Back once again to this feature, with us taking a look at WCW’s annual May event of Slamboree. Originally conceived as a “Legends Reunion” type show for it’s first three years, and flirting with the Battle Bowl format in 1996, Slamboree eventually became just a standard pay per view event from 1997 onwards and was often a show that was rarely treated as a big deal. The fact the 95, 97 and 98 events were all main evented by almost throw away tag matches would be a good example of that. Slamboree was really just there to bridge the gap before the two major summer events of Great American Bash and Bash at the Beach.
That’s not to say that nothing of any value happened at the events of course. Ric Flair’s brutal beatdown of Angelo Poffo at the 95 event started a blood feud with Randy Savage that actually drew good money at house shows, whereas the 98 show saw the unthinkable happen as Scott Hall turned on Kevin Nash to break up The Outsiders tag team. However, these moments were normally the exception as opposed to the rule. By the 2000 event WCW was on it’s last legs, a situation that wasn’t helped by having David Arquette competing in the main event as defending WCW World Champion.
Compiling this list was kind of tricky as Slamboree had quite a lot of middling bouts over the years that weren’t especially bad but also weren’t the sort of exciting and classic matches that immediately jumped out at me as ones I just had to include. Despite this, I eventually found six matches that I was happy with and I had to leave a few out in the end as well, which shows that there was ultimately a healthy amount of decent bouts when all was said and done.
I would just like to give a special shout out to Gorgeous George Vs Charles Robinson from the 1999 event as well, because my word is that match a hundred times more enjoyable than it had any right to be. George looked great for someone with so little experience whilst Little Naitch was making the absolute most of his 15 minutes by giving a brilliant Ric Flair impersonation, complete with all of Flair’s tradional spots. It really is absolutely mountains of fun and I can strongly recommend it as one of the best comedy/manager matches I’ve ever seen.
As always, these are just my own personal picks. This isn’t supposed to be some sort of objective list or anything. If I leave out a match that you think warrants inclusion, then please feel free to put it down in the comments section below. As with previous lists, I’ll be listing the matches in chronological order.
So without further to do, let’s take a look at Six of the Best for WCW Slamboree!
Read moreSix of the Best – WCW Slamboree
