LOL! Great American Bash 1991!

[$heriff Tom]

This is universally looked upon as one of the worst PPVs ever, if not THE worst. I happen to have it in my vast collection. I have been in a bad mood lately thanks to never-ending auto repair costs, so I decided this was a good time to pull this out and have a laugh. In coming weeks, i will get through these bouts and discuss them here. Anyone who happens to have this Holy Grail in their collection can join me, in book-club fashion, and we can have a bandy about regarding this awful card. If you are not privvy to these matches, feel free to comment on these wrestlers or anything related.

So last night I pulled the tape and got through matches 1 and 2. Match 1 is THE worst opening match in wrestling history, and has my vote as THE worst gimmick match in wrestling history, even surpassing the infamous Halloween Chamber of Horrors match, and that silly match with Hogan and Savage going against like 8 guys in that tower cage match.

So, here goes...

Bobby Eaton and PN News vs Steve Austin and Terrence Taylor....SCAFFOLD MATCH

First off, these tag teams make little to no sense. Its like they went into the back and found 2 guys on the good guy side and 2 guys on the heel side who would be willing to risk climbing on top of the scaffold. Its funny that one of the guys in this match was 400 pound PN News.

This was PAINFUL to watch. No action at all. Horrible way to open a card, for one thing. Everyone was tentative, and for most of the match were simply poking at each other warily. The match had a stupid "capture the flag" stipulation where the winning team needed to get to the other side, grab the opponents flag, and get back to their own side with it. This pretty much insured no one was going to take a bump off the scaffold.

After an interminable amount of non-action, Bobby Eaton somehow got over and took the bad-guys flag and ambled back to his side. While this was going on Lady Blossom tossed Steve Austin an aerosal can, and he sprayed News and Eaton in the face, but the match was already done. To add to the schmazz, there as no bell, so we had to assume Eaton won for his team when he walked off with the flag, until the announcement minutes later. On the way off the scaffold Taylor was kicked and took a half-hearted bump from about 5 feet up on the scaffold. This match was 100 times worse than I remembered it, and I had remembered it as being bad. Forget limiting this to gimmick matches....this is probably the worst wrestling match I have ever seen, period. And an ominous beginning to this card.

Another problem with opening up with a scaffold match is the taking of 10 minutes or so to get it down so you can start the actual wrestling matches. This went on forever, as Ross and Schiavone wasted time talking about the matches yet to to come, as if anyone who had ordered at the time had no idea what they were paying for.

Diamond Studd (with DDP) vs Tom Zenk

Saw a review recently of this card that crapped on this match, but that was simply pililng on what was a fun card to pick on. I actually did not mind this match, and sort of enjoyed it. It was fast paced, Hall was not out of place, and Zenk was Zenk - he was always pretty solid in the ring.

The ending was a mess, though, with DDP ending up in the ring bumping around for Zenk, until Hall snuck in from behind and waylaid Zenk to set up the pin. Ref Nick Patrick just stood there and watched the whole thing, when it was obvious that Studd should have been disqualified. All in all, though, decent match. The worst is yet to come, though, believe me.

[grover]

And it gets worse from here.........

[$heriff Tom]

Ah, yes, it does, right from the 3rd match on the card, which I watched last night before I ambled off to bed.

Ron Simmons vs Oz!!

Wow. Just wow.

Oz comes out in that goofy white bearded mask with his handler "The Great Wizard" who also had one on, but his stayed on. Oz pulled it off to show off his frosty hair. It was already a waste of Nash, as Nash was putting the badmouth on Simmons as he entered the ring, so you could see his cocky persona already coming through. Ross and Schiavone were verbally masturbating Simmons as he came down the ramp, with Ross calling him a "future World Champion." Sure enough, within a year, he was. Yet here he is, in the 3rd match on the card, against friggin' Oz, with Kevin Sullivan in a goofy getup at ringside.

The match itself was BAD. They were playing the "I can outpower you" gag. A lot of boring tests of strength and running into one another. For the first time during this legendarily bad card, a fan shouted out "BOORRRINGG!" real loud. A few others took him up on it. Simmons then went to clothesline Oz over the top rope, and Oz missed his cue. They went for it again, yet Oz could not get over. Third time was a charm, even moreso as Oz rolled all the way to the ringside gate, knocking over the soda a fan had on the floor. You could see the fan, holding a bucket of popcorn, get real mad that Oz knocked over his drink.

Terrible. Oz got back in and they lumbered around. At one point with the ref admonishing Oz for one thing or another, The Great Wizard moved for the first time in the match (he had been standing stoic in a corner the whole time) to get a shot in on Simmons. Simmons, however, overcame these great odds and started football clipping Oz around the ring. He finished off Oz with a football bodyblock, and scored the pinfall. Yes, Ron Simmons pinned Kevin Nash in a terrible match.

Kudos to Jim Ross for saying, "well, its probably back to the Yellow Brick Road for Oz" and that was that. I am a Simmons fan, and he was well received, and I am glad he ended up with a WCW title run. But this match sucked. That said, these bad matches are always fun for me to watch.

More to come!

[grover]

Oh God, that sounds like a disaster...

