Jump to content
Pro Wrestling Only

PeteF3

Members
  • Posts

    10268
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by PeteF3

  1. Okay stuff. Callous unleashes some of his big moves like the leaping clothesline, while Lawler mostly stalls and sells despite working babyface. Callous levels Jerry Calhoun and they're still clinging to the technical-loss thing.
  2. I love the setting already, with a full camera crew in the MSC along with the announcers, even if we don't really need 3 of them. Funk does the greatest oversell for getting spit in the face in history, and as a result turns this into a ringside brawl. Brown makes an okay comeback but takes one too many trips up top and Funk reverses a sunset flip into a tights-grabbing victory. Another fine Funk performance that whets the appetite for more to come.
  3. Always a brilliant idea to outright say that your talent isn't as successful as comparable talent in the other promotion.
  4. Tremendous moves, incredible action, great near falls. Doc shoves a newsletter in Meltzer's mouth afterward to really drive the point home for the 3% of the audience who gets it and baffle everyone else.
  5. Fun stuff. Ace looked as good as I've ever seen him, apart from having a noticeably shitty Ace Crusher...which is a bit of a problem, but maybe it was just a fluke. Tsuruta and Taue's comeback was maybe a bit rushed, but structurally this match was fine. Just, as mentioned, a bit odd. It could be selection bias but at this point Kobashi honestly seems to be coming across as more of the #2 man on Misawa's team than Kawada.
  6. An August WON says Martel was out with a nerve issue in his arm.
  7. This post cannot be displayed because it is in a password protected forum. Enter Password
  8. I could do without seeing Stan Hansen in a pink and white t-shirt and blue short shorts. Akira Fukuzawa demonstrates the lack of height and opulent foot space of the AJPW bus. Every Abby interview in Japan is a primo demonstration of why he never talked in the U.S.
  9. The promos are carrying this to the point where it doesn't yet seem like a total waste of Flair--more like a (temporary) elevation for Doom.
  10. Good heated brawl as the Nasties sucker the Steiners with belt shots at the contract signing. The Nasties' weird charisma is undeniable here. The Steiners stumble their way through a response promo.
  11. What an absurdly stacked tag division. The singles rankings actually less so.
  12. Contract signing footage from Chicago. Sting's spectacular outfit is the product of what would happen if Bret Hart were a member of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. No attack at the contract signing, but there is one later on as Sid lays out Sting with a chair and then gives him a piledriver on it. Sid reminds us that he rules the world.
  13. The most bizarre interview in Gordon Solie's 30 years in wrestling. That's no small potatoes considering the shit he had to call in Florida. I'm in literal disbelief watching this.
  14. "Mr. Excitement"? Slater is an odd fit for Memphis, but cuts a good heated promo. Eddie Gilbert is the New King.
  15. Well, the thing about these Memphis angles is that it's all about Guys Wanting Titles--period. Honestly the Adams/Austin feud is closer to Russo territory since Austin and Jeannie's goals are a little less clear, but at least there a.) the characters of all involved are consistent, and b.) it's building to grudge matches (or...MATCHES, period), if not titles. Without getting too far outside of 1990, here's hoping CM Punk--who seems to get it as much as the guys in Memphis do in these segments--can make reality cool again.
  16. Jarrett recaps what happened in the round-robin tournament, where he and Gilbert each cost the other the #1 seed. He's also captured the Southern title from Dick Slater. Eddie Gilbert, ALSO wearing a suit, which I love, comes out and rebuts and at first he's doing it in a calm, rational manner. His anger slowly builds, and even though he actually gives Jeff some props about how he earned his spot, he points out that Jerry Jarrett is signing people's paychecks (including Dave Brown, who only mentioned Jeff's Rookie of the Year Award and not Eddie's). Jarrett hits a verbal low blow of his own, pointing out that Gilbert's walked out on Memphis before and couldn't cut it in the NWA, then brings up his divorce! Holy shit! The personal shot is too much for Eddie, who sucker-punches Jarrett and then unloads on him with his dress shoe with some real stiff shots that bust Jeff open. Jeff does a gigantic bladejob and an unbelievably intense brawl breaks out that gets broken up and re-started a few times. Wow, wow, wow. I had no idea that the Lawler/Snowman incident could be topped, but I think it has been. This really had everything that angle had except that Gilbert and Jarrett are both miles ahead of Snowman as a talker. It had elements of real life, realistic shoot-style brawling, and even the same "shades of gray." Sucker-punch aside, Gilbert isn't a typical cowardly Memphis heel at ALL here--he's a guy who has a real point of view that he BELIEVES, and a point of view that maybe some people can actually relate to. Jarrett isn't nearly as strong on the mic but in no way does he come off as a legitimate Erik Watts/George Gulas type product of nepotism. THAT'S "shades of gray" booking, not Vince Russo bullshit where nobody actually has any point of view. A lot of Memphis studio brawls can be rather contrived and obvious, but the low-keyness of the early part of this segment made the sucker punch and brawl a legitimate surprise and something that came off naturally--an argument that legitimately got out of hand, rather than an excuse for cheap fighting. I've gone on about this and probably could go on even longer. I could be reading more into this than I should but I'm actually legitimately glad the car angle was a failure if it led to more booking like this. The car was all about shock value and this is all about real people in conflict. Maybe the single best non-match portion of this Yearbook.
