Clash of the Champions IX: New York Knockout — One Great Hour Erases One Forgettable Hour

Five minutes somehow feels longer because the match never decides whether it wants to be a fight or an excuse for a disqualification. Hawk and Animal no-sell almost everything, Michael Hayes stalls, Jimmy Garvin bumps, and the crowd spends most of its energy hating the Freebirds. Then Hawk shoves the referee and ends the thing just as a real tag match might have started. The weird title situation does not help: the Freebirds had already lost the belts to the Steiners at a taping, but television had not caught up yet. This is storyline housekeeping disguised as an opener.

Doom needs to look dangerous, and that objective is clear enough. Ron Simmons and Butch Reed overpower Gilbert and Rich, Woman looks pleased with the investment, and the double-team clothesline finish is suitably violent. The trouble is that five minutes never establish much beyond the obvious size difference. Gilbert brings energy and Rich gives the crowd a recognizable babyface comeback, but the match feels like a demonstration rather than competition. That is useful because Doom is heading toward the Starrcade tag tournament. It is not especially useful if the question is whether anybody should rewatch this match for its own sake.

The crowd has been waiting to stop pretending the Dynamic Dudes are lovable, and Jim Cornette finally gives them permission. He begins in a neutral corner, repeatedly looks conflicted, then reveals the answer by smashing Shane Douglas with the tennis racket and returning to the Midnight Express. Before the turn, Bobby Eaton and Stan Lane do enough crisp work to make the match genuinely enjoyable, especially when Douglas brings speed and Eaton sells it like betrayal is coming. The wrestling is solid; the angle is the real payoff. In nine minutes, WCW repairs Cornette, restores the Midnights' identity and ends an experiment the audience had already rejected.

Jack Victory has now worn enough masks at Clash events to qualify for a loyalty program. This time he is The Super Destroyer, which means Steve Williams needs less than two minutes to throw him around and finish with the Oklahoma Stampede. Norman wandering around dressed as Santa Claus is almost more memorable than the match, which is not a sentence that helps the match. Still, as a Dr. Death showcase it works. Williams looks strong, the crowd gets a clean finish, and nobody wastes ten minutes pretending the masked mystery man is about to derail the future.

The matchup promises chaos and mostly delivers it in short bursts. Rick Steiner hurls Dan Spivey around, Scott Steiner throws a Frankensteiner and a fallaway slam at Sid Vicious, and the Skyscrapers answer with size that makes every suplex look irresponsible. Sid's lung injury adds grim historical weight to a match already built around dangerous-looking collisions. Then Doom runs in and causes the disqualification because Starrcade needs four tag teams angry at one another. The non-finish is frustrating, but the post-match brawl sells the round-robin tournament effectively and Scott continues looking like someone who accidentally arrived from wrestling's next decade.

This is where the show wakes up. Pillman wrestles like every opening has to be stolen before Luger closes it, attacking the arm, flying from the ropes and creating near falls from positions that look hopeless. Luger is excellent as the arrogant champion who gradually realizes the smaller challenger is making him work harder than expected. The final stretch is fast, tense and full of believable counters. Then Luger introduces a chair while the referee is down and steals the pin, preserving Pillman while deepening the champion's heel identity. Sting's save afterward turns a strong title defense into the first real spark of another major program.

Flair and Funk do not wrestle like two men trying to win a match; they wrestle like two men trying to prove the other one lied about who he was. Every chop, piledriver and ringside collision carries months of accumulated grievance. Funk attacks the neck he injured, Flair responds by becoming more violent than the man who dragged him into the feud, and Tommy Young's microphone turns pain into dialogue. The final Figure Four is perfect because Funk has spent the entire program refusing to acknowledge Flair's superiority. He finally has to say it out loud. Then he shakes Flair's hand, and the feud ends with dignity before Gary Hart ruins the peace.