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garretta

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Everything posted by garretta

  1. garretta
    Soup hit the nail on the head; at least Mick and Miss Bang Bang did the best they could with Lost in Cleveland, and Kathy wasn't too bad either once she got the hang of it. Eddie in ECW reminds me so much of Lawler outside of the Memphis loop it isn't funny; neither one gives the slightest damn about anything except indulging their juvenile sense of humor. If anything, Eddie's worse than Lawler because he's supposed to be ECW's top heel, while Lawler's mostly being treated by the WWF as a broadcaster who mouthed off to the wrong person (Bret) and is about to get his ass kicked for it. While they're at it, they can get rid of Sulli too. Not for the joker Eddie supposedly hired, but for someone who seems like they care about what they're broadcasting. The indignant host bit is a staple, but Sulli's not a good enough actor to subtly put over something while appearing to bury it. He just seems like he's mad at Eddie and would rather not be around him at all, period. I suppose he could improve with time, but why not just hire someone who can do the job better right off the bat? And what's his fixation with full names anyway? I don't think he's addressed someone by their first name only in any segment we've seen on the set so far. The guy whom Eddie supposedly hired looks a lot like a Gilbert relative; same hair, same glasses, similar face. I don't know what they were trying for with the voice; it was probably either drunkenness or mental retardation. Of course, if the guy had legit problems (which I doubt), then all the credit in the world to both ECW for selecting him and himself for having the courage to go on camera when others in his position may not have.
  2. garretta
    I hated Lawler's promo. He doesn't really seem to be taking the match seriously, and his cousin Wayne Ferris does a much better Elvis than the poor sap they had trading jokes with him. I much prefer the Memphis side of the feud to this; Lawler's in his element, Bret's a much better invading heel than Lawler, and Vince is actively involved and doing great pre-Mr. McMahon heel promos. Here, Lawler's side of the ffeud is treated like a minor speed bump for Bret on the way to better things. Bret's promo was short, sweet and fiery. Not awe-inspiring, but plenty good enough for what it was, especially the part where he promised to mutilate Lawler, which he hasn't done in Memphis yet. I hope we see Stu and Helen, although Stu always looks like he doesn't quite know what to do with himself at a WWF pay-per-view. I've watched all the USWA promos leading up to their two big matches except for one, and I've noticed that while they've mentioned SummerSlam in passing, they're not promoting it at all. There's no "Call your cable operator and see the King try to take Bret out twice in two days" or anything like that. I understand wanting to set your own match up as the ultimate confrontation in most instances, but to all but ignore what by any measure is the bigger of the two bouts coming up between the two men is baffling at best and inexcusable at worst (unless, of course, you're Lawler, know you're losing, and don't want your fans to see Bret kick your ass from Auburn Hills to Canada). By the way, I honestly don't remember the result of the SummerSlam match, so if I'm wrong, don't tell me; I want to see it unfold for myself. Nice to see JR on ​Raw​; was this a live show? If it was, we know Vince was at the MSC tripping Lawler from ringside. I'm surprised he'd miss a live ​Raw ​just to do that, though. EDITED TO ADD: He didn't; this was a one-hour rerun of their annual SummerSlam preview show which had aired in full the night before, not a ​Raw. ​No wonder Vince was free.
  3. garretta
    Seeing Stan in the States without a crapload of chew all over everywhere automatically makes this one of my top three Hansen moments of all time. The promo itself wasn't the greatest, but it was fine for how short it was. I liked Stan saying that he'd forget about the match until Terry called him the day before, which is what I guess passes for a joke coming from him. I also liked him pointing out that although both he and Terry had fought Abby all over the world, they'd never fought him together, which makes this match unique. What a simple but effective way to sell a big match. I just hope it made the set.
  4. garretta
    I was aware of that tagline, Pete, but I didn't know either promotion was marketing to so-called "smart" fans to the extent that they were. Acrually, I thought maybe Paul was taking an inside shot at Corny based on their feud in WCW. Thanks for the info!
