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garretta

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Everything posted by garretta

  1. garretta
    Love the moment? Possibly. Love the match? No way. Look, it's great for Flair that he got to win the title that he's synonymous with again in his hometown, with the crowd on his side as only a hometown crowd can be. Hearing Sting and Steamer pay tribute to him was great, as was seeing his family, and his honest emotion in the postmatch interview was a welcome change from his usual cockiness. But his performance in the ring deserved ​none ​of it. He looked like a pathetic old coot in this match, and the only reason he won was because an older, even more pathetic coot thought he was the same guy he was back in 1973 and tried to come off the top rope in his goddamn dress shoes. If Harley doesn't stun Vader with that laughable attempt at a headbutt, Flair isn't set up to win. Even the winning move looked awful; if you trip a guy who weighs four hundred fifty pounds, naturally he's going to take longer than three seconds to get up. That's physics, not athletic ability. I figured out that they were going for a Rocky vibe in the first few seconds, but even Rocky gave Apollo as good as he got once in a while. It's like they told Ric to go out and wrestle like Hulk Hogan. He was literally all punches, chops, and posts, with his only wrestling hold being the figure-four. Well, guess what? Flair's a horrible ​Hogan. The original was sitting at home that night, and he'd have had me believing in his ability to take Vader out a hell of a lot more than Flair did. Vader squashed Flair like an ant for the vast majority of this match, and nothing Flair did suggested that he can't do it again on another night and take the belt back, plus end Flair's career the hard way. Honestly, I'm not even sure I'd have used Flair in this spot at all after what I saw. I don't know exactly where I would ​have used him, but a hometown/nostalgia pop wouldn't be enough to get me to book a match like this. Let him team with Sting and win the tag belts from the Nasties, or put the U.S. belt on Austin earlier and have him take Dustin's place. They needed another Sid to get in there with Vader, and the best candidate out there was still seven months away from debuting in WCW. That's right, I'd have put Hogan in this spot over Flair a hundred times out of a hundred, hometown hero or no hometown hero. Flair was just too small and too old to be messing believably with a man twice his size. Maybe if Hogan had made his debut here and saved WCW from the scourge of Vader instead of debuting against a legitimate regional icon like Flair whom the fans wanted to cheer because he'd been one of theirs for over twenty years, Hulkamania would have stood at least a fighting chance in WCW. I feel kind of bad for appearing to take a great big dump on a legit feel-good moment, but Dusty, Bischoff, and company were thinking about the big pop instead of trying to make the best possible match here. Assuming that they couldn't get Hogan on such short notice, what was the matter with Sting? Sure, the tag title match would have had to be changed, but it's not like he and Hawk were getting near the belts anyway. Have Sting beat Vader here, then drop it back at Spring Stampede and set up Hogan for Bash at the Beach. Actually, Flair could have gone for World title glory after all. I know he and Rude had just had two pay-per-view matches in a row, but Flair could have made the same promise to retire if he didn't beat Rude once and for all this time. Have Flair beat Rude here, then do a unification match with Flair and Vader at some point early in the summer where Vader has to cheat like hell to win. Hogan (who's in the building) notices, comes out to defend Flair, and the hype for Bash at the Beach is in full swing. Getting back to this match for a moment, the commentary was mostly straightforward, but I liked Tony running down Flair's previous Starrcade history, conveniently forgetting that he was disqualified against Dusty in '85, he and Nikita were both DQed in '86, he was pinned clean by Sting as part of the Ironman Tournament in '89, and he lost as The Black Scorpion to Sting in '90. Still, for all of that, his point was made, as was Jesse's about none of it being worth a hill of beans now, I liked the mic picking up Vader and Harley's taunting as well, particularly Harley's "You wanted him, Flair!" I would have howled if Ric had heard him, turned to him, and gasped out, "Not like this I didn't!" We haven't seen the last of this confrontation, and now that the sentimentality's out of the way, let's hope that these two have a reasonably competitive athletic contest in them the next time they meet. That's it for '93. See you in '94, folks!
  2. garretta
    Thanks for the info, Tim!
