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[1991-06-14-WCW-Clash of the Champions XV] Barry Windham & Arn Anderson vs Brian Pillman & El Gigante


Loss

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  • 3 months later...

Short match, but a really good one. Pillman losing the match should have been a bigger moment, but this show was poorly laid out and rushed like crazy. Pillman doing the jump off of Gigante's shoulders was great. But still, because he lost such a short match and they moved on so quickly, this feels like a Pillman burial, whether it was intended to be or not. As a result of the fall, Pillman must leave WCW.

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Jesus that was short for a loser leaves town match from your promotion's best in-ring feud of the last two months. The action was hot. I loved the spot where Pillman jumped off Gigante's shoulders. And of course, fucking WCW missed the brutal kick that put Pillman down, only showing it on replay. Aside from the wrestlers themselves, this promotion was such fucking amateur hour. Honestly, if they had gone out of business, the fate would have been well-deserved.

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Their was way too many angles on this show that it really cut into the match times. Heck their were already too many matches. They should have just built this match up on regular t.v for a month to pop a rating.I mean have a contract signing, an angle to set up the match etc.

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Good action for a TV match but Jesus Christ, it's absurd how little focus was given to the loser-leaves stip, to the point where it had no meaning at all. And that can't all be blamed on being short of time--the idea of a guy's career being on the line was given about one line of lip service during the match. The only rational explanation I can think of is they wanted to do this banned-guy-shows-up-under-a-mask angle but consciously chose not to hype the stip to too great of a degree or else people would expect to see Pillman turn up in the WWF. Regardless, the entire presentation is enough to sour me on the match itself no matter how good the work was. That it came 3 months after Warrior vs. Savage, which was hyped properly and also had longer-term consequences, just exacerbates everything.

 

"Brian Pillman must leave WCW, and now here's Paul E. Dangerously with a Clash of the Champions report!" Unreal. Going by his fawning over Pillman for the past several months on end, Jim Ross should be either slitting his wrists or condemning Barry Windham's soul to hell, or both. This promotion now really is coming off as a bigger wreck than it did during the Black Scorpion saga.

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  • 5 weeks later...

Loser of the pinfall is out of WCW. Gigante never even tags in which is smart of him to not risk his WCW career. Really rushed match with Pillman losing. I guess they felt since they wouldn’t honor the stips, they weren’t going to give them much time. Pillman being out of WCW is given little thought.

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  • 3 months later...

Action was good but the way this match was presented made it not resonate for me at all. The end of 1990 was a little bit forgivable with the Black Scorpion stuff because the action was able to sustain. Even the first two PPV's of 1991 were fine but now it really seems like the in ring action is suffering from the overall stupidity and moral.

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  • 5 months later...

Brian Pillman & El Gigante vs Arn Anderson & Barry Windham - WCW Clash XV Loser of Fall Leaves Town

 

No 1991 Brian Pillman retrospective is complete without the sprint that triggered what should have been an awesome Yellow Dog angle. Clocking in under 4 minutes, this match was not given much time to develop, but still it was a real fun 4 minutes. Pillman, Anderson and Windham put over how important a loss here is by all going for pinfalls early so as to get this over with. Pillman would attack both Windham and Anderson with chops to set up an early pinning predicament. Windham got a huge right out of headscissors and a big DDT, but could not pin Pillman. Pillman dropkicked AA off the top rope sending him careening to the floor and follows that up with a springboard splash to the outside. AA is disoriented and ends up in the wrong corner and gets choked by Gigante. El Gigante is a BIG dude. Pillman with a rocket launcher off of Gigante's shoulders onto Windham and the crowd is rocking, The Enforcer breaks it up. Windham trips Pillman while he is top rope causing him to crash and burn. In typical WCW fashion, the camera is on EL Gigante putting AA in a head vice while Windham kicks Pillman in the head to send him home packing. WCW does have a replay to show us the finish so I can't complain too much. This was a fun sprint with plenty of action and put over the nature of the stakes. It just did not have time to develop.

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  • 1 year later...

Let me start by saying that any criticism I have of Dusty over these next few days isn't meant as disrespect of the recently deceased at all.

 

That said, what could he have been thinking here? This should have been one of the main event matches, just as big as Luger/Muta and Flair/Eaton. Instead, this is a finish in search of a match. If I didn't know better, I'd swear that they taped this prior to the broadcast and only showed the finish, and I'm not sure they wouldn't have been better off doing that. Yeah, Pillman does a Superfly off of Gigante's shoulders. Hip hip hooray. The final pin sequence was weak (since when does one kick to the head pin someone as supposedly courageous as Pillman after less than five minutes, even if a guy like Barry's doing the kicking?) and not having Gigante tag in at all renders him pointless. They should have just made this one-on-one and given it at least ten minutes; they could have used a podium interview to show off Gigante's claw another time.

 

Pete's point about not hyping Pillman's leaving because they didn't want anyone to think that he was going to Vince is most likely valid, but if that's the case, why do the loser leaves stip at all? They didn't need to for injury purposes; all they wanted to do was put Brian under a mask to drive Windham up the wall. But this kind of match doesn't justify the trouble they went to at all; it just makes Brian look like he can't beat Barry fairly, so he has to use mind games and parlor tricks. Of course, we've seen that kind of thing before with Dusty (Midnight Rider, anyone?) so it has the potential to be entertaining. I just wish Pillman hadn't lost so cleanly in order to set it up.

 

Want to know how short this match was? There wasn't one mention by JR of Pillman's football career. It was covered in the pre-bout graphics, but not in the commentary itself.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Pillman has been the American wrestler of the year up to this point, yet the booking keeps cutting his balls off. Him losing isn't necessarily bad, but he keeps losing cleanly in very short fashion. No offense to Bobby Eaton, who I love, but he is not meant to be an uppetcard baby face. Pillman should have that role as he is much better suited for it.

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  • 2 years later...
  • GSR changed the title to [1991-06-14-WCW-Clash of the Champions XV] Barry Windham & Arn Anderson vs Brian Pillman & El Gigante

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