[1992-10-25-WCW-Main Event] Ricky Steamboat & Shane Douglas vs Steve Austin & Brian Pillman

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

The first match of the series, a few months before Austin and Pillman started teaming regularly. Good, but they had way better in '93.

[Tim Evans]

Was this the first time the 4 teamed with each other? This was good but they would have better matches in 93. Cheap finish too.

[shoe]

A nice little test run for things to come in 93.

[PeteF3]

Decent match, but a lot better when the babyfaces are on offense. Pillman still seems to be iffy on working heel.

[WingedEagle]

The debut of the not quite yet Hollywood Blondes. Austin's work as a heel is so much better and more focused than than earlier in the year. Douglas/Steamboat work very well together with some nice double teams early on, while Pillman is such a natural heel. Good formulaic tag with alternating FIPs and basic heel tactics. Pillman throws Douglas over the top for a DQ. The inconclusive finish is fine given this was going to be an extended feud, evne if they didn't know it yet..

 

***1/4

[PhilTLL]

Strange few weeks to close out the year for Pillman, as they clearly try to establish the Austin team over multiple weeks in October, then put him with Windham for a hot minute, then do a double reverse back to the Blondes.

[garretta]

This was a decent match, done more because each of the four men had individual rivalries with each other than anything else. Still, there was enough of a spark here that the eventual team vs. team feud was conceived, so that's one thing in its favor.

 

Boy, was Douglas getting a big push or what? Beating Austin one-on-one was a huge deal, considering all the hype he's gotten about being the greatest TV champ of all time.

 

Speaking of which, had Steamboat lost the TV title already? If he had, he didn't drop it back to Austin.

 

JR had a lot on his plate here, with having to call the match, set up Hayes on commentary, get in a last little bit of hype for Havoc, plus plug next week's shows. Considering all of that, he was very good. One question, though: I've talked about this before, but why in the name of all that's sane did JR do a radio show to be aired that night? Couldn't WSB have arranged to air something else the night of a live pay-per-view? I guess either WCW didn't care about possibly cannibalizing its pay-per-view audience or WSB didn't care about getting next to no ratings for that night's show.

 

Hayes isn't a bad backup color guy. He's heelish, but not disgustingly so, putting over each team's strategy, how tough it is for any one man to referee a tag match, and plugging not only Havoc but his own alliance with Heyman. I loved the line "He signs my check and I spend the money well". I'm not sure where he was going with the "Steamboat can't keep a partner" stuff, but Ricky has had quite a few partners lately: first Dustin, then Nikita, and now Shane. Thank heaven he settles down to Shane as his regular partner fairly soon.

 

Nice bit of forecasting by JR on the future of Austin and Pillman as a team. They may not have been thought of as the Holywood Blondes just yet, but clearly Dusty and Watts had some plans for them as a team.

 

As far as the actual wrestling goes, this was too short to be anything substantial. I don't think Pillman was iffy about working heel, but it was certainly new to him, and you can tell that Austin's leading the way for him a bit. Douglas and Steamer needed a little time to jell as well. The finish was what it was; I think they were still trying to establish Pillman's new attitude a bit, as throwing a guy over the top rope for no earthly reason definitely makes one a heel.

 

I'm guessing Heyman and Austin were no longer together, which is a shame because the Blondes seem like a perfect team for Paul to manage, both as a unit and as individuals.

[Loss]

Paul Heyman was making $250,000 guaranteed money a year at the time, which was unheard of for a manager. Kip Frey signed him to a huge deal. Watts actually campaigned for the job on finding a way to get rid of him. He tried marginalizing him in the booking in an effort to make him get mad and quit, and when that didn't work, they hired a PI to follow him on the road and caught him falsifying a receipt on an expense report and used that to fire him. Heyman sued, and there you go.

 

But I do agree he would have been great paired with them. It's just that Watts was doing what he could to get Heyman out the door.

[garretta]

For someone who bragged about what a straight-up kind of fighter he was, Watts could be a real backstabbing rat when it came to business.

 

Thanks for the info, Loss!