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garretta

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Everything posted by garretta

  1. garretta
    This match got a pull-apart brawl, but they couldn't fly Hansen in just once before the Tag League to have a brawl with Luger? And that's just one example off the top of my head. Between the Scorpion being a nonentity by design, Hansen being one by choice, and the Steiners' opponents all being foreigners, Starrcade got less of a chance to draw pre-card heat than any pay-per-view I can think of. They didn't even do a Doom/Horsemen brawl, unless I completely missed something. It's going to be interesting to see how they explain Taylor being recruited to join the York Foundation after the way he and Rotunda brawled here. I guess Ms. York must have been impressed by how hard Taylor fought at Starrcade.
  2. garretta
    Solid beginning for an interesting gimmick. We really get into how computers will help Mike win matches and titles, and it's the reliance on computers that sets him apart from DiBiase. Terri does her part well, and I think I like what I see better than IRS at the moment. It's a shame Vince's ginmicks had to be so "lappy", to use an old vaudeville term (if you don't dump a joke right in the audience's laps, they're too dumb to get it), because this could have gotten over in the WWF with no changes at all. So Tony came up with this, huh? That man might deserve a chance to run a wrestling company someday, don't you think? (Insert irony smiley here.)
  3. garretta
    Pete has it right; the vast majority of this angle has had the exact same setup every time: the Scorpion calls out Sting, Sting comes out and looks around for him like a damn fool, someone in a mask jumps Sting from behind while Ole blabs on and on about nothing in particular, Sting fights them off and demands the Scorpion face him, but the Scorpion refuses (and can't anyway, since it's Ole's prerecorded voice over the PA and nothing more). You'd think that Sting would have gotten smart by now and taken off for the PA booth or the TV truck to see where the voice is coming from, since the voice and the men who attack him never match up, but he's too thickheaded to do that; he just stands in the ring and pouts. Actually, Heyman's hypothesis that it's JR is as good as any, since the voice is so distorted by whatever machine Ole uses. We should have gotten at least one vignette by now where Sting confronts Luger, Pillman, the Steiners, and whatever other faces he can find and demands to know if one of them is the Scorpion. We know Luger's not above such things, and who can tell what the lure of the World title could do to young guys like Brian and Scotty? Or maybe Rick (his former partner, don't forget) is jealous of him being World champion and wants a piece of his own glory. Of course, all of them would deny it, but there would at least be more of a mystery surrounding the whole thing. As it is, there's no effort on anyone's part, including the announcers and other officials, to find out who this guy is before Starrcade. Whether the effort succeeds or not (and it wouldn't) isn't the point; the point is that Sting's perfectly content to be driven crazy for another week, and no one's making an effort to help him and ease his mind. What human being, even in a fictional context, acts like that? I've read about all the nonsensical angles various bookers tried in WCW afterward, but this is as ridiculous as anything Vince Russo or Eric Bischoff or Kevin Sullivan ever dreamed of. Someone who knew something should have pulled the plug on this crap, or at least told Jim Herd that he was being ribbed, that Ole was trying to make a fool out of him for suggesting something so bizarre. Maybe then a whole lot of needless embarrassment could have been avoided for everyone concerned with this abomination, Sting in particular.
  4. garretta
    I honestly forgot to watch the segment where Flair was kidnapped, so I can only comment on Barry and Arn. I kind of liked the new T-shirts and ball caps; honestly, what else do you expect them to wear into a street fight, suits and ties? After seeing how Turner neutered the Luger/Hansen match by taking the bell off the bullrope, I'm surprised they're letting this one go as a street fight. Now that Flair's not wrestling, though, I kind of wish they'd have changed this to a straight match (since Windham's only just getting involved in the issue, Horseman or not) and let Luger and Stan have the cowbells. Does anyone in that outfit know how to mix sound? They had the sound of the Flair segment going while Barry was talking, which made it impossible to hear either one clearly. In-ring wise, WCW may be the number two promotion in North America; TV-wise, even Hoo-Hoo Herb Abrams is ahead of them, which shows you just how deeply in last place they are.
  5. garretta
    I'm glad that I'll never have to watch another WCW Stan Hansen interview as long as I live. The tobacco was back in full disgusting force tonight. If I'd been Tony, I would have been doing a lot more than grimacing. No wonder Stan only came back to drop the belt; he was presented horribly in WCW, and he can thank his good buddy Ole for it. I don't understand the point of a bullrope match without the bell. It's basically going to be a tug-of-war now to see who can drag whose carcass around to all four corners. I expect a lot of knot-tying and dragging and very, very little action. Thanks a lot, Turner Home Entertainment, and Merry Christmas to you all! The interview made it sound like the bullrope was added by Stan at the very last minute for whatever reason. Knowing the Turner executives, they probably didn't want to mention it on national TV for fear of scaring the little Lexies (or whatever Luger's young fans called themselves at the time).
