garretta
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Everything posted by garretta
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Too bad about the commentary, as I really liked Dusty with JR. The Bull Drop Inn is no loss whatsoever. I guess Heyman's attack on Hervey at the Clash was Herd's way of getting rid of Hervey. Thanks for the info about Deadeye Dick. Randy Culley had to be just about every character in wrestling at one time or another! Black Blood being Billy Jack's idea makes me wonder if he didn't pitch it to Vince first. This seems like a total WWF gimmick that Vince would have flipped over. If he turned it down, I wonder if it was because Black Blood and Taker were too similar, as I suspect?
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I think I might have liked this better if they'd at least tried to have Morton recruit Gibson before turning on him. A heel, corporate Rock 'n' Roll wouldn't have been the worst idea, since their days as a babyface act in WCW were definitely numbered. Instead, we gat a quick punch, a piledriver, then nothing. Not only does Morton still look like the same old Ricky, he still sounds like the same old Ricky. I realize he couldn't help his accent, but he could have at least tried to talk a bit more intellectually/snobbishly. I'd also like to have heard a bit from Terri as to why she chose Morton over a bunch of other guys to join the York Foundation. Then again, as bad as she is on the mic at this time, maybe I wouldn't have after all. That brings us to Black Blood. Not only is Billy Jack a terrible choice to play this role, the gimmick itself is bad. Who the hell cares about a French executioner? This is nothing more than a bad Taker ripoff, an admission by Dusty that more should have been done with Mark Calloway before he jumped to Vince. If they had to do this, why not bring in a young guy with some physical stature for the role and see what happens when you apply some promotional elbow grease? To top things off, whatever gibberish Billy Jack spoke didn't sound the least bit like French, even under a hood. People sometimes wonder whether Russo was secretly sent by Vince to destroy WCW during the Attitude Era, but after seeing some of Dusty's brainstorms, I'm wondering the same thing about him here in 1991.
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What a waste. Arn's promo could have been conducted with JR on the ramp, and the rest of this was just trash. I don't know what Dusty could have been thinking allowing Hervey to act like an insufferable pain in the ass, but whatever it was, it's a complete flop. I join the chorus who wanted to see Heyman beat the crap out of Hervey, and I'm glad we don't have to wait much longer to see it. It's just sad that Dusty chose to get in the middle of slop like this, even peripherally. He should have been a respected pay-per-view and big events commentator and spent the rest of the time in his office taking care of the booking, which is slowly starting to go downhill too. No wonder people were happy to see Kip Frey and Bill Watts by the beginning of '92; Watts had issues and warts of his own, as it turned out, but at least he didn't book a circus every bit as bad as Vince's at its worst.
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Compared to this version of Gang, Akeem was a maniac. Seriously, he's acting more like Kamala than any previous incarnation of Gang; I'm wondering if Dusty might have actually been looking to bring Kamala in to feud with Gigante, but he (Kamala) declined. Dusty's worked with Gang before and presumably knows how to use him well, so he ought to know a setup like this does nothing for him. If he had to feud with Gigante, he should have been a secret weapon of the Horsemen, not someone brought in by Sully, who had nothing whatsoever to do with Gigante prior to SuperBrawl. As for Hervey, there are almost literally no words. Why anyone who's as good a talker as Dusty needs a sidekick like him I have no idea, and what he's doing incapacitating Gang with voodoo I have no idea either. Could you imagine the ribbing Gang had to take after this segment? I mean, doing the rough equivalent of a stretcher job for Jason Hervey? What universe are we living in here? I've heard about David Arquette winning the WCW World title, but at least that was treated as a fluke. This was presented seriously. Yes, I just said that Dusty Rhodes just booked something worse than Vince Russo. I better stop before the world turns completely inside out. The one saving grace was that Dusty expressed (extremely) mild disapproval of Hervey's actions, not that the damage hadn't been done long before. I thought a Dusty interview segment would be a real treat, but I honestly believe I prefer The Barber Shop to this. At least I had no expectations for Beefcake as an interviewer, and he's managed to live up to them. (Yes, you read that right.) This has been such a profound disappointment that it's starting to make me actively question whether this whole Dusty run has been WCW's worst time creatively to date, and that's with Flair's departure yet to come.
