garretta
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Everything posted by garretta
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Watts and Ole cut promos like the performers they once were and always will be. I think the "WCW is real wrestling" stuff is whistling past the graveyard now more than ever. They know they're number two and fading fast, that except for a few diehards most people prefer the "macabre cartoon" that is the WWF. Besides, what kind of real wrestling promotion lets its World champion wear facepaint, anyway? Ole as a referee sounds nice in theory, but he's just too tough and old to be pushed around the way refs need to be sometimes. Making him Commissioner would have been a smarter move. I'm kind of lukewarm about mats on the floor or not. Again, the idea is good, but it really doesn't make a difference; heels will still slam their opponents on the floor to get an advantage, and they'll be able to hurt them even more now that the slams will be coming on hard concrete.
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I disagree completely with Kevin here. Gene was just fine; I've never been a fan of announcers showing too much fear around wrestlers, no matter who they were. If a guy's going to be overly scared by the various strange things he'll see or experience in the wrestling business, he should find another profession immediately. An "Oh, my God, what is this?" while the ooze dripped down his hand was exactly what was called for. If anything, I think Curt looks like a damn fool for believing so thoroughly in Shango's curse. Vince I can see selling the hell out of it; Curt should be chuckling coolly and saying, "Mind games, McMahon. It's all mind games, and the Ultimate Sucker's falling for them!" In other words, downplaying the voodoo and keeping the focus on Shango the athlete. I'd never seen the guy with his feet on fire and the ooze all over his face before. I'll say this for Vince; he and his people went all out for goofy bullshit like this. Shango himself isn't bad on the mic, especially for his character. It's a matter of how much of this stuff you can take without running for the other channel.
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A typical Warrior promo. I can't figure out why Shango's weaker for cursing those who don't believe. What better demonstration of his power could there be that making the curse come true and showing the non-believers how wrong they were to doubt him? I liked Warrior saying that he'd sacrifice himself to save his Warriors. There were occasional nuggets of sense in his promos, but in general you had to sift through far too much crap to get to them.
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Thanks for the info, Loss!
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At least they didn't feature guys who were about to leave the company this year like they did with Flair last year. That's an improvement. I wonder what it would be like to actually wrestle on board a ship. I know they advertised live cards on board in '91, and like Pete I'd love to see a fancam or TV footage of the matches which took place, if such things exist.
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This is Lawler at his most intense. It's not the material that makes it; outside of the Missy story, there's really nothing new here. It's the style, the delivery, and the crowd reaction which makes this spellbinding. This man knows what his crowd wants to hear, and he delivers. As good as Eddie is, and as legitimate as his points may be, he can't touch Lawler's connection to his public. Neither can any other wrestler active at this time. The Missy story may seem a bit out of school, and it's a pretty safe bet that it's not strictly true, at least not the way Lawler tells it here. But it's a picture-perfect illustration of Eddie's obsession with Lawler and becoming the king of Memphis at literally any cost. Could Lawler have gotten away with telling it on a larger stage? Probably not. But it fits here, and it's definitely believable in this context. Eddie can't possibly look good even if he denies it in his reply, which he apparently doesn't. It's a bit much to call this one of the best promos ever, but it's probably one of the most perfect promos for the situation in which it's delivered, and if it didn't help to sell out the MSC. the USWA was in bigger trouble than anyone ever dreamed.
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I don't think the point of the magazine thing was that Eddie was number six; I think it was that he was number six while Lawler was unranked. That's worth bragging about, especially in Memphis where Lawler's reigned practically unopposed for so long. The promo here is excellent up until the last few moments, when Eddie loses control and starts yelling. Up until then, he was really making a case why he should be considered the man in Memphis once he beats Lawler. And there's the crux of Eddie's beef, both on-camera and in real life: plenty of guys have pinned Lawler or beaten him up, and Bill Dundee even sent him out of town for a while. But no one's ever taken Lawler's place and kept it for long, mostly because Lawler himself simply wouldn't allow it as co-owner of the promotion. Even though Eddie doesn't talk in those terms on camera, it's hard not to feel his frustration on that basis. As Pete said, though, I doubt much will change here. There's going to be a screwjob of some kind, and while Lawler may or may not leave the MSC with the Unified belt, his crown will remain untouched. No one, not even someone with Eddie's obvious qualifications, will be allowed to shine brighter than him, ever. As Lawler begins to split time between Memphis and the WWF in the months ahead, we'll see just how much that hurts the Memphis product. Interesting that they cut Eddie off just as he was mentioning his family. Was that a coincidence, or was that timed to possibly stop an on-air mention of Doug for whatever reason? I'm surprised Lawler allowed himself to be connected to Andy Kaufman's death in any way, even in heel promos, when everyone knew Andy had died of cancer. I guess he rationalized it by saying that Andy would have wanted it that way.
