Anatomy of a Disaster: Paul Roma vs. Alex Wright

Debra’s even gesturing at it!

ANATOMY OF A DISASTER: ALEX WRIGHT vs. PAUL ROMA:
-By popular request, another infamous disaster! This one more because of one disagreeable cuss who decided not to play ball. This one isn’t really THAT famous, as neither guy is much of a name in history- one is more notable for being “The shittiest Horseman” and the other for his elephantine dong (I guess there’s worse things to be known for), so you can imagine how high their starpower was. But given that this happened on Pay-Per-View during the time Hogan came to WCW, and led directly to Paul Roma getting fired, it’s still fairly notable. I mean, guys have refused to sell for their opponents before, but on a scale this large?

THE STAGE: WCW Superbrawl V (Feb. 19th 1995)

THE PERFORMERS:
Paul Roma: Roma was a reliable “good hand” kind of wrestler in the WWF for ages, acting as a jobber, then forming the Young Stallions as the weakest tag team on the babyface side of the roster (the Bolsheviks were on the other), typically acting as a “safe” job to the Islanders, Demolition or Brain Busters while technically giving the fans a real featured match between stars. The Stallions soon dissolved, leading to both Roma and partner Jim Powers becoming jobbers, albeit the most “elite” kind that usually got some shine. Roma was ripped, good-looking and athletic, and showed off a lot in his squashes, and eventually got re-pushed as part of Power & Glory. They seemed to be going places, but then fate intervened and the Nasty Boys got the World Title heel run instead, P&G becoming JTTS guys, frequently being split up to again do “safe” jobs on TV.

Roma ended up quitting the WWF in 1991 and went to WCW in 1993 (man there’s a huge gap there), where he initially got a push as part of the Four Horsemen of all teams- this was when they were babyfaces. It’s seen pretty universally as a massive disappointment- Roma had potential but he was a WWF job guy and was in WCW’s biggest stable. He won the WCW Tag Titles with Arn Anderson but soon lost them and turned heel. He spent most of the rest of his run as part of “Pretty Wonderful” with Paul Orndorff. Here, he was expected to put over the newcomer.

Alex Wright: Alex was a second-generation wrestler who was recruited by WCW during a tour of Germany in mid-1994. He was booked as “Das Wunderkind”, a babyface using techno music (like in German dance halls of the time- The Simpsons has a gag about this) while dancing, and put over Jean-Paul Levesque, who I’m sure languished in obscurity thereafter. The WCW bookers (particularly Ric Flair, so I’ve heard) were unbelievably high on this kid, booking him to win squashes with the flying cross-body (the universal finisher of the milquetoast babyface), and the future seemed bright. Except the fans never really cared. He’s all of 18 years old here, so any flaws on his part could easily be passed off as inexperience. But hoo boy, his fellow wrestlers didn’t seem to like him.

So the deal here is that Paul Roma is to put over Alex Wright clean (Roma suggests that Flair told him right on the day of the show that instead of going over as planned, “The office wants you losing”), making him look good in the process. Classic “lower-midcard heel” stuff. Roma, however, thought the kid was unworthy of his push and wanted to show his contempt. And… HOO BOY.

Roma was so much smaller than the typical WWF dude of the time that I often have to look at him out of context to realize just how roided he was. Dude was still HUGE.

“DAS WUNDERKIND” ALEX WRIGHT vs. PAUL ROMA:
* Immediately I LOL at Paul Roma’s face, looking like me if I’d just been served a lifetime ban from Disney World and didn’t want anyone to know about it. I’ve seen some epic Jobbing Faces in my life but holy shit. He’s in a singlet for some reason, with black on the bottom and red on the top. I only ever remember this dude in trunks. He’s announced as “One half of Pretty Wonderful” so the team was still together. Roma is a LOT bigger and bulkier than his tall, lean opponent. This is treated as jealousy from Roma that the ladies are paying attention to Wright. Judging by the fit of those blue trunks he’s wearing, I don’t blame them!

Roma thankfully attacks before the bell while Wright is doing his stupid dance and beats him down. He hits a god-awful press slam (what kind of a grip was THAT?) and mocks his little dance, which, since the dance is stupid, gets Roma immediately over as the babyface. Wright comes back with dweeby babyface stuff (sunset flip- Roma kickout out at “1”, armdrags, kip-ups), and does a Jumping Bomb Angels armdrag out of a wristlock. He holds a boring armhold while Ondorff hits ringside for moral support for his partner. Heenan keeps on digging “Das Wunderpunk” while Roma complains about his tights being pulled and some fans shout “BORINNNNGGG!”. Wright treats a headscissors like it stunned him and Roma throws some precision strikes- that last elbowdrop was FANTASTIC. And then he hits his repeating backbreaker! Extra points for just tossing the kid down like a sack of shit.

Wright is dumped repeatedly and Baba chopped, then fires up a comeback but Roma slugs him in mid-sunset flip at a weird-ass angle, getting two after a delay. Wright manages a backslide (that Roma just freezes him on entirely, then goes over without any observable struggle in between) and an inside cradle, but Roma’s immediately mauling him again, then hits an INSANELY long chinlock, just lying there while fans get impatient, though he does put his legs on the ropes twice and jawing with the fans. After two minutes (nearly exact- I counted- wrestlers obviously timed their restholds carefully because I see exactly one-minute ones used all over the place, even in Japan), Wright lifts his hand up at “2” and fights up, elbowing free and slugging away, but Roma AGAIN counters him, grabbing the ropes so Wright smokes his head trying a dropkick. This kid is just being eaten alive out there.

