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This was effective, with a little bit of guilt-tripping of the fans--YOU don't want to see Lawler in constant pain, do you?

Piper storms out in disgust when DiBiase comes out, and then Savage bails when Sherri is introduced. This was quite the angle-intensive Superstars for a show that didn't really have any notable angles to speak of--just set-ups and advancement.

"Short clothesline right there! The exact opposite of a long clothesline!" That made me chuckle. Seems that few people remember that Savage remained a heel, or quasi-heel, in the booth for awhile, until the wedding talk really started getting pushed. I definitely remember thinking "big bad heel cowers from the snake" was getting to be a tiresome angle at this point.

Undertaker's first extended promo under the gimmick. Not too bad. Even though this qualifies as sort of a dream match from a kid/mark perspective this program--not a feud yet--could still use a shot in the arm. I think we'll get one.

"Haven't you ever heard of generic drugs???" Decent advice, actually. Per Irwin's opening quotation here, the WWF missed out on the marketing possibilities of IRS teaming with the Undertaker as Death & Taxes.

I might have to give this a rewatch--somehow the matwork opening held my attention less than Lawler vs. Embry. The closing stretch was fun and Tsuruta's righteous indignation that Kawada had the chutzpah to kick out of the power bomb was fantastic, as he gratuitously backdrops Kawada a second time, just to prove his point.

There were probably a few too many Embry mic spots and I would have preferred to see one or two microphone shots to the face, but overall I thought this was absolutely tremendous--a contender along with Jarrett/Gilbert and a few others for the #1 USWA-Texas match ever, in fact. And definitely Embry's best singles match. We had some good-looking offense from both guys after a real fun start, and a nice swerve false finish where Embry takes advantage of a ref bump but bumped him too hard to get the win.

I definitely got a "house show" vibe from watching this (DUH!)--okay, but more than that. It was worked as such as opposed to something you'd see on television, which isn't a "Misawa Was Lazy" argument either. A lot more basic hold-working and basic psychology--but it all worked. Kobashi tried to unleash a bunch of big guns from the start while Misawa was more content to slow things down, as per custom. Definitely won't be among the high-end AJPW matches but very effective for what it was.

I'm afraid that's not the Beastie Boys that the Dynamic Dudes are coming out to--that's the BEACH Boys teaming with the Fat Boys to record a cover of "Wipeout." I'm not making this up. No, the Dudes coming out to the Beasties right as Paul's Boutique was being released would have tainted them with a scent of legitimate cool, and we couldn't have that. Teddy Long's Giant Gold Key was supposedly the key to Norman's cell, and was the prop he used to control Norman. Yes. Possibly the lamest manager foreign object ever.

Vince with another spectacular outfit. Hogan isn't anywhere close to his "I'm not retiring" promo in terms of low-key-ness, but he's definitely in a more subdued mood than usual, which is refreshing. I just wish WWF Standards & Practices didn't prevent Hogan from drawing upon the Warrior loss and Earthquake injury here, as some direct acknowledgment of his downs of 1990 would have added greatly to the feelings of being "reborn." We get footage of the fireball, and that sets Hogan off. Hogan gets pretty self-aggrandizing talking about how his Little Hulkamaniacs live vicariously through him, but I did like how he talked about vowing that Slaughter wouldn't burn the Hogan banner anymore only for Sarge to top it, and acknowledging that he left himself open for an attack. This was all a very effective way to continue a feud that looked totally complete at the end of WM7. Hogan vs. Sarge is now a strictly personal issue and is a much better program for it.

I hope JVK gets to this match eventually. I'm sure he'll be gladdened just to know that it exists. Hogan's matwork sequences always come off as kind of rote and rehearsed, as evidenced by him doing the same headlock-drop toehold-half nelson sequence twice. But it's still a novelty to see Hogan working so differently from the U.S. formula. We get those sarcastic Japanese cheers when Yatsu makes his comeback. Really awesome sequence where Yatsu somersaults through the Axe Bomber and then catches Hogan with the wonder suplex when he comes back for a second attempt. That's the highlight of an extended squash, but a pretty decent one.

Heh--mute this and you'd swear it was an MSG house show. Earthquake does a semi-shoot-looking takedown and that pisses Kitao off, and he throws a tantrum outside the ring. Crowd is NOT impressed with Kitao's reaction. Kitao attempts a shoot armbar and this breaks down, with the crowd clearly on Tenta's side which I find quite interesting. I guess Kitao's rather disgraceful exit from sumo didn't do much to endear him to his native audience. This ultimately is exhibit A of why pro wrestling shoots are rarely interesting--it's generally a lot of standing around with neither guy willing to compromise himself and thus neither guy's willing to do anything. This results in minutes upon minutes of thrilling footage of 'quake and Kitao staring at each other.

There's much to criticize about Mike Rotunda's ringwork, but you can't accuse him of not throwing himself into these roles. I know this gimmick was basically created for Vince's personal amusement having come off of an audit himself but I'm not sure how kids were expected to get worked up over an evil tax collector.

