What are you watching?

[rzombie1988]

I'm working on WCW SN 2-2-1991 and the Steiners have a squash match. First off, some guy named Paul Lee is the promotions 3rd Ric Flair style wrestler(Adding Flair and Landell). He looks completely like him except that he is small. During his match, his partner gets knocked out by a Rick Steiner clothesline. Rick then drags the guy to his corner to tag in Paul and literally holds his hand up so he can tag him. If a guy is out like that, just end the match.

[Cox]

Paul Lee was an SMW jobber mainstay, which makes sense as WCW and SMW used a lot of the same job guys (Larry Santo, Rip Rogers, etc). In fact, I think Killer Kyle lost his push for a while in SMW because he had done some WCW jobs and Cornette didn't want a WCW jobber looking strong on his TV.

[Dylan Waco]

Paul Lee runs an indy fed in North Georgia. His son went to school with my brothers. Needless to say he's as carny as they come

[El-P]

Loved those jobbers with pun names. Paul Lee. Jim Boss.

[Exposer]

Yes, I went to school with Paul Lee's son. I had weight training with him and we used to chop each other viciously in the locker room. I have been to a few of his shows but it's been awhile. They're decent for a southern indy fed.

[FLIK]

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/implode

 

im·plode (m-pld)

v. im·plod·ed, im·plod·ing, im·plodes

v.intr.

To collapse inward violently.

v.tr.

1. To cause to collapse inward violently.

2. To demolish (a building) by causing to collapse inward.

5/14/1999 Daisuke Ikeda vs Bob Backlund

 

So uhhhhhh, this was.....interesting. Backlund comes to the ring all happy & jolly, high fiving every fan he can, then the match starts and he switches to heel mode telling them to shut up. They do a few minutes of the typical style matwork you'd exspect then out of nowhere seemingly on a whim Ikeda implodes Backlund's face with the hardest headbutt i've ever seen ever. Backlund rolls outside and a river of blood pours out of his nose. After a few minutes of non action Ikeda goes outside to roll Backlund back in and continue the match. He goes for a really awkward pin and Backlund won't even let him get a 1 count so Ikeda gives him a couple of punts to the back at which point Backlund looks at him like "fuck this", he rolls back outside the ring, fans start booing, he stumbles around for a few seconds then collapses and the Dr or Ref calls for the bell and Ikeda's declared the winner. I watched this 2 times in a row and I still have no clue WTF I just saw.

 

[Kronos]

Watching Living Dangerously 2000 on 24/7. The production values put ROH to shame.

 

The first few minutes were misogynistic, homophobic, juvenile, and all around trashy. It does have a kind of embarrassing retro charm, though. Dusty/Corino bullrope match proves that even fat, slow, and blown up, Dusty was as compelling in-ring as ever. Doring/Roadkill vs Enforcers was a pretty decent straight wrestling match, and a nice change from the bloody brawl before it.

 

I think Roadkill is a great gimmick, and he's really over. Someone should bring that Amish Warrior character back on the Indy scene.

[Guest kowking]

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/implode

 

im·plode (m-pld)

v. im·plod·ed, im·plod·ing, im·plodes

v.intr.

To collapse inward violently.

v.tr.

1. To cause to collapse inward violently.

2. To demolish (a building) by causing to collapse inward.

5/14/1999 Daisuke Ikeda vs Bob Backlund

 

So uhhhhhh, this was.....interesting. Backlund comes to the ring all happy & jolly, high fiving every fan he can, then the match starts and he switches to heel mode telling them to shut up. They do a few minutes of the typical style matwork you'd exspect then out of nowhere seemingly on a whim Ikeda implodes Backlund's face with the hardest headbutt i've ever seen ever. Backlund rolls outside and a river of blood pours out of his nose. After a few minutes of non action Ikeda goes outside to roll Backlund back in and continue the match. He goes for a really awkward pin and Backlund won't even let him get a 1 count so Ikeda gives him a couple of punts to the back at which point Backlund looks at him like "fuck this", he rolls back outside the ring, fans start booing, he stumbles around for a few seconds then collapses and the Dr or Ref calls for the bell and Ikeda's declared the winner. I watched this 2 times in a row and I still have no clue WTF I just saw.

 

 

hahaha

 

do any of the sages here know the story?

[jdw]

Have no idea. Don't recall if the WON had anything on it. Backlund had been working with Bat-Bat the prior year and earlier in that same series/tour, including with Ikeda. Don't know if he worked with them ever again.

