[1992-01-04-NJPW-Starrcade 1992 in Tokyo Dome] Rick & Scott Steiner vs Sting & Great Muta

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Those entrances performed by the live band were a great way to start the yearbook. All four of these guys come off as genuine superstars because of that. This isn't a great match, but it's a very good one. I do like it better than the Superbrawl tag with Luger. The spot of the match is Rick catching Muta in the handspring elbow and hitting a release German. The Steiners doubleteam spots from the top are also fun.

[Tim Evans]

This was an alright match but it bothered me for a number of reasons. The first was Rick doing a top rope bulldog 5 minutes in and sting was fine. Wasn't that his finish? And speaking of finish, the one in this match was just the worst. That was a lame double pin. Crowd seemed confused and so did the wrestler. Other than that, I enjoyed it. Loved Rick's suplexes and Sting being motivated.

[glea diddy]

Good match but definitely on the weird side. Agree that the top rope bulldog was way out of place. Muta also took a helluva beating towards the middle from the Steiners and turned it around to make his tag to Sting way to easy. Finish was a bit out of nowhere and confusing but thought Stings counter was cool.

[stunning_grover]

11 min. Good match, but the most spectacular thing about this match were the entrances. It was part of NJPW/WCW Supershow II (aka Starrcade 1992 In Tokyo Dome), which was the first of many January 4th Tokyo Dome shows presented by NJPW. A nice way to start off the set.

[shoe]

This was just a fun spot fest with all 4 men hitting all types of great moves. Finish was weird. Still all 4 men came across as stars.

[Eduardo]

Pretty much agree with what everyone has been saying, not a great match, but I also think it was a nice fun way to start this set. Fun spotfest, it has it share of flaws but it was entertaining and enjoyable for what it was.

[JerryvonKramer]

So taken Loss's suggestion to dig into this. 6 minutes+ a bit lengthy for the intros.

 

Very surprised to see someone comparing this to the famous Superbrawl match with Luger.

 

I love the Steiners because they do loads of high impact spots that look cool without coming across as spot monkeys. Muta looks like he took a total pounding here.

 

I'd have liked this match to go another 10 minutes. The finish was weird as everyone else has said.

 

German from the handspring is one of the coolest spots I've ever seen.

[jasch]

To me this match was a poor man's version of the Steiners vs Bret/Owen match from 94. Not bad by any means. I have a feeling that if you put these four in a tag match today that you would get a vastly different match of comparable quality.

[El-P]

I love the Steiners because they do loads of high impact spots that look cool without coming across as spot monkeys.

Totally disagree. The Steiners *are* spot monkeys. They throw people around with no rhyme or reason, they have no idea how to build or structure a match at all, they just throw huge spots left and right, which is fun to see since they have so many but doesn't amount to much. Their matches can be fun spectacle but more often than not they need someone to structure the match for them.

This is an exemple of the Steiners being complete spot monkeys as Rick goes into his finisher 2 minutes in, and Sting has to kick out and no-sell it because it's the beginning of the match, and it's a go-go-go match anyway. So yeah, it's a rather fun spotfest because there are some great bombs, Rick blocking Muta in mid-air into a german is awesome. The finish sucks though, very confusing.

[Kevin Ridge]

I liked it. It is annoying to watch Scott Steiner hit big moves and not go for the pinfall though. I did enjoy the Rick blocking Muta's Hand Spring Elbow move and hitting the German Suplex. I always like seeing those ridiculous type moves being countered. I agree the ending didn't seem right as the pinfall happened in the background. Didn't seem like the crowd liked that finish.

[MikeCampbell]

This was a really fun way to delve into the yearbook, even if it wasn't exactly deep. Cool entrances, especially the tumblers on the ramp leading up to Muta's, and pretty much wall to wall action. Weird to see Sting and Muta being buddies after they had such a big feud a couple of years back.

[Zenjo]

The live band, fireworks and gymnasts provided a glitzy entrance. The match was suitably superficial with no soul to it. The spots kept on coming and brought some pops. It was worth a watch. Muta just worked and didn't do any wacky stuff this time.

[WingedEagle]

Fun way to kick off the '92 yearbook. All four worked pretty hard, with Sting putting forth more effort than usual. Some nice double team moves by the Steiners while Muta took a nice beating during the heat segment. I haven't rewatched the Hase/Sasaki match in forever, and while I know that had more high spots and a greater variety of impressive ones, this felt more cohesive.

 

***1/4

[PeteF3]

Time to see how quickly I can catch up. Five Yearbooks until I get to 1997 with everybody else seems like an awfully tall order. I'm so thrilled that we open with six full menus on Disc 1 with wall-to-wall "Achy Breaky Heart." That's one way to get me to junk this project and keep pace with the others.

 

Great atmosphere to kick the actual viewing off, with Pink Lady playing everyone down to the ring and Sting in particular looking pretty amped to be in front of such a big crowd. This is a total spotfest from the word go, and the spots are really well-done from guys who have plenty of them to go around. So it's fun to watch in that regard, but things like selling and structure are completely out the window. Muta takes about a million sick moves, including an Olympic Slam off the top and a belly-to-belly on the floor, and pops up fresh as a daisy once he makes the hot tag. Sting and Muta's double teams are pretty good and Sting shows lots of fire. Goofy-ass anticlimactic ending that I didn't care for at all. I think this may be the first Steiners defeat since the Varsity Club feud and it really needed to come off as more epic than that. That said I'm fine with a dream match-up being more of an empty bomb-fest than some psychological masterpiece.

