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PeteF3

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Everything posted by PeteF3

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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."
  8. PeteF3
    Maybe point #1 is a bit of a stretch, but that sounds like Killer Khan.
  9. 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.
  10. 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.
  11. 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.
  12. 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.
  13. 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.
  14. 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.
  15. PeteF3
    Lance Russell did at least acknowledge that Bockwinkel and Martel had traded/won the titles with Wanz and Tsuruta.
  16. 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.
  17. 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.
  18. 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.
  19. PeteF3
    Even though he made a big name for himself there, seeing bearded hippie Jimmy Valiant in a WWF setting now is weird. SHANE O'MAC gets what's probably his first speaking appearance on WWF TV, inducting his grandfather.
  20. PeteF3
    "...and when I go, I want each and every one of you to know, I'm not gonna miss not a ONE o' you muthafuckas!" Legitimately one of my favorite wrestling quotes ever. Yeah, this was fun, and Scorpio plays this crowd like a violin.
  21. PeteF3
    Man, I was disappointed with this. You can give these guys some points for creativity, but some spots like the big four-way clusterfuck at the very end were just too cute and contrived for their own good. And unlike Loss I am SO over the "five more minutes" gimmick. It sticks out even more in ECW which rarely seems to pay attention to time limits anyway. And it sticks out when the crowd is two steps ahead of the bookers, since they were calling for the Three-Way Dance after the first bell. And why not? I don't see how anyone could have bought that this match was going to decide a winner once the first time limit expired. On the plus side, Sabu continues to impress me with how he builds up to table breakage, as he and Saturn work a really fun suplex-reversal sequence on the apron that ends with a tornado DDT through the table--this after his first attempt, as per custom now, gets cu off. And Sabu diving to the floor and smashing his jaw on the guardrail was the OWWWW moment of the night. Still, not really a good match, by ECW standards or otherwise.
  22. PeteF3

    Dan Kroffat

    PeteF3 replied to Grimmas's topic in Nominees

    Crazy how we're criticizing Vince for *dumping* a wrestler's gimmick name in favor of his real name. (Not that you don't raise a perfectly good point--Rocker Mike Hickenbottom wouldn't work either. I just find it amusing.) I didn't remember them billing him from Paris, either. The Can-Ams were better as heels but the WWF couldn't really do that with them in late '96, because Bulldog & Owen were already around and had virtually the same dynamic. And even if they weren't as good, they were far more known and established. Meanwhile WCW was killing off its tag division. With hindsight being 20/20 they may have been better off making the jump a year earlier, but AJPW was a pretty good gig to be giving up.
  23. PeteF3
    The team would have been fine, but I don't get why you'd break up the Rockers, give Shawn a gimmick makeover, and immediately throw him back into a tag team.
  24. PeteF3
    Good match and Ace was AWESOME here. Just so much intensity and velocity to everything he did. Jun wrestles virtually the whole way, as again he's a target of abuse but still gets some moments to shine, thanks to Misawa knowing when to pick and choose his spots to showcase himself. What a great breakout year Akiyama has had. This really picks up when Misawa eats the backdrop driver, but he has enough to come back and attain a moral victory for his team by he and Jun going the distance. I have to confess I missed the pre-match graphic and thought this was a tag title match with a 60-minute time limit, so the final bell got to me. I knew they were going long, but I'll always appreciate it when a time limit draw happens that I don't see coming.
  25. PeteF3
    Pretty much a total stuntshow, but the stunts were well-done. Don't go into this expecting depth, but it's a fun little sprint. TAKA had quite the interesting 1996, as he seemingly worked every indy promotion on the planet against myriad types of opponents, including Kanemura (evidently, according to this thread) and a BattlArts match with Minoru Tanaka. Sort of a junior Tenryu.
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