PeteF3
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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. -
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.
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Not much to say here. Just two hosses beating each other up. This was better than their early '90s stuff, and the dynamic was switched. Hash is no longer the young lion--now Choshu is the oldster who's still trying to hang.
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Holy hell, I could watched these eight guys go at it for 2 hours. Ohtani is one of the most graceful pure athletes I think I've ever seen in wrestling, or maybe anywhere. We get to see Sasuke work heel, and the New Japan guys work Michinoku Pro comedy spots. We see one of the greatest dive trains ever in terms of combining sheer athletic grace with high impact pain. This was a total blast and if anything it was too short.
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This isn't as slickly put together as a WWF or even a Memphis music video, but the choice of song works--it's instantly cooler and more "with it" than any other promotion in the country. That said, you can pretty obviously see that they put in the absolute bare minimum amount of actual, in-ring wrestling content for it to qualify as a wrestling video. Hiding weaknesses is a Paul E. specialty and in this case the weaknesses cover everything that happens once the bell rings.
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The infamous spitting comes in the post-match. Effective but very short.
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Very good promo, with Bret hyping up a family member in his corner to deal with Shawn Michaels. Always loved that angle.
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The greatest day in the history of professional wrestling. "Great" meaning large or immense--we use it in the pejorative sense. Hart makes a nuisance of himself and Okerlund actually asks for Hogan's "official John Henry" on the contract. Hogan cuts a promo on Flair and about arm-wrestling Ted Turner. Yeah, kind of a far cry from Trump Plaza breaking apart and Donald Trump throwing away his earthly possessions to ride on the back of the Hulkster on the crazy scale. This is legitimately a game-changing move for WCW, as it indirectly leads to Nitro which leads to the most exciting period of wrestling in my lifetime. But man oh man, does this reek of phoniness and a short-term changing of the guard that isn't for the better. The sad thing is, WWE's competitors (such as they are) haven't really learned a thing in 20 fucking years.
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Music video with a weird, distracting strobe effect set to Chris Benoit's music. Blink and you'll miss Glen Jacobs taking a Stinger Splash. Some weird editing choices in terms of commentary snippets and a Vader moonsault that's bizarrely dropped in at the end. Sting was never a great promo so this is middle-of-the-road for him. I appreciate the nod to history and the first Clash.