PeteF3

I agree with flyonthewall--at the time, this seemed pretty desperate and Tyson was perceived as being past his prime. It seemed like less of a coup than WCW landing Dennis Rodman--of course, that wouldn't actually be the case and one of Tyson's appeals is the idea that he was capable of doing absolutely anything. Don King hypes up Tyson's potential appearance. What a meeting of minds that must have been. Of course, these negotiations would end up playing a pivotal role in the Tyson/King split, as it was Vince who discovered discrepancies in Tyson's books that led to the discovery that King was cheating Tyson out of money.

The Outlaws actually win a match clean. Their post-match beatdown of the Headbangers is quickly interrupted.

Five years before this would have been a hell of a match. Instead it takes a backseat to Goldust's outfit--I can't say that I was personally offended here, but I sure wouldn't fault anyone who was.

Austin's going to raise hell and do unto others before they do unto him, heading into the Royal Rumble.

I'm still kind of bored by Bret, against all odds, but Flair was treeeemendous here. He knew when to kiss up to the crowd, he knew when to play up the Nature Boy shtick, and he knew when to get serious. And he also gets off a ton of killer lines. This is essentially a broomstick performance as an interview, which pains me to say considering I thought Bret was the best man on the mic in wrestling in '97.

Short TV match but they make the most of their time. Babyface Jericho has spent 4 years now coming off as an insincere ninny of Bischoff-ian proportions, but now it's actually starting to work for him with the disingenuous promo he cuts before the match. He hasn't found his voice quite yet but he's starting to get there. Jericho wrestles an almost John Tatum-esque match here, handshaking constantly before getting frustrated and switching to cheap heel tactics, but DDP drops him with a Diamond Cutter out of nowhere for the win. Jericho throws another tantrum after the match.

Just the finish, though the action we get is decent. Frye's circa-1978 Major League Baseball relief pitcher look isn't all that flattering, but he gets in two nut shots in Ogawa, which aren't sold or put over that well on top of the weak execution, and chokes him out for an upset victory, thus officially avenging his runner-up finish to Ogawa in my '97 Rookie of the Year ballot.

Clips of the Ishin Gundan feud, of Choshu ruining the Hogan/Inoki IWGP final, of Choshu pinning Inoki (twice!--didn't realize he did it two times), of the Hashimoto rivalry, and much more. Also clips of various other in-ring tributes leading to his "official" retirement here, including the surreal sight of AKIRA MAEDA, not only reappearing in a NJPW ring again but shaking Choshu's hand. Choshu is introduced one last time (for whatever that's worth in wrestling) to the Dome crowd for a ten-bell salute and sendoff. Classy stuff, and I appreciate how Japan does these sorts of ceremonies for pretty much all of its retiring wrestlers.

I liked this a lot--dare I say it's the best match of 1998 so far. I get the criticisms of Otani's character work and it very much reminds me of jdw criticizing Kobashi for continuing to work his crying spots in the late '90s, but I can't say that that criticism registered with me while I was watching. I was just into the match wanting to see who won. I also didn't mind the matwork, since it was a bit different from your standard NJPW juniors fare thanks to Ultimo Dragon throwing in every lucha hold that he cribbed from Dos Caras that he can remember. It's not all executed smoothly but it stands out as unique. There are some really cool counters and cut-off spots down the stretch, which each guy putting over how much they fear the others' big moves, before Otani gets a win to retain his IWGP Jr. title. All this and a hot Dome crowd!

Saggs was *definitely* better than Knobbs. Actually pretty underrated offensively and of course he didn't get as long of a slow decline phase due to his career ending.

A year and a half later, I want to say the first vestiges of indy love really came from the DVDVR around '99...which would make sense, since there was little wrestling to be found in the Big Two by that point and ECW was pretty much finished as any kind of revolutionary territory. This is a marked improvement over the '97 OMEGA stuff. It's sloppy at a lot of points and both these teams appear to be not on the same page as well, and some of the big moves are rushed through too quickly. Nonetheless, that's all part of the growing pains of developing as a worker. They do attempt to work psychology, particularly big-vs.-little psychology when Venom is in. They work a structured, FIP-based tag match with high-flying but also some southern-fried cooking. There's a semblance of build to the big high spots. Definitely not something to change the world but there were certainly far worse big indy matches the previous year.

