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PeteF3

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  1. PeteF3
    Having never seen this before, I found this quite good and maybe the Undertaker's career performance to this point. He busts out all kinds of new shit, like the Lucha Undertaker dive off the turnbuckle, and busting out a small package on the burial plot which was pretty awesome. Mankind takes one absolutely sick backwards bump into the barricade but mostly tones down the masturbatory Foley bullshit. The constant going from the ring to the grave and back was a little contrived, but you do have to make story concessions to please the live audience sometimes. They do manage to work some credible "near falls" with the burying before Undertaker finally gets the win. Earl Hebner and Mike Chioda end up taking two of the biggest bumps of the night after the match. Executioner debuts with a great shovel shot and then UT gets buried, which even with a bunch of other heels helping out goes on way too long, though the closing image is an effective one. On a side note, seeing the old-school Coliseum Video column logo here was jarring, since I so closely associate it with the '80s.
  2. PeteF3
    Eh, at least the JR stuff stopped around when Perfect came out. Nice subtle foreshadowing of what was to come, as Perfect "accidentally" helps give HHH the advantage by getting into it with Austin (they'd had a previous blow-up on Superstars). I don't get HHH passing up the Pedigree to chase after Perfect, though, considering the endgame of this angle. But anyway, this is a nice match that overcomes the weird heel-heel dynamic and a crowd that didn't quite know what to make of it, as Austin hadn't quite engineered his cult following yet.
  3. PeteF3
    One of those matches that defies a star rating but that everyone should probably see once, just because it's so different. I loved Muta's misadventures trying to set up the table on end outside the ring, before deciding "fuck it" and just chucking it at Liger. This is a total sportz-entertainment match with New Japan-level work and layout, and somehow it all works even if sounds silly when described.
  4. PeteF3
    Pretty good match but one of the lesser MPro 6-mans. The Togo/Sasuke brawl was a different wrinkle, and I liked Togo not being able to knock Sasuke through the first set of doors, so he drags him over to another set elsewhere in the arena and throws him through those instead.
  5. PeteF3
    Mikey looks great here and Shane looks pretty good, though he messed up that baseball slide attempt something awful. I am digging his breaker of necks gimmick, though.
  6. PeteF3
    I'm closer to Tim on this, though I think I liked this more than their first draw. I liked both matches, actually, and yet I'd rather go to the dentist than watch either one of them again. Kawada hitting the backdrop driver in the opening minute or two kept this from being too excessively telegraphed as it immediately put Kobashi on the defensive, where he works best. He does do a great job of taking apart Kawada's knee, and we all know Toshiaki knows how to sell that, too. This is more of a match to admire than to love, as they had a good idea for what they wanted to do and how to enhance each guy's strengths over the course of an hour--it just didn't quite come together.
  7. PeteF3
    I dunno, I think I'm okay with Cactus being a martyr and saving the Vader loss for Starrcade. I do highly, highly disagree with the cheap-shit way they had Vader win, which helped nobody. Either make Vader look like a truly unstoppable killer, or do the HHH/Jericho "Vader beats the count by 1 second" finish, or have Cactus Jack repeatedly get up until he finally can't. Any of those options would have been better than a Taser to the leg.
