Loss

Midnight Express v Original Midnight Express - NWA Main Event 01/22/89 Nice match that I think is just as good as the Starrcade match between the two teams. Whereas that match had both teams rushing the bell to put the beating on each other, this was more of a case of two teams working the standard tag spots and putting shine on the babyfaces for the first 10 minutes before the heels took over. The Midnights were obviously far better and more effective in a heel role than in a babyface role, but one thing they do well is work the same spots they usually fed to the Fantastics or Rock & Rolls in the first 10 minutes of a 20 minute match. Because Condrey is working opposite them, he's definitely on the same page they are on all the sequences. The best example of this is Eaton rolling out of the ring in the middle of a criss-cross sequence to chase Paul E. around the ring and scare the hell out of him. Condrey tries the same thing on Cornette a few seconds later and Eaton sneaks up on him and holds him so Cornette can land a punch. That's pure Memphis heel philosophy at work there, with the heel attempting to do the same showoff/upstage spot the babyface tried and failing. Eaton and Condrey are terrific here. I think Stan Lane loses something for me every time I see him, although he still has his moments and is far from even being an average tag wrestler. Where the match starts to flounder is when Lane plays FIP. Selling isn't really his strong point, as he was always far better at the flashier doubleteam offense and portraying the whole cool persona than he was being a sympathetic babyface. And Condrey is good, but Rose is portrayed as an equal member of the team, so we get lots of Randy Rose in the ring, and Randy Rose beating on Stan Lane in the build to the hot tag ... let's just say it left something to be desired. Still, the first 10 minutes of showboating and heel stooging make this worth seeing, and this is still a really good match. I'd say it belongs on a Midnight Express set if I was asked, but it's not among their elite matches.

I'll know once Goodhelmet releases his set.

Punk losing was a boneheaded and stupid decision, but it's not the earth-shatteringly awful decision that will destroy his career forever that Scherer is making it out to be. Chris Jericho jobbed to Chyna in his first three months in WWE and still had a successful upper midcard/occasional main event run. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that the bad booking will work to Punk's advantage, because this will be forgotten in two weeks anyway. Punk now has HHH, Stephanie, HBK, Hayes, Finlay and Arn out to get him, it seems.

This embarrasses me, and I'm not even the one performing it. As anyone who lives in the South and has ever had someone find out you watch wrestling knows, people around this age still talk about wrestling in these terms to this day, just without the horrible background track. This reminds me of how my grandpa talked about wrestling, er, rasslin'. Of course, there were lots of great things about being a fan in this time frame, but GOD.

Ric Flair & Barry Windham v Ricky Steamboat & Eddie Gilbert - NWA World Championship Wrestling 01/22/89 Really super match. Steamboat shows up as Eddie Gilbert's surprise partner and Flair and Windham are suitably shocked and Steamboat has them on the defensive for most of the first 8 minutes or so. Gilbert comes in and does better against both guys than he has done at any point up until now, but ends up playing FIP, which he does really well in this match. Ric and Barry take turns working him over, with Windham missing an amazing elbow drop from the top rope that probably would have crushed him had it hit. Flair and Steamboat obviously have great wrestling exchanges, because they're Flair and Steamboat, so you see a lot of the standards, like the hard chops and Steamboat's roll-through out of the belly-to-back suplex, Flair bumping big off of Steamboat's offense and putting him over in the end. But Windham/Gilbert, while not quite in the same universe as a *rivalry* doesn't look out of place paired with the Flair/Steamboat feud at all. This really should have led to Windham/Gilbert at Chi-Town Rumble, because by this time, Eddie was getting momentum and they had good chemistry. Sadly, another Windham/Gilbert singles match didn't follow, because the progression of the feud with Eddie making a better showing every time (losing by pinfall, then having Flair run in for the DQ in the rematch) would have nicely culminated in Gilbert winning the US title in Chicago. Sometimes, established singles wrestlers working a tag is missing something as opposed to two established tag teams duking it out, but that's not the case here at all. Good booking with Steamboat not playing FIP and not really going on the defense at all, as they needed to get over his arrival. He may have played a slightly better FIP than Gilbert, but Gilbert did a great job at the role on his own and he wasn't challenging for the world title in a month. Only a couple of spots where it seems like whoever is in the ring is drawing a blank (Gilbert going back to the headlock was weird, but Barry quickly reigned him in, and Flair's flop was strange here because he did it for some pretty flimsy Gilbert offense), but the rest of this rocked.

Well, according to the Torch, or at least according to the Torch as stated by Lords of Paste, Vince wants Chris Jericho and Mick Foley at Wrestlemania.

