An attendance of 550 for UWF Beach Brawl? That sounds about right. The only PPV from Herb Abrams’ UWF took place in Palmetto, Florida in June 1991 and features the main event tournament final for the UWF SportsChannel Television title.
The Best
I won’t lie, I found Terry Gordy taking on future, recently canned WWE exec Johnny Ace to be pretty damn solid. You’re probably asking “Why is a match that is just solid in The Best?” A lot of this show is below mid, folks with some flickers of possibly being interesting, or the matches become interesting later or start off strong and peter out rapidly.
Also, this was when Terry Gordy could still go and Ace at this time was actually a very competent—if at times boring—talent. With a smidgen of room to groove at just over six minutes and this being a Gordy-favored match in a street fight, this actually worked.
At just over four minutes, the tag match between Wet N Wild and Cactus Jack & Bob Orton Jr: solid as hell match. It should’ve gone seven-to-ten minutes but they did a bit in that little four minutes that worked. I’m not sure about Wet N Wild winning. Like, they weren’t the best tag team or a team that was setting the world or the country on fire.
Hell, they didn’t set the UWF on fire, really. Across the ring, the team of Cactus and Orton worked very well together. We just needed more of this match and to really allow both teams to do their thing instead of condensing it and giving the boring or just plain bad matches more time.
I haven’t watched much UWF but for seven strong minutes, Terry Gordy and Steve Williams went at it over the UWF SportsChannel Television title. Already, “Television title” makes it sounds like UWF Beach Brawl was main evented by the secondary or third-tier title in the company but that doesn’t impact this bout.
The main gripe here is that this is the match that should’ve gotten a significant amount of time. Sure, most matches were on the brief side but with this being the main event, viewers should’ve gotten something to really sink their teeth into because this had the potential to be a landmark match for Abrams’ UWF.
The Rest
Oof…well, The Blackhearts—featuring the future Gangrel—took on Fire Cat and Jim Cooper in the opener. Gangrel isn’t as solid as he would become in this bout and Fire Cat—while a very good, athletic wrestler—wasn’t featured in a favorable match. This was actually a bit on the boring side but it didn’t eat up way too much time.
With that said, five minutes or so would’ve been fine for the opener. The time this match was given would’ve been better served for tag match between the Power Twins and Masked Confusion—the Killer Bees. This match went over twelve minutes which was pretty unnecessary. This was the time that the main event should’ve been given.
This wasn’t the most interesting match at all but I will say that “Masked Confusion” is a good 90s tag team name. So, a half-point for that at least.
Rockin’ Robin and Candi Devine was a stock, largely uneventful early 90s women’s match to crown the first UWF Women’s World champion. The talent for women’s divisions wasn’t exactly there in the U.S during the early 90s.
Sure, there were women wrestlers around and few talented ones but it wasn’t exactly in abundance to the point a title was necessary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHoUhdU_QHU
In the UWF, you would really have to happen upon a decent women’s match—or a decent episode of UWF Fury Hour from start to finish for that matter. While it wasn’t interesting, it was brief and that’s fine. Also brief was Paul Orndorff taking on Colonel DeBeers in a strap match.
Now, I know DeBeers was a bit up there in age at this point as is Orndorff but Mr. Wonderful still had a few more years of solid-to-good matches left in him before having to retire in WCW. This strap match was just over 4-minutes and it’s one of those matches that should’ve gotten extra time.
For a strap match, this was just way too short.
Following this was a 2-minute bout between Bob Backlund and Ivan Koloff where Backlund expectedly spanked Koloff. Ultra-short match, nothing to really see here.
UWF Beach Blast Verdict: Bronze Medal (4/10)
This show wasn’t a mess as it was very in line with what you’d get from an early 90s American promotion’s big show if it was on PPV. You’d get some short matches, matches that should be short are longer than needed, the matches with the potential to be good aren’t allowed to shine, and the main event just might be iffy.
All of the matches in “The Best” should’ve gotten more time but I’d also say that, some of these matches needed to swap out competitors or get someone else to wrestle these guys. Backlund should’ve had a better opponent than an aged Ivan Koloff in 1991.
The match of the show was the criminally brief main event tournament final between Dr. Death and Bam Bam. Overall, this was more like watching an episode of weekly TV than an actual PPV event.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHoUhdU_QHU
