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PeteF3

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  1. PeteF3
    The elbow is now officially marked as a Death Move, which makes this finish a lot less anticlimactic one than the Hansen title change. Note Fukuzawa invoking the names of Hansen and Gordy when Misawa hits it. Anyway, this wasn't quite as good as 10/92 but a very fun match, with the two really working as adversaries even if the split hadn't been finalized yet. Kawada was put over well in defeat--Misawa hitting the tiger driver in the first minute came off as a desperation move, and he got one last comeback when he first looked left for dead.
  2. PeteF3
    I thought this was the least of the heavyweight interpromotional matches, but still fun. Loved Team NJPW suckering Tenryu in at the start, resulting in Fujinami blindsiding him and leveling him with a big flurry of his trademark offense. After that I thought Fujinami dragged this down a lot when he was in, but the teases for the dragon suplex were good and the heat of course was tremendous. Holy shit, Ishikawa pins Fujinami! They teased us with that once with Choshu having to make the save, then doubled back and tricked us again by paying off the tease in the same match. I don't know if that explains it well, but it was really cleverly done. There's probably a lot more that can be written about how the promotions in Japan have treated interpromotional matches and stars as compared to the U.S. Stan Hansen jumped ship in the middle of a full-blown promotional war, and he was treated like the bombshell that he was instead of having to take weeks to "learn the All-Japan style" and know his place in the locker room. It's even more striking with this feud--WAR is a minor league outfit all the way, yet they've been allowed to show more in these few months than WCW did during the entire Invasion.
  3. PeteF3

    DISC 1

    PeteF3 replied to soup23's topic in 1980s Lucha

    I'm a little Yearbooked out, so I'm going to switch gears for awhile and play catch-up. I watched match 1 several weeks ago and 2-4 just now. Some of these comments may be useless without the context of the '80s DVDVR threads, but oh well. Satoru Sayama y Gran Hamada vs. Perro Aguayo y Babe Face (4/13/80) Good start that seems very "traditional" pro wrestling-style as opposed to lucha, which makes for a good gateway with new/inexperienced lucha watchers. Hamada shows some great fire here in-between some dazzling sequences, and this is centered on a developing feud with Aguayo. Babe and Sayama look good too but this is Hamada and Aguayo's match. Finish could be seen as cheap but it was a great, great low blow, and seemed like a natural conclusion to the escalating violence throughout the match. 7/10 Andre the Giant y Cien Caras vs. Alfonso Dantes, Herodes, y Sangre Chicana (1981) Match went too long for my tastes, but there were some fun Andre spots here even if they were fairly standard ones. It's cool to see what a truly worldwide sensation Andre was in the '80s, since he did these shots in Mexico and Europe that other top stars didn't. This also has the bizarre (to me, at least) sight of Cien Caras working babyface. His calling was clearly that of an asskicking heel, but that was certainly novel while it lasted. I don't foresee this escaping the bottom 25. Maybe bottom 10 if the rest of the set is strong enough. 3.7/10 Centurion Negro vs. Gran Hamada Okay, I liked this a ton. Along with the big NJPW multi-man tags and well-done big vs. little matches, I think lucha title bouts are now my favorite type of wrestling match. Centurion Negro becomes the first of what I'm sure will be multiple guys who will go from "who?" to "this guy's fucking awesome" by the time the set's done. He looks like a great mat wrestler here and he sets up Hamada's flying spots beautifully while throwing in some highspots of his own. Some really good close near-falls close out the third fall before Hamada takes the UWA Middleweight title. This is easily the best of the first 3 matches. 8.4/10 Canek vs. Don Corleone I'm middle of the pack on this. It did drag and Canek's offense wasn't that good, and that delayed turnbuckle bump was indeed comical. But Corleone's work looked good, both working holds, unleashing big moves, and selling Canek's weak-ass offense. Even Canek's tope didn't seem all that painful. I liked Canek quite a bit in New Japan--he and Blackman were about the only two Mexicans to get a good match out of Tiger Mask, and he had some killer bouts with Fujinami that I hope the next bout lives up to. I didn't hate him in this as much as Will did, but he didn't give a performance befitting of a Heavyweight champion here. And as much as I liked Corleone here, he looked better in the NJPW match against Fujinami. 6.1/10
  4. PeteF3
    Cindy Crawford! Leslie Neilsen! Susan Lucci! Eli Wallach! Sean Mooney! "When it comes to helping kids, no superstar has a bigger appetite than Hulk Hogan!" Hulk then CUTS A PROMO on children's leukemia. His biggest body part is his HEART. Which is just as big in every other WWF superstar. Yeah, on some level this is a nice effort but on another level this is pretty blatant pandering and ego-stroking. Brian Knobbs informs us that despite being as Nasty as they wanna be, smoking makes you not cool and a jerk. Some more incredibly generic "just say no" messages follow. A still shot of Vince has a caption acknowledging him as the WWF's CEO, which is probably a first for actual WWF television. SMILES ON FACES. I'm completely serious when I say that if I'd been a terminally ill child, my "Make-a-Wish" would have been to make a TV appearance with a babyface and have it used as a set-up for a dastardly heel act. Actually it would have been less like a "wish" and more like a demand. There had to be other young wrestling fans who felt the same way. The Andre video is a million times better. Lots of familiar images--blocking out Alfred Hayes' entire face with his hand, holding four women up, pouring champagne over Hogan, and of course choking Bob Uecker. Was the WWF Hall of Fame something initially cooked up to pay tribute to Andre or was it something in the works already?
