WWF Battle Royal at the Albert Hall (10.3.91) review 

 

October 3, 1991 

 

We’re in London at the Royal Albert Hall. About 5,000 in attendance. It was a prestigious venue to run in though and it has a very cool look. Sadly, it’s a UK show so…well…let’s just say they don’t have a good record of shows in the UK that aren’t shit. As with UK Rampage, we have a lot of very long matches tonight. Hosts are Gorilla Monsoon, Bobby Heenan and, oh no, Lord Alfred Hayes. Why would you do that to me? You pig fuckers. Hayes is, fortunately, only joining us towards the end of the evening.  

I’ve never seen so many foam fingers in my life. Were they giving them away for free or something? Everyone has one! There is a disgusting amount of MERCH being shifted here. This is why WWF kept coming to Europe. Full houses, everyone spending money. It obviously isn’t to put on low-end MOTYC bangers.  

 

Nasty Boys vs. Rockers 

This starts out ok, with Shawn very animated. It doesn’t last that way. They do some really lame house show stuff like the Rockers switching behind the ref’s back and the referee, instead of doing his job, just asks the crowd. The ideas are half baked. Shawn gets low bridged, and he runs into an already lowered rope like an idiot. This leads to lengthy heat on Shawn. LENGTHY. Do you like bearhugs? If you enjoy a bearhug, this is the match for you. I don’t like bearhugs. I think they’re stupid.  

 

Jannetty sleepwalks through his hot tag sequence. They then have a hideous spot, which is supposed to be a double team from the Rockers. The referee fucks the count up and a TELEGRAPHED FROM MILES AWAY finish involves Hart throwing the megaphone to Knobbs and he blindsides Jannetty for the win. This was awful pro wrestling. *¼ 

 

Ohhhhh, shit, he’s here! Naitch recently debuted on the TVs, but this is his first major appearance since jumping ship from WCW. He’s already got an issue with Roddy Piper. They’ll be putting him in with Piper and Hogan around the house show circuit.  

 

Tito Santana vs. Ric Flair 

Flair is wearing the WCW belt that he’s still not given back. After being discarded by WCW, Flair needed to get his groove back. Just going out and working a meat and potatoes* babyface like Tito is just what the doctor ordered. Flair bumps around like crazy for Tito’s babyface fire. They both go into the guardrail, and I’m wondering if Flair was tempted to run the blade. It’s a children’s show with almost all the ringside fans being kids but still, a bladejob is a bladejob. MA! MA! RIC FLAIR BLED ON ME! MA! HE’S STAINED MY FOAM FINGER!  

 

*A picadillo babyface?  

 

The match maintains a good pace, and this is a fairly washed-up Tito Santana. Flair uses all his tricks and crutches to get the match to keep going at a crazy rate. Santana gets a few near falls, including one off the flying forearm with Flair’s ring positioning being immaculate. Flair reverses the ultimate roll up by pulling the tights and fully exposing Tito’s asshole to the PPV audience. A great finish. ***½. Plugging Tito into Flair’s match makes for an easy win. Flair could wrestle this match with almost anyone, but fiery babyfaces were ideal.  

 

We have an advert for Suburban Commando edited off the tape. I will be watching this!  

 

Earthquake vs. Big Bossman 

This is real long and real sluggish. Bossman does at least try hard, to start with, but as soon as Quake takes over the match just sucks. It’s a procession of rest holds, which are a challenge to sit through. When Bossman tries to push the pace a little, it gets clumsy and untidy. There’s really no need for this to run 15 minutes. Bossman’s strikes in this are so lethargic and low impact. Mountie comes down to interfere, and Quake drops an elbow for the pin. Ugly match. Boring too. * 

 

Mountie vs. Texas Tornado 

Mountie calls Tornado “Kevin von Erich”. Swing and a miss, brrrrother.  

Kerry looks around the crowd, soaking it all in. Jacques, as the Mountie, absolutely stank. I don’t understand how the uniform made him so bad, but it’s true. There’s a lot of stalling here. Followed by resting. Lots of resting. Kerry doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing. He telegraphs everything too. It’s the worst of both worlds. He can’t seem to sell or react. It’s a bad performance. They make a mess of something, perhaps a monkey flip, and Mountie wins with his feet on the ropes. Jesus, this was dull and ugly. Even worse than the last match. DUD 

 

Undertaker vs. Jim Duggan 

They have an organ in the building, so Taker gets the Phantom of the Opera treatment. It is a great character; there’s no doubting that. The Undertaker’s in-ring and general creative though? Awful. Given the WWF’s intentions of putting Taker in with Hogan, I would have had him beat Duggan in 2-3 minutes here. Taker’s rope walk is supposed to demonstrate his incredible balance and yet what does it lead to? A clubbing blow across the neck. What’s the point? Gorilla calls Taker “very methodical”, which is code for boring. Duggan hits him with the 2×4, and that’ll be a DQ. At least they kept this SHORT! Amen! ½* 

 

Heels are 5-0 tonight by the way!  

