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PeteF3

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Everything posted by PeteF3

  1. PeteF3
    Why did they give away the Funk turn now instead of after Dreamer's match? The post hoc explanation was that Funk was pissed that Dreamer picked Jake Roberts as his mystery partner over him.
  2. PeteF3
    Are they fucking baiting and switching us AGAIN between these two? I don't want to see this match myself, but god damn, guys. This is a strong contender for 1998's Worst Feud.
  3. PeteF3
    Definite MOTYC--1/97 is still the peak of '90s AJPW much less this rivalry, but I definitely think this is more epic and memorable than 10/97. If you'd have told me this match would have had Kobashi kicking out of the TD'91 and the match continuing for another 5-6 minutes complete with a full Kobashi comeback, I'd have rolled my eyes--but that's what they did, and damned if they didn't make it work. I'm as cynical as anyone about self-conscious epics and just ranted about them again in the Olimpico review, but this is an instance where even if these two guys do overreach a bit, I still feel like applauding the effort instead of shaking my head. I think it's at least partly because the matwork they did for the first chunk of this was so well-done and so technically sound. Just strong work around holds, no rote preplanned chain wrestling sequences or contrived faceoffs to applause. I do find myself agreeing with what Chad said--Kobashi should have won this. He'd beaten Misawa twice already on this tour which sort of telegraphs this result, but if there ever was a time to change the AJPW formula, this was it. Yet, at year's end I could easily see this in the #1 spot. At the least, it's neck-and-neck with Kobashi's TC win over Kawada for the #1 spot for 1998 All-Japan.
  4. PeteF3
    ECW's been pretty shallow and bad in '98 and I don't care about anything on this upcoming PPV, but this is about as good of an attempt as making chicken salad out of the chicken shit that is the N2R show as you can get.
  5. PeteF3
    We see a very chilly-looking New Jack out in an alley somewhere. Dear God, New Jack and Jack Victory are STILL feuding? ECW loved to run angles where the Gangstas got attacked while doing pre-tapes.
  6. PeteF3
    The Triple Threat lay out Sabu and the Dudleyz regain the ECW tag titles. Not much more to add to that.
  7. PeteF3
    This was pretty good but it did have that "self-conscious epic" pall about it--Olimpico was GREAT at timing his kickouts for the last microsecond, but there reached a point where he almost seemed to be showing off how close he could make the count instead of building an organic story. It's also another point in favor of just doing a one-fall match if you're going to book a 2/3 fall match like this--I know, tradition and everything, but I say if you're going to get through the first two falls in like a minute apiece you may as well just skip them. Loved Halcon's funky reverse Gannosuke clutch to win the primera caida, though. I think I liked the first match better just because it was my first time seeing two relative unknowns. Here, they actually had expectations to live up to.
  8. PeteF3
    This reads too much like that entire season of Dallas being a dream--"sorry folks, everything you watched for the past 3 years has been a lie!" it takes It Was a Plan All Along, which was being played to death in late '98 already--to a new level. Of course I realize the implication here is that Austin probably shouldn't have turned, period.
  9. PeteF3
    Sigh. Another match we need to see in full. What's seen looks really really good, though not highest-end Liger-Otani.
  10. PeteF3
    Ah, I've been waiting for it...the infamous "Bret Clark" intro by Buffer. Some conspiracy theorists have posited that this was deliberate sabotage on the part of Hogan or somebody. Bret shows that he can still bring the goods when he's pushed, and DDP is just the guy to do that. He takes some great bumps and unleashes some big offense like a killer superplex. Page wins the U.S. title, which surprises me.
  11. PeteF3
    Not much reaction for Warrior swearing. Goodbye and don't come back.
  12. PeteF3
    WCW is so creatively bankrupt--they don't seem to be capable of booking any angle besides the phony-apology swerve angle. I mean, we just saw it in back-to-back Yearbook segments!
  13. PeteF3
    Pretty easy to see where this is going, as Bischoff makes sure to emphasize that the fans on TV will see Flair wrestle.
  14. PeteF3
    All-action but kind of sloppy and not on the level these two could provide in a perfect world--even accounting for Austin's physical state. The finish would have come across better if it wasn't a re-do of the Dungeon Match. Still, JR did point out that the match could end if one person was incapacitated and Shamrock was certainly that, so it doesn't feel excessively cheap.
  15. PeteF3
    "You've taken this incompetent, somewhat underachieving kid and turned him into a MONSTER!" Good way to put some sympathy on Shane before his whiny monologue. I still don't get what this plan was all about--Shane re-hires Austin just to turn on him? Maybe we'll get an explanation that this re-hire and family drama was legitimate and then Vince and Shane reconciled.
  16. PeteF3
    Huge, huge heat for this--even by Vince's now-lofty standards. Vince is about to close out his monologue with a word of warning for Austin to take stock in something, but is interrupted by Steve on the TitanTron, who suggests Vince buy stock in Pamper's Diapers instead.
