garretta
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Everything posted by garretta
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Who else was there on the babyface side for Sting to get backup from? The Steiners were more worried about Doom, Pillman was in some sort of ridiculous purgatory, Zenk was a dud, the LOD was gone, and Gigante was a huge pile of nothing. Besides, JYD and Orndorff, regardless of their physical abilities, were two of the WWF's biggest names at the time they left. Ole would have been nuts not to sign them and push them as far as he could, though unfortunately it didn't turn out to be very far. I'm torn between liking Paul as he is here and swapping him out for Sid in the Horsemen. Sid's big and powerful, but he's done absolutely nothing of note so far that didn't involve insulting Robocop. Put Paul in a suit like he was for Vince back in '84 when he first got to the WWF and tell me he doesn't scream Horseman, even six years later.
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And leaving the obvious and regrettable racism aside, Arn vs. Rocky King is supposed to be a feature match now? This was a freakin' squash in 1985, and Rocky King hasn't done a damn thing, in kayfabe or real life, to elevate himself since. Really, what does this prove? It's like the WWF trying to push Steve Lombardi as something special by putting him in a torn Yankees shirt, making Bobby Heenan his manager, and calling him the Brooklyn Brawler. It didn't help Lombardi, and it won't help King. No offense, Rocky.
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Herd's not even as telegenic as Jack Tunney, and that's saying something. Ole as a commentator? Why do I get the feeling that Herd was actually going to out Ole as the booker, then was told by someone what a breach of etiquette that was, which forced a hasty retake? I literally can't think of any other reason for such an off-the-wall comment. Ole plays along in his rebuttal, though, and the Horsemen save the segment as only they can. I liked Windham referring to Herd as an eggplant, which is one of the nicest things anyone from that era ever said about him, onscreen or off. So this is how Woman goes out, huh? As I said earlier, dumping her for Missy Hyatt (if that's what basically happened) was just one of WCW's many horrible mistakes this year. I notice that the corporate suits are already starting to phase in the WCW brand name.
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Great stuff on the stick from Arn, Flair, and Barry. Windham in particular seems much smoother on the mic as a heel than he ever was as a face. The LOD's last recorded match for WCW had already taken place five days before this match aired; on May 28 in Richmond, they lost a six-man (along with JYD) to Flair, Arn, and Windham. They were scheduled to work the TV taping the following day in Roanoke, according to Graham Cawthon, but their next recorded result is from June 25, when they made their WWF debut at a Superstars taping in Dayton, Ohio.
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If you're going to present Stan as a wildman, why not start right off the bat? He's not too much different here than he was in the AWA, except that he's scaring Jim Ross instead of Larry Nelson. A promising beginning for the Badman from Borger. Yeah, JR, I think we need to scale back the football references just a touch. Seriously, Ole had to like what he was doing; he was never shy about telling people if he believed that they'd messed up. Apparently, he saw value in mentioning the football backgrounds of everyone on the roster. One other thought: was TBS doing a college football package at the time? Maybe this was WCW's way of getting wrestling fans to also think about college football, even in the offseason.
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I had no idea that Vader was in WCW this early. Did he do anything of note before '92?
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I really didn't get the point of this, but at least it was short. Did anybody here call the hotline during this approximate time period? If so, what was it like?
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Great promo here from Curt, almost too good and wrestling-related for the WWF. You know damn well that if this program had been able to continue, Beefcake's promos would have been all about cutting Perfect's hair and not about the belt, so Curt does a great job of getting out in front and establishing credibility for the title, lest it be forgotten about in the weeks ahead. He lets Bobby gush over his hair and body, which The Brain is only too happy to do. I wonder if either Curt or Heenan would have allowed Beefcake to cut their hair had the feud continued. Cutting Curt's hair would have damaged the perfection gimmick, but I don't see Bobby taking a haircut either, particularly off the sleeper (which could have hurt his already injured neck, even if by accident). The only other manager who we know was willing to have their hair cut was Jimmy Hart, but Beefcake had already done that at Mania IV. Besides, I don't think he'd have meshed with Curt at all.
