Clash of the Champions XIII: Thanksgiving Thunder — Ric Flair Finds the Exit from Booking Hell

The opening bait-and-switch accidentally helps the match. A planned six-man involving Bobby Eaton and El Gigante collapses into another Freebirds-Southern Boys tag, which means everybody can stop explaining the premise and start moving. Tracy Smothers and Steve Armstrong attack with dropkicks, dives and quick tags, while Michael Hayes and Jimmy Garvin spend the sprint bumping and stealing shortcuts. The final minute is genuinely lively until Little Richard Marley trips Armstrong into Hayes' DDT. It is familiar material, but familiarity is an asset when the next hour will make basic competence feel exotic.

Buddy Landel is wrestling in his hometown and Brian Pillman treats that fact like motivation to be even more irritatingly athletic. Landel chops, posts and roughs him up with the confidence of a veteran who thinks the kid will eventually slow down. Pillman never does. He turns a possible floor dive into a springboard crossbody, keeps forcing the pace upward and finally escapes a superplex before finishing with another flying crossbody. The match is not long enough to become substantial, but every minute has direction. On this card, six minutes of two wrestlers meshing this cleanly feels like contraband.

Big Cat is Curtis Hughes before the suit, sunglasses and bodyguard persona finally give his size a character. Here, he is simply a very large man being positioned for Lex Luger. Brad Armstrong supplies the movement, sells the backbreakers and briefly tries to manufacture a comeback, but the outcome is obvious from the first shove. The Torture Rack finish at least links Cat to Luger's world, and the referee stoppage avoids having Armstrong verbally submit. That is the extent of the nuance. Four and a half minutes establish a challenger without establishing why anyone should want to see the challenge.

Brian Lee debuts on national television by standing in the wrong place for Tom Zenk's blind crossbody, which tells the story more efficiently than any scouting report. The match is only three minutes, yet still finds time for a reverse chinlock and several awkward pauses where one wrestler seems to be waiting for the other to remember the next idea. Zenk eventually hits the top-rope dropkick and ends it. Lee will become a useful big man elsewhere, but this is developmental wrestling performed without the privacy normally afforded developmental wrestling. The short runtime is the most professional decision anyone makes.

Mike Rotunda has become Michael Wallstreet, Alexandra York carries the computer, and WCW has found a gimmick more memorable than the match used to introduce it. Starblazer is Tim Horner under a mask, which should make this an easy showcase. Instead, Wallstreet gives him enough offense to drain the crowd before a clumsy exchange finally leads to the Wallstreet Crash. The important part is the presentation: the renamed Rotunda is beginning the character path that will eventually turn into Irwin R. Schyster. The wrestling itself is an oddly hesitant four-minute debut for a gimmick built around ruthless efficiency.

WCW needs an African representative for the Pat O'Connor Memorial tournament, so four wrestlers are assigned national identities, given less than five minutes and asked to create international stakes from thin air. The crowd openly loses patience while the teams trade arm work, middle-rope attacks and generic power spots. Jim Ross gamely explains the tournament structure and Paul E. Dangerously wonders about travel expenses, which is more compelling than anything happening between the ropes. A dropkick produces the pin and a Starrcade berth. The result matters to the bracket; the match does almost nothing to make that bracket feel prestigious.

Lex Luger is building toward a United States title rematch with Stan Hansen, so the logical assignment is to flatten a giant and remind viewers that the clothesline can be his weapon too. WCW somehow complicates even that. Big Cat attacks Luger on the way to the ring, Motor City Madman gets enough offense to look cumbersome rather than dangerous, and one suplex nearly becomes an industrial accident. Luger finally absorbs a corner charge, stares him down and wins with the clothesline. Two and a half minutes should feel explosive. This feels like a television segment that escaped quality control.

The Nasty Boys have just produced a star-making Halloween Havoc match with the Steiners, so WCW responds by asking them to work four minutes with the Renegade Warriors before the Steiners cause a disqualification. Brian Knobbs and Jerry Sags rough up Chris Youngblood, the Warriors attack the arms, and nothing develops long enough to matter because the actual point is waiting at ringside. When Rick and Scott appear, the match stops and the feud continues. The angle is understandable; the booking choice makes the wrestlers in the ring feel like furniture being moved out of the way for the important people.

This is not merely bad. It is two enormous inexperienced wrestlers trying to remember a match while an axe waits nearby like an HR violation. Bryan Clark, years before Adam Bomb and Wrath, works a bear hug and several hesitant strikes. Sid wears a singlet that somehow makes him look less imposing, then both men pause so visibly between spots that the audience can practically hear the internal discussion. Big Cat arrives, the Nightstalker swings the axe badly, Sid uses it too, and the pin finally ends the ordeal. The Wrestling Observer later named it 1990's Worst Match of the Year. That feels charitable only because 'match' is doing heavy lifting.

Rick and Scott Steiner need less than two minutes because this is what a squash is supposed to look like. Scott throws one member of Magnum Force with a tilt-a-whirl slam, Rick crushes the other with a Steinerline, and the Frankensteiner gets the loudest reaction the show has heard in a while. There is almost no competitive structure, but unlike several earlier matches, nobody pretends there should be. The champions arrive, demonstrate superiority and leave. The score stays low because there is barely a match to grade. The segment earns credit for understanding that two minutes can be a feature rather than a flaw.

Fourteen minutes of Ric Flair and Butch Reed feel like oxygen after the previous hour. Reed plays power wrestler, repeatedly pressing Flair overhead and knocking him around with right hands and clotheslines. Flair attacks the eyes, manipulates positioning and turns every ringside accomplice into part of the match. The heel-versus-heel alignment should be awkward, but Jacksonville simply chooses whoever is landing the most satisfying shot at that moment. Reed nearly wins with the flying shoulderblock before the referee disappears into the ringside mess and Arn Anderson cracks Reed with a chair. Flair gets the pin, the Horsemen get the Starrcade title shot, and the show finally produces a match with consequences worth following.