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garretta

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Everything posted by garretta

  1. garretta
    Ricky Morton as a corporate heel? He'll have to undergo the most extreme makeover in wrestling history to get me to buy into this. Or maybe Alexandra feels like slumming. Regardless, this isn't the type of heel a so-called "upscale" stable should be going after. The trouble is, other than the Horsemen, WCW doesn't really have any believably upscale heels at the moment. Maybe they should have just attached Terri to Flair as eye candy and had done with it.
  2. garretta
    I have a hard time responding to this, because Lawler's actions are so obviously seen as not only appropriate, but necessary in the context of the larger Texas/Tennessee feud that to condemn him would be like condemning 1930's movies as wrong for showing smoking as glamorous. Women who interfered with men in a wrestling arena weren't seen as creatures worthy of protection, and thus deserved to get the hell beaten out of them if the men could do it; that's just the way things rolled. Would it happen today? I sure as hell hope not. All of that said (and speaking just a tinge hypocritically), Papa ought to have known better than to do something like this after losing Dallas TV over man-on-woman violence, particularly with his top babyface as the aggressor. WMC couldn't have been too happy with this stuff appearing on their air, and with their chief meteorologist actually seeming to condone, or at least explain favorably, Lawler's actions. If I'd been the general manager of Channel 5, I might have sat Dave down and told him that no matter what Jarrett may book, if it involves male/female violence, he is NOT to support the male in any way, shape, or form, even if it's Lawler and the crowd's going nuts. If Jarrett has a problem with this, he can call me at any time and we'll discuss it, and I can hopefully convince him to save this stuff for the (untaped) house shows. Jackie's sales job came dangerously close to making her an unintentional babyface, and it might have happened had anyone else but Lawler (or possibly Dundee) done the striking, which made the whole thing a thousand times worse. On another topic, did you ever think you'd see the day when the cooler heads out to stop the King from committing mayhem were Eddie and Doug Gilbert? Talk about a bizarro world!
  3. garretta
    Embry can't even beat Doug Gilbert without outside interference and a foreign object. How pathetic is that? Nothing against Doug, because he's been a fine midcarder in Memphis so far in the Yearbooks, but for once I'd like to see Embry beat somebody at least semi-cleanly. Eddie comes in to make things right for his little brother, which leads into Prichard making a babyface-style save for Embry and Tojo. This was okay if the intention was to set up an Eddie/Embry rematch, but as far as I know that match never came off, so this just feels like a waste of time. Not even the announcers are particularly outraged by Embry's behavior anymore, which can't be a good sign.
  4. garretta
    As a Heenan fan, not only am I sad to see him leaving ringside, I'm more perplexed than ever as to who thought using Tolos this way was a good idea. Good Lord, can't the man at least take the goddamn whistle out of his mouth so we can understand him? Are we so stupid that we need to constantly be reminded that he was supposed to be a football coach? If this was the best they could do, I agree that Curt should have gone it alone. Either that or bring Lanny back. At least he was entertaining in his own way. The worst part was, they had JJ Dillon in the front office. If you have to replace Heenan, why not with the man who's closest in look and demeanor to him while still being an original? I think he and Curt would have been dynamite together, and of course once Flair came in the sky would have been the limit. I've heard that Vince was petrified that putting JJ back at ringside would lead to four fingers being flashed everywhere he went, but you can't tell me that that wouldn't have been better than this crap. Flair, Hennig, and Money Inc. as the Horsemen would have been as close to the original as the WWF would have ever gotten (in a world where Curt wasn't hurt, that is).
  5. garretta
    Worse than Peggy Sue, whom Vince actually expected fans to believe was a real person and not Sherri Martel in a fifties outtit straight out of a grade school production of Grease? You're kidding, right? This is the WWF. All feuds, even the most serious ones, have to have some wackiness in them to distract the kids and make them laugh, period. If Mike Jones in a dress and blonde wig and a few Piper chromosome jokes are the worst we get, we should consider ourselves lucky. Everybody knew exactly who Virgilina was supposed to be and why she was there, and they never even tried to hide it. Hokey? Yes, of course, it was supposed to be. Enough to kill a feud? Not even close.
