PeteF3
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Sabu actually doesn't look too good here but RVD has a nice array of crowd-pleasing spots and cool counters. Zakowski dominates, but Judge Dread costs RVD the match and Sabu wins with his feet on the ropes--Memphis! Yeah, Dave is pretty patronizing when Rob demands a rematch, but he's sort of justified too.
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Uh-oh, Gene's in the ring and not the podium, so you know some major shit's going down. Liz demonstrates why she was rarely allowed to talk, especially in a live setting. Savage is pretty funny in how uncomfortable he is on commentary--yeah, that situation has to be a total nightmare for any man. Huge reaction for this, though I found this whole set-up to be intolerable at the time, and was praying for a good payoff at the wedding to justify the whole thing.
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This picked up with Eaton taking his now-signature guardrail bump but I didn't think much of this overall. Lots of opening stalling that wasn't particularly interesting and Ross and Paul E. spent most of the match trying to get themselves over instead of the participants. Jeannie claws at Eaton's eyes and that leads to Austin winning the belt. Not the best-executed finish ever, but a good win for Austin and a sign that the WCW brass was very high on him.
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[1990-12-29-NWA-World Championship Wrestling] Arn Anderson vs Tom Zenk
PeteF3 replied to Loss's topic in December 1990
Answering Sleaze (and myself from earlier), Ole was already out as booker by this point and Jim Ross and a few others were keeping the seat warm for Dusty. Ross booked this switch to give the TV Title a shake-up. Once Rhodes was in, the belt went right back to one of Dusty's boys. -
I literally can't fathom the suggestion that Flair is akin to the Honky Tonk Man or even Heel Lawler as champion. I broke down the Flair/Lawler comparison in one of the '90 Yearbook threads already, I think in the Lawler vs. Jarrett thread from April. The differences are readily apparent once you've seen a few matches of Lawler as a heel. Flair didn't use chains or foreign objects to get or maintain an advantage--only as finishes or occasional false finishes. The figure four and the idea that Flair could destroy the babyface's knee loomed over every match--yes, even though Flair was constantly killing his own finisher. No one--nobody on the planet--feared that the Shake Rattle 'n Roll or the fistdrop was going to end anybody's career. I've literally never seen Flair work the mic in the middle of a match--maybe a counterexample exists out there, but having watched a fuck ton of Flair I haven't come across such an occurrence. That Flair engaged in begging off and bitch spots does not make him the equivalent to the Honky Tonk Man. One wonders how someone who's admittedly lost interest in viewing any Flair match at all in 5-10 years would be in a position to make or even comment on such a comparison.
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I meant "physical skills" meaning athleticism, because why use one word when you can use two. I suspect Eaton would be far more capable, not to mention willing, to take all of Scott's big bombs which require quite a lot from the recipient. Spinebuster notwithstanding, Eaton had more "cool" offense meaning he could match Scott bomb for bomb. To get all JR on us, Eaton and Scott are both Chip Kelly spread, high-scoring offenses. Arn is in fantastic shape but is all about Jim Tressel ball control, controlling the tempo and capitalizing on mistakes. He's a good bumper and seller but not good enough to be taking all of Scott's suplexes and powerbombs, and he's good on offense but not as impressive as Scott. None of this is to say that Scott is a superior worker to Arn. Just talking about "stuff" that each guy can do.
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The more parity-centric NJPW booking probably has a lot to do with that--watching this, any guy could have conceivably pinned any other, which is just something you didn't get with most AJPW tags especially at this time. Great desperation performance from Hase at the end is what really stuck out.
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I don't really know what Liger's current physical or mental state is, but if he's presumably not a drooling amoeba, then he has to have had one of the better aging curves in the history of wrestling, honestly. This was kind of fun, and to his credit Benoit does make a few token attempts to work the crowd, Liger, and the referee with some mannerisms here. But yeah, this was basically worked in a bubble and parts of it looked rather routine. Comparing and contrasting with the Honaga series would be Exhibit A in psychology and presentation over athleticism and hot moves in wrestling. Honaga was a low man on the juniors totem pole and barely even looked like an athlete, but he was a great foil for Liger and the matches were filled with pure desperation from both sides--Honaga because he was physically overmatched and Liger because he just couldn't find a way to beat the fucker. Benoit is a great pure athlete obsessively jacked to the gills here...but he's just a dude in a mask arbitrarily putting it on the line.
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There was a brief taste of that in the '88 Survivor Series match. They had one and only one straight tag match as well, at a house show in Columbus, OH that I've long been racking my brain trying to remember if I went to or not. I guess the fact that I can't remember indicates that it wasn't overly special.
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http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6lrdi_an...rt#.UWuJ67WceDg - Here's the announcement. As a consequence of said announcement, Flair is out of WarGames and Sullivan is in, according to the camera guys. I dreaded having to hear them talk throughout this whole match but I actually found them pretty entertaining. Even if there was a smarkish tone these guys were clearly devoted fans. The work throughout is pretty house-showy and half-speed. The highlight may have been Sullivan going nuts with the ring bell hammer, including whacking the Yellow Dog right in the groin with it. The heels in general are much higher-energy, even Nikita. Fairly tepid Match Beyond that nonetheless has some good heat to it. Gigante kicks powder into Sullivan's face and claws him into submission, a finish that I think you could have predicted before the match started.
