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PeteF3

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  1. PeteF3
    It's post-Christmas, because all the women in the Smoky Mountains have Rudolph's hoofprints on their back and rugburns on their knees. JEEZ. Bob looks INTENSELY uncomfortable when Van Horn starts ranting about the "stupid book of fairytales" the people in SMW read every Sunday, as opposed to the Book of the Dead. I think there's another promo where Caudle legitimately loses it and goes off on him, Dave Brown-style. Van Horn gets off lines that are occasionally funny in a vacuum but saying shocking shit just to be shocking reeks of desperation and wears thin really, really quick--and that's all Mitchell has really ever had going for him.
  2. PeteF3
    So the Bullet-Murdoch match did end in bullshit--Murdoch won, but Bullet fulfilled his obligation to "take his mask off," only to have another mask on underneath. Repeated failure to adhere to match stipulations and the consequences of gimmick bouts in general was one major failing of Cornette as a booker. The apparently vacant SMW commissionership is about to be settled--I guess this the time when they were planning to have Bill Watts take the role, but instead they're creating an opening to put Bob Armstrong back in the spot. Probably just as well, to be honest. Cornette is bringing back Terry Funk to take on the Bullet--with Armstrong's commissionership up vs. whatever Cornette and his mole on the Board of Directors want. Bullet must unmask and show his face (emphasized by Cornette) and leave SMW and kiss Cornette's feet. I do like the touch of bringing back Funk, the man who sent Armstrong out of SMW to start with. Cornette was great here as usual, full of fire but also getting off some funny lines including a direct shot at WCW.
  3. PeteF3
    Gorilla makes sure to inform us that HE wasn't surprised by Kid & Jannetty winning the tag belts--THAT WASN'T HOW YOU CAME OFF DURING THE HEADSHRINKERS MATCH, MONSOON. *cough* Bret is nonplussed by this development but Owen is pouty. I like that Owen is more disappointed than angry and shouting about this--sets up a split between the two without telegraphing it. Hype for a tag title rematch this coming Monday, in a non-televised house show at The Omni Madison Square Garden. This is definitely very non-WWF booking, with quick title turnarounds and singles wrestlers holding tag belts and rematch clauses and lip service paid to house shows, reminiscent of the house show switches from the previous June.
  4. PeteF3
    And this feud, shortly before its apparent conclusion, starts to come full circle, as it began with the WAR guys fighting with Koshinaka's faction. Shiro should not be allowed to work any match besides a heated bloody brawl. He gets busted open with a chair before the bell rings and has to fight to survive from there. He gets in a few good near-falls, especially that bridging cradle that the crowd seemed PISSED about when the referee ruled two, but Tenryu decisively puts him away.
  5. PeteF3
    By the end I was hoping for the two smarky filmers to have died in a car fire on the way home. Also that's one small, flimsy-looking ladder. The match it self is very good, and by WWF house show standards it's excellent. Shawn bumps his ass off, natch, but there's some psych and build to the use of the ladder, as well as payback spots when Razor goes back on offense. We see some stuff that we'd see later and other spots that they'd junk. Better match and a more interesting look at the proto-ladder concept than Shawn/Bret.
  6. PeteF3
    Everyone else has said what needs to be said about Gorilla. I don't like Stan Lane as an announcer at all, but he actually did a decent job of calling things and trying to give the talent some outs while Gorilla was shitting on them (like, Owen didn't capitalize on Scott's knee because it was the opposite side of the ring area and he didn't see the injury). I liked this better than the Dome match actually, and it's laid out and worked much closer to a Japan tag than a WWF one--some more-advanced-than-usual mat wrestling exchanges building to big bombs, and the saves and partner interference all felt very Japan-like. Wrestled clean but with all four guys going all-out to cripple the others, the best kind of babyface match. This is a terrific performance from Owen specifically, as there's tremendous snap to all of his moves and he takes the Steiners' most advanced offense like a champ. What a hot run of tag matches the WWF is on--not something you could say very often in history until fairly recently.
  7. PeteF3
    God, Gorilla is such a putz. "I DON'T KNOW WHY THEY DIDN'T JUST LET THE MATCH CONTINUE, STAN!" This from the guy who whines about how every infraction "is an automatic disqualification in my book!" Anyway, the match is really fun and the Headshrinkers, somehow, are miles away from what the SSTs were doing a few years prior. Some great bumps by all four guys and yes, Afa's interference is awesome--his Samoan Drop looked like it killed the Kid dead. I don't know where the dual commentaries come from but Polo completely marks out when that was hit, which was endearing and felt more real than anything Lane or Gorilla have ever said.
  8. PeteF3

