| FEUD PROFILE Hornet/GUNS "I don't NEED to pin you, Hornet. I already know who the better man is. And here's one hint. He's got the Strongest Arms in the World." "You see, GUNS, it's never been the "powers that be" that have stopped you from pinning me, no matter how much you believe it. It was me, GUNS, pure and simple."
That may seem a bit much...but if it does, then you haven't been following the story. It is very much a Greek tragedy, with the two heroes brought to bear by their fatal flaws. Two confident men who become obsessed with the other's demise, to the exclusion of everything else. It began early in 1995, and not truly in the CSWA. Superstars in their own right, Hornet and GUNS had not crossed paths. Hornet had been on his quest to unify World Titles throughout various leagues; while GUNS was busy establishing himself as a major player in the AAWC, and taking a World Title reign in a league known as the CCW. But as their paths began to cross...it became inevitable that two of the world's finest would become entangled.
"What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive." GUNS, as the mysterious "El Toro", was busy feuding Mike Randalls, the AAWC Unified Champion. But when GUNS was required to be a commentator, after denying he was the masked man, he found himself in a quandary. And so, he turned to Hornet to help me out and don the mask. The place, Tokyo, Japan, during the AAWC's first World War Games event. During the match, Hornet was unmasked by Randalls, but went on to win the match and the AAWC Unified Title. However, after the match, while congratulating the new champion, GUNS took advantage, attacking Hornet and brutally throwing him into the third row. So it began...but Hornet wasn't about to take things lying down. There was another AAWC chapter yet to write in the long story. Just about six weeks later, the AAWC would hold it's premiere event, WrestleFest '95. The featured event: the creation of an AAWC Universal Champion, merging the AAWC World Title with the AAWC Unified Title (created from a previous merge of three of the AAWC's lesser titles). The event featured GUNS, Hornet, Doctor Silver and Flic Rair. The first man to defeat his three opponents in consecutive matches would become the new champion. GUNS went on to defeat Silver, then Flic Rair. And in the third, he would come desperately close to gaining his largest title to date. But Hornet rolled up the big man in a small package, getting the desperation win. After the match, GUNS was furious, again attacking Hornet; leaving him laying for Doctor Silver to come along and get the easy pin on his way to the title. With Hornet up in the one match between the two men, but GUNS up in the post-match melees, the two would once again be thrown together, this time in the CSWA at FISH FUND X. The second IRONMAN of CHAMPIONS was announced, with the winner taking the Unified World Championship, a title merging over 30 World Titles from various federations. Our two central characters would meet with the then-champion Tsunami, Steven Flair and Alexandr Karelin. As the round-robin tournament reached its fifteenth and final match, Hornet and GUNS stood at the top of the rankings. The winner of the match would collect enough points to end the tournament with the lead...and the Unified Title. Having been denied the AAWC Universal Title, GUNS now set his sights on the next prize...looking to deny the former two-time Unified Champion a chance to begin his third reign. Each played on the other's weakness, Hornet attacked GUNS' previously injured right knee. Midway through the match, GUNS would send Hornet over the top in a desperation effort, causing Hornet to hit the apron and damage his achilles' heel, his back. But the downed referee would miss the call for the disqualification. GUNS took over the match from there, and the two even had some dialog. But Hornet promised that if he couldn't win the title, neither would GUNS. Proving his words, Hornet sent GUNS over the top from the top rope! GUNS would get the win by disqualification...but the points won were not enough to give him the Unified Title. And so, for the second time, GUNS was denied a title by Hornet. It's one of the strongest themes throughout the story...Hornet determined to deny GUNS titles he didn't believe he had earned. The theme would play out for the next time at the AAWC's Under New Ownership card. Before the main event, Hornet and GUNS got involved in a short pull-apart, brekaing up as GUNS entered the steel cage for his next chance at the AAWC Universal Title as well as the CSWA's Enterprise World Champion, both held by Tom Adler. GUNS' buddies, the massive tag team of the Armed Forces, interfered, stealing the keys and laying out Tom Adler. It appears that GUNS would finally have his major strap. But Hornet bolted from his position at the commentators' table, and the two men ended up fighting at the top of the cage. Hornet was knocked to the floor, but he once again gained Tom Adler time, catching GUNS on his shoulders as he tried to reach the floor. Adler was able to make his way unmolested out of the cage to the floor, having escaped the second rush by the Armed Forces. Not a moment's peace came between the two after that match. They began interfering in each others' matches, making sure that no one would defeat or injure the other before they could set up another one-on-one matchup. But that wasn't counting on Mike Randalls, who took the liberty to put a wooden stake through GUNS' knee at a card called CSWA Apocalypse. But nothing would defer a final confrontation between GUNS and Hornet. And that match would finally come in September 1995 at ELVIS LIVES CELEBRATION IX: DISNEY DAYS. In a match that GUNS announced to be his final before having knee surgery to correct his injured right knee, the two men went to a sixty-minute draw in a match billed as "NO EXCUSES". GUNS lasted the last five minutes of the match caught in the Scorpion Deathlock, proving that nothing short of a foreign object through his knee could get him to submit. Neither man was happy with the draw result, so the match was restarted. Three minuted into the restart, Hornet came off the top to get the big splash and a grapevine cover on the injured leg, winning the match.
