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PeteF3

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Everything posted by PeteF3

  1. PeteF3
    We get a helpful disclaimer for this one, informing us that all of the quotes from Turner are, in fact, real. A couple of ill-advised out-of-context statements and an off-color but clearly meant-to-be-humorous joke about women are read out as if any wrestling fan would give a shit. The bit with the Huckster was good, though, same with Nacho Man going down to a woman's shoe.
  2. PeteF3
    Some motivation for the Mankind character in this one, as he promises to lash out at mankind for disfiguring him.
  3. PeteF3
    Goldust makes double-entendres about Piper's "size" and describes in detail having an orgasm at the Jimmy Snuka coconut attack. Holy shit, this was even more over-the-top than I remembered. He also plays the bagpipes and there's an edit when it appears that he was about to do something obscene with the blowpipe.
  4. PeteF3
    Another Clique special, as these two work together well to put on a hot TV match, with Shawn putting Kid over pretty big even though Kid's just about gone from the company. Kid gets in some brutal-looking spin kicks, and the way he can come off as a dominant heel at his size continues to impress, 6 years after the Jerry Lynn series.
  5. PeteF3
    I liked this better than a number of other Flair/Sting bouts, though I still like the babyface-babyface '94 WCWSN title match and the first Nitro match more. This was slower-paced and while we got the usual Sting no-selling-chops/popping-up-from-suplexes bits that we always get in this matchup, Sting's Hulk-Ups felt a little more organic, for whatever reason. Shit finish that makes both Sting and Luger look like total idiots. There had to be a better way for Luger to cost Sting the match than that. Also, WCWSN is back on the road for the first time in forever. Thank God, as Center Stage was one of my least favorite weekly venues.
  6. PeteF3
    Albright is a man ahead of his time, coming out to "Voodoo Child." No air guitar, though. Definitely a match of value if just to see the other AJPW types work with Gary and compare them to what Kawada did in October. This is decent but not nearly as good--the opening is a total waste as Misawa doesn't seem to know how to really work Albright's style of opening mat-wrestling, so we get a lot of lock-ups, stalemates, and resets that's broken up when Albright unleashes a German suplex. Gary locks on a cross armbreaker on Misawa's rolling elbow arm and doesn't break when Misawa's in the ropes, providing an opening for another psychological road to go down, but they don't follow up on it aside from Misawa paying Albright back by doing the same thing. I can't really call this a spotfest--there's some token psychology involving Albright constantly going for a dragon suplex and Misawa constantly foiling it--but there isn't a ton of substance outside of the big suplexes. Albright does take a great flying bump off Misawa's rolling elbow at the finish, and overall I think he was as good or better of a worker in this match than Mitsuharu. Not a bad effort, but unless Gary was going to work Kawada every match, this is strong evidence that he wasn't going to be a great fit for the company.
  7. PeteF3
    The story going into this was that a.) in an earlier 6-man, Akiyama had dropped Kawada with a Northern Lights bomb and "knocked him out," with Kawada doing a rare stretcher job after missing the rest of the match, and b.) in a later 6-man, Akiyama got a pin on Taue for his first victory over a top-level guy, and Baba had declared that the Big Four were now a Big Five. At the start this is all about the Holy Demon Army trying to put this upstart Jun in his place, and Jun not going along with it. Taue and Kawada do as much as they can to grind him into the mat, and he keeps bouncing back up. And when they try to unleash their big bombs, he has counters for them. Unfortunately Kobashi, upon tagging in, actually drags this down a bit. There's some token psychology with Kobashi apparently having a bad leg, but for the first time in his career Kenta actually brings down the energy of a match. Things pick up again when Jun tags Kawada with a hard slap from the ring apron after Kawada slaps him, tags in, and goes nuts with Exploders. Kobashi then starts pulling his weight as a force from the outside making saves and setting up double-teams with Jun, but in the end Akiyama is double-teamed, Kobashi neutralized, and Taue gets his win back. This was non-title, but being as Taue & Kawada were the tag champs it wouldn't make a ton of sense to job them in their first big match after winning the belts. I have a feeling that I may say this a lot, but this felt like a star-making performance by Jun. For the first time in a big AJPW tag he felt like the best worker in the match.
  8. PeteF3
    Much slower-paced than their usual bout, with a bigger emphasis on crowd-pleasing spots. This felt like a WWF house show version of their match--not that there weren't some fine spots here, but a lot of it is stuff we've seen before. Kevin has that stuff with Rey doing feints while Psicosis is on the chair outside dead-on--no idea what that was supposed to accomplish. Psicosis blocking a Rey tope with a chair was a highlight, and I thought the finish was pretty great. Psicosis gets Rey to give the referee a flying headscissors (they make it work, trust me) then low blows him while the ref is out of the ring to steal a win, bringing his record against Rey up to 1-459.