  6. garretta
    This wasn't one of Idol's better promos. Bragging on yourself is one thing, but claiming to be bigger than a man who dragged the United States to the brink of war? Can't anybody in wrestling use the Iraq situation sensibly, for God's sake? This business is full of some of the most clueless people I've ever run across. Between the actual wrestlers, the announcers, and the promoters who employ them all, it's a wonder anyone with any intelligence can watch some of this stuff at all. When wrestling's good, it's very, very good. When it's bad, horrid isn't the word for it. Anyway, Eddie makes up for Idol's ramblings with a short and sweet warning to Lawler and Bam Bam and daring Bam Bam to come after the bounty on his head. Is Eddie the promo of the year for 1990? I would say that it's wither him or his idol, with Arn Anderson a rock-solid third.
  7. garretta
    Nice explanation of the previous match by Lawler. Can't wait to see it soon! It's interesting that they're teasing an Idol turn. I guess they figure that Lawler's going to have enough potential matches without Idol as an opponent, and that if nothing else they can always run Lawler/Gilbert, which is a guaranteed sellout program which shows no sign of slowing down any time soon. This is all assuming that Idol turns on Eddie in the first place, of course, Bam Bam didn't have a while lot to say, but Lawler tag team partners not named Dundee usually don't. He was perfectly fine here. Yes, it's because New Year's Eve is on Monday that the MSC card is on Wednesday. I'm guessing Memphis may have a New Year's Eve celebration that they don't want wrestling competing with, which is perfectly understandable.
  8. garretta
    Bountymania is running wild in Memphis, as now it's Eddie's turn to feel the heat. He's so crazy over this that he dares Dave Brown, of all people, to try and claim the fifty grand on his head. I'd have laughed my head off if he'd agreed (by proxy, of course). Seriously, this is paranoid Eddie at his best. He naturally blames Lawler for the bounty despite the King's earlier denials, and he has a point about Lawler being one of the dirtiest wrestlers in Memphis despite being the top babyface. I only hope that this angle doesn't peter out in the new year, because it seems like the type of angle that Memphis has always done so well. Even if the payoff is a bit mundane (Lawler and Gilbert each putting a bounty on the other, for example), the twists and turns that we'll undoubtedly take to get there will make the ride so much fun. Eddie has another point: he knows that he's made the fans mad enough at him that one of them could try and attack him right there on TV in an attempt to get the bounty, so he justifiably refuses to wrestle in the studio. We've seen heels refuse to wrestle on TV many times, of course, but seldom have they actually had a reason beyond inflated ego. Another great booking twist by Jarrett.
  9. garretta
    Corny and Stan are their old selves, but Keirn's looking a bit rugged. I never thought I'd see Corny as a face in Memphis even briefly, but here's the proof in living color. Fabs/Gilberts and Fabs/DWBs are two intriguing matchups to shake up the tag scene as we move to 1991. I wonder how Lawler's going to react to Corny's presence in Memphis, especially since he already has Jarrett and Dundee to watch his back, both of whom are infinitely more trustworthy than Corny could ever be even if you take the Lawler/Dundee feuds into account. I think Bobby Eaton originally wanted to leave WCW with Corny and Stan, but his family needed the money he was making, so they told him that he needed to stay for their sake. It would have been interesting to see the MX in Memphis, which they'd never been before in any combination led by Cornette.
  10. garretta
    Not much new ground broken here, but it's nice to see Corey Maclin. I love how Eddie tries to physically intimidate Corey, which of course doesn't work. The shame of this whole saga is that by the time Lawler went to Vince in late '92 and could at least theoretically have used a new king to take his place since he'd be in and out, Eddie was gone for good. Of course, I don't know by then if the fans could have accepted anybody but Lawler in that spot even if he'd tried to push someone else, which he obviously didn't. Did Dave take off halfway through the show? He interviewed Lawler earlier, as we saw, but now Corey's in his seat and Downtown Bruno's doing color.
  11. garretta
    I think we've seen this video before, although some of the clips may have been new. It's still a great watch, though. I can't think of a punch in the whole video that didn't look like it could knock a rhino out. At the very least, it's better than Phil Collins taking a Boston crab from Warrior.
  12. garretta
    This is a good way to do a "Bum of the Month Club" thing where Lawler faces a different challenger every week or two instead of the endless series with one wrestler at a time that he's had for most of this year. First on the list is his old friend Austin Idol, and the King promises that if Idol wants a fight, he'll get one like he got the last time they met. It should be a hot time at the MSC. (I'm guessing that the Unified title tournament final doesn't count in Lawler's eyes, since he mentioned sending Idol out on a stretcher after ramming his crotch into the steel post.) Based on what we've seen so far, it's a bit of a stretch for me to believe that Funk put a bounty on Eddie. He's an unpredictable sort, though, so it's not totally impossible. I guess we'll find out in the weeks ahead.
