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Loss

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  1. Loss
    We get the last few minutes. These two worked together really well. Arn and Flair run in and the Horsemen do a number on Savage. What's crazy about this is that while Savage is being destroyed, the announcers aren't feeling bad for him, they are feeling bad for Hogan for having to sit home and watch this. Seems like he has the better end of the deal. They finally establish connection with Hogan via satellite and he goes right into Hogan promo mode. Still fun to see an 80s-style Horsemen beatdown.
  2. Loss
    2/3 falls match. Brian Christopher is so good in the ring and as a promo. I wish he could have lasted longer on a big stage because he's too good to just be a regional guy in a national era. He's the standout in this match. Kind of a crazy finish to the first fall, with Rich hitting Christopher over the head with a 2 x 4 and breaking it. If it was gimmicked, it was gimmicked really well, because it didn't seem to be.
  3. Loss
    Beautiful match, and a legitimate MOTYC. These guys seem to be having a blast, and Casas getting a cheap pin over Santo is outstanding! More than that, Silver King may be the best guy in this match. He pairs well with Casas, with Dantes, with Satanico, and he is the standout guy. Lots of legitimately great heat building, teasing of specific pairings leading to big heated altercations later in the match. I'll probably come back to this at some point and do a more detailed review, but it's the second best match I've seen of the year so far (behind only Otani/Samurai).
  4. Loss
    "Doritos? Eating disorder?" This is way better than the last one. Scorpio does a promo talking about the greatness of having a good woman and asks his baby to come here for a kiss, and of course it's the ECW TV title. Perry Saturn shaves his head while Tommy Dreamer burns a candle and lets the wax drip onto his fist. And Cactus Jack cuts perhaps the funniest promo of his life about Mikey Whipwreck and Doritos, Leonard Cohen, and the satanic music of Ozzy Osbourne. Raven is soooo useless.
  5. Loss
    Much slower-paced and mat-based than your typical Michinoku Pro match during this time, which on its own isn't necessarily bad, but just make sure your expectations are set coming in. It's not at all a hidden classic, and is really just an okay match at best. I'm also thinking the match listings I've always seen for this show may be off, because Sabu isn't in this match. Way better Michinoku Pro to come.
  6. Loss
    Benoit puts on a great performance. Woman turns on Savage and reunites with Flair, as she, Flair, and Arn put the boots to Savage. Hogan tries to come to the rescue, then starts doing a promo about his upcoming match with The Giant, and Flair attacks him too, reopening the wound around his eye. Fun angle with Flair pushed strong, and tremendous heat for all of this. I love the Flair attacking Hogan part because how often did you see Flair pushed so strong at this point?
  7. Loss
    The skits take a turn for the ugly, this time with Billionaire Ted claiming that he won't spend his own money to put the WWF out of business, and he really doesn't care what his stockholders think. Pathetic and whiny.
  8. Loss
    Last few minutes of a rematch on TV, which is basically Diesel running in and beating up both guys. They were definitely on the right track with Nash at this point, and had something special. The last few months he had in the WWF were when he was most effective.
  9. Loss
    This is great! This is the match that anyone should point to whoever wants to make the case for Sean Waltman as a performer. This is also maybe a template for what the WCW cruiserweight style should have been. Now, I think Benoit, Guerrero, Misterio, Juventud, Ultimo, Malenko, etc. didn't really work the same style as Waltman, and they were far better in the ring than he was at this point. But what makes this work is that there's a template here to include as many highspots as you might want to include, but underneath it all, this still has the same basic face/heel template fans are used to in the U.S. The cruisers did get over in WCW, but not really in a way where people were invested in them personally. There are a lot of factors more important than the style that went into that, but this works really well because underneath the flash, there is a really basic layout. It also helped that they were given more time than most of the WCW cruiser matches were given on Nitro at this point. The cruisers usually had about 7 minutes including intros and the post-match promos, and were specifically told not to work holds. So as a result, you weren't really seeing matches most of the time on Nitro, you were seeing showcases. But this match proves it's possible to do both match *and* showcase if you add a little time and give the wrestlers a little more freedom. Yes, I'm making a claim that WWF wrestlers had more freedom than WCW wrestlers with a straight face, but in this particular case, it's true. Both guys have a lot of martial arts offense, so they build the match around that. You could take this same layout and make it a match between a mat wrestler and high flyer, two high flyers, etc. and it would work each time. The WCW cruiserweights surpassed the quality of this match. Many, many times in fact. But aside from a few standouts, few of them had a match structure this good.
