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garretta

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Everything posted by garretta

  1. garretta
    This was great, and kudos to Dusty for having this taped right after the Nikita match, when Lex would still be mad at what happened and wouldn't have time to overthink his words or be too smooth. This honestly might have been one of the best Luger promos I've ever seen. Heyman also gets credit for putting over how brutal the match was.
  2. garretta
    This one fell flat. They're not even trying to present Fujinami as anyone important. If the fans watching bought the Starrcade in Tokyo pay-per-view, they know that, disputed or not, Fujinami has a pinfall over Flair. That should have been more than enough to put him over as a threat, even if no one in the audience had ever heard of him before. Instead. Flair's doing the same old routine, as if the match is an afterthought. If you're not going to try to make Fujinami a name worthy of respect to the WCW fans, why not just have Flair beat him clean in Tokyo and book Gigante or another WCW guy in the title match at SuperBrawl? Did Gigante and Sid have to fight each other right then? Did Sting and Luger have to fight the Steiners? Even Sting/Flair Part Infinity + 2 would have been better than basically booking a title vs. title (NWA World vs. WCW World) match as a throwaway. One part I liked was Flair leading the audience in a call-and-response. Even he knows that his routine is the same as it ever was, and he has to find a way to keep the fans' interest up. Unfortunately for Flair, the response (if there was any) didn't really come through on camera.
  3. garretta
    I didn't like this at all. I know a lot of people around WCW at this time didn't like Heyman for this reason or that, but to go out there and encourage/tell Pillman to sandbag him on his own interview segment was wrong. Of course, Pillman's comments got a huge pop, but that's neither a justification or an excuse for doing something like that to the poor guy. Maybe a few months later when he was back managing and this could have been turned into a money-making program it would have been understandable, but not now. I noticed that they didn't include Sid in Pillman's rogue's gallery, too. Didn't Sid go against Gigante at SuperBrawl? Maybe they didn't want to distract the audience's attention from that match, although that wouldn't explain why Pillman was still targeting the rest of the Horsemen even though Flair and Arn had other commitments on that card.
  4. garretta
    I don't think they were burying the Horsemen so much as trying to make the careers of the group more distinct. I've said before that this probably had a lot to do with Flair's contract status; they didn't want to move ahead with more plans for the group without making sure that Flair (and, to an extent, Sid) were locked up long term. Barry and Arn weren't threats to go back to Vince, so that's why their interviews took on a more individualistic tone. Still no mention of Arn's real-life friendship with Eaton during the hype for SuperBrawl. Why was it such a big deal three years before when Dusty was booking the MX against the Horsemen, but not now when the two of them are going at it one-on-one?
  5. garretta
    The server ate this the first time, so let's try again. I can't really comment, because I could barely even hear what Flair was saying. I noticed that JR was a lot more concerned about hyping the next night's Main Event than he was about this footage, so you have to wonder how big a priority the Flair/Fujinami rematch really was to Dusty and the Turner suits.
  6. garretta
    This commercial was almost straight out of the LJN/WWF playbook of 1986, the only difference being that a wrestler (Sting) did the voiceover instead of an announcer (Vince). Surprisingly, Sting was very good here; watching this, I wish that he could do his promos as consistently well. Regarding the AWA and action figures, who would have thought that Verne would be ahead of the curve when it came to any aspect of wrestling merchandising? Too bad it didn't do him any more good than it did, which was very little.
  7. garretta
    I liked the promo, especially the nod to Chicago's history of blood and extra-violent matches, but I agree that the "every promoter in the country" bit doesn't work anymore; even PWI, which was still a bastion of kayfabe in '91, ran their "Arena Reports" section, where the fans could see for themselves that the same matches, indeed the same finishes, were being run in towns across the country by both the WWF and WCW. That nitpick aside, Flair's still at or close to the top of his game here, and you can see why WCW floundered without him when he left a couple of months later. I'm just glad Vince got hold of him while he still had some vintage performances left in the tank.
  8. garretta
    Nothing that we haven't heard before, but it's nice to hear someone other than Tony hyping the UIC Pavilion cards. Did Flair really not know how to pronounce "Gigante" correctly, or was this just a psychological ploy on his part? I'm guessing the latter, because why would the Turner suits not tell him how to pronounce the man's name correctly otherwise?
