PeteF3
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Sort of closer to Kevin and Loss here. And I too was majorly confused at the start and had to Google around to figure out what the fuck was happening. Having Hasegawa eat a fall two minutes in and continue to wrestle didn't help matters. So I was thrown off at the start. There was great stuff all around here, and some cool stories being told like Kansai getting knocked out by the Uraken immediately upon entering, and Aja being a lurking force throughout who wrestles as a near-invincible brick wall--truly she has usurped Bull's old role in every way. And the pinfall on Cutie was a fucking brilliant sequence that needs to be stolen and reused over and over. Still, I was drifting in and out at around the 35-minute mark as there was a long stretch between falls at that point, but they pulled me back in toward the end as Kansai kicks the shit out of people, survives another Uraken, and Ozaki whips out a pin with 5 seconds left to go in the time limit. I'm afraid that ending came off to me as a bit arbitrary rather than the climax of a slow build of a wrestler being worn down into defeat, which the best AJ matches pull off brilliantly. I really liked this too, and in retrospect the opening 5-minute matches were a pretty brilliant idea to showcase what each girl could do with 100% attention focused on her. Just wish I'd known about it before the match started, which isn't anyone's fault. I poke holes into this because I just don't see it as anything other than a top 10-15 MOTY. High praise indeed, but I just watched Hansen/Kobashi and I didn't think this was as good. -
Not as good as their two earlier singles matches, but very good in its own right and a good contrast to Kobashi vs. Hansen. Up until the closing stretch, every effort is made to portray these two as equals or near-equals. Both guys are tentative to start, and there are lots of faceoffs/"toe to toe" spots. Plus Kawada seems to have the early advantage. As things progress, however, Misawa reasserts himself. Kawada makes a gallant effort on the arm but not enough, and eventually Misawa is absolutely murdering him with some sick Germans. Kawada hangs on but Misawa basically lifts up his carcass and tiger suplexes it to put him away. Two straight matches with the established star getting pushed, but Misawa's victory actually feels more decisive. As this went on, my mind started to work over how unfathomable it was that Kobashi's payoff would come so much sooner than Kawada's. That question is still there, but by the end of this it's more clear that Kawada actually has a longer way to go.
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Yes.
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They really took that Carnival match template and expanded and perfected it for the TV and video audience. Hansen wrestles the majority of this match on the defensive, and has to resort to desperation moves like powerbombing Kobashi on the floor just to keep his head above water. Unfortunately Kobashi exhausts his arsenal, and when he tries for the Moonsault again, Hansen has an answer for it. But it's another table-setting match--Kobashi's first victory is now a matter of time. Somewhere between the #2 and #3 MOTY, I think.
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Adulation all around for the Destroyer, with hugs from Baba and his family (including Mrs. Dan Spivey, I would assume).
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Gilbert has apparently taken over the TV controls for today's show. Cut to Eddie and Paul E. in a cafe, with some woman they make Dick Van Dyke Show jokes about because her name is Rose Marie. Very topical, even for 1993. Some person walks up and starts kissing up to Eddie. As little as Loss likes these segments, I think I like them even less. I mean, Lost in Cleveland was jaw-droppingly bad, but I can't say it was as BORING as these vignettes are. That may not be enough to say these are definitively worse, but they may be just as bad in a different way.
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Shiny, Happy Lex. I can't believe Vince seemingly didn't learn a thing about this when he attempted the Diesel push a year later when the exact same mistakes were made. McMahon, who continues to be nauseating here, more or less announces the "Who Is Lex Luger?" series.
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Sato = Dick Togo, if I'm interpreting wrestlingdata correctly. The unmistakable rear end is there, at least. I liked the singles match a bit better than this--stakes were higher and there was a little more substance to it. But this was a fun blend of flying, mat wrestling, and comedy. The sequence where the guys seemingly forget who their partners are, leading to Naniwa and Sasuke about to do a rowboat even though they're on opposite sides before they realize what's going on, was pretty inventive.
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Okay, am I watching the wrong matches or did Art Barr suck as a worker this whole time? He has good charisma and this was a huge, huge match--probably the biggest non-TripleMania match in Mexico for '93, as I understand it. But he blows every move he does--he has some of the worst execution for a supposedly experienced wrestler I've ever seen. I know it's a small sample size, even moreso because this match is incomplete, but this is 2-for-2 (saw When Worlds Collide years ago, will get it to it when I get to it). Both of these performances came in big settings when he'd theoretically be on his game. Anyway, Love Machine brutalizes Panther (again, in theory) with some big moves, but constantly pulls him up at two even though he looks completely beaten. He then goes to repeat the same mistake that cost him his mask, picking Panther up for a tombstone, but Perro Aguayo breaks it up. I got confused at first, but the referee gestures that he disqualified Love Machine because Aguayo technically interfered. I've bitched about lucha officiating quite a bit but only Memphis is as good at bullshit finishes that still kind of make sense and that preserve the rules the style observes. Complaints about execution aside, this was an effectively done double turn. They build sympathy for Panther down the stretch as Barr tortures him, gloating the whole way. Barr throws a hissy fit upon the result, that no one could possibly be in accord with, while at the same time one could understand that he has a legitimate gripe. That's the best kind of heel turn. His beatdown on Perro is pretty awesome. Really an excellent all-around angle with tremendous amounts of build to it.
