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PeteF3

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Everything posted by PeteF3

  1. PeteF3
    Rich looks bad, and this is a cheap, unsatisfying screwjob finish (and not the "good" kind of unsatisfying). I love Mark Curtis and I love Cornette's booking but there are WAY too many easy, overdone distraction spots involving the both of them, where it's obvious that Curtis is turning his back because that's the Planned Spot. Landell is beaten down afterward, because he's still friendless. The point has been made--this story needs to move forward now.
  2. PeteF3
    "Now what camera am I gonna have to look at in this rinky-dink promotion?!" Tracy smothers sticks up for SMW's production values as compared to the USWA's. Downtown Bruno is now aligned with Armstrong & Smothers. JC Ice plays Terry Funk in the following match, as he's taken out on the floor by Bob Armstrong and Steven Dunn (!). He comes back to clobber Armstrong with a hubcap, but it's not enough to save the titles as Smothers reclaims his Confederate flag and uses it on JC for the win. Okay match, good to see a solid studio bout on USWA TV again.
  3. PeteF3
    This is supposed to be Razor vs. Yokozuna in a one-on-one non-title match, but Razor sees Owen with Yoko & Cornette and brings out the 1-2-3 Kid, and this turns into a tag match. I thought this was pretty bad, actually. WWF Tag Formula by Numbers and seemed like another instance of the Clique and non-Clique not being on the same page. Manny Garcia continues to be the absolute worst ring announcer of all-time--he cannot get through a single show without a major fuckup and here he announces the wrong team as the winners.
  4. PeteF3
    Good match with basically no downtime and perfect execution throughout. If you're looking for a RWTL '93 psychological masterpiece, forget it, but there's horrific violence in virtually every frame and some truly uncomfortable looking chairshots (the stuff with the barbed wire baseball bat is positively tame by comparison, oddly enough). Loved Tanaka legdropping the bat as Kanemura brings it down on Matsunaga. And Hayabusa makes for a terrific babyface in peril.
  5. PeteF3
    Kobashi busts out almost all of his big bombs right from the outset--it's Angle-y, yes, but it still makes sense within the context of the match and where Kobashi is in the pecking order. It makes sense for him to try to "steal" a quick win because he's the decided underdog. This goes 36 minutes when it probably could have been wrapped up in 30, and it starts to show by the end, so this isn't quite an all-time Triple Crown classic. But it's a hell of a match with Misawa memorably having to bust out the Tiger Driver '91, which in and of itself seems like a sign that Kobashi is ready to be a champion, but it just wasn't his night tonight.
  6. PeteF3
    2005 NOAH was in a lot worse shape, as was Japanese wrestling in general, than 1995 All-Japan.
  7. PeteF3
    Steroids were banned (without a script) in the US as part of the Controlled Substances Act in 1970.
  8. PeteF3
    I'm not ready to proclaim Kawada the #1 Four Corner just yet, but if you're going to make that case then I'm not sure if there's a stronger match in his favor than this one. While I still like the AJPW main event style over New Japan, the big advantage NJPW had was its willingness to throw different styles at us--shootstyle, brawls, etc. With this, Kawada provides another example of the possibilities of using the AJPW Style ™ with something else entirely--he had a bloody brawl with Taue in '91, and he has a shootstyle match here. Great stuff, and there isn't a single NJPW/UWFI Dome match that's a pimple on this one's rear end. Unfortunately, this match would end up being an outlier as far as All-Japan goes, and they'd only continue to keep themselves in their little bubble. Years later, but thinking of Names to Bring In...Bam Bam Bigelow was about to be released from his WWF contract and there was no perceptible rush by WCW to sign him. Now, granting that it's iffy how much Bam Bam had left in the tank to work the AJPW style, and granting that he worked one tour for Baba and apparently committed some sort of faux-pas and was not invited back as a result...if you want depth to spice up the mid and upper-midcards, he seems like a good bet to go after. Plus if you can land Vader as well, the promise of reforming the Vader/Bigelow tag team seems like it would be a hot ticket. And for a little changing of the course of wrestling history...Meltzer himself tossed around the idea of All-Japan as a potential landing spot for Steve Austin.
  9. PeteF3
    JT Smith promises he's not going to mess up this time, and to prove it he shadowboxes and accidentally cold-cocks Joey Styles. John Kronus is almost as annoying as Public Enemy. Terry Funk makes his return and is out to help Dreamer take out Cactus Jack.
  10. PeteF3
    Fun action, though it's probably for the best that this was in highlight form. Unbelievable bumps and moves by both guys, and Mikey getting knocked to the floor but using the rope as a lever to smack Sandman with the ladder is one of the spots of the year. Probably would have been a bigger clusterfuck in full. Sandman destroys the referee after the match, not appreciating Mikey taking him to the limit.
