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PeteF3

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Everything posted by PeteF3

  1. PeteF3
    Bubba *and* Norton turn in the same segment, after Wallstreet and Chono joined earlier in the show. Yep, the NWO is officially oversatured, though they did at least set all these turns up a few weeks ago with Bischoff's ultimatum. This is actually a pretty half-assed crazy brawl, with guys mostly standing around. Sting comes in and gets attacked by Arn, Mongo, and then Rey Jr., and lays waste to all 3 of them before leaving. He took out three WCW guys and no NWO members, but they all attacked him first. Hmm...
  2. PeteF3
    This was an awesome segment and Sting's bat reveal was great. I'll worry about these segments getting overdone when the time comes--and I do know it's coming. But this ruled.
  3. PeteF3
    Lee Marshall with the 1-800-COLLECT ROAD REPORT! Then Benoit and Woman in a restaurant...it's useless to try to talk about now, but for awhile I loved Benoit's "Kevin, doesn't life SUCK?" This is a pretty awesome brawl, with two guys just stiffing the shit out of each other and Arn providing the greatest counter to the Tree of Woe in history. Arn picking off the DOD one-by-one does bring to mind the idea of him doing that to the NWO, if they really wanted to go with Arn-Hollywood, which of course was a pipe dream even if Anderson were healthy. El-P searching for the one true final Arn match felt like me watching Steamboat in '94, constantly turning up on TV around and after Fall Brawl. We'll end up finding an Arn vs. Kwee Wee match from 2000 or something.
  4. PeteF3
    Man, this crowd LOVES Psicosis. Even a simple armbar reversal gets a huge ovation, and there are lots of great near-falls that have you buying that Psic is really taking home the TV belt. Psic does his stuff pretty well but the match is held together by Regal, who sells great and of course does his usual thing of just constantly finding ways to brutalize his opponent even during down stretches. His punches and palm strikes look absolutely vicious. And a well-done finish, too. A lot of these Nitro matches run together for me but this is definitely up with Malenko-Liger as one of the better WCW TV bouts of the year.
  5. PeteF3
    One Man Gang > Bundy > Akeem. Not just because of the gimmick change, but he really actively regressed as a worker.
  6. PeteF3
    Color me lost as to why "projecting your emotional investment onto a match" is somehow "bad."
  7. PeteF3
    Jimmy Valiant at his peak. And let's not discount the beard factor before we start quibbling over Valiant's ability or lack thereof to carry a promotion.
  8. PeteF3
    In addition to that--even if the transitions are done well, sometimes a match can get so filled with counters that they become meaningless anyway. Joshi has had this problem--you "know" that the momentum is going to swing the other way in 5 seconds anyway, so it's hard to get invested in believing that someone is on a sustained run of offense.
  9. PeteF3
    I'm not going to excuse the "tranny" talk, because it was absolutely real and doesn't look good at all. But Shannon was a legitimate nutjob for reasons having nothing to do with being trans and everything to do with...being a fucking nutjob. This is the person who seriously posited the conspiracy theory that after Bret divorced Julie he was going to make a move to marry Martha Hart.
