Ryan's Dive into '95 - Part Seventeen (4/23 - 4/29)
The One with Collision in Korea! Plus, Bam Bam turns face, the Great Smoky Mountain Promo Blitz, and more!
If you haven’t read it already, please check out my introductory article that explains what this series is all about. As a reminder, footage is sourced from the Goodhelmet 1995 Yearbook, unless otherwise stated.
How ya now?
Other than a babyface turn in the WWF, we have a pretty thin line-up on the actual Yearbook compilation this week. I hope you like promos and vignettes! However, a weekend of rather infamous shows happened around this time that were not covered in the Yearbook compilation, so I’ll discuss those and review some key matches as BONUS MATERIAL. In fact, the bonus material is going to make up the bulk of this review.
Well…
APRIL 24th
WWF Monday Night RAW - We kick things off by checking in with Bam Bam Bigelow and Ted DiBiase. The Bammer promises to beat Diesel and bring the WWF Championship to the Million Dollar Corporation.
We then join Bam Bam Bigelow vs. Diesel for the WWF Championship near the end. Tatanka “accidentally” trips Bam Bam as he's running the ropes, allowing Diesel to hit the Jackknife to end it.
Post-match, DiBiase runs down Bigelow's recent Ls and fires him from the MILLION$ TEAM$. Tatanka attacks him from behind, but Bam Bam comes back and tosses Tatanka to a sizeable pop. Bammer takes the mic and does the “YOU CAN'T FIRE ME! I QUIT!” thing. IRS comes out to attack Bigelow, and that results in some double-teaming.
SID then comes out to kick the shit out of Bam Bam, finishing with a powerbomb that looked like it would SUCK to take. It wasn’t a full-on Ganso bomb, but still not a fun landing.
Diesel FINALLY runs out and clears the ring, kick-starting the main-event program for King of the Ring and adding more fuel to the Diesel/Sid build for the first In Your House PPV. This was also the official face turn for Bigelow, which really didn’t work for anyone involved at the end of the day. The babyface side of the roster was already ridiculously stacked, and Shawn Michaels was returning soon, so there was little room to advance for Bigelow beyond the brief period of tagging with Diesel on top. Also, the lame theme music, flame-shooting gauntlets, and Kliq politics didn’t exactly help, either.
Plus, this took another main-event level heel off the table for Diesel. While the babyface side of the roster was stacked as hell, there very few viable villains for Diesel to vanquish. Having a babyface champion is all well and good, but not if there's no heels to work with. Batman can't be an effective hero if the rogues gallery is mostly filled with guys like the Condiment King, Ten-Eyed Man, Killer Moth, and Crazy Quilt.
Interestingly, this match actually did RAW's highest rating up to that point (3.9, translating to around 2.28 million). Any wrestling promotion would kill for that kind of rating on cable nowadays.
APRIL 28th
Collision in Korea (Night One) - Yes, kids, we made it to the utterly infamous Collision in Korea, a weekend of shows jointly produced by NJPW, AJW, and WCW that took place in Pyongyang, North Korea. I’ll discuss some of the major talking points surrounding this spectacle and review a couple of key matches from each night. I’m sure I’ll miss some things, and I don't imagine a lot of new ground will be covered, but this is more so meant to be a high-level overview.
Essentially, New Japan Pro Wrestling legend-turned politician Antonio Inoki, sensing his political career circling the drain, decided that improving Japan/North Korea relations was JUST the thing needed to right the ship. Kim Jong-il had just taken over as Supreme Commander after the death of Kim Il-sung and likely saw this as an opportunity to flex his political muscle in front of the rest of the world. Thus, the Pyongyang International Sports and Culture Festival for Peace was created, set to take place in May Day Stadium. It was several days of athletic feats, richly-choreographed exhibitions, militaristic displays, and good ol’ professional wrasslin’ as the headline attraction.
