Loss
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Flair wrestles the first few minutes of this with his robe still on, which is a first for him as far as I know. This is a better match than the last one, but still too rushed, and not as good as their matches in WCW. I wish this was structured more like Hogan/Tenryu, but that wasn't the WWF style. Hogan wins this one by countout. So they ran this match twice in MSG, had no intention of using it to headline Wrestlemania and still didn't give people a real finish. Too bad, but oh well. -
These guys are pros and obviously know what they're doing, but they also didn't seem to be all that interested in having a great match. They were having a solid one and just going through the motions without ever kicking into high gear. This was a three-star match and is pretty well-worked, and I liked the fake finish with Sherri ringing the timekeeper's bell before the real draw finish. But it's not something that is really memorable, even if it is better than most 20-minute draws the WWF ran on house shows.
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Jake cutting such a dark, serious interview in this phony Barber Shop environment is one of the failings of the WWF. When they try to do a really serious angle, it always seems a little off. But Jake cuts a tremendous interview suggesting that he and Undertaker will work together at the Rumble. Gorilla's disgust toward Jake is really entertaining.
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Jim Ross takes us to a Marcus Bagwell squash. WCW for some reason loved to make a big deal on television of Bagwell going to SPRAYBERRY HIGH SCHOOL. Bagwell looks pretty green in this match. Paul E. Dangerously interrupts his post-match interview to offer him a TV title match next week. Bagwell says he appreciates it, but he's not ready for that level of competition just yet. Paul E. is SUCH an asshole here, even though this entire premise is a little silly. Paul E. takes exception to Bagwell going to Sting for advice and Bagwell finally has enough and jumps him. This gets him ambushed by the entire Dangerous Alliance sans Rude. Paul E. pulls handcuffs out of his tux in a funny moment and they are about to handcuff Bagwell when Sting makes the save. Rude attacks him from behind and gives him a Rude Awakening and they end up attacking his knee with the plaster cast after handcuffing him to the railing. Great stuff.
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Paul E. tells Sting he is sinking, and that he might as well go up North and sign a contract somewhere where the physical demands aren't as high. Ooh. Paul E. introduces his entire stable in one of the few times they were ever all together. Everyone except Rude (even Madusa) is in a tux. Paul E. sends out warnings to Dustin Rhodes, Ron Simmons, Barry Windham and Ricky Steamboat. Rick Rude has words for Steamboat. Paul E. reiterates that this is not over until he has a spot on the Board of Directors. Good segment.
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Fuller literally doesn't complete a sentence before Richard Lee is out to ask him what it's going to take for him to learn his lesson. Fuller immediately socks him and drags him around by his tie. The Moondogs finally save their poor manager and I'm surprised but happy that they didn't go for the attack, as it's time to make Fuller strong again. He cuts yet another great promo. If he had been around and more prominently featured all year, he'd be in the running for best on interviews.
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Piper tries his hat as a motivational speaker, telling kids not to listen to Paul Bearer's dark message and to DREAM! He quotes Martin Luther King and talks about his childhood. He talks about his beginnings in wrestling and how life has been tough wearing a kilt. This is all to hype the Royal Rumble and his chance to finally win a championship. He closes this out by throwing Paul Bearer in the coffin on the set. Awesome promo from him, and I want Roddy Piper at TED talks.
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Terrence Garvin looks like a different person with his hair cut. Eddie Gilbert does mic work between matches that he is running for President. Gilbert does a pretty job carrying Garvin. He is not a good wrestler and doesn't seem credible in the least, but he does try hard. This is a credit to Gilbert that he was able to actually get over pinfall attempts and make the match seem competitive in a way that people bought what they were selling. They were smart to have Garvin spend a lot of time laying around selling a knee injury, since I'm not sure there was much else he could do. Great finish, as Gilbert throws a fireball before pinning Garvin.
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Two days after Liger won the title at the Omni, he defended it in the Meadowlands. I always thought this match was at least as good as Superbrawl II, maybe better. Unlike quite a few Japanese stars who work the U.S., Liger didn't tone down his style. If anything, he increased the number of highspots in an attempt to get over. WCW really had a great house show lineup around this time.
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Pretty sure this is the first match between these two. Austin still raves about the guy, and they seemed to be feuding with each other in some form or another for most of the next three years. They do a couple of intense staredowns off of collar-and-elbow tie-ups in the early stages. They work great stuff off the headlock, with Steamboat hanging on tenaciously, and Austin having to do two backbreakers to finally break the hold. Austin uses this opening to work over Steamboat's back. Steamboat does an awesome feed for a series of three fast clotheslines from Austin, which is usually a babyface offense spot, so that was cool. Great looking ref bump. Another ref comes in to count the pin for Steamboat, but you can tell that no one bought it as a finish, as the original ref sees Steamboat's foot under the top rope. He restarts the match, and Austin gets DQd for immediately throwing Steamboat over the top. Bobby Eaton runs out to help Austin with the beatdown. Barry Windham tries to make the save again but they beat him down until Steamboat chases the heels off with a chair. Really good match.
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Cactus talks about careers that were ended and bones that were broken since he and Abdullah arrived on the scene. Who? My overanalysis aside, this is a great interview where Cactus ponders teaming with Van Hammer at Starrcade. They promise to win Battlebowl. The segment ends with both guys hitting each other over the head with Abby's stick.
