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garretta

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Everything posted by garretta

  1. garretta
    There was a lot more wrestling here than I expected for a grudge match, but the announcers did a good job also putting it over as a match for both the Southern title and the number-one contendership for Lawler, so with those things also on the line it makes sense that they weren't just out there trying to kill each other. These two can flat out go in both a scientific match and a brawl, and even though I would have liked a longer match and a non-interference finish, this felt satisfying, although of course I'd like to see them go at it again, as they have tremendous chemistry both as partners and opponents. This almost certainly won't lead to Lawler/Embry; I think that issue's dead before its time. I'm also reminded that we never got a Lawler/Prichard series, which would have been a goody in its own right. What hasn't Tony Falk done in Memphis? Wrestler, ringside second, referee, and I wouldn't be surprised if he filled in on color commentary at least once. I think the only thing he hasn't been so far is the booker. Lawler's really going back to the future with the returns of both the Moondogs and Kamala. The question is, is he doing it because he believes that those acts will draw in and of themselves, or is he doing it because he doesn't trust the younger talent to get over with the exception of Jeff? I think it might be a bit of both. I'm surprised that the finish to this one was as clean as it was. Where can these two possibly go from here? As I said above, I'd like to see them go at it again, but as I in the minority? I guess we'll find out soon enough.
  2. garretta
    Having Fuller be the one to get dominated was an expert piece of booking. Usually, the smaller and/or less experienced partner takes the beating in situations like this, but here the Dogs do their number on Fuller, who's an experienced tough guy and has been known to bend the rules himself a time or several. You get the feeling that this would have been a more even fight if it wasn't for that cursed can opener (or whatever that doodad which busted Robert open was supposed to be). Did we ever hear of this "Young Gun" again, and was his absence legit or just part of the angle? Considering the beating Robert took and the low pay given for working TV in Memphis, it wouldn't surprise me if someone gave the kid a heads-up about what was going to happen and he simply bailed on the whole ball of wax. What accent was Corey trying for? Whenever I've heard him before, he's always done a picture-perfect Lance Russell. Here, it sounds like he's trying for some upper class/New York hybrid. If that's his natural voice, I prefer the Lance imitation. The jury's still out for me as far as Richard Lee goes. Let's see what happens as the angle intensifies a bit. Right now, he's just sort of there. I like the whistle; I haven't seen a Moondog manager use one since Albano did it with Rex and King during the team's original WWF run in '81. There actually is a San Juan, Mexico. It's a tiny village in the state of Campeche. Of course, no one in the USWA offices was likely to know that. The Moondog gimmick seems to be a strange one to bring back, given that Rex and Spotty have spent most of the last six years as jobbers, both together and separately. But Spotty and his new partner Spike have made it pay off in a big way so far, displaying a viciousness that we've never seen out of the litter before. They're already causing chaos, to the point that Jeff and Fuller are asking to be reunited specifically to deal with them, thus temporarily postponing Jeff's campaign for Lawler's Unified title. The best part is, they've only been back for a week. I can't wait to see what happens once they settle in!
  3. garretta
    If Jumbo and company have to dominate this feud, this is how they should do it. I've seldom seen a match where one non-jobber team so thoroughly dominates another and looks like they're having fun in the process. Not only was Misawa's nose ruthlessly targeted, so were Kawada's ribs and Kikuchi's body in general. Jumbo and his boys came to kick tail, and kick tail they did. The Misawa side brought just enough fire for this not to be a squash; they manage to stun their opponents and briefly knock them off their game plan, but at no time do they ever fully take control. It'll be interesting to see if Misawa's crew can get back on track with the Real World Tag League on tap in November. Zenjo, I think Misawa sold his facial injuries perfectly. If you got hit in the nose, wouldn't you wait until were sure you hadn't reinjured yourself before rejoining the fight? That said, most of Misawa's trips outside the ring lasted too long; Unless he'd been legitimately knocked unconscious, I'd have liked to see him fight his way back up to the apron within a few seconds of being tossed out instead of leaving his partners to fight three-on-two for almost half the match (practically three-on-one when you consider the hellacious beatings Kawada and Kikuchi each took at various points). .
  4. garretta
    I see what Pete meant about the announcers pimping this as more of a match than it was. It was a very good championship-style match, well-worked by both guys. The first and third falls can stand up against most of the good action from this year, but even in a style where second falls mean little most of the time except as excuses to make matches even and bring about the third and deciding fall, the second fall was far, far too short. The tit-for-tat submission wins were an interesting idea, but Panther's victory came too quickly to mean much. The buildup from mostly matwork in the first fall to almost all high-flying in the third was interesting to watch, as was the behavior of the seconds. There wasn't even a hint of interference from either Dandy or Pierroth Jr., and it shoes how thoroughly I buy the American style that I keep expecting interference from seconds even though I know it doesn't work that way in Mexico (or Japan either, for that matter.) Interesting that the seconds got more interview time than the wrestlers afterward, although that could have been because the wrestlers were still winded. I would have given anything for a translation, because it seemed that Pierroth Jr. in particular was quite disturbed by something. The training montage at the start was a nice idea for those viewers who wanted to know what it's like to train for a championship bout. I'm pretty sure most of the footage was of Atlantis and the technicos, but I thought I saw a shot or two of Panther mixed in.
