WCW On Pay Per View in the 90's - Every event Reviewed

[Keith]

1. I agree with deezy that the Midnight Express match from HH90 was not their finest, it was decent, but not up there with their normal standed.

2. I think the finish to the Sting/Sid match was a dog anyway regardness of weather the fans could be convinced that Barry Windham was Sting:spy:

 

[The New F'n Show]

Glad to see we disagree on some things. Would be boring if we didn't. I am really digging this idea because I am getting thoughts other than just mine on my favorite period in wrestling (well that's really the late 80's but close enough). A period most current fans never were into.

 

[Keith]

I would say the late 80's was my favourite period also, in fact the 80's might have been wrestling's greatest decade ever, what with some major territies at the top of their games, Japan on fire, British Wrestling a big attraction on Television, the NWA and of course WWF's first big boom period. Anyway the next review should up tomorrow.

 

[Keith]

Superbrawl Return From The Rising Sun

Date May 19 1991

Setting St. Petersburg, Florida

Attendance 6,000

Best Match World Tag Team Championship, Sting and Lex Luger VS. The Steiner Brothers

Worse Match Stretcher match El Gigante VS. Sid Vicious

Event Rating 6/10

Comments The first ever Superbrawl, was a very up and down event which was mostly saved by the last hour. The only match of note up until that point, was the thrilling street fight between bitter rivals Barry Windham and Brian Pillman. There were just too many matches, many of them were worthless filler, and the stretcher and cage matches [Simmons VS. Reed] were both very dull. The turning point came with the gripping World Tag Team Title bout involving close friends, and star babyfaces, Lex Luger, Sting and The Steiner Brothers. The match had a believable story behind it, and the four went at it at a full blast, with some high impact and compelling exchanges, before a heated crowd. The match was voted match of the year in Pro Wrestling Illusterated. Bobby Eaton's Television Title win over Arn Anderson and NWA Champion Ric Flair's win over Tatsumi Fujinami were also strong efforts.

The Great American Bash will be up before the end of the week.

 

[Deezy]

Any match with Sid Vicious and El Gigante don't even have to be rated, one wouuld just assume it was bad. Not Michael Jackson: Bad, maybe Michael touching children bad.

WCW really liked to pad their shows with shit in the early 90s. Think it was purposely done to make the top stars matches look epic in comparison. In retrospect, some of the epics from those shows don't really hold up as stand alones. But if you did watch the entire program, you think it was a masterpiece. Kind of like finding decent art at a garage sale.

 

[The New F'n Show]

Superbrawl Return From The Rising Sun

Best Match World Tag Team Championship, Sting and Lex Luger VS. The Steiner Brothers. One of the greatest tag matches ever. Koloff interference hurt the finish a little but still amazing match.

Worse Match Stretcher match El Gigante VS. Sid Vicious. After match attack was decent, match was a Shit Squash.

Event Rating 6/10

Comments: Freebirds vs Smothers and Armstrong was a decent opener. The finish introducing the new character didn't work for me though. Pillmn-Windham was a pretty solid match that was not killed by the concept. I thought Simmons-Reed was a solid cage match with a good finish and credible victory. Eaton and Anderson was a really good match and feel good moment and Flair-Fujinami was a solid match as well but had a lousy finish.

 

[Keith]

The Great American Bash 1991

Date July 14 1991

Setting Baltimore, Maryland

Attendance 7,000

Commentary Team Jim Ross and Tony Schiavone

Best Match Russian Chain Match, Sting VS. Nikita Koloff

Worse Match El Gigante VS. The One Man Gang

Event Rating 2/10

Comments One of the worse wrestling Pay Per Views in history, and the worse possible start to a new era for WCW. The opening scafford match pitting Bobby Eaton and P.N. News against Terrence Taylor and Steve Austin was just silly, and ended when Eaton captured a flag. The meeting between former tag partners Richard Morton and Robert Gibson was a major let down. The stupid feud between The Yellow Dog [Brian Pullman under a mask] and Johnny B. Badd carried on, as the Dog beat Badd by disqualification in a boring match. In the main match of the night Lex Luger pinned Barry Windham via piledriver in a cage match, to become the first offical WCW World Champion[NWA Champ Ric Flair was WWF bound], in a match which was just passible. Oddly enough the match which closed the show was a brief comedy match, which saw Rick Steiner and Missy Hyatt defeat Arn Anderson and Paul E. Dangerously.

 

[The New F'n Show]

The Great American Bash 1991

Best Match Luger vs Windham Cage Match WCW Title. The Heel Turn sucked and forcing Flair out was dumb but match was decent.

Worse Match El Gigante VS. The One Man Gang. I'll keep this but their is about 4 different matches you could put here.

Event Rating 3/10

Comments This is one of only 3 shows I have ever given a 3/10 and I have seen all WCW and WWE PPVs. Absolutely brutal. I've always been in the minority as I actually enjoyed the Gibson-Morton match. Diamond Studd (Scott Hall) vs Z-Man was passable. Sting-Koloff finish is the only reason that was good ,match was only passable. Rest isn't worth talking about.

 

[Deezy]

Was this when Jim Herd was put in charge of WCW?

Any match with El Gigante is always going to be worst of the show, felt so bad for Brian Pillman being stuck with him.

 

[The New F'n Show]

Yes these were the proud days of Jim Herd.

 

[Deezy]

Yeah Jim Herd was like Russo with more terrible ideas.

 

[Keith]

The Great American Bash 1991

Best Match Luger vs Windham Cage Match WCW Title. The Heel Turn sucked and forcing Flair out was dumb but match was decent.

Worse Match El Gigante VS. The One Man Gang. I'll keep this but their is about 4 different matches you could put here.

