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PeteF3

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Everything posted by PeteF3

  1. PeteF3
    Wow, what a great way to build heat on Vader for the strap match. Jimmy Hart successfully fends off an an attempted save by Ric Flair. Yes, really. Hulk cuts a barely-coherent promo.
  2. PeteF3
    I always thought Dave was a dead ringer for Brian Adias (or perhaps Adias was a dead ringer for Meltzer).
  3. PeteF3
    What's this? A good Gangstas match? A really, REALLY good Gangstas match? This is awesome all-around, though I wouldn't rank it ahead of Cactus vs. Candido as far as the very best SMW TV match. The Gangstas work over Smothers with both a blackjack and a spike, and Ross and Thatcher effectively get over how the Gangstas feel backed into a corner thanks to Cornette, the Bodies, and the Southern Boys. The Gangstas flash some damn good offense here and even work some cool sequences on top of the simple weapon stuff. Smothers makes a super-hot tag after being bloodied, but D'Lo catches Scott in the knee with the blackjack to give the Gangstas the pin. And they're not done--they take out Scott's leg, take out Cornette, and then eventually overpower Commissioner Armstrong and bury him in the X flag! It's not nearly as heated as Watts being buried under the Soviet flag but I admire the effort at least. Then Bob cuts one of the promos of the year with more great lines: he plans to take the X flag to his outhouse to replace his Sears catalogue as toilet paper! The best overall North American segment of the year so far. I was souring on the Gangstas angle but this kicked things up a notch and made them out to be the most dangerous men in wrestling.
  4. PeteF3
    Buddy Landell will have to face the Dirty White Boy in a steel cage at March Madness. Landell tears White Boy to go home, seal the windows shut, and turn the gas up! Holy SHIT. He then closes with an insult so long-winded and intricate that I can't bear to fail to do it justice by typing it out. SHOULD CAGE MATCHES BE ALLOWED IN SMOKY MOUNTAIN WRESTLING? Call the hotline and express your vote.
  5. PeteF3
    The race war stuff is now starting to get desperate. It seemed legitimately edgy and dangerous in a good way in '94, but they got away from it and this rehash just doesn't have the same effect. The X flag vs. Rebel flag stuff is just shit and the music video basically says, "Boo these guys because they're black."
  6. PeteF3
    Rich screams about how Wolfie D's mother hit his mother with a hubcap, thus justifying him slapping her. Rich screams bloody murder in a way more enjoyable way than Sid while Gorgeous George III makes terrible faces next to him. PG-13 are out and a pretty great brawl erupts, with Big Daddy Cyrus helping Rich cut off JC's rat tail. Having a heel attack a babyface's mother to set up a simple haircut angle seems a little backwards to me, but it was a cool segment.
  7. PeteF3
    Jericho took less time to read off all 1,004 of his holds than Shawn did to get through that list. Sheesh. "WHO OPENED THE GATES OF HELL AND LET THIS MAN OUT?!" Okay, that was a great line by Sid. He then does a SHOUTY WRESTLING PROMO the types of which were being made fun of by Ren & Stimpy and various sketch comedy shows. Except for that line, a bad segment all-around.
  8. PeteF3
    This is another AJPW title match that runs a little too long, but it didn't overstay its welcome quite as badly as the late-'94 TC matches. It's an excellent match with a star-making performance from Ace. He's not GREAT here but he's booked strongly and comes off as the gutsiest bastard alive. He does lots of impersonations here too--he mocks Kobashi's moonsault taunt, does the Doc stomping taunt, and then mimics Kobashi's loopy selling of the backdrop driver when he gets hit with a legdrop. Kobashi and Misawa are spectacular together, busting out some sweet double-teams. That powerbomb+top-rope splash was so great that it was almost wasted where it was. That could have been used as a legit finisher or hot near-fall spot. Kobashi also assists Misawa with doing a double tiger driver. Doc got to be a bit of a nuisance, but his selling of the leg was pretty great and he was at least finding new ways to get involved. I don't see this as the MOTY even for the first 3 months, but it might be the All-Japan match I've enjoyed most so far in '95.
