Grimmas Posted March 27, 2015 Report Share Posted March 27, 2015 Listened to this earlier in the week. The big thing that I took from it was the collective cynicism about the severity of Michaels back injury in 1998. Never really heard that before - is it a widespread belief? I had never heard that before. Watch the match, Michaels could barley move. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JaymeFuture Posted March 27, 2015 Author Report Share Posted March 27, 2015 Kieran made a case for it on the show, basically that he's a powerball bumping his ass off for the first half of the match taking crazy bumps, and it's as soon as he took over on offense, that's when he began selling and playing for sympathy to make it more about him and less about Austin, including screaming at the announcers about how tough he is. Austin alluded to issues with how the match went on his DVD, and given that he went from never wrestling again to doing eight more years, the question was whether the injury was really as bad as it was first reported. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnny Guitar Posted March 28, 2015 Report Share Posted March 28, 2015 Kieran made a case for it on the show, basically that he's a powerball bumping his ass off for the first half of the match taking crazy bumps, and it's as soon as he took over on offense, that's when he began selling and playing for sympathy to make it more about him and less about Austin, including screaming at the announcers about how tough he is. Austin alluded to issues with how the match went on his DVD, and given that he went from never wrestling again to doing eight more years, the question was whether the injury was really as bad as it was first reported. I'm sure that the casket bump fucked Shawn's back and he was totally ripped to the tits during Wrestlemania to cope with it. He probably legit needed some time off after it and could have come back back much sooner. But by that point he was so totally lost in drugs, Pillman's death was still looming over the company and the fact that Austin had taken off meant that paying Shawn to stay at home was best for business. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Parties Posted March 28, 2015 Report Share Posted March 28, 2015 I'm rewatching WM3 for the first time in years, and it's very entertaining. They fit more into this three-hour show than they will in five hours this Sunday. 11 matches, interviews and video recap segments. Almost every match had a storyline and feud that they were culminating, with a sense of justice: heels get served even when they win, and there's a “send 'em home happy” thinking behind the booking. Lots of novelty and variety here too: Tom Zenk, Lord Littlebrook, Harley Race, JYD, Butch Reed, Alice Cooper and Andre on the same show. What it lacks in good matches it makes for in every match being watchable. Not to mention the crowd and atmosphere, which looks more impressive today than it to me as a kid. Did someone on Good Will Wrestling say that Heenan's the MVP of this show? Him and Jimmy Hart are both really great throughout and give you a sense of how useful managers and stables were at the time. Most of all it's a show where you feel like they're using their time wisely. I also watched WM2 and 14 this week. WM2's a mess, but kind of an endearing one. It was clear that they were still trying to ride on celebrity cache, albeit lesser celebs than the ones they had at MSG a year earlier. I don't think I actually enjoyed a single match on the card, except maybe the battle royal for novelty alone. 14 is a really good show from start to finish. On one hand, the setup looks really modest by today's standards: Boston Garden with really almost no set constructed at all. Very barebones, but lots of entertaining matches, and it feels like a hot company. Best match is probably the tag title brawl just for Terry Funk's great lunacy at the end. His reaction to winning the titles is glorious and shows why he's the greatest of all time. But otherwise I was surprisingly impressed by Shamrock-Rock and even moreso by Austin-Michaels, which is really a better match than I'd recalled. Michaels is still a bump freak, and in some ways for me this feels like his last great performance. I could see people picking one of the Cena or Taker matches, but '98 was the blue chips HBK that never came back after injury. As an aside: this is a company that booked Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight, and Run-DMC in back to back years. This Sunday you're getting Kid Ink and over the hill CSI-era LL Cool J. I'd have been happy with LL performing on on Wrestlemania 2, but Wrestlemania 31 is really pushing it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strand Peanut Posted March 28, 2015 Report Share Posted March 28, 2015 Ray did WM2, Aretha did WM3, Gladys did WM4, and Run-DMC did WM5. And not a single one of them was a hot act when they did it. Ray, Aretha, and Gladys being booked to sing "America The Beautiful" has a lot more to do with Marvin Gaye's stunning '83 performance of the national anthem.. Or so I've always thought. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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