Rick Steiner v Mike Rotunda - NWA World Championship Wrestling 01/14/89 Decent match that is put over the top by the stiffness from both guys. Rotunda has an amazing clothesline and Steiner bumps off of it really well. They hit each other hard with forearm shots and some ugly kicks. Good effort.

Barry Windham v Eddie Gilbert - NWA World Championship Wrestling 01/14/89 This may well be the best match of Windham's first heel run. The whole story of the match is that Gilbert by this time is more of a nuisance to the Horsemen than a threat. Windham isn't taking him as seriously as he should, and Gilbert ends up pushing him to the limit. The way this is laid out really does a lot to emphasize the difference between the US champ and other midcarders, because Windham dominates most of the match and it's considered a major surprise anytime Gilbert is able to string together some offense. Nearly 15 minutes in, when he finally creates an opening by attacking Barry's knee and putting him in a figure four, Flair rushes the ring and attacks Gilbert for the DQ. It's a shame Windham didn't get a title run around this time, because he's terrific here at making sure that you know he's above Gilbert, but still putting Gilbert over at the same time. Championship matches that play like that are usually very good.

Bobby Eaton v Dusty Rhodes - NWA Superbouts 02/06/88 - Cage Match Not nearly as good as the other match. Dusty takes no bumps, which is fine when you have Eaton in there, but even Eaton's bumping is a bit clumsy compared to his usual self, and the crowd is pretty dead through all of this. Much of the match is Eaton playing Jerry Lawler hiding the fake foreign object, but none of it really results in any heat, and there's not really a payoff. I was excited about this one, but it's not as good as you'd think it would be.

Tully Blanchard v Barry Windham - NWA 01/23/88, Richmond, VA It's been a while since I've really felt compelled to write a lot about wrestling in terms of reviewing a match, but this match almost made me want to write a novel for the first time in a long while. It's a shame I can't really review this in a way deserving of the match at the moment because of writer's block. I'm finding that short summaries of what I liked or didn't like with a general overview of the match tend to do better for me these days. That said, I'll try to be concise and hit on the high points of this match as best I can without being too long winded. The opening part of the match is really well done. Barry is on fire early, which is what you'd expect, but Tully puts it all in context really well. He tries to be slick by offering an insincere handshake and gets tossed outside. He's a little peeved as a result and ends up on the losing end of a slugfest and gets thrown out again. Realizing this is a battle he can't win unless he changes strategy, he makes his first effort to start slowing things down. He pushes Windham down off of a lock up and then runs from him. This still doesn't work, as this time he's met with a big punch back in the ring again. Windham goes for a pin and gets a two-count, surprisingly, which prompts Blanchard to roll outside. He comes back in and is already having to take the cheap way out of falls, this time putting his leg on the bottom rope after Windham gets him with a powerslam. Tully realizes he has to slow this down even more. He cuts Barry off with a knee to the gut and tries a modified camel clutch, but Windham fights back yet again and belly-to-back suplexes his way out of it. It's a shame that we don't get to see what put Windham in peril due to a badly-timed commercial break. In a match like this, it was a really important transition that needed to be shown. Still, what we do see is great. Windham tries to fight out from Tully's leg hold with some nasty looking headbutts and also tries punching his way out, but nothing seems to work. When he finally gets away, he tries to stand and distance himself briefly, but it doesn't work, and Tully just goes after the leg again. He's a vulture. Windham then tries a sleeper, which is not normally an important spot in a match, but here, it's awesome. It's more of a defensive move to keep Blanchard away from his leg than it is part of his offense. Desperation sleepers mean a lot more than proactive ones. Tully of course still gets away and still goes back to Windham's leg. The point is made throughout the match that Windham is unable to stand on his own. He tries a bodyslam and Tully falls back on him and it nearly costs him the match. Later, he thinks he's rallied back further than he has and tries a vertical suplex and the same thing happens. During the final stretch, he goes for one of his big moves - the superplex - and still can't do it because his knee gives out. Another commercial break unfortunately takes out some good stuff, but when we come back, Tully is getting two counts off the figure four. Windham fights out and now Tully is dropping some great looking elbows on the leg. At this point, the only equalizer Barry has is his punches, and he makes them count after turning over the figure four. Tully tries to go right back to the hold, since he was able to do so earlier when Windham fought out, but this time Windham catches him in a quick rollup. Tully goes for a side headlock to set up Barry's bridging out of the pinfall and finally doing a gutwrech suplex which begins his comeback. It's at this point that his knee gives out on the superplex, but he still gets in the lariat and JJ rings the bell from ringside at two to trick the ref into stopping the match. Luger comes out and pleads the case for Blanchard, which leads to all the Horsemen rushing Luger. They give Windham the chance to join them (Oooh, foreshadowing!) but Windham opts to save Lex, setting up the best storyline of the year from my point of view. I could have done without the instant replay spoof in the booking, but everything else here is terrific, from the match to the post-match angle. If this match happened in the WWF in the 80s, it probably would have been an easy #2 on my ballot. This match would be talked about all the time had it happened on a pay-per-view.

