World Wide Wrestling

NWA World Wide Wrestling originally was a small time pro wrestling show filmed out of the TV studios of WRAL and WPCQ in Raliegh and Charlotte, North Carolina respectively from 1975 till 1983. World Wide Wrestling moved into larger Coliseums under Jim Crockett Promotions lead by Jim Crockett Junior and his brother David Crockett. The shows were filmed during the week, edited to one hour, transmitted to the local "Big 3" stations, and finally shown on TV across America. By decades end the NWA was in dire straights as Jim Crockett tried to compete with Vince McMahon who during the 1980's broke from the traditional "Wrestling Territory System" went and turned WWF into a big time corporate sports entertainment company making deals with MTV USA Network and NBC. And he systematically slaughtered the competition with his WWF Product. Jim Crockett Promotions eventually sold out to Ted Turner and World Wide Wrestling survived under Ted Turner and Eric Bischoff as they moved the show off the road to Disney MGM Studios in Orlando, Florida. World Wide from then on became a shell of it's once great self and was then finally turned into what WWF Superstars of Wrestling eventually became a "Recap Show". World Wide Wrestling was officially the last official broadcast program of WCW the weekend that followed the buy out of WCW from Time Warner/AOL to Vince McMahon and WWF.

When WCW was around I always liked to watch this program very late at night on one of the local channels! This weekly WCW event was taped for the weekends at Disney Land, Orlando Florida! It had excellent commentary by Tony Schiavone and the legendary Bobby "the Brain" Heenan! The show had some good matches through out the years but there was one match that I truly loved and that was in the autumn season of 1995 before Halloween Havoc 95. Below is an In-depth match review! The following is all in My opinion!

The match: Dungeon of Doom members The Zodiac (WWF's Brutus Beefcake) and The Ugandan Giant Kamala with The Taskmaster Kevin Sullivan in their corner (Meng was listed on the intro when they came out from the locker rooms but he didn't accompany them) vs. Terry Morgan and Scott D'Amour!

What happened: The wrestling match was fast but it was so cool! The Zodiac kept on brawling with D'Amour and threw him on to the outside. The huge Kamala was just pummeling Morgan with his trademark chops, kicks, and among other tactics! Mean while, Kevin Sullivan hit D'Amour with Kamala's mask across his back! Still outside the ring, The face painted Zodiac put on a camel clutch like hold on Scott (keep in mind the legendary Ugandan warrior is banging Morgan's head and just destroying him!) and the Taskmaster is stomping on D'Amour's fingers! He stomps on them quite hard a couple times! Then Kamala throws Terry into the ropes and thrusts chops him in the throat area and he goes down and holding his throat in pain he turns over and for an agile four-hundred pound monster Kamala splashes him and does another one of his trademarks by covering him on the back and grabs one leg. After a few times of turning the defeated opponent over Kamala finally covers him the correct way and gets the one-two-three!

Winners: The Dungeon of Doom - The Zodiac and The Ugandan Giant Kamala!

After the match: Right after the bell rings in victory for the two unusual wrestlers, The Zodiac is still outside manhandling D'Amour as he is stepping on his throat and he says, YES! NO! YES! NO! to the camera with a hilarious look on his face! In the ring Kevin Sullivan quickly goes on his big back and covers Kamala's eyes near the ropes so Kamala couldn't see and would be tamed down and cause no more destruction on anyone or anything unless ordered to!

Commentary highlight: When The Zodiac has Scott D'Amour in the hold outside the squared circle and Kevin Sullivan just stomps on the fallen foe's fingers for fun and laughs. Booby Heenan laughed at this and said look at that, for no reason, he's stepping on the man's fingers! Isn't that Great!? Tony said to Bobby, what is wrong with them and more importantly what is wrong with you and "The Brain" replied to Schiavone that happened to (Gene) Okerlund last night and somebody stepped on his hands! Schiavone said that's not funny at all and Heenan responded with a ha ha ha ha!

After look: This has always been one of My favorite matches because of the uniqueness of it and plus I adored the era of the WCW in 1995 especially all of the classic moments with the Dungeon of Doom! If you saw this match you know how good it was! In My opinion there will never be anything like this again in the world of wrestling!

This Worldwide was the cheap man's version of what the NWA under Jim Crockett Junior and Jim Crockett Promotions made back in the 1980s on the localized "Big 3" Stations during the Saturday Morning/Afternoon Wrestling Craze. When Ted Turner got his hands on Crockett's failed version of NWA he turned it into World Championship Wrestling and proceeded to drop all NWA references all together. NWA World Wide and NWA Pro Wrestling were relabeled with the WCW logo and moved off the road to Disney/MGM Studios in Orlando, Florida and eventually became nothing more than recap shows for WCW's Nitro, Thunder, and Saturday Night. Worldwide was officially the last WCW program under Turner to air the weekend of the WCW buyout from Vince McMahon and WWF. Today the entire NWA World Wide/WCW Worldwide Video Tape Archive along with the entire NWA/WCW Video Tape Library in general lay in the vaults of WWE Headquarters in Stamford,Connecticut.

WCW Worldwide was one of four syndicated WCW shows that aired in the 90's-the others were WCW Saturday Night, WCW Pro and WCW Main Event. All the matches were taped a couple of weeks before this aired.

The show featured some pretty good matches, pretty good depending on your view of the now defunct WCW product. WCW-which tried to emulate the WWF in 1992-also had a magazine style format for this show usually where Eric Bischoff (now WWE Raw General Manager) talked about the latest happenings in WCW. There were also clips of one match from a previous PPV and clips from the other syndicated programmes.

WCW fans will know that the last few years of WCW's existence were miserable. WCW had been a pure wrestling orientated organisation for years although it was not a success all the time and suffered due to poor management at times. From 1994, it was a modest success due to the signing of Hulk Hogan and the first PPV meeting of Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair. The best years were 1996-1998 where the New World Order led by a heel Hulk Hogan ran wild. Sadly, late 1998-2001 was abysmal as WCW became a chore to watch due to the fact it was being run by bureaucratic idiots who didn't have a clue what the fans wanted.

Back to WCW Worldwide, for it's last few years it was mainly a compilation programme and the quality of it was poor (as was the quality on all of WCW's programmes during it's last years). The announcers were alright at times but like a lot in WCW, there was no consistency as announcing teams changed on a regular basis.

All in all, a good programme for it's formative years but a compilation of poor matches for it's last few years.