Jump to content
Pro Wrestling Only

[1991-04-22-WWF-MSG, NY] Roddy Piper vs Ted DiBiase


Loss

Recommended Posts

  • 2 months later...

God, Piper was ripped by his standards. This was a basic match that nonetheless built heat on the Piper/Virgil vs. Dibiase feud. Piper came out hot, throwing hands. But even on offense, he teased the weakness of his bad knee. Ted eventually capitalized, and he and Sherri hammed it, up playing monumental assholes. Piper wouldn't submit to the figure four, so the ref did it for him, which seemed an effective way to keep Piper tough in defeat. One complaint: Ted's chair shots looked like those of a 10-year-old girl. If you're going to be a dick heel, swing that fucker like you mean it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is not really a match that reflects well on DiBiase at all. The crowd was really hot to start, and the match started off really strong. There was an audible gasp when Piper injured his knee after crotching DiBiase on the ropes. But they lost the crowd because DiBiase was having an off night. All the tools were there to have a really good match. Piper is terrific, Sherri is working overtime to draw in the crowd, and 10 minutes is the perfect amount of time for the match they were trying to work. But DiBiase just doesn't rise to the occasion. Childs mentioned the weak chairshots, which were bad enough to actually detract from the match, and even at one point he posts the wrong knee on the post, which Heenan had to cover for on commentary. How does one make that mistake when Piper has his bad knee taped up? At first, I thought Sherri should shoulder part of the blame for doing too much, but I don't think that was the case. I think she was trying to save the match and get the crowd back. Too bad, as the first 1-2 minutes of this had me excited.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Piper was good here, but Teddy blew it. It was obvious the story would be Ted working the knee. It seemed like it took him forever to get there. The chair shots were pretty bad. Plus the finish the crowd shit on. Maybe if Dibiase showed aggression working the knee it would have worked. At least they allowed Piper to get the proper face reaction at the end.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

What the hell happened in the crowd here? I get the criticisms of DiBiase's work and the chairshots here, but there had to be more to the story than that. The crowd looked actively distracted by something without making any noise--I honestly wonder if a fan didn't have a heart attack or some sort of medical emergency. It was something non-match-related, I'm almost positive. The match is kind of a mess at times, with DiBiase being late to pick up on Piper trying to feed him his bad knee, throwing weak chairshots, and then ramming the wrong knee into the post. Piper's selling was top-notch, however. DiBiase busts out the old figure four for probably the first time in his WWF career and gets a UTC victory out of it. Piper gets his heat back afterward and strips Sherri, but that's about as decisively as you'll ever see Piper get beaten in the WWF, which was a treat to see.

 

I enjoyed this okay, actually. Like I said, I think there was some outside factor here that took the crowd out of it. It wasn't a primo DiBiase performance but MSG crowds have popped a lot more for a lot less in the past.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

Piper gets his kiss in with Sherri as usual. Bobby who is doing commentary ends up pushing Sherri into the camera when she took his chair. He looked pissed off. DiBiase wins by submission! Though they make it clear Piper didn’t submit but referee stopped match. Granted Piper had the leg “injury” going in but Ted could have done more to build to that finish. Sherri takes a couple bumps after and loses her skirt.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...

Ok I take back what I said about Ted in 1991 as he was a mess here. The chair shots rival Lance Storm for weakness. Piper and Sherri were both flaying around but ted seemed disinterested. this being the last match on the card seemed to really fizzle it out to.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Bobby who is doing commentary ends up pushing Sherri into the camera when she took his chair. He looked pissed off.

Don't know if this was intentional or not but it's funny how they almost made Bobby a face in MSG around this time. Really sad you guys didn't include the Haku/Barbarian vs. Fuji/Kato match from July, with Bobby acting as both manager and announcer.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 year later...

I'm wondering if Teddy might not have been mad at Piper for not letting him get a clean submission win here. The only thing I really noticed that was off was posting the wrong knee (which Heenan covered for brilliantly), but if he looked lethargic to some people, that might have been why.

 

Think about it: Rod was mostly an announcer these days, and he was only tangential to the main issue of this feud, which was Teddy/Virgil. He was acting like a manager in a sense, and managers are basically expected to be squashed when they wrestle. So what was he doing getting in more than a few token punches? He should have been doing nothing but let Teddy grind his bad knee to a pulp and yelling "I QUIT, I QUIT!" as loudly as he could the minute Teddy put the figure-four on him. I don't agree with that line of thinking, but I wouldn't be shocked if that's what Teddy thought. When he got full-on babyface Piper instead, he might have said "The hell with this" and decided to futz around as much as he could, letting Sherri do the bulk of the work. That would explain why she was absolutely everywhere, long past the point of reasonable disqualification, or at least being thrown out of ringside.

 

As a result, this match became more about Piper's guts than about Teddy's ruthlessness, which the fans bought wholesale. The biggest pop of the match came when it was announced that Piper had not submitted, and he came out on top in the end anyway, stripping Sherri of her skirt and sending her and Teddy fleeing back to the locker room. They could have worked that finish after almost any decision short of a clean DiBiase win, but it was still effective here it its own way.

 

Once again, Heenan was the announcing star here; it was he who kept after the injury, constantly reminding the viewers of how hurt Piper was and how one effective move from DiBiase could cripple him for life. He's proving to me that he could be a serious analyst when he wanted to be, which I didn't think was possible. Gino was okay, and you could tell that Neidhart had plenty to learn. If "The Anvil" character wasn't appropriate for a situation (and it mostly wasn't unless Piper was in control), he had very little to say. I sort of get why Vince tried him on commentary; he was outlandish, could be funny at times, and still had name value. But that didn't mean he knew how to announce a wrestling match. Savage would have been a much better choice for a third man here, although he most likely had it in his deal with Vince that he worked Superstars and SNME only.

 

Surprisingly, they didn't do a return match the next time the WWF came back to MSG; in fact, the next time Piper actually wrestled there in October, he lost to Flair by pinfall, his first ever pinfall loss at the Garden.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 years later...
  • 1 month later...
  • GSR changed the title to [1991-04-22-WWF-MSG, NY] Roddy Piper vs Ted DiBiase
  • 1 year later...

Weirdly, I’d never seen this match. Rare Piper loss and rare DiBiase win over a major star (i.e. of Piper’s stature) at a big show. DiBiase was getting a hell of a re-push in 1991 prior to Money Inc which I’ve talked about before.

 

However, as others have said in this thread he was bizarrely uninterested in this match. Sherri was doing everything she possibly could, Piper was hot and doing an excellent sell job. Hard to recall a Ted match where he’s this unengaged.

 

That said, he got to use his old finisher, the figure four in a WWF ring and synched it in pretty well too.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...