  10. PeteF3
    WHINY BRET! Bret delivers a scathing interview spitting out contempt for just about every other top name in the company--amazing how much heat he gets just for calling Shawn Michaels "prissy." Then he disingenuously claims he's going to do what HBK did last night, which is offer impartial and uninvolved commentary. Austin and Vader have a hell of a brawl, and in addition to the shades of Heel Bret we saw in the interview, Austin unloading on Vader and the crowd going nuts is a similarly prescient sign of things to come. Bret of course breaks his promise and destroys Austin on the floor, which gets Vader pissed off. The main event scene now has 5 guys who all hate each other, plus Undertaker and Mankind hanging around as well. This is a super-hot segment and with its chaotic feel and "shades of grey" characters really feels like the first "1997 Raw"
  11. PeteF3
    Yeah, as much as I love MPro, I was actually groaning when I came across this--"ANOTHER 10-man tag? What more is there to do with these teams?" Uh, yeah. A fuck ton of a lot, as it turns out. As OJ says, there's some HATE here. Not that the previous tags have been lacking in psychology and character work, but this is as much about impact and fury as much as it is about pretty moves. There's also a constant sense of one-upsmanship throughout the early portion. Even the fucking Naniwa crabwalk is done with some bite to it--"Oh, you're going to cut me off in the middle of my move, Taka? Fuck you then, I'm going to do it if it kills me." Then that goddamn closing stretch--sometimes you'll say, "This felt like it went 7 hours" as if that's a bad thing. This felt super-long in a GOOD way. The brilliant thing is that every 1-on-1 match-up we got felt like it changed the momentum of the match. "Shiryu vs. Sasuke? Oh, that's an advantage for the babyfaces...Delfin vs. Teioh is pretty even...oh shit, now Yakushiji's alone with Togo." And so on. Yakushiji is spectacular here, executing everything brilliantly and working an awesome little sprint with Togo where he looks dead in the water but with an assist from Sasuke and an errant chair toss from Funaki, then gets in some credible near-falls. Hamada finally scores the pin which is the 100% right result to close out the year, as the crowd (and I) lose their collective minds. It was fresher than These Days, which most of us have seen a bunch, and the result was in doubt the whole way, but even accounting for that I have no problem saying this was the best MPro match of the year and one of the very best anywhere in the world.
  12. PeteF3
    Soon after we join, we get Sid and Bret REPEATING A SPOT that's blown the first time, which is total amateur-hour stuff and downright shocking to see Bret do. Michaels looks and sounds like hell. Bret beats the crap out of Shawn for costing him the match. A good start to the build to WM13 that of course won't lead anywhere. Suddenly, somehow, the WWF title scene feels fresh with a bunch of top challengers who could conceivably win it at any time--more like the Triple Crown or IWGP belt than something to be possessed by a singular babyface.
  13. PeteF3
    It's eerie how closely Vince's treatment of this Funk gimmick mirrors the early treatment of Adam Rose and the New Day. There's nothing less cool than Michael Cole or Vince McMahon dancing, unless Dude Love is involved. Funk's entrance is ENDLESS but gets pretty much no reaction, since we're never given any reason to care about either him or the Funkettes. Both of these gimmicks reek of guys trying too hard--Funk as a handclapping panderer and Leif desperately attempting to "edgify" himself. Not a bad match but not really one on the level of the more advanced WCW stuff, as this is simply looser, Scorpio's attempts at incorporating his dancing into actual moves don't really work, and Snow still isn't that good at holding a match together in between his big spots.
  14. PeteF3
    The Memphis wing of the Nation of Domination is beyond words: PG-13, Miss Texas, two big black guys, and Randy Hales as "Randy X" complete with a Malcolm X-style peci hat. Faarooq has personally authorized JC Ice to bring Bill Dundee into the group, but Bill wants no part of it. Bill, Wolfie, and JC are all great here, with JC encouraging Dundee to try the Black Power salute and Wolfie calling out Dundee for never actually doing anything for JC in his life. Dundee ends up getting laid out in the parking lot, and he and Wolfie are enemies once again, the way it should be.
  15. PeteF3
    I wish this had gone longer but there's only so much of this they were going to give away on TV. Still a good match with--shock of shocks--Dundee throwing really awesome punches. I also want to point out that Downtown Bruno did a really good job of officiating this, finding a way to make his presence felt without putting himself over the workers and knowing how to actually "officiate" a no-DQ match.
  16. PeteF3
    I think I zoned out during that part, but I believe they were referencing Ross' cry at Clash IX: "THE JAPANESE HAVE ATTACKED RIC FLAIR! THE JAPANESE HAVE ATTACKED RIC FLAIR!"
  17. PeteF3
    Kamala mocking Rayo's electric slide taunt is the 1991 Spot of the Year.
