WCW ongoing thread

[Cox]

It wouldn't surprise me if the Japanese wrestlers just toned it down on their own. Muto was notorious for never giving a crap while working in the US after '89.

[Loss]

I'm also not doubting that Watts may have said that, but what is the source for that? I don't recall seeing it in a WON.

[Dylan Waco]

Muta was notorious for never caring period

[JerryvonKramer]

Think I read that in numerous Scott Keith reviews, so source would be RSPW or his ass.

[artDDP]

Think I read that in numerous Scott Keith reviews, so source would be RSPW or his ass.

[NintendoLogic]

I haven't pored through all the 1992 Observers, but in his writeup of that year's Bash, Dave says that Jushin Liger "was nowhere near his usual level but probably wasn't allowed to be anyway."

[Victator]

They hired a private investigator to follow him on the road and found him falsifying expense reports, and there you go.

Accusing Paul Heyman of a misdeed?

 

I remember as a kid being really excited for Doc and Gordy, because the magazines pushed them so hard.

[El-P]

Halloween Havoc actually drew really well and should have been much better than it was.

Well, I actually enjoys the build to Halloween Havoc quite a bit, especially after Clash 20. Things are getting better. Watts is supressing the ridiculous tope rope rule, although keeping a dq on dropping a knee to the throat. Why not. More good matches on TV, with Brad Armstrong being on fire all of a sudden, I guess a small push did that to him. Although Barbarian isn't a main event wrestler, the push they gave him with Cac at his side and all the vignettes was a strong job of making him look like a freak. Jake Roberts is awesome on interview to build to Sting match. Doc & Gordy superpush that was going nowhere is done, and I like how they planted the seeds oh heel Windham as soon as the post match celebration with Dustin after they win the belt. It's subtle and it works well. Rude vs Chono could be intriguing enough I guess as an interpromotionnal match, but they did a better match plugging Sasaki coming in. Brian Pillman as a heel is refreshing, and it's cool to see him tag with Austin for the first time, foreshadowing what's happening next in 93. The lighheavyweight is dead, Armstrong busting out his knee was the nail in the coffin. Watts still gets low-budget veterans on the roster though, as Tony Atlas filling in for Butch Reed is not exactly star power. I'm fearing the Eric Watts push, I wonder how it'll look in retrospect.

[FLIK]

Getting back into 92 WCW, amused to discover they were recycling the jobber matches.

 

By pure coincidence I watched an ep of Main Event from early Feb today then went back and watched an episode of World Wide from a month earlier and they had the exact same Brian Pillman vs Chuck Coats and Big Josh/Van Hammer vs Jack Savage/Jim Boss matches.

 

*EDIT*

 

Holy shit, same episode of World Wide features a Mr Hughes match whear he's NOT wearing his glasses.....didn't know such a thing existed...this just looks wrong....

[shoe]

Getting back into 92 WCW, amused to discover they were recycling the jobber matches.

 

By pure coincidence I watched an ep of Main Event from early Feb today then went back and watched an episode of World Wide from a month earlier and they had the exact same Brian Pillman vs Chuck Coats and Big Josh/Van Hammer vs Jack Savage/Jim Boss matches.

 

*EDIT*

 

Holy shit, same episode of World Wide features a Mr Hughes match whear he's NOT wearing his glasses.....didn't know such a thing existed...this just looks wrong....

They also did this on occasion with main event matches.

 

Bobby Eaton & Steve Austin vs. Brian Pillman & The Z-Man (Main Event 1/26/92)

 

Steve Austin & Bobby Eaton vs. Brian Pillman & The Z-Man (Pro 11/30/91) 

 

Same exact match.

[Bix]

Holy shit, same episode of World Wide features a Mr Hughes match whear he's NOT wearing his glasses.....didn't know such a thing existed...this just looks wrong....

At the first Bash house show of '92, JYD headbutted him, shattered the glasses, and helped him get to the hospital to save his eye. Hughes turned face, became The Big Cat again, and teamed with JYD out of mutual respect.

[PeteF3]

Holy shit, same episode of World Wide features a Mr Hughes match whear he's NOT wearing his glasses.....didn't know such a thing existed...this just looks wrong....

