SuperBrawl Revenge 2001: WCW Could See the Right Direction and Still Miss the Exit

The cruiserweights open with seventeen minutes of movement that occasionally outruns the performers' ability to organize it. That is not entirely a criticism. Shane Helms, Kaz Hayashi, Jamie Knoble, Shannon Moore, Yun Yang and Evan Karagias are trying to make an overloaded elimination format feel urgent, and the match improves as bodies disappear and Helms becomes the obvious center.

The early stretch has some loose transitions and visible communication problems, but the eliminations create momentum. Knoble's offense looks especially sharp, Moore brings reliable speed, and Hayashi gives Helms a credible final obstacle. Helms eventually eliminates Moore and Hayashi to earn the Cruiserweight Championship opportunity at Greed.

The most important result is not one move. It is that WCW lets Helms emerge from a familiar group as the wrestler moving upward. The match is too long and too messy for a B-range score, but it accomplishes something useful while remaining entertaining.

Morrus and The Wall are not trying to produce elegance. They hit each other, throw heavy offense, use the ringside environment and lean on the idea that former allies now genuinely dislike each other. That directness helps. The Wall's size gives Morrus something substantial to overcome, and Morrus' moonsault remains impressive enough to generate a response whenever he climbs.

The match also has obvious dead zones. Big moves are followed by too much recovery, transitions occasionally look negotiated, and ten minutes is longer than the available story requires. Thomas Hall's criticism that trimming a few minutes would help is exactly right.

Morrus eventually wins with No Laughing Matter and adds another moonsault afterward. The victory is decisive and the grudge remains understandable. There is enough physicality to avoid failure, but not enough structure to turn a midcard power fight into anything memorable.

The Natural Born Thrillers split gives four young wrestlers an actual reason to be fighting, and that immediately makes this feel more valuable than a random tag-title defense. Palumbo handles much of the selling while Jindrak and Stasiak control the middle, giving O'Haire a clear hot-tag role.

O'Haire is the obvious attraction. His size, movement and Seanton Bomb create the impression of a wrestler WCW should be building around. Palumbo is steadier than spectacular, while Jindrak and Stasiak occasionally look like prospects still learning how to fill time between athletic spots.

The clean finish is the best booking choice. Palumbo lands the Jungle Kick, O'Haire follows with the Seanton, and the champions simply win. No manager, no referee collapse, no authority-figure clause. The match is not polished enough for a high grade, but the result and presentation make the young champions look legitimate.

Chavo Guerrero Jr. and Rey Mysterio Jr. give SuperBrawl Revenge its one genuinely excellent match. Rey attacks with speed, Chavo keeps redirecting him into damage, and both men understand that the champion's intelligence should be as important as the challenger's athleticism. The mask taunting adds character without slowing the wrestling.

There are rope and footing problems, including a springboard sequence that nearly falls apart, but both wrestlers recover without allowing the mistake to become the story. The closing stretch keeps escalating through dives, hurricanranas, the Bronco Buster and chair positioning.

Chavo wins because Rey becomes involved with the chair Chavo introduced, distracting the referee long enough for the champion to use another one and finish with the brainbuster. The weapon shot has aged badly, but the heel logic is sound. Chavo survives by being one step more calculating than Rey. It is easily the card's best complete performance.

Dustin Rhodes is the useful half of this match. Nashville likes him, his comeback offense has energy, and he sells Rick Steiner's power without disappearing. Steiner provides believable physicality but spends too much of the match in familiar stomps, clotheslines and control holds while resisting the sort of give-and-take that would make the challenger feel dangerous.

The finish repeats one of WCW's favorite late-card shortcuts. Dustin becomes involved with a chair and the referee, Steiner removes a turnbuckle pad, and Dustin is dropped onto the exposed hardware before Steiner uses the ropes for leverage. The champion retains through layers of cheating after a match that was never compelling enough to justify the protection.

Dustin's post-match retaliation gets the crowd back, but that is not the same as a satisfying title match. The audience wants him to succeed more than the booking does.

