WWE: Top 10 Title Unifications In Modern Wrestling

5. Jerry Lawler Defeats Kerry Von Erich To Unify The AWA & WCCW World Titles (SuperClash III, December 1988).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usr0b8PTA_s The WWE DVD about the death of the AWA had a tremendous line summing up this whole deal, with Vince noting that the promoters involved "couldn't agree on ordering a cup of coffee", which kind of showed you how doomed this idea was from the start. Verne Gagne's intentions were to band together all the B-level dying promotions (AWA, World Class, Memphis, GLOW, CWF) and rise up to challenge Vince McMahon's corporate machine by unifying all their World titles into one. Didn't work out so well for them, mainly because getting everyone to actually agree on a finish was an exercise in frustration. In the end, we got Lawler as AWA World champion facing Von Erich as World Class champion, supposedly for the Unified World Title. Kerry showed up, to put it politely, with some major chemical imbalances, and immediately slashed his own arm open with his blade while taking his robe off. The match itself was great, albeit with a total bullshit finish where Von Erich was in control but the ref stopped the match due to excessive bleeding on his part. However, the real nonsense came soon after this "unification", as Verne Gagne never actually paid Lawler for main-eventing the PPV and found himself without a Unified World champion once Lawler quit in protest. The AWA title was un-unified (is that a word? I'm calling it a word because it's wrestling.) and Lawler ended up buying World Class and renaming it USWA instead. All the other promotions died months later. So, you know, happy ending...? Match Quality: About as good as you could have expected from Kerry Von Erich hopped up on goofballs at that point. Which is to say, quite good. Long-term Significance: The SuperClash III PPV was the wrestling equivalent of a train filled with dynamite driving off a cliff and landing on a fireworks factory before exploding into a million pieces and killing an entire town of people with the shrapnel. A show that is such a disaster that it took down FOUR wrestling promotions with it. Maybe not directly, but my metaphor works better that way. FOUR WRESTLING PROMOTIONS.