  9. garretta
    I liked Nikita's interview, but the brawl never truly got going, and I couldn't really tell that much damage had been done to the belt. It sounded impressive when Nikita banged it off the ring post, but a few dents really don't do much for me. He should have left the thing almost plateless, the way Greg Valentine did to the IC belt when he lost it to Tito Santana. I did enjoy Nikita hitting not only Luger, but several of the jobbers with the belt. That did more for me to further the feud than anything else. As far as crowd heat goes, I'm not sure how much Nikita meant in 1991; unless you'd been watching for at least four and a half years, all the way back to Magnum's accident, and were familiar with the whole story of Nikita's face turn and eventual feud over the U.S. belt with heel Luger, what would you have seen Nikita as? A marble-mouthed, bald-headed, skinny old-timer whom Luger should have no problem with. Spivey was a much more credible threat to those fans who weren't JCP loyalists.
  10. garretta
    Flair's in a good mood as he comes out to hype the Starrcade in Tokyo pay-per-view. This wasn't at all designed to be a serious interview, as Flair gleefully romps through his catchphrases and trades google-eyes with Missy, who's so gobsmacked by his friendly kiss on the cheek that she barely knows what's happening next. I wish my kisses had that effect on women! Soup's right; Flair seems to be hitting on all cylinders in his promos lately, and it's hard to believe that he has less than three months to go with WCW at this point; right now he seems like he could quite literally go on forever.
  11. garretta
    An Andre/DiBiase reunion would have been interesting, but somehow I don't see Sherri and Andre as a fit. I guess the Giant didn't either. This almost feels like Sherri interrupted one of Andre's real-life drinking sessions, as I believe Arnie and Pat were two of Andre's favorite companions outside the ring.
  12. garretta
    Even this early on, you knew Taker was going to be something different, something special. Percy's a lot more menacing here than he was when he became a soprano version of Gomez Adams later on, and Taker doesn't quite seem like a zombie yet, just a slightly less-than-normal man with a death obsession, which is creepy enough. I forgot to say this in the Warrior/Savage thread, but I'm glad Taker wasn't a part of the match. His presence would have damaged, in not outright ruined the intensity, and Savage wouldn't have come across as quite so noble if he'd had to rely on outside help to try to win. (Sherri doesn't count for purposes of this discussion.)
  13. garretta
    I love how Mike portrays IRS as getting a sort of perverse joy out of his work. He's much like DiBiase was in his early vignettes before the realities of having to sell wrestling issues and feuds took over. I wonder how many people were sitting there thinking, "When is this clown ever going to get in the ring? Is he even a wrestler?" Usually, a gimmick like this would have debuted in the ring on TV by now; I don't even think we waited this long (five weeks) for the Million Dollar Man's first appearance, although I could certainly be wrong. Was Mike waiting out a noncompete in his WCW contract?
  14. garretta
    I agree with Pete about motivations for these "moonlighting" wrestlers, but in fairness, it's the weekend before Tax Day, so the gimmick doesn't really need to be tied into wrestling just yet. Let's see how they structure these things once April 15 has come and gone. Rotundo's getting more pugnacious here, which is unfortunate. Like I said earlier, acting too much like a wrestler is what killed most of these gimmicks; after all, would your average accountant threaten to close tax loopholes right around someone's neck? Taker's the only one who's avoided this trap so far, although it's actually more like he and Percy transcend it.
  15. garretta
    Yeah, this was a rerun of the Andre angle minus the heart attack bit on SNME. I can understand how this setup would create feuds with an instant hook- can whoever get revenge on Jake for making them look like a coward while avoiding a replay of their nightmare with Damien?- but doing it three times in the exact same fashion (Andre, Bad News, Quake) is a little much. Of course, this version has a few other little twists and turns that would make it stand out, but we didn't know that at the time. I like how Piper and Savage, who were both babyfaces by now (after watching Mania, I consider Savage a face, occasional heelish comments aside), didn't agree with how Jake used Damien after matches. That might have been an interesting way to turn Jake heel; have him take exception to Piper's comments and escalate things from there. I remember the Jake/Warrior stuff, but I would have much preferred a Jake/Piper feud for the promo battle alone. Of course, having anyone with the possible exception of DiBiase in two distinct feuds at one time totally went against the Little Hulkamaniacs Booking Handbook, although if anyone else could have done it, Piper would have been it. Poor Jimmy Hart; he was legitimately scared to death of snakes, if I remember correctly. That's why he had to be held by Alice Cooper when Jake put Damien on him after Honky beat Jake at Mania III. The idea of being sacrificed by Quake so Damien didn't land on him had to give Jimmy the creeps, even if nothing actually happened.
