Wacky Wrestling VHS Boxes #10

SummerSlam is here! And you know what that means, time for another entry in the Wacky Wrestling VHS Boxes series. Along with the usual WWF old school goodies, I found some more obscure scans online from classic NWA/JCP and a weird tape from Japan.

The Wrestling Classic (1985)

Scan credit: VHS Wasteland

The Wrestling Classic was the first widely distributed pay-per-view event in company history and featured a 16-Man elimination tournament along with a WWF Championship match between Hulk Hogan and Roddy Piper. I've watched this event a couple times and each time I never really was impressed. Most of the tournament matches are very short, maybe only a few minutes each and the Hogan/Piper match was decent.

The box here is pretty straight forward as were most of the early WWF tapes from this time. The interesting this about the title of the tape though is "Wrestlevision". I'm not sure if that was a line of tapes they had planned but this was the only tape released with this banner. The back is pretty basic but makes the claim that Hogan is the "9th WWF World Champion" and this is a true statement if you combine Bruno's reigns as one, ignore the Antonio Inoki win, and also the fact that the title was held up for a month during Bob Backlund's run. The back also has the list of participants in the tournament and judging by the way the list is ordered, it's easy to see who they were pushing at the time.

Anyway, if you haven't seen this particular event before, I think it's worth at least one watch just for historical reasons.

Biggest, Smallest, Strangest, Strongest (1985)

Scan credit: VHS Wasteland

Going from a pretty basic looking video box to this crazy looking and eye catching box, here's a tape called "Biggest, Smallest, Strangest, Strongest". While I've never seen the tape itself (I think it might be available on WWE Network) from the notes I found, it's pretty much a highlight tape designed to showcase some of the more unusual happenings from the WWF in the 1980s. The matches that are featured show Gorilla Monsoon, Hillbilly Jim, and Ivan Putski in action plus two midget matches (that's what they were called back then).

The case design is pretty eye catching with lots of photos both on the front and the back showing some of the craziness that one would be likely to find should they rent this tape. The back is interesting though mentioning some of the skits that are included but also claims that Pampero Firpo, Bepo Mongol, and Grand Wizard are shown. I find that pretty random at least from a WWF tape in the 80s.

WING Scaffold Match (1992)

Scan credit: VHS Wasteland

Well, this looks pretty bizarre. I saw this scan on VHS Wasteland and I knew I just had to talk about it. I mean, where else but Japan will you see a VHS cover showing a guy hanging off the side of a scaffold? WING was the offspring of Japanese hardcore wrestling promotion FMW and only lasted a few years before shutting down. During their run, people such as Mr. Pogo, Manami Toyota, Great Sasuke, Dick Murdoch, The Bruise Brothers, Ivan Koloff, Miguel Perez Jr., Bill Dundee, and The Headhunters wrestled there. Shortly after shutting down, the IWA emerged from the ashes of WING.

As for this tape, while I've never actually seen it, I had to do some research on what was included. From that I found it's a compilation tape of the main event matches from the March 11, 1992 and March 13, 1992 shows featuring matches such as Mr. Pogo against Kanemura, Ivan Koloff against Mitsuteru Tokuda, and Miguel Perez Jr. (of WWF Los Boricuas fame) against The Iceman in a scaffold match.

1992 Battle of the WWF Superstars

Scan credit: VHS Wasteland

Battle of the Superstars was a series that Coliseum Video and the WWF put out for a few years in the early 90s and consisted of matches filmed exclusively for video. The one thing about these tapes is that they have lots of interesting matches, like Randy Savage against Berzerker. There are also some interesting multi-man tag matches on here like Jim Duggan, Sgt. Slaughter, and the Bushwhackers teaming against the Beverly Brothers and Nasty Boys but the one match on here that sounds really fun is Hulk Hogan and Roddy Piper going against Ric Flair and the Undertaker.

The cover of the tape really sort of grabs you with the big Battle of the Superstars logo, Jake the Snake choking out Roddy Piper and all kinds of craziness. The back is just as wild with Bret Hart punching the Mountie in the stomach, the listing of most of the matches, and some other stuff. This is really, really and eye catching tape cover.

War Games: Bash 87

Scan credit: VHS Wasteland

"Let the War Games .... begin!"

Hearing that during when WCW was about to put on what was probably their signature match would give me chills. I got those same chills and excitement last November when NXT brought back War Games and had one of the most insane matches I've ever seen. The original concept however debuted in Jim Crockett Promotions in 1987 during the Great American Bash tour.

For 1986 and 1987, Turner Home Entertainment released compilation tapes of some of the top matches all around the tour. This particular tape contains both War Games matches from the tour along with other top matches such as Dick Murdoch against "Dr. Death" Steve Williams in a Texas Death Match, Rock-N-Roll Express vs. the Midnight Express, and Ric Flair vs. Jimmy Garvin in a Cage Match among others.

The artwork on the front of this tape with the fencing and the drawings of the War Games combatants is really cool. The one thing though I never liked with WCW/NWA tapes is that the back didn't have the match list. It had a summary and write-up more along the lines of what you'd see on the back of an actual movie.

With that, I'll put the bow on this entry in the Wacky Wrestling VHS Boxes series. I hope everyone enjoys SummerSlam tonight with Brock Lesnar vs Roman Reigns (again ... ugh), Ronda Rousey vs. Alexa Bliss, and A.J. Styles vs. Samoa Joe. It should be a pretty interesting show.

Wacky Wrestling VHS Boxes #6

It's that time again! Time for another WWE tent pole PPV event (Survivor Series) which means its another entry in the Wacky Wrestling VHS Boxes series. This is the one-year mark of the series which started last year on Survivor Series Sunday. Join me in raising a glass for this series surviving one year by reading about some old wrestling tapes. 

