WCW 1991: WCW Secedes From NWA and Recognizes Their Own World Champion; Ric Flair Leaves WCW for the WWF; Lex Luger WCW Champion; Dusty Rhodes Returns as Head Booker; Jim Herd Tries to Ruin the Company; The Rise of the Steiner Brothers; Cactus Jack Vs. Sting; Ravishing Rick Rude Debuts; Steamboat Returns

1991 would be the end of not only one era, but two eras in World Championship Wrestling. If 1990 was a bad year for WCW, 1991 might have been worse. There were better matches in 1991 than in 1990 but it was what was happening behind the scenes with its greatest stars which might have made it worse.

WCW counted on two men, Ric Flair and Sting, especially Flair, to get them out of the hell Ole Anderson put the company in. What did WCW do to their top two stars? Answer bury them. They buried Sting right away by having be the opening match at Clash of the Champions XIV and would do the same to Flair later although it started almost right off the bat as Jim Herd made Flair cut his hair really short, much to Flair's disgust.

To pay back Flair for saving their asses with the horrible Black Scorpion angle by unmasking as the Scorpion following the loss to Sting at Starrcade '90, Flair was promised the World Title almost immediately in 1991.

Flair defeated Sting on January 11, 1991 at a house show in East Rutherford, NJ to win the NWA World Heavyweight Championship for the seventh time, tying him with Harley Race for most NWA World Titles. It was quite bizarre to have the world title change hands not on a PPV or the Clash of the Champions or even on their flagship show WCW Saturday Night but at a house show in the Northeast.

Flair's win not only gave him the NWA World Title, but he was recognized by WCW as the first WCW World Heavyweight Champion. WCW slowly seceded from the NWA in January 1991 and started to recognize their own champions.

All the NWA Titles such as the United States, Television, World and U.S. Tag Team and so on had their names changed to WCW. The NWA United States Championship now was the WCW United States Championship. The NWA World Tag Team Championships were now the WCW World Tag Team Championships. And so on.

The NWA still recognized Flair as their World Heavyweight Champion as Flair was a double World Heavyweight Champion. Flair only had one championship belt as WCW still used the NWA Big Gold Belt as their Heavyweight Championship belt.

Flair's first title defense came two weeks later at the January 30, 1991 Clash of the Champions XIV against Scott Steiner. Steiner was still young and was still a member of the legendary tag team The Steiner Brothers, but Scott was starting to get over with the fans for his charisma and in-ring skills and back then high-flying style combined with power that made him a star.

Scott looked like a world champion in the match as he fought Flair to a TV time limit draw. Scott hit Flair with his Frankensteiner as he pinned Flair and the time limit expired before the referee counted three.

Flair still was with the Four Horsemen but their storylines were getting drawn out. They did team together to take on Sting, Brian Pillman, and The Steiner Brothers in a WarGames match at WrestleWar '91 on February 24,

The match was a thrilling classic match that ended with the Four Horsemen winning as Sid Vicious viciously powerbombed Pillman several times, including legitimately knocking Pillman out and giving him head and neck injuries.

El Gigante surrended on behalf of the babyface team due to Pillman being knocked out in order to save face (no pun intended) for the faces as someone did not have to submit to the heels in a submission hold.

Flair's next big match took place at the WCW/New Japan Supershow PPV event on March 21, 1991 that was a cross promotion between WCW and New Japan Pro Wrestling. This was billed as the Japanese version of Starrcade.

Flair defended the NWA World Heavyweight Championship, but not the WCW Title, against IWGP Heavyweight Champion Tatsumi Fujinami in the main event. Flair ended up losing the NWA Title to Fujinami.

WCW still recognized Flair as their World Champion as the NWA recognized Fujinami as their World Champion. WCW announced in the storyline that Flair retained the title because he was thrown over the top rope, which was against the rules back then and WCW announced that the title was given back to Flair.

This setup a rematch between the two at the inaugural SuperBrawl PPV on May 19, 1991 in St. Petersburg, Florida. Both WCW and NWA World Titles were on the line in an attempt to unify the two titles. Flair defeated Fujinami to retain the WCW Title and win back the NWA World Heavyweight Championship for the record eighth time in his career.

Little did we know, this was the beginning of the end of Flair in WCW and working for the promotion going all the way back to 1974 when the promotion was Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling owned by Jim Crockett Jr.

