PeteF3
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Severn has got the old ten-pounds-of-gold NWA belt, and Chip Kessler also plugs an upcoming UFC fight against Ken Shamrock in...Casper, Wyoming. UFC has come quite a long way. Severn has one of the worst voices ever when it comes to trying to cut a wrasslin' style promo, so the Pure Sports Build stuff suits him. Shots of UFC on Smoky Mountain TV is not something I ever expected to see. Kessler actually comes off as having a clue what he's talking about here. There are shots of Al Snow in Severn's corner in some of the UFC clips, which would be fun if it was mentioned on TV at this point.
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This is like that Tennessee/Texas feud all over again, where the promos could easily swing toward the heel or babyface side depending on which audience hears it. Mark Curtis is confused and saddened at the suggestion that he has somehow wronged Randy Hales. The Rock 'n Rolls will get a rematch with PG-13 with two referees. PG-13 rebut. Right now this still a USWA vs. "NWA" feud rather than a SMW feud.
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Terrific sprint with everyone looking good (well, Asako's just kinda there). Honda with his headbutt-centric offense is pretty fun, and the back-and-forth between Misawa and Taue is one of the longest, most dizzying arrays of moves and countermoves you'll ever see. It's not ***** or even a major MOTYC if only for the clipjob, but you can easily see why Meltzer would have gone nuts for it. -
Neither of these two people gave me a single solitary reason to care about them or if they won or lost, so with all the kickouts at the end, this was nothing more than a match that felt like it went on for about 6 years. The work wasn't *bad* and I admire the attempts to build up to the big offensive bombs, but in the end it was horrifically overindulgent for the level of star power these guys projected.
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Really good match, but I think I liked Big Egg Universe better. This was certainly different form--Toyota is still full of energy, but Kong keeps her grounded and intently focuses on her back. There's also a lot of really clever counters, counters to counters, and new wrinkles being thrown with the constant battles on the top turnbuckle. Every time Kong goes up, she either busts out a new way to hurt Manami or Toyota figures out a new way to counter it. That leads to some tremendous near-falls before Kong puts her away. Dynamite "Owen Hart" Kansai has a staredown with Kong afterward during her title celebration. It's definitely an agreeable point that both these title changes meant less than they should have.
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The craziest thing about that segment is that they intentionally, literally turfed the entire second hour of the show just to put the angle over. The planned main event of Giant vs. Savage turned into the Giant vs. Greg Valentine. High Voltage was subbing for the American Males or somebody. There was no contrived "surprise" replacements--half the night's roster was wiped out and WCW simply had to make do with who was left, resulting in an hour of JTTS squashes. And they comfortably won the night anyway. That kind of commitment to getting an attack over would never have occurred to the WWF, at any time.
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I'll never vote for the Warrior, as my views are like Parv's to a slightly lesser degree (I can appreciate a good Warrior match and performance--and his destruction of the Honky Tonk Man remains one of the happiest moments of my fandom). That said, guys like him should probably be put out in the open, so to speak, so there can be an attempt at a fair discussion. I don't think every worker on the planet needs a thread, but for certain guys it might be nice to rationally express why we're not ranking them. It's a similar principle to Warrior being put on the WON HOF ballot. I hardly think he's deserving, but it's probably even more unfair to refuse to put him on the ballot and engage in a discussion about him at all, polarizing though he may be.
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I don't know what's scarier--the degree to which some of you keep track of what you've watched and how you rate it...or the fact that I'm teeming with jealousy and lamenting lost opportunities. I love lists, rankings, and databases and would definitely keep an all-encompassing one if I could do it all again. My big projects in wrestling-watching since June of '07 have basically been limited to '80s sets and more recently the Yearbooks. The past few '80s sets I've kept reviews in an Excel spreadsheet that I use for rating and ranking matches. For those I use the Pitchfork rating system--1 to 10, with decimal points, which really means 1 to 100. Luckily I have a few from before the DVDVR board crashed--for earlier sets, I just have my rankings. My Yearbook thoughts on everything from the longest AJPW epics to the shortest throwaway promo are kept in the respective forum that's hopefully a little more secure. Including star ratings and ranking matches by month is something else I would do if I had to start over again, but what's done is done. In addition to loving lists I love consistency, so I can't bring myself to start doing it now. It's the reason I waited until the 1990 set was out to start watching, and why I simultaneously welcome and curse a potential 1989 set.
