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PeteF3

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  1. PeteF3
    Overwrought and not as good as the first promo, but still a vast improvement on his stuff earlier in the year. I'm not sure that Warrior's problems as company ace weren't inherent and unfixable, but having this feud come first, booked similarly, would have given him a much better start out of the gate. Would have been win-win, too, as Savage would have gotten out from under the suffocating Dusty feud.
  2. PeteF3
    First time I saw this "new" Rose was at a February house show, also against Tugboat (who had already been profiled in WWF Magazine as "Tugboat Thomas" but may not have been on TV yet himself). I was in complete disbelief. The match itself was one of the greatest smoke-and-mirrors performances I've ever seen, as Rose pulled out every stooging trick in his arsenal--challenging Tugboat to one-arm push-ups, trying to do a test of strength and having to climb the ropes to do it, etc.--to get a watchable match out of the Tugster. Oh yeah...this. They certainly struck gold in landing an annoyingly perky announcer. Why do I get the feeling that Vince's favorite part of this was "1-800-LAR-DASS"?
  3. PeteF3
    Warrior cuts his first legitimately, outright GOOD promo of this yearbook. He comes off as a high-strung human being instead of a total loonball, and is well-focused on the match at hand. Too little too late but I begrudgingly give him credit for effort. All due praise to DiBiase but this is the Warrior's best overall performance of the yearbook. This may not have been as good as the WM6 match but I'm guessing this didn't have Pat Patterson carefully laying it out, either. Warrior keeps up with DiBiase as best he can, executes what he does well, gives DiBiase a good amount of offense though it doesn't ever quite seem like Warrior's in danger of losing, and the long drawn-out Hulk-Up was nicely done. Virgil breaks up a pin--nice to see DiBiase protected. Warrior quickly overpowers Virgil but leaves himself open to a Savage attack. Savage and Sherri take turns pounding the crap out of Warrior with the scepter while Savage drops from the turnbuckle over a bevy of referees and suits. Afterward, Warrior slowly and painfully climbs to his feet. Before that, during his failed attempts, he had the look of a truly beaten man. I don't get what took the WWF so long to realize that being human enhanced the Warrior character rather than detracted from it. It didn't hurt Hogan that there was (kayfabe) legitimate doubt over whether he could continue wrestling after the Earthquake attack--it just made him more relatable. Savage reveals that he took a "royal payment" after the match. A Savage/DiBiase alliance at this point would be the most badass thing ever.
  4. PeteF3
    Tito getting in on this was about the coolest feature of this match to me. In all their years in the same company I think this is the one and only Hulk/Tito team, or the only one on any kind of stage. The opponents are no match for the power of Hulkamania, Warrior Wildness, and Arribaderci. Yes. Tito even gets in a token pinfall on Warlord to open. Pretty bad match otherwise. The Grand Finale was better in concept than in execution. It's an admirable attempt to equate Hogan and the Warrior, and this is about as close as they came since WM6 to successfully pulling that off.
  5. PeteF3
    Looks absolutely highbrow compared to some of the stuff being passed off as wrestling at the Clash. Piper and Monsoon seem like they should get some credit here, too.
  6. PeteF3
    In addition to that I'm not sure where you put him. He could obviously have replaced Perfect, but then you have to protect him from jobbing to the Warrior and then you have to get Perfect onto the Natural Disasters and then move Kerry to the Hulkamaniacs, and, and, and... Okerlund prods Savage about hiding behind Sherri. UNBELIEVABLY WRONG YOU ARE.
  7. PeteF3
    Almost forgot: the original Million $ Team, a photo that was just recently unearthed on wwe.com. Wonder if that adds credence to the rumor of Mark Callous debuting as "The Eggman." Bad News vs. Koko was apparently going to be an actual program--Bad News' sewer rats vs. Frankie. Wonder why Bad News quit?
  8. PeteF3
    Good pre-match promo from DiBiase. Jimmy Hart again gets nothing to do. Eliminations all throughout this show are go-go-go style because of the extra match and Gooker segment, so we get some oddball things like Ted pinning Neidhart after one clothesline. Undertaker basically no-sells everything, tombstones Koko into oblivion, does a solo ropewalk to eliminate Dusty, then gets counted out himself for protection. He was clearly being positioned as a top name from the beginning. Bret gets a bunch of great near-falls on DiBiase before Ted gets a clean victory himself.
  9. PeteF3
    The work is good and it's a fun crowd cheering the heel Horsemen, but this was overbooked as fuck from all the stips that I had trouble keeping straight to the finish.
