100 Worst WWE Matches Ever - 62 - Crush vs. Faarooq vs. Savio Vega
In Your House: Ground Zero
In what might be the only bit of interesting trivia regarding this match, this is the very first triple threat match to be presented on a WWE pay-per-view, and only the second run by the company in its history (the first being a random triple threat on Raw three months prior). As implied by my teaser, this match is such a disaster that I’m almost surprised the concept of a triple threat stipulation wasn’t scrapped altogether in the future.
Crush, Faarooq and Savio were original members of the Nation of Domination, most notably having the other good match from Wrestlemania 13 in the Chicago Street Fight. At King of the Ring, Faarooq failed to win the WWE Championship (a match you may hear about in the honourable mentions list) due to a distraction caused by Savio and Crush arguing with one another. Why were they arguing? Who knows? In the aftermath of this, Faarooq kicked Crush and Savio to the curb, and introduced the more well known “bigger, badder, better and blacker” iteration of the Nation of Domination which featured D’Lo Brown, and eventually Mark Henry and some guy named The Rock. Crush would turn face and start his own faction, a white biker gang named the Disciples of Apocalypse, consisting of the Harris Brothers and Chainz. Savio meanwhile started his faction Los Boricuas featuring some of the most forgettable wrestlers to ever set foot in WWE.
And thus started the Gang Wars storyline of 1997. This was, by some accounts, WWE’s response to the nWo in WCW - up until they hit gold later in the year with D-Generation X.
1997 is one of my favourite years for WWE, but that’s mostly off the strength of a fascinating main event scene. Lower down the card, things were still rough and this feud in particular did nothing for me. Despite that, given these are the three leaders of their respective factions and this storyline lasted a good portion of the year, this match is a bigger deal than it may look for people unfamiliar with 1997 WWE.
The start of the match is inoffensive enough. Savio and Faarooq take the time to gang up on Crush, and they establish the rules of a triple threat match by having lots of early covers. Remember this for later. Now this is inherently a decent idea - have the guys attempt pins and have them broken up quickly by the third man. It’s something that has been done in countless matches over the years to reinforce the rules of a particular stipulation especially when your audience may not be familiar with it.
The problem is, with smart workers, that’s where it ends. You establish the rule, then you move on.
These guys never move on from this idea.
It’s not often you get a match where the fans are frustrated by the sheer amount of near falls. To put it into context, Randy Savage vs Ricky Steamboat from Wrestlemania 3 - a match renowned partly for their ability to cram in as many pin attempts as possible - was three minutes longer than this match and had 21 pin attempts. About one every 42 seconds, roughly. This match featured 23 pin attempts! On average one every 30 seconds. And these aren’t quality near falls like in Steamboat/Savage, these are pinfalls after a snapmare, or a suplex, or a fucking chinlock. Not only that, but I counted 8 separate pinfalls that were in plain sight of the third man. One especially egregious spot sees Savio pinning Faarooq right in front of Crush, who has no urgency to break it up. You’d think with a match with 23 pin attempts that this would be somewhat exciting, but it’s not at all. In fact, this is one of those rare triple threat matches where they decide that it’s still a good idea to implement rest holds. JR outright calls out Crush for going for a side headlock, and Faarooq goes for two separate chinlocks and chokes.
In particular, I have to talk about the most hilarious, and stupid 60 seconds of wrestling I’ve seen in this project (and I watched RVD vs Sabu):
- Faarooq has Savio in a chinlock, while Crush paces around the ring.
- Faarooq tries pinning Savio (after a fucking chinlock!), and Crush just casually pushes him off the pin. Faarooq is aghast that he wouldn’t just let him win.
- Crush, basically the anti-Roderick Strong in this match, hits the worst backbreaker in history (he would also do the same move again, just as poorly later on).
- Crush tries pinning Savio in full view of Faarooq. Faarooq breaks up the pin, of course.
- Crush and Faarooq hit a double suplex and both go for the pin, leading to the referee telling them that they both can’t win.
- Faarooq throws Savio out the ring and, not to be outdone by Crush, hits his own sloppy backbreaker.
After about the 17th pin attempt, and a swinging neckbreaker where Faarooq decided to bump the entirely wrong way, the crowd become increasingly impatient and begin to take out those frustrations on the match. Every pinfall or botched move brings out an audible groan from the audience. The wrestlers, who to their credit have clearly worked hard to keep the match moving, are now absolutely exhausted. Every move in the final third of the match feels sloppy at best and totally messed up at worst. This is never more noticeable than perhaps the ugliest spike piledriver ever delivered.
Minutes later, Savio hits an ugly spinning leg kick for the win. Yeah, this match is a total mess with almost no redeeming factors. A combination of three guys who weren’t capable of wrestling this unfamiliar match type in a match that went way too long.
Up Next - For the first time, Hell in a Cell drops a dud.
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