So, personally, I have a real fondness for this match.
When I moved to Michigan in late 2009, aside from the night I slept in a staircase with all my stuff, I moved into a small apartment that already had a lot of furnishings, which was nice. The problem was that most of them sucked shit. The least comfortable and ugliest orange striped couch in the world, with only three legs so the fourth was propped up with a brick. A real shitty little chair that was far too low to the ground for my taste, and the smallest linoleum desk to put my laptop on, only one opening window out of like nine in the place. There was no fridge or oven or stove, just a hot plate next to the sink. The crown jewel — the thing that was much harder to get rid of (or in the case of the lack of fridge and hot plate, fix and then also give away) than everything else — was this gigantic water bed, elevated on a platform with a wooden frame and large cabinets built in behind it for pillows to lean against.
The first week or so you sleep on a water bed, it’s fun enough.
Something different at least.
After about a week though, at least in my case, that goes away, and I spent the next seven or eight months hating it. To get rid of it involved a complex process, as this was a waterbed on the third floor of the building for some reason (or maybe not THAT complex, but more than I was willing to undertake on my own at age 20), on top of finding some place to put all the wood when I disassembled the bed. I had been ready to do this for months, had stored a mattress in the attic for whenever we were ready months back, regularly bugged my uncle/landlord about getting a day and time to help out with the whole thing, and finally on Thursday, August 26th (not any of the many times we agreed it could be), he came knocking and said it was time to take the thing down.
The process took much longer than I expected, between getting the hose right, draining the thing, taking it down into the driveway when it was finally light/easy enough to carry and then brute forcing the rest of the water out while rolling it up, and then also taking apart this gigantic wooden frame and hauling that into the bed of someone’s truck.
By the time it was finally done and I had dragged that mattress down from the attic and just thrown it in the corner of the room (would get a bed frame at some point in the next six months, idk) across from the box style CRT TV resting on a milk crate, I had never been more tired in my life up to that point. It’s still probably somewhere in the top ten.
I have a super vivid memory of that, and also then of remembering that this match had been taped and got rave reviews from people in the crowd, and excitedly turning on this episode of Superstars that started maybe half an hour at most after this process was finished and just completely zoning out, not moving from sitting on the floor in front of the TV for at least another half hour.
Anyways.
Does this rule?
Yes. Of course it does.
Regal and Goldust get under ten minutes on a WWE C-Show, but it’s perfect for them because it allows them to be William Regal and Goldust, rather than cramming it into two minutes and/or doing a costume comedy match instead (nothing wrong with this, but put two of the best ever against each other, and I want to see them be two of the best ever). Regal tortures Dustin on the mat, Dustin has his perfect trademarks like the missed crossbody hope spot cutoff, the beautiful right hand uppercuts, and they play all the hits. You also get a million great little things. Regal’s early failed arm work including hand manipulation and grinding his knee along Dustin’s bicep. Dustin’s revenge by stomping on the hand of Regal in the back half. The loudness of all the shots thrown here in general, and all the great little ways they get from point A to B in a much smoother way than you see from like 90% of other wrestlers under contract here.
The match maybe doesn’t live up to the dream of “the lost WCW TV Title epic we never got between the two (better than the January ’94 Clash match)”, but relative to what they are now and what’s possible here, a real joy.
Should you, The Reader, seek this out thinking you will enjoy it on the level that I did?
I have no idea.
To some extent, it is not possible to ever entirely separate special viewing circumstances from a match, especially if the match is also good to great. One of my favorite episodes of wrestling television ever holds that place at least 50% because of the personal experience of watching it where, when, and how I did. There’s a great match here no matter what though. I imagine if you’re reading this site, you are at least moderately interested by a Regal/Goldust C-Show match, and I don’t think this will disappoint. At the same time, it’s also not exactly Regal/Christian from ECW over the previous twelve month, nor is it on the level of the better Old Man Dustin work either.
William Regal and Dustin Rhodes have a match that excels not because of its ambition or what they’re allowed to do, but because of how great they are at utilizing the time afforded to them, either through beautiful shots, great little things, or simply the stunning level of efficiency that made them so great in the first place. It’s maybe not the best version of this that I had imagined, nor as great as I remembered, but still a real great match between two old pros.
However you find it, I love it, and I also completely acknowledge that you and I can never have the complete same experience with this match.
I cannot recommend or make you uninstall a waterbed and gigantic wooden frame and carry stuff down two flights of stairs for hours before watching this match. I cannot give you the experience of first watching this match that I had. I can, however, tell you that for whatever reason, this episode and many more early Superstars episodes are up in full on Youtube, and I can definitely recommend watching this if you think it sounds like the sort of thing you’d enjoy.
HANDWERK 
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