Sunday, December 27, 2009

Steve Austin Legacy DVD Review

http://www.angrymarks.com/news/View.php?ArticleID=2946

Written by Stevie J.

EXTRACT ....

Steve Austin found his singles push derailed though when Dusty put him in a tag team with Brian Pillman, which Austin was not happy about at first. Austin says that as time went on and they drove down the road together working shows "things started to click" and that they enjoyed making each other laugh. Pillman eventually decided they should be called the Hollywood Blonds and the name stuck. This leads to our first wrestling match of the whole DVD set.

* Hollywood Blonds (C) vs. Dos Hombres (WCW Tag Team Championship steel cage match)

This match is from WCW's Slamboree PPV on May 23rd, 1993. I don't know if Dos Hombres always wrestled under a mask but it's to WCW's benefit here as they had to fool people into thinking Ricky Steamboat and Shane Douglas were the challengers. Douglas had been fired before the PPV though so Tom Zenk took his place under the mask. Tony Schiavone and Larry Zbyszko even argue they don't know who is Douglas and who is Steamboat due to the masks during the match, and it's all a little absurd because Schiavone then contradicts this by saying he can tell Steamboat is the one wrestling Austin because of his knife-edge chops. The Blonds were a good team and the wrestling here is just fine but I'm not convinced this is the best example of Austin's tag team days they could have included. I do like some of the spots in the match, such as Austin being from the top of the cage like a tree of woe, but manages to escape just before his opponent rams into the fence. Another good spot is when Steamboat takes his mask off just before going to the top of the cage where he does a flying crossbody onto both Austin and Pillman. The Blonds retain when Austin pins Zenk off a Stun Gun and in the words of 'Super Chico' Bryan Alvarez, "This was fine." WINNERS AND STILL WCW TAG TEAM CHAMPS: THE HOLLYWOOD BLONDS.

Personally I think I would have preferred if they had put the career bio and the matches in seperate places, but I realize that probably would have been too much like other Austin releases such as "The Stone Cold Story." Austin talks about how much fun he and Pillman were having together and how over they got with their antics. Unfortunately in the whacky world of pro wrestling "getting over" is often the OPPOSITE of what a promoter wants you to do. Instead of being happy that you were successful in connecting with the crowd the promoter gets upset that a "mid-card act" or "filler team" is more popular than the established veterans or the guys at the top of the card. As a result WCW forced Austin and Pillman to split up, which meant they had to have a feud once the team ended.