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Some sloppy execution, but pretty hot action for the closing stretch. Lee's never going to be confused with Ric Flair but as a personality and as a worker he's practically doubled his value over these past few weeks.
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Never in Jack Tunney's career has he seen such a groundwell of support such as that received by Lex Luger. Okay. Fuji has fought against a title match on the basis of Luger's metal forearm--but he gets the shot anyway, as long as he wears a WWF-approved forearm pad. Vince asks Tunney point-blank if there are any other stipulations, and Jack says, "No, that's it." Holy fuck, Jack, talk about burying the lede. I suspected Tunney was secretly in camp with Mr. Fuji from the time he "congratulated" Yokozuna on his title win while ignoring the fireball camera, and this may clinch it. On a more serious note, I wonder if the later "one title shot only" add was not another sign of something I already suspected--that Vince had actually given up on the Luger megapush even before SummerSlam.
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This was pretty fucking great. Actually it reminded me a ton not of FMW, but of Kid vs. Lynn in the PWA. This has lots of pretty moves from two junior heavyweights, but these two never lose sight of the basics, of their character, of a babyface/heel dynamic, and of telling a basic story. This is my first time watching Delfin heel it up, and he's a lot more fun in such a setting. He kills Sasuke to death with all sorts of head spikes, and Sasuke's flying comes off as a concerted strategy more than a way of showing off. I immediately thought Sasuke was going to age as badly as early-'90s Ultimo Dragon, but he's so far ahead of him at this point that it isn't funny.
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I know nothing about Vale other than what I've seen in '92 and '93, but he seems to have all the physical tools to have been a sensation in Japan. I guess he didn't throw enough killer suplexes like Albright or Vader, but he's a big charismatic monster-looking guy who moves like somebody half his size. Big man vs. little man is possibly my favorite style of singles match--when it's done well, which is relatively easy if the two workers know what they're doing, and this is a fine shootstyle variety of it.
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It's the one thing about the style that annoys me, even if there are things about it that I admire, in that it looks like NBA or NFL replacement ref officiating--i.e., realistically bad/controversial--rather than referees being blind incompetent narcoleptics. When it works, like it did with Aguayo and Mascara Ano or at When Worlds Collide, it works great. But too many times I want the ref to stay the fuck out of the way and not in a "drawing heat" sense, in a "go away" sense, because I know there's going to be bullshit that draws attention to the ref without him getting his comeuppance (except in the aforementioned examples).
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Paul and Eddie make inside jokes and there's more making fun of the Philly sports teams. And then this goes on and on AND ON AND IT'S LIKE FIVE FUCKING MINUTES OF BLITHERING ABOUT PIZZA. Yeah, is any of this building to anything? This segment in particular may be the moment Hot Stuff jumped the shark.
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After Razor turns down Money Inc.'s offer of hard labor, DiBiase demands to face the 1-2-3 Kid so he can do what Razor couldn't. Kind of an anticlimactic babyface turn, something the fans had been clamoring for for months. Razor got a huge pop for his entrance but his promo could have gone better, as could the brawl.
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It was definitely this match that was PWI MOTY--I distinctly remember them bringing up the instant replay finish. It's also really, really not far off from the WWF MOTY so far. I wanted to put all my sentimental support behind Jannetty/Doink but I have to admit it's really close. These two start off wrestling like the old-style Rockers against each other before getting into some pretty great near-falls, cutting a very quick pace the whole way as one would expect. Michaels is noticeably getting out of shape and I still don't much like his work on top--it's telling that he has no move to put Jannetty away after he spills to the floor--but this is still his best performance of the year, and Jannetty continues to be out of this world. There's no question that he's in a cluster with Bret and Doink as the best guys in the company. Michaels wins clean, and the Jannetty singles push was pretty much stone dead at this point. Kind of too bad because I think he had something to offer as an upper-mid-card babyface, but he was also great at making lunks like Mr. Hughes and Ludvig Borga look decent and also never seemed to escape his "other Rocker" persona.
