[1991-05-19-WCW-Superbrawl I] Ron Simmons vs Butch Reed (Cage)

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Last few minutes. I guess you could call this the very beginning of the Simmons push that would see him in main events later in the year and culminate with Watts making him his top guy in '92. I know hindsight is 20/20, but there was really no reason at all to break up Doom, unless Reed was having personal problems that made it necessary, which is possible. They work hard, but the crowd is just not into this at all.

[shoe]

I never understood why they did the breakup. Doom had plenty of gas left in the tank.

[PeteF3]

Simmons is busted open, which surprises me on multiple levels since I've never seen that before and we had double-juice in the taped fist match. The football talk is out of control, and this crowd that was so hot for the U.S. Tag Titles has been killed off. This is actually a surprisingly good sympathy selling performance from Simmons, but while I understand that as a major babyface Ron was going to have to get that act down, I have to think a more decisive victory was in order here.

[Kevin Ridge]

The cage just seems to be in the background. Teddy is locked in a cage above the ring for the sole purpose of dropping a chain into the ring at the end. Crowd pretty quiet for match.

[soup23]

Not much to this and a waste of a tag team that could have been really special.

[BruiserBrody]

Reed wanted to get into Rodeo and DOOM wasn't a Dusty creation, so we have the break up of a good team.

[garretta]

What was here was good. I agree that Simmons could have gone over a bit more decisively since Reed was leaving, but at least he got to foil Peanuthead's cheating, which is something.

 

The crowd wasn't into this like I thought they would have been for a former Seminole. Of course, Simmons hadn't done enough as a single yet to justify a big reaction, and beating Reed at this point wasn't the major deal that it would have been six or seven years earlier.

 

I don't think the football talk was that bad here, especially since Simmons' All-American career at Florida State was the biggest reason for his upcoming push. He hadn't really earned it based solely on his wrestling career so far, and the ability to use Bobby Bowden and Florida State in promos and interviews was an opportunity that WCW didn't want to pass up. It was no worse than a pea-green Steve Williams getting a much bigger push than he should have from Watts in 1985 and '86. Odds are he wouldn't have gotten it if he'd had similar training to that other Steve Williams (Austin), or if Barry Switzer had refused to do interviews for Mid-South/UWF TV. He almost certainly would have earned it later, but not right then.

[dawho5]

Good match despite nobody caring. Of course, following Gigante and Sid, anything would have looked good. I agree that Doom should have been around much longer than they were.