[1990-01-26-NWA-Power Hour] Ric Flair & Arn Anderson & Sting vs Great Muta & Buzz Sawyer & Dragon Master

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

This is some crazy heat! Forget WCW, this is a Jim Crockett Promotions crowd. Johnson City, TN rocks! This has been a *really* good month for wrestling in WCW. Flair/Eaton is better than this, but this has a much hotter crowd, and they kept the pace and energy up. Flair and Sawyer having the chop battle was awesome. Flair is FIP during most of this and does a really good job of it. Muta sprays Sting in the eyes to end this on a DQ, then Sawyer splashes him from the top rope. Great way to build heat on the Clash, and yet another indicator that turning the Horsemen when they did just killed the 1989 goodwill they had with the hardcores.

[PeteF3]

Frenetically paced match in front of insane crowd that's equally awesome and frustrating, as it highlights (as if we needed more reminders and indicators) what a dumb move the Horsemen turn was. Flair vs. Buzz seems like one of those quasi-dream matches that I'm not sure ever happened one-on-one. They're going all-out to make the Mad Dog Splash into a killer move, and it's working.

[soup23]

What a match. Great heat and the face Horseman trio has the crowd going into a frenzy. As disappointing it was to see Flair turn heel in 1994 vs. Hogan, from what I have seen so far this year, I will be even more saddened in 1990. The FIP stuff he did here was good and not a role you often see him in. Sting also looked amazing and hit every move well. The shoulder tackle inside the ring with the crowd jumping and losing it will be tough to forget as the year progresses. January 1990 WCW has been amazing.

[Kevin Ridge]

Yeah, loved the crowd is this match. They were loud and Sawyer plays it off well at the beginning making it seem like they were driving him more crazy. Sting had one of those great first moment's of action when he tags in with a flying clothesline. Crowd went nuts there. Sting also does a impressive press slam to the outside. Referee ignores the over the top rope rule there. Good build to the Clash with Sting taking the mist to the eyes at the end.

[Tim Cooke]

The heat is great in this. In a perfect world, I imagine this is what some of the late 1998-early 1999 WCW Horsemen matches would have looked like, with Flair getting a huge reaction, Benoit and Malenko carrying the in ring action. But it would have needed solid booking and that was long gone.

 

Sting's springboard lariat was excellent. Thought the build of Sawyer's splash throughout the month of January, kind of culminating here was also very cool, detail oriented booking.

 

The best hidden gem of 1990, maybe of the yearbook series.

[Cox]

Great match in front of a hot crowd. It really is a shame Flair wanted to go heel so badly. I know the heel side in WCW was weak, especially when they're trying to squeeze every last bit of juice they can out of J-Tex before Muta goes back to Japan, but there had to have been another way to go. Maybe instead of going fully heel, they could have gone with Arn and Ole butting heads with Flair about putting Sting in the Horsemen, and Arn and Ole turn on Flair and Sting? Then add Luger and Windham (when he comes in a few months later) and you have a Flair-less Horsemen feuding with Sting, Flair, and maybe the Steiners or Pillman and Zenk or some other babyface foursome? You could probably get away with turning one out of Flair and Arn, but I think turning both took the wind out of the sails of the hardcores in the NWA.

[Loss]

At one point, the idea was to pair Ole with Luger, and then have Luger reform the Horsemen with the returning Arn and Tully to really put heat on Flair/Luger as a feud. I think that might have worked.

[Cox]

That makes a lot of sense and would have been a lot better than what they wound up doing. I think they could have gotten another good year of business out of Flair as a babyface, especially since they didn't really do an extended babyface Flair vs heel Luger feud.

[JerryvonKramer]

Crowd is wild. Feel that the heels are a bit outpowered going into this.

 

Buzz Sawyer stands out as MVP for the heels. Stiff, nice powerslam, good at working the crowd. Dragon Master aka the fake Kendo Nagasaki looks pretty shitty to me. Muta had some neat exchanges with Sting.

 

Love Cornette claiming the Addams Family is in the front row. "Is that Pugsly?"

 

Is Sawyer something of a mini-revelation? He was really good in this match.

[Childs]

Sawyer's not really a revelation at this point. He was a tremendous talent who had significant '80s runs in Georgia and Mid-South along with some good matches in New Japan.

[goodhelmet]

For a Brit from Surrey, he is probably a revelation.

[shoe]

On the Mid South set he was one of the really great workers on it. He's one of the best brawlers around. Plus he's great at working his gimmick.

[Zenjo]

Yikes that crowd was scorchio! It was a shame that it was just a TV taping rather than a big PPV or Clash. They were wasted on what would normally have been a throwaway match. Nevertheless they helped to make this a good 'un. I liked how there was a lot of face shine and not a lot of beatdown. DQ finish was only a minor annoyance.

[Busterira]

Buzz was great here but in order to realize how great Buzz was or could have been you have to watch Buzz from 82-86. The guy was a wrestling machine. He just had so many demons and was certifiably insane. He was also brutal to jobbers.