  17. Eddie Marlin is out and once again have a belt (which may or may not be the belt). Terry Funk, Austin Idol, Dick Murdoch, Jerry Lawler, Bill Dundee, Jimmy Valiant, Eddie Gilbert, Mark Callous, Jeff Jarrett, Dan Davis, Doug Gilbert, John Tatum, Dirty White Boy, Brickhouse Brown, Steve Keirn, Gary Young, Jeff Gaylord, Abdul Hussein (from IRAQ!), The Samurai, King Cobra, and Dick Slater will be competing for the Unified title. Clips follow of Lawler winning the AWA World title from Curt Hennig. I'm actually a tad surprised they'd show clips of Lance Russell and a packed Mid-South Coliseum. Lawler's out in a suit and he's putting over the other talent in the tournament, thankfully. Another spiel about challenging all the other World Champions and finding out they're only company champions. Clips follow of Snowman's Leon Spinks-assisted title win as Lawler sort of semi-shoots on Snowman's lack of wrestling ability. Marlin calls Snowman out as a coward who wanted to handpick all of his opponents and cuts a promo on him. IF YOU HAVE TO HOCK THE UNIFIED WORLD TITLE TO A DRUG DEALER, THEN YOU ARE NOTHIN' IN MY BOOK. That gets a big pop. I guess they felt they needed to spell all this out in public with Snowman going back to radio and newspapers. In a way, accident or not, I'm not sure the Snowman angle could have ended in any other way. Big hard sell for this tournament. Drug deal tangents aside, this was a pretty classy segment that really got the championship over as a big deal--not always a staple of Memphis booking. (Hah--all typed up before seeing Loss' last sentence). This was about as good of a case of promotional damage control as you'll see.
  18. Martel is still hawking Arrogance, and this time Brother Love asks him to stick around due to the presence of guest Jake Roberts and his stinking snake. "I have always been the hired gun for my own stable / I am what Cain was to Abel." Goddamn, Jake was the man. I love the fact that he could drop lines like that as a babyface. While that goes on, Jake takes offense at Martel spraying Damian's bag, and when he confronts him about it a second time he gets Arrogance full-force in the eyes. While I still question if cologne can fuck up an eye as badly as Jake's will get, Jake sells it great and would continue to do so in scarily effective fashion. At 8 years old I was about as cynical a wrestling fan as you could get--I was smartened up at an early age and the Zeus push followed by the Warrior push had really soured me on the company as a whole. But holy shit, did this whole angle creep the fuck out of me. Chintzy set-up or not, this really is a preview of the multitude of intense WWF angles that would come the following year.
  19. I got interrupted during this and put into a real sour mood for work reasons, so I'll probably have to revisit later because I didn't see any way this was on the level of the Misawa/Jumbo matches or the 6-man that spawned this feud. It was really quite good, but...well, I called "time limit draw" about ten minutes into the match. There was a whole lot of sympathy placed on Taue here, with Kawada and Misawa focusing big on his pre-existing cut, and the presence of blood in a '90s All-Japan ring as well as chants for Taue gave this a unique atmosphere, in a bit more epic scope than the big singles brawl in January '91.
  20. And from the gestures in this clip, I'm about 80% sure that it's Ole under the hood as well. Awkward segment all around.
  21. thehistoryofwwe says Sid/Eaton was a 2-minute squash victory for guess-who. In all honesty, that's the correct booking move.
  22. Ross mentions for the first time a 5-minute overtime period in Gauntlet matches. Foreshadowing! This is slower-paced than you might expect from Morton or Eaton but it's a quality little match, with some solid arm work from Eaton and a few nice spots down the stretch and into the inevitable overtime. Stan Lane and Jim Cornette interfere liberally at the very end and that sets up EATON VS. SID for Saturday Night. In some weird way I'm intensely happy that such a match-up actually happened at that point in WCW.
  23. White Boy is trapped in a sleeper when he dropkicks Jerry Calhoun. After a miscommunication spot with the White Girl, Eddie Gilbert clobbers Bill Dundee with a chair. Brickhouse Brown is overpowered when he tries to make the save by Doug Gilbert, who knocks him out with a boot. They put Brown in a chair and the White Girl paints his face with makeup and puts a blond wig on him.
  24. I like how Dundee doesn't dance around his past history with Lawler, bringing up the Bill & Buddy run as it relates to both Lawler and Jarrett. Lawler recites his Unified title/company-champions spiel and recites the list of participants, which is quite the who's-who of quality non-Big Two talent. Despite all the trash talk things are kept pretty civil, even with Gilbert. I wonder if the more low-key and downright lighthearted last two weeks was a conscious reaction to the failure of the car angle to draw (in fact attendance went down).
×
×
  • Create New...