Inoki wanted to fly some American wrestlers over to participate and naturally reached out to World Championship Wrestling, with whom New Japan Pro Wrestling had a working relationship. Eric Bischoff, feeling that this kind of international exposure may give WCW the edge in their war with the World Wrestling Federation, was happy to oblige. At Inoki's behest, he even got Muhammad Ali to come along as a guest of honor, likely selling him on the “peace” aspect of the festival. Bischoff initially approached Hulk Hogan to work the main event against Inoki, but Hogan was like “that’s not gonna work for me, BROTHER” and wisely declined. Surprisingly not because he didn’t want to do the J-O-B to Inoki, but because he just didn’t want to go to Korea. Ric Flair was Plan B, and, seeing this as a way to associate himself with a sports luminary like Ali, accepted. Several other American workers (most of whom worked extensively with NJPW) came along for the fun.
So, yeah, you’ve likely read and heard about the insane conditions of the trip. The wrestlers had to be flown in from Japan via an old, decrepit military aircraft as the Japanese embassy literally told them that their safety could not be guaranteed. North Korean military escorts were assigned to accompany the foreigners everywhere they went, passports were seized upon arrival, and phones were bugged. Eric Bischoff went for a morning jog without his escort, resulting in hours of interrogation upon his return. All kinds of nuttiness happened there. Oddly enough, other than the military escorts and constant surveillance, the guests were treated like royalty. They were wined and dined and put up in fancy accommodations. I highly recommend checking out the Dark Side of the Ring episode about this subject as there's much more tea spilled there.
The two shows currently hold the first and second spots for highest-attended events in wrestling history. Per government officials, the first night saw a total of 165,000 fans in attendance, while night two surpassed that with 190,000 strong. Dave Meltzer and others dispute this, claiming that 150,000 attended the first night and 165,000 attended the second. Either way, that is a LOT of people. These numbers far surpass any other attendance figure as of March 2023. The shows also had huge live gates ($7.5 million for Night One, $8.5 million for Night Two), though some WrestleManias have beaten those numbers out.
While it was a record-breaker in North Korea, this festival didn’t make much of a worldwide splash. Press coverage was fairly sparse, with most of it being the typical ‘lol fake wrestling’ negativity.
A condensed version of Collision in Korea was broadcast on pay-per-view on August 4th featuring eight of the fifteen total matches crammed into two hours. It was promoted by WCW and performed poorly, earning about 30,000 buys when most WCW PPVs around that time generated 100K-200K buys. I mean, the show took place over three months prior and didn't have much to attract North American viewers, so it wasn't exactly going to do numbers. As of March 2023, this show is not available on the Award-Winning WWE Network or Peacock. However, it was available for a bit during the pre-Network Classics on Demand service (now THERE’s a throwback), so it wasn't always completely buried or anything.
The reasoning for it not being on The Network/The Cock is not entirely clear. Some people, including Dave Meltzer and Eric Bischoff, theorize that it's due to the shows destroying WWE's own much-ballyhooed (and possibly inflated) attendance records. Some theorize that it could be due to the fact that the show is essentially propaganda for a brutally oppressive regime with innumerable human rights violations. I mean, we all know that WWE would NEVER have anything like that on their streaming services…
I toyed with the idea of doing the full show as bonus content, but I really didn't feel up to it. The wrestling for the most part is rather bland with short matches contested in front of a crowd (most of whom were apparently ordered to be there by literal gunpoint) that didn't have a single clue of what they were seeing. Hell, even North Korean officials in attendance were apparently bewildered by the co-operative nature of standard pro-wrestling spots and didn’t know what to make of it. I guess Inoki sold the matches as more of a shoot than they actually are.
Since this is a two-night event, I'll cover a couple of notable matches from each night. I’ll do two from Night One here, and two from Night Two near the end of the article. The matches are sourced from the aforementioned PPV broadcast, with commentary courtesy of Eric Bischoff, Mike Tenay, and Kazuo Ishikawa (another alias of Sonny Onoo).
Before I jump into it the matches, I just want to talk about the WCW VHS release. Notice something amiss, specifically regarding the choice of Korean flag?
Yes, they used the South Korean flag for an event taking place in North Korea. In all fairness, I wasn't expecting the North Korean flag on something designed to sit on American store shelves, but they could have, you know, not used EITHER flag so that hacks like me have fewer opportunities to poke fun at them.
