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PeteF3

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  1. PeteF3
    Harvey does make for a good contrast against Sid's size, at least.
  2. PeteF3
    Ah, back when 'shopping photos took a huge amount of effort. I also had the follow-up that "exposed" the photos as fakes (Liz and Flair were watching TNT on television, but with '90s Coliseum Videos on the wall). Flair is in street clothes, and Perfect has traded his track clothes for a suit, thank goodness. This, the locker room "Wall of Fame" photos, and Flair's subdued arrogance make this the most Flair-like of all WWF Flair promos so far.
  3. PeteF3
    JIP, as I lament all the snooze-inducing half crabs and chinlocks from the MVC that we missed. We join Taue getting annihilated, but withstanding two Gordy power bombs and this already feels like a Taue showcase. Jumbo gets the spotlight towards the end, however, getting beaten down before more or less making his own comeback with Taue providing bits of help. This, from what we saw, was better than some of the '91 MVC matches but not as good as the high-end ones.
  4. PeteF3
    Misawa managing to withstand the first Lariat seemed to be a deliberate sign that he was the heir apparent, if it wasn't self-evident already. Misawa takes a huge beating before starting a comeback, and the elbows and the facelock are put over in a big way. He just doesn't have it in him to put Hansen down yet. Crowd is SO ready to see Misawa get this victory, and the build to it throughout the year gets white-hot. Sadly I recall the end result being very anticlimactic, but I'm looking forward to see if it holds up better than I remembered.
  5. PeteF3
    Ditto on the ring entrances and everything else. I can't explain precisely why, but the image of Rayo looking stoically at the camera from under his sombrero as "Eye of the Tiger" played in the background is fucking awesome. Aguayo looks like somebody's jolly Mexican grandpa, which is a hilarious image in the face of how he's worked before and how this match goes. The match? It's lucha meets Memphis and it's fucking incredible. Yet despite all the chaos this is easily the most structured "heat->comeback" layout of any lucha match on the Yearbooks. Plus there are three individual match-ups that all get focus, between Konnan/Caras, Rayo/Ano 2000, and Aguayo/Chicana. Aguayo gets Misawa'd on the floor at some point and Rayo gets lost in the rows of chairs, and Konnan is beaten down unmercifully with Caras constantly yanking him up at two, just because he's a fucking cocksucker. Konnan does a shockingly good Ricky Morton sympathy sell here, and eventually Caras puts an exclamation point on the fall by pinning him with a pinky finger. The second fall reigns in a bit of the crazy brawling and gets a little more traditionally worked, but it's still pretty spectacular. Ano 2000 eliminates Rayo, but instead of going straight to the finish proper the match goes on after that, with an attempted technico comeback that ends when Aguayo misses a somersault senton off the top. Chicana levels him with a fantastic left hook and the rudos win in two straight! As much as I've loved Los Cowboys, WCW needed to leave one of them at home and bring in Chicana so he and Michael Hayes could just spend 7 minutes trading rights and lefts with each other. That would have earned Match of the Night honors at the Clash. This should serve as another gateway drug for those itchy about getting into lucha, as I was for years. Six guys beating the shit out of each other should appeal to everybody, and there can't be any complaints about the somewhat contrived nature of how the falls end (i.e., two quick falls and a long third, or everyone on a team always getting beaten at once). Different in just about every way from the Casas/Cowboys trios but probably as good. In the running for MOTY.
  6. PeteF3
    Good but not great action down the stretch, with a few moments of Bam Bam looking lost and Vader doing one of the most obvious spotcalls since Sid in WarGames. Plus Vader gets tossed around not just by Muto but also by Hase, which is pushing things quite a bit. Still, some hot near-falls and Muto is quite convincingly beaten down to net Vader and Bam Bam the IWGP tag belts.
  7. PeteF3
    Very deliberate, but they crafted a nice long match without the need for a lot of 2-counts and very basic action until Hash's belly-to-belly superplex. Not a classic, but a showcase of two guys who knew how to work in addition to knowing how to brutalize each other.
  8. PeteF3
    Piper is also probably a guy who comes off a lot better in a Yearbook or random Youtube-watching setting than having to put up with him week after week as most of us did.
