[1996-02-05-WCW-Nitro] Randy Savage vs Chris Benoit

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Benoit puts on a great performance. Woman turns on Savage and reunites with Flair, as she, Flair, and Arn put the boots to Savage. Hogan tries to come to the rescue, then starts doing a promo about his upcoming match with The Giant, and Flair attacks him too, reopening the wound around his eye. Fun angle with Flair pushed strong, and tremendous heat for all of this. I love the Flair attacking Hogan part because how often did you see Flair pushed so strong at this point?

[Tim Evans]

Really enjoyed this match and it was kinda weird seeing Savage take such a beating from a mid carder like Benoit.

[Resident Evil]

IIRC, I do believe I did hear once that Savage wanted Benoit pushed. Given Savage's personality outside the ring and his wrestling style, that makes sense.

[Kevin Ridge]

Benoit gets to hang with Savage for a few minutes. Woman attacks Savage. Hogan comes to the aid of Savage. Heavy boos for Hogan when he says he wants to put an end to Ric Flair. Nature Boy attacks Hogan from behind. Giant nails Hogan with a chair. The Zodiac looked to try to block Giant from inflicting further violence.

[El-P]

This is my issue with Savage as a babyface at this point of his career, he would often sell 90% of the match and come back with two moves to win (or in this case, before the match would be thrown out). So yeah, it's surprising to see Benoit beat him down so much, but to me it doesn't make a very compelling match at all. The Woman stuff just made no sense to me, there was no reason explained why she was with Savage & Hogan to begin with, and she's always been a heel, so the turn was to be expected anyway. That bitchy Liz doesn't warn Hogan about Flair jumping on his back, which is great. Gotta love Okerlund trying to defend her when Savage is asking about the incident. Come on Gene, it was obvious Liz didn't even tried, you're so trying to get on her good side here.

[Matt D]

This is my issue with Savage as a babyface at this point of his career, he would often sell 90% of teh match and come back with two moves to win (or in this case, before the match would be thrown out). So yeah, it's surprising to see Benoit beat him down so much, but to me it doesn't make a very compelling match at all. The Woman stuff just made no sense to me, there was no reason explained why she was with Savage & Hogan to begin with, and she's always been a heel, so the turn was to be expected anyway. That bitchy Liz doesn't warn Hogan about Flair jumping on his back, which is great. Gotta love Okerlund trying to defend her when Savage is asking about the incident. Come on Gene, it was obvious Liz didn't even tried, you're so trying to get on her good side here.

I completely agree with this criticism of Savage. There are a ton of A and B show WCW Savage matches which sound exciting or interesting on paper and then when you watch them, it's just this. Long beatdown, bodyslam, elbow. The guy wanted to wrestle so badly just to do that?

[PeteF3]

Savage was so absurdly banged up at this point that it's a wonder he was able to wrestle at all, and if a promotional war wasn't going on, he wouldn't have been. The Observers have been talking for months about Savage needing to get his arm fixed, but he just keeps going. For the second time in a week we get an Established Superstar going 50-50 (actually more like 25-75 in this case) against one of WCW's recent young-gun signees. There's no reason why this couldn't have continued onward, with Benoit and Eddy getting pushed as being at Savage or Luger's level. Benoit dominates, but takes a sick bump off a missed tope to set up the flying elbow. But Savage goes after Flair when Flair goes after Liz, and Woman turns on him. Savage gets beaten down, we get a SWERVE as Hogan initially runs the Horsemen off only to be attacked by Flair again, then the Giant and Zodiac continue their little drama, then Savage comes back...and then Savage calls out Elizabeth for not warning him about Woman! Intrigue!

 

Crash-TV at its finest. Overbooked a little bit, but everything still made sense and made you want to keep from flipping the dial. The use of Woman to start with didn't make a great deal of sense but it's not like she didn't have like 57 fake-turns and fake partnerships in ECW.

[soup23]

Fun match with an interesting pairing. I understand the criticism being laid out about Savage but I love watching him sell damage so seeing him do it here for the ferocious offense of Benoit didn't bother me at all. We also get a good hot moment leading to the Superbrawl match of Woman being reunited with Flair so that was a nice angle to set up the PPV. **1/2

[tim]

Benoit takes essentially all of the match and is good enough to keep it interesting enough to not get boring. At the very end Benoit takes a sick bump off a missed suicide dive and Savage follows it up with a really beautiful elbow drop to the back of Benoit's neck. Fun enough over-booked post-match angle. Savage really berates Liz after the match for not warning Hogan of the attack; Savage is still an emotionally abusive partner!

[dawho5]

Okay, so Savage has been wrestling every week with a messed up arm and nobody has taken advantage.  Not even the dirtiest player in the game last week or Benoit, a supposed technician, this week.  Kinda bad match layout if you ask me.

That bump by Benoit on the missed tope was pretty tremendous/scary.  Why is he getting so much of this match?  Even if Savage likes the guy, there are better ways of making him look strong. 

Post-match stuff was pretty great.  Something I have not thought about the Hogan/Flair stuff in the past 3 weeks.  One question though.  With Sullivan turning on Arn last week, how are his guys still cool with Flair?  Or is that what the unicorn guy was trying to tell the Giant?