PeteF3
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Everything posted by PeteF3
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Nash stumbles his way through a promo and blows a line about Mark Fuhrman at the Apollo Theater, but at least gets his point across: Hogan will be here next week. Hall is actually more lucid.
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Great chaotic scene as the Outsiders emerge from a limo and try to confront Sting and Arn, who put their match on hold to stand guard. But Arn is still Arn and attempts to cheap-shot Sting during the confrontation, but Sting's ready for that. Sting cuts the promo of his life afterward, drawing on things Hulk said in the early days of Nitro as well as throwing a few quasi-shoot references to Hogan's movie and travel accommodations. Savage's promo isn't nearly as good--it's amusing in its own right but the tone is completely off as compared to Sting and the general downcast mood of Nitro the entire night.
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Really good sprint but I don't agree that "everything" hit cleanly, as there were at least 3 really awkward spots--though to their credit, they did cover for all of them well. With them sprinting for TV purposes, Dean doesn't get as much of a chance to ground Misterio, and also gives Rey an opening from the start to flash some of his stuff before taking over. Not really as good as GAB, but again--booking and card placement and all that matter, and this was an improvement in that regard. The Cruiserweight division has finally arrived.
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Post-produced angle since they obviously couldn't get a live crowd for this. Shawn and Ahmed unveil Sycho Sid as their replacement. Not a downgrade by any means, but yeah, the taping of Raw for weeks at a time was never more glaringly flawed in this new business environment than it was here.
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They had taped a Warrior run-in or angle for the 7/15 Raw to follow up on this, but obviously it never aired. Warrior gives Owen a lot here, but when he makes his comeback he looks clumsy and tepid even by his low standards. Somehow he's deteriorated further from 1992. Surprisingly low on heat, too. Cornette, Vader and Bulldog beat the crap out of him to end this with a very good heel beatdown. I can't totally fault WWF for giving it another go-round with the Warrior--the Monday Night War had brought back a lot of lapsed fans and it wasn't inconceivable that they could have gotten the Jake Roberts lightning to strike twice but on a bigger scale. But the odds were probably against this working out from the start.
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Monsoon leaves open the possibility of a Warrior return, but this is effectively it for him and the company.
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Very nationalistic crowd to start with, with a big "ME-XI-CO" chant, but Casas eventually seems to turn the crowd against him as this goes on. I hesitate to keep beating the phrase "meat and potatoes" to death and use it for any match in 1996 where a limb gets worked for 3 consecutive seconds, but that's the phrase that comes to mind here. Until the finishes, the first 2 falls are entirely mat-based and the third is about half matwork and a quarter apiece flying and shtick. There's not much overly advanced here but Casas continues to be a master worker--every time he gets near Tiger Mask in Sasuke's corner he pratfalls, framing TM for tripping or hitting him, and then takes the opportunity to low blow Sasuke or commit some other rudo act. That nets him the second fall and gains him an advantage in the third. Sasuke does his big spots well and holds his own in working holds, but he is showing a pretty consistent tendency to completely blow off the limb work so he can get his flying spots in, and it's as bad as ever here. This is still a very good match overall, sort of a lesser man's Malenko vs. Rey in terms of high-end technical stuff, but more smartly booked.
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Very southern tag layout here, just with more advanced moves. Sasuke & Delfin make for terrific underneath babyfaces to go along with the flashy offense, and Kaientai of course make for great evil opponents. I suspect the Shield and their opponents may have studied these matches as there are a lot of similar spots. Sasuke takes a crazy kneebreaker off a stage through a table that effectively removes him from the match, but Delfin is able to keep you guessing almost until the end whether or not he can pull off a 1-on-3 miracle. Another super-fun match from MPro combining high-end '90s offense with terrific character work. -
I think that whole thing was planned out, and this was a fancy way of doing a quick "Curt Hennig->Mr. Perfect" transition. Piper's quick "nevermind" had to have been a direct reference to the Emily Litella character on SNL. I doubt Vince gave two shits what the magazines were printing.
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[1990-09-01-USWA-Memphis TV] Interview: Eddie Gilbert
PeteF3 replied to Loss's topic in September 1990
I would say the correct answer would be "find another angle to book that doesn't potentially involve the police." -
There's not much I can say about this--and I tired of the "Who's side is he on?" debate a long time ago. Everything about that line has been said and no one's mind is changing. The match is better than I remembered, but how can you even remember the match itself for anything other than the ending? Heat is through the roof throughout, and climaxes with Hogan's fateful legdrop. Hogan follows up with one of the promos of his career, as he takes every bit of trademark Hogan self-aggrandizement, and frustration over the past 2 years of hostile crowds, and purposely turns it up to 11. For the first time in 6 years, Hulk is interesting again.
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Shitty match with Konnan attempting a bunch of stuff that's way out of his league. An even greater insult: this clip eliminates the match's lone highlight, which is Woman booting a 60-yard field goal into Konnan's groin.
