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garretta

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Everything posted by garretta

  1. garretta
    Thanks for the correction, Pete!
  2. garretta
    Okay, so now we know why WCW wanted Robocop to be part of Capital Combat. But like Soup said, that didn't make it any less stupid. One other question: why put Sting's head on another man's body for this commercial? Wasn't he muscular enough for WCW? If not, I think we're beginning to see why his run on top failed, and considering how over he was, that would be a major disgrace in a business that's chock full of them.
  3. garretta
    What Sting lacks in elocution, he makes up for in charisma. He really may be the top babyface in North America right now; I guess we'll see throughout the rest of this yearbook how WCW screwed him up (and over). Yep, this has to be one of Tony's earliest assignments following his WCW return; he was at Mania VI in Toronto (I believe), although I couldn't tell you what exactly he did.
  4. garretta
    Flair's verbiage became predictable long ago, but he delivers it with such conviction that it's still compelling. Luger sounds a little better since he has a shorter time to talk. I guess that in his case, less really is more. I'm not sure that Woman was around to carry out her threat against Luger at Capital Combat; I know she was gone by the Bash, at least from Flair's corner. As for Pete saying that these promos were better than Hogan's and Warrior's before Mania VI, well, what promos weren't?
  5. garretta
    God love JR and Corny for actually trying to sell this as serious business instead of dissolving in hysterical laughter on camera. Maybe if this had happened in '87 when the movie originally came out, it would at least be understandable, if not excusable. But three years later? This was nothing more than trying to outdo Vince and failing miserably, which this company became experts at over the years. The highlight of the piece was Corny proclaiming Washington as a bastion of honesty and integrity one minute, then claiming that it's the only place in the world where Sting could pull off this whole sham because it's so crooked the next. How did WCW ever let him get away?
  6. garretta
    Corny starts us off on a weird foot by accidentally referring to "Princess Charles". It's amazing how far Woman's slid since she's hooked up with Flair. She was great as the flirtatious femme fatale looking to get a piece of the World champion; now she not only doesn't talk much, but when she does she sounds awful. I can't figure this out, and it's not as simple as not trying to outshine Flair, not that she could anyway. JJ Dillon was still highly effective as Flair's manager/second while working under many of the same limitations Nancy is here. Luger's not very good at all. Watch what happens after Corny tells him that he (Corny) has insurance. It seems like Luger was supposed to say something like, "Well, if you get in my face again, they're gonna have to pay off!" Instead, he totally fluffs the line, then just shrugs it off. Someone should have been working with this guy on his interviews day and night, or else they should have given him a mouthpiece. Paul Ellering was still around at the time, so he could have fit the bill nicely. Nice to see Arn back, and his return is probably why the MX-as-Horsemen idea was shelved. At that time, Ole was still considered an active member, and for the early part of their classic run in '86, they were a trio while Ole was hurt, so they figured that the group could get by until a fourth member was found (or, in Barry's case, returned.) Why was the Mothership three hours that night? Maybe to make up for some upcoming shortened shows due to Braves games?
  7. garretta
    This went just about as expected. Ole seems more and more like he's trying to hold back the inevitable reckoning that he knows is coming as soon as Sting's cleared to compete. As for seeing too much of Sting, better an injured Sting as face of the company than Luger, who'd already been turned twice and on his best day wasn't considered nearly as kid-friendly, which was at least somewhat of a consideration. Vince had Warrior to step in as number one face while Hogan was out; who did Turner have that was ready made to take up the lead face role from February 7 on? I have to admit, it may not have been the smartest move in the world to keep throwing Sting out there, since another accident like the one in Corpus Christi could have wrecked his career. But they didn't have anyone else to be their face of the franchise, so they did the best they possibly could.
  8. garretta
    Thanks, Ohtani. So there really was no excuse for Estrada to be booked as going back on his word. I wonder if EMLL had to issue many refunds that night, and also if the feud with Satanico continued.
  9. garretta
    The MX wouldn't have been nearly as interesting without Corny, so I'm glad this didn't happen. I probably would have formally ended the Horsemen right here, because Ole wasn't a full-time worker anymore without Arn and Flair didn't need the group. Even with the MX, they'd have still been one short, so it really wouldn't have made sense. Now, Flair and the MX with Corny using Woman as a valet has possibilities, but would Ole have completely stepped out of the picture as he would have needed to, at least on camera? Sid would have been an interesting fourth, and when Arn and Barry return, you could have the reformed Horsemen kick the MX out, which would have led to a three-way feud with the MX, Sting and his friends, and the Horsemen. Even if you held off till the fall, the MX seem like much better feud partners for the Horsemen than Doom. At any rate, this interview was kind of paint-by-numbers, right down to Corny's fruitless drooling over Woman, who was a much better promo when she was chasing Flair than she is now that she's caught him. JR could have done this better from the regular interview set.
