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garretta

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Everything posted by garretta

  1. garretta
    It seems that the King can't get himself booed no matter what. Here, he bullies poor stupid Ben Jordan into putting his title shot on the line, slices his forehead wide open with (ostensibly) his infamous chain, piledrives him after the bell while Valiant makes a halfhearted attempt to get in the ring (seriously, I've never seen a supposed lead babyface follow the referee's instructions so readily in a situation like this, so Valiant must have really been out of gas from earlier)........and gets the crowd chanting his name! Cox is right; who else did they have who could have turned the crowd against Lawler for more than a few minutes? There were only two people that I know of: Dutch Mantel, who was lower midcard in Atlanta at this time, and Bill Dundee, who Jarrett was trying to push as one of many replacements for the Von Erichs in Dallas. Obviously, Jimmy was their can't miss solution to the top babyface problem in Memphis, and now he'd missed horribly. I'm not even sure Hulk Hogan could have helped out here. The only other thing they could have done was not book Lawler on the Memphis side for a month or so; have him work exclusively in Dallas and send in promos saying that while Dallas may be a stinkin' rotten hellhole, Memphis is so much garbage that hell wouldn't take it when it was offered for free. He could still bill himself as "The King of Wrestling", but change his hometown to Cleveland, where he was actually born and whose sports teams he followed. That wouldn't have guaranteed him lasting heat either; more than likely, it would have just driven attendance into the gutter. But it was the only trick he hadn't tried yet other than piledriving Dave Brown on the studio floor at WMC.
  2. garretta
    Great short promo by Valiant here, though I couldn't understand most of the song he sang. Dave seemed to dig it, though.
  3. garretta
    The most amazing thing about this segment when you consider who's in it is that Piper only had one line. He gets a big hand when he beats the future Raven, who's really laying on the New York accent here. I thought he'd give all the money to the first contestant so the guy could take his kids to Disneyland, but he hands it out to the crowd instead, which seems more fair (although the guy gets at least one bill as a souvenir). Part of me wishes that this had led to something, although it's perfectly understandable why Rod went back to the WWF once Jesse left the booth. Loved Madril's references to the "bicepticles"!
  4. garretta
    Tony hasn't missed yet in these promos. Every one of them is right on target, and it continues to amaze me how he was such an awful talker during his eighties run with Vince. Could he (among others) have been told not to upstage Hogan or Snuka (or, going back further, Backlund)?
  5. garretta
    A teenager interviewing a video game character come to life. Ah, the joys of indy wrestling! I wonder if the guy playing Super Duper Mario ever became someone important in the business. (By the way, if I'd been in Dawna's shoes and a walking, talking video game character told me that he liked to play video games in his spare time, I would have cracked up too.)
  6. garretta
    I'm not sure that the girl was out there as Billy Jack's valet. She seemed more like she was out there to try to interrupt and annoy Don Coss for her own reasons, which we never found out. I hope we see more of Billy Jack as a heel later in the yearbook. The setup was definitely interesting, to say the least.
  7. garretta
    Billy Jack shows more personality in five minutes here than in his entire WWF run. Having heard of some of the history between him and the Olivers, it's not surprising to me that they were in the middle of the turn somehow. Unfortunately, it seems like it came too late to help Owen's business that much. I thought for a second that we were going X-rated when Billy Jack ripped off his Oregon tights. Thank God we didn't!
  8. garretta
    He was probably using this run as an audition for Vince and Turner more than anything else, Cox, even more than being ICW's champion. The problem was, it got him Saba Simba instead of a major run against Warrior or Sting. I think ICW was probably just thrilled to have someone with at least some name value to hold its belt and headline its shows. Who or what he wrestled or cut promos on was very much secondary.
