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El-P

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Everything posted by El-P

  1. El-P
    Okay, another match at the end of Januray tagging with McMicheal vs the Amazing French Canadian. I'm stopping right there, but Arn was still working early in 97. I don't know how all those matches eluded you.
  2. El-P
    Great Bischoff bullying segment. Just a classic stuff, much like the following week angle. The Outsiders laughing is just awesomely cruel. Anderson plays his role well here, just a referee doing his job and not used to deal with the bullshit and the powerdrunk assholes.
  3. El-P
    True. But it was very striking with the Outlaws because they had the über catchy entrance.
  4. El-P
    Not nearly as fun as the Robin Hood match. Nick Patrick was probably tired after working the entire PPV by himself. Giant kicking out of the legdrop was poetic justice. This beatdown foreshadows what would pretty soon be an issue with the nWo angle. What was fresh and shocking is slowly becoming predictable.
  5. El-P
    Bollin as a co-host ? Ok, I'm passing this one. Bollin usually overstays his welcome after 5 minutes.
  6. El-P
    I wasn't enthralled by the whole Bischoff interview. Although hearing him share a beer with Austin makes the 90's scene seem like an eternity ago.
  7. El-P
    To me the standards for ladder matches are all screwed up when idiotic stuntfests are considered great matches. This was a very nice match to me, worked the old-school way, much like the early Bret vs Micheals match from 92, with lot of wrestling and a few ladder spots. There was enough big spots throughout to make the gimmick relevant, and they didn't do a lot of awkward überslow climbs. Waltman seemed more at ease with the ladder than Eddie was, but to say that he totally outworks Eddie here is a stretch. Underrated match.
  8. El-P
    On the contrary, to me the Steiners were perfect opponents for the Outsiders. They were the biggest team of the 90's, and they were truly WCW fixtures of the early 90's, like Sting and Lex Luger. Historical figures of the company. Their WWF stint had been an afterthought. As far as styles went, it also works for me since the Outsiders were big and physical enough to have the Steiner sell for them. This was a pretty decent match, carried by the Outsiders. Kinda slow and plodding at times when Nash was in, but Hall once again was the best of the four. Rick was already really sloppy at this point, and Scott couldn't be bothered to sell his previously injured back, but that's the Steiner for you. The finish was obviously not gonna stand, it's an nWo PPV and Randy Anderson isn't a nWo referee. But a good way to have a feel good moment on the PPV without having the Outsider losing their first match against the Steiners (which would end up being an issue when they would never really lose the belts).
  9. El-P
    The first hot segment of the PPV, following the first decent match too. The nWo B-team (I wouldn't call them C team already) look like idiots and DDP is slowly becoming the people's champion.
  10. El-P
    By mid 98's, yeah I agree, because the Outlaws were still fresh. Until SummerSlam 98, all was fine and dandy, mostly. But by late 98 when the Russoiffic product kicked in, the audience only cared about the entrances and cachphrases.
  11. El-P
    I think the more interesting question is this: Would have Billy Gunn gotten that pop? Nope. The NOA were an entrance. Their match often got crickets. And the entrance was Road Dogg spitting on the mic. There's a reason why every single Billy Gunn push has failed miserably. Road Dog was more charismatic, was a better worker and was a better talker. Billy Gunn had "Mr. Ass" written on his tights, was the "best pure athlete in WWF", had an awkward finish and said "suck it" a lot.
  12. El-P
    I love this angle. This sort of stuff is why I loved Sullivan's booking of Nitro before he got burned out.
  13. El-P
    Total bad-ass opening. On par with what ECW would do. I remember that on the German broadcast, they actually put Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall in the background, which made it even better. On the show itself, there was a lot of stuff that was WTF material (like the Miss nWo contest with zero hot girl or the annoying camera work), but yeah, it was so different and balsy that it gets a A for effort only from me as far as production goes. It could have been done better, and they should have tried to improve it the following year, but I guess the fact it bombed on PPV just killed the whole concept, which is too bad.
