El-P

And it still doesn't sound right.

Indeed, Plum was the polar opposite of Toyota, but she could work go-go-go too if needed. But her main style was matwork and submission. My memory is fuzzy, but I'm sure FLIK can direct to some good mat oriented matches with Plum. I think there's a cool Plum vs Bolshoi match somewhere.

They're hardcore ! They're hardcore ! Theyr're hardcore ! Ok, this is getting *really* pathetic guys. This has the infamous "Heroes of wrestling" PPV vibes.

The Main Event :

Nope. It's the big money comeback, as Sarkozy already beat Ségolène Royal 5 years ago, and Ségolène is François Hollande's ex wife. Yeah, it's Kevin Sullivan like booking here ! Of course it would have been even better if Ségo made a heel turn and joined Hollande, but instead they turned some mid-carders like Eric Besson (who turned into a fantastic racist heel), former humanitarian Bernard Kouchner and even Frédéric Mitterand (the nephew of former socialist president François Mitterand), which gained tons of support heat for Sarko, who didn't need it anyway. We got through a 5 year heat sequence, and only now Hollande will hulk up and will probably (please please please!) make a clean swipe and kick the asses of the evil cohorts of Sarko next Sunday !

That's not exactly a new thing with Lance. Wasn't he arguing a long time ago that Great Sasuke and Toshiaki Kawada weren't very good workers and that people who did the DVDVR 500 had no business talking about wrestling because they never got inside a ring ? Why is Lance Storm giving his opinion every two weeks on F4online anyway ? What has made him such a great wrestling analyst to begin with ? He sure wasn't a very good worker, he wasn't a good promo at all, he never drew shit, his biggest claim to fame is being carried by Justin Credible in ECW and be a multiple champion in Russo's WCW, helped by the presence of a pair of boobs at his side on both occurences (I guess to hide his total absence of charisma or personnality) . Never did much of anything that is particulary famous even on a cult level. I mean, Lance seems like a good guy, was probably very safe to work with, but I don't see exactly where he's coming from. But I'm narrow minded.

The François Hollande vs Nicolas Sarkozy debate was pretty awesome. 3 hour + of dogfighting. Sarko was a great heel, he showed quite a bit of ass and came off like an asshole. Did a few comedy spot a la Arn Anderson, tripping on the French language a few times. Cut some good promos with *lies*, which is what heel do. Hollande was a bit tiedous at first, but made some great fiery comeback and cut an awesome promo, overall he showed much more class and came off as the Man more than his opponent. I'd say Sarko did the job in the end.

Sounds awesome. Falir showing up and hooking up with Woman in ECW in 94 would have been gold.

I wish we would have had Steven Regal coming out to Oasis and play a regular beer drinking lad (which he is) loudly badmouthing everyone. That would have been awesome. I wish we would have had 2 Cold Scorpio coming out to Tricky's Black Steel and fuck people up while looking paranoid as hell.

It's scary how much we collectively know about pro-wrestling for 20 years ago. Talk about useless knowledge. In a way it's beautiful too.

That's a glorious one. The "You fucked up" chant should have been incented for this referee. That's a fun one. In retrospect knowing how great of a heel Koko was in Memphis, it's even cooler.

I guess it got really mainstream by then, with the post-grunge scene, but in the mid-90's britpop, electro (including the absurdly named "French Touch") and trip hop were becoming the taste of the moment. Why didn't we get some lounge wrestling character in 97/98 ? It also makes the idea that "ECW was the Nirvana of wrestling" quite ridiculous on every level (I don't think this idea came up before the ECW DVD anyway, so it's really revisionnist history anyway).

Hey, we got PN News in 91, and it was pretty much still the Golden Age of Hip-Hop. Ok, Neu wasn't exactly Rakim, but at least WCW registered than hip-hop was the new popular thing to come... Well, for a while. I don't think we got another MC in WCW before, gasp, Konnan. Then we got... Men on a Mission who didn't capitalize on G-Funk at all... Mabel should have been given a Biggie gimmick... Then we got Salt'n Pepa at WM 11. In 1995. Well, hip-hop and rasslin' don't mesh very mell (don't give me Cena, please). Was the rave scene really still strong in 95 ? I got a kick out of Wright because his music did sound very european techno, that was suprisingly in touch.

Pretty much. As soon as Lex gets the belt and turns heel, the first challenger is Simmons, fresh off.... doing nothing of note after the Doom split. As a kid I was super impressed he beat Oz so easily. They did a pretty strong job building Simmons though, and the 2/3 falls match at HH was way better than I remembered it to be. A good case of using the 2/3 falls to hide the weaknesses of the workers, as Simmons was good mostly in short explosive bursts, and Luger couldn't carry a match. Really, the idea that Luger was not any good after a great 1989 has been shattered going through WCW TV in context. Late 91, he's still delivering in a match against Simmons that just didn't look good on paper at all.

I would have never thought of that. They did made a grunge character... in 1995... Rad Radford. That was a pretty big fail. At least Raven, despite also showing up only in 1995, had the right look and psych of the GenXer depressed slacker. The HeadBangers were a bit more in synch with pop culture though I admit. Antichrist Superstars was released in 96, they showed up in 97 wearing Manson's T-shirts, that was neat. Of course they got created by Cornette earlier on in SMW, but I never saw them here, so I don't know what they looked like back then. It would be hilarious to think Corny in freaking SMW was more in tune with pop culture.

WTF was that about ? Funny how Tatanka was pretty hot for most of 93 until he got squashed by Yokozuna. Then he pretty much did nothing of note until his heel turn in the Summer of 94, then gained weight and turn into crap quickly in 95. Yet another occurence of interrupting an unbeaten streak not being a good idea.

Watching the Van Hammer character and video in 1991, it's yet another sign of how much wrestling is usually totally outdated with pop culture. The Van Hammer character was a good 5-6 year out of date, surfing on Van Halen's popularity which peaked with the 1984 album. It's one of those occurence when you see that having rasslin' guys only in the office is pretty bad, because they have usually no idea of what's popular. It's not surprising that things click when they do catch up with the current pop culture. ECW did it to an extent (although Raven's grungy character came right as grunge was dying). WWF did it to an extent when you had Road Dog wearing South Park T-shirts and such. But overall, it's striking how far behind the wrestling world is.

Does she ever get out ?

I don't know if there was any big angle on TV, but I remember the turn happening on an MSG match against Saba Simba. Search. Yep. I love the Internet era of wrestling sometimes : The Hammer turns on Jimmy Hart Valentine had great facials. I loved this guy.

As you see, give us Greg Valentine in 91 and we get all excited.

He did work the Royal Rumble 92, then left for WCW.

Nah. Starrcade 96 was a great card, tons of really good wrestling up and down the card, and Hogan showing ass for Piper and losing clean was the great feel-good moment that was supposed to happen after months of him bullying everybody. The fact that Piper was a part-timer excuse the fact it was non-title. Starrcade 96 is the apex of the nWo era.

Can we test him too ?

Yes but as a fan, I can't help but feel like it would be so much more special if it was not given away on free TV multiple times already. I haven't seen any of these. The priviledge of not following WWE TV in more than a decade.