Clash of the Champions XV: Knocksville USA — WCW Tries to Fit Summer into One Night

Six men, less than five minutes, and somehow the opener still feels complete. The Young Pistols and Z-Man attack with speed, the Freebirds and Badstreet spend just enough time mugging for the Knoxville crowd, and the match keeps moving because nobody is allowed to settle into a conventional heat segment. Hayes and Garvin use the railing to rough up Tracy Smothers, then all six spill into the finish at once. The triple sunset-flip pin is pure television spectacle, but it works because the crowd understands the rivalry instantly. The only real complaint is obvious: this matchup deserved more than a sprint.

Kevin Nash is now Oz, complete with the Wizard and enough theatrical baggage to supply another promotion. Johnny Rich is here to make the entrance look important. Nash throws a flying shoulder block, a big boot and a sidewalk slam, then deliberately pulls Rich up before finishing with the helicopter slam. The booking is uncomplicated and the match is mercifully short, but nothing inside the ring suggests the gimmick has solved the developmental problems visible in the Master Blasters run. Oz looks enormous, colorful and heavily produced. The wrestling remains the least interesting component of the presentation.

Dan Spivey and Big Josh spend almost three minutes trying to establish a feud that really belongs to the men orbiting the ring. Spivey controls early with size and strikes, Josh answers with a suplex, and Kevin Sullivan arrives so the match can become an angle for Black Blood. A crutch shot sets up Spivey's German suplex victory. The action is physical enough, but every development feels borrowed from another story. Spivey is nearing the end of this WCW run, Josh is still a cartoon lumberjack, and Sullivan's interference matters more than either man's offense. Efficient television, negligible match.

Dustin Rhodes and Terrance Taylor cram an actual television match into four and a half minutes. Dustin attacks with the youthful urgency WCW is beginning to build around him, while Taylor bumps aggressively and uses Mr. Hughes to create openings. A gutwrench powerbomb gives Taylor one of the better near falls on the undercard before Dustin rallies toward the bulldog. Then Richard Morton interferes for the disqualification and the York Foundation swarms. The finish is another non-result, but the match at least creates movement before the angle arrives. Dustin looks like somebody the promotion should keep finding minutes for.

The crowd supplies half the match and Sting supplies most of the other half. Nikita Koloff controls almost everything after an early clothesline, working the ribs, landing a tombstone and repeatedly cutting off comebacks while Knoxville grows louder behind Sting. The structure is unusually one-sided for a major babyface, but that makes the final stretch more satisfying when Sting reverses another piledriver, survives a missed Stinger Splash and avoids the Russian Sickle. A roll-up ends it before the match can overstay. The later chain attack during Sting's fan interaction gives the feud its real heat, but the nine-minute match is solid on its own.

The stipulation promises consequence, the match receives barely three minutes, and Brian Pillman works like he is trying to fit fifteen into them. He attacks Arn Anderson, catches Barry Windham with a leg lariat, dives from the top and even uses El Gigante as a launch platform. Gigante's involvement is mercifully limited. The Horsemen eventually isolate Pillman long enough for Windham to trip him from the floor and Arn to secure the deciding pin. Pillman is therefore forced out of WCW in storyline, setting up the Yellow Dog disguise. The angle is memorable. The match is a trailer for what the stipulation deserved.

Eight minutes are enough because nobody wastes one. Hiroshi Hase and Masahiro Chono attack with kicks, judo throws and combinations that force Rick and Scott Steiner to wrestle at their own violent pace instead of simply overpowering another domestic team. Chono's kicks literally break Rick's headgear, Hase answers suplexes with his own throws, and Scott detonates the hot tag with clotheslines, a butterfly bomb and the top-rope belly-to-belly. Hase's dragon suplex nearly steals the titles before the Frankensteiner ends it. The Hardliners attack afterward, but the match itself is the night's cleanest argument that WCW-New Japan cooperation should have been used constantly.

Scott Hall's Diamond Studd presentation is almost fully formed: Diamond Dallas Page provides the introduction, a woman removes the entrance gear, and Hall already uses the move that will become the Razor's Edge. Tommy Rich is the ideal veteran opponent because he can make the size difference look meaningful without requiring a long match. The problem is that two minutes barely allows the showcase to begin. Hall throws Rich around, survives one comeback and ends things with the Diamond Death Drop. Historically, the segment is fun because the future is visible. As a match, it is a polished squash with no room to become more.

Lex Luger and Great Muta get less than four minutes, which is an astonishing allocation for a matchup this interesting. Muta's speed immediately changes Luger's rhythm, and the handspring elbow miss sends him flying to the floor in the sort of bump that makes the audience believe anything can happen. Then the finish arrives almost immediately. Muta tries the green mist, Luger blocks it with his forearm and hits the powerslam for the pin. The sequence is clever and the crowd likes it, but the match never reaches a second gear. WCW essentially burns a marquee pairing as a television transition.

Twenty-five seconds is enough to show Steve Austin's look, Lady Blossom at ringside and the Stun Gun. It is not enough to produce a wrestling match. The stranger part is television continuity: Austin had already beaten Bobby Eaton for the championship on June 3, but that title change had not yet aired, while WCW's own promotional footage on this show had already shown Austin wearing the belt. The company effectively spoils its own tape delay and then sends Austin out to flatten Joey Maggs. Historically valuable, professionally efficient, competitively nonexistent.

Bobby Eaton receives the biggest singles opportunity of his career and immediately makes it believable. He punches through Flair's chops, works the arm, survives the champion's shortcuts and lands the Alabama Jam to win the first fall cleanly. That one pin gives Knoxville permission to imagine the upset. Flair steals the second fall by sending Eaton to the floor for a countout, then attacks the injured knee until the figure four decides the third. The final minutes are rushed because television time is disappearing, but the work remains crisp and logical. In retrospect, the match also becomes Ric Flair's final Clash before his 1991 departure.