TonyPulis'Cap

Really enjoyed this gentlemen, a really short breezy listen that covered the commute to work nicely this morning. Youtube is such a goldmine for exploring random matches and moments and would love to listen to any more show's like this you do down the line. It was like the audio equivalent of the sidebar, following yourself deeper into a rabbit warren that begins with Hulk Hogan and ends with the Necro Butcher. Glad to hear the love for Piper's in ring work too. Personally I love his frenetic style, and while not always the most technically sound, his matches have an intensity and energy to them that I can't help but enjoy.

Watching this I was amazed when the match wasn't an LOD squash, or even an LOD win, but it made for a much better match than I was expecting. I thought this was pretty fun, helped by being in the close and intimate setting of the Manhattan Centre with the hot crowd. As Soup says, I think LOD went out there determined to show they could a. still go and b. show they were willing to do business with other teams. I know a lot of people are down on it, but having gone back and watched all the RAW's and PPV's in 97, the LOD run is actually pretty decent and their TV matches are fairly consistent and enjoyable throughout the whole year. This also kicks off a pretty good run for the Headbangers, who while they are unpolished and rough, bring good fire and energy to the matches they are in.

After watching WWF events and TV through 94/95 until the middle part of 97 when RAW starts to look more like the show we know today and they start to run bigger buildings again, it's really jarring to see an event in such a huge arena. How much it is papered is up for debate, but still to have 60 odd thousand fans in a giant arena to see this WWF product gives a gravitas and big time feel to an event which it wouldn't have got otherwise. By way of contrast, the next PPV after this is in the UTC Arena in Chattanooga in front of a crowd a tenth of the size. Sadly the whole PPV does not live up to the setting being pretty awful actually, and this match is fairly pedestrian. As pointed out the story is that Shawn had the flu, but it's hurt to me by the fact that the home town support for Shawn in this is not strong enough to offset the hatred for him in NYC at Survivor Series 96/love the crowd has for Sid, in terms of match intangibles. The match is also not as dynamic as the one from MSG and lacks the intensity of the exchanges. While not a terrible match, it's probably right at the bottom of Shawn's main event 96/97 ppv offerings.

I think PeteF3 brings up an excellent point about the Kane turn that is often overlooked. Both at this show and the RAW’s beforehand, the crowd is vocally chanting for Kane, and while potentially somewhat more complex than perhaps wrestling story telling needs to be, the point about Kane not being able to bait Undertaker into fighting him, despite attacking him and other people, so he had to really twist the knife psychologically is actually pretty compelling. Onto the match itself, and I think it’s very, very good. Not on the level of Badd Blood, but that would be hard. As shown when they would go back to back at Wrestlemania 25 and 26, these two have great chemistry, and I think that Shawn is absolutely fantastic in this match. After surviving Taker’s initial flurry – which as pointed out above, is not quite as wild and chaotic as the way it was at Ground Zero and as you would like, he is able to control the match with manoeuvres like the sick sounding piledriver on the stairs, and generally looking like a resilient and intelligent champion, but without ever being overly dominant which wouldn’t be realistic. As Soup highlights, there are so many great visuals, particularly the one of Shawn being dragged into the casket and desperately trying to claw his way from the clutches of Undertaker. After months of Shawn being a dick with little comeuppance, the genuine look of fear on his face (similarly when he jumps at Takers pyro going off in the entrance) is very satisfying. The ending with Kane and the burning casket is of course way over the top, but sort of works in the bizarre universe that Taker and Kane exist in, and who can *just about* get away with this sort of thing. Again, the casket on fire is a very cool visual. I enjoyed the match a lot though and would call it a *** ¾ job. It’s a real shame that HBK gets that injury in this match, or that this bump exacerbates long standing issues, as I would argue he is in a real groove both in and out of the ring post heel turn in 97, and really liked the style of match that he worked here, Badd Blood, One Night Only and Survivor Series. It’s one of his strongest in ring runs.