At the first Bash house show of '92, JYD headbutted him, shattered the glasses, and helped him get to the hospital to save his eye. Hughes turned face, became The Big Cat again, and teamed with JYD out of mutual respect.

 

And this was all part of a Watts move both on-camera and behind the scenes: wrestlers all had to wear regulation-style gear as opposed to wrestling in street clothes (though I suppose you then have to question why Cactus Jack got to keep his shirt).

[Al]

I'm guessing someone saw Foley without his shirt and common sense prevailed.

[FLIK]

At the first Bash house show of '92, JYD headbutted him, shattered the glasses, and helped him get to the hospital to save his eye. Hughes turned face, became The Big Cat again, and teamed with JYD out of mutual respect.

Ah, I always remembered Hughes doing an angle whear someone headbutted his glasses into his eye but i'd completely forgot who did it & what it led to.

[FLIK]

World Wide 2/8/1992 Sting vs Vader

1st time they wrestled and they had awesome chemistry from the start. Only got 6 mins but they're throwing bombs the whole time. Sting german suplexing Vader is damn impressive

[El-P]

I blame the wrestlers more than Watts for how that show turned out.

After Finally rewatching Halloween Havoc, I have to disagree. The show sucked, and the booking was a large part of why it sucked. There was no reason to book yet another 30 minute matches between Windham/Dustin & Doc & Austin with an awkward screwy finish involving two referees. Especially when the same kind of finish would happen in the NWA title match, which was unexplicably terrible. Chono was hurt at this point, but still, I can't explain to myself how Rude and Chono can have a MOTYC a few months before and have such a stinker there. Even with Chono's injury. I have no idea if the rumour of Watts telling them to not show off the boys is true or not, but still it's bizarre to see Rude do so less after being so damn good all year long. Plus again the booking was confusing, as Madusa was accompanying him depsite having turned herself face a few minutes earlier by kicking the shit out of Paul E.. The WCW title match showed that Simmons was definitly a bad choice as a champ, and Barb a bad choice as a challenger, the match had no aura at all and they worked like a throwaway TV match. Nothing bad with what they did, but Simmons just didn't had it, couldn't work a compelling match and just didn't work as a champ. Same thing for Jake vs Sting, after all the great promos and promises of violence, the gimmick killed the idea of having an intense match, and Jake just wasn't capable of working a great or even interesting main event match at this point. So, again, bad idea to put him in this spot. All talk, no walk. Not to mention Watts building WCW around hardcore *wrestling* having a main event ending on a guy being bit by a cobra just looked out of place. So, it did have the best build for any big Watts shows thus far, but the matches showed most of them were a bad idea to begin with.

[El-P]

Erik Watts dominating Bobby Eaton while both Paul E. and Michael Hayes are at ringside. Then Erik Watts winning the match by pinning... Michael Hayes. Holy shit, not only Erik Watts was a shitty overpushed rookie but Bill Watts booked shit that Vince Russo would do. Wrestling is back. Watts was a tool (Bill, I mean).

[Loss]

While I like the Watts run more than most, this time period was in general proof that either:

 

(a) He was out of touch with changes that had happened in wrestling since 1986.

( He was always doing stuff like this, but people chose not to see it.

 

Maybe a little of Column A, little of Column B.

[El-P]

Most probably. Watts has always been overated anyway. Mid-South isn't the sacred land of the territories era, and UWF in particular was not that great.

One of the annoying trait of Bill Watts was his way to put himself in front of the camera for no good reason and try to get himself over to the hardcore fans especially, with his bullshit about true wrestling. It gets especially annoying when he's on camera trying to deny the fact that he's *pushing* his own son to the moon. Watching Erik Watts get a win over Arn Anderson when he should be beating jobbers in the curtain jerker match is infuriating, watching him challenging Rick Rude is just stupid.

And man, I HATE the new music themes WCW uses from December on. They had perfectly fine themes for Rude, Steamboat, Cactus Jack, and now I get to hear those lame generic tunes with stupid lyrics. I think Michael Hayes helped produced this, hich wouldn't surprised me, he ruined the Freebird mystique enough with his stupid songs when they should only have uses Freebirds.

[Cox]

It became tougher for them to use Freebird as entrance music once WCW went from popular music to the more generic stuff. I just don't think a redone version of Freebird would have been as effective as the redone version of the MX theme, so I think using Badstreet USA worked considering the circumstances. I have no defense of "I'm A Freebird, What's Your Excuse," though.

