Loss
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Everything posted by Loss
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DWB and Ron Wright are dyin' to get their hands on Jim Cornette! Ron Wright tells Jim Cornette EXACTLY what he intends to do to him, and I love it! Next, we get a video of Abdullah to "War Machine" narrated by Jim Ross, and this is awesomeawesomeawesome. Bob Armstrong does an awesome promo to put him over as a tough challenger while still showing his own confidence. Next is "Confrontation", hosted by Jim Ross, with Cactus Jack and Boo Bradley. Cactus is here to make things right. Tammy is upset and whispers in his ear what will happen if he talks to anyone other than her, which prompts Boo to attack Cactus. We'd later find out Boots the Cat was being used for ransom. Finally, Cornette and Bedlam are out for an interview. Great Cornette promo. -
Best wrestlers to ever be champ versus best championship reigns.
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Any US champ who is over enough to challenge for the world title while champ just isn't at the bottom of the list. Nikita, Luger and Rude are the main guys I think of who had extended programs with the world champion while wearing the U.S. belt. There aren't many of them.
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Clash 17, you mean? Excellent match. Really fun and heated. But it's only five minutes long and not quite in the "best of" category. Luger/Rich from Clash 8 is an overlooked match that I thought was tremendous.
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I think I might like Luger/Steamboat from Bash '89 better. I'm not sure.
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I've never heard that rep for Ivan Koloff, at all. I usually hear that about Nash. Ivan has a rep as a good worker, and it's a deserved rep.
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Interesting. I see him pretty interchangeable with pre-'89 Luger, only as a guy who had more charisma. But if you like Luger in the original Horsemen run and his first big babyface run, Nikita was at least as good, likely better. By '89, Luger had improved to a point where he was better than Nikita ever was, obviously.
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Wow. What are your thoughts on 80s Nikita, just as a point of comparison?
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I want to respond, but there aren't enough picks where I'd differ from Nintendo Logic. I have trouble in my mind remembering if something is a title match or not also.
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Yeah, it's interesting, because they had a roster that was deep enough to do great matches every week in that spot, but rarely hit that level. In my vision in my head, it would be where you put matches that are good pairings, but would never headline a PPV. Rude vs Pillman and Dustin would have been good here. Sting vs Austin. You get the idea.
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They show a Lawler/Christopher vs Rich/Gilbert match from MSC. Lance Russell does the hard sell of all hard sells to talk about how great it was. All we get is still frames - no video footage. Looked to be a great match just from the stills, but while it sucks to not be able to see it, I give them credit because Lance's hype resonates more, the match carries more mystique and if I'm a local ticket buyer, I'm kicking myself for missing it. Eddie Marlin is out and mentioned that an expensive camera was damaged, and that the USWA operates with millions of dollars of camera equipment. I find that hard to believe. All four guys are suspended, which the studio crowd hates. Scott Bowden is out to dispute that and says they are on his way. He confirmed this on his Zach Morris "cellular phone"! Later in the show, Scott Bowden is back out. He tries too hard to be unlikable, and doesn't seem like a real person. I'm not a big fan of him as a manager. Finally, Sid is out and pulls a couple of people from the audience who back him up over Spellbinder being the number one contender.
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It's the word "segment", not the word "control". Do matches have "segments"? Good matches have an ebb and flow, and good wrestling is reactive. I don't have a real problem with the term, but I don't really think a match's quality is necessarily determined by the adding together of all of its attributes either. That's a narrow, mathematical view in my mind. Plenty of matches with lots of good individual things in them aren't great, and plenty of great matches have huge flaws. There's no right or wrong way to watch or critique wrestling, but for me, I'm generally (I'm using the word "generally" so the handful of posters that enjoy looking for previous things I've said that contradict what I'm saying now don't read this and respond by trying to box me into a corner or take this point and run with it) more concerned with the macro takeaways (They kept the crowd, they got over the big picture, the offense generally looked good, that was quite the selling performance, etc) than the micro takeaways (a missed spot, a good punch, etc.) It doesn't mean those things can't stand out in a good or bad way, or that I won't comment on them, but for me, a good match is ultimately a composite of tangibles and intangibles. If there's a problem with talking about control segments, maybe it seems like it's the honing in on something too specific in a match instead of looking at the bigger picture. I'm not the best person to accuse someone else of being overly analytical of pro wrestling. People are welcome to deconstruct the finished wrestling product to their heart's content, and most of the time I'll find it interesting. This board is largely made up of people who make most hardcore wrestling fans look casual, so those kind of accusations are a waste of time here. But talking about control segments has always struck me as microanalytical, or at the very least, the phrase promotes a connotation that talking about wrestling in very, very, very specific terms is the best way to critique it. Although, I guess mentioning face in peril is really discussing the same thing - and that's not really a term people in wrestling use either. One of my famed Nuanced Opinions. I think I've just confused myself and talked in a circle. Pretty impressive!
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Hogan isn't as booed here as he has been in most segments, but Flair has a pretty vocal contingent on his side. I wouldn't by any means call this a great match, but it was a really hot one. Sherri worked almost as hard as Flair, taking tons of bumps and participating in lots of spots. What I hatehatehatehate about this is Flair doing the disappearing act. At the time, this was intended to be Flair's swan song - genuinely - so he should have had a goodbye moment. That just seemed especially disrespectful and petty. The parts of this that are Flair and Hogan in the cage are the best parts. They had the crowd and this felt like a big deal, as it should have. Imagine Ric Flair vs Hulk Hogan for the world title where the loser must retire in a cage match five years earlier. It would have done record business. The interference spots, while well done, were cheap considering that this really should have been a straightforward blowoff match to settle the score between the two "greatest stars of all time". They try their hardest to make Flair's departure seem insignificant with all the post-match angle stuff, but it doesn't really work. Brutus Beefcake replacing Ric Flair as the top heel? That's a tough sell. Seeing WCW's transformation from what it was at the beginning of the year - to peaking under Flair's booking with Spring Stampede and Slamboree - to this - is really depressing.
