KB8

I watched this a few months ago and really loved it. Agreed that Cornette is awesome here; I think at one point he actually says Shawn fondled her most private parts, which had me rolling. Vince being in the ring pretty much gives Lawler carte blanche to rip on Michaels and basically say whatever he pleases.

Yeah, there's an Eddy/Jericho v Faces of Fear match from the Nitro after Superbrawl '97 that is immensely fun, primarily because the cruisers are willing to be tossed around by by guys that are good at tossing you around. I watched a pretty big chunk of a "Best of the WCW Cruiserweights" comp between the time I watched the tag and now, and there wasn't a single thing on it that I thought was better than the tag match.

Emilio's look around this time was awesome. Like a lucha Bruiser Brody.

Haven't seen this one, so I don't know how long it goes, but their 2/97 match is fantastic and runs about 17 minutes, IIRC. Although I haven't seen that one in a long-ass time, either.

Going through the listings for this, these skits were things I was really looking forward to seeing again, pretty much just for the petty hilariousness of it all. I mean, it's not like I noticed there was a Billionaire Ted skit on the set and that sold me on buying it more than something like Savage/Finlay from Nitro, but still.

There's also a really good Scorp/Bagwell v Austin/Pillman match from 5/8 that I watched for the SC poll, although I don't remember which show it was on unfortunately. Thought it was a good shout for US tag of the year.

WCW TV The Cactus Jack/Paul Orndorff street fight from the 1/10 episode of the Main Event is a really stiff little brawl (think it goes about 8 minutes) with a great post-match beatdown on Foley, his face turn, and then a revenge mauling by Foley with a shovel. Whole segment is about 15 minutes and it's really, really good. Chris Benoit/Brad Armstrong from the 1/13 Clash of the Champions is a really good match that I prefer to a lot of the more highly pimped stuff from the Nitro Cruiserweight era. Probably an obvious one. FROM WILL'S REGAL SET: Windham/Regal from the 4/24 episode of the Power Hour is awesome with Windham being gritty and pissed off to shit. Definitely the best match I've seen from babyface Regal. That's probably another obvious one, though. I'm a big fan of the Regal/Steamboat feud that started in the fall. Their 8/1 match from the Main Event was a ton of fun and their rematch a week later (so 8/8), which is no DQ, was even more so. Probably not anything essential, but both are really good sub-ten minute matches. Their Fall Brawl match is the one that I'd expect to definitely make the set, but they have a match on the 9/25 episode of Saturday Night that has Steamboat going postal and bringing the hate and Regal has some brutal looking strikes right to the bridge of Steamboat's nose in it. Really liked it. Their handheld from 8/19 is also something no doubt worth looking at. I watched a few months back, but I have some stupid problem with handhelds that seems to leave me incapable of focusing on them, and thus I barely remember any of it. Regal/Arn Anderson from the 10/19 episode of Saturday Night is also really good. Goes 15 minutes and it's something a fan of those guys would probably like quite a bit. I am and I did, at least. Regal/Johnny B. Badd from the 11/10 Clash of the Champions - watched this last night and thought it was a blast. Wouldn't be surprised if I liked it way more than most, though, and I wouldn't go to bat for it as being totally essential, anyway. There's obviously a ton of other WCW TV stuff, but I haven't seen most of it in so long that I wouldn't know what to make of it at this point.

JEEZUS, that Piper segment is incredible. What a crazy motherfucker. Definitely hope you keep this up, too. Been years and years since I saw that Shinzaki/Gannosuke match, but I might have to give it a re-watch soon. Mostly remember them kicking the shit out of each other, though.

