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PeteF3

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  1. PeteF3
    About as good of a wrestler vs. manager match as you'll ever see. Cornette gets in just enough offense (with lots of smoke and mirrors) to get some heat, but not enough that overly pushes himself. I really, really wish one of those Cornette vs. Ronnie Garvin cage matches had made tape.
  2. PeteF3
    A worthy addition to the WarGames and WarGames-esque canon. Lots of highlights including Morton's gusher and the heels all dogpiling to try to protect Cornette after the match, but I think my favorite part was Scott Armstrong entering the ring and giving low blows to all four heels. Perfect build to Cornette first entering the cage and then Bullet Bob getting his hands on him. The handcuffed Gibson and Scott hold Prichard at bay and with the rest of the heels cuffed, Cornette quickly submits to a spinning toe hold. Chris Candido tries to free the heels afterward, but the Big Boss Man keeps the sides even. Satisfying payoff to the Cornette/Armstrong feud, which I know is far from over.
  3. PeteF3
    Fytch, looking good in her women's sports coat and bow tie, is disgusted and horrified at being involved in something associated with dirty, greasy, filthy coal miners. Lee constantly invoking his height actually makes sense in this context. Another good match between the two, very similar to the match the previous night with a few added spots revolving around climbing the pole. The glove plays pretty much no role in the actual match, as the Dirty White Boy clobbers Smothers with a chair as soon as he gets it, leading to a Lee victory. I thought the match the previous night was a bit better, but that could be a bit of bias talking as the spots were fresher then. A Confederate flag-waving babyface calling his opponents faggots and abusing women. Southern professional wrestling! Oops, there's some added intrigue after the match, as Lee and White Boy both want credit for Ron Wright's bounty. SMW feels really hot right now.
  4. PeteF3
    Ooh, a live Flair for the Gold at the Clash! Can't wait! The Worldwide/WCWSN timelines were always fucked up, it seems. When Worldwide wasn't a week ahead, they were a week behind.
  5. PeteF3
    Quite the loaded card here, actually. This was right when the WWF was going through a roster crunch and going to one house show per night instead of split crews. Shawn laments how he and Razor used to be pals--Razor assures him they can still be amigos, but this is business. This is eerily prescient of the Clique days. Pretty good promos here, actually--Shawn does a good balancing act of being arrogant and also being whiny and cowardly.
  6. PeteF3
    WMC found themselves a green screen, which they'll be making heavy use of in the weeks to come. Jarrett compares and contrasts Bret calling himself a "King" with Jarrett being dubbed the "New Fabulous One." Jarrett's gotten better on the mic. Lawler regales us with the tale of his match with Savage that we just saw, relishing Howard Finkle's introduction and the negative reaction of the New York crowd.
  7. PeteF3
    Bret and Owen vs. Lawler and Jarrett! I approve. I could watch Bret doing a mock Southern accent all day.
  8. PeteF3
    Hugely dramatic match, up there with Jannetty/Doink as a WWF MOTYC. Lots of downtime, but the selling and timing are so good by both guys (not to mention Lawler and even Fuji outside) that it doesn't matter. I too loved the "near-fall" with Bret trying to sneak out underneath the Banzai Drop set-up. Lots of clever spots like Bret crotching Yokozuna on the middle rope and the use of the salt bucket that Lawler tosses in. Bret clobbers Yoko with it leading to an INSANE near-fall that has MSG exploding and almost had *me* going. Lawler eventually tosses salt in Bret's eyes and Yokozuna gets the victory. Yokozuna then squashes him with a Banzai Drop afterward! Very rare to see a heel vanquish his babyface opponent so thoroughly in a WWF main event like that.
  9. PeteF3
    Man oh man...I'm enjoying the matches, but this is part of a BIG stretch of long foreign bouts and handhelds, and it's starting to wear. This is a note as much for myself for future reference as anyone else, not to get too surprised if I start to get pissy and nitpicky until I get some Memphis interviews or WWF Updates to break things up. Huge heat for Lawler. "I HATE BURGERS AND I HATE YOU!" Fantastic. Lawler begins with a public service announcement: "Would the lady who left her nine kids at Shea Stadium please come pick them up, they're beating the Mets 6-0!" Old joke at an easy target, but the crowd instantly gets madder than they already were. Foreign object usage aside, once the match starts it's about as strong as Lawler has ever looked with the company, at least until the feuds with Taz and the Miz. Bret Hart makes his way to the ring and like Elizabeth at WM8 he's inexplicably confronted by an army of suits. Jerry clearly has Savage beaten when he takes the time to spit at Bret Hart, who assaults Lawler for the DQ. That leads to an intriguing pull-apart with Savage afterward, which sadly won't go anywhere. The legal issues would have derailed things anyway, but I still think they could have gone farther than they did with this Lawler heel push. Savage was marginalized, but the crowd is still hot for him and VERY hot for the post-match. Camera-operator: "Who do you like now?" Little kid: "MACHO! He's a legend!" Vince should have listened to that boy. As a package this was pretty awesome, actually. The match isn't really great, but both guys do work hard especially by the sometimes hard-to-watch WWF house show standards of the day.
