garretta
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I thought Harley was better than either Jesse or Vader. Vader seemed to be rambling almost incoherently ("Pure white hair"? Since when?) and Jesse did indeed confuse Beach Blast with the Bash. Why in the world did that air, anyway? Did they not trust Vader to do another take without getting even weirder? In case you didn't notice, Jesse also used the line about Vader being champion as long as he wants to be twice, once when talking to Vader and once to wrap up the segment. That's not so bad in itself, but it speaks to Jesse's lack of preparation. Maybe Brooklyn Park (the Minnesota town that Jesse was mayor of at this time) had a lot of urgent business to take care of the week that this was taped.
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The promos were the highlight of this. They didn't exactly reinvent the wheel, but it's always nice to see both Lawler and Jackie as fired up as they were here. The match clip looked typically chaotic, and Lee interfered even more liberally than usual to set up the upcoming six-man. Is it my imagination or was Lawler in his gear? The room he was in looked like his game room. Putting on your gear to cut a promo in your own house? That's either extreme dedication to the business, sheer lunacy, or both. I notice that Lawler left Jeff out of the equation when he was discussing those who might have tricks up their sleeves in the six-man. I'm guessing he was the DV (Designated Virtue) for the babyfaces, or maybe Lawler and Jackie just forgot to teach him any tricks. Is anyone else about ready for a match between Lee and Corey? Corey sounds like Lee kicked his dog whenever he talks about his outside interference. I know that part of his schtick is to sound like Lance, but I never got the feeling that Lance personally wanted to get Jimmy Hart in the ring and beat the stew out of him. (There was the time that he threatened Tojo Yamamoto with a hammer, but that was clearly an act of self-defense, and was presented as such.)
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What match is Corey calling? He blames Lauren twice for sticking Eddie's foot on the ropes when she's halfway across the floor, then misses the finish completely? Sure, Lauren knocked Ricky's foot off the rope, but she did it after the three count. Not only that, we didn't get a bell or a ring announcement; Eddie just stuck his crown on his head and left. It wasn't the smoothest of nights at the MSC, that's for sure. It's not often that we get a full Memphis match on a Yearbook, and this one was worth the wait. It was nothing revolutionary, but it served the purpose of letting the fans know that Eddie could be beaten, that he couldn't pull the wool over everyone's eyes all the time, to borrow Marlin's phrase. He was dominated by Ricky except when he resorted to out-and-out cheating, and even his end-around concerning the time limit only worked temporarily, as now he has to defend the title against Ricky with Ricky's dad Paul as the special referee. Eddie had a moment or two here and there brought about by the cheating I just spoke of, but for the most part this was Ricky's day, even if he was (temporarily) cheated out of the belt. He looked almost as good here as he did challenging for the NWA title six years before against Flair. I'm not sure he could bring it at this level night in and night out by now, but for a one-shot TV match in Memphis he was outstanding. Dave's match call was excellent, a nice blend of move-calling and storytelling. I especially liked his chagrined reaction when he found out that Eddie had the contract on his side and would retain the title despite getting pinned clean as a sheet. He'll never replace Lance, and I think he'd be the first one to tell you that himself, but as of this moment he's in the top three announcers in North America, and that's if you put color commentators and play-by-play guys together and include Jesse. If you're talking strictly play-by-play, he's in second place, and number one (JR) has been awfully inconsistent lately. That's right, Dave Brown is a better wrestling announcer than Vince McMahon, Gorilla Monsoon, Tony Schiavone, and Bobby Heenan. Not bad for a weatherman, eh? No Corey at all, even on color? Was he on vacation that week or what? If he was, he was back in time for the MSC card two days later. If he was there in the studio and wasn't used, what does that say about what Papa really thought of him? All the other color guys have gotten at least some mic time during matches, even if all they did was crack bum jokes like heel Lawler. Line of the match: Eddie, after finding out that Paul was going to referee this Monday night's rematch: "PAUL MORTON? I thought he was dead! What did they do, dig him up?"
