Migs

Watched some Natural Disasters matches tonight. On the whole, I think they're a better team than they're remembered, hurt mainly by their lack of strong opponents, and also by their face turn, which created an odd dynamic in their matches. But they had strong offense and were fun to watch. Opened with a couple of their early squashes, which are actually pretty solid. The offense is good looking and they look imposing. Big Fred even busts out a dropkick in one! And they use the old midget rowboat move! Would have been interesting if they'd found a more unique finisher than a simple combination of their singles finishers. Natural Disasters v. The Bushwackers (Summerslam '91) The 'wackers are accompanied by Andre the Giant, on crutches, which is a nice moment, but retrospectively a bit sad, knowing Andre's not long for this world. Bobby Heenan, on commentary, repeatedly hits on the Disasters' combined weight of "over half a ton." The Bushwackers get a surprisingly strong, albeit brief, opening shine segment, with both Earthquake and Typhoon bumping for them. The Disasters take over and bust out an interesting transition from a Typhoon body vice into an Earthquake bearhug. Bushwackers get a brief comeback, ended with a double splash and Quake hitting his finisher to end it. The whole match only runs 6 minutes, but it makes a nice big match debut for the Disasters. Natural Disasters v. The Legion of Doom (Royal Rumble '92) This time it's Tenta's turn to throw a dropick (and miss!). Honestly, both guys are showing more athleticism than I remember. The match as a whole, though, suffers from the mediocre way the WWF booked the LOD. They built their rep pre-WWF on seeming invincible; and here the WWF has them in against big guys and playing face in peril. It's just not their best look. (Also, I don't know why they added red to their color scheme - feels like that also made them seem less menacing.) Tenta uses his excellent elbow to the back of Hawk - looked nasty. But on the whole, the face in peril section on Hawk is well worked but pretty lacking in heat. Thing break down and the Disasters get a countout win that didn't help anyone. Natural Disasters v. Sgt. Slaughter and Hacksaw Duggan (Crunch Classic, CHV) The faces are labeled by Sean Mooney as the "Patriotic Pair," which would be the worst team name ever. And why would anyone trust Slaughter when he'd been an Iraqi sympathizer six months earlier? Comes off as very strange. Anyway, the match is dull, but not really due to the Disasters. And that's maybe the biggest impression I get from watching them - if there'd been decent babyface teams to work with in this time period, the Disasters could have had some excellent matches. Disasters v. Rockers, for example, would have been very fun. I also think they didn't get much love, at least a theory, on why a lot of internet people didn't like these guys - they love bearhugs, and no move is more derided (other than maybe the chinlock) than the bearhug. And I'm not a fan of it either if its used for very long stretches - but that's not happening here. It's a short part of the heat segment, which is a nice use of the move. Anyway, this ends with another lame finish, with a brawl leading to Duggan getting DQed for use of the 2 x 4. Natural Disasters v. Money Inc. (7/20/92) This is a real exchange: JR: "Did Typhoon trip?" Heenan: "He never trips, he's a very agile man." I must say, I dig the Disasters move where Typhoon splashes a guy in the corner, holds them in, and Earthquake adds a second splash. Tenta takes a nice bump over the top on a missed corner splash, which segues directly from the opening shine segment to the face in peril section. Dibiase does something you rarely see, actually removing the tag rope to choke Tenta. Otherwise, the face in peril section is a little limp... it feels like the match needed a less traditional structure, because its weird to get heat on a guy as big as Tenta. This is why the "little guy and big guy" team works so well - heat goes on the little guy, hot tag to the big guy. Tenta's a good seller when he needs to be, though. Screwed up interference leads to a giant Tenta elbow drop on Dibiase for the win and the titles! Nice pop for the title change. Natural Disasters v. The Beverly Brothers (Summerslam '92) This was very fun. Reminded me of how good Enos and Bloom are - they did much better in the heat section in terms of keeping the offense interesting than Money Inc. did. The pop for the Disasters win is massive, which indicates that even if the match structure isn't as good with them as faces, they were over as all hell.

That's lame but pretty benign IMO. Agreed. The initial post said they were "slightly uncomfortable" - felt like that was my level of feeling too.

