PeteF3
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This was whatever. Styles attempts to put over the fact that Dory Funk Jr., a man who hasn't changed his facial expression since 1974, is "visibly upset." Dreamer gets a quick pinfall on "The Hopeless Hoodie," and gets attacked by Shane Douglas afterward. They have a laughably bad brawl and for some reason *this* of all things empties out the entire locker room, and I can only guess it's to spare the rest of us the sight of these two trading feather punches. 911 and Mr. Hughes have a confrontation that sets up the most horrifying possible match since Jeff Gaylord vs. the Snowman. Sabu and Shane finally come out to add some fire to all this. -
Sandman comes out to "Big Shot" by Billy Joel, which is pretty jarring. He and Woman cut a shitty nonsensical pre-match promo. Mikey takes some sick bumps and I admit I liked Sandman spiting the ECW fans by not using a chair when given the chance. That's commitment to heeling. Cairo clobbers Sandman with a cane behind the referee's back, and when the ref turns around he just sees him whacking Mikey, so it's another DQ win for the TV champ. This served its purpose, I guess. I know the ins and outs of presenting this style still need to be hammered out, but Styles needs to fucking decide if he wants to be a smartass smark announcer or a righteous babyface.
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Paul E. addresses the state of the business and sums up ECW in one succinct promo. "...even if we have to OJ Simpson your ass!" had to have been quite the "wow" comment for 1994. We just weren't used to hearing casual swearing on our wrestling programming. This rung about 500 times more true and believable than all the WWF "New Generation" bleating.
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In retrospect, I think they'd have been better off just doing a straight Lex turn at this point. The Tatanka turn was a nice swerve (even if most people I talked to at the time saw it was coming) but he was a shitty heel whereas a rejuvenated Luger could have had something to offer.
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Mercifully the Monsoon-as-lead-announcer experiment only lasted one PPV and TV taping. Jim Ross makes his triumphant return, at the best possible time. Bret's facing a smaller and more sympathetic guy for the first time in years, so he busts out some new forms of offense to build on that--uppercutting the Kid to death in the corner, the Samoan drop for the false finish, and cranking in a chinlock. I don't have much else to add--the roles were played pretty much perfectly, the match is great and is probably the best Raw match of the year if not the best Raw match ever to this point.
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The stalling was a little much but the 40-60 minute stuff was pretty terrific. They definitely made you wait for that first fall, and despite the stalling I kind of liked that, as you had some neat false finishes before Bret finally goes up 1-0. The downside is they pretty much used up all of their near-fall spots in regulation. Once overtime starts this gets into just trading holds back and forth, making the stretch run a real anticlimax when it should have been the most balls-out portion. I liked the Flair match better but I will say this went from background noise to something to really pay attention to as the match went on.
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I actually think part of his settlement with Debra is that neither one's *allowed* to address it.
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Hey, Terra Ryzing. Flair is begging off literally from the start of the match. Great. Heenan's rants about what an injustice this is to the Heavyweight champ are pretty classic Brain. All that's missing is something something "fair to Flair." Sting throws Flair around the ring at will and has him beaten with the Scorpion, when a Vladimir Lenin-looking dude gouges Sting's eyes, the power of which are such as to knock him out of the match with Regal at Bash at the Beach. Of course the real reason that it's Sherri dressed as a man is to give Hulk an excuse to beat her up. Flair's about to snap Hogan's knee when Mr. fucking T makes the save. Jesus. I have to admit this was a hot segment, but the bad parts are really, really bad.
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Was this a live episode? Hogan, to his credit, actually does an effective job of putting WCW over and hyping the Bash at the Beach main event. And WCW Interactive! After Shaquille O'Neal and George Foreman, Hogan brings out his trump card...Mr. T. Oh, just when this was going relatively well.
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A cake angle--also a southern-fried wrasslin' staple, but Jericho & Storm look so out of place in this setting. Really fun follow-up angle, as two kids are being filmed by their mom about to get the Thrillseekers' autographs when they're accosted by Cornette and two masked men. I could bitch about the mystery man overload at this point but I'll let it slide. Lance Storm recites the most wooden promo of all-time, dropping the bombshell that it was the Heavenly Bodies under the masks. Jericho's more charismatic but his acting is pretty horrible on all levels, from his over-the-top moaning after getting laid out to his ANGRY INTENSE WRESTLING TALK here. WE'RE GONNA KICK YOU LIKE YOU'VE NEVER BEEN KICKED BEFORE. Jim "Hoffa" Cornette responds, lamenting the snoopiness of modern America. Oh, Jim, you haven't seen nothing yet. I guess today he'd be singing the praises of poor railroaded Donald Sterling. Cornette's interpretation of the events on the tape are pretty hilarious. The WWF has suspended the Heavenly Bodies for one week and threatened a fine if they don't return to SMW to face the Thrillseekers during that time. Another potentially confusing set-up, explained away masterfully by Cornette.
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Cornette has now reinvented himself as a union boss, head of the Federation of International Thugs & Eliminators, or FITE. This whole set-up with THREE mystery men (counting Armstrong's successor as commissioner, which I believe was planned to be Bill Watts) sounds convoluted as hell, but everyone involved is so good at getting all these stips over that it all works. And all the payoffs work, from the announcement of the match stipulations to the announcement of the babyface cornerman to the announcement of the mystery partner. Between Cornette, Wright, and Bullet Bob there are way too many classic lines to even recap. Suffice to say I'll never look at a baseball bat again without thinking of it as a "Smoky Mountain toothpick." Wrasslin' as southern as a country-fried steak.
