[1990-08-03-USWA Texas] Steve Austin vs Chris Adams ('Come As You Are')

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Football vs Karate! Its billed as a Come As You Are match. Austin wears a football helmet and padding, while Adams wears karate gear. Austin takes some insane aslyum bumps, including a suicide bump splashing the concrete floor with Adams moving. This was really good and is by far the best match of the feud, with Austin looking really good and Adams getting some high-quality revenge. Pringle takes a few shots too. I wish Adams had gotten the pin but this was still excellent.

[PeteF3]

A fantastic brawl with Austin taking two absolutely insane bumps: the dive to nowhere on the floor and the missed tackle against the post, with Austin smacking it so hard his helmet flies off. Somehow they book a DQ finish in a no-DQ/no-countout match when Percy Pringle runs in and helps engineer a 2-on-1 on Adams. The psychology surrounding the football gear is actually quite clever which puts this an additional notch or two above the usual garbage brawl.

[soup23]

Probably my favorite Texas match yet. Great psychology, sick bumps, actually good interference by Pringle. I can't ask for much more.

[shoe]

Count this as my favorite match from Texas. The full speed bump Austin takes into the ring post is nuts. Just a super fun brawl.

[Kevin Ridge]

Austin is wearing football shoulder pads and helmet. Adams is in Judo gear with a kendo stick. He whacks Austin a few times in the head which don’t work with the helmet on. Austin does a Duggan football tackle. Austin hits the ringpost and full speed and his helmet flies off. Adams uses it as a weapon. Pringle gets hit with the kendo stick. He came back too quickly for a manager though and was physically holding Adams up for Austin to take some shots.

[Zenjo]

USWA Texas isn't my type of promotion at all but against expectations I ended up enjoying this feud. The women really added a lot to it. Jeanie was a devious minx and the best promo of all of them at the time. Initially I didn't find Toni attractive until I got a better look at her deformed plastic titties. What a slutty crackwhore!

 

Onto the match which was very silly but ridiculously fun. Easily the best of the feud. Austin running head first into the post and knocking his helmet off was so awesome.

[garretta]

This was going so well until the end. Austin was finally getting his the way he should have long ago, with Chris using his own football gear against him as well as the kendo stick he (Chris) had brought. Even Percy's interference couldn't stop him. And then, Austin got in a low blow and it was Schmucks on Parade Part 37, as Chris was once again beaten into oblivion, the only difference being that Percy was Austin's helper instead of Jeannie. The video cut out before we saw whether someone came down to help Chris or not. Odds are that if someone did, it was CVE.

 

You know, I'm glad some of you can get past the booking and appreciate this match solely for the quality of the performances, but I can't. Austin can look as good as he wants to slamming into steel posts helmet-first and missing splashes right on his pads; he's still making his so-called teacher into a joke. Adams has one win in this whole feud, and that was kind of a fluke in the barbed wire match all the way back in May. Since then, not only has he dropped decisions, he's been beaten within an inch of his life by a rookie, a fat slob of a manager, and his ex-wife, with his only help coming from his current wife and the young pup of the Von Erich litter, who has no business in the ring.

 

If this was Vince, we'd be hooting and hollering about how stupid this whole feud was, even if the in-ring work wasn't bad. In fact, we don't even have to imagine anything; two of the greatest workers in history, Dusty Rhodes and Randy Savage, just finished a similar feud for Vince, and most of the comments about it say that it went on too long and damaged both men's careers. Well, what do you think this feud's doing to Adams' career? Jeannie and Toni can work about as well as Sapphire and Liz, which is saying nothing at all, and at least Vince had the good sense to give Dusty, Sapphire, and Liz revenge around the horn through clean wins. (Yes, Savage won at SummerSlam, but that served as a transition to a whole other feud for Dusty and was kind of a throwaway match.) Let's not even talk about Sherri, who might have outworked everyone else in the feud, both male and female. In this case, Adams may have won the match (through a DQ in a no-DQ match, which only makes this whole mess even worse) but he still gets laid out in the end, and Austin and Jeannie get to crow endlessly for another week, this tine with Percy in tow. Blecch. I'll be glad when this feud's over.

 

Craig brought the football analogies and then some, but this time they fit, even if they were a tad overdone. Pedicino was serviceable on color. I liked the mention of the "real" Steve Williams from Oklahoma when Craig briefly discussed Austin's football career at North Texas, as well as mentioning the judo careers of both Chris and his brother. JR would have been in his glory calling this one for sure.

[Loss]

Savage-Dusty didn't go for the jugular nearly as much as this feud did. It also didn't have the same mature themes and weekly soap opera twists. It was a very different feud.

[soup23]

I also think the feud was completely different on the level you convey. It has been a couple of years but I never got the sense watching it was nearly as one-sided as you are portraying. Even in the face of 1990 stuff, I thought Lawler in USWA had opponents of a lower level that invoked much more discrepancy in the control of the overall feud.

[drew wardlaw]

Really liked the use of the football helmet here. First as protection against the kendo stick, then as a visual aid popping off, then as a weapon used against Austin.

[dawho5]

I'll echo this being the best match in the series so far. Austin in football gear is such a brilliant heel way to use this match gimmick. Wish Adams could get the upper hand once. Austin may be the heel, but Adams was supposed to be his teacher.

[zep81]

Steve Austin vs Chris Adams (USWA Dallas Sportatorium 08/03/90, Come As You Are Match)

I havn't really seen much of Austin in USWA, but the stip here peaked my interest. It's a superb brawl. Austin comes out dressed in American football gear and Adams is in a Karate outfit. Austin takes a couple of big bumps on the outside, including one where he ran head first into the post and his crash helmet came off

Was an insane bump

Very enjoyable brawl though. Great use of the football helmet here too. Both by Austin and Adams.

[Lee Benaka]

I think the two gnarly bumps from Austin make this match a must-watch.  It was more brutal to me than the Onita-Goto explosive barbed wire match I watched soon after.  The floor of the Sportatorium looks more unforgiving than any other arena floor I have seen.  You can see the unfinished quality of the floor, with floor boards exposed in places, and it just looks painful.  With Austin's splat to the floor and his 100-mph helmet-flying bump to the post, I can't believe he had as long a headlining career as he did in the WWF.  I don't have quite the negative reaction to the "one-sided" aspect of this feud.  As it goes on, settles into a comfortable routine.  Austin and Jeannie/Percy get the upper hand in the end, and Chris (and Toni sometimes) is back next week to go at it again.  There really are no lasting effects of the humiliations.  Chris comes back to dish out some more punishment, then rinse, repeat.  I think Chris and Toni are on the losing end often because they don't have the same killer instinct.  When their opponents are tied in the ropes, they will play to the crowd extensively and only land a blow or two before they lose advantage.  It's just the way it is, but I can see how this feud may have burnt out the crowd over time (assuming it did?).