PeteF3
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Another sterling Jake promo. Sadly this feud comes to an anticlimactic end as Jake flaked out (shock of the century) and DWB had to take the belt in a phantom switch rather than in a big cage blowoff.
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Another stiff fight, that takes the intensity of the Clash and ramps it up a notch. You'd like to see a pinfall to finish things off, but Larry going nuts with the umbrella was pretty cool in its own right. Great little footnote to a classic feud. Nice to see Solie get to call one of these matches.
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Hey, let's book a crazy ECW brawl main event and have all the focus on DORY FUNK. I like Dory more than most in the IWC, but goddamn, he fits into this as well as Bob Backlund does. That said, this match makes me unsure if Johnny Grunge ever actually attended a wrestling school. Another shitty-ass finish, even worse than Sabu vs. Cactus, and Styles' cluelessness as to why Paul E. and 911 were there was infuriating. Styles has gotten better, but jeez, they're there because they were paying for PE to take the Funks out. I picked up on this story, you could have done the same thing, Joey. Another shitty, overlong post-match that at least has a cool payoff with Rocco bungee-jumping off the eagle's nest.
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Cactus was clearly working hurt here, to the point where he probably shouldn't have been working at all going by his first book, and it really showed. Call me nuts but as a standalone match I actually thought this was pretty good. Yep, I even liked the waistlock counters and stuff that built to the big insane spots rather than the guys going balls-to-the-wall to start. Kind of reigned Sabu's worst tendencies in, the same way Funk did, even if it was by pure accident due to Jack's injury. That said, it didn't live up to all the pre-match hype and the fans who viewed this as a disappointment probably were right to feel that way. And the ending is pretty cheap. Even the post-match starts out pretty hot, as Jack actually carries 911 to something resembling a watchable sequence, but then it just goes on and on and on with Jack blowing a ton of shit and the involvement of Hughes, Douglas, the Bruise Brothers, 911, and other guys I don't give two fucks about. And that chairshot to 911's head was sickening and not in a good, fun way.
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It's hard to fault WCW too much for this--if the opportunity to sign Hogan is there, I can't fault them for taking it even if leads to a product I don't like. If you've signed Hogan, it only makes sense to go forward with the match that the WWF couldn't pull off. If you go forward with Hogan vs. Flair off the bat, Sting is going to be left out in the cold. All that being said, this set-up does Sting no favors whatsoever. All the pre-match build is on Flair and Hogan, all throughout the match the talk is about how Hogan's affecting Flair, Sting gets his ass kicked by a woman who double-crosses him, etc. I can't really offer a better alternative right now (the idea of having Hogan and Flair as a dream team before building to the match sounds nice in theory--in practice, I think the longer you put the money match off the higher the odds that something goes awry, just as it did in the WWF) but Sting really comes off as ineffective even as he dominates the match. There's really nothing new under the sun here, as these two roll through all their standard spots with Ric getting pretty badly bitched out, until demonstrating his superiority in the most important departments: brainpower and trust. The WCW International title is finally mercy killed and Flair and Sherri put on a pretty awesome post-match attack, before Hogan comes in and bitches Flair out again. Yes, Jerome is 100% right on the Hogan/Sherri altercation and Jimmy Hart's involvement specifically. It's one of numerous issues to come that demonstrate how many ridiculous advantages Hogan always gets. Plus Hart comes off as the little Chester the pup from Looney Toons, to Hogan's Spike the Bulldog. This historic, legendary unification match between WCW's two top all-time legends ends with Hogan's music playing. If that doesn't sum up late-'94 WCW...
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Man, how did I not realize what a blatant ripoff of "Real American" this entrance music was. Noticeable boos for Hulk's promo, which puts over WCW but really says very little. Flair cuts in from the video wall and screams at him. This is very 1998 Crazy Old Man Flair, and he's one breath away from taking off his robe and elbowdropping it. The talk in the Unification Match thread about Flair trying too hard also rings true here. Backstage (or somewhere else pre-taped, most likely) Hulk and Shaq both have words for us. Not that this moves the needle or anything by itself, but Shaq is as good of a celebrity "get" as WCW has had since LT in 1990. -
Dustin has evidently just stepped off the plane after performing in Branson, Missouri. Or he saw Regal's revolutionary get-up and powdered wig and thought, "I can top that." Arn will only team with Dustin if it's going to be the OLD Arn Anderson, which sits just fine with the Natural. Oh, Dustin.
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I loved how they changed up their approach after the mat- and psychology-based matches before. Oh, this had psychology out the ass and some good matwork, but this was a fight with some technical wrestling on the side. The stand-up stuff, especially Zbyszko's punch-and-martial-arts-flurry, are the real highlights. Clever and well-done finish as Sir William reverses a Boston crab attempt and Regal steals a win despite both guys being in the ropes. I'm not ready for this feud to be over yet.