 

Video Control gives us an interview with Roddy Piper, where he does not hold back. There’s oodles of homophobia in here, sadly. He makes reference to the unlikelyhood of a “Boy George Jr”. He calls Ric Flair a “feather wearin’ fuckin’ freak”. This is on YouTube and THEY LEFT THAT IN. I remember the original tape had this bleeped, leading to suggestions that Piper used the word “faggot” given his love of homophobic slurs. He did not. I am as surprised as you readers.  

 

WWF Tag Team Championship 

Legion of Doom (c) vs. Power & Glory 

No one in the entire world thinks Power & Glory can win here. Paul Roma’s mom is sat watching this, just happy her son has a job. Because every match is massively overlong (bar the last one) this goes nearly ten minutes. Just have LOD cream these ham and eggers after a few minutes, honestly. It should be a squash or possibly a squish. Or even the fabled squisheroonie. Instead, it just rumbles on. Roma comes off the top and gets caught and powerslammed by Animal. That’s it. * 

 

Davey Boy cuts one of his awful promos. Increasingly, he just resembles a stack of gammon. I have a conspiracy theory that Davey was replaced by assorted cuts of sentient pig meat when he left Japan. It would explain why he can’t talk and is just meatier now.  

 

Barbarian vs. British Bulldog 

I don’t have the exact numbers but these two wrestled each other 5000+ times in 1991. Davey won every single match. This is an improvement over some of the sluggish matches tonight because Davey actually cares about how he’s perceived. Barbarian is at the end of his WWF run here, off to WCW after the Royal Rumble. Davey is willing take all of Barbarian’s spots, what few he has. He wants to take an ass-kicking all match because it makes his comeback look more impressive. That’s what he’s taken from watching Hogan. Davey wasn’t a bad worker, but he was always better in tags where someone else, who was better at wrestling, could lead him. Powerslam finishes here. This was fine. ** 

 

Battle Royal 

This features everyone from the card plus a few other guys; Typhoon and Roddy Piper. It feels very small time to have everyone do double duty. It feels like the kind of thing you’d get on a camp show or some dirt tier indie.  

They’re still claiming Piper is from “Glass-GOW”. He’s Canadian, lads. The great part of Piper fighting Flair is it feels like Roddy has his mojo back, after a horrible run for the past two years as a babyface commentator. The ring is too full so Flair and Piper scrap on the floor. When it clears out a bit, they get to fight each other in the ring. Shawn pulls an early skinning of the cat in this, and Mountie dumps him right out afterwards. Another win for Canada over HBK.  

 

Piper backdrops Flair out, thus ending their fun mini scrap, which highlighted the entire thing. As things wind down, Piper and Taker fight each other, and both end up eliminated. That’s all the big names gone. They continue to fight on the floor. This was Piper’s battle royal. He was the centre of attention the entire time.  

 

FINAL FOUR: Mountie, Typhoon, Bossman & Bulldog. Bossman gets low bridged so we can get the really obvious two heels versus Davey conclusion. The heels miscue and Mountie gets bonked over the ropes. Davey backdrops Typhoon out and the crowd goes banana. **¼. This was pretty good, mainly thanks to Piper vs Flair.  

 

Post Match: The Natural Disasters beat Davey down.  

We’re then treated to one final appearance from Andre the Giant. Which is sad to see as his mobility is now non-existent. He needs a walking stick and has a bad limp. Davey ends up standing tall in the ring, and foam fingers and Union flags are waved with wild abandon.  

 

The 411: 

Like almost every UK show, this looked like it was fun live, but there’s nothing really worth revisiting. The most exciting moments surrounded Ric Flair. His match with Tito Santana is really surprisingly good. It shows how a motivated Flair could get blood from a stone. Santana isn’t a bad worker by any means, but he’d not had a match of this calibre in some time. The Flair-Piper moments in the main event were stole the show. Finally, though, it was nice to see Davey getting love from his country and Andre having one final moment in the WWF before his death in 1993.