PeteF3
-
Posts
10287 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Blogs
Everything posted by PeteF3
-
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.
-
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.
-
Hard to snark too much on this.
-
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.
-
Another winning gimmick from the WWF. I don't get why the WWF felt the need to continue this Bret-Lawler feud even further.
-
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.
-
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.
-
The slow-build to Linda's Senate campaign continues unabated.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Hulk Hogan and the Wrestling Boot Band, brother! This is like a pun-filled SNME on steroids.
-
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.
-
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..."
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
He was already in his 40's when he put the mask on, which will make him hard to evaluate because that WAS the twilight of his career. Hard to extrapolate precisely how good he was in the '60s with no footage.
-
This was regularly done on TV up until part of '93, I'd say. I thought it was actually one of the flower girls who appeared in the ring, but maybe it was a celebrity. Of course now despite a bunch of early-'90s TV being on Youtube I can't actually find an example of it, even though it seemed to be every week when I was going through the TV seasons years ago. It was for the full match, though.
-
In 1996 I was just some dude with a Prodigy account and rumors were swirling like crazy that Hogan was the 3rd man. The build-up was long enough that *everybody* and their brother was rumored for that spot, and it was always one of those "Believe it when you see it" things. But it didn't exactly come out of nowhere.
-
OJ, do you know what the hell was up with the early-'90s AJPW trend of having flower girls on commentary? Sometimes on a separate track with either Fukuzawa or Wakabayashi while the other did separate, live commentary that was barely audible underneath? Were they trying to cater to a female demographic or something?
-
I get Childs' logic and I've said similar things in the past about other segments...but I think there was very little danger of this crowd suddenly turning on the Undertaker because Kane tombstoned a disgraced old ballplayer.
-
Flair earlier in the show: "I took your WIFE in '92, and I took your father at Slamboree!" Awesome. I love that Flair and WCW didn't ignore that there was a prior history here. Savage while putting over how badly he wants Flair, deigns to put Alex Wright over as well and mentions that he has a wrestling father, too (explaining why he cost him against Flair in the U.S. title tournament). Hey Hulk, taking notes? That little interview spot probably did more for Wright than any dance video. Holy crap, this blew me the fuck away. Savage is a tornado start with--even his axhandle to the floor is done with extra velocity and zip to it. This is just a total personal war all throughout. Flair, for the first time since the Regal series, really works a match outside of his comfort zone. He gets a Flair Flip in and some begging off early, but this is a more vicious Flair than we've seen in awhile, stepping up his game in the intensity department the way Savage upped his. He even pulls out Jumbo Tsuruta's kneebreaker onto the guardrail! And later he adds doing a forward flip off the turnbuckles while holding Savage's leg, hyperextending it. Both men take some incredible bumps on the floor and into the guardrail. Savage pulls out the ringbell in a classic callback spot, but doesn't get a chance to use it. And a well-done finish as Flair clobbers Savage with the cane to finally get a significant win. I liked the combination of Flair & Perfect more than Loss, but this match is helped IMMENSELY by the fact that Flair is alone. Here he does cheat, of course, but this is a Flair having to get by on determination and guile rather than cheap help from a ringside second--it's a screwjob win, but Flair comes off as legitimately dangerous in his own right regardless. Just fantastic action with a great story on top of the intense brawling. This is your U.S. MOTY right now. (Of note: Flair wins this match while wearing the red trunks.)
-
Schiavone's disgust with Renegade is absolutely palpable, to a degree that I'm not sure Tony approached even during the Russo Era(s), and this a solidly pro-Arn crowd. Arn guides Renegade through the most bare-bones basic match layout you'll ever see and despite being incompetent, Renegade manages to get through without fucking anything up too badly. Naturally this crowd still pops for the title change. That's Dayton for you. Everything wrong with Big Two wrestling in 1995 is summed up in one match. Renegade was a better athlete and probably a better worker than Van Hammer. He was just given a gimmick that was death and a monster push he was nowhere close to ready for.