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This was really good and dare I say it, did more to get Malenko over than the Rey match the previous month. It's not as overall good as that match, but this made for a really fun story based around the huge contrast in personalities, with Dean being outright insulted at having to share the ring with this goof and showing his aggression as a result. Disco does some great bumping and selling while Dean is beating the shit out of him and times his hope spots well. Maybe the high watermark for Disco's in-ring career.
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They really should have swapped cruiserweight matches between the two Bashes--run Rey vs. Psicosis at GAB and Rey vs. Dean here. This is an outstanding intro for both Rey and Psicosis--they've had better matches against each other but this has plenty of spots that get both men over huge and plenty of *new* spots at that, with about 3 or 4 new huracanrana variations by Rey not seen before.
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Another "perspectives" thing--some of the stuff Loss jumps on is stuff that I'm sure he'd be used to watching from the start of the decade. Hell, Bull Nakano did a far more egregious no-sell of those kendo stick shots in 1990 which was a spot that a lot of other people loved but I hated--and that criticism comes up here, for a spot that didn't really bother me in this case. There are other issues with joshi far more prevalent than things like that. Anyway, I thought this was awesome, a real throwback to the JWP stuff of 1990-91 that I loved. Kansai is utterly dominant, but they at least carry that psychology throughout the match with Suzuki being a weak link and Fukuoka/Kaoru only getting in occasional hope spots when Kansai is in. But effective hope spots they are--Fukuoka's somersault dropkick was awesome and Kaoru gets a good near-fall by countering the Splash Mountain. Cutie still works lighter than a typical WWE Diva but she's sort of inherited Hasegawa's role as joshi's premiere person-in-peril. Kaoru & Fukuoka kept me in suspense as to what the final result would be throughout even though they looked overmatched for most of this, which is pretty much the quintessential definition of a good wrestling match. I'm with Zenjo--this was a joy.
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Raven's back at the playground complaining about his parents. No, wait, it's about Sandman & Peaches. They definitely do an effective job of making Tyler look like one creepy kid.
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Crazy chaotic scene as the Bash at the Beach build continues. Even the meandering after Hall & Nash are thrown out adds to the atmosphere, as it feels like the entire format has been thrown into upheaval.
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Good match with some neat twists down a long finishing stretch, as each guy has a counter to each other's familiar spots. Shawn sells a lot for a top guy wrestling an underneath tag guy but they make it make sense, with the fact that Jannetty knows Shawn as well as anyone.
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Sunny's demeanor change once she gets Phineas to close his eyes is awesome. She dresses down PIG publicly as the Smoking Gunns yuk it up in the background, before the beatdown is on. Henry and Hillbilly Jim make the save and Phineas gets his revenge. Man did I hate the Godwinns at the time and this is a very '80s presentation, but there's no question this is a well-executed angle right out of the Cornette playbook.
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I really liked the hard-hitting matwork of the first fall, with Wagner working like a 1970's babyface constantly going back to the headlock. It was shaping up to be a sleeper match of the year or at least a lucha match of the year, but Loss' point about dragging is well-taken. Particularly in the second fall, and in the third fall there are a ton of near-falls but it almost reaches the point of being overdone. Still, there was more good than bad here--Garza looked terrific and like a guy on the way to being a big star in Mexico and what probably should have been at least a decent-sized star in the U.S. I think he would have brought more to the table in-ring than a guy like Chavo Guerrero, Jr.
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Yeah, Casas is the clear MVP of this match, though everyone looks good. He and Dandy have an absolutely fantastic Memphis-style showdown of punch exchanges, and Casas is just an unbelievable dick all throughout. He even takes time to seek out a camera to whine into about getting fouled. Dandy is awesome too and the clear technico MVP, having that suicidal dive and throwing some awesome kicks--as versatile as Dandy is, and he may be the most versatile wrestler who ever lived, I still never really thought of him as a great striker until now. A terrific bout overall.
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[1996-04-09-AJW-Champions] Aja Kong & Mima Shimoda vs Manami Toyota & Kaoru Ito
PeteF3 replied to Loss's topic in April 1996
If I skipped this it wasn't by design--the only matches I've done that with are the '92 Rumble (have it practically memorized), Hansen-Vader (can't watch the eye thing), the Toyota-Inoue draw, and the last part of the last Mr. Pogo 6-man. That said, I don't have any recollection of this match either way, though it's more likely I wrote up a post and it got lost in the figurative ether. -
I'm with this. He isn't actively ruining threads, it's the people constantly jumping on him who are. And maybe we should let the mods do the moderating.
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::raises hand::
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Another sort of weird thing is that even in the early '70s, some guys like Abe Ginsberg are busting out power bombs--but they're treated more as takedowns or roll-ups than deadly moves, a la the old "Greco-Roman front body drop" as Lou Thesz called it.