[1993-09-13-WWF-Raw] Rick & Scott Steiner vs The Quebecers

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

I suspect Providence of Quebec rules were Vince making fun of the territories in as many ways as possible:

 

(1) No jumping off the top rope

(2) No piledrivers

(3) No throwing an opponent over the top rope

(4) Title changes hands on a countout

(5) Title changes hands on a DQ

 

You also catch Vince jumping on Heenan for using a pronoun on commentary.

 

Also appears to be the debut of Johnny Polo, and one of the best wrestling outfits ever: We Are The Quebecers Jacques And Pierre And I Am Johnny!

 

The Quebecers have some fun double-team spots. I love it when teammates perform wrestling moves on their tag team partners but land on the other guy. I love the heavy focus on the rules here. The ref refuses to count a fall because the legal man isn't in the ring.

 

With all the cool Quebecers offense, heated crowd, getting over the gimmick and nice hot tag build, this is one of the better Steiners matches, believe it or not, and I'd probably rank it decently in an all time WWF/E poll. I also really loved the nature of the screwy finish, because it's the only way I think anyone would have believed the Quebecers taking the titles. Great stuff!

 

The title change is put over as a really big, tragic deal and I even enjoyed the gloating post-match promo.

[Cox]

Johnny Polo had debuted a few months earlier, managing Adam Bomb. They moved him to the Quebecers at this point and moved Adam Bomb to Harvey Wippleman.

[Bix]

I always thought it was strange how they booked this with no buildup like the Quebecers sneaking the special rules in.

[Cox]

Had the Quebecers even worked syndies yet? I remember Gene Okerlund was talking about house show matches in the tri state area featuring "The Quebecers, Jacques and Pierre" and I recognized Jacques Rougeau, but had no idea who Pierre was, and they hadn't worked any TV, so it felt especially weird at the time that The Mountie and his fat new tag team partner showed up out of nowhere and won the tag titles from the Steiners.

[JadedWrestling]

I remember as an 11 year old kid just getting into wrestling, and a big mark for Scott Steiner in those days, this match had me absolutely furious. I think it was maybe the first big screwjob ending I'd seen in a match involving anyone I actually cared about, and it obviously left a mark as I can remember it fairly vividly even now.

[rovert]

I always thought it was strange how they booked this with no buildup like the Quebecers sneaking the special rules in.

The Steiners post Summerslam stint confused me on and off screen.

[flyonthewall2983]

How so?

[Kevin Ridge]

So smart of the Steiners to agree to the stipulations of this match. Though with these match rules you would expect the teams to be feuding for many months. I wonder what the piledriver business is though as it was not a move the Steiners used that frequently unless they are counting Scott's Screw driver. The Quebecers have an all time one of the best entrance themes. Rick does a comical splash off the middle ropes where they do not even bother do do the knees up block as Rick just lands on Quebecers lower legs and sells it. Love the tag move with Jacques trying to turn Rick over for the Boston crab and Pierre coming off the middle ropes with a leg drop on Rick. Jacques can then turn the weakened Rick over. More mental brilliance by Scott as he gets disqualified for using a hockey stick in front of the referee and they lose the belts. Cheap way for a title change but the Steiners deserved it!

[PeteF3]

Yeah, this was really weird. The Quebecers had been around, but had never wrestled on the flagship show yet. And there was absolutely no build to this, no explanation as to why the Steiners kayfabe-wise would agree to this. I think the Steiners and the WWF were having contract issues and I think they were looking to be allowed to work in Japan, hence the rather sudden title change. And I get that getting the Steiners to do a pinfall job was like pulling teeth. Still a clumsy set-up, though.

 

Really fun match. The Quebecers have lots of awesome double-teams and Pierre in particular is not afraid to bump his ass off, but they still come off as somewhat ineffectual cheating cowards, so they're almost a perfect U.S.-style match-up for the Steiners. I think I liked the Money Inc. Superstars match better, but this got lots of time and a nice long FIP segment on Scott. Scott makes the tag and a comeback, but quickly gets caught whacking Jacques with Johnny Polo's hockey stick, and we have a totally out-of-nowhere tag title change. Now that I think of it, this was clearly to set up the Quebecers as "Foreign Fanatics" for Survivor Series first and foremost.

[soup23]

I liked this better than the long Superstars match but it is still admirable that of WWF, they seem to be getting the tag division over a decent amount around this point that would peak with the January 1994 stuff. This also feels like the first time since the late 80's that we have some fresh faces in the tag division and everything doesn't feel stagnate or two big fat dudes have the belts just because. This was worked well around the stip and did an effective job of making the Quebecers look effective even if overmatched at times. The beatdown on Scott was really long and well done and I liked Polo on the outside teasing involvement but never really mixing it up until the very end. The crowd caught on and made the finish that much more effective. I also really enjoyed the gloating promo they give afterwards with the belts. Refreshing stuff on WWF television. ***3/4

[garretta]

I watched the promo separately from the match, which I'll get to in a while.

 

For a gimmick that seems as ridiculous as Jacques's is, he sure made hay out of it: not only is he a tag team champion here, but don't forget his brief reign as IC champion as well. Most people who talk about Vince's attitude with gimmicks say that he rewards those who throw themselves into the gimmicks he assigns them, no matter how dumb they may appear to be, and Jacques is living proof.

 

Does anyone else think that Vince really meant to call this team The Mounties and was threatened out of it? That would account for the two-man re-sing of Jacques's old "I am The Mountie!" theme.

 

It was a bit odd of Jacques to bring up the Blue Jays along with the Canadiens, considering that English Canada and French Canada are uneasy neighbors at best. I know that's not something most wrestling fans care about, then or now, but it's still worth noting.