[Matt D]

Most probably. Watts has always been overated anyway. Mid-South isn't the sacred land of the territories era, and UWF in particular was not that great.

One of the annoying trait of Bill Watts was his way to put himself in front of the camera for no good reason and try to get himself over to the hardcore fans especially, with his bullshit about true wrestling.

It'd probably be way more annoying if he didn't draw like crazy whenever he did that. Mid-South is a thousand times stronger anytime Watts is on camera or announcing. He was singularly excellent at getting the storylines over in the most passionate way possible and he knew his audience and spoke directly to their hearts.

 

It's not MY heart. It's definitely not your heart. But it's weird to go after something so effective like that.

[Loss]

Yes. Mid South Wrestling is not perfect by any means, but it was from my perspective the one that produced the most interesting television and had the most good matches.

[El-P]

Most probably. Watts has always been overated anyway. Mid-South isn't the sacred land of the territories era, and UWF in particular was not that great.

One of the annoying trait of Bill Watts was his way to put himself in front of the camera for no good reason and try to get himself over to the hardcore fans especially, with his bullshit about true wrestling.

It'd probably be way more annoying if he didn't draw like crazy whenever he did that. Mid-South is a thousand times stronger anytime Watts is on camera or announcing. He was singularly excellent at getting the storylines over in the most passionate way possible and he knew his audience and spoke directly to their hearts.

 

It's not MY heart. It's definitely not your heart. But it's weird to go after something so effective like that.

 

Well, there's a difference between being super effective with his core audience in Mid-South in the 80's and being a total delusionnal dated dickhead on WCW TV trying to explain why you're not actually overpushing your own shitty worker of a son though.

I like Mid-South a good deal, but it's not as great as it was pimped to be at one time I think. Especially UWF TV which could be grating at times. Of course there was also a good deal of really great stuff there.

[El-P]

It became tougher for them to use Freebird as entrance music once WCW went from popular music to the more generic stuff. I just don't think a redone version of Freebird would have been as effective as the redone version of the MX theme, so I think using Badstreet USA worked considering the circumstances.

I dunno. I think Badstreet was a rather shitty theme. Doesn't help of course that the Freebirds were often a rather shitty team too at this point.

 

I have no defense of "I'm A Freebird, What's Your Excuse," though.

Well, they have no excuse.

[El-P]

The last part of Watts tenure, first two months of 1993? was much better, and some of the best TV since the Dangerous Alliance days in early 92, only with better booking of the angle and build of the big PPV. Regularly good matches on TV, some new fresh blood like Benoit, Scorpio, pushing Austin & Pillman as a tag team (still not yet named Hollywood Blondes), pushing heel Windham hard (and he was the best wrestler on TV at this point), a really efficient build for Vader vs Sting too. The US title tournament was good, with the surprising final of Steamboat vs Dustin. It's too bad we never get a true finish to Dustin vs Windham, nor more of a following to Dustin vs Steamboat as they got more agressive during the return bout.

On the flip side, Maxx Payne was rather a cool character, but he was nothing as a worker, and really didn't need to be pushed that way. The tag team division outside of Steamboat/Douglas vs Austin/Pillman was getting nonexistent with only JTTS tag teams like Z-Man & Johnny Gunn (who didn't look very good), the Wrecking Crew, Shangai Pierce & Tex Slazenger (who were no good either).

It's a shame Superbrawl III bombed because it was a really good PPV. The arrival of Davey Boy I'm sure is what encouraged WCW to turn Regal who debuted as a white meat english babyface. Flair coming back was both exciting but also left some questions to what direction the company was gonna take, they needed to push younger stars already at this point. Sting vs Vader was an awesome feud, and Sting was really peaking on every level, and having Flair throw back into the mix was taking things back a few years, especially with him and Ole back on the booking sheet. Anyway, Watts tenure had debuted very badly, then took off around Halloween Havoc and really got going by 1993. He was cut short when he was getting much better. The post Flair period in WCW delivered two really good moments, from Halloween Havoc 1991 with Rude showing up to Watts debut, and from December 1992 /January 1993 when Watts finally got it.