Awesome to hear new podcast voices. I have to laugh that Stacey "had to" vote for Edge, even though she "hated" to. She may have claimed not to have set criteria, but it's clear she was secretly using a BIGLAV or BIGLAV-like formula the whole time.

Am I the only one more offended by the presence of the fucking Z-Man than Joey Ryan? It helps that my recognition of Joey Ryan went from "nonexistent" to "dimly aware" when he went viral a couple of months ago.

It was syndicated, so its airtime was up to the local affiliate.

Others who got #1 votes in 2006: Eddie Guerrero, Hayabusa, Ted DiBiase, Harley Race, Dynamite Kid, Akira Hokuto, Nobuhiko Takada, Jaguar Yokota, and Fit Finlay. Doubtless they won't all be drawing a #1 this time, but Hokuto, Yokota, and Eddie very well might at least.

That's the worst haiku I've ever read. Oh, and welcome back.

Revival has a pretty badly blown double-team spot but by the end of the match you pretty much forgot about it. Great opener.

Shit, if I waited 48 hours instead of 24, I'd never get these things out. These awards seemed particularly tough for reasons I'm still not 100% sure about but did my best to explain--so I figured it was best not to overthink things.

Eight Yearbooks--960 hours--down. Someone pray for me. Just two to go--until somebody comes out with 2000 or '89 or whatever else. Observer Awards for 1997.

