[1991-02-02-WCW-Pro] Arn Anderson & Barry Windham vs Ricky Morton & Tommy Rich

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Wow, they were building a super tag match before that horrid finish. Windham in particular looked great. I always love the punch after popping up out of the headscissors, and the little things Arn does like a tag while being put into a backslide position that are always taken for granted. Sadly, they work over Ricky Morton like a champ, but we never get the payoff of the hot tag to Tommy Rich, because Ron Simmons and Teddy Long are out to pick a fight with the Horsemen. Why were they still pushing this feud when it ended at Starrcade? And why would the babyfaces win by countout when Simmons was physically involved? I'm guessing the ref didn't see that part. That finish put a lousy spin on what was turning into a hell of a match that was given lots of time to develop.

[shoe]

Another solid tag. I thought the crowd was really crappy. I also thought the faces were in control too much of the match.

[PeteF3]

Yeah, we again got a nice solid match when I was secretly hoping for something a little more epic in scope. We never really got an extended beatdown on either Rich or Morton and while they're just fine working on top this is not a layout that quite plays to their strengths. Ron Simmons and Teddy Long make nuisances of themselves and the Horsemen lose on an upset countout. This is not exactly the ideal followup to that kickass promo video.

[Childs]

Solid match, as others have said. I like Tommy Rich, a lot, but he has yet to establish any kind of identity in his tags with Morton. I don't know if it's just the feeling that he's holding down Gibson's spot or what. But his superiority to Gibson (pretty undeniable overall) has not shown up in these matches.

[Kevin Ridge]

Teddy Long shows off his PWI Manager of the Year award backstage. Western Union is still around these days. I don’t seen any commercials for them anymore. Don’t know if it’s the audio but crowd seems subdued. Rich has not been able to replace Gibson yet. Teddy Long and Ron Simmons show up ring side. Horsemen end up getting counted out. Crap finish. So this feud continues I guess.

[soup23]

I didn't dig this a lot. Segments of it were really good like the headscissors punch and some of Arn's antics on the apron but overall the faces controlled way too much of the match and the match seemed to have a ton of restarts. Just when it was starting to develop into an interesting tag, Simmons and Teddy interfere and while the beatdown was pretty good, I was left disappointed.

[soup23]

I didn't dig this a lot. Segments of it were really good like the headscissors punch and some of Arn's antics on the apron but overall the faces controlled way too much of the match and the match seemed to have a ton of restarts. Just when it was starting to develop into an interesting tag, Simmons and Teddy interfere and while the beatdown was pretty good, I was left disappointed.

[ajtroma]

IIRC, the Chicago Pro show was matches recylced from a couple weeks prior that was seen on the other shows. Dont hold me to that. I do remember there being repeated matches from syndication on TBS and vice versa.

[PhilTLL]

IIRC, the Chicago Pro show was matches recylced from a couple weeks prior that was seen on the other shows. Dont hold me to that. I do remember there being repeated matches from syndication on TBS and vice versa.

It was just the standard Pro show with new voiceovers, UIC Pavilion hypes including occasional local promos, and a bit of local content like Schiavone and Brickhouse tooling around famous places or the Brickhouse Bonus. Pro did often have replays from the other shows, but sometimes they recycled from it for the other shows. They replayed the whole Arn/Terry series from Pro a month later on Main Event without even hinting as such.

 

This was a solid outing, nothing landmark but exactly the reason you watch a WCW TV show. The hot brawl would count as story advancement, rare for Pro, but of course the Horsemen aren't feuding with Doom anymore. (Well, as of the next WCW episode they are...sort of.) On a similar note, this episode of Pro also featured a match with Michael Wallstreet, who had been mentioned as out of the company at the Clash and on last week's WCW.

[garretta]

I'll be honest: I watched both instances of this match mostly to see what differences stood out on commentary. The match itself was a standard little TV tag, not a bad match certainly, but nothing worth remembering for long, especially considering the finish.