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Nice interview by Watts to explain the differences in the top rope rules between the NWA and WCW. Superplexes and slams off the top are expressly protected, which is good news since one of the guys in the tag tourney finals (Windham) uses the superplex as a finisher. I liked the styles clash here more than anything else. This match kept me off-balance a bit as a viewer because I had no idea what to expect from one moment to the next. Nikita looked more like the Russian Nightmare than he has since early in his original face turn, as Liger and Pillman both played pinball for him. Meanwhile, Steamboat offered a tantalizing glimpse of what he could have been as a heel, as he played bully quite effectively, particularly against Liger. I've seen the press backbreaker before, but never for three full reps with a powerslam finish. Talk about impressive. It's not that Steamer used heel tactics, it's more like the attitude he portrayed; instead of plucky babyface, he was kind of bossy, saying "Hey, I'm the veteran and former champion, and you young pups will have to go through me to win this." Liger and Pillman had their moments as well; they frustrated Nikita with armwork early, and I really liked the Liger-Steamboat exchanges, particularly the tombstone reversal that Liger pulled off. We already knew that Pillman could work with regular heavyweights, but it was a treat to see Liger do the same. I only wish we'd seen it more often. Jesse was at his main-event level for 95% of this, mostly because there were no real heels to back. His only digressions came when he tried to interject the Medusa abuse storyline into the match, which JR quickly (and rightfully) shot down. There was a definite feeling of issues and feuds being on hold for the night and all competitors equally fighting for the same big prize (which JR all but explicitly stated at one point), so it was jarring to hear Jesse call Nikita a woman abuser out of nowhere. He made up for it with the Edouard Carpentier reference, though, and I'm surprised that JR didn't follow up on it by at least letting the younger fans know who Carpentier was. He probably would have if it had been Tony or Gordon or someone else he respected who'd brought him up. Atkins was needlessly out of position quite a few times during the match. I don't know if they were doing things he hadn't anticipated or what, but it was more noticeable than usual. Nice use of the top rope early in the match to establish that using it was indeed legal in this match. I kind of wish we'd gotten more of an aerial match so we could have seen Liger and Pillman use it more often, but with Nikita in there it would have been unfair. Jesse estimated Nikita's weight at between 265 and 270 here, but he didn't look that big to me. Maybe he was and I just didn't see it.
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This may be the best Bossman promo ever for one reason: at no point does he utter the phrase "hard time" or make any cute references to law and order or police work. This is a real man promising real revenge on a real enemy, which seldom happens in the WWF. Usually promos are a tedious exercise in character reinforcement, and there's little real emotion to them. Come to think of it, this one was so real I'm surprised that Vince okayed it. The only law-and-order stuff was from Okerlund, who began the interview by saying that he believed Bossman was injured in the line of duty. Normally that would be inoffensive, but the rest of this was so real that the intro sounded kind of stupid. This doesn't have anything to do with the interview, but whose idea was it to distort Nailz' voice, and why was it done? Was it so Bossman wouldn't be able to recognize him, or did someone in the office just think that it made him sound more menacing? Talking about the kid was a bit cheesy, but Bossman needed a reason to return other than personal revenge. All WWF babyfaces must fight the good fight for the Hulkamaniacs, especially now that Hogan is gone for a while.
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I liked them showing the news clips from British TV; this was much more of a legit story over there than it would have been over here. I don't think Pittsburgh TV even mentioned it when we got our first pay-per-view (SummerSlam '95). I liked most of the interviews, although Davey Boy saying that being the only Englishman on the roster gives him an advantage is so bizarre that even the marks can see through it. Stealing a wrestling pay-per-view from America is nowhere near stealing the World Series (which is impossible anyway, since the Series is played at the home ballparks) but I can appreciate the head of Wembley's enthusiasm. Nice to see that Duggan still has a job; The last time we saw him on the Yearbooks outside of the '92 Rumble was when he saved Sid from Jake's cobra all the way back in October of last year. Warrior in street clothes was a bit of a shock, especially given the WWF's trend of having wrestlers go out in public wearing only their gear. Correct me if I'm wrong: The pay-per-view was done live on the evening of the thirty-first local time, which would have been in the middle of the afternoon Eastern time, then fed to the States via satellite on tape the same night (all told, about a six-hour tape delay).
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Thanks, AJ!
