Loss
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Everything posted by Loss
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Lawler has sent in a taped promo that Randy Hales hasn't had the chance to watch yet. Lawler apologizes to fans for not getting the job done against Kane. Lawler is ashamed of what he had to do, and said for now he'll stick to announcing in the WWF. Lawler wishes Hales all the luck in the world. Back at the studio, Hales is surprised but says things change. I'm interested in where this is going.
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So Power Pro is running monthly at Mid South Coliseum instead of weekly. We have highlights of Lawler vs Kane from MSC. This is a really great highlight package and it also looks like they might have drawn a decent crowd. Jim Cornette made an appearance after the match and is now managing Kane. It looks like Lawler threw a fireball. Kane sells it while Cornette cuts a promo on Lawler.
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I think it'll be hard for anything to beat this for MOTY. This is a MOTD contender. This is a thirty-minute draw and in terms of difficulty in execution, this is probably the most impressive match I've seen in the 90s. This is the decade where the ability to work holds well in wrestling became sort of a lost art, especially stateside, so this really stands out amidst a sea of excess. I'll write more about this in the future.
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Last few minutes. What we see of this is pretty good. Jericho ends up looking at the camera and saying "Come on Malenko, this one's for your dead daddy!", which gets Dean out to chase him away.
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Vincent comes out for everybody's promos, no matter what. The Giant is still smoking. He challenges Sting and Nash to put the tag titles on the line later that night. This is here mainly to show the absurdity of Giant's smoking gimmick.
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The lights go out a few seconds into the promo. Gertner makes me laugh by asking Paul Heyman off camera how he can't pay electric bills, and that it can't possibly be expensive to run ECW when he doesn't even run real arenas. Turns out it was a ploy by Sandman and Dreamer to attack them in the dark. I liked this as something different.
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Sable, who Vince has re-hired, introduces Steve Austin. Austin tells Sable to go to the back and flip her off, which makes her smile. Austin is tired of hearing he's a marked man - if that's true, whoever has him as a marked man can come out there. Austin accepts the First Blood match for KOTR. Kane says if he doesn't win the title, he'll set himself on fire. Austin says if he's dumb enough to do that, Austin will bring the hot dogs and marshmallows. Suddenly blood drops from the ceiling and Austin is covered in the red stuff. Kane does his voice box promo saying this Sunday, the blood on him will be real. This is corny, but I liked it.
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The cell descends during Mankind's promo. He's upset about Paul Bearer being injured last week in the Undertaker attack. Mankind promises a good night at King of the Ring. Not his best prediction.
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YOU THINK YOU KNOW ME. Edge debuts. Funny that Jose Estrada is still around. To his credit, Edge gets himself over well with this crowd and shows a lot of charisma. He wins by countout after Estrada can't get up from the somersault plancha. Odd finish, but this mostly worked. Did Jose get legit injured?
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Lawler asks Al Snow to come out. Snow is dressed as an old lady and has Head in Lawler's crown. Lawler says Snow can get the appointment with Vince if he will just return the crown. He has a piece of paper with him and it's actually a contract for a match where he'll team with Head against Too Much at King of the Ring, and he has to win the KOTR match in order to get his meeting with Vince. Thank God Lawler is there to keep Snow focused on something. Not a good segment at all - I think Snow's gimmick is too out there to get over as big as they are trying to get it over.
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Good highlights of the late Shawn Michaels and the Undertaker at the last Hell in a Cell.
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DX can't get out the Super Soakers commercial the right way. The director yells at them and ends up getting soaked for his efforts.
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Bischoff gloats for a while over Savage being sidelined with a broken leg. Hogan says DDP is only famous for his wife being in Playboy. This is a good interview. I do think it's interesting that Hogan is now being presented as above feuding with Nash's group.
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Hogan, Rodman, DDP and Malone are at Planet Hollywood doing a press conference for the match at Bash at the Beach. Hogan looks right at home doing something this big.
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Hogan and Rodman are guests on the Tonight Show before DDP and Malone show up to confront them. This was huge at the time.
