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dawho5

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Everything posted by dawho5

  1. dawho5
    I honestly thought this was a set-up for some kind of attack. Regardless, WCW's production could use some work.
  2. dawho5
    Just...why? Was this supposed to make money at some point?
  3. dawho5
    I was thinking WWF during this part too. Eh, everyone has misfires.
  4. dawho5
    My two favorite wrestlers in one place! Did Stone Cold steal his vest from Hansen? I was shocked they got the full intros done before Hansen attacked Kawada. One thing I always love about these 2 wrestling is every small thing is earned. Hansen and Kawada fight everything all the way to the finish and that adds a lot to the match. They even fight back (usually ineffectively) when they are on their back under the ropes trying to avoid what comes next. I LOVE that. A small thing I noticed was the official sitting next to the bell noticed Hansen eyeing it and moved it to a safer location. Hansen's powerbomb on the outside is an emphatic admission that Kawada's offense is worrying him and he needs to start putting him away NOW. That apron elbow was so great by Kawada. Loved when the crowd started to believe Kawada had a chance. Hansen's facial expression when he starts making his big push towards the end is incredible. Kawada kicking out of that powerbomb was absolutely huge. Great match that puts Kawada over as a contender.
  5. dawho5
    Yeah, I would agree. Adding them in did help the WWE in the short term and you can always cycle them in and out as you mention. The highlight of what you said for me is "how best to use them." Every wrestler has strengths (and weaknesses) that can be used to make compelling characters on-screen. It is just a matter of finding where they fit in the overall tapestry, not trying to plug them all into one singular system.
  6. dawho5
    I was actually thinking of it in a way that Kevin Sullivan described it when talking about mid-90s WCW. He didn't understand why people thought Benoit/Eddie/Malenko/etc. were thinking they should be the main guys. He understood why, but he talked about it in the sense that the whole thing was a circus and you had all these different styles of attractions for different people. The cruiserweights brought in some, as did some of the other non-mainstream types that populated the midcard. But you got a lot more people watching due to the Hogans and Flairs of the world because they knew those guys and would tune in despite the tendency towards less going on in those later matches on the show. I remember watching and wondering why Hogan and the NWO got all the love they did (this was towards the end of that run) and the more exciting in-ring guys who had more action in the matches weren't pushed more. I get it now and have for a whole, but I wonder if maybe towards 99-2000 they might not have gotten some benefit from putting some more active guys in the main event scene. I look back at that and wonder if maybe WCW management wasn't a little behind the curve in what would have sold to TV audiences at the time. Part of the reason ECW got so big was they had the more athletic guys in main event spots. They had a decent run on TNN before their talent was gutted.
  7. dawho5
    This was better than Eddie/Casas, yes. I thought there were a few miscommunications that they recovered from really well. What was the crowd laughing about in the early going? They really ramped this up towards the end with the big dives and near-falls. Finish was kind of anti-climactic, but you need roll-up finishes in sequences like that. Otherwise what is the point of using them as near-falls? Both guys did look great and I really like this matchup.
  8. dawho5
    Perfectly good match. Despite the stiff chops I was left thinking this looked more like an exhibition than a really competitive match. Maybe it was the abruptness of the finish?
  9. dawho5
    This last return to watching wrestling I am noticing things I was probably too set in my ways to notice before. I give a lot of matches a shot that I might not have before due to being more open to the changes that took place since (big surprise here) the early to mid 90s. I still retain the idea that national exposure breeds a certain kind of homogenization (I like your reasoning on why) and I tend towards liking wrestling that is less rather than more homogenized. 2 and 3 were more leaps that helped me reason out (using the same phenomenon under different circumstances) something that had long irritated me about AJPW. The 1990s AJPW model was never going to work long term, just like the territories. The worst part is Baba had a great talent (Takayama) sitting on his midcard that he had no interest in. Just goes to show that you can be a complete and total genius in some ways and clueless in others. My feeling on Kawada is that he was the guy always pushing for working with other companies to freshen things up. I know it got him in trouble when Baba was around and he was really active, as well as super adaptable in style, after everyone left and he started doing cross-promotional matches. Personally, Kawada has always been my favorite of the 4 Pillars. This last return to watching wrestling I am noticing things I was probably too set in my ways to notice before.
  10. dawho5
    I guess I do the short version since everyone covered my takes. Great selling by Savage. Great shine with selling throughout. HUGE bump by Sherri off the apron. Really good work by Shawn on the knee. Finish out of nowhere, but it makes sense given Savage's injury.
