PeteF3
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Everything posted by PeteF3
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Yep, lots of shit that doesn't make sense here. JJ has already been portrayed as being incompetent, now he's being lazy. Even Konnan holding a microphone feels off. The Wolfpack make empty threats--and didja notice no one in the Wolfpack responded to Hogan's grandstand challenge that opened the show?
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Ooh boy, the fans want DDP in the Wolfpack! WC-what now? Do I have to keep repeating how fucking STUPID this is for WCW to be pissing on its own brand and history like this? I HATE talking about "brands," but I don't have a choice if I want to talk about this shit at all! The NWO Hollywood music kicks up and is ignored and is replaced by the NWO wolf howl. Dig that WCW quality control. Larry Zbyszko still being ambivalent about the Wolfpack is about the only consistent and logical thing about this mess of an angle. Sting not only has red facepaint, he's now Shiny Happy Sting again. Nash sports a hockey jersey and a beret and is just too cool for school, and pauses after his opening spiel to wait for chants and cheers that...don't really come. He blithers for awhile trying to recruit DDP--what the incentive is for DDP, no one can say, other than the Wolfpack is kewl and WCW sux. Finally Nash's mic goes out and we get Hogan, Bret, Bischoff, and Rodman playing with the equipment (Larry Z with mock surprise: "Wow, Rodman can push a button!"). Nothing and no one about this segment is nearly as edgy as everyone (except possibly Bret) obviously seems to think it is. Hogan is losing his voice and loses the plot halfway through his promo. This is less of a wrestling segment and more of a political slapfight being played out in public. At least Bret and Shawn were mostly able to hype matches in-between the insider potshots.
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Things have definitely deteriorated from a year prior...of course, that may have been WCW's absolute peak as a company and as a "brand," so I guess there was nowhere to go but down. Rodman elevates this with a killer promo, though: "A hey hey hey hey hey. Hey hey hey hey hey. A hey hey hey hey hey." And so on and so forth.
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Yeah, this is a pretty shallow attempt at re-doing Austin vs. McMahon on a minor-league level. Like the others, I can see the appeal in gangly, awkward Randy Hales becoming drunk with power, but as Lawler said...he's no Vince McMahon. This isn't a bad segment but Lawler comes off as way too whiny and heelish here, though that's always been part of his character even as a babyface.
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Memphis wrestling returns to the Mid-South Coliseum and we've got a darn good main event.
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This was not a classic lucha title match by any means but I did like it--1998 seems to have a gigantic glut of good-to-really-good matches while being low on real classics. Obviously work in the Big Two is going down but even internationally there seem to be issues. I suspect my year-end MOTY list will have the most "low-end" MOTYCs of any list so far. Anyway, Octagoncito with his crazy dives and springboards and Asai moonsaults seems more like Octagon's imitator the Great Sasuke than Octagon himself, and the match is much better for it. Mini Abismo seems more like a base who's just there for most of this, but he does suitably kill Octagoncito dead with a power bomb at the finish. I think this might have actually been better with *more* shtick and gaga, since the bigger Abismo was the better rudo and the stuff with the seconds got great heat.
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Good match that I may have actually enjoyed more than the elimination tag. The crowd certainly did, in any case. I just dug the big Tenryu-Chono showdowns here--Chono felt strangely absent from the big NJPW-WAR feud and he wasn't Black Superheel Chono yet, so it was cool to see such magnetic personalities clashing with each other. Tenzan is awkward at times but no one can accuse him of not working hard. I didn't mind Koshinaka here and I'm far from a fan of his--this wasn't a super-chaotic brawl on the level of some of the famous Japanese interpromotional fights, but this is still a hateful violent match which is where he's best suited. -
This was pretty good, but this might be the closest that any of the many NJPW elimination matches came to approaching a Survivor Series-type layout, where guys go down to rather routine moves for no other reason than to move the match along. I too was a little underwhelmed at the early eliminations of some of the heavy hitters, but I do get the reasoning for it and it's almost to be expected of NJPW at this point to have a shock elimination or two. I know everyone here hates Ka Shin and he hasn't impressed me much in my limited views either, but I thought he was really good here and possibly the best man on his team, with lots of really funky counters into the cross armbreaker which is put over really huge as an insta-finish. Takaiwa was good as well heaving motherfuckers all over the place--the two finalists absolutely earned their spot based on quality of work in this match. I can't see it as a MOTY either--at times, this was a rare case of a major promotion coming across as a pale imitator of an indy. They do some MPro-like spots here and some of them are good, and some of them illustrate how much chemistry those guys really have with each other and how hard it is to do what they did. Still, an enjoyable bout that if nothing else gave us a fresh look at some lesser-known junior guys.
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Well, Corey sort of pre-emptively covered for the rib tape, speculating that Aries was wearing it to throw Nakamura off.
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I think these guys worked house shows as the "Authors of Pain." HOLY FUCK A PAUL ELLERING SIGHTING.
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Rubber match then, right? I'm sold.
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It's already time to start ranking Jason Jordan among wrestling history's all-time great dropkicks. The Steiner taunt was appreciated, too.
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That was cool, but I don't know if we need another Latino Guy Who Likes to Have Fun TM, on any WWE roster.
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Good opener but I was way more impressed by Dillinger.