  8. PeteF3
    Not to complain about things no one can control, 5 years after the fact, but this is one of the bigger misses of the '96 Yearbook and one ECW segment that absolutely should have been on, at the expense of one of the more superfluous Pulp Fictions or something. Shane bumps around like a pinball before dropping Pit Bull with a swinging neckbreaker and a piledriver, as Francine implores him to "break his neck just like you did to Gary!" Francine as a trashy Jersey shore bitch is more fun than I remembered. Pit Bull gets his hands on her and makes her beg before dropping her with a powerslam...which may have had some impact if she hadn't eaten a fucking Superbomb the same day she turned on them. Douglas blinds Pit Bull with powder and he does one of the most comically bad sell jobs of blindness you'll ever see, before getting dropped with the single-arm DDT and strangled with the dog collar. The match itself is pretty much nothing, but of course that's not the story. With the referee having been taken out by the blinded #2, a haloed Gary Wolfe at ringside takes it upon himself to try to stop Douglas' assault. Douglas responds by grabbing him by the protective halo, shaking it, and throwing him to the mat. Everyone in the ECW Arena who had been sitting down suddenly vaults to their feet and there's a palpable hush and state of disbelief over the crowd, who can't even think of a clever chant in response. Tod Gordon, Paul E., the referees, the undercarders, and Joey Styles immediately hit the ring and somebody even hops the barricade, prompting a response from the security guard we've all seen. Douglas is escorted out of the arena, possibly for his own legitimate safety. In a clever touch, the Eliminators and Taz are seen backstage and they actually approve of Douglas' actions--a nice little add-on to keep this from being too excessively shooty-shoot. Joel Gertner has the audacity to bother announcing that Douglas is still the champion, earning him a punch from Tod Gordon and another fun chaotic scene. After that breaks up, Gertner tries the announcement AGAIN, and this time it's Paul E. who tackles him. We go off air with the shot of an ambulance heading away from the Arena. One of the best ECW segments since Fonzie at his peak, or the Sandman blindness angle. Like the Sandman angle this played upon real emotions and the belief that what this crowd was seeing was real--the Wolfe injury was 100% shoot and the crowd all knew it. The only thing they didn't know was what he was still wearing the halo even though he only needed it for 6 weeks. It sort of pales in comparison to the work Hollywood Hogan is doing, but Douglas at long last is developing into the type of killer heel befitting his reputation among hardcores, instead of an annoyance only good for overlong promos.
  9. PeteF3
    Yeah, the Liz stuff makes more sense now, but I don't think Bischoff or Schiavone were ever able to spell out what was happening for the viewers--probably because of that trademark lack of quality control. For once, we needed Vince around to drive the storyline into our heads. The Nasty Boys make the mistake of wearing NWO colors before their contracts are finalized, which leads to them getting punked out and pretty much ended as a relevant force in wrestling. Hogan is SUCH a despicable creep here, playing on his past with Savage and basically promising to bone Liz.
  10. PeteF3
    Hard to get too thrilled about Dubba J vs. the Giant. This Memphis crowd doesn't seem too thrilled with him at all--and for Christ's sake, he was a heel when he was last in the USWA, so why should they be?
  11. PeteF3
    As usual, Liz is about ten million times better in a pre-taped format than a live setting. Good angle but they were really starting to play with fire with live audiences at this point, sometimes neglecting them entirely in favor of the TV audience, particularly since they didn't have a video wall yet. I guess it didn't matter at the time.
  12. PeteF3
    That great WCW internal communication strikes again. No way would we want to hype Nitro with a guy who's actually active.
  13. PeteF3
    "WHAT A WAY TO CELEBRATE COLUMBUS DAY!" was almost as laughable as the "biggest match in Raw history" blather. This is a mess--Austin and Shawn are working hard, but more attention is paid to the Vader/Cornette interview (with a great talker in Vader once again not saying anything), the Sid interview, Kelly and Ross talking about the Cardinals/Braves NLCS in a "this isn't four weeks in the can, really!" moment, the quick Vader run-in, Razor and Diesel (???) watching from the aisle...absolutely nothing is given time to breathe here, and Austin and Vader look pretty weak and ineffective in the post-match.
  14. PeteF3
    Undertaker actually PUTS SOMEONE OVER in a promo. One of his better ones, in fact.
  15. PeteF3
    Mankind looks even creepier with scraggly rain-soaked hair.
  16. PeteF3
    I was mostly underwhelmed by this, though this turns into a good match thanks to a hot closing stretch and a satisfying ending with Inoue picking up a huge win. Before the home stretch, this may as well have been a four corners match for how little continuity there was between each team, as evidenced by the absolutely eye-rolling triple sleeper. I don't want to say these four women took it easy for the night, but this was clearly worked at a step or three behind their usual pace. And, surprise surprise, it's a 1996 joshi match with heat so mostly nonexistent that it has to be acknowledged. Pretty good match but there are myriad better performances from all four of these ladies you can find elsewhere.
