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PeteF3

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Everything posted by PeteF3

  1. PeteF3
    It was a nightstick match, and it was a standard weapon-on-a-pole match, though at least it'd never been done in the WWF before. I forget what title they'd given Sarge around this time, but he was supposed to be a "rules enforcer" overseeing the referees. This came at a time when the WWF was handing down new internal directives about not brawling outside the ring or using low blows unless specifically directed, I think to combat injuries and possibly as a PR move as well. The whole thing was literally forgotten about in like two weeks.
  2. PeteF3
    Yeah, I've always thought of Bigelow as a perfectly good talker. He's the type of good talker who probably is better with a good manager anyway a la the Road Warriors, because how's *he* going to book flights, negotiate title contracts, etc., but he was effective cutting multiple kinds of promos in multiple roles.
  3. PeteF3
    I remember watching that All-American segment! I was just as confused watching it as Bix was having it described to him. I think it was just shit that Polo wrote to entertain himself.
  4. PeteF3
    Our first brawl is triggered when Shamrock goes after Mark Henry, who turned on him and joined the NOD either this week or the week before. Austin is one of the last men to enter, but comes in through the back, whacks somebody with the tumbler, drops Phineas with a Stunner, and exits as everyone else ends up brawling with each other. But Austin gets laid out on the ramp...okay, why is Savio working with the Nation, exactly? The WWF still kicks WCW's ass when it comes to attention to detail but there are still some pretty big slip-ups going on around this time.
  5. PeteF3
    Shawn has ridiculous white-boy cornrows that make him look like an even bigger douchebag than usual. He quickly gets to the point: Kane apparently split from Paul Bearer last week out of loyalty to his brother, and he's inducting Kane as the newest member of DX. We've finally reached the point where the announcers aren't buying these anymore and looking like morons. Undertaker comes out instead. He nearly chokeslams Shawn and then Chyna, but takes a crutch shot from Triple H and a superkick from Shawn and gets beaten down. Instant "WE WANT KANE!" chants--crazy! The Observers were really hammering how there was big money in Kane as a babyface, even before this "turn." The lights finally go out to a MONSTER pop and Kane sends DX running, and does the kneel-and-arm-raise gesture towards Undertaker. I think we all really knew where this was going to go, but this crowd is absolutely buying into these two in an alliance, so good on them. The "fake turn that's not really" would get played out to death by Russo in the months and years to come, but here it functions as an effective way to keep these two from having to wrestle just a little bit longer. It was clear that it was going to take a truly despicable act to get Undertaker to agree to a match.
  6. PeteF3
    Vince is still sort of in mid-'90s Classic Shill Vince mode. Tyson will be at the Rumble and at Raw next week. Can't wait!
  7. PeteF3
    Luna channeling Peggy Sue was quite the sight. This match goes about 30 seconds before Austin's run-in, due to Russo's minute attention span and due to the Foley-esque padding coming out of the back of Dustin's rear end.
  8. PeteF3
    Cactus is on the field at Beaver Stadium, and outs Chainsaw Charlie as Terry Funk. The WWF continues to do a good job of putting over several storylines up and down the card despite the lack of depth on the roster.
  9. PeteF3
    Yeah, I'm pretty sure if there was something to this they wouldn't be saving it for the hotline.
  10. PeteF3
    Highlights of Jim Cornette introducing the NWA to the WWF--holy shit, DENNIS CORALUZZO made an appearance. It's the WWF's Dennis of the Week! Back live, Cornette introduces the newest members of the NWA--the Rock 'n Roll Express. Robert's cut his hair and they're using the Rockers' music, but otherwise they look just as they did in SMW. I know the fact that these guys were anachronisms was the entire point of the gimmick but it still isn't that fun seeing this group slide into irrelevance. It does make for a great trick question for if you're playing the Worked WrestleMania + Starrcade game on Sporcle, since nobody remembers that the R'nRs wrestled at WM14 in the tag battle royal.