  6. garretta
    That's what I was looking for. Thanks for the explanation, Pete!
  7. garretta
    The arm work in this would make the Andersons proud, and so would Hase's destruction of Liger's back. But as vicious as Hase's attacks got, I never got the impression that Hase was fighting dirty or heeling, simply doing what he needed to do to win. Liger matches the armwork at first (more than adequately, I may add) before going to the high flying he's famous for. The only problem was, the crowd got in the way, so we had to pretty much guess whether the dives landed on target or not. Eventually, Hase's superior size, strength, and technical expertise tell the tale, and his Northern Lights suplex puts Liger down for three. A question about New Japan booking: Were losses by junior heavyweights to heavyweights seen as damaging in terms of pecking order? If so, this was a disaster for Liger, as he's lost three in a row (as of the end of May) to Honaga, someone clearly beneath him, and now he's been beaten clean (albeit in a good showing) by Hase. He needs to pick things up in a hurry if he's to be seen as any sort of contender for the junior heavyweight title again.
  8. garretta
    If you put this match in the Tokyo Dome, they would have called it one of the greatest ever. Both of these guys brought everything they had, and I'm not sure Fujinami's ever looked better. He didn't change his style, exactly, but he picked up the pace for the American audience and showed that he was more than willing to mix it up with Flair when it was called for. Flair also did well working the mat with Fujinami, which he didn't do too often by now in title matches. This really felt like a struggle, particularly when Fujinami trapped Flair in the octopus and just about had him beaten. I personally could have done without the ref bump finish and the tights pull for the pin, but I doubt Dusty knew any other way to book a Flair win at this point, so I'll let that slide. The downside here was the crowd. I wouldn't have blamed Flair and Fujinami if they'd noticed they were working in front of a bunch of corpses and decided to lay in a headlock until the pay-per-view time was up. Seriously, what was their problem? If nothing else, they should have popped for Flair getting his ass kicked, even if it was by a foreigner they'd never seen before. Or they should have been cheering for Flair to get out of the holds and predicaments that Fujinami put him into. It was their choice, but the choice they ended up making (sitting in stone silence) killed this bout as dead as they were. No amount of hype for Fujinami could have gotten them to care as much about him as they did Sting and Luger, but they could have at least given him a fighting chance. The only move that got any kind of pop, and it was a half-hearted one at that, was when Flair crotched Fujinami on the railing. I don't buy the "they were still worn out from the tag title match" excuse either, because they were just as apathetic before that match even started and didn't even really warm up while that match, their supposed dream match, was going on. Loss may have been right about Flair's act being a bit stale, but there was no excuse for this. Either Dusty grossly miscalculated what the people actually wanted to see or the fans deserve to be branded as hypocrites for behaving this way here and then chanting "WE WANT FLAIR" all through GAB '91. Guess what, morons? You had Flair, and he gave you one of his better performances in the last couple of years against an energetic challenger who brought his A-game as well. And what did you do? You almost completely ignored it. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if this was the match that convinced Jim Herd that Flair could be fired without too much damage to the company, but he fired the wrong man. There was an arena full of people in St. Pete that night who should have gotten the pink slip first, metaphorically speaking. I'm not even sure they'd have popped if Hogan had walked in with the WWF title in hand and demanded a title vs. title match right then and there. The bottom line is, this was a great match that deserved a much better fate than it got. After seeing the disrespect the fans showed toward both the match and the men who wrestled it, I'm ready for Flair to head north and see what he can do for Vince. As for Fujinami, the man's still a hero in Japan, and he has no more to be ashamed of than Flair does. He gave his best, and it should have been good enough. Before I forget. kudos to the announcers for trying to make this a big deal in the face of impossible odds. JR's move descriptions and history lessons were on point, and Dusty was full of good analysis and analogies, including the one Pete mentioned above concerning Julio Iglesias and Fujinami. The amazing thing was, it proved Dusty's point about Fujinami's international reputation perfectly, which doesn't happen often when announcers go that far afield. I might have been a little more receptive toward Fujinami's claim to the title than JR and Dusty were, but that was consistent with WCW's policy of regarding Fujinami as just another challenger, which was terribly misguided and may have led to a little of the crowd's apathy.
