Jump to content
Pro Wrestling Only

PeteF3

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    10269

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Everything posted by PeteF3

  1. PeteF3
    So Col. Parker gets off scot-free even though he and the Stud Stable have done just as much damage to the Rhodes family. "Hey everyone--Ric Flair won't be on TV or at arenas in the near future!" Great business decision.
  2. PeteF3
    My God, it's like the old mini-movies without the budget. It's a Nasty Boys-centered bar--dig the record scratch and music stoppage when Dusty finally confronts them, like an '80s teen comedy trailer. I actually ilke the idea of the Nasties taking up Dusty's offer simply because fighting in a WarGames would come naturally to them, but...yeah, this could have been executed better.
  3. PeteF3
    Cactus recites his past history with Sullivan in a neat little footnote to this angle, before amicably breaking up the team. But that isn't good enough for Evad, who badgers him about first breaking the team up and then speaking bad of Kevin when he's not here. He calls Cactus the wrong name and then grabs him, so Cactus responds with a DDT on the floor. Jesus, Cactus was trying to play it peaceful--Evad brought that whole thing on himself because he's an annoying little shit. He's already starting the "#1 Hulkamaniac" stuff, too. He and Cactus are in different worlds.
  4. PeteF3
    Candido is now sporting the old El Olympico open-faced mask to hide his bald head. That match ended up being a total disaster that killed SMW's best town--Morton was pinned in the match but rather than shaving his head, the Rock 'n Rolls teamed up to cut off Candido's. Not only did fans completely shit on Morton not adhering to the stips, but the electric razor they brought to shave Candido's head malfunctioned, and all they could do was snip off a bit with some scissors, so the fans never really got any head-shaving at all. Losing the Bodies was a pretty big blow but one that they weathered, but this was something I'm not sure SMW ever really recovered from. We see the final fallout of the Candido/Lee team, as one more Lee screw-up leads to a break-up, on account of Lee thinking too much for himself. Candido realizes this, so he and Tammy have brought in a new partner who's bigger, stronger, meaner, and stupider: his childhood friend/bodyguard Boo Bradley, working a total Rick Steiner Varsity Club gimmick.
  5. PeteF3
    The Gangstas are now painting a black "X" on opponents after beating them. New Jack threatens to rip the Rock 'n Roll Express' eyes out so they can see him kicking their own ass.
  6. PeteF3
    Payton's a legend and all but a running back named "Sweetness" who sounds like Michael Jackson isn't quite the guy you'd expect to counteract a pro wrestler. I'm surprised they didn't use the Fridge here, or even Steve McMichael.
  7. PeteF3
    Hogan actually put on a hell of a selling performance here, but now we're getting to see Flair start to get bitched out. He doesn't touch the injured knee at all to start despite it being the focal point of the match, which goes against Flair's entire MO--to the point where Heenan has to basically call him out on it. Hogan no-selling Flair's chops and suplexes on one leg is pretty absurd even if he does sell the actual knee. This finally does pick up once the knee comes into play, and Hogan being unable to finish his Hulk-Up routine because he can't execute his trademark moves is pretty clever and well-done. Then a ridiculous clusterfuck of a finish that wasn't executed well even before Michael Buffer's horrible announcing (and it doesn't do much for making WCW "mainstream" and "big time" if the announcer can't be bothered to comprehend the basic rules). Hogan gets jumped by the masked man again and in hindsight the Arn Anderson mannerisms are obvious. Mercifully Sting is the one who makes the save and not Bruti. This was all pretty well-done and a fairly strong running story throughout the Clash that makes you want to keep watching television to see where it goes, but there are also lots of red flags about what WCW is going to be about going forward. Hogan took over the whole show and Schiavone is now firmly up his rear end after being a Flair mark for most of his career, and lots of empty talk about WCW being the new "#1."
  8. PeteF3
    Mostly smoke and mirrors here--southern comedy spots, Arn interference, Dusty as Last Stampede-era Watts--but fun. Unfortunately the timing issues of Clashes past rear their ugly heads, as they work two FIP segments that are insanely rushed and barely even qualify as segments. The post-match is fantastic, however, as they re-do the Big Bubba magic with Meng, who plays his role perfectly. The beatdown loses a bit of effect considering how hard they've pushed the Hogan incident all show, but it's still an awesome scene to continue the feud.
  9. PeteF3
    Dig that rhyming of "back" with "back" in the opening verse. For what it is, this is...not a terrible production at all. It's a total waste and HTM would add nothing to this promotion, but it's better than the Van Hammer videos.
