[1990-11-10-NWA-World Championship Wrestling] Sting vs Bobby Eaton

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

The Bobby Eaton singles run officially begins, with his first big match against the champ. Eaton gives his usual inspired performance, and is motivated to take some big bumps. Sting really feels like a guy going through the motions here, which is unfortunate, because this is exactly the type of opponent he needed more matches against on TV -- someone willing and able to make him look great.

 

Eaton goes after Sting's leg, which I'm excited to see since leg work is not something we've seen him do on the yearbook. And ... suddenly the match becomes a total WTF when audio of a Black Scorpion promo accompanied by weird music starts playing over the loud speaker. Sting is distracted by this and accidentally throws Bobby Eaton over the top rope and gets disqualified. Two anonymous job guys hit the ring and start attacking Sting, but he neutralizes them, all while the Black Scorpion continues his promo.

 

Post-match, Jim Ross interviews Lex Luger to ask his thoughts on this. Luger points out that Sting can't handle this alone, and from here on out, he has help. Nice touch, but they never followed up on this.

 

I have no idea what to say about this.

[PeteF3]

Good match with another great performance from Eaton. For the first 3/4, at least. The Black Scorpion's music starts playing as Scorp starts taunting Sting, and eventually Sting heaves Eaton over the top rope for the DQ. Jesus.

 

Luger cuts a promo promising that the other babyfaces will be backing up Sting against the Scorpion. Ross outright says that they're reforming the Dudes with Attitudes.

 

More head-shaking stuff from WCW.

[soup23]

This match was mowing along fine until the Black Scorpion crap. I would have liked to have seen a 20 minute main event clash match between these two.

 

Luger cuts a promo at the end saying he isn't standing for this shit. I feel the same way.

[Kevin Ridge]

No Cornette in Eaton’s corner. Eaton is bouncing all over the place. Thought he got up too quick from the hiptoss on the floor though. Well, it was padded so I guess it ain’t too bad. Music plays in arena. Black Scorpion is heard. The match continues though. This seems like a post match production thing though. Sting ends up getting disqualified for throwing Eaton over the rope. This was silly.

 

Luger and other friends will now be backing up Sting at the Clash against the Black Scorpion.

[garretta]

As Scorpion hijinks go, this is actually pretty mild. He doesn't turn anyone into a wild animal or disappear into thin air; he merely costs Sting a match. If this kind of thing had been the extent of the Scorpion's presence, the angle might actually have been tolerable until it was blown off. But by now, too much weird stuff had gone on for this to be anything but garbage no matter what. I liked Luger's promo at the end declaring that Sting had help if he should need it. You'd think he would have said something weeks ago, but this isn't exactly the type of opponent where numbers do much good.

 

The match itself was very good until the screwy ending. Bobby showed that he belonged in the ring with Sting, and his work on Sting's leg was vicious. Sting showed more fire than usual, as JR pointed out on commentary. This is at least partially because of the Scorpion, but he's also learning that the World champion has to have the ability to be the dirtiest player in the game at times. The over-the-top rope ending really makes Sting look wishy-washy; if he doesn't know the Scorpion's MO by now and is so easily distracted, how can he be taken seriously as a World champion? That's the danger in running a psychological angle like this; the affected party almost has to look weak and desperate at some point, and those are two things World champions really shouldn't be.

 

I'm not sure that Bobby deserved a long singles match with the World champion yet, as some have said. He had to establish himself as a singles competitor first, which he would do soon enough. We know that he was probably a better worker than 90% of the WCW roster at the time, but the average mark would have said, "What's the tag team guy doing giving Sting a good match?"

 

I would like to have seen Corny at ringside; he and Stan hadn't left WCW yet, because Lane was a blocker for Steve Armstrong's running of the gauntlet that weekend. Also, Bobby's still billed as being from "The Dark Side" and still uses the MX's entrance music. I don't think Corny and Stan have too much longer to go, but as of now, they're still around.

[drew wardlaw]

The "random" people attacking Sting under the command of the Black Scorpion feels like a really budget horror trick, and is super lame. The match though, is pretty good, and I would've really liked to see this in a big spot. Sting wasn't very good at being the dominate champion, and didn't look especially motivated here, but I bet he would've worked hard and with Bibby Eaton being such a pro and bumping all over the place, this could have been an important won for Sting.