[1991-04-27-WWF-Saturday Night's Main Event] Sgt. Slaughter vs Ultimate Warrior

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

The bloom is clearly off the rose with Warrior. He's still over, but he's over like Sting was over - a guy people like having around, but no threat to the hierarchy of the promotion. This is mostly angle, but it's not terrible. Paul Bearer pushes a casket to the ringside area after a few minutes, which serves as a distraction point an allows Slaughter a chance to regain momentum. Eventually, Uncle Paul lifts the casket lid, and the Undertaker is in there. Warrior is quite possibly the most easily distracted babyface in history, and that's saying something. Adnan and Mustafa hit the ring along with Undertaker to do a number on Warrior, and Hogan makes the save. He hits Undertaker with the belt, and Undertaker no-sells it, which is a nice tease for Hogan/Undertaker later in the year. Warrior finally makes a comeback on Undertaker. Sometimes, I watch Undertaker just stand there and do nothing in this gimmick, rarely even taking bumps, and wonder how exactly he had so many injuries over the years. I understand later in his career when he started working a more physical style, but his early style doesn't seem like it would result in any injuries.

[shoe]

I feel bad for Slaughter here because he tried so hard to have a good match with Warrior. I think for the most part he did. He bumped really hard for him. He might not have the variety of bumps he once had, he still had enough to make this interesting.

[PeteF3]

Warrior with a decent interview. Col. Mustafa is now in Slaughter's entourage. Hot start with more crazy bumping from Sarge, who incidentally appears to be in the best shape of his post-'84 career. Unfortunately he's not nearly as interesting when he's in control despite the focus on the back. This isn't a great match but I did get into the post-match quite a bit, with Undertaker joining with the Triangle of Terror for a 4-on-1 before Hogan makes the save. UT no-sells a belt shot and that's the extent of their interaction--good way to tease something for the future without giving anything else away. Warrior manages to come back against UT after the Triangle has run off, but can't hurt him with clotheslines and just sort of knocks him off balance with the flying shoulder tackle. This is about as hard as Undertaker has been pushed to this point, or indeed any WWF heel since Andre. Hogan and Warrior both took their best shots at him and couldn't hurt him, and both babyfaces expressed fear and confusion. It's really, really well done, but you also understand why fans started cheering for Undertaker, in fact already had at this point.

[Kevin Ridge]

Warrior has had to learn to live in this normal universe of ours. Poor guy. Col. Mustafa has joined up with Slaughter. Sarge bumps early. Paul Bearer arrives ringside with a casket. Undertaker pops up from casket and we get a stare down. Warrior shows some fear. Heels beat on Warrior until Hogan shows up. Belt shot by Hogan has no effect on Undertaker. Warrior takes shots at Undertaker too. Taker looked strong with being able to take blows from both Hogan and Warrior.

[soup23]

I thought this was good fun and an interesting point in time for WWF. Warrior is on his way down from the heights of 1989-1990, Slaughter has added Col. Mustafa which seemed to dilute his whole faction, and Taker is already being pushed really strong. I liked the back work and bumping on Slaughter. I also liked how Savage cheered for Hogan and Warrior to go in the casket. Im surprised they didn't have a tag match at Summerslam with these four. Even though Summerslam 1991 is a good show, some of the choices leading in are perplexing.

[garretta]

This was a nice basic little brawl until Percy came down with the casket. After that, it was just a matter of when Taker would appear. That's kind of a shame, as there was definitely still an issue to be settled between Warrior and Sarge, who really went all out with his bumps here. He got little on offense except for the long bearhug, but he still managed to make the match look competitive, which goes to show how smart a worker he still was at this time.

 

Savage was great on commentary; even though everyone knew that he hated Warrior for ending his career, he still managed to put Warrior over as a tough guy whom he might have taught a lesson or two about how to survive in the WWF. I liked his glee when he realized that both Warrior and Hogan could get stuffed in Taker's casket at the same time, and that was his only true heel moment. Vince reminded the world how Savage impacted the Warrior/Sarge match at the Rumble in a nice nod to history.

 

Even though it got the job done, the postmatch still felt a bit rushed. I don't know how it could have been made longer, but it really wasn't sold as a major earthshaking event, at least not to me. There was a sense of "oh well, on to the next match" in the immediate aftermath, whereas previous major SNME angles (Savage/Honky, Megapowers Explosion) dominated the whole rest of the show, whether the remaining matches had anything to do with them or not. This one was sold in the moment, but I doubt we'll hear much talk about it in the Bret/Teddy match, which comes up later.

 

I agree with Soup that Taker should have teamed with Sarge at SummerSlam; it would have been a much better bout. I was thinking that they added Sheik to the match specifically to take the pin, but it turned out that Hogan pinned Sarge, which he could have done just as easily with Taker as Sarge's partner. I think Vince wanted to set up Sarge's face turn, and he could only do that if Sarge took a loss with Adnan and Sheik as his partners, which would lead to their breakup. They didn't need Taker to feud with Sarge in any way shape or form; The Dead Man was headed straight for Hogan.

[dawho5]

Taker looks big here. Good way to build up a monster.

[cactus]

This was a perfectly acceptable brawl. Things being kept short helped matters. It's not until Paul Bearer wheels out a casket covered with the Warrior logo. The Undertaker, along with Slaughter and his cronies beat on Warrior until Hogan makes the save. Undertaker no-selling Hogan's belt shot was a cool moment and lays the groundwork for a feud later in the year. This could of been a lot worse, considering the talent involved.

★★