  9. PeteF3
    College GameDay has a celebrity on every week to make picks for Saturday's games. Steve Austin was the guest this week--not really that unusual, they were in Arlington, Texas. Then analyst/paid clown Lee Corso quizzed Austin on the whereabouts of Lady Blossom. I about spit up my water and missed Austin's response.
  10. PeteF3
    Sapphire was ALWAYS, to my knowledge, referred to as a manager. Just like Elizabeth was, even though both essentially played the role of a valet. The line isn't always clear, but my rule of thumb to tell the difference is: 1. What did the promotion refer to them as? (Liz = manager. Sherri = manager, at least for Savage and DiBiase, since she was only Shawn's "girlfriend" Virgil = not a manager). This trumps all other criteria. 2. If the ringside second has no official or oft-quoted title, then were they the brains of the operation or not? Did they give orders or take them? This comes up way more in the Monday Night Wars era which was filled with guys who accompanied others to ringside but didn't have a named occupation. Almost the Attitude Era eye candy were valets, with the exception of Trish Stratus (always the boss behind T&A) and possibly Terri Runnels. To me, Trish was a manager--period. Sapphire doesn't fulfill #2, but since the WWF called her a manager, that's what she was. And she was infuriating in either role. Here's who I picked for Worst Manager after viewing each '90s Yearbook, which gave an excellent cross-section of managers all across the business: 1990 - Sapphire 1991 - Coach 1992 - Ronnie Lotz 1993 - Paul Bearer 1994 - Jimmy Hart. Lotz was a goof who showed up for a few cups of coffee in Memphis, an area that saw no shortage of shitty and/or useless, small-time two-bit managers. Bearer may not objectively deserve the award, since he was pretty effective, but I like Babyface Bearer and his Lion Sleeps Tonight falsetto only slightly more than I liked Sapphire. Hart as Hulk Hogan's babyface lapdog was intolerable, and gets bonus demerits for falling so far from where he was at his peak.
  11. PeteF3
    For my money Sapphire is a runaway winner for 1990 and Coach equally so for '91. Sapphire is one of my least-favorite characters of all-time, and the heel turn wasn't enough to save that. Coach was a monumentally harebrained idea, and the fact that he was directly replacing the Brain was all the more insulting. I have little love for Paul Jones, but of all these candidates I genuinely think he was the best ringside guy.
  12. PeteF3
    Yes, as bad as Bagwell was. The WWF lucked out that this was a taped Raw because things were held up for 30+ minutes.
  13. PeteF3
    Okay-ish psychology-based action but slow. Evidently Kawada tore up Hansen's arm because Stan is selling like it's hanging by a thread, and does a full-blown Triple H laying for 30 seconds after hitting his finisher before covering for the 3. Not an auspicious reign for Kawada, winning the title in a disappointing match, not having a victorious title defense, and still firmly behind Misawa in the pecking order as best I can tell and closer to even with Kobashi than with Misawa.
  14. PeteF3
    I didn't hate this nearly as much as you two, but I was definitely disappointed. This is a straight elimination tag, btw, a la Survivor Series. I didn't know that at first so the quick pin on Felino didn't bother me, but by the end when I realized where this was going and Felino was in and out in 3 minutes without doing anything, I felt really cheated. Dragon sucks, nothing new there, but Dandy and Salvaje didn't really contribute anything either besides a nice missile dropkick from Dandy. Jericho ends up getting the big push here and I thought the closing stretch with Casas was pretty decent, with Casas sort of guiding Jericho by the hand through a passable closing stretch. But Jericho just isn't there yet as a babyface--he still has the air of somebody trying too hard, from his cheesy working of the crowd to his too-advanced-for-his-own-good offense to his ridiculous pratfalling fatigue sell after getting the big win. Not horrible, but the wrong guys were featured.
  15. PeteF3
    I tend to agree with Matt on Fuji. Not great, not even good. But he had two surefire heat-drawing gimmicks (the cane and the salt) and sometimes that's enough. He hasn't won any of my Yearbook WON Awards, I don't think. If he did it was just by default.
  16. PeteF3
    I do think credibility is defiinitely Monsoon's strongest point. It may be because he constantly got himself over, sometimes at the expense of the workers or his broadcast partner, but in the end fans of the product tended to believe what he said.