    Punk Walks Out of WWE

    PeteF3 replied to Strummer's topic in WWE

    And here I figured the post-WrestleMania Raw would begin with AJ getting out of bed and seeing Punk in the shower...
  9. PeteF3
    The commercial break cues seemed really off to me. I think there was supposed to be a break when the Quebecers had their "time out" (the standard WWF spot, then as now) and not during the false finish--and there was another random break in the middle of things later on. Fun match, lots of stalling from the Quebecers early on but when they finally isolate the Kid they absolutely pulverize him. Jannetty and Kid come back for the win to a huge reaction, and I loved Randy Savage leaping into the ring to celebrate with them. He's not always the best commentator, but I would like to have seen him be around to do the same for the Usos on Monday.
  10. PeteF3
    I had trouble getting into this at first--the synch stuff wasn't working with me, and there were a *lot* of spots that doubtless sounded better on paper than in actual execution (e.g., Dynamite doing the Kyoko Inoue reverse-elbow thing off the top onto two people, and barely making contact with either). It all just seemed very haphazard. When this really picked up was when Team Oz started isolating Chigusa and working her to death--I love it when strategery pays off, as it mostly did here. The smaller, less experienced team having to use the numbers game and ring smarts to keep their heads above water. We get a big dash of saves after that before Plum is leveled with a second-rope power bomb for the pin. Everyone looked really good here. I loved Devil just chucking people all over the place, I loved Plum's spunk and tenacity (and yes, very Toyota-like even if she's more about holds than flying), Dynamite kicked ass, and Oz was a champ on the apron as well as taking a beating. I don't think this will end up in a Year-End Top 10 simply because it took awhile to get going, but it will be hard to displace as Match of the Month at the very least.
  11. PeteF3
    Kyohei Wada would sometimes appear to bounce straight up in the air when the mat was impacted with a huge move, then come down horizontally in perfect position to make a count. I admire Tommy Young or any other referee (Mid-South was good at this) who really throw themselves into their bumps in order to make it as reckless and catastrophic as possible. One complaint I have about Memphis is how lazy and uncreative they are with their ref bumps--doubly noticeable because of how frequent they are. Every time, it's the same "headlock-push-off-collide-with-ref" bit and most of the time, especially once Jerry Calhoun left, it didn't even look that good.
  12. PeteF3
    Gene was distracting but he was also asking some legitimately good questions and having a real back-and-forth with Flair--I thought it was a strong overall performance, considering his job was normally to hold a mic and make smartass responses once the heel had left. Flair looks like hell--a big nasty shiner over his left eye and he's having trouble talking thanks to Vader whacking him in the chops.
  13. PeteF3
    Good-looking action. DWB is justifiably renowned for his promos and his southern brawling, but as this video shows there was quite a lot of offensive shit he could roll out, too.
  14. PeteF3
    Big callback to last year's Kobashi/Hansen. Kawada rather casually murders Kobashi with a backdrop driver and we get a borderline-uncomfortable shoot angle or shoot situation. Even Fuchi, whose heart is as black as the ace of spades, has an "Oh, shit, Toshiaki...oh SHIT" reaction as Kobashi feebly rolls to the outside. Another quasi-stoppage, though this one a little more efficient and less over-the-top than Tenryu dying at the hands of Inoki. That leaves Misawa to fend for himself for awhile and he's quickly targeted at a shoulder or chest injury until Kobashi can recover. Kobashi is wobbly all the way through, to the point where you wonder why Misawa would tag him in at all, but comes back to moonsault and then legdrop Fuchi for a victory--essentially Kenta had to make a comeback against himself while his aging junior heavyweight opponent wasn't doing anything to him. Fun, unique story, and it's always great to see Fuchi pop up again in a big role, even if it's obvious that he's doing the job. We've reached the point in AJPW where I've only seen the big, major matches and not even all of those--and the ones I've seen, it's been long enough ago that I may as well not have. Great start, and sometimes it's the "little," mid-card-type or semi-main event matches out of All-Japan that I enjoy watching the most.
  15. PeteF3
    Pretty good considering what a hodgepodge group of guys this is. Love watching Tenryu work against juniors he normally never associates with. Mutoh is in a situation where every expectation would have him dogging it--a non-televised indy show with his team doing the job--but he works hard and brings lots of energy. Tenryu absolutely creams Samurai with a lariat just as Sammy gets in a hot tag, and the end comes soon after. Kitahara gets a moment in the sun by dragon suplexing his way to victory.
  16. PeteF3
    Too little seen to properly evaluate as a match. I actually thought Hogan looked more jarringly skinny at the KOTR.
  17. PeteF3