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Not bad for a generic promo. I wonder how many current fans knew about the MGM slogan that Corny referenced. My guess is not many. Not to nitpick, but Corny's recycling lines he used for the MX, such as "Every mother's nightmare and every schoolgirl's dream". Come to think of it, that's a common line when pretty boy wrestlers are the subject of promos, particularly in Southern promotions. I'm beginning to think that Stan's toupee might have been a deliberate attempt to get more heat on himself; I know for a fact that the headgear (which we haven't seen yet) was. No matter how hard a guy beats on him, there won't be a hair out of place, and he'll still look as pretty as ever. Even if Stan was simply being vain, the piece ended up as a heat-getter anyway, especially on this board!
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The Bodies may not be the in-ring team that the MX were, but they have them beat on promos by a million miles. I don't know where Corny got the idea to let Stan and Dr. Tom pull their own weight on promos, but it was a stroke of genius. It allows the fans to hate all three Bodies equally (especially Stan with his horrid toupee) instead of just Corny. Stan even gets the best line when he tells the women in the audience to call the 1-900 numbers instead of himself and Dr. Tom. A great all-around promo, maybe the best the Bodies have delivered to date. I'm guessing the Riches Corny referenced were Johnny and Davey. Did he ever try to convince Tommy to come to SMW? Even at this late date in his career, Tommy could have been an asset either as a face or a heel.
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Is it just me or is that five thousand dollars almost like a title because of how important it is to these guys? Landell is what Corny would be if he was a wrestler. He exaggerates almost everything (working ninety times with a fever of a hundred and fifteen?) and is obnoxious as all hell, but he's so entertaining that you don't mind it somehow. Horner tries, but he's just too earnest for his own good. The day of the quietly humble babyface who doesn't really like to talk and would rather just wrestle has either been gone since Dusty Rhodes turned face or never really existed in the first place, depending on your point of view. Not everyone needs to be a screamer, but the "gee, golly, gosh" routine simply doesn't play in 1992. The brawl was spirited, and I loved the disclaimer, which I've never seen anything like in my life. This may just be the hottest feud in SMW right now despite Horner's deficiencies on the mic, and I want to see how it turns out!
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I'd almost forgotten that Razor was supposed to be a sort of sex symbol who "oozed machismo". This promo sets up that aspect of the character nicely. The only thing that would have made it better is if the girl had slapped his face. I didn't notice the glass of wine on the table, but could you imagine today's WWE- or even the WWF of a few years prior- allowing its wrestlers to even suggest consuming alcohol on camera? I can't even remember the last time prior to this that alcohol had been seen near a WWF wrestler other than Flair. Maybe the Andre/managers vignettes a year or so before, with the Giant doing the drinking?
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I've never seen Scarface, so I really can't tell if Razor's a ripoff character or not. Even if it is, it's amazing that someone as light-skinned as Hall could pull off being a Cuban-American so well, even if he is from Florida. You can almost see the arrogance dripping off of him, and you wonder just how good he can be in the ring, since he's obviously a huge man with a big ax to grind. A question: Could the gimmick have worked as well if whoever came up with it for wrestling purposes put a revenge spin on it? Razor as a vengeful Cuban patriot who's made his fortune in America and now wants to stick it to us for allowing his people to be treated the way they have been by Castro over the years had possibilities if the WWF had been willing to acknowledge the world outside its bubble a little more than they were by now.
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I'd never heard of him before, Ohtani. This puts the match in a whole new light. Thanks for the info!