  11. dawho5
    Watching the Flair/Davey match from England really made me think about a few things: 1. How national TV exposure completely changed the requirements of wrestlers. Also, how long did it take the wrestling industry to figure this out? 2. Looking at AJPW, it's hard not to see their need to continually evolve. Their main market is Tokyo, competing with NJPW and these fans would have seen all the major matches. So you constantly need new blood or new ways the old blood operates to keep the fans coming. As an example: - Flair worked the NWA touring champ match with Davey for the British crowd and they ate it up. How many times would those same people need to see that match or the variations on it before they decided to put their entertainment dollar elsewhere? So given that AJPW (which I prefer, but they were not often the popular choice over NJPW) wanted to capitalize on these 5 talented guys, they had to continually evolve their in-ring style and have them grow to keep fans interested. 3. Another question it asks is about Kawada. Again, I love watching him, always have. But one way of looking at his career is that he didn't care for the idea of ever expansive moves becoming the new en vogue finisher. Where Misawa, Kobashi, Akiyama and Taue all added considerably to their arsenal, Kawada stayed pretty much the same with the gamengiri, powerbomb, backdrop and stretch plum. He did start using a brainbuster, yes. But what did he do when given the freedom to be the main guy? He seemed to try to do more with a more pared down style and substitute violence for the need to come up with a flashy new finisher because the old one was wearing out. He worked with wrestlers of different styles and tried to adapt to what they did instead of pushing them into better matches. Or was lazy and with one foot out the door, depends how you want to look at it. I start to wonder if that isn't the main reason Kobashi was pushed ahead of Kawada in the late 90s. Kawada had shown an unwillingness to adapt to the needs (maybe he didn't see them, I just saw it today myself) of keeping up with the competition. I need to watch more modern wrestling to get a better idea of how it affects wrestlers today, but my suspicion is that modern puroresu faces a very similar issue and every few years (or less) you see guys adding something to the arsenal and changing things up to keep crowds on their toes. Sure, they use the old favorites, but that's not enough to stay on top, even for a company like NJPW. WWE is different. It all flows from Vince and I'm not sure he feels the need to care about any of this just yet. And I doubt he has to. I imagine Triple H, for all the disparaging of him that goes on, is unaware of this and he has to have some plans in place.
  12. dawho5
    Loved seeing the hometown guy go over! This match put Flair as a whole in perspective for me. Everything he did was 100% meant to work for audiences like this. Hot hometown crowds who came to see the guy he was wrestling beat him. And based on the reactions he gets, it definitely works. If Flair has one great failing in his career it is that he never adjusted what he was doing due to the national television exposure.
  13. dawho5
    There were portions of the match that worked. The mask ripping and blood were good ways to put over the fact that this was a 2/3 falls mask vs. mask match. Some of the rope running sequences were pretty good but a lot of stuff looked at least a little awkward. The ridiculous amount of interference takes a lot away from this match. As does the stupid finish to caida 1, WTF was Darkness Dragon thinking? My suspicion is that Dragon Kid for sure and maybe Darkness Dragon (haven't seen enough) didn't have the offense to carry an 18 minute singles match so they gimmicked it all to Hell. And ruined it. Didn't watch it for the balloting in 2014 and it wouldn't have made my ballot anyway, despite the parts I liked.
  14. dawho5
    Good enough tag match for sure. Lane and Dr. Tom work well together. Living in the right part of Tennessee in 1992 would have been confusing with now DWB and Pritchard in both promotions. Battens are at least serviceable as babyfaces. Better as heels when they could do the illegal twin switching.
  15. dawho5
    Mark Curtis! Yes! Anyway, I also thought it was more angle than match, but that was fine. Orndorff carries it well and it is a perfectly fine TV match with Hector doing a few things you don't see often stateside. The piledrivers afterward put Orndorff over big.
  16. dawho5
    Embry should prove to be a valuable member of the team with that stip in place. As much as I love how this thing hs brought along a lot of great brawling, it is almost time for the Moondogs to get run out of town. You can only have this go on for so long before it gets to be too much. And Embry would be the guy to finally make it happen.
  17. dawho5
    Good fired up (and yes, slightly heelish) promo from Pritchard. Predictable that we get the ending we did. If I were a bookie I'd be putting pretty long odds on Pritchard winning that title at MSC.
  18. dawho5
    This is definitely becoming too much. Can't even get a match in on the side anymore.
  19. dawho5
    So after the Moondogs came around nobody really sold chains after this right? Seriously, these matches are 75% foreign object usage. And they go on long enough where you get the idea that maybe a foreign object doesn't mean much. That being said, great brawling in the MSC. Embry's promo is great and Lawler actually has to say no right away. After all the shit Embry has pulled there is no way this is a fast turn.
  20. dawho5
    Good to see somebody new involved with the Moondogs. Even if it is in it's very early stages.
  21. dawho5
    Goofy finish (due to timing I guess) aside, I thought it was crazy how they had the coked-up, screaming Sid promos bookending the replay of the toned down Hulk interview. The rest was...well, the rest.
  22. dawho5
    Good intro for Flexy Lexy. Not sure why they would be so into Lex with the steroids deal coming down on them, but whatever.
  23. dawho5
    I liked how Piper and Bret were contrasted in the pre-match promo. Piper the maniac and Bret in control and collected. I will second the comment on Piper not being technically sound all the time, but getting his character across through that.
  24. dawho5
    Great work by everyone involved. The shine really was great with all the heels really making Dustin, Barry & Steamer look golden. I can't get enough of these Dangerous Alliance matches.
  25. dawho5
    TEW 2020 is coming out soon and everything in the developer journal I have read looks promising.
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