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PeteF3

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Everything posted by PeteF3

  1. PeteF3
    I'm guessing Dave wasn't nearly so dismissive of the strap used by Sting and Vader.
  2. PeteF3
    Heenan: "This is the song, ladies and gentlemen, that they played at Schiavone's third wedding." It's actually very eerily prescient of Spamalot's "This Is the Song That Goes Like This."
  3. PeteF3
    Amusing to watch how they put together a video for what was probably literally a $0 budget. It's all Raven walking through a snowy suburb with every possible camera trick that their $200 Wal-Mart equipment came with. I never liked Raven being associated with an uptempo punk number like Come Out and Play. Jimmy Hart's acoustic Come as You Are knock-off was a rare instance of WCW nailing a gimmick better than ECW. Raven cuts a quick promo afterward. Grunge was dead but the Big Two missed out on that trend entirely, so points to ECW for this anyway.
  4. PeteF3
    William Shatner will be in Bret's corner tonight as insurance against the Roadie for Bret's match against Double J. Stay tuned for the Raw debut of MANTAUR!
  5. PeteF3
    Very good TV match, designed to get over Kid and Holly as the ultimate underdogs heading into the tournament final at the Rumble (Holly also did a clean job to Tatanka that weekend). Bam Bam uses his forearms to block a Kid spin kick and levels him with an enzuigiri in a spot right out of All-Japan. Kid takes some wicked bumps here but Bigelow's backwards fall off the turnbuckle at the hands of Kid at the ending was great, too.
  6. PeteF3
    Harlem Heat are now under the tutelage of Sister Sherri, a combination that made me go WTF at the time but ended up having way more mileage than I expected. Okay-ish action that we see. Booker takes a great bump over the ropes off a Bagwell dropkick. Really wonky finish with Sherri distracting people for no reason and a big deal made about Patriot being illegal, but Bagwell was just standing on the apron making no attempt to get involved. I think they were supposed to have things more chaotic than they actually were.
  7. PeteF3
    Great, great segment. Cornette is out with a cane making his case, and when the Gangstas come out to confront him 3-on-1, gloating about his lack of backup and kicking out his cane(!), damned if I didn't start getting emotionally invested--it really looked like some heavy shit was about to go down and that Cornette was a dead man. Bob and Steve Armstrong make the save and Cornette makes one more plea for the Heavenly Bodies to be reinstated. Cornette points out that when a crime happens, the police aren't supposed to investigate only "if the victim is a nice guy." Bullet Bob is won over and grants the reinstatement, to a huge pop. I think these fans missed the Bodies quite a bit, even when they were hated. Yes, everything makes sense here--Cornette and the Bodies aren't white-hat-wearing heroes, and they're even more over for it. Hey...something tells me the WWF could find a way to adopt this formula!
  8. PeteF3
    I don't think anyone could have anticipated that this song would ever be set to slomo footage of Chris Candido squashing a bag with a cat (ostensibly) in it. Cactus has paperwork demonstrating that Boo Bradley is certifiably sane and capable of living on his own.
  9. PeteF3
    Rich tries to hold one of PG-13 for Bowden to hit, but he slips away and Rich gets nailed instead. Every time this spot happens and it leads to tension or a split, the guy who nails his partner is always portrayed as the one being in the wrong, which I never understood. Isn't it the holder's responsibility not to lose his grip, with any negative consequences being his own fault?
  10. PeteF3
    Sabu is just not cut out for cage matches--he's a guy who needs to be flying all over the place in and out of the ring and the cage restricts that too much. He also gets visibly frustrated a few times when things don't go right--an attempted triple jump moonsault with a plastic trash can (yeah, right) and an attempted Arabian Facebuster with too big of a table. Actually, the "too restricting" thing applies to Cactus as well. Not really that bad but nowhere close to the earlier matches between these two. And I agree with everything said about the announcing, Doc! Doc Doc Doc Doc Doc!
  11. PeteF3
    "Steve" Richards in Scotty Flamingo gear and his fabulous '80s blow-dried mullet is out for the biggest day in the history of ECW. Tremendous heat for him already. He eventually introduces The Raven, in a look that's standard now but was pretty mindblowing at the time. I think it was a smart move to drop all the references to Polo, Flamingo, and Scotty the Body off the bat, letting the crowd work whatever clever comments they had out of their system before debuting the gimmick proper. Same logic Heyman would re-use at Occupy Raw with CM Punk.