  10. Loss
    Decent tag match, but really this was more to set up Yokozuna's split from Owen and Davey Boy and babyface turn. I think Yoko as a babyface had some legs and they probably could have gotten more out of it than they did.
  11. Loss
    Cool angle. Woman gets on the mic and says she's going nowhere and Sandman takes exception until Scorpio comes out and carries her out of the building, drops her in a limo and says "Send that bitch to Atlanta."
  12. Loss
    For whatever reason, the Rey/Juvi matches worked way more for me in ECW than the Rey/Psicosis ones, but pretty much everywhere outside of ECW, I prefer Rey/Psicosis. Anyway, this is an excellent showcase match to demonstrate the style, but these two have had way better, even in ECW.
  13. Loss
    So I was tempted to use this space to complain about how overpushed Raven was and that he really has no reason to be part of this match/angle at all, but he is, but I'll try instead to talk about the match, which is really more of a backdrop for the Cactus Jack/Mikey Whipwreck split on Cactus's way out. I do like this angle, but the match is just okay. The post-match with Francine and the Pit Bulls is awesome.
  14. Loss
    Typically great Flair interview promoting his Superbrawl match with Savage, and this makes me remember when heels actually believed in what they were doing, which is a lost art. Flair says he beats Savage a couple of times and he ends up bringing back his EX-WIFE to stand up for him? Of course, Flair says that when all is said and done, Liz will ride Space Mountain one more time.
  15. Loss
    This was a personal pick of mine, because these two had a surprisingly good match. Luger sells quite a bit for Eddy. There's an early test of strength spot that's fun with Luger making fun of the height difference by continuing to raise his hand higher every time Eddy tries to lock hands and finally, Eddy can't reach. So Luger gets on his knees and offers it, and Eddy responds by laying on his side and acting like he still can't reach. Funny stuff. So they start wrestling, and the pace is pretty fast, to a point where Eddy catches him with a really close nearfall early on. Luger slows things down at this point and controls for a few minutes, but Eddy is still sneaking in quick pin attempts. Finally, Eddy goes for a missile dropkick and Luger pushes the ref in front of him. Eddy ends up getting a visual fall after a ref bump and then Luger ends up catching Eddy in the rack. A second ref comes in and stops the match, leaving Luger to think he's won, but he's been DQd for shoving the ref in front of Eddy's dropkick. Eddy wins! This isn't worth going out of your way to see or anything, but it's a nice TV match between a main eventer and a midcarder with two very different styles that still managed to be pretty fun, where the main eventer did everything he could to make the midcarder look good.
  16. Loss
    This is a good match, but not at the level you might expect from these two. There's not really much worth criticizing about it. They just worked a solid match. There is a really great fast-paced sequence early on that I don't even know to describe, but this is more like a good weekly TV match than an all-time classic.
  17. Loss
    Good action that bordered on great action at times, but too long without any momentum shifts that actually had any consequence, which made it feel like an exhibition. Also not a fan of the WWE-style even Stephen booking where New Japan took the first fall and UWFI took the last two. Had it been a one fall match, New Japan would have won, but because it wasn't, UWFI won. This match is still worth seeing in spite of all that because it's a good capture of the style, but I bet it's one that looked better in edited form on weekly TV than complete on Classics.
