(Also Not March Madness): SECRET SANTO March 2020

[NikoBaltimore]

50 minutes ago, OctopusCinema said:

This is a match that intrigued me enough to keep digging through AAA stuff from the past year or two. Hope you enjoy!

Thank you!  I'm familiar with Vikingo  (when watching Impact) and of course Jack but have only seen a few gifs of Taurus that I enjoyed.  I'll check this out when I get a chance.

Edited March 9, 2020 by NikoBaltimore

[Goodear]

@Ace said he was a little short on Euro and... well... Jim Breaks.

 

[supremebve]

@Curt McGirt currently researching lesser known 80-90s tag matches.  I have a couple in mind, but I'm going to see if I can find a hidden gem.

[Matt D]

So supremebve and Curt are on this.

I think the only person we haven't heard from was @Six String Orchestra unless it was done via PM.

Well done, gents. 

[Spontaneous]

Im pmed mine. When are we do to report?

Sent this:

 

[Matt D]

Great, everyone is on track then. Try to get your review up in here by Saturday night/Sunday morning. Since everyone did so well I'll reroll on Sunday.

[Octopus]

Bless your six stringed heart, @Six String Orchestra! Excited to check this out. Thanks. 

[Goodear]

I still need a match to review.

[Octopus]

22 minutes ago, Goodear said:

I still need a match to review.

I can come up with something for you in case something happened with @Ace . And if he does message you then you can just ignore mine. What’s your bind spots?

[Curt McGirt]

I still haven't picked either. I'm debating it internally...

[Ace]

Sorry for flaking on picking. 
Here it is: Steiner Brothers vs. Hiroshi Hase & Kensuke Sasaki

 

[Matt D]

This is what I get for having faith in Curt, even if we didn't have photographic proof. Come on, man. Get it together.

OK, here's a review. Do not feel obliged to write one so detailed. 

@The Man Known as Dan gave me Makabe vs Gresham from 3-2-1 Battle, from 4/19/19, reffed by Girl Hebner, ring announced by some jolly bald dude and commentated by some guy over the PA. 

Of these things, I was only previously aware of 4/19/19 (kids were on spring break and I was off from work that week), but I'm glad to see these guys as your friend and mine, @DylanWaco, pushed me in that direction months ago and I never quite made it there. Thankfully, we have the social pressure of a project I came up with to push me over the threshold. 

Let's lead with this: I liked this. I liked it a lot, actually. I think these two are very talented, very focused and conscientious. They seem to care about the things I care about in wrestling: realistic struggle, a narrative driven through set ups and payoffs (look at Makabe and the double underhook for an example there) and with selling as the main storytelling tool even more so than moves and spots and small details as the punctuation holding the story together and giving it color and flavor and life. There's a great intersection here between character, technical skill, and hard work, and in a way that feels almost like a positive evolution of what we were seeing a few years ago with the Thatcher/Gulak/Busick run that I was tangentially aware of. All the pre-match stuff, from Greshman's entrance to the fan-chant along with the 3-2-1, to how engaged the ref was with the crowd (especially considering how thoroughly and effectively she disappeared into the match once it got going) worked for me. 

Let me put it this way: I liked the match enough that it's worth nitpicking. I liked how unfocused and exhibition-like the opening matwork was. You got the sense, just like you might have forty-five years ago, that they were just starting off honestly wrestling a bit while giving each other small openings to move things along. I liked the initial narrative of Gresham bringing something Makabe wasn't used to, especially on his home turf, and holding surprising advantage. While I thought some of the armdrags were a bit overwrought (just a bit), some of what they did, like the strikes to the hand/arm, Greshman's catching Makabe in the corner with his legs to set up a roll up, and especially the cool contortion submission by Gresham, were really stellar. Managing that sort of an opening exchange in 2019 and making it engaging, unique, and a struggle all at once feels near impossible and they walked the tightrope well. 

Obviously, my favorite thing in the match was the shoelaces transition. It was a total joy to rewind and see the exact moment where he undid Gresham's laces, since I missed it the first time. The subsequent one-handed defensive fighting is one of my absolute favorite things in wrestling (in general, not just this match). It's the best thought experiment in the world, really. Take a wrestler with his usual spots and style and the crowd's familiarity to him and take away one of his tools; suddenly everything changes. You get the same character, the same entity, but he's in an entirely new environment and how he reacts and what he does in the face of that adversity fleshes him out so thoroughly. He can't coast on what he always does. You learned so much about Makabe as both a performer and a character in watching him there. Really good stuff.

