PeteF3
-
Posts
10269 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Blogs
Everything posted by PeteF3
-
Trivia question: what was the first match in Raw history? Yoko vs. Koko.
-
And the idea of banishing the Rock 'n Rolls and Roadies was pretty effectively shut down by the panelists.
-
Maybe the now-weekly "Gay people like Curtis Thompson" segments should get their own timestamp. -
LOD were suspended (or at least Hawk was) around the same time as the title change--I would say that was part of it, but they were there at WM8 to do an interview anyway, so who knows.
-
[1993-11-10-WCW-Clash of the Champions XXV] Ric Flair vs Vader
PeteF3 replied to Loss's topic in November 1993
The stabbing had already happened, and Arn would be out of action until the very tail end of the year. Roma was already scheduled to be turning heel at this point (Arn was his original Starrcade opponent), and was sort of in limbo with his next feud opponent on the shelf. Though I think at the Disney tapings he was already teaming with Orndorff. -
This angle started with some promise, but it's getting sunk by the overacting and verbal diarrhea of Raven's relatives. Sandman shows up in casual wear and glasses and we get an incredibly feeble Seinfeld reference before the big pool bump. This isn't going anywhere, it's just throwing random characters at the screen that we have no reason to care about.
-
With Eddy out, I guess it's time to kill off the LWO. A mercy killing. Rey is allowed to leave without a beatdown, which I believe was supposed to lead to him being courted by the group. Hogan looks like he's dressing as Mick Foley for Halloween. After such fire shown by Flair earlier it's disheartening to see Nash and Hogan half-ass their way through this. Even the ironic "match of the year" discussion that's *supposed* to be insincere doesn't sound like they have their heart in it. Compare and contrast to the panache of DX doing multiple similar bits in late '97. I mean, Hogan sounds comatose. Giant and the B-teamers come out for a less-than-thrilling confrontation. Yes, this was the perfect time to cull the fat from the NWO and they don't do it. Hogan accuses Giant of DROPPING THE BALL--what year are we in again? Giant is playing out the string but somehow brings more fire to this than anyone in the Wolfpack.
-
What kills me is this promo shows they STILL HAD SOMETHING. After the Dome disaster, there was a light at the end of the tunnel--you have Flair fight back, and have Goldberg plow through every NWO member one-by-one until he gets to Hogan again. You could milk that all the way to Havoc or even Starrcade if you developed a plan and stuck to it. Instead, 2 months from now we're trying to figure out how fucking double-turn Flair and Hogan. "Don't you wrap me up, baby--I run the company now!"
-
Well, this is your Match of the...Week, I guess. I loved that for the first 6-8 minutes of action that we see, there's very little here that isn't a punch or a kick to a damaged body part--either Kawada's knee or Kobashi's head. An indication that the AJPW style hadn't completely disappeared up its own ass yet. Jun makes one of the greatest house afire sequences you'll ever see after a hot tag and in the end plays a similar role that he did in the Tag League finals, making miracle saves and being Kobashi's wingman in the midst of a stirring comeback. I knew this was a title change and I was still in suspense down the stretch, wondering just how in the world Kobashi would make a comeback after being brutalized the way he was--that's some good working, right there.
