[1991-09-07-WCW-Saturday Night] Control Center

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Paul E. takes us back to Luger vs Simmons at The Omni at the end of August. Mr. Hughes interferes with a chair and Luger piledrives Simmons on the chair to win the match. Windham is out after the match to tell the referee what happened, but ends up jumped by Luger's entourage for his troubles. Windham also juices to get the angle over.

 

We also get a clip from the Clash where Missy Hyatt is interviewing Luger in the locker room. Luger quickly throws Simmons out, and Simmons uses a football stance to break the door open again and they have to be pulled apart.

 

This build is perfectly acceptable. In fact, it's the most focused main event program WCW has run all year.

[PeteF3]

Two decent angles to build up to the Halloween Havoc main event. Mr. Hughes uses a chair to help cost Simmons in the Omni. Barry Windham comes out to protest afterward, but gets laid out afterward. Then Ron Simmons gets ejected from Luger's locker room before three-point-stance-ing his way through the door. Quick brawl but it was a better piece of business than the press conference.

 

Paul E. is strangely neutral here, sometimes coming off as almost a typical babyface announcer when talking about the "depths" Luger would sink to to retain the title. It's like Bischoff wasn't available or something.

[Kevin Ridge]

Luger and Simmons is main event for Havoc with two out of three falls stipulation. I must have missed that one from previous contract signing. Clip from Omni of Luger piledriving Simmons on chair to win match. Missy is a heel again being charmed by Lex and wanting nothing to do with Simmons barging in on her interview.

[soup23]

This was a much better build to the title match than the last part of the clash. Simmons uses his football background to get what he wants and Windham bleeds for his buddy's benefit. Good breakdown making the Havoc match sound like a big deal instead of a thrown together match.

[garretta]

I actually think Pete's on to something; they've used Heyman for quite a few of these segments over the last while, and he's surprisingly good at them, but they really should be done by the regular announcers; why aren't they available more often? The guy who should be doing them more often than not is Solie, but maybe he's on summer vacation.

 

We finally get to see some Omni footage, and Luger finally seems believable in the heel role. You can tell that Dusty's going for a replay of the Horsemen to some extent, but even though I don't mind Race getting into an occasional fight, he should be the last one in the ring or otherwise on the scene. I'm not sure who they could have gotten to go along with Hughes as Luger's goon squad, but there had to be a better option than Harley on anything more than an occasional basis. The piledriver on the chair and Barry's protest afterward is a perfectly good way to start the build to Havoc, but it almost seems like they're building a possible Simmons-Windham/Luger-partner tag than a World title main event, which is a error in focus. Windham needs to take a back seat until at least after Havoc.

 

I don't know quite what to make of Missy; I thought she and Simmons were pals of a sort because they were both living in Tallahassee at the time, but I guess Lex was just too much of a hunk for her to pass up. You'd think the fact that her issue with Heyman is still not settled would keep her a face, but I don't think Dusty knows how to book women as anything but Jezebels.

 

The pull-apart would have worked better if the faces weren't practically hanging on Ron's back before he ever crashed through Luger's door; in fact, I'd have liked to see him be so determined to get at Luger that he pounds someone like Pillman or another midcard face into a bloody heap. That would have just confused the whole face/heel dynamic even further, though, and if I remember right, Luger still got his fair share of cheers when he came down the aisle for the press conference later that night. Heel Luger versus face Simmons is fresh; face Luger versus what would still be essentially one-half of Doom without Teddy and Reed wouldn't even be a good Clash main event, let alone one for Havoc.

[ajtroma]

Watch Paul E. here and you can see Joey Styles channeling this on every stand-up he ever did in Ron Buffone's basement.