That said, even with a home promotion crowd, it's so hard to reimmerse into 2019 wrestling after spending the last few months in 1950s France. I just watched a match (we covered it here: http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2020/03/tuesday-is-french-catch-day-luis-el.html) where the heel faked his own shoelaces being untied in order to get an advantage and then nearly caused a riot with his subsequent heeling. Here, Makabe gets outwrestled and evens the odds with the sneaky, underhanded untying and an absolute thudding ambush in the corner, and the fans start chanting for him. That's not how this is supposed to work. I'm hoping sometime in the next few years, a new generation of fans can come up and realize that they can still be part of the show and be engaged with what they're watching by playing along instead of fighting the current. There is a different world where Makabe could have gotten real heat off of that and then carried it forward to create electricity throughout the rest of the match and he just didn't have that opportunity here.

From there, he started on the back and they moved on to a scenario where both wrestlers were vulnerable and unable to hit stuff because of it. On paper and in ultimate execution (selling, again), I thought this was good. It's a way to keep things from escalating too high until it's supposed to. Every attempt at a German Suplex that doesn't work makes the eventual German Suplex mean all the more, etc. I can't say I 100% bought Gresham's back being so damaged so quickly though, especially after the lengthier work on Makabe's arm. There were some hard shots to it, but the moves around them seemed to target the head/neck more and the announcer indicated as such. There was a lot of small in the shots to the back (hard but small), and I think the narrative would have been better served by them going big on it at least once it before Gresham was selling so hard that he was unable to hit his suplex. All that said (and with everything else in this match), I could be lacking context. 

The eventual escalation in the stretch had them going fast and hard with a lot of quick counters and forearms and go-behinds, but I thought they handled it well: the bodypart targeting was always in their mind, even if it didn't always play out (nor did it have to). Instead of throwing away the entirety of the match they just wrestled, they integrated it very appropriately, targeting out of desperation or when there was an opening, but not being so consumed by it that it felt obsessive. Very good balance there. I liked the struggle and the sense of inevitability on the finish. I wasn't sure exactly what Makabe was going for, and you even had the sense that he course corrected (first with the kick, but not just that) with Gresham's movements in order to lock in something that was masterful and excruciating but not at all rote. To make something that elaborate seem non-cooperative so well is a huge talent. 

Let me sum it up like this: there was a moment a few months back when WWE dropped the hidden gems where I wasn't entirely sure what I was going to do wrestling wise. I couldn't have predicted that we'd get 300+ French matches from the 50s-80s (and some glorious-sounding lost 79 NJPW on its way too). There was always a chance that I was going to have to actually watch modern wrestling. A match like this makes me think that I could swallow the few stylistic things that aren't my cup of tea and thoroughly enjoy at least one subsection of what's out there now, and that's hugely reassuring. 

[Curt McGirt]

Okay then here you go

I was thinking of picking something from PR anyway and this was the first that came to mind.

It also fits because, ya know, War Games.

Edited March 11, 2020 by Curt McGirt

[supremebve]

1 hour ago, Curt McGirt said:

Okay then here you go

I was thinking of picking something from PR anyway and this was the first that came to mind.

It also fits because, ya know, War Games.

I'm pretty sure this is going to be my very first exposure to Puerto Rican wrestling.  

Too bad you don't have the Network, or I'd have assigned you  11/19/91 - Anderson/Zbyszko vs. Dustin/Steamboat, which is a great lost gem of a Southern tag match.  I absolutely love that match, and if I can find it elsewhere I'll send you a link.  I'm going to watch a couple TV matches from the time that I found on Youtube, and I'll send you may favorite.

[supremebve]

13 minutes ago, supremebve said:

I'm pretty sure this is going to be my very first exposure to Puerto Rican wrestling.  

Too bad you don't have the Network, or I'd have assigned you  11/19/91 - Anderson/Zbyszko vs. Dustin/Steamboat, which is a great lost gem of a Southern tag match.  I absolutely love that match, and if I can find it elsewhere I'll send you a link.  I'm going to watch a couple TV matches from the time that I found on Youtube, and I'll send you may favorite.

Look what I found...I think I searched directly in Youtube.  This is my pick for you.