  10. garretta
    I liked this one a lot, particularly the third fall where Estrada tries to tear Satanico's arm off, essentially trying to make him choose between saving his arm or his hair. Of course, the match takes its toll on Estrada too, as he misses several dives (at least one of them because of fan interference) that might have won the match for him. Finally, it's an arm-based pinning move, the backslide, that spells the end for Estrada, and it hurts Satanico to have to use it, as he continues to sell the injury in the postmatch celebration. My biggest complaint, and one that hurts the match, is the failure to fully follow through on the stip. Estrada's not even close to totally shaved when he leaves the ring, and by all appearances he's allowed to get away with it. If I'd been in attendance that night, I would have demanded a refund. I just hope he showed up on TV the next week completely bald. The weird thing about it is that the hair match, from what I've heard, is supposed to be lucha's "court of last resort" for hot feuds which don't involve masked wrestlers, the one match that's supposed to settle everything. Is Estrada's hair somehow important to his persona? If it is, why book a hair match in the first place and make him the loser? Great wrestling, but failure to deliver as advertised lands this match in the middle of the pack so far.
  11. garretta
    We have a new third place in my WCW poll for 1990. Just tremendous action, helped by superior commentary from Crispy and Terry. It's their commentary in part that makes the physical action mean so much; they constantly put over in the early going that Flair, as great as he is, can't possibly be ready for Morton because he's been training exclusively to face Luger. Sure enough, Ricky dominates the first ten minutes, and you begin to think that an upset is possible. But then, the tide turns, as Flair uses his mind games and some well-placed cheating to take the advantage and eventually escape with the fall. Yes, it's Flair making his opponent look perhaps better than he should. particularly since Rock 'n' Roll isn't even being pushed as tag title contenders at this point. But the narrative spun on commentary, plus the idea that every babyface in the company wants revenge for Sting and thus will be more aggressive than ever against Flair and the Horsemen, makes it feel right. I was a bit surprised that JR didn't call this one once I found out that it was being aired on the Mothership, even if it was on voiceover, but as I said, Chris and Terry were tremendous. I especially liked Terry telling the ref again and again to take action against Morton's illegal fists without making it sound like pro-heel whining, which I'm not sure even Jesse Ventura could have pulled off. My favorite line on the subject was: "That's a gross violation, Crispy. That means that (Morton's) broken that rule a hundred and forty-four times!" He sure wasn't exaggerating by many! Tremendous TV bout, the best of the year in any promotion so far.
  12. garretta
    Not bad, but the camera work and lack of ability to hear what was being said on the mic killed it; I couldn't even begin to hear the finish. The brawl didn't resonate with me because I didn't know anybody in it, and if the finish was as screwy as Kevin said it was, then where did they go from here? What other type of match is there after an "I Quit" match to settle a feud in this age before thumbtacks and sledgehammers? Drake's limb work was interesting strategy, but the whole thing with the balcony simply took too long; then again, maybe they needed to stall to fill time, since the only match that could have possibly followed it was Lawler/Kerry. Basically, if the front row can't see it, it's a bad spot. (I realize that takes out a lot of ECW's most death-defying stuff, but that promotion pretty much drowned in its own sleaze after a few years anyway.) Maybe a trained TV crew would have made a difference, but Goodheart almost certainly couldn't afford it. I'm glad I saw this as a curiosity, but it's nothing I'd watch again.
  13. garretta
    This one was a bit too chaotic for its own good. The rudos were fairly dominant, which surprised me a bit. I had a hard time following most of it, and it was obvious toward the end that they were building toward the Satanico-Estrada hair match, so I hope it's worth the hype. I agree that Villano's top tope arm drag looked amazing. I'm surprised that I've never seen anyone else try it as a finisher.