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I have a slightly different perspective here. The nearfalls at the end would have been more dramatic if I hadn't been distracted by Misawa and Jumbo in the corner. By the time I figured out what they were doing, Kobashi or Taue had already kicked out, so it was just another spot rather than a jump-out-of-my-chair moment. Of course, Misawa and Jumbo weren't planning on giving up the spotlight anytime soon (although fate would take a hand in Jumbo's case), so the audience focusing on them instead of their number three and number two respectively was hardly a bad thing. This really wasn't a classic for me; they've done most of this match before in other bouts, and better too. The work on the knees is always nice to see, but the spots have become predictable: shinbreaker, knee bounced off the railing, half-crab. The figure four is actually fresh in this context, since you don't see it in every match. In general, they didn't work this match like it was supposed to be a game-changer, and AJPW has a way of setting things up so certain bouts are tabbed as ones that change the course of the promotion. If Jumbo hadn't gotten sick soon after this, which meant the end of the whole Misawa-Jumbo dynamic, would people still call this a classic like so many have in this thread? I don't believe so. That doesn't mean that this match wasn't tremendous, but tremendous is kind of par for the course for AJPW these days. I can't believe we get to see only two more bouts from this legendary feud: a six-man in August and a tag in October. I can't think of another feud that has defined a promotion for a period of time quite like Misawa-Jumbo, to the point where almost every native wrestler in the company has to pick a side. The closest equivalent that I can think of is Flair-Dusty in JCP, but the roles within the feud weren't quite as defined, and each man who was involved also had other major feuds going on at the same time, which isn't really the case here.
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Rumble isn't too bad here, but if anyone had told me that the sawed-off runt with the facepaint would become one of the most over wrestlers in the sport by the end of the decade, I'd have laughed in their faces. He looks like something that even Vince would have sense enough to turn down. Is this the same Carolina-based outfit that guys like Ricky Steamboat and Robert Fuller wrestled in for about five minutes back in '90?
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This was WWF-esque, and Dutch makes a better Gene Okerlund than you would think. He seems like the type that would be right at home in surroundings like this, and yet you can almost reach out and touch his disgust. It helps that Anthony looks and talks like someone who just crawled out of a garbage dump. This is such a far cry from the almost-civilized Tony Anthony we saw in Memphis. How could anyone, let alone Kim, love this man? Of course, he's perfect for someone as unscrupulous as Ron, who doesn't care whom he associates with as long as he makes enough money to get his medical attention. Unless I'm missing something, we have no answer promos from Lee. He had to have done a few; were they that putrid that not even one of them could pass muster for inclusion on the set?
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This was quick, and apparently the Bodies had done some kind of demonstration with the barbed wire earlier in the hour which we didn't get on the set. Corny's gloves looked a little weird, but looking at Stan's headgear is a million times better than looking at his toupee, which singlehandedly ages him about fifteen years. Stan gets the line of the segment off right at the end, though, when he tells Bob to quit shouting. Along the same line, Corny has to apologize when he accidentally yells too close to Stan's "busted eardrum". It'll be interesting to see how far they go with this part of the story as the buildup to Fire on the Mountain continues.
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Morton was the best promo of these three. You really buy that he's seen the error of his ways, and that even though he may have hurt Gibson in the past, he's not going to let anyone else do it, especially the Stud Stable. I'm actually looking forward to this, although I know it's just a stopgap until the Bodies are finished with the Fultons and are able to turn their attention to Rock 'n' Roll. Gibson does all right; his purpose here is to introduce Morton, not to talk all that much on his own. His accent's thicker than Ricky's, and he really should learn how to enunciate a little better to compensate for it, which would improve his promos immensely. I was disappointed in Fuller and Golden. The setup to their stuff with Bullet Bob was lame to begin with (since when does a wrestler need a license to switch territories?) and Golden in particular is just a bunch of hot air with no real feeling behind it. Bellowing doesn't equal conviction, my friend. The Stud's a little better, but he was on such a roll micwise as a face in Memphis that to hear him go back to Evil Foghorn Leghorn is a bit of a disappointment.