Akira Hokuto & Bull Nakano vs. Manami Toyota & Mariko Yoshida - As much as I recommend watching the Dark Side of the Ring episode on this, they completely left out the fact that women from AJW were on the show. That’s a pretty big thing to omit. If there’s one bright spot that came out of this weekend, it’s the fact that Akira Hokuto was introduced to her future husband, NJPW’s Kensuke Sasaki, here. They went on one date, where Kensuke PROPOSED, and then they proceeded to have some really loud…uh, “fun” at the hotel. Like, LOUD. “Wake up the entire hotel and have the police called on you” loud. The good stuff. Absolute king and queen shit here. They married four months later and are still together to this day!
So, yeah, this looks like a sweet match on paper, so I figured I'd check this one out first. This is the second match of the first night, but was the 4th match of the PPV version.
A lot of double-team offense from both duos and thwarting of double-team moves to start until Nakano clotheslines down both competitors. Things settle down as Nakano beats down on Toyota, including a stiff clothesline. Toyota sticks and moves with missile dropkicks and tags in Yoshida, who immediately eats a lariat from Nakano. Hokuto lands a splash off the top, a spinkick, and a short piledriver for two. Hokuto then locks in the Rita Romero Special for a bit.
Nakano checks in and gets her own leg grapevine, but it's broken up by Toyota. Yoshida continues to endure abuse from Hokuto and Nakano until she cartwheels to avoid Hokuto and hits a crossbody, then some handspring elbows. Fisherman's suplex gets two, but Hokuto hits a superplex for her own two count. Toyota tags in, but eats boots after attempting a splash. Nakano hits a BIG powerbomb (called a “piledriver” by Eric Bischoff on commentary). Toyota gets a roll-up for a close two! Attempted double-team suplex results in Nakano suplexing both opponents, but Hokuto misses a follow-up dive! Yoshida and Toyota hit a double-dropkick on Hokuto, then Yoshida follows up with a suicide dive, then Toyota hits a springboard plancha!
Back in, Toyota hits a moonsault for two. Japanese Ocean Cyclone Suplex is attempted, but Hokuto rolls through for a two count! Yoshida comes in and eats a beautiful German suplex from Hokuto for two. Nakano comes in, but is hit with a rounding crossbody from Yoshida for two. Nakano absorbs some dropkicks, then Hokuto hits a missile dropkick in both opponents at the same time. Hokuto then lands a flip dive to the outside. Nakano top rope legdrop on Yoshida ends it!
***1/2 - Yeah, this was expectedly great stuff. They had about eight and a half minutes or to work with, so they wrestled at a blistering pace and made the most of every nanosecond they were out there. Yoshida was game for taking a beating, Nakano was a great monster, and Hokuto and Toyota were on point. This was like a Reader's Digest condensed version (fuck, I’m old) of what these ladies were doing back then.
IWGP Heavyweight Championship: Shinya Hashimoto (c) vs. Scott Norton - This contest main-evented the first night. I wouldn’t have normally picked this particular match-up, but it’s for the IWGP title, so it’s one of the few matches with actual stakes. Scott Norton had a particularly rough time in Pyongyang. Poor guy was already in trouble with his wife because he wasn’t able to reach her by phone for a few days because of their fucked-up phone system, and she thinks he’s off partying with the boys. He finally gets her on the horn, where they argue, and he blurts out “you don’t understand what kind of shithole we’re in”. The phone immediately went dead, and he was whisked away to be interrogated in a hotel basement room. That sounds absolutely terrifying.
Hash's dubbed-in music is what would become Dean Malenko's theme in WCW.
Flash asserts his power at the beginning of the match, shoulderblocking Hash out of the ring. Norton continues to methodically beat down Hashimoto until Hash comes back with some of his trademark kicks that Bischoff assigns overly verbose names to. Mike Tenay discusses Hashimoto's past training with the Hart Family Dungeon, though he doesn't mention it by name. Tenay is always good for those little tidbits. After some arm work from Hashimoto, Norton hits a flying shoulderblock to put Hash down. Hash comes back with some kicks and goes back to the arm. It's as exciting as it sounds.
