[1991-11-23-WCW-Worldwide] Steve Austin & Arn Anderson vs Bobby Eaton & Dustin Rhodes

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Tony Schiavone calls this in the past tense, speaking with the knowledge that the Bobby Eaton turn and joining of the Dangerous Alliance already happened. This is a repeat of Barry Windham's turn on Lex Luger, almost move for move. But this had no heat at all and no one in the crowd seems to care, which is very weird. WCW dug such a huge hole for themselves that it was going to take them a while to get out of it. But they are moving in a good direction now.

[Kevin Ridge]

Tony is talking about how Eaton has already joined the Dangerous Alliance. He explains how Dustin is doing most of work in match and Eaton tags in briefly before making quick tag out. Eaton hits a couple punches on Austin but things still don’t look right. Bobby finally turns on Dustin to little reaction from crowd.

[PeteF3]

Bobby has already been unveiled as a member of the Dangerous Alliance on another program, forcing Schiavone to call this after the fact and inform us of what's going to happen. It appears that the Alliance is just Eaton, Rude, and Madusa at this point. They tell an effective enough story here and the work is all good, but there's no heat--I'm guessing this was taped before any TV viewer in attendance was compelled to care about this as anything other than a random syndie tag. Eaton does the same indignant tag-and-then-drag-partner-over-the-top-rope turn that Windham did on Luger three and a half years earlier, and is back where he truly belongs.

[Superstar Sleeze]

Dustin Rhodes & Bobby Eaton vs Arn Anderson & Steve Austin - WCW Worldwide 11/23/91

 

Again WCW impresses by pulling off a match that is the WWF's bread and butter using a match as a backdrop for an angle. Dustin really stood out in this match as really strong performer. Calls of nepotism be damned, he earned his position and this is just further proof. Just little things like coming in hot and chest bumping Arn just reminds the audience "Yeah he fucking hates this dude because he crushed Windham's hand". The beginning of the match he just stays the course and keeps wriggling free from all the cheating/head games tactics and going back to arm, but Eaton wont stay in the ring for more than 10 seconds so it is effectively a handicap match as Tony points out. Bobby had already been unveiled as the second member of the Dangerous Alliance on TV thus Tony focused on Bobby's odd behavior. Dustin did such a fantastic job selling fatigue. He was not hitting things at crisply and that leads to him getting hotshotted. Anderson and Austin are just great old school heels always taking shortcuts before hitting their moves. Bobby is great at distracting the ref and missing tags, Bobby actually does fire off some punches when he is tagged and that can be explained away as AA and Austin are not yet in the Dangerous Alliance. The Enforcer rammed Dustin's arm into the post thus he missed a tag so Beautiful Bobby gets pissed and gives him a shoulderbreaker costing them the match. It was a tight, efficient match that got everyone over in their role and moved Eaton into the burgeoning Dangerous Alliance. Even though I dug it, the crowd was dead, but on paper it does like a lethal lottery style tag match, but does a great job laying the foundation.

[soup23]

I thought this was really good as a tease to why Bobby turned to the Dangerous Alliance but man was the crowd brutal. Bobby only came in for short bursts then finally had enough and gives Dustin a shoulderbreaker to allow Austin to get the pin. I also enjoy the intensity between Dustin/Arn as their staredown at the beginning was really good.

[garretta]

First, this match was taped on 11/5, which was two weeks before the Enforcers lost the titles. That would help to explain the crowd; they probably spent half the match wondering where the hell Larry was and why this wasn't a title match.

 

As for the match itself, Dustin looked superb here fighting two men, while Austin and Arn were decent, considering that they'd never teamed before. This has to be Jeannie's last televised appearance ever, as Steve was introduced as a member of the DA that night at 6:05.

 

The turn wasn't badly executed, and I'll bet Arn remembered it move for move, since Barry did it to Luger while wrestling the Busters. (Note: I call Tully and Arn the Brain Busters when I talk about them as a team even in the Crockett years because I like the name and to avoid confusion with the Horsemen unit as a whole.) Bobby didn't put nearly as much effort into it as Barry did, but the circumstances were different; that was a World tag team title match, and Barry cost himself and Lex the belts, while this match was a syndie midcard tag that would end up being forgotten except for the turn itself.