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For so many weeks, Embry's looked damn near unstoppable. Now, it's Lawler's turn, as he goes through any and every Embry crony that comes near him, then renders him speechless and runs him off the interview set. I should be applauding, I guess, considering how much I complained about Embry doing a lot of the same stuff, but it really doesn't look all that much better on Lawler. Neither one of them seem to know how much to give the other side to make this feud the true epic they're presenting it as. I guess you could say that if Embry beats Lawler after this, it'll seem like a bigger upset than it would have before, but does anyone think that's actually going to happen based on what we've seen so far? If I didn't know better from reading future match listings, I'd swear that Embry was leaving Memphis sooner rather than later, because it sure seems like Lawler's out to totally bury him, much like Embry tried to bury the faces in his absence. Fargo as an active tag team partner (as opposed to an opposite number for the heel team's manager)? Well, why not? He held his own the last time he met up with Embry and Prichard. It may defy all wrestling common sense, but lack of common sense is what makes Memphis Memphis. Besides, they almost always find a way to pull it off believably.
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More good stuff on the mic from Embry. I'm not sure who Lawler's partner is for the tag match they seem to be promoting, but it looks like one of the Memphis guys that Embry's had a run-in with before, as he threatens to put whoever it is out of action all over again. It seems that Prichard and Miss Texas have officially split from the Embry/Tojo entourage, as they aren't even mentioned here, let alone present. I think Dr. Tom would be taken a lot more seriously as a threat to Lawler than a couple of comic book characters, but I'm not a frustrated cartoonist who has a job as a wrestling booker like Lawler does, so who am I to judge?
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It wasn't Embry attacking Marlin that made this segment stand out, but rather Embry attacking Michael. Marlin used to be a wrestler and has taken beatings from other wrestlers before, but no one's ever handled Michael like that. I almost thought Dave was going to get physically involved the way he threw down his mic so hard. Fortunately he doesn't have to, as Lawler comes out to run Embry off. Not only are the stakes for the wrestlers higher as a result of this segment, but for the fans as well. I think most fans who'd been going to the matches in Memphis could figure out that most of the heels Lawler was programmed against got two or three matches with him at least, so if they couldn't go to the matches every week, they probably skipped the first week and saved their money for the blowoff. Now, the first week is the blowoff, because (presumably) unless Embry wins the Unified title, he's out after Monday night. Lawler only has one chance to beat Embry's brains out, so buy your tickets now or forever keep your money. I wonder if it worked, because it certainly should have. Now that we're in the Lawler/Embry portion of this whole long Tennessee/Texas saga, the pace seems to have picked up quite a bit. I wonder how long they'll be able to sustain it.
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This incarnation of Leatherface actually looked like an athlete, which I didn't expect. He and Lawler worked really well together, and I liked that Lawler had to resort to a desperation rollup to get the pin. Then, of course, we get the Lawler/Embry mini-match, which was beautifully done. There isn't a soul watching, either live or on TV, who doesn't believe that if Lawler had three and a half minutes instead of three, Embry would have been beaten and shut up once and for all. That includes Eddie Marlin, who makes a regulation match between Lawler and Embry for Saturday's TV show. I enjoyed Lawler admitting that he'd underestimated an opponent for once in his life, which puts over Leatherface effectively as a threat to Lawler if they should decide to keep him around. Embry on the house mic was a treat, and having the announcers lay out so we could hear Embry cheering Leatherface on was a touch of inspiration, as was Leatherface going so wild with his chainsaw that even Embry was scared. Furthering a feud in this way was unusual even for Memphis, but I want to see what happens when Embry and Lawler hook up, so they're definitely doing something right.
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Rule of thumb: Whenever Missy Hyatt is the most sensible person in a segment (including both announcers), the segment sucks. Who the hell thought this was a good idea? I'm not just talking about Mero either; Teddy looked like a fool in this. I didn't see him holding Mero's hand on the way to the ring, but if he did.........wow. Dusty must have really had it in for him to give him this clown as his latest protégé. I'm not sure if Missy was just acting or if she really thought Mero was disgusting, but either way, her body language was right on target. Heyman takes shots at her because that's all he's good for these days, while JR desperately tries to play up Mero's legit amateur boxing background to reassure the people at home that what they're seeing has at least a passing relationship to athletic competition. It's at times like this that all the talk about guys' football backgrounds pays off, because people know that JR has done his homework on guys and isn't just mouthing whatever the company line is. I sure hope the gimmick was toned down after this, because there's no way it can possibly be taken seriously as is, especially in a sport-oriented company like WCW. I give them credit in an odd way for designing this type of persona for an African-American, but it's just too silly for its own good.