  18. PeteF3
    And GAEA closes out the year in fine fashion, with a strong tag match involving four strong workers. And on top of that, they close out with the 100% correct result, as Kato & Satomura score a rare 1996 joshi upset. It feels like the first time all year that any of the major companies have pulled the trigger on anything besides the "safe" result, with the more established talent going over. Heck, we just saw that in the previous match where Nagayo singlehandedly defeated two of Ozaki's deputies. Kato hits her Super Kamikaze (Kennedy's Green Bay Plunge) on KAORU but it only nets 2...and at that point, it feels like she's fired all the bullets in her chamber and the inevitable "safe" result is happening again. But she soon cuts off KAORU's comeback and puts her away with a bridge suplex, while Hokuto is kicking the crap out of Satomura in the back of the arena. Hokuto going from celebration at hearing the bell to a shocked sell of the actual result is letter-perfect. GAEA didn't produce a real Match of the Year candidate in '96, but it produced a lot of good to really good matches and really felt like a fresher product with fresher talent than AJW. It had enough star power from Nagayo, Ozaki, Hokuto, and some guest stars to keep casual interest while Meiko Satomura and Toshie Uematsu, among others, looked more like the face of joshi in the future than any of AJW's youngsters.
  19. PeteF3
    The work here was good but I had trouble getting into the idea of Nagayo taking on both of these 2 for this long. Plus they go from both Oz Academy members being in the ring at once to one standing on the apron and back again. Joshi has never been about rules consistency but that was jarring as well. That said, with all that going against it they still put on a pretty good match, with Nagayo having to craft her way to victory over her game but less experienced opponents. A hockey-uniform-clad Ozaki has a pretty epic confrontation and staredown with Nagayo afterward, with Chigusa turning her back on her and daring her to attack and Oz not being able to pull the trigger.
  20. PeteF3
    Chalk me up in the pro-UWFI match camp. In addition to Loss' criticisms of Takada's opening matwork, I think the result of the UWFI match pretty much gave away the result of this one--I don't know who could have gone into this expecting anything other than Takada returning the job. Still, they worked the drama great down the stretch and you can't argue with this kind of crowd heat, either.
  21. PeteF3
    Pretty good match but nothing you haven't seen before. Except that double springboard moonsault with Rey's knees smacking into Dragon's body--YEEOWCH. Same finish as WW3--lack of creative finishes for such a dynamic worker might well be Rey's single biggest weakness of this time period.
  22. PeteF3
    Onita looks like he's gotten 10 years younger in his time off. This was pretty good overall, with a nuclear crowd going nuts for Onita's return. Pogo is also super-over as an unlikely babyface, though he's so fucking horrible and out-of-shape that he really drags this down--it's absurd watching this guy waddle around throwing sub-Lita-level strikes while the Headhunters are flying around the ring. Plus his chain-and-sickle get involved which is a surefire way to take me out of a match instantly. But Onita looks good, the Headhunters provide some great flying fat man offense, Funk is Funk, and Tanaka gets a star-making spot here with some heroic kickouts, near-falls, a comeback from long odds, and the winning fall.
  23. PeteF3
    I'm the high vote on this, it seems. It's not a blowaway great match and the ending isn't much, but I find Kandori compelling in just about any setting, just because she's so unique.
  24. PeteF3
    From the moment Kanemura gets power bombed over the top rope through the table, this is really damn good, with Kanemura throwing a bunch of cool near-falls at Awesome and Awesome responding in his power bomb-happy way. But the opening is just killed by the endless scene of Awesome's leg tied up in the ropes, which I still don't know was a blown spot or intentional, considering how quick Kanemura was to go after his exposed (and bandaged) leg. Whichever way it is, it goes on and on and on and then Awesome pretty much blows off the leg work entirely and doesn't sell it for the rest of the match. If this were JIP it'd look like a hell of a match.
  25. PeteF3
    Wilkins did some work as a TV jobber for the WWF, and had a semi-infamous appearance as "Wee Willie Wilkins" for Crockett, getting the shit legit kicked out of him by the Midnight Express. Most of his other work seems to have come later, for Michinoku Pro.
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