PeteF3
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There are some damn cool moves and double-teams here--even from Lance. My favorite was the top-rope version of the old Hart Foundation "powerslam my partner into a cover" move. And I like Hagar more than Roth even if Roth knows more about the history of puroresu.
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Tammy is spectacular, in every sense of the word.
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I actually liked what we saw, even if it was just because the sight of the two Samoans working as a Memphis babyface tag team was so novel. It occurs to me that the 'shrinkers are natural babyfaces--their stuff like no-selling the head shots mesh more with stooging heels than with dumb good guys, and they have a nice array of crowd-pleasing moves to boot.
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Sting was scheduled to be in a "bounty match" against Scott Norton. Norton balked for whatever reason--money, doing a clean job, whatever--so I guess Walcholz was the biggest "monster" name they could get on short notice. The LA riot thing is freaky, but it was probably coincidence. DiBiase accused the Boss Man of beating prisoners right after his babyface turn (1990--the Rodney King attack took place in March of '91) and it wouldn't surprise me if they were sitting on the Nailz gimmick for a couple of years just like they did with the Ringmaster.
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Chigusa Nagayo vs. Mayumi Ozaki, JWP Super Major Queens Nagayo's SNK-sponsored video game entrance gear is rather amusing. I'm not sure to what extent the "generation battle" aspect of this meant anything, but this was definitely more epic in scope than the Kong/Kansai match. Ozaki brutalizes Nagayo on the floor to start with, but Chigusa begins a reocurring theme of the match by cutting Oz off with her "Super Freak" (tilt-a-whirl power bomb). Nagayo keeps it in the ring a bit and then pays Ozaki back on the floor with everything Oz did to her--including talking trash on the mic. There's sort of a story of Oz using weapons and chairs and whatnot while Nagayo keeps it basically to wrestling, but by the end of it Ozaki is the one who's bleeding a gusher. Ozaki throws all her big moves at Nagayo but Chigusa keeps kicking out, and then a finish that's similar to Hasegawa/Toyota, as Nagayo slips down Ozaki's back and levels her with one big surprise move for the pin. Very good match. I honestly hesitate to say if it was Match of the Night--I was clearly the way-high vote on Kong/Kansai and it was probably a little bit tighter and not really any less intense. This is definitely one for a supplemental set, though. It *feels* somewhat historic even if I'm not sure if it really is.
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Man oh man, I thought this was awesome. It's not the most dynamic matwork in history but for two big female hosses tying each other in knots, it worked fine. And the closing stretch was pretty holy-shit great. Kansai's comebacks from taking all the urakens are absolutely awesome--first she gets some blocks in and turns into a lucha-style abdominal stretch, then later on when she looks dead and buried she comes back to MURDER Aja with a forearm that almost turns the tide. Very young-Misawa-vs.-Hansen-ish layout with the challenger trying to wear down the nigh-unbeatable champ with holds and having the strategy *almost* pay off. No, this isn't as good as 8/93, but I thought this was easily the best of the 3 joshi matches in this little stretch.
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Someone's going have to explain why Estrada is covered with Stars of David all over his attire here. La Parka is so darn likable--how much longer can he believably be a rudo? Even the coverage touches on that fact. Of course, he's also such a great stooge that using him as a babyface seems like a waste, too. After the classic amateur wrestling showdown with Sagrada, Parka kicks the ropes in frustration...right as Estrada is bouncing off of them, sending him to the floor. Some great comedy stuff going here. AAA matches tend to have a lot of bullshit in them, but this was entertaining bullshit, at least for the most part. They add a few twists, like Estrada breaking up the usual lucha rowboat spot. Eventually things break apart into a chaotic brawl in the third fall, with some cool dives that take out everyone except Metal and Estrada, leading to a clean rudo submission win. Mostly good stuff but I thought Metal had a fucking horrible performance--his timing was off on lots of things and it wouldn't surprise me if he was drugged out of his gourd for this, because he was out of it. -
I liked this way more than the kickfest before, as this was much like a classic JWP match combining deliberate matwork with some advanced suplexes and dives toward the end. One of the best "reigned in" singles Toyota performances since the early part of the decade when she was trying to tear apart Hokuto's knee. Hasegawa provides some way cool holds and even cooler counterholds, and then scores a pin at the end! Wow, didn't see that coming. The second counter of the JOCS was perfectly timed, as after Sakie countered it once it looked for sure like Toyota was going to hit it the second go-round, but Hasegawa finds another way out.
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I liked the kicking and the more deliberate, matwork-based pace of this, but had trouble getting into it overall. I'm just not a fan of Hotta and I think Yamada is best suited in a tag setting. It also had a fairly tough act to follow, which wasn't helpful.
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I have to come down on the side that Kawada was not yet ready to pin Misawa for the TC here. Even after winning the Champion Carnival and taking him to a draw on the same tour. He was simply jobbed out too much towards the end of '93, with his team falling to DiBiase & Hansen and then him putting over Kobashi in the RWTL finals, he just hadn't recovered enough that he could go straight to the top singles belt. He needs to pin Misawa probably sooner than later, but preferably in a tag match or Carnival match first. It's hard to beat the Hokuto/Kandori tag in terms of telling an overcoming-the-odds story, just because that one was so unique. But these two manage to pull it off. The action is great throughout of course, but once Kawada gets a ridiculous hang-time kick to nail Misawa coming off the turnbuckle, things get nuts. Misawa gets the shit beaten out of him with about every big move Kawada has in his arsenal, but weathers the big bombs and gets just enough openings with his elbow smashes to make the comeback. This match's greatness is pretty self-evident, as all great matches should be, but having knowledge of Kawada's knee problems and the effectiveness of Misawa's elbow and the length of time since the first Tiger Driver '91 adds a great deal. I'm starting to dig big, epic puroresu tag matches over big epic singles matches, I think--so I don't know if this has MOTY locked up or not. It will be a close three-horse race with the May tag and the Queendom tag.
