garretta
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Everything posted by garretta
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I agree that Jimmy's promo was excellent and heartfelt; you can tell that he's serious because he drops his accent. But the effect's ruined, because even Dave can't hide his laughter after the skit. When are they going to give up on Lawler being a heel in Memphis? The man's simply too much of a legend and he knows it, and so do the people. I can see making him a tweener if you want to put him in against someone who you'd really like the fans to cheer once his program with Lawler is done; there have been times this year when the crowd booed the King almost in spite of themselves (like when he beat up on Chris Champion) so you can get away with semi-heel Lawler for a while. But not for almost seven or eight months, and not against the nonentities he's been in there with except for Valiant, who's trying his damndest but is also almost completely shot. This run started, for those who may not have the 80s Memphis set, with a turn against Dundee and Mantel in the fall of '89, which led to Kerry coming in and going after the Unified title. But once they'd worked the MSC a few times, it was time to turn Lawler back, even if he stayed a heel in Dallas (which the Memphis fans wouldn't have known, apparently). Except for Valiant, he's had nobody at his level to work with him, and I don't need his promos to tell me that either. King Cobra, a fading Junkyard Dog, and a green-as-new-meat Mike Awesome aren't exactly the stuff kings are made of. He should have been fighting Tony Anthony and the Soultaker instead, with maybe visits from some of Akbar's Texas army like Gary Young, or maybe Terence Garvin (since no one would know that they're friends in Dallas). Hell, have John Tatum crash the studio one day and claim that Lawler's buddy Bill Dundee stole his girlfriend. Jerry could deny they were buddies, Tatum could call him a liar and slap him around a little, and we have a ready-made MSC main event. I'll be interested to see if this Snowman character freshens things up as much as the people on this board say he will. God knows the Memphis side needs it desperately.
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Nice short video about parts of the lucha experience in Mexico. I like that they used native music instead of rock like most other videos at that time did; it made the whole thing seem more authentic.
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I give the USWA credit for trying to spice up what would normally be a pedestrian series of bouts with some romantic intrigue, but no one did the "Beauty and the Beast" story better than Vince did with Randy Savage and Elizabeth. Still we get a satisfying payoff here, as Tessa has finally put up with enough of Tatum's abuse and costs him the Southern heavyweight title, then leaves with Dundee. Is it true romance for the Superstar and the lovely Tessa? Stay tuned!
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From what was on here (which is all we have to go by), David might as well have saved his time and energy buying those whips. When I sit down to watch a strap match, I want the straps to be used from start to finish. It might have helped alleviate my disappointment if the rest of the clip hadn't been markedly inferior to the three-fall match from TBS a month earlier, which itself was only really good in the second fall. I know Hayes was too good verbally to really bury, Buddy Jack was retired, and Gordy was in Japan full-time, but there had to be something they could have done with the Freebird name that was better than this. Thank God it gets better for Ricky and Robert as the year progresses.
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Did I hear the ring announcer right? Did this match actually last over forty-four minutes? Impressive for such a supposedly limited worker as Jimmy Valiant. What we saw was good, but Jimmy does a lousy job of selling unconsciousness while he's on the stretcher, to the point where Lawler has to use the rag twice. I always thought that if one of the guys could fight their way off of the stretcher in a stretcher match, the match continues. If that's not true in this case, I guess you could say that Jimmy woke up on the stretcher and knew he'd lost. Whatever the case, the rules weren't clearly stated in the few clips that we saw.
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Jeannie could have been a little smoother, but I suspect that will come with time. She fits really well with Austin, who just keeps getting better on the mic every week. Percy redeems himself for his slight heel tendencies early in the show by registering disgust with what Jeannie said and ordering Austin to get in the ring and wrestle. That said, his arguing with Austin while Jeannie was talking made it hard to hear her and took away from the segment slightly. Since Jeannie mentioned divorce number two, I suspect we'll see Toni before too much longer.
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Wow, this was uncomfortable to watch in 2015. I remembered Tatum as a pretty boy in the UWF and World Class, but he's an extremely believable psycho here, and we get more blood than we're used to on weekly TV from the posting he gives Dundee. Tessa gets physical with him trying to pull him off of Dundee, which is rare for women in an abuse angle. I wonder what Percy meant when he said that he'd better not stick his foot in his mouth again about this situation. Does anybody know? Most important of all, how did Jarrett's Southern title end up exclusively in Texas? I wondered why we hadn't heard about it on the Memphis side for a while. It almost seems like that was supposed to be Dallas's main belt, with Lawler and the Unified title coming in only sparingly, like the NWA World Champion used to.