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It took a while to get past the poor lighting and the awful ring, but once I did this was quite nice. Espanto never took a backwards step, like you'd expect a relative no-name to do against a legend like Del Santo, and his win was both clean and surprisingly popular. I'm not saying that the fans turned against Del Santo; it was more that they grew over the course of the match to respect the plucky youngster who was obviously giving the performance of his life. This wasn't a match filled with memorable moves or spots, bur considering the result, it didn't have to be, I'm surprised these guys decided to stay in such an obviously dirty ring; I've seen other matches in rings like this take place almost exclusively on the floor, only coming into the ring for the finishes of the falls. Maybe the fact that this was a title match kept it grounded. "We Will Rock You" for entrance music and "Urgent" for exit music? Either Espanto was a huge fan of eighties music or these songs were dubbed in, legally or otherwise, by the company that produced this footage, either for TV or tape. I'm guessing the latter, particularly in the case of "Urgent", which sounds too clean to have been played in the arena. What was the disturbance just after the beginning of the third fall? Did officials want to determine if the ring was still usable? That's about the only reason I can think of for the match to be stopped in such an odd place.
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This match is best viewed not as a coherent story, but as a demo tape of spots to be sent to the Big Two should either one of these two get up the guts to try and make the jump. In that context, the piledriver through the table spot didn't bother me at all; the idea was to show that Fulton could execute it, and after Wilcox sold it for a few seconds it was time to move to the next spot in the checklist. These two guys worked hard, but they were obviously years away from being stars or even functional workers anywhere but where they were. It seemed at times like they switched roles, as Wilcox heeled it up a bit while he had Fulton in the figure four. This adds to the audition tape vibe that permeates the bout. They needed to work on their ring positioning as well; several times when they went to execute a move that needs a lot of room, they ran out of room and smacked against the ropes. McAdam looks a little bit like Corny, but I've seen Corny's debut in Memphis, and even though he was a million miles from what he would later become, he still had more charisma and working ability than McAdam shows here. There's a reason he settled down to life as a tape trader and message board poster. Of course, I would have had more to judge him on if I could have actually heard the prematch promo he cut with Fulton. Are you sure McAdam ran this promotion, Loss? The only UCW I could find with a search that was in operation in 1992 was an outfit that ran out of Winnipeg. Its owner was a gentleman by the name of Walter Shefchyk.
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I agree that Hase's performance after the bandage was ripped off was excellent, but I'm still not comfortable with guys throwing Vader around, or Bam Bam either for that matter. As I said in an earlier thread, I'm a proponent of the Vince McMahon School of Superheavyweight Booking. It should take at least three or four strikes to stun a guy over four hundred pounds and five or six to knock him down, and slams/suplexes should be limited to one a match. Any more than two and it's not a special spot like it should be. By that standard, Vader and Bammer way oversold here, and if that's the way Vader chooses to work, he should lose about a hundred and fifty pounds at least. All that said, I liked the cohesion between both sides, and if you manage to put the size difference out of your mind, this was a great back-and-forth match. I didn't much care for Hase's insistence on going outside to doubleteam Bam Bam with Muto, and it was that very move that cost them the match, as Bam Bam hit the double DDT on the floor which knocked them both silly. It was only a matter of time after that, though I liked Muto straining to save Hase after Vader hit the winning splash and just barely missing. I don't think I've ever see a pin cutoff fail in quite that way before. This is the Bam Bam the Apter mags went wild over: size, agility, and toughness. It's good to see him finally put it all together, and while I have some problems with the way he and Vader were presented here, their actual work is tremendous. Maybe Vince booked his big guys the way he did because they couldn't move and work like these two can and I'm just slow to appreciate the difference. It's definitely possible. At any rate, I wish Bammer would have accompanied Vader to the States; even if he and Vader couldn't have been partners due to Vader's issue with Sting, he would have been an excellent addition to an already loaded WCW roster. By the way, the shots of him with Hase's blood all over his face were awesome in the literal sense of the word. Is there any special reason why Vader went without his mask? Was this usual for him by now in NJPW?