  5. PeteF3
    Kind of an interesting story with Malenko constantly going to the anklelock, and his screaming "GET UP!" at Liger was amusing in hindsight considering Dean's subsequent persona. But this is definitely not going to finish high on a list of All-Time IWGP Jr. Title matches.
  6. PeteF3
    It didn't, which is too bad. Jim Cornette's sell of that is terrific, and he drops a priceless line before taking the hood off, about how the rednecks in the audience were probably used to seeing people walking around in white sheets! Arn proceeded to call out Eaton for abandoning him while he was hurt in favor of the Bodies, while acknowledging that he didn't like Ricky & Robert either. Here, Arn lays it down regarding the previous attack on Kanemura, which is awesome. Arn's heart is on vacation, and he's here to do to Cornette & the Bodies what they've been doing to everyone else, and it may mean repeating what happened with Kanemura. Standard killer promo from Anderson. Ricky and Robert stand nearby.
  7. PeteF3
    Really, uncomfortably sick. Not as good of a presentation as the butchering of Brian Lee, but they actually work a semi-match out of it with Kanemura even getting a comeback. Sullivan pulls a spike out of nowhere in a really well-done spot and goes to town on Kanemura's arm, after already busting him open to start. The big red "X" makes an appearance! Nightstalker is at ringside cutting people off with a chair, until Brian Lee takes him out and rescues Mr. Yamaguchi. Caudle & Dutch are excellent here, by the way, letting us in on the story of Victor Quinones talking about banning Sullivan from Japan and Mexico, hence Sullivan's attack.
  8. PeteF3
    Eddie being Eddie, despite being a babyface he shoots about a lack of title shots and not being a "first match boy" or "second match boy." He does turn this back to Bert Prentice and the Rock 'n Roll Phantom. Killer promo, too bad it led to yet another Gilbert downfall.
  9. PeteF3
    Definitely another standout performance from Casas, who I thought carried most of this until the big near-fall exchange towards the end. Dragon was way better here than in the Samurai match. I like Sammy but Casas is a much more fluid mat wrestler, and Dragon actually got to show some struggle and fight here, having to fight out of holds before leveling Casas with a stiff clothesline to set up his primera caida victory. Casas evens things and then knees Dragon in the balls between the 2nd and 3rd falls, a great moment with a great cat-eating-the-canary look on Casas' face afterward. Casas really ramps up the cockiness in the 3rd fall and it costs him twice, once with Dragon monkey flipping him into the turnbuckle on the apron and once when he takes his sweet time climbing the turnbuckle and pratfalls off. Great run of near-falls follows and Dragon picks up another huge singles win in Mexico. This wasn't as good as the high-end Mexican title and apuestas matches, and I've sort of turned on the idea of Dragon being any kind of a superworker. But this was very, very good and a top 10 MOTY candidate.
  10. PeteF3
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMk4P6NPrVE - There's the Sting title win. Sort of Sting/Vader by numbers with a familiar finish. The Vader win looks good from the little footage that we see, possibly better than the first title change.
  11. PeteF3
    Fixed for accuracy.