  10. PeteF3
    Also, this seems like an appropriate spot to discuss the fact that in the midst of the Clash segments on the Yearbook I fired up the legendary Sting/Scorpion face-off hosted by the Mike Wallace of pro wrestling, Paul E. Dangerously. I felt it needed to be acknowledged as it is possibly the most embarrassing, moronic segment of the year in any promotion. Sting comes out to declare that he's doing what he has to do and confront the Scorpion face to face. Scorpion does what he's been doing for months now and that's appear somewhere else in the arena. He plucks a ridiculously cooperative "fan" from his ringside seat and puts a box over his head and does an awful-looking magic trick (complete with fan blatantly holding the box in place) trying to Linda Blair him, all while Ole Anderson blithers over the PA and Paul E. blithers over that just to completely ruin whatever effect was being gone for. He carries the fan (who's feigning horror at this point so we can't chalk up his cooperation to a trance or hypnosis or whatever--the ring crew girl put on an Oscar-worthy performance by comparison) to a conveniently placed cage, puts a curtain over it, and pulls it back to reveal a leopard. Sting is either paralyzed with rage, fear, or befuddlement at this point. Sting spends about 10 seconds talking about how he's going to go after the Scorpion before actually doing it, giving Scorp time to do the same disappearing act he did at Havoc. The angle is every bit as awful as its reputation, and then some. It makes Papa Shango's shit (another guilty pleasure for me) look dignified and sophisticated. The execution was godawful on top of everything else, with Paul E. and the voiceover constantly talking over one another being one of many gaffes. This angle, the above match, the underwhelming main event, and the presence of Starblazer and Maximum Overdrive and others should make Clash XIII a runaway winner for Worst Show of the Year.
  11. PeteF3
    Clarke is clean-shaven, which is a little jarring. Ox Baker is apparently gone already with little notice--Ross and Paul E. have to cover for why he's still on the chyron. Comical sequence where Sid breaks a bearhug with an ear clapper, then stands there and just allows Nightstalker to reapply it. Paul E. does his damnedest to inject a storyline into this, bringing up Sid's punctured lung as justification for the rib work. Nightstalker's strikes are as bad as Zeus' and the crowd quickly lets them know it. Big Cat strolls to ringside for no particular reason and the finish is horribly done on top of everything else. So, our Worst Match of the Year candidates (I'm thinking/hoping no other contenders emerge before the Yearbook is out): - Atlas vs. Onita - Zeus vs. Abby - Pearl vs. Cazana - Team Challenge Battle Royal - This I would also include Aoyagi vs. Go from Pioneer but I'll accept the appreciation that others have for it and chalk it up to personal distaste only instead of objective badness. The ICW and WWC matches had true what-the-fuck atmospheres about them, plus the ICW bout was preceded by the best of the solo Atlas promos. Puerto Rico had Abby getting monkey flipped by Zeus. The Battle Royal was awful on almost every level but the 30-second entrances were enough to keep us short attention-span people somewhat occupied. This was hideous...but shorter than Pearl/Cazana. Also, Sid threw a really nice back suplex. Pearl/Cazana takes it for me. Negative crowd reaction is better than no crowd reaction, plus the thing was dragged out to the point where it felt longer than watching an Ironman Match. The difference between Stalker/Sid and it is the difference between Plan 9 from Outer Space and the cinematic ouevre of Coleman Francis.
  12. PeteF3
    They show O'Connor pinning Rogers in the first fall at Comiskey Park and treat it like he won the match. Ah, pre-Internet (except for Miss York) pro wrestling. Only the #1-seeded Steiners and Muta/Saito are announced at this point.
  13. PeteF3
    Billy Beane is a mere scout at this point, and Wallstreet and York have already incorporated his Moneyball techniques into the world of pro wrestling. I can certainly get behind a sabermetrician gimmick. The York Foundation was always one of my favorite guilty pleasure gimmicks. I'm heartened to read that they were a mid-card highlight throughout some dismal times in 1991 and look forward to seeing the hard evidence.
  14. PeteF3
    Doc jumps Orndorff after a squash and we get some good post-match, back-and-forth action. We get the quasi-infamous moment where the referee no-sells Doc's chairshots and then clings to his leg like a tantrum-throwing infant, which in some ways kind of adds to the mayhem. We get the confrontation we saw earlier, with a locker room interview from Orndorff that gets interrupted by a short, heated brawl with Doc. Doc rambles to Lou Albano, warning people not to turn their backs on him but he only comes from the front. A bloody, out-of-it Orndorff is badgered for comment by Abrams and compares Doc to Hussein and kind of sort of makes sense doing it. Clearly the UWF peak. Orndorff is pretty much awesome on all levels here.