  5. garretta
    Not a lot new here, but it's a nice little recap of the things that have been going on in Corny's career. It's also a way to make Bossman's presence a bigger deal than it might have been otherwise, although any former (or current) WWF Sperstar showing up on an SMW card was probably a huge deal anyway. Corny puts Bullet Bob over as a threat much more here than he does in other promos, actually allowing for the possibility that Armstrong's Army just might prevail if Bossman doesn't come through. In a day and age where wrestlers are already losing the ability to put their opponents over as legitimate threats, this is a breath of fresh air and something that other wresters would have done well to copy. I don't know how Vince could have worked it, or even if Bullet Bob would have wanted to, but I'd have given anything to see an Armstrong appearance or two at a Raw​ or on ​Superstars to continue his feud with Corny. If they'd really been on top of things, we could have had Bullet Bob as a guest cornerman for the Steiners at SummerSlam. Again, he may have declined even if he'd been asked, but Vince and his people should have at least made the effort.
  6. garretta
    I didn't really like Eddie here, even though it's nice to actually see him hyping a match. This still isn't the Eddie who was so great in Memphis and Mid-South; he's not big enough to be promising to rip Terry Funk's arms out or cripple Stan Hansen, king or no king. He should ​have been talking about hiding behind Abby and about how being king means never having to lay hands on Texas inbred trash like Stan and Terry. I'll be glad when he's gone; everything I hear from him reinforces the notion that he should never have left Memphis. Paul sounds more like Paul Heyman, ECW owner than Paul E. Dangerously, wrestling manager, and the change is a positive. While I enjoyed Paul on the mic as a mouthpiece and broadcaster, it was as the owner of ECW where he was at his verbal best. He really believed in ECW, even if few others did at first, and his passion comes through the screen, even at this early date. I'm not sure about the shot at SMW, especially since I don't think it was syndicated on the East Coast at all, but the rest of this promo was excellent work.
  7. garretta
    This is the kind of stuff Mick should have been doing instead of the Lost in Cleveland garbage. Just have him send in videotapes week after week promising revenge on Vader, starting out low-key and serious and then ramping up the intensity until it boils over as it did here. It's a simple formula that's been copied a thousand times, and that's because it works. I liked Mick admitting that he was a little jealous of the fear that Vader puts into young wrestlers' hearts. He's not only fighting for revenge, but for his reputation as the most feared man in wrestling, which should make his eventual showdown with Vader even wilder than their previous two matches, if that's possible.
  8. garretta
    Flip the matches around- the World title match at the Clash, followed by the tag match on WCWSN- ​and we might have something. The Clash is supposed to be bigger than ​WCWSN​ even in this new era, after all. They'll probably do a few teased dissension spots in the tag match, but even with those the Kongs should be no problem. Were they even heard of again after this? God bless Harley, he's gone above and beyond during his managerial run, both with Luger and Vader. But if you're WCW and he's your main antagonist for the NWA World champion at his age and with his physical problems, it shows how much you think of both Flair and the NWA World title. Honestly, it's getting kind of hard to watch him having to bump and take punches like he still does, though he doesn't look half bad. Still, he should probably be retired to a commissioner's role or something similar, especially since Vader doesn't need him; he's an above-average talker in his own right. I read somewhere that he was Leon's real-life babysitter on the road, but that doesn't mean he has to be taking bumps anymore, certainly not on behalf of a tag team that I'd honestly never heard of until I sat down to watch this angle unfold tonight. (As an aside, I liked him admitting that he hated for people to put his hands on him when he was champion, then shoving Flair anyway. Only a former wrestler with Harley's reputation would do something like that and expect to get away with it.) How are we counting NWA title reigns, exactly? I've always thought that Flair added his WWF World title reigns to his NWA ones to make nine total World championships, so he should be at eight NWA reigns, not ten. Does that make nine Harley's record in the eyes of WCW, then? I know there was a back-and-forth between the two of them in Australia that wasn't originally acknowledged but later was, so maybe that was it.
  9. garretta
    I thought for a second that we were getting Flair-Sting for the NWA World title at the Clash, which would have been excellent. No such luck, as instead we get Harley seemingly baiting Ric into a confrontation with his newest team and Sting coming out to help him. Maybe if the Awesome Kongs had had a bit of build that actually made the set I would have cared. As it stands, not a chance. The outfits the Kongs were wearing looked a lot like the furry getup that the Barbarian wore dutring his singles run with Heenan in the WWF. If one of the Kongs is Barby (who used to be known as Konga the Barbarian), I at least partially retract what I said above.
