PeteF3
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Clips from the Mid-South Coliseum as Snowman gets into things with Eddie Marlin, security, and what appears to be several fans. A fantastic chaotic scene that the ringside crowd seems to believe is 100% real. Marlin and Brown do an incredible job of what Memphis has always done best: get even the most absurd angles and developments over as being completely plausible. This isn't even absurd or unrealistic, but I love the explanation that Snowman is getting a public forum to prevent future incidents such as the one at the MSC. Marlin almost immediately cuts Snowman off and brings out King Cobra, who denies encountering racism on a business or promotional level, but has on an individual level. Cobra actually does a good job of dismissing the resulting boo birds with a "They're not in the business, so they wouldn't know." One time where that talking point has validity. Snowman constantly shits all over Cobra while he's talking, pointing out that he lost the title as soon as he won it and that he's nothing but a whipping boy. Snowman referring to Lawler last week and now Cobra this week as "boy" is a surefire reaction-getter. Snowman brings in two members of his posse. Norvell Austin's brother says that putting Lawler in the ring with Snowman would be the same as putting Al Bundy in the ring and dares Lawler to run Snowman off himself if he's truly "The King." Lawler comes out and demands to cut through the BS by offering a title match at Snowman. Marlin shuts him down, saying that he's the one who signs the title matches and that just gives Snowman another opening. Marlin gets fed up and leaves after declaring the USWA won't sanction a match, but says the two can fight in the ring if they want. More back and forth, with Lawler actually getting flustered for about the first time I've ever seen, and it's more or less promised that Lawler and Snowman will go at it Monday night, despite Lawler's scheduled title match with Jeff Gaylord. Another hot segment. Eddie Marlin was great again, not quite able to maintain control but still keeping credibility intact as an authority figure. -
Same promotion, same feud, different worlds.
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Rude's training. He's the only man to have beaten the Warrior. We get it already. Rude and Heenan are still good but have him beat the Warrior down or let him PIN somebody in the ring, for God's sake.
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There's a really weird thing at the beginning with Vince & Jesse leaving the booth to "get a bird's eye view" of the show. Was there a shot of an empty booth that they had to explain away after the fact or what? Vince just didn't want to announce over the big angle? Hogan threatens Jimmy Hart when Earthquake doesn't initially appear, until he gets dropped from behind by a chair and hit with three Earthquake splashes. Hogan gets stretchered out and here we get Vince to berate the officials. This was an unbelievably rushed segment that came off VERY "off" for some reason, especially by the high standards set by the WWF production crew. The effectiveness of the angle is more to the credit of the marketing after the fact than it was in the actual execution, if that makes any sense. I don't know if the Hogan "retirement" video shows up on this set (the one with the stringed dirge version of Real American) but that did far more to get the angle across than the actual attack did.
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I'd like to see Punk & Heyman re-enact this.
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We have our second shoot angle in the span of a week as Misawa & Jumbo do a quasi-reenactment of the Choshu/Maeda shoot kick and the Hansen/Tenryu NOBODY POTATOES ME pull-aparts. Most of the great AJPW 6-man tropes are here: Jumbo being grumpy, Kobashi getting his knee dropped on a table, Fuchi tearing people's limbs up (though Kabuki takes more of that role here), and the hot run of near-falls. The only jarring thing is seeing Taue on Misawa's side. I suppose Baba hadn't quite finalized who was going to be with whom just yet. Taue is booked rather strongly here himself, getting his own moments of standing up to Jumbo and being in on the closing stretch. Misawa gets the pin on Fuchi with the tiger suplex and even though Fuchi is the clear #3 man on the team the victory seems like a major upset for Misawa's side. #2 MOTY at this point. A huge breath of fresh air that All-Japan needed after a lackluster opening quarter.
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Those figures look awesome.
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A really fun, realistic-looking brawl with a cheap finish. Kerry is tossed out of the ring and hits Percy Pringle, and Pringle is upset about Kerry tearing his jacket. That distraction allows Borne to roll Kerry up rather weakly for the 3-count. This was good, but the cool presence of all the officials sort of unfairly had me expecting something a little more epic in scope.
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I praised Tatum for his shamelessness earlier but I think his problem as a worker is going too far in that direction. You can criticize Lawler for relying too much on stalling and cheating and foreign objects but he comes across like Vader by comparison to Tatum. It works even less when in with a guy like Dundee. Still a good finish that's finally a turning point in this storyline as Tessa turns on Tatum and crotches him on the top rope, leading to a Dundee win.
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They work a whole match without any major cuts on the wire at all, as the mere threat of the wire is enough to get heat and draw people in. Awesome finish as Chris fights from getting dropped onto the wire and pulls out a crucifix for the victory. He pays for it afterward, as Austin decks Adams with brass knucks and then brutalizes him with a chair and a really well-done beatdown.
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Great to see Cornette & Paul E. still selling their feud, instead of being all buddy-buddy just because they're both heels now.
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Super-hot start with a motherfucking plancha from Choshu! Mutoh tries to slow things down by taking out Choshu's legs and gets some very close near-falls, but Choshu eventually takes over and is able to lariat Mutoh down. Mutoh was back to working as the plucky young underdog after a year of working as a monster heel and he didn't seem to lose a beat.