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I know we like to pick on Tugboat around here because he would be the Shockmaster later on and because he's Dusty's brother-in-law, but let's cut him a break. This was supposed to be a cheerful segment that told the little Hulksters that their hero was on his way back, so his mood fit perfectly. If anyone was the downer, it was Okerlund with the "mentally and emotionally, it's going to take time" stuff Anyone notice the address? P.O. Box 911 (which is universally known as the emergency number), Venice, CA (Hogan's worked hometown). Talk about not missing a trick when it comes to advertising. If only Vince had paid this much attention to marketing his other stars, maybe Warrior wouldn't have bombed so badly.
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Since Ray Traylor was really from Cobb County, Georgia, I wonder if that wasn't his real high school teacher, or at least one of them? I'm sure that if they could find one of his teachers who would agree to do something like this to help the angle get over, they'd take the opportunity. That would certainly explain the look she gave the money; if I saw someone like Virgil flashing that kind of cash around and I was trying to exist on a teacher's salary, I'd look like that too. Another excellent job from Teddy and the WWF production crew.
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They had to try something to make the man seem like less of a maniac, so give them credit for effort, at least. But it's not natural or normal for Warrior, and Pete's right; he still comes off as nuts when talking about Rude, so the effect is even more jarring than it would otherwise be. I do admit to enjoying him stalking Brother Love, though. The bottom line is that they needed someone who could at least appear human as champion and ended up with this guy instead; by the time they realized their mistake, it was too late to change the plan. But who else could have filled the role, not only as champion but as lead face? Would you have rather seen Duggan, who was presented as semi-literate and lovably dumb at best? Piper, whose promos could at times ramble more than Warrior's? Beefcake, whose sole goal in life seemed to be humiliating people by ruining their looks? Or maybe Jake, who waved his snake in innocent announcers' faces for kicks? A real list of winners Vince had to pick from, don't you think?
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This really did feel like a tribute to a dead man, which I guess in wrestling terms Hogan almost was. What I liked more than anything else was pulling out clips of guys like the Iron Sheik and Freddie Blassie, who by 1990 were known to most WWF fans only through Coliseum Video and weren't mentioned on TV anymore. Liz also got more face time than I expected, since she's strictly working house shows at this point and is aligned with Dusty and Sapphire. As for the attack, seeing replays of it only reminded me of how much more dramatic Hogan's original "squashing" by Bundy prior to Mania 2 felt. Not only was it better done, it felt a lot more important because Hogan was still champion, and also because the Heenan Family was behind it. As big as Quake was, he never saw the day when he was as scary and mean as Bundy. All the constant talk of tremors and Richter scales made him just another interchangeable gimmick in Vince's endless supply, and Jimmy Hart was a laugh-out-loud joke by then whose biggest claim to fame was being the Honky Tonk Man's head stooge. Nothing he dished out could really derail Hulkamania in my eyes, and I wasn't even a true mark by that time. Heenan and Bundy inspired dread; the only question about Quake was how long he'd last before Hogan put him away. All that said, this piece was effective in ways that all of today's elaborate video packages can't even hope to be. Excellent work.
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Even as the third-biggest face in the company, Jake is legitimately scary on the mic most of the time. I loved how he subtly waved Damian in Mean Gene's face just because he could. If he does stuff like this for a midcard feud with Bad News, I can't wait to see the Savage stuff once he turns in '91.
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Both parts of this vignette are extremely well done. Teddy and Gene are masters of this sort of stuff, and as hokey as it is, it doesn't really feel that way in contrast to some other vignettes we've seen on this set from various guys. Excellent job.
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I think this is the same ad that aired April 28 on SNME.