  17. PeteF3
    It's not always cut and dried like that--and there are guys like the Reds' Marty Brennaman above who shit all over the best players by focusing on the negative all the time. Those tend to be "made men," institutions who have been with a team for decades and are pretty much untouchable, though. In that case they're putting over The Brand much like modern-day WWE, and Reds Slugger #37 or Latino Player #52 don't Play the Game the Right Way ™. Still, a lot of local guys are not remotely going to come close to shitting on a player unless it's something that can't be ignored, and even then they'll tend to spin something good out of it. Player A can't hit a lick, so they'll gush over how well he plays defense. Player B can't hit OR field but will get praise for his clubhouse leadership or the fact that he "does the little things." Etc. etc. etc. Like in wrestling, some guys can pull that act off credibly and some can't, but the stuff I'm talking about is so common that it's a cliche. There are thousands of not millions of baseball fans who would be aghast at the suggestion that Derek Jeter is a terrible defensive player, because he's completely above criticism and has been for almost his entire career.
  18. PeteF3
    I know this isn't your field but I'm not sure that's the case. One area where the analogy doesn't hold up is that in real sports there are national announcers and then local announcers, and local announcers are expected to hype up the team and sell tickets. So are national guys to some degree (see: Tebow, Tim and Manziel, Johnny) to sell TV ratings if not fill stadiums. But local announcers have a similar balancing act in having to get over various talking points the front office wants them to, calling the action, and being able to build trust with their audience.
  19. PeteF3
    I do think there's a line to walk between selling everything as being great and selling out your own credibility. No question Brennaman shits on the team too much, much like Jim Ross was sometimes capable of doing. But as I mentioned earlier...a wrestling announcer has to maintain a shred of credibility if he wants to sell you on anything at all. And sometimes that means calling a spade a spade with regard to what's being shown. If Ross describes a shitty match as "bowling shoe ugly" but then hypes up a promising youngster like a Brian Pillman, fans will notice. "Ross isn't going to lie to me, he didn't lie about that earlier crapfest. I better pay attention to this guy!" Rings a lot less phony than New Generation Era Vince.
  20. PeteF3
    Disappointing compared to the '94 matches between these two. Apparently the double-turn that put each guy into their more familiar roles has now taken place, as SATO does heelish stuff to start with like working over Delfin's knee in the ropes, and Delfin is a total babyface down the stretch. The closing stretch is pretty hot but the opening portion was in like 0th gear. And some of the hotter portions of the match are missed by the stationary camera missing stuff on the floor and in the corners of the ringside area. I don't know if this was the story or not, but I'd like to thinK SATO sort of sold his soul to the heel side having been frustrated at losing his mask and hair to Delfin in the previous year.
  21. PeteF3
    No question. Flair needed to tear Santana's leg to pieces and then figure four him for the submission. Then preferably keep it on afterward until Tito was screaming for mercy. Instead we get, IIRC, a cheap roll-up and hook of the tights finish. Okay for a traveling champion, but Flair was a true "newcomer" for the first time in years and needed to be put over like one or insist on being put over like one. On top of that, England was about the worst possible spot for Flair to have one of his first televised matches. That isn't anybody's fault, it's just horrendous luck, but it was all the more reason for Flair to put his foot down and insist on going over strong.
  22. PeteF3
    I was under the belief that Bobby and Tony hashed out their differences when they did a Legends of Wrestling video game together some time ago. Heenan does seem like a guy who holds grudges, though.
  23. PeteF3
    That is odd. I've seen Dave talk about brother vs. brother before, on the Classics board. He did cite Bret/Owen that time and praised the angle for being well-booked and believable. He also pointed out that Ole/Lars worked because Ole was such an ass that you would believe his own mother wouldn't like him.
  24. PeteF3
    There's The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, a full-fledged wrestling Off-Broadway play about an Indian wrestler who's forced into a terrorist gimmick.
  25. PeteF3
    Vince and Cornette sit in front of a green-screen designed to look like ringside for some reason. This is effective in its way, but is VERY dry. I think that's the word I'd sum up '95 WWF with--it's the same problem that permeated the company in the second half of '92 as well. Dry, conservative, and downright stodgy. Past the "old school" line. Bam Bam finally spices things up and reiterates his challenge to LT, and LT accepts an offer to appear with Bam Bam at the Harley-Davidson Cafe.
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