"The best laid plans of mice and men..." The next chapter in the story is an odd one. GUNS was seemingly out of wrestling forever. The feud was over, right? Not quite. The world was shocked on October 29, 1995 in Caesar's Palace. GUNS has been on TV on crutches, telling Hornet that he wanted to be in his corner for the upcoming match between Hornet and Mike Randalls. Hornet didn't respond, but GUNS came down to ringside during the match. With the referree incapacitated, GUNS took advantage of the situation, attacking Randalls with the wooden stake that caused the massive injury to his knee. The world was shocked when GUNS actually ran across the ring and nailed Randalls with a kneelift! And the world was shocked again when Hornet, after seemingly joining up with Randalls to go after GUNS, clipped Randalls' knee. GUNS and Hornet proceeded to team up on the former Unified Champion. In an interview after the match, GUNS explained to the world about his 'bionic' knee surgery, and the events that led up to these two former enemies becoming friends. So all was right with the world, right? GUNS and Hornet teamed up to take on Mark Windham and his assorted partners, as the feud between Hornet and Windham intensified. But as 1996 rolled around, things were shaky in paradise. As the CSWA SuperPRIMETIME: I Have A Dream, celebrating Dr. King, Jr.'s birthday, these two partners had two of the biggest singles matches of their career. In the first part of the Double Main Event, GUNS got what some fans call the biggest win of his career, defeating Mark Windham and Mike Randalls in a long triangle match to capture the Enterprise World Championship. It was GUNS' first big match after his return from the knee injury, and he proved to the world that he could still compete. After the match, GUNS was attacked by Randalls and Windham. Hornet came in to make the save, and the two drove the attackers away...but then backed into each other. GUNS swung his newly-won World Title, accidentally catching Hornet in his back, reinjuring that achilles' heel. Hornet went on in a match against a lunatic named Jim Williams, who had been 'preaching' that Hornet was the Antichrist. The Unified Champion won the match, but lost the war, as he was ganged up on by Williams' cronies, and attacked with a branding iron to the back. Afterwards, Hornet accused GUNS of trying to sabotage and re-injure him...and also questioned where GUNS was when Hornet himself was being attacked. Things seemed to be glossed over. GUNS prepared for his first major title defense at WINTER'S WARRIORS VII on March 19, 1996, against none other than previous challenger "The Living Legend" Mark Windham. Closeted in a steel cage, these two were ready to finish their short-lived feud. Windham was looking to take advantage of his shot at the title, but GUNS took everything he had to offer...and then offered a little of his own, powerbombing Windham off a ladder brought in from a previous match. As GUNS went for the pin, referee Manuel Juarez suddenly lost his command of the English language. As GUNS argued with the referee, Windham pulled out a set of brass knuckles and laid out the big man. But as the crooked ref began the three-count, Hornet was already on his way down, climbing the cage, and stopping the count. Hornet and GUNS shared a moment as partners as GUNS thanked him for the save. GUNS set Windham up for a final piledriver....oblivious as Hornet taped up his hand and discus punched his 'friend' in the back of the head. Windham dropped GUNS with an implant DDT, crooked ref Juarez counted the three-count, and Hornet handed Mark Windham the EN World Title. America's Team was reunited.....and they exposed the seeming two-year split and feud between the two as an elaborate scam, of which GUNS became the scapegoat. And so the stage was set. But rather than the one-on-one battles that had become classics, Hornet and Windham, as America's Team, began to wreak havoc on the CSWA. In a fan-requested match, GUNS was teamed up with former enemy Mike Randalls against America's Team at a CSWA SHOWTIME in April 1996. The feud expanded as Pierce was added to America's Team, and Tom Adler's Diamond Exchange was added to the team of Randalls and GUNS.
