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PeteF3

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  1. PeteF3
    This was definitely one-sided for awhile, but not to the degree that I had a big problem with it like I had with Dean at the '96 GAB. All that really happens is that the opening babyface shine sequence is skipped and we go right to the heat. Which is fine now--Rey's fully established and over and we all already know what he's about, now it's a matter of making the fans wait for it. Rey is a perfect opponent for reigning in Dragon's worst instincts, as Ultimo doesn't really have to worry about being flashy (though there is plenty of that here), and can instead just dominate and bully and throw bombs at Rey while Rey garners sympathy and Ultimo finally comes off as a killer. It's not the best WCW match of the '90s, cruiserweight or otherwise, but it's another great showcase match for Rey and a good performance out of an opponent that I normally hate. Fantastic finish, too. A great spot to begin with, and when Ultimo hit it, you knew Rey's energy bar was depleted and that was the end for him.
  2. PeteF3
    I watched this because I'm trying to hit everything on Loss' Rewatching & First Time Viewing list that I can easily find, but man oh man, this is about as joshi-paint-by-numbers as it gets. Jaguar can be compelling to watch because she's so smooth, but this is little more than an extended squash for her and Shimoda. There's nothing bad here, but nothing that really stands out as really good until the end when Shimoda busts out the Death Lake Driver (a tiger superplex), which is a pretty nutty spot.
  3. PeteF3
    In fairness to JR, the torn groin actually *was* true. It's why Arn had to miss WarGames.
  4. PeteF3
    I don't really keep track of star ratings, though if I had to do it all over again I would. That said, guess-timating from my '80s ballots and Yearbook threads: ***** Clive Myers vs. Steve Grey (11/22/75) Inoki vs. Robinson (12/11/75) Gwyn Davies vs. Steve Veidor (5/26/76) Terry Funk vs. Jumbo (6/11/76) Robinson vs. Baba (7/24/76) Andre vs. Hansen (9/23/81) Andre vs. Khan (4/1/82) Slaughter vs. Sheik (6/16/84) DiBiase vs. Duggan (cage tuxedo coal miner's glove match, 3/22/85) Inoki/Fujinami/Kimura/Ueda/Hoshino vs. Maeda/Fujiwara/Kido/Takada/Yamazaki (3/26/86) Midnight Rockers vs. Rose/Somers (8/30/86) Bockwinkel vs. Hennig (11/21/86) Lawler vs. Idol (4/27/87--sort of a **** match with a ***** angle) Jumbo/Tenryu vs. Choshu/Yatsu (12/16/88) Flair vs. Steamboat (4/2/89) Flair vs. Steamboat (5/7/89) Jumbo vs. Tenryu (6/5/89) Liger vs. Sano (1/31/90) El Dandy vs. Angel Azteca (6/1/90) El Dandy vs. Satanico (12/14/90) Warrior vs. Savage (3/24/91) Misawa/Kawada/Kobashi vs. Jumbo/Taue/Fuchi (4/20/91) Muto vs. Chono (8/11/91) Liger vs. Samurai (4/30/92) Toyota/Yamada vs. Ozaki/Kansai (11/26/92) Hokuto/Kandori vs. Kong/Nakano (3/27/94) Misawa vs. Kawada (6/3/94) Misawa/Kobashi vs. Kawada/Taue (6/9/95) Samurai vs. Otani (1/21/96) Misawa/Akiyama vs. Kawada/Taue (12/6/96) Sasuke/Hamada/Delfin/Naniwa/Yakushiji vs. Kaientai D*X (12/16/96) Misawa vs. Kobashi (1/20/97) Hart vs. Austin (3/23/97) Santo vs. Casas (9/19/97) ****3/4 Mil Mascaras vs. Destroyer (7/25/74) Dory Funk vs. Horst Hoffmann (12/15/75) Bockwinkel vs. Robinson (12/11/80) Funks vs. Brody/Snuka (12/13/81) Flair vs. Kerry Von Erich (8/15/82) Fujinami vs. Choshu (4/21/83) Fujinami vs. Choshu (7/7/83) Gagne/Crusher vs. Blackwell/Adnan (cage match, 3/25/84) NJPW vs. Ishin Gundan 5-on-5 gauntlet (4/19/84) Duggan/Rock 'n Rolls vs. Ladd/Midnight Express (6/8/84) Bockwinkel vs. Martel (8/16/84) Gordy vs. Khan (11/22/84) Inoki/Fujinami vs. Adonis/Murdoch (12/7/84) Lawler vs. Dundee (12/30/85) Kobayashi vs. Fuchi (4/6/86) Hennig vs. Hansen (5/31/86) Fujinami vs. Maeda (6/12/86) Lawler vs. Dundee (7/14/86) Choshu vs. Khan (7/31/86) Steamboat vs. Savage (3/29/87) Choshu vs. Fujiwara (6/9/87) Jumbo vs. Tenryu (8/31/87) Fujinami/Yamada/Koshinaka/Fujiwara/Kimura vs. H. Saito/Kobayashi/SS Machine/M. Saito/Choshu (9/12/88) Kawada/Fuyuki vs. Kroffat/Furnas (6/5/89) Liger vs. Sano (7/13/89) Liger vs. Sano (8/10/89) Misawa vs. Jumbo (9/1/90) Kong vs. Nakano (11/14/90) Cutie Suzuki vs. Scorpion (8/30/91) Trio Fantasia vs. Los Thundercats (12/8/91) Kawada/Kikuchi vs. Furnas/Kroffat (2/22/92) Sting's