  3. garretta
    I don't know if anything Marty said should be taken as explicitly anti-government. He's talking against Mike Rotundo, a delusional pro wrestler who thinks he's an IRS auditor. He's been referred to as Mr. Rotundo more than once by Vince McMahon himself while dressed as Irwin R. Schyster, so the world knows who he really is. Sometimes we look for too much meaning in simple promos. I can't wait to see how Waltman hurt his leg. He looked for all the world like the Repo Man skulking down the aisle with Rotundo's briefcase in his hand. I think it was nice of Hall and company to even give Mike his briefcase back. Most faces would have kept it and not thought twice about it. The physical part of this wasn't a whole lot, but it really wasn't supposed to be. We're not usually able to hear front office people like Patterson on camera, and I always wonder how they get away with being so forceful without getting themselves slugged, or even attacked. Think about it; Pat's a pretty proud old guy. If Rotundo would have slapped the taste out of his mouth, would he have let Tunney suspend Mike, or would he have demanded a chance to get even in the ring although he would probably have gotten his ass kicked up and down the eastern seaboard? Yeah, the Fernwood Resort isn't exactly Madison Square Garden or even the Mid-Hudson Civic Center in Poughkeepsie. The once-mighty have fallen hard, and it'll be a while before they find their way back up.
  4. garretta
    I don't think Van Horn lasted much longer than Kharis, if he outlasted Kharis at all. All I could think of when I was watching this was a recent interview Mitchell did on Corny's podcast where he admitted that most of the things he said in his interviews were porn references in code. If there were any people in the Knoxville area who were smart enough to pick up on that, it's no wonder that both Mitchell and Kharis got the boot so quickly. Calling the Bible a pack of lies is going too far, whether your audience is from the Bible Belt or not. A lot of people who don't necessarily practice religion fervently still believe in its basic moral teachings, so anyone who insults it is most likely bringing more trouble on themselves than they bargained for. Given that Corny himself is a card-carrying anti-religionist, it probably didn't bother him in the least, but he should have had a better grasp of who his audience was.
  5. garretta
    I wish I could remember the guy they ran this exact angle on in Memphis, complete with Dennis. At least I think it was Memphis. Anyway, it was him seeking to prove that some wrestler wasn't who he said he was, and it lasted about as long as this storyline did. Everyone in the area knew exactly who Tracy Smothers was and that he was a real native son, so what Corny was trying to accomplish here I can't say. I know the simple answer is "to get heat on Candido", but there had to be a more intelligent way to do it than this, Hell, Chris could probably make one up out of his own head on live TV if he had to. If you're going to use Dennis again, Corny, at least teach him how to act a little better. No one's expecting Brando in his prime, but at least give him a few lessons on how to be truly obnoxious instead of just dull.
  6. garretta
    I really liked this, even though it's a tad disappointing that they couldn't get the real Paul Morton to be involved somehow, especailly since he wasn't a ref in Memphis anymore. He probably wanted too much money. Ricky was the star of this whole thing. I loved how he reacted like an aggrieved and vengeful son instead of a babyface wrestler, especially in the locker room scene. "Get the fuck outta here! This ain't wrestlin', that's my dad!" was probably the most natural reaction I've see in an angle like this. Most of the time, the guys notice the camera and stop to cut a promo. Jigolo Jimmy doing his Paul Morton/Stevie Wonder imitation was hilarious. We've seen this kind of thing a thousand times before, but in the hands of a master like Corny it still manages to seem fresh. How anyone could get caught up in Dr. Tom playing with his hair while Corny was running Paul down is beyond me. I think I like his tirades against Rock 'n' Roll better than the ones against Bullet Bob, mostly because the history between him and Rock 'n' Roll is so much longer and richer. Nice touch having Tony be the babyfaces' emissary to explain to the fans what happened to "Paul". There's no doubt now that he's on the right side of the fence, whether Tracy feels comfortable shaking his hand or not. I also noticed Kim in the crowd of people tending to "Paul", which was another nice touch. Was that Candido wrestling Ricky in the match he walked out on? It sure looked like him. Tammy wasn't there, but I don't think she and Chris had joined forces professionally yet. How bad a talker did Corny think Robert was that he had to hand Bob a note instead of just explaining that "Paul" was in the building on the mic? Okay, so he isn't Dusty in his prime. Neither is Ricky, to be honest. Actually, they're much closer to being verbally equal than is commonly believed; all Hoot has to do is remember to speak up just a bit.