  12. PeteF3
    Lots of fun here, and a promising first look at Sasuke who's way over in his first chronological appearance. Hamada is his usual awesome self, Signo provides some chunky fat luchador offense, and Rudo (who is this guy? Would he be more well-known as another name?) keeps up. Somebody interferes when Sasuke dives out to the floor and whacks him with a chair, allowing the rudos to steal an upset countout win.
  13. PeteF3
    Not a great match, but decent enough. I was surprised at how intense the food fight was. It's not quite Tupelo at its peak but it was quite the little brawl. I'm almost ashamed of myself for actually laughing at Bartlett-Vince a couple of times, even though the deadly combo of Gorilla & Bartlett is just behind the team of any announcer & Jason Hervey for the Announce Team from Hell.
  14. PeteF3
    JYD in a different kind of setting, cutting a serious low-key promo for maybe the first time since the blinding angle.
  15. PeteF3
    Some good and some bad. La Parka's bullet tope through the guardrail was a highlight, as was the psychology of the low blows and fake low blows. But there was a lot of sloppiness, and this is the second straight subpar effort from Misterioso, who continued to look lost and blew a majority of the spots he tried. The best parts of this were Rey Jr. as rudo punching bag, as so often seems to be the case with young Rey in these 6-mans. This got better as it went along but overall it wasn't particularly good.
  16. PeteF3
    Yeah, I wonder who the star of this is--even the staunch pro-WAR crowd knows judging by the name they keep chanting. Easy match of the night honors here. Hara is great at knowing when to Hulk Up and when to sell. I've never much cared for him but this may be a career performance. I love the way Team WAR punches Hash in the mouth right to start, both literally and figuratively. This segues into a more structured tag bout with Team WAR logically trying to isolate Ohara, and succeeding in beating him into a bloody pulp. Squint and Ohara looks like Kenta Kobashi--blood notwithstanding he wrestles a lot like him, too. Eventually he gets the hot tag to Hash and this gets put away. Count me as somebody who actually liked the small package finish. I thought it was a neat way to put the WAR guys over in defeat--even Hashimoto, far and away the #1 guy in the match, is at the point where he decides, "Let's get this the fuck over with."
  17. PeteF3
    It was made in response to rapidly shrinking revenues--between the WBF, the failure of WrestleMania, and a weak summer house show season. At the same time, they added a dollar to show tickets and uprooted the road schedule to regionalize tours in order to cut back on travel expenses. It may have been a test run but there was no reported indication of such at the time. Meltzer even specifically said that these steps were "a temporary thing."
  18. PeteF3
    Oh, now this is more like it. I really, really didn't want to bring this up when talking about Samurai/Dragon, because like Roger Ebert I believe in reviewing the match (movie) that actually happened, not the one that you wish had happened. But I'll say it now after watching this: as an interpromotional juniors match I wanted to see two guys tearing each other's masks open and wanting to bloody and cripple one another, instead of the pretty roll-ups that we got. I get not reviewing the fantasy-booked match in your head and I get the idea of booking and match layouts with regard to a whole card as opposed to matches individually--I get all of that. But goddamn, guys, show some fucking FIRE. Give me some sympathetic selling from Dragon or Samurai being a dick (refusing a handshake in the poutiest, whiniest manner possible doesn't count). I mean, here we have a WAR mid-carder taking on a junior who hasn't been relevant in this decade, and they put on a match that's just as heated with regard to crowd reaction and a damn sight more aggressive and hate-filled as befitting this interpromotional war. These guys brutalize each other in and out of the ring, and there's an unexpected wrinkle of an ending that's nonetheless given serious and sensible build, with some good similar "near-falls" earlier. There was even some Snowman/Lawler-esque "is this getting out of control for real?" moments. Kobayashi had better brawls than this, with Tiger Mask ten years earlier and with Masa Fuchi in AJPW. And one could question the logic of the "invading" wrestler (one who's been a heel most of his career to start with) being put in such a sympathetic role. But this was an enjoyable addition to the feud and an example of how knowing how to work can trump knowing spots and moves. The more Dragon I watch the less I'm sure he ever really grasped the former concept--which sure doesn't say much for Toryumon/Dragon Gate and may be why I was cold on the little of that that I've seen, even back in 2000-01 when it was a semi-rage.