  9. garretta
    Maybe this is a function of when I watched the match rather than the match itself, but I really didn't feel this one. I watched it along with a slew of other epics from May (I forgot about it in April), and this really didn't stand out all that much. They definitely worked hard and hit all the right notes, but it didn't feel like something that was overly noteworthy. I dug Jumbo's counters, particularly the hot shot off the top and the almost backdrop driver he hit directly on the second turnbuckle, and Misawa was plucky as ever, to the point where Jumbo had to hit three backdrop drivers to put him away for good. But the six-man from two days later was the best match of its kind ever, so watching that one before this, plus all the other long matches I've been watching lately, almost guaranteed a letdown. Maybe if there had been a title change it would rank a bit higher, but they weren't ready for that yet. Speaking of which, shouldn't we be getting to the point where things are a bit more even between these two? By my count, Jumbo's comfortably ahead if you count all the matches in the feud: 4-2 in six-mans, 2-1 in singles, and 1-1-1 in tags in the Yearbook series from January of '90 through June of '91 (their next encounter is in July). The total thus reads Jumbo 7, Misawa 4 with one draw. At some point Misawa the plucky challenger who can't quite get over the hump just won't cut it anymore. I'm not saying that he has to dominate Jumbo for the next year straight, but maybe he should have gotten the pin on Jumbo in the 4/20 six-man instead of Taue as a bit of revenge for this loss. Just a thought.
  10. garretta
    This wasn't bad at all. The Brazos continue to impress me, especially Porky, who's shown in these last two matches that he can do more than cry on cue. I appreciated his agility as I did in the last match (Dandy/Astro/Popitekus), and he showed that he can wrestle a bit by busting out some suplex variations. His triple-pin spots were also impressive, though the one that ended the first fall was a bit too cooperative for my tastes. Speaking of which, this is the second lucha match in a row where someone sits in a figure-four for an eternity without any action or real selling going on. I know Mexico's style is as different from ours as Japan's is, but using a figure-four as a resthold is something I can't understand at all. I liked the Dandy/Astro/Popitekus tag better because they kept the action flowing a little more, but like that match, this one was about the Brazos, and they really delivered.
  11. garretta
    This bored me stiff, and there was a reason why: I never knew who was winning. Most shoot-style promotions will put the scoreboard of the match onscreen so that the viewers will know how close each competitor is to winning the bout, but PWFG doesn't. As a result, we were down to two men hugging each other from behind and tying their own legs in knots, and I can think of few things less exciting. The few strike exchanges raised my interest slightly, but they didn't last long enough to make much of a difference. I found myself wishing for good old Flair/Dusty or Hogan/Andre or something else I could understand and sink my teeth into. (By the way, I'm no MMA fan, so this didn't interest me in terms of seeing how that style evolved, either.) This isn't an indictment of shoot-style altogether; if I know the story being told, I can get into it like anybody else. But I'm no expert, and I at least need to know who's winning in order to make an investment in the match. Hopefully, PWFG will realize this and flash the score onscreen during future matches.
  12. garretta
    I finally found a trios match that I dug from start to finish. The Brazos surprised me by matching agility with both Astro and Dandy, and the fat man stuff with Popitekus and Porky was fun as well, particularly when they tried to slam each other, with Popitekus being successful The succession of dives to end the second fall was tremendous, as was Porky's flying Thesz press to pin Popitekus at the end. I can't say that Porky is the most athletic big man I've ever seen, but he's definitely one of the few I've ever seen that looks totally at home on the top rope. I also agree with Soup about the cartoons. At least Mexico's honest about presenting wrestling in this manner; Vince preaches that the WWF is kid-friendly on the one hand and has five hundred pound guys squashing snakes and people being locked in caskets for five minutes on the other. This wasn't exactly Flair/Steamboat. but to write it off completely as a comedy match is doing it a disservice. There was a lot of serious athleticism on display here.
