[1993-12-18-WCW-Saturday Night] Rick Rude vs The Boss

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Gary Juster says Davey Boy Smith had a contractual obligation to face Rick Rude, but he's not in the building. If he doesn't show up in 30 seconds, the match is forfeited and Rick Rude is the winner. Rude wins by forfeit and gets cocky on the mic. This brings out The Boss, with the Big Boss Man name tag conveniently covered on his wrestling gear, but otherwise looking the exact same. At last, he can get revenge for Rude's comments about his mother!

 

In a hilarious moment, Jesse blames Bill Clinton for this, as Clinton was pushing a crime bill at the time to put 50,000 more cops on the street. Also, we get to hear Tony Schiavone say "The Boss! Man, is he big!"

 

Great action, and the hottest thing Rude was involved in all year.

 

Okerlund interviewing him after a match with Rude is an interesting visual heading into 1994, when WCW would take their WWF signings to a new level.

[Zenjo]

The Ex-Man jumps Rude in a hot WCW debut. There was some early excitement, which not even Rude's array of rest holds in the middle could kill off before the upset finish. Good way to start his WCW run for the Boss, though he didn't go on to accomplish much in the promotion.

[El-P]

Red hot debut for Ray Trailor. What was the situation with Davey ? Was he fired for any specific reasons ? He sure didn't last very long despite having good matches with Vader. Anyway, the whole gimmick infringement is so blatant here, what were they thinking ? Of course coming back as Big Bubba would probably wouldn't have got a superstar reaction like it did here. Bubba was off AJPW, so it's not exactly a jump from WWF to WCW, still just a few months after Gene Okerlund it's indeed quite interesting to see Bossman in WCW as a sign of things to come. The difference being that Trailor was still in his prime, as showed by this spectacular performance, an excellent TV sprint that put a fire under Rude's ass. Best Rude match of the year ? I would say so.

[Kevin Ridge]

Davey Boy does not show up for his match with Rude. Smith is presented as being a coward. Boss Man hits the ring and we got an official match with Rude! Continuing their feud from WWF in 1990 before Rude disappeared there. The AJPW guys were taking the Boss Man Slam much better than Rude. Boss Man is still in full WWF character. Boss gets elevated immediately as challenger to Rude's title as he scores the non title win. Boss Man had a pretty good November and December in the ring.

[PeteF3]

Gary Juster is introduced as Okerlund's "very close, personal, long-time friend" which absolutely slays me for some reason, I think because it's such a Gene thing to say. Davey Boy is not in the arena and has 30 seconds to hit the ring or face a forfeiture--so long, Davey. Your WCW run was a lot better than I remembered, and in theory you could have continued to be an asset for them.

 

But as Plan Bs go, this is one hell of a coup for a company that spent most of the year not being able to get out of its own way. THE BOSS is here, in full prison garb with his former ring name stitched over and presumably to finally after all this time avenge Rude for those comments about his mother. Somehow this leads to a match. Schiavone justifies it by saying, "It's TV, it's entertainment!" Somewhere Vince and/or Kevin Dunn are shedding a tear of joy. These types of situations are where Jesse really thrives. Rude is still noticeably slowed, working at half-speed and still bumping gingerly. Boss is over big from the start, though, and he nicely focuses everything on Rude's back, both playing on his past history and settting up for the Boss Man Slam for the win.

[garretta]

I guess you could say that Bossman finally got Rude back for talking about his mother. So what if it was three years later and in an entirely different promotion? Given Tony's cutesy allusions to Bossman's past, Gene's line "Didn't that jar your mother's preserves?" just couldn't ​have been a coincidence.

 

Rude got more of this match than I thought he did after reading the thread, but this was still a dominating performance from Bossman. This may be the first case of Vince letting a guy go too soon, as I could have definitely gotten behind a Bossman-Yoko feud for the title, and I might have even appreciated a short Bossman title reign if Vince had chosen to go there.

 

As good as Bossman looked, though, Jesse was the star of this match. This is the first time we've gotten pure, unadulterated heel-leaning Jesse in quite a while, and it sounded fresh. I can't recall the last time he was so worked up, and it helped that Rude was such a longtime favorite of his. Hearing him rant about how Bossman was an example of how big fat cops were going to show up on our streets was hilarious, as was Tony's reaction to the whole performance. He was amused, alarmed, and dumbfounded all at the same time, and you could almost hear him ask himself several times, "Just what the hell's going on here, and how do I get out of this match with my head on my shoulders?" Jesse was in such a bad mood that he even went after Okerlund for not iniviting him up to his cabin to do the Christmas show the following week. Let's just hope that he has a few more classic performance like this in him before he goes.

 

The "Boss, Man is he big!" routine was clever the first time, but when Tony did it again I knew that Bischoff was deliberately rubbing Vince's nose in Traylor's defection. That may have been what caused Vince to sue (or threaten to sue) Turner over the whole thing, and that's too bad, because that gimmick was the one that made Traylor a superstar moreso than Big Bubba Rogers. Once he had to change it in order to keep Turner out of the courtroom he was never the same, at least from what little I remember. I guess I'll see if I'm right in the '94 set.

 

Speaking of rubbing people's noses in it, giving Davey Boy a count to get to the ring when you know perfectly well he isn't even in the building is a prime example, and we didn't need to see it. They should have just said that he was injured or went home to England for a family emergency; it would have gotten the point of Davey's absence across without making WCW look petty in the process.

 

Was there ever a better match of pitchman and product than Mean Gene and the WCW hotline? I remember him hawking the damn thing literally every time he was onscreen during ​Nitro ​when I tuned in occasionally during my college days. The NWO could have just laid waste to the building, there could have been a riot going on right in back of him, but Gene was still in there shilling his heart out. it just felt proper somehow.

[soup23]

The Boss rushes out and takes Rude by surprise and he is a house of fire. Jesse of course is shocked on commentary talking about the legality of the whole thing. I liked the counter of Rude with the DDT to take over. Jesse has a great line saying he doesn’t normally cheer lead but he has to on this occasion. Rude’s work on the neck is well done and the heat here is stronger than anything else he has been involved with. Boss makes his comeback and we get some great Rude sell jobs on atomic drops. Boss wins for the big upset and gives a promo with Gene after the match. Fun segment. ***1/4 6.3