 

He did have a history of doing odd finishes. He had that extremely short finish with Takada on an early UWFi card.

 

John

[Dylan Waco]

 

This was actually fun to watch at 2am. I mean Bob Geigel is about 80 and looks like a poor mans Karate era Billy Graham, but this is Rip Rogers/Abby v. Mike George/Bob Geigel in Central States in 1987. Tell me that's not an entertaining car crash on paper?

[Tim Evans]

I'm watching some more USWA 1997. Up to June 1997 and it's getting really depressing. The ECW/USWA started and Dreamer is headed to town to take on Lawler. I was surprised at how little Lawler was on USWA tv at the time. They were down to about 2 house shows a week in small towns in Mississippi and Arkansas. The big feuds were Fake Razor vs Fake Diesel with Vince Mcmahon of all people sending in a interview bashing Fake Razor. He pretty much killed the Fake Razor character and said he didn't have enough talent to play the role and Scott Hall was better. Billy Travis was also in the territory feuding with Brian Christopher over guitars. He did a concert one week on TV and the next week, guys like HBK and Mankind were cutting promos on how bad it was. Mankind had a funny line that went like "I only have one ear but listening to you sing made me wish I lost both ears." Another big feud was Dutch Mantel vs Lance Russell/Stacy/Michael St. John. Dutch was a announcer for a couple weeks till Michael came back. This caused Dutch to turn heel and start feuding with the announcers while burying the product. It was very much like Lawler vs Cole. Almost too alike. I think people will get a kick out of some of this stuff on the 1997 Yearbook.

[Mad Dog]

Watching Chikara High Noon.

 

I really liked the Green Ant/Tursas match. It felt like a satisfying grudge match. The visual of Green Ant not being able to turn Tursas for the Texas Cloverleaf and kicking him in the back until he turned was pretty cool.

[Chess Knight]

Rey v Malenko from the German WCW show on 6/19/97

Thought this was really fucking good. I have more than one gripe with Malenko, but he looked good as hell here. I haven't really thought the rest of their matches hold up very well for a few reasons- I wasn't a fan of Malenko working the arm and letting it go nowhere at GAB, plus it was kinda boring. Instead of working Rey's body part in this one he just stretches him places and doesn't let him string anything together for the better part of the 16 minutes or so they worked with. Plus, Dean doesn't use that stupid Pull Up Head After Pinning Him spot. Rey was working from the bottom, so naturally he ruled. Loved his vocal selling. Like I said I'm not HUGE on their matches as a whole, so this is my favourite one they had.

 

Rey v Nash (Nitro 2/22/99)

This is sort of thing Nash should have been working his whole late WCW career. Rey was pretty obviously the guy making Nash's offense look great by bumping like a car crash victim, but even Nash's selling looked better than usual. The match going three minutes doesn't give Kev the time to completely blow up and start filling time with useless shit. The finish is fucking great; Nash gets him up in the powerbomb and Rey starts punching away with Kev wobbling before going down and being pinned. Million stars for a three minute match.

[Robert S]

I am currently going through WWF 1997 and the stuff so far is so hit and miss that is not even funny. For example yesterday I was watching the Feb. 24th Raw (ECW invasion episode). I guess most of the roster was touring Germany at that time and they had to fill the two hour time slot with a very thin roster. This gave us not just the surreal ECW invasion (who promoted Barely Legal in this show much better than WWF did with Wrestlemania) but they also booked a Sunny vs. Marlena arm wrestling contest without any backstory. Marlena no-selling the stretcher job (after the attack from Chyna) a week before was funny too.

[Jingus]

This is sort of thing Nash should have been working his whole late WCW career.

Considering that Nash spent the next month burying the fuck out of Rey and even unmasking him, I'd say that win didn't help Mysterio at all. Even on the rare occasions he did important jobs, Big Sexy always managed to somehow make them meaningless in hindsight.

[Chess Knight]

I meant he should have been kept to shortish matches instead of ten+ minute upper-card stuff, but WCW obviously weren't going to change the way they work things. It is shitty how the Nash/Rey stuff wound up, though.

[Dylan Waco]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP1vTE88e44

 

Was talking about Ozark Mountain Wrestling the other day with Bix and by random happenstance I managed to stumble upon this Colorado Kid v. Bull Pain Coward Waves the Flag match from the promotion here. It's JIP but what's shown is a ton of fun despite Rapada who is awful. Pain bleeds a fucking gusher, does a really nice splash off the ropes, plus a diving clothesline spot on the floor, takes a bump off a stairwell (with the announcer making an outrageous claim that the bump was 20 plus feet), et.