  16. garretta
    So far, this character's actually more decent than I remembered. Rotundo looks and sounds like a stereotypical accountant, rather than a wrestler who's playing an accountant. That's the problem with Vince's "workplace" characters, they never let you forget that they were wrestlers doing a gimmick instead of members of their chosen professions who wrestled on the side. Death and Taxes might have been a cooler concept than Money Inc., but Taker was too valuable as a singles performer to temper with by that point. IRS being managed by Paul Bearer might have had some legs, though.
  17. garretta
    Before I talk about what this match was, let me list what it wasn't. It wasn't the Match of the Month and the clubhouse favorite for Match of the Year: that's WarGames. It wasn't the greatest WrestleMania bell-to-bell match of all time: that's Steamer/Savage at Mania III. It's not even the greatest Mania moment of all time: that's Hogan slamming Andre at Mania III. What this was was a transcendent performance by everyone involved, and that's rarer than you think at a Mania. And when I say "everyone", I mean the cornerpeople and announcers too. Liz did nothing of note at Mania III, and George Steele didn't play much of a part in the finish. Heenan did nothing at Mania III; he didn't even take any postmatch bumps from Hogan. To be fair, Liz and Heenan weren't in a position to be big parts of those particular matches, but I'm including them for comparison's sake. Everyone here was at the top of their game: Savage was the daredevil he made his living being, Warrior wrestled a more varied match than he did even at Mania VI when he won the belt, and Sherri gave what might have been her last truly great managerial performance. Pete talked earlier about the callback to the neck-over-the-railing spot; it's only fitting that missing that spot is what directly cost him his career by giving Warrior his final offensive opening. I loved the "talking to the gods" routine as much as anyone, but even if Warrior had gotten the message to walk away, I'm sure he'd have fired those gods and found new ones to worship PDQ. Seriously, they finally succeeded in making the Warrior believably human, which stupid stuff like Amanda Ultimate Warrior couldn't even come close to doing. The false finishes for both men were tremendous, as each man kicked out of the other's finisher. Of course, Warrior surviving Savage's elbow after it was dropped no less than five times killed that move deader than dirt, but since Randy was leaving, it really didn't matter. It also took three Warrior spears and the gorilla press to finally put Savage down, so they ended at least somewhat even. Sherri pulled out every stop in the world, as you'd expect. Gino and Bobby made sure to point out that her reign as queen was on the line too, so this was in essence a handicap match. As I said earlier, I don't recall her giving a performance like this again, and I don't think she ever enjoyed a gimmick as much as she did this one, at least according to her shoot. Gino was solid, but just like in the Hogan/Slaughter match, Heenan was the announcing star. This may be the best serious analysis of a match I've ever heard from him; he constantly puts over both men as competitors, describes the intensity he sees from each of them, and even lays off of Liz for the most part until the postmatch. Why wasn't Bobby this good more often? Because there weren't really enough good main-event style matches during his time as top heel commentator, certainly few of this magnitude that made his usual style out of place. Of course, he lets loose during Randy and Liz's reunion, but how much longer could anyone realistically hold him back? Besides, grown men and women crying over two strangers reuniting in a wrestling ring deserve to be made fun of, masterful storytelling aside. The postmatch made me wish that Liz was just a bit bigger and had some training so we could see her go at it with Sherri. Apparently, Vince thought about having a series between them at one time right after Mania V, but either Randy, Liz, or both put a stop to it, and I'm not sure Sherri would have done it either. For those few who may not know, Liz picked Sherri as her successor in Savage's corner, and the two of them became close friends, so Sherri may not have wanted to put Liz in a position to be accidentally hurt. She sure sold for Liz like Liz was Wonder Woman here, though. I love Heenan's call of Sherri kicking Savage: "The woman's possessed!" The reunion itself was sappy, but that was to be expected, especially since this really was supposed to be Savage's farewell bout for TV purposes. Not only the Macho King gimmick dies here, but the idea of a King of the WWF period, as Gino salutes the once-again "Macho Man" while he and Liz are departing ringside. This was the Match of the Night for Mania without a doubt, and despite what I said above, Vince would give anything he possesses to get real emotion like this out of a crowd today. We can argue about its ranking in history all we like, but it's unquestionably one of those select few bouts that will never be forgotten by those who have seen it. For that, sincere congratulations to all involved, and it's a tragedy that we can't thank most of them personally anymore.