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First fall: Was that four fingers that Arn was holding up just out of camera range as he walked to the ring? I loved how JR tries to pass it off as Arn telling Barry that he was going to be the television champion for the fourth time. You know that at least some of the trash talking had to be Horseman-related, but that group isn't supposed to have ever existed, at least for the next year. At the same time, JR freely acknowledges their former tag team, which is at least a step in the right direction. Paul and Arn complain about the taped fist until Barry unloads on Arn with it once or twice, which is a bit weird. (I think the complaining stopped after the second punch.) JR talks like the taped fist is an instrument of payback against the DA, which is only logical, since the broken hand which caused it in the first place should have been healed long ago. I like the dueling limb work which defines the fall: Barry attacks Arn's left arm, which is standard operating procedure for wrestlers but contains added drama here since Arn's a lefty. In return, Arn works over Barry's leg. Arn's the better seller, as every move he tries is somehow affected by the bad arm. JR points out that his blows don't have the effect they normally would, and that there are times when Arn would ordinarily use his left hand on offense, but can't now. Even as Arn punishes Barry's leg, a few shots to the arm and shoulder area back him off. Barry's bad leg plays into the finish, as he's too slow to hit the move he was going for, but not too slow to push Arn off as he's going for the superplex (!), then set himself and hit a flying lariat for the win and a 1-0 lead. Most Incongruous Trash Talk by a Manager: Heyman, for supposedly asking Barry to let up on Arn's arm. I think that was JR having a little fun, as I've never known Heyman to be the beggar type unless his own health was in danger. Second fall: The story here is Barry's back. He injures it taking a fall over the top rope early on, and of course Arn senses the kill, pounding it and applying submission holds for the rest of the fall. The best Barry can do to counter is a few right hands, but even with the tape they don't really have much juice behind them. Heyman doesn't get physically involved often, but when he does it means something. He not only assists Arn with some extra leverage from the outside on at least two occasions, but clobbers Barry in the spine with his phone. The visual of the fall is him jumping up to the apron right after that and carrying on a conversation as if nothing had just happened. JR's really on top of his game throughout here, putting over strategies and maneuvers as only he can while still mixing in shills for all of WCW's upcoming big events and his radio show. He outdoes even himself, though, when Arn applies a bodyscissors and he namedrops Joe Stecher, who used the hold when he was champion at least sixty years before. It's at times like this that you can see shy many people were calling JR the best announcer in the business at this time, and he does it working solo here, which has to be a huge relief after some of the dim bulbs he's had to carry the last few weeks. Arn's spinebuster gets the clean win, and we're tied at one fall apiece. Third fall: This fall only gets about five minutes, most of which Arn spends working on Barrry's legs again. His primary weapon is a Heyman-assisted figure four, which doesn't get the submission. Eventually Barry fights back, and has Arn on top and ready for the superplex when Austin interferes for the DQ. I've never been a big fan of that finish when a heel is challenging for a belt, because it makes it seem like the heel in question doesn't care about winning the title as much as he does beating the hell out of the champion with the one who interfered and keeping from getting beaten himself. It's a finish as old as the sport, though, so I've gotten used to it. Heyman was very active verbally on the fall, yelling to Arn loudly enough so the camera could pick it up. He's very good at that, and it puts over his character as a strategist reather than just as an annoying loudmouth with a weapon in the mold of Jimmy Hart. I liked how Heyman started to call for a DQ on Barry when Arn went over the top, only for JR to remind us that that's the last thing he wants because Barry keeps the title. I don't know if Paul heard JR or not (I doubt it), but the complaining stopped almost as soon as it started. This was probably the best two-out-of-three fall match in the WCWSN series so fat, as both guys went at it hammer-and-tongs with no letup for the whole time. It was definitely the most physical of the matchups, as JR himself noted, and it could have led to a great rematch if Austin hadn't beaten Barry for the belt the following week.
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Gino was talking over Curt because Curt, whether it was on purpose or not, was getting facts wrong all over the place. He had Flair drawing number two instead of number three at the Rumble, and he was the one who said that Flair was pulled off the card at Mania, not Gino. I have to assume that these "mistakes" were made on purpose, but I don't understand why. Flair's performance in the Rumble was already a classic without having to exaggerate it further, and it sounds like Vince didn't want to have Hogan or Sid mentioned, so "switching the main event" became "being left off the card". All these things did was make Curt look like an imbecile, and why you'd want to do that during such an important interview I can't even begin to guess. Flair saved this with his most Crockett-like interview yet. I could have done without the yelling, but this is one time when it fit, since he was so angry at both Warrior and Tunney for being completely left off the SummerSlam card. This was the first time I can recall him referring to himself as "Nature Boy" in the WWF, and it's also the first time I can recall him using "Whether you like it or don't like it....." and "What's causin' all this?". Curt recovered from his brain cramps to deliver a perfectly acceptable "Whoo!" at the end. Heenan sounds more out of place than ever cheerleading from the booth. Surely he can do podium interviews without worrying about hurting his neck. If he can't, then tell him to treat Flair like any other wrestler on commentary and stop trying to connect them at all. Sometimes I think that the only reason he's still referred to as Flair's "advisor" is so he can annoy Gino during Flair's interviews without Gino being able to stop it. I liked the blowfish line from Flair about Warrior; he does sort of look like one when he gets really fired up during interviews.