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This wasn't bad at all for a first confrontation. Embry's the master psychologist as always, claiming that he has no beef with Lawler since he doesn't want to beat up a cripple, then throwing his partner/protégé Stiles to the wolves to save his own neck. Stiles looked like a whole bunch of nothing here, and I wonder if we'll even see him again. Lawler beats up both Stiles and the Texas Ranger at once to prove once and for all that he's ready to return, then promises to do the same thing to Embry, Prichard, or anyone else from Texas that he sees. I'm nor sure if I like Dr. Tom being moved out of the main feud. Granted, Lawler/Embry is the big deal now, but Prichard would be a hell of a lot more effective as an interference runner than any other heel on the roster. I also don't recall seeing how Anthony turned or why they felt it was necessary. It seems like now that Lawler's back, this isn't about the Texans vs. the Tennesseeans as much as it is about Lawler and Embry one-on-one, and while that could be excellent, it robs the feud of a lot of its richness and unpredictability. I don't think Embry talking about Miss Texas giving Lawler an "etiquit" lesson was a mere slip of the tongue. He can almost be as clever as guys like Piper and Flair when he wants to be. I just wish he didn't have to have his finger in every cotton-pickin' pie.
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Here we see the rational side of psycho Embry, which somehow makes him more dangerous than ever. He not only threatens Lawler, but the Gilberts and Fuller, and you can feel the hatred oozing out of him with every word. I agree with Kevin that he's better here without Dave rolling his eyes and constantly telling him to knock it off and go away. I don't think we're quite ready for Lawler/Embry yet, at least judging by the match listing, but it's not too far in the future. There's something about Embry calling himself "the man" that makes him seem like even more of a rat, especially since he hasn't accomplished one-tenth of what Flair has. It's yet another subtle way of ratcheting up the heat so Lawler can bring it to a boil at the proper time.
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This made me want to see Bossman/Taker more than Bossman/Mountie, which I'm sure wasn't intentional. Taker would definitely be a better physical match for Bossman; as well as he's done with the Mountie character lately, Jacques is still Jacques, which means that Bossman should dominate a series between the two of them. Bossman's always been one of the more literal WWF promos, in that his every word reinforces his character. The only guy who might have been worse in that regard was Terry Taylor as the Red Rooster. Remember all those godawful forced barnyard puns? Percy's mugging is too noticeable for its own good. I realize that they're probably telling him at this point to go all-out in terms of being campy, but he's almost making his guests redundant by putting on his own silent show. Even Piper at his most obnoxious knew when to shut up and stand there so his guests could do what they were out there to do. Yet again, I'm wondering why we're being subjected to stuff like this while the greatest wrestling interviewer who ever was is trading kissing jokes with Savage in a Stamford studio.
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With all due respect, how much of Andre's promo seeming "hollow and untrue" comes from the fact that we know in 2015 that he was not only in bad physical shape, but due to be dead in two years? If I'm listening to this in 1991, I'm completely buying that Andre's going to at least try to come back and get revenge against Quake. He did make reference to the fact that fighting Quake might be the last thing he does in the ring, so for all we know they might very well have been planning a showdown between the two of them at some point as a retirement match for Andre before they realized that it simply wouldn't be possible. Beefcake's not improving as an interviewer at all. He has to learn not to cut promos on behalf of his guests unless he's in a position to back up his own words with actions, which we know he isn't. Yes, guys like Brother Love did the same thing at times, but everyone knew that they weren't wrestlers at that time, and in fact had never been. With Beefcake, he still looked like he could go; there were no scars or other signs of damage from the accident. If one didn't know the real story, they could assume that Beefcake was as much a cowardly pot-stirrer for the faces as guys like Brother Love were for the heels, which leads to the question of why the faces need a great big good-looking fraidy-cat like Beefcake doing their talking for them. That's not a question you want even some of your fans asking. They need to either tell Beefcake to channel Mean Gene or bring back the genuine article to do straight platform interviews.
