WCW Clash of the Champions XI: Coastal Crush
June 13, 1990
Charleston, South Carolina
Announcers: Jim Ross and Bob Caudle
The Setup
Ole Anderson took over the book in the build-up to this Clash and immediately brought in Junkyard Dog to main-event this show with Flair, in between Luger and Sting PPV title defenses. They did some horrible fucking racial angles with JYD, Rocky King, and the Horsemen to build it.
The Business
The show did a 4.1 cable rating, the lowest of any Clash until that point. JYD may have been a big deal years before this, but those days were long gone.
Prowrestlinghistory has 4,100 at the McAllister Fieldhouse, and they were great all night.
The Results
The Southern Boys def. The Fabulous Freebirds in 7:29 ***
Tommy Rich def. Bam Bam Bigelow via DQ in 3:46 *1/4
Mike Rotunda & The Z-Man def. The Samoan Swat Team in 5:25 **3/4
Mean Mark def. Flyin’ Brian in 5:40 **1/2
NWA United States Tag Team Title Match: The Rock ‘n’ Roll Express def. The Midnight Express (C) via DQ in 12:08 ***1/4
Barry Windham def. Doug Furnas in 5:40 **1/2
NWA United States Heavyweight Title Match: Lex Luger (C) def. Sid Vicious in 0:26 NR
NWA World Tag Team Title Match: Doom (C) def. The Steiner Brothers in 11:19 **3/4
Paul Orndorff def. Arn Anderson in 11:39 **1/2
NWA World Heavyweight Title Match: The Junkyard Dog def. Ric Flair (C) via DQ in 6:37 **
Notable Happenings
Sting was in the ring beating Flair’s ass while the Dudes with Attitude kept the Horsemen out of the ring as the show went off the air. Sting did a promo right before, and honestly, the crowd was going ballistic, and all of this was awesome. This angle was as he was doing a promo for his world title match with Flair at the Bash after his knee injury. All of this was excellent.
Flair beating Dog wasn’t bad. Ric understood the exercise and worked his ass off, staying in constant movement for the immobile Dog. Ric made it fine overall.
The Doom finish was meant to be controversial in that Rick had Simmons pinned while Reed pinned Scott after a foreign object shot. The match got a little clunky when Scott got the hot tag, but it was still good.
Windham and Furnas needed more time, but both looked so fucking athletic in their match.
The Midnights and Rock n Rolls had their typical very good match, but an awful finish with Stan Lane grabbing the ref’s arm before he counted three for a cheap DQ.
Like a lot of these matches, Mean Mark and Pillman probably would have had a better match with more time, but it was fun while it lasted.
Orndorff beat Arn in a non-title match since Arn was the TV champion. The match was pretty good, but a little slow. Orndorff was gone in a couple of months.
Luger got the quick clothesline win over Sid because Sid wasn’t cleared to work a full match after the punctured lung. The live crowd went wild because they couldn’t believe what they saw, but that’s probably much more disappointing to people at home. That’s a huge match not to deliver on.
Bam Bam Bigelow just beat the hell out of Tommy Rich, then didn’t obey the ref, and he was lamely disqualified. Why even do this at all?
The Southern Boys made their WCW big show debut, having a good match with the Freebirds. This was to set them up as challengers for the Midnights’ US tag titles at the Bash. The Southern Boys were a team that WCW criminally underpushed overall.
Rating: 6.5/10.0
I realize I’m probably higher on this show than others, but the wrestling is pretty good overall; it flies by, and the closing angle was really excellent. I love the way some of these early shows flow.
The Video
