PeteF3
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I believe that may be Brian Gewirtz as the hapless director.
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Bo-ring. Wake me up when or if Hogan ever puts one of his opponents over in any way. Rodman costing DDP a match against Hogan is a neat idea, but sadly the GAB went directly up against Game 6.
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Good for Bischoff for staying out of this. '98 Rodman wasn't quite as big as '97 Rodman, but having him face off with Karl Malone right after he was defending him all throughout the NBA Finals was a pretty big deal. I had forgotten about Rodman blowing off practice in the middle of the Finals to go to Detroit to do Nitro, which was a big sports controversy at the time. The NBA and the Bulls each issued separate fines for that. Hilariously, the Observer said that the reaction of his Bulls teammates were like, "Well, he got fined $20,000 and is getting paid $250,000 to wrestle--sounds like a good business plan."
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This is admittedly pretty cool, less Leno hamming things up. Thank God this should be the last of his involvement in wrestling this year. Malone demonstrates part of a Diamond Cutter on him, then starts a pull-apart with Rodman as we go to commercial.
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Not a bad quickie promo here, but the graphics suck and WHY ARE WE GETTING INTRODUCTORY VIGNETTES A YEAR AFTER THE GUY DEBUTED? I know he's an easy whipping boy but Raven *easily* could have been in that Jericho/Booker T class of guys who were ready to move up into programs with the main eventers. I believed it at the time, stopped believing it seeing the reaction to him in these Yearbook threads, and have come around on him again watching his '98 work for myself.
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Joshi tags have way too many pin saves. There, I said it, and I'll say it again. That said, this turned into an excellent match and the same innovative counters by Nagashima are the things that jumped out at me the most, too. Countering the power bomb/Doomsday Device with a huracanrana that takes out *both* opponents was a holy-shit spot, not because it was incredibly athletic by wrestling standards but because the timing was perfect. So was the finish, when it looked like Nagashima was completely dead and buried. This veered a bit into 2.9 territory at times but the actual finish was very satisfying, as she knocked out Uematsu with one shot instead of just setting up another cheap near-fall to extend the match even more. Amano provided lots of awesome ways to put people into cross armbreakers and brought the attitude and character work through most of this. The GAEA team was a little more anonymous and I was hoping Uematsu would be as enjoyable as I remember her being in '96, but aside from her way cool springboard twisting elbow thing, she was more of a warm body than anything. Still a match that left me out of breath and one that could sneak into the MOTY list. -
I think they're still finding themselves with this new style (for joshi, at least), and while the all-matwork opening is interesting at times it looks a bit like mid-'80s UWF noodling-around-on-the-mat not accomplishing much. They do build nicely down the stretch and never delve into joshi go-go-go style, as Yoshida is still about submissions with only the occasional suplex to break it up. I groaned at the sudden time limit draw finish but I guess that's a good thing that I wanted this to keep going.
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Hey, Hayabusa was a good face-in-peril, too. This was loads of fun and I'm starting to warm up on FMW again after a string of disappointments. Even Ricky Fuji looked really good here. Kanemura was definitely the man of the match, a big fat tornado of offense and bumping, with way more velocity than you'd expect for a rather fat guy (as opposed to the obese Fuyuki). Seeing Ikeda in this environment was a treat and he adapted very well. Team No Respect was full of charisma and could have carried the match on that alone, but they all provided some fun offense and quadruple-teaming while also setting themselves up well for the babyface comebacks. I dunno if there was something on the line in this match but the crowd seems to treat this win by Team FMW as something pretty monumental. As an aside, who the fuck was doing color here? He had the worst voice for a broadcaster since the days of Pete Doherty: Boston Garden Announcer.
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Those are your picks ahead of "Rap Is Crap"?
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I really liked this--I could watch Tanaka throw elbows at motherfuckers all day. Kuroda was an overmatched but very game opponent. I mostly like Tanaka for his big babyface comebacks but here he showed he could be really effective working on top, too. I'm not sure this wasn't more enjoyable than the big Hayabusa-Gannosuke matches from earlier in the year precisely because they *didn't* go all-out to make this seem "epic"--they ran through a lot of big moves and some near-falls, but it was sort of refreshing in that it was "just a match."
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Mostly a big bowl of whatever, outside of Spike's crazy dive. Hype for the debut of the Dreamer Driver--"something that will be copied on every Monday night show." It's a copy of the Emerald Flowsion--yeah, guys, keep thinking how cool and with-it you are as a company. The Big Two you used to make fun of passed you by a hell of a long time ago.
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And IIRC from the Observer Storm was supposed to be in this match but visa issues cropped up, temporarily preventing him from coming back into the U.S. So we get the absurd sight of Shane Douglas wrestling AGAIN even though his real-life injuries combined with the work by his opponents should mean that his elbow should have snapped clean off by now. The finish with RVD and Sabu both putting Candido through a table does look pretty, I'll give them that.
