El-P

Really ? Well, I would guess it's thanks to Flair vs Luger again, which did big business earlier in the year. They didn't do much about the whole Black Scorpion except a few creepy promos. That would be enough to introduce a new character, but as far as selling a main event... I can't wait. It is pretty bad, and after the heighs of 1989, early 90, it can get pretty hard to watch. I mostly look forward to 92 and 94. Seems a long way to come though. I'm watching this very soon. I'm not sold on Sting at all thus far, Luger strikes me as a better worker even at this point and a bigger star too. I have whatever I can get for free basically. I'm not sure I could handle a third show per week though. I'll probably get Main Event for 91 as well, but not afterward. Too bad.

How dull was the Summer of 1990 ? No fun heel color man along Ross or Caudle, so we get Ross by himself, which is not nearly as good as with Cornette. Or Ross with Caudle, which is boring. I understand they didn't run as many angles back then, but still, seemingly nothing happens. Doom and the Rock'n Roll wait for a match together. The Steiners and the Samoan work some half-ass angle waiting for a match which I don't think will happen anyway as the Samoans were going to leave soon. They did run a bizarre angle with Luger showing up late with teared up clothes, and Tommy Rich saying the Horsemen beat him up. In the following weeks, Luger would say nothing but would show up to watch the Horsemen in the ring. His silence and the way it was put together would make you think about a swerve and an eventual Luger heel turn, but maybe my mind has been polluted by modern wrestling booking. Anyway, in the end, nothing special comes from it, Luger is going to fight Flair for the US title at the early september Clash. Mmkay... Well, it meant that Flair was a step back from the World Title at this point, as they prepared Sid to feud with Sting. Did they think Flair had passed the torch successively to Sting and that he could be brought down the card a bit ? And then you've got the beginning of the Black Scorpion angle. Really seems like they were already trying to outcartoon WWF all of a sudden. Did they have any idea of who should be put into the role, or did they just booked it Russo style with no idea of where to go ? I don't believe Flair was supposed to get the part at first. Anyway, I didn't know this shit started so soon in the year. I fear a burn out before the end of the year... The summer was carried by undercards feud or mini-feud like Tommy Rich vs Buddy Landell (in which Landell was basically a JTTS), who had two fun matches, Arn Anderson having good matches with Pillman, Zenk and Luger, by Dutch Mantell having solid JTTS matches with Scott Steiner and Sting, and by the Midnights opposing Pillman & Z Man and the RnR. The best feud of the Summer actually involved the Freebirds, which was a shocker to me, against the Southern Boys. A cool three match series for the bogus "Southern Title" that the Freebirds supposedly won against the Southern Boys. It all ends with the surprise intervention of Buddy Roberts, and the involvment of Bullet Bob Armstrong showing up to back up his boy. Final 6 man match at the Clash. Solid matches, cool little feud, well built. On the "WCW brainfart" series, Tim Horner worker as Starblazer (what was the idea ?), The Pearl (there the idea was very clear, create a nise-Great Muta actually played by Ranger Ross under a costume, needless to say, it failed) and most of all, Brad Armstrong new gimmick : the Candyman, as he's giving away candy to kids and his dressed with sugar cane candy motives on his trunks and boots. No logical explanation on why Brad Armstong is giving out candies. I guess the idea was that he was a pedophile of something. More teams coming up, it's scary how many teams they were at the times. Nasty Boys debuting. The New Fantastics (with Jackie Fulton in place of Tommy Rogers, not exactly the same beast). The Master Blaster coming up... Ugh... And Bob Holly in a competitive jobber squash, which gave us a cool Ric Flair vs Bob Holly match (cool in a curiosity kinda way, not in a good kinda way). Going into Clash 12. WCW burn out looming.

Well, I just got to the point in my WCW watch where I witnessed the first Black Scorpion promo on Saturday Night. So, I echo your sentiment, litteraly. And yeah, Randy Orton embodies everything I hate about wrestling today, both in work and presentation.