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I was stunned by how much I enjoyed this. In particular I really liked the Undertaker's failed sit-up after the third piledriver, only to sit up for real just as Warrior was about to drop with the splash. The "near-fall" as Warrior came close to being zipped up was also well-done, and we even had some bodybag psychology with Warrior zipping up Undertaker's head and torso first, the opposite of what Undertaker did. Then the cool visual of the bodybag sitting up and Undertaker storming out looking none the worse for wear. Warrior's piledrivers actually looked pretty good. The only big negative was UT delivering possible the worst tombstone of his life. No one's going to confuse this with 6/3/94 but this was as good of a match between these two workers, in this gimmick, as you could expect. Two larger-than-life characters in a comic book battle that's action most of the way, with a decisive finish. This was one of the few North American programs of 1991 that was actually doing good box-office and we can see why.
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I object to Beefcake's line of questioning--he was clearly leading the witness. Savage is incredible even when all he's saying is "YES!" Savage is going to propose to Elizabeth this weekend on television, and if she says yes it's going to be in MSG at SummerSlam.
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Paul E. lies about his activities on his time off, but then owns up to it afterward because WCW action figures are just that good. Yeah.
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These cards are lost on me, though as an obsessive collecting sort I'd have likely been all over these if I'd known of them. The production on PN News' video actually isn't terrible, but wow...on the soulness scale he makes Michael Bolton sound like DMX.
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The Desperados finally get around to acknowledging SOMETHING in relation to actual WCW programming, at least. This was also the shortest of the bunch.
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Holy crap, the psychology (yes!) surrounding the chainsaw is fantastic. Leatherface is lost and confused when it conks out, and then while Embry is trying to get him to help beat down Lawler, Leatherface is caressing it like Lennie Small's mouse--you'd get the feeling he was two seconds away from trying to administer mouth-to-mouth.
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Judging by the ALL CAPS SPELLING of his name on the graphics Ta-Gar's true identity may be that of a lost Michinoku Pro worker or Ultimo Dragon trainee. I question the looseness of the USWA rulebook allowing Ta-Gar to wrestle in a plastic metal faceplate. This is all about Lawler trying to find ways around the mask, even busting out an enzuigiri. Lawler boots Ta-Gar in the groin and then rolls him for the pin. Embry tries a sneak attack afterward but Lawler is ready with a punch, sending Embry over the top rope in a bump borrowed from Lawler's repertoire. This was better and more logical than any Oz match ever.
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Dave and Michael are running over the rest of the show when they hear an ominous noice--LEATHERFACE is in the studio, running around waving a chainsaw. Like I said earlier, there's a Texas Boys connection there. The relation of Ta-Gar is somewhat murkier--are there volcanoes in Texas? What makes Embry so great on the mic is that he's probably as good or better as a babyface, which is saying something considering what a spectacular scuzzball of a heel he is. There's absolutely nowhere else in the world where he could have gotten over besides Memphis and Texas (and he had the book in both places!) but God bless him for it.
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This is easily one of the most WAR-esque six-man matches ever held in the Memphis territory. Doug Gilbert was piledriven a couple of weeks before and is now working a Rick Steiner goofball gimmick. Sort of a perfunctory tag match, though the action is good when Prichard is in. Dread has a nice look and I remember him getting play in the Apter mags but I don't think his career went anywhere. Prichard gets handcuffs from Miss Texas and cuffs DWB to the ropes. Tojo Yamamoto comes out with syrup and a bag of feathers, and after approaching DWB, Kimberly tries to stop them and gets tarred and feathered herself.
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Another really good match, with Spivey pulling his weight this time. The Americans rely on brawling while the natives try to take out Hansen's arm, with Kawada doing some great counters into armbars, but they don't take it out enough.
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The Observer says that it was not Dusty's kid, but it was in fact Ben Sullivan, son of Kevin.
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Wow, I liked this a hell of a lot. Yatsu has dropped some weight and puts on what is easily his best performance since '89, just a lurking force whether in or out of the ring. They hold off on a lot of big Tenryu/Yatsu one-on-one stuff but I thought the two junior halves were perfectly fine, even if Yatsu's shrunken gut has transferred itself to Fuyuki. I was not looking forward to seeing any more of SWS Yatsu but now I want to see a singles match of his against Tenryu if one exists.
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I'm almost ashamed to admit that Dutch deciding to get Deadeye Dick's attention by shooting him got a LOL out of me. You'd think they'd have determined long before this how handy Dick was with a pistol. All three guys actually have their moments but this is loooong and laps itself way, way too much. The fact that this led to absolutely nothing doesn't help. In the end, these are like 12:50 SNL sketches if the show was running short and they began at 12:35. The second half of this in jail was real weak-sauce.
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Holy shit, Flair vs. Luger in a cage! Unprecedented!
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Dave Brown has been spectacular for this whole episode, I should note. Embry is out to talk trash to the team of Jarrett & Fuller. Brown calls out Eddie Marlin to get Embry off the set, and that earns ANOTHER attack. It's not the first time we've seen Eddie Marlin get assaulted but this feels so much bigger and more intense than when the Gilberts did it. Then Embry takes exception to Michael St. John calling him crazy and is ready to deck him when once again Lawler comes out to chase him around. This time we get very brief fisticuffs before Embry takes off again. Marlin announces that Embry is FAHRED, which Brown approves of but Lawler doesn't. Lawler wants Embry in the ring first--he just wants one crack at him. This was the best-built match of 1991 before these last two angles. Embry is better as a constant agent of chaos than Lawler was the previous year, because there's a peer that can keep Embry from completely running the program, which adds to the tension and creates a money match to build to, as opposed to trying make challengers out of Nitron and King Cobra.