[1992-02-29-WCW-Superbrawl II] Sting vs Lex Luger

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Last few minutes. Luger is roided out of his mind. Sting wins the world title to a big pop. Nice post-match ovation that isn't as decked out as Bash '90, which tells me this was a hotter crowd than they anticipated.

[shoe]

Luger had the backne going. The crowd has always been behind Sting as champ, but not at the box office until Starcade 97.

[El-P]

They couldn't follow the three previous matches obviously, but it'd still a good match. It's also very interesting to me, after watching WCW from 89 to then, it's clear that after 2 and a half years of Luger being the superior worker, they reached the point where Luger finally doesn't care that much anymore and doens't work half as hard as he used to, while Sting finally got it and became a good worker. The heel turn after Flair left in 91 really killed Luger's spirit it seems. And he's roided out of his mind here, gasping for air after a few minutes. I actually like this match better than the GAB 90.

[Matt D]

Luger had to have huge ring rust here.

[Loss]

Luger's appearance is ridiculous in this match, to a point that Kip Frey had to acknowledge it as "embarrassing".

[El-P]

Luger was pretty much WBF bound at this time. Which is hilarious when you think WWF was deep into the steroid deal... But hey, I enjoyed Luger quite a bit from 1989 to mid 91, and his stock went way up with me.

[MikeCampbell]

The match wasn't anything special, but the reaction to Sting's win was awesome, showing that was definitely interest in seeing Sting as champion.

[WingedEagle]

As a Sting mark at the time I couldn't wait for this. Nice pop at the finish, though I wonder how they decided on a flying cross body for the title change. You'd expect the Scorpion or a barrage of his splashes to give him a trademark victory rather than something that wasn't built as a killer move.

[BackToBionic]

This was like right at the exact moment I became a big mark and unfortunately I couldn't talk my parents into renting it (my neighbour rented all the WWF PPVs this year) so I remember dying of curiosity to find out if Sting won. Kids nowadays probably just stream it if their parents won't rent it. Lucky bastards. I didn't even get to actually watch this until 5 or 6 years ago because no stores around here had it. But oh boy did I have it played out in my mind from the pictures in WCW magazine.

[PeteF3]

"His 30 days of training have paid off, Luger looks as big as I've ever seen him!"

"How do you bulk up in 30 days??!"

 

There was lots of passive-aggressive shots at bodybuilding throughout this show. An anticlimactic World title victory deserves an anticlimactic loss. Just going by the ending this isn't much of a match, which is a disappointment considering the insane PPV hot streak Luger had been on dating all the way back to WrestleWar '90. Sting's victory does get a monster pop from a crowd that started off red hot and never burned out after a night of very long matches.

[xlynwoodx]

Not much to this, Sting makes a comeback and wins the title a few minutes later. An odd finish with the cross body, I don't think a lot of people were expecting that to be the end of the match. There were still 3-4 minutes on the clip after the pin, I was expecting something to happen but it was just Sting celebrating, leaving, and the rabid crowd bringing him back down to the ring. I was amused how they commented post match about Sting having the advantage if the match went long, what with Luger being huge and likely to gas out quickly.

[Superstar Sleeze]

WCW World Champion Lex Luger w/Harley Race vs Sting - WCW SuperBrawl II

Most reviewers take this match to the woodshed and given that it was World Title Change, yes it was underwhelming, but it was not a bad match. My biggest bone to pick is people blaming Luger's laziness/apathy. Yes, clearly given his enhanced bodybuilding physique, wrestling was not his number one priority. However, if you watch his performance he was trying his damnest to give his buddy Sting a good match. In fact, at the beginning of the match, I thought they were wrestling at a clip that would have made this a great match. Luger was explosive and it was during this time the crowd was at its hottest until the finish. It was a well-done story of one up manship. Luger started of offense and Sting hit the Stinger Splash. Luger hit the powerslam and Sting his the German Suplex. Luger goes for the Rack and Sting puts him in the rack. Once Luger wriggled free, I first noticed him breathing heavy. The match quality and heat declined precipitously with Luger meandering around the ring trying to get his wind back during his heat segment. It was interesting to me how much Luger incorporated Flair's style into this match. He used corner cheating twice and begged off twice. Sting's kick out of the piledriver was very anticlimatic. Sting's comeback was ho-hum, but his punches looked better than usual and Luger sold pretty well for him. The cross body sure is a popular finish for world title changes as the initial pop was small because it was unexpected, but the sustained ovation shows that Sting was definitely over like rover with the WCW crowd. As soon as, Luger lost his wind so did the crowd and the match never recovered. I would blame Luger's physique rather than his attitude for the failure of this match. I would have loved to see Luger bumping around for Sting before the win, but still it was a nice moment for Sting. Sting feels like a bigger deal in 1992 than he does in 1990 and it finally feels like he has arrived.

[DMJ]

As the poster above said, this match starts off red hot and I even liked the finisher-throwing early on, though, to be sure, in modern times this has become overused.

 

However, there are a few things that go wrong that I think would've made this a much more highly-regarded bout, even if Luger does look tired after a few minutes.

 

First, the finish comes TOO "out of nowhere" for me. As others have said, Sting should've won with either his finishing move or the Torture Rack as that would've helped the match come "full circle."

 

Second, if Harley Race getting knocked out at the end of the match was supposed to be meaningful, why not throw in a segment somewhere in there where Race helps Luger get leverage (I'm thinking the classic figure four spot) or distracts the ref when Luger connects with a below-the-belt cheap shot. Then, when Race gets back body dropped, the audience could really get the feeling that Sting has overcome Luger's biggest advantage.

 

Third, Luger should've turned face after the match or alluded to such a turn by shaking hands with Sting after the match and raising his arm. My understanding was, at this point, Luger was done with WCW so protecting him for rematches wasn't necessary - besides, shaking hands with Sting wouldn't have hurt those rematches even if he WAS going to stick around. That's the kind of "moment" that would've made Sting's victory that much bigger.

 

In a nutshell, I wanted this match to be great - and, for the first few minutes, it is heading that way - but what you end up with is lost opportunities that stick out more than what these two actually do accomplish. Not a terrible match at all, just not the masterpiece that you know could've happened had they made a few changes and worked smarter, not necessarily harder.

[garretta]

I only watched the clip that was on the disc, which was mostly Sting's Hogan-like comeback and celebration.

 

Luger at 295? Wow, he must have really thought he'd take the bodybuilding world by storm.

 

Since Luger was leaving, it might have been okay for Sting to get the submission, but I'm not sure they wanted any problems with Luger over how he dropped the belt. They needed to have their big moment of coronation for Sting, and they wouldn't have gotten it if Luger had walked out and left Sting to wrestle Hughes or Race, or if they'd had to give him the belt by forfeit.

 

By the way, where was Hughes? I would think he would have been at ringside for his client one last time.

 

JR and Jesse worked together well from what little I heard, but I could tell that JR really wanted to call the match his own way and not have to worry about dealing with Jesse. These may sound like contradictory statements, but I think they worked together well mostly because this was still a one-shot at the time. It'll be interesting to see how the chemistry evolves when they're paired on big events regularly and JR isn't inclined to be generous.

 

I liked the fans calling Sting back down to the ring for a curtain call of sorts; I can't remember that happening any other time, at least in that fashion.