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PeteF3

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  1. PeteF3
    Decent opening, hot finish, shitty middle. Shawn is very good at transitions and cut-offs but, as would be the case for the rest of his career, so-so at best when in control. There are some clever spots here and some good near-falls before a surprisingly clean finish, but overall this isn't a high point for either guy.
  2. PeteF3
    Well, it's certainly no lucha MOTYC but I thought this was pretty fucking awesome, about on par with Fiera vs. Tiger Mask and better than any other Fiera appearance in the early '90s. Dandy is such a terrific sympathetic babyface because God knows he wasn't a master of enough styles already, and I completely bought the Northern Lights suplex as a big comeback move to even the falls. Yet another Dandy hair match ends in controversy, as Fiera tries to steal a win with the ropes, but Dandy counters and grabs the ropes himself. This time there's no Atlantis to plead anybody's case, so the decision stands. Start of a rudo turn for Dandy or just a typical poetic-justice finish for the heel? I guess we'll find out in '93.
  3. PeteF3
    Dr. Death turned heel and joined the Varsity Club via a locker room promo from Japan.
  4. PeteF3
    It'd have to be something that cost a ton of money and failed right out the gate. ...and did huge damage to the business as a whole (when OJ talks about auteurs being to blame for their own Hollywood demise, this movie served as the breaking point). That's why I'm tempted to go with '87 Crockett over SWS, which was sort off in its own isolated world and ended up being a blessing in disguise for All-Japan, despite being a money pit.
  5. PeteF3
    Who or what is the Heaven's Gate of wrestling? Post-UWF buyout Crockett?
  6. PeteF3
    Russo actually has four ideas. Shoots, misogyny, swerves, and blatantly lifting shit from TV and movies: Natural Born Killers for Flair/Crowbar/Daffney, Saturday Night Live for Kwee Wee, and this Daffney/Crowbar/lookalike thing I only vaguely remember, but from the description here it was clearly lifted letter-for-letter from an episode of Frasier.
  7. PeteF3
    Loss summed up perfectly why they had to slow things down and work basic here--I had eerily similar thoughts as I was watching. It greatly stands out in contrast to what was going on in AJPW in the early '90s but it would have seemed even more incongruous to go balls-to-the-wall only when Baba was on the apron and slow things down otherwise. I think AJPW was better off for when matches could still be worked this way instead of requiring every big match to be a bomb-throwing fest. But, oh, we do get a bit of that down the stretch, as the stuff with Kawada trying to put Kobashi away was great fun. I admit I got taken in a bit by the result, as I had this pegged as a draw despite Kobashi being the obvious sacrificial lamb here. I still think I liked the '93 match better, but it's not a fair comparison since I don't think that exists in full and we got some opening matwork here that verges on the slow side.
  8. PeteF3
    Kim Chee makes a rare speaking appearance in a little Coliseum Video cameo with Wippleman and Kamala. Michaels' interview is stronger than Bret's, which surprises me quite a bit. Not one of Bret's better efforts on the stick. There's nothing technically wrong with this match at all, but man is it dull at points. This is pretty much the American equivalent to the Hansen/Misawa title change. And the main issue is that Shawn just isn't compelling working on top, an issue that would plague him for the rest of his career. So we get a lot of chinlock- and facelockery, none of which is worked all that well. I do give them credit for never losing the crowd--no one was seen filing out of the Coliseum and there were "LET'S GO BRET" chants towards the end. The WWF fans that remained were apparently buying this guy as a Heavyweight champion. And there were some downright excellent transitions and cut-offs, like Shawn cutting Bret off with the superkick and Bret taking a cool-looking bump getting tangled in the ropes. Since a number of these were Bret trademarks like slamming chest-first into the turnbuckle, I attribute most of these to him. This turned into a decent match but it didn't live up to expectations.
  9. PeteF3
    Hey now--Kong vs. Hotta where Kong tears up Hotta's hand was the second puro match I ever saw, way back in 1995, and I thought it was awesome. I was never a "hater."
