[1991-01-19-WCW-Saturday Night] Ric Flair & Arn Anderson & Barry Windham & Sid Vicious vs Sting & Brian Pillman & Rick & Scott Steiner

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Very good match, but not as good as the 8-man the following year with the Dangerous Alliance in February. This one had some nice moments, but it was pretty crowded. I think there were too many people doing too many things for anything to really stand out. However, the one thing that did stand out, surprisingly enough, was the Rick Steiner-Sid Vicious mini-war, which believe it or not made me want a singles match between those two guys. I was surprised at how perfectly competent Sid was in this match, but overall, this was a collection of spots and sequences you've seen a million times. No finish after a 15+ minute match feels like sort of a ripoff, but that's a pattern with 1991 WCW TV.

[shoe]

A good match. Like Loss said crowded would be a good description. It seemed like their were too many personalities trying to get their stuff in. I'm a mark for the blind clothesline on the floor spot. It always got a crowd to go ooohh.

[PeteF3]

The non-finish makes sense to me. Ross puts it perfectly afterward, saying that these eight men can only be contained by the WarGames. That's what you need to establish with a match like this. Anyway, this is a good match with Pillman managing to stand out even among the other eight guys, though everyone looks good here--even Sid, who actually takes some fine bumps for the Steiners. Ross mentions that the Clash will take place in the CNN Center atrium, which sadly did not come off--I'd really like to see what the atmosphere would have been for that.

[soup23]

If they would have had the show in the CNN Center it would have been a shit show.

 

Good match but a little muddled at times. I also had no problems with the main event as a set up for Wargames. They gave away something satisfying here on tv without taking away too much from the PPV coming up.

[Kevin Ridge]

Sting and Flair square off early in match. The focus becomes Flair/Scott Steiner as they mention upcoming match at the Clash. Scott cleaning house. Never felt like we would get a clean type finish as with the amount of guys in the match they were breaking up pinfall/submission attempts really easy. Agreed about the match feeling crowded. Smaller ring makes it harder for the big tag matches.

[PhilTLL]

The non-finish makes sense to me. Ross puts it perfectly afterward, saying that these eight men can only be contained by the WarGames. That's what you need to establish with a match like this.

And thank god they did some kind of building for it, because to this point there wasn't really a feud between these 8 guys. The Steiners ran off the Nasties and were in a holding pattern from November, Arn and Barry were feuding with Doom, we had only recently found out Sting and Flair were actually feuding, and Pillman was doing everyman stuff all over the card. The first Flair/Pillman match was a full year prior and mostly forgotten. Hell, Sid was barely a Horseman, working almost nothing but squashes and randomly reteaming with Spivey for one night.

[garretta]

This match had no point in and of itself, but it either established or continued several storylines that would be prominent over the next few weeks, namely Flair/Scotty at the Clash and the WarGames match at WrestleWar.

 

I'm wondering if Pillman getting a major showcase was Dusty's way of making it up to him for taking the Clash main event away, as he was the only member of the face team to get a major sequence with every member of the Horsemen.

 

I'm not sure if CNN Center was nixed as the site of the Clash due to the war in the Persian Gulf or not, but I'm curious as to why anyone would think it was a bad place to hold a card. Does anyone know how many the atrium would seat for wrestling, what the ring setup would be, and so forth?

 

I agree that Rick/Sid would have been a great singles match for the Clash, especially since Rick was able to get the belly-to-belly on Sid with almost no problem.

 

Sting continues to get the shaft; other than a brief early sequence with Flair and the triple figure-four spot, we barely saw him in this whole match. If I'd been in his shoes, I might have considered jumping to Vince right about now, since even as a former World champion he got no respect at all from the powers that were in WCW at this time.

[dawho5]

Sid was the story for me here. Who knew the guy could work?

[cactus]

With the heels working over Pillman, the first 15 minutes feels like they are slowly building up to something special, then all hell breaks loose and everyone starts brawling in the ring causing the referee to throw this one out. Jim Ross mentions that their going to need War Games to contain these guys. Looking at all the great talent involved in this, this isn't that great and feels like a ham-fisted ad for WrestleWar and the upcoming Steiner/Flair title match. 

★★½