The SmarK Rant for WWF Superstars – 10.19.91

The SmarK Rant for WWF Superstars – 10.19.81

Originally written 10.23.25

Taped from Wheeling, WV, on 09.30.91

Your hosts are Vince McMahon, Randy Savage & Roddy Piper, celebrating National Forest Products week. As we all do. I’ll let you guess all the tree jokes yourself.

Jake Roberts v. Bill Pierce

Paris gets some shots in the corner to start, but Jake slams him to cut off the offense, and then hits the short arm clothesline and finishes with the DDT at 1:25. Jake now has a cobra that he brings with him, and Vince notes that he’s really “breaking bad”. Like anyone ever used that phrase before.

UPDATE! WITH MEAN GENE OKERLUND! BROUGHT TO YOU BY WWF RAMPAGE 91!

Hey let’s talk about the Survivor Series on Thanksgiving, and WE ABSOLUTELY PROMISE NO GIANT EGGS. Well that’s more of an assumption on my part. But we’ve got Sid, Bossman & LOD v. Jake, IRS & The Natural Disasters. Plus Hulk Hogan defends against the “undefeated” Undertaker, which is true if you discount all the times he lost matches in 1991. Anyway Hulk tells us about his nightmare where a football field of Hulkamaniacs walked into their graves if he loses the title, and he can’t let that happen. Think of all the merchandising money he’d lose! Just to recap: He accuses Undertaker of wanting to literally murder a stadium with 70,000 of his fans in order to win the title. Actually it was only 62,000 murdered according to Dave Meltzer’s count.

The Texas Tornado v. The Brooklyn Brawler

Kerry works the arm and tosses Brawler to the floor to start, and back in for some punches and the tornado punch finishes at 1:25. Too bad he couldn’t have dodged those punches, like some kind of Brooklyn Dodger.

Meanwhile, back in Mexico, Tito Santana has now advanced to the bullring with his pink cape, which is the most important part of bullfighting, as we know. So we get an extreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeme zoom out of the arena, with someone who is obviously Tito Santana and not a ringer, and he fights the bull while they cut to close up shots of Tito’s faces. OLE! Not to be confused with OLE Anderson.

The Natural Disasters v. Barry Hardy, Duane Gill & Jim Arnon

“Grab his eyes!” notes Piper and then also Savage, getting into the spirit. Earthquake tosses Hardy around and brings in Gill, who gets clobbered by Typhoon. Next up, Arnon takes a corner splash from both guys, and then the Disasters pile up all three jabronis in the corner and squish them, setting up the butt splash from Quake and big fat splash from Typhoon to finish at 3:05. Quake is so generous, letting his buddy take the win like that. So this match features Finkel doing a voiceover for some kind of “World Martial Arts Expo” in MSG at the end of the month, which sounds bonkers and I’m not sure what Vince’s angle was with it.

Ric Flair v. Ron Cumberledge

Woooooooo! The Superstars debut of the Real World champion! Flair takes him down and then hits him with chops in the corner before dropping a knee on him. And the figure-four finishes at 1:30. The crowd of course goes nuts for the supposed heel Flair.

The Funeral Parlor with special guest Hacksaw Jim Duggan. We’ve gotta be getting close to changing over to the Barber Shop, don’t we? Duggan is just there to defend the good name of Hulk Hogan. Pretty sure Hulk can stick up for himself. Also Undertaker has a casket ready for Hogan, complete with a Hogan poster in it already. And it’s autographed! That’ll be worth way more once Undertaker kills him.

Sid Justice v. El Diablo

Diablo is a newcomer to the WWF, from parts unknown and weight unknown. Seems pretty sus. But he’s got a karate gi and a mask and blond hair poking out, so we can safely conclude it’s Jack Victory under there. But before we can see him in action, Undertaker interrupts and Paul Bearer bribes El Diablo with a briefcase full of money and takes his spot. So they do a staredown in the ring and try to chokeslam each other, but Diablo returns and unmasks as Jake Roberts, attacking Sid and choking him out with his karate belt for the presumed DQ. Still better than their Wrestlemania match. Jake and Take double-team Sid and Jake hits him with the DDT. So Jake cracks open the briefcase and reveals that it’s not money, it’s a giant snake, so obviously Paul Bearer knew exactly what to bribe him with. He’s so thoughtful. Jake is about to unleash the snake on Sid, but Hacksaw makes the save while the crowd is FREAKING THE FUCK OUT. Vince’s epic disgust sells it like crazy and this was an awesome angle that I surprisingly didn’t even remember from the time. 1991 had some real bangers, not gonna lie. That being said, I’ve heard he suffered his injury here, but I didn’t see anywhere where it would have happened and he was moving around fine the whole time.

The Rockers v. Vito Krus & Al Coleman

Vito is of course Big Vito / Skull Von Crush doing a pastiche of both gimmicks here. Rockers double-team Coleman and hit him with a double superkick to chase him back to the corner, and it’s over to Vito. He pounds on Shawn in the corner but takes a hilariously overblown charge at the corner and misses by a mile, and Marty splashes him for the pin at 1:20.

Meanwhile, Sgt. Slaughter talks about valor. Yeah well his valor was all stolen. He still wants his country back but appears to be unwilling to actually do anything to make it happen. Maybe he should try therapy.

NEXT WEEK: Ted Dibiase! EL MATADOR! The Undertaker! Rowdy Roddy Piper!

That Sid angle was GREAT.