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Weird that they'd induct Pedro at all if he wasn't going to be there to accept it, but then the HOF wasn't quite what it is today. Bill Murray sends in a video introduction from the set of Larger Than Life. Then we're treated to Ivan Putski singing.
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Hard to snark too much on this.
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Another winning gimmick from the WWF. This time without the sarcasm. Here we get the soundbite that opened up Waylon's entrance theme--lahvs are gunna be in Waylon Mercy's hands.
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Another winning gimmick from the WWF. I don't get why the WWF felt the need to continue this Bret-Lawler feud even further.
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Okay, right, THIS ends the worst PPV effort in WWF history. Well, not this--the actual tag match. Not that I feel any effort to fire up the Network to watch it. Diesel power bombs Tatanka, he calls out Sid, Sid walks off. When you have a guy with a heavy metal serial killer vibe like Sid, you definitely want to push him as a 1990's Honky Tonk Man. Especially when he's a challenger as opposed to the champ.
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We join in with the Philly fans in open revolt. It's easy to make fun of indy and puroresu snobs nowadays, but watching this set will really re-open your eyes to a time when that "the Japanese way is the bestest way" philosophy made total and perfect sense. The Big Two were recycling angles and presentation as stale as month-old bread and failing to draw anything with it. PURE SPORTS BUILD or Extremism may not have been the ideal perfect solution, but at least it was *something.* They go all-out to try to get Mabel over, but it was too little, too late. He'd already been poisoned by being part of a mid-card gimmick tag team and his name and attire would never let him get anywhere. Mo reads a proclamation and takes about 3 hours to do it. So ends the worst PPV effort in WWF history at least to this point.
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The slow-build to Linda's Senate campaign continues unabated.
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Not that good of a match but an improvement over IYH. Such a dumb, disgusting stipulation even though the booking of it actually made some logical sense.
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This was inoffensive, but "by the numbers" sums it up. No heat at all until the stretch run, and I'm not sold on Koji really knowing how to put it together at all yet. Maybe they were desperate with Liger out, but he looks nowhere near ready to have already had a run with the IWGP Jr. title. As far as "inoffensive mid-card juniors bouts" go, Silver King-Dantes blew this away.
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I've seen that Saito clip and I'm fairly sure that old hag of a woman is Luna Vachon--she was with Kevin Sullivan's Army at one point.
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Hulk Hogan and the Wrestling Boot Band, brother! This is like a pun-filled SNME on steroids.
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Good promos all around. Landell sure does love to question the parentage of his babyface opponents, but it cracks me up no matter how often he rolls that material out.
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I don't get the cassette tape thing at all. Snow and Morton are really good, as you'd expect. Snow on talking about dragging Armstrong's directive up to the State Supreme Court: "I'll appeal this, I'll appeal an orange, I'll appeal a banana..."
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Hales: "I've been a bodybuilder all my life!" Hales is an awkward promo to say the least, but that sort of adds to the effect. He's such a gangly, annoying little twerp, but the kind that you want to see smacked.
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I'd say the second half of '94 right up until Cornette fireballing Armstrong was SMW's peak, though it was a remarkably consistent promotion at least when viewed in the Yearbook setting. There's been a sea change now, though--Cornette on top feels like same old, same old and the TV production has gone downhill. Caudle & Dutch to Ross & Thatcher to now Kessler & Thatcher is quite a big downgrade.
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I liked this a good deal--it felt like a lucha version of a gritty 1990 Worldwide main event. Some hard-hitting work and Dantes builds things up to some great highspots, including balancing on the top rope (the rope part, not the turnbuckle) for what seems like 5 seconds before diving out to Silver King on the floor. Glad to see Silver King back after such a great tag run in the early part of the decade. This left me wanting to see more of both guys.
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Even though nobody else in the world sounds like Baba, AJPW somehow managed to find a guy who did. There are two color guys with deep, gravelly voices. Baba's one of them, I would assume Takeuchi is the other one.