So was this the best Yearbook so far? I have to say…no, I ended up liking ’96 better, to my own surprise. Possibly both of the Big Two promotions had their best years of the ‘90s, and it was an outstanding, return-to-form year for lucha as well. But it seems a lot of other places took a step back. ECW had some of its best segments in its history as well but by the end of the year seemed to be running on creative fumes. All-Japan had an all-time opening and a very strong RWTL to close out, but in-between completely lost the plot. New Japan had some good (or great) juniors action with a real who-gives-a-shit main event scene revolving around NWO Japan. And then you had AJW, which took more like 50 steps back and was pretty much on the verge of going under. So it wasn’t all rosy, and the result is something slightly less inspiring than ’96 which seems to be the “deepest” of the Yearbooks so far. That said, a surprisingly strong December, even from the dead-in-the-water WWF, has me excited to see what’s coming in ’98. Plus I can’t let the Excite Series guys stay ahead of me for too long. On with the Awards! Dave did some restructuring this year: Best Box Office Draw is a singular award to replace Best Babyface and Heel. Apparently those were dumped due a combination of the changing wrestling landscape and Dave’s frustrations over misinterpretation of those awards’ intent, which was to focus on drawing money more than just loud fan reactions. Best Manager is gone, because the manager is dead (though not dead enough that there aren’t candidates for Worst Manager). Dave dumped Most Unimproved because the thing just went to Hogan every single year—as someone not encumbered by that bias, I’m going to overrule Dave for the first time and continue to vote on this, because I think it’s something that merits thought. Best Major Show moves from Category B to Category A. I missed this last year, but Most Obnoxious was dumped for 1996—no big deal, it was going to Shawn Michaels this year in a landslide. And Dave added two shoot awards (Best Shooter and Best Shoot Fight) to Category B, which I won’t be discussing. CATEGORY A AWARDS WRESTLER OF THE YEAR (Mitsuharu Misawa) 1. Shinya Hashimoto 2. Steve Austin 3. Bret Hart Even though AJPW’s year ended strong and NJPW’s heavyweight stuff wasn’t even noteworthy enough to make the Yearbook, I think I have to go with Hash over Misawa here. He had the bigger main events with Ogawa and managed to carry a non-wrestler to two pretty darn good matches, which I don’t think anyone else could have done. Even though the WWF spent all year at #2, what singular entity from WCW is deserving of a vote? WCW won because it was an ensemble of stars. Sting wasn’t active, and Hogan in the final two months was starting to show signs of being a burden more than a benefit. Austin was the most compelling figure in American wrestling throughout the year, and Bret was a big part of the reason why. MOST OUTSTANDING WRESTLER (Mitsuharu Misawa) 1. Kiyoshi Tamura 2. Jun Akiyama 3. Shinya Hashimoto It takes a lot for me to consider a shootstyle guy for this award but Tamura was too awesome to be ignored. Like I said in one of the reviews, he would have been a tremendous wrasslin’-style worker if he had any inclination at all to work that style. Misawa had the Greatest AJPW Match Ever, yes, but also some of the most disappointing AJPW matches ever. I noticed that in every Misawa/Akiyama match on the set, Akiyama either outworked Misawa or did most of the heavy lifting while Misawa sold on the floor. And again, two really good matches with Naoya Ogawa. Hash is really one of the greatest carriers in wrestling history, he should be mentioned in the same breath as guys like Flair and (by reputation) Michaels. BEST BOX OFFICE DRAW (Hollywood Hogan) 1. Hollywood Hogan 2. Shinya Hashimoto 3. Steve Austin Still, despite the documented issues cropping up from October onward, it seemed like WCW was breaking company gate records left and right as the year went on, climaxing with Starrcade. Hash could have taken #1 if the series with Shamrock came off, but he still did a good job with what he had. Actually this all seems like a pretty topic to “vote” on, which is inherently subjective. FEUD OF THE YEAR (Steve Austin vs. Hart Foundation) 1. Steve Austin vs. Hart Foundation 2. Diamond Dallas Page vs. Randy Savage 3. Jushin Liger & co. vs. Shinjiro Otani & co. The feuds and programs in Japan seemed…I dunno, vague, this year? Lots of stable wars, which is great, but there didn’t seem to be one singular personal issue that stood out. Misawa-Kobashi was more of a “rivalry” than a feud and despite a great finish, I didn’t get a big sense of advancement over the Misawa/Akiyama-Holy Demon Army tag feud. Plus the big singles match bit the big one. Austin-Harts is pretty much a runaway winner anyway, since it provided at least two MOTYCs and provided for compelling television every week, oftentimes completely carrying the Raw program due to the WWF’s lack of depth. DDP and Savage are two of WCW’s best-matched workers since Sting and Vader and was the best thing about the overall NWO-WCW feud. TAG TEAM OF THE YEAR (Misawa & Akiyama) 1. Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue 2. Mitsuharu Misawa & Jun Akiyama 3. Kenta Kobashi & Johnny Ace A clean sweep by All-Japan—tag wrestling was dead in WCW, full of really bad to mediocre teams in the WWF, the Outlaws weren’t really over yet, and the other promotions were marked more by six-mans and multi-man tags with it being too hard to pick two and only two guys. Any incarnation of Kaientai D*X could probably have gotten a vote on merit, though. MOST IMPROVED (Tatsuhito Takaiwa) 1. Kazushi Sakuraba 2. Tatsuhito Takaiwa 3. The Rock Takaiwa was certainly a new force in the juniors division with some really unique and soon-to-be-imitated offense. Sakuraba’s matches at the end of the year pushed him ahead though, and have me wanting to seek out more Kingdom, as I really like the more urgent style with legal punches to the head and fewer points. Rocky probably hasn’t put it together as a worker yet but turned himself into a pretty compelling presence as the year went on, eventually overshadowing Faarooq entirely. MOST UNIMPROVED (N/A) 1. Shane Douglas 2. Stevie Richards 3. Doug Furnas & Phil LaFon Hey, three ECW votes, how about that. If we had Yearbook footage worth watching we probably could have voted for three bankrupt AJW ladies, too. I’ve heard ECW as having peaked at Barely Legal and jumped the shark immediately after—I don’t quite know about