  19. PeteF3
    Holy shit, my disagreements on everything outside of shootstyle have been minor for the most part. But I thought this was the absolute pre-eminent Yearbook example of the worst of '90s junior wrestling. We open with a shitty "matwork" portion that involves Samurai putting a bunch of holds on Dragon, none of which mean anything and none of which are done with any sort of struggle until we get the Samurai Clutch, which is sold nicely and Dragon fights out of. It's the best part of the match. We seem to miss a key transition on the floor--the camera's fault, not the wrestlers--leading to a nice Asai moonsault. Then both guys throw a bunch of my-turn-your-turn near-falls at each other until one of Dragon's rollups arbitrarily ends the match. That was one cooperative-looking closing stretch. Go back and find my post in one of the AJPW threads about psychology centering around imaginary video game "energy bars"...well, this is the diametric opposite of that idea. The closing stretch was heated and the moves themselves were sort of well-executed but it was all stereotypical indy 2.9 wrestling, with no moves or holds carrying any actual meaning--just excuses to get to the next spot. Since this presumably wasn't taped for official release I don't really know why they worked the "perfunctory matwork before going to the highspots" style of match--that works with a JIP match but it came off very badly in this setting in particular. Most disappointing match of the first 3.25 years--I actively disliked this.
  20. PeteF3
    An angle as old and basic as wrestling itself, but pretty well-done. I don't know what's up with Boris' Rick Steiner headgear, though.
  21. PeteF3
    Very good, intense, heated brawl with a great, great shocker of a finish. Completely deflated the hot crowd, but the fact that Wright had stayed planted in his wheelchair for a year and a half makes the climax so much more important.
  22. PeteF3
    Sullivan has slipped paperwork into the SMW offices that were unknowingly signed off on, and the company is now forced to pay for his therapy sessions or else face a discrimination lawsuit. Sullivan is having fun naming the seagulls after his Smoky Mountain enemies, lures them in with food, then pulls out his spike. This continues to be the best use of Sullivan since Florida if not ever.
  23. PeteF3
    Bagwell dancing with Scorpio is ridiculous, but damned if the crowd doesn't squeal over it. I definitely didn't think this was as good as the Power Hour bout. As shoe points out it does get chinlocky, and it doesn't have Steamboat holding the structure together. There is some good heeling from the Blonds and Bagwell is energetic, and it must be pointed out how much more heated this is. I think it's absurd that they didn't strap a rocket to Scorpio and push him to the TV or U.S. titles--he was over enough and probably a better "black draw"--for want of a less patronizing term--than Simmons. Finish was real weak-sauce. At least do a Bobby Eaton and come off the top rope on the guy.
  24. PeteF3
    Ross' departure is going to leave a noticeable void in WCW, especially if we have to hear more Bischoff on play-by-play. "Back leg round kick" or something gets called, so those classic Eric tendencies are already established. Douglas puts Austin in a Boston crab, then Steamboat springboards over him and lands on Austin's back and immediately switches to a semi-camel clutch, in a fantastic double-team spot. The overall match is really good with really strong psychology surrounding Douglas' bad knee. It's sold well and it impacts the match without overly drawing attention to itself. Steamboat's FIP segment is a classic with some awesome hot tag teases and cut-offs. I especially liked how they set up Steamboat's patented "flip over the back" reversal of the back suplex by having Austin hit the move the first time to cut off a tag attempt and having it backfire when he did it again. Pillman absolutely creams Steamboat with a clothesline towards the finish, and we get a fun little cluster of an ending.
  25. PeteF3
    I've never watched either show on tape, but I still think KOTR was better. Brock's coronation seemed a little more historically significant even if it was a foregone conclusion, and Angle tapping Hogan was fun and markout-worthy. Badd Blood had a mildly entertaining Orton/Benjamin match and nothing else to offer that approached the entertainment value of Rock, Booker, and Goldust backstage. I went to a ton of Ohio Center shows dating back to roughly late '85/early '86, and only twice did I go to a show where the place was filled. (The Ohio Center was/is NOT a huge arena--8000 seats or so, maybe more for wrestling). One was a Challenge taping with Hogan on the card, one was in '98 with Austin approaching his peak. TV at the Schott and Nationwide Arena were different stories of course. And actually that Badd Blood PPV had most of the balcony curtained off. I know Columbus was a strong market for GCW and they filled the place up some, but other than that and Al Haft's peak it's never been a major wrestling city to my knowledge. Blame the Sheik and his shitty promotion.
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