Invasion '92

My first memory of this tape has nothing to do with actually watching it. When I was a kid, the video store down the street had two WWF tapes, Royal Rumble 1992 and SummerSlam 1994. I constantly rented both of those on a revolving basis. The Royal Rumble tape I remember had Mean Gene at the beginning hocking new releases, one of those being Invasion 92. Many, many years later I found this on eBay at a more than reasonable price and picked it up. While the matches like Hulk Hogan vs. Typhoon and Randy Savage vs. Virgil may not be five star classic, the pure nostalgia of seeing Sean Mooney and the Coliseum Video crew cosplaying as the crew from the USS Enterprise throughout the whole tape worth it.

Monday Night Raw: Prime Cuts

Back in the summer, on a trip up to Maverick's card shop in Kettering, I stopped in to another cool place a few doors down in the same shopping center called Game Swap. I think I've mentioned this before but the place has the exact feel of a video store from the 1990s. DVDs sectioned off by genre, old VHS tapes along the wall, arcade games for 50 cents, and other assorted movie and TV stuff. Toward the end of the VHS wall, they have a section for "sports" and bunched in with said sports tapes are the wrestling tapes. Mostly the tapes are stuff from the Attitude Era but occasionally there's an old Coliseum Video tape hanging out there as well. Such was the case with this tape. There are a few fun matches on here like Mr. Perfect vs. Doink, a 20-man battle royal, and three title changes. The Shawn Michaels vs. Marty Jannetty match on here though is definitely recommended viewing. Couple that with the fact that I'm pretty sure this is the only tape Rick Martel was ever featured on the cover of and I'd say this is a really fun tape.

Supertape 4

What's that in your VCR? It's super! It's a tape! It's a Supertape! I always thought that the Supertape name was sort of limiting. Would this still be called "Supertape" if it was re-released on Blu-Ray? Perhaps I'm putting too much though into these things. Anyway, the Supertape series took over the original Best of the WWF Series and this is the 4th of the said series. Only one more Supertape was released after this and that was in January of 1992. Anyway, it's been a while since I've watched this tape but there are some interesting bouts on here, especially Undertaker vs. Tugboat where Undertaker is actually going by the name of Kane the Undertaker, which was shortly after his debut. 

In Your House #1 (May 1995)

Let's end this with a first, the first In Your House that is. In Your House was a series created in 1995 to be ran on the months where there wasn't a tentpole event or King of the Ring. This first one took place on Mother's Day 1995 and has a pretty interesting card. I like the fact that they threw in two bonus matches to make this feel a little bit special. By the way, look at Sid on the cover of this. He looks like he's ready to just ... well, I don't know what. 

Hope everyone enjoys Survivor Series tonight. If anything else, it's definitely going to be an interesting show. 

WrestleMania Week: 1998 Topps WCW/nWo Cards

It's WrestleMania week on the blog and since it's the biggest pro wrestling show of the year, each day the whole week leading up to WrestleMania on April 3rd will have some sort of pro wrestling tie-in. Today, we'll kick off WrestleMania week with a look at some 1998 Topps WCW/nWo cards!

In 1998, WCW was at its peak with mega stars like Goldberg, Sting, Hollywood Hogan, Ric Flair, and Kevin Nash along with a great roster filled with other people like Bret Hart, Lex Luger, Diamond Dallas Page, Eddie Guerrero, Rey Mysterio, Ultimo Dragon, and Chris Jericho. Topps put out a set in 1998 with 72 cards featuring some of the biggest names in the promotion and lots of the people on the undercard.

I've got all but one of the cards in the set, the only one I'm missing is card #41, Jay Leno. So to kick off WrestleMania week, I wanted to show all the cards in the set I have and comment as I go.

Most of the top names on this first part. Of these, Giant is the only one who is still currently active. You can also see three different designs. These cards had to have come out towards the end of 1998 as there were two different nWo factions depicted.

Getting into some of the second-tier guys now, along with fading stars like Roddy Piper.

More lower card guys. Hey, what's the British Bulldog doing in there? He was only around for about a month or two and still managed to get a card in the set? Rick Rude would make history during the Monday Night Wars appearing on both Raw and Nitro at the same time on the same night.

Mostly cruiserweights in this batch. If you look on the back of the Eddy Guerrero card, his last name has four Rs in it, not three. Nice to see Jimmy Hart get a card.

One of my all time favorites, Meng (or Haku for you WWF people) is on top right. If you've never seen any of his matches, the dude meant business in the ring and just beat the crap out of everyone. The announce team also got a card. I always felt that Tony Schiavone was a really underrated announcer. I think finally, with the advent of the WWE Network, people are going back and discovering old WCW stuff and finding out how good the guy really was.

There's a Ric Flair sighting! Unfortunately, it's stuck in the middle of the pack. Wait, Gene Okerlund gets his own card but the rest of the announce crew has to share one? And how did Jim Neidhart get a card? He was around less that the Bulldog!

The last few base cards and moving on to the Nitro Girl inserts. The Nitro Girls were basically cheerleaders that would come out and dance during broadcasts of Monday Nitro and during pay-per-view events during this time to help energize the crowd.

More inserts. I really like the idea of having inserts showing the current champions when the cards came out. The Goldberg and DDP cards on the bottom are actually stickers.

Finally, the last batch of stickers.

Overall, this is a pretty fun little set and provides a nice glimpse back in time to when there was a viable alternate to WWE. Only a few short years later, the assets of WCW would be sold to WWE for less that $3 million. I highly recommend reading the book "The Death of WCW" for the complete story of how they reached tremendous heights in the mid-90s, only to have in crash down in the span of a year and a half.

Come back tomorrow for more WrestleMania week goodies! This is just the tip of the iceberg of the fun stuff I've got lined up!