WWE 24/7 - Old School - MSG 10/18/91 Review - September 22, 2008

This is Forever Flair month on WWE 24/7 and the Old School show of October 18, 1991 that just finished airing had a definite Flair feel to it. This was Ric Flair’s debut at Madison Square Garden. I had never seen this show so I was really looking forward to seeing it. On commentary is Gorilla Monsoon, Bobby Heenan, and Lord Alfred Hayes. I really can never get enough of Monsoon and Heenan together and they had a lot of funny moments in this one. I’ll throw their moments in during this recap as well. Opening match had The Texas Tornado defeating Big Bully Busick following the tornado punch. Yeah, I thought the Busick gimmick was lame when I was a kid and time passing hasn’t helped it either. It was an all right match. IRS was next taking on The British Bulldog. Gorilla mentioned that IRS might be able to be bribed to which Heenan says the only person that would take a bribe would be Jack Tunney. I loved Heenan talking about how useless of a pet that a bulldog is saying that it all it does is slobber and drool. This match got really good in the last five minutes. I was also wondering just what was up with referee Danny Davis in this match as well. Monsoon was also ripping on him as well. IRS sneaks in a tag rope and then proceeds to choke the Bulldog with it. Bulldog gets out of the ring and goes to get a tag rope as well. He chokes IRS with it. IRS then counters it hitting a low blow. All of this is right in front of the referee. LOL. Bulldog hooks a small package but the time expires in the match sending it to a 20 minute time limit draw. Solid match but the ref just watching all of this illegal activity going on and doing nothing but counting was just bizarre. The commentating ripping on it as well was funny. The Mountie got a win on Jim Neidhart in the next match when The Mountie used the tights to help him get the win. This was post Hart Foundation for Neidhart so he had his High Energy looking outfit on. Heenan mentioned his outfit saying that Neidhart was going to go looking for a cab after the match. I laughed at that. Main event was next with Rowdy Roddy Piper taking on Ric Flair. Big pop for Flair at MSG. Classic stuff at the beginning with Piper throwing his shirt at Flair followed by Flair woooing at Piper in the corner and Piper spits back at him. Really fun back and forth battle between the two and the fans at MSG were going crazy for it. Of all the refs over the years, WWE has made Earl Hebner look the worst and this was no exception. Hebner is yelling at Heenan on the outside and then gets blasted by Piper and Flair when he isn’t paying attention. Piper hooks a small package but no ref to make the count. Davis runs out to help Hebner taking over the match for a moment. Flair nails Piper in the head with a chair. Neither ref saw it. Hebner finally makes a count and Piper kicks out at two. Piper goes out and grabs Alfred’s chair out from under him. He goes to hit Flair with it and then Hebner grabs the chair from behind before the contact could happen. Flair nails Piper with a punch from the apron knocking Piper down. Flair dives over the ropes and makes a pin. Flair has his feet on the ropes and Hebner makes the three count. Fittingly enough, Piper nails Hebner and Flair with a chair after the match. Seriously, they make the refs look like the most useless people on the planet. LOL. Next was The Big Boss Man taking on Colonel Mustafa. IRS comes out before the match saying that Boss Man is a tax cheat. Mustafa nails the distracted Boss Man. IRS walks to the back. Boss Man runs to the back looking for him. I figured it would be a countout win for Mustafa but Boss Man runs back to beat the count while not finding IRS. Boss Man would win with a standing spinebuster type slam. Next was Bret Hart defending the Intercontinental title against The Berzerker. Good logic moment from Gorilla as the match started. Gorilla mentioned that the title shouldn’t be in jeopardy because Berzerker had never won a match by pinfall cause he always won by countout after he threw his opponent from the ring. That’s right!! I had forgotten that he won matches that way. Nice logic from Gorilla in that point. He was always good in details like that. Lots of fans mimicking Berzerker’s talking gimmick which was funny. Bret ends up winning a pretty entertaining match with a crucifix pin. That takes us to El Matador vs. Hercules. Ugh, I couldn’t stand the El Matador gimmick when Tito started doing it. It never made sense to me as a kid why he couldn’t just be Tito Santana. This was around the time when WWE was changing long time talent to new gimmicks. This was said to be the debut of the El Matador character in this match. The win goes to Santana after hitting the flying forearm to the back of the neck. Heenan called it the flying hallapino which was classic followed by him asking if Matador “cuts his ears off now” after the win. Last match of the night had the Legion Of Doom defending the tag team titles against The Natural Disasters. The ending of the match had a real head scratching moment. Animal ends up getting destroyed in the ring. Hawk is trying to get in the ring. Typhoon hits the big splash on Animal. They knock Hawk off the apron so he is done. Earthquake hits the big earthquake finisher. Earthquake doesn’t go for the pin but gets up and throws the ref out of the ring causing the DQ. They had an easy three count as they would have had to peel Animal off the mat taking their tag team finish. Why would you throw the ref out when you had the match won? Get the pin, win the tag team titles, and then throw the ref out while you’re holding the tag team titles. Yeah, I know logic. LOL. What was funny was that they didn’t even cheat either. They did all this damage clean. Gorilla was saying the same thing about how stupid it was while Heenan argued with him on it. Heenan then talked a minute later about how stupid it was making it sound like he had just come up with the idea. As the show went off the air, they announced the next MSG show would have the first ever meeting of Hogan and Flair the next month. As the show ended, Heenan again mentioned how stupid the Disasters finish was and then Alfred said “cheerio” while Heenan followed with “cheerios”. Great stuff!!! I really enjoyed this show. Yeah, the booking defied logic at times with the finishes but oh well. Seriously, when you do that much damage on a tag team finish, get the pin and THEN hit the ref. I’ll support you on hitting the ref after the win cause of all the stupidity that they did in this show. LOL!!!!!!