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garretta

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Everything posted by garretta

  1. garretta
    Corny's so excited that he sounds like he's talking up one of his own guys here. I guess since Arn and Flair weren't around to help out, it was up to him to do the heavy verbal lifting for Sid, who does well if he doesn't have to talk for too long. It's a shame that this match was derailed by the Black Scorpion nonsense, if I recall correctly. It wasn't exactly a dream match, but it was certainly one that most fans were looking forward to seeing.
  2. garretta
    If these guys were supposed to be Road Warrior imitators, they failed miserably. I did recognize Nash, though. I want to hear them cut promos and see if they're supposed to sound like Hawk and Animal too.
  3. garretta
    We talk about how stupid the voice distortions and the multiple Scorpions were, but this really wasn't done any favors by Sting either. If he knew this guy in LA, there has to be something about his physique or way of moving that at least jogs a memory. A World champion simply shouldn't be as dense as Sting's being made out to be here. I'm not saying he should be telling the audience who he thinks it is, but he should be saying things like, "I think I might have a handle on him. I'm not going to tell you what I know, since that would take away my advantage over him, but I have some ideas, and next time I wrestle him, I'm pretty sure I can beat him once and for all." Did WCW think that they could actually convince Warrior to leave Vince's belt behind and jump, or was that just what they wanted the audience to believe? I've heard the story both ways; I can't think of where I saw this, but I've seen at least one site that said they made an offer to Warrior which was rejected out of hand.
  4. garretta
    The Hollywood vignette was pretty good, though Hayes can stop with the mascara any time he wants to. The interview I could have done without, mostly because Smothers and Armstrong should be feuding with the MX instead of these guys, even if Stan and Bobby aren't the US champions anymore. The Confederate facepaint wasn't as inappropriate here as it would be somewhere else; remember, this show was in North Carolina, where the Stars and Bars mean something to almost everyone, be it positive or negative. Nice to see Buddy Jack, but I don't think he was with them for long this time. Ideally, WCW would have paid enough for Gordy to join the group at least for Clashes and pay-per-views, but Ole was never one to spend that kind of dough, and considering how well Bamm Bamm was doing in Japan by then, he wouldn't have come cheap.
  5. garretta
    I thought we'd seen this promo before. Anyone with any brains knows that's Ole doing the voiceover. Couldn't they have found some low-level Turner employee who could act a little to do it? No one would have known the difference at home, especially since the voice was so heavily distorted anyway.
  6. garretta
    An interesting method to debut a hot new tag team, showing their boots as they walk. What is this preoccupation WCW has right now with not showing new wrestlers' faces? As for the man who started this trend (the Black Scorpion), if the angle had stopped here, regardless of who the Scorpion would have ended up being, it would have been all right. Okay, so it's Al Perez. Sting beats him here, he's forced to unmask, his "clues" are found out to be a bunch of crap (since he was in Texas wrestling in '86, not California), and we either continue the program or don't. It was the constant fakeouts and the multiple Scorpions, some of whom were apparently sorcerers, that made the angle so cringeworthy. I'm actually looking forward to seeing for myself just how bad it got.
  7. garretta
    Great performances from all concerned here, especially Heenan and Vince, who falls all over himself to get out of the way of a rampaging Bossman. That was a terrible bump Heenan took off the broadcast platform; he's lucky he didn't really hurt himself. Quite frankly, I'm surprised that he agreed to do it. Wrestlingdata.com shows that Rude never faced Bossman in the ring during this feud; his last recorded match was October 1 in Emmitsburg, Maryland, where he lost to Hacksaw Jim Duggan by disqualification. In fact, he and Duggan had a house show mini-feud right after SummerSlam, with Duggan winning every recorded match by either pin or DQ. There were also several tag matches, with Rude and Curt Hennig taking on Duggan and Jake Roberts. Rude and Hennig won all four recorded bouts cleanly.
