[1992-08-29-WWF-Summerslam] Randy Savage vs Ultimate Warrior

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[El-P]

Overlooked match when you think about the few great Warrior matches. I haven't seen it in years, but I remember it as easily as good as the WM match, with the only thing hurting being the lack of finish. Flair not having a match at Wembley was a disgrace though.

[Loss]

It is a little overlooked, and the work is solid, but it's not as good as the other Savage match or the Rude match, and the match is so overbooked that it takes away from and overshadows anything happening in the ring. Again, Flair in a suit would have made way more sense than coming to ringside in his robe. I just wasn't a fan of this build at all. If triple threat matches were part of the consciousness at that point, I'm imagining that's what would have headlined this show.

[Tim Evans]

Wasn't Flair injured at the time and that's why he didn't wrestle? All the ref bumps made this feel like a TNA match.

[flyonthewall2983]

Ric was probably just coming off the inner-ear infection that took him out for most of the summer.

[shoe]

I liked this match. Easily a top 5 Warrior match. The story that was told in the ring was easy to follow. All the stuff outside the ring hampered the flow of the match, but I guess they thought they needed it to hide Warrior. Still their was a lot of drama and good story telling in the match.

[Zenjo]

I'm surprised at how well this holds up. Great atmosphere, I wasn't the only Warrior fan in attendance! They went at it hammer and tongs from the start with exhaustion setting in as it progressed. It would've been better without the interference as the storyline completely took over in the end. Normally with a Warrior match that was this lengthy you might need some shenanigans to fill the time, but they were performing way better than expected in the ring. It was still very dramatic and enjoyable. They did a ton of near falls. Well I say 'near', but Earl Hebner never did a convincing near fall in his wretched and never ending career. What an awful referee who hurt so many high profile main events over the decades.

[Kevin Ridge]

Fans seem to be a bit more on Warrior's side. Think this match is pretty good but not as good as their WrestleMania match. Flair coming out to ringside in his tights and robe was a bit silly. I can see how people really didn't by that either Savage/Warrior sold out. Flair/Perfect are out there to stir up things though and get a bit physical. Savage climbs to the top for the big elbow but instead tries to dive to outside on Flair. Bad idea as Flair was ready for that one. He nails Savage's knee with a chair leading to a count out. Flair does applies the figure four to inflict extra pain. So Savage keeps the belt but is hurt and Flair is ready to get his shot.

[WingedEagle]

I absolutely loved this. Savage sold like a champion early on here and even worked as a subtle heel to establish that dynamic, using the tights to throw Warrior into the turnbuckle for a transition and then dumping him to the floor. Great sequences with Warrior no selling one axehandle, going down from the second and catching him on the third with a backbreaker. Savage then sells and Warrior works over his back for a nice little bit. Flair & Perfect start doing their thing here, interfering against Savage and then Warrior, resulting in a great near fall after a Savage piledriver and elbow. Savage eventually realizes what's going on and jumps from the top to the floor on Flair, who nails his knee with a chair which results in a count out and sets up the title change at the next TV tapings. Warrior teases a belt shot but hands it to Savage and they celebrate together while Savage sells knee.

 

I need to rewatch the Mania match but initially I didn't think this was any poorer. Warrior gassed just as early and more visibly than DBS later that night and Savage still carried the inferior worker to a superior match. When examining Savage's record as a worker, these matches should be exhibit A in demonstrating his ability to carry someone.

 

****1/4

[PeteF3]

Vince and Bobby never had the great chemistry of the Gorilla/Bobby team, but they're absolute gold in the pre-match. "Savage...nevermind." "WHAT?!" It's hard to describe, you'd have to see it, but it's one of my favorite Bobby moments ever.

 

Flair had an interview earlier in the show where Okerlund, God bless him, actually called him out for being in his robe. "You're not scheduled to wrestle today!" Flair explained that when you're Flair, you're always "ready for any kind of action."

 

Warrior's Grey's Anatomy singlet here is only a marginal improvement over the naked-fig-leaf outfit earlier. Nonetheless this is a very pro-Warrior and anti-Savage crowd. Both guys work hard, and there is an attempt to impart some psychology on this with Warrior's neck and Savage's back, but neither injury really impacts the match and Warrior does a laughably bad job of selling a neck injury. And Vince is at his absolute worst here, speaking in that LOUD VINCE VOICE throughout and falling for every two-count. I did like the interference spots, but they make it harder to compare this match to WM7 or the other high-end Warrior matches. I don't think it's as good as those, though. The post-match is excellent, and Flair going to grab the ropes while doing the figure four on the floor is SUCH a glorious heel spot that I wish he would have succeeded. I also liked how Flair and Perfect waited for the bell and then pounced--"Okay, let's cripple this fuck, but dammit, let's do it within the confines of the rules."

 

Flair and Perfect are at their gloating best afterward. They're already pushing Flair vs. Warrior.

[garretta]

This has to be the most annoying pay-per-view main event (or co-main event) in history.