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A bit of an odd start for a feud, but at least Kevin finally makes the set for more than a few seconds. How in the world did he get so marginalized, anyway? I know he was slowing down a bit by now, but he's done virtually nothing this whole year. I wonder if we'll see an alliance between Borne, Garvin, and Young before it's all said and done, perhaps even with Percy managing?
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Borne's promo makes a ton more sense than Kerry's, even though he's the one they call "The Maniac". I like how he was smart enough to apologize for slapping Chris because it didn't accomplish anything, which is a nice touch you don't see from most heels. Basically, he wants to fight Kerry because he wants a clean victory over the former champion to validate himself, and there's nothing wrong with that at all. Percy's trying to keep it business for now, even as Borne tries to sway him over to his side. As I said in the last post, this is going to be an interesting situation to keep an eye on.
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If Kerry had tripped over his words, etc. like Cox said, just in this promo, it wold have been one thing, but he's done it so often it has no dramatic impact. More than that, he visibly stops himself and moves his lips at least three times during the promo, as if someone had scripted him before he came out and he was desperately trying to remember what came next. In short, it's almost no different from any other promo he's cut this year, and that's not a good thing. As I said in an earlier thread, Vince's rigid scripting (which I think he was doing with certain guys by then) and use of a green screen can only help. I didn't think Percy came off expressly as a heel here, but it's tough to apply the rules of professional wrestling to what you think of as a close friendship, so he came off as a bit of a jerk regardless. Obviously there's more to come here.
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Thanks for the explanation, Loss. I'm still curious about what would have happened if Luger simply couldn't wrestle. They had no one else ready to challenge Flair at this point, remember.
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Great, great stuff here. A truly heartfelt tribute to one of the last vestiges of the old WCCW, with a cameo by Jeff Jarrett representing the Memphis side. What I liked most was that Marc didn't make this all about him, though no one could have faulted him if he had. He's in there pitching for the current angles right up to the end and encouraging the fans to have their normal good time. His message is that while he'll be leaving, the USWA will keep on, and that's something wrestling fans (and all people) tend to forget at times like these, when momentous change is affecting their lives. So long, Reverend Marc. I have a feeling that we're going to miss you just as fervently as your parishioners welcomed you, if the people you've been working with lately are any indication.
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Now the NAWA is running twice a week: one night in Dallas and the other in Fort Worth. Here's to progress! This may be the only promotion I've ever heard billed as an "Allegiance" rather than an "Association" or an "Alliance".
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We know that Austin's improving by leaps and bounds every week, but Jeannie has the makings of quite a bitchy valet, too. It's a shame that they were getting divorced right as Steve was making it big in the WWF, because I could see them involving her against Linda and Steph, plus giving Mr. McMahon the odd crotch shot or two. (She was the one who gave Steve the nickname "Stone Cold", according to at least one legend.) What a way for Marc to go out; having his chair destroyed in the middle of an angle. It fits, though. I caught the misspelling on the back of the chair, and it was most likely laziness rather than an editorial comment. I know that the purpose of this feud was to get Austin over and give him a leg up in the business, but even at that, Adams is coming off as whiny and slow-witted here. He needs to score at least a small victory before this feud gets totally one-sided and boring.
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Wow. Never let it be said that Dundee doesn't have a way with the ladies (or the men, for that matter). Can't wait to see how this one progresses.
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Kerry's best promo so far. If he could channel this emotion every time he stepped in front of the mic, we wouldn't spend most of our time either dreading his interviews or laughing at them. This partially explains why we got no new material from Lawler in his earlier promo; he (presumably) knew the match would never take place, so he felt free to say whatever he wanted, knowing that it wouldn't count for anything.
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One of the few times (if this promo is correct) that a town in the Memphis loop went with the program and cheered someone against Lawler during this heel run. That's the King's focus here, and he threatens to show the fans what fools they are by crippling Handsome Jimmy once and for all. The King mentions that Eddie Marlin is the promoter in Evansville. I know he was the matchmaker on Memphis TV and at the Mid-South Coliseum, but did he book some of the small towns in the loop as well?
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Nothing here that we haven't heard before from Lawler. It seems to me like there were no Texas babyfaces other than Kerry that were programmed with Lawler. I'm sure there was a one-off or two with guys like Chris Adams, but all we've seen since Jarrett took over Dallas as far as programs go is Lawler/Kerry, with other Memphis-based guys like Jimmy Valiant and Bill Dundee (whom I still consider Memphis although he's mostly been in Dallas lately) filling in occasionally. I know that not everyone can be programmed with Lawler at once, but it doesn't seem like the Dallas guys ever really got their chance to work with him.
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Chris looks and sounds more like a ten year-old than someone who's nearly twenty-one and ready to debut as a wrestler in a little more than a month (June 22). I don't think I'm looking forward to seeing him wrestle, to say the least. Borne could have been just as good a crazy heel for a major company without the Doink facepaint. He needed to sound a little less like Piper on the stick, but otherwise the tools were all there.