 

In general, I preferred the Pro version. Zbyszko was fabulous on commentary; you could tell he leaned toward the heels, but he wasn't afraid to call them out when they made a mistake, particularly Barry for not hooking the leg on pin attempts. He also puts over Ricky's fire and guts, which is rare for any WCW heel commentator to do. Of course, there's some self-promotion, because he's scheduled to wrestle on the next Chicago card, but not too much. He really sounded like he was into the match and knew exactly what to get over and how, which isn't always the case with guys as new to a promotion as Larry was to WCW at that time.

 

By contrast, Heyman was really goofy for most of the match on Power Hour. He and JR spend most of it going back and forth on JR's "upcoming" flight to Phoenix for WrestleWar, and Paul tells him to be sure to order the special meals because of how fat he is, which JR surprisingly doesn't yell at him for. In turn, JR publically pities Bob Caudle for having to put up with Paul on WCWSN that night. Paul doesn't buckle down to match analysis until almost the end of the bout, although what he does is very good, as usual.

 

JR's in sort of a strange mood as well; I expected WrestleWar hype and plenty of it, but it almost seems like he's trying not to call the match at times, especially since the finish is totally irrelevant to anything going on at the time. He makes sure to hype the next Omni card, and even tells us that he's going to the Bulls/Hawks game that same afternoon, which will also be at the Omni. He's a little more willing to play straight man for Heyman than usual, and gets off some good lines at his expense, including one about how the guy who lobbied for him as a color commentator has since been committed. His one real contribution on the wrestling side is a call for two referees in tag matches, which is hardly anything new.

 

Tony disappointed me. How he can't tell the difference between a wristlock and a hammerlock after all his experience is a disgrace, and it alerted me to what a bad play-by-play man he could be. He's great as a host for pay-per-views and can hype a card with the best of them, but his move-calling is spotty, and unlike Vince, I doubt that he's doing it for strategic reasons; he just has trouble caring at times about what the wrestlers are doing in the ring, and that's terrible. Heaven help us when he gets the number one chair after JR leaves for Vince.

 

Just as an example of how different commentaries can spin different stories with the same match, Pro shows an interview with Simmons and Long in the early seconds of the match which establishes their presence; Power Hour doesn't. This means that while Pro can explain Simmons' interference as part of their ongoing feud with the Horsemen, JR has to scramble for an explanation on Power Hour. He manages to reference a recent Omni match between Windham and Simmons (which Windham won by pinfall after Reed's interference on Simmons' behalf backfired), and somehow ties it all together by intimating that Long's got something he's folding over Simmons' head which is contributing to Doom's dissension. Of course, showing a match like this when you know perfectly well that there won't be any payoff of any kind isn't the smartest decision Dusty (or whoever else) ever made. Why did they wait three weeks and let the Horseman feud cool off?

 

By the way, Larry ended up teaming with Windham and Stan Hansen on the UIC Pavilion card that was hyped on Pro; they lost to Tom Zenk and the Steiners, and Larry (who was subbing for Sid Vicious) was pinned by Zenk. Arn was also a no-show that night; he was replaced by Terry Taylor, who pinned Bobby Eaton. In the other match that Tony mentioned, Sting and Luger beat Doom by DQ.

[drew wardlaw]

Rich and Morton have gotten better as a team since Halloween Havoc. Very solid tv tag match here, although with two great sellers like Rich and Morton I wish the structure was reversed. Larry is funny but overbearing on commentary, as usual. We get some classic Arn stuff on the apron and some good selling by him as well. The finish didn't bother me, I'm generally not bothered by nonsense finishes in tv matches so it was par for the course fprmme. Two wcw matches in a row that I was a bit let down by.

[dawho5]

Good tag match. Finish is still such an 80s finish. WCW seems plagued by that.

[Sean Reedy]

Schiavone and Larry Z! One of my favorite announce teams. There's an ad for the first house show I begged my dad to take me to, El Gigante vs. Ric Flair. I was sure Gigante was bringing it home. He said the UIC Pavillion was in a bad part of town. Finish has a little Memphis flavor as Ron Simmons shows up throwing haymakers at AA and it turns into a pier six with the ringside table and a chairshot to the head. The punches in this match! It was solid but not great as they went 20 without a ton of heat and kept it pretty deliberate. Lots of smart stuff and worth watching of course.