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PeteF3

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  1. PeteF3
    Fun as hell, especially down the stretch. Ogawa isn't exactly Mr. Offense, so giving him an opening by having Kakihara fuck up his ankle on the post is a perfect match layout as he can utilize all kinds of routine offense and it's effective as long as it focuses on the leg. This goes from good to great with Kakihara's comeback--if only he hadn't stopped to clamp on a chinlock when he really had Ogawa on the ropes. The rear naked choke would have gotten over in a UWFI or even NJPW setting but in front of an All-Japan audience is sort of dies, but that's quickly forgotten about. Kakihara takes Ogawa off the top turnbuckle with a cross armbreaker, but in a brilliant move Ogawa desperately grabs at the referee and "accidentally" knocks him onto Kakihara, which breaks the hold. One more cross armbreaker attempt turns into a rollup and Ogawa steals a win and keeps his title. I get what Zenjo is saying about this sort of style in AJPW, but I like it out of Ogawa precisely because he's the *only* guy doing it. It's sort of like Jim Cornette's philosophy of having a crazy cartoony gimmick in your promotion being fine, if he's unique.
  2. PeteF3
    The first part of this is a pretty fun throwback to pre-KDX MPro, with lots of heel miscommunication and comedy. The "epic" portion in the second half isn't as great as your high-end MPro but still pretty good in its own right--I was always under the impression that Yakushiji rather quickly fell off the map due to injuries, but he had a longer, higher-quality career than I'd remembered. Still under the radar, but one of the most reliable faces in peril of his era.
  3. PeteF3
    Yes, probably my favorite BattlArts match so far, with a convincingly deadly ending with Yone just getting killed over and over until he drops. This will be on the MOTY list at year's end in all likelihood and in a very good position. Yone is almost unrecognizable from a visual standpoint, but his style is pretty much there already.
  4. PeteF3
    An awesome double twist to end the show, with Vince apparently stealing his way back to #30 only to have it all come undone. McMahon's expressions were pretty over-the-top even for him, but this segment got over great.
  5. PeteF3
    Now that he's #2 in the Rumble, it's imperative that Vince build up endurance. So he runs in the snow, chases a limo, chases a chicken, and then goes to work on his punches in a meat plant. Glorious stuff indeed.
  6. PeteF3
    Undertaker is back to his 1994-98 music, a retrogression in its own right. And he has a new faux-Emperor Palpatine look. Booo-ring. This is the kind of segment that quickly made me reconsider my decision back in '99 to stop flipping to Nitro.
  7. PeteF3
    Giant probably should have been disqualified for using Hall as a foreign object. Instead Nash uses his own object (with Billy Silverman stupidly looking right at it instead of tending to Hall) to knock Giant out and send him out of WCW.
  8. PeteF3
    This promotion still isn't unredeemable. Right now, the Fingerpoke of Doom is a bad setback, not a failure. That will come in a couple of months.
  9. PeteF3
    Goldberg means business--he'll never make the mistake of trusting Kevin Nash again.
  10. PeteF3
    I really didn't *want* to like this, but Nash's "back and to the left--back and to the left..." legitimately cracked me up. Nash reveals that the CAT scans are negative and the internal bleeding from last week has stopped, but he still can't raise his left arm. This is a total 1996-style skit which is just another indication of what a step backwards last week was, but on its own it's pretty funny.
  11. PeteF3
    Okay, *this* is a better example of Old Guard vs. New, even if it still makes no sense that suddenly Rey is totally committed to the LWO. This gets a lot of heat, both Rey's teased comeback and the attack on Konnan. Pedantic but still annoying point: YOU CAN'T HOLD A GUY WHO'S BEING TASED. The human body is a conductor--Luger should be getting shocked, too. Good segment in a vacuum but it ages badly because of course none of this leads anywhere.
  12. PeteF3
    We begin with Raven and Sandman discussing Wittgenstein over a game of backgammon. Loss' comments about the commercialized video-camera usage rings true here as well. WCW is operating in a weird sort of in-between where the individual shots are still framed documentary-style but with a multi-camera set-up. The result doesn't really feel authentic but is too low-rent to be TV or commercial-quality like the Lucha Underground skits. No, I don't want to see Raven vs. Piper specifically either, but it'd almost be worth it to see *one* angle involving one of the Old Guard deigning to interact with a younger performer.