"...this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper." Thus begins the third and final chapter to date. Things had gotten out of hand. The wrestling world was being torn apart by the feud between six of the biggest stars in the world. Four of those men were former Unified Champions; five of the men had held the Enterprise World and/or AAWC Universal Championships. The cream of the crop were looking to tear each others' throats out. But it all really came down to the hatred between GUNS and Hornet. The feud that had begun more than two years previously had to come to a head. A decisive battle had to be waged in the war. And so, Hornet and GUNS agreed to a match at FISH FUND XI: End Of An Era. And on September 6, 1996, the two men who between them had held over 40 World Championships, stepped into the ring. However, this match was no ordinary one. It had three months of buildup...three months of harsh words....and the promise that at the end of the match, one of the men's wrestling careers in the CSWA would be over. Hornet, the CSWA's "Franchise", and GUNS, the CSWA's three-time EN World Champion....and after the match, one of them would be gone. GUNS told the world it would be him, that CSWA management would certainly save their beloved one. Hornet argued that this was to be a fair, final battle....but who could believe the man who had pulled off the biggest doublecross in wrestling history six months earlier. But finally, the match came. And in a titanic struggle, the two men battled back and forth as usual. This time, no time limit could stand in the way...no disqualification...no partners...no titles, even. It all came down to this one night. From powerslams to abdominal stretches, full nelsons to discus punches, the double chicken wing to the scorpion deathlock. From tombstone piledrivers to Hornet splashes.... And that was the difference. Hornet's zeal to put GUNS away forever, and an unneeded Hornet splash while the referee was down. GUNS' manager, TTL, helped move the downed man out of the corner, and Hornet found nothing but steel post. TTL maneuvered GUNS' arm over Hornet....and GUNS finally had his pinfall on the three-time Unified Champion. Hornet regained his senses before GUNS did, and made a farewell speech to the crowd, sitting on the top turnbuckle, almost in tears...before he walked through the crowd out of the arena.
With Hornet gone, and GUNS disinterested, the CSWA seemed to fall into decline. Merritt and Thomas began feuding, Mark Windham lost his mind again, and men like Mike Randalls concentrated on the Unified World Title. But the silence between Hornet and GUNS was deafening...you could hear it across federation lines. Nothing had truly been settled at FISH FUND. The CS Enterprises-sponsored third IRONMAN of CHAMPIONS began in December 1997. And as the dust cleared, five men remained to fight in the round-robin tournament in January 1997. As you've already guessed, two of those men were Hornet and GUNS, along with Mike Randalls, Mark Windsor and Julius Godreign. The Unified World Championship was on the line...and Hornet and GUNS were destined to meet one-on-one in a neutral site, with the Unified Championship Committee watching. As in the previous IRONMAN, with a win, GUNS could clinch the Unified World Title. Hornet was still in the running, needing a win to keep him alive before his final match with Mike Randalls. In a match that saw both men gain control and come back with second wins, GUNS almost became the Unified Champion with the help of a roll of quarters. The referee ordered a restart, however, and Hornet came off the top to catch GUNS and get the pinfall, bringing the series to a slight 3-2 edge in his favor. Hornet had stopped GUNS from becoming the Unified Champion again...but this time, Hornet couldn't capitalize. In the final match of the IRONMAN, Mike Randalls defeated Hornet to become the champion.
"From the heart of hell, I stab at thee!" The epilogue brings this story to date. There has never been another meeting between these two men in the ring. The CSWA never reclaimed its form, although GUNS was able to capture the re-formed CSWA World Championship at ANNIVERSARY 1997, defeating Troy Windham in the semifinals, and Julius Godreign in the finals. Hornet was ruled able to return to the CSWA in July 1997, choosing a match between his protege MJ Dean and GUNS to return through the crowd, just as he had left. Hornet struck the last blow to date in the battle, attempting to regain some measure of revenge for FISH FUND XI. At the CSWA's final major card before Commissioner Merritt was jailed, Hornet ran into the ring during a title defense by GUNS against Troy Windham. Hornet didn't interfere in a match already marred by run-ins...he did, however, count the three-count that cost GUNS the CSWA World Title. Not much has been heard of by either man in the last nine months. Neither has returned to active competition in the wrestling ring in quite a while, although GUNS did accept a position as interim commissioner of the AAWC. He was injured, and has been out of the public eye.
They've done it five time before, and nothing has ever been settled. But this time, their entire wrestling careers may very well be on the line. The winner has the right to call himself World Champion. The loser returns to the sinking quagmire from which he came. This time....no whimpers, no excuses, no favorites. Three years of hatred boils over in one squared circle. Can Hornet keep GUNS from the gold yet again? Can GUNS prove his dominance, once and for all? The final chapter in the most talked-about feud in the history of wrestling is upon us. "The quickest way to end a war is to lose it." |
The CS Tribune SPOTLIGHT shines the light on CSWA wrestlers, their careers, and their feuds, giving you an in-depth look at what makes and breaks the best in the sport. Hornet/GUNS Timeline AAWC World War Games
AAWC Wrestlefest
ELVIS LIVES CELEBRATION IX
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