The Main Event:

Fans of wrestling in the eighties knew that where the WWF (now WWE) had Wrestlemania, the WCW had Clash Of The Champions, the difference being that these were events on par with the WWF's pay-per-view flagship fiesta but shown on regular cable TV on TBS. The event, which was intentionally scheduled to air on the same night as Wrestlemania IV, first appeared under the NWA league banner on March 27, 1988 and continued through 1997 when the last entry in the run aired on August 21. WCW took over for the fourth event and it appeared as a WCW event for the rest of its run.

WWE Home Video have opted to compile a 'best of' collection that wrangles up what someone somewhere considers to be the cream of the crop - and thus we have this release, The Best of WCW Clash of the Champions . What most fans will quickly realize just by skimming over the match listing is that the emphasis here is on wrestlers who had a strong WWF connection ('Macho Man' Randy Savage, Ric Flair, Ricky 'The Dragon' Steamboat) and on wrestlers who would have a strong WWF connection (Steve Austin, Sting, Eddie Guerrero ) - calling this the 'best' is debatable, but to the WWE's credit, the matches they have compiled here are generally very good. Dusty Rhodes presents introductions to each of the three discs and pops up periodically to give some historical context to various bouts. His input is decent enough but Dusty being Dusty, there are moments where he's a little out there. It's fun to see him pop up here though, and he even gets a chance to strut his stuff in one of the matches on the first disc where he teams up with Sting who hadn't yet turned into the odd hybrid of The Crow and The Joker that he's become over the last few years.

It was around this time in wrestling history, the late eighties and into the nineties, that the WWF/WWE was getting gimmicky. This left WCE in a great spot to capitalize on the void that was quickly being left and that's exactly what they did. Yes, there were storylines and feuds and rivalries and back stabbings galore, this is all part of what makes wrestling what it is, but with the WCE matches it always felt like the emphasis was always on what happened in the ring.

The content in this set, and there's quite a lot of it, is spread out over the three discs in the set in chronological order as follows:

Disc One:

The Real Story
-NWA World Heavyweight Championship Match With Ric Flair Versus Sting, Clash Of The Champions - 27th March, 1988.
-NWA World Tag Team Championship Match With Arn Anderson And Tully Blanchard Versus Lex Luger And Barry Windham, Clash Of The Champions - 27th March, 1988.
-Why Wait a Whole Year?
-NWA World Tag Team Championship Match With Arn Anderson And Tully Blanchard Versus Sting And Dusty Rhodes, Clash Of The Champions II - 8th June, 1988.
-Russian Chain Match With Ricky Morton Versus Ivan Koloff, Clash Of The Champions III - 7th September, 1988.
-I Quit Match for the NWA World Heavyweight Championship With Ric Flair Versus Terry Funk, Clash Of The Champions IX - 15th November, 1989.
-Mil Mascaras Versus Cactus Jack Manson, Clash Of The Champions X - 6th February, 1990
-NWA World Tag Team Championship Match With Midnight Express Versus Rock And Roll Express, Clash Of The Champions XI - 13th June, 1990.

While some of this material has been made available before on other WWE releases, for those without extensive wrestling DVD libraries this set offers up a lot of classic moments. The first disc is excellent through and through, the first match being the one that really made Sting start to rise to national attention when he wrestled champion Ric Flair for forty-five minutes straight. The action doesn't let up from here, as we then segue into a great pair of tag team matches and are then treated to a surprisingly brutal and bloody 'Russian Chain Match' with Ricky Morton and Ivan Koloff, something you never would have seen on the WWE at the time. The 'I Quit' match with Terry Funk and Ric Flair is a highpoint in the careers of both of these legitimate superstars of the ring, while the bout between Mil Masceras and Mick Foley (appearing here as Cactus Jack Manson) is also excellent. Close the disc off with another solid tag team effort and the first disc is a winner all the way through.