  13. PeteF3
    Crowd is into the idea of singing for Pepe. Goofy and silly, but at least Smiley and Chavo are committed, which makes this work for what it is.
  14. PeteF3
    I guess Bischoff namedropping Jim Herd would have flown over viewers' heads. Bischoff's chemistry with Klondike Bill is the highlight. The start of several weeks of Bischoff outsmarting Flair for every menial job he's given.
  15. PeteF3
    Flair sets the tone by kissing up to Knoxville--good time to do it with Tennessee winning the national title and the Lady Vols at their...Summit, so to speak. He locks Hogan into a contract until 2001, reinstates JJ Dillon (yay), and Dillon announces that Scott Hall's stun gun will be suspended above the ring in a ladder match between Hall and Goldberg. Flair does more to put over the LWO than any of the announcers have since their inception, then asks them to disband for their own protection. I guess since Eddy's gone and their original raison d'etre is out the window with Bischoff out of power, the concept really is superfluous now. I'd pay money to see a series of skits of Flair and Juvy in Tijuana. Not a bad way to kill a lame-duck gimmick off while, Thunder notwithstanding, letting these guys keep their dignity. Of course Rey's reluctance makes zero sense. Chill-inducing video to close things out, that really feels like a labor of love on the part of somebody.
  16. PeteF3
    Telling stories, baby! Who the fuck wants to watch two guys fighting to determine who's better when we can have RUN-INS! And BOOKING! And SWERVES! And all kinds of stuff to focus on what a creative genius the guy in the back is rather than what great athletes the guys in the ring are! Sabu runs in, and while his new music is cool, why is it playing all this time when we already have a guy on the roster whose gimmick is that his music plays during his matches? Taz gets the worst of it and Douglas goes for the cover. Styles: "This one is over!" Well, that's proof that it isn't--yet another possibly genuinely dramatic false finish, killed by the World's Greatest Announcer. Then Douglas gets up and makes the Triple Threat sign in a spot that no one gets. Styles: "The Triple Threat is no more!" Then Sunny is in. Then Candido is in. Then we get a not-really-a-catfight. Styles: "Candido is here to save Douglas' title!" THUS RUINING THE SURPRISE WHEN CANDIDO TURNS ON HIM. Good Lord, how can a guy like Paul E. who proclaims that he doesn't insult his fans' intelligence continue to think that we're not going to figure this pattern OUT after five goddamn years? And why all the shock when you JUST SAID the Triple Threat was no more before Candido even showed up? Did you get your pre-written talking points mixed up, Joey? Taz wins the ECW title for the first time and it's a complete afterthought. ECW's most evil, nastiest heel goes down heroically in refusing to tap, passing out instead. What a big pile of shit.
  17. PeteF3
    Pretty terrible. Dig how Dreamer is clearly thrown to the floor with the ladder around his neck, we clearly see Credible pull a second ladder out from under the ring, and then Dreamer comes back into the ring with the ladder again and Styles says with amazement, "Dreamer must have pulled a second ladder from underneath the ring!" Open your goddamn eyes, Joey--where was his voice-in-the-head Paul E. while that shit was going on? Dreamer is the first to climb the ladder and grab the Singapore cane, and just to get the stips over, he turns around to Credible and...dives off with a DDT. And drops the cane. I guess when you have a stip as dumb as "use the big giant metal ladder to build to grabbing the wooden stick," you may as well ignore it. Dreamer tries and fails to tie up Credible in the ropes to sink this match deeper into farce, but Funk shows up and whacks him with a trash can and That's Incredible gets Aldo the win. Not only does the ridiculous Credible push continue, we are also continuing to beat to death the lame and predictable "Dreamer can't bring himself to hit Funk" story. Which is a story that's been told more times than the one of Terry Funk and his jackass. All this does is make Dreamer look like an even bigger imbecile than he normally is. I'll break from everyone else on one aspect in that I don't mind using Funk as a heel--in theory. The problem is, I suspect they'll drag this out and in Paul E. fashion not even get to the blow-off before Funk shows back up in WCW--and in any case, Dreamer needs to stand up and put a beatdown on Funk *fast.*
  18. PeteF3
    D-Von recites his 3-year-old "Thou shalt not fuck with the Dudleys" spiel, and Bubba Ray declares that they have to beat the Public Enemy to be the greatest tag team in ECW history. Yes, using a PPV to set up a regional house show reeks of 1990 WCW's obsession with the Omni. That said, if Rocco and Grunge are strictly cannon fodder I'm okay with this as a one-off.