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Randy Hales on commentary from the Mid-South Coliseum. I think Rich has a legitimate beef with that decision. That "throw off the headlock and into the referee" spot is a Memphis staple and it never ends in a DQ. Maybe he saw Dream Machine get involved. Rich has hijacked Diesel's ring gear and now looks and sounds like a redneck Greg Valentine. He rants about all he's done to Lawler and Dream Machine lays a rap on us. I like Graham's act but this idea that he "did Dusty better than Dusty" is absurd. He talks a good game but he's never hit you in the gut the way Dusty could.
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The triple-submission was a neat finish, but I can't help but think AJPW did the same thing except it was much cooler because it was the young folks putting the screws to Jumbo's team. Still, this was a really fun look at the old guys putting the young'uns in their place. Much, much more fulfilling than the Steiners match the night before, naturally.
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Slower-paced than the usual Steiners match, to its detriment. There's really nothing new under the sun here--all the Steiners moves, all the native moves, and even the Mutoh & Hase mocking spots have been seen before. I'm fine with a tag match sticking to the basics but Money Inc. actually did a much better job of getting that sort of match out of the Steiners than Muto & Hase. There are some nice spots here, but Rick in particular pretty much blows off everything that's done to him. The only time the Steiners ever seem in danger of losing is when Mutoh hits the moonsault, right before the inevitable save. A step behind the Dome match which was a step behind their match in '92.
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I aced an analogy question on a proficiency exam that involved the word "vignette."
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I think I liked the J-Cup match a bit better, just because it's hard to top that finish--*that* as opposed to some of NJPW's upsets-for-upset's-sake was magnificently done in a way that really elevated Sasuke and led to great other matches. This time Sasuke goes balls-out from the start in an effort to prove that J-Cup wasn't a fluke, and the action never lets up from there. Sasuke does a little fighting from underneath at times but controls most of this, before Liger convincingly drops him with a super fisherman buster.
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I didn't much care for this at all. I knew not to expect a redux of their famed Texas Death Match but this was pretty phoned-in by Bam Bam. The Memphis style that seemed so cutting-edge at the start of the decade in comparison to the Big Two has in fact changed by standing still. ECW has surpassed it as the under-the-radar promotion doing shit the national promotions weren't. Standard Memphis stalling and a standard, tired Memphis finish. I'm sure there will be enjoyable stuff to come, as the promotion is filled with enough good talkers that almost any issue can seem compelling, but the USWA seems content to just be going through the motions. Let me know when SMW invades.
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Bad promo from the Kid, and the humble-nice-guy act is way overdone--someone similarly booked like Pillman, who wasn't afraid to show a bit of an edge, could have built this into something really special. This is very much an argument in favor of scripted promos. Lawler is in a tough and unusual role for him: "respectful babyface vs. babyface match" simply isn't a Memphis forte unless there's an angle attached, and he's in the weird position of sort of having to put over Bret. But he pulls it off nicely, and him steadfastly rooting for the Kid is a nice touch. The ongoing and neverending Bret-Lawler feud is probably the best thing about the WWF's mid-'90s booking.
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Flair and Sherri cut a promo in front of an obvious green-screen of the WCWSN set rather than the set itself. Flair is good, Sherri's just a bit over-the-top for my tastes.
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George was still a fairly big deal in boxing at this point and was a few months away from his improbable Heavyweight title win. This was short, at least.
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Good scorched-earth promo from Tammy with sort of an underwhelming payoff. This presumably sets up the Morton's-hair-vs.-Tammy's-hair disaster.
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End of a Paul E. promo that I'm pretty sure went longer, as he brings up his old desire to bring WCW down. Cactus responds with his infamous belt spitting that set off an internal shitstorm in WCW, thanks I believe in these pre-Youtube, pre-DVR days to Okerlund stooging him off. Really great promo from Cactus, with one of the first references to "Mrs. Foley's little boy." He channels Ole Anderson a bit with his plans for Sabu, brings up some history about being left out of the Dangerous Alliance, and talks of how he's "tired of being a family entertainer." Music to ECW fans' ears. And my general coldness to ECW notwithstanding, even mine.
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The scepter is cool, the crown is ridiculous and so lame that it can't even cross back over the line into cool again. Monsoon's "LIAR--YOU GOT LUCKY!" in regards to Owen's victory over Bret is absolutely fucking infuriating. There's the usual Monsoon quirks and then there's the unforgivable shit that belies the idea that he had any goddamn clue how to get over anything at all besides the Brain's quips and his own ego. I'm thinking back to all 4.5 Yearbooks I've watched, trying to remember one other time besides the '92 Rumble where Gorilla actually said something to put a heel over. Bitching aside, this is a very strong promo from Owen, full of rage and fire, actually much better than the KOTR coronation.
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I'm STUNNED, legitimately, that Okerlund doesn't introduce Ted Turner as his "close, longtime personal friend." WCW does go all-out to make this look like a big deal, but it still carries an air of phoniness (especially Gene's fawning intro of Hogan and the tepid applause following) and lacks the WWF's early-'90s slick production values. Cool of Turner to take part in this, though--the dude was always loyal to wrestling and we were all better off for it. Flair is always great in these settings, but I kind of wish we'd gotten cocky and laid-back Slick Ric. He had reason to be that way after vanquishing Sting, but he has to look paranoid and insecure instead.
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Who knows how many Armstrongs are running around out there, both legitimately and illegitimately.