  9. garretta
    Matt, Let's rank your answers: 6. Duggan- Nope. His entire character was based on patriotism, the two-by-four, and "HOOOOOOOO!" Who would be your new all-American hero if Duggan turned (and you know Vince would have had to have one other than Hogan)? Warrior as a heel denouncing the USA as "a country of normals" and Duggan fighting for its honor would have fit better. 5. Windham- Only because Vince had no control over his departure; he asked to leave because of Mulligan and Kendall's legal problems. In a world where they stay clean, Barry would have been ideal. Who knows, maybe Vince thought he'd be back once they were in the clear. Instead, he went back to Atlanta. 4. Demolition- Good thought, but they would have had to give the Harts the tag belts over Andre/Haku to make the timing work. Remember, Rude's challenge came right on the heels of Mania VI, which was two months before Crush even debuted, and the only reason Crush debuted in the first place was because Bill Eadie got sick, which no one could have foreseen then. They probably would have put Smash and Crush back with Fuji (as they eventually did in real life) rather than have Ax as the manager anyway. 3. Warlord- Not enough singles cred, plus the wrong manager, as no one took Slick seriously by then. 2. Quake- He was tailor made for Hogan, but he could have chased both Hogan and Warrior at the same time if they'd thought to book him that way. I'd have put him with the Brain if I was going to do something like this; he was the only credible male manager that they had left. 1. Barby- By process of elimination. Vince probably thought about this, but decided that Rude could get more out of Warrior athletically. It would have been a good secondary program, though.
  10. garretta
    Another tremendous promo by Atlas. He seems to have been slightly influenced by Bad News Brown, not so much in what he says, but how he carries himself. It's a look and sound that fits him well, and he'd have been a hell of a challenger for Warrior when he jumped to the WWF if Vince had chosen to go that route. (Okay, the matches would have been brutal, but the atmosphere would have been great).
  11. garretta
    Just the last few minutes, so there isn't really that much to say. The ref seemed to give Misawa extra chances to hold his arm up during Bret's chinlock. The WWF is the only promotion I know not to give time limit announcements during arena matches, and that goes all the way back to Bruno's day. I wonder why?
  12. garretta
    This may be the most emotionally invested I've seen Dusty in the WWF. Even during the Bossman feud he laughed and shucked and jived, but not here. I can only imagine how hot this same angle would have been if it had played out in mid-eighties Crockett. Little Jimmy Cornette beating up Baby Doll with a tennis racquet was bad enough, but Sapphire being assaulted by a pair of trained wrestlers? Savage and Sherri both would have been getting legit death threats. As much as I love Liz with Randy, Sherri fits the heel side of his character better because she's just as crazy, if not more so, than he is. While we're imagining, can't you see Sherri jumping up and down with glee in November of '86 as Savage tries to murder Ricky Steamboat with the ring bell? As for what we actually saw, Sherri laid in her beating on Sapphire a bit too much, but she was probably so thrilled at getting to do something resembling wrestling that she forgot herself a bit. Sapphire didn't appear to be really hurt, so it wasn't too bad. When promoters name their jobbers "Bobby Salsa" and such, it's a clue that they're not going to wrestle. I've heard of jobbers with names like that, most of them scheduled right before hot angles on TBS. I thought Jesse cared as much as he ever did. I liked his taunting Vince with Liz's "interference" at Mania VI (which Vince never got around to addressing one way or the other, for obvious reasons).
  13. garretta
    I would have liked to see Jake win the match, then throw the belt down on DiBiase's lifeless body, but that's just the Jake fan in me talking. His promo was probably the best and most pointed ever cut on the Million Dollar Man character; that's why it resonates like it does. Finally, someone gets to the heart of why this man is so hated and promises payback for all the little people, which he then delivers. Just tremendous. If you think about it, this is the end of Teddy's big run. He gets paid off for all of his bad deeds over the years (except for abusing Virgil), and is made to choke on his own money. Yes, he has the Million Dollar Belt, but that's just an expensive trinket. In all other ways, he's finished as a singles main event player, and it was probably the last great heel run that started and finished in the Hulkamania era. Hats off to a hell of a worker. I'm assuming that the bill Mary got was either autographed by the some of the boys and framed in her house or given to another lucky fan seated nearby.
  14. garretta
    Nice moment for the Giant, but in retrospect it should have happened earlier, when he could still work even a little. Maybe turn him at SummerSlam '88; run a similar miscommunication to what we saw here, only with Teddy or Virgil in Haku's place. Then run Andre/Teddy and Andre/Virgil, with Hogan or Savage being his partner in tag matches. Blow that off somehow at Mania V, and have that be the end for Andre as an active WWF competitor. I don't know about you, but I'd trade that for Andre's feuds with Jake and Warrior any day, especially Warrior. I think the Demos got a nice pop here, but as Pete said, the sound's off because of the music dubbing. It's kind of a shame the Road Warriors showed up when they did, because Vince felt the need to flush a perfectly fine team like the Demos down the toilet to accommodate them. I wonder if Hawk and Animal would have come in at all if they'd been ultimately booked to put the Demos over clean in the end, thus making the imitation superior to the original? Of course, Ax getting sick would have changed the whole dynamic anyway. Yeah, the Brain's not bumping like he used to. His days as a full-time "broadcast journalist" are coming sooner than almost all of us would like.