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Did anyone else notice how quickly Vince brushed aside any Hogan connection to this turn when Savage brought it up? He was bound and determined that Sarge was the one and only man Hogan would feud with at this time, period. Actually, throwing Hogan into this mix as Andre's avenger wouldn't have been a bad idea, considering his past with everyone else involved. It would have been an official "welcome back" to the face side for Andre, a chance for Hogan to finally pin Quake once and for all to end that feud, and a fresh opponent for Hogan (Typhoon) while he waited for Flair and Taker. Instead, he gets to take on a washed-up Sarge, a fat and lazy Sheik, and Adnan, who adds nothing to that trio either verbally or physically, while Typhoon does his big-money turn on the Bushwhackers. Let's hear it for WWF creative. All of that said, I've heard some good things about the Disasters as a team, so I'm looking forward to seeing them in action. Not only are they pushing Quake hard, but they're positioning the Colonel as the number one manager now that Heenan's in the booth full-time. It'll be interesting to see how he meets the challenge when he's been a total cartoon for most of his run. I hope we see just a tinge more of the Memphis Jimmy going forward, but somehow I doubt we will.
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Andre may be a face again, but he's still in psycho mode when it comes to promos. He was good here, but knowing that there won't be an Andre/Quake series renders his talk irrelevant. I think Andre used either a cane, crutches or a walker from the time of the appearance on Challenge that we saw a brief clip of until the end of his WWF career. How sad is that when one considers how impressive he looked walking to the ring in his heyday (and even as late as Mania III against Hogan, where he looked like a world beater riding in on the cart)? Watching the megaphone shot from Quake again, does it seem to anyone else like it came uncomfortably close to Andre's crotch?
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This is the type of angle that would have led to sold-out houses ten, or even five, years before. Unfortunately, all it led to now was a series of Andre appearances as a do-nothing cornerman for various faces as they went against Quake. The angle itself was still masterfully done, as befits a legend, and despite the fact that most fans with a working pair of eyes knew that the Giant was almost unable to move (or speak, as Jimmy carried 98% of the interview before the attack), Quake still looked like a badass for taking him down. Savage was at his prickish best here, with the line comparing Andre to Damien and also his inside reference to this being "last call" for Andre the legendary drinker. For his part, Vince repeated some lines he'd used in the past: he's never seen the Giant down like this before (at least since Duggan knocked him out with the two-by-four) and he won't allow the indignity of watching Andre crawl back to the dressing room to continue (which is in the same ballpark as the infamous "raping Andre's dignity" call from the Studd/Patera haircut angle). Piper tried to sell Andre as being the force of nature he once was, someone who will come back to beat Quake, but I doubt even he believed it. What this needed was a babyface to make the save for Andre and take his part against Quake. I know Jake was already starting to turn, but what about Duggan? Sure, he'd fought Quake before, but it would have been a good way to get him back in the midcard mix. How about Bossman, which would have tied in with the Mountie feud? Or the LOD, which would have set them up with the Nasties quite nicely? As a kind of afterthought, they stuck the Bushwhackers in that spot, but only to put over the Natural Disasters, if I recall correctly. Andre deserved someone who was fighting directly for, and because of, him. I loved Andre's selling too, especially knowing that it really wasn't all selling. What a dedicated performer he still was to go through with an angle like this that had to be legitimately painful, even with Quake taking it easy on him. I was actually rooting for him to walk out of the arena under his own power, although it was neither desirable in a kayfabe sense nor possible in real life.
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So if you buy WCW action figures you'll end up arm-wrestling airheaded bimbos and hitting obnoxious punks in the head with cell phones? Sign me up for every last one! What, were Sting and the Steiners too busy to do a thirty-second commercial? Using a heel is bad enough, but using an obnoxious heel chauvinist broadcaster who jumps people from behind with his cell phone has to be the most boneheaded marketing move in wrestling history up to that time. For an equivalent, just imagine the WWF using Jimmy Hart as its spokesman for their figures back in the mid-eighties. What could they have been thinking? (I'd ask if they were thinking at all, but we all know the answer to that one, don't we?) The sad part is, they'll be going even further in the toilet before the next few days are up with Flair's departure. The more I see of WCW lately, the more I believe Ric came out of all this smelling like a rose.