  15. PeteF3
    Were they seriously going to bring Studd in at this point? Andre makes his point by tearing apart a John Studd LJN figure. I'd like to see him do that to the Bundy figure. This is all pretty cute, actually. The Great Orton is in the Golden Greek's stable! I can just see someone scouting these promos in Titan Tower while trying to come up with a replacement for Heenan. "Stop drilling, we've hit oil!"
  16. PeteF3
    A clever screwjob finish really, really badly executed by Morrell, but everything else was golden. Jarrett working as an awesome aggressive babyface brutalizing Eddie Gilbert's knee, and Doug refusing Eddie's request to wave the flag because...hey, it's not his knee getting destroyed. Gilbert's work on top is pretty good, too. Morrell DID make every effort to get the chair away from Jarrett even as he was using it, so he was at least attempting to enforce the rules even in an apparent no-DQ setting. It also establishes that Morrell needs to be in the ring to get bumped.
  17. PeteF3
    There's a good-length Sarge vs. Wahoo match from the studio in 1982.
  18. PeteF3
    I would assume the Superdome was capable of being set up as more or less "arena"-sized--the Silverdome was for house shows and for Pistons basketball. It still was a worse option than the 10,000-seat Lakefront Arena or the 7,000-seat Municipal Auditorium if they insisted on running New Orleans. On top of the advertising, running a dome killed what meager demand for tickets there was because of over-supply.
  19. PeteF3
    As I understand it, Scott thought giving Flair/Steamboat away on free TV would be detrimental to house show business. As a result, the 900 tickets sold was less about an advertising fuckup and more like deliberate sabotage to order to underplay the match as much as possible.
  20. PeteF3
    Dave was always down on Jumbo, it seemed. All his great matches were either due to his opponent or the exception because Jumbo would take the night off if the card wasn't televised. Obviously most of us don't agree with either statement, but that was a lot of the prevailing opinion at the time, including Dave's wrestler sources. I have no clue what was up with the Stan Hansen ranking, unless Dave simply thought he was at the end of the line. I didn't see any indication that was the case just looking at his '89 work and hindsight sure doesn't support it. Re: George Scott's "rules." A lot of these were throwbacks to his days running Mid-Atlantic in the 1970's. From what I understand Scott was a major stickler for details much the same way Bill Watts was. That extended not only to how matches would be worked, but quality-control stuff: wrestlers were not to appear in ring gear if they weren't scheduled to wrestle, wrestlers had to change clothes between appearances if they were taping multiple weeks of television/multiple shows in one shot, etc. Mid-Atlantic house shows were all built around the main event or MAYBE a semi-main too, with the rest being undercard/mid-card matches. No question as to what "drew" or issues with depth--meaningless or otherwise--here. Cards built from prelim vs. prelim matches to the lower-mid-card stuff, which was "before intermission." None of those were even mentioned on television in advance. Then came the upper-carders and main event. And it's the stuff "before intermission" that had the most restrictions. The thinking was that if Abe Jacobs and Larry Sharpe are working the mic, brawling on the floor, or posting each other in the opener, then what's the main event going to do? The early matches were meant to be wrestled mostly cleanly so that the rules could be established and followed to increase the heat when the upper-carders broke them later. That said, wrestling had sort of moved on in the interim and particularly for a show like a Clash or a PPV the shows can't be structured the same way at all. You have main eventers and matches that mean more than others, but ideally a majority of matches on a Clash or PPV should be "special" in some way. In some ways I appreciate Scott's efforts to throw things back the way Watts also would attempt to do, but in others it really shows that Scott was out-of-touch with how a wrestling company in 1989 needed to be run. Just as much as with the disastrous advertising job that almost ruined this show.
  21. PeteF3
    This, except I don't have a lot of individual shows on DVD. Someone upload this shit, dammit.
  22. PeteF3
    There's at least some comic potential in Teddy Long as a chauffeur.
  23. PeteF3
    More heated and intense at points than the first match, which is to be expected. WWF-style time limit draw where the heel is on the verge of winning at the end. Arn is frustrated anyway and gives Taylor a piledriver after the match.
  24. PeteF3
    I'm sold, Black Magic notwithstanding.
  25. PeteF3
    Gilbert hypes a Hospital Elimination Match for Monday--Lawler/Dundee/Jarrett vs. the Gilberts and BLACK MAGIC. Not Norman Smiley, presumably. Even his presence doesn't detract from another outstanding Gilbert promo.
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