  10. garretta
    Flair only promoting another editiion of ​AFFTG ​was wrong. He should be in the ring at the Clash, although with Barry presumably out of the mix it's hard to think of who they could put him in there with. Maybe we'll find out something about that soon. I still haven't seen Roma actually wrestle as a Horseman yet (I haven't watched either July match featuring him, since I don't really have time for long matches at this point), but he stinks as a talker when compared to both Arn and Flair. The standard heel bluster doesn't do it when you're a Horseman; you have to have a style. It can and should be a different style from the other members of the group, but there has to be one, and there isn't with him. He really didn't do much talking in the WWF (The Stallions weren't pushed for long enough, and Slick and Herc did the talking for Power and Glory), but a spot in the Horsemen isn't the place for on-the-job training. Arn needs only one good line to make this memorable: "The only way we're not winning those belts is if you (the Blonds) kill us dead!"
  11. garretta
    This was shown after​ the SummerSlam match? I thought it was weird that match clips of Luger-Yoko were included when they supposedly hadn't faced off in a match yet. Count me as another one who doesn't understand why Vince pushed Luger to the extent he did if they knew in advance that he wasn't getting the title. It was such a waste of resources that could have been used to push Bret. (I was going to list some other guys who could have gotten this push if it wasn't for Luger, but there weren't any others except for Taker, who was up next.) I get that the "Real American" push had worked for Hogan, but that was because he squashed Sheik like a bug when the moment of truth came. I've read a thread over at Kayfabe Memories which suggested that Hogan should have chased Sheik NWA-style for six months to a year before finally winning the belt, and I'm here to say that if that had been the plan, he'd have homesteaded in Japan by the summer, because the fans would have turned on him like they turned on Luger after this. Under the circumstances, Yoko had ​to lose the title here, even against Vince's so-called better judgement. This video would have been the fitting cap on a Luger title win, sappy as it was. After what ended up happening, it was just another symbol of Vince's total disregard for what his fans wanted, especially after he ​was the one who told them they wanted Luger instead of Bret or Savage in the first place. The main vocals of "Together" were done by a female, although I seem to remember a male singer in there somewhere too. It sounded a lot like Michael Bolton, but Vince probably didn't have the money to pay a big star like him by now. Were the kids on the bus Luger's own? I know they showed a lot of kids in the video, but I doubt they would have let strange kids actually travel on the bus. That was a cool way for them to see America if nothing else.
  12. garretta
    Nothing really new, but the tried and true is still more than enough for right now. It still amazes me that Lawler's able to reconcile his two different sides so well for the Memphis public, because not only is one face and the other heel, but their personalities are a hundred and eighty degrees apart: working-class hero with a bit of a mean streak in Memphis, pompous ass and nearly complete coward in the WWF. Thiey sound different, work different, and even look a little different. Then again, so does Vince. I loved Dave's reaction to Lawler promising to give everyone their money back if he can't beat Bret, who just might be more of a test than Paul Neighbors. I realize that this would have been impossible to do for a pay-per-view, but I'd have liked to see Bret make a similar promise for SummerSlam. Maybe they could have limited it to the greater Memphis area, since it was there that Lawler made his original promise. The green screens are looking good, even if they're a bit out of place in Memphis. To be honest, both the USWA and SMW aren't that far away from the Big Two production-wise, although part of that's due to the WWF scaling back so much. I know we probably won't see this, but since this MSC card is on a Sunday, can they please bring Dave in to call it? There's no other promotion ever that's had such a dropoff between their TV and their arena footage, and it's almost entirely due to the utter void of incompetence that is Corey Maclin.
  13. garretta
    I get the feeling that the fireball was to have been the finish, but Lawler piledrove Neighbors once or twice too often and legitimately knocked him out. Lighting the neckbrace on fire was a good save under the circumstances. I hionestly thought that they may have been setting up a one-off between Lawler and Patterson, and even at Pat's age he looks like he could have pulled off at least a short match. He took a nice bump into the post, that's for sure. Vince looks so much more realistic here than he ever did as the "Genetic Jackhammer" or whatever bullshit name he called himself. He was still arrogant and evil, but he didn't feel the need to actually compete with the wrestlers on an equal basis. His punch looked good for a noncombatant who was supposed to be angry enough to actually take a swing at a wrestler, but no one, not even he, had any doubt that if he'd done more than trip Lawler they'd have had to find a second stretcher to take him out of the MSC on. If Mr. McMahon (the character) had confined himself to stuff like this, plus of course the occasional round of evil machinations, he would have been a hell of a lot more palatable. He only needed to put the fox in the henhouse once in a while, not go on a killing spree, shoot the hens dead and burn the feathers in the city dump. He got a great reaction here, as the Memphis fans wanted to see him humiliated and sent back to Stamford with his tail between his legs. If he got that reaction again after, say, 2001, I'd be shocked, yet he and his family are still the driving force behind every TV episode to this day. And don't use USA Network/NBC Universal as an excuse; there are other outlets, including his own network, that he could move his programming to if he wanted to get off-camera completely in spite of their wishes. But he's trying to recapture the magic he created on nights like this, and if what I've read for the last few years is any indication, he's failed miserably at least 99.5% of the time.
