Last year I reviewed the original Heroes of World Class and consider it one of the best non-WWE produced wrestling DVDs ever made. If there is one thing I enjoy more than a good wrestling DVD, it’s a good special edition wrestling DVD and Big Vision Entertainment (the boys behind the incredible Ultimate Insiders series of shoot interviews) came through in a major way with this “Director’s Cut” of World Class.

You can read my review of the original DVD through the link above, so we’ll just cover the new bonus features. Anyone who has seen the original cut of the movie is going to want to immediately view the deleted scenes on Disc One. With over 22 minutes of material, the deleted scenes are a must for anyone who fondly remembers the heyday of World Class Championship Wrestling. Broken up into four chapters (“Heroes,” “February 1984: The Freebirds and Von Erichs are waging one of the biggest drawing feuds in wrestling history,” “February 3, 1984: David Von Erich wrestles his last match at the Sportatorium before a trip to Japan,” and “Summer 1984 –February 2003), the deleted scenes start off with an alternate opening to the documentary and an unbelievably awesome skit in which World Class announcer Bill Mercer went to the Von Erich farm to go duck hunting with Fritz and the boys. Truly mindblowing stuff that you would never see today as there was actual footage of Mercer and Kevin Von Erich sitting with shot guns in one “trap” while Kerry and Fritz waited with their guns in another area. The skit closed with all four men walking home triumphantly - each carrying a dead duck – while wearing big camouflage coats over regular t-shirts and jeans. One of my absolute favorite parts of the documentary is the skit with David Von Erich forcing Jimmy Garvin and Sunshine to do a day’s work on the Von Erich farm, and this skit blew that out of the water in terms of surrealism.

The middle section of the deleted scenes focus on the red hot feud between the Von Erichs and the Fabulous Freebirds. Words can not describe how hot the building was for the matches on the DVD. It was one thing to see the great crowd dynamic that John Cena brought to the ring with him last year (especially at ECW’s One Night Stand PPV) but this takes that type of heat to a whole new level. Awesome stuff that hopefully WWE includes a ton of when they eventually put out their version of a World Class documentary. The deleted scenes close with the announcers going back to the decrepit Sportatorium and had some great history stories, but I can easily see why it was cut when compared to the original movie’s version of Kevin Von Erich doing a similar thing. Thankfully it was included here.

Disc Two started of with ROH’s Jim Cornette talks about World Class. Clocking in at over 20 minutes, this was shot with a big ROH banner in back of Jim Cornette and looked very similar to a Straight Shootin’ release from ROH. I’m pretty sure that the interviewer was Brian Harrison and this was not from any of Cornette’s Straight Shootin’s. Cornette spent his time talking about everything World Class, including the Von Erichs, the Freebirds, the television, the booking, and everything else that added to “the magic” along with the downfall. This section closed with a nice ad for ROHwrestling.com.

Next up was Pro Wrestling Torch’s Wade Keller and Bruce Mitchell discuss the World Class era. Running an amazing hour and fifty plus minutes, this feature took a Bruce Mitchell audio segment that covered the movie and put it over the main feature. Anyone who enjoys the fantastic Figure Four Dailys with Bryan Alvarez and Dave Meltzer is going to love this feature as Bruce and Wade give their unique perspective in an entertaining way. I watch a lot of director’s commentaries on DVD and 80% of them suck ass because the participants are just so boring. Keller and Mitchell have a great dynamic and it is too bad we couldn’t get something like this for the ECW and AWA DVDs that Titan put out.

Monday Night Mayhem.com interviews: Running a combined hour and twenty minutes, these are two interviews (one with director Brian Harrison and another with World Class announcer Bill Mercer) that have the original feature running in the background. Interesting stuff where you’ll get to hear Harrison talk a lot about how he made the film.

The bonus features close with a bunch of Big Vision trailers, including Forever Hardcore, Hardcore Homecoming, Ultimate Insiders, Best of the Deathmatch and other titles. Head on over to www.BigVisionEntertaiment.com for more info on these and other cool stuff like the Japanese Deathmatch DVD with Mick Foley, Terry Funk, Terry Gordy and Leatherface!

OVERALL THOUGHTS: A great DVD made even better with the inclusion of a bunch of solid extras. There is absolutely no excuse not to add this DVD to your collection as it is as riveting a story on professional wrestling as you will see anywhere. World Class had the fiery atmosphere that the best ECW shows had along with tragic stories that need to be retold so that future generations can learn from the mistakes. With the addition of deleted scenes and some must listen-to interviews with the likes of Jim Cornette, Wade Keller, and Bruce Mitchell, Big Vision has applied its Midas touch to one of the best wrestling documentaries ever filmed. CLICK HERE for a great price on Heroes of World Class: Director’s Cut, or head on over to www.BigVisionEntertainment.com for more information.

Derek Burgan has been reviewing wrestling DVDs, comics, books, and other miscellaneous crap for the Observer/F4Wonline Empire since October 2005. He can be reached at: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

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