[1991-04-06-WCW-Worldwide] Ric Flair & Barry Windham vs Ricky Morton & Tommy Rich

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

The Horsemen can't even get a win over two midcarders at this point, and El Gigante is saved from a heel beatdown by Big Josh. WCW's sense of hierarchy was a complete and total mess at this point. That said, anytime you want WCW fans to react to something, even as late as 1991, put Ric Flair and Ricky Morton in the ring together. Rich is usually a total passenger when he teams with Morton, but this was a really good match with the other three working really hard, and Rich doing a little more than he normally does. Everyone seems to be working more stiff than normal. Check out Flair and Morton laying into each other. The crowd was a little dead at the beginning, and the stiff shots seemed to turn on the heat, which was interesting to watch. Booking problems aside, very much worth checking out.

[shoe]

A fun match. Those Flair chops were so stiff. Morton look energized working with one of his best opponents. The booking was pretty fucked and hurt a good match.

[Childs]

WCW always found a way to deliver good TV matches, even when the big picture of the promotion was kind of a mess. Flair-Morton gave us the goods as always, and Windham was back to being one of the best workers in the world in '91 after a largely undistinguished '90. I have no idea what I was supposed to take away from the ending brawl.

[PeteF3]

I admit--I genuinely love the converted-PAL film effect we get with these UK classic shows. This was fun up until the goofy overbooked Dustyriffic ending. Somehow El Gigante is legally tagged into the match and actually executes a passable, heated sequence with Flair and Windham until Sid hits the ring. Crowd was chanting "WE WANT STING" as soon as Morton was isolated, so naturally this means that Big Josh makes the save.

[Kevin Ridge]

Flair puts over Windham as one of the best technicians. Contrast in clothing styles with Flair in suit and Windham in leather jacket and wearing glasses.

 

Flair throws Morton outside on the wrong side of the ring as was done same area where Windham was illegally hitting Rich. Nick Patrick had to completely ignore it. Rich gets taken out leaving Morton by himself. El Gigante wants to tag instead! I couldn’t tell if Gigante was no selling Windham’s punches or forgetting to sell them.

[soup23]

Work in this was really good and besides Arn/Tully and maybe the Andersons, Flair/Barry is probably my favorite Horseman team. They seem to compliment each other really well. Finish was stupid and El Gigante has reached his shelf life in my eyes.

[ajtroma]

I have always hated the overly sterile feeling these syndicated shows had. WWF was horrible about that as well. It was the flavor of the day though. That and those motherfucking hideous chroma key backgrounds.

[garretta]

I liked this better than most of you did. The switch from Rich to Gigante was about as well-executed as possible under the circumstances; the problem was, it never developed into anything because Sid ran in almost right away. Maybe World Wide, where a match like this only got ten minutes, wasn't the right place to run this type of angle. Besides, if JYD is a third of the six-man champions with Morton and Rich, wouldn't he have been the logical choice to replace Rich? Was he even still with the company by now? If I remember correctly, Borne got his third of the six-man belts around this time.

 

Both Morton and Rich had tremendous sequences with Flair, and if I didn't know what was going to go down over the next couple of months, I would have sworn that they were building to at least a TV singles match between Flair and one or both of these guys. It's almost unfair to call Barry a passenger here, but he clearly had the least to do, though he did it well.

 

One major thing I noticed: Tony and Gordon totally ignored the "We Want Sting" chants from the crowd. That tells me that this match was taped back when Sting and Flair still had an issue, most likely before WarGames. Now that Flair's moved on to Gigante and Fujinami, that's been disposed of and is to be ignored even when it's in plain sight, so to speak. I got a howl out of Tony trying to somehow make a Morton chant out of it.

 

Were Tony and Gordon the main World Wide announcers at this point here in the States, or was their commentary especially for the fans in the UK? If they didn't do the show for American syndication, who did?

 

If it had been allowed to develop and stand completely on its own, this could have been a first-rate TV match. As it is, it's still very good, but not quite great.

[JKWebb]

Morton was fired up when this started! He was incredible. Loved his punches vs Flair's chops. It's really always a treat when you get to see Morton and Flair work with each other. Yeah, if it had been allowed to develop it could have been great. I agree, funny how the "we want Sting" chant was ignored. Could have been great, but still was really fun.

[dawho5]

Morton and Flair always deliver when paired off. Barry is really coming on strong of late. As mentioned above, the booking kills this, but fun while it lasts.