Loss
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I love this feud! The initial angle is what gets remembered the most, but the way they followed up on it was awesome. Because of the gimmick, every nearfall in this match has so much heat. The in-ring is totally in sync with the storyline, as Kid is doing a lot of ducking and running and Razor is out to settle a score. Kid takes a ridiculous inverted bump off of a chokeslam and Razor spends a huge chunk of the match toying with him and beating him up for fun. Kid ends up slipping off the top rope in a nasty spot. I love the finish of this, as Kid takes the money and runs, where he had a parked car waiting for him. The awesomeness continues.
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Doink as Ric Flair is awesome -- doing a figure four and being press slammed off the top! This is a hell of a match. Lots of great matwork, and Jannetty does some awesome high flying stuff. I'd put this against anything from KOTR, including Bret/Perfect. The best thing about this is that Jannetty knows what's going on and is trying to stay a step ahead of him by telling the ref and it's not working. A smart babyface, imagine that! Randy Savage and Bobby Heenan end up getting involved, with Savage pulling the original Doink out from under the ring, leading to the ref reversing the decision and giving Marty the win.
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Nice match and I love the controversial finish. There's nothing here that doesn't happen in pretty much every chain match in history, and of the three chain/strap matches so far on this set, this is the least of them all, but I'm still glad I watched it, and I still enjoyed it. Eddie Gilbert is now the King of Philadelphia! Also, we got to see Paul E. sneak attack Todd Gordon. -
Change in plans. 1992 will be next so we have more time to go through some 1990 things that are harder to find. If you have anything to add to this thread, make sure you do it this week.
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Finally, something good out of WCW that's not a wrestling match! Roma isn't Flair or Arn as a promo, but that's not exactly news. But Flair and Arn are still really good. At the end, we get a quick promo from Rick Rude hyping the Slam Jam CD.
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Talk about it here.
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Flair introduces Parker as a "distinguished Southren (yes) gentleman". Flair and Parker seem like they're in other worlds from each other. Again, wow, WCW was SOOO awful at this point. I'm glad we have it recorded in yearbook form, because it emphasizes even more how out of touch they were.
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Talk about it here.
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Wow, WCW was terrible at this point. Catherine White is still investigating the whereabouts of Cactus Jack, including a fan who said he saw him entering a UFO in Bismarck, North Dakota. Because of all the Cleveland leads, she's now in Cleveland looking for Cactus Jack. I crack up at their depiction of Cleveland -- all homeless people, drunks and police sirens with the reporter's purse getting stolen.
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SOMEWHERE IN THE GULF OF MEXICO Pretty infamous, but I'll recap. Vader, Sid, Parker and Race are upset that Sting and Davey Boy missed their rally to play volleyball on the beach with a bunch of kids. Race asks Cheatum if he trusts him "to do it", and Parker says he trusts Cheatum as if he was his own. Then everyone maniacally laughs for about 30 seconds. Then we cut to Cheatum snorkeling with a shark fin on his back to Sting and Davey Boy's boat, where he places a bomb. Cut back to the beach, where Sting and Davey Boy are still playing volleyball when this bizarre tank-looking thing shows up. Davey Boy: "Looks like we got some uninvited guests." The two teams forever walk toward each other while western music plays. Col. Parker, in an incredibly gracious move, offers tickets to go to some retirement community. Sting and Davey Boy in unison say, "No, I don't think so. I'll see you at Beach Blast." Kids in unison then say, "Yay Beach Blast!" Sting is back on the boat trying to find the bomb. Davey Boy pulls Sting off at the last minute and THE BOAT EXPLODES. Everyone standing on the beach is in tears because they think the two are dead at first, but they come out of the water with their hands in the air. To be continued at Beach Blast. I am still shocked that a major wrestling promotion did this. It's tough for me to think of anything worse in terms of hyping a PPV that any major company has ever done, and that covers a lot of ground.
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New Jack has repackaged Mark somethingorother to be more like him.
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Lawler tells the other side of the story about King of the Ring. He says the reason he attacked Bret was that when the WWF was at The Pyramid, Jeff Jarrett challenged Bret and he never accepted, proving that Bret wasn't a man of his word. He says he was very clear in advance that he didn't like the idea of the tournament and said he would do exactly what he did. He said he doesn't go around calling himself "Hitman" or "Macho Man" Jerry Lawler, so he does resent someone else going around calling themselves King. It's awesome how Lawler was able to do this.