What's with everyone, Gorilla included, acting like Andre's still a Heenan Family member? Heenan's justification that rolling in grapes is "good for the elbows and good for the skin" is pretty amusing. I never understood where they were going with Andre here, with him abusing all the managers and the WWF hitting the reset button on the Heenan/Andre break-up.

The triumph of Hulk Hogan and millions of Hulkamaniacs was RAPED by the cold-blooded ambush of Sgt. Slaughter. Hogan should have carried that spray that prevents rape with him. Hogan is about to call his family in the locker room when Sarge surprises him with fire! A longtime wrestling staple that the WWF hadn't touched since the days of the Sheik makes its return here. Hogan's "OH GOD" moaning is absolutely putrid, on the levels of his "acting" in the first-aid area with Elizabeth on the Main Event. Okerlund and Sarge are great, though. BURN, BABY, BURN. Hogan's histrionics aside this was a pretty intense and well-done angle that came across as chaotic and out-of-control instead of sterilized and rehearsed like most WWF angles. One of several hardcore angles to come this year.

Okay angle, but man what a cheap-looking entrance/curtain area.

This was on the level of the middle Arn-Taylor draw...if that makes any sense. I too don't get why Arn needed Sid's help to hurt Rich's already-injured leg, but Rich's work is outstanding--from his focused attack on Arn's leg to his sympathy selling after the run-in. I'm fine with a time-limit draw since that's such a TV Title staple, but the execution of it wasn't all that great and we had that WWF-style "heel champion in control at the finish" that seems so back-asswards. This was still enjoyable with Rich showing that he had a decent amount left in the tank.

This is stretching the definition of even "Pro Wrestling Mostly," but hey, let's keep going... [/qb] This is all pretty on the mark, though actually an EPL fan would see the "top teams" more often--it's home-and-away against everyone else in the league, right? A team not in the same division as a New England or Green Bay will only see them every 2-4 years. Since the NHL added shootouts/penalty shots in the wake of the season-destroying lockout, the NFL is the only league left where a tie is possible. It happens about once a decade, including a game last year. College football, which didn't have overtime at all for decades, has a different system that eliminates ties entirely. And there's something we haven't even gotten into--I'm sure the concept of college athletics is something Europeans find completely baffling. The only equivalent is the annual Oxbridge boat race, now imagine a whole national swathe of universities competing in such a competition with millions of dollars and fans and greater popularity than the NFL depending on which part of the country you're in--both Chad and my respective necks of the woods, for example. This is where I think college football (or basketball) is actually closer to the EPL/European model than the professional leagues. In the top division of college football you have about 120 teams divided geographically (sort of) into conferences of 8-14 teams. Each conference has certain teams that seem to be perennially at the top each year and have-nots at the bottom and a few in-betweeners who can contend for a conference title every so often but generally don't. It's still probably more fluid than the EPL, but on an individual conference level, the Ohio State University or the University of Alabama can be considered to be their respective conference's equivalent to ManU. They've had some low periods, and Alabama was pretty terrible in the late '90s and early '00s, but it's only temporary in most cases. The gap isn't quite as big now as it was in decades before, due to newer scholarship limit rules and the explosion of TV coverage, which gives the more minor teams a national stage presence that didn't exist in the early '80s and before. And yet, the following of a team like the University of Minnesota or Mississippi State because it's "in their blood" is still there, just like it is for Aston Villa. With schools having a greater community presence than a professional squad, that and the alumni connection fosters even greater loyalty. The EPL teams have local derby games that carry great importance which are akin to the big rivalry games that every school big and small has. Ohio State fans would generally prefer to go 1-11 with a victory over Michigan than go 11-1 with a loss to Michigan. A lost season can be redeemed by spoiling the season of a rival. I think when it comes down to it, it's all about the size of the country. Perspective time: the British soccer system--92 teams in the top 4 leagues that JVK mentioned--is confined to a territory that's about the same size as the state of Alabama (I know there are a few Welsh teams grandfathered in). Looking at an EPL map, in any given season you'll have 5 teams in the London area alone, as much as half the league in the Manchester-Liverpool area, a few teams in the North, and a couple of others scattered in various other parts of the country. The NFL has a team in Seattle and a team in Miami and at all points in-between. It's the equivalent of the theoretical Pan-European Champions League mentioned earlier. The EPL has 20 teams for a country of 60 million. A similar team-per-3-million scale in the U.S. would result in a league of 100 teams, which outside of college football just doesn't work. So instead of several teams per metro area, only the very biggest metropolises (NYC, Chicago, LA) get multiple teams in any given league (acknowledging that LA has no NFL team at all, but they used to have 2). This size gap goes all the way back to the birth of professionalism in American sports, in the late 1800's. Back then the absolute widest gap between locales would involve an East coast team and a team in St. Louis or maybe Minneapolis--still a territory many, many times larger than England or almost any European country you'd care to name. Owners at the time realized that they could make more money establishing a monopoly of a sport in one particular city and "own" that city, with more than enough big cities to go around to organize a full league. As transportation made coast-to-coast travel possible and populations shifted to places like Florida and the Southwest, this brought the need for league expansion and the so-called "franchise" system that's completely foreign to leagues outside of North America. There's some good discussion on the subject here, as well as the blog post that this link is a response to. Other big differences I hadn't picked up on are the distribution of TV money and foreign quotas or the lack thereof. Country size, incidentally, is one reason (aside from sticking a genie back into a bottle that isn't going to go) why the idea of relegation in any U.S. league is a pipe dream. The NFL might--might--be okay with its once-a-week scheduling. But if a west coast team like Seattle or San Diego gets relegated and replaced by a Hartford or a Pawtucket, it's going to create scheduling chaos resulting in the new imbalance of eastern- and western-based teams. To say nothing of how devastating it would be if a league were to lose Chicago as a top-flight market and instead have to replace them with something like Des Moines. Um, oh: I'd like to know if the Observer ever covered the fallout from TBS over the plastic bag angle. There were some people in charge who were really, really upset that WCW would air such a thing.