  18. garretta
    I may be seeing things that weren't there, but it looked to me like Fonzie saw Flair throw Fujinami over the top rope and was going into the ring to call it, only to be held back by at least three different officials. Even the appearance of something like that makes this finish seem like one of the old-fashioned hometown fixes seen in old-time boxing matches. Did Fonzie recover from his bump a little too soon, or was Dusty (who I assume booked this) getting a tad sloppy in his old age? As for the match itself, Flair dominates most of it, which is a nice change of pace, and busts out moves we haven't seen from him in a long time, if ever. Fujinami tries to get momentum going, and wins some chop exchanges, but can never quite sustain the advantage long enough to be a threat to Flair. Even though Flair gets himself busted open, he doesn't seem to be in any real danger of losing at any point until the finish. Fujinami seems a step slow compered to what he was before; that back injury seems to have taken its toll, though he still looks like he belongs in the ring with Flair. I assume we'll find part of the answer in the weeks to come, but here's how I understand the aftermath so far: Fujinami's victory was allowed to stand by the NWA despite the screwy finish. But WCW, sensing a ready-made rematch, went ahead as if the Dusty finish meant that Flair retained the WCW title (which they considered separate) and said that Fujinami would defend the NWA title against Flair at SuperBrawl. This angered the NWA Board of Directors, and was the first step toward WCW leaving the NWA (which they finally would for good a couple of years later) and going out completely on their own. Feel free to correct me if I need it. I agree that these two could have had a five-star classic a few years earlier. As it was, this match was above good, but nowhere near great. Liger/Nogami was the Match of the Night for me.
  19. garretta
    Let's try this again. I watched the pre-match stuff to see Hogan's promo, and once again I was struck by the utter lack of symbolism or subtlety anywhere in it. They're all but calling this an actual battle in the Gulf War, to the point of Hogan actually trying to somehow adapt the lyrics of the national anthem to fit the WWF promo style. Needless to say, that idea falls flat on its head. The average SNME punfest is classic Greek oratory compared to this mess. Then come the intros of the celebrities, which are fine. Gino gets on Bobby's case concerning some things he supposedly said about Regis Philbin, and Bobby comes back with a crack about Kathie Lee Gifford being a loudmouth. Marla Maples gets a mention; Alex Trebek gets nothing except a nice intro from Finkel. Gino tells us that Regis will be siting in on commentary. Then come the intros of the wrestlers. Alex isn't bad, though he pronounces the name of Sarge's manager as "AD-NANN". The problem is, Gino and Bobby are blathering about Regis instead of setting the scene for the titanic struggle to come. I usually enjoy their act, but if we're talking about a battle in the ongoing Gulf War that's going to start in just a few minutes, shouldn't they be just a little more focused? Now on to the match. This was Sarge's baby all the way; he had one more big match left in him, and this was it. He took an impressive beating from a fired-up Hogan at the start, and while his offense was limited and looked suspiciously like the Iron Sheik's offense circa 1/23/84, it was effective in the moment. He was also sly enough to constantly tease the crowd with the idea that he'd get intentionally counted out or DQed just to cheat them out of the ending that he knew they wanted to see. In terms of Hogan's Mania opponents during his first WWF run, his may be the best overall performance, though Savage at Mania V is