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PeteF3

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Everything posted by PeteF3

  1. PeteF3
    Gilbert is on the short list for promo man of the year. I honestly think they're rushing into the barbed wire match, and it's been my one constant complaint about this feud--sometimes they draw things out slowly and then one week just completely bombard us with all kinds of crazy stuff. They could run 2 weeks of "straight" Lawler/Gilbert matches while Funk is in Japan before going to the crazy stips.
  2. PeteF3
    This must be a fairly big roster crunch for Lawler to have to pull double-duty like this. Great promo to sum everything up, though. Funk's gone to Japan for 21 days, so Lawler has to go after the Southern title to ensure that he'll have first ups when he gets back. But he has to get through the Internationals in a LLT match first.
  3. PeteF3
    I know this is Memphis but I think things would have been shaping up for a hot Lawler vs. Gilbert title match, but this switch is going to dilute that somewhat. Match layout and action itself are very good.
  4. PeteF3
    Dundee is livid that he has to pay A DOLLAR-FIFTY per gallon of gas. *sniff* It appears to be a loser-leaves-town match set for Monday between Lawler/Dundee and the two Sheiks.
  5. PeteF3
    Definitely. Downright Crockett-esque, as the show goes off the air with the beatdown ongoing. Animal actually looked better than Hawk here, which surprised me, showing some nice crispness to his moves even accounting for the fact that Tanaka could make Santino's Cobra look like a killer strike. LOD dominates the match until Fuji waves to the locker room for help, and it's a 6-on-2 attack.
  6. PeteF3
    This makes for two weird Survivor Series matches in a row involving the WWF Champion going up against a team captained by an opponent he doesn't have an issue with. Hogan vs. DiBiase and now Warrior vs. Perfect. Somehow Kerry Von Erich gets more lip service than the ostensible New Ace. Demolition's masks certainly don't do anything to help shed their image as S&M aficionados, and they seem to have trouble talking in them to boot.
  7. PeteF3
    The thing I like about Gilbert's heeling here as compared to Lawler is that he makes an honest effort of things at first. He goes after Lawler guns a-blazing with his fists, but Lawler has a counter for all of it. Then and only then, after his attempt at wrestling more or less straight-up has failed, does Gilbert resort to the chain. That's Tully Blanchard's SOP to working heel and is more befitting of an ostensible title contender or champion than what Lawler was doing, regardless of how enjoyable it was. Both guys pay back the other with various moves like DDTs and piledrivers, and Gilbert gets some near-falls both with and without foreign objects, while Lawler is just hanging on trying to get in desperation moves like the sunset flip attempt and roll-ups that fail due to a distracted referee. Cactus Jack blows his attempt at interference to give Lawler the win. Best "straight" Lawler match of the year that we see.
  8. PeteF3
    Dylan mentioned Windham's ability to "work small" in the thread that begat this one. That is one of the Boss Man's primary strengths. He was a 357-pound badass with a nightstick who, once he turned babyface, was able to legitimately work sympathy against guys like DiBiase and the goddamned Mountie. I'm glad that the entire BBM/Mountie match apparently made the '91 yearbook, because leaving aside the brilliant jail antics I remember it being quite a solid match. Probably the best Mountie match ever, which isn't high praise or anything, but it was good. BBM/Barbarian from the Rumble is probably the best Barb singles match in the company. I really, really like the 3-odd-minute match with Doink which is a virtual squash for Borne with Boss Man getting tied into knots. And incidentally he was an excellent squash-match worker for the company and the time period. It's rare for a guy to improve that rapidly working for the WWF but Traylor did it. He went from never saying a word and never working as a (pushed) babyface to being a very good, underrated interview and a good babyface worker. I haven't seen that Garvin match, but the dude fucking no-sold a wooden chair that Klondike Bill forgot to gimmick. No-sold a taxi door getting slammed on his fingers too, until he got inside. That has to count for something, maybe even enough to make up for fucking up Jim Cornette's knee permanently.