Dusty Rhodes v Bobby Eaton - NWA 01/26/88, Raleigh, NC It's a shame more of this match didn't make the air, because the near 10 minutes of the near 20 minute match that are shown look really good. Eaton takes some wild bumps on the floor, including a hip toss and a DDT, and he also works over Dusty's leg like clockwork, bending it over the guardrail and doing lots of awesome cheating. The NWA, in 1988, was amazing at doing really great wrestling spots on the floor and getting them over as death spots, which is a big part of this match as well. Seeing this in full sometime without the commercial breaks eating such important parts of the match would be nice.

Nikita Koloff v Mike Rotunda - NWA 01/26/88, Raleigh, NC This is not a bad match at all, and it tends to break the NWA heel formula around this time, as Rotunda dominates Koloff on the mat with some really basic, effective stuff that's fun to watch. There's nothing really outstanding to put this over the top, but it's interesting to watch a competitive NWA title match that doesn't have the babyface getting shined up for the first 10 minutes. This was a match that was laid out to showcase what Rotunda did well. Nikita was really losing his edge by this time, and it showed, so dropping the belt made sense at this point. Rotunda is better at working what is essentially the same amateur gimmick into his wrestling style than Kurt Angle.

Arn Anderson & Tully Blanchard v Barry Windham & Sting - NWA 01/17/88, Charleston, WV Calm down, this match isn't quite at the level you'd expect from these four at this time frame. There are some good moments, and the match is laid out well until the last two minutes or so, with the heels stooging big early, and Arn and Tully doing a fair job working over Sting's knee while Sting does a fair job playing FIP. But there's nothing here that hasn't been done better a million times elsewhere, and the match never really establishes any type of flow. It's more of a collection of okay ideas without anything to tie it all together. Barry gets the hot tag and the match almost immediately ends in a DQ because of Arn using JJ's cowboy boot to attack Windham, so there's no real payoff to all the build. That said, this is better hot tag build than you'll see from any match in at least the past year or so. Windham didn't get a chance to do much of anything here. Sting taking random partner after random partner all year in '88 and pursuing the Horsemen did occasionally produce some good matches, but this isn't among the best.

Yeah, the VKM/DX stuff was incredibly good.

Ah, Meltzer. Man, if HHH did that to someone, we'd never hear the end of it.

I have wanted to get into MMA for a little while now, but I'm a little intimidated by it. I know nothing about any of the performers or the history or rules or anything like that and was wondering what shows are the best ones to pick up to familiarize myself with the style. Also, what are things I need to know going in? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Michaels had his moments during that time as a performer, although the way he was booked distracted from the buildup at times. The whole side story of Michaels threatening not to show up at Wrestlemania was unnecessary, although there were some angles like Tyson joining DX, Shawn holding the belt in Austin's face while HHH and Chyna restrained him and the "Vince McMahon needs me" promo that were really well done, more because of Shawn's contributions than anything else.

Originally, when HHH tore his quad in May 2001, he was expected back by Summerslam and they were still talking about doing a big Austin/HHH match at that PPV after the injury. These things always take longer than they originally say.

That much is true. I will give Michaels credit for keeping his cool under pressure. Someone made a good about DVDVR that he should be a referee because he tends to handle those situations quite well.

Did someone say that at some point? I'm reminded of when Test asked why HHH got to keep his hair long while all the midcarders had to cut theirs. That didn't go over that well either.

Anyone know the deal with Dr. Andrews, by the way? Is he the physician of choice because he doesn't hassle about steroid abuse, or because he's cheap, or even something wholesome like that he understands the frame of mind of wrestlers better than other doctors. Just curious since he's done nearly every major wrestling surgery of the past 20 years or so.

Yes, I'd say so. It was 8 months or so before he shook off the ring rust and was back to his normal speed, or at least close to it.

I've also always thought that Hogan coming in and Austin turning babyface are the main reasons HHH rushed his last comeback.

I don't think HHH is afraid of losing his spot anymore. At least he has absolutely no reason to be.

I plan on doing exactly that. Yes, I think it's a good move too. What happens after people get to know each other outside of their tastes in wrestling sometimes is that there's a lot of flame wars and stupid exchanges between people. Some of that is going to happen regardless of what type of board you have, but it's a turn off for me. I'd rather not know what kind of porn other wrestling fans like to watch or how they feel about politics, because it usually ends up making me not want to talk to them much at all. I'd imagine there are others who feel the same way.