  14. garretta
    I think the crowd was fine here, considering that this whole thing was a setup for a match that they would never get to see, even on TV. Vince is already showing that he knows how to perform in front of a crowd, and he sounds a bit more like Mr. McMahon than an announcer. Since this is a WWF taping and Lawler's doing his usual whiny heel schtick, he gets a positive reaction. I liked that someone finally got the last word on Lawler when he tried to use the "Whopper" line. The first time or two, it was funny. Now it's just another clichéd piece of business. I noticed that Paul Neighbors is never mentioned by name, which I don't understand. If this was for the Memphis audience, who would definitely know exactly who he is and that he's slowly been going heel for months, why does it matter if the WWF audience knows who he is or cares? I'm guessing that the 8/23 ​Raw ​was taped in advance, since Vince certainly wouldn't have missed a live Raw ​just to be a ringside guest at the MSC. I've also noticed that even in the USWA, Vince isn't known as the owner of the WWF. I wonder if not acknowledging just who he really was was a condition that Lawler agreed to in order to get Vince to come to Memphis. Finally, I noticed that Lawler's in the WWF crown and robe rather than his Memphis crown and coat, which I'm assuming he owns by now. What's the matter, Kingfish, did it get lost in the laundry by mistake?
  15. garretta
    You have to wonder if soimething went wrong between here and SummerSlam which changed Vince's outlook on Luger that we still don't know about. The explanation that Vince simply wanted Luger to chase the belt for a while longer just doesn't hold water after seeing this. If ever an ending was telegraphed, it was here. Luger looks like the most confident man in the world, even more than Yoko (who was legit scary here). They wouldn't have hammered the "just one shot" thing so hard if they'd meant there to be an honest title chase. My personal guess (and it's just that) is that Vince or someone close to him found out about the spot Luger had put WCW in while he was champion there with only working so many dates and the shameful way he dropped the belt on the way out and was bound and determined that it wouldn't happen to the WWF, which I can't blame them a bit for. Why they even pushed Luger like this if I'm right is beyond me, though; If all they wanted was one valiant but failed try, they should have kept Duggan around (I think King of the Ring was his last WWF event). At any rate, the story here (besides Luger looking more like Flair than Ric has in quite a while) was Corny. He got off so many good lines that it's impossible to list them all. I'm torn between two favorites: him telling Vince "Stick with me, kid, I'll get you through this." and his ending to the rant about paid WWF interpreters screwing Yoko: Jack Tunney: How dare you! Corny: Oh, I dare, all right. And he (presumably pointing to Fuji) does too! For those of you who haven't seen this and thought Corny might be muzzled by the WWF, you're in for a pleasant surprise. There hasn't been this effective a heel manager in the WWF since Queen Sherri. I only have one problem with the Fuji-Corny arrangement: Fuji's been in this country for twenty-some years (if you count from his first WWF appearance and forget that he's really Hawaiian), has had managers with excellent command of English like Ernie Roth, Captain Lou Albano, and Freddie Blassie, plus managed the longest-reigning WWF tag champs in history for at least part of their reign, and now ​he can't understand the language enough to help Yoko? Suspension of disbelief, my ass. That excuse is used way too often to explain stuff that simply had no business being booked.. Why couldn't they simply do what they did when Blassie wanted to get off the road and have Fuji sell half of Yoko's contract to Corny? That way Fuji can wind his career down gracefully, yet still make certain shots that Corny can't due to SMW conflicts. Corny could still do the talking, and you could really play up the American-Japanese "merger" aspect of the deal. As a bonus, since Fuji lives in the Smoky Mountain area, he could do some pretapes and TV tapings as an "advisor" to Corny and his crew if he chooses. If not, there's still the threat of guys like Yoko and (later) Crush as extra enforcers for Corny if his big mouth gets him in trouble back home (which it always does). The point is, when a promotion has many possible ways to tell a story and chooses the one that insults the intelligence of longtime fans, it shouldn't be excused with "suspension of disbelief" and a shrug; the promotion in question should be hammered for it, even if it is ​twenty-three years after the fact. I thought sure there would be a confrontation at some point, either between Luger and Yoko or Yoko and Savage, who was quick to jump into protective mode for Luger, Then again, knowing Luger I doubt he would have worn a nice suit like that if a brawl had been booked. I also doubt Heenan would have been in the ring, as protective as he was of his neck.