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I don't usually go into matches looking for blown spots and the like, but after reading this thread I was ready for them in this match. At about the seventeen-minute mark, I was about ready to say that you guys didn't know what you were talking about. Then Muto blew the moonsault, of all things, Choshu whiffed on a DDT, and a couple of his lariats looked less than crisp as well. Everyone can blow a spot once in a while, but three or four such noticeable ones in such a short span of time is just a sign of laziness. Add to that several times late in the bout where Muto didn't seem to know what to do next, and this bout goes from solid if unspectacular to a profound disappointment. I didn't notice Muto being especially lazy, unless you guys mean that he wasn't struggling enough in Choshu's submission holds, which is debatable and takes the discussion down a bit of a slippery slope. If he'd been selling too actively, I'll bet some of you would have criticized him for it the way you've criticized Ricky Steamboat in the past. I found Muto's selling in this match to be perfectly competent, if a bit understated.
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This was almost two different bouts. When the action went to the mat, Takada dominated with his leg-based submissions. But he couldn't counter Albright's pro-style throws, which included both slams and suplexes. This makes me wonder why more guys didn't use regular pro-style moves during shoot-style bouts more often. The amazing thing about the finish was that it seemed to come out of nowhere. Takada had built an eight-point lead, and Albright seemed desperate to avoid being blown out of the arena. Then all of a sudden Albright hit the first suplex, but there was still not much worry, as Takada still led by five. When the second one hit, I didn't realize that Takada wasn't getting up until after the bell sounded. Talk about an upset! I liked Albright's promo after the bout, and it was a nice touch for him to be helped out of the arena even in victory, selling the damage Takada's submission holds had done to his legs. I'd love to see another fight between these two soon. Does anyone else notice the more-than slight resemblance between Albright and Steve Williams? Also, if I'm not mistaken, the N on Albright's singlet stands for Nebraska, which at that time was Oklahoma's mortal football enemy.
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It's really hard to tell just how dirty the Steiners may have been here, with the exception of Rick's forearm off the top that closed Iizuki's eye. Everything else could have been Rick and Scotty stiffing the Japanese, or it could have been the Japanese selling their hearts out. One thing's for sure: They kept going and didn't complain, nor did they make any attempt at a receipt too obvious. The closest they might have come was when Fujinami kicked Rick hard in the head while breaking up a pin late in the match. The telltale sign that it might have been a potato was Jesse chuckling as he said, "He rung his bell, Jim Ross." You wouldn't think that the Steiners would want to rough up anyone associated with New Japan, seeing as how they're scheduled to go back in June (their match with Vader and Bam Bam made the set, in fact). They're taking an awful chance on getting paid back sometime when no one's around to protect them, and Fujinami's experienced and knowledgeable enough to hurt anyone if he really puts his mind to it. I noticed that JR covered Fujinami's resume by saying that he's won "too many championships to mention". That, of course, includes his controversial NWA World title victory over Flair last year at SuperBrawl I. My guess is that they definitely wanted the Japanese team to look and act more like heels, which would explain Fujinami's mustache (which, by the way, does nothing whatsoever for his look). I've never seen Iizuka before, and he looked like he belonged in the same ring with the Steiners for the first few minutes. Then Rick hit the foream from the top and he was (understandably) never the same. I hope we see more of him on upcoming sets, because he really impressed me (not to mention Jesse). Did Fujinami and Iizuka ever team before this? JR made them out to be an experienced team, but that could have been just hype designed to make them seem like a big deal and thus make the Steiners' win look better. I guess this was a non-title match, because neither Cappetta nor the announcers ever mentioned the WCW belts being on the line, even though Rick and Scotty were announced as champions and wore the belts to the ring. JR pretty much had his way in this match. Jesse tried to make this about the All-American Steiners from Detroit defending the honor of the country from the dirty Japs who make our cars these days and thus put Americans out of work, but JR put a stop to that PDQ and probably warned Jesse nonverbally not to open his mouth in that way again for the rest of the match. Jesse got the message, apparently, because he was almost 100% neutral from then on. Free to call the match his way, JR sounded like his old self, putting over the physicality of the bout and telling us again and again that we only get that kind of action in WCW. Being an American, he was naturally biased slightly toward the Steiners, but made sure to give the Japanese team the respect it deserved. This was helped by the fact that Fujinami and Iizuka wrestled a relatively clean match. It's going to be interesting to see how he and Jesse frame Steiners/MVC matches; how do you portray two Americans as dastardly foreign heels, especially when one of them is the son your new boss never had even though he has two biological sons of his own?
