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PeteF3

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Everything posted by PeteF3

  1. PeteF3
    I'm living in a cuckoo clock.
  2. PeteF3
    This makes his "down here it stinks funny" vignette look like Dusty's "I neglected you" promo.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. PeteF3
    It'll be the Dundees and Jerry Lawler against the Internationals in Jasper, Mississippi. Tojo Yamamoto will be handcuffed to Eddie Marlin.
  10. 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.
  11. 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.
  12. 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.
  13. 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.
  14. 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.
  15. 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.
  16. 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.
  17. 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.
  18. PeteF3
    One thing that hasn't changed is that Haynes looks legit unhinged, no matter what role he's playing.
  19. PeteF3
    Albano was an All-American wrestler at Tennessee?? Orton barely holds it together when Albano starts showing off his body.
  20. PeteF3
    Pretty good stuff, with neat work (though not to a Buddy Rose extent) centering around low blows. Did any non-squash in the UWF ever have a pinfall finish?
  21. PeteF3
    In that case, I suspect that the pressure would have gotten to the WWF to a greater degree and the angle would have gotten killed sooner than it actually did. I can easily see NBC deciding around April that with U.S. casualties mounting, either Slaughter would not be a part of any SNME or the program would go away permanently. That's the kind of consequence that would get the WWF to backtrack real quick.
  22. PeteF3
    Admittedly it IS pretty hard to hide behind the sheer black skirt that Sherri's wearing here. Good promo all around with a less-than-enthralling payoff line.
  23. PeteF3
    Score one for the girl in the blue shirt and glasses.
  24. PeteF3
    Funny you mention the crowd. It's struck me that the crowd has been quiet most of the night. Not just for the tag title match but for the Midnights as well. Not "heatless," per se, more of a "sit and watch intently" way, almost like a stereotypical Japanese crowd. They do pop for the stuff designed to get pops, so they're paying attention. Just not a lot of sustained volume. Sting works really, really hard here. The best way--maybe the only way--to get a good match out of Sid is to have him stand there like a brick wall and let a Sting or Shawn Michaels just bounce off of him repeatedly. This is not a great match and maybe the whole thing doesn't stand up, but the action we see here is pretty decent because of the match layout and Sting going balls-to-the-wall. I actually thought the Fake Sting was pretty well-executed at first. It's a complicated set-up as you have to get Sting and Sid to the back, but you just had a DCOR in a major match earlier so Ric and Arn need to be out to distract the ref. Then the camera keeps a wide shot on Windham so that it legitimately looks like it's the real Sting. Crowd certainly buys it, too. Then it falls apart as Barry runs away and the cameras miss Sting confronting him in the aisle. Setting off the fireworks and balloons was kind of a clever touch, but since when do they set off balloons and fireworks for heel title victories? The fake Sting is so convincing that the crowd seems to have no clue at all what's supposed to be going on as looking closely at most of the reactions, they clearly thought it was a legit title change. I like the idea and parts of the execution, but Windham needed to hang around at ringside longer so everyone could get to see the real Sting confront him. This was a case of booking to a TV audience at the expense of the live crowd, and it showed.
  25. PeteF3
    I didn't mind Spivey's appearance by itself, particularly with Paul E. mentioning their partnership in Japan. Ross completely shitting all over Paul E.'s "clean in the middle" declaration did bother me. The cowbell didn't factor into the finish one iota, so shut the fuck up JR. This was good action from what we saw and a rather shocking conclusion to Luger's epic reign as U.S. Champion. He'd held the belt for 18 months and done two full turns in one title reign, which might be a pre-2000 record.
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