This column would have been written earlier, but damn those dirty video games! I was able to pick up Conker's Bad Fur Day for a really cheap price at my local Electronic Boutique, and I played it longer than I should have after I got off from work this evening. Conker's BFD has to be one of the most innovative video games, ever. Notice how I'm buying up older video games, and not chucking out lots of dough on the newer systems. Remind me to lecture everyone about video games some time in the near future.
A few of you have been asking where has the Jackson 5 been, even though I've promised to one day bring it back? Well, just take a look at today's wrestling. The WWF has totally sold its soul to doing non-wrestling segments over traditional wrestling, therefore, making a top 5 hard to really judge. No, I won't rank wrestlers based on how they acted in a segment. The Jackson 5 rates WRESTLING, not acting or attempts at acting. Let's get that straight.
Enough of that. The Time Machine is warmed up, so let's hop on over to 1993 to take a look at the very weird World Title scene in 1993 from WCW. On to the PDC.
So what happened? For one, you had complete idiots running WCW by 1993. For some reason or another, WCW trusted secondary announcer Eric Bischoff to be the new Vice President of WCW, making all executive decisions for the failing wrestling company. Big, big mistake. Bischoff would put the legendary Dusty Rhodes back into the position of creative head, and in came the the stupid ideas. With that, WCW then decided to convince the returning NWA to crown one of their wrestlers as the NWA champ, since WCW still had some ties with the NWA.
So Barry Windham became NWA Champ, and the current relationship between WCW and the NWA went well, so far. However, WCW still had their World Title, and Vader was a tough champion in 1993. The decision was made, by probably WCW and the NWA together, to have Ric Flair win the returning World Title, and with that, Flair won that very title in July of 1993. Now, we had Ric Flair and Vader as two separate champions within WCW. Neither came close to fighting to unify those titles, for WCW was throwing various people at Vader, such as Cactus Jack, Sid, British Bulldog, and Sting, many many times.
Then, big problems occurred. WCW didn't feel the need to be a part of the NWA anymore, therefore cutting all ties to the National Wrestling Alliance forever in September of 1993. However, Ric Flair was still the NWA champion, but under WCW contract, therefore making him not eligible to be a part of the NWA. The official NWA title was declared vacant, but WCW kept the title going, calling Flair the NWA champion and still using the belt (which the apparently owned anyway). This would bring WCW and NWA into legal issues, where the NWA claimed that WCW was wrongfully using their name, title, and prestige for their company.
The legal threat forced WCW to change the name of the title that Ric Flair was holding. He was no longer the "NWA Champion", but the "WCW International Champion". Flair was apparently crowned this title by a so-called championship committee, and like the NWA title, it was supposed to be an equal title, in stature, to the WCW World Title. However, unlike the World Title, the International title wasn't very stable with its holders. Once Ric Flair lost the International Title to the late Ravishing Rick Rude later on in September of 1993, we'd see Rude hold the title for a meaningless and lengthy title reign, title changing hands in Japan, and one title vacancy.
At the end of 1993, Eric Bischoff's job was in trouble. He made WCW a laughing stock, and he needed a bail-out to save his ass from selling hotdogs on the street. Therefore, he turned over booking responsibilities over to Ric Flair, and Ric Flair would then book himself into Starrcade to fight and beat Vader to become the new WCW World Champion. As booker, the only way Ric Flair saw any way to make something out of the International Title was to put the title on Sting, and then fight in a big unification match.
Flair did that, as he put the title on Sting in the Spring of 1994, and then built him up as champion through another feud with Vader, in which the title vacancy occurred. Sting would overcome that, and face Flair for the "big" unification match, in which Flair won, at the Clash of the Champions in June of 1994. Flair mainly won because Hulk Hogan was on his way to WCW, and Flair had to be unified champion for Hogan to take the title away from him. It should be noted, though, that the International Title and World Title unification didn't create buzz back in 1994.
Hey, that's very ironic, because nobody cares about the possible unification, next Sunday, with the WCW World Title and WWF World Title possibly merging. Oh wait, my bad, the WCW World Title was simply renamed the "World Title", just like the WCW version of the NWA Title was renamed or changed to the WCW International title. Wow, isn't it funny how we are seeing striking similarities?
But at least in 1994, Flair made some effort to make the title vs. title match meaningful. However, with the WWF today, we aren't getting an official title vs. title match, as Austin and the Rock must fight preliminary matches at Vengeance. That's a shame, too, because the WWF could have had a big money match with champion vs. champion, especially since they are a much more successful company, now, than WCW was back in 1994. Oh well.
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@That's all for this weekend. I hope you've enjoyed the look back at WCW's title unification, and I at least did a decent job at telling the story. Until the next column, just chill!!!
Take Care, and Thanks for Reading.