  10. PeteF3
    There was some strong work here and a pretty balls-out closing stretch, but this was very my-turn/your-turn-y almost all the way throughout. Steamboat is almost heroic down the stretch here--you can plainly see the injury when he awkwardly falls backward off the turnbuckle and hits his tailbone, but he gamely works through it and does some tremendous sequences, even as he's obviously slowed and in pain. Of course the match suffers through coverage--the work is hard in the open but they're clearly working not to do anything of super-importance so we can focus on Hogan's ambulance ride, and the Blacktop Bully is dropped in on us just to muddle things further. All in all, this was not a great match, but it was a worthy way for Steamboat's career to draw to its premature conclusion and a worthy way for Austin's long title reign to be stopped.
  11. PeteF3
    HUMAN UNDERSTANDING LOVING KINDNESS The Most Awesome Force in WCW History is undone by a pipe to the back of the knee. Hogan and Okerlund are both absolutely horrible here. One last Tonya & Nancy reference on this Yearbook, but that story was absolutely stone dead by this point. Okerlund gives a hilariously overwrought soliloquy about how a grand and glorious night has turned into wrestling fans' worst nightmares. I guess irony can be pretty ironic sometimes. "THIS IS ABSOLUTELY A SHAM." Well, Gene's right about that. Thirty guys in suits are immediately out to check on Hogan, and Okerlund's there to helpfully browbeat the medical staff, yet Sting doesn't get the same treatment when the same thing happens to him on another Clash. Bischoff, who has lots of ambulance-riding-with-top-babyfaces experience, follows Hogan to a hospital (their words). I'm ashamed to admit I really bought into all the masked man stuff at the time this was airing, and I was excited for the WCW debut of either Mr. Perfect or a heel Ultimate Warrior. That's surely what they had to be building toward, right?
  12. PeteF3
    Agreed on the by-the-numbers nature of the opening. Nothing bad, some of it quite good. But nothing worth going out of your way to see. Aja's elimination was a cute way of furthering the feud with Kansai while playing off ThunderQueen, but I didn't feel like it was really earned. I bought the insta-KO quickie finish when Kansai ate the Uraken, but this felt like, "Well, here's where I sell a random kick for a ten-count." And while I'm not asking for Aja to get a concussion or anything, I need a better-looking kick than that from a person noted for kicking the snot out of people for that to be a one-shot knockout. Anyway, misgivings over the execution aside, the 2-on-1 allows this to pick up with much more urgency. Still, this didn't match Queendom for "epicness" because of the wonky stips--both tags are about trying to overcome impossible odds, but here it rings a little more shallow because regardless of the end result you *know* Kansai/Hotta aren't sweeping this 2-0. At Queendom there was doubt over what would happen next all the way through until the final 3-count. Here, the conclusion of the second fall is foregone and it's only a matter of how they get there. Now, all the miscommunications didn't bother me--they were executed well and in a handicap situation it's the only believable way for Hokuto to sustain any offense or for a partner not to make a save. The closing stretch is quite good and this is another fine Hokuto performance, with enough near-falls to keep you guessing but not enough to suffocate things and cross a point of no return like in the previous bout. But this would have been better off as a straight tag. In fact, and not to review another match that didn't actually take place, it may have been far more compelling if they'd dumped the elimination concept but eliminated Aja anyway. She's not "officially" out, she just does a Terry Funk and acts dead on the floor or even does a stretcher job. That leaves the question of whether Hokuto can overcome the 2-on-1 a little more open, with a result that either makes perfect kayfabe sense (if Kansai/Hotta win) or is another feather in Hokuto's cap (if she wins) depending on how you want to go from there.