  10. PeteF3
    Very Warriors vs. Heenan Family at Survivor Series, with Cornette not being quite as masterful as Bobby but with so, so much more awesome offense--from both teams. The Bodies just have ridiculous amounts of cool shit they can do, both in terms of offensive moves and comedy stooge shit on defense. Bullet Bob finally gets his hands on Cornette when the Bruise Brothers attack. The Rock 'n Roll Express come in for the save but are overpowered when one of the Harrises gets the tennis racket. Finally Mark Curtis retrieves a baseball bat--Thank God for unbiased officiating--and Bob takes out the heels one-by-one with it. Really fun match, better than the SMW title bout in fact, and one of the best the company has put on to this point.
  11. PeteF3
    Genuinely good match good heat--Smothers was tremendous here but Lee, as awkward as he can be, has through some miracle progressed into being a perfectly acceptable worker. Even his chinlocks were well-worked, and Fytch is already a natural at ringside. Just a few months into her career and her timing when it comes to reacting to the action and working interference is already superb. She has Mark Curtis distracted and Lee crawls for his loaded glove--cornerman Tim Horner tries to stop him but gets clobbered from behind with a chair by Chris Candido, but the delay allows Smothers to block the punch and for Mark Curtis to see everything and call for a DQ. Smothers almost gets some payback with the glove (with Lee doing a hilarious bit of begging off) but Fytch saves her man.
  12. PeteF3
    Harley Race is incensed that Flair has broken his World title record, and that he isn't defending the title at the Clash. RIC FLAIR IS A GUTLESS HUMAN BEING. Flair comes out to respond and that ends with him popping Race one. Later, he addresses Sting by CCTV and asks to make the Sting/Kong singles match into a tag. The Colossal Kongs come back out to corner Flair before Sting can respond, but Sting comes into even the sides. Pretty good angle, but the Clash tag build is rushed--and Jesus God, are the Kongs a complete waste of an opponent for something that should be treated as a big deal. I have NO recollection of babyface Sting wrestling babyface Flair on TV.
  13. PeteF3
    I was a fan of the countout teases in some earlier lucha matches but here they felt excessive and killed the flow of the match. I think it was a case of "fool me once..." here. I actually liked Heavy Metal more here than in the May match, as he showed some nice athletic moves, but this was more of a my-turn, your-turn bout without much in the way of a story. I did get taken in by the double-pin finish--they stall for a bit, then re-start the match, then it looks like Heavy Metal is going to bail, then he reconsiders and continues the match until Santo gets a decisive victory. Overall good, but not a high-end lucha singles match. I couldn't help but notice that Metal had essentially run out of things to do by the time they'd gotten to the restart--lots of repeated moves and sequences and not in a "learned psychology" way.
  14. PeteF3
    Vader with the Pure Sports Build pre-match interview. This is very similar to Vader/Nakano except Yamazaki actually gets him on the ropes at one point (figuratively and literally). Vader comes back and murders Yamazaki for the chokeslam and the match is stopped, with Yamazaki selling like he's been paralyzed. Good climax to a great UWFI show.
  15. PeteF3
    Funny how Sano constantly turns up in my favorite shootstyle matches. This ranks among one of the better ones I've ever seen, with lots of crazy leg dive takedowns from Anjo and some great counterwrestling. Basically a more technically advanced version of the previous match--without that match's killer ending but with greater depth to it.
  16. PeteF3
    This was awesome, just two guys suplexing the shit out of each other while also throwing in some cool mat counters. Lydick's Hulk-Up at the end is one of the most fun shootstyle moments ever, coming off one of the style's greatest false finishes.
  17. PeteF3
    I know nothing about Harley Saito, but as Nise Dynamite Kansai she does a more than adequate job. They push a strong running story of Saito's bad ribs vs. Hokuto's bad knee, and both ladies take the time to sell that stuff, so you get a more leisurely and psychologically sound joshi match. Not a match that'll change the world but a good look at the "upper-card vs. not-as-upper-card" style of the time.
  18. PeteF3
    But Abby was much the same way. He was "too dangerous" to allow on television.
  19. PeteF3
    What the fuck was with Savage reciting a Dusty Rhodes catchphrase at the beginning?
