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.

Great post on JW Storm ! Amazing story.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Heated segment. The build to Souled out has been pretty efficient as far as the main event goes.

Yep. This is where everything went wrong for WCW. From there it was a slow downward spiral.

One of the all-time memorable moment on Nitro. Savage takes Nitro hostage, looking like the coolest mofo bad ass ever, and the crowd is going crazy for each and every moves he makes. Sting coming down the rafters and playing mind games was the icing on the cake. These two playing phantoms of Nitro for a while was very intriguing, and I agree Savage finally joigning the nWo without much of a factor for a change of heart looks like a disapointing pay-off after this awesome angle.

Come on. He can't defend his wife against *one* guy ? Whom he already beat ? This entire angle is rotten from start to finish.

To be fair, Austin always used cool as shit vehicules that fit his image. If Daniel Bryan's character is so uncool that as the world champion he's using a basic rental car, well, I agree there is some issue here. But it's a minor detail compared to the fact they portrayed the babyface champ as running away in panic from a guy whom he already beat. Godawful booking (and godawful segment in idea, writing and execution).

We're in 2014 and they are still running godawful Z-movies inspired angles with Kane. This was right out of WCW 1999, and I know what I'm talking about. Just awful stuff. Adam Rose's entrance was fun, especially with Dutch (sorry, can't call this guy Zeb) caught in the middle. Hopefully for him he doesn't turn into Fandango though.

Lawler is even more useless than Heenan was in WCW. Lecherous old man Lawler was annoying as hell during the Attitude Era, but Corporate HoF Lawler is just not even there anymore.

Agreed. I love Austin, but he doesn't get a free pass from me on this matter. And he should be able to adress it.

Debra did talk about it in her shoot interview with RF, didn't she ?

Although the match was about as appealing as such a thing when I think about it.

I don't. Sorry about that. I've replaced it by "clusterfuck" in my last post.

True. But Tough Enough still is totally unnecessary. The last winner really made an impact… And only Steve Ausin made it fun to watch.

Lana's ASSSSSSS. And legs. Yep. That's it really. Am I the only one who thought the reference to Vlad Putin was of extremely poor taste with what has been happening in the last few months ? I mean really. Evolution doing the job in the midcard after a fun match = good. The two main events = drizzling shit. A 30 minutes Kane match, dragging Daniel Bryan way way down. And that clusterfuck that is Cena vs Bray Wyatt, with one of the most absurd finish I've ever seen in pro-wrestling (and that's saying something). Not only was the match boring, but that finish was just out of a terrible horror Z-movie. This feud is rotten. (and this is neither here nor there, but yes, the Attitude Era post-Summerslam 98 was godawful. The fact that it drew big ratings doesn't mean shit to me, the product in 99 was the worst it's ever been.)

Well, I enjoyed the last episode with Bolin for once. And Corny's rant on Cliven Bundy and such was highly entertaining to me.

Exactly what I was thinking about. Amazing phantom bump in both cases.

Sullivan is still a fascinating mind. The "No excuse" T-shirt idea is glorious.