I Used To Be An Iceman, Living In An Iceman Town

Steven Regal (c) VS Dean Malenko - WCW Television Championship 12/23/1996

JJZ: Yumma dum dum. Fun fact about JJZ. I used to fucking HATE Regal. I thought he was flat out boring when I was younger. In this match alone I see how much he influenced Chris Hero. And I fucking LOVE Chris Hero. So this match is exactly what I thought it might be and I'm so happy it was. Ever since Danial Bryan VS Drew Gulak from Elimination Chamber, I've been in the mood for some gritty technical wrestling. And these two bring that in spades. This is a TV title match and at one point they mention it's only a ten minute time limit. Now Chris, wasn't it always a 15 minute time limit? Maybe I'm wrong. Either way, this match was exactly what I was looking for.

CJD: 15 minutes on PPV I'm pretty sure. Heenan sounds like he's on his fifth or sixth scotch of the night, and still gives better insight into this match than Schiavone. And sneaks a choice dick joke in there. I'm not going to lie, I wasn't big on Regal until I was older either, and it's safe to say we both had our heads up our collective teenage asses on that one. I did love Stinko Malenko though, and one of the things I loved about WCW in general in this time period was how the Cruiserweight, Television, and United States titles always produced such under the radar high quality matches. So a Champion VS Champion match between those titles like this would have been right out of my *Prodigy message board fantasy booking playbook, but I have no recollection of this match. And it's not the most memorable, but damn it's good. This is one where they are so similar stylistically I wasn't sure how it would play out. It made for some awkward moments in a good way. It always felt like they were fighting each other for control, even when they were trading flips and cartwheels. They fit a lot into this match and I liked they way they finished it as well. Very nice find.

(SPOILERS below...)


JJZ: We gonna talk about the fact the match was 9 mins but it ended in 10?

CJD: Haha I couldn't figure out a way to without spoiling the finish. But yeah but they did that all the time with time limit draws back then. Shaved minutes off constantly. I don't know how those timekeepers kept their jobs!