Ryan's Dive into '95 - Part Two (1/8 - 1/14)
Shatner? I hardly know her!
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?
With the first week of 1995 in the rear window, we move into the second week of January. That first week was pretty intense with some killer in-ring action from NJPW and AJW, as well as some absolute dumpster coffee. This week is relatively light on the in-ring action with only a couple of matches, but they're both violent, bloody brawls featuring our favorite one-eared bestselling author. We also have a few title changes (including one title changing hands twice within minutes!), some celebrity appearances, and a key debut.
Well, PITTER PATTER.
JANUARY 8th
IWA Japan Duel of the Wilds - Man, talk about starting things off with a bang…or, should I say, a “Bang! Bang!”, because…
No Ropes Barbed Wire Fire Death Match: Cactus Jack vs. Terry Funk - Get it? Because Cactus says “Bang! Bang!”…
But, yeah, this is the first of two Foley-flavored fights this week, and the first appearance of IWA Japan. IWA Japan, a successor to the recently-folded W*ING promotion, started putting on shows in May 1994 as a chief competitor to FMW in the deathmatch marketplace. IWA Japan would end up in rapid decline due to founder Victor Quiñones and several top talent leaving within the next couple of years.
We start off with dueling promos from both guys. Foley was always a strong promo, but he is in his absolute BAG around this time as you’ll see throughout the course of this series.
The Funker is more subdued and humble in comparison. He's just so darn likeable!
We are at the Honjo Civic Gymnasium in Saitama for this one. Cactus throws some chairs into the ring to start, but Funk just biffs some of them back at Jack's head, then wallops him some more. We go back to the ring for some wire teases and fisticuffs. This match goes pretty much how you'd expect a match between these two to go, full of intense brawling and both men throwing caution (and chairs) to the wind. Terry becomes the first to taste the barbed wire.
Jack wrapping up Funk's arm in barbed while doing his Mankind-esque screams is unsettling as all hell. Also unsettling is Jack coming at Terry with a fucking flaming chair!
Funk crawls into the crowd after getting hit with the chair, so Jack gets ANOTHER flaming chair and goes into the crowd to punish him some more, but Funk turns the tables by hiptossing Jack onto the burninating chair and chases him back to the ring. Foley gets a gutful of barbed wire courtesy of a Funk gourdbuster.
Jack takes a nasty bump through the wire and onto the floor. It looked like he was going for the “get your head caught in the ropes” spot that cost him his ear the year prior, but the wire wasn't able to hold up its end of the deal. That may have been a good thing.
WE GET THE FLAMING BRANDING IRON!
Funk brands Cactus, thus marking him as property of Dutton Ranch. Not satisfied with condemning Jack to a lifetime of service at Yellowstone, Funk tries to brand Jack's face!
Jack fights out and drops the Cactus Elbow! They were pretty fortunate with the fire here, which wouldn't be the case later on in ECW.
After some more wild brawling in the crowd, a double-arm DDT gets two. Funk gets a few jabs before falling on his face from exhaustion and blood loss. Cactus attempts an inverted atomic drop, but Funk counters into a DDT for the pin!
After the match, Funk goes after the referee and cameraman, understandably punch-drunk. Jack and Funk appear to show respect, but it was a RUSE! Jack turns on Funk and piledrives him on the floor, calling him a “sonofabitch”.
**** - Well, that was absolutely insane, bloody, violent, and awesome. Your mileage will absolutely vary depending on if you're into these kinds of matches or not, but I thought it was an intense, fun brawl with both guys just punishing each other (and themselves). With Funk, you're going to get a wild, messy fight, but that's the charm. Funk just did this shit so well. Cactus was building up a reputation at this point with matches like this. He did well in an antagonistic role here, while Funk was great fighting mostly from underneath.
Feel free to watch it yourself here (skip to 1:15:58, or watch the whole thing, whatever).
Post-match promos from both guys close things out.
WCW Main Event - Our first WCW of 1995, and it's a rare appearance for WCW Main Event, one of WCW's B-shows from around this time.
We're joined in progress near the end of Arn “The Glock” Anderson vs. Johnny B. Badd (c) for the WCW Television Championship. Col. Robert Parker and Meng get involved, with the former pushing Arn onto a supine Badd and holding Badd's leg down while the ref counts to three! Arn becomes TV champion for the fourth and final time in the first title change of our review series!
“Mean” Gene Okerlund interviews Jonathan Benjamin Badd immediately afterwards and even beckons referee Randy Anderson over to tell him what was missed, but Randy (one of the more underrated refs ever) can only call what he sees.
Naturally, this transitions into a WCW Hotline plug. Holy shit, you HAVE to respect that level of hustle from Mean Gene.
