WCW Clash of the Champions 13: Thanksgiving Thunder

The Clash of the Champions television specials on TBS were supposed to be the NWA’s and later WCW’s answer to the WWE’s Saturday Night’s Main Event programme on NBC. The first Clash of the Champions had been positioned in direct competition to Wrestlemania 4, as a way of discouraging viewers from paying for their rival’s product when there was a free wrestling event also available (it was also in response to WWE running the first annual Survivor Series opposite the NWA’s Starrcade in 1987, and putting on a free Royal Rumble television special opposite NWA’s 2nd attempt at pay-per-view, Bunkhouse Stampede, in 1988).  For the most part the Clash of the Champions have a rich history featuring pay-per-view calibre contests between the top stars of the company at the time. The thirteenth instalment of the event however, subtitled Thanksgiving Thunder, failed to live up to that billing and instead featured a string of poor or insignificant matches interspersed with a number of short ineffectual promos and one of the most ridiculous pieces of wrestlecrap ever seen (and that is most certainly saying a lot). There are glimpses of quality here and there, but these are all too fleeting and overall this is a show that served only one purpose- to continue the hype for the following month’s Starrcade ’90 event.

WWE In Your House: Badd Blood

WWE In Your House: Badd Blood is a fascinating snapshot of WWE at a time when everything was about to change in ways that couldn’t have been imagined at the time, mainly due to the fact that things already seemed to be changing in ways nobody could have imagined just a few months before. Going on air a matter of hours after the death of Brian Pillman and with details of what had happened to him still filtering through, there is an atmosphere of shell-shock that grips this show through the disjointed commentary, unconvincing undercard action and underwhelming crowd noise that pervades most of the matches. While it would be churlish to suggest that Pillman’s death was not a massively significant moment (to his peers, his family and to the wrestling world at the time- it was devastating), there is a sense that history remembers the night more for the events that would take place in the ring near the end of the broadcast, than the untimely death of a trailblazer worthy of celebration.