  13. garretta
    This would have been a whole lot better if Terry had actually used Loss's line about how Flair's snub bothered him. Instead, it's the standard Unified champion stuff, and Lawler delivered it a lot more convincingly, probably because he believed it at least to some degree. Terry, on the other hand, knows he's just passing through. I also noticed that Terry's hair wasn't as wavy as usual. Maybe he skipped his appointment at the barber shop just to do this promo.
  14. garretta
    You can tell by this promo where the gift of gab in the Gilbert family went. Eddie's a little crazier than usual, but still good. Doug.......isn't. He's not actively horrible, but he's nothing all that special, just the stereotypical screaming meathead wrestler. I've got the Funk promo ready to go next. Unless Lawler's fighting him at this card, it's strange that's he (Lawler) isn't in the six-man somewhere.
  15. garretta
    Warrior actually uses a not-too-shabby looking Boston crab here, which surprised me a little. The airplane spin was actually more of a fallaway slam without the fallaway, which would have crushed poor Phil like a grape. The most embarrassing part of this was Phil's ring attire. You can tell that whoever did the special watched way more boxing than wrestling. The headgear was another dead giveaway; who wrestles in boxer's headgear other than Rick Steiner? I know they wanted to protect Phil, but did anyone seriously think that Warrior was going to drop him directly on his head? Fortunately, I have "Take Me Home" at the end of SNME to remember Phil by in a wrestling context, because this certainly was something to forget.
  16. garretta
    I agree with Parv that doing an angle like this took guts on Sarge's part. For that, I salute him. As for the rest of this crap, it's not even well-performed. Any idiot could have gone out there, proclaimed himself an Iraqi sympathizer, and gotten close to this level of heat at the time. I admit that Sarge having been portrayed as an American hero in the past made it easier, but if The Iron Sheik had been in any kind of physical shape, he would have been just as good at this, either as himself or as Col. Mustafa. Adnan is a complete waste since they won't let him speak English, and Sarge's constant screaming actually makes him less menacing, not more so. Also, Sarge is so focused on being an Iraqi that he's forgetting to remind us of why he turned on America, which was supposed to be the whole point of his return to begin with. The only American he insults here is poor "Pukeface" Okerlund. Where's the talk about America being soft, Gomer? Where's the talk about being in bed with the Commies and turning our backs on Saddam once we'd used him and his army to help us get rid of the heathen Iranians during the Iran-Iraq war which had concluded only recently? Calling Americans soft and slimy traitors who knife their friends in the back once they use them up would have generated just as much heat as talking about victory parties in Baghdad which everyone with half an ounce of sense knew would never happen even if Slaughter won. (You say suspension of disbelief? I say horseshit. Too much garbage, then and now, has been given a pass by invoking that phrase. For some of us, the real world doesn't stop just because two men fake fight in their underwear for an hour a week, and we reserve the right to call those who try to tell us it does, like Vince, fools and worse.) There are only two good things about this segment: First, they had the good sense to preempt Brother Love for it; seeing this done in that particular setting would have been too much for me to take, and I suspect I'm not alone. Second, they had the further good sense to stop playing that stupid drum roll while Sarge was running his yap. That's one less way to get a headache from listening to this.
  17. garretta
    I agree that this was some pretty heavy stuff. They couldn't do it sooner because they needed to establish Virgil as an obedient servant first, and also because Mike Jones needed to be able to do enough in the ring to gave Teddy a decent series of matches. I'm kind of surprised that it took this long, but Teddy's always had higher-profile feuds and angles on his plate before that wouldn't have been well served by injecting this kind of story into them, even if Jones had been good enough in the ring to do his part. I thought for sure that Virgil was going to grab one of Teddy's toes during the foot massage and yank it as hard as he could. Oh well, time for that sort of thing soon enough!
  18. garretta
    Even WWF fans can respond to honest heartfelt emotion if it's conveyed properly, and no one can do it better than Dusty. I wish they would have let Dustin speak in his natural voice, but I guess we can't have everything. He shows off his own gift of gab, and while he isn't in his dad's class as a promo (good luck finding someone who is on a consistent basis), he's got more than enough juice on the mic to leave his own mark in the business. I liked the subtle foreshadowing of Virgil's turn in Dusty's comment about the bond between him and Teddy being "paper thin". They're really handling this match and these angles in a more mature fashion than you'd expect for this time frame.
  19. garretta
    What match is this disc on? It's not on 30, and I'll have to look through my collection to find and watch it. (I only keep the discs I'm watching by my computer; the rest are in my storage space).
