El-P

WCW sure did a good job making Raven's signing look like a big deal. Stevie & Raven had a great chemistry together depsite their personnal issues. Gotta love Gene & Dillob's appaled look as soon as Raven begins to recite a poem. Funny stuff.

Flair vs Syxx could have been a super feud for Flair, who was seriously getting dated at this point. And yeah, that shirt, really ? Also, the whole "introducing the next member of the Horsemen" deal was really getting old at this point, especially with a Flair looking like an old parody of himself. Hogan was just on another level (promo, work and drawing power), and in retrospect I don't see what the issue was with not using Flair at the top anymore.

Youre not kidding. Hogan can get unbearable when he's ranting, but this is just focused, serious, and seriously great. It's amazing to me how great Hogan was as a heel at times, considering I really can't stand his babyface character most of the time.

When I started to watch pro-wrestling I was like 13 in 90, and I only had WWF Superstars and no PPV until 92. KNew it was worked from the very beginning, still loved the hell out of it. And when Repo Man showed up on TV, it didn't take me long to recognize Smash, although I had no idea who Barry Darsow was of course. Hell, I had recognized jobber Bob Bradley under the masked Kat gimmick they were doing after Braddy Boone dropped it. It wasn't hard to see Papa Shango's tatoos on Kama, and although I only saw Dustin Rhodes for a few weeks during his first stint, as soon as Goldust opened his outfit to show his flabby white-ass body, everything clicked. Could see the lack of pushes, the shitty workers and the fucked up storylines although I had no notion of what these terms were. I was still what you'd call a total "mark" before I was exposed to any other product than WWF, yet I knew about all those things, without knowing the proper way to express it.

A fake fake Sting. Ok, they're gonna run out of ideas soon but this was a nice touch coming off the PPV. Luger is probably hotter than he's been since 1990.

Konnan finally joigns the nWo. Yawn. Kevin Nash ducking the Giant this early seems to indicate the product will finally begin to drag. And this is a segment where Nash thinks he's funnier than he actually is.

Hennig is fat. Cool promo though. Flair looks like a total idiot here, especially trying to recruit a guy already acting like a traitor and helping the nWo against DDP.

Yeah, I always loved the fact they weren't really good dancers. DDP's wife gets to do her own little project on TV. I wonder if this is the point where Nitro turned the corner into complacency. I totally has fantaisies about Chae & Spike back in the days. There you go. I guess it was a nice way to divert the live crowds. And a bunch of them ended up marrying wrestlers. Not a bad deal in the end I guess.

A casual fan with an access to the Internet and social medias. And since everyone has access to the Internet and social medias, what you're describing is just the casual fan of today, really.

Excellent interview, and Douglas came off really well, as he usually does. The non-wrestling stories were indeed really interesting, although I must admit Douglas describing the worst aspects of Memphis wrestling as a bad Supremes video cracked me up. Can't help but think this guy is really a decent human being.

It definitely makes sense. I think that type of fan still exists. It's just that some of us were there at one point and we're not anymore. It's possible that it's not so much that scene has changed as much as where we are in it has changed. Agreed.

I was hanging out with Mike Lorefice and the Quebrada crew back in 99. We didn't think Shawn Michaels was the greatest of all-time. Both of us thought he was overrated as all hell. We thought Bret wasn't the greatest of all time. He was down on Ric Flair for being dated and formulaic. I thought Takada was awesome, Mike thought he was a bit overrated and not a great shoot-style worker. We loved NJ juniors, which had supporters and critics at TOA (Jewett was very critical of them, including bashing Tiger Mask way before it was fashionable). We both loved LCO, which Schneider down at DVDVR didn't care for at all. I enjoyed garbage wrestling and Onita much more than Mike, although he pimped some stuff that was highly regarded by the DVDVR guys too (Honma, Yamakawa in BJ) in 99/00. Their crew loved GAEA, we weren't much enthousiastic about it. There were a lot of different opinions and taste even back then. Looking at just a few cases about US wrestling is really understating how diverse the opinions were. I was über critical of HHH when he was having a honeymoon with quite of bit of "smart" fans in 00. Etc etc…

About Abyss, I have no word left. Really.

By "modern days" I'm refering to basically the last 15 years.

Yes, but very few workers are able to fill 60 minutes without either going into long useless resthold and/or "dramatic" selling segments or equally useless endless series of spots and "dramatic" nearfalls. Sometimes smokes and mirrors and overbooking can work around that, like HHH vs Rock in 2000, but matches going really long is usually a sign of complacency in the modern days.

I dunno, I thought Credible came off like he usually does, as a nice, humble and down to earth guy. Probably too laid-back to get too much dirt, but it wasn't boring nor dry like some recent ones have been (Vader and Windham's for instance, both huge disapointments). Or course KC should have tried to get Corino who's hilarious and a great storyteller, but it was fine I thought. Nothing earth-shattering of course. What amazes me the most is that Justin is still only 39. I mean, that guy was a kid back then, which I truly never realized.

Agreed. Although I enjoy the early Nitro era quite a bit, I usually get more of out the big angles than out of most matches, as I find frustrating to have short competitive matches between two guys that should get at least 10 minutes together. Had the same issue with joshi in the late 90's in GAEA (and ARSION at times).

I couldn't agree more. A match has to be awfully special for me to want more than 25-30 minutes. I know I said this in another thread recently, but "could've used more time" is an overused criticism. Ten or 15 minutes is fine for most matches, even good ones. Put me in the 25 minutes club too.

Is anyone still able to watch a Buck Zumhofe match anyway ? Yeah, every HHH main event match ever. Most one hour matches are too long.

Shoichi Arai and his very distinct way of announcing and counting to ten during deathmatches was part of what made FMW so different and enjoyable to me. He was part of the unique atmosphere.

Two words : Lanny Poffo. Avoid Jannetty's and Sunny's at all cost though.

Fantastic spectacle. Rodman was a terrific heel here. Too bad they had to do that stupid Nash-as-Sting heel spot at the end, and the announcer selling it like it was Sting was idiotic. But yeah, great lay-out, great psychology. Way to get the most out of a bunch of simple armdrags.

Hennan drops the classic "He's in the best shape of his life" that you drop when a guy comes back looking fat. Hey, even Scott Hall made fun of his gut during the match. Hennig is not over, and coming out during DDP's music wearing an old Mr. Perfect singlet with the straps down (always hated that) really doesn't help. Bischoff wrongfully assumed any former WWF guy would be percieved as a huge star. Plus he was miscast as a babyface, and the turn was predictable as hell as every time Perfect appeared on TV for an angle in the last 4 years, he turned on the guy he was supposed to help (Luger at WM X as a loyal referee and Mero in 96 as some sort of mentor). Add tp this the botch spot which Savage kinda saved by immediately jumping on Hennig as he saw he didn't went over the top rope, you got a reciepe for a super underwhelming match, which it also was as far as the work went, with Hall looking sloppy. And yeah, why in the hell would you trust Hennig after that and try to recruit him in the Horsemen, especially considering the kayfabe history between him & Flair.

Edit : nevermind, I thought this was his match with Hayabusa. I love FMW from this era (well, from any era mind you except Fuyuki's, which has its moment too).

Kinda pointless to have this on PPV, really.