[1991-05-19-WCW-Superbrawl I] Sting & Lex Luger vs Rick & Scott Steiner

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

The pre-match video is INCREDIBLE, one of the best in wrestling history. Why couldn't WCW do these more often?

 

I do have to admit that while I'm not a huge fan of this match, it was a major dream match at the time, with the only guys in the company aside from Flair who were legitimate stars. And re-watching it, I get the appeal a lot more. While a lot of the spots looked rough, to say the least, they gave the people the match they wanted to see. This type of power spotfest isn't really Luger's forte, even though he does work hard. The other three are great in this setting. The finish really detracted from this.

 

It's hard to criticize wrestlers trying this hard, but they were trying so many new spots for the first time that they weren't executed very well.

 

The Sting/Nikita brawl after the match was excellent.

[shoe]

This had that big dream match vibe.Just worked as a total sprint with big moves. It seemed like all 4 guys were going for the big touchdown. That dive by Sting was awesome. Their was some clunky spots, but I thought the announce team covered it well. Not the classic it was made out to be back in 91, but still a good match that was a lot of fun to watch.To think in 96 on the Prime show they ran this match up a lot.

[PeteF3]

Different kind of pre-match video, that sort of comes off as a memorial tribute.

 

This was okay, but after a pretty awesome opening I had hopes that this was a "so overrated it was underrated" found-then-lost classic. The best part was the Lex vs. Rick opening, with Rick in an unusual position of being a pinball bumper stooging for Lex's power spots. That climaxed with Sting's awesome dive to the floor. But the match didn't reach those heights afterward, as this was very much a my turn/your turn-fest but with spots not as well-done as in the Tokyo Dome match. I get the dream match aspect of this and most dream matches probably *should* be booked as spotfests, it's just that this one wasn't that special.

 

One thing that was noticeable was that as soon as the referee got bumped, you saw fans immediately start to stand up and look to the aisleway, which probably isn't something you want to condition your fans to do to that degree--sadly this would only become a worse problem in the years to come. The finish is what it is, and probably an improvement over a standard DCOR or other non-finish. Nikita transitions nicely into a new feud.

[Childs]

I 've never been a fan of this match and saw it the same way as Pete on this viewing. The opening minutes paid off the dream match billing, but the whole thing petered out from there on the way to an unsatisfying finish. I get why people liked it at the time. That doesn't make it good.

[Superstar Sleeze]

I have been meaning to watch this match ever since this match took a hit in popularity. When I first watched it in like 2006ish, I remember liking it a good deal and specifically remember thinking the Sting dive was wicked cool and Luger ruled in this match. Fast forward to 2013, shocker of all shockers, Rick Steiner is the best wrestler of the four by a country mile and Scott Steiner is the worst of the four by equally large country mile.

 

The bump Rick took off the Luger shoulderblock was awesome. It is amazing that without reading these comments I felt the same way about the beginning of the match. I was all like, "Jeez who pissed in everyone's corn flakes". The answer was Scott Steiner. I am a pretty big Scotty Steiner mark (one of my guilty pleasures in wrestling), but he was a no-selling, premature celebrating loon out there. The Russian Legsweep spot with Luger was one of the weirdest I have ever seen and almost on cue here comes Ricky with a pretty decent flying bulldog on Luger. I will say Luger still looks pretty good here before the Flair debacle. Finally outside of the tombstone reversal spot (which always rules) after the bulldog it seemed like they were filling time until Nikita came out. The finish made sense as it was a face vs face matchup and it set up the "big" Sting/Koloff for the next PPV.

 

This is still a pretty good match with some shining spots it is just disjointed due to Scotty Steiner's worse tendencies shining through. Luger looked like he was ready to be World Champ and it is so sad what ended up happening. Sting looked like his overpepped, chipper self. Rick Steiner gave one of his best performances in my eyes. There is enough in this match for them to stay clearly on the right side of good.

 

So I know Rick Steiner/Lex Luger had a title match later in the year, this match makes me want to see it, but the more rational part of me says that match will suck out loud. Only one way to find out...