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Listening to this, I'm reminded that Liz actually handpicked Sherri to be her replacement, according to Sherri's shoot. She wanted someone who would work well with Randy, yet not jump all over him while she was sittiing at home. Sherri spends quite a bit of time talking about how Liz chose her, and how the two of them actually became close friends. (By the way, if I remember correctly, Vince suggested some singles matches between Liz and Sherri around this time, but Sherri turned them down because she knew that Liz wasn't a worker and didn't want to hurt her by accident.) Liz sure picked a winner, because Sherri in particular knocks this promo out of the park. As time goes on, I think she gets more into the "evil kingdom" gimmick than Randy does. Prichard does all right, but he's not in either one of their classes. I loved Vince going into apoplexy at the thought of Liz kissing Brother Love's foot.
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Now that Warrior's champion, he wants to set the standards that the rest of us normals will have to live by. Apparently, we're all supposed to speak in tongues, talk to our hands, and paint only half of our faces. Oh, and by the way, he's going to dispatch Rick Rude deeply into Parts Unknown. It's almost unfair to call Warrior the idiot here; these promos simply have to be scripted, and the real mental midget is the one who thought this shit would actually sound like human speech and talked Vince into letting Warrior deliver it on national TV. He deserves a huge part of the blame for derailing Warrior's run at the top, and I sincerely hope that he can sleep at night. Warrior already had two strikes against him: being almost totally unathletic and not being Hulk Hogan. He didn't need to sound brainless to top things off. If Vince still employed this clown (the writer) after watching him help to destroy Warrior's career, he should be ashamed of himself. But then again, Vince has built his entire career on being utterly shameless, so why should he feel any in this case?
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Rick tries, but his delivery's too straight here. It's almost like he's really selling Arrogance as a car care product. He needed to take lessons from Rude on how to deliver lines like these suggestively.
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This purpose of this segment seemed to be to blend serious Rude (new haircut, tougher attitude) with sleazy Rude (tights, hip swivels). The effect's a bit jarring, since we've seen nothing but serious Rude for weeks, but I guess a complete makeover was too much to ask for. Heenan's still as serious as a heart attack, though. I also kind of like the idea of ending the Rude Awakenings; they were a nice way to get over his sex appeal in the beginning, but the schtick was getting old by now. Besides, there probably weren't all that many young women willing to do it in the first place. Just eight weeks until SNME!
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Fantastic end-to-end action from all six men. They all wanted a piece of each other, and it showed. I've never seen a major pull-apart in the middle of a match before, but after reading the threads, I know what they were going for, and it worked beautifully; I can't wait to see the first Misawa/Jumbo singles match. Or the next six-man for that matter, as both men have picked a solid group of allies (which I know will rotate as time goes on). I can already see the difference in energy level from just a couple of weeks before, and I'm only viewing selected matches, not full televised cards and arena shows like some of you have. I appreciate the history lessons in some of the posts that help to explain the funk that AJPW was in at the beginning of the year, but it's over now for sure. I really can't rate this over the superb Hogan/Hansen or Vader/Hansen brawls, but number three on my Japan match of the year list with those two in front isn't a bad place to be.
