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Loss

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Everything posted by Loss

  1. Loss
    The end of HHH's so-called burial for the MSG incident. HHH wins the IC title with an assist from Mr. Perfect in a swerve that made for a nice moment, but didn't totally make sense.
  2. Loss
    Bret does a really good interview announcing that despite a tremendous offer from WCW, he's not going anywhere. He also accepts the challenge to wrestle Steve Austin at Survivor Series. This was a really good segment, and when you see the domino effect Bret's return had, you realize that in some ways, the company owes their entire resurgence to Bret.
  3. Loss
    This was a really good match, but it should have been the blowoff of the feud. A disappointing match at Survivor Series being the end felt anti-climatic. The burying went on forever and ever. The Carrie moment at the end was cool.
  4. Loss
    I HATED this thing with Jim Ross's mic going out on this show. It actively detracts from the match, which is too bad, because these two work really well together, and this is a nice match. I love Austin's old style. Helmsley is decent at fundamentals despite having little presence or charisma, and I wish he would wrestle like this more often.
  5. Loss
    I expected this to be epic, life-or-death wrestling. The video package was awesome. Then, you get the match, which is a heck of a spectacle, but nothing is really going on for a while. Muta does most of the same stuff he did in the Tenryu match, only he had much better chemistry with Tenryu. Still, not sure if it mattered much, as I think the big part of the appeal here is that it's LIGER VS MUTA! Liger going under the ring after Muta is awesome, even more so when the cameraman follows them. Then Muta attacks Liger with a broom! And starts ripping a mask! And he goes to attack Liger with a chair, realizes Liger is wearing the same face paint, then Liger sprays him in the eyes with mist himself and does his own brawling! This had to be fun for both of them because it was so different, but this match is ass. Still, I'm glad I saw it.
  6. Loss
    Terry Boy's makeshift suit outfit that he wears on the way to the ring is outstanding! Togo and Sasuke brawl outside the ring in a small gym, which is a little different from the normal style. They do some other things that pleasantly surprise me too, like MX-style double team moves and cutting off a Yakushiji hot tag. Yakushiji is king-sized in this by the way in terms of taking a beating. This isn't as good as These Days, but it's grittier and has more stuff outside the norm. I wonder how this would serve as an intro to the style, as there are American staples mixed in with the highspots, then you could move on to the better matches that are more representative of the style.
  7. Loss
    This feels like that "Teddy Bear" Coliseum Video match with Sherri, as the cameraman seems more interested in Francine in the beginning than the match. This is still fun. It feels more old school than most ECW because of the crowd passion and really clearly drawn heel/face line in the sand in the way the match is worked. I can appreciate that. Give Douglas credit for selling a lot for Mikey. He seemed to get just the right amount of offense based on where they both were on the card at this point.
  8. Loss
    You could say that about Booker T, Kidman, Raven and probably a lot of other over midcarders that people seemed to want push harder. I do think Booker had serious potential as a serious act, but WWE played up his comedic stuff more. He wasn't as high on the card in WCW, but he was presented as an accomplished athlete. I wish they would have gone all out on a push before they did, but I guess his '98 injury would have derailed things even if they were going to push him to the top.
  9. Loss
    Your typical 25 minute All Japan main event is probably better, but I do enjoy matches like this for something different. It's fun to watch Kawada and Kobashi kill time because they are so good at working basic holds and selling. In that sense, this does feel like something you'd come across on a random All Japan Classics more than it does a big match in the 90s, but that's part of the charm. That's not to say this feels antiquated, because it definitely doesn't. They still bring their best stuff, but the pacing of the match is not the usual 90s pacing. In some ways, this is a good thing, as there is more time between the big moments, giving them more time to sink in. This feels more organic and less telegraphed (but probably still somewhat telegraphed) than your typical hour match. They do big nearfalls and big offensive moves within the first 20 minutes, just as they do within the last 20 minutes. But they're also able to really milk heat spots like the stretch plum for all their worth. Kawada and Kobashi seem to be doing a bit of my turn your turn early on. Not in a bad way, but more just that both guys are fresh and it's hard for the other guy to keep his opponent in peril for very long. When Kobashi catches Kawada with a dragon screw leg whip, the crowd pops huge, Kawada's facial expressions sell the anguish amazingly, and it feels like the first real opening either guy has had. They do some awesome attention to detail stuff, with Kobashi cinching in a half crab and Kawada using his free leg to try to kick his way out of it. I love that they think about these things, because it goes so far in getting holds over when the wrestlers don't just sit stationary while they're applied. Same for the way they work the figure four, which is a better worked sequence that does more to get over the hold than anything Flair did in the same decade. Kobashi gets in a few awesome suplexes and a moonsault, and a few good nearfalls, and here it becomes obvious that they're building big to a Kawada comeback that will probably blow the roof off the place. Kawada comes back just 2-3 minutes later, and that kinda feels like a missed opportunity to really continue building heat on Kawada for a while. To me, from there, the match doesn't quite hit the same level again. The selling is sublime and the action is great, and I popped big for Kobashi's desperation backslide near the end of the match, but it feels like they lost their chance to do something really special. It goes from being a potential classic to a great match at that point. I do still love it, but I can't help but be a little disappointed by it. Seems like a weird thing to say about a ****1/2 match, but I hope it makes sense.
  10. Loss
    She explained in a promo that she did all of those things because she was hurting and angry and lashed out at him and was sorry for everything she had put him through. That's where the mystery was. Did she mean it? Or was Hogan just putting her up to it?