  15. garretta
    SNME sometimes served the purpose of bringing casual fans (those who just watched SNME, mostly) up to date on the current angles in the WWF, and that's the purpose Heenan served here. Basically, his short promo was an introduction to what we've all seen the previous few weeks. A beatdown would basically come out of nowhere and made no sense to the non-regular viewers they were hoping to pull in. As for Warrior, I think the disease he mentions is the power of the Warrior; basically, he's going to suck all the extra strength out of Rude's body and fill him with the power of the Warrior. Or something. I like the idea of Vince turning to Jesse to get the crap off of his shoes. They each look dapper in their Western outfits, too. I think the stuff with the horses was done in front of a green screen at Titan Towers, but I'm not sure.
  16. garretta
    I think they did script him, Cox. No way could he make up and remember all this bullshit on his own, especially for a network broadcast where everyone else was supposedly more tightly scripted than usual. If he was scripted, I'd like to meet the poor sap who did it. I want to shake his hand and ask him how he learned to think on such a higher plane than the rest of us mere normals!
  17. garretta
    From a rather ridiculous beginning, Jake pulls this feud out of the morass, framing their upcoming confrontation as a test of Bad News the bully's manhood. We took a little bit of a ride through Bizarroland to get here, I suppose, but we're finally where we need to be. Count me among those who liked Jake's apology to Mean Gene. You don't see wrestlers, even babyfaces, interact with announcers that way often, and it was nice to see it here.
  18. garretta
    I'll say this for Martel: he threw himself into this gimmick and made it work for him better than it ever had a right to. I wonder if that atomizer was filled with real perfume of some sort or just water.
  19. garretta
    There are times, rare as they are, when you can see through the Hulk Hogan character and into the soul of Terry Bollea, and his entrance for this piece is one of them. He looks genuinely touched to see all the fans still supporting him, and the smile on his face just before "Real American" switches off and we get down to business is as real as it gets for him. Both Prichard and Hogan are at their best here, with Brother Love caught off guard by the continued support of Hogan but as confident as ever that Earthquake will end Hulkamania for good. Hogan gives the fans the full treatment: poses, hand to ear, ripping the T-shirt, fiery promo. If only Vince hadn't felt the need to horn in on every silence, this segment might have been as close to perfect as the WWF got at this time. Brother Love instead of Percy/Paul Bearer as Taker's manager? Interesting for the reasons Pete mentioned above, but in the end, Prichard was probably seen as too valuable at Titan Towers. Besides, Percy (as I'll continue to refer to him once Taker hits the scene) added so much to the Taker character. Interestingly enough, they tried Brother Love as the manager of the Beverly Brothers when they first debuted, but switched them to John Tolos (Coach) after (I believe) just one taping.
  20. garretta
    The good promos from Rude and Heenan keep on coming, but I'm about ready for an answer from Warrior.
  21. garretta
    How else do you bring together two guys who really have no other reason to interact? I admit that this is rather cheesy for a beginning of a feud, but even the marks knew that neither of these two was ever going to be a serious contender for a belt again, so one way to start a feud was as good as another, I guess. I don't remember this pairing being nearly as good as it could have been.
  22. garretta
    Gee, that's a shame. If you guys ever do an errata set, that should definitely be on it, if you can find it by then.
  23. garretta
    Three winners in a row from Rude and the Brain. If I'm not mistaken, Rude had trained at least a little as a boxer in his younger days; that may be why he looks so at home on the speed bag.
  24. garretta
    They may have wanted to keep Curt and Lanny together even after Curt won the IC title at first, which would have made Lanny the man Beefcake would have had to go through to get a shot at the belt. If that had remained the plan, extending his feud with Beefcake would have made sense. As it turned out, the plans changed and this segment just seems pointless.
  25. garretta
    The announcement that Warrior's forfeited the IC title. Gee, what a shock! I like Cox's thinking here, but the most obvious candidate (based on the fact that he was starting a feud with Rude during the summer of '89) was Piper. The question is: Would Rod have let himself lose on pay-per-view to Hennig at Mania VI? We all know he didn't lay down in any fashion on a major card until Mania VIII, and that was at least partially because Bret was (distant) family.
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