  11. PeteF3
    Dustin isn't too adept at walking in high heels. JR sort of channels Bill Watts in tripping over himself to get over how tough Dustin and Mero really are underneath their insecurity and attention-whoring.
  12. PeteF3
    Quick and dirty segment, with Austin mentioning how the rug was pulled out from under him last year. Austin welcomes being a target at the live Rumble drawing later tonight. Later we go to MSG where Austin hypes up Celebrity Deathmatch Death Bowl '98--yep, I remember watching that. The Super Bowl was just nearing the end of being sort of a highly-rated joke at this point, as the days of annual NFC blowouts would come to a halt. Counterprogramming halftime, though, was just getting started.
  13. PeteF3
    This is every 1993 frat boy movie stereotype you've ever seen.
  14. PeteF3
    The Outsiders still have a few tricks to show that they know how to work a logical tag match, but overall this isn't that good as the Steiners continue to deteriorate. Hogan interferes liberally and DiBiase *takes a bump* on the floor after Hogan decks him--no recollection of DiBiase doing any of that ever again. Savage tries for a top-rope elbow and hits Rick Steiner, but appears to have been aiming for Nash. It nets the Outsiders the tag titles again but dissension is in the ranks. This isn't the angle of the decade or anything but after weeks upon weeks of the same old shit on Nitro, a potential Savage or Nash turn seems fresh, at least if they pay it off in a timely manner. Raw was amassing more and more viewing time in 1998 (and would go to 100% after the Fingerpoke of Doom), so a lot of this WCW stuff is incredibly blurry to me. Viewing it with fresh eyes will be...well, I don't know about fun, but interesting at least.
  15. PeteF3
    Neidhart isn't really well-built for Pure Sports Build talking segments, but Flair once again is out to save a segment. I'M DAVY CROCKETT, JACK--KING OF THE WILD FRONTIER! Flair and Neidhart end up making an impromptu match, but Flair makes sure to go retrieve something from the back first. As soon as he gets in, he clocks Neidhart with brass knuckles and gives Billy Silverman a shot for good measure. Ric applies the ringpost figure four and Bret finally is out to run him off. Another awesome segment thanks almost entirely to Flair--they did a good job of building this up from friendly disagreement to rivalry to finally a physical assault over the span of a few weeks.
  16. PeteF3
    Jericho loses a match to Steve McMichael, who doesn't blow anything in the short time we see. When we come back from commercial, Jericho quickly switches from berating the live crowd to disingenuously apologizing to us, the viewers. His mood shifts again when Rey Jr. comes out for his Cruiserweight title match, and Jericho pretty much cements the heel turn by apologizing again, then clobbering Rey from the back and Lion Taming him for about a minute. Juventud fucks up a springboard entrance to the amusement of the crowd, and capitalizes on the injured Rey with a quick win. A waste of a promising match but well-done, in that the heat is on Jericho for ruining it rather than the company as would be the case later.
  17. PeteF3
    Huge pop for Goldberg who's looking more and more like a future superstar. This is an absolutely awesome 2-minute UWFI match with Goldberg doing all kinds of cool shooty takedowns, making him look all the more badass.
  18. PeteF3
    My first remark was going to be about Okerlund doing this interview. I think this is the first time we've seen that happen since he interviewed the Outsiders way back in the Disney Nitro days, before Hogan's turn. It works okay here because Gene's playing the investigative reporter ambushing them outside the limo instead of doing it as a formatted segment. Savage appears to be on the outs with the NWO, or at least with Nash, after he snapped last week and Nash had to deck him.