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What surprised me most about this was Hansen's skill level. He's mixed in more wrestling holds with his brawling over time, and though I'd hardly call him a technician, his execution is much crisper than one would think it would be for someone his size. I liked his back-to-back dropkicks, and to see him bust out both a gut-wrench suplex and a snap suplex made me think I was watching the Dynamite Kid in his prime. Of course, his bread and butter is still the lariat, and he threw one of his better ones this time if the bump Kawada took for it is any indication. Combine this with some great work on Kawada's knee and you have one of the most well-rounded Hansen performances that I can remember seeing. Kawada was a picture of resourcefulness and pluck. Since his major striking weapon (his knees) was taken away by Hansen, he used kicks and forearms instead, and he had Stan glassy-eyed and ready to be beaten on several occasions before ultimately falling just a bit short. He sold the knee beautifully, and if the story of the match required him to do something that someone with a bad knee would have difficulty doing, such as slamming Stan on the floor, he always sold for a few seconds the first chance he got instead of blowing off the injury like it never happened. His performance has more than earned him another crack at the Triple Crown in the not-too distant future. With Misawa and Kawada breathing down his neck, and others still to be heard from soon, Stan figures to have a hard time holding on to the Triple Crown even with Jumbo having to step aside before too long. This will be an interesting title picture to follow in the second half of '92.
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If I hadn't read this thread beforehand, I'd have never known these two were partners, as they gave each other no quarter whatsoever. It never really got violent, but everyone watching knew that they'd seen a war when it was over. Toyota's dejection over losing as we faded to black was almost palpable. One could see why she made the hair vs. hair challenge, which is usually the last resort between bitter enemies instead of the final chapter of an intense competition involving a continuing partnership. I paid special attention to the English commentary to see if I could pick up some stuff that I didn't know before, but no such luck. They didn't use Debbie all that much, and when they did she stuck to move descriptions and other run-of-the-mill stuff. The most interesting discussion she participated in was of Yamada's three personalities, which supposedly compare to Keiji Muto's two. She also dropped Lex Luger's name during a discussion of submission holds, which is something I never thought I'd hear on Japanese TV. I find it odd that the Japanese commentator didn't mention that this was a no time limit match until after he asked Debbie if she thought they were going to wrestle to yet another draw. I'm looking forward to seeing how these two can possibly continue as partners in the wake of the challenge Toyota made. They have a tag match coming up in less than a week that made the set, and we'll see how they function as a unit, if they do at all.
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Doc and Bamm Bamm look unstoppable here, which is of course the whole point of their being in WCW. Dustin and Barry get a little bit of offense, but nothing lasts, and Dustin does the clean job to a Doc clothesline (not even the Oklahoma Stampede?). I think the crowd would have bought Doc and Bamm Bamm if they hadn't looked so invincible. If they're supposed to be heels, let Bamm Bamm come in and hit Dustin with a chair for the win, or maybe nail him with a foreign object. The fans resented these outsiders (which they were by now) coming in and going through all their favorite tag teams like a pair of Ginsu knives through a toupee. Let someone put them in danger every once in a while, for pity's sake. Ole was so bad that at one point what JR called a two-count on Doc was really only a one-count. Between that and his weak pitty-pats on the mat, he looked pathetic. Put him outside the ring as an enforcer (sorry, Arn) and let Nick Patrick or Pee Wee Anderson do the officiating inside the ring from now on.