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Good point. It was probably a vacant lot or something similar.
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It only took one segment to change my mind. In a previous thread, I said that I was giving Ole the benefit of the doubt, that I didn't think that Flair calling Rocky King "boy" and threatening to make him unable to moonwalk on one leg, among other things, were done with racist intent, that they were just Flair getting heat as best he could like he would against any wrestler regardless of color. Then he opened his mouth again, and the benefit of the doubt vanished for good. The minute I heard the words "your black hero" in reference to JYD, I knew there was big trouble. Then he started in with going after Janet Jackson, and my stomach lurched. Not at the thought of him sleeping with an African-American, but at the knowledge that he was taunting JYD with it. As Pete said, he should be above this by a million miles. I can get the idea of JYD going on The Arsenio Hall Show and such, knowing that Arsenio is a fan and would no doubt have wanted JYD on his show if he would have beaten Flair, but the whole idea of Flair being dead-set against losing to a black man, or even of him disliking JYD for "personal reasons", was insulting not only to African-Americans, but to the Flair character. He's supposed to dislike those who can take what he has because they're good enough to beat him, period. Color's not supposed to enter into it, and hasn't up until now. He's never felt the need to insult Koko B. Ware or Butch Reed or Tony Atlas (three previous black challengers) in a racial manner, so why JYD, and why now? It's not like he's going to drop the belt to him, or even have a serious program with him. This is just filler until Sting's ready at the Bash, nothing more. Why didn't he stop it? He could have, and he was about the only one in WCW who could have. Surely the suits at Turner would have listened to him and told Ole to knock off the racist bullshit or else. What was Ole going to do if he refused, run high school gyms in Georgia? This was the only major organization left who would take him on as a booker, because he was done in the ring and everyone knew it. I guess Flair figured that since this wasn't a major program, it wasn't worth it to rock the boat, and JYD was probably grateful to be back on the big stage. Besides, he'd just finished working with Lawler, who was even more insulting and stereotypical. One last question: Where was Hank Aaron or whoever was in Hank's position at the time in the Turner organization? I can't remember exactly what Bill Watts said that got him branded a racist and fired, but it surely couldn't have been worse than this crap.
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I consider myself an intelligent enough person to know what racism is, and I didn't see patently racist behavior here as much as I saw wrestling heel behavior. With racist elements, certainly, but not racist in and of itself, and there's a difference. Flair's called white guys "boy" before too, and the stuff about not even talking to guys like Rocky King has as much to do with relative status as color. Besides. what the hell are the frazzled Horsemen supposed to do, say "Mr. Ritter, we believe that we're better wrestlers than you"? How does that get the crowd to boo them out of the building and/or want them to be hurt, which I assume is the intent here? Sorry, but until I actually see Ole in blackface with outsized white lips or hear Fiair going "Yassuh, boss" in the ring during promos, I'm going to assume that they're just normal heels doing what normal heels do to babyfaces regardless of color (which may at times include racist statements, granted), not the newest pledges to the KKK. I loved Flair's George Steele impersonation when he first saw JYD: "YOU! YOU! YOU! HEY! HEY!"
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Even having figured out what the surprise is from reading ahead, I don't see what's so racist about this quite yet. I have a feeling I'll find out soon enough, though.
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Well, look at it from WCW's point of view: Assuming that they waited to give Luger the finish until he got to Washington, suppose that they'd given it to him before and he decides not to show up. You don't have Luger, you don't have Sting, the Steiners are already losing to Doom, and Zenk and Pillman are already losing to the Midnights. Who's left to take Luger's place against Flair? If you're going to ask Rick or Scott or Pillman to do double duty, do you really want them losing once and getting screwed a second time? If you're not......well, as I said, who else do you throw out there? Do you ask JYD to get out of his street clothes and main event a pay-per-view with no buildup whatsoever? Do you do something really off the wall, like turn Sid out of nowhere? Now, let's say you're Lex and you know that you're going to look like a fool getting suckered by the Horsemen again. Do you risk permanent injury to that knee, even for a pay-per-view payday? Remember, if WCW fires you, you have the look that Vince goes crazy for, so as long as you can walk, you'll have a job somewhere. I'm not saying that WCW necessarily did the right thing by getting Luger out of the hospital without him knowing the finish (assuming that that's what happened), but I can understand their thinking. By the way, Luger sounds more articulate with a staph infection than he does when he's healthy. How weird is that?
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Interesting that JR seldom acts cowed by the Horsemen even at their most intimidating. Contrast that with Okerlund, who almost always goes to pieces if the heels so much as breathe too close to him. Can't wait for the surprise!