Jump to content
Pro Wrestling Only

[1993-05-23-WCW-Slamboree] Flair for the Gold: The Four Horsemen


Loss

Recommended Posts

  • 1 month later...

Not bringing Tully in for this was one of those penny wise/pound foolish decisions WCW seemed to excel in. With Tully, they could have marketed the return of the original Horsemen and used that as a house show draw all over the south, with Flair/Arn/Tully in six-man tags with Ole in their corner. I can't say how well this would have drawn but I do know that WCW house show attendance sucked ass in 1993 and this couldn't have hurt. With Paul Roma, you just don't have that marketing hook, and that's not meant as "lol Paul Roma". Nobody else in WCW was an original Horseman either. But seriously, lol Paul Roma.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...
  • 1 year later...

Seriously, whose idea was that ? Who thought for one minute it could work ? As babyfaces nonetheless, when Roma is a natural heel. They couldn't find anyone on the roster or someone with a history in the company instead of a WWF branded JTTS ? Never saw that before today either, and man, it sure made Flair look like an idiot. I would say poor Roma, but he was an asshole anyway, so fuck him.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 7 months later...
  • 4 months later...
  • 1 month later...

Jesus Christ, they couldn't even be bothered to edit the intro--"THE ORIGINAL FOUR HORSEMEN!" Crowd starts shitting on this the instant Flair mentions "a little bad news." I'm surprised they even bothered to mention Blanchard at all, instead of trying to scrub him from existence. The idea that Barry Windham was supposedly responsible for Tully no-showing is ludicrous. And instead, of course, we get Paul Roma. Crowd doesn't boo so much as loudly, LOUDLY groan. "I don't think these people realize the THOUSANDS of wrestlers you had to choose from!" Oh, come on. That said, despite Roma being a douchebag, he was set up to fail here. Just about anyone would have failed, much less a WWF undercarder. Another indescribable segment and sadly things are going to get worse for WCW before they get better.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 year later...
  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 months later...
  • 1 year later...

I guess I'm that guy again, because they didn't do as bad a job of saving this as I thought they would. Editing the intro would have given it all away, so I can foirgive them for that. I thought blaming Barry for Tully's absence was a great move and would have made for a hell of an angle, and Roma.......well, they must have been stuck. How close to the show did they know that Tully wasn't coming? If it was less than a week, they might have run out of time to change the card and their plans for Sid. Didn't the Stud Stable (as I will call them, even though they weren't billed that way) debut here, with Sid as Fuller's first protégé? If you change the card to make Sid a Horseman, what do you do with Fuller, whom you've paid a ton of money to?

 

Not that there weren't big problems with this, of course. First, even though they had a ready-made angle with Barry, they completely whiffed on it by turning around and insisting that Tully's absence was no big deal. If Tully's absence is no big deal, why even mention him, especially in connection with Barry? That's what you do if Tully's going to come out in Barry's corner later that night against Arn or something similar. Of course, he wasn't and they knew it, and he wasn't going to magically show up and stand alongside the Horsemen after a suitable interval either.

 

The second problem was marketing Ole as a full member of the group. Managers/mentors aren't supposed to count as members of their own stable, guys. Ole was well past done in the ring, even as an attraction. That means you needed ​two ​wrestlers, not one. Ole didn't look half-bad for a legend, but to count him as a Horseman was just as big a mistake as lowballing Tully, and they didn't even try to explain it away.

 

Problem number three was Roma's promo. Flair, Arn, and Ole can get away with being cheered for being assholes, Paul, because they've been doing so for years. ​You ​can't. If you want to be a member of a babyface group, even the Horsemen, you have to do the humble newcomer bit, not brag about your looks or how you were chosen out of the thousand guys they could have chosen to be Horsemen. In other words, you needed to be a young stallion (pun intended) and let everyone else do the kiss-stealin' and the wheelin'-dealin'. You would have been just as bad a fit, and people might have still laughed at you, but you might have looked like just a tad less of a buffoon. I'm actually looking forward to seeing how he pulls his weight going forward; maybe he won't turn out to be such a crime against wrestling after all. Remember, he didn't do too badly with Power and Glory.

 

They probably could have stood to announce Flair's return to the ring another time, like the night before on ​WCWSN. ​The crowd was in no mood to hear it after being promised Tully and given Roma, and that's not the kind of thing you yell out as an afterthought as a segment is closing unless you don't really want it to be a big deal after all, which Bischoff may not have.

 

I liked Flair using the girls to try and keep Arn away from the booze before his big match. It's an inconsequential thing, but it's one of the rare times ​AFFTG has gotten something right since it started.

 

Who would I have chosen to replace Ole and Tully? As it stands now, Paul Orndorff for Tully and Bobby Eaton for Ole (who, of course, remains the manager).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • GSR changed the title to [1993-05-23-WCW-Slamboree] Flair for the Gold: The Four Horsemen

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...