Disc Two:

To Be The Man, You Gotta Beat The Man -NWA United States Championship Match With Ric Flair Versus Lex Luger, Clash Of The Champions XII - 5th September, 1990.
-The Young Pistols And Z-Man Versus The Fabulous Freebirds, Clash Of The Champions XV - 12th June, 1991.
-15 Man Battle Royal, Clash Of The Champions XVI - 5th September, 1991.
-WCW United States Championship Match With Sting Versus `Ravishing' Rick Rude, -Clash Of The Champions XVII - 19th November, 1991.
-Other Stars On The Rise
-Two Out Of Three Falls Match With Ric Flair And Arn Anderson Versus The Hollywood Blonds, -Clash Of The Champions XXIII - 17th June, 1993.
-Brian Pillman Versus 'Stunning' Steve Austin, Clash Of The Champions XXV - 10th November, 1993.
-WCW Television Title Match With Lord Steven Regal Versus Dustin Rhodes, Clash Of The Champions XXVI - 27th January, 1994.
-Elimination Tag Team Match With Sting And Ric Flair Versus `Ravishing' Rick Rude And Vader, Clash Of The Champions XXVI - 27th January, 1994.

The second disc has also got some classics on it, with the Flair versus Luger opening proving to be a standout and the fifteen man battle royale, something seen far too infrequently in wrestling these days, a nice blast from the past. Some good tag team matches pop up here, Flair involved in a few of them and even teaming up with Sting for the last match on the disc but by this point in the series we're starting to skip ahead... a lot. No Road Warriors, no Sid Vicious and no Cactus Jack? Something's wrong with that!

Disc Three:

Here we are Again
-Championship Unification Match With Sting Versus Ric Flair, Clash Of The Champions XXVII - 23rd June, 1994.
-WCW United States Championship Match with 'Stunning' Steve Austin Versus Ricky `The Dragon' Steamboat, Clash Of The Champions XXVIII - 24th August, 1994.
-Hulk Hogan And `Macho Man' Randy Savage Versus Ric Flair And The Giant, Clash Of The Champions XXXII - 23rd January, 1996.
-Medusa Versus Bull Nakano, Clash Of The Champions XXXIII - 15th August, 1996.
-Match for the Battle-Bowl Ring With Diamond Dallas Page Versus Eddie Guerrero, Clash Of The Champions XXXIII - 15th August, 1996
-I'm gonna watch this
-WCW World Tag Team Championship Triple Threat Match With Harlem Heat Versus The Steiner Brothers Versus Sting And Lex Luger, Clash Of The Champions XXXIII - 15th August, 1996.
-WCW Cruiserweight Championship Match With Ultimo Dragon Versus Dean Malenko, Clash Of The Champions XXXIV - 21st January, 1997.
-WCW Cruiserweight Championship Match With Chris Jericho Versus Eddie Guerrero, Clash Of The Champions XXXV - 21st August, 1997
-Diamond Dallas Page And Lex Luger Versus Scott Hall And `Macho Man' Randy Savage, Clash Of The Champions XXXV - 21st August, 1997.
-35th and Final Clash

The third disc is the weakest of the three and the later cards don't tend to be quite as interesting as those seen on the first two discs in the set but again, they do offer some good wrestling with some interesting and classic characters. Sting and Ric Flair team up again for the opener and you can't help but get excited when Hulk Hogan and Macho Man square off against Ric Flair and The Giant - there are better matches in the set than that one but the star power here is impressive and it's easy to see why these guys became the legends they became. The Triple Threat match is just okay, not great but not terrible, while the Ultimo Dragon/Dean Malenko fight impresses. Another Macho Man appearance and an early Chris Jericho match are both fun as well, even if both men have done better work than what we see here.

All in all, this is a pretty great collection of matches and highlights from the Clash Of The Champions events. The focus is on the better known contestants and as such, some fans are going to be disappointed that maybe some of the bits that they would have liked to have seen haven't been included here but in general the WWE has done a nice job of compiling some solid bits of NWA and WCW history. By my count, eight of the twenty-four matches in the set have been released on DVD before, so the overlap may also be a bone of contention with some, but with two thirds of this material not having hit the format before this release, the good certainly winds up outweighing the bad. There's room for improvement and with that in mind hopefully the WWE will dig a little deeper into the vaults and concentrate more on the entertainment value that some of these matches provided when they first aired, rather than the star power inherent in them.

The DVD

Video:

The 1.33.1 fullframe presentation (technically the 1.33.1 image is windowboxed within a 1.78.1 frame, so widescreen TV owners have no fear), though interlaced, looks pretty decent. Some of the earlier matches are on the soft side and aren't quite as clean and colorful looking as the later day content is but this is generally quite a respectable looking presentation. There are times where the lights over the ring make skin tones look a bit off but this isn't a fault of the transfer or the authoring, it's simply the way the material has always looked. Nothing here really looks worse than when it was broadcast on television, and to some eyes it might even look a little bit better.