  20. PeteF3
    One of several issues with this main-event push for Luger is the WWF's rather backwards and undignified portrayal of Japan. Running supposed Japanese newscasts that look like propaganda pieces--describing Luger's bodyslam as a hiptoss and editing to make Yokozuna look dominant--and having a guy intentionally sing an awful version of the Japanese anthem at SummerSlam is over the line. Having a monster heel from Japan (I know, not really, work with me) is one thing. Turning an entire country--one who's been an ally of the U.S. for almost 50 years at this point--is another entirely. The point of all this is that Cornette, god of managing that he is, actually finds a way to make this shit plausible, drawing on real-world events of the time with U.S. companies being taken over by the Japanese. He went even further with this in other promos, getting heat on the Detroit auto industry and comparing the Heavenly Bodies to superior foreign imports. And his talk about Jack Tunney utilizing crooked interpreters when dealing with Yokozuna was pretty damned funny, as was Vince's indignant reaction to that accusation. Cornette approves of the contract, and as great as he is he still looks SO weird in this setting. Even after working with the company for another 10 years or so, it's still odd to see him trading barbs with McMahon and Jack Tunney after all this Yearbook viewing. Vince & Bobby are doing live commentary over the ring mics for all this, which is similarly weird. Luger signs, and then Cornette drops the news that Luger will never get a rematch if he doesn't win. WHERE WAS THAT WHEN YOU WERE ASKED POINT-BLANK ABOUT ANY FURTHER STIPULATIONS, TUNNEY??! Vince just whines about "chicanery" and "fine print." Luger cuts a fairly effective promo in response, while Yokozuna just stares at him like the baddest motherfucker around. This is a segment practically designed to flash TITLE CHANGE at you, as the WWF and USWA had done in the past, which makes the SummerSlam finish all the more baffling. But I'm getting ahead of myself...
  21. PeteF3
    Luger got in with the wrong crowd at the University of Miami--though one wonders if those '80s Hurricane teams even had a "right crowd." If Luger really had to leave for disciplinary reasons, he must have done some heavy, heavy shit. Lex talks about how he wanted to use football as a stepping stone instead of letting football use him--smart idea, and he clearly had that same attitude with regard to wrestling which as we know now, didn't work out as well for him. A plan to attend Stetson University and get a law degree turned into a tryout with Championship Wrestling from Florida. Two non-WWF promotions mentioned in the span of two weeks, holy shit. The best of these segments so far. As negative as I've been on this push, none of it is strictly Luger's fault. It's the fault of just about everybody else in the company. In hindsight, I really wish the WWF had simply hedged their bets a little more before the Stars & Stripes Challenge. Give Luger just a few soundbites announcing his intentions beforehand to slam Yokozuna. Don't have him wave the flag, cut jingoistic promos, or even specifically target Yokozuna--he's still the Narcissist, and let the announcers stress that he's doing it for his own ego. If Hogan sticks around, you can have Luger beg off afterward and pretend it never happened while going through with the initial plans. If Hogan leaves (and they had to know this was at least a possibility even before he dropped the title), go full-bore with Lex and do his turn a little more gradually and with a little bit of his Narcissist attitude left over, until the REAL babyface turn comes when he comes to the aid of a Tatanka or a Duggan or a Crush--just as WCW did in February 1990. Unfortunately I don't think Vince and the WWF was capable of that level of nuance as far as booking and character development at this point.
  22. PeteF3
    One of the longest MSC clips seen since the 1980's. Overbooked in that classic Memphis style, but psychologically sound and they do throw some wrinkles at us. Still not a fan of promotions arbitrarily overturning referee's decisions as a booking crutch--either enact a full instant-replay system or stick to the "referee's decision is final." Or find a more creative way to do it, like they did with Heenan overstepping his bounds in the IC title match on Raw.
  23. PeteF3
    How do you know which it is? Most noticably, All-Star has a big star pattern on the ring mat and a slicker, somewhat Americanized presentation in general. I think they were the only ones doing graphics at the start of rounds. That said, the sharing of Joint and All-Star of the television slot doesn't begin until you get to '86.
  24. PeteF3
    I think Singh is about the most boring WOS worker ever, for whatever that's worth. For Roach to get a match that good out of him is a credit to him as a worker. The heavies are definitely going to be more about storytelling than slick work, for the most part. When they hit, they really knock it out of the park--but the style definitely is more conventional as a whole.
  25. PeteF3
    Why the fuck would you arbitrarily add a no-DQ stip after the fact? Clearly the referee and wrestlers weren't clued in on this. The matwork and struggle here were tremendous--that build to the butterfly suplex spot was something out of All-Japan. The finish is of course bullcrap but Orndorff's sheer energy is enough to make up for it. When it comes to simple stomp-and-punch-based beatdowns, I'm honestly not sure if a wrestler in history was better than Mr. Wonderful.
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