that, as the initial WWF invasion stuff was some of the best booking in the promotion’s history. But by the end, with a fearsome WWF contingent of RVD, Sabu, Fonzie, and Lance Wright, it seemed like a promotion on fumes. Douglas was mostly intolerable as an interview and didn’t provide much in the way of good wrestling—and the year was building to a triumphant World title win in his hometown in what I now realize is a rather pale imitation of the Sid/Shawn title turnaround, which didn’t quite work because he’s a shitty babyface. I feel bad for Richards’ neck injury but in the end, his work as a “serious” wrestler just indicates to me that the Clueless Putz or cartoon-character RTC Guy is the role he deserved. It’s staggering how much apathy Furnas & LaFon generated in any role—you’d think they’d be two guys that Heyman could work wonders with, but even he couldn’t make anyone really care about them. BEST ON INTERVIEWS (Steve Austin) 1. Steve Austin 2. Bret Hart 3. Mick Foley No one else is particularly close to these three. Foley may not be the wrestler with a finger most on the pulse of where wrestling was going like he was in ’95 and ’96, but his sitdown interviews were still captivating and he continued to walk the line between being funny and scary, while playing more roles. Bret probably delivered the year’s single best interview when he turned heel and delivered all kinds of incredible character work, all while drawing either incredible babyface pops or nuclear heat depending on where he was. Not every one of Austin’s segments was a winner, particularly at the end of the year, but he was the perfect foil for Bret and was capable of making even the lamest idea something that you wanted to at least keep watching. MOST CHARISMATIC (Steve Austin) 1. Steve Austin 2. Sting 3. Hollywood Hogan See above about Austin wanting to make you see what he’d do even during less-compelling segments, like the New Year’s Baby stuff with Goldust or the back-and-forths with Rocky before people cared about him. Sting was one of the biggest TV draws around despite wrestling two matches and never talking—kind of the definition of charisma. Hogan could still generate a reaction by blowing his nose and still mattered more from an objective, dollars-and-sense standpoint, but got more grating as the year went on and he actively hurt a number of segments in the last quarter. Not a big deal, just the biggest PPV and TV main events in company history, but enough to slide him down to 3rd. BEST TECHNICAL WRESTLER (Dean Malenko) 1. Kiyoshi Tamura 2. Volk Han 3. Atlantis Atlantis is a bit of a reputation pick but he did have the year’s best non-shootstyle technical match, and I have no problem believing he was one of the best mat workers in lucha during an outstanding year. I don’t know if it’s quite right to give Tamura the nod based on charisma for a Technical Wrestling award, but he did have something to him, some sort of urgency, that added to the match when he would take things to the mat. BRUISER BRODY MEMORIAL AWARD (Mick Foley) 1. Mick Foley 2. Steve Austin 3. Masato Tanaka There’s a good chance that Foley and Austin will be finishing 1-2 here for the next two years, at least in some order—even as wrestling gets marginalized the WWF will have plenty of great brawls for us involving these two. Tanaka continued to stand out among the myriad FMW garbage brawlers, combining heated brawling with good transitions, comebacks, and advanced offense making for a standout hybrid worker. BEST FLYING WRESTLER (Rey Misterio, Jr.) 1. Rey Misterio, Jr. 2. Taka Michinoku 3. El Hijo del Santo There’s good chance that Rey will be finishing…yeah, see above. Taka may not be as consistently spectacular as Sasuke (though that spaceman plancha is something else) but he’s a far better all-around talent and better at logically incorporating flying into his matches. Whether it was perception or not, Santo seemed to step up his game as well—like Taka and Otani, he had some dives that looked like they *hurt* in addition to just looking pretty, especially against Felino. MOST OVERRATED (Hollywood Hogan) 1. Roddy Piper 2. Triple H 3. Prince Iaukea There will come a time when Hogan is a worthy nominee, maybe as soon as 1998. But he’s not there yet. Piper was used well at some points, not so well at others, but there was not a single point all year where he was in a match that I really wanted to see. HHH wasn’t *bad* and had some very good matches with Foley in a good overall feud, but like the Stanford University marching band he’s about a quarter as clever and hilarious as he obviously thought he was. Rocky Maivia should have been a shoo-in for #3, but he redeemed himself with his push late in the year, a push that a lot of people were groaning about when it started. So we’ll go with the Poor Man’s Rocky instead, as Iaukea almost completely kills the TV title—actually, the fact that he was immediately de-pushed back to his previous jobberrific levels ended up doing even more damage to the belt. MOST UNDERRATED (Flash Funk) 1. Juventud Guerrera 2. Chris Benoit 3. Flash Funk Surely WCW could have come up with something for Juventud to do—for various reasons he may have had the most upside of all the non-Misterio Mexicans on the roster. Benoit was marginalized against the NWO despite being a Horseman and spent most of his time in a side feud with Jeff Jarrett that didn’t do much for him, before having to feud with Raven’s Flock while Raven continually backed out of matches due to a legit injury, which while not a bad heel tactic got really old really quickly. And again, it didn’t do much for Benoit to beat up on the Lodis and Riggses of the world. Funk deteriorated badly in McMahonland, and it’s hard to say if he was underpushed because his work didn’t live up to expectations or if his work started suffering because of a lack of push. BEST PROMOTION (New Japan) 1. CMLL 2. WWF 3. WCW This might have been the most enjoyable year for lucha on a Yearbook since the height of El Dandy in 1990, with some classic title matches, spectacular action involving minis, and the Santo-Casas-Felino stuff. The Big Two really were in a dead heat with each other, with similar problems as the year went on, but while they couldn’t touch WCW for depth or random TV matches, Austin and the Harts were just that compelling with each other with just enough other good upper-mid-card acts like Mick Foley, Undertaker, and Vader to give the WWF the nod for second place. WCW could create some great set-piece angles but the week-to-week booking wasn’t nearly as strong. BEST TELEVISION SHOW (New Japan World Pro) 1. WWF Monday Night Raw 2. WCW Monday Nitro 3. CMLL on Televisa Just from reading Meltzer’s reviews, there were a lot of I-don’t-give-a-shit New Japan TV matches involving NWO Sting, Buff & Norton, and a tired Keiji Muto that even Dave didn’t seem all that high on. The live-TV factor for Raw and Nitro and all the backstage chaos in both companies ended up creating an element of danger and unpredictability that hadn’t been seen on any wrestling television outside of Memphis. Again, the week-to-week booking gives Raw a slight edge. MATCH OF THE YEAR (Bret Hart vs. Steve Austin, 3/23) 1. Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Kenta Kobashi (AJPW, 1/20) 2. Bret Hart vs. Steve Austin (WWF, 3/23) 3. El Hijo del Santo vs. Negro Casas (CMLL, 9/19) 4. Mitsuharu Misawa & Jun Akiyama vs. Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue (AJPW, 12/5) 5. Toshie Uematsu vs. Yoshiko Tamura (GAEA, 7/19) 6. Torneo Cibernetico (CMLL, 4/18) 7. El Samurai vs. Koji Kanemoto (NJPW, 6/5) 8. Volk Han vs. Kiyoshi Tamura (RINGS, 9/26) 9. Jushin Liger vs. Shinjiro Otani (NJPW, 2/9) 10. Rey Misterio, Jr. vs. Eddie Guerrero (WCW, 10/26) 11. Volk Han vs. Kiyoshi Tamura (RINGS, 1/22) 12. El Hijo del Santo vs. Felino (CMLL, 7/4) 13. Ultimo Dragoncito & Cicloncito Ramirez vs. Damiancito el Guerrero & Pierrothito (CMLL, 3/14) 14. Steve Austin, Ken Shamrock, Goldust, & The Legion of Doom vs. The Hart Foundation (WWF, 7/6) 15. Hayabusa, Ricky Fuji, & Ricky Morton vs. Mike Awesome, Hisakatsu Oya, & Mr. Gannosuke (FMW, 5/13) 16. Yuki Ishikawa vs. Daisuke Ikeda (BattlArts, 4/15) 17. Torneo Cibernetico (CMLL, 3/18) 18. Bracito de Oro, Cicloncito Ramirez, & Mascarita Magica vs. Damiancito el Guerrero, El Fierito, & Pierrothito (CMLL, 10/3) 19. Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Kenta Kobashi (AJPW, 10/21) 20. Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue vs. Hayabusa & Jinsei Shinzaki (AJPW, 11/23) A sign that ’97, while greatly enjoyable mostly for the Monday Night stuff, maybe wasn’t the magical year I thought it was. There are more “novelties” on this list than probably any other MOTY list of mine (even though in the early years I didn’t vote past 3). These are all great matches of course, but in ’96 and ’92 especially I had to make some painful cuts whereas here, things fall into place a little more clearly and I actually had to do some digging through threads because I didn’t have enough matches tagged as “MOTYC” in my reviews to make 20. Still, the high-end stuff is great and the WWF continued to hit it out of the park when it had the opportunity to do so (the next two cuts were the two big fall Undertaker matches). In addition to the fun novelty-type matches like the wacky FMW 6-man and the stuff with the minis, we had a surprise GAEA match between two youngsters. We had a classic juniors match that holds up well, IMO, against any other high-end NJPW juniors match despite the colder reaction from others on it. And of course at the top we have my favorite AJPW match ever. ROOKIE OF THE YEAR (Mr. Aguila) 1. Naoya Ogawa 2. Don Frye 3. Bill Goldberg Ogawa and Frye were almost instant stars. Granted, it was because of their backgrounds, but there are worse spots to debut than opposite Hashimoto. Frye didn’t get that luxury but was immediately a gripping figure just because his style and persona were so unique for a shooter. Goldberg wasn’t technically eligible because Dave cut the debut time off at 9/1, but whatever—he’s a handful matches into his pro career at this point and is already carrying himself as a star and showing great athleticism, even if he’s as raw as Nikita Koloff was in 1984. Guys who debuted in ’97 who could have been eligible with footage include Yoshinobu Kanemaru, Super Dragon, Ultimo Dragon’s first trainee class including guys like CIMA and SUWA, Tomoaki Honma, and Chad Collyer. BEST TELEVISION ANNOUNCER (Mike Tenay) 1. Jim Ross 2. Tony Schiavone 3. Mike Tenay With the coalescing of wrestling television in general in the U.S., our options for Best and Worst Announcer are getting thinner and thinner. I admit to being entertained by Ross’ almost open disdain for the WWF’s direction in the late part of the year—“Boy, the WWF has champions it can really be proud of!” When he got the opportunity to call a big match, he could still bring the goods, and formed what turned into a very good team with Vince and Lawler. Schiavone had some great moments like the aftermath of the Hennig-Flair angle but was also hurt by Bischoff’s policy of not cluing in the announcers on plans at other times, and we saw our first glimpses of the “greatest night in the history of our sport!” Schiavone of the late ‘90s that we all made fun of. Tenay still did a good job of getting over the luchadores and juniors without the really annoying aspects of Joey Styles. WORST TELEVISION ANNOUNCER (Dusty Rhodes) 1. Eric Bischoff 2. Rick Rude 3. Lee Marshall See above—I had to struggle to come up with three BAD announcers. The worst guys were some of the people who worked USWA and Music City, but I don’t know who any of those guys were. Bischoff was in a tough spot in being a heel play-by-play man and having to get WCW guys over while also ripping on them, but I don’t think heel play-by-play ever works and it didn’t work here. And even babyface Bischoff was a tough listen. Rude was pretty bad in both promotions he did commentary for, very similar to AWA Ray Stevens in that he spoke in platitudes in cliches but never actually contributed anything specific to get a wrestler over. Just the occasionally amusing double-entendres. Lee was Lee, something out of a 1980’s movie about wrestling rather than an actual wrestling announcer. BEST MAJOR WRESTLING CARD (Canadian Stampede) 1. Canadian Stampede 2. CMLL Aniversario 3. Slamboree There were actually more bad big shows than good ones this year, which is a little alarming considering how many of them there were. Most WWF PPVs suffered from the lack of roster depth, WCW PPVs suffered from main events that were often poorly booked on top of being badly worked, and similar depth issues hit All-Japan and AJW. NJPW’s Dome shows, and they ran a lot in several different places, didn’t seem particularly blowaway and had a lot of shoot or worked-shoot stuff on them—some of which was good, some of which was bad. Stampede solved the depth problem by limiting the show to 4 matches and keeping bad workers hidden in the 10-man tag, and had the best atmosphere of any major show of the year. The