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These guys try, but Savage sadly just doesn't have it anymore. There are glimpses of their past chemistry, but the match is wrestled at half the speed and intensity of those great '97 matches. Piper is useless and it's absolutely absurd that the last image before the run-in is Piper singlehandedly beating the shit out of both guys. I guess the big takeaway from the post-match beatdown is that Bischoff hit Savage in the knee with the chair, because Bischoff and Piper are the two guys who need to be put over in this angle. Nash makes the laziest attempt at opening the door you'll ever see--just watch it and see what I mean--before running (!) to the back and raising the cage. This prevents the need to GET SECURITY--GET THE POLICE OVER THERE AND GET OLE ANDERSON AWAY FROM THE SWITCH. Almost no real heat for any of this mess and we go off the air in about the least intense way possible considering we should be seeing a giant steel cage war between two factions of stars. What a sad capstone to a great feud.
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I don't think we've seen a whiff of Adams since the 1990 or perhaps early part of the '91 Yearbook. I wonder if that's a record gap for a guy who was wrestling regularly. His entrance music sounds like Tom Brokaw is ready to give us the nightly news.
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Yeah, ideally Jericho would be moving up to heavyweight, borderline main event status, perhaps a feud with Booker T that could elevate both guys before they move on to programs with true established main eventers. HAHAHAHA, I managed to type that with a straight face. Still, we get another good brawl, a better one than at the GAB.
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Yeah, this seemed to have the atmosphere of a pre-taped Raw, not a live one. Still, the heat for this closing brawl is pretty good.
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This stuff with Al Snow trying to get a meeting and a contract was dragged out for *way* too long, and it's a wonder that the upcoming KOTR disaster didn't sink him entirely. None of these Attitude Era fans know who Avatar or Aldo Montoya are.
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Okay-ish for a TV match in the era. X-Pac trying to steal a win during HHH's opening routine was nice to see, and for a bullshit finish it was fairly well-executed. Rock is starting to sound more like his familiar self.
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X-Pac and HHH are put against each other in the first round of the King of the Ring. The usual harmless DX goofiness but they do, to their credit, both put over the importance of winning the match.
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This was actually a good chop-down-the-tree finish and maybe the match is worth watching in full. Sting seems like a guy who should match up well with the Giant, and the finish here is pretty strong support for that theory. Giant powers out of the deathlock and kicks out of two death drops, but a death drop off the turnbuckle finally puts him down. Good heat for this, too.
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Bret headbutting the chair was the only highlight of this mess. Piper still knows how to sell but is otherwise possibly the worst wrestler in the world at this point. This is mostly heatless because at least 3 of these guys simply can no longer provide the action to back up their star power and charisma. I know I've harped on match quality mattering less in '98 than before, but this was a traditional wrestling crowd that popped for wrestling, and "We already have their money, brother" just wasn't going to work anymore. As soon as Hogan & co. start laying in feather-light shots the crowd just dies. Savage is buried hard on the way out, doing two straight submission jobs. One would think the Wolfpack hung him out to dry but I don't know if that was the planned storyline.
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I already said this, but it's officially ridiculous that Booker wasn't a main event babyface by the dawn of '99. For fuck's sake, he didn't even get the honor of being involved with Master P. Okay, staying positive: Finlay's leg work is incredible, as he runs through about 6 or 7 different leglock variations in the span of 45 seconds, some of which I've never seen before. Even the blown finish is forgivable--as Sleeze mentioned, it fits with Booker's hurt knee and instead of repeating the spot, they were pros enough to organically move to an alternative finish. I liked the Benoit match a bit better because it was more openly crowd-pleasing but this was still a worthy capper to the whole saga.
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Yeah, crazy brawls are so not Dean's forte--and his chairshots were pretty bad, too. This still has great heat and a really good closing stretch, and Jericho darting through traffic to a building across the street was fun.
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They saved the best for last, didn't they? This was absolutely fantastic and easily the best WCW match so far this year. Booker really feels like he could be main eventing within 6 months--maybe he'll always need someone to lead the way for him, but he can work underneath and at least with another pro in the ring, is great at timing his big crowd-pleasing comeback spots. I *loved* the near-fall off the dragon suplex--great that they saved that move for the final match and not remembering what the result was going in, they had me suckered in thinking that was the finish, but we had another 5 or so minutes to go after that. Another thing about not remembering the result was that I spent half of this match waiting for some bullshit gaga involving Bret and the NWO, but they're refreshingly a non-factor. I wasn't expecting this series to age that well, because of the elephant in the room and because Booker took some shit in the WCW Highway to Hell thread, but this exceeded my expectations.
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Man, Lawler is whiny here. He can't do any wrong with the studio audience, but I don't think Corey Macklin really earned Lawler's wrath for being skeptical of his chances. The stuff with Kane and Paul Bearer is much better. Corey is AGHAST at Lawler's treatment of Downtown Bruno and I can't say that I blame him. Re-dickiless, indeed.