  13. PeteF3
    I was thinking all of you were out of your minds, but as the match went on, and on, and on, I started to come around. I actually liked the opening matwork--it's not exactly dynamic, but it's a different sort of opening for joshi. And Toyota being put into holds is almost always compelling because of how flexible and therefore sympathetic she is. And Kyoko has some pretty funky ways to tie you in knots. She also hits all of her big moves, like the springboard back forearm thing, great. Then we go balls-out with some insane spots, like Toyota doing a Taka Michinoku springboard plancha and Kyoko killing Toyota with a powerslam off the top. Even the transitions are pretty good--as this is an epic near-fall-fest without coming off as too my-turn/your-turn. Toyota even kicks out of the JOCS, which was a shocker and the first time I've ever seen that. But...that's probably about where the match peaked. After that come about 5 or 6 more instances of the girls kicking out of finishers, and Toyota gets sloppier and sloppier. Not only does she slip off the ropes, but she tries an inverted form of the JOCS that she used on Ozaki in one of their tags and the whole move falls apart. Then her horrible back springboard that Kyoko kind-of-sort-of covers but really kills the momentum of a match that was already starting to wear out its welcome to begin with. After each girl has completely killed the other with more finishers than you can count, Toyota puts Inoue away with...a sunset flip. Okay. But really, by that point, anything short of either woman pulling out a bazooka was going to be an anticlimax--there was simply nothing else they could do the other. I thought I was seeing a sleeper MOTYC for a lot of this, but this was just too "epic" for its own good. I liked this a lot more than anyone else here and it's a truly magnificent all-around performance from Kyoko. Her ridiculous tanlines notwithstanding, her offense and her selling as well as the timing on her kickouts were all superb. Until they said "fuck it" and just started chucking everything at the wall, she did a fantastic job of reigning Manami in and putting on a great match.
  14. PeteF3
    Big hype for all the NWA World title tournaments as well as the ECW Tag Title match, before philosophizing on the modern state of wrestling. Good promo that sort of stumbles to the finish--like anyone really thought 911 was walking out with the title.
  15. PeteF3
    What a bizarre way to show the result of a match. It's supposed to sound like Styles is calling the match "live" but it sounds like radio play-by-play and is clearly after-the-fact. I guess this is the birth of the "hardcore" Tommy Dreamer, suspenders notwithstanding. With a pseudo-"ironic," I guess, musical selection to boot. Woman reviving Sandman with a cigarette is cute. Woman is so ridiculously hot at this point that she makes even the cliched sexy-woman-with-a-cigarette image work. Woman eggs Sandman on afterward to take Dreamer out.
  16. PeteF3
    Well, this is fine, it's four years before we all read the story in Have a Nice Day. More shots at WCW.
  17. PeteF3
    This whole feud seems lost in time--it truly is the last gasp for southern-fried wrasslin' on a national level. Dustin cuts possibly the promo of his life to this point--HELL'S COMIN', AND I'M COMIN' WITH HIM. Badass.
  18. PeteF3
    Jericho's gotten better on the stick, and actually sounds semi-sincere. Lance can't remember if Jericho is his brother or his partner, and is going to wrestle singles for the next 6-8 weeks. And with that, the Thrillseekers come to an anticlimactic end. Two whitebread Canadians seem like they would have been just as natural enemies for the Gangstas as the southern redneck rock 'n rollers.
  19. PeteF3
    New Jack's thoughts on the Knoxville NAACP: "To hell with them homegrown monkeys!" Then New Jack and Mustafa feast on some watermelon and fried chicken to represent how the SMW fans want them to be. Holy Mary, mother of God. There goes the neighborhood 'cause there's a new Negro in town, indeed. Somehow I think Cornette is an even bolder booker than Paul E. this year.
  20. PeteF3
    Christopher is SOO channelling Lawler here. He's about to explain to us the nature of his torn MCL when he's surrounded by Bowden's group of heels. Gilbert takes a mighty McCarver-esque baseball bat swing with the crutch to Christopher's bad knee and the beatdown is on before the Moondogs make the save. Man, those guys really have lost their edge without Richard Lee. A seething Eddie Marlin suspends Doug Gilbert. Going from "hair on the line for the next 5 matches" to "banned from the USWA" in the span of 1 TV show seems a little rushed, but that's nothing new for Memphis.
  21. PeteF3
    Yeah, I saw that Landell turn coming too. Great southern-fried promo from all involved, though. Rich, Gilbert, and Landell are AGHAST at having to wrestle a 6-man tag against the Moondogs--"We're WRASSLERS, Dave Brown!"
  22. PeteF3
    Doug freaks out about this latest stipulation, but Marlin shuts him up by ordering WMC to go to break! It's amazing how good Marlin is at maintaining his dignity as an authority figure in the wacky, chaotic world of the USWA.
  23. PeteF3
    Not that it really changes your point but there is David Kapoor.
  24. PeteF3
    So Joey was barely 24 when he officiated the main event at WrestleMania 3. Marella was a much better referee than Earl Hebner, the type of ref you don't notice in a good way. Classy segment.
  25. PeteF3
    Empty arena interview with the cage set up. Strong, intense interview from Owen.
×
×
  • Create New...