    Other 1994 worth watching

    PeteF3 replied to jdw's topic in 1994

    Riki Choshu vs. Yoshiaki Fujiwara - 1/4/94 Somebody got a haircut! In addition to that big news, this is Choshu's return from a nasty injury. I don't think he was 100% yet but I guess he didn't want to miss the big Dome show (or lose any power with a prolonged absence...) This isn't a high-end match in the rivalry, nor was it consequential enough to go on a Yearbook when so much other, bigger stuff from this show made it. But it's a fun stiff-fest between two guys who know how to get the most out of the least. At the very least you have the compelling contrast of Choshu's lariat vs. Fujiwara's finisher which is basically an ideal counter to the Lariat. Finish is something I feel like I've seen between these two before, with Choshu just repeatedly Lariating Fujiwara until he drops.
  18. PeteF3
    Interesting match when viewed full. Inoki stuns me by working this basically as the heel, being the first to throw closed fists and then the big moment when he won't break the choke sleeper with Tenryu on the ropes. Tiger Hattori gives him what-for and Inoki responds by slugging him. Inoki could give Hogan lessons in being an entitled little shit. Meanwhile Tenryu is out cold. This is almost comically overdone, as Tenryu is unmoving for close to 3 minutes from being sleepered for about 10 seconds, and the guy should have had permanent brain damage even in a pro wrestling context. Hattori grants him enough time to wake up, because of the illegal nature of the hold, which he eventually does. Inoki again refuses to break when he applies a cross armbreaker in the ropes, and the Dome crowd BOOS him. Holy shit, I've never seen a reaction to Inoki like that before. Boo-tista, indeed. Tenryu comes back again and while this doesn't really look like a shoot in the UWFI sense, the stiff lock-ups and rough strikes carry the air of something on the verge of breaking down totally. Tenryu catches Inoki with a power bomb for the win and there's almost no audible reaction from the Dome crowd--despite their distaste for Inoki's tactics this seemed like an Ivan-beats-Bruno stunner to them. Tenryu is now one of the only wrestlers--and the only Japanese--to get pinfalls over both Baba and Inoki. Historically significant and well worth watching just to see Inoki work heel if nothing else. I wouldn't really call it a good match, though.
  19. PeteF3
    Surprised the WWF even allowed this to happen, but I'm not complaining. Slow start with the most notable happenings being Scott's spectacular hair and Rick actually doing a "pissing dog" taunt and then biting Mutoh in the rear end, which is absurd Bushwhacker-like shit but kind of amusing considering the setting. I'm closer to Childs and Chad on this--this was fun, like you'd expect a one-off Dome show match to be, but that's all. There were some great spots in this but I didn't feel anything from the matwork--and I really, really like Hase on the mat. The Screwdriver looked nasty, and yeah, Scott is exactly the kind of guy who'd leap to the turnbuckle and yell after doing it, rather than attempt a pin. I also liked the Frankensteiner as a transition move, thanks to the selling by both guys, and Hase is killed suitably dead at the finish. But as a Dome match it didn't hold a candle to the Steiners' bout with Hase & Sasaki
  20. PeteF3
    Sparky Plugg...Christ almighty. The Crush intros are still rock bottom as far as vignettes go, but the names of characters in '93, '94, and '95 are some of the worst ever.
  21. PeteF3
    Yokozuna has lodged another protest, this time to prevent Luger from entering the Royal Rumble due to his one-title-shot stipulation. Tunney will rule on that in the coming week. Another happy-go-lucky babyface promo with Vince slobbering, praying and hoping that Lex is allowed entry.
  22. PeteF3
    No-frills, down-and-dirty contest where Austin really carries himself as a singles star. It also reflects well on Sting that he was able to work a match like this The finish is cheap, but it seems to set up Sting & Pillman vs. Austin & Rude, which is something I can get behind. I'm going to try not to be too negative for the first half of 1994, and qualify every Austin match with a comment about why the fuck was he putting over Jim Duggan in 10 seconds and why the fucking Butcher main evented Starrcade and what a gigantic dump they took on Ric Flair and...OK, I got that out of my system.
  23. PeteF3
    Same video as the Starrcade intro, but instead of Vader destroying people we cut to Flair's celebration. Still a chilling piece of work.
  24. PeteF3
    Will is a clever little sod, having my '94 Yearbook arrive the same day I wrapped up my final thoughts on '93. Razor's gold turned up missing while he was getting laid out by Shawn Michaels on Raw, and an enterprising cameraman found it in IRS' briefcase. Razor makes threats towards the Tax Mang.
  25. PeteF3
    Deserving of its own thread when it's fully confirmed, but apparently Billy Robinson has died. That's some pretty shitty news for what's been an exciting week of wrestling.
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