  17. PeteF3
    I didn't have a clue how this was going to end up when I first saw these 8 people in one match, but it ended up being a load of fun. There were probably 6 or 7 spots that would have made Bill Watts see red, but in this context they worked. Even the tired arm-pump spot led somewhere, as Delfin's female teammates initially turned on him, only for it to be a set-up on Sasuke & Tiger Mask. Great build to the initial female-vs.-male showdown as well--and other than a trip and Delfin bodyslamming Fukuoka, the man-on-woman violence is minimal, whereas the woman-on-man violence is abundant. One of the better hidden gems of any Yearbook--the old comedy spots looked fresh in a new setting and there was some new stuff to go with the Lucharesu's Greatest Hits match layout.
  18. PeteF3
    I don't want to sell Patriot too short--his offense looked pretty good and I think he's a guy who tends to come off as too light for AJPW. Really liked his and Doc's struggle for him to apply the full nelson slam towards the end, too. Still, I think we can all agree that Kobashi was the best guy of the 4 at drawing sympathy...even if one could question a Triple Crown champion working that way.
  19. PeteF3
    Slow start to this--not the usual Doc/Gordy/Ace kind of slow with a lot of laying in holds. Just deliberate. And there's good stuff to be found, like the little football tackle dick-waving contest between Doc and Patriot. This picks up and turns into a hell of a match, with a closing stretch that wouldn't be totally out of place among the great early-'90s All-Japan tags. Kobashi works as sort of the juniory, in-peril member of the team, which I could see being a source of criticism, but...well, that's what Kobashi does. And while Patriot is fine, he's best served as an apron cheerleader who just comes in to hit his big spots. There's lots of neat counter-wrestling in between all the big bombs and some cool double-teams. It's probably too long to have been included on a pretty loaded Yearbook in full but this is probably the best AJPW match not to make the cut.
  20. PeteF3
    Yeah, apropos of the "carrying" discussion in the main section...some might want to say that applied here, but I dunno. I suppose Kikuchi could get credit for "holding this together" but RVD seems like the more dynamic worker and he's the more over guy in the match, at least by the closing stretch. He hits most of what he does with a minimum of RVD sloppiness and meandering, and what sloppiness is there is covered for nicely. This had a slow start punctuated by RVD's unique moves, with a pretty hot finishing stretch where Kikuchi steps his game up some even though he's clearly far from what he once was in terms of energy and speed. I find it amazing and more than a bit scary that he was a full-timer in NOAH for another 14 years after this.
  21. PeteF3
    I wouldn't want Muto to be like this all the time, but in occasional doses against the right opponent it works perfectly. Muta even gets to show the value of an American learning excursion, with his interactions with the referee when it comes to his foreign object usage. Tenryu really makes this with his incredible punches and comeback.
  22. PeteF3
    I also read in a circa-'96 Observer that Casas at Arena Mexico was like Flair in the Carolinas--wildly cheered, regardless of his "official" alignment.
  23. PeteF3
    The real October Giants: Also, on a more productive note for Parv: Dory & Kikuchi vs. Taue & Akiyama.
  24. PeteF3
    Hat tip to Dylan for pimping this on Twitter. I'm going to have to re-evaluate the Satanico/Pirata Morgan match from 11/26--I had that as the #9 Match of the Year worldwide and the top-ranking lucha match, and I think this compares favorably. This is every bit of the war you'd want to see between these two--I don't know if both are rudos (though Casas is the crowd favorite) but it doesn't much matter. Both guys happily beat the living shit out of the other and both guys provide some great sympathetic selling. Each fall gets time to breathe, and Casas is absolutely unreal working both on top and underneath. He takes an awesome bump over like 3 rows of ringside seats, and his kicks and comebacks are out of this world great. This is about as stiff and high-impact as lucha gets, and I think works great as a match to watch for people who aren't into lucha. The third fall also has a great running story of who can make their high-risk move attempt pay off first, like a lucha title match. Both guys miss at first and you know it's going to come down to who can be the first to hit their top-rope move. Even some really great lucha matches don't always have three good finishes for each fall, but here each fall works.
  25. PeteF3
    Vince's almost never-seen half-brother was supposed to be at that show, too. Since I'm approaching that time period in my Yearbook-viewing, i regret that Baba either never could close or try to close a deal to bring Nobuhiko Takada into AJPW in late '96, a move that would have given the promotion a needed shot in the arm. I'm not sure just how good Takada vs. Misawa or Kobashi would actually be, but they'd be big money matches and he and Kawada could have brought the Budokan house down.
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