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This one had so much nonstop action that it felt like a finishing sequence from the beginning. I like my bouts to have lots of action, but sometimes a small breather allows the fans to process what they're seeing and gives the wrestlers some much-needed energy at the end. This was so breakneck that people were preventing their own partners from making pinfalls in their rush to get in the ring, or at least that's how it seemed to me. The giant swing by Kyoko was one of the most incredible moves I've ever seen. I counted no less than sixteen and a half revolutions, and it's a wonder that both Kyoko and Sakie didn't pass out. Kyoko's body control was enormous. It sounds like there's definitely more to come from these four, based on Kyoko and Mariko's promos after the match. Maybe next time they'll slow things down just a tad and allow us to savor their work a little longer!
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Bobby Fulton may be the best face promo in the promotion right now, but he can't hold a candle to Corny. The man's in another league, and he's allowed to go further now than he ever was in JCP; somehow, I can't imagine Dusty letting him bring out an "I will work for food sign" during a promo on Rock 'n' Roll or himself and Magnum. The scary thing is, he gets better once Rock 'n 'Roll comes back and Del Ray, who's not much of a talker, replaces Lane. I wondered why Stan looked so old all of a sudden. While nothing can prevent me from paying attention to one of Corny's promos, that piece was enough to make me seriously wonder if Stan was ill or something, I disagree about the headgear, though; I thought the "busted eardrum" story that Corny used to explain the headgear was hilarious. Was it just me or was Bob trying not to crack a smile during parts of Corny's promo? I can't see how any announcer avoids it once the man truly gets rolling; if he didn't have such a potty mouth and could stand to live in New York or California, he could have a second career as a stand-up comedian.
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This is a great match, but in a year where the Royal Rumble featured the greatest Flair performance ever, and in a promotion where Misawa and Jumbo and their friends have great matches at the drop of a hat, I can hardly heap the praise on it that some of you have. Having said that, Kikuchi finally gets to the top of the mountain, which is a great thing to see, and I've never seen Kroffat and Furnas look better. I get that Bill Watts wanted to bring his boy Doc home, so that's why the MVC got the call to WCW, but I wonder if he couldn't have gotten better matches for the Steiners out of the Can-Ams. I wasn't really paying attention to the crowd, but one of the reasons they may have been so hot is because these four guys took everything to the limit. The pin saves were timed to the very last possible instant, the submission holds looked like they were designed to break bones and impossible to get out of without help from the respective partners (Furnas' crab in particular looked excruciating), and the kickouts were true escapes at the two and three-quarter mark more often than not. This being a hometown crowd for Kikuchi put the cherry on top. Even though this may not be the best Japanese tag match we've seen this year so far, it beats the hell out of anything we've seen from the States. I've been waiting for a place to mention this, and this is as good as any: It utterly amazes me that we haven't seen a WWF tag match featuring regular teams since LOD/Nasties at SummerSlam '91. Nothing from the LOD's title reign made either the '91 or '92 sets, and now we're deep into the first run of Money Inc. and we've still seen nothing. Over in WCW, the last tag title match we saw was Steamer and Dustin winning the belts at the November '91 Clash; Arn and Bobby's reign, though mentioned a few times during other bouts, wasn't represented on this set, and by now they've lost the belts to the Steiners. That's not a knock on Will by any means, but rather an indictment of how bad tag team wrestling was in the Big Two, at least at the championship level, during this time.
