PeteF3

This match deserves to be remembered for more than the closing spot, because it's high-energy, terrific, and full of great offense from Owen in particular. He goes all Aja Kong on Austin's hand and we get the rare middle-finger-based psychology for a bit, while then switching focus to Austin's neck, which in a way is serendipitious with what's to come. Lots of twists and turns and momentum shifts, and even the restholds are used effectively and with different variations. Then the sick tombstone spot and scary aftermath...watching Austin attempting to crawl around barely able to move is still frightening. I still don't know to this day what Owen was thinking--the kneel-down version of the tombstone was a semi-regular move of his.

Chyna's timing is pretty far off here at multiple spots--she also absolutely killed Mick with the door, hitting him with it so hard that he didn't grab his head, he grabbed his shoulder. Then of course her jumping into the cage too early and having to leave. The crowd picks up on things as soon as Mankind starts climbing the cage, dropping a "Su-per-fly" chant. Mankind takes off his mask and rips off his shirt to reveal what was supposed to be a Dude Love heart, but by this point is just a pink smudge. Fun follow-up to a pretty fun mid-card feud, and the Dude basically Hulking Up out of his coma afterward in time with the music is great.

This G1 was a single-elimination tournament and not a round-robin, so I could see why Kensuke's victory may ring a little hollow. That aside, we see a pretty good closing stretch in front of a jacked crowd. Tenzan has NWO Japan with him, including Vicious & Delicious, but can't follow up with his win over Hash.

Chono in the all-black casualwear and sunglasses is about the smoothest looking motherfucker in wrestling. Until he gets on the apron and changes the tide of the match, this is way more interesting with Hashimoto on top, as Tenzan for the bulk of this doesn't offer much more than chops and eye gouges. The closing stretch is a lot better, minus one of the weirder blown spots you'll ever see--Tenzan's foot getting caught in the turnbuckle like that seems so fluky and unlikely that one could swear it was a planned spot. They run through a quick Hashimoto comeback before going to what appeared to be the originally planned finish, with Tenzan picking up a big win. Not an overly impressive performance by Tenzan all in all, but Hash carries this to something pretty good.

Yes, that. And release the goddamned Money Inc.-Steiners title change already.

A sampling of crowd chants: "NUR-SING-HOME!" "STEERS-AND-QUEERS!" "TEX-AS SUCKS!" And people think Full Sail can be annoying. Well, that aside, I was looking forward to this, with the Bizarro World crowd dynamic, but this ended up being pointless because of Shane's refusal to work as a babyface. He finally throws a few token attempts towards the end, like asking the crowd if they want one more belly-to-belly, but that's it. Sabu runs in for no reason other than Paul E. couldn't be bothered to book a sensible finish and Funk retains his title.

Bad stuff here--this was a very inauspicious first look at Youth and Storm worked kind of dumb too, though his actual move execution was fine, at least in comparison to the OMEGA stuff. The presence of the cage was dumb if they were going to brawl all over the building anyway. Lots of eye-rolling moments not just limited to the constant entering and exiting of the cage, like Youth's Asai moonsault to nowhere and the blown finish.

I don't think they count as "MegaPowers"--two singles legends (in their own way) coming together as a unit. They're more like the Road Warriors, Demolition, and Rock 'n Roll Express of jobbers, respectively. Rodz and Scicluna have a much stronger argument.

WWE would be wise to skip the stage for WM--with that giant video board they don't need one.

'96 Cornette was evidently flashing back to the days of less quality control: there's a TBS interview where he makes the exact same burglar-rape joke, about Baby Doll.

Edit: wrong thread.

...or, with trash-throwing and heel turns signified by t-shirt changes, WCW. I do credit Surge for changing outfits for each round. Sweet Dreams is proud to be the first black champion in OMEGA history--eat your heart out, Jackie Robinson. Edit: I do see that Matt's sterling mic skills have fully arrived, though.