First off, I'm not an expert on soccer. I watch the World Cup, rather intently, every four years and that's it--even though I live in a relatively big-soccer city. But the differences between how international leagues operate as compared to American ones does interest me. There are two other factors in the disparity between the top EPL teams and the have-nots that don't apply to the U.S.: the Champions League and relegation. A berth in the Champions League means a metric, heaping shit-ton of money for a team. While relegation is a devastating blow to a team, probably to as great of an extent. It hurts prestige and of course it hurts that cash flow. There's no Champions League for the top U.S. teams to aspire to (I think there is a CONCACAF Champions League equivalent but I'm not talking about that) and no way for them to be relegated either. A team can fall apart and still be in decent position to rebuild. On the other hand, that means there's not a lot of "playing out the string" in the EPL. While Kansas City and Seattle are going through the motions in meaningless baseball games in September, lower-rung teams like Aston Villa and Wigan Athletic are playing incredibly tense and meaningful football at the end of the Premier League season. Fans of non-Big 4 teams can also be content to get the FA Cup or the local derby--if anything, the EPL is actually closer to college football than the pro leagues. No relegation but you have certain have-nots that can take years to reach championship level, who often have to content themselves with chalking up an upset win over a powerhouse or a rivalry game victory as a successful year. That's not even getting into the notion of playoffs trumping the regular-season schedule, which is totally backwards from soccer where winning the league (by record only) is paramount and the FA Cup is basically a consolation prize. As for the NFL and others being fully open...well, it'd obviously be a lot better for the players and a lot worse for the owners. That alone is enough for me to probably be in favor of it even if the Yankees and Cowboys being forced into a budget generally makes for a more aesthetically pleasing game. It would be incredibly, incredibly difficult for any American fan to accept the possibility of 4-5 teams (or fewer, as is the case in other non-EPL leagues) being the only ones realistically capable of winning a championship.

Dusty is quite the shit disturber. Windham more or less announces that the Horsemen are going to concentrate on taking care of their own personal careers instead of group-above-all status.

Bearer demands a moment of silence, and this is all quite creepy now on a whole different level. Paul had runs, long ones, where he annoyed the living shit out of me, but he was always a pro regardless of the material he sometimes had to work with. He was really effective here, before he decided that speaking in a falsetto was the proper way to go.

Hogan channels his inner Damien Sandow. Anything less would be uncivilized.

This intro is literally all about Hogan, which is pretty absurd. It's enough to make you long for the days of "the brand" above all else. Savage is gonna be WWF BROADCASTING CHAMPION OF THE WORLD, OOOOOH YEAH.

This was a lot of fun, basically what you'd want out of a quasi-dream match. There were some surprisingly stiff chair shots during and after this, Hogan re-opens his WM7 cut, and even Hawk lets the juice flow in what I think is the first time I've ever seen in a Roadies match. We also get an awesome spot near the top with both Road Warriors doing press slams--Animal's gorilla press of Hogan was particularly impressive. Didn't notice much in the way of my turn/your turn--both Hogan and Tenryu worked what amounted to FIP segments with hope spots and cut-offs and all of that. Hawk breaks up a legdrop and Hogan breaks up a Doomsday Device and the action spills to the outside, where the Roadies level Hogan & Tenryu with chairs and just beat the count back in. Not really an ideal finish for a Dome show main event, but there's a heated post-match confrontation that makes you want to see a rematch that sadly never comes. This really felt like a career performance for both Hogan and Hawk. Probably Animal too, but Hawk struck me as the more impressive guy on his team.

It's crazy that this match took place on a card with WWF talent. Normally stand-ups and resets in UWF-style are what cause me to tune out, but here the stand-up portions were the best part of the match while the matwork portions were good but tended to be overlong. The hard palm strikes and kicks at the end were awesome, and Funaki weathers a "near-fall" to come back and drop Sano with a suplex and cross armbreaker, and the PWFG guys have a big celebration, getting what I guess is considered an upset victory in an interpromotional match. That made for a cool moment.