[1997-09-14-WCW-Fall Brawl] Ric Flair & Curt Hennig & Chris Benoit & Steve McMichael vs Kevin Nash & Syxx & Konnan & Buff Bagwell (War Games)

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

JIP right before Syxx enters the ring. Hennig also shows up with his arm in a sling. In a nice bit of detail, he wants in the ring but Flair says he's got this. Doesn't look like the action is too great and there's not a ton of heat before the big angle so I don't think we were missing much not including the entire thing. Hennig finally enters the cage, takes off the sling and brings in handcuffs. Benoit and Mongo get handcuffed to the cage while Flair gets beaten up by everyone. Nash grabs a mic and no one is surrendering. The door is open to the cage -- WHY IS NO ONE HELPING THE HORSEMEN? Then we get the finish with Hennig slamming the door on Flair's head. Nash grabs the mic and talks about how this is the death of the Horsemen right in their backyard. This was a horrible finish and seemed designed just to humiliate Flair. What a stupid finish to do in North Carolina.

[Kevin Ridge]

Here we go. Never seen this but watching the full match from WWE released blu ray. Bagwell might be the worst guy ever to start a War Games. WCW couldn’t get Dillon to at least do the coin toss? What a half assed effort by JJ running WCW. Poor first five minutes to start even with Benoit involved. Just no heat. I was wishing for Mongo to get involved. Syxx ain’t wearing wrestling gear. Tony talks about if this is your first War Games and I’m thinking you are very disappointed. Hennig arrives with arm in sling. Did WCW have a no blood policy in 1997 as there is a big lack of it in this match? Hennig turns on the Horsemen. What a just flat and depressing match. I still need to see the later War Games matches in full but this is the worst of them I’ve seen so far. Horsemen have been buried.

[Zenjo]

A Wargames with Mongo, Konnan, Bagwell, Nash and no blood? It sounds promising, but just needs a great angle to make it perfect.

[Childs]

Well, Benoit and Flair tried to create some action in the match proper. But there were too many shitty guys in there, and the booking was such a shit follow-up to the Horsemen parody. I mean, why build a whole show around burying Ric Flair? It just shows the void in perspective that developed over the course of '97.

[soup23]

Watched this in full on the network. I don't think it was necessary to include in full but I do think it was a good match. I also don't have as much a problem with what happened at the end if the follow up would have been better. NWO beating Flair and becoming the dirtiest player in the game in a match he made famous sounds like good storytelling from the onset. Especially having Hennig be the catalyst given their history. I wonder why the angle that resulted sputtered so bad because the trifecta of Larry, Flair, and Sting winning the final three matches at Starrcade sounds like a good plan on paper at this point. I would like to give Buff credit as he gets hurled into the cage at the onset vs. Benoit. The action is a little mundane but again not terrible and their is cool little sequences within like the big boot Nash gives Mongo. Syxx taking a backdrop into the top of the cage and Flair chopping everyone. I did like that Hennig immediatly turned so we didn't have any goofy fighting with the NWO that is forgotten once we get the turn. The dramatic door slam would have been better suited for a better crowd. The crowd chanting We Want Sting with Flair yet to enter the match is pretty damming. i don't really know if it is WCW burying Flair too much, Sting being super hot, the crowd sucking or a combination of all of those. I did like the disgusted sign off of Tony to end the show. I think this is a good PPV overall with 3 good matches (that we saw) and some fun stuff like Larry Z getting properly involved.

[Robert S]

Nash grabs a mic and no one is surrendering.

Couldn't Nash have asked Hennig as well? I understand that the whole point here was the beatdown and not the win, but it would have been a nice moment if Nash had asked Hennig with Hennig responding with something like "I don't want to surrender, I want to see Flair beat up even more".

[El-P]

Bagwell kinda sucked the life out of the match early on on offense, but he redeemed himself by taking a hundred chops. Konnan was kind of an albatros save for one DDT. Benoit was a dynamo here, easily the standout with Syxx, who took a sick bump into the roof. Bad followup aside, I don't see nothing wrong with the angle the way it is executed, it's actually a pretty great double swerve (for one) that the crowd really didn't see coming. And Hennig seems much more at home playing dastardly heel, so he shows his real personnality for the first time here. Yeah, they did kill this incarnation of the Horsemen there and Flair never got the right revenge (the whole Hennig feud is a blur to me), but it's a damn effective angle. The one issue is, where the fuck were the WCW guys, DDP, Luger, Giant, hell, even Piper ?

