We’re back for more Into the Vault 1995 with WCW Great American Bash ’95 from June 1995. Now one thing I just love about doing this—besides going back and watch the matches—is looking up the shows and seeing the dark matches. I love some tag team wrestling and yes, The Fantastics weren’t setting the wrestling world on fire in the late-90s but I would’ve watched Harlem Heat or The Nasty Boys vs. The Fantastics.
It would’ve been better than the first tag match of the night.
Low-Tier
Oh boy, well the arm-wrestling match between Dave Sullivan and DDP—didn’t care about it. It might make for a good addition to storylines or whatever but this the Great American Bash. These are more like filler for TV or when the PPV looks like it might run short. After that was Jim Duggan vs. Sgt. Craig Pittman which was going to be mediocre at best. I just got tired of Hacksaw very early as a kid. Plus Pittman was never really entertaining.
I won’t say that Arn Anderson failing in defending his WCW Television title against The Renegade was utter garbage. It wasn’t an essential match since this is The Renegade we’re talking about. Arn did make that match as watchable as possible. Like The Ultimate Warrior, The Renegade shouldn’t be in action for long periods of time.
In TV title terms, 9-minutes is almost going the distance and on PPV, that’s middle of the road. The Renegade was just painful to watch. He just wasn’t interesting enough at this point to warrant being at this place on the card. Also, it was if someone had their Ultimate Warrior create-a-wrestler face in-game Arn.
Mid-Tier
Harlem Heat taking on Dick Slater and Bunkhouse Buck was solid. It wasn’t a bad match at all but it’s not going to wow you. It’s like dollar bin beer at the gas station, you’ll take it and it’ll do the job but you really want a few more of these.
After Sting finished up with Big Bubba in a feud that I don’t think anyone asked for, he faces off against Meng over the WCW U.S title. It’s vacant because Vader did a very bad thing and injured Dave Sullivan. He had been raging for a while and now Nick Bockwinkel decided to strip him of the belt. Cool. Whatever. David’s on the PPV doing an arm-wrestling match but it’s fine.
This shouldn’t have been the match but Flair and Savage’s tournament bout ended in a non-contest. I love WCW’s tournaments but sometimes they had wonky stuff that would throw off everything else. It wasn’t a bad bout. Semi-final match quality? Probably not.
Exotic-Tier
The match between Brian Pillman and Alex Wright was good. When it comes to WCW, you really want to keep an eye on the undercard at PPVs and Nitro. They tend to deliver—especially if the match has wrestlers out of the company’s younger pool.
I wasn’t big on The Nasty Boys in WWF but I dig them in WCW. Their defense of the World Tag Team titles against The Blue Bloods was great. If Harlem Heat had faced either of these teams on this show, it would’ve been a dope match.
The main event bout between Ric Flair and Randy Savage is also worth watching. I preferred the Tag Title match and Pillman-Wright to it but these two locking up was going to be enjoyable regardless.
WCW Great American Bash 95 Verdict: 6/10
Not a bad show! As with any show, there’s stuff that could be done without—or if it’s there it could be placed better. As far as the matches go, there was more tolerable-to-good than bad. Overall, it’s a very enjoyable show that was shy of good.
WCW Slamboree 1995 Score: 5.5/10
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