Squadron vs. Dangerous Alliance (WarGames, 5/17/92) Misawa/Kawada/Kobashi vs. Jumbo/Taue/Fuchi (5/22/92) Kobashi/Kikuchi vs. Kroffat/Furnas (5/25/92) Rude vs. Steamboat (6/20/92) Kong vs. Nakano (11/26/92) Hokuto vs. Kandori (4/2/93) Toyota/Yamada vs. Kansai/Ozaki (4/11/93) Toyota/Yamada vs. Kansai/Ozaki (12/6/93) Mascarita Sagrada vs. Espectrito (3/12/94) Bret vs. Owen (3/20/94) Kawada vs. Williams (4/16/94) Misawa/Kobashi vs. Kawada/Taue (5/21/94) Nakano vs. Kandori (chain match, 7/14/94) Misawa vs. Williams (7/28/94) Misawa vs. Taue (4/15/95) Ozaki vs. Kansai (3/17/95) Santo/Octagon/Misterio/Parka vs. Psicosis/Fuerza/Panther/Pentagon (6/18/95) Kong vs. Kansai (8/30/95) Sasuke/TM4/Shiryu vs. Delfin/Michinoku/Naniwa (3/16/96) Santo/Atlantis/Dandy/Lizmark vs. Panther/Felino/Wagner Jr./Casas (3/22/96) Taue vs. Williams (4/20/96) Misawa/Akiyama vs. Williams/Ace (6/7/96) Hart vs. Austin (11/17/96) Austin vs. Dude Love (5/31/98) Kobashi vs. Kawada (6/12/98) Misawa vs. Kobashi (10/13/98)
  5. PeteF3
    I'm nearly done with my 7th '90s Yearbook, a monumental undertaking and the most fun I've had watching wrestling since the Monday Night Wars. I've watched and discussed more wrestling due to this tremendous project than I ever have since that time. So I don't want to come off as bitchy when I say that I'm not sure I've been more baffled as to any match's inclusion on any Yearbook as I am with this one. Even other, shittier matches are worth watching for some reason or another. Is there some significance here that I missed? Gordeau sucked, the rest of the guys all work like they're trying not to break a nail, and the rules made no sense (Gordeau taps out at one point, the bell rings, but the ref just shoos him out of the ring and Anjo comes in). The ending is a total anticlimax, which is good for "realism" but UWFI has never concerned itself with realistic finishes. This promotion had a tremendous run, but let it die already.
  6. PeteF3
    CMLL's answer to the Hogan turn, as Santo can't stand the fact that Negro Casas is a technico and sells his soul to do something about it. His fight is initially purely with Casas, and Dandy and Garza are too stunned to react to it. They milk and milk and milk this technico comeback for as long as possible, with Casas selling his ass off and Santo instantly becoming an unbelievable prick. When the technicos finally do take the gloves off, it's a comeback for the ages, including a bloody Casas re-emerging from the dressing room and Dandy and Santo chopping the shit out of each other. Of course, the rudos have had the upper hand throughout the entire match, with Salvaje having promised a surprise in his pre-taped interview, so the result is pretty inevitable. Alfonso Morales goes between shock, being nearly on the verge of tears, to practically ready to leap out of his seat and go into the ring himself to give Santo what for. A great match but an even greater angle makes for the best lucha segment of the year (at least possibly until next week).
  7. PeteF3
    Slower start but a hotter finish. MUCH hotter. Call me easy to please but I liked this more than the first tag match on this card, because this truly felt like anybody could conceivably pin anybody else down the stretch, which isn't a dynamic you often get in All-Japan. Kobashi really has Misawa on the ropes at one point, especially after an awesome combination power bomb/Patriot Missile that looks great and would have killed Mitsuharu dead if not for a save. Then Akiyama and Patriot each have each other beaten, then Misawa's beating up Kobashi outside...even though the two partners were clearly on a lower level, in isolation it didn't feel that way. This is also one of the better Patriot performances you'll see--he's not a Triple Crown-level guy and probably never will be, but his moves have more snap to them now and he works some nice little exchanges with both opponents, and really knows how to build up and tease the rather pedestrian-by-AJPW-standards full nelson buster as looking like a killer move. He has some great kickouts down the stretch too. Ultimately this gets monster bonus points for having me truly believe Misawa might do the J-O-B to Kobashi--I understand why he didn't, but I think Baba would have been perfectly justified had he chosen to pull the trigger on that right here.