  14. garretta
    Of the three worst matches so far on this set, Lawler's been in two of them. When he's motivated to work hard and be nasty, there are few better, but when he's in the mood to take the night off, no one's worse. I agree with Loss that these matches make it hard to take Lawler seriously as a candidate for Greatest of All Time; we were debating Bret Hart in a similar vein earlier tonight, and he said the same thing about Bret's match with Rick Martel. But at least Bret did something, even if it wasn't top-of-the-line something. Lawler's done nothing in two matches on the set so far, and he was outbullshot (or whatever the plural of bullshit is) by Jimmy Valiant in another. His best bouts were the squashes of Ben Jordan and Ken Raper when he was Hurricane Kingfish for those two shows on WMC and destroyed everyone but Dave Brown. Otherwise, he's been total garbage in the ring. Kerry wasn't good in this match either, but he at least tried. This supports my theory that Lawler simply didn't care to perform much outside of the Memphis loop, which begs the question of why he even bothered to travel at all. I've heard for years that he wasn't very good in the WWF either, and he was old hat in the booth back in the late nineties when I used to turn Raw on every once in a while. He may be the ultimate "horse for a course", so to speak. I plan to get the 90s yearbooks through 1995, so we'll see if he keeps proving me right as the years roll on.
  15. garretta
    Their goal was to do enough to keep the fans entertained, Charles. Even you admitted that the crowd was into this (which they were), so they accomplished their objective. To survive in the WWF, you had to be in shape to meet the travel schedule first and foremost. You could get away with working bad matches, but you had to show up to get paid. I've seen quite a few interviews that talk about guys being asleep in the dressing room before bouts due to exhaustion, and I've seen other ones that admit that the match was the last thing on their minds on certain nights. Get in the ring, do a few moves, get to the finish, and get ready to travel. Besides, if all the fans really wanted to see was Hogan, and in a lot of cases he'd already been on before intermission so he could travel or go back to the hotel to get ready to party, they were probably working in front of dead crowds anyway. So what did a one-star or five-star match matter if nobody gave a damn? And how do we know that the Crockett guys cared any more on every single show they performed? We may like to think so, but I'll bet that even Ric Flair took an occasional night off just because he could, not to mention the times when he was sick or injured. They didn't know that so many of their performances would be dissected by nerds like us, and if they had known, I doubt that their approach would have changed one whit. At any rate, this was a typical WWF midcard match. It featured some nice moves, some weirdness on commentary (Lord Alfred and Hillbilly Jim talking about Hillbilly's possible trip to Europe could only happen during one of these bouts), and didn't have much of a finish. The draw was a bit weird considering that Bret would be back with the Anvil for a fuil-time tag run beginning at Mania VI, but Bret was a last-minute sub for Piper (according to Graham Cawthon), so maybe that was the original finish and they just didn't bother to change it. Also, Graham has this match timed at 21:36, but on this disc it lasted just over fourteen minutes. Was the version we saw clipped, or could Graham have gotten this match confused with another one?
  16. garretta
    This match actually put the 3/23 Dandy/Azteca bout (which I'd watched first) into perspective a bit. I'm not sure who the booker was, but if the boys did this on the fly, it shows their improvisational genius. Azteca not only feels slighted because Texano and Dandy want him to step out of the match, but then has to watch Dandy blow the whole thing by tombstoning Estrada, which he knows perfectly well is illegal. I'm sure they've done this angle in the States at some point somewhere, but not off of an unplanned bump. The action was pretty good, especially since the wrestlers had to compose themselves in order to continue with the match after Pierroth almost killed himself, but the booking overshadowed it, at least for me. This easily beats Flair/Luger for Best Booking Save In The Face of Potential Disaster so far in 1990. Excellent job by all.
  17. garretta

    Matches of the month

    garretta replied to Loss's topic in 1990

    Top three NWA matches through February: 1. Flair/Luger (WrestleWar): A true big-match atmosphere and a memorable, if cheap, ending. This match is a shining example of making booking salad out of booking disaster. 2. Midnight Express/Rock 'n' Roll Express (WrestleWar): These teams had faced each other thousands of times, but you'd never know it from the match. Tag match of the set so far. 3. Flair/Eaton (down from #1 in January) Top three Japanese matches: 1. Hansen/Vader (2/10): Leon almost loses an eye, but doesn't take a backward step. Could have been even better without the eye incident, and that's saying something. 2. Liger/Sano (1/31) 3. Saito/Zbyszko (2/10): The title change alone makes this memorable, as the Japanese crowd gets to salute one of their own. Larry Z brings his A game, which didn't happen too often in the States. Overall top three through February: 1. Flair/Luger 2. Hansen/Vader 3. Garvin/Valentine (barely hanging on over MX/Rock 'n' Roll)
  18. garretta
    I didn't feel this one. Then again, I've watched every match on the Lucha 80s set plus the two or three on this yearbook so far, and I have yet to get into more than one or two. Nice gymnastics, but give me Hillbilly Jim stripping Mr. Fuji to his boxers in one of Vince's tuxedo matches instead, and I'm being dead serious. I know it's an awful match, but it has Finkel doing ring announcements and Gino and Bobby to talk me through it, things I can understand without thinking too much. With this stuff, I know what the individual moves look like, but they come together in ways I can't begin to figure out. I'll keep trying with some of the rest of these, but I don't hold out much hope. Then again, the penny dropped at least a little with shoot style after a while, so it's not impossible that the same could happen here.
