[1991-06-14-WCW-Clash of the Champions XV] Sting and Nikita Koloff / Bruise Cruise commercial

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

"Ben" (Is this Ben Sullivan?) wins the Sting lookalike contest. As a result, he gets to meet Sting. I understand wanting to heat up Sting vs Nikita, but considering how much WCW struggled with crossover promotion like this, Nikita doing a sneak attack in this segment was probably not a good decision. I say that, then his mother interferes when Nikita goes after the kid, and they are so obviously actors. Still, this promotion is terrible.

 

Then we get a commercial for the Bruise Cruise! Hey, Flair was the center of the advertising for this too!

[shoe]

I was thinking the plant was a young Cody Rhodes . I know I'm stretching. Teasing attacking a kid is in bad taste.

[PeteF3]

Apparently having matching facepaint is enough to win a Sting Lookalike Contest. How lame.

 

There's a part of me that thinks a wrestling card held on a cruise ship would make for a really, really cool and unique atmosphere. Then the pragmatic part of me takes over and coldly informs me of the myriad reasons why it wouldn't really work.

[PeteF3]

I was thinking the plant was a young Cody Rhodes . I know I'm stretching. Teasing attacking a kid is in bad taste.

The Observer says that it was not Dusty's kid, but it was in fact Ben Sullivan, son of Kevin.

[Kevin Ridge]

Looks like the kid was going to administer medical aid after Sting got beat up. A regular Doogie Howser. This whole segment should have been axed with everything else being rushed as it is.

 

I can only imagine the Bruise Cruise vessel losing power and them being stranded for five days.

[soup23]

Amazing that it was Ben Sullivan.

 

The sneak attack was interesting and I liked the mom interfering.

 

I still don't know why they don't do a bruise cruise now as I think it would be a lot of fun.

[garretta]

This might be a whole bunch of nitpicking, but they could have told Ben to at least attempt a Southern accent. For a Knoxville native, there was a bit too much second-generation Boston in his voice. In a bit less of a nitpick, was it a coincidence that Ben and Sting had the exact same paint pattern, almost as if someone (read: Sully) had told Ben beforehand what paint Sting would wear so the two of them could look alike?

 

The attack was nicely done, but everyone, even the marks, knew that Nikita wouldn't really go after Ben, so that part didn't accomplish much. By the way, is/was Ben's "mother" anyone famous? That certainly wasn't Nancy with him by a longshot. Then again, that could have been Ben's real mother, since I doubt Sully was a one-woman man.

 

Did the Bruise Cruise actually happen? I wouldn't think that WCW would want to take most of its top wrestlers off the road for five days, even if there were some scheduled cards on the ship. Having Flair as your spokesman under these circumstances may not have been the best idea, but who else did they have who was both well-known and adult-oriented? Sting, Luger and the Steiners were all geared too much toward kids, and you wouldn't find many of them on a cruise like this. Maybe Arn would have been a better choice, or possibly Windham, since he was going face soon enough.

[DMJ]

There is photographic evidence that the Bruise Cruise happened (google it - well worth your time), but I'd really love to read/hear an interview with someone who attended. People have requested the same on reddit, and so far, no one has responded. C'mon, PWOers, one of us nerds must know somebody who got drunk with Bobby Eaton in the tropics!