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Not a bad vignette but in some ways it looks even cheaper than the ECW ones.
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This blew my mind. I'm not sure I've ever seen a wrestler like Chikayo Nagashima. Her ability to think on her feet is unparalleled if this match is any indication. Some of the counters to move are things I've never seen before, probably because they require such precise timing and amazing athletic ability. Yet the stuff she does never feels hokey at all - maybe more wrestlers would actually do a Matrix-style duck to avoid a Doomsday Device if they could pull it off. There's also the cool moment where she is being drilled with knees and just seamlessly maneuvers Uematsu into a fisherman's suplex. I'm talking mainly about the athleticism but that's hardly the only strong point of this match. I think the sense of desperation is the reason this is great more than anything else - it sounds so basic, but everyone is frantically trying to win, so they're doing everything they can think of and trying for a pinfall. Whatever the actual stakes were, they seemed pretty high. I feel like I'm doing a crappy job of writing this up, mainly because it's hard to describe wrestling that doesn't quite look like wrestling I've seen before. I'll come back to this and say a lot more later. -
Yes! This isn't technically the yearbook debut of Mariko Yoshida, as she was in a few matches in 1992 and 1996. But she reinvented herself around this time with a new look and totally different working style. She is so different now that it might as well be a debut. She brings out a completely different side of Aja Kong here, one I'm not sure I've seen before or since. She forces her to work the mat. Fun moment near the beginning when Aja gets the better of a mat exchange then lies on the mat daring Yoshida to come after her. This went to a 15-minute time limit and was a really cool match. While Yoshida looks really good here, she's so much better in 1999 that this is really just a teaser of what's to come. But it's an effective one.
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Of all the late 90s multi-man matches I've seen, I think this one came closest to evoking the spirit of the New Japan multi-mans of the 80s. It's not at that level, but it's the closest. Kanemura is the lead heel in this and does a great job. I think the way they bring weapons into this is pretty smart too. It's fun to see Ikeda in a completely different environment than BattlARTS, wearing military fatigues and doing more of a traditional wrestling comeback. Oya is a machine when he's in - for pure mechanics, he's the best guy in the match. This is equal parts chaos and structure, just as it's equal parts wrestling and brawling. Add in the sharp face-heel divide and all the crowd-pleasing spots and this is a tremendous match.
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I always felt like there was an underlying racism (likely unintentional) to the Worst Manager category, because it was usually "won" by managers who didn't speak English as their first language. But that's another topic.
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It did not. And when Jim Ross tried that approach in 1993 WWF, it was incredibly awkward. So I won't deny that Gorilla fit in with what the WWF was. I just don't think he was particularly good when held to universal standards of what a great announcer should be. And such standards have to exist if we're going to compare announcers in different promotions and eras.
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For the record, I have no problem with people enjoying Gorilla Monsoon as a personality and I think it's great that some people do. I can admit that he's amusing at times too. Where I object is when people call it good wrestling announcing. It's kind of like how a lot of people enjoy Sid or Ultimate Warrior, and there's no problem with that. But there would likely be debate if either of them were called great workers. I think there's more to being a great wrestling announcer than being witty and entertaining.
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Did he say that line at some point? I don't recall him saying that.
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So if a baseball player is bad and strikes out every time he's at bat, are they expected to put a positive spin on it and cover for him? I'm sure announcers in every field have certain things they have to get across that come from above, but surely that's far more the case in the worked world of pro wrestling.
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Well, Jim Ross and Tony Schiavone also pointed out tactical mistakes, but they did it in a more measured way, meaning that they didn't do it frequently. We've heard both talk about wrestlers letting their emotions get the best of them and that sort of thing. But because it was balanced with far more praise than criticism, it didn't come across like they were trying to make themselves look smart and the wrestlers look stupid. Clash I: Ross and Schiavone point out that Sting is not going to make Flair submit with a side headlock, but that he's weakening him to make him more prone to something else later in the match. Compare that to the oft-mentioned "I've never seen anyone submit to an abdominal stretch. Why is he even bothering?" thing people mention about Monsoon.