  8. PeteF3
    Odd-looking venue for an AJPW show. This is another terrific bout, that comes off as more of a Kawada vs. Doc singles match with Taue and Ace as ancillary NPC types. Which is fine--Kawada is Kawada and I'm still waiting for Doc to lose a step from his layoff, because it hasn't happened yet.
  9. PeteF3
    Some moments of true greatness but also some downtime, which keeps this from being RINGS' best effort of '96. Han going down from a shot to the ribs should be a spot as predictable as Flair getting slammed off the top by this point, but he always sells it so fantastically.
  10. PeteF3
    Re: Anti-Tanking...we're not even touching on "pro wrestling" at this point, mostly or otherwise, but is there any compelling reason for the NBA to continue weighing lottery numbers? It may have served a purpose at one time, but we've reached the point now where it seems it'd be more conducive, if you want to eliminate tanking, to just give everyone one Ping Pong ball/envelope and be done with it.
  11. PeteF3
    Sabu in AJPW is an utterly bizarre sight. Teaming with Albright is more bizarre yet. And him working spots with the Patriot isn't something you see every day, either. This has a very tentative beginning with a lot of resets and tag-outs and it's definitely one of those matches that's best viewed as JIP, but it builds into a pretty hot closing stretch with some fun spots along the way. Tables and springing off chairs is a non-starter, it seems, so Sabu improvises by using Albright as a springboard, as they do the Hardyz' Poetry in Motion a full 4 years beforehand. Sabu & Albright mesh surprisingly well as a team with some other cool double-teams that make use of both guys' disparate styles. Patriot is working with one arm here which brings a bit of psychological focus to this--I don't know if it's a legit injury or not, but he does a primo job of acting like it is. Albright pins Kobashi in a shocker of a result. Not sure I'm crazy about your Triple Crown champ jobbing to somebody on Gary's level, but the double-round-robin format allowed for a bunch more upsets than you're used to seeing in the RWTL. Fun little bout that constantly threatens to run off the rails, but it holds together.
  12. PeteF3

    New Jack

    PeteF3 replied to Grimmas's topic in Nominees

    The Gangstas had a good match with the THUGs in SMW, and had a good 6-man in ECW teaming with Dreamer against Lee & the Eliminators. And...that's about it. I don't recall any of the Rock 'n Roll Express matches being anything more than okay, which is a pretty damning indictment of the team. Possibly a top-50 talker just based on his SMW work, but that's it.
  13. PeteF3
    Are you talking about the main event? I dunno, I think Jesse was in an awkward position there. You can't have your top color man shitting all over both of your main eventers, whether they're babyfaces or not. And if he did his usual routine, whether it be "Hogan's an egomaniac" or "Warrior's a lunatic," it'd look like he was favoring the other guy. I think he did as good of a job as possible. And he threw in that Richard Belzer line just to show that Jesse was still Jesse. One thing that really worked for Jesse in the WWF that didn't in WCW was the shoot conflict he and Hogan were constantly in. There was an edge to his anti-Hogan commentary that came off as truly personal and real. He didn't have that with Sting or any other WCW babyface, and at times it came off as though he was slagging on them because he was a Heel and that's what heels do.
  14. PeteF3
    Kawada jumping ship felt, from a kayfabe standpoint, more like a player leaving a team via free agency (or by transfer, for the Euros) than a wrasslin'-style "turn."
  15. PeteF3
    Maybe point #1 is a bit of a stretch, but that sounds like Killer Khan.
  16. PeteF3
    Great atmosphere and a great chaotic scene at the finish, but there were parts of this that fell flat to me. Both at the time and now. I won't really get into it all because it's late, I'm tired, and it's all nitpicking anyway. But the big Bischoff turn is somehow sort of lost in the shuffle between more Piper rambling, Tenay and Heenan not being able to get the appropriate points over that needed put over (and they were just as likely not clued in on what was going on), and more Kevin Sullivan vagueness. This is an instance where it needed to be spelled out crystally clear that Bischoff was lying and had been found out, and that really didn't happen, again forcing viewers to sort of connect the dots themselves. Bischoff is fantastic from Piper's entrance up until the turn, though.
  17. PeteF3
    Cameo from Hogan, as he intimidates Bischoff into declaring him a bigger icon and richer star than Roddy Piper. Bischoff also says that Piper hasn't been able to be contacted since last week. Hmm. Meanwhile DDP is out for another interview and is again confronted by the NWO, who quiz DDP on if he found out anything since last week. When it's clear that he hasn't, Nash gloats some more.