  5. garretta
    Nice little six-man here, and it's nice to see the belts finally get some attention, It seems like we haven't seen the Yorks in a month of Sundays. For a stable that seemed ready to be a major player, and that had a gimmick which could have really gotten over if marketed correctly, they've become an afterthought and a disappointment through no fault of their own. There was a lot of solid action, and the "turnabout is fair play" finish (Borne pinning Taylor with his feet on the ropes just seconds after Taylor tried to do the same thing to him) was a treat. Unfortunately, we only get sporadic match commentary from JR, who instead talks about his radio show, runs down the lineup on WCWSN for the following Saturday, recaps Halloween Havoc, and especially dissects Rick Steiner's motivation for and chances of beating Luger for the World title as a way of plugging a Power Hour interview with him the following Saturday. The only thing that remotely interests him about the match going on in the ring is the brief confrontation between old friends Borne and Rich. If it wasn't a title match I could understand this to a point, but the six-man title is still a championship no matter how infrequently it's talked about or featured, and thus deserves respect as such. Maybe he was just mad that he couldn't talk about anyone's football background. It's good to see the heel team as the one with a legitimate gripe for a change, and I'm looking forward to the rematches.
  6. garretta
    This match is the classic story of evil having to sink to its greatest depths to overcome transcendent good. Everything went Sting's way from beginning to end, but Rude and Heyman were just low enough to cut one more corner than Sting could overcome. You could say that Sting looked almost too good in defeat here, but that was done with the idea of keeping him viable as a contender for Luger. Rude would shine plenty in the months ahead. So much for all-business Rude, as we're back to the custom-made tights and the hip swiveling. The hair's back almost to its WWF length as well. Congratulations to the camera crew for capturing both Heyman's promo and the ambulance pulling up to the arena at the same time. The sense of drama was palpable: Even after all he went through, Sting wasn't out of the woods yet, as he actually had to make it back to the ring before the ten-count. Of course, like Heyman had before him, Rude actually harms his own cause, in this case by going out to meet Sting head-on instead of simply standing there and letting Nick Patrick count him out. A typically stupid heel move, especially since Sting was already limping and had used up extra energy by going to the wrong entrance after getting out of the ambulance. Instead of literally being handed the U.S. title with no effort expended on his part, Rude found himself in an unexpected dogfight. He may be a bit overrated as a promo, but Heyman works ringside like a pro. His whole being is devoted to one and only one purpose: To drive everyone who isn't on his payroll completely insane, and if he can't do that, to use anything that isn't nailed down in order to give his men the advantage they need. I can't think of too many other managers who were as willing to physically involve themselves in bouts; if it's a major match of any sort involving the DA, you know someone's getting whacked with the phone, as Sting was here, and unlike most other managers, Heyman's going to be doing the vast majority of the whacking himself. The phone saved his bacon in this instance, because the only reason Sting even got to ringside without having to forfeit the title was because Heyman had run his mouth for too long instead of letting Patrick count Sting down. JR was great here: openly rooting for Sting, but still educating the viewers on what an uphill climb he had ahead of him. He finally gets to let loose on his former partner Heyman, and you can hear the repressed disgust flooding out as he bellows "That big-mouthed jerk!" He also does a great job after the match in reflecting the fans' disappointment that the fairy tale ending they wanted so badly wasn't to be. He can be a bit flat on the weekly shows from time to time, but he still brings his A game for the money events (Clashes and pay-per-views). Interesting that for the purposes of this match, they link the lineages of the Crockett/JCP version of the U.S. title and the San Francisco version. I don't think I've heard the name Ray Stevens mentioned before on WCW programming, although I could certainly be wrong.