[Kevin Ridge]

I do appreciate them putting four big stars who are good guys in a tag match against either other at this time. There was excitement early seeing each guy pair off with each other and the crowd is into it. Luger fit in better than I thought but that side Russian neckbreaker looked strange as it seemed like Lex did the move to himself. Match had promising start but didn’t finish as strong as would like. Not having a clean finish was to be expected.

[soup23]

This match perplexes me every time I watch. I am not a fan of execution over structure but for a spotfest all action type match, they could have had some crisper work here. The beginning is also so good that the action after the dive feels really disjointed and disappointing. Sting and Rick are fabulous. Lex is good. Scott is a another story and is a complete trainwreck dragging this match down. Finish was fine as a cop out way. Crowd was also more dead than I remembered.

[Zenjo]

Amazing pre-match video. Classical or dance is so much better for these than the dreaded wrestling-nu metal fusion they'd have by the end of the decade.

 

This was 11m of fast paced, high impact action. The execution wasn't always there but it was certainly exciting. No beatdown to hot tag here baby. The ending was memorable as Koloff interfered and Sting saved Luger. Fun match.

[Rock_Of_Jericho]

Love this match. Always have, always will...

[flyonthewall2983]

Amazing pre-match video. Classical or dance is so much better for these than the dreaded wrestling-nu metal fusion they'd have by the end of the decade.

And exists to this day sadly.

[flyonthewall2983]

The piece of music is called "Thinking and Feeling" by Larry Owens. It's from a 1984 album called Powerpulse, I'm assuming it was made for aerobics classes back when they were starting to get popular.

[BruiserBrody]

This was near equivalent to Hogan/Warrior to 9 year old me.

 

This match felt like 10 mins of a 25 min match. It had its moments but I was under welmed rewatching it last night.

[Timbo Slice]

Disjointed in a lot of points, but there are definitely some high points, and if they figured out a better bridge after the initial salvo to the finish, this would have been the best tag sprint ever. As it is, the sum of the parts just doesn't add up. Not a great match, but a lot of fun in parts. Scott especially came off looking like a star. He had a lot of pop in everything he did in the match and when he was in there, he added a lot.

[PhilTLL]

This match is far from perfect, especially compared to a lot of the "dream" Steiner matches (i.e. vs Harts), but I always get a big kick out of watching it, which is all you can really ask. Seeing it in the context of the whole PPV really puts home how hungry the crowd was for this, as almost everything beforehand was either rushed, weird, or just plain awful. They don't really even regain the energy in the next match until Eaton wins.

[garretta]

This felt more like an exhibition than anything else. A fiercely contested exhibition to be sure, but an exhibition nonetheless. This lasted just long enough for all four individual combinations to get in the ring with each other (and as it was, we got very little of Luger/Scotty), and then it was time for Nikita, whom I suspect was really the point of this whole thing to start with, as in giving Sting an issue to be mad about (losing the tag titles due to Nikita's interference) and getting Luger off of Nikita's case and on to yet another World title challenge. The Steiners were never really in danger of losing, and that was fine with all concerned; simply having all four men in the ring at one time was enough. The real fire was in Sting and Nikita's postmatch brawl, which went outside of the Bayfront Center.

 

You van tell that they don't think much of Flair/Fujinami by Dusty's opening remarks: "If ever there was such a thing as a man event, this is it". Substitute the words "dream match" and he would have had it right. My question for him is, if you didn't feel that Fujinami was worthy of a shot at Flair, why the hell did you give him one? And while we're at it, what was the deal with the biggest matches on this pay-per-view getting almost no hype? Flair/Fujinami got a little, but this match got almost none, Eaton/Arn got almost none, and so on. The only match to get a decent amount of hype (at least according to what made the set) was Gigante/Sid, which ended up being a total disaster in every way possible.

 

I wonder if Dusty even wanted a May pay-per-view considering that it was as close as you can get to an under-the-radar card in the pay-per-view era. In fact, didn't SuperBrawl take WrestleWar's place in February starting in '92, thus leaving May dark pay-per-view wise? If I recall correctly, SuperBrawl 2 (featuring the WCW pay-per-view debut of Jesse Ventura) was on 2/29/92.

