Matt D

I think he was being more general there, to be fair.

To be fair to myself, I ran down the list at Graham's site quickly. To be unfair to myself, I knew all those things instantly just by seeing them listed again. To me, given how few really good WWF TV matches there are, the MSG (and earlier the Boston, Toronto, Philly) house show matches are a real treasure trove. The Smash vs Steamboat match is one of Darsow's two best singles WWF matches, the other one being an 92 match with Bret. Even on the last taped MSG card, there's a surprisingly good Michaels/Snuka match. But yeah, if I have a niche it'd probably be early 90s WWF. I suppose in some workrate grand scheme of things, that's kind of sad, but at least I bring something different to the table. You would shake your head sadly if you asked me how Misawa or Kawada matches I've seen in my life.

there are a lot of neat/weird MSG things in 1991 WWF. The weird botched Paul Roma/Shane Douglas match. The Koko vs Tito match where Koko worked heel. Warrior vs Savage in the cage where poor Sherri got brutalized. Harts vs Earthquake+Bravo which isn't as good as it could have been. Kato vs Michaels and Tanaka vs Jannetty Rockers + Virgil vs Orient Express + Fuji Steamboat vs Haku Steamboat vs Smash The WEIRD Fuji vs Heenan mini feud And that's just the first half of the year.

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.

Then there was a Prime Time match with Bravo. I thought there was a interview leading up to Mania but I was thinking of Hercules leading up to WM VI vs Earthquake instead.

Also, don't they not have to pay him the $5 million if he skips out early? Just a fraction of that.

The Valentine turn is actually pretty fun for what it's worth. As sort of a minor footnote.

If they were really writing Brock out with this, legit, they would never, ever, ever do it by having him hurt HHH like that. That's not how WWE would write Brock out. They'd have him attack Hunter, and get pedigreed for his trouble. If there was even a tiny chance that he wasn't going to be back, HHH wouldn't have put himself in that vulnerable position last night. Why are we even spending so much time talking about this?

I kind of like the idea of using Brock, who won't be sticking around for more than a year tops, to put over as many of their guys as possible. They need to rebuild and be thinking a few years into the future and nothing else has worked. I probably just wouldn't have started with Cena. I guess they were trying to have their cake and eat it too. If he was sticking around I'd use Sheamus to fight for his buddy Triple H here and build to a big grudge match for the belt, and have Sheamus actually win it. Then, if Brock's going to go, he can go. Right now I don't think they gained all that much from him.

People Power.

Ok I hate WWE's tag team title booking over the last few years. Some one should get a count of how many times a team won a non title match to set up a title match at the PPV(especially one they lost). It's not a bad angle in and of itself, if it's done once every few years. But they were doing it almost every month for a while.

Great, now I will have to come up with some bullshit response to my wife for why I'm laughing at the computer.

Yeah, Sherri was great.

Let's see how they can build Tensai out of this too.

Don't even joke. Lesnar's going to come out and Sid whoever's in the ring first, probably Miz and Kofi or something.

Can anyone prove otherwise on that? Was that spot never used in the early-mid 70s?

You were difficult even then, huh?

I forget his name but Sean Mooney was on his honeymoon for this taping.

Meta reactions like that are interesting. For instance, I liked Punk vs Henry (1) more specifically because I was frustrated Punk didn't sell his back in the WM Punk/Jericho match. The second I saw him do that, I sort of marked out for it because it was so blatantly different than what had just bugged me.

It really wasn't a huge TV feud. I'm sure there were event center promos and head inserts for matches, but yeah, no big blowoff. After Mania, Dibiase was with Virgil and Kerry was paired with Warlord for the next many months. I don't think there was any tv angle to set up that. He sort of floundered against Skinner, Berzerker, and Hercules (and more often than you would think) Kato (and Flair on the Europe tour) after that, until getting suspended in February 92 after his arrest.

They feuded from January to March, all the way to Mania, actually. A lot of the later matches had Virgil in Kerry's corner.

British Bulldogs were really bad about it. They took way too much of the match as their own.

Traditionally do people outside the top echelon of WWE get motivations? Tensai is pretty easy to me. He was a former WWE wrestler. He went to Japan. He destroyed a bunch of guys there. Now he's back to destroy a bunch of guys here.... also he has a worshipper.

Vic's noted that Umaga had a lot of time to work dark matches and get the gimmick down first, and I think that Albert probably needed that. The hand motions are pretty embarrassing.

I think the general consensus is that he needs some more time to get the gimmick down. Personally, I wish they would let him go crazy with his moveset. I NEVER think that Movez is the answer, but this is probably the exception. Right now Henry is doing the power stuff so much more impressively on the same show and over on smackdown Skip is bringing the crazy intensity. Tensai is sort of stuck in the middle with only the senton to see him through. Really, he needs to be on the opposite show of Henry though.