  18. PeteF3
    "You got the bad neck, right Tony? You want to pick up your kids again?!" Nash is AWESOME--a total asshole bully with pretty much no redeeming value, and actually pretty scary also. This leads to a cool backstage brawl where the Outsiders actually go 50/50 with the Faces of Fear, as they brawl outside the arena. Fantastic angle to kick Nitro off in a state of total chaos.
  19. PeteF3
    Awesome brawl with both guys taking some great bumps, as you'd expect from Foley but you forget what a bump machine pre-neck injury Austin could be at times. Total 180 from the Bret match the previous night, natch. None of that finesse bullshit here. Undertaker saves Austin from a 2-on-1 after the Executioner runs in...and in a quintessential Austin moment, he repays him by dropping him with a clothesline. Hot segment all around.
  20. PeteF3
    I liked this better than the other tag from this show, for the contrast in styles. Nagayo & Kato are all about power and brutality, and Kaoru & Satomura have to counter with a bunch of high-flying and flashiness. "Big vs. little" is possibly my favorite wrestling style because it's an almost foolproof way of putting on a compelling match, and they pull it off here. Nagayo throws some of the sickest suplexes you'll ever see in joshi, Satomura is her usual excitable self, and Kaoru offers some truly gorgeous flying moves and roll-ups. Finish may come a *little* too easily for guess-who considering how much they were on the ropes down the stretch, but this is one of GAEA's better straight tags so far. Also, I love the announcers' call of "MONKEEYY!" every time Satomura does her running arm-wave.
  21. PeteF3
    This is for the AJW Tag Titles held by the Oz Academy team, even though it's a GAEA show--I guess they're quasi-freelancers. This is another established-team vs. youngsters GAEA-style match and another good one for the style, though you pretty much know the youngsters aren't winning so the drama is starting to get sapped. Numao & Nakano do beat the living shit out of the champs, though, and I'm starting to wonder if Sugar Sato in particular wasn't miscast and better off as a babyface, because she does some fine sympathy selling here. There are the usual near-falls down the closing stretch but they change things up a little by having submission attempts take center stage. I'm running out of things to say about most of the standard matches on FLIK's list, but this was another good match for the promotion. Even if they're not really as good yet, it feels fresher to be watching GAEA's young talent, which seems miles ahead of what AJW is offering in the mid- and under-cards.
  22. PeteF3
    Lance Russell did at least acknowledge that Bockwinkel and Martel had traded/won the titles with Wanz and Tsuruta.
  23. PeteF3
    We've now about hit the point where American wrestling audiences have turned heel. Still probably the best Sid match ever, as this is all in all pretty good, as Shawn essentially wrestles a brick wall and Sid doesn't really fuck anything up. That said, IT'S BIZARRO WORLD MAGGLE! this crowd simply won't buy what HBK is selling, and if you lived through his uberpush in '96 you'd understand why, no matter how many times he brought it on PPV. I'm not even a Shawn fan at all, but he really did bust his ass in '96 to put on a bunch of memorable main events, and he busts his ass here--but he simply comes off as damaged goods and you do kind of have to shake your head at it. This was a smarky crowd by 1996 standards, and it's really difficult to imagine something like a smarky modern-day audience turning on a Dolph Ziggler in favor of Ryback or something. I'll point out something really minor that I really liked: Sid accidentally brushing the cameraman mid-way through the match. I thought that was a rare WWF production gaffe but once Sid decked the cameraman a second time at the finish, I realized that it was a very subtle planned spot.
  24. PeteF3
    I think Zenjo's final point is a sound one--this is *not* a Pat Patterson Special, or a Mick Foley Special, like the other high-end WWF matches of the year. It's a rough-and-tumble, meat-and-potatoes, three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust struggle. It's not something normally seen in a WWF setting, but it does certainly play to both men's strengths. The big highspots here, and the spots that get the loudest crowd responses, basically revolve around frenzied punching exchanges. Austin is still being pushed hard as a technical wrestler who knows submissions, an aspect of his character that would be almost completely forgotten in a few months, perhaps to his detriment. I don't have all that much else to add, but it's a fantastic match that makes you want to see more. It's a top-15-20 MOTYC, worldwide. That said...it's going to be hard to compare this to the other two candidates for WWF Match of the Year (Shawn/Diesel and Shawn/Mankind) because it is so different and they were setting out to accomplish something other than a thrilling PPV main event. If I had to vote now...I think my vote still goes with Mind Games. I'm sure that puts me in a minority, but that was pretty long on psychology itself in addition to some crazy and creative high spots.
  25. PeteF3
    An almost literally babyfaced Rocky Maivia does not yet have the pull to be abusing Kevin Kelly just yet. You really *can* see flashes of presence and charisma with this guy, but this cliched babyface material does him no favors.
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