Clash of the Champions XXIII — Ric Flair Comes Home and WCW Finds an Asterisk

Paul Orndorff's injury turns a Television-title program into four minutes of Dick Slater trying to annoy Ron Simmons until physics catches up with him. Slater works the leg, Orndorff grabs at Simmons from the floor and the crowd spends more energy chanting at the injured champion than reacting to the substitute. Simmons eventually decides subtlety has gone far enough. One burst of power, one standing powerslam and the replacement is finished. The match barely develops beyond setup and payoff, but it keeps Simmons strong and preserves the Orndorff issue without pretending Slater has suddenly become a major threat.

Lord Steven Regal's first live WCW television showcase feels like the company discovering it owns a completely different kind of wrestler. He treats Bagwell's arm like a mechanical problem, rolling through reversals and turning basic holds into demonstrations of leverage while Sir William hovers nearby like a disapproving museum curator. Bagwell keeps up better than the matchup suggests, firing back with athletic counters and enough energy to stop the mat work from becoming a seminar. Then the finish arrives just as the match starts to open up. Regal wins cleanly, but the six minutes matter mostly because his style immediately looks distinct from everybody around him.

Barry Windham begins the match with the relaxed arrogance of a champion who assumes Scorpio is another athletic television challenger, and the entire story is watching that assumption become a problem. Windham slows the pace, leans on size and keeps trying to pull Scorpio back into familiar territory. Scorpio refuses. Every kick, springboard and sudden burst forces the champion to recalculate. By the final minutes Norfolk is buying near falls that looked impossible at the bell. Scorpio's slingshot 450 comes close enough to make the title feel vulnerable, but Windham survives and catches him with the implant DDT. The challenger loses while becoming substantially more important.

This is WCW turning half of Beach Blast into one enormous preview and trusting six recognizable wrestlers to keep the traffic moving. Vader and Davey Boy Smith make power look athletic, Sting and Sid create instant noise simply by standing across from each other, and Dustin Rhodes gives Rick Rude the connective wrestling needed between the larger collisions. The match works because nobody stays long enough to exhaust his matchup. Harley Race and Robert Parker provide the heel-side machinery without swallowing the action. Rude eventually steals the pin on Dustin, giving the villains momentum while leaving the bigger attractions protected. It is promotional television done with unusually good ingredients.

The first televised image of Ric Flair wrestling again for WCW does not need nostalgia packages because Norfolk supplies the soundtrack. Arn Anderson deliberately makes the crowd wait for Flair's tag, Pillman acts personally offended by every cheer and Steve Austin spends the match proving he belongs in the same ring with the veterans he has mocked for weeks. The Blonds attack Arn's knee with textbook cruelty, Flair explodes through the hot tags and the first fall gives the audience exactly what it wants when Flair pins Pillman. Then WCW gets scared of its own stakes. Barry Windham causes a disqualification, Flair and Arn technically win two straight falls, and the champions retain because titles cannot change on the DQ. Great match, maddening punctuation.