  13. garretta
    I'm sorry, but I can't nitpick the work in this one like some of you can. I have no idea how to work in a match in a booby-trapped minefield or the equivalent thereof like these two crazy bastards just did. What I saw looked like just about what I would expect if I saw two guys trying to fight their way out of the jungle in a war movie, and no one faults people fighting in the jungle for a lack of action. Claim all you like that this is performance art and allowances should be made so the match is more entertaining for the audience; I just thank God that both of them made it out all right, because that barbed wire and those explosives don't know that it's supposed to be a work. Are these guys supposed to want to play around in all that shit willingly? If I was signed to be in a match like this, I'd do exactly what they did to avoid it as much as I possibly could, and if the fans hated me for it, the hell with them. I just hope that every last one of them knew the risks that both Onita and Pogo took for their entertainment. Thank heaven no one in this country was insane enough to book a match like this, not even Heyman at his craziest.
  14. garretta
    I agree with Soup here. If Doc and Gordy had sold more, Misawa eventually getting Doc up for the winning powerbomb wouldn't have been as big a deal. In order for the finish to work, Misawa and Kawada both had to be dominated by a team of nearly invincible badasses, and Doc and Bamm Bamm fit that bill here. No, their offense wasn't flashy; it reminded me more than a little of the type of offense seen in early 80s WWF tags, only executed better. But it served its purpose, as both tags were red-hot, and when Misawa almost knocked Doc out with the cobra hold, then lifted and planted him, the crowd went crazy for the improbable comeback win. I've never seen the MVC here in the States, but from what I've read, wasn't part of their problem that JR talked them up to the point where by the time they got in the ring, the fans were already sick of hearing about them? Then they turned around and won both the NWA and WCW World tag titles to set up a series with the Steiners that turned out to be underwhelming, to say the least. I'll see for myself when I get to '92. but most of that was probably the Sooner partisan in JR marking out for Doc, as he's done since 1985. Between that and Watts' favorable booking of them as double champions, it's easy to see why American fans got sick of having them shoved down their throats.
  15. garretta
    For a non-native like me, the best Japanese matches are the ones that transcend language and cultural barriers to tell a universal story. So it is here, as Yamada has chance after chance to defeat a bloody and semiconscious Honaga but instead insists on revenge for having his mask ripped. In the end, he pays for it, as what looks to be a finishing reverse sunset flip turns into yet another improbable (and illegal) win for New Japan's answer to the Honky Tonk Man. Of course, comparing Honaga to Honky isn't really fair; Honaga shows basic athleticism and ring knowledge, while Honky was all about his prematch schtick and doing as little as possible while getting his ass kicked to everyone's satisfaction. Still, both men share a knack for getting improbable wins over guys they don't figure to be able to hang with. In Honky's case, it was Ricky Steamboat; in Honaga's case, it's Liger/Yamada. But you'd think Yamada would be smarter than he showed he was here, as Honaga's already beaten him twice when he seemed to have no business doing so prior to the bout. I normally would downgrade a match for making one of the combatants look that dumb, but in this case Honaga's craftiness makes up for it. If he was a more gifted athlete and was portrayed as a guy who could beat his opponents straight up, three finishes in a row like this against the same opponent would be quite a bit more distressing. As it is, I'm not really sure what they'd accomplish with a fourth. Should there be another rematch, one of these two guys has to win clean and leave no doubt who the better man really is.