Roma immediately does his wicked backwards-climb to the top rope and hits an EPIC Flying Elbow, killing the kid and doing a big dance around the ring to celebrate while Heenan declares “It’s OVER!” and the fans cheer because that was awesome. Heenan starts to scold Roma for wasting tons of time doing this (he’s even slapping hands with Orndorff), Wright having to lie there writhing in pain the whole time, then he even pulls the kid up at “2”! And sure enough, he does a Patera Charge into the corner and eats shit, then bounces back for Wright’s punches and European uppercuts. And then… what the fuck was that? Roma flips over as if hiptossed but Wright barely touched him. Wright with a spin-wheel kick for only a one-count, as Roma’s up right away and punches Wright again to stop the comeback. But Wright goes to the corner and flies off with his Flying Cross-Body finisher, ending up WAY in the ropes, Orndorff pulling him off to be a dick. Roma uses the distraction to go back on offense (Heenan of course claims “I didn’t see that on MY monitor!”), but slams him and goes to chat with Orndorff- finally, Wright dropkicks him into his partner and schoolboys him for the pin at (13:21), Roma noticeably kicking out early! I’ve heard of kicking out at 3.1, but 2.7?!?

So this is an interesting one, as it’s not a botchfest like most Disaster columns have ended up being, nor was it one guy just ignoring everything his opponent did (the traditional version of “no-selling”) but it sure was interesting seeing Roma just gobble up his opponent. Given he was calling the match that’s gotta be on him, especially as he does stuff like eats a single move then flies back on offense so he can do more stuff, doing big, flashy moves and gestures designed to show off himself at Wright’s expense. Like Alex would get some moves back and then Roma just ignores them after initially selling, then flies in with an elbow to stop the kid’s momentum and crush him. And then he does what he often did when he was losing to “name” guys- hits these big finisher-tier moves but spends too much time celebrating, like he “could have” won but chose not to and that’s the only reason why he lost. It makes him look like a dumbass in kayfabe, but I can kind of see how that’d piss people off if he was wrestling them.

Two long slow stretches (one at the beginning is fine, but the second goes on too long) don’t help. The flourish Roma puts into everything is amazing, but I can tell he’s totally hot-dogging it, showing off to the fans (and suits) and being so good he’s drawing CHEERS despite his arrogant heel character. Wright more or less looks like a punk kid who got his ass beat and was lucky.

Rating: **1/4 (seems like a perfectly fine PPV match with only one ugly spot- the real flaws are in how the match was constructed in terms of who gets over)

The Fallout: Paul Roma says he received a FedEx letter the next day informing him that his contract would not be renewed. He spent the next month jobbing, mostly on house shows (usually to Wright again), and his final TV appearance was a loss to Brian Pillman. I can imagine the bookers (especially Flair, who’d have known exactly what Roma was up to in the ring) would have taken issue with him just gobbling the kid up. Roma kept wrestling for only a few years (going to CWA in Germany and even getting some WWF dark matches with an “Alex Roma”) but was mostly done. His eternal legacy is pretty much just “PAUL ROMA AS A HORSEMEN?!?” disbelief, but history has been pretty kind to Power & Glory squashes, and it’s generally accepted they could have gone somewhere with that team.

Wright… really went nowhere. WCW tried and tried to push him as a big deal, but his lack of charisma and boring wrestling matches made him stick out like a sore thumb when the nWo and Cruiserweights were tearing up Monday Nitro- he couldn’t match the nWo’s act and he couldn’t wrestle well enough to match the Cruisers so he was just a ** match-having “piss break” guy. He had title wins over both Chris Jericho & Ultimo Dragon, but this failed to enamor him with people, as anyone could see those two guys were better. They kind of did a comedy “Dancing Heel” gimmick with him for a while but to no major consistent push, and a push as Berlyn was aborted after his Matrix-esque “long trenchcoat” look debuted right around when the Columbine school shooting happened, and then his bodyguard “The Wall” ended up getting a push instead of him. He even had ANOTHER veteran gobble him up when “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan refused to sell for him on a major show!

Mitigating Factors: There’s not really an excuse for that. This is only Alex Wright’s second PPV match and he’s only 18 years old, so they both have an excuse for it not being a great match, but Roma is blatantly going into business for himself here.

Overall, though, you can definitely tell this was a hugely unprofessional showing- on the surface with no backstory, it looks like your everyday “Arrogant Heel Costs Himself Against a Rookie” match, but given the job here was to actually make Alex LOOK GOOD, Roma absolutely failed, purposefully killing him again and again, cutting off comebacks after mere seconds, hitting awesome moves and posing, and all around treating Alex like a complete jobber who was out of his league. Roma barely sold a damn thing, and was kicking out at “1” nearly every single time he was caught, and only won due to a mistake.

Case in point: Fans would come out of this match thinking that Roma was awesome and did awesome stuff, while Alex was clumsy and ineffective, and just lucky his opponent was so arrogant. Not the stuff of legends, nor a good push for a rookie wunderkind who was actually supposed to be good. Alex’s take on the incident: Roma switched their plan at the last minute and screwed him over. Alex, a rookie trained to respect the veterans, had to go along with it.

In the end, Paul Roma became one of the very few guys who was cast out of the business nearly for good. An important lesson when the bookers want one of their darlings put over: don’t show them up and get over at their expense.