  7. garretta
    Sorry, but this did nothing for me. I repeat: NOTHING. First of all, couldn't you guys have found the uncensored version? The WWF damn near blotted out the whole picture with that stupid red X; I couldn't see a thing, literally. For all I knew, Jake and Savage could have been putting golf balls back and forth in the ring. Sure, Vince freaked out, but he's always freaking out over something or other, so what made this so special? Without actually seeing the cobra dig his fangs into Randy's arm, the whole thing just becomes another overacted skit, complete with Randy's Keystone Kops-like pratfalls when he's going after Jake. All I could think was, "For God's sake, Mach, quit hamming it up. This whole thing's stupid enough." Liz's hysterics, which I'm sure were at least partially real, saved it slightly, but not to the point where I cared. Taker locking Warrior in the casket scared me to death, even a few months ago; I can still remember looking for a place to hide and covering my ears when Savage seemingly put Steamboat on the critical list with the ring bell. This isn't either of those. (Let me reemphasize: the above comments were just for the censored version. I'm sure it was legitimately frightening in the arena, as we saw with the little boy crying his eyes out. But siting here watching it twenty-four years later when all I can see is that X.......well, to paraphrase Popeye, I saw what I saw, and that's all that I saw, and it moved me not a bit.) To be fair, the mood was damaged for me before the cobra ever made his appearance, and this one was purely Vince's fault. Jake outdoes himself on the mic, as he knows he has to in order to entice Randy into the ring. At one point, he's even got Piper ready to fight him, which I would have laid down big money to see. Savage slowly rises from his seat, makes his explanations to Vince, and stalks down to the ring, with Jake still fanning the fire, making sure his trap still holds fast. But do we hear what Jake's saying? We do not. We hear Vince babbling on and on about Survivor Series and how Randy blew his opportunity for reinstatement even while he never so much as touches Jake. It's Jake who cheapshots Randy, rams him into the post, and ties him up in the ropes, and yet Vince still cries the blues because Randy couldn't "be a pro", as he's put it before. Only when the cobra comes out does Vince finally wake up and smell the venom, so to speak. What we needed out of him was to shut the hell up and let us listen to what is quite literally a money promo from the best heel talker of all time. That's right, better than JCP Flair, better than prime AWA Heenan, better than '84 Piper. This is the promo that's going to finally talk Savage into a confrontation, reinstatement or no reinstatement, and we hear less than half of it. He could have started speaking Swedish from the second Randy got out of his chair and it would have made no earthly difference, because the home audience would never have heard him one way or the other. Vince learned this bad habit in the studio, or maybe he's always had it and it's only getting unbearable now. Regardless, it made me feel more disgust with him than with Jake, and the red X finished it off on a horrible note. I understand why they had to do it, but couldn't they have made it smaller somehow? This may seem like sacrilege, but I wouldn't have done this angle at all, I'd have settled for an exact replay of the Steamboat SNME angle and brought back the python instead. If I recall correctly, Damien wrapped himself around Ricky's neck at one point and it wasn't censored by NBC, so I would have given the cobra the night off and used Lucifer one last time. This would have had the added effect of Savage going into the ring at Tuesday in Texas with a severe concussion (hopefully not a legitimate one like Steamer got) which he could sell throughout the match. I'll have to watch the match when I get to it to see for sure, but I don't believe that Randy sold the arm that was bitten, or that Jake made a point of working on it. (By the way, if that was a blade job Randy did where the cobra bit him, that's Cactus Jack levels of sick. If it wasn't, let me slightly amend my comments from above, because that looked really scary, red X notwithstanding.) In summation, now that I think about it I'm probably more pissed at Vince tromping all over Jake's promo than about the X, though I still wish it had been a bit smaller. At least the X was understandable even if I didn't like it; Vince's behavior was not only ignorant, but cut his best verbal performer off right below the waist. Sad to see that this feud didn't do so well at the box office. You'd think they'd have gone to MSG with it instead of Long Island, but I used to get WWOR on cable, and it was amazing how many big feuds went to Nassau or the Meadowlands when they hit New York instead of the so-called Mecca. MSG never saw Hogan-Orndorff, Steamboat-Savage, Piper-Adonis, Hogan-Andre (except for SummerSlam '88, which of course was a tag), and the list goes on. From what I heard, Nassau was the hardest of the three New York metropolitan arenas to get to, so maybe Vince wanted to reward those who made the trip.
  8. garretta
    Not much we haven't heard before from Savage, but again Vince was practically promising that he would return to oppose Jake at Survivor Series. I stand by what I said earlier about it working out for the best that their issue stayed one-on-one, but if Vince wanted it to stay that way he shouldn't have had Randy mention Survivor Series at all. Liz was a lot better here than she would be a week later on Superstars. I especially liked that she acknowledged that Randy had done people a few bad turns in his day, but right or wrong, she was behind him. We already knew that, of course, but to hear her state it confidently was something that this angle needed. I just realized that her Superstars appearance came right before Randy was attacked by the cobra, so in that case I can certainly understand why her mind wasn't exactly on business. Gino and Bobby still have the old chemistry when Gino doesn't have to worry about calling matches or putting over people he doesn't like. He's in favor of Randy and Liz, so he's in a good mood and decides to play straight man. My favorite exchange, though, was one where Gino himself got the last laugh: Gino: "Isn't (Liz) lovely?" Bobby: "Compared to what?" Gino: "Anything I've seen you with!"
