NJPW/WCW Starrcade 1992 in Tokyo Dome, Tokyo, Japan
I have seen this match before, but probably just the once. It’s the sort of match a young me would give a look when trying to get into the Japanese wrestling — it had people I knew. I found this over time to be an effective way for me to get further in, but that was a different time. Now everything is just really easily accessible, the scope of coverage is wider, etc. If you don’t watch and know Japanese wrestling or lucha or whatever now, that’s just your choice. It’s a fine choice, I don’t care what you watch, but I didn’t have a billion dollars being handed to me to buy Japanese wrestling tapes when I was young like apparently everyone did.
Muta’s going with a blue and some red flourish in the face paint. Sting is ridiculous with white and blue paint and blue and orange tights and orange boots. Steiners are in their normal stuff of the time, lots of early 90s neon and Taco Bell dining room designs on the singlets.
Muta and Scott start, but the first big thing comes with Rick and Sting, as Rick hits a hard Steinerline and then a flying bulldog, and Sting comes back with his own hard clothesline and a faceslam, then takes that page out of the Steiners book and slams Rick into the corner, like he did in the legendary SuperBrawl match with Luger against the Steiners.
Scott gets the hot tag and hits the double underhook bomb, followed by the tilt-a-whirl slam. Crowd reaction would be more vibrant in Florida than Tokyo for this stuff, but they do like when Sting goes “woo!” or “oooww!” or whatever it is he did.
Scott chucks Muta with a T-BONE, then Rick chucks Muta even more with a super belly-to-belly where he literally just hurls him over his head, then follows with a massive release German. I’m gonna be honest: there’s really no tag team ever that I enjoy more than the prime Steiners. These guys were ahead of their time. If they came around now they’d…well, I don’t know, depends if they signed with WWE or not. WWE have hosted some of the best tag team matches ever in the last decade but their commitment to tag teams is still pretty bad.
But the Steiners were, in a way, sort of the exact split between a monster team of the 80s like the Road Warriors and the hugely athletic breakneck teams of the late 90s and early 00s like the Hardys and Edge and Christian.
Muta takes a beating for a while, suplayed around the joint, including a belly-to-belly on the floor from Rick while referee Bill Alfonso is distracted by Scott, at least mostly. But Muta hits a nice back suplex on Scott and gets the tag to Sting, who takes it to Rick with the Stinger Splash. Because wrestling is very stupid, Muta tags back in pretty quickly so he can go for the handspring back elbow, only to be caught mid-air and German’d over by Rick again.
Sting and Muta get in some good double-team work, including a doubled up faceslam on Scott, and then Sting press slamming Muta onto Rick, with the two of them tumbling to the floor, where Sting flies down onto Rick with a crossbody. The crowd is wild for it, and then wrestling producers strike again as they miss Muta’s entire big dive from the ring out onto Scott.
But the Steiners come back from that with a double flying clothesline/body block in the ring. Sting takes another tilt-a-whirl, but reverses this one into a pin on Scott, while Rick is pinning Muta at the same time. Alfonso gives the win to Sting and Muta, but it’s a clear “nobody can lose-lose” situation, and it is what it is.
It’s still a good match, Steiners doing their state of the art stuff as they did from, like, 1990-92 as their true peak, Muta in solid form, Sting hanging in with everyone which was really when Sting was at his best, sort of riding the coattails of those who were better in the ring, getting the reactions because he was charismatic and a good presence. And it’s a brisk 11 minutes.
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