Al

I just watched WarGames '91 courtesy of the WWE Jukebox. The Figure Four for Everyone spot actually shows up in this match too. The Pillman powerbomb looks bad, but he clearly landed on the top of his shoulders, so it was not the cringe-worthy moment I feared. Was the ending planned, or improvised when the powerbomb mishap occured?

The cage used for some Lawler/Savage match I've seen was quite bad. I do know there were early cage matches that literally used chicken wire.

I have nothing to add except that I enjoyed reading this review.

I just remember watching that god-awful Jesse Ventura docu-drama that night. For those who missed it, the movie essentially moved time frames around so that Ventura quit the WWF after the Montreal fiasco.

Simply, Edge is entitled to a World Title shot at any time until Wrestlemania XXII.

Could be as simple as Pittsburgh being closer to Chicago. It's hit or miss, depending on the cable company.

It's kinda sad that the "best match of their career" will be known simply as a overdramatized hardcore-type match. Now, I didn't see the match, but that really can't be saying a lot could it? Well, Tim Cooke and company are probably throwing chairs at the thought of this match comparing to Eddie/JBL from last year's Judgment Day. So Bradshaw has a great match under his belt. The jury's out on Cena's career. He has a long way to go.

From Meltzer's recap... So did anyone see the match? How was it?

Like SG, I don't get WGN.

It was fairly common at that point, with the two hour mini-PPVs. Heck, one In Your House event saw the Undertaker main eventing against Faarooq of all people. I think most fans expected a cop-out ending.

Most casual fans have no idea of the concepts of workrate and psychology. They know wrestling is predetermined, but they have no idea how it is done. Before a couple years ago, the idea that wrestlers would tell a story and not simply perform a wrestling exhibition was foreign to me. Yet I could still enjoy an exciting wrestling match. I liked this match long before I could explain why. I guess that's what I'm trying to express there.

The big problem with the ending is that Michaels hits the superkick, and then covers Foley as slowly as possible. And then the referee counts, as slowly as possible. All the while, Vader runs to the ring as quickly as possible, and Michaels has to get up before the referee counts in order to preserve the DQ ending. And even then Foley lifts his shoulder just in case. It is not that the ending is so bad, just that it is botched. Otherwise, I love this match. Everything clicks, and you can enjoy the match even without appreciating the psychology involved.

As far as Tough Enough goes, Maven looks worse because he is just a few years out of wrestling school. Very few wrestlers are on the big stage at that point in their careers. Chris Nowinski got injured, but that is hardly a knock on the show.

What people miss often is that ECW had a forerunner in Philly, Tri-State Wrestling. That promotion ran in the early 90s and featured Eddie Gilbert, Cactus Jack and Terry Funk, among others. They frequently held barbed wire matches, and in addition had such brainstorms as the fan participation lumberjack match, the reverse cage battle royal, and the last blood battle royal. It's the promotion that featured Gilbert and Foley's best of 3 falls match, where each fall was a different gimmick (as an aside, this had fun results, the second fall was a stretcher match, where a wrestler had to beat his opponent so badly that he could return for the third fall, and the final cage match ended in a double DQ). They also featured matches such as Owen Hart vs. Takayuki Iizuka. ECW was very much simply a continuation of that promotion.

Why not expand it to the beginning. It's only another year and change. For WCW, I would just do the Starrcade years, using 1983 as a starting point. And if we do WWE in the future, I suggest moving the timeframe to 1982, when Vince Jr. purchased the company.

That was the one part I did not mind. After Lawler's feud with ECW, it would have been odd to see him do an about face and start cheering the promotion. Agreed with the rest of your post however. That is certainly not how either Tajiri or (especially) Chris Benoit wrestled in ECW.

I'm hoping that match goes 60 minutes just to read HTQ's review.

I doubt Meltzer will even see the card, unless they produce a videotape of it. I certainly would not expect an immediate write-up. But it could be fun live, as long as you don't expect more than a glorified indy card.

There are two cards, the WWE effort, and this indy one.

I think this illustrates the general problem with these reunion shows. They seek to deliver the same workers and matches as before, but the workers are 5-10 years past their peaks, and if I wanted to see Douglas/Sabu/Funk, I could just pop in a tape. It is scary to think it has been almost eight years since ECW booked that triple threat match as a nostalgia effort the first time.

I'll take either answer.

Meltzer mentioned one promotion produced a majority of the top 20 in womens' wrestling history. Are there ANY American Female Wrestlers that would rank among the top 20. Medusa is the only female of note, and possibly Mildred Burke for historical perspective.