Talk about it here.

The amount of false advertising and lying to fans on this show has to be an all-time record. Schiavone going on about how he knows Zenk is Douglas by the way he throws punches is shameless. Fairly hot closing minutes of nearfalls. Zenk always said Steamboat took off his hood on purpose so it would be known he wasn't the one doing the job.

This match is WILDLY underrated and I'm not sure I get why. Zenk is the world's best possible Shane Douglas.

IIRC Zenk does a superkick near the finish, which was one of his spots, not Douglas's.

The whole Dos Hombres gimmick really kills the heat until Austin decides he'll kill himself bumping off the cage. Hot finish, although with a major screw-up, and Zenk just is no Douglas and it shows.

Funny part is when the bell rings too early when the faces go for the cover.

Cool dive by Steamboat on to both Austin and Pillman. So what's the actually story to this? Douglas had left but they put masks on Steamboat and Zenk just to pretend Douglas was still in WCW? I think people wouldn't even be bothered if they just replaced Zenk as normal without the masks.

I don't even know what the Dos Hombres story was (besides "Shane Douglas left"). Schiavone doesn't even try to sell that these guys are anyone else besides Steamboat & Douglas, so what the fuck is the point of even having a mask angle? (I know, I know, "Shane Douglas left"). The Omni is so not into this. Steamboat finally wakes the crowd up with a spectacular dive off the top of the cage. Zenk's conspiracy theories about jobbing aside, I'd want to unmask and clarify my identity before doing that move, too. Incredibly the Blonds kick out of that, and we get a neat spot where the bell rings and while Atkins is busy waving that off, Steamboat gets a visual pin on Pillman. Maybe it was just a typical WCW production gaffe but it worked perfectly in the context of the match. Z-Douglas gets whipped into a Stungun and the Blonds escape with the belts again. This was looking horribly disappointing but a hot finish partially saved it, bringing it all the way up to relatively disappointing instead.

I watched this match not knowing about Z-Man taking Douglas' place or even being aware of the Dos Hombres storyline.

 

With that in mind, I thought this was a fun match with Austin as the clear MVP. Him flying into the cage multiple times is great and I love the finish - whether or not it was a gaffe, the fact that the bell rang for a close nearfall added to the chaos in the closing minute.

 

What his intention, whether Steamboat took off the mask because he wanted to make it clear he was not doing the job (as a poster said above) or he just wanted to make sure the spot would make sense on a highlight reel down the line, the effect is the same one and it is glorious: the crowd popped big for the reveal and his crossbody off the top is perfectly executed.

I don't recall why this is Dos Hombres instead of without the masks, but apparently it has to do with Zenk taking Douglas's place, despite the TV 24 hours before the show promoting Douglas & Steamboat as the challengers. Steamboat takes his mask off late before the other Hombre is pinned. Last few minutes we get are solid.

Who were the businessmen watching in the crowd that Larry and Tony mentioned several times?

Pretty bad action until the finish and Steamboat riling up the crowd by taking off his hood. The finish with the bell ringing brought about a chaotic atmosphere that kind of worked. I would have been interesting to see what they would have went for with Douglas in this match as some Final Conflict vibes could have been played out, but what we saw here seemed like a disappointing match.

Bullshit promotional tactics aside, the match itself was really good.

One word sums up this match: Why?

 

Why didn't WCW simply claim that Douglas got hurt or ran scared or fell off the face of the earth or whatever else they wanted? Why didn't they just sub in Zenk as Steamer's partner and move on? Why did we get what looked like a big finish with Steamer leaping off the top of the cage (after revealing his face, no less) only for the Blonds to then beat Zenk clean as a sheet, thus further pissing off a crowd that was none too friendly to start with?

 

If I recall correctly, Steamer and Douglas supposedly used the Dos Hombres name and mask to beat the Blonds in a non-title match, so at least that part made sense: they wanted to capitalize on their momentum and throw Austin and Pillman off guard. But the minute Zenk had to be substituted, that should have gone out the window, assuming that it was planned. Of course, knowing this nut factory, they probably decided to use the Dos Hombres gimmick at the last second to cover up for Douglas' absence. That would explain why the crowd was so deflated: even if they knew the story behind the gimmick, they couldn't figure out why Steamer and Shane were using it in the title match. Maybe a few people figured out that it wasn't them in the outfits, which wouldn't surprise me after the Horsemen bait-and-switch earlier,

 

The funny thing is, they could have made a big deal about Zenk teaming with Steamer in his hour of need and facing off against his former partner. Zenk was still reasonably popular, and most of the fans probably remembered the Zenk/Pillman team, so it would have added some drama to the proceedings. But for whatever reason, nobody at WCW could get out of his or her own way all night long.

 

Larry was good on commentary in what we saw, and I especially liked him promising stardom for Austin provided that his body holds up. It didn't, as we know, but he was still a much bigger star than Larry could have ever foreseen.

 

Speaking of false advertising (although this was unintentional), we got Larry instead of Jesse, whose blood clots flared up again and put him in the hospital, That's not WCW's fault, of course, but I wonder if they told the truth (or at least said that Jesse was under the weather) or made up a wild story to cover for his absence. Since most of the stuff we've seen from this card has been a giant trainwreck, I'm voting for the latter.