  8. garretta
    I haven't seen the first part of this yet, but this part was kind of dumb. Since when does a wrestler tell his manager what to say, especially when Bobby Heenan is the manager in question? If this was all the reason they had to start a feud, they should have left it alone. I wonder if Rude got told not just about his language, but about saying stuff like "You could've stopped this, McMahon". At the time, Vince was very zealous about maintaining his geeky "just an announcer" persona on the air, even though almost everyone who wanted to know that he was the owner of the whole ball of wax already did. Somehow, I don't think that Rude was the type who would have cared.
  9. garretta
    This was just to establish that Sapphire was in Teddy's employ. She really didn't need to say anything; just the sight of her ironing Teddy's money was more than sufficient for Vince's purposes. You can tell by Teddy's demeanor that he's still having a ball with this gimmick. The ironing joke was a bit of a groaner, but in this situation, it worked.
  10. garretta
    Like Loss, I'm just going to assume that everyone reading this knows this angle is total horseshit in terms of taste and move on to the individual aspects of each segment. That out of the way, this is a massive blunder on Vince's part. Adnan can speak English despite being a native Iraqi; Vince's idea of him not doing so (in hopes, no doubt, that someone would confuse him with the real Saddam Hussein) makes him completely useless to Slaughter, since he can't wrestle anymore either. Again, they needed to make Heenan the commanding general, even if it meant junking the whole Iraqi sympathizer load of crap. Either that or just send Sarge out there by himself; it's not like he can't draw heat or anything. Piper would have made a much better first program for Sarge than Volkoff, but I doubt that Rod would have laid down for Sarge clean. I've heard a lot of his commentary concerning this angle, and I don't think he was happy with it in real life, which only added to his on-screen ferocity. I can't help but wonder what Jesse would have done with it if he'd still been there, especially if he had any political ambitions (which we all know he did).
  11. garretta
    Another tremendous Crockett-style promo from Dusty. I wonder if the whole Sapphire being bought thing was his own idea, because he's turned things up to a level that we haven't seen from him in the WWF. Even though he's eventually going to lose this feud in the ring, he's showing that he's got more than enough life left in his mouth. It's a shame there wasn't more of a call for babyface managers, because he'd have been perfect in that role for either one of the Big Two.
  12. garretta
    I wiped out my first try. From the top: This is about as close as you'll ever get to a Road Warriors-style promo from the Legion of Doom, and yes, they're two entirely different teams with the same members. I especially liked Hawk's line about Arrogance and his telling Brother Love, "If you were our brother, you wouldn't be here." Even calling Demolition "mini-men" didn't get to me under the circumstances. The only thing that was over the top was the "Legion of Doomers" bit, but keep in mind, the ass-kicking Road Warriors from JCP and the AWA are no more. Hawk and Animal chose to leave them behind for Vince's money. All babyfaces in the WWF follow the leader (Hogan) and pay homage to the kiddies. Calling the Demos bad role models is a true insult in that context, where it wouldn't be in a more adult promotion. Actually, the original Demolition was probably a more effective WWF-style tag team than Hawk and Animal were in the ring and out, as too much was lost in the Road Warriors/LOD transition for Hawk and Animal to be more than a slightly more fan-friendly upgrade over the fading Demos. At least that's the way I remember it; I'm anxious to see if the yearbooks over the next couple of years bear me out. One question: Did Precious Paul really want to take time off, as the magazines said, or did Vince just not want him around? It's interesting to me that the LOD's downhill slide starts when he (and Rocco the dummy) show up at Mania VIII.
