Original Airdate: Saturday, April 27th, 1991
Omaha Civic Auditorium
Omaha, Nebraska
Follow me on Twitter: @WorkTheNetwork2
Off The Grid, Volume 56:
Vince McMahon is your host and this time he is with recently retired, Randy Savage. For some reason the banner in the background shows The Main Event.
Savage is with Sgt. Slaughter, General Adnan and Col. Mustafa. He talks about taking Warrior's breath away. That leads to us going to Mean Gene and Ultimate Warrior. They show the Undertaker shoving Warrior in the casket and being locked in. Tonight will be the ultimate battle.
Sgt. Slaughter vs. Ultimate Warrior
This was the last Saturday Night's Main Event on NBC until 2006, which is kind of wild. Slaughter tries to surprise Warrior by going up to the top, but Warrior grabs him and tosses him across the ring. Warrior continues his offense until Col. Mustafa gets involved. Slaughter slaps on my favorite move, the bear hug. Warrior powers out of it and hits a body slam, but is selling a back injury. Slaughter once again goes back to the bear hug. Warrior is on his knees and out comes Paul Bearer wheeling out a casket. Warrior gets out of the hold and sees Bearer. This allows Slaughter to clothesline Warrior to the floor. Slaughter attacks the back again and we have a commercial break. Slaughter throws Warrior back into the ring, but Warrior is starting to shake the ropes. He hits a series of clotheslines and a shoulder tackle. Bearer opens up the casket and Undertaker is in there. The distraction again allows Slaughter to attack Warrior, but this time Mustafa and Taker join in, causing the disqualification. Out comes Hulk Hogan to make the save. He hits Undertaker with the belt in the face and Taker no sells it. Taker misses an elbow drop on Warrior while Hogan chases Slaughter away. Warrior clotheslines Taker a couple of times and again gets to no sell it. The flying shoulder tackle knocks Taker to the floor, but on his feet. Officials are now out and that's all. That was a pretty poor match even before the no finish.
Match Rating: 1/2*
Mean Gene is with the Nasty Boys and they do a lot of yelling and claim that they're Nasty, but at least they aren't disgusting. We then go to Roddy Piper with the Bushwhackers. More yelling and they find a way to make Roddy Piper feel uncomfortable.
WWF Tag Team Championship Match
Nasty Boys vs. Bushwhackers
Is this the Bushwhackers most high profile title match? We get some chaos early on and the Bushwhackers throw Knobbs into Sags and then hit a double clothesline on both. This is actually a pretty spirited match with the Bushwhackers looking like more of a threat than I expected here. It all breaks down and a distraction on Luke allows Knobbs to sneak a pinfall with Sags helping a little bit (and a little bit in front of the ref) for the win. After the match, the Bushwhackers hit the Battering Ram because they are poor sports. I expected nothing here and got a pretty fun little match.
Match Rating: *3/4
Mean Gene is with Undertaker and Paul Bearer. Bearer is doing a more normal voice here for some reason. Undertaker says that he won't rest until Warrior rests in peace.
Battle Royal
We go to the ring with Mr. Perfect on his way and then get an entrance from Big Boss Man. We go back to Mean Gene with Jimmy Hart and Earthquake. They show him squashing Damien and he says he'll squash Jake Roberts too. We then go to Randy Savage with Jake and he says how much it has affected him. Jake gets an entrance and then we go to Mean Gene with Hulk Hogan. He has nothing worthwhile to say as always. We get his entrance and we are underway. Paul Roma has the honor of being the first one eliminated as Marty Jannetty uses a headscissors to take him over the top. We get a lot of bodies in the ring for what feels like a long time. Duggan gets eliminated pretty early, which is a surprise. Hogan then gets Earthquake out of there. Hogan gets Kato out but then Tugboat eliminates him from behind. The ring then starts to clear. Mr. Perfect dropkicks Boss Man from behind and Barbarian helps him on his way out of the ring. Haku accidentally chops Perfect and Shawn Michaels dropkicks Haku over the top. This feels like Michaels first true test. He throws Perfect out, but he's able to catch himself on the apron. Perfect is able to elbow Michaels to the floor, leaving us with Perfect, Barbarian and Greg Valentine. Just as you predicted. Perfect accidentally dropkicks Barbarian and Valentine helps push him to the floor. Perfect does a signature bump out of an atomic drop and into the turnbuckle. Valentine has the crowd into this thing, I'll give him that. He throws Perfect over, but he rolls under the bottom rope. He tries lifting him over, but his momentum takes him over and Perfect hangs on to pull off the victory. I liked that the finalists were a little unpredictable here and Perfect was really good in his role.
Match Rating: **
Mean Gene is with Sensational Sherri and Ted DiBiase. Did you know he has a lot of money?
Bret Hart vs. Ted DiBiase
The Bret solo push begins. Roddy Piper is now with the announce team here. Sherri gets involved and tries to trip up Bret and it leads to DiBiase accidentally hitting her with a knee and sending her to the floor. DiBiase comes back with a stun gun and shifts the momentum. Sherri gets involved again and chokes Bret with her jacket. She then levels him with a right hand to the throat. Hart makes a comeback and hits his inverted atomic drop. This is one of the better DiBiase matches I can remember seeing. Bret hits a second rope elbow drop and gets a close pin attempt. Sherri tries tripping Bret again and this time he goes out of the ring to confront her. DiBiase hits him in the back with a double ax handle. Piper heads down to the ring as the action goes back in the ring. Piper chases Sherri around the ring before grabbing a broom under the ring and mocks her for being a witch. He then slaps her on the butt with it and chases her back. DiBiase catches wind of it and goes after Piper. Bret goes out in the aisle and they start brawling which leads to the obvious double countout. This was a really enjoyable match with everyone playing their role extremely well.
Match Rating: ***1/2
Mountie vs. Tito Santana
The WrestleMania rematch that probably only I wanted to see. Santana hits an atomic drop and some dropkicks, causing Mountie to roll out of the ring and hug Jimmy Hart. Mountie gains control but when he goes for a splash, Tito gets the knees up. Tito hits the flying forearm but Jimmy climbs into the ring. Tito hits Jimmy with a forearm and Mountie grabs the shock stick. Mountie sticks it right in Tito's throat and we get the cheesy sound effects and that's enough for the win. That was probably the match they were supposed to have at WrestleMania and then had to cut it down to about 90 seconds.
Match Rating: *1/4
Mean Gene is with Sgt. Slaughter and crew again. He yells Hulk Hogan's name a lot. He then talks about pulling the skin of Hogan's face off.
Now it's off to Piper and Hogan. He hits all the notes he always hits. Yawn.
Vince and Savage recap tonight's happenings with Savage still playing heel, which makes no sense.
As someone who loves 1991 WWF, this was an essential watch for me. However, you can also see the shine wearing off with a lot of the booking decisions they were making. Still, if you are like me and enjoy this time period, this one is a nice little appetizer before SummerSlam.
Overall Rating: 70%
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