[WingedEagle]

Nice, glad to have you on board! Good luck catching up

[concrete1992]

I don't feel I'll be able to catch up but maybe I'll end up being able to have someone to chat about this with since it seems most others have moved on haha.

[garretta]

The pre-match what-ifs based on WCW's storylines at the time and the aftermath of Sting and Muta's win are a hell of a lot more fun than the match itself. I do private commentary on the non-English speaking matches for my own amusement, and I crafted a story for the match that had to do with Sting possibly not being able to trust Muta because of their past history. For that matter, the DA might have paid off Muta to turn on and injure Sting for them. Neither of these remotely came into play, of course. The Steiners were pretty good heels of the moment, though, as they brutalized Muta with almost every slam and suplex in their arsenal, but refused to try for pins. I wonder how this would have been explained to an American audience, because this tactic is blatantly heelish.

 

The double pin keeps all four guys over, but Sting and Muta getting the official pin means that they can claim a clean victory over one of the top teams in both North America and Japan. It's a pity that we won't see Muta in America for a while, because he would heve been a great secret weapon in Sting's feud with the DA, at least on pay-per-views and the like. No offense to Buff Bagwell, but I think Muta would have struck more fear into the DA's hearts than he did.

 

The best move of the match had to be Sting's leap from the top rope on to Rick. He doesn't do that here in the States very much, so it was nice to see him not only attempt it, but hit it cleanly. Rick catching Muta in the middle of the handspring elbow and hitting a German was second.

 

The entrances really made this one feel big, though they might have run a bit long. I especially liked the gymnasts that preceded Muta to the ring. In fact, I thought the first guy doing handsprings on the ramp was Muta at first.

 

I liked this better than the Luger tag at SuperBrawl I, mostly because it didn't feel like it was being used solely to set up another feud (Sting-Nikita). It wasn't the greatest tag match in history, but it accomplished its purpose well.

[Eegah]

Starting this set out, going to try and use star ratings for some kind of baseline towards the end although Im not the biggest fan of that kind of rating system.

 

This match was fun, seemed more of a greatest hits by both teams outside of some signature moves not being present. A fun tag match with Muta taking the brunt of damage for his team. Finish was cutesy with Rick looking like a buffoon thinking they won when Alfonso was clearly not facing Rick and Muta. ***

[Migs]

Surprised to see people ranking this above the tag with Luger at Superbrawl. This really felt like a poor man's version of that to me, with a similar bomb-throwing style, but it doesn't quite take off in the same way and doesn't build as well.

[soup23]

I liked this one more here on tonights viewing than at any other point I have watched this match before. I took it at surface level as a big bomb fest featuring four big personalities and that helped the pacing for me to drift away from the spot > spot > spot nature of the match. Muta blows the blue mist to start out which is unique for him. The finish was about protecting the Steiners a bit but came off awkward in execution. ***1/2 (6.9)

[Superstar Sleeze]

The Great Muta & Sting vs The Steiner Brothers - NJPW 1/4/92

 

The first Tokyo Dome show on 1/4 in history. This would be the first of three out of four years Muta would wrestle the Steiners at the Tokyo Dome. New Japan sure loved the Steiners. Coming home from the club at 3am, the Steiners are exactly what I want to watch. Big, dumb fun. No thinking. Just a ton of power moves. Rick stiffs Sting early and Sting gives right back to him with the best Sting clothesline ever. I liked Sting stealing the Steiners running powerslam into the buckles. Muta takes a lickin' in this match. He just thrown around like a ragdoll. I don't like the blue at all on Muta. Not intimidating. White, black and red are the best. Green and yellow are ok. Blue is too neutral. It just makes him look cold. Steiners are fucking awesome. Every suplex and slam you can think of. Muta of course sells for shit, but at least he is willing to bump. Muta just gets up acts like nothing happened and pops off a back suplex. Whatever. Stinger Splash. Muta tags back in. Back handspring elbow, um, don't think so, Rick catches Muta and RELEASE GERMAN! I think that's the best version of that spot. The best spot of the match for me was when Sting hurled Muta at Rick sending him tumbling over the top rope. That could have looked horrible, but it was perfectly executed looked amazing. The finish sucked. They were clearly trying to protect the Steiners with a fast count and Rick also pinning Muta while Sting pinned Scott. Shitty finish aside fun power, Dome match. ***1/2

[dawho5]

Perfectly acceptable spotfest with the Steiners throwing out a million suplexes and power moves. Sting was motivated and hitting his stuff good, Muta even seemed to give a shit. And the Steiners appear to have been in a giving mood as Sting and Muta got to have offense. Not sure anything in this match was meaningful, so I won't go that far

[JKWebb]

That back handspring elbow into the release German from Steiner to Muta was just nuts! I had seen this before, but it was fun to come back to as I jump into 1992. I do love the entrances and the feel of the match. I love the teams too, but I don't agree it's more fun than the Superbrawl match with Luger. That match is such a fun sprint. Maybe that is just nostalgia talking, but I don't think so - either way, they are both super fun.