DocSarpolis

…WCW in ’94 never quite captured the feel for whatever reason (erratic color palate for one), but as far as booking and talent and performance is concerned this is all right out of NWA-JCP’s heyday. This whole segment and this whole feud feels like 1986. ….Dusty Rhodes quotes Apocalypse Now, “Are you an assassin? Or are you an errand boy?” Fantastic.

GOOD. It means they aren't rushing it. It means they heard something was good and worth tracking down. I've been waiting for this set since the August release date, but if the delays just mean it will be even better...so be it. Looking forward to it.

brief additions to the above comments: I love Bret’s facial expression after Kid takes him down with the arm drag. Such a great job of illustrating both the surprise and the being impressed. As I mentioned during the King’s Court that built this match, I loved the dynamic of babyface v. babyface and underdog v. company ace. And all of that plays out beautifully in this match. Kid insisting on out wrestling the ace. Bret goes for a snapmare to counter a hammerlock, and Kid rolls through and keeps it on. Awesome. And it’s a stiff elbow to the jaw that eventually gets Bret on offense and maybe Kid is starting to learn that he will have to do more than wrestle. As the tension escalates there’s a segment where Bret throws some European uppercuts to kid in the corner and it’s serious shades of Regal-Larry Z with its stiffness.

I thought this was excellent as build for a TV match. Lawler does a spectacular job of stringing along the interview to tell the story of the Bret-Kid match up. It's babyface vs. babyface and company ace v. company underdog. So, they establish that Kid respects Bret, refuses Lawler's recommendations to rely on underhanded tactics, and will try his best to out maneuver the champion.

I've been watching a shit-ton of Great American Bashes and am curious what other people's opinions on the 98 show are. In particular, what are people's thoughts on the Finlay-Booker match that Jeff listed here? I tend to think that the best matches from that show are Booker-Benoit and Eddie-Chavo. And that X-Pac-Jarrett match is fantastic. Has to be among the more underrated matches from WWF since it was on a loaded card with more trendy stars. Best match on the show and I'd be happy with a video package set to 'Highway to Hell' that I imagine aired on TV rather than the main event itself.

The edit job here jumps the gun as we miss the Flair-Col. Robert Parker confrontation where Flair further solidifies his tweener role as he decks Fuller and takes the briefcase full of cash. That was after this match right?

Yeah, it's too bad we didn't get clipped versions of the incredible Rude-Hase matches or a longer jip'd version of this so that the back bump was in there. That back bump is among the defining moments of 1994 pro wrestling and should have made the set.

…I had remembered thinking this was great, but noticeably inferior to the ’89 run. I felt like it was pushing it to put these two on top at this stage of their careers. How silly is that? Flair would go on to continue to deliver quality bouts for years and while Steamboat would retire soon, it was due to injury and not before he would have a handful of classics v. Austin. Looking back, this match is fantastic. The crowd is clearly a bit burned out after a fantastic night of wrestling, so they’re a little down for the mat exchange stuff, but they come alive whenever there’s chopping or the occasional big spot. And these two know exactly when to kick it into gear. The moment they feel a yawn from the crowd you get a thunderous chop to wake everyone up. The moment you feel the fans fearing a 45-min. 1970s style contest on a night when they saw Vader-Boss, Buck-Dustin, and Nastys-Jack/Payne beat the dog shit out of each other, they take it to the floor and bump. Some spots that stick out for me are when Flair goes for his knee drop and Steamboat catches the knee before contact. I first saw that spot in January of ‘87 when Windham did it to Flair and I popped like crazy at the time and it instantly became a favorite spot for me. Also, there’s 1 exchange where they get mixed up a bit and Flair ends up hitting a clothesline. You know you’re watching a couple of pros when they’re calling everything in the ring and just letting it happen rather than sticking to a script. When you go at it this way there’s no such thing as a botch. You roll with the punches. That’s when wrestling is at its best. It should be organic. Sure, you should have a planned story to tell, but the meat of it should be called on the fly. Anyhow, he hits that clothesline and the crowd erupts because Flair never hits clotheslines. One of those gifts that come from a match called on the fly and a lot of Flair’s matches delivered those little moments. 30 min. in and the fans are with it as they start elevating the action, but the fans are now pretty solidly behind Flair. Fuzzy finish here as there’s a double pin and they let Flair keep the belt since it’s technically a draw. I agree with that and the fans were pleased to see Flair keep the belt. I think if they pulled an angle and held up the title that the fans would have shat on the non-finish and it would have hurt an otherwise incredible show. Also, again, I have to think there was more of a celebration and closing here and I wish Goodhelmet would have included it. This is 1 of the greatest discs of wrestling ever. And on a disc with 3 MOTYC from Japan in 1 night and a Flair-Steamboat classic....I think my favorite match of the disc is Buck-Dustin.