I obviously don't have this set yet, but I did watch this match last night and rambled about it in my blog earlier today. I'm a pretty huge fan of it. Okay so I don't know the exact story between these two, but I know there was some real-life drama that had something to do with Nancy and, I think, an affair with Chris. Never really bothered to look into it so I'm not gonna bother talking about it here when it all boils down to these two HATING each other, anyway. I mean this is serious hatred. Sullivan is a guy that I've never really payed much attention to as a worker other than that appearance on the Memphis set and, of course, this feud with Benoit. But I watched two matches vs. Benoit last night and I came away thinking "Man, that guy is great at going to the eyes." Eye gouges, eye pokes, eye rakes, it all looks real nasty. It's probably because he's tossed the "working" aspect out the window and he's really trying to gouge Benoit's eye out, but still. At one point there's a close up of him sticking a thumb in his eye and there's nothing half-assed about this. Looks like he's really trying to get it in there and spoon out the eyeball. I'll choose to read this as him going the extra mile to make it look real since they in amongst the crowd and everything. I'd be wrong, but it won't be the first time. There's basically tonnes of instances of Sullivan doing shit - not limited to going for the eyes - that one could choose to read as him being an unprofessional douche. But then again Benoit is banging his wife. Is he? I don't know. Benoit goes along with it all and seems harrowingly willing to take as hideous a beating as Sullivan wants to give him, and from time to time he'll decide to give it right back. It's probably also the definitive "Dusty spazzes out on commentary" show as he is just totally hilarious at several points. Starts out with Benoit clotheslining Sullivan right in the face as Sullivan's making his way towards the ring, and then they just start punching the crap out of each other. Before long (like, a minute) they're in the crowd and heading up the steps. There's no "I'll grab your hair and walk you wherever I want to take you while you do nothing about it" bullshit like you see in Japan all the time these days; they're punching each other in the face and FIGHTING their way up the step. Then they wind up in the bathroom. Benoit really takes a horrendous beating. Sullivan eats a shot off a cubicle door and kinda gets thrown into a wall, but Benoit's taking full throttle shots to the head with a cubicle door, getting launched into walls and repeatedly having his eyes poked and gouged at. Dusty drops this corker: "Taskmaster is in his element, right here in the john, if you will, right here in Baltimore, Maryland." Six stars. Then Sullivan tries to stick Benoit's head in a urinal and we get the classic "HEAD FIRST IN THE COMMODE!" line from Schiavone. Any other time and that's bound to be the line of the night, but a few seconds later Dusty spies some woman and he completely flips. "THERE'TH A LADEH! THERE'TH A LADEH IN THE MEN'TH BATHROOM! RIGHT HERE! THERE ITH A LADEH IN THE MEN'TH JOHN RIGHT HERE IN BALTIMOW. *silence...silence* CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT?! SHE DONE STOPPED AWF! SHE GOT TO GET SOME RELIEF HERE, BABEH!" A million trillion stars. Back outside the bathroom they have this incredible fist fight and Sullivan is just railing off and cracking Benoit with total barfight punches right to the eye. There was one flurry that would've made Tenryu hot under the collar. This is also where they start fighting over a garbage can and Dusty's off and running about plunder. "Dey be gettin' plunder, Toneh." We're more than half way through the match at this point and you could start an honest to goodness drinking game for every time Dusty says plunder. Back down the stairs they go and Sullivan just heaves Benoit down the steps. Twice. "Boy you tawk about bad intentions in two guys' eyeballth." First time looks nasty enough, but the second time is borderline ridiculous. I mean Sullivan clearly does not give a shit. Then he goes ahead and stomps flush on Benoit's dick, just because. Dusty - "Well, uh... might'been a little low." They've really beat the piss out of each other by the time they make it back to ringside, but what's great is that they haven't once bothered to attempt a pin. And they're still hucking chairs and crotching the other on the guard rail right up until Benoit brings a table out from under the ring. "We got sut'm comin' out right here. Goin' for plunder. There's no plunder sayfe!" And then Benoit throws his plunder at Sullivan's head. Benoit sets the table up across the top turnbuckle and Dusty's all "He's tryin'a get his plunder right, nah mean?" Finish is basically a superplex from a raised platform, but even that move looks way more nasty than usual. Post-match Benoit continues the beating and Arn Anderson hits the scene. They've been teasing Arn turning on the Horsemen and joining the Dungeon of Doom for a little while and the crowd doesn't know what to make of it when Arn grabs his stable mate and tosses him off of Sullivan. Crowd thinks he's with Sullivan and Hart... then he punts Sullivan in the ribs and the crowd POPS. "This place is gone crazeh! Somebody git mah medicine." Mine too, Dream. Mine too.

I was actually planning on making a decent sized order from Alfredo pretty soon, anyway. Thanks.

Can't believe I missed this before. Goes without saying that I like Estrada way more than you do, so I'm really interested in checking this bad boy out. Care to point me in the right direction? Write-up was excellent, too, btw.

What did you guys think of the Adonis/Fujinami match from 6/22/84, btw? IIRC it was getting pimped a fair bit a few years ago, and while I was thining about some of the more highly regarded matches that never made the set, this one popped into my head. Then again, I might have been imagining this "praise". This is in no way a complaint, btw. Nor is it a roundabout way of bitching about something being left off. At all.

The 4/19/84 gauntlet match may be the best thing I've ever seen. The whole thing went, what, an hour and 20 minutes all told? Fucking nuts that there literally wasn't one moment where I wasn't 100% interested. If anything bumps that from my top spot I'll be surprised. Can't stress how much I've been loving this set, btw. Through five discs it looks like it might actually surpass the Mid-South set as my favourite wrestling purchase ever.

I did this at the weekend with the entire series and liked the Feb. match a lot more on re-watch. Gotta say, though, the Choshu/Fujinami series is something I'm loving a Hell of a lot on the first watch. I only just got done with the 4th disc, but Choshu is probably my favourite guy on the set already. Either him or Andre.

So I got this on Saturday and motored through the first disc over the weekend. I enjoyed everything, even though I wasn't as big a fan of the Hansen/Inoki stuff as some were. Almost unreal to think there's still 14 discs worth of this to see. Can't wait to get to the UWF invasion stuff. I'm pretty much sold on Fujinami, too. So yeah, forget the complaints about matches that should've been included and all that; Will, Phil and Childs are machines for watching as much stuff as they did to get this final 175.

I've been using OJ's blog as a Lucha bible over the last few months. Really is fantastic. His hatred of Jerry Estrada makes for tremendous little bits of reading. I'm still hoping one day he goes about reviewing Casas/Dandy from 7/3/92 and Panther/Atlantis from 8/9/91. I was thinking about maybe starting one up myself at some point as well.