Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum, Phoenix, Arizona
You have to give World Championship Wrestling credit where it’s due. For all the company got wrong during their time, they did a fantastic job in generating interest around the War Games match at WrestleWar 1991.
At least they did for this writer.
In my recent Clash of the Champions 14 review, I talked about how the whole event was essentially one long promotional vehicle to advertise WrestleWar.
I must admit, it worked on me.
By the time I’d finished watching Clash 14, I was more eager to watch this show than any other wrestling event I’ve seen in ages.
Without further ado then, forgive me if I cut this intro short and get right down to Phoenix, Arizona to see if WrestleWar ‘91 was an event worthy of the hype.
It's Time for WrestleWar
Our show tonight began with an ariel camera granting us some beautiful and dramatic shots of the Arizona mountains as a Tony Schiavone voice-over told us that the state would play host to WrestleWar, an event Schiavone actually made it to sound like a legitimately huge deal.
I mean it, I know it’s fun to rag on Mr. Greatest Night in the History of Our Sport and his propensity for hyperbole at the height of the Monday Night Wars, but Schiavone sounded truly genuine here.
That, combined with those fantastic ariel shots made this a really good PPV opener. That itself was surprising because most of WCW’s PPV openers sucked.
Anyway, cutting live to the arena, Schiavone repeated himself about how important tonight was, only this time he was on camera.
The current AEW announcer then hyped the War Games match before running down the rest of the card and, honestly, at this point in our review, I’m genuinely excited about what’s to come.
With his run down complete, Big Tony passed over to our announce team, Jim Ross and Dusty Rhodes.
[side note, I’ve been doing this for so long now that every time I write ‘Jim Ross,’ I automatically start to write ‘and Jerry “The King” Lawler’ right after it.]
JR and King The American Dream also expressed their enthusiasm for War Games and with that, it was onto our opening contest.
World Championship Wrestling Six-Man Tag Team Championship
WCW Six-Man Champions Ricky Morton, ‘Wildfire’ Tommy Rich, and The Junkyard Dog vs. The Big Cat and State Patrol (Sgt. Buddy Lee Parker & Lt. James Earl Wright)
At first, all of my enthusiasm for WrestleWar ‘91 went right out of the window.
Even with big stars like Ricky Morton and The Junkyard Dog involved, this just didn’t seem like something I was going to care about at all.
Not even the fact that this was for the short-lived six-man title did it any favours, as the champions didn’t even have a single title belt between them which made it feel like any other match.
Then, things finally got underway and I was pleasantly surprised.
Don’t get me wrong, this wasn’t a bad burner or anything and I’m never going to suggest that you go out of your way just to watch it, but it was a perfectly serviceable opener in which all six men turned up to work.
The result of their cumulative efforts gave us a bout which did its job, entertained and kept things more interesting than it possibly had any right to.
After a decent 10+ minutes action, things broke down into a free-for-all and, in the midst of the chaos, Morton snatched a pinfall to help his team retain their WCW Invisible Title.
Your Winners and Still Six-Man Champions: Ricky Morton, Tommy Rich, and JY
Somewhere out in the arena, Tony Schiavone congratulated Alexandra York on the recent success of The York Foundation.
Having joined York’s enterprise back at Clash of the Champions 14, Terry Taylor stood behind the future Marlena as she boasted about her successful company and her plans to recruit more wrestlers.
With the mic then pointed at him, Taylor put himself over with a decent promo which proved that his time in the York Foundation was the most interesting Terry Taylor would ever be in his whole career.
Wrapping things up, Terri told us that she predicted a win for her man against Tom Zenk in less than 15 minutes and 28 seconds before Other Terry added his own one-word prediction:
Pain
Brad Armstrong vs. Beautiful Bobby Eaton
As Brad Armstrong made his way to the ring, JR told us that the grappler had a younger brother currently fighting in Operation Desert Storm.
Hmm, wonder whatever happened to that kid?
Meanwhile, Bobby Eaton was billed -as always- as hailing from The Dark Side, something which always amused because it seemed so at odds with the rest of his character.
The two immediately went at it in a flurry of fast-paced, back-and-forth offence that made you believe this was going to turn into one hell of a match.
Before long, however, the babyface Armstrong slapped an armbar on his opponent, followed it up with another armbar, and then, just to spice things up, went right back to the original armbar.
