[1991-12-29-WCW-Starrcade] Battlebowl

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

We join in progress. Luger has won the battle royal in ring one, and Sting, Austin, Rude and Steamboat are the final four in ring two. Are three camera angles really necessary when only one ring is being shown? Classic WCW. Rude, Steamboat and Austin fall by the wayside, leaving us with Sting and Luger as the final two, which is a fun stretch. Sting finally eliminates Luger after some great teases. And there you go, 1991.

[Kevin Ridge]

Watched the full match. Nothing too memorable happened. I feel like the Dangerous Alliance should have immediately eliminated themselves to ring one. There they could have rested and picked off one by one anyone that came into their ring. Yes, them going to three way screens once they got down to only a few guys in the one ring was funny. Needed to use that earlier in the match when it was in both rings and more chaotic. Rude accidentally eliminates Austin. Steamboat eliminates Rude who then yanks Ricky out. Rude has another shot for Sting and gives him the Rude Awakening. Down to Luger and Sting. Luger is hanging on the ropes and Sting runs the ropes to get momentum to push Lex out to the floor. That looked kind of weird.

[PeteF3]

Yeah, at some point the multiple-angle thing needed to be dropped. I wonder if Bischoff was dreaming up World War 3 while this was going on. Sting wins Ring 2 but suffers a Rude Awakening afterward as this whole show is all about having Sting overcome as many obstacles as possible in preparation for his SuperBrawl win. Sting and Luger have a long sequence including some brawling on the floor before Sting overcomes yet another obstacle (Harley Race) on his way to a comeback victory. Running Starrcade as a gimmick PPV is an anticlimactic way to finish the year, but things continue to look up for this company.

[soup23]

Lots going on in this segment. Sting now has feuds vs. Rude/Abby-Cactus/Luger. We get the first instance of Rude and Steamboat really locking up with Steamboat tossing him in a fun spot and Rude pulling him straight out. Sting wins the battlebowl and has had a good bounce back in the second half of the year. He looks like a player to be reckoned with going into 1992. So long 1991.

[PhilTLL]

I really love how Steamboat spends the first few minutes mostly on the ramp doing feature spots due to the too-specific over the top rule, and Schiavone tries to analyze it as a good strategy.

 

Morton puts Liger into ring 2, then follows him into it for a somewhat contrived but enjoyable feature segment and then a mutual elimination. Does that match exist? We shall see. Actually, multiple guys just wander over and the director misses multiple eliminations.

 

Luger and Vader! Harley throws his hands up as if to hail the clash. Luger gets Vader with a clothesline! Hot damn. The Arn, Dustin, Hughes, Simmons elimination sequence is pretty neat.

 

Totally a mystery why the multiple angle stuff doesn't appear until the final four rather than in the beginning, when it would have been useful. The end is good work, but an unfortunate reminder that Sting is booked in two programs at once since the Clash. Hey, wait, JR literally says that in the wrapup. The show was okay but a total waste of a Starrcade and much less memorable than the Clash before it.

[garretta]

What we saw of this served its purpose well: to set up Sting/Luger at SuperBrawl. That match is going to have a hard time topping the faceoff here, which was about as action-packed a sequence as I've seen in quite a while. Maybe it's because they're such good friends in real life, but Sting and Luger brought it all here, and so did Harley, who still bumps like a champ despite all of his injuries.

 

I'm surprised they booked the brawl on the floor, which almost never happens in a battle royal but might have been the best part of the bout that we saw.

 

I can't wait to see what happened between Sting and Abby after hearing it hyped so heavily.

 

Nice to see the setup for the Steamboat/Rude feud. This marks the first time that I've seen the skin-the-cat move backfire on Steamer.

 

Rude slapping the Rude Awakening on Sting helps keep that feud hot, but JR's right: Usually in battle royals there are extra referees to make sure that eliminated wrestlers go straight to the back, but if there were any here, they conveniently fell asleep at the switch.

 

I loved Luger mocking Sting's "OWWWWWW!" Why can't he show that kind of personality (or any other kind, for that matter) a little more often?

 

Lice of the segment goes to Tony, who quickly corrects JR's assertion abut Luger and Sting's status with "They're not just stars, they're superstars!" Not only is it true, but it's a nice subtle dig at Vince, who was overusing the word then and definitely still does today.

 

This is for Phil: Why is it unfortunate that Sting's in two feuds at once? As long as both of them are well-executed, I think that it adds a bit of spice and depth to the product to have guys targeted by two enemies at once. It sure beats the WWF, where guys are so deeply trapped in their own feud bubbles that they barely even interact with anyone else on the roster, face or heel.

 

Where was Hughes? I didn't see him with Harley or in any other sequences involving Luger. Had he been in Battlebowl earlier?

[PhilTLL]

This is for Phil: Why is it unfortunate that Sting's in two feuds at once? As long as both of them are well-executed, I think that it adds a bit of spice and depth to the product to have guys targeted by two enemies at once. It sure beats the WWF, where guys are so deeply trapped in their own feud bubbles that they barely even interact with anyone else on the roster, face or heel.

Well, that's the trick, isn't it?

 

It's not an inherently bad thing, as you make clear. I just felt like the alternating storylines weren't very well handled, especially the intersection of Luger and Dangerously, which basically becomes a red herring if I recall correctly (I've been watching probably a bit too fast for my own good). Luger's increasingly rare appearances make for not much of a feud at all between him and Sting.

[Loss]

In the case of Luger, he had used up almost all of his appearances, but was World Champ. In their class ineptitude, WCW didn't realize this until a few months into his title reign. So they shot one angle to build to the match where he'd drop the title, but they couldn't use him more than that. They *could* have used him for extra dates, but they'd have to pay him extra money, which they didn't want to do. So the end result was the Sting vs DA feud to carry the shows with Sting-Luger almost purposely being treated as secondary to that since Luger was on his way out of the territory anyway.

[TheU_2001]

I thought this was really good for a Battle Royal. There were multiple storylines going on with Sting vs The Dangerous Alliance, vs Abby, and vs Luger. Luger looked pretty good in there as well. I wish Liger would've lasted a little longer. Luger vs Vader to end Ring 1 was also good, although criminally short. I enjoyed the 2 ring concept too, and wish WCW would've kept it that way for future Battle Bowls. Sting vs Luger at the end was also nice, and did a good job of setting up their upcoming title match.

[dawho5]

This was really good and well-executed for a battle royal and did exactly what it was supposed to do. Sting and Luger had a really good final pairing to boot. However, this setup at Starrcade is a terrible idea. It's their big show of the year, not the place to experiment.

[G. Badger]

If you're watching the full match, once the introductions are done, fast forward to when Ricky (Richard to you) Morton and Liger are in ring #2. You can tell that they agreed to say 'Fuck it' and put on a junior fireworks display for 30 seconds before eliminating themselves.

Then, we get everyone else making their way over to ring #2. Luger vs Vader remained in ring #1 and this was getting good. 

The process of getting to the second ring was good in theory but, in reality it was clumsy as a college kid at a kegger. Many of the wrestlers just willfully eliminated themselves to the second ring to spare themselves and fans from the awkwardness.

Business really started when it was Steamboat and Sting vs Austin and Rude (with Luger in waiting). This part was very good but, as a whole I can't say the same. It was fun but, there was too much going on that looked crappy like most Battle Royals. Perhaps they could've gone down to 14 guys instead of 20...