  9. PeteF3
    I'm not ashamed to admit this--I thought the Dark Patriot was the coolest gimmick in wrestling. I'd never heard of an evil doppelganger gimmick before and him finishing guys off with the "Scud Missile" as opposed to the Patriot Missile just enhanced it. Pedicino does a good job of balancing kayfabe with paying respects when he talks of the death of Tojo Yamamoto. Take note, Larry Z.
  10. PeteF3
    This is great stuff between two guys I've never heard of, who wrestle like seasoned pros. Crowd is way into this by the end.
  11. PeteF3
    Just an unbelievable match. Negro Casas really stands out as he runs the ropes and takes bumps with such an incredible velocity, he makes every move he takes look like Hansen's Lariat. And that's exacerbated with Los Cowboys who bring such unusually stiff offense for the style. Rambo isn't in as much but works sort of a monster heel style and does some great tree-falling-in-the-woods bumps. The finish to the segunda caida sounds absolutely absurd when it's described--the technicos get Casas to perform a huracanrana on Rambo and they hold it for a pin, then roll Rambo into a sunset flip and hold it for another pin to finish the fall. And yet it works, perfectly. It's one of the greatest finishes I've ever seen and it's something CHIKARA should try to rip off if they haven't already, though I doubt it would look 1/15 as smooth as these guys do it. The third fall has a "past midnight" feel to it as there's a big 6-man clusterfuck that looks like the real finish, but they keep going until Hamada gets an impactante on Casas, and Rambo and Los Cowboys pin both guys while they're still in the hold, resulting in a draw. Another awesome finish--shades of the Rock 'n Rolls vs. Guerreros on Mid-South TV that's one of my favorite finishes ever--but only the second-best of the match. No problems at all putting this in MOTY contention. The WWF is sort of spinning its wheels as it resets its WrestleMania plans, but every other promotion on the planet is on fire. Without having seen the rest of the decade this has to be one of the greatest months of any Yearbook.
  12. PeteF3
    "His 30 days of training have paid off, Luger looks as big as I've ever seen him!" "How do you bulk up in 30 days??!" There was lots of passive-aggressive shots at bodybuilding throughout this show. An anticlimactic World title victory deserves an anticlimactic loss. Just going by the ending this isn't much of a match, which is a disappointment considering the insane PPV hot streak Luger had been on dating all the way back to WrestleWar '90. Sting's victory does get a monster pop from a crowd that started off red hot and never burned out after a night of very long matches.
  13. PeteF3
    What a fucking loaded show this is. I fired up Steiners vs. Arn/Eaton and it's a hell of a match too, albeit one with an even cheaper ending than this. This series is so great for body part work that pays off in various ways throughout the match. Rude's ribs will be an issue at Beach Blast, and here Rude basically has his arm taken away from him and so he has to resort to high-risk offense because he can't execute the Rude Awakening (or his full array of poses). Steamboat hits possibly the greatest superplex I've ever seen. It really appeared as though he deadlifted Rude off the turnbuckle, it was the closest-looking thing to a shoot superplex as you will ever see. The ending...well, it's a clever screwjob, no question about that. But after we saw the Ninja speak earlier in the night (when Madusa propositioned him in Japanese) you have to wonder how Steamboat was unaware backstage that it was Paul E. under there. You have three legitimate MOTN candidates on this show, with very, very strong arguments. For some federations in some years they'd be MOTYCs. Here they're part of a greater cluster of matches just for the first two months. Just about every promotion around has seen a big quality uptick since 1991.
  14. PeteF3
    Really great double-FIP match. I didn't sense much in the way of slowdown when Rhodes went on the defensive, other than maybe some chinlockery on Austin's part. But everything else was great, from Larry's tantrums over the count to Rhodes' nutty bumping to Windham's offense. And yes, this was a great crowd, and the Mecca with its theater-like setting, like a bigger version of the Lowell Auditorium, was a unique atmosphere. I think I have this a shade ahead of the Light Heavyweight title as match of the night.
  15. PeteF3
    It's a nitpicky thing to bring up, but man, Liger gets the most absurdly stereotypical Charlie Chan entrance music ever. Even the WWF let Great Sasuke use his standard entrance theme. This was more of a spotfest than the handheld match which was worked almost totally New Japan-style, in terms of pacing. Here we get some nasty legwork that's blown off in favor of high spots. Which is fine--they didn't fly Liger over here and put him on a PPV opener to work like Jushin Anderson. But for token throwaway matwork it's really quite good, and I liked Pillman having the impactante scouted and countered. Then it turns into a spotfest but all the spots hit and they're spots that most U.S. fans had never seen. This is going to be an absolutely loaded year for great WCW matches and as of now I think I have this at #2 behind the eight-man. Which means that it will probably drop, maybe even before this show is over. But it's a fine match and almost a sad one at the same time, as it shows just how good and valuable a juniors division could be in creating a point of difference from the WWF. From a purely artistic standpoint, reviving the concept was probably the best thing Bischoff did for the company while killing it for four years was probably Watts' worst.