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Okay, this was........something. First, out of all the things to have a problem with (and they are many), not giving the belt to Luger isn't one of them. Even in a world without Sting, even in a world where Luger would have gotten the belt here, they'd have had to audibilize and have Flair retain, even if it was with a bullshit finish like the one we got. Luger didn't actually work a match with a documented finish for almost another two weeks after this, when he defeated Flair by DQ in Pittsburgh (my hometown, by the way) on June 1. He was subbed for by JYD a few times, and was scheduled to compete on cards with no known results a few more times in the thirteen days between. If I could pretty much count on my new World champion missing my first round of TV tapings because of a legit injury, chances are I'd do whatever I could not to put the belt on him and worry about how that affected him in the fans' eyes down the road. That said, as long as they knew that Luger wasn't getting the title, did they have to screw him over this way? All this does is leave the whole issue between Luger and Flair unresolved and divide the fans, because even some of the little Stingers probably thought that Luger would win the belt here to set up a Luger/Sting dream match. Now, some fans probably wanted to see one last Luger/Flair match (probably an "I Quit" match) instead of Sting/Flair at the Bash, which is completely counterproductive, not only because Sting was going to win the title, but because the Luger/Flair feud, at least for the World belt, was completely forgotten after this. If they knew that Flair was moving on, have him score some type of screwy pin, then do whatever you needed to do in order to set up Sting/Flair. Other observations: 1. I'll buy that Gonzalez was 7"7' (whether he actually was or not), but there's no way in hell he looked like he weighed 450, even to the stupidest of marks. Three hundred, maybe a little more, but not 450. That was just an attempt to make him as big as Andre, and I thought WCW was supposed to be above that kind of thing. 2. If Luger really swore at the cameraman, I didn't catch it. But if he did, no wonder they didn't want him holding the title. Flair screaming "OH, SHIT!" while selling as he sometimes did was bad enough, but at least it was easily explained should they have cared to try. 3. I wonder why JR and Bob didn't try the most obvious way to explain Flair climbing the cage: making Luger climb up after him with his bad knee, thus weakening it. I guess Flair the coward made a better story. 4. If you ever wondered where JR got his WWE style from, you hear early vestiges of it here. "Patch me through to the cage guy! Somebody raise the damn cage! Get Ole away from the switch!" Unfortunately, he overdid it to the point of parody during the Attitude Era, but it works fine here. 5. Why leave Woman in the cage? I like the spot where they searched her, but if that was the only reason to leave her in, it was kind of stupid. 6. I noticed that Gigante didn't try to raise the cage by hand. That would have been a nice feat of strength to debut him with, even if he didn't join Sting in saving Luger. I noticed Sid's absence too; maybe he didn't want to get his nice new tux dirty, or maybe he had a softball game the next day and didn't want to risk injury.
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This is a good match that's ruined by the decision to give Percy a live mic. The minute that happened, this whole thing became about Percy and his desperation for Kerry not to get his hands on him instead of the Kerry/Borne feud that's still unsettled. It's almost to the point that I'd rather they'd just booked Kerry/Percy in the cage and let Kevin take up the Von Erich family issue with Borne, which is almost exactly what happened, come to think of it. Make no mistake; Percy's gold here, but his performance didn't need to happen in this match. Let the stuff with Borne ostensibly be settled, then run the postmatch with the loaded sock and Kevin's run-in. This splits off Kerry with Percy (or, more likely, someone of Percy's choosing other than Borne) and leaves Kevin, the better worker, to fight Borne. The aftermath was brilliant here, though, almost like whoever was booking knew that Percy was going to be the focus of the bout and gave Matt the postmatch to make up for it. He beats up three people, including a referee and a security guard, and looks every bit the killer heel doing it. You know then that despite the pinfall win for Kerry and the fact that he made Borne bleed buckets, this feud is far from over. Just brilliant. USWA Texas keeps on cooking!
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Thanks for the warning, Pete.
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I was able to get into this one a little more due to the great work on Dandy's shoulder by the rudos. I also liked the tecnicos (Satanico in particular) knowing that Dandy was hurt and trying to protect him. I didn't catch both parts of the third fall again; it takes away from the experience knowing that they can render two decisions at once and still not catching both of them, although some of it is due to the subpar camera work. I think I'm slowly but surely starting to get there on the trios matches, but I'm looking forward to the one-on-one bouts, which will no doubt be easier to follow (at least I hope so!).
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This one was worked a lot more like the Southern tags I'm used to, so I wasn't quite as lost, but it still didn't hit the spot. I don't know if it's the overreliance on flips and gymnastics instead of holds and strikes or the language barrier, but I'm still having a bunch of trouble with lucha. I can tell they're great athletes; great workers in the WWF/WCW sense (which is my baseline) not so much. I'm not likely to change my baseline either, so these guys will have an uphill climb, to say the least.