  7. garretta
    I'm not sure how well the Cowboy would have gotten over in Knoxville. Bullet Bob had wrestled in the area a lot over the years and was well-known there, which is why Corny used him in the first place. Maybe if it had been a Tulsa or Oklahoma City promotion, Watts would have been okay, but not in Tennessee, especially since he would have been just a suit like he was for Turner. I actually don't have a problerm with how they got around Bullet Bob losing; the double masks is a classic spot used when promoters need a masked guy to unmask, but don't want to reveal who he is. Of course, it's a heel spot for the most part, but I'll bet the fans loved The Bullet making an idiot out of Corny like that. Now, if he does the same thing again this time, that'll be too much, but I have a feeling that it won't come to that. I still can't figure out why Corny didn't use Yoko for one of these matches. Just make it non-title so Vince doesn't have to worry about Bullet Bob as WWF champion. Using Terry's great, but Yoko would seem a lot more logical since there's already a known, permanent professional connection between the two of them.
  8. garretta
    Okay, let me be the dissenting voice. This was a great match, no question about that. It was probably the Japanese Match of the Year. But it isn't the runaway candidate for Match of the Year that some of you think it is. I'd prersonally go for Flair-Bret at the Boston Garden in January, but I'm admittedly biased toward American wrestling anyway. There are two things keeping it from Match of the Year status in my eyes: 1) Not enough work on Kawada's knee. They should have had Misawa and Kobashi try to tear the knee out if they worked on it at all. I understand Kawada was legitimately hurt, but if the knee was going to be a part of the match they should have gone all in and really brutalized it, with Kawada doing a stretcher job at the end and thus being unable to take part in the ceremony. If Kawada didn't feel comfortable with that, they should have ignored the knee altogether. As it was, a back suplex, no matter how well executed, being enough to get the pin felt like a cheat to me. 2) Too much time with all four men in the ring. There were some great four-man sequences, particularly with both members of one team working submissions on both members of the other team at the same time. But tag team matches, especially at this level, are supposed to be about tagging in and out and exhibiting teamwork, and that got lost a bit toward the end here. What they did instead was unquestionably exciting, and maybe even needed given the ongoing feud between the two sides, but it wasn't strictly tag team wrestling. Kobashi was indeed an excellent FIP in the first half of the match, and Kawada showed his toughness by not only persevering despite his bad knee, but still managing to be effective offensively. Taue covered brilliantly for his partner when he had to. I don't have a whole lot to say about Misawa; he was good when he was in, but he didn't really get into the flow of the match much. He seemed slightly above it all, as he probably should be given that he's the Triple Crown champion and the ace of the company. So there you have it. The farthest I'd go in the ranking for this is Top 5. As I said, if I have any excuse to rank a WWF or WCW match ahead of a match from a foreign country, I'm going to take it, and this match gave me the two excuses I listed above. It was still tremendous, but not the Match of the Year.
  9. garretta
    I didn't like this much. Not only did the round system make for too many stops and starts, but it seemed like they were both holding back. There were a few nice moves here and there, but none of them ever led to anything. There was no storytelling, no psychology. Not only that, but both man started each round fresh, not bothering to sell any damage done in the previous round, This made each round into its own self-contained unit, and watching ten separate three-minute matches simply isn't very exciting to me. Under American or Japanese rules, this could have been a very interesting bout. Under these rules, it was just a long, disjointed mess.
  10. garretta
    I'm going to miss Tunney when he leaves later this year. He's the most effective figurehead executive that wrestling's ever had, and he added a lot to the angles he appeared in, although his appearances were brief by both design and necessity. I would have loved it if Owen would have gotten Bret's title match after beating him clean, but they weren't thinking that far outside the box yet. Same thing with the triple threat match, which would have been an ideal solution even two years later. I guess they could have had a Bret-Luger match on Raw ​for the title shot, but who would have done the job? I know we didn't get Luger-Crush at Mania, but it sounds like a great feud possibility for after ​Mania, and I'm surprised Vince never pulled the trigger on it.