  9. PeteF3
    I'm living in a cuckoo clock.
  10. PeteF3
    This makes his "down here it stinks funny" vignette look like Dusty's "I neglected you" promo.
  11. PeteF3
    Good promo from Ivan, passable and generic stuff from Nikita. This is all pretty bubble-riffic as you'd think they could actually draw on real-world current events for this.
  12. PeteF3
    Jesus, that's not even accounting for the ring announcer with the super-long blond mullet. This is quite the Japan indy version of Jerry Lawler vs. random monster. Pogo basically sucks but Onita is such a compelling seller and his fired-up headbutt comebacks are so brilliant that it doesn't matter. I don't know if Onita was coming out to "Wild Thing" yet but man do the music overdubs kill this, worse than the Demolition dub at WM6.
  13. PeteF3
    Flair is fantastic here and Long is pretty good, too. This all seems rather convoluted, though. I'm not sure why fans would be compelled to care whether or not Flair loses his limo or yacht.
  14. PeteF3
    This is a cute set-up to bring in a newcomer, but the WWF would have pulled this off about 9 million times more effectively, even on a similar budget.
  15. PeteF3
    This is twice now, the other being the initial Gilbert return, where they set up an obvious double-cross tag match and pay it off immediately when I think the could have milked the "will he or won't he?" factor for a little bit. And both matches looked promising on paper. Brickhouse doesn't really look like he was too hurt to wrestle on his post-match run-in, but makes the same mistake he made earlier in the show when he gets too busy ground-and-pounding on the DWB and leaves himself open to a chairshot from Doug Gilbert. His sister Sweet Georgia Brown catfights with Kimberly and somehow that runs the heels off. Ken Wayne gets in some licks on Davis at the announce desk.
  16. PeteF3
    The whole heel locker room is out with streamers, noisemakers, and a cake for the man that Tojo Yamamoto claims to be the Real New King of Wrestling, Eddie Gilbert! Gilbert rattles off an absurd top 10 that includes Terry Gordy, Ricky Steamboat, Bam Bam Bigelow, and most of the bigger names in the Unified title tournament. The idea of Steamboat working Memphis at any point much less now is giggle-worthy. Jeff Gaylord awkwardly poses in the background during all this. There have been so many stories about Gaylord that I didn't think he could possibly live up to them once I got a chance to see him, but he has surpassed those expectations with flying colors. While all this is going on, Gilbert loses a match by countout to Chris Champion. Eddie Marlin breaks things up. The Dirty White Boy walks back to explain his side of a story wherein he gave some lady a piledriver. Brickhouse Brown levels him and takes him down, but gets hit from behind with a chair by Doug Gilbert.
  17. PeteF3
    It'll be the Dundees and Jerry Lawler against the Internationals in Jasper, Mississippi. Tojo Yamamoto will be handcuffed to Eddie Marlin.
  18. PeteF3
    Great stuff all around. Lawler and Maggs have a nice little studio match with Maggs bending the rules, paying for it, and getting a public dressing-down from Dan Davis. Pulling hair and throwing fists isn't just against what Davis taught him, it seems like bad strategy to me. Trying to go fist-for-fist with Lawler is usually a losing proposition. I suspect Jarrett/Gilbert would be a strong Memphis MOTYC contender based on the clips we see and the talent involved. Jerry Calhoun gets bumped. Jarrett drops Sam Bass Lowe with a piledriver but takes a fireball from Gilbert, and Gilbert keeps his hair and wins the Southern Heavyweight title. Lawler and Brown brace themselves for Gilbert's inevitable talk about being the new King of Memphis. Lawler rattles off names who had previously tried to put him out--Hogan, Savage, Andre, LeDuc, Funk, Brisco--and none of them could do it. The big Lawler/Gilbert title match is something I can't wait to see.