  16. garretta
    Interesting that Jeff got in on the Helen Hart bashing, albeit briefly. It's odd to see that part of the feud carry over, but with the way Bret's been acting toward the USWA fans, you could almost say he deserves it. I'm surprised that Lawler didn't mention his costing Bret the WWF title the night before as well when he interfered in the cage match. Maybe he wanted to keep it simple for the Memphis audience or focus on his own accomplishments, but I would think he would have used that to show that he's already gotten part of his revenge on Bret, with the rest to come at the MSC. Lawler sounds just like he does in the WWF when he talks about New York City, which is just fine. I love that he's not trying to be all apple-pie and sweet in front of the home folks, most of whom undoubtedly catch his act on ​Superstars​. Does anyone think that Dave could have been a fit in the WWF if he'd ever wanted to leave Memphis? I don't think he's bombastic enough to do play-by-play, but he'd have been a great replacement for Mean Gene, or at least better than Todd Pettengill.
  17. garretta
    I didn't know they ran Hall-Michaels this soon, let alone twice in twelve days in metropolitan New York. I also didn't know that Nash talked this soon. All three men really seem into this, much more than the similar Bret-Yoko interviews, which sounded like they could have been done separately and spliced together except for a couple of lines. It's interesting that they made such a big deal of Hall and Shawn being friends. We all know how close they were offscreen, but they never ​interacted onscreen while they were both heels. I have a feeling that Vince has transferred Flair's association with Hall over to Shawn for purposes of this feud, as if the marks couldn't remember what had gone on seven months ago just before Flair left. The stuff about Knicks coach Pat Riley talking to Nash was a neat little inside reference to Nash's real-life basketball career, although if you didn't know that he'd already played basketball you could still buy it due to his height. This is the type of stuff that Gene brought into these segments like no one else in the WWF, and that's why he's one of a kind. I can buy an occasional double main event, but a triple? That's too many "main events" for one card. Gene didn't even tell us what the third one was. If I had to guess, I'd say Steiners-Shrinkers. By the way, Hall won the match on a reverse decision after Curt came out to protest Shawn's apparent pinfall win. Shawn and Nash attacked both Hall and Curt afterward, laying them out with spike piledrivers. This didn't lead to a tag match on Long Island, but since MSG and the Meadowlands were so close by, they may have settled the issue at one of those two arenas instead. EDITED TO ADD: There was no tag match in the New York area, but Curt and Nash had a singles bout at MSG on 9/25. Curt won by DQ when Rick Martel interfered.
  18. garretta
    I didn't mind this video as a one-off, but if this song had replaced "Pomp and Circumstance" as Randy's entrance song, it would have been a different story. I can't exactly explain it, but this type of song is beneath Randy after all he's accomplished, although to his credit he hams it up just like you'd expect. The footage is nice to see too, including the clips featuring guys like Hogan and Martel who aren't even with the company anymore. They even show a few seconds of the Mania III match with Steamboat. No sign of either Liz or Sherri, though. (Amazingly enough, according to an earlier Update they're still selling Macho King ice cream bars, although Randy hasn't worn the crown in almost two and a half years.) I guess the good thing we can take out of this is that Randy has a brief resurgence as a wrestler coming up, with his MSG bout against Lawler, the match against Doink from Raw, ​and his upcoming feud with Crush. Anything to get him the hell out of the booth!