JANUARY 9th
We're joined in progress again, this time near the end of Owen Hart vs. Razor Ramon (c) for the WWF Intercontinental Championship. Owen has the Sharpshooter locked in, but Bret Hart runs in to attack Owen, awarding him the match via DQ. What we saw before the DQ looked pretty fun.
New AEW signee Jeff Jarrett and The Roadie then come out to attack Bret and Razor.
This ends when Razor and Bret bounce Jarrett back and forth like a ping pong ball. The DQ, while lame, makes sense as Razor was on a collision course with Jarrett for the Royal Rumble PPV, while Owen was still feuding on-and-off with Bret.
Later that episode, we have the first appearance of The King’s Court in 1995, featuring future CPAP cleaning device pitchman William Shatner as the special guest.
The Shat is here to promote “Tekwar”, the TV show based on his (ghost-written) series of novels, which was set to air after Monday Night RAW. Tekwar, of course, is a science fiction franchise so thoroughly engrained in our popular culture that you have just opened up a new browser tab to find out what the heck it is on Wikipedia.
Lawler and Shatner banter while Vince McMahon on commentary laughs almost to the point of death like Chrysippus when he saw a donkey eating his figs.
Shatner: “These people are not idiots! This is our audience! These are the people that watch TEKWAR!”
That was said with absolutely zero irony, and I am fucking HOWLING.
Things get a bit more heated, ending with Shatner taking Lawler down with a judo throw. Bret Hart comes out to celebrate with “his friend William Shatner”, per Vince. I mean, it was a pretty harmless corporate synergy segment that didn't go overlong. That's all you can ask for from these kinds of segments sometimes. Plus, that “These are the people that watch TEKWAR!” line was gold, Jerry! Gold!
The last segment for this episode of RAW sees a commercial advertising Baywatch star Pamela Anderson's appearance at the upcoming Royal Rumble PPV. She'll be the special guest at the PPV and will accompany the Rumble winner to the ring at Wrestlemania XI. Various wrestlers leave voicemails, including Lex Luger, Diesel, Shawn Michaels, and Doink. Well, she did marry Kid Rock, so this wasn't her last experience with clowns.
JANUARY 10th
ECW Hardcore TV - We pick up at the start of the show with Joey Styles calling out Steve Richards, who had been performing under “Stevie Hot Body”, Stevie Flamingo”, and “Stevie Polo”, obvious references to Scott Levy's past gimmicks, and had been promising to deliver the real deal to ECW, much to Joey's skepticism. Big Stevie promises that THIS is the biggest night in the history of ECW.
Tonight, we witness the birth of…RAVEN!
So, yeah! This is the debut of the Raven character, which was as big a departure from those other characters as you could get. He almost feels fully formed as he already had the catchphrase (“Quoth the Raven, Nevermore”), attire, theme music (“Come Out and Play” by The Offspring), and hostilities with Tommy Dreamer established from the jump. We'll be seeing a LOT more of him to come.
JANUARY 13th
We see our first action from the National Wrestling Conference, and we probably won't see much beyond this. The NWC was based in Las Vegas and had some notoriety for having some hardcore brawls, but it’s time in the sun was short-lived, and ended up folding in 1998.
Weapons Cage Match: Cactus Jack vs. Sabu - We get our second Cactus Jack match this week, and another one with a famous rival, this time being Sabu. Cactus cuts another banger promo before the match.
Bah, this has the lame WWF escape rules, but this should still be fun. At least the door is chained shut, so that’s not an option. Plus, this has WEAPONS. The ring announcer lists off the weapons in the ring, including (some of this is verbatim, by the way):
One 8-foot long table
One small trashcan
One telephone
A rope
A noose
“What looks like a champagne bottle”
One big garbage can
And a tray
One shovel (which gets applause)
One table
One “whatever the hell that is” (an old crappy phone)
Looks like a wine bottle
And “something that came out of the ceiling earlier”
I wonder if any of the smaller promotions that do “Fans Bring The Weapons” matches do something like this. “OK, we have a two-slice toaster, a Colecovision with thumbtacks glued to it, a four-slice toaster, a model of the Tower of Babel constructed from light tubes…”. Cactus comes out to the most hardcore, blood and guts anthem possible: “The Power” by Snap! Holy fuck, I am DEAD.
Jack gets the first weapon shot a few minutes in by using the One Big Garbage Can, but Sabu later returns fire with the tray. Cactus with the beloved SHOVEL!
He bops Sabu with it a couple of times before ramming him into the cage, drawing blood. Sabu tries to leap off the One Big Garbage Can and either into the cage or onto the ropes, but it doesn't work out. Cactus breaks the “something that came out of the ceiling earlier” over Sabu to follow up. A table is set up, and both guys go upstairs, only to both crash through the table!
