Ditch

Great post, Matt. The cartoonish nature of Hogan-era WWF often leads people to overlook the very real storytelling they did. For instance, the Hogan vs Warrior promos actually had a point and weren't just coke-fueled gibberish.

Your loss, tons of Tenryu greatness in there!

Bumping this. C'mon... jdw at least must have seen one or both!

I recently got to see the 11/23 match, quite good. I'll have to get the 10/23 one!

To be honest I really hadn't watched a ton of Andre, but almost all was at the end of his career.

Are you talking about '92? What was the very first one in NJ vs WAR? Or do you mean the very very first one in '90, which I agree had insane heat.

I thought Andre was overrated, and just got respect because of WM3 and so on. Then I started seeing the late 70s/early 80s stuff from Japan...

How big he got can be seen in the rare instances where he wrestled shirtless as 'battle Liger', notably for G-1 2001.

Well that explains the March 31st trios match...

Masato Tanaka stopped being brought back (IIRC he had a falling-out with FMW) after the matches with Mahoney, there's the Sabu mess, and Jerry Lynn missed a few months in early 2000. So yeah, talent was a big part of it, but you'd think maybe they could have used the extra revenues to bump up contract offers and keep a couple of the ones they lost.

I downloaded the complete set of the series and I find myself staying up late to watch them. Sometimes it's out of wanting to see what happens next in a positive way, but sometimes it's a "wait that made no sense, maybe they explain it later" way. General thoughts: -This is clearly what Russo wants shows to feel like, only done exponentially better than he ever managed to. It's predictable at times, but Heyman does a better job of making you gloss over the mistakes and there's less embarassingly awful crap. -Oh, and there are plenty of mistakes. For instance, the angle where someone 'put a hit out' on Dreamer, and it turns out to be... Judge Jeff Jones? And the guy who collects is... the wrestler he manages, Mike Awesome? What a terrible payoff. Or the way they had Sandman's wife be attacked by Rhino, then it gets dropped, then she gets re-attacked for the start of the actual feud. I mean, after the first attack Sandman would come out to help Dreamer vs Da Baldies (who did nothing to him) and he'd ignore Rhino who was out there for like half the segments. -Way too many people. I understand that ECW on TNN was just 1 hour and they couldn't cram in all the undercard acts, but said undercard acts had too many valets and managers. Simon Diamond had three or four people at one point, and he was maybe the least important person on the roster. I'm sure they weren't paid a ton but it was still something. How many big-breasted bimbos and hangers-on do you need? What the heck is "The Innovator of Silence" Lou E. Dangerously actually doing between his random five-second appearances? -The Sinister Minister makes for interesting TV because of his great look and personality, but after a while you're left wondering why he got so much TV time. People would come to him asking for favors despite his not having done anything, he wouldn't accompany Whipwreck to the ring for the first couple months, and the promos didn't always make sense. He'd recap a random angle, make a religious pun, and cackle for a minute. Really? There are guys who were on every PPV that struggled to get more than a couple minutes a month on TNN. Better time management! -Maybe it's because I don't remember every injury and every rumor, but it sure seemed like they didn't expain much of any comings-and-goings. For instance the Impact Players seemed to have left the company at one point, then they returned, then they were de-pushed, then they were back and have the tag titles, then Credible drops the belts and starts his crappy reign. Guys like New Jack and Balls Mahoney would go from every-week players to gone for a while. Certainly there were injuries but it would be nice to know why Wrestler X fell off the face of the earth. -There's a lot they did right. For instance, Rhino's semi-feral gimmick worked immediately. The shot of him going nuts wanting to take on the return of Sandman was so good that they added it into the intro the next week. Mike Awesome came out of nowhere (ie. he wasn't a regular) to become a focal point, and was very effective in his role. Maybe my favorite thing is when people would cross paths who weren't in the same milieu, for instance Awesome having a title shot against an unnamed opponent and having it be New Jack, leading to great reactions from everyone involved. And last but not least, how can anyone not love Gertner, with the dirty middle name thing and the little happy/mark-out dance. -The shoot comments are a mixed bag. Sometimes they work, like Cyrus telling Tajiri that if he doesn't behave he'll be back in Big Japan against Abby. Or, Joey pimping ECW Magazine and saying something along the lines of "the odds aren't good, like the odds of ever seeing Sabu in ECW again, but he's on the cover of the magazine anyway". But there are also times where they break kayfabe in an annoying, "look at us we're breaking the 4th wall we're so edgy" way. -What's the deal with them ragging on TNN? Was TNN management really overbearing, or was it just easy fodder for their mostly east coast urbanite fanbase? Definitely some good lines by Cyrus ("the ayatollah of rock-and-bollah", "I'll cancel this show and replace it with extreme sssssssshuffleboard!") but at a certain point you wonder why they're complaining so much about being given a show. -It's a shame they couldn't pay off so many things, like Awesome vs RVD, whatever the Dreamer vs Awesome endgame might have been, etc. Injuries and people jumping did not help. -The average match quality went downhill as 2000 went along. Too much of Fat Old Dusty, Credible, Raven, Da Baldies, matches with Jack Victory spending a significant amount of time in the ring, etc, and fewer notably good outings from the 'workrate' guys. Rhino was an effective character but not much as a worker (then again that was true of Taz). Overall it's very watchable, yet I can see why they were out of business soon.

