[1991-02-01-USWA Texas] Rumble Royal

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

What does a promotion do when they want to run a Royal Rumble, but also don't want to get sued? Easy ... they do the Rumble Royal! Well, that settles that. This is like the Royal Rumble in that someone new comes in every two minutes, but it's different in that pinfalls also count for eliminations. It isn't nearly as organized or tight as the WWF version, as wrestlers miss their cues coming in and the eliminations look sloppy. There are also lots of no names like Chris Germany and Ed Robinson in the early part of this. Steve Austin puts on a show and looks really good while he's in. Funny moment when John Tatum enters and is alone with three babyfaces Jeff Jarrett, Billy Joe Travis and Bill Dundee, and immediately starts gladhanding them all. This has its moments. It's not really a well-worked battle royal, but it is funny that they blatantly copied the WWF concept. Jeff Jarrett takes it home.

[shoe]

It had it's moments and was fun.

[PeteF3]

Skandor Akbar is sitting in providing surprisingly straight-laced color commentary. Billy Travis gets the endurance mark here, such as it is, and looks awesome throughout. That's one long ad break they take the second time--the first one had no time elapsed and after the second one there's three new guys in the ring. This is a pretty thin roster for a 10-man Rumble, but the top guys all work well and even Awesome Kong is utilized okay. Jarrett and Steven Dane trade some good near-falls but would anyone really buy Steven Dane winning this? The ending actually has the first-ever clever twist on the "ref kicks the hand off the ropes" spot that I normally hate with a passion.

[Kevin Ridge]

Rumble Royal? Doing their best to rip off WWF. Pinfalls allowed though. The crowds really went to crap. I thought Gary Young did enough to stay in the ring but looks like his elimination was not planned. WWF does these matches the best. This was a much better effort than the battle royal we saw in AWA in 1990 though. Dane in the final two though?

[soup23]

Crowd was really awful here.

 

Hilarious concept from the name to announcers talking about never seeing this match before. USWA Texas announcing has fallen on hard times as well. Akbar was shockingly calling things mostly down the middle here.

 

This felt like an honest indy version of a ROyal Rumble. Some neat spots but sloppy and less depth. Fun as a watch. I didn't like how Kong elminated BJT so easily though.

[ajtroma]

I think every promotion by this time copied the Royal Rumble (with some other clever name) at least once.

 

Michael St. John is a blithering idiot. Or course, after he leaves, we here in Jarrett-land have Corey Macklin inflicted upon us. What we all did in a previous life to deserve him, I'll never know.

[garretta]

This was a nice twist on the Royal Rumble, with pinfalls allowed. I wish the WWF had tried this just once to see what would have happened.

 

Was Akbar potentially heading for a career in broadcasting? He did a great job calling this match straight, not even showing all that much favoritism toward his own guy Gary Young. Michael St. John was fairly inoffensive, but this promotion misses Craig Johnson as lead announcer.

 

They really pushed the "no friends" routine, with Dundee, Travis, and Jarrett going at each other quite spiritedly at one point. Kong, who was the odds-on favorite to win based on his size, was eliminated very cleverly.

 

The Khris Germanys and Ed Robinsons of the world made this feel small-time through no fault of their own. You'd think guys like Lawler and Embry might have been talked into participating to really get this event over as a big deal.

 

Nice little mini-match between Jarrett and Dane to finish things up. You knew Jarrett was going over, but Dane made a decent showing of himself. By the way, when did he turn heel? The last time we saw him in August of '90, he was Dundee's partner against the Rock 'n' Roll RPMs.

 

Does anybody know if they ever ran an event like this again? This might have been a good way to determine a number one contender for the Unified title at an MSC card, providing that Lawler was busy with other things.

[DR Ackermann]

This was fun and got better a lot better after Dundee, Jarret and Tatum got in. Double J went overkill on the sunset flips there at the end doing 3 in about 2 minutes. Really liked the finish though.

[JKWebb]

This was a fun match. I loved the spot where Travis blind-sided JJ with that punch and he sold it like he had been caught off guard and almost knocked out. That's a spot I'd love to see incorporated into more rumbles, When you get blind-sided like that, it should knock you out (or almost).

[drew wardlaw]

Man John Tatum shaking hands with the babyfaces really got me. Genius stuff. This felt very long but funny and enjoyable enough, and I liked Jarrett in there by himself at the end.

[cactus]

Even the WWF's Rumble hadn't been perfected yet, so it's no surprise this was a bit of a mess and it went on too long. Gary Young gets eliminated even though his feet didn't touch the floor. We get a rare long-hair Steve Austin appearance along with some of the USWA regulars.