  9. garretta
    Now I know why delaying Savage's reinstatement until Tuesday in Texas felt like a bait-and-switch. They all but guaranteed that he'd be there and then pulled the rug out from under those who might have ordered the pay-per-view just to see him get at Jake. That's dangerous, considering that most people probably wouldn't have had the money to order two pay-per-views in six days. No wonder business went into a down cycle. Wasn't the Piper match the one where they introduced a rule where a wrestler could be eliminated over the top rope, then proceeded to have almost everyone in the match except for Piper and Flair get eliminated over the top all at once? That's even cheaper than withholding Savage from the Jake match. I get the feeling that Vince was so invested in Tuesday in Texas that this show was pretty much an afterthought. (I just looked it up, and I was wrong. Instead of almost everyone being eliminated over the top, Virgil, Teddy, Jacques and Bret were all DQ'ed for brawling inside the ring, which left Flair the sole survivor without him actually having to beat anyone or chance him getting beaten himself. And it just keeps getting worse and worse.) The other matches wouldn't have thrilled me if I'd been wondering whether to buy this card. Maybe I'd have wanted to see Sarge get his hands on Sheik, for what little that was worth seven years later, and I guess we can thank God that Vince kept that promise at least. The match with the tag teams looks like a yawner (when were the Bushwhackers last truly relevant?) We all know my feelings about Percy and Curt. It's off to see Teddy taking a backseat to anyone in this format after three straight years of being a captain, but if he was going to defer to anyone, it was Flair. Of course, Curt the manager is treated as a much bigger deal than the Real World Champion, but then again, who hasn't been lately? Remember one thing, though: the Mr. Perfect character belongs entirely to Vince, while Ric Flair belongs to the entire wrestling world, regardless of where he's working at a given time. I can see Loss's point about wanting to keep Flair, in essence, an invading force from Ted Turner rather than a co-opted member of the WWF by not having him muck in during the tag matches. I know there was no way that was going to happen, but instead of teaming with Warlord and Jacques, I would have suggested Flair, Jake, Taker, and Teddy against Hogan, Savage, Piper, and Virgil with Taker pinning Hogan clean after the tombstone to win it all and set up Tuesday in Texas, which would proceed as it did in real life. What did Taker need the belt for if it was just going to be held up anyway? Taker may be the single scariest wrestler in WWF history at this point, even scarier than the current version of Jake, which is really saying something.
  10. garretta
    I usually agree with Pete, but not this time. I know most people wanted Savage to get at Jake at Survivor Series, and the fact that it was held off until Tuesday in Texas made them feel as though they were robbed. But would it really have been as satisfying to see them square off in a situation where Jake could avoid Randy by simply tagging out, or running away and absorbing a countout? This feud needed to be one-on-one from the word go, and though eliminating Jake from Survivor Series and making his match a six-man seemed like a desperate attempt to keep a lid on things until a more lucrative time, I think it worked out for the best. (I'm pretty sure it was also done to make at least one match go quicker so we would have more time for Hogan/Taker.) As for the interview, it's another Jake classic. He has amazing chemistry with Mean Gene, and if you watch the interviews from the original '86 heel run, it was there from the start. The great thing about them was that Gene could unleash all the verbal static he wanted, and Jake wouldn't threaten him or scream at him, but merely smile, just like he did here. I'd go into the lines that I thought were great, but they all were. I get the sense that Jake's been preparing for this run for a long, long time, because I'm not sure when he's ever been better in terms of mic work. There have been flashes, but nothing sustained, not even back in '86 when he was just as hated as he was here and ticketed for Hogan to boot. Randy's a great opponent for him, because he matches Jake's intensity in a totally different fashion. Jake's on the verbal roll of his career, and Randy can't hope to match it, as good a talker as he is. So he keeps it simple, basic, and intense. No flowery metaphors, no "OOOH YEAH!", just a husband vowing to get revenge on the man who nearly scared his wife to death. Speaking of whom, Jake's threats toward Liz might have ended this angle prematurely. As I mentioned a post or two back, according to Jake Randy had to go to Vince and ask to beat Jake decisively to end the feud sooner than anybody wanted, mostly because the Hulettes were giving him a hard time over Liz's involvement. Jake threatening to make Liz a princess of the dark side could have certainly been one thing that brought this about, even if the Hulettes were smart to the business. The unfortunate thing is, there's no angle at all without Liz, because there's no wedding for Jake to crash and present the snake to her at. Of course, the Hulettes presumably thought that Randy was legitimately retiring to raise a family, so that's probably another reason why they were angry. My point is, Jake does his job so well in these promos that it probably cost him a big Mania VIII payday and left Savage available to challenge Flair for the World title. On such small things do careers change course. I'm wondering if the headaches of traveling with a cobra, even a de-venomized one, either led Jake to stop carrying the snake or Vince to tell him to stop. One wrong move with one of those things and tragedy could have struck (no pun intended, obviously).
  11. garretta
    I knew about Liz being originally presented as a schemer, but I've never heard about the "Miss Elizabeth" name being part of it, even as a theory. It makes sense, though, considering that the patriarch of the Ewing family was Miss Ellie. Given Vince's penchant for direct steals and bad puns, we should be grateful that she wasn't called Miss Smelly or Miss Jelly. Thanks, Loss!