For pretty much all of 1990 and 1991, Flair clashed with WCW Executive Vice President Jim Herd. Herd had been in this position since Ted Turner bought out Crockett in 1988 because he was friends with a Turner Executive. Before this, Herd was a regional manager for Pizza Hut so the joke was having a "pizza guy" running a wrestling company.

Herd felt the best way to compete with Vince McMahon's WWF was to come up with lame gimmicks like the WWF had and the longtime NWA fans would be pissed. Herd tried to come up with a tag team called "The Hunchbacks" whose gimmick was that they had hunchbacks and could not be pinned because their humps would prevent their shoulders from touching the mat, but thankfully that was rejected.

Unfortunately, the Ding Dongs were not rejected and we forced to suffer watching them. There was also Big Josh (played by Matt Osborne who was best known as Doink The Clown) who was a rugged outdoorsman who would dance with bears coming to the ring. Some of the blame should go to returning booker Dusty Rhodes as well. Several high profile wrestlers left the company the year before due to clashing with Herd.

Now it was time for Herd to run off another high profile wrestler in the legendary "Nature Boy" Ric Flair. Flair's contract with WCW was about to come to an end and Flair was in a bitter contract dispute with Herd over the direction of Flair's character.

Herd wanted Flair to drop the whole Nature Boy gimmick. Herd then wanted Flair to shave his head, wear an earring, and change his name to Spartacus in order to "change with the times." Flair wisely told Herd to go bleep himself (my words not his maybe he did say that who knows). Kevin Sullivan famously said that's like going to Yankee Stadium and making them change Babe Ruth's number.

Herd wanted Flair to take a pay cut of about half of what he was currently making then. Herd believed that Flair was too old (he was 39 years old then) to be the face of the company and wanted that distinction to go to Sting and Lex Luger and believed Flair could no longer draw. Flair was still the company's top draw at that time as evidenced by being the World Champion.

Herd had the nerve to make these demands to Flair as Flair was the NWA and WCW World Heavyweight Champion. Flair had enough as he refused a new contract from WCW and was about to leave the company once his contract was up.

Lastly, Herd wanted Flair to drop the World Title before he was going to leave. Herd wanted the title to go to Lex Luger, but Flair refused saying he wasn't ready and Flair already promised to drop the title to Sting as Herd agreed to it. Herd refused as he didn't care what he said and accusing Flair of "holding the company up." Flair came back and said he was only holding Herd to his word.

Flair said he would drop the title to Barry Windham as he felt Windham deserved the World Title. Flair was on vacation and even came back early from vacation to drop the title to Windham at a house show. It did not matter, however, as Herd did the unthinkable and fired Flair on July 1, 1991, two weeks before The Great American Bash PPV.

Flair was gone from WCW and just about every member of the WCW locker room were upset over Flair's departure. Flair took the Big Gold Belt with him over to the WWF following his firing. Flair did not give the belt back as he wanted the $25,000 deposit plus interest he was owed, but Herd did not give him that so Flair wore the WCW-NWA World Heavyweight Championship belt on WWF TV for quite some time.

For the first time since the creation of the NWA in 1948, the NWA World Heavyweight Championship was vacant. The NWA stripped Flair of their World Heavyweight Championship when he went to the WWF as the WWF was not affiliated with the NWA. Eventually, Flair and WCW came to a settlement where Flair gave the title back

The main event at The Great American Bash was between Lex Luger and Barry Windham in a Steel Cage match for the vacant WCW World Heavyweight Championship. The crowd was restless as they loudly shouted "We Want Flair!" throughout the match. WCW crowds would chant that up until Flair came back in early 1993.

The match featured a double turn as Luger turned heel and Windham became a face due to Luger's cheating and having Harley Race become his new manager as Luger defeated Windham to become the new WCW World Heavyweight Champion.

WCW had to use a makeshift World Heavyweight Championship belt for The Bash as they had no time since Flair took the belt with him to the WWF. WCW created a new WCW World Heavyweight Championship belt that they used after The Bash and would use as their World Title belt for a few years.

Luger was the reigning WCW United States Heavyweight Champion at the time and was forced to relinquish the U.S. Title as he could not hold both titles at the same time. Luger held the U.S. Title for a grand total of 809 out of 874 days, including a record 523-day reign from May 1989 until October 1990. That record still remains today. Sting won the United States Championship in a tournament in August 1991.

The Four Horsemen were officially done when both Flair and Sid Vicious left WCW to join the WWF. Windham became a babyface and Arn Anderson soon joined up with Paul E. Dangerously's Dangerous Alliance later that year. Windham and Anderson even feuded later that year.

