Joseph and Colette Discuss The Final Conflict

This month, we’re tackling matches suggested by you, the BIG EGG reader (and, hopefully, subscriber — you do subscribe, don’t you?). First up was The Final Conflict, a legendary steel cage match that pit Ricky Steamboat and Jay Youngblood against Sgt. Slaughter and Don Kernodle with Steamboat and Youngblood putting their partnership on the line for a shot at the NWA World Tag Team Championships held by Slaughter and Kernodle. It’s an undeniably important wrestling match, but both of us were a little less than thrilled by it in 2023.

Joseph: The Final Conflict: How a Tag Match Breaks Down
Colette: The Final Conflict Is, Among Other Things, Good Soup When You’re Ill

Up Next: Cactus Jack, King of the Deathmatch. Toshiaki Kawada, Triple Crown Champion. HUSTLE, the greatest wrestling promotion of all time. You wanted it, Colette has fond memories of digging into Japanese wrestling after seeing this back in her webforum days, and Joseph hasn’t seen it. How will this freakshow hold up? Let’s find out together!

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Colette Arrand
This is going to sound odd, and maybe dismissive, but this match peaks in its introduction of the champions. Slaughter and Kernodle are cowardly bullies, Marines who are there to bleed and lose, but they come out to the theme from Rocky, taking their damn time and preening as if that song was a rallying cry for everything terrible in the world and not the grit and determination their opponents stood for. The rest of the match fails to live up to that, but boy was Slaughter an incredible heel.

Joseph Anthony Montecillo
I did notice that! What an odd song choice, although I guess I hadn't considered the irony of it. Wrestling's always better when promoters just steal music and that choice just kind of had me scratching my head. I've heard tell of The Final Conflict for years and years now, it's definitely a favorite on some of the message boards I've frequented. A lot of the talk I've seen about it seems to emphasize the rivalry as a whole going into it, so I can't help but feel maybe I just didn't click it with it entirely because I hadn't seen the build up. Did you see much of the angle leading into this?

Colette Arrand
I’ve seen bits and pieces of it, but just through playing old JCP on random on YouTube, so it didn’t stick other than how effusive I am about how good Slaughter was during this time. He seriously makes a case for me as being an me of the top heels of the 1980s, and he was a babyface for the majority of the decade.