For this writer, it felt like the match went from super exciting to mind-numbingly tedious in the snap of a second.
Things didn’t look like they were going to get any better when Eaton turned things around and applied a chinlock.
Thankfully, things did pick up again and we got a spirited build to the finish that resulted in Eaton picking up the win courtesy of the Alabama Jam.
The beginning and end of this match were good, but that middle but made me totally tune out and I could never get back into it.
Your Winner: Beautiful Bobby Eaton
After a quick commercial for our next PPV meeting with WCW, Superbrawl, Ross and Rhodes put over the upcoming WCW/NJPW Supershow and an upcoming exhibition match which was designed to promote that show.
Miss A & Miki Handa v. Mami Kitamura & Itsuki Yamasak
The four women involved in this match were met with near silence as they walked to the ring, the only sound being Dusty making fun of his inability to pronounce their names and then commenting on how good they looked in their outfits.
It’s to each of their credits though that they very quickly won over the crows and had JR and Dream taking them very seriously thanks to a stellar-performance in the ring.
Seriously, this was a strong match that turned an apathetic crowd into ardent supporters of the four wrestlers involved and was a compelling watch from start to finish.
After a tremendous effort, Miss A rolled up Itsuki Yamasak to score the fall.
Your Winners: Miss A & Miki Handa
Elsewhere in the arena, Missy Hyatt announced that she was going to be the first woman to ever conduct an interview from inside the men’s locker room, an achievement that she first claimed was a stand for women’s equality but later admitted was just a chance to find a “babe.”
Nature Boy Buddy Landell vs. The Natural Dustin Rhodes
The last time we saw Dustin Rhodes here on Retro Pro Wrestling, he was teaming with his daddy back at the 1991 Royal Rumble.
Here, he and Buddy Landell had the worst match on the card so far.
There was nothing technically wrong with it, it was just incredibly bland.
Though the two did have parts of the small crowd on their side for most of the match, it was a very uninspired affair that felt more like they were there to fill time than to genuinely entertain.
After a few minutes of mediocre action, Dustin picked up the predictable win.
Your Winner: Dusty Rhodes
Backstage, Missy Hyatt got all excited about finding herself a babe as she became the first woman interviewer to go inside a women’s lockeroom.
Her excitement soon dwindled when all she found was Stan Hansen in his undies who spat tobacco at her and yelled at her to leave.
Out in the arena, Tony Schiavone found Missy’s misfortune hilarious, but the whole thing was kind of stupid.
The Royal Family (Jack Victory & Rip Morgan) vs. The Young Pistols (Tracy Smothers & Steve Armstrong)
Jack Victory and Rip Morgan were supposed to be a Royal Family, but came out in medieval garments that made them look like old-worldly servants while medieval flute music played as their theme.
Maybe they really were royalty, albeit royalty with access to a Delorean which accidentally took them back a thousand years.
Meanwhile, Tracy Smothers and Steve Armstrong had dropped the ‘Wild-Eyed Southern Boys’ name and become The Young Pistols, no doubt in an attempt to get rid of the whole confederate flag gimmick they’d been working in the past.
After the opening moments of exciting action, the arena lights went out, prompting the two teams to spend a few minutes wrestling under a spotlight.
If you want to know the truth, it actually looked pretty cool.
The actual match was cool too.
The Young Pistols put their speed and agility against The Royal Family’s brute power to give us a bout which, though certainly not spectacular, was very entertaining with nary a dull moment in sight.
The heels dominated for much of the contest, but at the final moment, the good guys reversed Victory & Morgan’s double face buster attempt to score the win.
Your Winners: The Young Pistols
Out somewhere in the arena, Diamond Dallas Page made his PPV debut in an interview with Tony Schiavone.
In a compelling promo, Page put his gift of the gab to work in putting over The Fabulous Freebirds and how they were going to”drop Doom like a bad habit” when the two teams met in the ring.
The future Hall of Famer then turned his attentions to Doom's manager, Teddy Long, and began ranting about how the opposition’s manager had a peanut head.
Naturally, this brought out Long, who told off Page and promised that Doom would reign supreme later tonight.
This was a pretty damn good segment.
