PeteF3
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For me, Misawa tagging in, Hulking Up through Kawada's kicks, and then getting the better of a super-intense slap exchange is the moment where he really established himself as the Ace. That one little moment, moreso than beating Hansen either time. It was that awesome. The whole match was awesome--Kawada & Taue are finally in their own as a working tag team and Kobashi repeats his performance from last June as the gutsiest bastard ever in teaming with Misawa. Two great near-falls that had me fooled: Kobashi eats a choke slam off the turnbuckles (!) but Misawa makes a perfectly-timed last-second save. Then Kobashi eats a power bomb but kicks out, and then actually teases a comeback before Taue subdues him and he goes down to a second. All kinds of great mirror spots throughout this, to establish these teams as evenly matched and Kobashi approaching the level of the other TC contenders. An excellent coming-out party for everyone involved, as 3 of the 4 guys are in brand-new roles (Taue just keeps on keeping on). Probably the #2 or 3 MOTY. As we approach the halfway point, I'd have this, the Dream Rush rematch, and Sting/Vader all clustered near the top with maybe some other things kicking around too that aren't coming to mind. Time enough to revisit that at the end of the set, though. -
Kid was watching Raw at his "grampa & grandma's"--please. Razor's offer has doubled, but Kid is still fearful of what could happen to him. The build to the rematch was done really, really well.
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I'm at the point where hearing that saxophone music makes me want to cry. I have become an emo hipster version of Pavlov's dog. Flair and Arn are in workout gear and there's some chick on a stepboard. Sting is Flair's guest, also in workout gear. In the most astonishing development in the history of wrestling, Sting is actually WARY OF FLAIR at first, bringing up their past. Flair just kisses up in response and pleads with Sting to lighten up, because that's all behind them. Sting explains why he wears facepaint--it's to support kids who may not be the same as everyone else. Well, that's admirable, I guess--Sting beat the Be a Star campaign by a good 18 years. Oh God, kids are out to get autographs. Little Stingers for Sting, girls for Flair--that about sums things up, I guess. This is unwatchable, even by the low standards set by this segment. Among many things to hate about this show is what a fucking spineless, asskissing pussy Flair has turned into. And Jerome's right--Sting pays about two seconds' lipservice to Vader, Rude, and Sid, but otherwise not a single sliver of attention is paid to any ongoing program. This, like the Lost in Cleveland skits and a lot of backstage shit today, is the work of some writer or writing committee trying to justify their own position.
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Ricky & Robert are once again SMW Tag Team Champions, and in the process they've eliminated Stan Lane. Cornette is bringing a new mystery team to take care of them (but don't get excited--it's Ron & Don Harris). Tammy Fytch (Dutch: "Her name is Fytch, with an L") comes out to make them an offer--obviously the Rock 'n Rolls don't know much about business. Rock and roll is out, and rap is in! Dutch points out that Hillary Clinton took a nobody to the White House. Ricky responds with the Wayne Campbell "we're not worthy!" and the R'nRs take a hike.
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Armstrong still has trouble breathing but is otherwise working hard for a comeback.
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Jennifer lets us in on Lawler's massive Coca-Cola memorabilia collection. Was this aspect ever touched on when Lawler was feuding with CM Punk? It should have been. Jennifer's phoniness notwithstanding, Lawler's artwork is legitimately impressive.
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It's pretty amazing, and ridiculous, how much better Gordy is in these settings than he is working tag slogs with Doc. Great performance from Kenta with Gordy being a strong anchor for him to work spots off of, with Kenta having to make two comebacks to get what has to be his biggest singles win to date. Gordy had just pinned Misawa in the Carnival, so he was still being positioned as a Big Deal.
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Hot Stuff has gone from the Gilbert Wrestling Federation to Eddie's Championship Wrestling. Tod Gordon stands up to him, and he's no Eddie Marlin even if I get that they're already trying different things with this promotion. Funk does a great job of praising Philly wrestling fans without coming off as a shameless asskisser. Don Muraco aligned with Eddie and Paul E. sounds really weird.
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Razor has harsh words for that cock-a-roach, the Stick-Mang, and offers him $2500 for a rematch. Bret Hart comes out, and he and Vince openly wonder how Razor can beat Bret if he can't beat the Kid. The "1-2-3" chants are now in full force, and Bobby moans about how everybody in every arena is going to do the same thing. Heenan was always brilliant at that "put something over while complaining about it" audience mind-control.
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I thought Perfect's victory over the second Doink came a little easy, but this was well-worked and surprisingly vicious before that. Perfect, even if he's weak offensively, sure knows how to work over a leg and Doink responds by tearing apart Perfect's arm like he's an Anderson, even tossing in the hammerlock bodyslam. Heenan's stumbling justifications after the match are really funny, from insisting there's only one Doink to "he beat the wrong Doink!" to "it was wrong for him to beat Doink!" Crush is as useless as ever during his run-in.