  11. garretta
    This was one of the best attempted swerves in wrestling history. Other than the understandable stuff about the tag title match being his big break, Owen talks like he and Bret really have ​made up and are a united pair. Most of the fans were probably seeing the turn as a foregone conclusion, so they needed to create some suspense about it, and they accomplished that here. Despite Vince's tease, Ray didn't ask about the Rumble match, probably because that would have undermined what the interview was trying to accomplish. I see by Graham's page that Owen was eliminated long before Bret even came to the ring, which was a smart move since they wanted to save the brothers' one-on-one confrontation for Mania X. Did Ray ever acknowledge that one of the Quebecers was his brother? I wonder if he ever interviewed Jacques, and how they played it if he did. If I had to guess, I'd say someone else did those interviews, since Jacques was never explicitly recognized as Jacques Rougeau while he was a Quebecer that I know of. Personally, I think Ray would have been a much better fit as the Quebecers' manager than Levy was, whether they acknowledged Ray and Jacques as brothers or not.
  12. garretta
    I didn't think Percy added a damn thing, but then he usually doesn't. It's not really his fault that his voice is naturally high-pitched, but he's gone into permanent falsetto, which isn't creepy at all. I'm not even convinced that Taker even needed a manager now that he was established. The visual of the casket was suitably scary, as was the setting, but Percy's presence cast a needless cartoon pall over the whole thing. Vince should have sent Taker out on his own by now and put Percy in the office full-time.
  13. garretta
    I'm of two minds about this one. I realize that Jeff needed to show the Memphis fans that he really was a heel now, but the constant stalling didn't do anything for me at all. It may be that he'll get better at it as he finds and hones his heel persona, but right now it feels like he does it just to fill time. Once he made the "I came to fight" speech, things picked up exponentially. Another thing I could have done without were the two nearly-identical ref bump sequences. I know Frank Morrell used to be a wrestler, but any match with two ref bumps has one too many, especially when as I said the sequences were nearly identical, with each man hitting two piledrivers. Since Lawler was winning the title back, I would have eliminated the sequence he controlled and kept Jeff's. Lawler seemed a bit off his game, like he wasn't really sure how to work with Jeff as a heel. He got back in the ballgame toward the end of the match, though, and it's a shame that this series didn't contunue, because once they found their stride fully, it would have been a classic. I wonder what kind of promo the Double J character was in Memphis, and how they explained his sudden desire to become a country singer, if they even bothered to try. Also, since Lawler and Vince were still on the outs for obvious reasons, I'm wondering if Jeff used the Double J gimmick here with or without Vince's blessing. It certainly looked like Vince was on board (how else would the MSC have had a copy of Jeff's WWF theme music ready and waiting?), but I'd like to know for sure. Corey wasn't nearly as annoying as usual, but the constant time calls were a bit much toward the end. He made up for it with a classic call: "Life's all peaches and cream! Lawler wins!" That call alone is almost enough to make me forget how clueless he's sounded over the past few years. Almost​.
  14. garretta
    At least ​we'll ​get to see the MSG match! Seriously, if that wasn't shouting "TITLE CHANGE!" from the rooftops, I don't know what was. Between that and the fact that the belts had to be on the line at the Rumble to get the maximum juice out of Owen's turn, it's obvious that Waltman and Jannetty weren't long for this world as champs. Bret's promo was good, but they overdid it when he promised to tag with Owen exclusively for the rest of his career. I wouldn't have believed that if I was the densest mark on earth, especially since Owen looked as excited by that news as he would have been by the news that his house had burned to the ground with everything he owned inside. Even when Vince tries to be subtle with his booking, it just doesn't come off. I almost wish they'd had been screaming threats at each other since Survivor Series. I don't know what to make of Levy as a manager. He hit all the right heel notes, but his heart didn't seem to be in his work. I've heard that he wanted to wrestle in the WWF, not manage, so that might be the reason he seemed a bit listless here despite the volume he projected. Jacques stank with the screaming, and as far as Pierre goes, what can you tell from "AHHHHHH!"? Marty might have been the best of everyone in the segment, as he came off as happy and confident in his and Waltman's ability to remain champions. Sean was a bit understated here, but he's playing a green kid, so that's about what's expected. I can't wait to actually see the matches!
  15. garretta
    Luger comes off as the typical athlete refusing to let the world get in the way of his positive vibes. It's disingenuous when football and baseball players do it, and it's disingenuous here too. Vince doesn't ask him just how he'll deal with not being allowed in the Rumble, and that's a shame because I wanted to hear Lex say, "Hit everyone I can think of with my loaded forearm, and you're first, pal!" I applaud Vince for his attention to detail here in bringing up the stip from SummerSlam, but no one over the age of five actually believed that Luger was being left out, I hope. I'd rather have heard him announced as officially in and heard Corny throw a fit over it. Based on the crowd reaction I heard for Luger at the Superstar of the Year ceremony for Bret, I have a feeling that not too many of the "votes" he got were legit. Vince can keep throwing Old Glory in our faces all he wants when it comes to Luger, but America isn't buying. You had your chance in August, Vince, and you spat in its face.
