The Great American Bash 1987: JCP Books an Entire Summer and Invents WarGames

The first WarGames is one of those rare wrestling inventions that arrives with almost all of its essential parts already correct. Dusty Rhodes and Arn Anderson establish the personal hatred, the Horsemen win the coin toss and use the staggered-entry advantage exactly as villains should, and every babyface arrival feels like emergency relief. The second ring creates simultaneous danger without losing the central story because the crowd always knows which side has the numbers. By the time J.J. Dillon enters, he is not a wrestler so much as a future surrender waiting to happen. Blood and chaos matter, but the arithmetic is what makes the violence legible. The Doomsday Device and assault on Dillon produce a cathartic finish, while the injuries underline how little the match was pretending. This is not merely the best match of the tour; it is the blueprint for a genre.

Barry Windham and Rick Steiner are both more interesting than the fragment preserved on the commercial tape. Steiner already throws people with the blunt enthusiasm that would define him later, while Windham has the smoothness to make a short midcard exchange feel larger than its time. The problem is that the surviving version is joined in progress and ends with an awkward cradle sequence after Steiner tries to suplex Windham back into the ring. Reviewers consistently treat it as a modest or below-average excerpt, and the clipping gives the bout no chance to establish a complete arc. As a glimpse of the UWF talent entering Crockett's orbit, it has historical texture. As a standalone Bash attraction, it is connective tissue wedged between much larger ideas.

The important correction is the date: this U.S. title change took place July 11 in Greensboro, even though later broadcast and compilation context can make it look like part of the July 18 Charlotte presentation. The match itself has a wonderfully simple target. Koloff enters with his neck already damaged by WarGames, and Luger spends the bout attacking the injury with the kind of uncomplicated focus that makes his limited offense feel purposeful. The clipping hurts the rhythm, but the psychology survives it. When J.J. Dillon supplies a chair after the referee goes down, Luger can steal the opening, apply the Torture Rack and leave as champion without making Nikita look weak. The mechanics are slow in places, yet the match advances Luger, pays off the WarGames damage and gives the tour a meaningful title change.

Steve Williams and Dick Murdoch should be tailor-made for a Texas Death Match: two thick, credible brawlers with enough background animosity to make formal wrestling feel unnecessary. The surviving home-video edit does them few favors. What remains focuses on Murdoch attacking Williams' injured arm, Eddie Gilbert hovering as a nuisance, and Doc using his cast as both vulnerability and weapon. The physicality is believable, but the excerpt is too compressed to let the stipulation develop into a genuine war. Reviewers generally land around the low end because the tape gives viewers a result more than a match. It still helps illustrate JCP's attempt to integrate UWF feuds into the Bash, and Williams carries himself like a future centerpiece. The concept promises a grimy fight; the preserved footage delivers only the middle pages.

The Fabulous Freebirds returning to a Crockett supercard sounds bigger than the three-plus minutes preserved here. Michael Hayes, Terry Gordy and Buddy Roberts have immediate personality and the crowd understands their act, but Ivan Koloff, Manny Fernandez and Paul Jones function mostly as bodies waiting for the Freebirds to run through their offense. The short runtime keeps the match lively while also preventing any real structure from developing. It is a curiosity from the UWF acquisition period, especially because the original Freebirds configuration was already nearing another split, yet nothing in the bell-to-bell work demands preservation on quality alone. The result is a highlight-reel segment pretending to be a match: enough to remind viewers how magnetic the Freebirds were, not enough to make this a meaningful reason to seek out the Bash tape.

Dusty Rhodes and Tully Blanchard had enough hatred to make almost any normal stipulation work, which is why the barbed-wire ladder experiment is so frustrating. A bag of money hangs above the ring, barbed wire supplies the menace, J.J. Dillon and Dark Journey add ringside complications, and Barry Windham watches Dusty's back. That is three different match ideas before either man begins wrestling. The clipped footage contains the expected blood and loaded-glove interference, but the ladder sequences look awkward and the central objective repeatedly gets lost beneath the feud's other moving parts. Dusty eventually climbs for the money after turning Tully's weapon against him. Historically, it is fascinating as an early ladder-match curiosity. Artistically, it proves that adding one more gimmick to an already hot feud can make the fight feel smaller rather than bigger.

The premise has aged badly—Ric Flair gets a date with Precious if he wins—but the actual cage match is better than the angle deserves. Jimmy Garvin is not a natural world-title workhorse, so Flair does what great touring champions do: he identifies a simple route, gives the challenger enough offense to make the crowd believe, and turns an apparent knee injury into the match's decisive story. The clipping removes some connective tissue, yet the chops, cage shots and figure-four progression remain easy to follow. Ron Garvin's ringside presence adds another layer without hijacking the bout. Flair wins by forcing Jimmy to succumb to the leg damage, preserving the champion while advancing the broader Garvin feud. It is not a classic, but it is a strong example of Flair making the person across from him feel more credible than the résumé suggests.

By 1987 the Rock 'n' Roll Express and Midnight Express could create a compelling Southern tag match almost on muscle memory. Even a clipped version shows why. Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson generate speed and sympathy, Bobby Eaton and Stan Lane control space with precision, and Big Bubba's interference gives the finish a clean heel mechanism without erasing the babyfaces' momentum. The home-video edit removes much of the traditional face-in-peril build, so this is not the definitive version of their rivalry, but the surviving stretch still has sharper timing than most of the tape. Bubba leaves his hat and sunglasses in the ring after interfering, allowing Tommy Young to catch the evidence and award the champions the disqualification. It is classic territory logic: broad enough for the stadium, detailed enough to reward viewers watching the referee.

The Miami WarGames cannot reproduce the shock of seeing the concept for the first time, so it wisely tries to prove that the formula can travel. J.J. Dillon is too injured to compete and the masked War Machine replaces him, removing the obvious weak link from Atlanta. The entry order changes, the Orange Bowl provides a completely different scale, and the same basic heel-advantage structure still works because another crowd understands the numbers instantly. Some sequences echo the original too closely and the brawling can become difficult to track, but the match remains feverishly physical. Paul Ellering's arrival with the spiked wristband gives the final phase its weapon, and War Machine eventually surrenders under the babyface assault. It is a sequel rather than a revelation, yet four weeks after the invention, WarGames already feels like an institution.