10 Best Ever Wrestling Tournaments
6. NWA Crockett Cup 1987
Dusty Rhodes always had a fondness for tag team wrestling. Today, this is most obvious through NXT’s Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic, but the roots of this competition stretch back to the 1980s. The Dusty Classic was directly inspired by the NWA’s Crockett Cup tag tournaments, which Dusty had a huge hand in both behind the scenes and in the ring.
The Jim Crockett Sr. Memorial Cup Tag Team Tournament (whew…) saw 24 tag teams compete for a grand prize of $1 million, with the Road Warriors taking the original tourney in 1986. The following year saw Jim Crockett Promotions raise the bar: the Road Warriors returned to defend their crown, and they were joined by some of the industry’s biggest teams in the Midnight Express, Rock ‘N Roll Express, and the Super Powers themselves: Dusty Rhodes and Nikita Koloff.
The matches might seem outdated and unathletic by today’s standards, but the tournament featured some of the biggest stars in the business. It benefited from some smart booking, too: the Super Powers reached the finals, but they were made to work hard for it, while their heelish opponents Lex Luger and Tully Blanchard had it comparatively easy, and primarily faced lower-midcard acts.
Rhodes and Koloff fought severe adversity in the final, but they pulled it off. Dusty pinned Blanchard following a flying bodypress, but the war wasn’t over, and the Super Powers feuded with the Four Horsemen into the following year.