  12. PeteF3
    Pamela looking very doable here.
  13. PeteF3
    I observed this in the previous match, but it is refreshing to see Raw coming from a big arena with a sizable-looking crowd for once. Lawler's a pro, and this is decent enough for what it is, but it sure isn't as entertaining as the braying laugh track portrayed by Vince McMahon thinks it is. And so the idea of Lawler as any kind of threat comes to a permanent end. Interesting that Bret gets the star rub here and not Diesel. Is that because of the mutual Canadian-ness? Was the original Star Trek a little too fresh and recent to be on Big Daddy Cool's radar?
  14. PeteF3
    A common criticism of 1992 rears its head again: Bret should not be in ring gear considering he's been inactive since Survivor Series and his comeback match isn't until next week. The action here was much better than at KOTR and the run-ins are handled logically. But this is sort of symptomatic of a 1995 trend of heels not being allowed to get any heat on the faces, a trend that would continue until Bill Watts' arrival.
  15. PeteF3
    The TV Title will never look out of place around the waist of Arn Anderson. Finish seemed somewhat blown, like Badd was supposed to go for a rolling cradle and froze.
  16. PeteF3
    Not what I'd call a great match, but something I think is worth seeing by anyone interested in a complete history of wrestling. As part of the deathmatch genre it's pretty seminal, even if there are Onita matches that are better than this--this match had some smart work but didn't really build to a satisfying finish the way Onita does best. This is still quite good, with some jawdropping spots involving fire and thrown chairs. And flaming thrown chairs. This is also helped tremendously by the bookended promos, which give it a touch of uniqueness that the FMW stuff can't offer.
  17. PeteF3
    Chip Kessler does blink a little this time, but those bug eyes are weird. Cornette's surprise that he promised: an injunction preventing the Gangstas' posse from being at ringside. Clever. New Jack clocks Gibson with a blackjack, but with the referee still tied up Morton gets his hands on the tennis racket and takes out New Jack with it to regain the tag titles. During the inevitable post-match beatdown, Cornette swerves everyone by asking the Gangstas to hold up Morton, then clobbering both Gangstas with the racket instead! That doesn't last though, and eventually Jimbo gets overwhelmed, and even breaks out the blade. They also take out Cornette's recurring bad knee. The Rock 'n Rolls make a standing offer for Cornette to be in their corner for all subsequent matches against the Gangstas. Cornette has to convalesce in his home with twelve stitches and a busted kneecap, and cuts the promo of the motherfucking YEAR (including '94), outlining his motivations and having everything make perfect sense. He was going to let the Rock 'n Rolls get beaten down, but the cheers and exhortations of the fans led to him attempting to save the day. Cornette paid for it, and is bringing in the Heavenly Bodies for a possible match with the Gangstas on January 28! That's great...but first he has to meet with Bob Armstrong to get their ban lifted. He makes a hell of an argument. Absolutely stone-cold brilliant stuff here, and if the CANE DEWEY/anti-hardcore stuff wasn't coming later then this would lock up the Best Interview of the Year immediately. Can't wait to see where this goes, which is all you can ask of an episode of wrestling television.
  18. PeteF3
    Pro-shot ending of the match we saw at the end of the '94 Yearbook, but here we get the post-match. Chris turns on Boo and Tammy stuffs Boots the Cat in a burlap sack and runs off to throw him off a bridge. Eventually Boo rescues the sack (after a convenient backstage switch) but once again Tammy's trusty hairspray comes out, and Candido drops a leg from the top turnbuckle onto the sack. This is done better than Earthquake squashing Damian but is still a pretty over-the-top and unnecessary way to turn Boo babyface considering how blatant the writing was on the wall almost from the moment he debuted. Mark Curtis and the Power Ranger (!!) are of no comfort to Boo, but Cactus Jack returns to offer his support. I'm a cat person myself, so this hits a little closer than a snake being squashed or even Al Snow's dog being cooked off-camera. Everyone plays their role well, but this is getting very close to the Terri Runnels miscarriage angle that Cornette hated so much, for similar reasons. This results in Tammy Fytch being suspended, presumably to go to the WWF and start doing the Live Event News segments. But Cactus Jack successfully petitions SMW to keep Candido so that Boo can strike a blow for those who have been used and abused.