  16. garretta
    I liked how they threw in just enough footage from Tony's heel days to remind fans that he was a mean asskicker regardless of whetther he was cheered or booed. Other than that, this was mostly about his feud with Lee, including a couple of matches that I don't believe made the '93 set. I'm not sure about beer drinker, since he doesn't do that oin camera, but the word "hellraiser" fits Tony to a T. Interesting that we see Kim in a few shots, but no Ron. I'm guessing he was out of the picture, selling the effects of the attack Brian and Tammy had made on him a few weeks before.
  17. garretta
    What I want to know is how Vince came up with the name of Thurman. Something twlls me it wasn't a tribute to Thurman Munson, the Yankee catcher. Knowing him, I'll bet a kid named Thurman stole his lunch money or beat him up on the playground, and this is Vince's revenge. Not much else to say, since I'm not a NASCAR fan.
  18. garretta
    So let me get this straight: Hall's angrier about Rotundo stealing his jewelry than he is about Shawn trying to cripple him with his own finisher? I understand that they wanted the final confrontation between Shawn and Hall to come at Mania and needed an interim challenger for the Rumble, but they could have done a hell of a lot more to tie Shawn and Rotundo together. How I'm not sure, since it would be hard to figure out why Shawn would want to use a "government official" to steal Hall's jewelry, but that's why there are such things as bookers. Besides, who has Mike beaten as a singles wrestler to earn an IC title shot? The last time he was relevant was a few months earlier, when Money Inc. and the Steiners were going round and round over the tag belts. Nice to see Ray as a regular interviewer. I'm guessing Pettengill was either too green to take on the road to the regular tapings or had no interest in working outside of Stamford except at pay-per-views. I've grown used to the Razor character's speech patterns, but does Hall have to keep his toothpick in his mouth while he's talking? One inhale at the wrong time and we have another Fran Crowley from ​Mama's Family ​on our hands. (For those who didn't watch the show, Fran was the sister of the main character, Thelma Harper. When Rue McClanahan, the actress who played Fran, became unavailable, the producers decided to have the character choke to death on a toothpick.)
  19. garretta
    I'm not sure what to think of this. I didn't mind the stuff most of you did, but I agree that this was far from a great match. The individual elements were fine; I enjoy a good chickenshit heel if he does it right, and Metal did here, since it was established that del Santo was by far the better wrestler. The bout was a tad slow for being the third or fourth in a series, but not to the point of being overly boring. I thought they told a nice story of Metal not being able to outwrestle del Santo. The problem is, I thought they'd told that story before. The double pin was another thing that wasn't terrible in and of itself; but they didn't try to generate much controversy with it. It was obvious from the time that Metal's shoulders hit the mat what they were going for, and they didn't really make out like it was all that big a deal from what I could tell. One thing I loved unconditionally was del Santo's submission hold to win the first fall. I haven't seen a headscissors applied in quite that way before, and I had to catch the replay to see just how devastating it was. I'd have loved to see an American wrestler attempt it, although I can't quite figure out who at the moment. Overall, this was a case of nice ingredients making a mediocre meal. I wouldn't mind seeing them go at it again, but if they do I hope that match is a lot more memorable than this one will be.
  20. garretta
    I wasn't feeling this from the moment Charles rammed Dandy's head into the post no less than five times in a row and Dandy didn't bleed so much as a drop. Between that and the fact that the first two falls were quicker than normal even for lucha, the third fall was bound to be a disappointment even if it was good, which it was. I didn't see Emilio actually squeeze Dandy's testicles to set up the final fall, which puts the ref and me in the same boat, I suppose. Overall, Gregor's right; this match wasn't exactly fought like a battle to the death between two guys desperate to humiliate each other by shaving their opponent bald. It was more like a regular match with the hair stip tacked on at the end. My best moment came after the bout, when Dandy gave Charles the chance to take the first snip himself. It was a nice way to acknowledge that Charles was indeed the better man on this night. I thought for a second that Dandy was going to allow Charles to give him the entire haircut, but I guess that would have taken too long.. I don't know about Dandy's hair being all that great, but Charles' hair was certainly a sight to behold as always. I'll bet Kevin wasn't the only one regretting that one of these lovely mops would be no more.