Hey, at least you're not watching WCW under Ole.

Don't you know he did bomb on top and was paranoid about Superstar Graham ?

I always loved that segment, because Mero was such an awesome heel in this doing a great job of making Sable (who I couldn't stand) part of a really fun angle. The post-"match" celebration is just hilarious.

Bravo was a big star in Montreal with the Rougeaus. Of course the french connection (no pun intended) is there, but it's not like either of them was pushed very hard (the Rougeaus as tag champs would have been huge coming back in their territory). I don't know how much of Patterson's influence played with the french speaking roster. Martel had been all over the world when he came back to WWF and had been a star everywhere, and he got the biggest push.

The Freebirds were two delusionnal disgusting assholes pretending to be rock stars. No one who suppose to cheer for them. Ricky Morton was not an ugly guy in a 80's übermullet southern way. The fact that they had girls screaming is a testament to how good they were. Zenk was good looking but dull and a mediocre worker who never drew a dime. So... I fucking hated the Freebirds during the first six months of 1990. They were just awful, particulary Garvin. Then all of a sudden, they become decent again, working harder (especially Hayes), being thrown around by the Steiners and having a fun undercard feud with the Southern Boys. It really depends on will they show up or not. Garvin didn't had much to bring to the table at this point, but as long as he doesn't kill the match with overlong restholds and shitty looking stuff, he can be watchable in spots. Hayes still had tons of charisma. Plus I admit I'm a mark for outrageous looks, and the Freebirds delivered in spades. Let's see for how long they can stay out of my shithouse.

The MX never registered with me as faces. I was so glad to see them turn back heels. I'm about to the point when Cornette and Lane left, and they are still clearly the best tag team in the US, head and shoulders abover everyone else. It's a shame WCW fucked around with them, there was still ton of mileage to get from them, at least until the mid 90's.

Hurt in what ways ? To get a job in the WWF, yes. Otherwise, I don't see it as a problem, especially for heels. I like my old school wrestlers with bellies.

I'm watching this period right now, and yes, the RnR's offense does look dated compared to the new blowjob tag teams of Dynamic Dudes, Zenk & Pillman and Southern Boys. But they are still an excellent working team despite the lack of new exciting offense. And the double dropkick was still over when they did it, so it shows that everything is perception. That said, I would have loved to get the Rockers thrown in this mix, opposing Doom and the MX.

I think he was gone soon after the whole Earthquake/Bravo vs Hogan/Tugboat feud. I don't remember him being around much in 1991. He came back shortly in 1992 (during European tours I think) having one really good match with Bret Hart in Germany, and was not hired back. Odd he never tried his hand at WCW, but he probably didn't had any connection, as the Rougeaus and Martel worked in WWF at the time.

What do you mean by Bravo being a special case ? I'm intrigued. They seemed to protect him, possible for Canada. I'd have to run through his results, but he seemed to do fewer jobs than you'd expect for a WWF heel of his level. Similar guys did lots of jobs as the WWF usually was about making the fans happy and not much into protecting heels. John I watched the Montreal French WWF broadcasts in the late 80s and I recall they gave him a full on main event angle that ran across several house shows that was not referenced on the other TV shows so that kind of backs up what jdw is saying. I wish those Montreal WWF TV would pop up, if only to hear Carpentier & Hauray again. Then I would become all nostalgic. Interesting what's being said about Bravo being more protected because of the Montreal market. Carpentier would always put him over huge in commentary despite Bravo being a heel, talk about him like he was a contender for Hogan all the time. They really never did any big things with him on a national level though. Montreal has such a strong identity, and Hogan doing a job for Jacques Rougeau there as late as 1997 when Rougeau was not a blip on the radar of WCW is telling.

What do you mean by Bravo being a special case ? I'm intrigued.

