Welcome to another look back at WCW's past. This week, it's all about Jimmy Valiant.

Please, come back. I promise it won't completely suck. And there's blood.

Our first match is Valiant taking on The Midnight Express (Bobby Eaton and Dennis Condrey, with Jim Cornette). This won't be a handicap match as Valiant gets help from Miss Atlanta Lively. Our host Dusty Rhodes invites us to try and guess Miss Atlanta's true identity (which I'll spoil right away by revealing that it's Ron Garvin). This match sounds awfully familiar to me. Hey! It's the "Atlanta Streetfight" from Starcade '85. This by the way is two straight weeks where they showed a match from a Starcade without admitting it. They did it last week with Wahoo McDaniel & Mark Youngblood vs. Bob Orton & Dick Slater from Starcade '83. And they'll do it again later in this show.

On a side note, the single most annoying aspect of this show is that they never give the historical background for these matches. They just throw 'em out with no real explanation. Since this is the first match shown in this series that falls fully within my personal recollection (I started watching pro wrestling heavily in the fall of 1985) I will go ahead and give the background for this match. The Midnights arrived in WCW in 1985 and their first real feud was with Valiant and his valet Big Mama (who did absolutely nothing). For some reason Valiant brought in Ron Garvin in a dress (as Miss Atlanta Lively) to help him battle the Midnights. Jim Cornette promised during the build up to Starcade that he would strip Miss Atlanta naked and prove that "she" was in fact a "he."

As for the match itself, the Midnights wore tuxes just like Cornette. Valiant and Lively throw powder in the Midnights' faces then beat them to a bloody pulp. Eaton, in particular, takes a hell of a beating, including a hip toss on the concrete from Valiant, and is soon a bloody mess. The Midnight's come back briefly and try to strip Lively but are unsuccessful. They really take over with powder and Cornette's tennis racket and bloody the other team. They isolate Miss Garvin for a double-team assault (and there a fewer sites as bizarre, IMO, as Ron Garvin, in hideous drag, wearing an oversized wig, and covered in a "crimson mask"), while keeping Valiant out of the ring. They stop a Valiant comeback. Eaton climbs up top to go for a kneedrop, but Lively meets him with the knockout punch on the way down and covers for the pin. After the match the crowd gets what it was promised: a stripping. However it's Cornette that gets stripped: to boxer shorts with hearts on them. (Side note to Scott Keith: Jim Cornette didn't need Vince McMahon to publicly humiliate, he was perfectly capable of humiliating himself.)

We then get an impossible to follow video montage of Jimmy Valiant highlights. None of the clips are long enough to leave any impression, so that's all I have to say about that.

And just like that it's time for the feature match.

Charlie Brown (Jimmy wearing a mask) vs. Great Kabuki (with Gary Hart): Mid-Atlantic TV Title match from Starcade '83 (though we aren't told that)

I must repeat: Would it kill them to provide some background for these matches. Why was Valiant wearing a mask? The mask itself completely failed to hide the identity of it's wearer. It only covers half of Valiant's face, completely revealing his trademark oversized beard. This, as I said before, is the second match they have shown on this series from the "Granddaddy of Them All" Starcade '83. Gordon Solie does the announcing for both (I was a big fan of Solie's work in the '80's. My condolences to his family). Both matches can be ID'ed as being in the same ring as there is a very obvious blood stain on the mat (probably from Abdullah vs. Colon). Starcade '83 had three legendary matches (Flair-Race; Piper-Valentine; Steamboat & Youngblood-Briscos). Maybe someday we'll see one of these great Starcade matches.

I say that above because this match is, in scientific terms, a suckfest. The match is long enough to span across a commercial break, but the "action" mainly consists of Kabuki applying a claw hold. Valiant escapes the claw, and Kabuki re-applies it. This process seems to go on for several years, until Kabuki misses a kick in the corner, "Charlie Brown" hits an elbowdrop and gets the pin and the TV title. Oh wait, if "Charlie" had lost he would have had to unmask. Something else they might have told us during the intro.

And that does it for this edition of WCW Classics. How did I do? Was I adequate? Did I suck? And why was Jimmy Valiant wearing a mask? Let me know at blahbleh@bellsouth.net.