  21. garretta
    Other than a couple of chair spots from Villano (to establish him as the heel, I guess), this match was rather sedate. Both guys worked well, but as Kevin said it's nothing I'm going to remember in a few days. I heard the ring announcer say that Hamada was the WWF light heavyweight champion. Did the WWF still officially recognize that title? I know they never brought Hamada (or any other light heavyweight champion) stateside, but did Vince or his people have any influence over how the title was booked, or did they just take money from the Mexican promoters for the use of the name? Was FULL a Mexican promotion or a Japanese promotion? I noticed that they had a Spanish-speaking ring announcer and a Japanese ring announcer, and I heard a few announcements during the match in Japanese. I liked the ref instructing the wrestlers in how fast his counts were going to be before the match started. You'd think more promotions would do something like that, but If they did how could refs get heat for overly fast (or slow) counts?
  22. garretta
    Now we know what happens when a crowd conditioned to believe that only WWF wrestling is any good is asked to sit through another promotion's match on a WWF card. But it wasn't all ​the crowd's fault; these guys may have worked an athletically impressive match, but it didn't feel like they were comfortable enough to do the bullshit that makes this series fun. This is where they needed to do every spot involving Corny that they could remember, all the hokey but effective miscommunication and dissension spots from the Bodies, all the vamping and preening and overacting that still gets the Southern crowds hot. In short, they worked a straight wrestling match when they needed a Southern-fried sports entertainment match. In other words, take your Asai moonsaults and your Franensteiner counters and stick them up your asses next time, guys; I want to see Dr. Tom and Jigolo Jimmy make a sandwich out of Corny in the middle of the ring, I want to see Jimmy go to give Robert an arm wringer in the corner, only for Robert to switch with Dr. Tom. I want to see everything go wrong for the Bodies at the start and have them threaten to go at each other, only for Corny to convince them to hug it out. I want to see racquet spots in the middle and ether at the finish. Wrestle like it's Knoxville or Johnson City, not a WWF pay-per-view. If Vince doesn't like it, too bad. JR really sounded at home here, as he should have considering his history with Ricky, Robert, and Corny. He told stories and mentioned facts that we experienced fans have known for a while, but were undoubtedly fascinating to the first-time viewer of this feud, like Paul Morton being a ref in Memphis and Robert's mom being a deaf mute. I could have done without trying to merge the Bodies' history with the Midnights, but SMW's done the same thing at times, so I can't fault Vince (through JR) for following suit. Hearing Gino say the names Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson was surreal, as was hearing a "Tennessee territory" acknowledged by both name and location, which they haven't done up to now with the USWA although Lawler was arguably their top heel from the time he attacked Bret until he had to leave. Gino never really sounded like he was into this match except for briefly ragging on Corny at the beginning. He was asked to call the match, so he did, but it felt like he was just marking time until he could get back to the ​real stars of the show, four Doinks included. He put everyone over as an athlete, and that was about all. I found it a bit preposterous that he tried to make it sound like Ricky didn't know how tag team wrestling worked until it hit me that he might never have seen Rock 'n' Roll before and didn't know their formula. The finish was a bit convoluted, but they needed to do it that way to give Rock 'n' Roll an out back home. By the way, did anyone notice that the crowd woke up just a bit when the Bodies were announced as the new SMW tag champs? I heard more than a few cheers, which was a bit surprising considering how the Bodies had just won and how big a heel Corny was through his association with Fuji and Yoko. It's too bad that Vince probably used the crowd's reaction to this match as an excuse to marginalize the Bodies and not use Ricky and Robert again. I think Rock 'n' Roll wouldn't have made bad challengers for the Quebecers, whether they ever ended up with the belts or not. I forgot to say that hearing Finkel announce Ricky and Robert was yet another surreal moment, as was hearing him do the "NEWWWWWW!" bit for the SMW tag titles. I wonder if Corny ever thought of using him as a guest ring announcer in SMW, especially when there were WWF stars on a card.