  12. garretta
    Sorry, but this didn't work for me. Classy, demure Liz just wasn't enough under these circumstances. I'm not saying she should have been screaming and swearing, but a little anger might have helped. Even giving her Randy's line at the end about Tunney being no more of a man than Jake if he turned down Randy's reinstatement would have been enough of a shock to let everyone know that she meant business, dammit. As it was, Randy said it better than she did in about one-eighth of the time. I'm not sure if Liz was a bad performer, as Pete said, or if the confines of the Miss Elizabeth character just didn't allow her to reach her potential as a performer. (By the way, why do they still refer to her as "Miss Elizabeth" when she's married on-screen? For that matter, why did they start in the first place? It's not like she was playing a classic Southern belle, the type of woman whom you might refer to in that way.)
  13. garretta
    The more I see of Percy as Paul Bearer, the more I think Vince missed a golden opportunity to get rid of him at SummerSlam and put Jake in Taker's corner as his manager. The man isn't scary at all; in fact, he draws attention to just how fake the Undertaker gimmick is despite Taker's efforts to present it as completely real. Calloway sounds for all the world like a zombie would if he was to somehow be reanimated, and I can only imagine how a verbal master like Jake would present him. "For the death of me" my foot. Percy should have cone in as Percy and managed guys like the Beverly Brothers (sorry, Lanny) and maybe the Repo Man or another midcard singles guy. It's not a question of him playing Paul Bearer badly; I have no doubt that he was executing the role exactly as Vince envisioned it. It's that the Paul Bearer gimmick itself was, ahem, dead weight from day one. If ever you wanted a sixty-second master class in what it means to be a heel, check out Jake's promo. He lays it all out step-by-step; manipulation is the key, making people laugh and cry whenever you want them to, distracting them with objects such as the snake in the bag to take their attention away from the most dangerous snake of all. I love him rhythmically slapping the glove on his bare hand back and forth at the beginning to gain the viewer's attention, and when he tells Tunney that he'll abide by the order not to bring the snake to ringside, you know he's got an extra-special big one just for the occasion. Randy's so intense here that he actually drops the verbal tics of the Macho Man gimmick. No "OHHHHH YEAH!", no sending Jake to the danger zone, no "Freak out, freak out". This isn't Macho Man Savage, wrestler; this is Randy Poffo, husband, only slightly altered for storyline purposes. He's just as chilling as Jake in his own way, which fits because he was the number one crazy bastard in the WWF for a long while before Jake's current run, and not even Jake actually tried to kill an opponent with a ring bell. These two were so good verbally that this didn't deserve to be the only pay-per-view match between them. This feud should have gone all the way to Mania, and it might have if Liz's family hadn't insisted on Randy beating Jake decisively before then to (supposedly) defend her honor. Whather they were tired of seeing her have to play the terrorized damsel in distress, or whether they weren't smartened up and actually believed that she'd been traumatized for real by the cobra, this feud deserved a Mania blowoff, most likely in a no-DQ "snake pit" (Texas Death) match. By the way, in this world Flair takes on Hogan for the last time and Sid is back in Atlanta after Vince deliberately reneges on his promised Mania main event and substitutes a pair of matches the fans actually want to see.
  14. garretta
    The WWF gets introduced to psycho Flair at his best here. You can reach out and touch his glee at having cost Hogan the one thing he holds dearest. It's interesting that he doesn't consider Taker a rival to his claim; then again, the WWF title's always been a minor belt to him, so why should he care who holds it as long as it's not Hogan? This is the first time I've seen Curt as Flair's manager (and that's what he is, despite the fancy title). It's as bad a fit as I thought it was going to be. He should never utter the word "perfect" during a Flair promo; in fact, he should go by his given name and ditch any hint of the Mr. Perfect character entirely. It really grated on me that right in the middle of this wondrous Flair promo, Curt jumped in with "Wasn't that the perfect win, Champ?", or whatever he said exactly. He's still trying to get his own character over, maybe because he thinks he'll be back in the ring eventually (which, of course, he will be), and that's fine. But Vince shouldn't have used Flair to help him do it. You'll probably read this a hundred times during my posts concerning Flair's WWF run, so get used to it: There are only two acceptable cornermen for Flair on the WWF payroll, Bobby Heenan and JJ Dillon. No one else should have gotten within ten miles of him, period. Flair would have looked ridiculous trying to interfere in a suit, but Loss's point about him probably needing to be in one for this interview is well taken. I guess Vince wanted him to look like he was ready to wrestle at any and all times, or maybe he just didn't want Flair looking so good that it put the rest of the roster to shame. One other thing I'm dying to know: In spite of the fact that Flair's robes still say "Nature Boy" on them, Vince has gone out of his way not to refer to Flair by that nickname. Was he trying to pay respect in his own weird way to Buddy Rogers (who, don't forget, was his dad's first champion) or was this just another way of trying to make "his" Flair different from Crockett and Turner's Flair. If the latter is the case (as I suspect it is), why didn't he tell Flair to buy new robes? Nice touch by Flair bringing up the video distortion of the belt. You wouldn't think Vince would want to call attention to such an obvious stunt, though, which leads me to wonder if Flair wasn't going out on his own here.
