In 1991, I hadn’t been watching wrestling for very long. We’ll say 6…no, make that 7 years. Yeah, that’s about right. And back then I did a lot of my watching on tape, usually having an idea of what I should be looking out for based on what whoever loaned me the video or wrote the results in the newspaper (Remember when wrestling pay-per-views were still that important?) thought was worth praising.
But 91 was also the year when it seemed like everybody living around us got satellite dishes and because people liked me for some reason, I was even friends with a few of them. This meant that I got to watch a lot more things live or if not live, much more quickly than I was used to. Things like Mr. Perfect vs. Bret Hart Intercontinental Title Match from Summerslam that year.
At the time I couldn’t decide if this or the career vs. career match between Randy Savage and the Ultimate Warrior at Wrestlemania the same year was the best match I’d ever seen live and looking back now, it’s still a tough call. They were both great for similar but different reasons and I should really try to find that one or hope that somebody happens to post a link to it someplace I’m reading like just happened with this one.
Speaking of this one, even after all this time, it still holds up. There’s nothing about it that isn’t fantastic. Great wrestling for a championship that was treated as important, good psychology that made you believe that either man could legitimately win and commentary that made sure you noticed all of those things while still managing to be fun. It was a total package that we don’t get often enough anymore. Sure WWE’s been better lately than it’s been in a long time, but even at the best of times there tends to be something missing. Whether it’s the announcers being over-produced to sound a certain way often at the expense of what’s going on in the ring, the titles being switched around so often as to not really prove that anyone is that much better than anyone else or just the blistering pace that things move now compared to 20 years ago, it’s just not quite the same anymore.
By the way, apologies for the ads that keep cutting into the action. Those are Dailymotions fault and I can’t do anything about them.