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Richard Lee is out to show a video of himself and the Moondogs doing a taped promo. Jeff Jarrett apparently wounded one of the Moondogs in their last match with a hard chairshot. So Richard Lee had to replace one of them. This leads into a squash, which like all Moondogs squashes during this time was pretty brutal. Both jobbers juice and the match gets thrown out, and one gets gouged to the point of bleeding with a key! Then we get arena clips of Jarrett and Fuller vs The Moondogs. Robert Fuller does a stretcher job. We get a taped promo from Fuller that is pretty awesome, talking about how the Moondogs not coming in to wrestle bothers him because of his heritage and the Fuller name. He vows revenge and promises that he'll show how low down and dirty he can get. All of this closes out with a very serious Jeff Jarrett coming out for an interview. He's quickly gang attacked by the Moondogs, which I would have expected.
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Really good match. Pretty typical of Dangerous Alliance six-mans. Arn is the star of this one, working well with all three babyfaces. Good precursor of the type of matches you'll see on the 1992 Yearbook, for anyone on the fence about whether to jump to 1997 or continue going through these chronologically.
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Sting finishes a squash as Rude is interviewed by Jim Ross elsewhere in the arena. Sting grabs the mic in the ring and interrupts, and wants Rude in the ring. Paul E. tries to keep him back, but Rude wants in and away we go. They have an impromptu brawl and Sting puts the scorpion on Rude. Paul E. tries to pull him off and can't. Jobbers come out and can't do it. Referees come out and can't do it. Finally, the ring fills with other babyfaces who throw them all out to cheer him on! Awesome! Crowd is rabid for this. Amazing what Rude's arrival in WCW did to revitalize Sting and this is a great segment. Still, I hate that WCW would run angles like this and never speak of them again.
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Pretty good match. I figured Norton would stick out like a sore thumb, but he actually fit in with what they were doing pretty well. I love Hashimoto's desperation electric chair to stop the Muto moonsault. But it only delays the inevitable, as Muto puts him away with the same move for the finish just a few minutes later. Muto going over clean while the crowd chants his name seems like an appropriate way to end 1991 for New Japan.
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Flair did not wrestle in the 80s like he did in the WWF. That comparison assumes he was still the same guy in 1991-1992 that he was in the decade preceding that. Relying on a ringside second for heat wasn't really a big part of his 80s act, and aside from the Ironman handheld and the Rumble, he never really had a match that went more than 20 minutes or so in the WWF. There are also a lot of spots that he called for regularly in the NWA that he didn't do regularly in his WWF run, probably because he didn't have opponents capable of pulling them off. For example, aside from Bret Hart, I don't recall anyone doing the bridge up spot out of the side headlock to flying headscissors chain. I also don't recall him getting in a ton of stiff chopfests. He worked as a foil to the top babyface. He was the de facto #1 heel for most of the run, but he really wasn't presented as the top heel, if that makes sense. I always saw WWF Flair as a stripped down, faster, emptier version of the 80s NWA champ. Not as many spots working off of a headlock, not as many teases of figure four reversals from his opponents, not as much build to the figure four. That continued when he returned to WCW, and he kept slowly declining from his peak as the decade progressed, where you'd often see nothing setting up a figure four except a belly-to-back suplex.
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Give credit to Smothers and Armstrong for turning this into a decent match with nothing opponents. Seriously, this is a completely singlehanded carryjob, and it's a pretty good one. They follow the tag formula, and work over Firebreaker Chip (or is it Chip the Firebreaker? Tony Schiavone doesn't seem to know). The Pistols win the U.S. tag team titles, which mean next to nothing at this point, but it's hard to complain about belts being on a good team. They weren't going to fit into WCW in the long run, but I would have liked to see how could the Pistols could have gotten as heels with more time to really fine tune their act.
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Parejas Incredibles match? Something else? I don't know. Weird to see Fuerza and Octagon teaming after their war just six weeks earlier, but I guess this is a different setting. The crowd is completely muted for the announcer, which is unfortunate. Fuerza and Octagon end up winning the first fall by DQ when Shadow catches Fuerza with a low blow, and for once, it's not Fuerza faking it! I always make this point about Fuerza, but it bears repeating that it takes a talented guy to look that foolish. The second fall ends and something weird has happened, as now Black Shadow is covering Santo for pin attempts and everything. It doesn't make sense, and the whole thing becomes really hard to follow. Anyone up for explaining this? I might be inclined to really like this match if I understood it, because Santo's selling and bloody comeback are pretty awesome.
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Steamboat shows good intensity, but I've never thought he was a good interview. The match is excellent. This has to have been the first time these two had a singles match, and Eaton in particular seems excited about the opportunity. He attacks Steamboat right at the opening bell while he's still in his entrance gear, and they brawl into the seats before the match settles into a more standard wrestling match back in the ring. Steamboat doing the skin-the-cat spot and going right into a belly-to-back suplex from Eaton was excellent. All the two counts were well-worked and got over how focused Steamboat was on winning. He finally gets the win with the crucifix. Post-match, Madusa kicks Steamboat from behind and he teases striking her, but stops short. Steve Austin runs in and attacks Steamboat from behind, but Barry Windham makes the save. Good stuff, and nice setup for Austin vs Steamboat in *their* first match the next week. Give WCW credit: they knew the best way to use Steamboat was to have him working pretty much all the time.
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Another MSC clip. Tony Falk tries to interfere, but Pritchard attacks him. Eric Embry looks so weird with washed hair. The referee gets bumped at the 10-minute mark and then Pritchard gets the visual fall. Falk runs in with the Texan flag and tries to hit Pritchard, who ducks and Embry eats the shot instead. CJ finally runs in and throws a few weak kicks. Pritchard tries to put her in her place, but leaves her purse behind, which Embry uses to clock Pritchard from behind. The referee revives with Viviran in time to count Pritchard's shoulders to the mat, and Embry wins the Southern title.