  16. garretta
    This match was a little better than the one at Starrcasde in Tokyo, but not much. Sasaki and Hase had a few moments early, but even when they were on offense, I didn't get the feeling that the Steiners were in any real trouble. In the end, Hase absorbed a frightful beating, taking several of the Steiners' top-rope power moves almost right in a row, with the Frankensteiner finishing him off for good. The Steiners didn't make him look stupid like I believe they did back in March, but he and Sasaki still didn't seem to be in the invaders' class as a team, and I don't know what New Japan was supposed to gain by having Rick and Scott be quite so dominant. What other teams could they have put together to challenge them if this is the best the promotion had to offer? What other team could have even stood a chance against the almighty Steiners? I've only seen a few Road Warriors' matches from Japan, but as dominant as they were here in the States, they were less so over there; they still had their moments, of course, but their matches were a lot more back-and-forth and competitive. I have them on the All-Japan 80s set fighting (I think) Jumbo and Yatsu, and I was surprised at how much they gave and how good the match was as a result. Rick and Scott haven't learned that lesson, and I'm not sure they ever will. Maybe the natives are afraid that they'll beat up their opponents for real if they're not booked to their taste, or maybe New Japan's teams really aren't as good as they are, and this is the best match we can expect from them. Either way, they've been a disappointment, which is rare for an American worker in Japan. In few cases would I rather see a certain worker in the United States' sports entertainment environment than in the "pure sport" environment of Japan, but the Steiners are one of them.
  17. garretta
    I figured Tamura out by his boots (which said "Tamura" on them), but couldn't think of Kakihara's name to save my life. Thanks, Tim!
  18. garretta
    This looked pretty good, from what little I could make out of it. Having two guys in there I'd never seen before took away from this a bit, as did having to get used to a new scoring system. Both guys seemed excited to be at the forefront of a new promotion, and that's always good. I'll have to watch more to form a better judgment, both of these workers and of UWFI as a company.
  19. garretta
    This felt more like an exhibition than anything else. A fiercely contested exhibition to be sure, but an exhibition nonetheless. This lasted just long enough for all four individual combinations to get in the ring with each other (and as it was, we got very little of Luger/Scotty), and then it was time for Nikita, whom I suspect was really the point of this whole thing to start with, as in giving Sting an issue to be mad about (losing the tag titles due to Nikita's interference) and getting Luger off of Nikita's case and on to yet another World title challenge. The Steiners were never really in danger of losing, and that was fine with all concerned; simply having all four men in the ring at one time was enough. The real fire was in Sting and Nikita's postmatch brawl, which went outside of the Bayfront Center. You van tell that they don't think much of Flair/Fujinami by Dusty's opening remarks: "If ever there was such a thing as a man event, this is it". Substitute the words "dream match" and he would have had it right. My question for him is, if you didn't feel that Fujinami was worthy of a shot at Flair, why the hell did you give him one? And while we're at it, what was the deal with the biggest matches on this pay-per-view getting almost no hype? Flair/Fujinami got a little, but this match got almost none, Eaton/Arn got almost none, and so on. The only match to get a decent amount of hype (at least according to what made the set) was Gigante/Sid, which ended up being a total disaster in every way possible. I wonder if Dusty even wanted a May pay-per-view considering that it was as close as you can get to an under-the-radar card in the pay-per-view era. In fact, didn't SuperBrawl take WrestleWar's place in February starting in '92, thus leaving May dark pay-per-view wise? If I recall correctly, SuperBrawl 2 (featuring the WCW pay-per-view debut of Jesse Ventura) was on 2/29/92.
  20. garretta
    I had trouble watching this one, and that's because of the ridiculously over-the-top announcing. Fairly or not, I judge most matches by the entire package, so it's possible for a well-worked match to become pedestrian or worse due to factors other than the work in the ring, and that was the case here. I don't know where Mick Karch learned how to call a match, but he should ask for his money back. I thought Joey Styles was ridiculous with his constant "OH MY GOD!" stuff, but Karch took it to another level, because he roared that phrase every time Waltman touched Lynn. When these guys are throwing chairs and using the bell to make each other bleed buckets, I can understand being this emotional. But the match we saw called for JR and one of his talks on game plans, specifically concerning Waltman making hash out of Lynn's knee. Instead, we got Karch and his sidekick doing everything but hitting Waltman with a chair to get him away from Lynn, and that's just wrong. No wonder the PWA never lasted with announcing like this. Add to the mix the constant attacks by the color guy on the WWF and the constant bragging about how the PWA lets its guys wrestle, and a stellar performance by Waltman, astoundingly good for his age and experience level, is rendered nearly irrelevant. Ditto Lynn's performance in the role of the babyface who simply won't quit even though his career will almost certainly be ended if he doesn't. If I'm not mistaken, the referee stopped the match and gave it to Waltman; it was tough to tell with Karch and his buddy throwing their thousandth fit in the last twenty minutes. I notice that these two have a fourth match coming up down in Dallas in July, and I'm looking forward to watching them go at it again, this time with a sensible human being in the booth instead of a couple of screaming nincompoops.