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Slow burn here, but when this got going, it really got going. Great work over Fujinami's arm and Tatsumi showed more intensity here than he has in years. The other highlights--Tenryu's killer enzuigiri, his sell of Hash's payback kick, and Fujinami having to adjust his dragon sleeper--have already been touched on. Not one of the high-end matches of this feud but a high-quality addition. Tenryu vs. Hash has been one of the best builds of any match on any Yearbook.
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My brother did the same thing! IIRC the show was on the channel that eventually became the Family Channel and aired weekday mornings when we were at school Add me to the list--it was the Family Channel by the time I was watching it. And of course now I wish I'd kept and converted the tapes since a DVD release seems all but hopeless in the near future. It's almost scary how into old things I was (in the same timeframe that Will talks about): - Watched as much Nick at Nite as I did Nickelodeon, and it should be noted that Nick itself was still almost entirely second-hand material--minus the game shows--until the early '90s. My dad was obsessed with the old '50s Superman as I was with Batman, so I saw most episodes of that also. - Most music I listened to was oldies radio, or my Dad's record collection which consisted of the same material. Never was a big MTV watcher. - I actually did have access to old '50s wrestling, thanks to some commercially available tapes my father had. And some '70s-era wrestling books which had title histories. Between that and seeing the various History of WWF Championship Coliseum Videos I knew way more about the Backlund/Graham/Bruno era than was healthy for a child of my age. - I watched almost no first-run '80s primetime TV, nor did anyone else in my family. My mother watched Cheers and I absorbed a little of that at the time. That stood as about the only exception to penetrate my household until the rise of The Simpsons, Seinfeld, and to a lesser degree Frasier and Home Improvement. - Sports? Ohio State was at or near its lowest point in the late '80s and the Browns and Bengals were breaking hearts all over the state. And the less said about the Indians... Meanwhile I was consuming these books written in the late '70s for every NFL team that my school library carried. I could name most of the 1968 Jets lineup but I probably didn't know who Ken O'Brien was. I wasn't totally sheltered, but my modern-day knowledge was mostly limited to quarterbacks, Browns and Bengals skill players, and whoever had Starting Lineup figures made of them. - Movies...like Will, it was down to a case-by-case basis. That said, most of my childhood movie love was directed towards Disney, Don Bluth, and the Godzilla franchise. More old shit. I'm not the guy to ask about what younger folk are exposed to these days. That said, my gut instinct tells me that the Internet does in fact make exposure easier rather than harder. They have access to just about any piece of music and many TV shows and movies that they want, rather than be subject to the whim of a TV schedule. They just need an incentive to view it, and that can still come accidentally through a Tweet or a shared link, just as it did through channel-surfing back in the day.
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Unlikely. The TV movie did well, but the re-launched series died a death even quicker than the one in the early 80s. There was nostalgia for one-offs. Not true popularity to sustain a show. I think Loss was talking about syndie reruns. I don't have any hard data but I've heard the same thing--the show wasn't any kind of ratings monster in first-run, but had a resurgence in repeats, just like Star Trek though obviously to a lesser degree.
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Phil's summation of this show was perfect. On top of the other production and advertising issues, Bulldog comes out to a version of "Rule Britannia" that sounds like it was captured by holding a tape recorder up to a radio speaker. Hey, it took a couple of weeks, but we've gotten around to mentioning Cactus Jack risking his life for us. This is a poor man's Sting vs. Vader, but Davey Boy offers up some tremendous, awe-inspiring power spots. Lifting Vader up into the electric chair was markout-worthy. This may be his strongest (hah) individual performance in years. Davey Boy hits the same corner-powerslam spot he hit on Saturday Night, but Race breaks the count and a desperate Vader clobbers Smith with a chair to draw a DQ. I actually liked that finish in the context of the feud and thought it was built up to well, but yeah...in the face of the other ripoff bullshit surrounding this show this may not have been the right time for that. Good match in isolation, though.
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I don't even know what the Dos Hombres story was (besides "Shane Douglas left"). Schiavone doesn't even try to sell that these guys are anyone else besides Steamboat & Douglas, so what the fuck is the point of even having a mask angle? (I know, I know, "Shane Douglas left"). The Omni is so not into this. Steamboat finally wakes the crowd up with a spectacular dive off the top of the cage. Zenk's conspiracy theories about jobbing aside, I'd want to unmask and clarify my identity before doing that move, too. Incredibly the Blonds kick out of that, and we get a neat spot where the bell rings and while Atkins is busy waving that off, Steamboat gets a visual pin on Pillman. Maybe it was just a typical WCW production gaffe but it worked perfectly in the context of the match. Z-Douglas gets whipped into a Stungun and the Blonds escape with the belts again. This was looking horribly disappointing but a hot finish partially saved it, bringing it all the way up to relatively disappointing instead.
