WCW Main Event, Greenville, SC
You like to think this match will be good, but it comes a day after (on TV) a puzzlingly shitty Eaton-Anderson match on WCW WCW, so who knows?
Eaton, the reigning TV champion (he beat Arn at SuperBrawl in mid-May, but this match was taped before that one happened), has a shot at Flair’s world title coming on June 12 at the Clash in Knoxville, and he’s enlisted Brian Pillman as his partner here. Flying Briang had beef with Horseman Barry Windham around this time, but the Horsemen had also lost a fourth member in May when Sid left the company and they’d kinda gone their separate ways, other than Arn still hanging off Flair’s nuts at all times. And then Flair got himself fired in June, still holding the belt, and was off to the WWF.
Tumultuous time in the WCW!
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Eaton is TV champ and, again, going into a world title match at the Clash, but they come out to Brian’s music because Brian’s the sexy young one that all the chicks are wild over and Eaton is Beautiful only in nickname. And in his kind heart.
Bell sounds with all four in the ring, which is really Bill Alfonso’s mistake, but we get another awkward start where Eaton and Flair get at it, and Pillman and Anderson are sort of a step behind that and not sure about how to lock up, so they just weirdly slap at each other for a moment. It’s only a moment, but it’s weird. Arn was particularly a little off for a bit around this time.
As for Pillman, he was gearing up to team with El Gigante against Windham and Arn at that upcoming Clash in a Loser Leaves WCW match. Pillman lost and had to do the “Yellow Dog” gimmick for a bit.
Arn and Pillman head to the floor quickly to leave the featured Eaton and Flair pairing. Flair flops quickly, but right back up for a backdrop coming out of the corner, and then Flair rolls out into chops from Pillman and he’s on his ass while Arn wanders around the other side of the ring.
Eventually, Bill Alfonso actually gets control of things and we start proper with Pillman and Anderson. Ross makes a mildly clumsy reference to the suddenly-hot Atlanta Braves, who had been something of a laughingstock franchise for years but were just about to start an incredible run of going to the playoffs every year between 1991 and 2005, and coming out of it all with one entire World Series win in the strike-shortened 1995 season, sort of a 90s/early 00s version of the modern Dodgers and their won World Series won in a 60-game season. At least the Braves had to play 144.
Pillman and Anderson doing house show stuff early, it’s perfectly fine. They go to the floor where Anderson busts his bicep on the post when he misses a punch. Pillman is pugnacious, folks. He’s working the arm now. Bobby tags in with that cleeeeeeeean right hand of his, then a hammerlock of his own.
Arn gets out of that and tags Flair, who is a real aggressive competitor when he already has an advantage. So he’s in, full of piss and vinegar, marching right over to Eaton. Chop, chop, and then they trade right hands. Flair panics a bit and Eaton wins the fight, Flair winds up sent over the top with a clothesline. No DQ call from Bill Alfonso. Referee’s discretion and shit.
Flair flops on the outside after another right hand, then he goes to the eyes. Anderson gets the tag when the action goes back in but Eaton gets a suplay in as Jim Ross becomes the dumbest person you’ve ever met.
Pillman tags in and he and Arn do a little nice work, Arn going to the eyes but getting his head bounced off the turnbuckle pad. Pillman hits a missile dropkick that Bill Alfonso almost walks into. They wind up outside and Arn tries a piledriver, but Pillman backdrops him over, and they head right back in, where the tide immediately turns again with some heel cheating in their corner.
Flair and Pillman trading chops as they truly enjoyed doing many, many times in singles and tags over a few years there. They both seemed to just get a real kick out of it.
Anderson makes another tag and drags Pillman over to the post, wrapping the leg around it twice. Eaton distracts Fonzie because he’s kinda dumb, being a babyface wrestler, and eventually he just walks over there to help because honestly, what’s gonna happen? The referee warns him?
Eaton finally gets a hot tag and unloads on Flair with rights and lefts, another backdrop out of the corner, a quick shot for Arn, Flair flips in the corner, punched off the apron. Outside, right back in, Flair with a chop, and they’re trading no, Flair basically trying to stay in it.
Eaton with a swinging neckbreaker, two count, Anderson makes the save. Pillman comes in to fight Arn, they go out to the floor. Eaton with a series of right hands to drop ol’ Ricky Flair, and then we transition right into everyone fighting in the aisle for a double countout and a rushed trip to the break.
B-show tag match that continues to, they hope, build interest in the Flair vs Eaton title match at the Clash. I mean, it’s just a Clash main, and by ’91 even the Clash wasn’t what it was at the beginning in ’87, but if there was ever a time to do a “big” world title match with Eaton challenging as the babyface, this was it. He’d overcome, however briefly, the doubt that he was “just” a tag wrestler by winning a major singles title. I don’t suppose anyone really thought he’d beat Flair (I was nine and surely already knew better), but you figured you’d get a good match, and maybe Eaton would do a Visual Pin or the like. Maybe enough time had passed that you do an exciting Dusty Finish, the thing people pretend killed Crockett so bad he had to sell to Turner.
This is a decent match to just look at for about 10 minutes counting entrances, nothing more than that and nothing less, but more pleasant than not, so 3 instead of lower, even if the match is really fuck all.
Tape Machines Are Rolling 