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La Parka vs. Lizmark, TripleMania '93, Take Two The one-fall stip threw me, twice over--once at the false finish and again after the restart. This still built well from matwork to lots and lots and LOTS of near-falls, probably the most of any lucha match I've seen. Also countout teases for near-falls. All the bailouts gave this a very disjointed feel, but it did make the counts more meaningful. Speaking of which, the story here is another officiating controversy, and again it's done in an ambiguous, real-sports bad-officiating way rather than just a plain blind referee. Gotta say that having this on the same card as Aguayo/Mascara is overkill, even by lucha standards where the heel refs are part of the show. La Parka gets every benefit of the doubt on every close two-count and at least one near-COR, though replays seem to support the referee. He then ties up Lizmark and gets a three-count, with Lizmark not getting the same benefit. Replays again seem to support the referee, and Dr. Morales and Arturo Rivera sound like they're one step away from coming to blows themselves in the booth. But after a LONG delay, long arguments, and a conference with the Box y Lucha commission, apparently the match is restarted and we pick up where we left off. The turning point is Parka taking a horrific bump into the corner post, and it's pretty much downhill from there, as Lizmark locks on a shootstyle side mount submission. This was good, and a really coming-of-age performance for La Parka, but as I said--disjointed. The match was building up a ton of momentum and I'm not opposed to the idea of the restart, but the absurd length of time it took (it must have been close to 5 or 6 minutes, or more) stopped things dead in their tracks. And the officiating controversy didn't pay off as spectacularly as it did with Perro and Mascara Ano, though Lizmark deciding to go with a submission after not making any headway with pins was a clever touch. One for a La Parka comp, no question, but overall not quite as fun as the mask match on the same card.
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I'm following the WONs as we go, and I haven't come across it yet. Dave was as confused and weirded out about that NWA title finish as we all were.
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More phoniness and desperation from Vince and the WWF.
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Fuchi! It's been too long. He picks up right where we saw him last, twisting Akiyama into knots. Kawada and Fuchi seem to be making up submissions on the fly at some point, with some downright lucha-esque submissions on Jun. Then Kawada clobbers Misawa from behind after he makes a save, and after selling on the outside as only he can do, Misawa barges back in and the war is on! Forearms and kicks all over the place, Misawa going crazy shoving Kyohei Wada and his own partner, and eventually the partners basically have to break things up. Misawa does most of his big moves on Fuchi, but Akiyama scores the pin in what has to be the biggest win of his short career. Slow and basic start, but still compelling because of the intensity of the holds, building to a good finish in a match that continues to establish Misawa and Kawada as genuine hated rivals.
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Not bad action, not great. Vader's moonsault was one of the most mindblowing things people had ever seen, and Sting's running diving save over the ropes was a cool follow-up. Davey Boy shortly afterward gets a crucifix pin on Vader, nicely setting up their Clash rematch. Vader worked this match with a herniated disc in his back, and from what he does here that's possibly a more amazing feat than Windham in the NWA title match.
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No heat here for anything, until Flair gets the figure four locked in. The action we see is actually pretty good, considering Windham was working on one leg, and I liked his desperate attempts to fight off the figure four. Flair eventually puts it on, and then the finish that I still have no clue what to make of. Very Flair-by-numbers victory promo. Flair by numbers is still good, but man oh man does he need something to focus on at this point.
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Some good stuff here, but this match was probably ten minutes longer than it needed to be. Roma is pretty much a charismatic black hole in this role, so there are long stretches without much heat except when the Blonds are jawing with the fans or Arn is in. Paul could be good as a cocky heel or as an underdog, but a babyface Horseman didn't suit him at all. The Blonds are very good at what they do but are mostly reduced to classic heel stooging spots--much easier on Flyin' Brian's body, I'm sure, but the big epic tag and high-flying spots from earlier in the year are disappearing. The Steiners and Money Inc. actually put on a tighter and more compelling and interesting TV bout than what we got here. The finish was a swerve, as Schiavone subtly alludes to when he talks about how the Blonds surprised "more people than we even know," referring to the upcoming developments given away at Disney--but that was about the only new thing under the sun here.
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Ah, here it is: the first--and for many to come only--Yearbook match I saw live. Not a terrible match but not really good either. Hughes has gone totally WWF-style and other than those armdrags we don't see any of Hughes the big fat bump machine, and his offense isn't anything special either. This is totally made by Marty bumping off him and throwing high-flying moves at him, essentially wrestling a brick wall. That superkick was ghastly--more impactful than just about any version Shawn ever did except maybe the time he killed a flying Shelton Benjamin. This was during a stretch of long feature bouts on both Superstars and Challenge--there was a 6-man at this same taping that even got the "we're out of time!" treatment and was finished the next week. I still suspect that Ross' fingerprints were all over this stuff.