Norton absorbs some kicks and knocks Hash on his ass. Norton works over Hash for a while in glacial fashion until Hash comes back with a dropkick. Hash again works the arm until Norton grabs his face to break. Norton takes back over with some clubbering. Norton hits a Vader Bomb (well, with his knees) for two. Norton SLOOOOOOWWWWWLLLYYY continues to work over Hashimoto. Hashimoto finally springs to life by SWEEPING THE LEG JOHNNY and hitting some kicks. Y’know, as much as people riff on Bischoff's complex names for kicks (myself included), I used to take taekwondo and jiu-jitsu when I was younger, so it's mildly interesting to me to hear some of the martial arts technique and methodology described on commentary.
Hash hits a DDT for two, then goes to the chinlock. They mess up a powerslam spot, so Norton transitions into a DDT of his own. They fight over a suplex, with Norton hitting it for two. Both guys trade blows, with Hash getting a thrust kick for two. Powerbomb from Norton, but he goes upstairs for a splash…for two! Weirdly, a bang is heard and streamers fall from the sky to indicate the 20-minute time limit being reached. WE HAVE A DRAW!
* - I wouldn’t say the match was truly terrible or anything, but it was very slow and quite boring. I enjoy both guys, but slogging through a 20 minute match in front of a crowd that mostly wasn't there by choice wasn’t the best way to showcase their talents. It felt like watching two tectonic plates move. A few highlights here and there (some of the kicks and a couple of fun power spots from Norton) can't really redeem this one.
APRIL 29th
USWA Championship Wrestling - We're walkin’ in Memphis this week with “Dapper” Dave Brown (OK, I made that one up), who brings out PG-13.
Because April 15th didn't have ENOUGH going on, The Gambler and Brickhouse Brown beat PG-13 for the belts that day. JC Ice and Wolfie D miss being tag champs and promise to reclaim the gold. That's pretty much it.
Smoky Mountain Wrestling - We start off our battery of Smoky Mountain promos this week with Smoky Mountain Heavyweight Champion Buddy Landel at Classy Motors, as used car lot. He is with Wayne from Classy Motors.
He runs down former champ Bobby Blaze, but decides that, as an OUTSTANDING PILLAR OF THE COMMUNITY, he is going to buy Bobby Blaze a VEE-HICKLE. Wayne from Classy Motors shows Buddy a series of cars suitable for a “puke from Ashland, Kentucky”, all of which are TOO NICE for Bobby, his old lady, and “that illegitimate kid” of his. Buddy will be back next week to see if Wayne from Classy Motors can find that right car. Again, Buddy Landel was fucking hilarious here. He also looks great with that belt.
We are now in the Smoky Mountain conference room with human bowel obstruction Jim Cornette, “Bullet” Bob Armstrong, and Smoky Mountain commissioner Sandy Scott. Jim reveals to Bob that his partner for the Texas Death Match against The Gangstas at Volunteer Slam is none other than TERRY FUNK!
Bob takes exception because Terry is nuts and can't trust him. To show that he's SUPER SERIAL, Jim brings out a cashier's check and promises to refund the money of everyone in attendance if Bullet Bob and Terry Funk don't beat The Gangstas. Jim loves that “refund the people’s money if (blank) happens/doesn’t happen” trope, doesn’t he?
Next, we catch up with Ricky Morton, clad in a neckbrace after sustaining two compressed vertebrae from Al Snow's assault (Al-ssault?) a couple of weeks ago. Morton plans to be back in May, and he wants Al Snow in the ring, and in a manner that prevents outside interference.
We then cut to Al Snow and Unabomb for their retort. Snow calls Morton's girlfriend a cow, a skank, and a bag of yeast. Jesus, dude.
Morton's girlfriend is in attendance and goes after Snow! I don't blame her after all that. Snow hides behind Les Thatcher because he would prefer not to have that smoke.