  18. Loss
    So having made it through all of January, here is how I rank everything so far: #1 - Shinjiro Otani vs El Samurai (NJPW 01/21/96) #2 - Vader vs Antonio Inoki (NJPW 01/04/96) #3 - Hayabusa & Masato Tanaka & Koji Nakagawa vs W*ING Kanemura & Mitsuhiro Matsunaga & Hidoh (FMW 01/10/96) #4 - Manami Toyota vs Yumiko Hotta (AJPW 01/22/96) #5 - Psicosis vs Ultraman (AAA 01/18/96) #6 - Jushin Liger vs Koji Kanemoto (NJPW 01/04/96) #7 - PG-13 vs Tracy Smothers & Jesse James Armstrong (USWA TV 01/20/96) #8 - Rey Misterio Jr vs Juventud Guerrera (AAA 01/31/96) #9 - Shinya Hashimoto vs Kazuo Yamazaki (NJPW 01/04/96) #10 - Aja Kong vs Combat Toyota (FMW 01/10/96) #11 - Juventud Guerrera & Psicosis vs Volador & El Mexicano (AAA 01/12/96) #12 - Ric Flair & Arn Anderson vs Hulk Hogan & Randy Savage (WCW Monday Nitro 01/08/96) #13 - Sabu vs Stevie Richards (ECW House Party 01/05/96) #14 - Smoking Gunns vs Psycho Sid & 1-2-3 Kid vs Owen Hart & Yokozuna vs Razor Ramon & Savio Vega (WWF Monday Night RAW 01/01/96) #15 - Ric Flair vs Hulk Hogan (WCW Monday Nitro 01/29/96) #16 - Sting & Lex Luger vs Harlem Heat (WCW Monday Nitro 01/22/96) #17 - Tommy Rich & Doug Gilbert vs PG-13 (USWA TV 01/06/96) #18 - Ric Flair vs Hulk Hogan (WCW Monday Nitro 01/01/96) #19 - Public Enemy vs The Gangstas (ECW House Party 01/05/96) #20 - Brian Pillman vs Eddy Guerrero (WCW Clash of the Champions XXXII 01/23/96) #21 - Ric Flair vs Sting (WCW Monday Nitro 01/15/96) #22 - Tracy Smothers vs JC Ice (USWA TV 01/27/96) #23 - Vader vs Savio Vega (WWF Monday Night RAW 01/22/96) #24 - Tracy Smothers vs JC Ice (USWA TV 01/27/96) #25 - Ric Flair vs Randy Savage (WCW Monday Nitro 01/22/96) So far, no big surprises. The good matches are still good, and there haven't been any revelations. I'd have to give Wrestler of the Month honors to Psicosis because of his efforts in the Ultraman match and the tag match. Both were great performances. At this point, Flair and Lawler are the best interviews in wrestling, which is pretty expected. I was surprised that I liked the FMW brawling as much as I did, but I think it's because there is still some sense of cohesion in the 1/10 matches. The Billionaire Ted skits are even worse to watch now than they were to watch then, which is saying something. Just based on January, I think you'd expect Vader and Flair to have really good years, Shawn to be a good choice to carry the company for the year, and for Hogan, whose fan support was dropping by the week, to be on hiatus by year's end. Interesting how different wrestling was at the end of December.
  19. Loss
    This isn't the best Rey/Juvi match, but there is a certain charm to it, because it feels different from typical Rey/Juvi and definitely has a big match main event feel going for it. They milk the big dramatic moments really well, and do a few crazy spots. Still, for me, it's probably the worst of the big Rey/Juvi matches of the year, which by no means makes it a bad match. The brawling style doesn't really play well to what was the biggest strengths of both guys at the time, even if there are some really nice moments. Comparing this to the Ultraman match, I think Psicosis was by far the best gimmick match worker of the three at this point.
  20. Loss
    If he was heel prior, why were he and Lawler still doing handshakes and wrestling like sportsmen?
  21. Loss
    Good match, and the beginning of a long streak on Nitro of finishes involving high-heeled shoes. Hogan does a job in response to Billionaire Ted skits claiming he never loses.
  22. Loss
    This is only 20 seconds, but it's a really cool video. I remember being pumped that Cactus Jack was coming back, as I could tell it was him by the voice.
  23. Loss
    This is the press conference. There are some real gems here. "Is it true that you provide double the programming of the WWF, but you purposely undercut your advertising rates?" "Since you own television networks, couldn't you include your rasslin' show on another night? Don't you think fans would have preferred that?" And Huckster: "It's in my contract with Billionaire Ted that I never lose" Of course, WCW responded to that by having Hogan do a bunch of jobs for a few weeks on Nitro. This one was the best one so far, but the audacity of some of this stuff is still amazing.
  24. Loss
    Fit Finlay debuts in WCW (and the U.S.), kickstarting the Regal feud with a nasty beatdown.
  25. Loss
    Good match, probably not as good as an arena match would be between the two. But the highlight is a Dave Brown quote on commentary: "Tracy Smothers points to his temple as if to say he is smarter than JC Ice. It's almost as if he is saying 'I'm smarter than you, JC Ice.'"
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