  13. garretta
    I didn't like this much. Sherri was brilliant, but the idea was weak. All Warrior's doing by ripping up the contract is proving Sherri's point; he is a coward and a closet champion who doesn't want to face a former titleholder who could beat him. After all the missteps they've made with Warrior this year, they didn't need to make another one here, but they did. How could they have fixed this? Simple. Have Warrior sign the so-called "royal proclamation" only for Tunney's office to declare it null and void; you need an official WWF-approved contract to get a title match, and Savage's recent performances haven't earned him one. Savage and Sherri vow to go on a rampage to force Tunney's hand, while Warrior vows to be ready for Savage any time, anyplace. You don't need to reinvent the wheel here, Vince. The ancillary stuff was good; Warrior destroying the Brother Love set got a nice pop, and Prichard was amusing as a "mediator" between Sherri and Warrior. Interesting unintentional foreshadowing, as Warrior's claim that Savage has found love somewhere else would come true by the end of this feud. I'm not sure whether Warrior referring to Savage as "Macho Man" instead of "Macho King" was supposed to happen or not. If I was pressed, I'd have to say it was, since they didn't edit it out when they certainly could have,
  14. garretta
    This was actually sort of a tweener poem from Lanny; yes, he brags about himself and seems to gloat about the kids having to go back to school, but he also tells them to do the best they can. This may not have been an accident; they may have been trying to see how the Genius character would get over as less of a heel. For further proof, his first post-SummerSlam house show program was against, of all people, Haku. There were at least four matches between the two men right after SummerSlam; of these, we know the result of only one, as Haku scored a clean pin on September 1 in Lincoln, Nebraska. The experiment with a face/tweener Genius ended soon after; I guess the fans didn't respond to Lanny the way Vince wanted (and why would they, with the gimmick as over-the-top as it had become by then?)
  15. garretta
    I can see (oh, am I on a roll!) the seeds being planted for the Jake feud here, but it would have meant more if Jake's name, or any wrestler's name for that matter, had been name-checked. As it was, this whole segment seemed to lead to nothing if you didn't have the benefit of foresight (these are too easy, intended or not). Vince doesn't know whether to play along with Piper here or not; he laughs along with the Steven Seagall joke, even initiates one about Piper having a more powerful potion than Arrogance, but seems embarrassed by the Jim Bakker references. These shows were taped before SummerSlam, so Piper was sort of a tweener character-wise. If he'd been left this way, he would have been great.
  16. garretta
    Not much of a promo here, but the point is made. Tugboat didn't sink (forgive me) to the midcard right away; he teamed with Bossman against Earthquake and Bravo quite a bit to keep that situation going while Hogan was absent from the house show circuit that fall. He also had a few singles bouts, mostly against Bravo. Tugboat/Bossman might have made an interesting team if there had been a decent heel team their size to send them after, but the only one that qualified was the Demos, who were busy with the LOD.
  17. garretta
    I had no idea what to think about this one. It seems like a match that was cooked up in a fan's scariest nightmares, really, with a blue-haired woman, a green-haired woman, and people whacking each other in the head with kendo sticks all over the place. I didn't dislike it, but it was too far out for me to love it like some of you did. Kudos to Grizzly and Bison for absorbing a pair of savage beatings so Aja and Bull didn't have to. Those cane shots looked (and probably felt) absolutely brutal. They did mix in some solid wrestling along with the brutality, which doesn't always happen in matches like this. In fact, Grizzly scores the winning fall with a nice German suplex. It's all a bit anticlimactic after we almost had quadruple homicide via kendo stick, but wrestling's just that way sometimes. I'm guessing Aja was majorly pissed off in her postmatch screamfest with Bull, judging by her tears. Anyone care to guess why? I wouldn't call this a match of the year candidate by any means, but it was something that needed to be seen. Looking forward to Aja and Bull one on one!
  18. garretta
    Maybe it's the trios style that has me buffaloed, because I've enjoyed quite a few lucha singles bouts. It's the multi-man matches that I have trouble with. My Uncle Elmer references were total sarcasm, but my point was that I can understand his style, such as it is, very easily. There's not a whole lot of nuance to Stan Frazier at close to five hundred pounds. With the lucha guys, it seems like a different sport. Zenjo mentioned choreography, and it puts me in mind of an analogy: where American and Japanese wrestling remind me of swimming, lucha reminds me of synchronized swimming. I like to watch swimming races, particularly in the Olympics, but synchronized swimming often leaves me scratching my head and wondering what I just saw. Don't worry, I paid too much money for these yearbooks to start fast-forwarding through lucha matches, and there's always a chance that I'll learn to appreciate the trios and tag matches more as time goes on. For now, though, I'm still trying to figure out where the pieces all fit together, and it's much harder than I thought. I promise not to dismiss them out of hand like I seemed to here, though.