 

Levy's an odd fit with these two, but Harvey Wippleman/Downtown Bruno would have been even more odd, and he's the only other heel manager that I can think of other than Corny, who has his hands full with Yoko and the Bodies.

 

I liked Jacques refusing to take on the one of the Steiners in a captain's match, thus leaving Pierre to do the dirty work while he does most of the bragging. Was that the usual division of labor between the two of them?

 

Normally, I'd say that the match was ruined by such an obvious dipshit finish, but that was kind of the whole point of the Quebec rules; once they were announced, everyone in the audience could figure out that the match would end because one of them was broken.

 

I still didn't like Scotty breaking the stick over one of the Quebecers' backs (I'm not sure which one, thanks to all the confusion) right in front of Earl, though. Why couldn't we have had something that wasn't quite so obvious, like one of the Steiners using a piledriver like they teased earlier? Or have one of them hit a Steinerline and have Jacques or Pierre take an intentional dive over the top?

 

Complaints aside, this match did one thing that it needed to do: establish the Quebecers as a legit tag team. I have to admit, I thought of them as a joke before I watched this because of their goofy outfits and having someone like Levy as their manager. But they looked great here, and dominated most of this match with superior teamwork, both legal and illegal. Even before Levy came to ringside, they were dominating. I especially liked their doubleteam body splashes. If Pierre's a legit three hundred pounds as Vince claims, to have him slammed on top of you by a partner who weighs two fifty is a guaranteed finisher to all but the toughest of teams. The Steiners fit that bill; I don't think there are too many others.

 

Scotty took a hell of a pounding, and for all the complaints we've heard about the Steiners being unwilling to sell, Scotty did so here about as well as you would want him to. Whether he and Rick liked Jacques and Pierre personally, whether they were intimidated by them, or whether they were just in the mood to be generous, it was one of the best FIP performances I've seen this year from someone not named Ricky Morton.

 

Vince and Heenan delivered one of their best two-man performances on commentary. There are too many good lines to list them all, particularly from Bobby, whose cheering for the Quebecers actually helped the match by helping to spotlight the Quebec rules, which needed to be constantly reiterated since they were so different from the norm. Vince was the revelation here, though; he brought up Notre Dame upsetting Michigan in college football over the past weekend, which he's ​never ​done before that I know of. Most of that's due to the shows (except for ​Raw) ​being taped so far in advance, but he isn't one to let the outside world into his fantasyland too much regardless. It's almost like JR was in his headset.

 

My favorite exchange concerned Levy. It's not much, really, until you consider who's delivering the punchline:

 

Heenan: (Levy's) got a hockey stick..........

Vince: He's a hockey ​puck!

 

Savage, unfortunately, contributed little beyond the requisite cheering for the Steiners. It's a shame, really; when he first came into the booth after Mania VII, he had spirit and style, and he was a great antidote to Piper, who was every bit the obnoxious shill then that he himself is now. He obviously wanted to wrestle more than occasionally, and he definitely still had the skill and athleticism to be an upper-midcarder and occasional main eventer. Why Vince didn't either give him that opportunity or let him go to Atlanta earlier is something I can't figure out. He'd have been an ideal replacement for Rude in the Flair feud, for one thing. With all the turns that happened in Russo-era WCW, did they ever run face Flair against heel Savage?

 

Finally, I don't recall ever seeing Quebec rules again, even though the Quebecers were a top team for almost a year. It would have been interesting if all tag team title matches had had to be contested under these rules for as long as they were champions. Then again, as someone suggested above, this was probably done more as a parody of other organizations' different rules more than as a way to establish Jacques and Pierre as something new and different.

[Superstar Sleeze]

WWF World Tag Team Champions Steiners vs Quebcers - WWF RAW 9/13/93 Quebec Province Rules

 

Reading some other reviews of this match, it seems the Quebecers were very new and that there was not much of build. It seems likely that Steiners were having a contract dispute this was a way to get the titles off them without hurting them in case they did re-commit or if they suddenly left they wouldn't be champs. The key clause in Quebec rules is of course the title can change on DQ which pretty much telegraphs the finish. There was apparently no build to this or why the hell the Steiners would agree to this. The Steiners shine is a bit clunky. The moves are good. I liked Rick's powerslams and Scotty's Tiger Driver which The Brain tries to sell as a piledriver as piledrivers are illegal in this match. They did a great job teasing DQs like Rick almost doing a piledriver, jumping off the top or clotheslining someone over the top and each time Scotty has to stop him. There was a lot of awakwardness in the beginning. Rick hit this weird splash and sold like he was on the hurt. Weird transitions and then Scotty would just hit a massive suplex. Once Johnny Polo came out and they went to the heat segment I thought this picked up. Basic transition Pierre clobbers Scotty from behind running the ropes and then Jacques slugs him. The heat segment was terrific just big bomb after big bomb. In terms of offense this match was great. It was juts four big dudes chucking each other. I loved the double team snake eyes on ropes. Tons of great double teams involving slamming the partner onto Scott. Jacques and Pierre looked vicious. Loved the cheating nonstop. Great climax with Boston Crab/legdrop combo only for Rick to save. Finish was pretty lame Rick cleans house, Scotty hits the Frankensteiner, but then gets the hockey stick after clobbering Johnny and cant resist the temptation of using it and that triggers the DQ and the loss of the titles.

 

It is a Steiners match so it is big, dumb fun. Quebecers felt like heel Steiners with all their BIG offense and tons of great double teams. Some awkwardness early on, not much in terms of flow, but the heat segment ruled. I love some big offense so this was a good fireworks match. ***1/2