WCW SuperBrawl II

1) Brian Pillman vs. Jushin “Thunder” Liger – 7
2) Terry Taylor vs. Marcus Bagwell – 4
3) Ron Simmons vs. Cactus Jack – 5
4) Ricky Morton & Vinnie Vegas vs. Van Hammer & Tom Zenk – 4
5) Steve Austin & Larry Zbyszko vs. Barry Windham & Dustin Rhodes – 6
6) The Steiner Brothers vs. Arn Anderson & Bobby Eaton – 6
7) Rick Rude vs. Ricky Steamboat - 6
8) Lex Luger vs. Sting - 5

This card looks tremendous on paper but for some reason, I found this show rather difficult to sit through. As I mentioned on my review of the Brian Pillman DVD set, the Liger/Pillman match was a tremendous aerial exhibition. There was a pretty sick somersault dive to the outside by Liger and Pillman was working some ground work in. The two guys went non-stop for nearly twenty minutes and you could tell that Jesse Ventura was clearly impressed on commentary as he called it “the greatest aerial match I’ve ever seen”. Taylor and Bagwell fell apart pretty fast. The story going into it was simple … Taylor offered Bagwell a chance to be his protégé but Bagwell refused thus leading to the match. This was Bagwell’s first big angle to be a part of and he botched a few small things but managed to score and upset. Cactus and Simmons was brief but fun. They pretty much blugeonded each other with hard shot after hard shot. I remember fondly a sick bump that Foley took on the elevated ramp leading to the ring. After the match, Abdullah joins Cactus in a beat down of Simmons which lead to the Junkyard Dog running in from the stands. Morton and Vegas worked well as a team, much to my surprise. One major glaring thing about Morton was that he was playing heel but he was still using his babyface selling technique. Hammer was way over on his team but really didn’t contribute much aside from battling most of the match with Vegas.

Windham and Rhodes come out of the gate fighting with intensity. The whole match stems from when Arn and Larry slammed Windham’s hand in a car door at Halloween Havoc. Windham comes to the ring with a taped hand and lays out Austin and Zbyszko. Zbyszko’s selling of Windham’s hand was epic as every time he was hit with it, he sold it like he just got shot with a revolver. Arn and Bobby teamed well and had a great match with The Steiners. This was the Steiners return match as a team after Scott’s bicep injury. The story was that the Steiners never lost the tag titles so they were fighting to get them back. This was hard hitting and fun and would’ve gotten a higher score had they not pulled a Dusty finish. Rude and Steamboat was not as good as I thought it would be but it was damn fine nonetheless. They worked their asses off and were sweating after about five minutes. Steamboat was accompanied to the ring by The Ninja who stood rigidly at ringside until he hit Steamboat with a phone, therefore telling everyone that it was Paul E. Dangerously (who had been barred from ringside) in disguise. Sting winning the title from Luger in the main event was a formality because Luger had become disgruntled and was heading out the door. Luger’s heart was not in the match as Sting pretty much worked around Luger’s laziness. Sting won the title with a nice cross-body from the top and everyone in the building went apeshit.