  19. garretta
    Six-mans are ways to put together as many different combinations of wrestlers as possible in the context of one match. Vince McMahon offered that explanation of multi-man tags on an early Coliseum Video, and it's a good way of looking at matches like this. Seeing the double and sometimes triple-teaming of all three guys on one team against one of the opposite team is its own special thrill that a singles match can't provide. Plus, multi-mans can break down into chaos a lot more easily than a singles match and provide action all over the arena, not just in the ring. I think those are all good things. Maybe not meaningful in the sense that a title match is, but they can be more entertaining depending on how and when they're done. In this case, All-Japan wanted to make money off of Misawa/Jumbo without having to kill the matchup by running it too often, so matches like these are a nice little compromise. They have the added effect out of making front-line stars out of guys like Kikuchi, who may not be up to having one-on-one matches with people like Jumbo, but can certainly give him a run for his money in short bursts until he eventually learns enough to be Jumbo's equal. He was the star of this match with his fighting spirit in the face of an obvious skill disadvantage. As time goes on and he enters more bouts like this, he'll (hopefully) learn enough and become "big" enough in the fans' eyes that they'll accept a singles series between him and Jumbo. Most of you already know what I just posted above, no doubt, but we'd do well to remind ourselves of stuff like this when we sit down to watch these matches. They have far-reaching meaning if one chooses to look for and embrace it. Well, most of the time anyway; those random six-mans on Superstars that Vince used to put on just to give as many guys as possible some face time stretch credibility a tad. This particular match was a lot more chaotic than the first one we saw, but the main rivalry (Misawa/Jumbo) has progressed, and their friends have also seen plenty of each other, so matches like this should be more chaotic. It's hard to pinpoint individual spots in matches like these, but the crowd seemed red hot when Misawa and Jumbo faced off, and of course Kikuchi stole the show, as I said earlier. Not an all-time classic, but certainly a great way to spend a half hour.
  20. garretta
    This is the best women's match I've ever seen, regardless of promotion. Hokuto knows she has to keep Toyota off of her injured leg at any and all costs, so she tries for the quick win, but can't get it. Eventually, we get the leg work, and it's expertly done. I didn't get the sense that Toyota wanted to break Hokuto's leg, but she would if she had to in order to win the match. Eventually, Hokuto ignores the pain and starts to work on Toyota's neck in order to try to even things up, but can't get either the submission or knockout. Then it's desperation time for both women, as they bust out their entire arsenals in a futile effort to get the winning fall before time runs out. I guess I'm not as hung up on selling as some of you; I didn't particularly mind Hokuto getting her stuff in in spite of the injury. It's the old Ric Flair principle: Regardless of the story each match tries to tell, there are certain spots that are expected by the average Joe (read: not someone who necessarily cares how artistic a match is), and failure to deliver those spots automatically ruins a performance for that fan, regardless of the quality of the rest of the work. If the schoolgirls in the audience want to see Hokuto practically no-sell a tombstone on the floor in order to get her own tombstone in, then it's her professional obligation to do just that. Remember, these matches aren't being staged for our benefit in 2015, gentlemen. There are times when no-selling is so blatantly obvious even to a mark that it needs to be criticized, but that happens far less often than one who reads these comments might think. Complaining is fine if that's what you want to do, but sometimes we need to take a step back from our own opinions and realize that a match that we didn't care for may have done whatever the promotion wanted it to do, which means it shouldn't be criticized as harshly for not living up to a fan's personal taste. To cite one example, Hogan/Andre at Mania III was a terrible bell-to-bell match, but I call it the greatest match I've ever seen because it filled the Silverdome and provided an iconic moment that (at least in my eyes) will never be topped in wrestling history even if we see another huge boom. At any rate, this just misses my yearlong Japan ballot; I'm still holding on to Hogan/Hansen as number three for reasons of overall spectacle and historic importance. This one is a better match, though.