Following a disappointing stint in the WWF where he was forced to wear polka dots as the WWF embarrassed him, Dusty Rhodes returned to WCW as their head booker in early 1991. He did some good things while with JCP but many felt he helped put Jim Crockett out of business. Herd did not want Rhodes to be a wrestler, but strictly a booker. He appeared on WCW TV as the "Goodwill Ambassador of WCW."

Dusty brought his son Dustin Rhodes into WCW after Dustin had a really short stint in the WWF with his father. Dusty pushed his son Dustin, obviously showing favoritism. Dustin was a pretty darn good wrestler, but he should not have won every single PPV or Clash of the Champions match he was in. Dusty made sure the other wrestlers and announcers put his son over.

Many of Rhodes' ideas bombed in 1991. The Clash of the Champions events in 1991 were badly booked. The gimmicks like Big Johs, P.N. News, Todd Champion and Firebreaker Chip, and Fantasia were really bad.

He also had Brian Pillman lose a Loser Leaves WCW match to Barry Windham then had Pillman dress up as the "Yellow Dog", a masked gimmick, that was perceived very poorly and Pillman returned as his "Flyin Brian" character. Reports were that Dusty did this in attempt to get his son over and prevent the more popular Pillman from taking his spot.

One character Rhodes was not at fault with was Kevin Nash's character "Oz." Yes it was based of the Wizard of Oz. Oz made his debut at SuperBrawl I accompanied by Kevin Sullivan in a Wizard outfit and characters playing Dorothy, the Tinman, the Scarecrow, and the Lion with him as well.

Yes this really happened and the reason for it was because Turner Broadcasting purchased the rights to the legendary movie the Wizard of Oz so they wanted a character solely based on that. So it was the Turner execs who came up with Oz character. Nash previously was in WCW briefly as "The Master Blaster" before being repackaged as Oz.

Nash's best friend Scott Hall also returned to WCW after a disappointing stint as Scott Hall in 1989. Hall was repackaged as "The Diamond Studd", managed by Diamond Dallas Page, who Dusty brought into WCW in 1991.

Page started "The Diamond Mine" stable with the Studd as his number one wrestler. Page helped Hall create the Diamond Studd character by having him shave off his mustache and going with the five-o-clock shadow, dying his hair black, and having a toothpick in his mouth which would be the precursor to the legendary Razor Ramon character in the WWF.

WCW was involved in some weird situations involving title changes occurring at TV tapings instead of PPVs and Clash of the Champions events. After coming up with a great match years before like the WarGames match, there were really bad matches such as the Chamber of Horrors match at Halloween Havoc.

It was a giant steel cage match where the winner had to put an opponent in the Electric Chair and "electrocute them." Yeah let's show what we do to serial killers in a wrestling match, very good idea!! #extremesarcasm

Dusty also came up with the Lethal Lottery and Battle Bowl battle royal, which were used at Starrcade '91. The entire PPV that's their biggest event of the year was entirely dedicated to this.

There would be a "Lethal Lottery" that had random wrestlers team up and face off in tag team matches and the winners of each match would participate in a battle royal at the end of the event. Sting eliminated Lex Luger to win the inaugural Battle Bowl battle royal at Starrcade.

The Lethal Lottery-Battle Bowl series would continue at the following year's Starrcade event as well as having their own PPV called Battle Bowl in November 1993 and then bringing in back for Slamboree in 1996 before it thankfully ended.

WCW was criticized for having several of their championships being taped earlier but the champions appeared at PPVs and Clash of the Champions events with the titles even though they had lost the title a week or even some cases two weeks before the event.

Back then WCW used to tape their programs a couple of weeks in advance so there were occasions where a champion appeared at a PPV or a Clash still with the title because the match was not shown on TV yet.

On January 16, 1991, Arn Anderson defeated "The Z Man" Tom Zenk to win the WCW World Television Championship. However, the match would not air for nearly a month. Meanwhile, Zenk defended the title against Bobby Eaton at Clash of the Champions XIV on January 30th despite losing the title two weeks before.

The next weirdest sequence of title changes occurred in February-March 1991 involving the WCW World Tag Team Championship. Doom (Ron Simmons and Butch Reed) were the tag team champions entering February. However, during a TV taping on February 9, The Fabulous Freedbirds were the WCW World Tag Team Champions and they lost the titles to The Steiner Brothers.

How did the Freebirds lose the titles they didn't win? The answer was that they defeated Doom for the titles at WrestleWar on February 24. Finally, the match where they lost the titles to the Steiners finally aired on March 2. Confused? Yeah you should be.