Event Rating 3/10

Comments This is one of only 3 shows I have ever given a 3/10 and I have seen all WCW and WWE PPVs. Absolutely brutal. I've always been in the minority as I actually enjoyed the Gibson-Morton match. Diamond Studd (Scott Hall) vs Z-Man was passable. Sting-Koloff finish is the only reason that was good ,match was only passable. Rest isn't worth talking about.

No see I think Koloff-Sting was the most intense match of the night, and it felt different to most of Sting's other matches, it wasn't a great match, but was very solid. No problem with the way they turned Luger heel, but the match itself should have been much better. Gibson-Morton was a sound wrestling match, but it was far too slow and lacked the emotion one would hope, the upshot it was quite dull. Quite often when wrestlers who were great together as a tag team meet, it makes for a poor match, see Simmons and Reed from Superbrawl.

 

[Keith]

Halloween Havoc 1991 Chamber of Horrors

Date October 27 1991

Setting Chattanooga, Tennessee

Attendance 8,900

Best Match Television Title Match, Steve Austin VS. Dustin Rhodes

Worse Match, Chamber of Horrors, Sting, The Steiner Brothers and El Gigante VS. Big Van Vader, Cactus Jack, Abdullah the Butcher and The Diamond Studd

Event Rating 5.5/10

Comments The theme of Halloween was taken to a rediculous level by WCW in the extremely ill thought out Chamber of Horrors opener. Get this! The rules were that to win the match, a member of one of the teams had to force one of the other team into an electric chair, strap them down, and then pull the lever to supposedly electrcute them and win the match. It was a confusing mess, and to make matters worse the finish was very dodgy, as Abdullah the Butcher wrestled Rick Steiner towards the chair, his partner Cactus Jack got near the liver, ready to pull, when Steiner belly to bellyed the Butcher into the chair, and without noticing [even though he seemed to be looking at the chair right before], Jack pulled the lever to hand Sting's team victory. The only possible thing you can say in the chamber's favour is that maybe it was actually so bad, it was good in a funny sort of way, a bit like a guilty pleasure:frog:

The most note worthy happenings on the card, were Brian Pillman pinning Richard Morton in the finals of the Light Heavyweight Tournament to become the first champion [the divison would become one of the highlights of WCW in the 91/92 period], and Rick Rude's awesome debut for the promotion, first crushing the Z-Man, he was then unvailed by manager Paul E. Dangerously as the man behind the mask of the WCW Halloween Phantom, and in an fine interview, sent a message out to Sting claiming that he was Rude's top target, this was the first step in the formation of super heel group the Dangerous Alliance fronted by Paul E. and Rude. The best match by a country mile was the thrilling 15 Minute Time Limit Draw between Television Champion Stunning Steve Austin and Dustin Rhodes. The two out of three falls main event for the WCW Title between Champion Lex Luger and Ron Simmons was very well hyped, but the match itself was medicore.

 

[The New F'n Show]

Halloween Havoc 1991 Chamber of Horrors

Best Match Television Title Match, Steve Austin VS. Dustin Rhodes Hell of match and the time limit draw didn't hurt.

Worse Match, Chamber of Horrors, Sting, The Steiner Brothers and El Gigante VS. Big Van Vader, Cactus Jack, Abdullah the Butcher and The Diamond Studd. Solid wrestlers in this but concept was brutal. Example for many stupid ideas to this day.

Event Rating 7/10

Comments Even though the Chamber of Horrors was a brutal idea, it was entertaining.Johnny B Badd and Jimmy Garvin had a very underrated match. Austin-Rhodes was excellent. Debut of Rude was handled really well. Even the tag match was average. And I enjoyed Luger-Simmons. Overall pretty solid card.

 

[Keith]

Starrcade 1991 BattleBowl The Lethal Lottery

Date December 29 1991

Location Norfolk, Virginia

Attendance 7,600

Best Match Lex Luger and Arn Anderson VS. The Z-Man and Terrence Taylor

Worse Match Ron Simmons and Thomas Rich VS. Steve Armstrong and P.N. News

Event Rating 6/10

Comments Another interesting idea by booker Dusty Rhodes, which was some what flawed in practice, at least the first time around. The Lethal Lottery portion of Starrcade saw wrestlers radomly drawn to team, and compete in ten tag team matches with the winners going to wrestle in BattleBowl, the two ring battle royal main event. The first problem was that to have a card made up of mainly tag bouts was clearly overkill, and because of the nature of having thrown together combanations, it made for a very hit and miss element to the action. The highlights from TLL were the enjoyable opener pitting Freebird partners against each other, as Jimmy Garvin teamed with rookie Marcus Alexander Bagwell to defeat Michaels Hayes and Tracy Smothers, Jushin Liger and Bill Kazmaier [who at the time was the world's strongest man] victory over Diamond Dallas Page and Mike Graham worked a treat, Lex Luger and Arn Anderson's win over Z-Man and Terry Taylor was thrilling, Ricky Steamboat and Todd Champion's sucess over Cactus Jack and Sgt. Buddy Lee Parker, which made for a bizzare spectacle, but was well booked, and added to the characters of both Jack and fellow madman Abdullah The Butcher who was heavily involved in it. The second problem came in the layout of the 20 man Battle Bowl, as the wrestlers started competing in battle royal numble one, where the object was to toss the opposition over into ring two, therefore once two men had been dumped over, battle royal number two could begin, where the object was to elminate your man to the floor, so in the end winner of ring one faced the winner of ring two, so yes as you would think trying to keep track of two battle royals at once, did become a bit of a challenge, and in the end things did become a confusing indeed. The final saw Sting defeat World Champion and former friend Lex Luger, to become the first battle bowl winner, and win the battle bowl ring.

Superbrawl 2 will be up tomorrow.