-
[1999-01-05-FMW-New Year Generation] Mr Gannosuke vs Hisakatsu Oya
PeteF3 replied to Loss's topic in January 1999
Oya's haircut makes him look like a taller Japanese version of '80s JCP job guy Mike Simani. Anyway, the garbage brawling outside the ring here was far less welcome than in the Hayabusa match, and in fact it almost seemed worse because it was so perfunctory. At least there were some big spots in the first match--here Oya just goes out to blade for no real reason and the blood plays no factor in the story or the drama of the match. I admired a lot of the mat work here and what they were going for, but admiring and liking are two different things. This could have stood to lose about 10 minutes and a few half-dozen abdominal stretch rollups. The dead crowd is kind of a big elephant in this room that needs to be mentioned as well. They started off quiet for Hayabusa but were loud and raucous by the end. Here, the biggest reaction is the polite applause for Gannosuke's win. I'm really trying with FMW, but I'm about out of patience with this promotion. It feels like it peaked from a workrate standpoint right after Onita's retirement and from a star-power standpoint before that. They've tried throwing epic near-fall-fests, garbage brawls, tag team chaos, and now matwork-heavy matches at me, but even in the face of the best-worked matches I still just don't care. I have almost no regrets about my GWE list but one, as I'm astonished and embarrassed to have put Hayabusa at #80. Gannosuke and Tanaka are far and away the best and most complete workers in this company and I feel like they're being wasted in this environment. -
[1999-01-05-FMW-New Year Generation] Hayabusa vs Tetsuhiro Kuroda
PeteF3 replied to Loss's topic in January 1999
I didn't dislike this as strongly as a lot of the '98 Hayabusa matches but I didn't think it was much better than average. The FMW guys know how to create big near-falls in a vacuum, but still can't find a way to compel me to care about who wins or loses. Hayabusa actually did try to sell his way through his comeback, which I appreciated, and made this seem like something a *little* more than just trading big moves back and forth. -
The match was taped, much to LOD's consternation as they requested it not be. But it never aired--because with the LOD getting suspended and the plans for WM8 changing (originally LOD/Disasters in a no-DQ match and Money Inc. vs. Slaughter/Duggan, which I believe was reported in the Magazine), the finish was unusable as it was.
-
We get our first look at some spots that would become staples, like Rock doing commentary mid-match, and the "Smackdown Hotel" catchphrase. Fun match with a few neat near-falls, but an even better moment. On a night when WCW decided to pull the rug out from under everybody and rip off 40,000 attendees while also inviting us to check out the competition, we flip over to the other channel to get one of the biggest feelgood moments of this or any other year.
-
Clever angle here that's sort of forgotten quickly, as the stuff about DX sacrificing him isn't really touched upon again. The cameraman gets knocked down, which is a neat way of not actually showing the attack and not forcing Shawn to do much physically besides take one shot to the gut.
-
A clever swerve, so much more sensible than the change from Goldberg to Hogan. Vince is hoisted by his own petard.
-
Highlights of Mankind giving "Mr. Jocko" to Pat Patterson. I like this short-lived remix of Mankind's original theme. Mankind comments on the FOLEY IS GOD signs, corrects them, and gets the idea for his second book title. Vince puts over what a STAIN Mankind would be as #1 contender, much less the champion, and blames him for listening to the people instead of him. Vince is at his best here, which is cocky and gloating. There was lots of ominous foreshadowing in the opening segment of Nitro--this has foreshadowing of a deliberate nature, and it's pretty much all positive. It's established here that the absolute *last* thing Vince wants, with Stone Cold temporarily out of the mix, is for Mick Foley to be a champion.
-
Hogan's coming out in his street clothes, because of course he wasn't here to wrestle--there, *one* good attention to detail for this whole rotten night. This is my first time actually watching this entire segment start to finish. I actually missed the majority of this--the entrances up through the Fingerpoke itself--because, hey, Rock vs. Mankind for the title. I flipped over in time to see both NWOs killing Goldberg with Bischoff celebrating the new champion and sort of wished I hadn't. Goldberg taking out most of the NWO goons but having to sell for Hogan and Luger's pathetic offense is just ridiculous. #Politicalhit, indeed. Bischoff is so obnoxious with his sound effects and not in a heel way--there's no planet in the universe where imitating a stun gun and pretending to be a spray can qualifies as "good," or effective commentary. A major moment of my fandom. Historically I worked the TV remote like a video game controller on Monday nights, expertly flipping back and forth between the two shows. That skill became obsolete after this--my father and I both decided it simply wasn't worth it to keep watching Nitro. And I wouldn't, for pretty much the rest of the year other than some curiosity over what Russo would do. And then not again until the first Russo/Bischoff Nitro. Basically WCW was telling us that the previous 10 months didn't matter--it was Bobby Ewing stepping out of the shower on Dallas, only way more depressing. This means that almost everything from this Yearbook from WCW will be new to me, though I was still in the habit of reading CRZ and various other recappers at this point. Its freshness should make it a bit easier to sit through, I hope.
-
Liz trying to backpedal and saying there are a lot of bald wrestlers out there is kind of funny. Goldberg is free to go.