  15. garretta
    What a bullshit move by Hogan, trying to bury Taker (no pun intended) and end his WWF career before it really got started. I wasn't really paying attention to how Hogan's head hit or didn't hit the canvas or the chair, but it definitely seemed that something was legitimately wrong in the ring after the match. Hogan didn't really look like he was just selling the tombstone; he seemed like he'd really been knocked out at least briefly, and a knee to the head from a guy as big as Taker would definitely do it. I wonder what the plan would have been if Hogan hadn't been able to go at Tuesday in Texas. You just can't cancel a pay-per-view out of nowhere, so who would Taker have wrestled, and how would they have worked the title holdup? I honestly don't know who else the fans would have bought, except maybe Savage working twice, since Taker had brained him with the urn at SummerSlam. Even that would have been a stretch, though. At any rate, this really did feel like the beginning of the end for Hulkamania, and also the first time when Hogan's Superman act flopped. I'm not just talking about getting up from the first tombstone, but going outside and after Flair. Usually, it's over for those who try to interfere once Hogan hits them, but here Flair not only recovered, but one-upped Hogan by slipping Taker the chair for the second tombstone. Heenan was absolutely right here: Flair hadn't interfered yet when Hogan struck him, and though being hit doesn't excuse Flair's actions, it does remove Gino's right to be outraged by them. Did Hogan honestly think that the man who was bold enough to brand him a fake and call himself the real World champion right to Hogan's face would take getting attacked from behind lying down? He's smarter than that, or at least he was. I don't care what Gino says; Taker had to be sweating his ass off in that all-black and purple getup. He deserves a lot of credit for continuing to remember the character and no-sell not only pain and shock from Hogan's blows, but also weariness. Even wiping sweat off of his brow could kill the illusion for some, and that's almost a reflex in the middle of intense competition. I didn't especially notice loud cheers for Taker, but given his athleticism it makes sense that people would pop for moves like the flying clothesline, That's why some old-timers say that heels should limit their offense to obvious rulebreaking tactics like gouging, hair-pulling, and choking. To them, showing even basic wrestling ability is counterproductive. For what it's worth, I strongly disagree; I happen to think heels like Flair, DiBiase, and Hennig who are obviously superb wrestlers yet choose to break the rules are more contemptible and thus worthy of boos than someone like Honky, who (at least in character) didn't know a headlock from a headboard. Mentioning Mike Utley, the Lions football player who was paralyzed ten days earlier, seems a bit cheap when trying to compare and contrast Hogan's worked injuries to his. Hogan visiting him in the hospital was a superb gesture, but they should have picked another moment to mention it. Heenan's crack about moving another bed into Utley's room for Hogan was funny, if a tad on the sick side,
  16. garretta
    Okay, that makes sense.........sort of. Thanks, Pete!
  17. garretta
    I still don't think much of Percy as an interview, mostly due to that lousy falsetto, but Taker himself is one scary dude from top to bottom. The more I see of him, the less sure I am that he even needed a manager at all; he could get his message across quite well with the few words he spoke. Beefcake didn't back up an inch from Taker, which is fine for a wrestler but not for an interview host with steel plates in his face. He really needs to learn a lesson or two in selective cowardice from Mean Gene. It's interesting that The Funeral Parlor was bumped for a standard Mean Gene interview with Hogan, while The Barber Shop was allowed to go on. I think Okerlund would have been a better choice to conduct this interview, as Pete suggested above. That said, I again ask why we have personality-based interview segments at all if Mean Gene has to be brought in to handle the money interviews. (I'm pretty sure the Parlor was bumped because Hogan had just been a guest there the previous week, but my larger point still stands.) Does anybody know why Heenan left the booth at the end of the segment? I just looked up this show on Graham's site, and Flair wasn't on it, so what else could Bobby have been involved with?
  18. garretta
    Not only is Hogan immortal, but he was with Jesus on the cross. How ridiculous can this guy get? Wait, don't answer that! The thing that stands out for me from this promo is that the Hogan/Flair feud, once hyped as perhaps the greatest clash that would ever happen in professional wrestling should it come about, is now and forever reduced to second-class status. Flair's been dismissed as one of Taker's druids, if you will; no mission of his own, no claim to be Hogan's equal or superior, his presence just another mind game cooked up in the evil non-soul of Paul Bearer in his and Taker's mission to give Hulkamania over to the devil. Their feud is now analogous to Hogan having to face Virgil to get to DIBiase, Fuji to get to Muraco, or Orton to get to Piper. No wonder it never drew; who wants to see Hogan waste his time on a second-stringer with a toy belt? I wonder if Flair would have signed with Vince if he'd have known ahead of time that when push came to shove, he'd be playing second fiddle to a zombie managed by a Gomez Addams knockoff. Surely dropping the WCW belt to Luger and sliding gracefully down the card had to be a better alternative. The explanation of the red and yellow of Hulkamania makes a weird sort of sense if you think about it, but we've all heard this same type of stuff from Hogan too many times before for it to mean much now. "The Gravest Challenge" was a clever tagline the first few times I heard it, but I'm getting sick of it now, especially since it has to be repeated every thirty seconds so the poor stupid rubes that Vince wants to order Survivor Series can't possibly forget that Hogan's wrestling a guy named the Undertaker. I don't know about anyone else, but I'm ready for Hulkamania to die, at least this version of it.