  21. garretta
    This match never really got going for me, and it had nothing to do with what went on in the ring. If we're just looking at the actual wrestling, this might be the best bout Jeff and Dr. Tom have had yet, and the finish, though it's typical bullshit, is brilliantly conceived bullshit, so it's forgivable. But there's just been too much bad booking in the USWA lately, and that negates everything else in my book. To start with, we have the typical violent match that hurts no one. Okay, so you can say that Jeff wants the cage not so it can be used as a weapon, but to keep Tojo out. Well, it doesn't work on that level, just like it didn't with Dundee/Embry, because it's his chain that leads to the finish. So why have the cage? To beat your opponent up with, except that can't happen because of ESPN's blood restrictions. But we knew all that going in, so at least Paul Neighbors can stay out of the way and let these two slug each other senseless, right? Wrong! So we get no violence, no blood, zealous rule enforcement, and the usual interference, plus a DQ finish that has to be overturned. Was the ring crew desperate enough for a paycheck that Papa booked a cage match just to give them something to assemble? But wait, there's more. It struck me from hearing Michael's introduction that I couldn't remember how the Southern belt had changed hands last. Then I remembered; we've heard so much about Embry and his various feuds that everything else in the promotion has been completely forgotten, title belts included. Not only that, but we're back to Dallas not recognizing what happens in Memphis. In Memphis, it's Embry who's the Southern champion, thus allowing him to hold the most prestigious belt each half of the promotion has. The Southern title doesn't mean as much in Dallas, so Jeff and Prichard are allowed to squabble over it with no one the wiser. Can you imagine what the fans who got ESPN in Memphis must have been thinking at this time? Of course, to them Lawler was the king no matter what, so maybe who held which belt didn't matter as long as Lawler was the overall ruler, so to speak. Still, it had to be confusing, and Dave and Corey/Michael/Lawler probably didn't take time on a given Saturday morning to say, "Now, for those of you who might be watching the shows from Dallas on ESPN..........." Finally, am I the only one who wishes that either Embry or Prichard had flat-out decked Elliott Mays? I have nothing against the man, but there's something about seeing him hold up and run away with two belts like a thief in the night that irritates me. My guess is that they were trying to figure out which belt to keep once the Dallas side closed, and wanted both of them out of action so they wouldn't be tempted to book any more switches until everything got straight. All I can say is thank God that we have only one more Dallas bout to go. I've never believed that Papa's heart was in this side of the promotion, and the fact that he's let things go to this extent proves it. Maybe now with Dallas closed he can work on keeping Embry's ego in check before he takes Memphis down the sewer too.