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That's a hell of a domestic crowd for 1992 WCW. Not a question, just an observation--Scotty Flamingo getting a pinfall on Larry Zbyszko on WCW TV has to be one of the all-time WTF results, at least in the pre-Nitro era.
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I liked this a lot, too. Honda is raw but he was already carrying himself like a star and was way over from the start thanks to his Olympic background. One thing that I think has come through on these '93 and '94 Yearbooks is that between Akiyama, Omori, and Honda so far, AJPW had building blocks for a post-Four Corners world that simply never materialized. Jun was thought to be a future legend, and maybe Omori and Honda weren't quite at the level of Kawada and Kobashi--but it's hard to hold it against them that they weren't once-a-generation talents. They've shown enough to me so far that they should have gone farther in All-Japan than they did. Instead, they were mired in the mid-card even into NOAH, while Jun became just another guy. Tracking these guys' development or lack thereof will be an interesting part of the late-'90s Yearbooks.
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I'm closer to Loss on Fujiwara than the general PWO/DVDVR consensus, and the idea of a shootstyle match with a ton of resets sounds like my own private wrestling hell. But I liked this quite a bit. It didn't quite reach that NJPW/WAR, Lawler/Snowman "out of control for real" level of intensity, but this was a pretty vicious fight. I thought the finish was blown and even Hash's reaction seemed to be one of surprise, but maybe that was just part of the booking. Not one of the blowaway Fujiwara performances but a good one, and a very interesting side note to his career. Hash ends up going over pretty strong, which he needed after the IWGP title turnaround with Fujinami that I still don't understand the purpose of.
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Another awesome segment from ECW, building well and paying off nicely. The Mikey angle and this are the things to point to when talking up how innovative the company was. Paul E. begs us to boycott the 6/24 ECW Arena show as it will lead to the match getting called off and Sabu not being hurt. The Cactus reveal was a great way for the episode to sign off.
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A black-eyed Mikey with intense words for Mr. Hughes: "I'm gonna die!"
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"Do you remember what I did to you last King of the Ring, or is there so much oil on your head that it slipped your mind?" Pretty good segment overall, though Lawler was clearly the most entertaining talker of the three. Still was too early to be pushing Diesel as a World title challenger at this point.
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Way cool look from Delfin--that half-Liger/half-Delfin mask looks like it would set you back quite a bit considering the one-shot nature of the look. This has taken on almost a dream-match quality now that I've seen Delfin's '93 and early '94 stuff, and in the end it lives up to it. Some heartstopping kickouts and reversals here, and Delfin gets a lot to the point where you're really biting on the near-falls. Credit that to Sasuke's J-Cup upset and NJPW booking in general, too. Fantastic bout, one of the best Liger singles bouts since...well, the Sasuke match. But not far behind his best overall.
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Best free-TV match of the year, I'd say. One of the best to air on any Yearbook so far, in fact. Great stuff that really plays off Slamboree and put over beautifully by Schiavone and the Brain. Regal was overconfident and arrogant at Slamboree, and here he's vicious and aggressive. Some of the holds are stuff that I haven't even seen since--Larry puts on a surfboard-type thing that's almost lucha-esque. The time limit stuff, as mentioned, doesn't really make sense, but it's not enough to diminish how great this was. INSANE crowd for this, too. It's incredible how over Larry Z is as a babyface--a theme that would continue for years to come, actually. I honestly have never quite understood it, but that's not really a complaint--he was a tremendous worker who deserved it, but he was also an older, mat-based heel who cut intellectual promos that were probably over the heads of much of the audience. But whether tearing it up with Regal or standing up to Scott Hall and the NWO, he somehow knew how to get a crowd behind him when he needed it.
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This is pretty shameless.
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If you look closely you may see Catherine White interviewing hobos in the background.
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Les "Ray Rougeau" Thatcher attempts to get a word from the unconscious, immobilized, stretchered Dirty White Girl. He is unsuccessful. Here's the Jake promo I mentioned at Volunteer Slam. So glad it made the set, because it's an incredible one.
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Weird dating on this, as this looks like the official Scott Bowden heel turn when he had appeared in the TV studio the week before. Maybe it was from the MSC show the week before and only aired this week. The visual of the fans pointing to Bowden and explaining what happened is a really good one. I have to point out that I thought Corey Macklin was really, really good at calling all of this.
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Point taken about the low-budget look of these vignettes. At least they're starting to get mic'd properly. This was a fairly good promo considering the absurdity that this is going to lead to.
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I half-expect these various vignettes to be for new WWF gimmicks. Don't try to tell me there weren't sketch renditions of the Wrestling Sandwich Artist or the Wrestling Tow Truck Driver floating around Titan Tower.
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Crowd is absolutely nuts for this, so good for them. But this is some bad wrestling--Konnan's selling is utterly bizarre. He'll pump his arms to fire up the crowd and then collapse against the ropes, then go back to pumping up the crowd. Really weird. It occurs to me that I don't think I've ever seen Jake bleed before this, not even in Mid-South. Post-match is really fun, with the tecnicos coming out to congratulate Konnan and then La Parka and Psicosis coming out to tease a fight. But when Jake tries to flee, the rudos corner him and help force him into a haircut. Warlord appears to be attempting to offer his own head up for shaving in sacrifice, which is really funny. Seeing that trademark long hair get shaved off really gives some weight to this--as bad as the matches in this feud were, this is an effective and significant payoff. The other wrestlers PUT THE BOOTS to the snake in the bag, which is equal parts horrifying for babyfaces to do, and hilarious.