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In May 1990, WCW put on one of the most infamous pay per views of all time. Just a mention of its name will lead to a look of understanding followed by disgust. It is one of the few things all wrestling fans are able to agree on. However, the card had lots of great matches. One of them was so good, the WWE put it on one of their Best of compilations. So, why do fans hate the event so much?
In the second part of an ongoing series, Nathaniel defends 1990 WCW and Capital Combat in particular. He discusses why it is a great card, why fans do not seem to like it, and what it meant for WCW and its fanbase. The episode also includes a discussion about the booking of WCW and why they may have made some of the odd choices they did.
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["The Star-Spangled Banner"
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Thank you for joining us on Leaving a Mark, where I fondly look back on the things that
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made me a wrestling fan my whole life. Have we got a big show for you today
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My name is Nathaniel Mir and I'm the movie editor at AIPT, a long-time wrestling fan who knows his
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stuff. This is the second part of my four-part look at 1990 WCW. When we last left, it was April
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Sting was recovering from a real-life knee injury. Ric Flair was having ongoing battles
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backstage with Ole Anderson and on screen with Lex Luger. Luger and Flair had a fantastic match
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at Wrestle War 90 that ended in what I felt was a satisfying countout. Also in February
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was the unmasking of Doom. To the surprise of exactly zero fans, the masked duo turned out to
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be Butch Reed and Ron Simmons. Their former manager woman had left them to join the Four Horsemen
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though it seemed like she was really with Ric Flair. Before we head into capital combat, what happened there and why, I wanted to talk more about woman
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since I really didn't get into her last episode. Woman debuted as Robin Green on an episode of
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NWA's Worldwide Wrestling. She looked like a total geek and was a huge Rick Steiner fan
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Now these led to these funny segments where Jim Ross was teaching Rick Steiner what to do on a
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date. So you'd get the this NWA where we wrestle right after we have this cute comment of JR
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teaching Rick Steiner how to date. It was really odd for the company. Unsurprisingly, it eventually
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turned out that Robin was not really a geeky wrestling fan like the rest of us. She was
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a seductive sexpot who was using the Steiners to further her own goals and introduced this
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masked team named Doom. It's pretty standard stuff. Last month I talked about the predictable
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angles that still leave fans feeling satisfied when all is said and done. This is one of those
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angles where everyone could see what was happening right from the beginning and by the end came
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around they still really didn't care. What was cool about the angle was how far in advance WCW had
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apparently planned. I went to a WCW house show in January. It had to have been. It was after
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December because it did reference the Stark 89 Future Shock event but it was before Wrestle
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War 90 because it had the card for that and still had Lex Luger vs Steve Williams in there
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I want to say this was definitely before the clash. Sometime January was the early
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February at the absolute latest. I got a program from the show and this program was
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little more than a merchandising catalog but it was all in color and it had some cool pics
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Along with that it teased a face turn for the great Muta which since then many people have said was
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actually in the works. Most interestingly in retrospect it had an interview with woman
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Normal fluff piece. She's talking about you know how she has big plans for the year and she's kind
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of focusing on how amazing WCW is going to be. Towards the end the interviewer asked her what
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plans she has for the future and she says she was looking to manage someone and even that person
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didn't even know that she was watching him. She was scouting him when she eventually did announce
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who this person was it would shock her and the wrestling world but most of all it would shock him
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So at this time WCW was drawing maybe a thousand people to their house shows and of those thousand
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people will be generous and say a hundred of them buy programs. So this was something that was being
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done for a month and a half period that this program was being out there. So WCW was running
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an angle that a handful of people will be able to see. Actually pretty cool stuff. Also you'll
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notice that I flip-flop constantly between NWA and WCW. It's the same thing even though I'm doing that
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During this time on the television shows they had actually stopped using the NWA name and the NWA
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logo. However they weren't officially WCW yet. At least that's how my memory serves. I base
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everything from my youth on Pro Wrestling Illustrated and PWI didn't recognize them as WCW
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until January of 91. So that's what I'm going by. So this leads us into May, Capital Combat
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So all the backstage turmoil and all the on-screen feuding finally comes to a head at the
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much maligned Capital Combat. Now this card is immediately dismissed for one major reason