  19. garretta
    So instead of an angle that would have reestablished the Midnights as a truly dangerous team, we get the hackneyed "steal the belts because we feel we're the champions" stuff which lots of heel teams have pulled over the years and never leads to anything because the faces always steal the belts back? That's a real waste. I can't even figure out how JR and the other announcers could ignore something like that without looking stupid, because I'm sure they were asked about it. Yet another promotion that banked on wrestling fans' willingness to be gullible for the sake of entertainment and got away with it. The match basically existed to set up the angle, but it was good while it lasted. Zenk and Pillman continue to look fresh and exciting, and it's a shame that their run was so short, because they're really over with the people. The Midnights look as good as they have in years too; they weren't bad babyfaces, but they're in their element as heels, much like the Horsemen (as a group, at least). Can't wait to see more between these two teams!
  20. garretta
    Another Memphis special deep in the heart of Texas. I'm surprised Marc went to those lengths to sell one of Valiant's kisses, being a future man of the cloth. As Charles pointed out above, these two have quite the good "nothing" match, with the nothing done so well that it feels like quite a bit. Boogie Woogie almost meets his bullshit match in Terrence Garvin, whose character is much more suited to a cornerperson/manager than to a commentator. Billy Joe contributes his share to the fun by trying to sing Jimmy's theme song, then we have a brief slugfest that ends with Terrence jumping in from behind for the DQ. I was surprised that the fans of Texas took so well to Jimmy, but it's good that they did, because otherwise this match would have been murder to sit through. As it is, it's a neat way to kill ten minutes.
  21. garretta
    The biggest takeaway I have from this match is that the crowd was still as dead as in the other bout we saw from this card. It was basically a showcase for Perro's blend of skill and rulebreaking, and I'm honestly surprised that Hamada would book himself to not only lose two straight falls, but to look so weak doing it. Maybe that's why we don't see too much more from this promotion. These two bouts were interesting as snapshots of something different, though.
  22. garretta
    Fine introduction to Japanese-style lucha libre. It was worked more like a regular Japanese wrestling match that I thought it would be, but considering that I'm still not sure about lucha as a style, that's not exactly a bad thing. The crowd didn't seem really into this, but that could be because it's a relatively new promotion. Looking forward to seeing more.
  23. garretta
    Other than the botch, this was just nice. I'll be interested to see the historical progression between these two as the year goes on.
  24. garretta
    The purpose of this match was to show that Cactus Jack could actually wrestle and hold his own with the good workers in the NWA, and it was achieved. This is the first time I've seen Mick work a match that's mostly holds, and he acquits himself well. Gilbert's a tad bland as a face, which most of us already knew going in. I liked the discussion of offensive and defensive wrestling from JR and Gordon. I know some people prefer that JR would say nothing that isn't the calling of a move, but what sports announcer doesn't digress from time to time? And this wasn't even a digression; it helped get over that Cactus Jack actually had some skills, which is the whole point of this match in the first place. Fir someone who at times didn't come across as comfortable working with a color commentator, Gordon is a superb one himself. Not a contender for Match of the Month, but a solid bout that did its job well.
  25. garretta
    Tully was the star here, no doubt about it. I wonder if he wouldn't have gotten the belt in Larry Z's place if he'd come in a bit earlier and established trust with Verne. Agree about Tully and Enos working well as a two-on-one team against Peterson; that segment was the highlight of the match. I know the crowd went crazy for Baron slapping the claw on Tully, but if you're going to have him interfere, why not have Zbyszko (who I'm assuming was at ringside as captain of his TCS team just like Baron was) do the same? At least have him interfere first so the Baron's spot can be justified as "turnabout is fair play". And did Baron need to interfere three different times? I thought that was Heyman in the heels' corner until I remembered the TCS and that Larry was the heel team captain.
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