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PeteF3

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  1. PeteF3
    But Dean works in this setting, because here he's an undersized guy trying to fight from underneath, giving this match a "hook" that goes beyond just being a mat-based spotfest. In fact he looks outclassed on the mat here, as Regal ties him in knots and throws him all over the ring, and Dean has to sneak out a victory. Really fun match--I'm not exactly a Dean fanboy myself but I could watch him and Regal wrestle for an hour.
  2. PeteF3
    "The Stalker..." Half-Skinner, half-Mike-Boyette-in-Memphis-as-Apocalypse. This is better than most gimmicks to have debuted in 1994 and '95 but still far from a good use of Windham.
  3. PeteF3
    Heartbreak: By Calvin Klein.
  4. PeteF3
    Yeah, this was well-done (and a fine interview by Mankind explaining his motivation for going after the title) but it was way too early to do this. There's no reason why they couldn't have saved this for Mind Games. Hell, maybe it would have taken some of the sting out of the DQ finish.
  5. PeteF3
    That blown spot was a very, very minor flaw exacerbated by Michaels' temper tantrum--otherwise, they covered for it very well. This was a REALLY good match with some annoying booking. They gave Vader three false finishes (if you count the visual fall off the power bomb) in an effort to keep him strong for rematches, since presumably he was still expected to take the belt at Survivor Series. Makes sense, but it seemed like too much. All that aside, the work here from both guys is fantastic--this is the closest WWF Vader has come to looking like his old killer self, as he destroys Shawn with some great clotheslines and other cut-off spots. Michaels' bumping is great as well--of course we all know he's a great bumper, but here the bumps really come across as putting over Vader's offense instead of HBK falling into his usual self-indulgent "look at me!" shtick. Not a GREAT match, but it could have been if they'd just gone 20-25 minutes straight. And this could well be Vader's high point in the WWF as a worker.
  6. PeteF3
    I don't think many people could get that good of a view of the big screen. It wasn't a late-'90s style TitanTron. They did react to the big spots, though, and I don't think it was canned. Yeah, this was enjoyable. Not really something with a lot of re-watch value, but it felt gritty and dirty and lowdown, in a way that the WWF rarely was. Mankind as per custom takes some truly loony bumps, and UT gets a nasty cut on his elbow that led to a staph infection--a very good reason not to do this type of match too often. Bearer turns heel as we all know. It's not nearly as impactful as the Hogan turn, but hey--they milked that relationship for 5 and a half years before pulling the trigger on a split. Afterward a Gregorian chant strikes up and some monks carry Undertaker out, in a segment that was almost forgotten about the very next night.
  7. PeteF3
    Liger's little shimmy brings to mind Mr. Wrestling Ii--maybe the first time that comparison has ever been made. Really fun match that's not at the level of the truly great MPro matches, but shows just how strong an "average" match of this type could be. This could well have gone longer--Hamada didn't really get a chance to do much.
  8. PeteF3
    Okay, if there's one GAEA match that should have made the Yearbook, I'd say this is it. Not only because it fucking ruled, but because all 8 women get lots of time to show what they do on offense, what they do when selling, and to a somewhat lesser extent get their personalities over. This was a relentless war--not as epic in scope as the legendary Dream Rush tag but the intensity of the match really is not that far off. Nagayo also is SOO channelling Tenryu here--a stoic, grumpy, almost contemptuous veteran leader who turns the tide every time she's in, just laying in some awesome kicks on people and suplexing the shit out of them as well. But there's also an overarching story of Oz Academy being a just plain better and more cohesive team than the babyfaces. Poor Hirota is making her TV debut here and Oz Academy just brutalize her, working over with double-teams, triple-teams, quadruple-teams, and some Kaientai-like abuse for the fun of it. The best moments for the babyfaces involve Nagayo kicking ass and Uematsu doing some fantastic high-flying--she's not Rey Jr. or Sasuke in terms of agility, but she's fantastic at using high-flying as a strategic weapon rather than doing crazy shit just to show off. The big babyface highlight appropriately involves those two: Nagayo and Uematsu do the old Quebecer assisted-flip-senton finisher, but with Uematsu standing on Nagayo's shoulders and Nagayo walking her over to the center of the ring to the opponent. Ozaki herself is spectacular--she may guzzle her opponents a little *too* much here, but she's Grumpy Jumbo with the grumpiness ramped up about 150%, and it's a treat to watch. Nagayo vs. Oz instantly seems like a major money match. I don't know if this quite a serious contender as a top-15/20 MOTY--the big negative is a VERY weak and sudden finish, when this match could have easily gone another 10 minutes. But it's definitely the GAEA MOTY for the first 8 months.
  9. PeteF3
    Man, I hate Konnan as much as anybody but I thought he was perfectly inoffensive here, and even contributed some downright good stuff. This was fun and I'm not sure I agree about there being nothing new here either--if nothing else, Juvy and Estrada gave us some pretty awesome double-teams. This may be helped by low expectations coming in but this was a very fun no-frills lucha tag without any of Konnan or Pena's booking bullshit.
  10. PeteF3
    The atmosphere and work is sort of a sad reflection of where UWFI was at this point in time--as much as I love both these guys, it just doesn't feel right seeing Irish whips and pinfall counts in a UWFI ring. And this is certainly a step down from the NJPW feud, but Choshu was just that effective at ruining them. That said, the match is pretty kickass and the highlight is Sano dropping Tenryu with a kick that may or may not have been below the belt. Tenryu certainly thought so, as he roars back and absolutely mauls Sano with awesome punches in the corner. Another fine match between Tenryu and an underdog with Genichiro getting over the peril he's in before winning. Afterward he abuses the UWFI ref just because.