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I thought this was just as much about Matsuda's comeback as Liger's ultimate victory. (I'm using Matsuda's real name here because he wrestled most of the match with his mask off.) I've seen a pissed-off Liger/Yamada beat guys to within an inch of their lives and overwhelm them to the point where they're completely helpless in the bargain, but Matsuda not only refused to be overwhelmed, he got a few close counts even after Liger's offensive roll started. Ultimately, though, he couldn't take Liger's repeated suplexes off the top; I think I counted one regulation superplex and two back superplexes, plus the finishing Frankensteiner. Kudos to Matsuda for taking so many vicious bumps on the back of his head in so short a time. I knew about the ferocity of the first few minutes from reading about it in this thread, but I didn't expect the sequence in the middle where Liger tried to rip Matsuda's arm off. That has to be some of most painful limb work I've ever seen; I got the feeling that Matsuda was literally trying to keep his arm attached to the rest of his body. Of course, Liger had to get to his flashier finishing offense, so he never really followed up on it, but it would have been interesting to see just how far he'd gone with it if he'd had the time. Matsuda's work on Liger's neck shouldn't be discounted either; not only fid he hit the tombstone on the outside, but he hit another one in the ring right afterward that might have won him the bout if he'd gone for the cover, then followed it up with a Rude Awakening, a recliner chinlock, and a dragon sleeper. I have a feeling that if this wasn't a blood feud already, it's going to be one going forward, as these two have established that they're not only out there to beat each other, but to cripple each other. I'm sure we haven't seen the last of this issue. I wonder who got the idea to hide not one, but two bottles under the ring for Matsuda to use. I've never seen a spot like that done twice in a row before. I haven't seen enough New Japan juniors matches to call it the greatest match ever for that division, and I'm pretty sure it's not the best match in New Japan history, either. But it's certainly the match of the tournament and the start of what should be another memorable rivalry in a long and distinguished line for Liger.
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I'd be a fool if I said this wasn't unique, but it might have been more digestible if it had been more conventional: Santo vs. Casas in a lucha singles and Onita/Goto vs. Boulder/Patterson in an FMW-style tag. It was certainly a novelty seeing Goto and Onita as teammates, though, and I wonder if that was acknowledged when they went back to Japan. Outside of a few spots, there wasn't much interaction between the luchadores and the FMW guys, which I thought was the whole point of a bout like this. Santo had one nice double dive on Boulder inside and Casas outside that was the spot of the match, but other than that, this could have been the separate matches which I suggested above and not lost a thing. It was nice to see Hogan's nephew and Patterson, whom I remember as just another WWF jobber. The interesting thing is, Patterson looks more like Hogan than Horace does here. I guess Horace eating a piledriver on the floor and coming back to the match in a few moments as if nothing happened shouldn't bother me, since stuff like that happens in "garbage" promotions all the time. But for whatever reason, it still does. Call me too logical for my own good, I guess. Was this held in the same arena as the card the previous day, or did they go to a do a different part of the LA area for this one?
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This might have been the syndicated match of the year so far in WCW. Dustin didn't need to be made a star, but this was his best singles performance to date, as he handled Rude for the majority of the bout and looked like a future superstar doing it. It took a blatant shot with the US belt off of a Medusa distraction to finally put him away (though Rude used the Rude Awakening to make it all look legit). Before I go any further, what was the point of this tournament? To crown a number one contender for Sting? If that's the case, why is Sting wasting his time with Mick Foley at Beach Blast? Was there any sort of payoff? It should have been a World title match for Rude the following week on Worldwide, if you want to be logical about things. They've had World title matches on syndie shows before; remember Windham vs. Flair back in '87? Rude's selling of his bad back was excellent as usual, and he had to develop legit back problems as a result of always doing back injury spots. Ir's his own fault for being a master of the bump and grind! I loved Jesse's suggestion that Medusa show Dustin some leg; as he knows so well, it distracted veterans like Teddy and Andre when Liz did it at SummerSlam '88. Imagine how it would work on a relative greenhorn like Dustin. Tony was quick to quash Jesse's assertion that there were multiple wrestlers (including Dustin) after Medusa, and I applaud him for that. Dusty should never have started down such a disgusting road with Steamboat in the first place. The timely use of the low blow was a recurring theme that you don't see explored too often. With that said, Fonzie looked like an idiot not warning Rude at all after his first one and only warning him after his second when he clearly saw them both. He also looked terrible not DQ'ing Dustin after Dustin threw him across the ring for no apparent reason. I know that was the setup to the planned finish, but either they needed to set it up in such a way that Fonzie didn't look so bad or Dusty needed to tell Dustin not to be quite so blatant about tossing Fonzie around. Tony works with Jesse a lot more smoothly than JR does, but there's still an occasional hint of Tony getting annoyed that Jesse would interrupt his match calls at all. This is one area where Vince is superior; he lets the heel commentators he hires do their thing, and though he and Gino definitely show annoyance with guys like Heenan and Curt, it's at the things they say, not the fact that they're saying something in the first place. WCW needs to either give Jesse a wide berth to be what they hired him to be or let him go and go back to solo announcers or JR and Tony in the booth together.