  19. PeteF3
    I didn't realize Sapphire was still around at this point. This is a rare opportunity to see DiBiase work a non-squash in the WWF as the dominant guy, as the story of Dustin's heart vs. DiBiase's experience takes center stage and DiBiase controls 90% of the match and gets to act like a gigantic prick while doing it. Well-done finish as Dustin is trapped in the Million Dollar Dream as the clock is counting down, but manages to avoid having his arm drop for the third time right at the expiration. Dustin eats a Million Dollar belt to the head afterward but also gets the official win. I was expecting the Tornado to show up at this point but I guess that comes later.
  20. PeteF3
    Love is sporting a neckbrace as a result of last week's DDT. Heenan offers not only an apology to the Boss Man and his mother, but to ALL mothers. Love and Heenan mug as much as they can and eventually get on their knees in a moment of SAHLENT REMOOOORSE.
  21. PeteF3
    Fantastic match with a shocker of a finish--both in context of where everyone was "ranked" and in the context within the match itself, as Hase was all but dead until that fortuitous Tiger Hattori bump.
  22. PeteF3
    Much more highspot-oriented than the August match, as they go almost immediately to the dives and only use matwork as sort of a comedown period. Benoit tries the diving legdrop that won him the title again, but misses and gets shooting star pressed to drop the title. About as crisp of a spotfest as you'll ever see with a better ending, at least, than the August title change. Liger shows himself to be a master of waiting until the last second to kick out, turning a few routine rollup spots into hot near-falls.
  23. PeteF3
    Yeah, I was wondering why the IWGP Title match was going on before the juniors. Oh well, minor quibble. This did start slow and as a result I don't think it was as overall strong as their match from early in the year, but Choshu makes another great comeback that starts with a superplex. The series of lariats doesn't put Hash down the first time, and after a neat tease of Hash coming back but whiffing on a spin kick, one last Riki Lariat gets the win.
  24. PeteF3
    I suspect that the date disconnects are continuing. Going by the commentary this match is clearly part of an already-ongoing feud, but the previous match actually seems to have more of a finality to it. That said, each match has had a different feel to it and even though this comes off as more of a table-setting match, it's a chance for Kid to shine working as a dominant heel--not easy when you're a scrawny 18-year old kid, but he pulls it off. Some of his legwork suffers from pretty wonky execution but this match layout as with the others is absolutely top-notch. Other than a few teases, Lynn is basically on defense from the knee injury on the plancha until the end, when the match is finally stopped. A lot of my match evaluations for either this or the '80s sets are based on expectations. I'm definitely a sucker for an unexpectedly good performance (John Studd in his one AWA appearance is the one that comes immediately to mind). So, I still think the first match (or first that we see) is the best of this program--I went in expecting a curiosity and got a MOTYC candidate. Now, fairly or not, I'm going in expecting to see MOTYCs which puts both guys in a corner already. But this is definitely another notch in the Kid's belt as a worker of great ring smarts on top of his copious athletic talent.
  25. PeteF3
    As the match started I was actively looking for those SNME-ian spots and I honestly didn't see any. No regroups on the floor, no one coming to or leaving ringside, etc. I always thought the point of doing 2/3 falls tag matches on SNME was because those "breaks" were built right in. No need to cut to commercial anywhere except between falls which doubtless would have happened. You had those two awkward moments in the 3rd fall but I don't think those are enough to keep this from my WWF MOTYC, which would put the Rockers at 1-2 on that particular list. Even the criss-cross spot comes a little more like Bret the character saying, "Screw this running around shit, I'm going back to grinding things out." I'm fine with blown spots that still come off as logical in the context of the match and this was all about the Harts trying to negate the Rockers' quickness. I'm not sure if the work was quite as good overall but this was much, much more in tune with how a "teams on the same side" tag match is worked than Horsemen/Doom. Incidentally, this is the only 2/3 falls WWF match I've ever seen that went 1-1-1. Seemingly every other such match, the winning side lost the first fall and then won the next two. Seeing that pattern broken would have made this result quite the shock if I'd seen it in 1990.
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