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Well, Boss Man used a nightstick and Akeem shoved the referee. Now the year after that, when the Powers of Pain leveled Hogan with a spike piledriver and *both* got disqualified, after Zeus was (justifiably) DQ'd earlier ("I don't care if you've got a Z on the side of your head or not, that's not legal")...well, Jesse's frothing-at-the-mouth rant summed that up better than I ever could.
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Rocco's delivery is over the top but this is a pretty decent promo that hits the notes that it's supposed to hit and hypes what needs to be hyped, with no goofy bullshit. Grunge hotwires a car in the background.
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Paul E. does a great job of hyping this as a one-of-a-kind match, with the possibility that one or both men may not survive for a rematch. Holy shit, Sabu speaks! Very good build to this match considering it's just two guys cutting promos on each other, with Jack's being 30 seconds or less. They're letting the match sell itself.
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What a fucking waste. 1994 kiddie booking at its absolute worst. Well, maybe not worse than Doink & Dink. But definitely worse than Santino & Emma. Lawler, God bless him, still finds a way to work in some shots at Stu & Helen. Duke gets off some horribly lame responses before turning to leave, but not before stupidly stopping to acknowledge the crowd. Lawler decks him and destroys him with the garbage can. This being squarely in the family entertainment era, the camera quickly zooms backward and the segment seems to end early. Lawler was actually forced to issue an (in-character) apology for this. As much as we complain about the PG era, the WWE isn't as overly sensitive to violence as it was 20 years ago.
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Flair is awesome here, though all the Hogan talk more or less telegraphs who's winning at the Clash.
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Well, no Rhodes has ever been burned by asking an Anderson to team with him before. This "wait until the Clash" business doesn't make sense on the surface level, but if I can supply my own fantasy booking I'd like to think Arn went to the Colonel after this and said, "Make me an offer or I take the kid up on his." Hell, maybe this was explicitly explained.
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This may have been somewhat cynical on WCW's part, but at least on TV they, along with Traylor, come across as wanting to do justice to the Angels. This is quite an effective promo, too.
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Everyone in Tennessee and the Armstrong family are dumb, toothless, with no mentality--they all want to be volunteers at 18, so they quit the 5th grade!
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"You like to play mind games, Jake...let's do it then." DWB is still filled with self-doubt and remorse, but now for the first time it comes off as though Jake is fucked. Jake sans hair is out to rebut, and he finally has the title belt with him. "If this were a battle of wits, I would be fighting an unarmed man." This is one of Jake's strongest SMW promos yet, as he junks the smartassery and is back to being the purely cold-hearted evil bastard who tormented Randy & Elizabeth like he's tormenting Tony & Kimberly. Jake espouses the instant gratification of running with the Devil. Hey, Daryl Van Horne, take note: this is how to cut a promo in the Bible Belt and come off as genuinely believing it rather than a guy trying to say the most shocking thing he can on broadcast TV to get a reaction. They do a pretty masterful job of trying to make sense out of Jake's haircut. The fake Kendo stuff is pretty clever, but it's not quite the hellfire and brimstone brought upon Jake that you might hope for. Tony follows up by taking off his eyepatch, which is a cool moment.
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Eh, I liked this. Tammy's joy is pretty priceless, precisely because it makes absolutely no sense. That was some Dwight Schrute levels of gullibility. A feature, not a bug. Candido was there to add some skepticism and gravitas--"Is it ticking?"
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Missionary Man was definitely a hit, but a lesser one than Sweet Dreams or Would I Lie to You. It was also eight years old and part of an era that Nirvana had more or less wiped out--remember what I said about ECW's use of Fantastic Voyage? The lyrics do at least fit with Christopher's image as a semi-antihero babyface. Lance is backstage with Brian, who vows revenge for a 3-on-1 beatdown at the hands of Doug Gilbert, Tommy Rich, and Dream Machine. Footage follows--holy CRAP, I can't believe Russell wasn't seriously hurt. He went flying farther than a 68-year old man should ever go. The dude's a trooper.
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See, most of the Memphis I saw the first go-round was a.) the McMahon stuff, and b.) stuff from 1995. So I'm used to PG-13 as babyfaces and it was weirder seeing them as heels. They're good enough to work both ways--they're scuzzy and sleazy, but also small and capable of sympathy, with some crowd-pleasing flashy offense. They're forcing Bert Prentice to put up $1,000 to get a tag title rematch before the 30-day deadline, which seems like a dick move for a supposed team of babyfaces. The Eliminators take out their frustrations. Jeff Gaylord, Spike Huber, and the Colorado Kid make for one sad collection of mid-card babyfaces. Bumper footage of PG-13 clobbering some jobber with their hubcap--wait a minute, what the fuck WAS I just saying about these guys working as babyfaces?!