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I don't know specifically how to improve upon the execution here, but ultimately I think this was too much, too soon. Not to excuse the crowd, but this type of long, understated ceremony hadn't really been done--especially incorporating pre-WCW and non-WCW elements like Verne and Thesz. And running multiple legends matches on top of this was overkill. And of course the Horsemen segment did its best to piss off the crowd before the ceremony even started. Wrestling II gets a nice reaction, complete with "II! II!" chants. Solie tells us the story that I've always loved, of Wrestling II refusing a White House invite once he was made aware that he could not wear his mask.
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Jesus Christ, they couldn't even be bothered to edit the intro--"THE ORIGINAL FOUR HORSEMEN!" Crowd starts shitting on this the instant Flair mentions "a little bad news." I'm surprised they even bothered to mention Blanchard at all, instead of trying to scrub him from existence. The idea that Barry Windham was supposedly responsible for Tully no-showing is ludicrous. And instead, of course, we get Paul Roma. Crowd doesn't boo so much as loudly, LOUDLY groan. "I don't think these people realize the THOUSANDS of wrestlers you had to choose from!" Oh, come on. That said, despite Roma being a douchebag, he was set up to fail here. Just about anyone would have failed, much less a WWF undercarder. Another indescribable segment and sadly things are going to get worse for WCW before they get better.
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Scorpio absolutely kills Benoit (ooh, bad choice of words) with the Tumbleweed legdrop, landing full-force on his head. Hard to watch that now. But everything up to this was very good. Bagwell has turned into a perfectly serviceable worker, and as the perennial FIP of the team he plays his role well. Benoit & Eaton should have gone farther than they did, and I wish some of Eaton's ring smarts had rubbed off on Benoit a little more. Eaton could take any insane bump you'd care to describe but he also knew how to work shtick, heeling, and comedy...things that Benoit never really picked up on, which in retrospect was to his detriment.
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Good segment, with a cool powerslam by Davey Boy when he catches Vader attempting an avalanche.
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Oh dear God, geisha girls on the set and Flair and Arn are in kimonos. This show finds new ways to...well, bottom itself. Arn looks like he'd rather be anywhere else in the universe. Flair hypes a live Flair for the Gold at Slamboree with the ORIGINAL FOUR HORSEMEN, ON THE SHOW LIVE. Can't wait for that. "I'm talking about Tully Blanchard!" Wow, don't recall the name actually making television. This goes on while Fifi takes Flair to get dressed. Rude comes back out and sort of gladhands with Ric, which is a role that doesn't fit him at all, while Flair can't decide if he wants to be a babyface or a heel. Rude repays Flair for the hospitality by introducing "Fufu" and I can scarcely believe what I'm watching. Somehow in one segment they've managed to undercut Flair, Arn, and Rude all at once. Incredible. WCW is so, so painful to watch right now.
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I'm sure Bischoff was much happier here than talking Lou Thesz with Gordon Solie. Um...what was this supposed to accomplish for us, the viewer, exactly?
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This comes off as very ESPN Classic SportsCentury-ish, 7 years early. Solie talks up appearances by Jim Barnett, Don Owen, and Stanley Blackburn at Slamboree. A rundown of Lou Thesz's career follows--I'm quite dubious of Gordon's claim that he was wrestling's "first major celebrity." Clips follow of Thesz vs. Inoki and I think, if I heard correctly, they're actually trying to push this as just happening recently as opposed to the 1970's. Bischoff is so very punch-worthy here. We don't get a list of who's actually competing in the Legends matches but we do get two separate hype jobs for Maxx Payne playing Norma Jean. The concept of this show is admirable, but I think the early-'90s wrestling environment wasn't the right place to run such a show on a national level. Nostalgia and acknowledging the past and Youtube clips and Hall of Fame ceremonies weren't around in full force and most promotions in the U.S. were concentrating on the here and now. And even if it was a good time to do it, WCW was not the promotion to pull it off effectively.
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After Rage in the Cage, the heel team crucified Bob Armstrong against the cage with handcuffs and he was beaten half to death. Scott and Steve Armstrong are now in SMW to go after Cornette and the Bodies: "Your mama can't pay her way out of this." Bob is resigning as commissioner, and is coming back to wrestle! Cornette is in hysterics. He's gotten what he wants. Jimmy Del Ray is here! Stan Lane has quit for a WWF commentator's job been sent packing in a loser-leaves-town match. Del Ray is Prichard's "cousin" (???) Del Ray is immediately the biggest, sleaziest scuzzball any of you will ever see.
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This is NOT the same chick who was in those Jerry Lawler Show clips.
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Very classy tribute all around. Even though I too smelled an angle.