What you describe is exactly what happened, and I don't remember the specifics of the sory Alfonso told, it may have been a young Luger wanting to call the match to which Brody responded by just stopping selling, but anyway Alfonso basically said it was no big deal and that the two talked and settled it in the locker room later. The story just got blown out of proportion and became ridiculously twisted afterward, probably because Luger is not well liked at all and Brody was seen as this great legend.

You want the more level headed version of the Luger vs Bridy story, you get Bill Alphonso's. He was inside the cage with both of them. He said it was a misunderstanding issue, nothing more. I love the fact you still hear incredible stories about how Brody beat up Luger, Luger running off scared for his life and other bullshit from old timers, when the footage is available and none of this actually happens.

Mike Graham is notoriously full of shit.

I don't care for Fantasy Booking interviews, but I pretty much always enjoy the discussion prior to the actual fantasy booking. That Dusty story is great. And for the record, I do enjoy Terry Taylor as a face (although he was a natural heel and much better at it).

I think those were killed by the influence of indieriffic moveset wrestlers like Edge. Which is a shame.

I haven't seen this is about 10 years, but that's about what I remember about it, and it this way, it's quite amazing.

Agree the house mic sucked at this point. Agree Bill Alphonso enforcing the rules was pure gold.

Holy shit, Dave had the pythons back then !

Great American Bash 1990.07.07 Really good show overall thanks to strong tag matches and a cool under-undercard. First 45 minutes was comprised of the most random, thrown together matches you can find at the time, with zero build. Buddy Landell vs Brian Pillman was really good, as expected. Landell is a guy I wish I could see more off, but he never had a really strong stint anywhere, it's a shame, as he was as good as anyone when he was on. Dutch Mantell vs Doug Furnas was pretty good too, although Furnas did look lost in some occurence, screwing up the last transition. Dirty Dutch is another of those super solid worker, and you can see the ring general guiding down Furnas, who's better off in tags with a smart guy like Kroffat. Mike Rotunda vs Iron Sheik was as good as a Shiek match can be in 90, I was shocked to actually enjoy it as much as I did; lots of suplexes which makes senses with these two, stiffness, really decent considering the Sheil's physical state. And Tommy Rich vs Harley Race was shocking in how much Race could still go at 47. He delivered about 90% of the offense (thankfully since Rich has none), basically kicking Rich's ass, and winning to boot. No idea why they threw that match in the card. Race was sporting his old "king" trunks, which was odd. Vader vs Z Man was the perfect way to introduce Vader, who got over big time. The real strenghts of the PPV were the tag matches. I don't care if ot's an accepted fact by now, but Southern Boys vs Midnight Express is a fucking great match. One of the best of the decade in WCW. EVerything they try works, even the goofy karate contest. Great near-falls, great work, shitload of heat. A thing of beauty. Then you got the Steiner Brothers vs Fabulous Freebirds, which consist of the Steiner throwing the Freebirds around and not letting them rest. The Freebirds were basically dressed like Christmas Tree, and they got "Faggot "chants from the crowd, which is kind of uneasy. At some point, a small group of fans was clearly chanting "Michael is a bitch". Whaou. The Freebirds are climbing back into my good graces after letting the Steiners beat their ass like that, and I have to admit they got tons of heat. Doom vs Rock'n Roll Express was clearly a very good match, but they oddly got no heat whatsoever. Maybe it was because the crowd was spent, because it was the last match before Sting & Flair, but despite all their effort, they couldn't get the crowd into their match. Kinda sad. Doom's victory gets its share of cheers, the team was getting toward "they are so kick-ass we're chearing them anyway" territory. The six man between the Horsemen and Orndorff, Gigante & JYD was an exercice in how to work around useless workers. Whenever Orndorff was in, the match was good, but when he got out, it quickly went nowhere. They milked Gigante a lot, but as soon as it's obvious he can't do anything you can feel the disapointment from the crowd. Lex Luger vs Mean Mark was decent at first, but Mark just doesn't do much in term of offense, and Luger just stopping selling to make his comeback kinda negates the idea of a big mean monster. Not good, but Luger was clearly the better of the two. I remembered Sting vs Flair not being anything special, but it was worst than that. Sting sucked, he no-sold left and right all match long, including no-sold the attack on his knee injury that nearly put him out. Stupid stuff. Flair was good, but STing acting like a superhero ruined the match to me, nothing made sense. He also applied the worst Scorpion ever. JYD match aside, this is probably one of Flair's worst title match ever at this point. I'm pretty sure Flair had much better matches with Hogan in 94 despite the hulking up.

