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6th JAPAN TOUR
6th JAPAN TOUR
New Japan/WCW Starrcade '91
The US PPV "was edited to show
Pillman as the star ..." - (Meltzer, WON 04/15/91)
Back in the US, the whole show was edited from four and a half hours hours down to one hour fifty minutes. The six-man tag match was cut to seven minutes or roughly half the match. Meltzer who had seen both the live event and the US PPV told his readers "The six-man tag match was a lot better LIVE because half the match was edited out ….supposedly to show Pillman as the star.” Just in case fans didn't get the point, Jim Ross underlined it throughout his US commentary - "In my estimation Pillman is the HOTTEST guy - he's the STAR of this match......"
Not
so, said Meltzer - "everyone in the match, except Kobayashi, looked very
good." Even PWI got the story right, rating "Brian Pillman,
Tom Zenk and Tim Horner's high powered accounting of themselves against
the equally athletic Kuniaki Kobayashi, Takayuki Iizuka and Shiro Koshinaka"
among the "more memorable moments" of the supercard.
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In
the final match, Fujinami defeated Flair. "Flair's begging and upside down
bump into the corner don't get over at all here. The begging was really
out of place in this environment. Flair was booed, but it wasn't "heat"
booing if you get my drift, it was more groaning booing..... Fujinami ducked
out of the way of a tackle and Flair hit ref Alphonso (Alphonso was the
only ref around ringside for the match - Hattori was announced as the sub-ref).
With the ref down, Fujinami did two pinning maneuvers on Flair and got
three counts as counted by the crowd but no ref.... Hattori came to ringside
to help Alphonso and ...at this point Flair charged at Fujinami and was
flipped over the top rope. The Dusty finish hits Tokyo. Hattori jumps in
the ring to ref... Fujinami... taking Flair down into a cradle and getting
the three count as the place went nuts." Fujinami becomes unified world
champion. "Just about every reporter thought this was a legit world title
change except for those few who knew English.... After the show was a sayonara
party at a night club in another part of town.
Friday- Friday morning's Nikkan Sports came out and the entire front page of the newspaper was devoted to Fujinami becoming the 75th NWA World Champion... Saturday
- The story that Flair had left Japan wiith the belt hit the papers. "I
heard that [the finish] was supposed to be ..the American ref would say
Flair won and the Japanese ref would say Fujinami won. The reason they
didn't do the Dusty finish as it's done in the U.S. is because ... doing
that screw-job would have ended up with the place rioting ...So they did
the Verne Gagne and sent the fans home thinking it was a title change until
two days later when they read the real story in the newspaper" (WON 04/01/91).
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The
Supercard crowd set an all-time indoor sports attendance record for Japan
(64,500), meaning that, with Wrestlemania III, at Pontiac Silverdome (93,173),
Tom Zenk had wrestled the biggest shows in the history of both U.S. and
Japan wrestling.