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Hello! This week's Deep Cuts has no theme! I feel like I should mention when they do or don't. I don't know why. You'll figure it out very soon anyway, right?
We'll span a remarkable 26 years this week, longer than some of you have been alive. That's crazy. You guys are crazy. You young folk. But that's also because we're including a very recent match this week, thanks to some of the doings from last week that got y'all (and m'all) all hot and bothered on some pro wrestling.
Ric Flair & Barry Windham vs The Midnight Express (Clash of the Champions IV - 12/7/88)
This is a tag match with four heels, the main event of the "Season's Beatings" Clash of the Champions, which isn't much of a show unless you're specifically into 1988 NWA, which I am, so I like it more than most might, but, like, no, it's not very good. That said, this is a great match in its odd way, with the Midnights taking the babyface role, allowing them to rock n' roll (!) all over Flair in particular, who doesn't want a damn thing to do with Bobby Eaton. Ric Flair may be half a pile to watch on TV doing anything nowadays, but he remains the greatest professional wrestler there ever was. I'm sorry, but Shawn Michaels just isn't on that overall level. I tried to see it, and it's not that I can't or even don't see the argument, but Michaels did not surpass Flair relative to their eras, and Flair was just a better all-around performer. In the ring, maybe Michaels wound up with an edge, but everything else goes to Ric Flair.
Doink vs Marty Jannetty (WWE Monday Night RAW #22 - 6/21/93)
Doink and Jannetty had a match the prior week which ended in a double countout, which necessitated this two out of three falls rematch. While you do get some "Double Doinks!" silliness, you also get a really terrific TV wrestling match between a couple of guys who were in a groove in the spring of '93, and even the "Double Doinks!" stuff was more palatable than usual.
Blitzkrieg vs Juventud Guerrera (WCW Spring Stampede 1999)
The last three years of WCW were a weird mish-mash of garbage angles, terrible "reboots," and eventually the death of the company, but like mentioned last week, there were also still some awesome matches thrown in, and a few really good PPV shows. Spring Stampede '99 popped up out of left field as a quality card in the middle of a real gnarly run for WCW, and the opener between Guerrera and newcomer Blitzkrieg is a load of fun. When Juvi felt like it and/or was on his game, he was really as good as any of the cruisers operating in the States from 1997-99. This is one of his better matches. Internet nerds of the time -- your forefathers -- were just crazy for Blitzkrieg.
Must Reads
Must Reads
Chris Benoit vs A-Train (WWE No Mercy 2003)
Months before climbing the ladder and winning his first and last world heavyweight title (second, if you count his one-day WCW reign), Benoit put in a tremendous performance to get something interesting out of A-Train. Now, about that, I'm not saying A-Train sucked or "couldn't work" or whatever. But often he wasn't really allowed to show what he could do in the ring. With Benoit, he got that chance, and obviously the opponent was great enough to carry him and make it interesting. Nobody much cared about the A-Train character, which also generally hurts, because they'd never really been given reason to care about him. But this matched worked, much like the Kane-Test match from a couple of years prior that we did in the first edition of Deep Cuts way back when.
AJ Lee vs Natalya (WWE Main Event - 3/11/14)
This is from this year, obviously, so not the deepest of cuts, but people were going bananas over the Natalya-Charlotte match from NXT Takeover last week, and I made the argument that it might not have even been Natty's best match of 2014, let alone some "greatest Divas match ever" mess. That's not to say that I didn't enjoy the Takeover match, because it was good. But AJ and Natalya were even better. My point isn't, "Don't watch that! Watch this!" It's, "Hey, if you loved Natty and Charlotte last week, and you maybe missed this one because it was on Main Event, seriously, check this match out, too, because it's also awesome."