  19. PeteF3
    I didn't think much of this at all, and thought it was markedly inferior to the Bigelow/RVD match. I will say that it's miles ahead of November 2 Remember and does do an effective enough job of washing the bad taste of that disaster out of everybody's mouths. For one thing, I don't get the psychology behind a Stairway to Hell Match--just as with ref bumps, what's the point of putting a weapon out of reach when weapons are all over the place in every ECW match? A lot of the spots I praised in years previous are starting to seem passe, like setting up tables outside the ring for bumps to come later. There are some impressive bumps here, but this is *way* more highspot-rest-setup-highspot-rest than the previous match was accused of being, and the spots are still hit-or-miss. Ending makes no sense--I guess Sandman was supposed to dodge the Arabian Facebuster, but he doesn't, gets hit with it, then recovers first and wins with one shot of the Singapore cane. You can't accuse these guys of not working hard but this whole style is reaching a point of diminishing returns. There are better ECW gorefests, better matches with Sabu, better matches with Sandman, and better ECW spotfests than this.
  20. PeteF3
    Well, the ending was a mess, but I thought the stuff leading up to it was surprisingly good and not even particularly spotfesty by RVD/ECW standards, thanks to Bam Bam doing a nice job of holding this together as best he can and working as a base. Heel RVD vs. babyface Bam Bam shouldn't work at all, but that dynamic allows RVD to play a lot of hit-and-run with his offense and makes his high-flying look rather logical since he has to continually strike from a distance. Still, there's lots of stalling on RVD's part and zoning out in general. After a really badly mistimed ref bump this goes off the rails, with Sunny doing a pointless run-in, Francine wearing whatever she was wearing, and Shane Douglas continuing a program that I can't imagine many people care about.
  21. PeteF3
    Another vote here for Solar. As best I can tell I've lost him and Kroffat over the past couple of days, in addition to the others I mentioned.
  22. PeteF3
    She has been the best joshi worker of the last decade... but yeah my best joshi worker ever is only top 15. I like Asuka but being the best joshi worker of the last decade is like people talking up Dave Concepcion as a Baseball HOFer because he was the best shortstop of the '70s. It's not been a peak period for joshi and the '70s wasn't a peak period for shortstops--that distinction isn't as impressive as it sounds.
  23. PeteF3
    My brother is a gay hipster artiste who lives in New York, isn't named Mike, and would sooner slit his own throat than watch anything sports- or wrestling-related. This is not to say that he's NOT, I'm just saying it's unlikely, is all.
  24. PeteF3
    I was sort of dreading this when I realized it wasn't one of them "finish only" bouts, and the pre-match is pretty whatever. All of Credible's heat comes from Jason and Nicole Bass making out with each other--and people accuse Raven of leeching off other people?? But as it turns out, the match isn't bad--in fact it's damn good. Credible takes some great bumps before going to work on Sasuke's bad knee, and Sasuke sells like a champ and gets in a few near-miracle comeback attempts before missing a Stardust Press and getting dropped with That's Incredible for his second defeat. Credible and Jason go after the knee further and then go after Sasuke's match. Gran Hamada saves the mask but eats a That's Incredible of his own. You can't fault Heyman for giving it the old college try with Credible, who's a talented worker but has maybe the least amount of star power of any pushed wrestler in a major company in history. He tries, but basically every single thing he does is done by somebody else better. His and Jason's working of the crowd brings to mind DX and the stuff with the chair and the leg is just too reminiscent of Austin, intentional or not. And the ring attire and overall look is just bush-league. He looks like a backyard wrestler even if he has infinitely more talent, not a future company champion.
  25. PeteF3
    After such a hot match, the action after Nitro goes off the air is just awful, awful, awful. Everyone's timing is off, things are executed clumsily, the announcers keep missing things (like Hollywood using a foreign object)...just a disaster. We get a good WCW vs. NWO brawl to end things, because why show Bret in a war with the NWO and a major chaotic brawl on live TV when you can show taped footage of it 10 days later? Dillon calls out Hogan and Sting and announces that...the title is held up. Sting responds with his first speech in almost 2 and a half years and man, what a mess. Did I mention that it was time to start splitting the NWO apart and go with Sting vs. Bret? Did I? I think I'll do it again, just in case.
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