  20. garretta
    Always nice to see Crockett-era Dusty on the mic instead of Mr. Polka Dots. I understand why Dusty felt the need to prove to Vince that he could get over with them, but he probably should have gotten rid of them after Mania VI at the latest, or even only worn them occasionally to begin with, mixing them in with his more normal attire. Dustin does a lousy imitation of his dad. I can't wait to hear him speak in his own voice with WCW. What was Vince's obsession with showing Bruce Prichard's mouth so wide open that you could see his tonsils? I don't remember any of the TV evangelists ever opening their mouth that wide, so I'm guessing that this is a backstage rib of some sort. The most disgusting thing is when Prichard walks right up to the camera and opens his yap almost on top of the lens. YUCK!
  21. garretta
    Nice little promo spot for the WWF's Nintendo game. I understand why they wanted to use a tag team (so the partners could play against each other), but I wonder why they used the Rockers instead of the LOD? I think it would have been fun to watch Hawk "wrestle" Animal.
  22. garretta
    So the motorist Jacques pulls over is from Georgia, is she? If I didn't know better, I'd swear Vince was taking a shot at WCW. He wouldn't do that, would he? I'll give Jacques credit for this much: He's playing the character well enough that it's hard to remember that he's Jacques Rougeau, who'd just been jobbed out of the tag division a little less than a year before. The trick to success in the WWF with a far-out gimmick is simple. If you have enough natural acting skill to play one of these screwball characters well, you have a chance of getting over, even if your character's stupid. If you're not a good actor or fight the idea on camera (as some did), you're headed down the toilet. So far, as I said, Jacques is pulling this one off pretty well. We'll see if that continues in the weeks ahead. This should be dated 12/22, not 12/29.
  23. garretta
    This was so bizarre it was comical. Did Vince think that people wouldn't figure out who this was? Just at the start of the year he and his brother were claiming to "love" living in Memphis, and now he's making bizarre anti-American jokes and claiming that he's a member of the RCMP? Even marks knew that wrestlers were repackaged from time to time (whether they knew to call it that or not), so why not show Jacques going through some sort of Mountie training, even if it's 100% faked? Have him explain why he wanted to train as a Mountie (and why they let him, since he obviously wasn't going to be an actual full-time RCMP member) and how it would help him become a star in the WWF. If they could do it for Tito's run as El Matador, to the point of actually paying for his bullfighting lessons, they could have done it for Jacques. Then again, this character was always treated as a joke, even when he was using a cattle prod on his opponents after matches. I'm surprised that the RCMP let this gimmick go on unchallenged for as long as they did.
  24. garretta
    This was an extremely focused and intense promo from Savage, bizarre outfit aside. I'm wondering if they realized that too much Sherri, as cartoonish as she had become, would take away from the very angle she'd helped to launch so perfectly. Or maybe they were subtly laying the groundwork for their breakup at Mania VII. Like Kevin, I'm wondering what Randy meant when he said that he'd break the bond between Warrior Prime and all his little Warriors. Was he referring simply to taking the title away, or was he talking about something else that ended up being dropped? It's tough to tell with a loose cannon like Savage. Exchange of the Week, with Gino and Bobby talking about Savage's spending habits: Gino: He spends more money accidentally than you do on purpose. Bobby: Yep, and I'm proud of it! That's just one example of why they're the funniest commentary team in wrestling history, bar none. Line of the Week also goes to Heenan for his description of Savage as the world's toughest barber pole. They don't make humor in wrestling like this anymore, my friends.
  25. garretta
    Teddy was at his most obnoxious here, not only flaunting his wealth but insulting everyone in sight except for Brother Love and giving all sorts of excuses why Dustin was able to last ten minutes with him. I loved the start of the slow burn toward the Virgil turn and Brother Love cheering on the beatdown from the sidelines until Kerry came in to clean house. It's interesting that 1) Dustin doesn't say a word here and 2) that Dusty's supposedly "watching on TV" back home in Austin. Actually, not only was Dusty at the taping, but he teamed with Dustin to beat Teddy and Virgil in a dark match. I guess Vince was trying to keep Dusty off of TV as much as he could after finding out that he was going back to WCW. Fortunately, it worked out well for everyone, since Teddy could then cost Kerry the IC title the following week on TV, as we'll see later in the set. As for Dustin, I guess they didn't want to do a whole lot with him either, since he was leaving with his dad. Why build him up for no reason? Honky added just as little to the proceedings as I remembered. I don't exactly have fond memories of Savage as a commentator either; he was either told by Vince to broadcast completely in character or decided to do it on his own, and whichever it was, hearing that "Lord, I need some Ex-Lax" voice for an hour at a time drove me up the wall. But he was miles better than this. Was there some law against Heenan doing both Superstars and Challenge, at least temporarily? Yes, I noticed that Teddy has three feuds either going or brewing now. But it makes sense that an obnoxious millionaire would have more than one person angry with him at a given point in time, even in a world as sterile as the WWF. You'd know all about that, wouldn't you, Vince?
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