  14. El-P
    I had turned the corner a few years ago already on that match that I probbaly used to love in the late 90's, here's what I wrote about it when I rewatched some weeks ago : "I'd rather stare at Liz and Woman in mini-shorts doing nothing for 30 minutes. This is just a bombfest with zero dynamic (your turn/my turn for 30 minutes) and no effort to involve a dead crowd. Yeah, worked in a vaacum. Ultimo vs Rey craps on this match so hard it's not funny. And the timekeeper announcing that only 5 minutes were left as a total giveaway made it even more annoying. It's telling that Woman interfering got the most heat. I don't blame the crowd. Most overrated match of the year." Yeah, there are dead crowds that you can't get into anything. JWP crowds in the mid 90's were infamous for being silent while watching matches that would get tremendous reactions in front of your average Korakuen hardcores. But this wasn't one of them. Rey got them to cheer for him earlier on. Malenko is the picture perfect exemple of "working in a vaacum" most of the time, and that makes him amazingly frustrating to watch. Like Muraco is the greatest laziest wrestler ever (this side of Muto), Malenko is the greatest tone deaf wrestler ever.
  15. El-P
    This.
  16. El-P
    Raven and his dog and pony show was pretty damn great at building to one or two (which is enough) credible nearfalls. He's one of the few US guys that can still make me pop for a true nearfall 15 years after the fact in matches I already know. Yeah. Blast me now. Mariko Yoshida was amazing at kicking out at the very last extreme moment (with the help of Daichi Murayama who was a terrific referee), her body language and facials following the nearfalls were tremendous too. Flair really never struck me as being great at building nearfalls to be honest. What you describe is indeed very cool stuff about Flair's work, but I wouldn't call the way he kicked out of headlock pins in the first stages of a match nearfalls. There was no way the match was ending there. And really, when I think about great Flair matches, the last thing I think about is great nearfalls. I dunno. To me this is a lost art these days. One thing I hate is the "nearfalls" during a your-turn/my-turn sequence (usually in junior matches) where the guy pinning his opponent basically pushes him off at two to get into the next position. This is just awful, and guys like Malenko were doing it all the time. To me the guy has to kick out on his own. If he's not quick enough, too damn bad, but some guy basically get out of the pinning position by themselves.
  17. El-P
    Great post on JW Storm ! Amazing story.
  18. El-P
    Don't speak ill of the Cole Twins. They were a pretty decent team in that wretched WCW 1993. Ice Train had some potential too (never realized), although I never understood the name (Big E Langston is a much better name, I guess)
  19. El-P
    Yeah but that was to be expected. Misawa's style didn't mesh very well with the US workers of the time (he also had a very underwhelming match with Steamboat in 89), and Bret's style certainly did't mesh at all with Japanese workers. Went to a 20 minute draw, headlock galore.
  20. El-P
    Oh yeah, I had forgotten about that one. They were arguably two of the best wrestlers in the world at that time, and the match ended up being…. nothing. To me Hase never really fit in AJ. I'm far from having seen everything from him there, but most of his big matches were disapointing I thought.
  21. El-P
    Solid little match. Hall works pretty hard, and Luger is decent too. The ending is verything good about the nWo angle, and it's obvious who the real nWo are. The original Wölfpack worked so well as a new version of the Freebirds.
  22. El-P
    I assume that they cleared the bathroom before the match as I would guess that they planned to fight there beforehand (which might not be the case for the Bash one). Hopefully, because it got cringeworthy at times. Especially Randy Anderson one feet in the urinal. Never gets old with me, this feud was gold (of course there's a creepy factor now watching it). Say what you want, but Sullivan is the one who made Benoit seem important in WCW in the first place, and he put him over like no one else. Hell, he even put over Nancy here. The balsa wood chairs were mocked back in the days, but now it doesn't seem like such a bad idea.
  23. El-P
    Pink neons. And not even GTA Vice City like neons (which wouldn't exactly fit the Giant either). Yeah. Not really a cool setting. Solid promo from the Giant.
  24. El-P
    Hum… from where do you get that feeling ? The crowd went nuts for Malenko anyway, this got over by the sheer quality of the work. Ultimo was a better opponent for Dean than Rey because he didn't allow Deano Machino to ground him and bore the crowd with endless control segment going nowhere. And Dean is a better fiery babyface than he is a Iceman heel, really, his best work and matches always came in this kind of setting. Dean working on Ultimo's leg was no different from Bret working on some heel's leg, it was not designed to get sympathy for Ultimo. Just a terrific junior match.
  25. El-P
    Heated segment. The build to Souled out has been pretty efficient as far as the main event goes.
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