  22. garretta
    Yet again, we have a match that calls attention to violence, yet has to be sanitized for ESPN. The beating these guys took (particularly Embry in the sequence just before the finish where he was handcuffed for three straight minutes) needed to be punctuated with blood, particularly after Dundee's vicious boot shots. Embry's top-notch selling made up for it a little, but not nearly enough. Then, we had yet another instance of the cage not being able to stop interference, as Tojo was able to pass the ether rag to Embry as if there was no cage at all, and that's where things really go to hell. It's not the finish itself; if there's no cheating, then the rag was cheap as hell, but not illegal. It's the aftermath, when Elliott Mays (and just who the hell is he? I've never seen him before in my life) holds up the Texas title belt on behalf of the USWA Board of Directors. Why? The match isn't supposed to have any rules. Note the italics and read that sentence as many times as it takes for that concept to sink in. That means that Embry's the Texas champion, period. Or it should, except that Dallas needs someone to face Embry for the same reason Memphis does; no Lawler. Of course, there would have probably been as little Lawler as possible in Dallas even if he wasn't out of action, but that's another story. The bottom line is, with Jeff fighting Prichard for the Southern title, there's no one else with any credibility for Embry to feud with except Dundee, so we get the loser-leaves town stip gotten around (rather ingeniously, I must say) in Memphis and the held-up Texas belt in Dallas. Pete brought up the possibility of either the Texas or Southern belts being retired, and since the last USWA Texas match we have is dated 6/7, I'd think the Southern belt returns to Memphis full-time before June's done and the Texas belt gets the chop. We'll have to wait and see; I guess they could keep Embry as the Texas champ for vanity reasons and to help promote the Lawler/Embry showdown that's coming soon. I'm not so sure that Michael was faking those coughs entirely; Cornette has said that the various ether substitutes used to load rags have pretty strong smells that can make people dizzy when they're close to them. Of course, that wouldn't explain Tony Falk not smelling it from right there in the ring. Come to think of it, I don't ever recall a referee selling the smell of ether or lawnmower starting fluid or whatever else they use for this spot. I wonder if they're instructed not to, if they take it upon themselves not to, or if they're so caught up in the finish that they just forget.
  23. garretta
    I wouldn't say that this was a "straight" match; it definitely had a shoot-style feel in some of the kicks and takedowns, almost as if AJW wanted to see how they got over when performed by two women. Speaking of the kicks, they was the most brutal part of the match, as Hotta's in particular were super-stiff. It was kind of jarring to see women brutalizing each other like this at first, but once I got used to the idea I could enjoy it for what it was, which wasn't bad. There were also enough standard pro maneuvers so that I never had to wonder just what I was watching; the final pin sequence was inventive enough that I wonder why other promotions didn't steal it. If this was a test case to see whether the fans liked seeing the AJW women try to go at it shoot-style, my vote is a cautious yes, provided that they use the maneuvers and strikes as another skill set and not just as an excuse to beat the hell out of each other.
  24. garretta
    The story of this match was Arn's decimation of Bobby's knee. It influenced everything that happened after it, and Bobby's gutsy performance was topped off by going to the top despite it and hitting his money move, the Alabama Jam, to win the title. Arn's work was superb, as well as Bobby's selling, both verbal and physical. For those who hadn't seen Bobby in Memphis (which was just about everyone in the audience), it had to be a revelation just how good he was as a singles performer. I loved Dusty's analysis of the knee work; if anyone would know what it's like to have Arn Anderson work over a leg, it's him. At first hearing, it seemed a bit unfair for him to call Bobby a rookie, but in terms of WCW singles experience he is, which makes his win all the more surprising. The sad thing is that the crowd couldn't have cared two cents less for it. Whether it was card placement, unfamiliarity with Bobby as a singles competitor, or a lack of real buildup for the match, this crowd was dead like few other crowds I've seen on a North American pay-per-view. What a shame, as they slept on a good, solid bout. They showed the pin on replay, so I give the WCW production crew a pass on missing it live. Pillman countering Windham's outside interference was a nice touch. As for going back and forth on the Horseman breakup, like I said in another thread, they probably weren't sure what Flair was going to do at this point. If he'd decided to stay, Dusty would have no doubt kept the Horsemen as his primary heel group, since it had been so successful in the past. Who would have taken Sid's place? I'm guessing probably Steve Austin, although Larry Zbyszko would have been an interesting dark horse. It almost certainly would have been one of the guys who later made up the Dangerous Alliance, and I wouldn't have been surprised to see Heyman take over the J.J. Dillon role, especially since he never hid his admiration for Flair while he was broadcasting.
  25. garretta
    We get to see most of the first fall, then they cut right to the finish and Owen's unmasking, so it's difficult to tell how good this really was. It's surprising to see Owen working as the Blazer here, knowing how he ended up feeling about the gimmick just before his death. I'm also surprised that Vince would let Owen use a gimmick that he (Vince) created outside of the WWF. According to Graham's site, El Canek's MSG appearance came on August 24, 1981, as he beat Jose Estrada at 14:31.
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