  10. PeteF3
    Having not really seen AWA Hennig at this point, I was stunned by how easily Perfect slid into a babyface role. It was a really good refreshing of his character. Heenan's rant throughout the intros of this is one of my all-time favorite Brain moments--I love how literally every action by Perfect, from chewing gum to wanting to start the match, invites another reason for Heenan to go off. Not to mention his lament of "what society has come to" that fans are cheering him. Finish aside, this was a pretty hot match. They keep the Perfect turn as organic as possible, with him teasing the walkout and sort of reluctantly accepting Savage's high-five at the end--this alliance was honestly a lot more believable than Savage and Warrior as buddies. The finish is blah but the post-match is done pretty well. This is the type of match where you kind of wish the WWF had a true, live Clash show--they could have run this match there with the cheap finish and set up either Perfect vs. Flair at the PPV or a Survivor Series-type match (I guess the singles match would have worked better).
  11. PeteF3
    Even Okerlund seems positively giddy setting this up. Flair cuts another seething promo, seemingly very excited to have a hot issue to talk about again. The only problem is Flair is basically promising hellfire and brimstone upon Perfect for crossing him, when we all know that that's never really going to come about. I'd give anything to see Razor and some other goon jump Perfect in the parking lot to kick this feud into another gear.
  12. PeteF3
    I didn't know much of the backstory either--just that Toyota and Yamada are tag partners who had been feuding with each other at the same time previous, and that this is an interpromotional match. And that it's a total, fucking, war. And that the "best match ever" praise is not unfounded in the least. I mean, Liger/Samurai instantly became one of my favorite matches ever and I have to say this match definitively left it in the dust. I praised the first two matches because of their "non-joshiness," but this is the absolute peak of what I think most consider the joshi style, or at least the '90s style. It's all action with super high-end offense, but it's done with an intensity and a hatred and a sense of both teams fighting for everything, for their promotions as well as themselves, to a standard that almost no other bout has ever been able to match. I've also criticized some joshi tags because everyone tends to bleed together from a style and strength-and-weakness standpoint. Well, that's not in effect here. Toyota and Yamada are already great contrasts, which is why they're as good as rivals as they are as partners--and Kansai and Ozaki are a fine contrast as well. Kansai can match Yamada kick for kick and Ozaki is such a delightful bitch, making a nuisance of herself on the apron. There's also a terrific moment where Kansai has Toyota in a figure four and Oz comes in and applies a cross armbreaker, and she takes time to turn and wink to the camera, just because she can. The first fall alone is one of the greatest wars you'll ever see in wrestling, and the second fall is booked perfectly with the champs and Yamada in particular stepping up with their backs to the wall and quickly equalizing. Escalating back-and-forth third fall with Kansai and Yamada just murdering each other with kicks, Toyota providing the great highspots but also playing a terrific sympathetic babyface, and a just-ambiguous-enough ending because it's still an interpromotional match and God knows that's a prerequisite. So there's your 1992 Match of the Year, and there quite possibly is your Match of the Decade. This is pretty much perfection from an action, drama, and booking standpoint, and this is coming from a joshi skeptic.
  13. PeteF3
    Aja's got not one, but two square trash cans--and they're gold, so some serious shit's going down. But mercifully they don't play any role in the match, as this is very deliberate and mat-based, befitting a major title match. Another "traditionally" laid out match, with a nice slow organic build to when the brawling starts and then when they start unleashing the big moves. Nakano throws everything at Aja, and we get some fantastic nods to past history. The guillotine legdrop fails, the rolling guillotine legdrop fails, and so Bull goes for the desperation moonsault once again--but this time it misses. Nakano is able to withstand the series of urakens that had put her down previously, so Aja trumps THAT by busting out a guillotine legdrop of her own. Fantastic finish and an even better post-match scene. I admit it didn't really pack the emotional gut punch for me personally that something more familiar like Savage & Elizabeth at WM7 did, but the sense of impact and change was still palpable. Now I have to decide between this or the previous match as joshi MOTY, and there's another big match on this card to go!
  14. PeteF3
    This is the best joshi match of the year so far, even if it's because it's such a non-joshi layout. An actual feeling out process to start before building to the big moves, long sells between moves, and hot near-falls built around roll-ups and counters rather than giant bombs. This is a career performance for Kyoko to this point, with her fantastic glassy-eyed selling of Hokuto's dives and of those sick dropkicks to the back when she tried to do her springboard reverse dives. These girls also do more work struggling in pin attempts than some people do in entire matches. They were positively Liger-esque in their ability to convincingly fight through to last-second kickouts. There isn't a ton of super-innovative offense here but there are some very neat counters from Hokuto, and the near-falls are of course fantastic and had me biting several times. Interpromotional intrigue after the match--another one of those cross-promotional trends that makes these Yearbooks so cool.