  11. PeteF3
    They were trying to position all the top babyfaces as being in conflict with each other, because God knows it was the only way for there to be any intrigue in this feud with the Dungeon of Doom. Hogan butchers both a Bible verse and an FDR quote in the same breath. Hogan is whinier and more insecure now that he's in black, like an emo teenager, but isn't really committing to going all-in with this Dark Hogan gimmick.
  12. PeteF3
    SULLIVAN, MY SON. THE INSURANCE PACKAGE HAS BEEN DELIVERED. FROM NORTH OF KATHMANDU, FROM THE HIMALAYAS AND THE NORTH FACE OF MOUNT EVEREST, THE SHERPA GUIDES HAVE GONE OUT, A THIRTEEN TON OF MICE(????). When Sullivan clipped the whiskers of the Rare White Bengal Tiger...something or other, but it has to do with Darkness. Sullivan in more lucid fashion explains that the Sherpa Guides have given Sullivan the YET-TAY. Giant cuts his first live promo that we see on the Yearbook, and it isn't bad, until his evil laugh at least.
  13. PeteF3
    Another bad match, and another awful finish. Bret was trying to be diplomatic all throughout the contest with regard to Bulldog's new attitude, saying he disagreed with his new allegiances but didn't harbor the ill will toward him that he did to Owen. Then Davey Boy knocks his headset off and Bret snaps for no discernible reason, jumping Davey in the ring and causing a disqualification. Vince and JR are for some reason baffled at the decision. A really, really lame post-match brawl follows. So ends possibly the most depressing PPV in company history, even including the disastrous King of the Ring show. This featured no-shows by Shawn Michaels *and* the Undertaker and two horrid replacement matches (Yokozuna vs. Mabel?? Seriously?) and yet another bad performance by Diesel in the main event.
  14. PeteF3
    Dok Hendrix is in some living room set-up playing wrestlers' entrance music on his keyboard, introducing this after the fact. Shawn definitely looks like hell. Bad match between two guys with absolutely zero chemistry. Dean attempts to make something of this toward the end, busting out a reverse flying bodypress and a nice dropkick, but Razor wins with an absolutely horrible finish.
  15. PeteF3
    I can't imagine any other end result, though I think a new Horsemen without Flair would have been more interesting in 1990 and would have been more interesting here.
  16. PeteF3
    Sgt. Rock would turn out to be Miss Texas, doing her gimmick of beating up men for the first time.
  17. PeteF3
    Landell, despite having cost Rich a match against jobber Flash Flanagan, is having trouble acquiring allies to deal with the Militia. So he's going to settle for screwing with Tommy Rich's mind.
  18. PeteF3
    White Boy is the master of the damn chain match! Gibson is being just a little too buddy-buddy with the THUGs for an ostensibly impartial referee. White Boy delivers a psychotic promo describing a scene out of a Saw movie. HELL'S COMIN', BOYS.
  19. PeteF3
    Good stuff, and glad to see the SMW war back on after a period of inactivity. I wish we could have gotten Evil Brad Armstrong as part of this run, but I don't think it was to be.
  20. PeteF3
    Bullet Bob sounds like a reasonable human being, as he announces his intentions to call off the SMW-USWA war. He then recites a list of four completely unreasonable demands and walks off. The interplay between Bob and Lance is so, so awesome.
  21. PeteF3
    Cactus' promo is too awesome for words. He's ditched the anger and become a complete corporate shill, a la Corporate Dude Love. Loved the ECW sign falling behind Alfonso and Fonzie just going with it. "SEE? IT'S ALREADY DOWN!"
  22. PeteF3
    I still think the double dog collar match should stand at the top of the pile for being the quintessential ECW match--but the best "pure" match, for whatever that definition is worth, is probably this. This was, in a word, incredible. Death-defying shit all over the place, but with Psicosis ramping up the heeling and the aggression and Rey matching him as the match goes on. See, Eddy and Dean, this is what you get when a match and a rivalry BUILDS to something. Psicosis can't outquick Rey, so he has to overpower him, brutalize him, and when necessary, cheat. That leads to both guys stepping up their game both in terms of moves and in terms of objects and furniture used. Great combination of lucha and ECW-style brawling, and a contender for best North American match of the year.
  23. PeteF3
    My joshi knowledge is basically what I've read + seen of the '90-'95 Yearbooks, but Yamada came across to me as someone who looked like (or was) all-world in tag matches--basically a female Kawada--but was badly exposed as a single. Not that she was terrible, but it doesn't seem like she ever had the goods to pull off an epic singles title match. I can't hold Bundy's inactivity against him too much--he had a lucrative computer endorsement deal at one point (or at least a far less physically taxing one) and got to do guest shots on Married...with Children and other places. There were worse things for ex-wrestlers to be doing.
  24. PeteF3
    Apparently that's from the making of the In Your House game (with Mortal Kombat-style graphics and gameplay). I'm guessing there's some reason that green and red would scan better.
  25. PeteF3
    "My name is Buh-Buh-Buh..." Yep, the Dudleys would never quite be the same.
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