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I like how Arn seems ready for every standard spot that he normally falls for, like the flip flop fly. He even has a counter ready for Dustin putting up the boot off of the axehandle from the middle rope thing he seemed to always want to try. Dustin works over his arm after he misses a clothesline attempt and hits the ringpost on the outside. The crowd doesn't really react to much of it, I guess because the feud was blown off at War Games and there probably wasn't much reason for this match ... at least not at this stage. I wish the crowd had gotten into this more, as this built well, had some great wrestling and counters and solid psychology. They seemed motivated to do something fresh and thoughtful, but it just didn't quite click like it should have, despite being a good match.
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Edited version of the Flair video from a week before on Saturday Night, along with the same video package from before we got the interview with Hogan's parents. It's capped off with a fresh old-style promo from Hogan behind a fence, which was always one of my favorite old school wrestling staples.
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Gene Okerlund interviews Hulk's parents. There are strategically no pictures of Hogan in the WWF on the wall in their background (they show a couple later), but there are plenty from Japan. Mrs. Bollea clearly put on her make-up and nice jewelry for television! I was thinking this segment was pretty decent, but then Hulk strategically drops by and seems as phony as the day is long. Gene calls the Bollea house a "modest little home". That's amazingly rude and tacky.
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Joined in progress. SMW was interesting at this point because the babyfaces were the workhorses and the guys with experience, while many of the top heels were green. Cornette tries interfering, but it backfires, as Ron Wright does the same. As a result of the pre-match stipulation, Bedlam and Cornette both have to take five lashes. Bedlam gets handcuffed to the corner and takes his lashes. I knew somehow Cornette would get out of taking the lashes, and sure enough, Bedlam ends up blindsiding him and Cornette throws powder in DWB's face. I realize it's an angle, but Ron Wright taking the shots is type of bait-and-switch thing that I hate in my wrestling. Cornette should have taken his shots, even though this was a great segment otherwise. DWB and Wright vow revenge.
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House show clip. Miss Texas and Fantasia get into it, but this is hard to see. Lance almost comments on the bad camerawork and bites his tongue. Then, they show Undertaker vs Sid from Mid South Coliseum. Lots of heat for this. Knowing how stingy Jerry Jarrett was with payoffs, I'm surprised he felt bringing in Paul Bearer was worth the money. I wonder if this was an unofficial tryout for Sid, to get Undertaker to gauge him and see if the WWF could work with him if they brought him back. The Spellbinder runs in for the DQ when Undertaker has Sid pinned, but Undertaker makes his own save.
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Sid cuts a pretty good heel promo yet again! Then, Tommy Rich and Doug Gilbert are out to do the same. Doug's little roll continues. Budro has apparently parted ways from them again. I knew there were still hard feelings about that fan belt. Scott Bowden talks about Buddy pretending to be Ric Flair. Oooh, they went there. Later in the show, Buddy Landell is out in a suit with a new lease on life. That his suit looks so cheap is part of the essence of Buddy Landell. Rich and Gilbert are out to make fun of the suit and again call him out on being a Ric Flair wannabe. Buddy's promo is too pandering, to a point that I don't buy it. The studio crowd doesn't seem to buy the turn either. This also would have been better had Buddy not already come in as a babyface, although watching Buddy brawl with Tommy Rich in a suit is awesome.
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This match was solid, but didn't really make too much of an impression on me for the first half or so. Agreed with OJ that Takako - who controlled most of this - just didn't turn in a strong performance, at least at first, which is a shame, considering that she was the best worker in the tag match less than two weeks before this. Takako seems to have an epiphany around the halfway point and amps up the aggression. Flipping off the crowd, throwing the rapid fire punches and all the other heel stuff was really well done, but it didn't have the heat it should have had because: (1) Takako didn't really start heeling until halfway into the match. She was even rallying the crowd behind her offense early on. (2) The first half of the match felt too disconnected from the second half. Toyota gives Takako most of this match to strut her stuff. She sells a lot and does it really well. She gets angry and makes a big comeback after Takako's sudden heel onslaught, but again, the heat doesn't pick up as much as it should since Takako just flipped a switch randomly within the match. Too bad, because the work was really good and probably would have had the crowd rocking had it been preceded by better build. The back half of this is good enough to consider this a good match, but it took them too long to get there.
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This was a really disappointing, even boring, match. They never really seemed to crank it into high gear. They worked the mat quite a bit, which is good, but the matwork isn't particularly interesting. This was just too long and methodical, and they lost the crowd at times. I thought the first two matches in the year that these guys had were great. This one was really lacking. It's a shame, because Kawada winning the Triple Crown for the first time was a big moment that deserved a classic match to go with it. The deadlifting and struggle for Kawada to secure the first powerbomb was so dramatic and well done that it was almost enough to make me like this match on its own. And the finish of Kawada applying so many different types of kicks (kick to Doc's knee to call back to the earlier work, Koppo kick, and more) was pretty great. But sadly, this just didn't grab me.