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Awesome, hard-fought match, everything I hoped it would be after so many months of teasing a match. I've seen the G-1 match before (but not in years), and from memory, I'd agree that this isn't quite at that level, but this is still something that would be a low-end MOTYC in a normal year. Like Graham Crackers, I loved the legwork, but more than that, I thought this was amazingly paced: a series of builds to great moments, each kind of playing off the last one.
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Ah, I didn't realize they had any matches after the G-1. Good to know.
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Also, much of the "he can't work" talk came from Bryan himself.
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Great match, with Fuyuki working really hard and doing all the spots you'd expect from a B-team WAR guy. He wrestles as kind of a low-rent Tenryu here. Hase is consistently good and sells everything Fuyuki dishes out very well to get over the match. Started slow with little heat and really picked up in a big way as the match progressed. I don't know if I need to make a paradigm shift or what, but Fuyuki is very obviously the heel here, yet Hase is the outsider. I'm not sure why they would work the match that way (much like the elimination match just before this where the face/heel alignment seems off). Despite this being a midcard match, it's really wrestled more like a main event in terms of layout and kickout of big moves. Way, way better than I expected.
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I always loved the "Austin misses the vegamatic -> Austin does the camera thing -> Arn does a surprise DDT" sequence. But the rest of this match just doesn't look as good now as it did at the time. I've commented many times that this was the first time I ever thought Flair looked old. From watching this, he doesn't appear to have much ring rust and isn't wrestling "old", so I don't think that's the issue. I think part of it is that Austin and Pillman were so obviously eager to have a good match and because they were still on the rise and had an act that was working, Flair and Arn seemed a little boring in contrast because they were at a stage where they could coast a little. They're helped by working in Norfolk, a very pro-Horsemen crowd, so the crowd ate everything up. Also, Austin seems genuinely excited to be in the ring with Flair for what was likely the first time and is working very hard. It's also interesting that this match is why the Blonds were broken up. The show did a low rating and Austin and Pillman were blamed for it, with the line being that if they were over as a team, the show would have drawn a good rating. Dusty's conclusion was that Steve Austin had star potential, but needed to be in singles and that he was being wasted teaming with Pillman, so he broke up the team to push Austin. That's later gotten spun as some political thing because main eventers felt threatened when that really wasn't the case. But WCW's television cycle was so stupid at this point that it took them a few months before they were at a point to break them up because they had so many months of TV in the can. Interesting match to watch now for many reasons, even though it's not very good.
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Not much to say about this match that hasn't been said before. Great vet vs young guy dynamic, and a match that is an interesting comparison to Bret/Perfect seeing both next to each other, because it shows the difference between WCW and the WWF. Bret/Perfect is in the top handful of WWF matches post-Backlund and pre-Austin, while as good as this is, there are plenty of better WCW matches during those same years. I'm also not sure which of the two is better, I have to think about it some more. But this whole match is really good, but the finishing stretch just puts the match over the top for me because Windham gave Scorpio so much. Also, I guess this could be considered Barry's last hurrah, as it was his last great match.
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Gilbert does an interview outside. Typical old school heel promo to hype a match in a local market -- in this case the chain match with Funk -- and Gilbert was a great promo anyway, so I enjoyed this.
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40+ minutes of these guys again? How can this not be awesome? I don't think this is at the level of the February matches, but it's still pretty great. This is really built around Tenryu being a total asshole, and provoking everyone on the NJ team into beating the shit out of him as many times as possible. But he's like a cockroach and the beatings keep going but he doesn't get more sportsmanlike or anything. Fujinami is also awesome. He's selling an arm injury from a previous match and he has the arm taped up, so of course everyone on team WAR goes right after it. In a SHOCKING moment, Fujinami gets a quick inside cradle on Tenryu about halfway into the match and now Team WAR is without their leader. The crowd goes insane, and I kinda have a WTF? moment myself, since so much has been built around him. Between this and the previous WAR tag, Fujinami seems to be taking a more active role in this feud, and I guess this is where they set up the Tenryu/Fujinami match that took place I think a little later in the year if I remember correctly. Awesome stuff, as Tenryu/Choshu had been blown off and Tenryu/Hashimoto was about to start winding down, so they were already planting seeds for the next feud. So Fujinami really becomes a hero the rest of the match. There are many spots set up where he's being double teamed by WAR guys and does a lot of ducking, running, outsmarting, etc., and he's great at it. He doesn't always come out ahead, but he looks good. From here, guys start dropping off. If there's one complaint I have sometimes about this feud, it's that the New Japan guys get the upper hand too much. But I think the same complaint has been made about every single interpromotional feud New Japan has ever done, so I guess it just comes with the territory. Choshu was a star and should have always had some involvement, but his participation in the feud peaked months prior to this, and he really overstays his welcome in this match. As we wind down, it's Choshu/Chono/Hashimoto vs Ishikawa. I don't understand why they wouldn't have the hometown team be the ones fighting from underneath for the whole match. But in some ways, the WAR guys still got put over big in this match because of the way it was worked. Hara was eliminated for example, but made a great showing and everyone sold for him when he was in. Ishikawa was put in the position to overcome big odds as the sole survivor for his team, despite tapping out to Chono's STF. But it's a dynamic that may have worked better in WAR, and while the heat is strong, it's not as strong as it was for their matches in February, and I think part of that is how this match is laid out. And I'll never complain about hearing Choshu's awesome music, but he has a case of bookeritis here, and his music playing despite Chono securing the win for his team and Hashimoto having the biggest issue humors me.