probably the best bell-to-bell match. Hogan was by-the-numbers here except for a few tries at aerial moves, but by-the-numbers was exactly what was called for. The crowd wanted vintage Hogan to bring it all home for America, and that's exactly what he did. The only thing I would have changed was him wiping his face with the American flag in the postmatch; why wouldn't they keep the Iraqi flag Sarge brought in if they wanted that spot so badly? Adnan was passable here, not much more. I don't think that "distraction" spot was a botch; it was designed to show that all Iraqis and Iraqi supporters are too freakin' stupid to live. I mean, who else but a Godless Iraqi would distract the referee while his own man is attempting a winning pinfall? Gino hammers that point home on commentary as well; one time when Heenan's complaining about a slow count, he jokes that you only need a two-count to win a match in Iraq, to which Gino replies, "That's all the higher they can count anyway!" Speaking of Gino, this wasn't one of his best calls; he was obviously pulling for Hogan, which he was supposed to do, but his disgust for Sarge spilled over into his interactions with Heenan. He wasn't in the mood to indulge Bobby's whimsies at all, and when he isn't, this partnership (which, don't forget, is almost all about comic timing, not the matches in the ring) is a non-starter. Bobby actually did better than I thought; he walked a kind of tightrope between his well-known dislike for Hogan and his.......patriotism isn't the right word, but he seemed to understand that Sarge's reign continuing spells bad things for all Americans, including him. I liked how he outlined his dislike for Hogan to Regis, and when Regis teased him that if Hogan got the belt back, his men would never get title shots, he was right there with "Probably not". Speaking of Regis, he was okay, a typical celebrity commentator. Uecker was the best of the bunch, because he actually grasped what was going on a bit; most of the celebrities Vince used for commentary never got that far. Remember Susan St. James (Mrs. Dick Ebersol) imploring George Steele to eat Randy Savage's leg at Mania 2? One last complaint: Did Vince (through Heenan) really have to plug Prime Time while the action in the ring was ongoing? It made Bobby look ridiculous (not in a productive way), and did he (Vince) really think that anyone gave even a sliver of a damn at that point? It showed how his priorities had changed even since last year, and that was a terrible thing for the business.
  20. garretta
    I watched the pre-match stuff to see Hogan's promo, and as usual, Vince won't stop clubbing us over the head with the idea that this is almost literally supposed to be a battle in the Gulf War. It wouldn;t be so vas except that there's no subtlety in the sriting wha
  21. garretta
    The first two falls really dragged, but the third picked things up a bit. Not much, but enough that this wasn't a total washout. Santo submitting in the final fall was enough to warrant the match being included here all by itself; I thought he was almost untouchable in Mexico. I was also surprised that Casas didn't try to heel it up a bit more, instead, he tried to match holds with Santo and succeeded as often as not. This was a good exhibition of the technical side of lucha with a legitimately surprising finish. I'm sure that these two had a better match in them somewhere, though.
  22. garretta
    This is the kind of match I despise. I'll submit that there was plenty of athleticism from both sides, which was a treat to see. But when seven of the wrestlers wear masks and the bulk of the match is armdrags and flipovers, it's not going to sit well with me at all. I'm slowly starting to grasp the Mexican multiman structure, but this match didn't further my education one bit.
