WCW Superbrawl II
(Chosen by Matthew Roberts)
In the early 1990’s, ITV started to show WCW TV shows in the early hours of the morning. No series link in those days. Watching them involved manually setting up the VHS recorder and making sure you left the TV on the right channel. But the 1992/93 era of WCW remains one of my favourites, even if it was much later when I was able to actually watch the PPV events the TV shows were building to. (It would be a couple of more years before I discovered tape traders). SuperBrawl II (1992) has a little something of everything.
We kick off with a superb Light-Heavyweight clash between Brian Pillman and Japanese legend Jushin Liger. It might seem a little tame today, but it was revolutionary at the time and certainly stands up well in my eyes. It will be fun for younger fans to see the likes of Marcus Bagwell, Ron Simmons, Cactus Jack and Vinnie “Kevin Nash” Vegas at earlier points in their careers even if the action isn’t always scintillating but the action does pick up with a couple of good tag team matches. Arn Anderson and Bobby Eaton team up to take on the Steiner Brothers and Barry Windham teams up with Dustin Rhodes to tackle Larry Zbysko and “Stunning” Steve Austin. Both matches will make longer-term fans pine for the days of real tag team action which, despite recent “improvements” in the WWE product, we may never truly see again in the “big league”.
Two good singles matches round things up as Rick Rude and Ricky Steamboat showcase their natural chemistry before Sting tackles Lex Luger in the latter’s last match in WCW before he departed to be the face of the World Bodybuilding Federation. Sadly I don’t think there are any plans at the moment to put the WBF TV shows on the Network…