  11. PeteF3
    I loved Schiavone recapping the early history of the Hogan-Flair feud. Tony was still good for this sort of thing at this point in time. I quite liked this, actually. There's one really awkward spot where Flair shoots Hulk into the corner and stops to WHOO--a standard Flair spot that inevitably sees him eating a clothesline. But Hogan stops short and they sort of fumble their way into another sequence--that's a stooge heel move and one of the two men realized it and decided not to go through with it. And then there's the Hulk-Up which I'm torn on...on one hand it is dumb for a heel to do that, but on the other, isn't it it a common complaint of fans how babyfaces always forget how they wrestle when they go bad? On some level it makes more sense if Hogan DOES keep Hulking Up. There's some promise here of a really, really good match between these two in these roles, and a promising post-match showdown as well.
  12. PeteF3
    I thought Hall and Nash singing the praises of SENIOR REFEREE Nick Patrick to be really funny. Hogan is great here, and Hall & Nash are fun in this casual environment for a wrestling promo. The 4th man is ostensibly here, but is told to stay off-camera.
  13. PeteF3
    Not as high on this as the others--it's decent, with a few neat spots already mentioned and some nods to history (which the WWF has been VERY good at for all of '96), but also slow at points. The IYH match was the best of this series, I think. Kudos to them for not settling for that weak superkick to the chest as the finish. Normally I hate re-doing spots but this is a case where that was the better option. We get a really good post-match with Vader annihilating Shawn in a rare instance of WWF Vader looking like a killer. Great cliffhanger ending as Raw goes off the air right as Vader, after already dropping multiple Vader Bombs, starts climbing to the top rope. This might be a bit over-the-top and Zeus-like, but I was always hoping for a pre-match spot where Shawn hit Vader with the Sweet Chin Music and Vader would no-sell it, or at least not go down.
  14. PeteF3
    I'm...not sure what that last line means.
  15. PeteF3
    Sunny laments having to share the Bikini Beach Blast-Off with other women--Lawler invites her to sit on his throne, as long as she doesn't get his lap wet. Yowza. Sad music plays as we recap Ahmed Johnson's ruptured kidney and his ill-fated #1 contenders' battle royal win.
  16. PeteF3
    Okay from what we see, but yeah--the Giant's Hulk-Up would have had about 900% more impact in front of a more in-tune audience. Here the bikers have no idea that Hogan's supposed to be a heel, and the reaction to the post-match ranges from celebratory to pure confusion when he beats up the Booty Man. Hogan is terrific here, but the huge flaws in the Hog/Road Wild concept are apparent.
  17. PeteF3
    Nick's over-the-top selling after the match is pretty funny. I look forward to seeing Evil Nick Patrick. The action we see is pretty good and heated. Heenan sounds completely sloshed at this point, and even starts cheering for Hall for God knows what reason.
  18. PeteF3
    Why does there "have to be" a winner, anyway? Anyway, yeah, these two wrestle in a vacuum as they're wont to do, and they don't even respond to the time calls well. The crowd seemed generally polite until the announcement of the overtime period, even though nothing much of consequence was happening. Now, I wouldn't call this a "spotfest" necessarily, because these two are so fundamentally sound that the transitions all work. But nothing is sold long-term and there's no real story going on, at least until Benoit targets Malenko's knee in the first OT. Heenan was also actively annoying me, playing the "he got him!" gag way past the point of staleness and declaring that Malenko would "never give up" in the Texas cloverleaf. All this for a super-cheap finish, too. Underwhelming stuff.
  19. PeteF3
    I love the build to this feud and the build to the Clash main event. It's one of the better Clash main event builds ever, in fact, which is doubly shocking considering the chaotic week-to-week environment we're in. Flair even tosses some shoot comments into this, referring to "characters," which was weird, but this was still an awesome piece.
  20. PeteF3
    So, the running themes in wrestling for 1996 were: takeover angles, shocking heel turns, and fights in bodies of water. Got it. Pretty good match, though these ladies have had better. The counters and re-counters at the end surrounding the Splash Mountain were awesome. The pattern of heatless joshi matches--in AJW as well as JWP--continues.
  21. PeteF3
    This was glorious in its stupidity. Even Styles was amusing here.
  22. PeteF3
    Definitely the best G1 since '91, and the most wide-open tournament since then. Great old vs. new vibe here with Fujinami in Choshu's corner, and the old dog managing to pull out the win really feels earned, as opposed to a booker jacking off.
  23. PeteF3
    Good match with two guys who know how to milk every moment for maximum drama. There maybe a little TOO much milking of stuff here, leading to some downtime and repeated spots, but it was a dramatic match that had me thinking of a time limit draw before Chono pulled out a win.
  24. PeteF3
    More of the same as Muto-Koshinaka, though Kojima doesn't really have Muto's star power or flair for the dramatic, at least not yet. Still very heated, though. Another fun finishing stretch and ending, too.
  25. PeteF3
    The final destruction of Brutus Beefcake as a relevant player in wrestling, and a glorious destruction it is. I love the Horsemen laying stomps down on Beefcake in the background of Arn cutting his awesome promo. A full-blown war between the Horsemen and NWO is on, and it sounds like the most awesome thing ever even if it doesn't really turn out that way.
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