Talk about it here.

Short match, which is for the best, as the Freebirds were rapidly deteriorating, and this was a really good short match and you wouldn't know that by seeing them here. They crammed a lot of great tag team spots into a sub-five minute match. Great finish! The Steiners win the tag titles.

Is there any kind of backstory to this match being on Pro? The show had been kinda disconnected from the TBS stuff for a while.

Wow that was quick. The Freebirds were throwing some great punches.

This match-up seems like a train wreck on paper--the Steiners are all-action with high-impact offense and the 'birds are all about stalling and bumping as safely as possible--but this was shockingly good. The 'birds' tangible disappointment that their clap-along routine goes ignored by the fans cracks me up--that was Super Porky-esque. Then they quickly follow with an awesome transition with Scott ducking under a Garvin clothesline only to get absolutely creamed by one of the greatest Hayes punches ever. They work a full-blown shine/FIP/comeback match in 5 minutes, with Rick giving an assist to Scott as he's being double-teamed, leading to a Frankensteiner on Garvin for the win and tag titles. Rick never did officially tag in. Absolute monster pop for the victory, which adds to the moment.

Freebirds were dominating most of the match which was kind of a surprise against the Steiners. Flash out of nowhere Frankensteiner wins. Right to get the belts off the Birds at this point.

Still don't understand why the Steiners couldn't just beat Doom straight up causing them to start having dissention but I digress. This was a lot more fun than I thought it would be given how awful the Freebirds looked getting the ring. Also where was their entourage? The Frankensteiner finish looked sort of weak but it got a huge pop for the win.

This is the fairly infamous match where the Steiners win the championships from the Birds that Michael and Jimmy hadnt even won yet. Yup, taped before WrestleWar, so the Freebirds have one of those Negative Day Title Runs.

I didn't like this at all; the ring action never made it past the bad booking for me. If I'd been in Hayes and Garvin's shoes, I'd have given notice right after the match. Look, no one's saying that the Birds as they were then constituted were World championship material, but they deserved better than to basically be squashed in a handicap match by Scotty Steiner. Sure, they got a few nice moves, but so did plenty of TBS jobber teams. DDP never even showed, and Humperdink hadn't been added yet. Plus, the outcome needlessly exposed the business to every fan in attendance, although I'm not sure how much Dusty really cared about that by now.

 

I'm with Soup; the Steiners should have challenged Doom at some point before WrestleWar and beaten them for the belts, thus seemingly reigniting that program at least until WrestleWar, when Doom could have been upset by the Birds and the dissension angle would have started in earnest. I'm guessing that with Flair, Arn (at least until his injury), and the Steiners in WarGames and Luger needing to retain the US belt for the Nikita feud, Dusty felt like he absolutely had to have some kind of title change to pop the crowd at WrestleWar, and the only title match left was Birds/Doom, so he tried to have his cake (a title change) and eat it too (the Steiners as long-term champs) regardless of the consequences. Needless to say, it came off as amateurish, disrespectful to Hayes and Garvin, and just plain dumb.

 

Larry continues to impress me greatly as a color man on Pro. It's a shame (at least in a broadcasting sense) that he's going to be wrestling more in the next few months, because if he'd stuck solely to commentary, he would probably have been on WCWSN before long, which might have meant no Jesse, and maybe no Heenan either down the road.

For it being a Freebirds match in 1991, this was pretty good. Hayes and Garvin both threw some very good punches. Finish was a little wonky, but it was as good as it could have been.