Yes, the live play-by-play is Strike 1, right to begin with. Cham Pain has indeed recovered from the Pedigree Driver '97 to reach the semifinals of whatever the hell tournament this is. This could charitably be described as "raw," but it's an interesting enough time capsule. Matt Hardy already knows how to connect with an audience, and the audience themselves make for an interesting contrast to your typical American crowd of 1997--way more kids and families, no snark seen anywhere. In that sense, this was kind of refreshing. This would have been, all in all, a pleasant enough diversion but the use of the table at the end was pretty gratuitous.

Ah, Ravishing Rick--back where he belongs, milking crowd reactions and playing fans like violins. Douglas was willing to trade Francine for one night to gain Rude as an ally, and we close out with a guitar version of Rude's old WWF theme.

Longer than even the longest MSC or Sportatorium beatdowns, it seems. First Dreamer and Sandman, then Funk, then Taz. There are some good moments here, like Lawler finally getting some payback, and Taz getting beer poured on him and Candido locking on the kata hajime, but they're more spread out than they really should be.

Still waiting for that PG-13 vs. FBI match. JC does a decent job of not projecting even a shred of sympathy as he cuts this promo from a hospital bed.

Well, no beating around the bush from Mr. Titan here. "There you have it," indeed.

I had high expectations for these two to come through in a singles match after their work dominating 6-mans, and they didn't disappoint. They smartly worked around the explosions and made you wait for them, and they gave us a ton of dramatic kickouts but never crossed the line into self-indulgence. Tanaka doesn't have Onita's presence and charisma, but he's not far off in terms of fired-up comebacks and has way more athletic talent at this stage--it's a fairly even trade-off.

Our first look at Frye and man was he awesome, and I really wish a guy like him who was capable of believably heeling it up to a degree not seen in shootstyle could have had a run in UWFI or RINGS, just to see what it would have been like. This is all-action and ends before it can possibly wear out its welcome, but Frye is slow to break his winning hold and that draws in Naoya Ogawa and then Inoki himself.

Pretty good match with a borderline-nonsensical finish. It's OK if you want to establish "shit happens" and that refs can get bumped but it doesn't automatically mean a screwjob, but I don't know if that was really NJPW's intention or not. These two always have great chemistry but even ignoring the booking I thought their '96 matches were better and tighter.

Yeah, absolutely nothing of consequence happened here, and the idea of seeing this go 60 sounds excruciating--particularly since it seems that no team was ever really in danger, thus telegraphing the result badly even by the standards of many hour draws. Tajiri and Yamagawa's spunky underdog performances may have come off better in another setting but here they were crying out for more interesting opponents than Jado & Gedo.

Decent enough match and nice to see something different ending Nitro besides some combination of Hogan, Luger, and Sting. Credit to WCW: they did go out of their way to make Giant's chokeslam of Bischoff really feel like a big moment.

Yes, this is one of Flair's lowest points so far. He really comes off as completely out to lunch. I never liked the whole Hennig turn at WarGames but maybe having that door slammed on his head and resulting hiatus was actually the best thing for his career.

Wright's really picked up on some subtle heel touches--it's not the most original spot in the world, but it amuses me that I'm watching him execute the exact same "He's got my hair, ref!" trick I just watched the Midnight Express do in 1984 Houston. And then he combines it with some nice Steven Wright-esque escapes and cartwheels and, in all honesty, pretty much leads Jericho through a good solid match. It's not as spectacular as what we imagine the WCW cruiserweights to be, but this was a nifty little bout carried by a guy wrestling well beyond his years.

Both men play their anthems before the match, and they actually have the audacity to book Bret to jump Patriot in the middle of The Star-Spangled Banner--that was ballsy and eyebrow-raising at the time, even moreso than the O Canada interruption by Austin, and would never, ever fly a few years later. That pisses the crowd off as much as Bret's earlier promo, and we start getting bottles thrown at the ring in a sight you really didn't see outside of WCW and even that had seemingly been toned down in recent weeks. Pretty basic match, as Shawn does commentary and does a decent job at getting the angles and wrestlers over as opposed to just himself. He then needlessly interjects himself in the match and gives Patriot an upset win. Patriot badly needed a rebound after being thrown to the wolves for his wrestling debut the previous week, but I wish they'd had Bret do something to provoke Shawn like knock his headset off or something. Would have also served as good foreshadowing for SummerSlam.