  9. PeteF3
    I don't hate Koshinaka the way I once did but this is a revival of an '80s series that made the NJPW '80s set a real chore to sit through at points. Here, the burial of UWFI continues as now even on a UWFI show they can't use actual UWFI rules or the style, as Kosh fills this with pin attempts, ass attacks, and rope-running. He drops Takada with a brainbuster and stands there while Takada's out, but no ten-count follows. Meanwhile Takada spends the majority of this match laying around trying to exert himself as little as possible. He does make a fired-up comeback and drops Koshinaka with a bunch of kicks and...oh, now we're doing ten-counts. Yay consistency. Takada slaps on a cross armbreaker and Koshinaka does the worst sell-job of the move I have ever seen, making absolutely no effort to get out, go to the ropes, or even act like he's in pain. He literally just lies there as though Takada's got a chinlock on him on a WWF house show undercard match. Eventually he submits, but he completely kills the hold in the process, which for all I know was exactly what he was told to do. I don't know what I was watching in comparison to everyone else, including the live crowd, but I thought this was total fucking horseshit. I've liked '90s Koshinaka as a guy who can bring hate and energy and make mid-card matches feel "big," but crowd reactions aside he does nothing like that here. Takada turns in a performance that actually manages to top the Mutoh matches for sheer laziness and lack of effort. I don't know if he was demoralized about the state of the promotion or what but it sure didn't make for entertaining viewing. Objectively I don't see how Warrior vs. Goldust or the Doomsday Cage Match can be topped for Worst Match of the Year, but this is absolutely a legitimate candidate for that honor--bad matches with good (or decent) workers are worse than bad matches with shitty workers. Throw in the continued spiteful, self-defeating booking and this makes for possibly the most overrated feud of the decade.
  10. PeteF3
    Back to the spirit of the first War Room skits, with some more on-the-nose jokes about WCW booking and Hulk AstroTurfing, with some staggeringly unnecessary poopy sound effects. And the whining about how the WWF "made" Hogan and Savage stars is pretty pathetic, but this is a little bit better than the past few segments. Were they insinuating that Larry King was boffing Jane Fonda?
  11. PeteF3
    God, with Vince out of the booth even Lawler has to gush about the reaction Shawn's getting, though he tries to play it off in that Bobby Heenan "make fun of a guy and put him over at the same time" manner. Shawn and Bret play mutual admiration, with the crowd not exactly thrilled with Bret. This is a typical WWF babyface vs. babyface yawner of a segment until Piper comes out and injects some passion and energy into things. I liked Piper shitting on the idea of Shawn showing off his abs as proof of great condition. He doesn't want a DQ or a copout finish or a fluke, so he makes it an Ironman Match.
  12. PeteF3
    Going for a Norman Bates-meets-Hannibal-Lecter-meets-Willard vibe here, and effectively so.
  13. PeteF3
    A bunch of kids who would have been about 3 when Warrior was last on WWF TV beg for President Piper to bring the Warrior back.
  14. PeteF3
    Sunny blew Sable out of the water in every conceivable except apparently Vince McMahon's tastes. Way, way hotter on top of being a better overall performer.
  15. PeteF3
    What a goddamned war. Anjo and Takayama come out in Super Strong Machine masks just to be dicks. At the same time, these four completely abandon any pretense of "shootstyle" while ramping up the shootstyle factor...but this time in the Lawler/Snowman sense, instead of the MMA sense. Hash absolutely beats the shit out of the UWFI guys with some of the stiffest slaps and chops you'll ever see, as this builds into a solid formula tag match on top of all the chaotic brawling and hatred.
  16. PeteF3
    This was enjoyable enough, but a really, really dead crowd didn't help at all. They finally woke up a little when Sammy and Tiger went to town on Otani's knee and Otani was selling it like the Confederate soldier in Gone with the Wind getting his leg amputated, and again at the finish. A little unexpected that Otani would go from being in control to going down to one big move, as it's sort of an American-style finish rather than a Japanese one that's usually more drawn-out, but the Samurai Bomb that won the fall looked pretty great and devastating.
  17. PeteF3
    A very dapper Bill Dundee is back out to explain where he's been over the past few months, and we get an incredible shoot angle, complete with Dave Meltzer's name being dropped on the air. Some of this may have gone over the audience's head but they didn't quite reach Brian Pillman levels, so this was awesome. I THINK Dundee was working for Bert Prentice's Ozark Wrestling outfit in his absence, so some of the local audience may have known legit that he was gone. Lawler manages to talk Dundee into going to the back and I'm waiting for Bill to jump him, but it doesn't happen. Anxious to see more of this. Even as the company is decaying in the face of the death of Monday night Coliseum wrestling, early '96 USWA has somehow managed to come off as a hot product.