 

[Curt McGirt]

...not only that but I'm also almost sure I have it from someone else on here, who I'm sure will get a big kick out of reading that. 

Review coming tonight! 

[Curt McGirt]

Okay, this is a real treat because I've only seen it for the first time this year and it is amazing. I got ahold of it on a Dangerous Alliance comp and it was one of the first matches on there. I immediately found it on Dailymotion and posted it here because I was so blown away. If this wasn't on the WWE Clash set or any of their other WCW sets it should not only have been but it should have headed the fucking thing. 

The story starts with some footage from before Halloween Havoc with Dustin and Barry Windham pulling up in their convertible to talk to Bischoff before their match that night, whereupon they are immediately attacked by the Enforcers. They slam Barry's arm in the door of the car and though he manages to get through a match later, it's doubtful whether he's about to get through the title match at the Clash coming up. Him and a fired-up Dustin (seems like nothing has changed there in what, 30 years or so) come out to the ring after the Enforcers where they reveal Barry had to have reconstructive surgery on his arm so they picked another opponent to help challenge for the belts. A cloaked figure in one of those giant dragon masks you can probably still find at your local magic shop walks out. Dustin takes off the mask, the man beneath throws off the cloth -- and it's RICKY FUCKING STEAMBOAT. The crowd comes U N G L U E D. Arn practically turns white, yelling "NOT RICKY STEAMBOAT!", putting his hand on the title in worry before handing it off.

We have just had the best setup for a tag match ever. 

And what follows is one of the  best tag matches ever. Arn is still freaking out, yelling at Zybyzko "He's only a man!", having to bail and hit the "Time Out" handsign, because the Dragon and the Natural just eat them for lunch at first at a blazing pace. They initially get ahold of Arn after it slows down a bit and start working his arm as revenge for Barry but however, as you would expect the Enforcers isolate -- who else -- the best seller in the world, Steamer, and begin pummeling him. Jim Ross on commentary says that Larry wants to be known from now on as "the Cruncher" for what he did to Windham's arm and he acts like it here, total hothead, yelling, grinding into everything he does, helping Arn cheat from outside. Finally though after several missed tags Dustin gets the hot tag and this 21 year old kid just goes to town. He throws haymakers at Larry and Arn and you can actually hear them hit over the crowd! He manages the Bulldog on Larry, tags in Ricky and Ricky steals it with a picture perfect crossbody off the top to gain them both the tag titles. Both guys lose it in celebration and so does the crowd, while the typically great WCW video guys run the clip of the Steamboat reveal in slow motion with the crowd still screaming, freezing on Dustin and Steamer in mid-eruption*.

Such a great match, great preceding angle, great during-match angle, and setup for one of the wildest runs in heel history of any faction. This match is one of the seeds for the Dangerous Alliance to form around Paul E. Dangerously, the Enforcers, Rick Rude, Bobby Eaton, Medusa, Michael Hayes, and a young up-and-comer by the name of Steve Austin. At the same Clash as this tag match Medusa turned on Sting and injured him, giving Rude the belt under the management of Paul E., so as the months traveled on the group coalesced. Thus was a fantastic period in wrestling history born and this tag is a classic part of it. 

Highest recommendation. 

* Side note: right as they're filming the celebration and freeze frame Ross introduces that upcoming is a video package for a Japanese wrestler by the name of Jushin Thunder Liger... So yeah, this Clash (XVII, from 11/19/91) is a wee bit important.

[Goodear]

On 3/11/2020 at 3:15 AM, Ace said:

Sorry for flaking on picking. 
Here it is: Steiner Brothers vs. Hiroshi Hase & Kensuke Sasaki

 

No worries, I watched this for the first time yesterday.  I'll do a rewatch and have thoughts shortly.

[Curt McGirt]

I watched the finish again and it's Arn who gets the bulldog and is stunned for the crossbody. The icing on top is Larry just about to break up the pin and Dustin FLIES in at top speed to stop him like a bolt of lightning from the opposite corner offscreen. It's awesome. 

Also, like Matt already said, you don't have to write as much as us. I got pretty far into it there haha...

One other thing: It is a trip seeing Arn and Dustin participate in the same match on live TV 30 or whatever years later last night, and with Tony and JR on commentary no less.