Even in June, newcomer "Stunning" Steve Austin defeated Bobby Eaton to win the WCW World Television Championship on June 3 a couple of weeks after his WCW debut. The match would not be shown until June 29. Eaton appeared at Clash of the Champions XV for his match with World Champion Ric Flair still carrying the TV Title belt since the title change had not aired yet.

The Steiner Brothers were without a doubt the best tag team in 1991. With their aforementioned World Tag Team Championship win over the Fabulous Freebirds, they were also the reining U.S. Tag Team Champions and were forced to vacate those titles due to not being allowed to hold two titles simultaneously.

They were the second team only behind The Midnight Express to hold both World and U.S. Titles at the same time. The Steiners added more gold in 1991 as they defeated Hiroshi Hase and Kensuke Sasaki to win the IWGP Tag Team Championship in March as WCW announcers referred to them as "Triple Crown Champions."

Scott Steiner even got a nice run in singles competition dating back to the end of 1990, which culminated with him taking World Champion Ric Flair to the limit in a draw at Clash of the Champions XIV in January. This was well before he was known as "Big Poppa Pump" in later years to a significant amount of success in the singles ranks.

The Steiners best match came at SuperBrawl I when they defended the World Tag Team Titles against fellow babyfaces Sting and Lex Luger (at that time) in a super rare at that time match featuring two tag teams of the top babyfaces in the company.

It was a match where all four beat the living hell out of each other and tossed each other around much to the fans delight. The match ended when Nikita Koloff went to hit Luger with a chain, but hit Sting instead as the Steiners pinned Sting to win the match. The match was voted 1991 Pro Wrestling Illustrated Match of the Year.

The Steiners' reign as World Tag Team Champions came to an abrupt end when Scott Steiner suffered a triceps injury and it put him on the shelf for a few months, causing the Steiners to vacate the titles. Scott returned at the end of the year as the Steiners climbed back to the top.

Mick Foley returned to WCW as his Cactus Jack character after a disappointing stint in WCW the year before as Ole Anderson would not push him, causing Foley to leave the company. One of the good things Dusty Rhodes did was develop the Cactus Jack character to this deranged, hard-core legend we all know and love to this very day.

Cactus Jack made a surprise appearance at Clash of the Champions XVI: Fall Brawl on September 5 where he was in a giant gift box with a red bow around it meant for Sting. When Sting opened the box, Cactus jumped out and attacked Sting, starting a feud between the two.

Paul Heyman (known as Paul E. Dangerously) was "fired" as a WCW announcer for making too many controversial comments. So Dangerously decided to get revenge on WCW by becoming a manager as he was fired only as a commentator but it did not say anything about not being a manager, so he created his stable "The Dangerous Alliance."

Dangerously brought in the masked Halloween Phantom at Halloween Havoc as the centerpiece for his Dangerous Alliance. The Phantom unmasked to reveal himself as "Ravishing" Rick Rude, returning after a three-year stint in the WWF. Rude wrestled back when it was NWA-JCP in 1986-87 before leaving for the WWF. Rude quickly started a feud with the "Franchise of WCW" Sting.

Rude defeated Sting to win the WCW United States Heavyweight Championship in November at Clash of the Champions XV. Sting had been attacked by his "former" best friend Lex Luger earlier that night as it was revealed Luger had been giving Sting the gift boxes in an attempt to take him out of WCW as Sting was a threat to his World Title.

Rude would hold on to the United States Championship until being forced to vacate the title in January 1993 due to a legitimate neck injury. His reign of 419 days remains the second-longest U.S. Title reign in history and his reign abruptly came to an end only because of an injury.

At Clash of the Champions XV, Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat returned to WCW after a dismal short-term run in the WWF. Steamboat was the surprise tag team partner of Dustin Rhodes, subbing for an injured Barry Windham, to defeat the WCW World Tag Team Champions The Enforcers (Arn Anderson and Larry Zbyszko) to win the titles. Steamboat would join fellow faces Sting, Rhodes, Windham, and Nikita Koloff to feud with the Dangerous Alliance at the end of 1991 and throughout 1992.

1991 would actually be worse than 1990 in terms of money lost ($8 million from $6.5 million in 1990) as it was the most financially destructive year in company history, that would stand until 1993 and then blown away in 2000 before the company closed. House show attendance and PPV and TV ratings continued to fall.

1992 would continue the downfall of declining ratings and attendance and losing money.