  15. PeteF3
    Vince's outfit is something, but it doesn't hold a candle to what he had on in 1991. I probably would have found this segment intolerable watching at the time, but Bret is very good in this setting.
  16. PeteF3
    Razor says that Perfect is just like that americano, Arnold Benedict! It's unbelievable how quickly Hall adapted to this role--whether it was with great coaching or just the right gimmick. Flair follows with a tremendously intense promo.
  17. PeteF3
    Checked out the October tag (thanks, Ditch!) and it's almost as good, and maybe an even better spectacle. Great contrast as it's a pro-WAR crowd this time and Koshinaka and Kimura are having way too much fun heeling it up. With the grittier setting and rampant brawling and interference (Masa Saito even gets involved from his commentary desk) it feels like a classic Mid-South or Crockett event rather than '90s Japan. Tenryu is absolutely spectacular--maybe the best he's looked since '89 even notwithstanding the Flair bout. At one point he clobbers one of Team NJPW with a lariat so explosive that he flies over the top rope to the floor. Kosh and Kimura open up cuts on both of Team WAR's heads and go to work on them before Tenryu makes a huge comeback--hot near falls and then he puts Kosh away with a power bomb. But Tenryu isn't content with that and gives Koshinaka two more after the match, and Masa Saito leaps into the ring to make the save! Tenryu and Saito jaw at each other over the microphone and have to be separated. Definitely the #2 Japan indy match of the year behind Tenryu/Flair, with an excellent post-match angle. Fuck, Tenryu vs. Saito sounds so awesome, regardless of whether or not Saito has lost a step by this point.
  18. PeteF3
    This seems like the #2 NJPW Match of the Year to me. I'll have go to back through when I do my Awards post and check, but right now the only thing jumping out as being definitively better is Liger/Samurai. The atmosphere is incredible, with a crowd that REALLY hates the WAR undercarders and isn't all that fond of Tenryu either. The work isn't always pristine but there are some terrific transitions and cool spots. Tenryu gets on the mic and calls out Riki Choshu--so cool to see a feud cross promotions like this. Antonio Inoki makes an appearance so you KNOW some heavy shit's going to go down. Great stuff all around and I can't wait to see more of this feud.
  19. PeteF3
    Terrific match, one of Dustin's best performances yet. He gets some great offense but Vader still comes across as an unstoppable beast, particularly with the pre-match storyline of Vader coming in injured from a 2x4 attack by Sting. I think the Clash match was a little better but this still makes you want to see these two have a full-fledged program.
  20. PeteF3
    I wouldn't be anywhere near the top--I just have the highest ratio of shit I watch to shit that I post about, because it's pretty much confined to Yearbooks and '80s sets.
  21. PeteF3
    I'm fairly sure Jushin Liger would fulfill the "not a main eventer" criteria.
  22. PeteF3
    From the Linguistic Milestone Dept.: this is the first instance of "tapping out" entering the wrestling vernacular, at least on a national stage.
  23. PeteF3
    Decent TV match with a hot pre-match angle. Garvin fits in perfectly with this outfit, and he surprisingly is the one to take the Morton role in Morton's absence. They take great, contrived pains to have Mark Curtis distracted so Cornette can whack Gibson with the tennis racket, then Curtis turns around and calls for the bell anyway. So what was the point? Ricky Morton comes back with one eye taped up to run off the heels. Strong, effective table-setter for the Thanksgiving Thunder tour. Incidentally it's ridiculous how good Cornette's punches are.
  24. PeteF3
    A fucking clinic from Cornette. One of the most mesmerizing promos of the year.
  25. PeteF3
    What's the one thing that dogs are scared of? BATHS. Uh...I thought that was cats. Yeah, it's a Waterboard Death Match at the Mid-South Coliseum. 1992 was a more innocent time. Richard Lee rebuts from the S.S. MOONDOG. Of all the vignettes involving managers and yachts on these Yearbooks, this is probably the second-best.
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