  18. PeteF3
    Beefcake heel turn and SummerSlam co-main event, brother!
  19. PeteF3
    Closer to a Smoky Mountain "Rage in the Cage" than WarGames, as we have handcuffs on the cage. And no man-advantage rule either, as each team sends a guy in at the same time. Pretty cool brawl that actually builds into a hell of a wrestling match, with some really great near-falls and saves and some cool psychology with the babyfaces having to fight off a 2-on-3 disadvantage when Kuroda gets cuffed. Afterward Victor Quinones, the Headhunters, and Mr. Pogo lay waste to everyone in sight, with one Headhunter doing a moonsault off the cage. I dug this quite a lot.
  20. PeteF3
    Note that some cable systems aren't airing the live show, as it's up against a UFC replay.
  21. PeteF3
    I actually liked the Christmas match between these two the best as far as TV bouts go, but this was pretty good and like that match is a bit more meat-and-potatoes rather than a sprint designed to keep eyeballs from flipping to Raw. More satisfying ending too, even if the timing is a bit off. The post-match is underwhelming with the debut of the BOOTYBOOTYBOOTYMAN, with the announcers pretending to not have any idea who it is and the gimmick being another excuse for Beefcake to desperately and shamelessly mug to the crowd.
  22. PeteF3
    My greatest fear if time travel is ever discovered is not Terminators being sent from the future, or altered histories caused by people stepping on prehistoric butterflies, or me marrying my own grandmother. It's someone going back to the spring of 1990 and planting a particular SummerSlam main event idea in Hogan's head...
  23. PeteF3
    Much more low-key than the previous bout, as we're JIP with Combat methodically destroying KAORU's leg before unleashing some bigger bombs. Combat's offense looks good here, and KAORU does a nice job of consistently selling her leg and providing a reason for Combat to no-sell her dropkicks. This turns when KAORU catches Toyoda on the top turnbuckle and KILLS her with a brutal super fishermanbuster that looks like it could have compressed Combat's spine. She then drops repeated moonsaults on her and finishes with a twisting splash for...the pin. Well, that was a curious match layout by any standard. KAORU didn't exactly get a fired-up comeback, she got one big giant move and then just methodically wore Combat down for the pin. Not bad, just different. Toyoda had a nice array of crunchy offense and the match was well-done psychologically, though despite this being on Combat's retirement tour it still came off as more of an enjoyable TV studio match.
  24. PeteF3
    Well, you certainly can't accuse this of being boring. 12 minutes of non-stop violence, with maybe two or three legal tags the entire match. Sawai and her big fat offense impress, and I think Eagle Sawai & Tomoko Watanabe is now my joshi dream tag team. All six ladies are killing each other all over Korakuen, with Nagayo and Eagle fighting into the concourse and then the balcony before returning to the ring. Most of this centers around Nagashima, who's constantly elevating the action by using a kendo stick and a chain. She works hard, but she really doesn't have 1/10 of the panache and charisma of Takako Inoue or someone like that--she comes off as someone using the weapons because she's a heel and she's booked to use them, rather than someone using weapons because they want/have to. The babyfaces sort of fight on the level for most of this before paying the opponents back by using every weapon against them, but Kato taking the sort of overmatched Sakie Hasegawa babyface role gets power bombed and pinned by Sawai. Even Nagashima's post-match promo sounds tepid in comparison to other Japanese ladies on the mic, and Nagayo is clearly a more compelling speaker with greater control of the crowd. Fun match, though there are other better joshi brawls. With 6 people however, the action never stops, and at 12 minutes this doesn't wear out its welcome. Generally crazy brawls shouldn't go much more than 15, in my view. As workers, Nagayo and Eagle were the only ones to really stand out even though Nagashima got a lot of focus. Still early in the GAEA learning process, so hopefully I'll have more to say as the year goes on.
  25. PeteF3
    Logistics and the usual Piper issues aside, Rude desperately needed some other hook besides working out. If they couldn't run another injury angle to another top babyface, then maybe a solution would be to go all cliched Southern wrasslin' and have Rude call Warrior a chicken, then run out when he's on on the Brother Love Show and tar and feather him. Or, since they were experimenting with Warrior's look, do a haircut angle. Hell, in this environment you could even draw heat by having Rude rub his face with paint thinner. But do *something.*
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