Snow does an admirable job here being a complete chickenshit heel that people want to see Ricky (and his girlfriend) beat the snot out of. He didn’t really need to keep repeating “bag of yeast”, though.
The promo-thon continues with The Thugz (Dirty White Boy and Tracy Smothers). They are set to wrestle PG-13 for the USWA Tag Titles at Volunteer Slam as the worlds of two of our Saturday staples collide! Yes, Smoky Mountain and USWA did some inter-promotional stuff around this time.
Of course, The Gambler and Brickhouse Brown are the current USWA tag champs, but PG-13 would get them back in early May. Speaking of PG-13, we have them on tape…with the belts. Jesus, this footage is out of date. Hey, a promo within a promo! Nested promos! PG-13 lay down some bars and cut a heel promo, calling the fans “inbred rednecks”.
Smothers provides his retort and lays down that awesome catchphrase:
T is for Terrible, H is for Hell, U is for Ugly, and G is for Jail, ’cause a thug can’t spell!
After that awesomeness, The Gangstas come out because THEY want PG-13. A match is set for next week, with the winning team going on to face PG-13 at Volunteer Slam.
And that ends this week's Smoky Mountain Promo Blitz.
WCW Saturday Night - We board the Mothership and catch up with Diamond Dallas Page, the Diamond Doll, and Max Muscle. They’re all going SHOPPING! We get a montage of Kimberly trying on various hats.
They then hit an art gallery for some more Thomas Foolery. DDP buys ALL OF THE ART.
We then get Kimberly trying on several outfits. At the end, she models a wedding dress, causing DDP to spit out his cigar and order her to take it off.
Max Muscle looks respectfully.
DDP continues to kill it with this version of the character.
On the opposite side of the awesome scale, we have Dave Sullivan training with kids, set to music that sounds like a version of “St. Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion)” that was held back in school a few years.
We then get clips of Dave Sullivan tearing it up at the WCW Power Plant as a knock-off of “Gonna Fly Now” plays and clips of the children's encouragement are interspersed.
Collision in Korea (Night Two) - As promised, we have a couple of big matches from the second night of our wrestling spectacular from beautiful, scenic, cosmopolitan Pyongyang, North Korea.
The Steiner Brothers vs. Kensuke Sasaki & Hiroshi Hase - Yeah, no way I wasn't gonna be watching THIS puppy. These guys had a certified banger in the Tokyo Dome in 1991 so this should hopefully rule. Code of Honor is adhered to, and Scott and Hase start, with Scott getting the best of Hiroshi early. Scott presses Hase overhead and tosses him onto one of the other NJPW wrestlers at ringside!
Sasaki comes in and gets belly-to-belly'd by Rick as the Steiners stand tall. Back in, Hase comes back with some kickings, but Scott cuts him off with an overhead suplex and a tilt-a-whirl slam. Rick tags in and barks like a dog, naturally. Sasaki enters the fray and snags a release German, but gets caught with an overhead belly-to-belly seconds later. Sasaki comes back with a powerslam as the announcers discuss his whirlwind romance with Akira Hokuto. Bischoff: “Yeah, I heard about that the next morning, by the way”. Heheheheheheheheh.
Hase comes in and hits some strikes on Rick, but Rick ends that rally with a STEINER LINE. Rick runs Hase gut-first into the buckles and tags in Scott.
Scott hits the belly-to-belly and beats Hase down. Rick tags in and hits a NASTY release German, with Hase landing on his FACE! Scott grabs an STF, then lands an overhead belly-to-belly. The Steiners beat down on Hase for another bit, with Scott hitting a double underhook suplex for two. Hase snags a Uranage out of nowhere and THEORETICAL HOT TAG SASAKI! Dropkicks and bodyslams galore…until Scott hits Sasaki in the wiener. Sasaki comes back with a double clothesline, then the Japanese duo hit a backdrop/clothesline combo. GIANT SWING FROM HASE!
Rick comes back with another sick release German, then Scott hits a pumphandle slam. Sasaki and Rick brawl on the floor as Scott hits a Steiner Screwdriver (that the camera completely misses) on Hase for the win.