[PhilTLL]

 

I wonder if Dusty even wanted a May pay-per-view considering that it was as close as you can get to an under-the-radar card in the pay-per-view era. In fact, didn't SuperBrawl take WrestleWar's place in February starting in '92, thus leaving May dark pay-per-view wise? If I recall correctly, SuperBrawl 2 (featuring the WCW pay-per-view debut of Jesse Ventura) was on 2/29/92.

 

 

They just swapped. WrestleWar was in May 1992, then by 1993 they started Slamboree. The underwhelming card was especially sad considering they promoted this endlessly as "the biggest PPV in WCW history" with the SuperBrawl Sunday tagline.

[JKWebb]

I really enjoy the back and forth between Rick and Lex when this starts off, and Luger nailed Steiner with a MONSTER lariat. Sting immediately picked things up when he hit that cross body to the outside on Rick, and crowd is came out of their chairs. Rick no sold when he came back in for pop and tagged Scott in for some bomb throwing. Scott was super hyped, and Dusty did a good job selling how "electric" it felt. Sure, there are some minor mistakes and lot's of no-selling, but man they gave the crowd what they wanted. It's no wonder, at the time, they stole the show on that night. These four huge faces went fast and loud, and it accomplished what they set out for, "electricity." The finish falls pretty flat for me, but I guess one team wasn't going to job clean to the other. I look back on this match and moment (including Sting and Nikita) fondly. This holds up as a really fun sprint, but not a MOTYC (as I remember PWI had this listed as the MOTY in their magazine as a kid). Final grade = fun.

[Beast]

I still really like this match, but I now agree with some of the criticisms in this thread.

 

Until Scott goes onto the announcers' desk, I think this is pretty much perfect. Rick vs Luger is an awesome opening. They feel each other out and it has a friendly, but competitive exhibition feel. There's a great stretch of Luger matching Rick's Steinerline with an even more impressive one that flips him inside out. Then Sting hits his great tracking dive as well as doing Rick's own corner slam. Sting and Luger are starting to get carried away and the hits are getting harder so when Scott finally gets in, he goes nuts and hits the double underhook powerbomb and tilt-a-whirl backbreaker.

 

But then it sort of devolves into a random mishmash of big moves. The Luger/Scott torture rack/legsweep disaster is a confusing botch, but Rick's blind tag bulldog is awesome. The match is always entertaining, but the story disappears.

 

Still a great match that is probably the best these four could have done at the time. And it lived up to the dream match moniker.

[dawho5]

Fun match that did pick up the crowd from earlier in the show. I will agree that Scott absolutely destroys any chance this is remembered as a great match and that Ricky is all kinds of incredible in it.

[Superstar Sleeze]

WCW World Tag Team Champions Steiners vs Sting & Lex Luger - WCW SuperBrawl I

I am really glad I went back and re-watched this match as this is a barrel of fun. Just four big muthafuckas throwing each other around. Is it a spotfest? Hell fucking yeah! The best kind, just raw bone power! Luger vs Rick at the beginning reminds me why I always wanted to watch their Clash match at the end of '91. So much power and struggle. The way Rick bounces off Luger is crazy. The German suplex by Rick is HUGE! I love the mirror clotheslines! This is such a cool way to do babyface vs babyface. It feels like the whole match is just babyface shine. STING'S SPLASH! I forgot how awesome that was. Sting wrestles king-size in this match. Scotty Steiner is fucking hyped bro! I loved mirror spots of the blind tag Steiner Bulldog and blind tag Sting missile dropkick. I was marking out for that. Luger tackling Rick at the end was crazy. Sting with the Stinger Splash only for Nikita to run interference was lame, but also good booking as no way in hell do you want a clean finish in a face vs face tag. I am surprised we even got a pin. DQ seemed more likely. Just a badass, king sized power spotfest that does not overstay its welcome and is super fun. ****

[Tenese Sarwieh]

An awesome sprint of a baby face vs baby face bomb fest that is perfectly compact. Good offense from both teams and a crazy hot crowd makes it even better. 
 

[cactus]

This is the spotfest that people claim that the Steiners match at the WCW/NJPW Dome show is. We great some great spots in this rare faces vs faces tag match. Luger was the weak link. He looked lost out there and even fumbled a few spots. The Steiners continue to be the highlight of my WCW viewing. Fun stuff that doesn't outwear it's welcome. 

★★★½