  19. garretta
    If you can get past the suddenness of his push, this is a really good way to set up a babyface run for Luger, and because he has a background that can be legitimately used as a cautionary tale and is a fresh face to WWF viewers to boot, this works out better than it most likely would have for Hogan unless you wanted to mention either his AWA days (a possibility under these circumstances, since it was no longer direct competition) or his initial WWF heel run (I don't think Vince would have done that, since it would have been too much of a shock for those who didn't read non-WWF publications). It still bothers me slightly that there's been no hype for the actual SummerSlam match that we've seen so far. These vignettes are nice, and Larry continues to do a fine job, but we should be getting a lot harder sell for SummerSlam three weeks out. I see the contract signing for the match is coming up soon, so that should kick things into a higher gear. Some elaborations and corrections on his statements concerning his football career: The off-field incident Luger referred to which ended his stay at Miami in 1979 was trashing his hotel room because he was disappointed at not being named a starter for the team's game at Georgia Tech. He never played a down for the Packers and isn't considered a member of the all-time roster; he was on injured reserve for the 1982 season and was cut in training camp the following year. He was, however, the last person to wear Number 66 for the team (in practices, presumably) before it was retired in honor of Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Nitschke. He was a teammate of Ron Simmons when he played for the USFL's Tampa Bay Bandits in 1984. I have no idea why JR didn't mention this on WCW broadcasts, since he seemingly talked about every other non-wrestling aspect of the wrestlers' lives during the time of the Luger-Simmons feud. It wasn't strictly relevant, but it might have added a little extra fuel to the fire.
  20. garretta
    Knowing that Corny legitimately considers Bobby the greatest manager ever adds even more to this. Of course, it helps that Bobby isn't an active manager anymore; I doubt Vince would have bothered with Corny at all if Bobby or Jimmy Hart were still managing and able to take over Fuji's duties with Yoko. By the way, this is the only time I've ever heard Bobby pit over another heel manager in character, even though he's been retired for over two years by this point. Interesting that even though Corny had found out about managing Yoko, there was no reference to it here. The idea of Corny taking over Yoko's contract would have popped the crowd more than mentioning the Bodies (whom I'm betting most people in that crowd had never heard of) would have. Good on Vince for not playing completely dumb. He at least acknowledged Corny and SMW, which is more than he would have done a few years earlier. This brings to four, by my unofficial count, the number of new WWF arrivals whose non-WWF past was acknowledged in some way on an official WWF TV show: Dusty, Flair, Lawler, and Corny. (Cutesy lines by Gino about guys being "no stranger to the world of wrestling", especially on local house shows, don't count.)
  21. garretta
    Waltman fits right in in Memphis from the start, as he, Jamie, and Wolfie put on a nice little three-way exhibition. I was almost sad to see Jeff get involved at the end, but he and Waltman against PG-13 wouldn't be a bad semi-main for the MSC. Jamie's got the perfect promo style for his size, as he's one of the most irritating little buggers on God's green earth at this time. You want someone, anyone​, to show up and knock his words down his throat, kind of like Waltman tried to do here. Wolfie seems solid enough, but he's clearly the junior partner, and he would be even if Jamie's dad wasn't a certifiable Memphis legend.
  22. garretta
    Anything ​would have been better than those lousy Event Center promos. This managed to create the illusion of interaction between Bret, Fuji, and Yoko, and surprisingly, Fuji and Yoko come across slightly better than Bret does. That isn't to say that Fuji was good or that Corny wouldn't be an improvement, just that they shone during this particular segment. I like Yoko doing a bit of his own talking, just enough to appear to be his own man and not just a pawn of Fuji's or Corny's. He probably wasn't glib enough to handle his own promos from start to finish, but he showed here that he could execute when the situation called for it. Sad to see that we're leading up to Mean Gene's WWF swan song. He noticeably lost a step almost immediately in WCW, and once Hogan turned heel and didn't need him as the Cosell to his (Hogan's) Ali, he really lost his sense of purpose. Getting sick didn't help him either, as he looked ten years older than he really was due to his liver problems. By the way, the last MSG cage match prior to this one came in January of '91, when the Ultimate Warrior defeated Randy Savage just two days after dropping the belt to Sgt. Slaughter at the Royal Rumble.
  23. garretta
    I liked this more than some others of you, it seems. Tenryu and Hara are the classic heel team, but they still wrestle instead of just cheating. I really liked Hara in particular; he may be limited to headbutts and clotheslines, but he knows exactly which to do when, which is more than half the battle. As for Tenryu, is there no one on the NJPW roster whom he hasn't pissed off? He started the match with Fujinami as his main rival, than antagonized Chono within the first few seconds to the point that Chono wanted to cripple him. I can't think of an American heel at this point who can get heat quite as easily as this, then work as hard as Tenryu does to back it up. Hara was going to take the fall since he's both the old guy and the second banana; my problem was that Chono seemed fully recovered from the beating he'd taken, not even selling the effects of Tenryu and Hara beating the stew out of him for almost fifteen minutes. They should have had Chono take out Tenryu while Fujinami put Hara out with the dragon sleeper, regardless of who Tenryu's issue was supposed to be with. Sometimes bookers are so concerned with telling their set story that they refuse to let common sense take over, and that was definitely the case here. Tenryu could have easily confronted Fujinami after the match was over to set up their feud again.