  17. PeteF3
    I don't get how Austin suddenly got stale in 8 months of being back on TV. And on top of trying to execute the turn in Texas, he turned at a time when there were no top babyfaces to oppose him. I daresay Kane and Undertaker as top challengers did almost as much damage to the WWF's bottom line, though in the end turning Austin was sort of like trying to turn Bruno in 1980. If you couldn't trust Bruno, what babyface *could* you trust?
  18. PeteF3
    WADA did such a bang-up job with the Russian track teams, they're definitely efficient and trustworthy to handle this fairly.
  19. PeteF3
    Just for the record, I looked in the OED and it doesn't have any listing of "abortion" in that specific context. It's been used since the mid-1500s to describe the deaths of pre-born children.
  20. PeteF3
    This is actually it for Cleveland. WCW made the decision to yank any remaining segments and just chalk it up in interviews as Cactus Jack faking the whole thing to "play mind games" (no wrestling storyline can ever not be explained away as mind games).
  21. PeteF3
    Just in the mag. This was one of many changes and magazine-only stories that Vince Russo was writing to amuse himself due to his disillusionment with the on-air product.
  22. PeteF3
    I think it's more his personality than anything. What set this thing off initially was someone rather innocently asking Dave if he still "marked out" on occasion. Dave's only response was a rather assholic reminder that "mark" is a stupid term used by people who looked down on fans. There's an *actual* parallel there between "mark" now being appropriated by wrestling fans and the other word being appropriated by the black community, but damned if I'm the one to talk at length about it and damned if this is the place.
  23. PeteF3
    If nothing else, Dave *cannot* be having conversations about issues this heavy in the world of Twitter. Any semblance of nuance goes out the window in this environment.
  24. PeteF3
    Hercules definitely did the Jobbers Tour. What's forgotten now is that the team with Roma started *before* they both turned heel. Then there's this result from the 6/17/90 Challenge: The Honkytonk Man & Greg Valentine (w/ Jimmy Hart) defeated Hillbilly Jim & Randy Fox at the 3-minute mark when Valentine pinned Fox following a double back suplex; during the bout, Rhythm & Blues and Jimmy Hart cut an insert promo on the Bushwhackers Jim's a surprising name to be doing that duty--he did plenty of jobs later in his WWF career but was still kind of a made man in the company. Some more stuff on the Tito/Virgil combination: - The Virgil/DiBiase thing continued into 1994 until Virgil was finally done with the company. His last program was a feud with Nikolai Volkoff, as he ran in to save the 1-2-3 Kid from a post-match attack by Volkoff and DiBiase and was out to try to "free" Nikolai from DiBiase's grasp. - I was not in Huntington that night, but I was at the Challenge taping in Columbus the night before. It had these feature bouts, many of which were repeated the next night: - Rick & Scott Steiner winning the WWF tag titles from Money Inc. (this was the opener--quite an improvement over King/Doll over Matador/Virgil) - Randy Savage over Doink by reverse decision (Coliseum Video) - Ted DiBiase over Bart Gunn (All-American exclusive) - Lex Luger over Owen Hart (Mania exclusive) - Undertaker over Giant Gonzalez by DQ - Yokozuna over Duggan - Bam Bam Bigelow & the Headshrinkers over Tatanka & the Smoking Gunns (Challenge) - Mr. Hughes over Marty Jannetty (Challenge) - Hogan & Beefcake over Money Inc. with Sgt. Slaughter as the guest referee - A Men on a Mission squash, which I believe was their in-ring debut--they were definitely brand-new ... - And the biggest dream match of them all, a match that only aired on TSN in Canada: Tito Santana DEFEATED Virgil. Both men worked babyface and shook hands afterward. Minds were blown on that night, I can assure you. By this point the WWF was actively sprinkling feature bouts in-between the endless parade of squashes at TV tapings, both for Coliseum Video and just for the live audience, to keep crowds active. In addition they were running more feature bouts than ever before for syndie TV, something that I believe may have been the work of Jim Ross (the 6-man I listed here actually got the "we're out of time!" treatment on TV and was continued the following week). Rex King & Steve Doll were very close to becoming Well Dunn at this point--their match the next night may have been either a tryout or them actively finalizing their gimmick, depending on when they actually signed. Still, losing to Well Dunn wasn't much an improvement, as they were probably sub-Bolsheviks on the all-time heel tag team totem pole.
  25. PeteF3
    Keith's version of history is slowly starting to fix itself, I think, with his recent penchant for recapping old Observers on his site. He's still useful for little tidbits now and again, like these two recent ones: - The first Clash show drew 521 responses for the thumbs-up/thumbs-down poll, and Keith expressed amazement that Dave's subscriber count would be so low, as if 100% of his readership not only watched the show but called or mailed in an opinion. - Dr. James Andrews was given the nickname "Tape it up and play through it," when any sports fan knows that name is synonymous with "season-ending surgery."
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