I think everyone needs to re-watch this. The presentation...the setup....the outfits....the characters....the dialogue. Shawn is a male prostitute and Diesel is his 'management' (bodyguard/pimp). Razor was a recent customer who skipped out on the bill and the word is out on the street that Shawn/Diesel have gone soft. This is Shawn & Pimp back on the street making it clear that these transgressions will not go unpunished in an attempt to save face. Hey man, I'm not trying to juxtapose any subtext here. I just watched the segment and that's what he said. With that in mind....hilarious.

This is going to be an awesome thread. Thanks for starting it. I'll be watching along as you review stuff since i have both 'Hep C Hero' and 'The Tommy Rich Story' and have yet to make the time to sit down and watch them all the way through. Hopefully this thread also serves as a point of reference for an eventual comprehensive Tommy Rich comp by Goodhelmet. Tommy Rich was a guy I didn't care about 1 way or the other when I started watching wrestling in the mid 80s. In recent years, as I've caught up with older stuff, he's rapidly shot up to being 1 of my top 20 favorite guys ever. The Rich v. Lawler stuff from Schneider Comp. V.24 is just out of this world fantastic. His match vs. Steve Corino from this year is a legit MOTYC for me even. Sure, it's largely a carry job by Corino, but Tommy is still there to bleed and punch and that's all we need from Tommy Rich in the ring in 2012.

Oh man, I wish this was the 1st thing on the set. It would have been such a classier open than that shitty Razor int. Plus, with Flair's title win being perhaps the major development closing out 1993 it would have made sense as an open.

I also enjoyed this. Simple, but compelling working of holds rather than the Randy Orton 'rest' hold. It was interesting watching this soon after seeing Sheamus-Bryan from 'Extreme Rules'. Among the qualities of the latter that overjoyed me was that Bryan was able to execute a very old-school style match in that 1st fall with lots of hold based work and it got over like crazy. You just don't see hold-based work get over very often these days in front of that large of a crowd. And this Sting-Austin match is indicative of the kind of match that you probably just wouldn't see on TV from a major company today. And that's a shame, because it served its purpose. It was compelling and they didn't blow through moves, so if the two were to end up having a series of PPV singles match down the line, there would still be a ton of stuff for them to do that they had yet to do.

An unfortunate way to start the set. Outside of the highhlights of the HBK attack on Razor from RAW, this was the shits.

God damn the storytelling in this is extraordinary. Simple stories told with outstanding execution. I find myself dreading when the next match/segment that comes up on a disc is puro. I love puro, but I'm finding that on these sets I'm most interested in: a) Seeing a lot of the great angles from USWA & SMW for the 1st or 2nd time. B ) fondly remembering what was going on in WCW at the time. c) less fondly remembering what I saw as a kid in WWF So, when an AJPW match pops up I'm assuming I'm about to see a 30 min. match that will require great attention because it's probably of the highest quality and I may have not seen it before or saw it once. That said, when I actually just sit and watch it I can't get over just how much it exceeds my expectations. I know this stuff is great. I've seen a ton of it. However, watching a match like this (as well as the Hansen-Kawada match that preceded it) I'm just amazed at the level of storytelling here. Perhaps when I 1st saw all of this stuff years ago I was caught up by the action. It was so much more high impact and stiff than what most of us were used to, so perhaps I didn't grasp the storytelling. Anyhow, yeah, this was amazing.