Edited March 12, 2020 by Curt McGirt

[supremebve]

1 hour ago, Curt McGirt said:

I watched the finish again and it's Arn who gets the bulldog and is stunned for the crossbody. The icing on top is Larry just about to break up the pin and Dustin FLIES in at top speed to stop him like a bolt of lightning from the opposite corner offscreen. It's awesome. 

Also, like Matt already said, you don't have to write as much as us. I got pretty far into it there haha...

One other thing: It is a trip seeing Arn and Dustin participate in the same match on live TV 30 or whatever years later last night, and with Tony and JR on commentary no less.

Here is the review I wrote about the match a few years back...

 

Quote

11/19/91 - Anderson/Zbyszko vs. Dustin/Steamboat (WCW) ****1/4

 

This match has a lot in common with the last match I reviewed…three guys I  love to watch and a fourth that isn't exactly a weak link.  Anderson could be the best tag wrestler ever, Rhodes might be the best active tag wrestler on the planet, Steamboat is an absolute legend, and Zbyszko is a crafty veteran who knows exactly what to do in the ring at all times.  Zbyszko and Anderson could teach a master class on how to work as a heel tag team.  There heat segment of this match starts with one of the best blind tag sequences I've ever seen.  It wasn't even really cheating, as much as it was taking advantage of the babyface fire that the crowd loves so much.  Zybyszko slaps Steamboat and then bails to the outside, Steamboat being the fiery babyface chases him around the heel corner back into the ring where he doesn't see Arn Anderson get the tag only to have Zybyszko go back to the outside and around again allowing  Arn, the new legal man to hit Steamboat in the back when they get back into the ring.  That one sequence illustrates why this match is great, it is four really smart workers working a really well put together match.  This is almost like a Pixar movie, it is just smart storytelling put in a concise easy to digest package.  This might be a little underrated at ****1/4 this is a really good southern tag match worked by four masters of that particular form of match.  There just isn't much more you could ask for from these guys.

 

[AxB]

On 3/8/2020 at 7:36 PM, Super Ape said:

 

 

Well, this is an interesting one. Because although it's a pivotal match in Wrestling history, and for a lot of people probably the first Barbed Wire Match they ever saw, it's also sort of the last of it's kind. Obviously in a Pro-Wrestling setting, once you take away the ring ropes, you take away a lot of the creative freedom the wrestlers have. They can't do rope breaks, they can't do running moves, they can't really take to the air. So to compensate, there developed a series of established spots that were to be done in every NRBW match (to be fair, Sabu and Terry Funk both played major parts in developing the style, with Onita in FMW). And Pro Wrestling (especially in the 90s) being a 'Can you top this?' type of business, they took the established Barbed Wire story, and took it slightly further than it had gone before. Which, for various reasons, turned out to be too far.

To look at a Wrestling match merely as a series of moves in sequence, and then to list them in the order they happened, is to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the art. There's a lot more to Wrestling than the moves. "Meaning is not in things, but in between them" - Norman O Brown.  But if everyone taking part in this project did write down every move that happened in their match and listed them in order, my list would probably be the shortest. Probably by quite a long way, even though the match goes about 20 minutes.

Sabu challenges Terry Funk for the ECW World Heavyweight Championship, in the main event of Born To Be Wired 1997. There is no lock up. Neither does Sabu open the match with his usual dives at the legs. The opening exchange consists of tentative punches, closely followed by more confident punches. Sabu attempts a dropkick to the knee, but Funk avoids and grabs a single leg pickup. Sabu punches from his back. Funk pulls him up by the hair and punches him in the face. He whips Sabu towards the wire, but Sabu manages to stop himself in time. We are one minute in.

Warily, they circle. Sabu rushes in with a wild kick to the belly, and throws Funk towards the wire. Funk drops to the mat and rolls out under. He is stomped as he returns to the ring, and Sabu locks him in the Camel Clutch, but releases quickly to stomp and kick. Funk responds with a Headbutt and a Rude Awakening Neckbreaker. He then hits a Piledriver for a 2 count, and follows up with a DDT. He attempts to rake Sabu's face across the wire, but Sabu grabs the top strand to resist it. Sabu smashes Funk with elbows and attempts to rake Funk's face into the wire, and Funk similarly blocks. Sabu hits a Huracanrana into a pinning attempt and gets two, but Funk's kickout sends Sabu chest-first into the barbed wire. We are three and a half minutes in.