Anniversario is carried by a legendary main event but I feel like CMLL has to be represented somewhere. Slamboree was WCW’s best feel-good show of the year and probably its best-worked main event on top of the straight-ahead, “right” result. CATEGORY B AWARDS BEST WRESTLING MOVE (Diamond Cutter): They were calling this the move of the ‘90s on WCW TV and I don’t think they were wrong—at least the move of the second half of the ‘90s after the power bomb was the move of the first half. It seemed like 3/4 of the wrestlers in the business started doing impersonations of it just like everyone’s doing STO variations now. But it makes sense, as Page and Austin got the move over great as an instant knockout that could occur at any time—it was almost like what Choshu did for the Japan style in the mid-1980s. WORST MAJOR WRESTLING CARD (NWO Souled Out): There were some bad cards in ’97 but this might have been the only one not to have *any* redeeming, must-see match. You have to admire the effort put into this but it simply didn’t work on any level. Bad commentary, bad wrestling filled with so much gaga bullshit that none of it really meant anything, and an attempted show-saving ladder match that was nice but didn’t really “save” much. MOST DISGUSTING PROMOTIONAL TACTIC (WWF interview with Melanie Pillman). Not even up for debate. All the constant bait-and-switching as far as match announcements seem downright quaint by comparison. Even Meltzer has stopped caring about that even though Starrcade may have set a new record for such practices. The Melanie interview is possibly the worst idea put to film in the history of the Observer to this point. FAVORITE WRESTLER (Chris Benoit): Bret Hart being a mark who takes himself too seriously is a feature, not a bug, and it was never clearer than in 1997. I tend to bristle at the suggestion that Hogan wouldn’t have made it without Piper to play off of and don’t really buy it as truth. But I do think Bret was vital in making Steve Austin, in multiple ways. LEAST FAVORITE WRESTLER (Hollywood Hogan): I’m counting the days until I get to WM14 and Shawn Michaels can just go away. WORST WRESTLER (Hollywood Hogan): These Hogan-centric awards are getting silly at this point. Hogan had some awful performances but also some damn good ones, like the Nitro match with DDP and Bash at the Beach. Steve McMichael, as much as I kind of like the big oaf, was a walking danger to himself and everyone around him but still kept getting pushed. WORST TAG TEAM (The Godwinns): The heel Deliverance Godwinns got a lot more tolerable. Skull and 8-Ball of the DOA got yet another plum spot despite doing nothing to earn it on merit. WORST TELEVISION SHOW (USWA): Another tough call with fewer options. I think the USWA had just enough intriguing stuff on it to escape getting the award even if the promotion was dying. Shotgun Saturday Night, especially once it became a regular B-show, really exposed the WWF roster as a whole. Raw was often great, but take away the main eventers and you didn’t have much left. WORST MANAGER (Sonny Onoo): Not really any good ones to choose from, hence the demise of the Best Manager Award. I actually think Onoo was better here than he was in ’95, so I’ll go with the useless James Vandenberg, who didn’t even get to use any borderline R-rated inside jokes in his promos to entertain the boys. Take that away, not that it was much more than eye-roll material to start with, and he had nothing. WORST MATCH OF THE YEAR (Hulk Hogan vs. Roddy Piper, 10/26): Definitely the worst PPV main event, but the worst match I think has to go Sabu-Sandman at November 2 Remember, which was an embarrassment to wrestling as a whole. Just long set-ups for big garbage spots, almost every one of which was blown. Not just bad, but a scary indictment of where a lot of people thought wrestling was headed. WORST FEUD (DOA vs. NOD vs. Boricuas): This one produced a few WMOTYCs in its own right. One of the most nothing feuds of all-time, featuring 12 people with the only thing that was over being the DOA’s motorcycles. WORST ON INTERVIEWS (Ahmed Johnson): YUH, GUW’N’, DUN. YUH, GUW’N’, DUN. All three U.S. promotions had enough good talkers that it could afford to marginalize the guys who couldn’t. All, seemingly, except Ahmed. WORST PROMOTION (USWA): I know it gets a rep in a few years, but the Big Japan stuff made W*ING look high-end. Fascinating that New Japan would be willing to do business with them at all. BEST BOOKER (Paul Heyman): Heyman definitely lost quite a bit off his fastball—he, Sullivan, and Taylor all seemed to be fresh out of ideas in the second half of the year, and television began to look like repeats. The WWF didn’t have a singular booker, so I’ll have to split the award between Vince Russo (!) and Jim Cornette, who worked shockingly well together in presenting a product that was fresh and dangerous with a ‘90s feel, but with enough traditional booking that it was still a wrestling program—at least until the winter when Cornette left creative, people started leaving, and the guys who were staying were all hurt. BEST PROMOTER (Riki Choshu): New Japan ran some big-money Dome shows not just at the Egg Dome but also in Osaka, Nagoya, and Fukuoka. Hard to argue with that kind of success even if the heavyweight matches that didn’t involve Hashimoto against an outsider seemed pretty underwhelming. BEST GIMMICK (Steve Austin): The Three Faces of Foley were genius and I’m not sure to what extent it had ever been done before in wrestling. The third persona and the lack of a loser-leaves-town-type catalyst separated it from Uvalde Slim and other guys-disguised-in-a-mask angles. WORST GIMMICK (Goldust): Rockabilly was a horrible misfire right out of the early ‘90s. The crazy thing is the identity of Honky’s protégé was a semi-hot topic on Prodigy and RSPW at the time, and the whole idea went to hell about half a second after Gunn walked out. There were a lot of people hoping it would be Disco Inferno, but in hindsight that seems like a pipe dream. MOST EMBARRASSING WRESTLER (Goldust): I’m going to have to agree. We were past the era of wacky outdated ‘80s gimmicks and qualms about overpushes aside, wrestling was still pretty meritocratic by necessity due to the ongoing Wars, so there are again fewer options here than, say, 1994. The Artist Formerly Known as Goldust was sort of compelling because you didn’t know what crazy shit he’d do next and because Dustin was so committed to shocking people, but I can’t imagine trying to explain it if a non-fan happened to see him on TV.