  19. PeteF3
    Jerry Lawler comes across the "Dirty White Boy," some guy passed out underneath a pile of clothes. He lays verbal waste to the White Boy, Dirty White Girl, and to the city of Knoxville while extolling the virtues of Memphis. After spinning his wheels for months, White Boy suddenly has two hot issues going on.
  20. PeteF3
    It helps that longtime Memphis fans would know Beverly Dundee as an on-air character herself (or "a bald-headed old hag," as the heels put it). This is awesome on all levels. Bowden is nice and focused and Rich and Gilbert get some great lines about PG-13's families but go on and on--by design, because they needed to go over-the-top to draw them out. The heel interviews are awesome, the brawls are awesome, and PG-13's response is awesome. Wolfie declaring that he's the same person when the cameras are off, and Wolfie and JC both talking about stealing things if they have to, are examples of some great character work. It's amazing how authentic two skinny white Tennessee boys come off when playing two hoodies. Take note, Public Enemy.
  21. PeteF3
    Well, this might be the most divisive match on the 5 Yearbooks and change so far. I thought this was fantastic, but I wasn't as high on it as Loss. Getting to watch joshi grow from where it was from 1990 until "now" probably helps alleviate some of the criticisms. After watching 5 years' worth of this stuff, I know what to expect and what not to bother hoping for, and the match stands up as great in its own context. It's better than anything at Big Egg Universe, but it's not at the level of the Dream Rush/Dream Slam/Thunderqueen holy trinity of joshi tags. For example, I thought Inoue's final kickout in the first fall was unnecessary--she should have gone down after the flurry of suplexes from Hasegawa instead of kicking out only to go down right after to a tornado DDT. Toyota's table dives were bothersome, but this has been a trademark of hers for the past several months, and incidentally I don't think it's a coincidence that she started using tables in '94--Meltzer may have overstated his case at the time, but Sabu's influence was far-reaching indeed. What struck me watching this was just how good the execution on almost everything was. It didn't tell a transcendental story like the other tags mentioned, but almost every single move, every spot, and every kickout was pulled off beautifully from both a timing and execution standpoint. The only issues were the table dive re-do and a spot where Takako pulls Toyota off the turnbuckles to set up a Doomsday Device but doesn't quite successfully sit her on her shoulders, forcing Toyota to rather obviously grab onto Takako's head to set up Kyoko hitting her. But considering how much else they crammed into this, those are minor concerns. This should be in the running for MOTY, or at least a top 10 spot.
  22. PeteF3
    Sasaki's ridiculous Brian Bosworth mullet haircut is a crime against humanity, but everything else here was great. Kind of a Hash carry job but that's only fitting for the guy who's been New Japan's MVP for the past year-plus. Sasaki sure isn't afraid to beat the shit out of a guy though, and Hash obliges him. I liked this more than the other Sasaki singles match I have feelings about, which is the Kawada bout (good but underwhelming).
  23. PeteF3
    Rick and Scott are apparently representing the nation of Uganda, judging by their ring attire (black, red, and yellow striped singlets--sorry, not leopard-skin loincloths and moons and stars painted on their chests). The '91 Dome match is still the Steiners' high watermark in Japan but this was a lot of fun, helped immeasurably by the feel-good ending. This has some fresh new spots, like that bizarre yet entertaining interlude with the ladies at ringside, including who is presumably Mrs. Hase. Lots of twists on previous standard spots, like Rick catching Mutoh with the German suplex off the handspring attempt and Mutoh having an answer for that, and Scott countering Mutoh's ramp-running clothesline. Mutoh's final counter, backflipping through a German suplex attempt by Rick and creaming him with a dropkick, was an awesome spot and a great way to set up the finish. Hase gets the big moment, and we get a long overdue win for a native team over the Steiners. Match of the Year so far!
  24. PeteF3
    This was good, but that's all. Ohtani is a magnificent athlete whose springboards always look fantastic, but at least at this point he's not a guy who can lay out a great match start to finish. Too often he goes back to the chinlock or head scissors as a resthold (an applicable term here), while Samurai holds the match together more. Good closing stretch and finish, which is sold as an upset even though Ohtani's defending some sort of belt.
  25. PeteF3
    Absolutely brilliant piece of work. Mikey evolves from a total punching bag to a punching bag who's willing to stand up for himself, right before our eyes.
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