  24. garretta
    I get what Pete's driving at, and the transition from Narcissist to All-American was​ done way too quickly, but as I've said, I'm not sure this was meant to be Luger's spot at all. This really does feel to me like it was originally supposed to be Hogan's last hurrah, not Luger's coming-out party; an attempt for the fans to see the Terry Bollea behind their hero in light of his waning popularity and the scandals that had engulfed both him and the WWF over the last couple of years. (Yes, I know about him supposedly dropping the belt to Bret at SummerSlam, but if I'm right, this must have been in the works before Vince ever got that idea.) Regardless of all of that, it turned into Luger's angle, and the fit isn't terrible, but it's not great either. I'm not sure I need to know about how shy Larry Pfohl was in school, or how his dad was a pianist, or how athletics took second place in his life to academics (which explains a lot, come to think of it). I want to know more about Lex Luger, the character and wrestler, and how he plans to defeat the Godless Jap at SummerSlam. In other words, a standard wrestling promo. Build him up that way first, give him credibility in the ring and on the mic in obviously worked situations the old-fashioned way, give him the title, and then ​tell me about the man behind the myth. It's almost as if Vince knows that Luger's not getting the belt already and is giving this to his fans as a consolation prize before the fact: "Well, he's not man enough to beat Yokozuna, but look at what a nice guy he is!" To which my mark self would say: "The hell with that and the bus it rode in on. I want Bret!" To his credit, Lex (or should I say Larry, at least in this context) does a great job, and he sounds a hell of a lot more natural here than he ever has giving a promo. But it just wasn't needed, at least not at this point in time. Sadly, the time when it would ​have been needed never came close to happening.
  25. garretta
    Having seen the two months of aftermath from this bout, I can say that it wasn't worth the trouble. The action was actually fairly good, although they spent far too much time outside the ring. That's par for the course even this early on in ECW's life, but the whole point of the chain match is to touch the buckles inside ​the ring. There are plenty of other match types you can have if you want a lot of action on the floor. That wasn't my main complaint, though; that's reserved for the finish. I admittedly couldn't hear what Tod Gordon was saying to Kevin Christian (Lawler)- or anything else said on the mic for the whole evening- but I could see enough to know that there was nothing from Kevin about why he did what he did, and that made Gordon's actions after the match seem a lot like sour grapes because Terry didn't win. To be honest, the seed was planted by his commentary; he was openly rooting for Terry all match long and putting down Eddie and Paul every chance he could. The explanation was tailor-made if they'd chosen to go with it: Kevin's dad (who's known in Philly from his indy dates, don't forget) has kept the rightful king from his throne for too long, driven him out of Memphis, in fact. Not only that, he helped Kevin's brother Brian become a wrestler, but not him. So this is his payback: to help his dad's sworn enemy become the king of a much bigger city than Memphis could ever dream of being. I don't think we ever saw Kevin in Philly after this, though, so maybe he was just brought in to do this angle. At any rate, they could have had a story similar to the one I told, and instead, we get half-baked "comedy" sequences that even the supposed star couldn't have cared less about. What a waste of a perfectly good angle. I should also mention the commentary, which barely deserved the name. It seemed like Jay Sulli and Tod Gordon were in a contest to see how many times they could mention the full names of Jay Sulli and Tod Gordon, and that's the main thing I'll take away from what I heard. Well, that and the unabashed rooting for Terry, which all babyface announcers do to some extent but few are so ham-handed about. Even Vince McMahon at least pretends to give the heels credit from time to time, and he doesn't take a massive dump on the angle that's been promoted for two months just because the commissioner got knocked on the head by Heyman's cell phone. Concern for the man is one thing; stating that Eddie being crowned King of Philly is irrelevant just because Gordon was dumb enough to get physical in the ring, even with a ref, and got himself clobbered for his trouble is something else. Thank God Joey Styles shows up before too much longer. They should have just given Terry either the crown or a legend's title and had him defend it against the likes of Muraco, Snuka, and whoever else they could get to come in. This match and what came after it was a tremendous disappointment, especially considering the buildup it got. If this was the best Eddie could do as ECW's booker, thank God for Heyman.
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