Jump to content
Pro Wrestling Only

PeteF3

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    10285

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Everything posted by PeteF3

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. 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.
  10. 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."
  11. 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.
  12. 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.
  13. 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.
  14. 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.
  15. 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.
  16. PeteF3
    Fun, crazy brawl, that appears that it's going to break up a few times but then re-starts.
  17. PeteF3
    Lawler is bringing in the JYD to counteract the Big Black Dog. Lawler teases that this will be it for the Moondogs in Memphis--good promo but yeah, I'd say that's not likely.
  18. PeteF3
    Hot segment, with Jarrett getting attacked by the Moondogs but came prepared, with weapons waiting for him in the back. Richard Lee is AGHAST--"that yellah-bellied coward is gonna HURT somebody!"
  19. PeteF3
    So odd to see Kawada and Kikuchi as a team. Kikuchi is about the purest babyface in history and Kawada is already a surly bastard despite the Misawa rivalry not even being a glimmer in its father's eye...or something. Anyway, the Can-Ams jump the natives before the match and Kawada eats a tiger driver on the floor. Now that's getting your point across early. And this match doesn't slow down from there. Kawada works FIP(!) and gets destroyed for a few minutes before making the hot tag to Kikuchi(!!) who gets in a few flashes before he too gets destroyed, but not without kicking out of everything the Can-Ams put him through. Closing stretch is just as heated as the beginning, with Furnas making one of the great last-second pin saves in wrestling history, rescuing Kroffat from a Kawada power bomb at 2.9999. Kawada locks in the Stretch Plum and this time Kikuchi is able to hold Furnas at bay long enough for Kroffat to pass out for the ref stoppage. This wasn't exactly a psychological masterpiece but who needs that when the action, intensity, and--yes--the transitions are all this good? #2 MOTY to this point behind the Jumbo/Kawada Triple Crown.
  20. PeteF3
    Big Bad John is some big dude in street clothes working a sort-of Festus gimmick, as he's rendered docile by a towel being put over his head. Boni Blackstone is at ringside along with Tracy Chapman or perhaps her long-lost twin sister, and they're both intensely curious as to where Prichard found this guy. John is an oaf who can barely run the ropes, but Gilbert carries this to something decent. They tease an opening when John messes up his knee, but he quickly comes back to lock Gilbert in a backbreaker and despite Eddie shaking his head no, the referee calls for the bell. Wow, THREE Montreal screwjob finishes (counting each fall of the hair vs. hair match) in the span of two weeks. Terry Garvin protests, but Gilbert honors the pre-match stip to kiss the feet of Bruce Prichard, who is making almost no attempt to disguise his Brother Love voice. I keep expecting Gilbert to have something up his sleeve, but nope. And then John levels him again afterward and locks him in the backbreaker again, as Terry Garvin is unable to break the hold with chairshots. We get that magic ESPN editing on the post-match shots but Gilbert whacked John in full view of the camera twice during the match for all of us to see. Gilbert seems to be doing a very good job of booking Global at this point. He used John as effectively as possible and it's striking how much late-'90s and '00s stuff is showing up at this point.
  21. PeteF3
    I thought Lozansky (about whom I know nothing) kept up just fine. Not in much but he kept up with some pretty dizzying sequences. Los Cowboys have easily been the lucha highlights in the first part of 1992, just as Los Brazos were the standouts of '91. I think we have two guys building a very strong Tag Team of the Year case. The rudos take the second fall and do a triple Fargo strut afterward, which is about the high spot of the year. This is a total balls-to-the-wall sprint that's about the STIFFEST lucha trios match I've seen. Los Cowboys throw some pretty wicked clotheslines and their dives look hurty on top of looking spectacular. Lots of bombs thrown by both teams in addition to all the high-flying. As much as I'm loving them, am I the only one with major trouble telling Silver King and Texano apart?
  22. PeteF3
    Nothing more to add to this. These are two guys that I wish would have had an extended program. I don't get WCW's hesitancy to put the U.S. or even TV title on Pillman at any point. He was over enough and obviously a strong enough worker to carry the title.
  23. PeteF3
    Warrior being locked in the casket was sold pretty big, and even rather realistically. No blood but they pushed the idea of not being able to breathe really hard. Austin 3:16 vs. Pillman 9mm, not to mention all the stuff with Goldust, probably tops all of that.
  24. PeteF3
    Landell shoots(?) on promoters who only push asskissers. I'm pretty sure SMW will cement itself as the best promo territory around by the time this Yearbook has concluded.
  25. PeteF3
    Dutch and Ron Wright are almost as tearful as Richard Lee was. Wright of course needs a hip and knee replacement and Medicare won't cover it, so he's in Smoky Mountain to manage the North American champion and use that money for the operation. An inspired Dutch Mantell asks him to accompany him to the ring to face Brian Lee. Wright as the crippled old man was a fantastic character and it was amazing how involved he was able to get in matches without ever leaving his wheelchair.
×
×
  • Create New...