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Well, on the subject of excessive kickouts, I thought Kanemoto/Wagner was a badly laid out, overindulgent mess and I thought this was incredible. Was that because the table-setting portion of the BOSJ final got cut? You'll have to take that up with the NJPW TV editors, not with me. This had me guessing all the way until the very end and even wondering if there was a hidden 60-minute draw I didn't know about. Kawada is pretty firmly established as the Man for most of this, as the tide turns drastically every time he comes in and Kobashi and Ace are almost worrying *too* much about trying to neutralize him. Taue does a very good job in a somewhat unfamiliar FIP role before getting the big comeback and chance to shine at the end. Maybe you could say there were a few too many reversals, especially Taue having his "double nodowa" attempt countered twice, but when the reversals were this well-done and sensibly timed and executed, it's hard to quibble that much. I enjoyed this as much as any match on Japanese soil so far in 1998.
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Jericho may be trying too hard at times, but he almost has to. To get noticed as a WCW mid-carder you kind of had to do it kicking and screaming. Here he does that quite literally, until Malenko shuts him up.
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More fun between these two, with Stevie Ray now making his presence felt. He doesn't get directly involved, but he does serve as a distraction to Benoit that sets up Booker's win. Booker blocking the application of the crossface with his arm was cool and he's really starting to put it together as a worker. We'll see if it continues to hold up.
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Yeah, this was pretty terrible on all levels. Gertner has some good lines on paper but he kills them with his overly slow delivery. A big clusterfuck of a finish with Jeff Jones and Jim Molineaux doing more wrestling spots and Gertner showing that he should absolutely positively not be getting physically involved in matches. You know how we pointed out that the Over the Edge main event was overbooked but not *too* much overbooked? This is like Russo without the Filter. Eventually the babyfaces get handcuffed, and Beulah again tries to save Tommy Dreamer and that ends the same way it always does. How ironic--in the past I've said ECW was way too reliant on going to the "beat up Beulah for heat" well and gotten on Styles' case for his dramatic hushed voice every time it happens even though it's happened 500 times. Now we're actually getting an angle where Beulah breaks her neck and is being written out of the promotion, and it's touched upon for like 5 seconds before New Jack comes out and she's forgotten about. At least they sold the dramatic injury well by having New Jack run out, throw his weapons around the medical emergency scene, and do comedy spots with the guitar. A grotesquely overweight Jack Victory "sneaks" into the ring in plain sight and Styles laughably puts over his punch as having Ivan Drago-like power. Styles loses his mind on commentary despite the thoroughly routine beatdown we just saw. Really one of the worst ECW segments of the year.
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New Japan can't even air the FUCKING FINALS in its entirety? Goddamn, fuck them. That said I'm with dawho on this--that false finish with Kanemoto getting his foot on the rope took me out of the match, and then the second Wagner Driver *and* super crucifix bomb not putting Koji away took me out of it further. At that point, it was firmly established that Wagner Could Not Beat Kanemoto even if he shot him with a bazooka, so the "will he or won't he come back?" suspense factor was totally gone. Kanemoto was winning and everything else was window-dressing. I get why this was so loved because the backlash against 2.9 wrestling hadn't really begun when this match took place, but this was way overindulgent and Wagner's dominance felt more like a political game rather than a way to build for a gutsy Kanemoto comeback, the climax of which came way too easily. Despite the heated crowd and a few hot near-falls this ended up being a colossal disappointment.
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I love Vince regressing to his old Commentator Voice but still acting as a heel, especially when Mankind makes his entrance and again during the post-match: "This guy is impressing me! This is a guy who could make his family proud!" Austin vs. Kane is immediately a hot main event since the two have never interacted in Kane's 6 months with the company. The talk about the number of main eventers in the WWF compared to WCW brings to mind the adage of how if you have two starting quarterbacks, you really have none. There's diminishing returns if you have 15 main event guys and none of them have any real focus.
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I like how they stay in character here, without coming off as totally out-of-touch werkers. It's like the old Arsenio interviews.
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This isn't a *terrible* promo from UT but I'm not sure I'd call it good--the material and motivation are fine but I don't think Undertaker is quite cut out for these pseudo-shoot promos just yet, as his delivery is much more stilted than the other main eventers of this era. I'm amused by the idea that Bret Hart was incapable of beating Giant Gonzalez, necessitating Undertaker to do it. This is all Russoriffic, yes, but I don't mind the material yet--it's still Filtered Russo. Vince is out again and browbeats Undertaker, which is awesome to watch just because it's so rare. Even DX never got this kind of verbal heat on him.
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Yes, this was amazing--two great performances and almost unbearable-tension throughout. Is Foley going to pop Vince? Will Vince have Foley attacked? This was threatening to descend into chaos even before McMahon enticed Foley to use the chair on him, then takes a left turn when Vince brings up Foley's family and financial situation. The Dude is fired and Vince rubs it in his face.
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Childs nails it. I'd have Sting reveal the red and black t-shirt, then turn around do the exact same thing to Nash, Savage, and Luger. He takes off that shirt and walks off on his own, leaving both NWOs laying. Sting bodyslamming the Giant is cool and this gets over huge, but it completely kills Sting stone dead. Sting has a dumb smile on his face and Konnan has to teach him how to dance to the Wolfpack theme and this is all very lame in retrospect.
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Booker controls most of this one to build up to his clean submission job, and these matches are definitely better the more Benoit is on offense and pacing the match. This is still good.