  16. PeteF3
    Wright reads a letter from a "fan" thanking him for his years of good sportsmanship, and encloses $5.00 to contribute to Wright's operations in the hopes that he can eventually find a "good, Christian athlete" to lead. Awesome stuff.
  17. PeteF3
    JYD was pretty useless but this brawl was otherwise on the level of all the others, with some crazy shots with chairs, trash can lids, wooden boards, and window shutters. Great ending as Jarrett and JYD crotch Big Black Dog on the post and all three babyfaces just brutalize his knee with chairs. Jarrett figure-fours the Dog and Lawler just whales away on the leg with the chair until he submits. You wouldn't expect a Moondogs match to end on a submission but they made it work perfectly. Lee cuts what is probably his strongest promo yet. The Moondogs are going to pay Lawler and Jarrett back fivefold.
  18. PeteF3
    Pat Tanaka, in a role that will surprise you. There's no heat for the match itself, despite some good action. Tony Falk runs in, but Tanaka makes a comeback and levels Embry with a big kick. White Girl hands him a chair to use, but Embry clobbers White Girl and he and Falk run off. Cory Macklin tracks Embry down in the locker room and boy is he pissed. Mercifully Dave and Cory warned me beforehand that Embry's eye was messed up, at which point I could minimize Media Player and just listen to Embry rant. Really good promo by Embry under what were probably not planned circumstances.
  19. PeteF3
    The gun angle was booked by Jake Roberts, who was on the committee for a short time period. A Sable kidnapping doesn't seem like a stretch for him to push at all. On TVTropes "Word of God" is supposed to be the show producer, director, or showrunner. Who exactly would they be citing? If it ain't Vince himself, then it ain't the "Word of God."
  20. PeteF3
    Has any Funeral Parlor in history not been predicted by Vince to be "most interesting"? Yes, Jake is still on fire here, at first no-selling everything Bearer and the Undertaker try to do to intimidate him, springing his plan into action, and then eventually running away in fear. Paul Bearer eating a DDT on the set was a pretty crazy spot, too. UT is a babyface, and while I was pissed at this development at the time, there was just no way the WWF could postpone this any longer, the fan reaction was just too great. This is more or less the end of the Funeral Parlor, and just in time, because Bearer and his ever-increasing falsetto have just about jumped the shark.
  21. PeteF3
    I liked this quite a bit, and I liked it more than their first singles match. That said, neither match was any kind of Top 20 for the '90s contender. Still, this was one of several incredibly well-done "top dog vs. mid-carder" matches for the month of February.
  22. PeteF3
    We get a rehash of the Hogan/Orndorff double escape, carried out in about the most perfunctory manner possible, and again the match restarts. Flair gets a field goal to the groin early on and after the restart Piper pays him right back. Not much of a match, with a lot of the boring WWF-style climb-the-cage spots, but a very heated crowd.
  23. PeteF3
    Very much the shootstyle version of Rude vs. Pillman, as Fujiwara is pushed hard by an undersized rookie but still wins convincingly. Loved Fujiwara's signature Boston crab counter getting thrown back at him and the leg kicks were good looming story throughout the match that played into the ending.
  24. PeteF3
    Holy shit, this is the WCW Match of the Year to this point. It was fast-paced yes, but I didn't get any "spot-a-thon" vibe at all. It came off like a quick multi-man AJPW tag with the layers that it had and they had room for a pretty epic Dustin FIP segment where the DA takes his leg apart. Plus Arn gets some awesome little things in, both in the ring and on the apron, like refusing to engage Sting when he's tossing DA guys around left and right. Dustin's hot tag is hot indeed, and Steamboat going nuts on all four opponents is one of the best things he's done since coming back. Fantastic TV match in front of a psychotic crowd.
  25. PeteF3
    Fun, crazy brawl, that appears that it's going to break up a few times but then re-starts.
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