  23. garretta
    This match was worked at half-speed, or at least it seemed that way to me. The matwork portion was way​ longer than it needed to be and didn't figure into the rest of the match at all, and the finishing stretch was wrestled like they were covered in molasses. Every move seemed to be followed by a ten-minute rest period while they figured out what to do next, and the only move that looked really devastating was Hash's finishing DDT. Like most of you, I've seen these two do better on many occasions, and hopefully if there's a rematch we'll see them at something close to full speed and energy. What were they using on Muta at the end of the match? It looked like he was having the back of his neck steam-cleaned.
  24. garretta
    I guess you could say that Bossman finally got Rude back for talking about his mother. So what if it was three years later and in an entirely different promotion? Given Tony's cutesy allusions to Bossman's past, Gene's line "Didn't that jar your mother's preserves?" just couldn't ​have been a coincidence. Rude got more of this match than I thought he did after reading the thread, but this was still a dominating performance from Bossman. This may be the first case of Vince letting a guy go too soon, as I could have definitely gotten behind a Bossman-Yoko feud for the title, and I might have even appreciated a short Bossman title reign if Vince had chosen to go there. As good as Bossman looked, though, Jesse was the star of this match. This is the first time we've gotten pure, unadulterated heel-leaning Jesse in quite a while, and it sounded fresh. I can't recall the last time he was so worked up, and it helped that Rude was such a longtime favorite of his. Hearing him rant about how Bossman was an example of how big fat cops were going to show up on our streets was hilarious, as was Tony's reaction to the whole performance. He was amused, alarmed, and dumbfounded all at the same time, and you could almost hear him ask himself several times, "Just what the hell's going on here, and how do I get out of this match with my head on my shoulders?" Jesse was in such a bad mood that he even went after Okerlund for not iniviting him up to his cabin to do the Christmas show the following week. Let's just hope that he has a few more classic performance like this in him before he goes. The "Boss, Man is he big!" routine was clever the first time, but when Tony did it again I knew that Bischoff was deliberately rubbing Vince's nose in Traylor's defection. That may have been what caused Vince to sue (or threaten to sue) Turner over the whole thing, and that's too bad, because that gimmick was the one that made Traylor a superstar moreso than Big Bubba Rogers. Once he had to change it in order to keep Turner out of the courtroom he was never the same, at least from what little I remember. I guess I'll see if I'm right in the '94 set. Speaking of rubbing people's noses in it, giving Davey Boy a count to get to the ring when you know perfectly well he isn't even in the building is a prime example, and we didn't need to see it. They should have just said that he was injured or went home to England for a family emergency; it would have gotten the point of Davey's absence across without making WCW look petty in the process. Was there ever a better match of pitchman and product than Mean Gene and the WCW hotline? I remember him hawking the damn thing literally every time he was onscreen during ​Nitro ​when I tuned in occasionally during my college days. The NWO could have just laid waste to the building, there could have been a riot going on right in back of him, but Gene was still in there shilling his heart out. it just felt proper somehow.
  25. garretta
    This was a lot like the tag league final for me, in that the indelible image that I'll carry away from this isn't a wrestling move, but that long, lurching walk Akira took back to the locker room after Shinobu finished pounding the marbles out of her. She had no idea what planet she was on, and really hadn't since she took that shot at the start of the match that bloodied her mouth. This wasn't exactly a squash, and Akira managed to do some damage to Shinobu's neck and knock her for a loop of her own at one point. But she just didn't have enough left in her to deal with the younger, stronger invader. I loved the shot of some of the younger AJW wrestlers wanting to storm the ring and get at Shinobu, only for Aja to hold them back. Being the ringwise veteran that she is, Aja knew that a couple of young pups had no chance against Shinobu on this night, and probably not on too many others either. This didn't feel much like a wrestling match, if you want the truth. This was a knockdown dragout dirty rotten fight, with a few holds mixed in for variety. It's the second joshi match in a row I've watched that was a welcome departure from the usual go-go-go style, and I'm liking the change for however long it lasts. I hope we see more of Shinobu in the '94 Yearbook; she isn't as big or physically imposing as Aja or Bull, but she's every bit as dangerous, as The Dangerous Queen herself found out here. These last two matches have gone a long way toward restoring my respect for joshi as a style. I hope this trend continues into next year, and I'm also looking forward to comparing and contrasting joshi with American female wrestling once the WWF brings their women's title back.
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