  19. garretta
    There are parts of this I liked and parts that I didn't. The main part I liked was Flair's promo. You can tell that he's been waiting a long time to say what he said right to Hogan's face, and in a way it's a shame that he had to say it merely to set up a Taker attack. I would have loved to hear a sustained promo battle between these two at some point before now, with Mean Gene moderating and no excess crap. Flair would probably win, but it would be nice to hear how Hogan would reply to Flair's taunts face-to-face, which he hasn't really done so far. I'm not sure if someone told Flair to do "Whatcha gonna do?" right in Hogan's face or whether it was done on the spur of the moment, but either way it took major guts that I don't see many heels scaring up. Flair may be one of the few heels whom I can legitimately say doesn't fear either Hogan or Hulkamania, and Taker's definitely another. I understand the symbolism of the undead tearing a cross off of their victim's chest, but I think Andre did it better before Mania III. There was definitely more emotion involved, and Andre threw it away like garbage, while Taker was forced by his character to show fear of it (which directly contradicts what I said above). Once and for all, the "be a professional" lectures from Vince to Piper and Savage have definitively been shown as a cover for the fact that the commentary is being done in the studio instead of live. You'll notice that he didn't say a mumblin' word when Piper cracked Flair over the back with a chair and Savage did the same to Taker, even though he has specifically said in the past that any sort of physical confrontation by these two while broadcasting will result in a suspension for the combatant. Then again, who else was far enough in Hogan's bubble at this time to save him? In true WWF fashion, none of the other faces have a thing to do with either Flair or Taker feudwise, so they can't be involved. I guess if Piper and Savage hadn't been there live, Taker would have locked Hogan in the casket and no one would have done a thing about it. Vince's shilling is getting sickening. His World champion is being taken off the Parlor set, having to be assisted by two guys who just put their broadcasting careers (and, in Randy's case, a chance to avenge the terrorization of his wife) on the line, he could have possibly been stuffed in a casket, and all Vince can do is not just hype Survivor Series, but spit out the hype in that godawful half-growl, half-retch that he's been using more and more when the time to hype comes along. There's no selling of how close Hogan came to being buried alive, no concern for Piper and Savage directly disobeying Jack Tunney's edict against getting physically involved (and doing so to help Hogan, of all people), not even a moment to wonder just what kind of physical and mental condition Hogan will be in come the twenty-seventh. I guess he doesn't think that what we just saw counts for much, so why did he put it on TV? Why should we even watch the weekly TV shows if that's the way he's going to act? I remember the masterful job he did with things like Orndorff's turn on Hogan, Andre getting a haircut from Studd and Patera, Honky throwing Liz to the mat and breaking his guitar over Savage's head, and countless others. Where did this Vince go, the man who sold an angle better than anyone else in the business except Lance Russell? There's no one else on the broadcast team who could step in for him and do as well, and that's what's really sad; as bad as he's gotten, he's still the best play-by-play guy the WWF has right now. This is probably the second-best Funeral Parlor to date after the one where Warrior gets stuffed into his casket. Almost every other one is tied for third.
  20. garretta
    I'll have to check out Gino's commentary at Survivor Series if I get a chance. I know he's going downhill, but I didn't know he's going downhill this fast. Speaking of commentary going downhill, Vince was putrid here. The "1-2-3 HE GOT HIM!" bit twice in a row off of a knucklelock? How laughable can you get? And ignoring the spat between Shawn and Marty in order to shill Tuesday in Texas? Of course, he had the advantage of knowing that nothing was going to happen then, but that's still inexcusable. Then again, Vince stopped caring about being a good announcer around the time he stopped doing MSG on a monthly basis, which was early '83. Heenan does a great job of foreshadowing, but not in a heelish, stir-the-pot kind of way. His simple use of the phrase "I wonder......." is a bit of understatement that I would never have expected from him. He just may be the best color commentator in wrestling right now regardless of promotion, and as big a Heenan fan as I am, I never thought I'd say that about him at any time. The "dissension spot" wasn't really that big a deal, although I've never seen a small package reversal work for the heels before, even like that. Still, it's something that it seems like the Rockers can come back from until that fateful moment in The Barber Shop. No Jimmy with the Nasty Boys? Vince must have really been hurting for money if the managers had stopped traveling to MSG.