This begins as a tag-team issue and quickly becomes a handicap match because Bryan Clark is taken out before the bell. Brian Adams fighting from underneath is a workable idea, and Nashville responds when he briefly starts throwing both Lex Luger and Buff Bagwell around.

The match itself is thin. Luger and Bagwell spend too much time in ordinary control offense, Adams is not a natural sympathetic seller, and the action exists mostly to move toward the reveal. That reveal is at least clever: the supposed Clark who returns is actually Mike Awesome in disguise, while the real Clark appears elsewhere, allowing Awesome to attack Adams and hand Totally Buffed the win.

The angle is more memorable than the wrestling. As a segment it advances the story. As a pay-per-view match it is a six-minute delivery device built around a disguise.

Lance Storm gives Ernest Miller a clean framework: attack the leg, interrupt the kicks and force the babyface to fight from underneath. Miller is limited, but he has enough charisma and crowd support to make the comeback sections work. Nashville wants The Cat to regain the commissioner job, which gives routine exchanges more urgency than they would have in silence.

Storm is the glue. His targeting is consistent, his transitions are crisp and he keeps the match from becoming a sequence of isolated kicks. The inevitable outside business arrives when Mike Sanders appears and Ms. Jones neutralizes him, allowing Miller to land the Feliner and win.

The commissioner stakes are difficult to take seriously after months of authority changes, but the wrestling is functional and the crowd enjoys the result. It is the definition of a respectable middle-card match elevated by context.

Kanyon gets the showcase he deserves and Diamond Dallas Page does not treat the assignment like an inconvenience. They brawl early, Kanyon introduces creative offense, and Page bleeds after the ringside sequence, immediately giving the match stakes beyond killing time before Jarrett.

Kanyon's offense feels inventive without becoming exhibition work. Page's selling keeps the challenger dangerous, and the near falls around the Kanyon Cutter and powerbomb sequences create a convincing possibility that Kanyon can win on his own.

WCW still cannot resist the extra layer. Jeff Jarrett arrives after the referee is compromised, hits Page with the Stroke, and Kanyon finishes with the Flatliner. The interference lowers the ceiling because the Kanyon Cutter could have provided a stronger standalone finish. Still, Kanyon leaves with a meaningful victory and Page leaves protected for the next match. Both men accomplish their jobs.

Page begins this match already bleeding and depleted, which is the correct way to make the double assignment matter. Jarrett immediately works like a man trying to exploit the advantage rather than restart the evening at zero. They brawl into the crowd, use the ringside area, and eventually settle into a more conventional closing stretch.

Page's selling is the connective tissue. Every comeback looks expensive, so the near falls feel like acts of survival rather than routine sequence markers. Jarrett is focused and gives Page enough room to create one of the better babyface performances of the show.

Kanyon returns and helps produce another interference-heavy finish, but this time the plan backfires. Jarrett's guitar catches Kanyon, Page lands the Diamond Cutter, and the exhausted babyface wins. The result sets up Page as Steiner's next challenger without pretending he steamrolled two opponents. That is smart, efficient booking.

The main event begins with a simple premise and then spends twelve minutes running away from it. Nash arrives pretending to be injured, surprises Scott Steiner with the title belt and pins the monster champion almost immediately. Instead of treating that as the story, Ric Flair changes the match to two out of three falls.

Steiner then uses a pipe outside, cannot conveniently return Nash to the ring, and Flair changes the rules again to falls count anywhere. Midajah interferes. Flair interferes. Chairs, brass knuckles and referee manipulation pile up until Steiner finally wins with the Recliner.

The problem is not merely excess. Every addition weakens the intended character. Steiner should be the unstoppable champion. The booking makes him a champion who requires increasingly creative legislation to survive Kevin Nash. The crowd remains invested and both men have moments of physical credibility, but the structure is self-defeating. WCW's penultimate pay-per-view closes by making its strongest heel look administratively dependent.