Sabu's forehead is raked back and forth across the top strand of wire, and he recoils across the ring bleeding. Funk closes the distance and Irish Whips him back first into the wire, and Sabu grimaces in pain. He peels himself away, but Funk picks him up for a reverse Atomic Drop, landing him legs akimbo straddling the wire. Funk drags Sabu off the ropes by tearing at his tights, ripping the fabric (thus proving to the watching audience that Yes, This Is Real Barbed Wire). We are five minutes in.

Funk whips Sabu into the wire on the other side of the ring, and hammers him with a series of punches. More strikes follow, but when Funk attempts to whip Sabu into the wire on more time, Sabu reverses and it is Funk whose spine meets the strands. Sabu attempts to tie Funk's right arm up in the wire as Bill Alfonso throws a couple of chairs into the ring. Sabu blasts some hard chair strikes into Funk's back. In attempting to roll away from the danger, Funk accidentally moves into the wire once more, and Sabu rakes the bottom strand across Funk's forehead. He then arms himself with a fork and stabs and gouges at Funk's bloody forehead. We are eight minutes in. So far, nothing in this match has gone wrong.

With Terry Funk struggling to his feet and his chest up against the wire, Sabu backs up and launches off a chair to hit a leg lariat to Funk's back. He then covers for a count of two. Funk pulls himself to his feet in the corner of the ring. Sabu throws a right hand to keep him there, then backs up across the ring. He charges, launching himself off the chair to attempt a Leg Lariat in the corner, but Funk escapes and Sabu hits the wire. In his autobiography, Sabu claims that with the ECW crew lacking guidance and experience in matter such as these, when they went to buy the Barbed Wire from the hardware store, their main concern was what would look best. So they bought the heaviest gauge barbed wire, with the longest barbs. Conversely the FMW crew would buy low gauge wire with short barbs, because it was so much safer, and that was what Sabu was used to. He had done the Missed Air Sabu into the wire spot in these matches before and had no problem. This time, he had a big problem. A giant laceration on his upper arm that was bleeding not at Good Wrestling Blood levels, but at Oh Shit I'm Dying levels. This was the first thing in the match that went wrong. From this point on, things like telling a story and maintaining character became secondary concerns in the match, because not bleeding to death was a far more pressing matter. We are nine minutes in.

Sabu (who does not speak) mouths the words OH SHIT. Following a brief conversation with Bill Alfonso, the manager runs backstage. Terry Funk covers Sabu and gets a two count. Fonzie returns with a roll of tape. Sabu audibly says "It's OK I'll do it myself", and begins taping up his arm. Terry Funk repositions the chairs so the seats are facing each other, drags Sabu out of the corner and hits a neckbreaker across the seats. In lieu of selling the move, Sabu continues taping his arm. He then leaps to his feet and suddenly unloads with strikes at Funk, but a big Funk punch to the chin drops him. Windmill forearms from Funk force Sabu to roll out under the bottom strand of wire, and once at ringside he resumes taping up his arm. Following some brawling at ringside, Funk rolls Sabu back into the ring and applies the Spinning Toe Hold. Bill Alfonso climbs onto the apron, so Funk abandons his hold and drags Fonzie over the wire and into the ring. Sabu attempts to save his manager, but is picked up in a vertical suplex and dropped stomach-down on the wire. Terry obtains a loose strand of wire and wraps it around his fist, dropping Alfonso with a punch and using the wire to tear the shirt from his back. He rakes the wire across Alfonso's back, drawing a mixture of delight and disgust from the fans. We are Thirteen and a half minutes in.

A final punch to the face puts paid to Alfonso, and Terry Funk obtains a pair of Wire cutters. Snipping a length from the top rope, he uses it to whip Sabu across the back and legs. Funk then chooses to exit the ring and beat up Alfonso some more. Rather than save his manager, Sabu chooses to use the wire cutters to take down one side of strands. When Funk returns to the ring, Sabu uses the wire cutters to stab him in the forehead. Rob Van Dam chooses that this is the right moment to interfere in the match, running in and raining punches and stomps down on Terry Funk. Funk rolls outside the ring to escape, but RVD follows, and rolls Funk across some fallen strands, tying him up in the wire. With Funk's chest and back loosely wrapped in wire, he is placed on a ringside table. Sabu leaps from the ring with a legdrop, breaking the table. We are Seventeen minutes in.