 

First, and worst, we had thirty-six and a half straight minutes of Vince McMahon puking up his internal organs and calling it commentary. My God, how horrible. I knew he'd slipped over the years, but this was beyond the worst commentating job I've ever heard. I actually think he was trying to drive the audience mad for whatever reason. This match was nobody's classic to start with, but if you began with five stars, the commentary would take off at least three. Vince never took a breath, seldom lowered his voice beyond that awful spoken singsong wretch, and was so busy debating who had or hadn't sold out to Curt that the match was barely even an afterthought. Before I forget, additional minus points to him for his awful British references. "Cliimbing the Tower of London"? "Leaping across the Thames"? The sad part is, there will probably be a few more in the Bret-Davey Boy match, since Davey's actually British.

 

Okay, so we have our theoretical two stars left. Now, we turn to the whole mess with Flair and Curt. Simply put, even if Gordon Solie in his prime would have been on commentary, the execution of this storyline would have taken away at least one star, maybe more. It dominated the match even when they weren't out there yet, as I think Savage and Warrior were running through their offense at warp speed because they knew that Flair and Curt would be the center of attention once they arrived. I've never seen so many nearfalls in the first ten minutes of a title match, and they were going for them after almost every move. The Mania VII match had time to build its drama and get us invested in the struggle; this one was a complete sprint, and not a very well-done one, because the minute Flair and Curt came out, the match in the ring might as well have been over. Heenan made more sense than he ever knew with his comment toward the end that there were three separate matches going on: not only Warrior vs. Savage, but Flair against each of them. The trouble was, two of them weren't supposed to be taking every scrap of the fans' attention away from the third, which was the one they actually paid for. Not only that, but the whole mess had to be set up by Savage deliberately choosing to engage Flair outside the ring instead of putting Warrior away inside. At least have Flair run in and break up the pin once Randy hits the elbow instead. He could have done both the chair shot and the figure four inside the ring as well as he did it on the floor.

 

What galls me the most is, the payoff of this isn't even going to be on Superstars or SNME. No, it's going to be on Prime Time, which has never been anything more than a recap show even when Gino and Bobby made it perhaps the most entertaining wrestling show on TV five and six years earlier. Now, it's got that lousy roundtable format with geniuses like Hacksaw Duggan and Hillbily Jim as co-hosts. So a pay-per-view for which we the fans paid thirty or forty bucks is being used to set up the WWF's answer to public access TV. Beautiful. Simply beautiful. Is it any wonder why the WWF was going down the drain so badly that they had to hotshot the belt six times in nine months (Savage-Flair-Bret-Yoko-Hogan-Yoko) which probably should have been seven in a year (Luger at SummerSlam '93)?

 

Line of the segment: I guess the byplay at the beginning between Vince and Heenan that Pete referenced above. Who used Okerlund's teacup for a urinal in the postmatch, by the way? I've seen him get in a heel's face before, but here I was actually rooting for Curt to sock him.

 

Between the commentary and the fact that this whole bout was a tease for another bout which we'd eventually see for free, I was as unimpressed as I could be here. The presentation and outside bologna made the in-ring work itself almost superfluous. If they had to involve Flair and Curt, one of them should have been the special guest referee (most likely Flair, since he could bump) and the other should have factored only in the postmatch beatdown. If Flair could work at all (and I assume he could, since he won the title back just two days later), they should have just done the title change here, had Warrior face Shango, and used the IC title change to send everyone home happy. But that would take common sense and respect for the fans, neither of which Vince had any of then and still has none of today, if what I read on boards like this is right.

[Jetlag]

Hahaha! Forget about this being the best Warrior match or something. This was like the best WWE style main event ever. Essentially they worked it like a joshi match without any holds. Just BAM! BAM! BAM! impact moves and drama the whole time. Savage was a lunatic. You gotta give the Warrior some credit too, as he always kept moving forward at Savage, was never lost, and got over the fact that Savage put him in serious danger (in his own Warrior-ish way). The confusing interferences and character acting from Savage was gold too.

[JKWebb]

How about Savage's selling back down the entrance ramp post-match?  ...he's the greatest!

[cactus]

Yeah, this is Warrior's greatest performance. I still prefer his match with Savage from Wrestlemania VII more and his offence still looks like shit, but he actually makes an effort to sell here. Speaking of selling, I think Savage might be the greatest seller ever. Flair wacks his leg with a chair and Savage hobbles about and never takes another step without milking his bad leg. The added intrigue of Flair and Perfect claiming one of the faces will sell out and side with them kept everything interesting even if it was all a ruse. I thought the interference added to the match instead of hurting it, personally. 

★★★¾

[dawho5]

Not seeing what most of you saw in Warrior's performance here.  He threw crap punches, seemed to struggle with basic wrestling sequences and posed after every second or third spot to catch his breath.  On top of that Vince was awful on commentary.  The whole Flair/Perfect thing ended up being really goofy too.  Put a heel in the match if you need that kind of deal to get the match over.

I did like Savage though and I thought that one spot they did with Warrior backdrop-ing out of a piledriver only to fall into a sunset flip was pretty good.