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[1990-11-21-NWA-Clash of the Champions XIII] Sid Vicious vs The Nightstalker


Loss

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  • 3 months later...

Here it is - a match that for years had the rep as the worst wrestling match of all time. Let's see how it holds up. Bryan Clarke was an Ox Baker trainee? How did I not know this?

 

This is a horrible, horrible match, but I'm fairly sure I've seen a worse match at some point in my life. It was at least shorter than Zeus vs Abdullah the Butcher after all. I would love to do play-by-play on this sometime, but I just don't have it in me.

 

As a side note, Sid being booked as a babyface is weird.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Clarke is clean-shaven, which is a little jarring. Ox Baker is apparently gone already with little notice--Ross and Paul E. have to cover for why he's still on the chyron.

 

Comical sequence where Sid breaks a bearhug with an ear clapper, then stands there and just allows Nightstalker to reapply it. Paul E. does his damnedest to inject a storyline into this, bringing up Sid's punctured lung as justification for the rib work. Nightstalker's strikes are as bad as Zeus' and the crowd quickly lets them know it. Big Cat strolls to ringside for no particular reason and the finish is horribly done on top of everything else.

 

So, our Worst Match of the Year candidates (I'm thinking/hoping no other contenders emerge before the Yearbook is out):

 

- Atlas vs. Onita

- Zeus vs. Abby

- Pearl vs. Cazana

- Team Challenge Battle Royal

- This

 

I would also include Aoyagi vs. Go from Pioneer but I'll accept the appreciation that others have for it and chalk it up to personal distaste only instead of objective badness. The ICW and WWC matches had true what-the-fuck atmospheres about them, plus the ICW bout was preceded by the best of the solo Atlas promos. Puerto Rico had Abby getting monkey flipped by Zeus. The Battle Royal was awful on almost every level but the 30-second entrances were enough to keep us short attention-span people somewhat occupied. This was hideous...but shorter than Pearl/Cazana. Also, Sid threw a really nice back suplex.

 

Pearl/Cazana takes it for me. Negative crowd reaction is better than no crowd reaction, plus the thing was dragged out to the point where it felt longer than watching an Ironman Match. The difference between Stalker/Sid and it is the difference between Plan 9 from Outer Space and the cinematic ouevre of Coleman Francis.

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Also, this seems like an appropriate spot to discuss the fact that in the midst of the Clash segments on the Yearbook I fired up the legendary Sting/Scorpion face-off hosted by the Mike Wallace of pro wrestling, Paul E. Dangerously. I felt it needed to be acknowledged as it is possibly the most embarrassing, moronic segment of the year in any promotion. Sting comes out to declare that he's doing what he has to do and confront the Scorpion face to face. Scorpion does what he's been doing for months now and that's appear somewhere else in the arena. He plucks a ridiculously cooperative "fan" from his ringside seat and puts a box over his head and does an awful-looking magic trick (complete with fan blatantly holding the box in place) trying to Linda Blair him, all while Ole Anderson blithers over the PA and Paul E. blithers over that just to completely ruin whatever effect was being gone for. He carries the fan (who's feigning horror at this point so we can't chalk up his cooperation to a trance or hypnosis or whatever--the ring crew girl put on an Oscar-worthy performance by comparison) to a conveniently placed cage, puts a curtain over it, and pulls it back to reveal a leopard. Sting is either paralyzed with rage, fear, or befuddlement at this point. Sting spends about 10 seconds talking about how he's going to go after the Scorpion before actually doing it, giving Scorp time to do the same disappearing act he did at Havoc.

 

The angle is every bit as awful as its reputation, and then some. It makes Papa Shango's shit (another guilty pleasure for me) look dignified and sophisticated. The execution was godawful on top of everything else, with Paul E. and the voiceover constantly talking over one another being one of many gaffes. This angle, the above match, the underwhelming main event, and the presence of Starblazer and Maximum Overdrive and others should make Clash XIII a runaway winner for Worst Show of the Year.

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I still got Zeus/Abdullah as WMOTY due to this being short but holy shit it was bad. Nightstalker might as well brought the house mic into the ring as loud and obvious he was calling spots in the bearhug. I don't know why he had some much to say because they didn't do nothing but punch/kick afterwards.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...
  • 4 weeks later...

Sid tried. He really did. But nothing was stopping Wrath from sucking out loud. There was actually a semblance of psychology and Sid did sell his arm off the ring rope snap-thingy wrestlers do. The problem was that Wrath got any offense at all. Sid should have squashed that chump. Sid, who I have always thought had really shitty punches, nailed Hughes with a sweet one and if you pay close attention Sid actually hit a nice belly-to-back suplex. So given that, this is not the worst match of all-time, but still really bad.

 

Was that a fuckin battle axe that Wrath carried with him? Where is Dusty when you need him? I cant get over that. A friggin' Battle-Axe. Wrestling is just awesome.

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  • 1 month later...

I dont think this is anywhere near the Worst Match of All Time but it is pretty rotten. Been sitting here thinking if its worse than Abby - Zeus. The latter has that "why is this happening" quality that negates it's abundant horribleness. However, Abby - Zeus just wouldnt end. This match here with Sid and Nightstalker was much shorter (I figure Hughes was sent out early because they knew this thing was going nowhere). Sadly though, the Steroid Musclehead phase would continue for a little while after this debacle. You'd think after seeing this fiasco, that trend would have at least cooled off but it didnt. It was a frightening time for the wrestling fan. It looked like matches like these, with the huge immobile human action figures would be the flavor of the day, if not the entire decade. Truthfully, I think that if the Feds hadnt cracked down on Vince, that era would have never ended.

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  • 1 year later...

I never thought Sid was capable of carrying anyone, but he showed that he was here. The Nightstalker needed a whole lot more of Ox Baker's training, that's for sure. Of course, this is what you get when you put two monsters who aren't supposed to sell anything in the ring against each other. I could tell that Clarke wasn't used to being hit or even taking Irish whips, as he looked unsure of what to do the one time Sid sent him for the ride. The blatant interference from Hughes and the use of whatever weapon Clarke was supposed to have in his hand should have been called DQs in a perfect world, but I think the refs, like everyone else, just wanted this over with and forgotten.

 

Sid actually does some fine work here, at least by comparison. I remember that the Apter mags always said of him that he knew the at least the basics of wrestling, but chose to be a brawler instead because he wanted to prove how big and bad he was. I guess this was the type of match that they supposedly wanted to see from him; it's a shame that there was so much else going on to turn it into hash. I also liked Sid's promo at the start. He's surprised me with his verbal skills, and it looks to me that he was yet another guy whose ability to talk was wrecked by Vince, who turned him into a tooth-grinding, bug-eyed moron.

 

I know they wanted to set up a Skyscrapers reunion at Starrcade, but would it have killed Arn to come down and even the sides? Sid is still supposed to be a Horseman, after all. Or was this step one of a possible Sid face turn that ended up being scrapped by Dusty once he came back? Could Sid have been in line to challenge Flair once Ric got the belt back from Sting if Ole had kept the book?

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  • 1 year later...

I get all the Brians mixed up, and this was apparently Brian Clarke who I can't remember what he went on to do. Was he Wrath or one of the DOA? Or neither? Anyway, bad match, not the worst I've seen, and maybe not the worst I've seen this year. Someone above mentioned Zeus vs Abdullah, I'd call that worse. There was also some really long match, maybe like a draw or something, that I'm totally blanking on but remember being just absolutely punishing.

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  • GSR changed the title to [1990-11-21-NWA-Clash of the Champions XIII] Sid Vicious vs The Nightstalker

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