Monday, August 21, 2017

Random Match Review: 8/21/17

NWA World Tag Team Title Tournament: The Miracle Violence Connection vs. The Steiner Brothers – Clash of the Champions XIX 6/16/92; McAlister Field House


Looking to re-establish their relationship with the NWA, WCW hosted an NWA World Tag Team Title Tournament. The opening stuff went down on this edition of the Clash of the Champions. Earlier in the night, the Miracle Violence Connection, Steve Williams and Terry Gordy, defeated Jeff and Larry O’Dea. The Steiner Brothers beat Miguel Perez Jr. and Ricky Santana via forfeit, which got them to the second round here.

I’ve seen these teams wrestle once. At Beach Blast, four days after this, they wrestled to a thirty minute draw. Rick started the match for his team and commentary instantly noted that was unusual for the Steiners. Little things like that being noticed by commentary adds so much. It really made this feel like a strategic head game, rather than Rick just wanting to start. Some of the early stuff felt clunky, but they made it work. For example, Scott had trouble bridging up with Gordy on him and instead of feeling like a botch, it was more like we saw how not even Scott’s strength was enough against these opponents.

Once things picked up, this became one of the manlier tag matches you’ll find. Scott started throwing suplexes and the intensity revved up. Slaps, ground and pound and stiff shots were the name of the game from there on out. The fans woke up for that, popping for the big offense and biting on near falls. Rick got the hot tag of sorts, as we were treated to the old “referee didn’t see the tag” spot. Scott had his leg worked on, so when he got clipped late, it seemed like it might be the end but he survived a great gorilla press slam. Scott came back with an attempted belly to belly suplex, only to get clipped again. Williams landed on top of him and got the three at 15:01 to eliminate the tournament’s #1 seed.

Early on, this wasn’t really working for me. I just wanted to see them go at it, but the slow start left something to be desired. Once it got going, I was way into this. Rugged action that looked legitimate at times and felt different to a lot of what was going on at the time. The finish worked because it came as a shock and played into the leg work from earlier. I prefer their match from Beach Blast, but this was still great. [****]

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