 

Here he is against someone named Mulley from Georgia in 1983. I actually think it could be Randy Mulkey not sure thou. Sawyer absolutely destroys him.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJtyIv6aFls

[Laney]

Awesome crowd here that really makes the match. This was a wild match that did a very good job in building up the cage match next month. Sting worked really good with the Horsemen here who were very over as babyfaces. It's a shame that Flair turns heel soon since he worked as a great face here and was super over in that role.

[ajtroma]

I be yet another one that was shocked at how rabid the crowd was here for the Horsemen. I can only imagine what the response would have been for a TV taping like a week or so after the Clash.

 

Jim Cornette points out a redhead in the front row, decked out all in black. That might have been his future wife, Heather. Not sure. But, I would bet that Corny and her had some really vile, perverted sex that night. Possibly like that one scene in Pink Flamingos where the chicken died.

[bradhindsight]

Having watched the Clash match prior to this, I wasn't sure what to expect so I was completely surprised by how awesome the match and crowd was here. Even after a fun shine sequence to start they still settled into a more traditional tag then and the heels got just enough in to make them still seem like a threat. Solid FIP sequence with Flair, who was the right guy for this as Sting was just bananas over here. Things get a little out of control outside so Cornette can sell why a cage is needed and it works. Flair and Sawyer beating the shit out of each other - with Dragon Master almost caught by surprise with a tag and Flair swinging at him - was tremendous.

 

I know the Clash match was to really get the angle over and that works much more for me now after seeing how awesome this was. Just great.

[Zero]

Sting could have killed somebody in this arena, and got away with it. RED HOT CROWD, really put this over for me.

 

Buzz's splash is great. Last week we had Ole sell it like death, now Sting. Great build.

[Blazer]

At one point, the idea was to pair Ole with Luger, and then have Luger reform the Horsemen with the returning Arn and Tully to really put heat on Flair/Luger as a feud. I think that might have worked.

 

 

Would have been amazing.

[garretta]

I haven't seen the Clash bout in years, but I feel safe in saying that this match is better than that one. Not only is the crowd hotter (even watching live, I thought the Clash crowd was muted, which made sense considering what they'd just seen), but the action's much crisper. Again, for someone who was used to TV main event six-mans ending after a minute and a half in a double-DQ, matches like this continue to be a revelation.

 

Sting certainly has the crowd in the palm of his hand here; they're ready for him to be The Man. What goes wrong once he comes back from his injury will certainly be worth exploring as this yearbook rolls on. Flair and Arn, beloved though they are, definitely take a back seat.

 

Interesting to see some Muta signs in the crowd. What would have happened if he'd chosen to stick it out stateside?

 

Interesting tidbit from Charles about the original plans for the Horsemen. Tully, Arn, Luger and Windham with Ole as the manager would have been tremendous. On the other side: Flair, Sting, and.....whom? Orndorff would probably have been one, but you'd think they'd have done better than JYD or Gigante as a fourth. Doc, maybe? Eddie Gilbert, if you want to go outside the box? It would have been better than what we got, that's for sure.

[PeteF3]

Interesting tidbit from Charles about the original plans for the Horsemen. Tully, Arn, Luger and Windham with Ole as the manager would have been tremendous. On the other side: Flair, Sting, and.....whom? Orndorff would probably have been one, but you'd think they'd have done better than JYD or Gigante as a fourth. Doc, maybe? Eddie Gilbert, if you want to go outside the box? It would have been better than what we got, that's for sure.

 

The answer could very possibly have been Bret Hart. Bret wanted a singles push, and Herd had visions of pulling a Bischoff and trying to raid WWF talent, but concentrating on their best workers.

[garretta]

That would have been something else!

 

Forgot to mention the foreshadowing of Luger claiming that he'd be involved in the World title match at WrestleWar one way or another. It wasn't intentional, obviously, since no one could have predicted Sting's injury, but it was foreshadowing nonetheless.

[tjones324]

Just saw this for the first time. Wow, is that crowd something else or what? Really fun match. I'm going to have to find some more Buzz Sawyer stuff as this and the match with Arn are the first I can recall seeing of him and he's impressed me the most so far. Really enjoyed this one and if I were watching it live I'd be sold on the cage match by this point.

[drew wardlaw]

Sawyer's howls from beyond are absolutely inhuman sounding. You can really feel everyone feeding off the crowd, and having the babyfaces on top for most of the match really worked in this environment I think. I watched this match recently, maybe on the WCW 24/7 stream and was shocked when comparing it to the Clash match. I thought Muta looked good here and worked hard for the little bit he was in. He at least had energy in the ring. FIP Flair is so natural that I forget how rare it actually is. Babyface Enforcer Arn has such a cool vibe, totally different than the cool heel Enforcer. A tough, stern babyface like that is really nuanced and great. Great match overall, don't care about the DQ.