  21. garretta
    Vince should have told Darsow to watch the tone of his voice. He started out okay, but by the end of the piece Repo sounded exactly like Smash. I'm surprised we didn't start getting "DEMO-LITION" chants after a few of these had aired. The Repo Man gimmick itself is like too many others from the WWF, both present and future: if you don't recognize the wrestler playing the role (and who would know Darsow without his Demolition paint at this point?), you're left to wonder what the hell a professional repossessor (or IRS agent, or garbageman, or dentist, etc.) is doing in a wrestling ring. Where did they get the time to train as wrestlers, and why did they leave their old job? Further, if the WWF is the best promotion in the world where only the best wrestlers compete, how did these guys gain enough experience to get a job there? How have they proved themselves worthy of a spot, and why should the fans take them seriously when there are so many "real" wrestlers to cheer and boo? I actually liked the part where Repo kicked out the guy's window, because it established that he's the type of guy who'll go to any lengths to complete a task, which is important for a wrestler. That's unlike the IRS vignettes, where all Rotundo did was run his mouth about tax cheats, or the Skinner vignettes, which featured Keirn waxing poetic about swamps. "What's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine too!" isn't a bad catchprase either, even though it's no "Rest in peace" or "Whatcha gonna do?" I'm looking forward to actually seeing Repo in the ring; I have almost no memory of seeing him wrestle, at least not in that gimmick.
  22. garretta
    This is exactly the type of promo Heyman needs to avoid in the future. All the screaming, spitting (fake or otherwise) and gloating puts Rude's title win in second place to Heyman's personal crusade against the WCW higher-ups. Not that Heyman vs. the suits isn't a good storyline, but we aren't going to see Jim Herd vs. Paul Heyman at a Clash or on a pay-per-view anytime soon. This moment should have been about how the DA (specifically Rude) suckered Sting and beat him despite his valiant effort. Rude puts that vibe across well, particularly when he says "Nice guys finish last", but Heyman, who's supposedly the good talker in this operation, fails miserably. Tony's disgust only adds to the package, although he's more reserved about it than Lance or Dave would have been by quite a bit. I dug the very end, with Paul peeking out over Tony's shoulder and mockingly waving at Herd. He needs to tone down the yelling (as he did in his WCWSN promo a few days later) and sprinkle in more of that sort of thing. Medusa's a nice piece of eye candy at this point, but if she's going to talk even a little, she needs to do it in her own voice and leave the fake European (or, as Paul later termed it, "Miss 007") accent to the professional actresses.
  23. garretta
    I never knew that. Thanks for the info, Pete!
  24. garretta
    This is a lot more like it. Heyman's at his shooty best here, talking about how the Dangerous Alliance is going to make the suits at WCW crawl. I love how he exposes the inner workings of wrestling contracts, saying that substitutions such as Steamboat for Windham at the Clash would never be allowed in any other sport because they're inherently unfair, which is true. Then he goes on to introduce each member of the group. Eaton as one of Sting's best friends is a little hard to swallow, but it sets up his turn nicely enough. Larry is the "enforcer" of the group, and his transformation from sniveling coward to surprisingly effective tough guy is complete. He's the one guy I never expected the nickname "Cruncher" to fit, but it does, and quite nicely too. As for the original Enforcer, he's now teaming with his real-life best friend Eaton, which should be something to see given their tag team experience. Austin without Jeannie makes sense here, since Medusa's part of the group and also since Jeannie wasn't doing much of anything anyway. With Heyman doing the vast majority of the talking, she would have been superfluous here. We only hear from Steamboat for a few seconds, but he seems to have improved quite a bit on the mic. He's more direct and focused than he was in the WWF, where since he was playing an Oriental karate master, his promos tended to be more stiffly formal in an attempt to make him sound ethereal. I loved him calling Eaton "squirt". If we hear more stuff like this from Heyman and less idiotic screaming, and if his guys get it done in the ring like they can, this group could rival the Horsemen as best stable in WCW history by the time all is said and done. Only time will tell.
  25. garretta
    This was an excellently done, real sports-style interview. Sting's real name isn't mentioned, of course, but you really feel like you're hearing from Steve Borden, not necessarily the Sting character. This is especially true when JR chips away at kayfabe a bit by mentioning that Sting and Luger remain business partners outside the ring in spite of being on different sides of the fence at the moment. Most promotions wouldn't have mentioned that at all. Stung sidesteps JR's questions about Luger for the most part, preferring to focus on Rude for now. The "no goofing off" stuff is a nice shot at Vince, but Rude's been all business since early 1990, before he ever came to WCW, so it doesn't fit him the way it once did. In fact, it fits Heyman now more than anybody else in the angle, since he's been nothing but a goofball from the minute he and Rude joined forces. Sting also promises to get wild and crazy with Rude, which I would love to see. Good move by Sting to in essence end the story of his knee injury, emphatically stating that the bad knee is 100% and that going after it won't give the heels any more of a special advantage than it would against any other wrestler. I also liked him turning Rude's "nice guys finish last" line back to his own advantage. That's something that wouldn't happen in the WWF, where every word of every promo is designed to beat the audience over the head with a given character. Sting's plea to the fans to stick with him and JR's acknowledgment of his and Sting's long history together was an ideal way to wrap the segment up. Superb work from everyone involved.
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