"With the finish from the previous night messed up and thus really unable to ever be shown on television, it was decided after the dust settled to change directions once again. A rematch was held on Nitro the next night in Baltimore, with the gimmick being that the finish wouldn't be shown on television. So on Nitro the next night, about six minutes into the rematch, the show abruptly went off the air. Naturally there were more complaints about this the next day at Turner Broadcasting than anything WCW has ever pulled in history. ... "This actually would be the earliest the show had gone off the air in recent memory despite having nothing but the Nitro replay to follow on TNT and it being billed as the biggest match in Nitro history." --12/29/97 Wrestling Observer newsletter I agree this was much better worked than the previous night, with more urgency and a hotter crowd. Still, there are issues. Like, huge, gaping, giant issues. Hogan is on offense most of the way again, randomly cutting off Sting at points seemingly just because (in fact, even though Hogan could be an incredibly effective working heel, cut-offs were never his strong point). Hogan's selling seems off here--I don't quite want to say he's in that Shawn Michaels "sarcastic selling" mode, but I'm not sure it's far off. It's weirdly over-the-top but not in a fun way, just in a "bad acting" way whether by design or not. The We're Out of Time finish is not only so ridiculously cheap it makes a standard D-X finish look like something out of RINGS, it's almost incompetently executed. Why not at least give us a warning that the show is in danger of going off the air before the match ends, the way Jim Ross would scream about on NWA or UWF TV? Schiavone pays about half a second of lip service to "staying with this as long as we can" early on, but when Hogan yanks Randy Anderson in front of the Stinger Splash, all of a sudden the copyright notice goes up on the screen and we're out, with no advance notice. The moment the listings for the '97 Yearbook were posted, I remarked that this was the most perfect ending of the set possible--WCW shooting themselves in the foot on TV, in the most horrific manner possible. It would still take a few months for the tide to turn in the war, but the moment they had a chance to step on the WWF's jugular, we're watching a promotion totally drop the ball. There's not a better set-up for 1998 than that.