-
"When there's positive momentum, there's positive momentum. But when there's negative momentum, there's REALLY negative momentum!" Shoot comments that aren't supposed to be shoot comments, etc. etc. etc. The rest of Hogan's promo is mostly drowned out by Goldberg chants. Even after the Starrcade bullshit, he wasn't unredeemable. "If you're even thinking about changing the channel to our competition, fans, do not." Bischoff tries a tack from a few years ago but has Schiavone act as his mouthpiece this time. What Eric didn't seem to realize was: a.) The WWF had been back to taping every other Raw for a full year at this point, to no effect on the ratings week-to-week. b.) Spoiling things was daring when it was unprecedented--it's not anymore. c.) The previous spoilers were over things that were either fairly inconsequential (like who won the Raw Bowl) or saying that something did *not* happen (the big guy lost to three superkicks instead of winning the IC title). Here, they gave away a pivotal event. d.) I'm fairly sure the fledgling wwf.com had Mankind's title win as a front page story after the taping. Not only did they anticipate spoilers getting out there, they were counting on it. Dave reported on Mankind's title win even before it was taped, very likely by a source who wanted it out there--all precisely to counterprogram against the loaded Dome show on the other channel. WCW played right into the WWF's hands.
-
"I was at the Coke machine, and I was getting myself a Diet Pepsi--..." Liz slips up again by saying that Goldberg was wearing red tights. BUT GOLDBERG DOESN'T WEAR RED! A twist worthy of an Encyclopedia Brown mystery.
-
Goldberg, true badass that he is, proclaims that he sees Liz around all the hotels because WCW books them there. Then he points out that Liz sees him at the gym she goes to because he owns it. Nash is out to talk to Gene and barely sounds awake. He asks Flair to swap out Goldberg for Hogan--the first of several straight weeks of Flair making an executive decision that blows up in his face. There is a very, VERY mixed reaction to this announcement. The negative reaction Chad talks about definitely comes through on TV.
-
Hey, the star of the vignettes may be half-dead, but we used the film stock, we're gonna show it come hell or high water! Poor Dandy is forced into valet parking duty, and then Eddy helps himself to Silver King's hat, the other girls, and everyone else's dinero in a poker game. He ends by imploring his fellow team members to put the LWO above themselves. Someone in charge in WCW got way too emanored with and took the completely wrong lessons from all the soap-opera Russo bullshit we've been getting recently on Raw.
-
WHATEVER IT IS, I'M INNOCENT. LIKE I SAID. NOT ANY ONE OF YOU GUYS, OR COLLECTIVELY, ALL OF YOU. I don't want to shit on Goldberg, because this is like the alleged Einstein quote about judging a fish by its ability to climb trees. He's totally being set up to fail. Actually the jarring thing about this is that for a big musclehead he's pretty well-spoken, so he's dropping all this polysyllabic vocabulary in the middle of this angry off-the-cuff rant, which is rather amusing. Goldberg is hauled to the precinct without being told what the charge is, which probably violates some sort of protocol. Nash is out to protest. And Hogan is here, still clinging to this Presidential run. The charge: aggravated stalking. Filed by Elizabeth Labetsky. What a twist! Speaking of people not suited for speaking off the cuff, we have Liz herself. The saving grace is that at least here she's *supposed* to be a bad actress.
-
We had an angle already where PeeWee got rehired--I believe Anderson had to go out again for more cancer treatments, but they act like he's been gone ever since Bischoff fired him. But hey, until I got to the '97 Yearbook I didn't really remember if he came back or not. When I watched this live I was like, "Didn't he come back already? No? Guess not--oh well." Flair books the first match for Souled Out--2 weeks out is a good time to start doing that. David Flair throws his name into the hat for Ric's match. Insert Between the Sheets "dun-dun-DUN" soundbite here. Bischoff goes to the announce booth. He would actually say one sentence at some point in the next 2 and a half hours: "Goldberg's a dead man." In fact, Eric was mostly away from the desk running things backstage and his silent treatment was a cover story. Lots of inadvertent ominous foreshadowing here, but as a standalone it's a fun segment.
-
[1999-01-04-NJPW-Wrestling World in Tokyo Dome] Keiji Muto vs Scott Norton
PeteF3 replied to Loss's topic in January 1999
Not particularly good, though heated. Muto seems to be trying to overcompensate for his rapidly expanding bald spot, which seems like it will an issue for him until he gives in and shaves it all.