It’s interesting that Long and DDP were such strong characters that neither Doom nor The Fabulous Freebirds needed to be in a segment that was supposed to be about them.
No Disqualification Match
Terry Taylor (w/ Alexandra York) vs. The Z-Man
Despite being a babyface, The Z-Man got almost as many boos as Terry Taylor as the two made their way out for a No Disqualification match that failed to take advantage of such a stipulation in anyway.
Look, I like Tom Zenk. Even though there are plenty of people who will tell you that Z-Man was a goof who deserved to be booed, I think he had a certain role to play and played it well.
Likewise, Terry Taylor was a genuinely interesting character for the first (and perhaps only) time in his career as he took on the role of ‘The Computerised Man of the 90s.’
I’d even fairly enjoyed their outing together at Clash 14, but this felt like a wasted opportunity.
The only reason for the No DQ rule was that both men had beaten the other via disqualification in previous outings so now they were going to settle the score once and for all.
It was a good concept for a match that was ruined by the fact that -other than a split second where Taylor choked his opponent with a cable ok the outside- nothing happened to make this unlike any other generic singles match.
That’s not to say it was a bad match. It wasn’t all that interesting, but it wasn’t terrible or anything, but it just seems a shame to promote a no DQ match and not take advantage of the opportunity to do something different.
Still, this was WCW in the 90s, so I shouldn’t be too surprised, nor should I be surprised that the company would give Alexandra York a computer that didn’t turn on and then give us multiple shots which clearly showed her typing into a computer that wasn’t switched on.
It was kind of dumb, but it did give me the opportunity to say something interesting about this otherwise run-of-the-mill match, as did the appearance of Nikita Koloff.
Koloff had last been seen on PPV two years ago at Wrestlewar '89, but tonight he was in the crowd with The Great Muta and Hiro Matsuda, both of whom were in town to promote the WCW/NJPW super show.
Back to our match, after a competent but boring match, Z-Man looked to have the victory only for Ms. York to distract the official.
The referee (who JR liked to tell us was a rookie at every opportunity) refused to stop arguing with York, even when Z-Man told him that he needed him to count the fall.
The ref refused, instead focussing his efforts purely on The York Foundation leader, but the second Taylor rolled up his opponent with a handful of tights, you can bet your sweet ass that the ref was right there to count the fall.
It was a dumb end to a dumb match between two decent performers who probably deserved better.
Your Winner: Terry Taylor
After the match, Ross and Rhodes hyped an upcoming appearance by El Gigante on Paul E. Dangerously’s Danger Zone interview segment.
“I tell ya, I’ve seen El Gigante training. I’ve seen him running, I’ve seen him hiding!” Exclaimed Dusty, who apparently didn’t seem to realise that telling fans that a babyface had been “running and hiding” was probably not a good idea.
Let’s Get Racist!
Speaking of things that weren’t a good idea, Dangerously then made his way to the ring and immediately began a racist tirade against illegal immigrants and Latin people in general.
El Gigante then sauntered to the ring, where the goal was for Heyman to put over the big man as the special referee for an upcoming cage match between Sting and Ric Flair.
Instead, the future WCW boss simply amplified the racism before Gigante had enough and destroyed Dangerously with a body slam.
I get that this was of it’s time and everything, but this segment really didn’t age well and I doubt was all that well-received at the time.
Let’s Promote the Japan Show!
If Clash of the Champions XIV had been one long promotional vehicle for tonight’s show, WrestleWar ‘91 was itself shaping up to be a promotional vehicle for the big. NJPW/WCW crossover.
Up next, Schiavone told us us that WCW’s “Rolling Thunder ‘91 Tour” would be working its way to Tokyo Egg Dome where Sting would face The Great Muta.
As the former TV champion stood by, Hiro Matsuda told Schiavone that he (Muta) would beat Sting.
It wasn’t much of a promo and, to be honest, didn’t really get me very excited about watching the big Egg Dome show.
Maybe this next match would:
Stan ‘The Lariat’ Hansen vs. Big Van Vader
This match was awesome.
Unlike anything else in WCW (or the WWF for that matter), the bout saw Hansen and Vader throw wrestling protocol right out of the window and just absolutely beat the living shit out of one another.
They brawled around the ring, they took it to the outside and threw chairs at one another, Vader dropped Hansen on the guard rail before Big Stan threw Big Van into the ring steps, then the whole thing went back in the ring again.