Liger was never seriously considered as a heavyweight headliner that I know of. I mean, Sasaki is as short as it gets for Japanese heavyweight champs and he has 10CM on Liger, plus a thicker frame/build. They transitioned bigger/taller dudes to heavyweight status. Who knows what would have happened if Liger was 10-15CM taller and could pack on proportionately more muscle, but it is what it is.

Brock Lesnar destroying a bunch of people, especially Spike Dudley. It enabled him to go from nowhere to headlining Summerslam in a few months, even after they hit some roadblocks (too much time dealing with the Hardys and Stasiak). The first impression was just SO strong.

Liger was junior heavyweight superman starting on the January 4th Dome show. The big payoff was Liger jobbing to IWGP champ Sasaki in a short non-title match in the semi-main of the April 7th Dome show. At the end of the next tour Ohtani finally pinned Liger in a tag, and Takaiwa beat Liger for the junior title after he (Takaiwa) won BOSJ. Liger still got to be in the G-1. Before long he was pretty much regular Liger just in a black outfit. Liger vs Kanemoto, which started it: http://theditch.us/LigerVsKanemoto1-4-00.avi Liger & Minoru Tanaka vs Ohtani & Kanemoto, the tag I referenced: http://theditch.us/LigerTanakaVsOhtaniKanemoto4-30-00.avi

Gotta start somewhere!

What's interesting is that it isn't really different from their earlier '90s bouts, which tended to have the ending of "one guy eats big strikes and won't stay down until he's spent". It's just marginally better than the others and in a high-profile situation, so it's famous. I recommend that those who enjoyed this seek out the rest of their series.

Er... I think you have them confused with each other.

I like the fact that Tommy got her in the end in real life. I'll second the lack of love for Raven in ECW. A couple good moments, a couple good matches, but most of it has little redeeming quality. It's funny to watch him talk about how to work a match in hid ROH shoot series, with lots of great points that have absolutely nothing to do with what HE ever did in a match.

Dustin in WCW has been pimped as good for a while now.

I'm with you. I also don't like the way that they build and build and build to a Steamboat comeback that never happens.

Rumors have him facing Kane, Barrett or someone even below that this year because there wouldn't be any letdown if it was just a couple minutes long. So, not really 'headliners' (Kane is well behind even Batista), but then that's due to injury more than anything. Seems to me that the only 'real' match they have left that could be huge is Taker vs Cena. If Taker is up for it, they need to pull the trigger on that next year.

I'll add that the "Crowd of 50,000" is more like "there will be a wrestling ring at a festival attended by 50,000 people over the course of several days". Odds that there are ever more than a couple hundred people watching at any given time are very low.

Considering how overexposed Limp Bizkit was at the time, I'm amazed at how effective it was.

How would adding 15 more minutes have *helped* the match? Is there really that much more for them to have done?

The way Austin did some heelish things through the match, his busting out the cobra clutch (which he discarded when he turned face) and Rock doing the Bret Hart counter (the finish to the great Hart vs Austin Survivor Series '96 match), the callback to the WM13 finish. All of which hinted at the resurfacing of Austin's heel side, paying off with the finish.