  21. garretta
    There were literally only three offensive moves that I saw in this match: hiplocks, armdrags (which are basically the same thing) and headscissors, along with a backbreaker that was so short you can barely count it as offense. I'd sure like to know where all this great work is, because it isn't in anything I saw. They didn't even offer a replay of one of the falls because they were busy with an interview My luck, it was one of the falls where all three guys were pinned at once and I had no idea who was pinning who. I understand that most of you like lucha because of the athleticism of the guys involved, and I won't deny that luchadores are world-class athletes. But I have yet to see any real grappling skill in the vast majority of lucha matches. The Dandy/Azteca singles bout from June was a welcome exception, and I loved it. Other than that, all I see are dives and takeovers until it's time for all the members of one team to pin all the members of another. I spend most of my time while watching lucha thinking that there's some Uncle Elmer match I could be enjoying instead.
  22. garretta
    I'm not sure about this one. Finlay and Jones looked good throughout, and the babyfaces weren't bad either, but the style was different enough to throw me off, particularly when it came to refereeing. I had no idea when people were going for pins (which didn't happen that often regardless), which took away from the drama. I finally realized that European refs seem to count one verbally, then get down on the mat and count two (and three if necessary) with their hands. In general, it seems like they count very slowly as a rule, which means that the false finish is practically taken out of the equation; when someone goes for a pin, the odds are that it's the finish. This also applies to countouts, as I'm not even sure the ref reached ten while Finlay and Jones were on the outside before awarding the belts to Zrno and Schumann. I don't know if whoever changed these rules felt that there was too much filler in matches and wanted to streamline things or what, but the filler is, at least in most cases, what builds the drama and heat; without it, all you have is guys showing off nice moves, and that's not enough for me. Give me Harts-Demos from SummerSlam instead. It may have stunk as a wrestling match, but it had drama which was allowed to build and got me invested in the outcome. This match was too bare-bones to do that.
  23. garretta
    I liked the psychology surrounding the wire here; neither guy wants to take a shock, particularly Onita, so he searches high and low for ways to get out of Goto's figure-four that don't involve going to the ropes/wire. I also enjoyed the round of headbutts that Onita gave to Goto at one point. I think I counted eighteen, and they left Goto's forehead a grisly mess for the rest of the bout and gave him a head injury which the endless DDTs and powerbombs at the end no doubt made even worse. I don't think Goto ever took a full-blown, one-side-to-the-other Irish whip into the wire. It looked more like he backed into it timidly for just long enough to get one shock. I liked Onita the sportsman dousing Goto after the match to neutralize any effects of the explosions. I wonder why he didn't do the same to himself, and I hope whoever took Goto out of the ring was extra careful! This is another one of those bouts that I'm glad I saw once in order to satisfy my curiosity. I don't know if I could take seeing it again, though.
  24. garretta
    This felt like an exhibition match, to be honest. Neither man was aggressive enough for my taste considering the round system. It seems that that would encourage constant offense in an attempt to win the match before the round runs out, but it sure didn't in this match. I think I counted two near-falls in the whole thing, and I have no idea what the finish was. I also didn't see the part where Owen stole Finlay's elbow pad and used it on him, and I wasn't only watching the match, but doing private commentary on it. I'd like to see what these two could do in a continuous bout where the action can build naturally, instead of the fits and starts we get due to the round system. As an aside, I didn't know that the ref could card wrestlers like soccer players; at least that's what it looked like the ref was doing to Finlay at one point. An interesting wrinkle that I've never seen before anywhere else.
  25. garretta
    Jumbo gets the win, but this was Kenta's match. He knew he'd have trouble fighting Jumbo straight up, so he spent the first half of the match wearing him out with side headlocks and front facelocks, then stood toe-to-toe when the time was right. Unfortunately for him, Jumbo still had enough left to put him away, but it took more than anyone ever thought possible. Continued selling isn't as big a deal to me as it is to some of you, but extra credit to Jumbo for selling the side headlock/front facelock combo throughout the bout. He was still shaking his head and pulling at his ear after he got the win, trying to clear his head after the punishment Kenta had put on him. Clearly, he thought a lot of Kenta's potential to go out of his way to sell like that. A run of nearfalls is one thing, some selling right after a hold is applied is another, but this kind of selling is only done by those who truly think that their opponents are worth the rub.
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