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I've about had it with the Watts era. If I didn't know better, I'd swear that they were running a dirty referee angle with Pee Wee Anderson. What the hell kind of storytelling is this? I didn't time the interval between Scotty tagging Rick (which, mind you, Pee Wee let stand) and Pee Wee ruling the tag illegal, but it had to be at least two minutes, maybe three. I've literally never seen anything like it, not even from the likes of Daffy Danny Davis (TM Craig DeGeorge) back in '86. Like so many other WCW missteps, it turned a decent match (not much more than that, sadly) into unwatchable trash. If I'd been watching in real time and knew the ins and outs of the relationship between Doc and Watts, I would have called this a shoot screwjob on the level of Montreal. It really does seem that Watts was doing everything he could to make sure that Doc and Bamm Bamm got over, even letting crap like this go by when other promoters wouldn't. Of course, this wasn't really a shoot screwjob, but you can't tell me that it was planned either. What seems to have happened is that Pee Wee forgot to disallow the tag and decided to do it when he did to make sure the finish came down the way it was supposed to. I guess you can't blame him for that, but if I'd been Watts, I would have asked him what the hell he thought he was doing out there. Fortunately, JR and Jesse were loyal enough not to comment on how strange this all was, but even the densest mark in the world had to at least notice that something was off. It's the kind of inexcusable sloppiness that kept WCW from becoming number one until 1998 and eventually drove it out of business. As for the bout, I didn't like the amateur stuff as much as some of you. Big guys who can brawl should spend their time doing that and leave the amateur stuff to the so-called technicians, and I'm certainly aware of the legit amateur backgrounds of Doc and the Steiners. But in the pros, they're bomb-throwing asskickers, and that's what they should have been from start to finish in this match. We should have seen chair shots and post shots, not crossfaces and rides. Two or three people bleeding wouldn't have been out of place, either. If Watts wanted to show off their amateur skills, he should have done an amateur rules bout on TV; with the proper buildup, Doc against either Steiner in that type of match could have been something else. I liked the finishing run, with both Doc and Bamm Bamm clipping Scotty's knee. Doc's looked particularly vicious, in part because it was outside. I also liked that Scotty sold the knee so well at the end by staying down; that's the kind of stuff you seldom see from the Steiners, at least to this extent. JR was in his glory calling the amateur sequences, and Jesse kept up with him well. They weren't really memorable here. but with the stakes of the match being what they were, there was no time for much byplay or even interaction. Pee Wee tapping Scotty's head wasn't half as noticeable as the "missed tag"; if that had been his only transgression, I would have barely noticed it. I didn't see the buildup since it isn't on the discs, but again, if Watts felt that way about the whole NWA deal, why on earth didn't he just scrap it? It's not like they did much with it after he left anyway. Even with the amateur stuff, if you take out the whole "missed tag" business, this was good for what it was. Unfortunately, you can't, and that makes the whole mess something that should never have happened. Keep these teams apart until the finals and you may have had a classic.
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This really wasn't a match; it was a twenty-minute six-man pull-apart brawl. I don't think we had two men in and four men out for more than a minute total, which made the whole mess very hard to follow. Octagon's armdrag to the floor on Parka is about the only thing related to wrestling that I'll remember about this. It looked okay to me, but I've never seen the move before so I'm not sure how it should look. I agree with Kevin about Perro walking around the ring for no reason while the match was going on. I'm guessing that he was trying to sell being disoriented, but if he was, he did a terrible job of it. I've never seen a heel look for a foreign object from the crowd before like Fishman did here. I would have laughed if someone had actually given him one with no problem. I've never seen a lucha match end in a double unmasking before. I'll say this: it's a novel way to have a draw finish. I know the tecnicos end up getting their hands raised, but I'm not sure if it's because they won or if the officials just wanted to prevent a riot on AAA's first night. Overall, this was another trios match that frustrated me. Very few of these matches have clicked with me at all for whatever reason, either on the DVDVR set or the Yearbooks. As I've said before, it's not lucha itself; I've enjoyed most of the singles bouts very much. But the tag and trios matches continue to miss the mark.
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This wasn't only notable for setting up the return of Rock 'n' Roll, but for the beginning of the alignment of Dutch with Fuller and Golden as an unofficial third member of the Stud Stable, which explains why Dutch is more biased than usual in favor of Golden here. Nice to see Fuller back after a long absence, and he's another guy who's a decent face but a better natural heel. Caudle was Corey Maclin levels of naïve here. Hey, Bob, your partner's been cheering on Gibson's destruction and egging Golden on for the whole bout. What makes you think he's going to take pity on Gibson and ask the Stud Stable to back off? You know better than that!