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I'll bet a lot of teenage boys made sure they collected the Missy Hyatt card. If that really was PN News rapping, no wonder the fans laughed at the gimmick. If it wasn't, maybe they should have used him; he certainly couldn't have sounded worse than this. At least the WrestleWar '90 rap sounded slightly authentic. This sounded like one of the older Turner executives had his lunch held hostage until he agreed to get in front of a microphone. Could a so-called major card possibly be more poorly promoted than Bash '91 was?
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The low audio threw me off, and I didn't hear a lot of the dialogue, so much of the humor was lost on me. I suppose watching Dutch and Bart whip each other with cowboy hats is good for a few yucks, but this was too long by about a minute and a half. It probably should have ended after one of them (I couldn't tell which one, but I think it was Dutch) said that they were trying to find Hansen. Quick sell, a joke or two, then back to ringside; that's all that was needed. This was like watching Dusty perform his triple potty bypass in excruciating detail. (Remember his WWF entrance vignettes?) I know Bart and Dutch, but who played Deadeye Dick? I didn't quite recognize him.
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I guess they wanted to make Luger winning the belt a real surprise. By showcasing Flair so heavily, they wanted to make it seem as if he would retain, which would make Luger's victory even sweeter by making it seem like a true upset. That's a logical way of looking at it, anyway. But since when do logic and WCW belong together? It's odd that we see almost nothing of Luger in these commercials at all, even with the above said. As I mentioned in an earlier thread, after promoting the show this way, they couldn't have been surprised that the fans clamored for Flair and crapped all over Luger winning the title. They just couldn't have been.
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No wonder they all chanted "WE WANT FLAIR!" in Baltimore. Of course, they could hide behind the "Card subject to change" bit to protect themselves legally, but this was still fraud in every way but legally. They deserved to look as silly as they must giving away prizes promoting a wrestler who was now working for their direct competition. It couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of carnies. Did they announce the winner of the contest on TV? Did they just quietly give away the prizes with nobody knowing it? Did they substitute Luger or Sting merchandise? Or did they just scrap the whole thing once Flair was fired?
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You can tell WCW wasn't used to doing vignettes like this, because there's nothing at all which suggests wrestling or anything connected with it. Usually, vignettes like this at least tell you who the man you're supposed to be watching is, if nothing else. This looked like something I would have stumbled on by mistake while looking for TBS, or at best a promo for one of their Sunday morning movies (which I still think they did at the time). I don't know if I'm interested in seeing where this goes or not; I just hope it goes somewhere.
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Lawler must have been on some pretty powerful painkillers when he thought of this one. Who was the poor sucker who played it? I actually can't wait to see their match later in the month so I can find out just how a Lord of the Volcano wrestles!
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This match may have been long, but it sure wasn't an epic. It felt in many ways like a wrestling school match, where each participant has a specific list of moves to work on or execute within a given bout. Unfortunately, Toyota's "list" included lots of moves that not only wouldn't work against someone as big as Aja, but that she looks silly trying. Slams, lift suplexes, and submissions that involve wrapping the arms around a bigger wrestler's body parts have to be done exactly right or a smaller wrestler looks foolish for trying them, and Toyota certainly looked foolish at times here. She also forgot to sell the damage that Aja did to her lower back early in the match; within twenty seconds of finally escaping Aja's half-crab, she was throwing dropkicks and breaking out of pins with full bridges like she was fresh out of the locker room, and that was just wrong. I don't usually criticize a wrestler's lack of selling, but this case was too blatant to be ignored. She's so obviously sloppy at times that Aja looks bad for letting her hang around for the draw instead of taking advantage of her mistakes and beating her in the first five or ten minutes. Speaking of Aja, I've seen her look better too, but she handled this match as well as she could under the circumstances, and her work on Toyota's back early in the bout was vicious and well-done. In fact, her technical ability kind of surprised me, since she's usually such a mauler. It made the usual trash can spree in the middle seem really unnecessary, but I'm guessing that the fans would have been disappointed if she hadn't used it at some point. This wasn't a classic, but it wasn't exactly a dud either. I'll just call it solidly mediocre and say that I hope to see both ladies return to the top of their form soon.
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Not a bad commercial, and the product line looks decent, but as most of the others have said, this feels like, to quote Johnny Mathis and Deniece Williams, "too much too little too late".