[1991-09-14-WCW-Saturday Night] Sting vs Steve Austin / Sting, Cactus Jack and Abdullah the Butcher

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Highlights from the one-night tournament for the vacant U.S. title at The Omni. Sting vs Austin was the final. Stupid finish, as Lady Blossom gets on the apron to congratulate Austin after he hits the Stun Gun and Austin starts celebrating with her. It's not really believable that the heels are that dumb, but it's all to set up the recent Maria spot from ROH with Sting and Lady Blossom. Sting takes the match and the title.

 

This is followed by a recap of all the gift box angles so far. Sting reminds me of Cena in his promo. Cactus with an even better promo than before.

[PeteF3]

How hilarious would it have been if Austin had won the tournament, thus necessitating yet another title vacancy? That would be a clean sweep for WCW titles vacated in the span of one year. At least they set up Lady Blossom and Austin's stupidity by having them hug earlier in the match. Sting comes back with the early-'90s WCW trademark, the tombstone reversal, and that apron spot with the valet is just as well-executed here as it was with Maria and Shelton Benjamin.

 

Recap of the various box angles, and naturally they make sure to edit out Cactus' big elbow. And for some reason they had Ross dub new, less effective commentary over the Abdullah debut. Sting gives punny names to the various boxes he's received and even while doing so, completely misses the significance of the last box with the woman in it. Cactus says that Sting can't play mind games with him, because he makes the rules. Cactus Jack: Calvinball pioneer. He takes credit for ending the career of Z-Man. Oh, if only.

[Kevin Ridge]

Yep, the Austin/Blossom hug after Austin hitting his finisher was frustrating to watch. I hate that type of stuff in title matches. Austin gets done in by his stupidity by getting pinned by Sting.

 

We get a recap of the gift boxes and the people who pop out of them. I wonder if Sting has some type of trauma of Christmas time when he receives presents wrapped up.

[soup23]

Looked like a fun card in the Omni and Sting wins the US championship. Austin does look like an idiot at the finish.

 

Promo work again has been good. Im more interested in all the US promotions currently than a month ago for each.

[garretta]

Sting's promo was good, although I thought he got a little too cutesy with the names, especially for the woman. Foley's not quite fully formed yet on the mic, but you can definitely see signs of future brilliance. One of the things that's helping him is that even though he's still going by the name Cactus Jack, he's dropped all the cowboy stuff from his gimmick, including his Western drawl, and is talking as himself. That's giving him added confidence and allowing him to focus on what he's saying, which is why he's saying it better than ever. I can't wait to see these two actually hook up in the ring.

 

I agree that the finish of Sting-Austin was about a hundred times stupider than it needed to be, but what's worse is that Sting moved right on to Foley/Abby without even giving Austin a rematch. It just shows that Austin could have been almost anyone on the roster, and that in the eyes of Dusty, he's not ready to be the supposed second-best wrestler in the company. That's too bad, because I think we could have gotten more out of a Foley/Austin alliance than we probably will out of Foley/Abby. The matches would have been better for sure, and maybe we could have had Jeannie as the "benefactor", which would have been a nice surprise.

 

By the way, if I had to guess who the "benefactor" was going to be solely off of what we've seen so far, my choice would be Kevin Sullivan. I don't think he ends up being a part of this, though, unless my admittedly limited memory for this angle is failing me.

[dawho5]

I liked Foley's shorter promo better. And Sting's really. The finish to Austin/Sting was pretty dreadful and I'm pretty sure we could have missed seeing it. Paul E. has gotten a lot better in the last month or 2.