[Superstar Sleeze]

I actually liked this match a good deal. Benoit was in his ass-kicking prime. I just loved his tenacity throughout this match. You have already set up the Horsemen are at a disadvantage. There is no reason to really show it until it really happens when Nash walks in. So Benoit basically kicks ass 2 on 1 and 3 on 1 (Mongo doesn't count). Benoit took a nasty bump into the wall of the cage. Benoit vs Syxx to start would have been incredible. Was Syxx already injured? Then I saw him take those hellacious bumps and I was like guess not. I thought the crowd was pretty into the Syxx bumping and wildman Flair offense. I interpreted the "We Want Sting" not as a slight to Flair, but as the crowd recognizing that the Horsemen were down a man and needed a fourth. Nash was actually pretty good as the monster early on demolishing the Horsemen and felt like a big deal when he entered. I liked the Hennig swerve and the initial angle is fine, but got botched with Flair not getting his revenge. Benoit spitting and clawing while in the handcuff was tremendous. Benoit was definitely the MVP of this Wargames and I think it is an underrated match overall. Not an elite Wargames match, but better than the 95 and 93 incarnations. I don't think that far behind the 96 Wargames, but I will need to watch that again. ***1/4

[PeteF3]

This is an instance where the booking and the politics overwhelm things to such a degree that I just can't get into this. Syxx and Benoit were good in this environment, but this was a piss-poor follow-up to the parody angle (that I still like in a vacuum), but this is just another excuse to make the Horsemen look like idiots and doing it in North Carolina to boot. Hennig is a guy that I'm just completely over in '97 no matter what role he's playing. I will disagree with Loss and Childs when they wonder why they would book this--I think it's pretty clear why this was booked this way.

[DMJ]

I'm a bit surprised to see so much hate on this match. I thought it was actually pretty good. I don't really understand the "This match buried the Horsemen" argument. Yes, they lost on their home turf...but they were outnumbered and outsmarted. Should they have been outsmarted? No...but wrestling has its tropes and babyfaces getting turned on, whether its the numerous times Sting teamed with Flair or Dustin Rhodes making Arn Anderson his tag partner in 94', is a common one. I understand hating the swerve for its repetitiveness, but as someone else said, at least we didn't see Curt Hennig clean house and then turn - he turned the first second he got in the ring - and if they had played their cards right, Flair vs. Hennig should've been a money feud. It just fizzled out, though.

 

Positives:

- Benoit is outstanding here. He comes out of this match looking like he too could've been poised to be a bigger factor in the destruction of the nWo. I would've liked to have seen him in almost a "B-team Killer" mode, working his way through the nWo's lesser guys until maybe getting a shot at Syxx.

 

- People hate on Bagwell so much, but I thought he was more than serviceable, bumping into the cage, eating chest chops, and in the rare moments he was on offense, delivering acceptable, standard heel fare (chokes and taunts). Some reviews seem offended by his mere presence in this match when, if you ask me, its Konnan who is the obvious weak link, doing nothing to draw heat and not selling much.

 

- Some reviewers have implied that this match was "heatless" or that the "We Want Sting" chants showed how little the crowd really cared about the participants. My interpretation was different, but maybe I need to get my ears checked. I felt like they popped pretty well for Mongo and Flair's entrance (not to mention Hennig's). I think I heard sizable cheers when Benoit fought back from being in a 2-on-1 position. The crowd loved Syxx getting cut off and beaten down the second he came in. The "We Want Sting" chants, to me, were totally reasonable as, for the majority of the match, it did seem that Hennig was not going to participate, meaning that the crowd may have been thinking, "Who will the Horsemen's mystery partner be?" The Stinger coming into this match as WCW's fourth member would've been awesome and not out of left field at all. Can you blame fans for being conditioned to believe Sting would show up in the last 3 minutes of the show to save the day in the fall of 97'? When you factor in his history with the Nature Boy, I actually think that would've been the better finish from a crowd-pleasing standpoint, but its obvious that the bookers felt, right or wrong, that the nWo needed to win this match in order to maintain their dominance leading into the storyline's climax at Starrcade.

 

I guess you can hate the booking so much that it spoils the match, but watching it in full today, I thought it was a solid match with enough cool moments, crowd interest, and even brutality (Flair getting his head slammed is just nasty) that it worked for me.