March 4th, 1991
Taped February 15th, 1991
Penta Hotel
New York, New York
Commentators: Craig DeGeorge & Bruno Sammartino
It’s the second set of tapings from the second set of tapings at the Penta Hotel so strap yourself in for tired crowds & non-finishes (also this is the third time trying to publish this as some issue happened on the blog while I was trying to post this and it got wiped and I was in no mood to re-type it all again).
Steve Williams vs. Carmine Albano
Lou’s useless nephew makes his second dumpy appearance and Williams treats him with all the care of a dog with a new toy. Steve puts so much effort into pounding his opponent that he pops his own stitches from the Orndorff match and starts bleeding. Steve dumps a pitcher of water over Carmine which causes a bunch of fans to start chanting for him because these extended beat-downs don’t work as planned in New York. A double-turnbuckle Oklahoma Stampede ends a really long squash (to cheers).
Ask the Wrestlers feat. Steve Ray
Someone asks Steve how he got the nick-name “Wild Thing”? He answers by censoring himself with a bunch of bleeps. OK.
Herb hypes the next set of tapings, The Rumble In The Sunshine State on April 6th at Ft. Lauderdale which…would happen! ALRIGHT HERB, WE’RE GONNA WIN THIS THING.
Wet N’ Wild (Sunny Beach & Steve Ray) vs. The Power Twins (Larry & Dave) (w/Rick Golden)
“Here we are, the world famous Power Twins!” Who? They’re two identical bears who wrestled in Stampede and would go onto USWA and not much else after this. As they’re being introduced by Rick Golden, the UWF announcer has to remind fans not to throw rubbish into the ring. Bruno then emphasises how identical they are by mentioning even their bald spots are the same. Always a good start for your debut. This is Wet N’ Wild’s first appearance together after forming last week/earlier in the night. Steve tries some WOAH HEY I’M A FACE stuff and the crowd’s tries to explain they just cheered Williams murdering a man. Some double-teams get the crowd cheering because as long as you’re inflicting pain, New Yorkers will cheer. Sonny’s arsenal is as basic as it gets, which is different to Steve’s which is also as basic as it gets but he goes WOAH YEAH C’MON after everything. After landing his fourth side headlock takedown, Wild Thing tags in so The Power Twins can show off their world-famous offence (back body drop, clothesline). We get a few missed tags but the production does such a wonderful job of missing it that if you weren’t listening to Bruno’s mumbling you wouldn’t have known it happened. Steve accidentally distracts the ref so the Powers can double-team but both of them are so gassed that neither of their offense could put a dent in rice pudding. The ref has enough of their offensive offense and DQs them with no attempt to stop them beforehand. The commentators emphasise the victory by wondering why the match was stopped. Wet N’ Wild were as good as two wrestlers with the combined move-set of one wrestler could be.
Capt. Lou’s Corner w/Cactus Jack
The best Corner ever as Cactus shows up and does all of Lou’s material (“If you put your brain in a parrot, it’d fly backwards”) before mocking him (“GET YOUR LAUGHS LOU, GET YOUR LAUGHS”) and says if Lou has any questions, go ask his opponents when they’re knocked out in a heap.
(Also I know we’re all looking forward to the episode with the tape getting stolen, rest assured but if it happened and it aired, I’m clipping it and uploading it to twitter).
B. Brian Blair (w/Capt. Lou Albano) vs. Bob Orton Jr. (w/John Tolos)
Well we get a screwy finish to this long-running feud last time we were here so common sense says Herb wouldn’t do the exact same thing again in the exact same venue but I think we all know better than that by now. Some mat wrestling starts us off to show off how grudge-y this match is while Lou & Tolos yell at each other at ringside. That last sentence described three minutes. Bruno gets excited at the graps as we go to break with Herb explaining this week’s Cactus Jack match has been trimmed due to time constraints. I love UWF. When we return nothing is still happening, to the point where Lou has to hype up the fans by walking around the ring yelling C’MON. Bob finally does something interesting by taking the Shawn Michaels sell into the ring post and that’s apparently enough to set up the finish as Blair locks in The Scorpion. Tolos & Lou try to interfere and in the confusion the ref gets bumped. Blair gets an O’Connor role but the ref’s still dead so Orton sends Blair outside for a comfy piledriver on the soft hotel carpet.
Orton jumps inside to help the ref count Blair out buuuuuut Steve Ray shows up to inform the ref he took a piledriver so it’s not fair to count him out or something. What is happening. They attempt to cut to shots of the crowd reacting from earlier in the night to make it look like the crowd is cheering on Blair but it’s so fucking badly done I had to pause to laugh. Bruno is truly bewildered by everything happening in front of him (even more so than usual) and after hearing Ray’s wise words, the ref decides to GIVE THE VICTORY TO BLAIR. Neither commentator can figure out why the match ended as the piledriver isn’t illegal but we fade to black on this episode of insanity as Bruno looks in his filofax for Vince’s number.
Overall: Lost in the drugs & baby oil is Herb’s inability to book a program/feud in any way other than “keep doing the same match-up with non finishes until either they leave or I run out of money.”
Crowd was so dead this week that I started recognising noises in the fake audio they looped into the main event so let’s end on some Observer Notes to end this recap on a mild high.
On Herb Abrams television show that aired this past week, he had Lou Albano and Don Muraco out saying that the war shouldn’t be exploited to sell wrestling tickets. Then Abrams did all the commercials for his merchandise saying the profits would go to Operation Desert Storm. (Edit: They aired the same ones this week too, but with Herb reminding everyone that the conflict may be over but you can still pay tribute to the troop’s fine work by buying a shirt.)
Abrams is claiming now he’ll have 125 television stations by April, but no television stations seem to know about it.
I’ve been Maffew and also check out Work & Shoot, covering Valentine & Honky Tonk Man’s opinions on UWF.