[Chess Knight]

Glacier/Ernest Miller v Mortis/Wrath from Bash at the Beach 97. I don't think I will ever see the stars align for a match with four more random dudes in it than this. SUPERKICK ON A CHAIR INTO A HEAD NEXT TO THE STEEL POST. Seriously an awesome sprint and it needs to be on the '97 yearbook.

[Jingus]

Mike Rapada is actually a perfectly competent worker in the right context. He's good enough at southern-flavored comedy, and makes a really fun arrogant cowardly heel. Nice guy in person, too. He simply was not ready for an NWA world title push, no matter what Bert Prentice thought.

[Dylan Waco]

Watch that match. Rapada is pretty not competent.

[Jingus]

Oh, he certainly had periods where he was pretty fucking awful. And back in 1995, Rapada was a young kid who had no idea what he was doing. And he was never worse than when Bert was trying to push him as the Von Erich-like superface. But if you can find any footage from Prentice's USA Championship Wrestling (which is kinda worth it anyway, because they had the world's weirdest collection of random misfits and slumming ex-WCW employees and OVW trainees and Memphis veterans) from 2001, Rapada had a nice little heel run where he'd turned on Lawler and become an egomaniacal douchebag.

[Exposer]

As I'm closing in on the 94 Yearbook and very excited to soon be getting the AWA set I've decided to embark on a difficult and challenging side project: 2003 WWE Raw. I'm insane and will watch almost anything. This is a testament to that. I've completed January and here are my thoughts so far:

 

 

January

• The Game is the heavyweight champ. His promos don’t last very long but their terrible regardless. Scott Steiner is his burial assignment of the month. This feud has been horrendous. They’ve had arm wrestling contests, posedowns, and weight lifting competitions. Apparently that’s mind games from the Cerebral Assassin. Their match at the Rumble was atrocious with dogshit booking.

• Evolution just started and it’s a mystery. Flair just wanders around in the background and makes weird facial expressions. Batista is kind of entertaining to watch in a strange way. Randy is too green at this point to make anything of him. Their ends of the show beatdowns are preposterous and too long.

• The tag team division is marred in controversy. Chief Morley is running around and feuding with the Dudley’s. Storm and Regal continuously get squashed and destroyed only to have a former porn star, a gay hair stylist, and two savage samoan thugs assault the Dudley’s to help them win. JR and King are also involved with some absurd little rivalry with Storm and Regal which is what started this whole nonsense. The Dudley’s had helped them beat Storm and Regal in a match.

• Bischoff is on notice after Vinnie Mac showed up and got all pissed off and gave him a month to “shake the very foundation of Raw” or else he’d be fired. Then Bischoff dropped the “bombshell” as he called it by inviting Steve Austin to return to Raw and show up at No Way Out.

• The divas division is good actually. Trish and Victoria had an extremely fun and to be honest good street fight on the last Raw of the month. Jazz has returned which is even better and killed Trish.

• The Jericho-Michaels stuff is pretty good. Jericho’s outfits are tremendous and hilarious. Michaels is not all that annoying here to be fair. I liked how Jericho sneak attacked Michaels at the Rumble. It furthered the feud well. Jericho also accidentally hit Stacy Kiebler with a chair in a match against Test. He didn’t apologize and was an assclown about it. Christian is his lackey and is pretty funny. I find goofy heel pre-TNA Christian to be fairly enjoyable.

• Booker T and Goldust are a fun tag team. They’ve had a couple of fun matches so far. I thought they had tremendous chemistry.

• D-Lo Brown starts up the black militancy shit or whatever. Teddy Long shows up as his advocate and sponsor and is awesome. D-Lo also had a pretty good match with Shane Helms as well.

• I’ve found Tommy Dreamer to be somewhat enjoyable. He comes out and plays his role well. Fun stuff.

• Jeff Hardy is all “conflicted” for some reason. He must have lost contact with a dealer or something. He’s not getting enough oxycodone and Mollie. He did have a random competitive match with Raven of all people on a show. That was totally bizarre.

• It is extremely odd to see such a lackluster program have competitive matches every week. And not just one competitive match, three or four. The last show of the month in Chicago was really fun and very good surprisingly. But the previous three shows and the Raw matches at the Rumble were pathetic.

[Victator]

This is sort of thing Nash should have been working his whole late WCW career.