  23. garretta
    I've read James Beard's postings on a few different boards, and he's said that referees were instructed most of the time to enforce the rules even in matches like this, both so the wrestlers didn't accidentally hurt each other and so the fans would know that using weapons was still low-down and dirty. The only thing they couldn't do was stop the match if a weapon was used. I guess how far they went in stopping the guys from using weapons depended on how physically lucky they were feeling on a given day. All of which begs the question: Why even book street fights in the first place? I'm guessing this match was kept tamer than usual because it was being taped for ESPN, but again, why Dad would book a street fight for a TV show when he knew what they were and how bloody and out-of-control they were designed to be is beyond me. (For those who may not know, I refer to Jerry Jarrett as "Dad" because there are two Jarretts and two major Jerrys in the USWA.) At any rate, Jeff and Dr. Tom did a decent job working around Neighbors and still managed to make this look like a violent brawl. Even Tojo did his part outside the ring. They managed to use the Southern title belt, Jeff's weightlifting belt, at least three different chains, a kendo stick, and Dr. Tom's boot, all without a drop of blood being spilled by either man, which is no mean feat. Michael ends up being the custodian of the weapons, much to his chagrin; just once, I would have liked to have seen him try to refuse Dr. Tom one of the chains and see how far he got. Of course, this match ends on a garden-variety rollup, which somehow fits after all the misplaced rule enforcement. I'm not sure why the postmatch didn't fire up the crowd; sure, the last match between these two ended with a three-on-one beatdown, but that happened a thousand times to the Von Erichs. I thought Jeff was as close to a transplanted hometown favorite as Dallas had by this time, but I guess I was wrong. Maybe they didn't buy Dr. Tom as a real threat, or maybe the Embry turn simply soured them on the USWA in general. Eric may not have been Kerry in his prime when it came to popularity, but he was one of the people's own, and now he was just another bleached blonde heel like the rest. There were no faces left who weren't Memphis transplants, and that might have been what finally killed Jarrett in Dallas. He needed to bring back one of the World Class old-timers, like Kevin or Chris Adams, to lead the babyfaces instead of relying on Dundee and Jeff, especially since the best babyface he had (Lawler) could barely be bothered to show up.
  24. garretta
    I didn't feel this one at all. The first part was too slow, given the intensity level of the feud between these two. Title match or not, they should have been out to kill each other from the start. In feuds like this, personal hatred should be more important than whatever title is on the line, the only exception being the World title. At any rate, the leg work on Jeff spiced things up a bit, and things were really starting to hum when the run-ins started. First of all, Tojo swings that briefcase of his like a girl. More importantly, the first false finish (Jeff nailing Prichard with the chain that Austin intended to be used on him, then sticking it in Prichard's tights) would have been brilliant by itself. But they had to ruin it by having Embry come down and hit Jeff in the head with his boot. This requires both Tony Falk and Paul Neighbors to be knocked out, which ruins the whole point of having two referees. If every referee on staff can be knocked out or distracted at the same time whenever the heels deem it necessary, then why waste time assigning two to one match? When a promotion uses two refs, that should be a signal to the crowd that there will be no ref bumps and no manager distractions; in other words, a guaranteed clean pin for the babyface. Instead, we get this finish, and if I'd been watching in real time, I'd have been left to wonder what it would take to get the Southern belt off of Dr. Tom, and if Jeff was the man to do it regardless. Sometimes old-school promotions built heat for a little too long and made their payoffs meaningless as a result, and this could be one of them if Jeff doesn't win the Southern belt back convincingly in his next bout with Prichard. To answer Kevin's question above, I'd have to take Fuji over Tojo at the moment simply because Fuji was still able to wrestle on at least a semi-regular basis, while Tojo was clearly physically past it. Neither man was worth a damn on promos, which was fine in Tojo's case because he had great interviews beside him in Embry, Prichard, and Austin. Fuji, on the other hand, had the tail end of Demolition and the Orient Express, none of whom ever talked, although I've seen Tanaka do a great job in the AWA when called upon. After this, he had the Berzerker, who only said "Huss!", and Yoko, who only said "Banzai!". When you have a manager who can't talk and wrestlers who don't, that's a recipe for disaster, which is why Fuji was eventually replaced by Cornette when Jimmy came into the WWF in '93. The only guy Fuji ever really clicked with was Muraco, and that was mostly a comedy act outside the ring. With everyone else, even the Demos in their original heel run, he was a third wheel at best and utterly useless at worst.
  25. garretta
    This was end-to-end action no matter who was in the ring. It was kind of hard to follow at times, but in a good way, as you never quite knew what was coming next. I never expected Misawa vs. Taue to be as intense as it was, and the Kobashi/Kikuchi doubleteams were tremendous, as noted above. It's about time for the youngsters to take one of these, though; I think there have been five six-mans on the Yearbooks with Misawa and friends on one side and Jumbo and friends on the other since June of '90, and Jumbo's crew has taken four of them. I get that they're making the Misawa side earn its way up the ladder, but eventually it has to pay off in wins or people will tire of this feud, and that would be a shame, because the action in these matches has been first-rate in all of its forms: singles, regular tags, and six-mans.
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