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and one less talked about one but arguably more frustrating. So here's a rundown of the entire
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card. We had a six-man tag team match. Norman the Lunatic who had turned face was teaming with
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the Road Warriors to take on Bam Bam Bigelow, Cactus Jack and Kevin Sullivan. Mean Mark managed
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by Teddy Long defeated Johnny Ace. So Mean Mark went on to become The Undertaker. Johnny Ace went
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on to become Johnny Laurinaitis which is actually his real name. So two big names in the WWE
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The Samoan SWA team defeated Mike Rotunda and Tommy Rich. Paul Elling and Teddy Long wrestled
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The Midnight Express beat Brian Pillman and Tom Zink for the US Tag Belts
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The Rock and Roll Express defeated Jim Garvin and Michael Hayes in a corporal punishment match which
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is basically a strap match. Doom who had been on an impressive streak won the tag team belts from
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the Steiners and Lex Luger beat Ric Flair in a cage match. So the first thing people will notice
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about the card is the amount of top level tag teams that are on this show. So there's the always
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dependable Midnight Express and to say they had great chemistry with Brian Pillman and Tom Zink is
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kind of redundant because they had great chemistry with pretty much everybody but in about a 20
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minute match they won the US Tag titles from Pillman and Zink who turned out to be more than
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just a pair of pretty boys. The Steiner brothers who seem to be adding a new and more awesome move
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with every single match were defeated by their old foes Doom. Now Doom is incredibly interesting
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The reason given for Doom's vast improvement is one of my favorite ever in wrestling because it
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makes so much sense. See as the masked henchman for woman it didn't matter if they lost. No one
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knew who they were anyway so yeah they'd eat the pinfall but once they took those hoods off they
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were fighting for themselves. There's that added layer of pride that almost forced them to improve
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and become a better team. Then there's the main event. Ric Flair and Lex Luger met in another
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awesome bout. This time it was a no disqualification cage match where Ric Flair puts on the crimson
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mask. No one remembers or cares about any of this however. Why don't people speak more fondly of
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this match and of this card? The match itself Luger was on the verge of victory yet again
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All of a sudden the cage lifts up. Barry Windham makes his return by attacking Lex Luger
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The results? A disqualification in a no DQ match. Vince Russo would be proud but even this bit of
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Russo-ific booking was not the worst part of the show. For weeks the show was hyped as the return
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of Robocop and sure enough the cybernetic crime fighter was there to free Sting from a cage and to
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fight off the four horsemen. It was awful and to make matters worse it wasn't even the real Robocop
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It was just some actor portraying the hero. But even that wasn't the biggest problem. What made
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fans most angry was how it went against everything the NWA stood for. Let's face it there's little
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crossover between hardcore sports fans and hardcore wrestling fans. Those sports lovers
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who need their fix they weren't gonna find it in the entertainment-based world wrestling federation
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See the NWA was their best shot. It provided a more grounded and more realistic product
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Make no mistake about it it wasn't sports but it was pretty damn close. Now can you really blame
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the NWA for copying the most successful wrestling company in the entire world? Of course you can
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However totally turning their backs on everything they stood for and their entire fan base was not
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the right idea. As many wrestling promotions have proved in the many decades since it is impossible
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to compete with the WWE by trying to become a third-rate copy of them. In the end it didn't
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matter. The damage was done. The card it was fantastic. As a matter of fact that Luger
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flare cage match is on the WWE's greatest cage matches. The fans forgot about it though
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It was another screwy finish that made the fans angry. Robocop proved the NWA didn't care anyway
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June was coming up and it was used to set up the Great American Bash. For the first half of the
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year nothing seemed to go right. There was Sting's injury. Ric Flair and Ole Anderson continued to
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argue backstage. There was great matches and there was really good cards but it didn't matter
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They were all completely forgotten by goofy gimmicks and bad finishes. But with July around
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the corner Sting was sent to return. But so was an old enemy and new problems
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If you liked this episode of Leaving a Mark make sure to take out part one where I discussed the
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first few months of WCW 1990. Also make sure to like and subscribe. Please leave a comment
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If there's something that you would like for me to cover in the world of wrestling especially if it's in the territory days let me know. Thank you very much and we'll see you next week
#Wrestling