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As with most Muta matches, this is a crazy, gory spectacle and a fun to watch brawl. Kabuki is ancient by this point, but his facial expressions are awesome and Muta carries it. Kabuki takes the facecrusher on the floor after Muta lifts the padding. This is pretty much a total Muta squash until the last few minutes when Kabuki starts raking eyes and doing running clotheslines. I don't know that I'd go back and watch this repeatedly, but I'm glad I saw it.
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Razor has upped the amount to $10,000 to get Kid back in the ring. Razor: "McMahon, with this kind of money, you could get that personality transplant you've been wanting."
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This is a match that really should be talked about way more than it is. I know the talk has come up recently about Benoit's signature match. His career had different phases, so I'm not sure that this qualifies, BUT I would say the only Benoit match that I could safely put ahead of this is the Eddy match from '96. It's pretty typical as far as NJ juniors match structure goes, but it's executed extremely well. In other words, not a revolutionary match layout, but they pushed that match structure about as far as it could go at this point. It's not going to compare to a match like Liger/Samurai or Liger/Sano, which in addition to having great wrestling, is super heated as well. This is more just the best possible throwaway juniors match. The finish is a wild one, with Benoit powerbombing Samurai off the top rope. I also think El Samurai is the best "good hand" in wrestling history. He's not going to blaze any trails on his own, but he can keep up with anyone in the ring. He has also given so many guys their best matches or at least one of their 2 or 3 best matches -- Liger, Otani, Benoit, Ultimo -- that it's impossible to ignore that.
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This is the best Fujiwara match on a yearbook so far. He and Kido are a great match-up and the exchanges are really fluid. Fujiwara's selling is fun to watch because it fits the style and isn't overstated, especially when he's back at a standing position after Kido's legwork. Speaking of Kido and the legwork, it's really well done. And I love Fujiwara trying to get out of the headscissors. But as much as I hate to say it, I just don't see what other people see in the guy, at least not at the level at which he's rated these days. He's a great mat worker yes, but so are lots of guys, and I haven't come across anything yet that makes him stand out from guys like Ikeda and Ishikawa, or even someone like a Dean Malenko. Good wrestling is about momentum to me. Wrestler X takes control for an extended period of time, either due his own opening or a mistake from Wrestler Y. I think what is keeping Fujiwara from really standing out to me is that no matter what happens in his matches, both guys are having another standoff a few minutes later and are right back where they started. So as a result, you get nice exhibition stuff, but it doesn't feel like a match. Everything is sold and executed well, but there doesn't seem to be much consequence when either guy gets in a good shot. Kido, on the other hand, was super impressive. He mixed in pro style moves like the neckbreaker and belly-to-back suplex. The finish was also really well-executed. I don't anyone to take this as me being down on Fujiwara. I'm definitely not. I see the appeal. I just don't see why he's quite as highly regarded as he is based on his '93 stuff so far. It's a small sampling, so that may be the only issue.
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Actually, now that I think about it, the logic here was to include as much Hokuto as possible. People talk about her incredible year making her one of the best ever just on the strength of '93 alone, so I was hesitant to cut anything she was part of for that reason. With that in mind, I know I still have a few big matches of hers left, but halfway through the year, she's only had two great matches, while all the All Japan guys have had way more and aside from Kobashi, would any of them be argued to be having a career year in '93? Not a knock on Hokuto's year by any means, but more of a statement that I expect every match she's in after this to be off the charts in order for her to come close to living up to her rep.