***1/2 - Another suitability fun “Steiners vs. Japanese Guys” match. The Steiners suplexed and slammed the shit out of their opponents (mostly Hase). The Japanese contingent had some fun spots, Hase took an absolute BEATING, and the brief hope after Sasaki’s “hot” tag was fire. It doesn't hit the heights of some of the other Steiner tags because this did feel quite one-sided. The (understandable) lack of crowd reaction and terrible production at the end didn’t exactly help matters. Seriously, they couldn’t have edited in an alternate camera angle to actually show the fucking Steiner Screwdriver?
Antonio Inoki vs. Ric Flair - And now the main attraction, the one and only meeting of two of the biggest stars in the history of the business. The lack of crowd reaction up until this point makes the show feel like it was shot in an empty arena during the early pandemic era, but the crowd finally comes alive for Inoki, a protégé of Korea's Rikidozan. The legend of Rikidozan was the focus of the promotion of this show in North Korea. During the ramp-up to this event, Inoki claimed that the winner of this match would receive a WCW title match, but that wasn’t really going to happen. Oh, Antonio, you silly goose!
This is also Flair's first match since his Halloween Havoc 1994 cage match loss to Hulk Hogan.
Both guys take it slow to start, engaging in some mat wrestling, with Inoki grabbing an armbar, with Flair breaking via the ropes. Flair gets his own armbar, but Inoki kicks at Flair to escape. Flair stalls for a bit and tries for a hammerlock, but Inoki comes back with a shoulderblock and some stompings. Flair bails to collect himself on the floor.
Flair comes back and lands some chops, then gets HIS own stompings, causing Inoki to bail. Flair works Inoki over on the floor and suplexes him back into the ring. Flair goes for repeated pin attempts, then Ric begins to abuse the leg. Figure four is locked in, but the crowd tries to will Inoki back into it. Inoki escapes and rolls Flair up for two. Both men exchange blows, with Inoki naturally getting the upper hand.
Flair flops and begs off after some punchings, and Flair takes his trademark bump over the corner. Back in, Flair goes upstairs, but, and you'll want to sit down for this, Inoki slams him off the top. Glancing dropkick gets two for Inoki. Flair comes back with an elbowdrop for two, then lands a back suplex. Inoki headscissors out of a bodyslam and lands a rolling kick and a kneedrop from the top. Enzuigiri connects for the three and the win for Inoki over that EVIL AMERICAN PIG Ric Flair. Post-match, Code of Honor is adhered to.
**3/4 - This was a fairly well-worked and fun match, albeit with a bit of sloppiness here and there, and the selling of the leg from Inoki could have been more consistent. However, considering the ages and possible ring rust of both men, this was still pretty decent. At least the match flew by and, unlike anything else over the course of the two nights, the fans were very much into it.
After the show, Ric Flair was asked to make a statement declaring North Korea’s superiority over the United States. Ric declined, but did offer up a nice, flowery speech about how wonderful Kim Il-sung was in consolation. Later in the year, leaflets of Inoki standing over a beaten Flair were air-dropped over Seoul, South Korea as propaganda. Once the plane landed in Japan, Ric got on his hands and knees and kissed the ground, happy to be back on friendly ground.
Apparently, the North Korean government was so pleased with how this turned out that they were considering making this an annual event. Luckily for the wrestlers, the people in attendance, and pretty much everyone not in the North Korean government, this wasn’t the case. Unfortunately, for Inoki, this wasn’t the shot in the arm his political career needed, as he failed to be re-elected and didn’t return to politics until 2013.
Well, that was a lop-sided week as Collision in Korea dominated, but we had some fun promos here and there from Smoky Mountain and WCW. The two tag matches were fun, and Inoki/Flair is an interesting curiosity, but there's nothing worth going out of your way for. The PPV version is on YouTube if you want to check it out, but don’t expect Bridge of Dreams-level awesome.
NEXT TIME: Atsushi Onita’s retirement match (well, one of many)! Plus, a AAA singles match, and music videos and vignettes galore!
BE THERE!