[1991-08-26-WWF-Summerslam] Big Bossman vs The Mountie

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Decent match, but the post-match is the reason this is here, as The Mountie goes to jail! The match ends here, but the fun is not over. Stay tuned.

[Loss]

The Mountie screaming the whole time he's being escorted to jail is great! YOU CAN'T DO THIS TO ME! I'M THE MOUNTIE!

[flyonthewall2983]

Was this kind of match ever done before?

[Loss]

I hope not. Going to jail simply for losing a match seems a bit extreme.

[PeteF3]

A much better match than you'd expect, with some surprisingly vicious punching and the Mountie getting the rare courtesy of kicking out of the babyface's finisher.

[Kevin Ridge]

All about the post match angle. They play up the loser is going to jail for the night. Mountie actually kicks out of the Big Boss Slam. Great victory for Boss Man in the end.

[soup23]

Match is decent but they didn't have tremendous chemistry in the ring together and there was some near botches mixed in. Post match angle is where this really comes into play.

[garretta]

This one was surprisingly stiff; Jacques really held his own in the brawling department with Bossman, which surprised me. But there was way too much waiting for Jimmy to get his stuff in, which slowed things to a crawl. Also, kicking out from the Bossman Slam didn't mean anything, as Bossman just repeated it from a different position to score the three count. That kind of leads me to wonder if Jacques was really supposed to kick out from the first one.

 

I didn't like the commentary here; there were way too many bad jail jokes from Piper and Heenan for my tastes, and far too many allusions to Heenan possibly being a jailbird himself, which even Gino got in on. I don't suppose we should have expected better from what was supposed to be a comedy match at heart, but it just didn't sound right to me somehow. Bonus points to Heenan for at least trying to get over the horrors of being thrown in jail.

 

The character stiff from Jacques was tremendous before, during, and after, especially the prematch promo where he tries to tell the NYPD cops just how to handle Bossman. I loved the scenes of him being thrown in the paddy wagon and dragged into the jail by what looked to be authentic New York City cops. I'm kind of surprised this was done so realistically, because I can't believe that the actual cops and an actual jail, or even a police station holding cell, were used for a stunt like this. These guys simply had to be McMahon-hired actors using a set of some sort, for public safety reasons if nothing else. What if there had been an actual emergency need for cops that night in New York and a bunch of them were busy trying to drag a wrestler off to jail just because he lost a match? The outrage would have made the national news, guaranteed.

 

It sure seems that the Mountie character wasn't meant to go on beyond this match originally. They do everything but wrote him off the planet in the postmatch interview with Bossman, not to mention the commentary right after the bout itself. If my hypothesis is true, I wonder what changed Vince's mind. Could they have been thinking about a Canada vs. Canada feud with Bret for the IC belt already?

[PeteF3]

No way would they have given Mountie that much primo time and effort just to write him out. Guys who were written out simply disappeared from the WWF. They wanted "jailbird" chants thrown his way--something that would lead to his next program.

[dawho5]

I thought Jacques did a really good job making himself into any kind of a threat given the way he has been handled so far. He really killed it in the pre-match interview, all but calling the New York cops bumbling idiots more than once. He also did a great job of fighting his post-match fate as much as you would expect him to. Bossman had to be a stiff bastard who got rid of the crooked Mountie and pulled that off fine. I'll agree there wasn't a ton of chemistry, but the fans seemed like they were behind Bossman and that's enough to make it work.