[globix]

It's been great to see Ron Simmons on raw the past few weeks, even if it has been just one word catchphrase appearances. I can't believe they never brought him in to feud with JBL during his title run. It must burn Vince & co. up just a little bit that the only way they can get any pop lately is to bring in the stars of yesterdecade

[sancho231]

Dustin Rhodes and The Southern Boys (Tracy Smothers and Steve Armstrong) VS The Fabulous Freebirds (Badstreet, Jimmy Garvin, Michael Hayes) (w/Big Daddy Dink) in a Elimination match.
How was this match it dosent sound too bad

[$heriff Tom]

Thats the next match on tap, after the battle I watched last night. The review I have seen on that elimination match is it was one of the better matches on a bad night of wrestling.

Richard Morton vs Robert Gibson

This is a match I have found myself pullling out here and there through the years, as I marked out for the Morton heel turn, and am a closet Rock and Roll Express fan. And each time I watch it, I get dissapointed all over again. This match was just booked wrong.

You would expect a fast-paced match of catch as catch can between two partners who should know each and every move of the other before he even does it, but we got that for all of the first minute of the match. From there it degenerated to Morton attacking Gibson's bum leg, very methodically, and for way too long. The match went well over the 15 minute mark, and at least 12 of those minutes were Morton pounding away at Gibson's leg, or ripping open his tights around the brace he was wearing, trying to unbuckle the brace.

The fans wanted to pop for this match too. Every once in a while Morton would bungle something and Gibson would get a quick move in, even with his bum wheel, and the crowd would go bonkers. At one point Morton pulled off the dumbest move I have ever seen in wrestling....he was apparently stunned by a Gibson blow, and turned and WALKED INTO THE TURNBUCKLE and somehow managed to bang his head on it, even though he is obviously much taller than it.

The match just creeped. Ross and Schiavone did a good job playing up the history of these guys, although Schiavone played dumb and acted like they were "unknowns" in 1985, when they were both regional superstars at that time, entering the fed.

After all this, Morton needed chicanery to score the pin. The attack on the leg did not play into it at all. While the Rock and Rollers were fighting on the ramp at ringside, Alexandra York jumped up on ringside and started engaging ref Bill Alfonso (LOL!) in an animated conversation. At some point she slid her stupid toy computer into the ring. Morton ended up draping Gibson through the ropes, where his head was hanging into the ring, then he grabbed the computer and ambled up to the top rope, and came down and clocked Gibson to score the pin.

Another goofy thing about this match is Morton was not in his "corporate persona" and came to and wrestled the match with his silly bandanas on.

[grover]

LOL oh man, what a mess.

[$heriff Tom]

Well, how bout this battle? Sancho bought this up, and history shows its looked upon as one of the more palatable matches of the night. I watched it over the weekend while drinking beer, which makes any match better.

The Fabulous Freebirds (with Big Daddy Dink) vs The Young Pistols and Dustin Rhodes

To start with, I have been major fans of all 6 guys in this ring throughout the years, including The Young Pistols (ie - The Southern Boys, who all of a sudden decided they were from Wyoming and were Cowboys cause a Southern bent was not as marketable although the WCW offices were always in Atlanta) and "Badstreet" Brad Armstrong.

This was an elimination style match. So of course the first guy eliminated was the most charismatic guy in the match, Michael Hayes. But before that there was a lot of decent action and a lot of theatrics. At one point, for no reason, Jimmy "Jam" Garvin started making muscle poses in the middle of the ring while Tracy Smothers stood there and gaped. Hayes, noticing this at ringside, immediatly jumped into the ring to join him. They just stood there and made a series of muscle poses as the crowd booed and their opponents just stood around and watched.

Another cool spot in the match, and one I can not remember seeing since, was Badstreet kicking one of the Pistols in the head from a standing position. He just lifted his leg high enough, while facing the guy, to kick him in the head.

The ending of the match was pretty cool. Rhodes and Armstrong were your final two, and Dustin caught Badstreet in a bulldog, and as he took him across the ring Big Daddy Dink had decided to enter and possibly interfere. While up in the air for added emphasis on the move, Dustin dropkicked the portly Dink out of the ring, then scored the pin on the masked man.

The match even had a great capper, as a fan at ringside wearing shorts and a t-shirt jumped up at the count of 3 like his favorite baseball team just won the world series. I mean, this guy was jumping up and down with glee, I have never seen a wrestling fan so happy. It was really strange to watch. I mean, who really cared??

Another cool moment was after the fans were heckling Hayes unmercifully, Garvin came over to console him, and the camera caught a closeup of Hayes whining, "I hate them." and Garvin patting him on the back, going, "I know, I know."

[grover]

LOL! That sounds like a fun match to watch. LOL @ Big Daddy Dink.



I was not a fan of the Young Pistols. That posedown seems like ti would have been good fun to watch.

[$heriff Tom]

The posedown was hilarious, especially as Hayes scrambled into the ring to joing Garvin in posing faster than most wrestlers would scramble into the ring to break up a pinfall.

Thats a great pic there.

[grover]

Hey wasn't the crowd chanting "We want Flair" all night during this PPV? How often did they really chant it?

[$heriff Tom]

See, thats the thing. To this point, I have not heard the chant. I KNOW they chant it nonstop during the main event, but to this point, nada. No signs, either.

In fact, the crowd has been very boisterous all evening. Its been a good crowd, popping at the right times. I have to look back...was Flair not being there common knowledge amongst the crowd, or is this something that happened that week?