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Yeah, Luger was fucked by management here, not Flair per se. They decided that Sting was going to get the belt that he would have won in February and that he would get it from Flair. Lex just a placeholder feud because, as Meltzer put it in reporting on the Sting injury, the next-highest singles babyface after Sting was Norman the Lunatic. Knowing the condition of Lex's knee now, his performance here is probably one of his best. I really don't think you'd know the knee injury was legit judging from what Luger does--whether or not that's a good thing I'll leave up to others. But all of his moves still have snap and the cage allows them to do some high-impact, heat-getting stuff that just involves heads into the cage rather than big bumps. Pivotal moment where Lex fucks up the knee on a superplex and Flair has him almost beat with the figure four, and then we go off the rails. First the Horsemen come down, then Sting, then El Gigante--with what I believe was no hype or announcement whatsoever other than what we saw from Connie Chung. The knee shit is all blown to hell as Luger goes nuts again on offense. RoboCop is nowhere to be seen. Then the cage raises and we get the mother of all bullshit finishes. The post-match is great stuff, with a long beatdown as Sting and Gigante are helpless outside the cage, and a fantastic crazy bug-eyed Flair promo.
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I will not have you two defaming the NAIA AND JUCO ALL-AMERICAN Butch Reed. I mean, hyping Pillman as a "wedgebuster" or Simmons, who at least was a legit elite college player, is one thing, but...I think I made this point elsewhere about Tracey Smothers. Telling that Ross spends five minutes blithering about football and collegiate wrestling before getting around to mention what degree the Steiners majored in. There was a bit of meandering to this but Scott was a bit better than I thought in the Ricky Morton role, and some of the clotheslines were fantastic. Scott busts out one of the earliest t-bone suplexes on record. A double-team on Rick nets the tag titles for Doom and that boxing loss and headshaving are a million miles away from Theodore Long.
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So Jumbo vs Tenryu from 1989 would count because it was in the "territory days"? Really? Was the criteria really too complicated? Most of the complete matches available from the '70s are from the WWWF, the Japan promotions, and Great Britain because that's mostly who kept the footage or even had long arena footage to start with. The Mid-Atlantic "garbage" tapes are all fascinating even though very little is complete.
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The S&M toys are barely used and this isn't much of a match despite the best efforts of Ricky and Robert.
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Cornette's revelation had me laughing to the point where I missed JYD saying "I'm yo' daddy." Cornette's attempted subterfuge afterward is almost as good. Priceless segment. An in-shape JYD would have had a lot to offer to any promotion. Caudle and Schiavone seemed like they were legitimately cracking up.
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Gordon called some goofy shit in Florida but this might top it. He sells it as best he can, though. Cappetta's ridiculous over-the-top editorializing in his intro of Sting might actually top THAT. This...goes about as well as it possibly could have, to be honest. It definitely had a "Let's get this shit over with" feel to it which I'm just fine with.
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Ross' fat jokes about Cornette are getting tiresome, not to mention a bit hypocritical. What would Ross do if WCW had ever signed Ronnie P. Gossett? Disappointing match in most aspects. There have been good, heated matches where Cornette was similarly incapacitated, but Pillman and Zenk are no Rock 'n Roll Express or Fantastics. Eaton is fantastic here, Lane and Pillman pretty good, and Zeaman is awful. Each babyface gets to kick out a heel finisher, I guess as a bone for doing a clean job, but it sort of makes Zenk going down to an enzuigiri & small package all the weirder. The storyline of the match pointed to Pillman doing the job. Edit: Ross & Caudle don't pick up on it but the replay shows Lane loading the boot before the enzuigiri, which is a nice touch.
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I think it's pretty hilarious that Sid, of all people, is the only one of the Horsemen to be wearing a tux. It appears that Woman is already being phased out, as she wasn't a part of the final pre-show promo or this one.
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Jeannie threatens to come out with a tell-all book about her marriage to Chris Adams that will be better than what's in the National Enquirer. She then cuts a really great promo on the wives of the World Class viewing audience, saying that when they're snuggled up in bed that they're actually thinking about her.
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We get a recap of the match from 5/18 that we apparently missed out on--Dundee's boot had gotten removed and Tessa tossed it into the ring. Dundee caught it and hit Tatum with it for the pin--so whom did Tessa throw the boot to? Tatum declares that it was a mistake anybody could have made and coerces Tessa into declaring her love for Tatum. Dundee isn't interested in fighting and gives up his interview time to Tatum, only to get leveled from behind and posted, all while Tatum dares Tessa to take Dundee now.
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Weird segment with Gary Young more or less outing himself as the culprit who apparently destroyed a surprise party set-up for Kerry Von Erich. This looks like a babyface turn for Terrence Garvin when suddenly he hands Young his $1000 payoff and Young jumps KVE, and both heels take off. Fun little swerve even if this feud set-up doesn't make a great deal of sense. A Von Erich *would* be taken in by a trick like that.
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Borne's sort of all over the place to start, but once he talks about the lumberjack match he gets on track in a hurry--Kerry is built for show, not for go. Pringle does not seem overly interested in making nice with Borne at this point.
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Yeah, Kerry is almost Hogan-esque in his complaining about how everyone is against him. Pringle comes off as incredibly reasonable in his defense of his viewpoint. On the other hand, even if it was unintentional it's a nice way of building to a turn without giving it away. "Matt Borne either leaves...or he stays." How Zen. "But if he stays, he'll be injured." Like the similarly coherent Jimmy Snuka, Kerry does have an undeniable presence on the stick even when he isn't making sense. I don't see how it's possible that the Texas-raised Kerry and Oregon-raised Borne could have been longtime friends, but Kerry does sound sincere.