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This is where the Bullet Bob/Corny feud that defined SMW started, and you can tell already it's going to be a doozy. What I like best is that Corny is able to stand up to Bullet Bob; that's what separates him from other authority figures like Jack Tunney and Jimmy Crockett Jr. I can't imagine someone like Heenan daring to get in Jack Tunney's face and call him an old fossil; of course, that's mostly because Tunney was seldom near an arena. But Corny's hubris has a price, which is that Bullet Bob is now actively involved in the match as the referee. I actually think this is good for the match; at this point, Corny's the known quantity, so to bar him from ringside takes most of the show away for the fans. Pete's right; a wimp like Corny isn't going to risk hurting himself climbing barbed wire just to throw powder or get in a racquet shot, so his ability to do physical damage is nearly nullified. Thus we get the best of both worlds: Corny working ringside and what should be a bloody classic between the Fultons and the Bodies. I liked that Bullet Bob becoming the referee was seen to be Bobby's idea. If Bullet Bob himself had suggested it, it would have seemed like he was bullying the Bodies and trying to stack the deck against them, which would have validated Corny's complaints.
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Nice to see Ricky in the role he plays so well. Richard Morton was a needed short-term change of pace, but his bread and butter is as the spirited babyface who takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'. I find it a bit weird that he's thrown right into the title picture, but Lawler-Gilbert's more than a bit played out, plus Eddie needs to have a run of longer than a week or two, and putting him right back in with Lawler would have been the same old hotshotting. I love Eddie talking down the Memphis fans as hicks and rednecks, especially because he grew up as one of them just like Ricky did. The in-ring confrontation was a nice preview of coming attractions. I know that this is just a pit stop for Ricky on the road to SMW and the return of Rock 'n' Roll, but it looks like we're in for some hot matches while he's here. I hate to tell Eddie, but his crown is identical to Lawler's. For all we know, it could be exactly the same crown, especially since Lawler doesn't always wear his on TV.
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I really, really liked this. Mike's right; it felt more like a WCW match than a New Japan match, and that's part of the reason why it was so good. The Steiners played foreigners-In-peril perfectly, and that allowed Vader and Bammer to dhow off offensively a bit, particularly in terms of suplexes (the one we saw from Vader is in my top ten of all time, considering who delivered it). Ref bumps are rare in Japan, of course, but I think this one worked to the match's advantage, as an overconfident Bammer had things going his way until he stopped to try to revive the ref, which allowed Rick the opening he needed to hit the winning belly-to-belly. Vader got thrown around a bit too much for my taste early on, but considering what the finish was I'll live with it. Rick and Scotty needed to establish their ability to lift Vader and Bammer so their win didn't come off as a total fluke. I'd have had a problem if they'd suplexed Vader off the top or something like that, but they didn't. I'm guessing it's a standard spot now for Vader to ditch the mask when it comes down to crunch time, much like Lawler drops the strap, Now we know for sure that Watts was talking about the IWGP titles when he mentioned the belts Rick and Scotty won in Japan. I wonder if he was okay with them hugging Vader after the bout when he'd tried to cripple their friend Sting and the Great American Bash was just two weeks away. I don't think he expected NJPW to follow WCW's storyline, but that may be one reason why the win was acknowledged but the match wasn't shown, assuming that they'd thought about it.. I would have loved to have seen a stateside rematch, even with Harley in Vader and Bammer's corner. I think the American fans would have gotten into those two more than they did Doc and Gordy. I couldn't tell from the ting announcements; were the WCW belts on the line here?
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Great to hear JR make his WWF "debut" here. I was so lonely for a WWF tag match featuring regular teams that I had to watch this, even if it was only a clip. This is the first hide or hair we've heard of the WWF tag belts in almost a year! Heenan didn't sound like he knew what he was talking about here, and I don't mean in an in-character way. Maybe working with JR threw him off-stride. JR was decent for calling a Coliseum Video exclusive.
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I liked how casually Hall pushed the guy in the fountain; that's how casually he's going to dominate the WWF until he gets the World title. As Pete said, underneath the great character work is a strong promo, perhaps the strongest heel promo in the promotion next to Flair at this time. I think we only have one more of these on the Yearbook, which comes the following week. That's a good thing, as even the best vignettes in the world can become tiresome when there's no in-ring action to back them up.