[1992-07-04-WCW-Saturday Night] Steve Austin and Barry Windham

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Austin and Paul E. are doing a bragging promo following a squash about how Austin could beat Windham in five minutes. Barry comes out and calls his bluff and challenges him to get in the ring. Watts gets the referees out of the way who are trying to restore order and tells them to hook 'em up! Okay action, but I really like the whole presentation of this more than anything.

[Tim Evans]

Windham going from a head scissors to punching Austin right in the Jaw ruled. However, this wasn't very fair with Steamboat, Pillman and Rhodes at ringside against Paul E.

[shoe]

The presentation was what made this special. We should have seen more bombs thrown.

[Kevin Ridge]

It is kind of cool that a heel running his mouth has to act on it. Not really a match but more two guys allowed to blow off some steam by beating each other up.

[WingedEagle]

Austin interview, Windham challenges him and faces are out to counter Heyman. No ref which is odd, and they of course hype a rematch at the Omni the next night. Because that's what a national audience cares about. Strong smack by Windham for crowd pop. They go for falls even with no ref. Eventually Rhodes counts a fall for Windham.

[PeteF3]

This is a little goofy, in that an impromptu brawl is taking place with no referee in the ring and yet these guys are doing armbars and pin covers. But the set-up is good, the work is okay, and Austin comes off as a skilled and gutsy athlete instead of a chicken shit heel. And Watts is spectacular--"Sometimes you have your alligator mouth overload your tadpole fanny!" A more effective sell of a house show match than a token TV main event with a run-in DQ. Windham gets a cover and Rhodes counts the pin to put an exclamation point on this deal.

[MikeCampbell]

This was a fun little segment to help build up to Austin and Windham's rematch in the Omni. It'd have been smarter to do this to build to a PPV or Clash of Champions match, but that's Watts for you.

[garretta]

I'd have liked this a lot better if it had been a little more formal. At least keep a ref in the ring and put a time clock on the screen, since Barry beating Austin in five minutes is the whole point of the segment. Dustin ended up counting the pin, and by my unofficial clock it was just at five minutes or a little over, so the point was still made.

 

Going for covers didn't seem weird to me under the circumstances, especially on Barry's part. The lumberjacks were a bit much, though. Have Barry pick one guy (presumably Dustin) to stay at ringside and send the other two back to the locker room.

 

Watts can still get it done on commentary, and I wonder if he didn't at least flirt with the idea of doing color on Clashes and pay-per-views himself to save money. As much as I like Jesse, JR and the Cowboy in the booth together for special events would have been tremendous.

 

I've talked before about how WCW had to hype Omni cards during national telecasts because TBS was also their local Atlanta affiliate, but this is definitely one time that I sympathize with those who hate that arrangement. As I've said in other threads, if they were going to make such a big deal about the Omni events, they should have taped them like the WWF did their big arena shows for years and shown the finishes the following weekend so those across the country who couldn't go to the Omni could see what happened.

 

Line of the segment: It's already been mentioned, but Watts' "Sometimes your alligator mouth overloads your tadpole fanny" is a legitimate classic.

[dawho5]

I was blown away by that line too, great stuff from Watts.  Match was nothing special and I thought they should have dispensed with the resthold stuff and thrown bombs.  I did love seeing a heel get called on his shit and made to stand up for it though.