Road Warriors vs Doom (NWA, 2-23-1990)

NWA Power Hour, Rainsville, AL

Doom are fully unmasked by this point, we know they are Ron Simmons and Butch Reed, they are big, bad, strong dudes, and they’re in again with the Road Warriors, the biggest, baddest tag team of the 80s, entering the 90s, which, let’s be honest, did them no favors whatsoever. Their aura at this point is already diminished, but they always looked and seemed cool for a minute at least.

Buncha big lads here. Butch Reed is the smallest guy and Butch was a big, jacked man. As the match’s “small man,” Reed is also the bump machine, selling big on a Hawk clothesline and an Animal press slam.

This is a big, dumb, clunky power team match. Nobody here has any “finesse” or whatever, Reed has by far the most but that’s not really his style, either. It gets about 12 minutes, Animal takes most of the beating, crowd are into it because they are happy to see the Road Warriors in this backwater hick town, but it’s not particularly exciting. Doom were cool but not good enough to carry the Road Warriors to something really interesting, and the Road Warriors were cool but if you were looking for a “good match,” they needed better than Reed and Simmons across the ring.

But I DO like the bigness, dumbness, and clunkiness. It is warm nostalgia in this way, I miss matches like this being different than other stuff on the show. These big boys are here to fight, and they do that. Road Warriors win when Hawk hits a flying clothesline on Reed.

Rating: 2.5/5