Yes.

You have to commit to six months but it will be billed monthly.

Netflix removes content because deals to carry that content expire. This is all footage WWE owns the rights to. HBO keeps all of their series on HBO GO all the time... it's not like the Sopranos disappears some months. This won't keep me from subscribing... I'd have been subscribing to 24/7 for years if I'd ever had the option. But it's still a backtracking on the big talk they were doing about the library.

I'm beginning to think Adrian Adonis is a severely underrated worker who needs some revisionist love. He was a unique and charismatic worker who needs to be in the conversation when we discuss top workers from the 80s. Adrian's main issue from a historical perspective is that the best captured run of his career is the Adorable Adrian run in the WWF, when he was going downhill from a physical standpoint. I'd still say, though, that his work in that time is excellent. He's bumping at a ridiculous level for a man his size, and he got over a character that pretty obviously reads like a punishment. Watch the tag team cage match with Savage v. Sammartino and Santana - the crowd is electric to see Adrian get a comeuppance. Same was true at Wrestlemania 3. I'm spending this afternoon watching some of his early 80s AWA run with Jesse Ventura. They were a great team, although I'm not seeing a lot of full matches unfortunately. But they ooze charisma and have perfect heel characters to anger the midwestern AWA audience, talking about their time in Hollywood and New York. From a work perspective, Adrian carries the team - Ventura is mostly kicking and bearhugs, whereas Adrian is wrestling huge chunks of the match and has the best looking offense of anyone in the matches. I actually think their dynamic might have worked even better in the WWF, when Jesse was basically managing Adrian against Bob Backlund. Adonis gets maybe the best Backlund matches I've seen, for my taste. And this ignores his excellent run with Dick Murdoch as well, which I'm looking forward to watching in the near future.

Agreed - was hoping for big dumps of eps. This looks more like 24/7 with an archive. Which is still cool, but not as cool as it could be.

Dead on, I think. I have found alternate ways to view PPVs if there was only one match I wanted to see, where it wasn't worth $60 to me. Now they'll certainly have my money for those shows (and shows that I'm not interested in at all).

Actually I do see a lot of WWE and UFC stuff that says Sky Sports. Not to go off on a tangent, but does anyone have any sense of why that is? Cable provider feeds easier to rip there? EDIT: saw anarchist's posts - there's plenty of high speed internet in the US, so unless the UK internet is way faster than we can imagine here, not sure that would explain the difference.

I had a Roku and didn't love it, but I'm also someone who prefers to download content. If you're using it just to watch Netflix and WWE Network, it'll do the job. It's very much plug and play with minimal setup. I believe the newer ones also allow you to hook up a hard drive. What's the rundown of promotions they are showing? WWE, WCW, ECW... then World Class, SMW, AWA? Have to think they'll add a good bit of Mid-South after the DVD did well.

Didn't see a thread... figure it's worth discussing. Finally catching up on this - on the second part of the Austin interview. Love Austin telling Jericho to watch the ECW doc Barbed Wire City - it feels like Austin spends almost as much time as some of us here watching old wrestling, which is cool. Jericho's a solid interviewer, but his intros are lacking a bit - feels like he needs someone to bounce off of, like Austin has his buddies.

Dynamite > Davey Boy Dusty > Nikita Pillman > Zenk

1) Write about wrestling more. Been toying with different methods, types of reviews... never like something enough to publish it. Should just bite the bullet. 2) Relatedly, start and finish the late 80s/early 90s project I've been thinking about. 3) Get in on a DVDVR 80s set - they always look like fun. 4) If I get through enough other stuff - pick up a Yearbook. Probably want to start around 96-97.

I'm still confused as to what such a disclaimer would look like, and I find it hard to imagine it wouldn't be pretty jarring to see before every show.

My girlfriend dropped a CM Punk hoodie on me today. And it was only the 3rd or 4th most thoughtful thing she got me - I am a lucky man.

I blew through all this stuff a few months ago and I just don't get the hate. I think the Royal Rumble match hasn't aged perfectly, but the meat of that era is all those awesome tag matches, and they're all still awesome.

He and Low Ki can be the new Los Matadores.