This is definitely true - there are some very underwhelming characters in the Rumble, and it would take a good couple of years to refresh the midcard to where it was very strong in 2000. Having the ending to the Rumble be a forgone conclusion does not necessarily mean that the match itself will be a bad one, but the 1998 version is, in the main, very uninspiring, with little to no memorable bits of action or eliminations. Austin’s popularity is immense of course, and the whole match is spent waiting for him to make his arrival, and was reflected in the TV leading up to the event where he was made out to be the marked man by everyone. Overall though there are just so many lower midcarders in the match, and too many bodies in the match for anything interesting to take place. This is also entering the 98/99 era of a lot of WWF wrestlers having very punch kick offence, where a few more exciting spots might have spiced up the match. Some other random observations while going through: - The appearance of the three different Foley characters is one of the few things that is relatively exciting, and does play off the second half of 1997 with the introduction of Cactus Jack and Dude Love…but as someone who does like a little logic in their wrasslin’, it all sort of relies on the fact that he knew he was going to get knocked out twice for it all to work, but maybe I should not think too much there… - Riding on a relative wave of overness, Vader at 30 is a really good spot and the crowd reacts very well for him, but after throwing the Honky Tonk Man immediately, he then does little off note, before being tossed by Goldust, at a time when you still have the likes of Chainz in the ring. - JR kept talking about the strength of numbers for the Nation with five members. Them ganging up, like we would see by the Nexus under CM Punk to eliminate people would have been a good story, but then they spend all of it fighting each other. Going in, there was dissension between The Rock and Faarooq which is paid off, but on TV there didn’t seem to be any other infighting, so while it is of course ‘every man for himself’ it was a bit strange to see Kama and D’Lo randomly fighting, or the amount of times D’Lo would go after The Rock. - Similar to Vader, Shamrock is one of the few coming in with some credibility as a potential outside bet to win, but while he is eliminated by The Rock to continue their feud and it is a result of a low blow (which the camera misses and they have to replay) his elimination feels very underwhelming. - Ditto Owen Hart, who is still receiving a fair pop but who doesn’t get a long run at all. Having a final six of say Austin, The Rock – the MVP of the match – Vader, Shamrock, Owen and Foley would have been a lot more interesting than no hopers like Chainz and Headbanger Thrasher. - Terry Funk was awesome in this match, lasting far longer than I remembered and being one of the few wrestlers to create some drama through a number of potential teases of being eliminated.

This is a solid, if unspectacular match, but a good pay-off to the rivalry that Vader and Goldust have been having since the Survivor Series, giving Vader a definitive win. The finish is great and still one that I pop for even seeing it now, 18 years later. Listening to the crowd, Vader is as over as he's ever been in the WWF as a tough guy face, and it's a shame that he's then sacrificed to Kane and then does little of note until his WWF career peters out in the autumn. Hard to know where he might have slotted in on the Mania card, where there isn't an obvious gap, which is a shame as he had the crowd on his side at this point.

I really didn't enjoy this match. For me, the highlight happens only about a minute or so into the match. Following the initial lockup, Nagata slaps Kobashi hard in the face who then gives him one of the best looks I've ever seen which seems to say "oh, OK tough guy, you want to play do you? well have some of this". The crowd pops huge when they see it on the big screen and the camera captures it perfectly. It's just unfortunate that things don't ever seem to progess from there, with little by way of a coherent story or strategy from either guy. There's bits of arm work from Nagata but nothing consistent and while I liked that his initial mat wrestling made it different from other Kobashi title matches, by the end they were just exchanging various suplexes on each other with little rhyme or reason. As fxnj highlights above, the NOAH vs NJPW aspect was one of the most intriguing elements to the whole package, and I also hoped that the slap would lead to Nagata feeling like an outside invader. Sadly he ends up just feeling like another challenger of the month to be ticked off, which is a shame.

Hi all, Glad to have finally taken the plunge and move from ‘anonymous lurker’ to signed up member of the board, so thought I’d say a few words by way of an introduction here. Have been following a lot of the output from the board via the consistently epic podcast outputs from the PTBN network and which get me through many a long commute and day at work. Being able to hear and read people debate wrestling in an in-depth way, the way they would do sport, films, TV, politics or art has been amazing and really re-ignited the passion in me to remember why I love wrestling. So a few more background bits and pieces, I’m in my early 30’s and from London in the UK, and it’s been good to see there are quite a few other British voices around here. I’ve been a fan since the early 90’s, although it’s really the Attitude era when it became cool to like wrestling at school that really started the fandom. My parents got Sky in 2000, allowing me to see the WWF when it was at a creative high and I rode that wave hard until the first decline in standards around 2003/2004. Finding the now much missed Powerslam magazine in a WH Smith back around that time opened my eyes to other wrestling out there and I spent the next couple of years hoovering up ECW commercial VHS’ while a company over here (called Deltavision I want to say), still had the copyrights. Being at university allowed me to meet a few others who were into it, and PPV Sunday night became something of a ritual in our house, although the 1 till 4 in the morning slot did sort out the hardcores from the casuals. That was also the time when I started to appreciate that there was so much more out there, and I bought my first ROH tapes from the US, after hearing about this amazing stuff they were putting on. From about 2004/5 to 2008/9 I was all in on ROH and have an absolute stack of DVD’s in boxes at my parents’ house, which I’ve started to try and work my way through chronologically but bloody life keeps getting in the way. Being British, I’ve also been a big fan of the re-emerging and now, somewhat thriving, UK independent scene from the early 2000’s onwards. I went to the UK ROH shows back in the day and being there for the Danielson/McGuinness match at Unified back at the day was brilliant. I’ve been a regular attender or shows at the iconic York Hall in Bethnal Green, and have to say that some of the recent Rev Pro shows there have had some of the best matches I’ve ever seen live. Having got to see Jushin Liger and AJ Styles live in the last 12 months have definitely been highlights. I'm waffling now, but looking forward to contributing to and getting to debate all of the many and varied aspects of what makes up wrestling and why people on this board love it so much.