The Best of WCW Clash of the Champions

Younger and newer fans of pro wrestling, lend me your ears! I have to let you know how spoiled we are to have so many countless hours of top programming each week featuring marquee matchups/storyline angles. “The Monday Night Wars” between WWF/WCW in the second half of the 1990s changed that and forced both promotions’ marquee shows to consistently put on top matchups and rivalries each week. When I first started watching wrestling in the late 80s the bulk of weekly television put on by WCW and the then-WWF featured primarily squash matches and recaps from the latest big PPV and TV specials.

WWF and WCW only had four or five PPVs a year around this time and they usually featured several big matches with many weeks of television buildup. To help fill those three-four month gaps between PPVs, both WWF and WCW did four-five TV specials/mini-PPVs for free on cable a year during this timeframe. WWF had Saturday Night’s Main Event (SNME) and WCW had Clash of the Champions (CotC). Instead of several big PPV-quality matchups over the course of three hours ad-free, these specials were 90-120 minutes with ad breaks. SNME and CotC mostly featured one top matchup, supplemented by other matches featuring top stars, but usually in last minute thrown together meaningless tag matches. WWE released a best of SNME DVD-set in 2009, but today I am covering their Best of WCW Clash of the Champions (trailer)BluRay set they released in 2012.

Dusty Rhodes is the host of this DVD set, and he has a good introduction to the DVD explaining that WCW made CotC free and held the inaugural show to compete directly against Wrestlemania IV as a response to WWE forcing the first Survivor Series PPV to compete directly against WCW’s first PPV a few months earlier. It was a joy seeing Dusty again a couple years after his passing, and he is charismatic as ever, but the rest of his appearances in The Best of CotC are surprisingly lackluster as he sheds no context or insight about the matches he is setting up and merely says a variation of, “here is wrestler A and here is wrestler B, oh-boooyy.” I know I am splitting hairs nitpicking over Dusty’s intros but Diamond Dallas Page did an excellent job with them in the trilogy of Best of Nitro DVDs that I cannot help but feel a little dismayed at Dusty’s performance.

Another thing to keep in mind is that even though nearly all 27 matches contained in the Best of CotC (three of which are exclusive to BluRay) have top talent, only a small slice of the 27 bouts have clean finishes. If I recall correctly from watching these at the time I presumed the bookers did this to teach fans that they had to pay the big bucks for the PPV match that did not feature interference. At first I was increasingly agitated to see many excellent matches have run-ins for a quick DQ or tainted victory, but eventually I accepted it as par for the course by the end of the collection.

I want to highlight a few of my favorite matchups on this set. The first match is the main event from the first CotC, and it features one of the first televised matchups of Sting and Ric Flair as the two fought for the NWA World Title and went to a 45 minute time limit draw. The crowd is simply bonkers into Sting as the two put on a clinic in the ring and have several dramatic near falls in the final minutes. The infamous “I Quit” match between Flair and Terry Funk from 1989 is another epic match on this collection, and features a ton of hardcore action and brawling between the two before ECW popularized that style a few years later. Ricky Steamboat and Steve Austin (then with a full head of hair from his “Stunning” days) have an awesome match for the US title with tons of near falls and is one of the few great matches on here with a clean finish. My last top pick on here is a cruiserweight title match between Ultimo Dragon and Dean Malenko that features a good hybrid of Dean’s technical prowess and Dragon’s high-flying acrobatics. Those four matches are the feature bouts that have no cheap interference and left me wanting more.

As I alluded to earlier there are many good-to-great matches on here that unfortunately suffer with a awful finish. The Rock ‘n Roll Express and Midnight Express light up the crowd in one instance and Ric Flair carries a young Lex Luger in one of his best matches, but both contests feature cheap DQs. Sting and Flair put on another classic match on here from 1994, but a theme of the match is on Sherri Martel’s presence at ringside throughout, and sure enough she factors into the finish. Two more tag title matches that have a lot of great action with crowd’s engaged throughout, only to be letdown with a lame DQ were Arn Anderson and Ric Flair taking on the Hollywood Blonds and Harlem Heat defending their gold against the Steiners and Lex Luger & Sting. Of the three BluRay extras, only one stood out and that was Ric Flair & Barry Windham taking on the Midnight Express with all four guys being on top of their game and making formula tag team spots stand out in a class of their own to the delight of a rabidly hot crowd.

The matches in here span from 1988-1997. In 1998, WCW introduced Thunder as its second top-tier weekly show to supplement Nitro, and that brought an end to CotC. Seeing how WCW and its production values evolved over the decade was fascinating and they came a long way in that decade, especially in its final few years. While a majority of the matches have awesome wrestling and very engaged crowds, it is regrettably unfortunate to not recommend The Best of WCW Clash of the Champions because of the sheer amount of cruddy finishes. There are four or five standout matches tucked away within that I breakdown above, but you are better suited hunting those down on the WWE Network than shedding out the money for the DVD.

Past Wrestling Blogs

Best of WCW Monday Nitro Volume 2
Best of Monday Nitro Volume 3
Biggest Knuckleheads
Bobby The Brain Heenan
Daniel Bryan: Just Say Yes Yes Yes
DDP: Positively Living
Dusty Rhodes WWE Network Specials
ECW Unreleased: Vol 1
ECW Unreleased: Vol 2
ECW Unreleased: Vol 3
For All Mankind
Goldberg: The Ultimate Collection
Its Good to Be the King: The Jerry Lawler Story
Ladies and Gentlemen My Name is Paul Heyman
Legends of Mid South Wrestling
Macho Man: The Randy Savage Story
Memphis Heat
OMG Vol 2: Top 50 Incidents in WCW History
OMG Vol 3: Top 50 Incidents in ECW History
Owen: Hart of Gold
RoH Supercard of Honor V
RoH Supercard of Honor VI
RoH Supercard of Honor VII
RoH Supercard of Honor VIII
RoH Supercard of Honor IX
RoH Supercard of Honor X
ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery
Sting: Into the Light
Superstar Collection: Zach Ryder
TNA Lockdown 2005-2014
Top 50 Superstars of All Time
Tough Enough: Million Dollar Season
True Giants
Ultimate Fan Pack: Roman Reigns
Ultimate Warrior: Always Believe
Warrior Week on WWE Network
Wrestlemania 3: Championship Edition
Wrestlemania 28
Wrestlemania 29
Wrestlemania 30
Wrestlemania 31
Wrestlemania 32
The Wrestler (2008)
Wrestling Road Diaries Too
Wrestling Road Diaries Three: Funny Equals Money
Wrestlings Greatest Factions
WWE Network Original Specials First Half 2015
WWE Network Original Specials Second Half 2015
WWE Network Original Specials First Half 2016
WWE Network Original Specials Second Half 2016
WWE Network Original Specials First Half 2017