  19. PeteF3
    Funk cuts a more hardcore version of his old jackass spiel--instead of shooting an animal that's broken its leg, Dory, Sr. slits its throat because it kicked him. Funk compares this to Dreamer picking Jake Roberts over him as his mystery partner. Hard not to see the motivation for Funk. Terry Funk vs. Jake Roberts is one of those quasi-dream matches that apparently never happened. They never really crossed paths and wrestlingdata doesn't come up with any results.
  20. PeteF3
    ANGRY WRESTLING VOICE. It's going to take some doing to make up for Masato Tanaka being out, Paulie.
  21. PeteF3
    Oh, this was great, and the new running #1 MOTY--at first I thought I was looking at an effective heel showcase, but then the babyfaces, after not being all that interesting for the first half of this, run off an incredible series of comebacks and near-falls that have me and the crowd biting on a lot of them, even though I figured simply from the lineup that there was no way Crazy Max was doing the job. The run of near-falls lasts just long enough and again, the match ends pretty much when it should. That said, while everyone plays their part, Shiima is by far the biggest star of the bunch and is really the one holding everything together. Not only does he have the most panache and starpower and best execution of the 6, he's good at a lot of little things, like casually sneaking in a quick kick to Yakushiji's groin as he's down on the mat. And he was the best seller--he was the precise reason we were biting on all those near-falls even though the babyfaces were tremendous underdogs, because of how he sold how much danger he was in. Awesome stuff that has me pumped to see more of Crazy Max in general but CIMA specifically.
  22. PeteF3
    It's not explained, but I'm guessing Disorderly Conduct got here with a convincing win over the Texas Hangmen, possibly in Rio. Call it a hunch. Great extended squash as Taylor and Finlay just brutalize these two guys at will, with both submissions and big bombs. Mean Mike and Tough Tom are professionals all the way and I loved how they were able to keep their jobs for so long because they provided 2 tag teams for the price of 1.
  23. PeteF3
    Well, I think Stevie Wonder could have seen that opening angle coming. Lawler doesn't cover himself in glory standing in the ring picking his nose while Christopher and Stasiak are at the desk. Pretty perfunctory match, with an angle where Lawler is suckered into brawling into the back and locked in a shark cage. As we go to commercial, Christopher asks Stasiak if he remembers Lawler saying that Stacy was HOME ALONE. Christopher's Kevin McAllister face is kind of amusing, but we're kind of beating this home-invasion stuff to death. Buddy Wayne and Harvey Wippleman attempt to break the lock...you know, it's not that hard to find big bolt-cutters for a lock like that. There has to be an Ace Hardware store that's at least as close to WMC as Lawler's house. Stasiak's in the car and teases cutting Stacy's hair. Stacy, being a rare wrestling babyface with an IQ above her shoe size, tells Stasiak when he arrives that she's been watching him blow his big plan and naturally won't let him in the house. Stasiak tries to force his way in by keying her new car, but as soon as he grabs Stacy, the police show up and Sean bails. Maybe you shouldn't broadcast your plans to the nearest camera, guys. There's no question who Lawler and the PPW brass were drawing influence from with this kind of show-long, sportz entertainment angle. It's more logical than a lot of Russo's recent on-location stuff, but still a little much.
  24. PeteF3
    Should we take bets on whether the Walkman and Watchman survive the end of the show or not?
  25. PeteF3
    Second-best match of the week, for sure. Really, really intense matwork that was fast-paced but never overwhelming, with both women staying true to their strengths and "wrestling within themselves" to borrow a sports cliche. And only a few 2.9s, with the finish coming precisely when it should. Yes, that armbar as Nagashima is in the fireman's carry is fantastic, probably a sleeper pick for 1999's Best Wrestling Maneuver Award.
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