  11. Loss
    The points are: * Would Raven be capable of getting heat if he wasn't always surrounded by people who are capable of getting heat? In most of his key angles, he sits around while people like Stevie Richards, Dreamer, Sandman and even Tyler Fullington do all the work. * Can Raven wrestle a match that involves the audience without any outside interference or props? I like Pillman/Flamingo from Beach Blast '92, and I thought the Johnny Polo gimmick was really fun. A more basic Raven was probably not capable of becoming a star, though. Then again, a more propped up Raven had limited results too.
  12. Loss
    Looking back at some of these comments, this seems like an appropriate place to post this. If there's one thing I've learned watching this set, it's not to put too much stock into Internet superlatives. Yes, the AJ heavies were largely having better matches than the NJ heavies, but that doesn't mean the NJ heavies were slouches and should be ignored, just because they didn't get as much discussion. And I've been pleasantly surprised by guys like Yamazaki and Koshinaka on this set. Because most of the buzz has always been around Koshinaka's 80s matches, I expected him to be way past the point of usefulness in 1996. Not at all. Koshinaka has been one of my favorite "discoveries" in watching these matches. Then, you get into Chono. "Chono sucked after his 1992 neck injury" is fairly common talking point. I don't want to say I have no idea where that came from, as Chono was probably more athletic in the early 90s than he would become. But he's such an awesome asshole and does bring positives to a match. I think I took "Chono slipped after his '92 injury" as "Nothing Chono ever did after 1992 is worth seeing." There's a whole discussion to be had about Wrestler of the Year. I will be starting a thread about it after I finish this yearbook. I don't want to give too much away on who my choice will be for that slot, but it will probably be a New Japan heavyweight.
  13. Loss
    It was actually in WCW. She was the catalyst to the Horsemen going heel after the J-Tex feud ran its course. By spring, people with power were higher on Missy Hyatt, and the prevailing thought at the time was that they could only get one woman over, so she ended up fading out, and one day, she just wasn't there with him. I think they explained it on TV by saying that she was suspended for bringing an "international object" into the cage at Capital Combat (which I always thought was kinda cool). But because she just disappeared without explanation, it made it easy to insinuate that there were problems between the two.
  14. Loss
    The angle (which I admit was confusing, and only understood after watching this yearbook) is that Liz signed a contract with Hogan to do movies. Then she regretted it when she saw how they were treating Savage. And now, she keeps trying to reach out to him to tell him how she feels, and then Hogan plays up that she's only doing it to get inside his head. So Savage can't figure out if Liz is genuinely into him, or if she's just doing Hogan's bidding, and as viewers, we are supposed to be asking ourselves the same thing. It's a good angle, but too subtle. It could have been more overt. I'm curious how they would have had Flair react to Liz just disappearing from his side like that had he not been injured.
  15. Loss
    "Herding cats" goes way beyond any of that. It's a business term. Project managers are fond of it.
  16. Loss
    One thing I also like about this is that while Hogan and Savage aren't facing each other until the PPV after this, they still interact here. I like matches and angles that encompass multiple things going on in a promotion at once instead of each individual feud existing in its own universe, neatly starting right after the last PPV feud and completely ending after the blowoff. If two feuds are going on, those feuds never cross over each other. It has always bugged me as a fan when wrestlers pretend like what they're doing is the only thing happening in the promotion. This angle operated on both a short-term and long-term level. That's needed more.
  17. Loss
    Hogan praises Liz for her acting ability in making Savage cry. She goes to slap him and he blocks it. Pretty awesome. They built this match well, and Liz was really good in this angle. The Nasty Boys come out with their contracts and mention as politely as possible that they aren't getting the money they were promised in their contracts. Hogan says he hasn't signed any contract for them, and that they don't wear NWO colors unless he approves it. The NWO then beats them up, takes off their NWO gear and spraypaints them. Once again, the NWO takes over the booth. Hall loves pointing out that Harlem Heat is really from Texas.
  18. Loss
    I don't know what Leilani is worth seeing. But I have heard Dave say that a few times. I think I've proven lately that I'm on some other planet when it comes to knowing what people talk about that's Joshi related.
  19. Loss
    Is Leilani Kai still the safe choice for best American female ever?
  20. Loss
    Sting is in his 50s. If I want to see Sting, there's plenty of it out there already.
  21. Loss
    I think the reason it's a requirement to rank everything is that it's hard to trust the voters to watch the entire set otherwise. I agree that no one really has interest in seeing what ranked #136 on the Mid South set, for example, but if someone is only ranking the top 50 matches on a set, what's to say they never took the time to watch anything else on the set because they didn't like how something looked on paper? Forcing everyone to rank everything they watch makes them think about every single match that was included for whatever reason. My fear is that if you didn't require that, you'd just get yet another list of usual suspect matches.
  22. Loss
    Asking Savage his favorite towns to work would be a great interview question if anyone ever got a chance to talk to him.
  23. Loss
    Sure it does. I'm not saying they should abandon it. It's successful and popular. I just tend to hate the Rumble because it's too far out of the realm of plausibility for me that anyone who wins has really accomplished anything all that impressive. I don't expect them to go changing their staples to suit me though.
  24. Loss
    I would have loved this just to hear Bryan and Dave's reaction, after they complained that WWE may f*ck with the integrity of the Royal Rumble gimmick by having some jobber win it and then get screwed out of the title shot in their Rumble preview. The integrity of the Royal Rumble? It's already ridiculous enough that the act of throwing someone out of the ring makes you good enough to face the world champion on the biggest show of the year, as opposed to, you know, beating several top contenders for several months.
  25. Loss
    Flair too.
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