Tommy Dreamer runs in, cracking RVD in the head with a bin lid, and then DDT'ing him on it at ringside. Dreamer carries Van Dam to the back as Terry Funk rolls back into the ring. Sabu covers, but only gets a two count. They roll Funk back out of the ring, and onto a fresh table at ringside. Sabu runs through the ring to collect the barbed wire he clipped off earlier, and then proceeds to wrap them around his legs. He then once more leaps from the ring with a legdrop, breaking the table. We are nineteen minutes in.

Both men lie exhausted at ringside, the barbed wire that wraps about their bodies now hopelessly enmeshed. They rise, and attempt to return to the ring, but Funk in particular is having great problems moving. He can be heard exclaiming "Somebody get me in the ring". With the help of Alfonso and some referees, he is placed back on the canvas. They attempt a punch exchange, but their range of motion is now so compromised that even this proves near impossible. Terry Funk loudly says "Oh shit. Oh god. Someone help me". Sabu covers and gets a two count. We are Twenty minutes in.

They try to separate from one another. Funk tries to roll to his stomach, but finds he cannot. Sabu tries to stand, but he can only crawl a very short distance. Funk continues to ask for help. Sabu covers, and gets the three count. The final bell rings, twenty minutes and 49 seconds after the opening bell did. Three minutes later, Sabu has finally been cut clear enough that he can separate from his opponent and celebrate becoming the new champion.

The reason why I said at the start that this match was the last of it's kind is, they took what was the established Barbed Wire match template at that point, and pushed it as far as they could, and it was too far. It would be impossible to have a more extreme version of a barbed wire match using this template, because it was impossible for Funk and Sabu to actually physically do anything after the final legdrop. Terry Funk had two deathmatches in the 90s that would be considered iconic (by Western fans at least; To Japanese fans the Onita match would probably be more important), this one and the Cactus match in the IWA Japan KOTDM final. Both had really underwhelming finishes, where there wasn't actually a finishing move, so much as an accumulation of damage and exhaustion eventually wearing them out to the point they couldn't continue.

It's also odd that, to our jaded 2020 eyes, the gash on Sabu's arm doesn't look that bad. We've seen people with blood fountains shooting from their heads, we've seen Necro Butcher take a glass bump off a ladder and have a chunk of hamburger meat fall out of his arm, and Sabu's sliced bicep seems comparatively bloodless by that (ridiculous) standard. But to this day, Sabu insists that he would not have survived the match if he hadn't taped it shut.

All things considered, this match was an incredible spectacle, and in terms of being a "How can you call yourself a Wrestling fan, if you haven't seen..." match, it deserves it's place on that list. It's a match that's important, in the history of Pro-Wrestling. But is it actually a good match?

Not really. If you showed it to someone who grew up on PG era WWE, they'd either vomit, or think it was the greatest thing they'd ever seen in their life. But to someone who'd watched a lot on=f CZW and IWA-MS, they might find it comparatively tame. And it's far from the best Sabu vs Funk match to ever happen.

[Curt McGirt]

I want to know what the best Sabu/Funk match is then. I can't really think of many others. XPW? That can't be it. 

Sabu said the cut was straight to the bone and he could see the muscle. There was no blood at all until the vein opened and started squirting. In another shoot he said when he asked Fonzie for tape Fonzie replied "I don't have any tape" and Sabu had to ask him to work with him here haha. Also, the finish wasn't supposed to be Sabu going over but Sabu couldn't roll Funk on top of him in the ball of wire. 

 

[AxB]

18 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

I want to know what the best Sabu/Funk match is then. I can't really think of many others. XPW? That can't be it. 

See what you think of this one: 

Sabu vs Funk starts around 1:11:00

 

[PetrolCB]

1 hour ago, Curt McGirt said:

Also, the finish wasn't supposed to be Sabu going over but Sabu couldn't roll Funk on top of him in the ball of wire. 

Really? So Funk was supposed to drop the belt to Douglas then? Hmm. I always did find the Sabu reign to be a bit strange. 

[Curt McGirt]

Sabu said he took no time off and lost in a three way with Shane and Terry the next week, so I presume it was Shane that won that match?

EDIT: Yeah, WWE.com has a clip of the match. Sandman interferes, Shane pins Sabu, Shane then pins Funk and wins title

Edited March 13, 2020 by Curt McGirt