 

But the real problem was with the WCW production staff. If you know ahead of time that there's going to be a turn, doesn't it make sense to air the turn before it's announced on another one of your shows? Tony doesn't even try to show disgust or anger with Bobby, even after the fact, and he's not really invested in calling the action because the match itself doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, so we end up with a whole bunch of blah. Worse yet, there are no shots of Bobby walking back to the locker room, so the turn doesn't really sink in for those few who might not have known about it.

 

If they had to show the match this way, they should have had Heyman come in and do gloating commentary about what an idiot Dustin was and how he's the second victim of the DA behind his buddy Sting. He could have also put Arn and Austin over as DA members, since they would be announced as such on the same weekend that Bobby was. It's not exactly a golden opportunity lost, but it's something that could have been used to the DA's advantage.

 

The sad part is, there have been many instances over these first two Yearbooks of WCW matches being aired too long after something important has gone down which involve one of the people wrestling, thus forcing the announcers into some rather embarrassing spots and requiring them to explain things that are suddenly more complicated than they have to be. It only gets worse as time goes on, from what I've heard, and that's one reason why WCW wasn't able to overtake the WWF until the Monday Night Wars era, when both Raw and Nitro were live more often than not.

[Loss]

This is something I have only learned in the past few years, but at the time, WCW treated each syndicated show like its own territory, which seems like a really dumb practice on paper. So the non-cable angle was Eaton turning, but the cable TV angle was just Bobby Eaton telling Sting at the Clash that he had plenty of time to get back to the building. The non-cable angle was never acknowledged on cable. Mind boggling stuff, huh?

[garretta]

Mind-warping stuff is more like it, Loss. This would make sense if they had separate champions for all the shows, with the World champion going back and forth among them, but they never thought of that, apparently. As they tried to do it, it was all just one great big mess.

 

By the way, just to clarify, was TBS then its own universe as well? There was at least some connection between WCWSN, Power Hour, and Main Event; remember the Gauntlet in the fall of '90? Or was each show on TBS separate?

 

Thanks for the info!

[Loss]

There was some overlap, but it was minimal. It was more that any angles on the syndicated shows (Worldwide and Pro) were rarely acknowledged outside of Worldwide or Pro. Plus, any angles shot on Pro weren't mentioned on Worldwide, or vice versa. It seems like it's making life unnecessarily difficult for a booker and destroying any semblance of kayfabe for people like me who had TBS and got both Worldwide and Pro in my market. I think Ricky Morton turned on Dustin Rhodes three separate times to join the York Foundation. I guess they had a weird assumption that most fans only watched one of the shows in syndication OR the TBS shows. And even the TBS shows didn't have great back-and-forth continuity among each other.

[dawho5]

Reading the immediately above posts hurt my head. Not the fault of Loss or garretta, but it still hurt. match is well-done and Dustin comes of very well. For a guy as young as he is, he really looks like he belongs in the ring with top competition. Same goes for Austin. Tony does what he can with the whole timing of the match and the circumstances. Not sure using a pre-taped match called as such to support an angle that just happened on your show is exactly the best way to do things. Like i said though, good match with a well-executed turn. Just more stupid WCW crap kind of kills the overall impact of it.

[Beast]

The timing doesn't make sense if this was the Saturday morning show.

Unless I'm mistaken, this would have been the next WCW show following Clash XVII, where Eaton was a face (in a face-face match with Firebreaker Chip) and he did the subtle clue of telling Sting he had more than enough time to get back for the Rude match.

So Schiavone acting like viewers would have seen Eaton with the DA before this is wrong and ruins the match. Not even just in terms of spoilers, but also it lacks any emotional response from Tony. It's also confusing to have Anderson & Austin team if they weren't actually part of the DA yet. Eaton had issues with both men throughout 1991 and I'd like it if Paul E. brought that up when unveiling the complete group. Guess I'll find out as I continue.

It's a cool storyline and one I didn't realize existed for years. I was always confused as to how Bobby Eaton was a face in 1991 and then all of a sudden was a member of the DA.