Good Lord, that Lionsault was scary. Hennig is still "meh" but maybe this Yearbook isn't quite doing him justice since it seems like every single match is "finish only"--that said, he's not really encouraging me to fire up the Network to watch him in full, either. Jericho reacts to this loss by beating up David Penzer (rough couple of weeks for him) and then using his chair to beat up the ringpost, thus kicking off a run that will be the thing I'm looking forward to the most out of WCW in '98.

Ric Flair picks up on the fact that Bret mentioned the Giant, Luger, Sting, and Benoit...but not him. Attention to detail! Awesome. This all sounds fine and dandy as Bret's first quick program, so no complaints yet until it's spring and Bret still hasn't done anything else.

I still hate Bret's music. Still, this is finally a good segment with him--he's put over big as WCW's savior, which finally adds some gravity to his jump. Crowd is still split, though. Big reactions for Bret rattling off the guys he wants to wrestle. Nice of him to throw Benoit in with the other main eventers. Bret then moves on to Hogan and brings up some undoubtedly real feelings when he accuses of Hulk of running away from him--HOW DID THESE TWO NEVER WRESTLE EACH OTHER??!!

A huge moment beforehand, as Ross, over the PA, announces that negotiations have begun today for Mike Tyson to participate at WrestleMania 14. Big boos from the Long Islanders for that. This felt a little desperate at the time, but man, did they make the most of that. I *would* pay to be a fly on the wall for Vince McMahon meeting with Don King. These two always have great chemistry and again they fall out of bed--almost literally, considering the apparent legitimacy of HHH's injury--into another terrific TV match. Shawn unleashes some of his best offense since the WM13 Ironman Match, and Owen's closing flurry of rapidfire near-falls is terrific, with great intensity and execution. And man, Shawn and Owen have done that dueling superkick/enzuigiri spot in every single encounter since late '95 and it just never, ever gets old. That's some AJPW-level of attention to detail--and I like that they don't beat you over the head with their past history, it's more like a bonus for devoted fans. Another cheap and rather predictable finish and sadly this is pretty much the peak of Owen as the Sole Survivor, as he'll get moved on to HHH as well as a rather pointless and not-well-explained side feud with Jeff Jarrett. After a long dry spell this ended up being a pretty good Raw. All of a sudden the WWF has a number of good, over programs and storylines all up and down the roster. Think that might be an omen for '98?