PeteF3
-
Posts
10285 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Blogs
Everything posted by PeteF3
-
I kind of hope Omega/Okada III is like a 15-minute sprint. I also hope Toru Yano sweeps his way to the finals, so we'll see which one is more likely.
-
I have to admit I'm pretty surprised that we're getting Omega/Okada III in the G-1 at all, and not even in the finals. But Allan's booking proposal makes sense.
-
Definitely an upset. No strong feelings on this one way or another. I can't say that I rolled my eyes at this at any point, unlike the '98 final.
-
Hirata got this "spot," so to speak, by virtue of working with Owen in Stampede in Owen's earliest days in the business.
-
JR and Lawler's argument over Stephanie is pretty funny, another example of what separates the WWF from WCW even when the WWF misfires badly at the macro level. They find an amusing way of getting around the Corporate Ministry being barred from interfering by having Jeff Jarrett do it (there was some reason or another for that feud to start, damned if I remember what).
-
Note that GTV goes to static as soon as Terri starts talking about her wedding night with Dustin.
-
JR: "That's the straw that broke the camel's back right there!" This after Vince has already been booked against Ken Shamrock in a Lion's Den Match. I'm not sure this won't end up being the best-booked WWF storyline of 1999, honestly.
-
AW, SON OF A BITCH. One of the worst booking moves (not the *dumbest* in a Beaver Cleavage, Henry-and-Sammy sense, but the most potentially damaging) of the era, and in a way could have been seen as the WWF's Fingerpoke of Doom in its "Sorry, the show you've been watching has been a lie!" contempt for the audience. However, what separates it from the Fingerpoke of Doom (aside from WCW being even more incompetent as Chad points out) is the follow-up I talked about in 2014 and that I stand by. WCW thought they were creating brilliant television, while *somebody* in the WWF realized that a reset button on the Vince character wasn't going to be enough and that they had to give us something more. It doesn't completely redeem the segment, but it does help.
-
I won't lie: this is nearly the hardest I've laughed at any segment on any Yearbook. The sight of Nash comically shoving his hand through the window and fumbling with the door handle just sent me into fits. The angle of course is an infamous moment in WCW history but I had never seen it before. This was almost Shockmaster levels of hilarity.
-
Yeah, the idea of Piper vs. Flair AGAIN for control of the company AGAIN is just flabbergasting. Piper chastises Buff for not main eventing MSG, because there's nothing like outright telling your audience how much better and more prestigious the competition is. WCW is turning into TNA by the minute. I suppose I should be thankful that there's *some* attempt at using Piper to try to put over youngish talent--I wouldn't necessarily do it with Buff, but I'll chalk that up as a simple difference of opinion. No, the execution is where this really fails. On its own, this is a bad but not horrible segment that I suspect is going to lead to much worse things.
-
"YOU ARE A STUPID PER-SEE-UN." Savage is such a sad sight. Just completely out of touch and out of it, like he's aged 10 years since his knee injury. Bischoff's cackling at this will have you begging for the understated subtlety of the Repo Man. The sad thing is--as if I actually have to break down what's wrong with segment--the sewage doesn't LOOK impressively messy, since whatever they're using all sort of bunches together instead of completely soaking Macho. Also, Savage doesn't really sell humiliation, he sells annoyance and inconvenience. Bischoff thinks this is the funniest thing in history while Tony sounds like he's 3 seconds away from sticking a gun in his mouth. Bobby, God bless him, actually tries to put over how angry Savage is going to be in a vain attempt to actually sell people on a PPV, but to no avail as Bischoff cuts him off so he can laugh some more.
-
Hey DJ Ran: as the board's resident Cleveland Indians fan, quit speaking for us, you poseur. "Mick something-or-other"...Foley as the Greater Power *would* have been interesting.
-
Randy Savage arrives at Nitro with some of Mark Henry's work. He's wearing a bright pink feathered jacket that seems to the same purpose as when Jim Cornette wore a white jacket.