Considering that Nash spent the next month burying the fuck out of Rey and even unmasking him, I'd say that win didn't help Mysterio at all. Even on the rare occasions he did important jobs, Big Sexy always managed to somehow make them meaningless in hindsight.

 

That was post unmasking. He did beat Rey at Uncensored, but needed Luger to do it. Rey also pinned Bam Bam Bigelow and Scott Norton cleanly.

[Chess Knight]

• The Game is the heavyweight champ. His promos don’t last very long but their terrible regardless. Scott Steiner is his burial assignment of the month. This feud has been horrendous. They’ve had arm wrestling contests, posedowns, and weight lifting competitions. Apparently that’s mind games from the Cerebral Assassin. Their match at the Rumble was atrocious with dogshit booking.

I watched the two Steiner/Trip matches recently to see if they hold...down... as the bottom-of-the-barrell crap I remember them being. Thoughts I posted:

 

Rumble- So I actually watched H/Steiner, and I'm really, really glad I did. First parts were boring as shit, but once they....um, 'picked it up' (which isn't the right term since it was slow and plodding), it just got legitimately funny. I'm literally telling the honest-to-God 100% truth when I say I laughed at some of the moments in this match. First time was the tombstone reversal which ended in this fucked up stunner/neckbreaker/diamond cutter move which Steiner sold by pretty much falling backwards. Trip nearly fell on top of him and I nearly fell off of my bed in laughter. Just when I'm about to get over that Steiner pretty much trips over while giving Trip the worst butterfly powerbomb thingy of all time. Match was a total mess; I thought they might go a good route when Ric brings Trip to leave the match, but then Steiner comes after them and Ric distracts the ref for Trip to hit Steiner with the belt. Except he didn't and Steiner hits him instead. They should have LET Trip hit Steiner and they should have done it in the first few minutes of a 12 minute match (it went like 20...). Steiner's selling was almost non-existant when Flair got cheapshots in. He was wrestling like a morbidly obese man that belongs on one of those motorised scooters. The both of them looked like shitty trainee wrestlers trying to emulate what they were seeing on TV, and it was just an awful match. But it was fucking hilarious. ****3/4. I'm watching the No Way Out re-match tomorrow.

 

 

No Way Out- Not as stupidly awesome as the historically shitty Rumble match, but pretty terrible/fantastic in it's own right. Trip has a bandaged leg going in and Steiner wastes little time going for it. Which was stupid. When he fired the first shot HHH backed away and looked like 'oh shit I better watch out,' only for Scotty for pound it for the next two minutes. They could have played a good theme, but I guess Steiner didn't want to waste time and become the wheezing huffing sack he was in the first match. The punches in this....oh Lord the punches. I'm not a guy who really thinks punches can make or break a match (they'd have to be amazing or miss by two feet), but they can certainly add or subtract. And these were the most light and feathery punches you'll ever see. When Trip first goes for the Pedigree Steiner gets out of it and throws the absolute worst one you'll see in some time. I thought it was actually kind if funny. Not as funny as the awkward-as-all-hell top rope....suplex...angle slam...thing. It wasn't even that, Steiner gets Trip in the wrong direction at first then just puts him on his shoulders and tilts backwards. Reminded me of Wile E. Coyote falling on a cliff really slowly while riding a rocket. They actually sort of play off the Rumble match; I didn't mention this when talking about that one, but Trip threw Hebner out of the ring and Hebner refused to DQ him. I can only imagine what people watching it live would have thought. "NOOO!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE.......PLEASE END THIS EARL" They sort of do the same thing here, but the crowd actually boo Hebner, mostly because they're Montrealions (Montrealites.....Montrealicians, Montrealasians, IDK) and are full of hate about the screwjob. Which is ironic since Trip played a bigger part in it than Earl did. Flair calls for Orton and Batista, and no joke, their selling is the best part of either Steiner/HHH match. Orton looked great for those 23 seconds. I thought it was nice that Steiner kicked out when HHH hit him with the belt following that, but there is literally nothing between that and the Pedigree that scores him the win. I don't understand who'd book that or why they did, but sweet ice cream on a cone it can get funny. Just terrible wrestling. Don't expect to find these matches funny like I did.

[Exposer]

Oh, I laughed while watching the Rumble match. Especially at the tombstone spot and Steiner's awful excuse for a butterfly suplex. Also, Steiner doesn't even hit Trips with the metal side of the belt. He just hits him with the leather strap part and The Game still blades. Amusingly terrible.