WCW Uncensored 1996: Retro 3 Things We Hated And 3 Things We Loved

Horrifying. Trainwreck. Disgraceful. A blight on professional wrestling from which we have still not recovered from. These are among the nicer things that could be said about WCW Uncensored 1996, one of the worst PPV's to come out of a promotion that, at the time, was producing some of the worst PPV offerings in history. Naturally, when the time came for someone to take a stab at this show and find some things to love and hate about it, there was no better person than the guy who previously embraced Sumo Monster Truck Madness, Jimmy Hart heel turns, AND THE YETAY!

Alas, this was an even tougher task than WCW Halloween Havoc 1995 (another all time stinker of a show), mainly because there were so many things to hate on this show. Beyond this paragraph, you will not hear a peep about the likes of Colonel Robert Parker vs. Madusa or Diamond Dallas Page vs. The Booty Man, two matches that range from terrible to outright offensive. On a normal wrestling show, they would easily be among the most hated things one could find. On WCW Uncensored, they're among the nicer turds in the toilet. Here now are three things from WCW Uncensored 1996 that I hated and three that I (somehow) loved.

It is the shining light in the darkness, the hit single in the midst of an otherwise mediocre album, the Dev Patel to Uncensored 1996's "The Last Airbender." It's also not surprising that a match between Steven "Don't Call Me William" Regal and the Belfast Bruiser (aka Fit Finlay) would wind up being this good; these are two of the most accomplished wrestlers to come from Europe after all.

But for all the good work these two did over the years, including against each other, this one seems even more special, probably because the rest of this card is so lifeless. These two just beat the ever loving tar out of each other; it's like watching a 1990s All Japan match or even a modern AEW match. Just hard strikes, a few potatoes (Bruiser legit busts Regal open hardway with a punch to the face at one point), some great grappling; absolutely spectacular stuff. This isn't just a great match on a bad card, this would be a winner dropped into the best shows.

As great as Regal vs. Bruiser is, this is still early 1996 WCW, and this promotion can't help but bungle the one good thing on this show. Regal has complete control of the Bruiser outside of the ring, when suddenly his stablemates, Squire Dave Taylor and Earl Robert Eaton, hit the ring to attack Bruiser from being, leading to a disqualification. What? WHAT?! After the absolute beating these two have put on each other, this match has to end with a DQ, caused by guys interfering on behalf of the dude was winning?

This would be bad enough as is, made worse by the fact that it took place at a PPV called Uncensored, where there's supposed to be no rules! I have seen some bad DQ finishes ruin some good matches in my day, but this may take the cake for the worst of all. Not only did it mar what was the best match on the show, but it did so on a show that has almost no other redeeming qualities. I would say I have no words, but I just wrote 184 words and counting on how bad that was, so clearly that's a lie. Yes, I counted the number of words I wrote. That's how ticked off I am!

Yes, I am definitely grading on a curve here. This is not a Giant vs. Meng, "WCW Monday Nitro, September 21, 1998" esque gem, nor is it anything remotely good. Poor Loch Ness (better known as Giant Haystacks for most of his career) is a few months shy of 50, largely immobile, and only a few years away from his untimely death; he probably shouldn't have even been working this match, let alone anyone expect him to do anything worthwhile.

But I cannot lie; the sight of him and Giant squaring off is pretty neat, and Giant bumps his a** off here. That moment where he goes for a corner splash and ends up bumping all the way to the floor? Perfection. Magnificence. BEAUTY! How can you not appreciate that type of effort here? That moment, the novelty of these two big guys going at it, and the fact that the match was shorter than Judas Priest's classic "Breaking the Law" is enough to make this match a winner.

This honestly may be among my least favorite matches of all time, at least regarding matches that aren't the dirt worst. This is not a bad match; in fact, there's an argument to make that it's the second best match on the show. But it doesn't matter because this match is just so freaking long. It's so long that I'm not entirely convinced that it's actually ended! In total, this Chicago Street Fight went 20 minutes and 33 seconds, the longest match on this PPV, even beating out the atrocity that followed it.

Why did it go this long? I have no idea. I suppose maybe the thought was "there's no way Sting, Booker T, Animal and Hawk can have a bad match, no matter how long or short it is." WRONG! I can't even really blame the guys either, because they do work hard and there's the skeleton of a fun match here. The problem is that fun match would've been between 15 and 18 minutes, and instead it's half an hour of similar spots, long stretches of tedium, and cameos from Lex Luger and Stevie Ray. A terrible match? No. A disappointing match? Absolutely. And on a card that needed something, this going too long and disappointing is enough to make it stand out more than DDP losing to [Bryan Alvarez voice] THE BOOTY...MAN. I have to move on now before I question my life choices.

If nothing else, Uncensored 1996 proves there was no smarter man in wrestling than Brian Pillman. The Loose Cannon was in the middle of his Loose Cannon storyline at the time, having even made appearances in ECW where he trashed Eric Bischoff a month prior. Nevertheless, there's some evidence that Pillman was supposed to be part of this match as a member of the Alliance to End Hulkamania, most notably in Tony Schiavone saying he's in the match and then pondering just where Pillman was when he didn't show up.

Was Pillman actually booked, and avoided the match because he got wind that Hogan wanted to beat him to squash his momentum? Did Schiavone make a mistake? Did Eric Bischoff, feeding lines into Schiavone's ear, make a mistake? Who knows, and quite frankly, who cares. The only thing that matters is that Brian Pillman avoided being in this calamity, and for that, he is a winner, and I love him for it. Well done Loose Cannon, well done.

This has to be the most predictable Hated in the history of Wrestling Inc., right? I'll be honest; it's kind of "love to hate" thing the same way the Monster Truck Match AND THE YETAY were for me at Halloween Havoc 1995. This is truly among the top tier of "so bad it's good" wrestling matches, where it's so stupid and so nonsensical that you can't help but laugh. Frankly, I'm still not sure what happened here. There were three cages stacked on top of each other, and it seems the idea was that Hogan and Savage's way to victory was to work their way down the three cages (featuring various members of The Alliance to End Hulkamania in them) till they escaped and won the match.

Here's the thing; none of that played out that way once Hogan and Savage escaped the first cage (where Ric Flair and Arn Anderson were, because only WCW would put their best workers in the first cage and leave all their worst in the other cages!). Instead, we have everyone in the match leaving the cages altogether to go fight in the ring (by the way, did I mention this cage structure was set up at the entranceway and not in the ring? No. OOPS!), only for everyone to go back to the cage and then fight till Savage pinned Flair following a Lex Luger punch to Flair that was either deliberately turning Luger face or a mistimed botch. At least I think that's what happened; it's possible this match fried my brain to the point that nothing makes sense anymore. Whatever the case, this was brutal. It's easily one of the worst matches ever, one of the funniest matches ever, and, thankfully, the death nail in the first incarnation of Hulk Hogan. Notice how he's slowly phased out after this match prior to coming back with the nWo in the summer? I'd like to think this match was the one that made WCW go "this isn't working, let's try something new." Sometimes it takes the worst of the worst to get you to see you need to go in another direction.