-
We get a brief glimpse of the first GTV bit, with Mark Henry stinking up a bathroom to the consternation of D'Lo. As enthralling as it was the first time. Austin refuses to divulge the identity of the Greater Power as he's interviewed by some guy I've never seen or heard of before, and who definitely does not fit the description of the ideal WWE Announcer that Kris and Bix talked about on the last BTS.
-
Terri and Jackie don't quite have Sunny's panache with a squirt gun.
-
Somehow Dave Brown is missing and Corey Macklin is locked inside a cage in the parking lot. Only in Memphis. Angle looks promising in his move execution and we get Fatu's requisite inside-out clothesline bump but Angle doesn't seem to be over at all. Neither does anyone else involved in this, really. Angle attempts a gratuitous dive off the top turnbuckle after the match is over and hurts his knee when he misses, then Smooth goes to town on it with a chair. Well, you pretty much brought all that on yourself, Kurt.
-
Jimmy clearly has carte blanche to do whatever he wants as long as it's within FCC regulations.
-
I thought this was a total blast, maybe a bigger fan of it than anyone else here. I think the most compelling facet of this oddball matchup is that it takes almost any sense of predictability away. Even in a great Four Corners tag there are spots you can call when they happen, and you don't really get that at all here, even though both teams mesh surprisingly well. Seeing Misawa and Taue pull off double-teams together just feels fresher, as does seeing Kobashi and Kawada doing their sandwich-style double-teams and making saves for each other. Another MOTYC and Japan feels really hot all around at the moment. -
A really fun TV main event, brought down by some horrible commentary by Larry Zbyszko. The talk about how wrestlers don't age like football players and boxers is just so weird and nonsensical, and then Larry goes into a weird tangent about Shaolin monks (I'm not making this up) while lambasting the younger talent in WCW who aren't at *all* being held back by the veterans. (Not to mention that pinning the "holding back" of youngsters on Ric freaking Flair is the height of absurdity as well). You'd think a guy with Larry's WWF past would be a little more sympathetic to the youngsters' cause. Anyway, that unpleasantness aside Flair keeps up with Benoit very well.
-
I still like the '96 match better but this was a ride and a half. They take us from extremely focused body-part work--Samurai targeting Otani's arm and shoulder, Otani targeting the leg--and then move into bomb-trading but do it in an organic way. And Otani busts out a few leg submissions down the stretch as false finishes to keep a psychological thread running through this. Otani is still a master seller, not just of damage done to him but of damage that *could* be done to him (watch as he scrambles to not let Samurai do the inverted DDT off the turnbuckle) and reacting to other moments in the match (like Samurai kicking out of the German suplex). And good Lord are there some vicious dropkicks thrown here, of all kinds and varieties. When the time limit expires I groaned but it was the good kind of groaning, where I wanted to see these two continue and am extremely hopeful that there's another singles match to come in '99. If not on the Yearbook, at least one that I can find. Definite MOTYC and off the top of my head probably New Japan's best effort of the year so far.
-
Dave: "He [Russo] told me personally that Bagwell had more charisma than Dwayne Johnson. I mean, can you imagine?"
-
Nothing blowaway great but a super-hot crowd can carry almost any match, and the work here is perfectly fine, just perfunctory in setting up the big post-match. A good cliffhanger ending...maybe a little too good considering what's to come.
-
Mankind successfully (apparently) goads HHH into a hardcore match by informing him that Chyna has been checking him out in the locker room. This is only about a million times better executed than the mess with Savage and the fake Nash, as if that needed saying. I agree that Mankind's sort of been lost in the wilderness really since losing the title--on the other hand, he was banged up more than usual and several months of working light probably allowed him to have that final classic run starting about 6 months from now.
-
The Beav is nervous about his debut match but finds solace in his mom's boobs. Amazing that Beaver Cleavage always seems to turn up just in time to remind me that the Savage-Nash feud could be even worse than it actually was.
-
This is all pretty creepy, really.