At some point, however, the ending did become predictable. Things were so out of control that it seemed like only a matter of time before referee Randy “Pee Wee” Anderson called for the double DQ finish.
The ending was inevitable, but that didn’t detract away from what was a great match that this fan would have happily seen go a lot longer.
Double DQ
Thankfully, we did get more from these two as Vader went to the top and destroyed Hansen with an impressive top rope clothesline before Hansen battled back and choked Vader with his bull rope.
The two brawled all the way to the back and that was that.
Before the next match, JR told us that we were going to hear more about Superbrawl. When he said “more,” he meant “the exact same graphic as we saw before.”
Ross and The Dream then hyped up our next match, which would be the last appearance of the old-school NWA US title as WCW struck out as its own separate entity and swapped to its own titles.
World Championship Wrestling United States Championship
WCW US Champion Lex Luger vs. Dangerous Dan Spivey.
Autocorrect keeps changing the name to Dangerous Dan Spicy and I can’t stop chuckling at that.
Spicy or not, the challenger and his opponent exceeded expectations here with a fine match that got more compelling as it went on.
In the opening moments, it looked as though this was going to descend into a lackluster big man power match, but before long both men picked up the slack and found their groove to deliver a genuinely riveting performance.
Every time, the champion dramatically kicked out and eventually battled his way back, ultimately retaining his title after an exciting finish which saw Spivey throw him off the top rope only for The Total Package to reverse the subsequent pin attempt for the fall.
Your Winner and Still US Champion: Lex Luger
Post-match, Luger made his way over to Tony Schiavone, Grizzly Smith, and Nikita Koloff, the latter of whom was supposed to present the new US title belt to the champion.
Instead, Koloff smacked Lex in the face with the belt and proceeded to cut a scathing promo.
In it, he lambasted the WCW Championship Committee for telling him that, since he had been retired for two years, he had no rights to claim a title shot and would thus have to prove he was worthy.
Attacking Luger, said Koloff, was his way of proving that he meant business, and dethroning the man who beat him for the US title back in 1987 would ultimately show the WCW Powers That Be that he was indeed worthy of holding gold.
That was great.
World Championship Wrestling World Tag Team Championship
WCW World Tag Team Champions Doom (Ron Simmons & ‘Hacksaw’ Butch Reed w/ Teddy Long) vs. The Fabulous Freebirds (Michael ‘P.S’ Hayes & Jimmy ‘Jam’ Garvin w/ Diamond Dallas Page, The Diamond Dollls and Big Daddy Dink)
Flanked by two beautiful ‘Diamond Dolls,’ the charismatic Diamond Dallas Page rocked and rolled, strutted and strolled down to the ringside while his team, Michael ‘P.S’ Hayes & Jimmy ‘Jam’ Garvin both struggled to get any attention on them.
Once in the ring, Page took to the microphone and, in the most long-winded fashion ever, announced that he was stepping back from being ringside with the Free Birds, and that he would be replaced by the group’s new road manager, Big Daddy Dink (Oliver Humperdink).
To be honest, this was a good thing.
The larger-than-life DDP didn’t so much ooze charisma here as he did spray it like a ruptured fountain, The problem was that he didn’t yet have the mic skills to backup his overwhelming personality, so the whole thing started to get very annoying.
Seriously, every third phrase out of his mouth was “GOOD GAWD” and you ended up hating it more and more every time he said it.
The result of all this was that The Free Birds, you know, the guys actually wrestling the match, were completely overshadowed by their manager, a manager who wasn’t yet skilled enough to warrant all of the attention.
It was not a good start.
Fortunately, things got much better once Doom hit the ring and proceeded to have a good but largely forgettable match with Hayes and Garvin.
After a somewhat short encounter, Reed pulled out an international object and went to take out Hayes, but the future Doc Hendrix ducked and Simmons bore the brunt of his own partner’s attack.
As Hayes fell to the mat, Garvin -who had himself been knocked silly- was shoved onto Simmons by Humperdink.
One three count later, The Free Birds had fluked their way to a title win.
Your Winners and New WCW Tag Team Champions: The Fabulous Freebirds
As Page returned to celebrate The Freebirds big win, Butch Reed and Teddy Long turned on Ron Simmons, starting the letter’s singles face run.