Meiko got put over in feuds by Kansai, Devil & Hokuto as well. She also beat Kaoru, Yamada, OZ a bunch of times, scored atleast a few wins over Toyota & while she didn't beat her in singles until the last night, Meiko did go over Chigusa in a few tags. Nagashima got put over heavily by OZ & Aja, Devil was going to put her over too in their feud but got injured in the match. She beat a bunch of other vets along the way. Aja put over Sugar in their feud, Kaoru put her over too. Yamada put over Toshie in their feud, D-Fix got Sakura over as something other then a comedy wrestler for the first time. There's others but that's what comes to mind off the top of my head. Again, pretty much all the vets except Lioness ended up jobbing in feuds/major matches to the younger girls atleast a couple times. They won their fair share too but still Heh naw, you're way off on that one. Some undercard stuff would be clipped (it was on GAORA after all) but you always got atleast a 2 or more longer matches per show. A ton of 15 - 20+ stuff aired in 99. They didn't really start cutting down majorly until 03-04 with 04 especially being bad as you'd rarely get to see anything over 15 but still you'd atleast get 10-11 min matches. Well, that's not what I remember, but since you saw shitloads more than me, and probably recently too, I'll take your word on this. Until I get back into joshi, one of those decades. She was fine when she came in full time in 2000 though she was pretty crummy her last few months in JWP before jumping over. I thought she was already totally washed up when she joined GAEA. Never saw anything close to the old Kansai past 1998. Illness did her bad. Yamada is one of those who I think was decent at first but fell off the wagon pretty quickly. That said, rewatching 92 and 93, Yamada's stock dropped to the point I wouldn't call her a great wrestler at any point of her career now. Haven't seen her last year. I agree her first comeback was still good. Not anything close to prime Hokuto, but good. I was thinking about post 99. Man, that's interesting. At this point I have no earthly idea who came up with it. I know I used it all the freaking time, but I don't think I came up with it. Maybe I did. But I wouldn't bet on it. I'm taking credit on spreading around the LCO acronym though, who I stole from Keith Watanabe I believe. Well, you've seen the best.

I don't remember any youngster getting anything from the veteran that would put them near the same level. The closest was Aja vs Satomura, which was the best feud in the history of the promotion, mostly thanks to Aja. Man, I thought Kansai was mostly terrible in GAEA, mediocre at best. Yamada was done. I never liked KAORU much. Hokuto was washed up and delivered exactly once. Lioness was Lioness. Chiggy was Chiggy. Only Oz and Aja were really good still. By 1998-1999 when they launched the SSU angle, most TV matches were really short sprints by joshi standarts. No way they got a lot of 10-20 minutes matches on regular basis at this point. What was cool about GAEA during that period is that they were doing supercards that nobody else could do in the late 90's early 00's. I got all those big shows. But to me GAEA was better and more fun at the beginnings. When Sugar Sato showed shitload of potential. Now you can say that ARSION booking sucked, that they pushed Ayako too much, that they gave up way too quickly on their initial style, that Chama was annoying, that Rossy was an idiot, that GAMI's comedy wasn't funny, that Lioness ruined the promotion and that their only saving grace was Yoshida still being Yoshida way after the point of anything mattering or not.