That didn't look like a fun landing for Mick. Sabu goes to escape, but Jack cuts him off, but gets crotched for his efforts. He then tastes the unforgiving steel and is now busted open.
Sabu tries to set up an Arabian facebuster with a piece of broken table, but can't get it to work, so he just throws the table on Jack. Legdrop follows, then MORE SHOVEL TIME…which is interrupted by a low blow from Jack, albeit temporarily. After an attempt to put Sabu through another table is thwarted by stubborn wood, Jack suplexes half of the first table onto Sabu. I've always liked the Foley “suplex a table onto the opponent spot”. Someone needs to bring that back.
Sabu goes to moonsault Jack through a table, but Jack moves, so Sabu gets the full brunt of the table…that doesn't break!
Cactus Elbow misses Sabu…and the table still doesn't break! Sabu punches Jack, who falls onto the table…which finally breaks! Hooray! Sabu Paul E.’s Jack with the telephone! Both guys climb opposite sides of the cage, and both fall to the floor, but Sabu hits the floor first for the win! After the match, Sabu does his traditional post-match moonsault through a table.
***1/2 - I tend to enjoy plunder brawls more than most, so this was a blast. There were some spots that didn't go as planned to say the least, but that's to be expected with Sabu matches. It actually adds to the air of unpredictability, and those moments didn't take me out of the match. The spot with the One Big Garbage Can in particular wasn’t as bad as it could have been because Sabu wasn’t like “lemme try that sumbitch again”. They just went with it like damn pros. Cactus adds another solid brawl to his ever-growing resume. If nothing else, it's kind of neat to have two different hardcore-style Cactus matches in this one review, each from a different area of the world.
JANUARY 14th
USWA Championship Wrestling - We're back in Memphis to visit our friends in the USWA. We get an arena clip of Doug Gilbert and Tommy Rich wresting the USWA tag belts from PG-13 with the aid of a foreign object. An angry PG-13 try to goad the new champs into an immediate rematch…and it works?!?
Back in the ring, Scott Bowden accidentally strikes Rich, who is then rolled up for the 3! PG-13 immediately regain the tag titles! Ha!
Smoky Mountain Wrestling - We catch up with Cactus Jack (man, Foley is everywhere this week) and Boo Bradley. We learn that Boo is certified “sane” by a local mental health facility.
After some threats are lodged towards Chris Candido and Tammy Fytch for treating Boo like garbage and…yes, killing Boots the Cat, both guys walk off into the distance while “He Ain’t Heavy, He's My Brother” by The Hollies plays over black and white clips of recent events. Yup.
Meanwhile, The Heavenly Bodies have come down with a case of SUPER SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER. Hopefully they’re not contagious; otherwise, they should be wearing masks and socially distancing. They are hoping that commissioner “Bullet” Bob Armstrong reinstate them into Smoky Mountain (they had lost a loser leaves town match to the Rock N’ Roll Express in 1994) to fight The Gangstas to avenge Jim Cornette.
Speaking of Cornguy, he and his cane are in the ring with Jim “BAH GAWD” Ross, but The Gangstas immediately interrupt.
They accost Jim until Bob and Steve Armstrong come to Corny's aid. Cornette then requests that Bob reinstate the Heavenly Bodies, which Bob grants. DON'T MISS SUPER SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER! HEAVENLY BODIES VS. THE GANGSTAS!
WCW Saturday Night - And we close out a busy Saturday of wrestling (and Part Two of this review series) with a visit to The Mothership. Nitro wasn't a thing yet, so Saturday Night is still WCW's flagship weekly program. We're joined in progress to the ending of Harlem Heat vs. Stars & Stripes (Marcus Bagwell and The Patriot) (c) for the WCW World Tag Team Championship. After the referee misses a Bagwell tag to Patriot, all four men brawl. Amidst the confusion, Booker T rolls in and pins The Patriot, who was not the legal man, for the titles!
Hey, another title change, though this one was kind of a mess. The Patriot went down after him and Stevie Ray clotheslined each other, and Booker didn't pin him until about 40 seconds later. Patriot was the fresh man (Bagwell was the one getting worked over until the finish kicked in), so he really shouldn't have been down for so long. Definitely not the best way for Harlem Heat to win their first of TEN WCW tag titles.
Well, this was certainly different than last week. We had fewer matches, but made up for it with memorable moments and history being made. Cactus Jack was all over this review, and as a lot of his legendary work comes as part of his ECW run from this year, we'll be seeing much more of him.
NEXT TIME: All-Japan makes their first appearance! A match from WWF Action Zone! More Shatner! And more from the usual suspects! Be there!
See you again soon!