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Almost all WWF lifers in this class. "Manager extraordinaire" James Dudley among them. I guess I don't know why I should be surprised that Backlund was there, but somehow I am. Savage says a few words in his normal voice--which is always jarring, even if as the years go by it got less and less distinguishable from his wrestling voice. Vince in the background seems to be genuinely having a ball. Nice and classy all the way around.
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Weirdness all around, even before the post-match cheapshot. Shame about the shitty overdubbed music.
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Monsoon seriously picked Mabel to win this? That's crazy talk! I forgot about the one thing they attempted to directly involve Art Donovan with, that he was supposed to be in Razor Ramon's corner (figuratively, I mean) the whole night. Also, incidentally, I'm missing all the talk and emphasis on round-by-round time limits from 1993. Knowing about Jim Ross' recent podcast comments that was surely his doing. There's not much chemistry between these two, and the match is a disappointment. I don't think it was ever in Razor to wrestle three times in a night. Naturally Gorilla completely shits all over the concept of Owen doing an abdominal stretch on Razor. Before the match even has a chance to go anywhere, Neidhart is out and it ends. Probably for the best, but I think they had something greater in mind for this match, but as much as I like the Neidhart turn Owen comes off as a real chump, since the whole match was a Razor shine sequence and a screw finish. Hart Attack after the match! Oh, I marked out for that. Bret's shellshocked about Neidhart's actions. Jack Tunney is wheeled out for an increasingly rare live appearance for the coronation ceremony. Owen gives him the brush-off so that the only family member he can trust can crown him. Holy shit, a New Foundation reference! Didn't see that one coming. I dunno, there's something strangely fascinating about this entire show. It's a very, very odd combination of horrible, chaotic production by a reeling, turbulent company...with some excellent wrestling and decent booking. With shit-tons of "New Generation" references, which ring almost as phony and desperate as Hulk Hogan's press conference. And yet, little nods to history like the Hart and New Foundations, and high-end matches like Kid/Owen, that are more for the devoted fan than the young audience they were obviously courting. Oh, and the disastrous main event that deserves mention. The production as a whole is very "off" but in a completely different way than next year's disaster. I'm very strangely compelled to check this show out in full on the Network sometime--it's one of the truly unique PPVs in company history. Perhaps only the D-Generation X PPV compares.
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Fantastic. Kid is working an injury angle stemming from the Double J match earlier, as an excuse for these guys to go balls-to-the-wall from the opening. Actually before the opening, as Owen CREAMS Kid with one of the greatest baseball slides of all-time. Almost had me jumping out of my seat, since Owen just emerged from the dimmed lights out of nowhere. He also busts out a German suplex counter and a fucking POWER BOMB that kills the Kid dead to set up the Sharpshooter. One of the best 5-or-fewer minute matches ever, anywhere.
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Well, here it is. The only Coliseum Video-era WWF PPV that I've never, ever seen. Like I said, this was pretty much rock bottom for the WWF. Business may have been worse in '95, but bad business combined with the federal indictment was a deadly combination that permeated the entire product and even the American wrestling business as a whole. Vince wasn't even able to be at this show, and fairly or not it shows in the first 30 seconds of footage that we see, as we get an awkward production moment involving the footage of Bret on the King's Court. And of course, the incomprehensible decision to have Art Donovan sit in on all 3 hours of the show. Even Finkle's absence casts a pall over this, not to mention the shockingly dark Baltimore Arena. We do at least get the debut of Bret's new theme here. Bret does some very good work over Diesel's legs, and Diesel does a surprisingly good job of selling it. Donovan aside, Monsoon & Savage are awful together and each one calls the match as if a split second of silence would be catastrophic. It makes you long for the modern-day indifference of Jerry Lawler. In the end, I'm pretty stunned at how much I liked this. I knew this match had somewhat of a rep, but Diesel's selling throughout was a really unexpected highlight--especially his punch-drunk staggering after hitting the exposed turnbuckle. Bret basically slots Diesel into his standard big-vs.-little template that he worked against Bam Bam the previous year, but it's a nice reliable way to build a match with an inexperienced guy. The Patterson influence is definitely there, especially Shawn clobbering Bret with the title and the near-fall off of that. There were some other unexpected wrinkles--Bret suddenly taking Diesel down and applying the Sharpshooter from his back was a very neat spot, and the finish is a well-done copout--Neidhart saves Bret's title, but his motives are left ambiguous--was he out to save the title, or did he just react to Diesel attacking him? And where'd he go during the post-match beatdown? I really think they wanted to have a great match, and Nash worked as hard as you'll ever see him work. He blows and mistimes a few things, so they don't quite get there. But I have to give him an A for effort, and all my harping about the quality of the product aside, I've always thought Neidhart's involvement with this show was incredibly well-booked.