Meanwhile, Hayes & Garvin had already lost the titles to The Steiners in a pre-taped match that had been recorded six days prior but wouldn’t air for another few weeks, making them the only team to have technically had a negative title reign.
Up next, Jim Ross promised us ‘more’ about Superbrawl, but of course, it wasn’t more at all, it was the exact same clip of the event’s logo and date that we’d already seen twice.
From there, Ross and Dusty interviewed some kid who had won a sweepstakes competition.
JR asked the youngster who his favourite team in the War Games match was. The poor kid either misheard or misunderstood, because he answered with ‘Doom,’ all while looking bummed out about Reed & Long’s earlier betrayal.
“Well, I don’t think they’re going to be a team any more!” quipped JR, throwing gasoline onto the bonfire of misery this poor, nervous kid was already experiencing.
The duo then showed us a clip of Brian Pillman being destroyed by The Four Horsemen, putting a question over Pillman’s head about his health. Finally, they reminded us that Arn Anderson was out of the match due to injury and would be replaced by Larry Zybysko.
Let the War Games Begin!
As the arena went dark, dramatic music played, and bright colored lights flashed over a cage that was lowered to the ring while blazing with fireworks.
It was, honestly, pretty awesome.
Tony Schiavone then reminded us all of the War Games match before finally, it was back to the action.
War Games
WCW World Heavyweight Champion Nature Boy Ric Flair, Sid Vicious, Barry Windham, and Larry Zybysko (w/ Arn Anderson) vs. Sting, Flyin’ Bryan and The Steiner Brothers (Rick & Scott Steiner)
This match was incredible.
As Barry Windham stepped into the ring for his team, Ross and Rhodes speculated about how unwise it would be for Pillman to start the match given his recent injury.
Naturally, Pillman then broke away from the pack and leapt into the ring before his teammates had a chance to stop him, all in the name of getting revenge for the Horsemen’s attack.
And man, did he get his revenge.
For the next five minutes, Flyin’ Brian destroyed Barry Windham, flying around the ring with a barrage of attacks and grating his foe’s face against the cage until he bled.
It looked tremendous.
A coin toss was then held to determine which team would get the two-man advantage and, as if it wasn’t obvious, it fell in favour of the heels.
Flair then entered next, followed by Sting, Larry Zybysko, Rick Steiner, Sid Vicious, and, finally, Scott Steiner.
All the while, the two teams waged war on each other in a manner most awesome.
At one point, the faces all put the heels in figure four leg locks at the same time in one of the main highlights of the match.
Later, Pillman and Sid found themselves alone in one of the two rings.
Big Sid lifted Brian up for his signature powerbomb, but there wasn’t room. As such, Pillman’s legs struck the cage roof and he landed head-first on the match.
Sid quite visibly checked that Pillman was ok before picking him up for a second devastating (though thankfully not life-threatening promo).
At that point, Brian’s buddy, El Gigante ran to the ring and declared that his fallen friend was in no fit state to continue.
Referee Nick Patrick agreed and called off the match, giving the win to The Horsemen.
Your Winners: The Four Horsemen
As Gigante carried a lifeless Pillman out of the arena, the Horsemen celebrated having emerged victorious in one of the best matches of that year, if not that decade.
Finally, Patrick told JR and Dream that he stood by his decision as he didn’t want to be responsible for Pillman getting hurt.
Then, all was left was for our announcers to recap some of the night’s highlights and, with that, Wrestle War ‘91 was over.
I started this review asking whether Wrestle War 1991 was capable of living up to the hype.
Having watched the whole thing, I can not categorically say yes, yes it was.
Though not every match was perfect, there was a lot of good to great stuff here leading up to a phenomenal War Games match that would end up going down as a classic.
Other 1991 pro wrestling reviews:
- WWF Royal Rumble 1991
- WCW Clash of the Champions XIV: Dixie Dynamite
- WCW WrestleWar 1991
- WWF Wrestlemania 7
- WWF Summerslam 1991
- WCW Halloween Havoc 1991
- WWF Battle Royal at the Royal Albert Hall
- WWF Survivor Series 1991
- WWF This Tuesday in Texas
- SWS/WWF SuperWrestle '91
Other WCW Wrestlewar reviews:
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