Loss

Very good match against a horrid lyric, the lyric being the announcing. I adore Dusty Rhodes, but he is burying these guys throughout this match. He likes Eddy, which is obvious, but when Tony talks about how these two and Dean coming in have really revolutionized WCW, Dusty says that's not true and that all this stuff does no good if they can't get out from under the bigger guys. When Tony talks about Benoit joining the Horsemen, Dusty says maybe they are younger and quicker than previous versions of the Horsemen, but they just aren't as good. Dusty was obviously a huge Eddy fan, but I don't think he was a fan of making these guys a division and this style. This is more mat-based than most of the sprint-style matches these guys had in WCW. Eddy does a dive to the floor at one point, but most of the rest of this is really well-done mat exchanges until they hit the closing minutes. Lots of exciting offense at that point and a terrific finish, as Benoit does a belly-to-back suplex from the top and they are both counted out. On par with the Nitro match a month earlier. I remember that for me during this time -- and I was pretty far from the typical Internet fan at this point -- Eddy was my favorite wrestler and Benoit/Eddy was my favorite match-up.

Paul Orndorff is worried that he has bad luck and really, really wants to talk to Gary Spivey again. It all started when he broke his mirror, and suddenly, Gary Spivey appears in a cloud, and this is really drug-induced and bizarre. Orndorff receives a package from edEx, I guess because WCW didn't want to advertise for FedEx, and it contains a brand new mirror. I don't think that's how it works. This is possibly the weirdest thing ever on WCW television, which covers quite the amount of ground.

Gibson is quickly interrupted by Tracy Smothers, who cuts a hell of a promo on him. They get in a really contrived looking brawl that you'd expect to be much better. Jimmy Del Ray and Jim Cornette make the save and do a number on Smothers. DWB makes the save.

Butch Cassidy has a present for Jim Cornette. He ends up smothering Cornette with a plastic bag that's inside the box as the audience laughs. Weird seeing something that was a hardcore element to the Flair/Funk feud played for comedy.

Every one of these polls is managing to mildly anger me.

No. Promotions like Stampede that aren't going to have a DVDVR set will be heavily featured. Plus, we have a lot more space to play around with. Everything on the DVDVR sets will be on the yearbook, PLUS everything considered for the DVDVR sets that didn't make them, PLUS more local promos and week-to-week things that are worth seeing, PLUS stuff that has historical meaning. They're the yearbooks I look forward to more than any others, but they will be the last ones we do. Each set has a different purpose. One is to look at the best a promotion had to offer in a decade, and one is an attempt to put together the global history of pro wrestling that's as thorough as space limitations will allow.

We'll find out, but I think they will be.

Good question to be answered through 80s yearbooks eventually, but 1990 will be sometime this year, and Eaton has plenty of singles and tags that will make the set that will make that question easier to answer. That's considered his peak year much of the time.

Bobby Eaton, all the way, and I'm a huge Arn fan. Eaton was a phenomenal high flyer by the standards of the 80s and was at times considered top five in the world. Arn, while someone I really like, was never viewed at that level.

Sure, AJW was a sprint promotion, but the 6/92 Toyota/Yamada match has plenty of sitting on the mat.

Ace was in a lot of good matches. Re-read my post. I didn't give him credit for that, I merely pointed out that he happened to be part of some. So if you're saying "Who was in the most good matches?", he's in that slot. If you're saying "Who brought the most to their matches?", he's obviously not.

They also started off with Jerry Jarrett thinking they could take the WCW audience that just stopped watching wrestling. That was their target audience. Now, I have no idea what their goals are even. I don't even know how they define success. But I do know that their wrestling philosophy has always been so incredibly far removed from what WCW fans seemed to like in their wrestling (maybe not so much what the remaining ones were willing to tolerate at the end) that I don't know where to begin. I think too much time has passed for that to be the target audience now, so I have no idea who TNA wants watching their shows. I know what Dixie Carter told Congress is their target audience, but I take that with a grain of salt.

Yeah, I'd say that's a pretty safe statement. When I look at the body of Benoit's Japanese work compared to that of, say, Ric Flair, there isn't much difference in quality. I could see an argument for either guy over the other guy, but it's not a huge gap in either direction. Terry Funk had better and more high-quality stuff than both of them, most likely. Doc is probably #2, then Funk, then Gordy and then maybe Flair/Benoit. After that, probably Johnny Ace. (Ace's output can be credited more to who he worked with than anything he did, really, so it all depends on what you care more about -- output or individual performance.) And Eddy in Japan usually disappoints me, because the mask negates one of his biggest strengths, which is his facial expressions. The Black Tiger gimmick -- while he had some good matches in it -- was largely a loser from my point of view. I like babyface Eddy in WCW, but generally speaking, 1995-1996 Eddy hasn't held up well on rewatch because Eddy was not incorporating all of his natural charisma into his matches, at least not in Japan. Eddy had the match with Scorpio in 4/95 that I liked so much more than the Malenko series because he did all the cheating between highspots that made him so much fun. Eddy in '97 against Otani in '96 would have blown Starrcade '95 out of the water. (Wait ... yeah that sort of makes sense.)

Ok, so wrestling. Go!

I know you watched the TBS stuff from 1990. How does the Flair/Steiner match from the Clash compare to the one from Saturday Night where Flair put Scott over clean a few months before this?

Why was this posted in this thread? Couldn't figure out the connection.

He lost me last night. It's not even that it's a bad idea, but it's that WWE panders to the lowest common denominator too much, and I think what Jericho is doing is too high concept for their average viewer now as a result. They just cheered away, not getting the irony at all.

This has a rep. Dean raved about it in an old DVDVR and it came up in the recommendations thread too.

What happened to Umaga's handler guy?

Going through the 1990 USWA Texas, and so far: * Kerry Von Erich has done a promo with late 80s Russian hair metal group Gorky Park, where he thanks them for their work in fighting communism and drugs * In an interview on his birthday, he repeatedly calls Percy Pringle Marc Lowrance. Marc Lowrance is nowhere around. Percy finally points it out, and Kerry says, "Oh I'm sorry, you look like Marc Lowrance" Other Kerry quotes: * "The Texas Title belongs to me. The Texas Title belongs to us. I will fight to the death to keep it. The Soul Taker likes to stand in the back of arenas, but I'm no stepping stone. You should let me know when you're here, coward." * "In case you're here to fight instead of talk, I will take off my shirt." * "You mess with my brother, you mess with me. You mess with me, and you mess with me." * "The reason I am on this microphone is because good guys don't call you, and bad guys aren't in your locker room." * "I would rather have the Texas Title than the World title because Texas is the World Heavyweight Champion!" Also: * "I'm so glad that little faggot got fired" -- Chris Adams on Terrence Garvin * "I hope they bury you next to your brothers so I can dance on all your graves" -- Terrence Garvin to Kerry I'm not watching matches, but I've also come across quite a few that look good on paper. This yearbook is going to be lots of fun.

Oh, this wasn't that. This was WCW holding up cue cards for the audience, who make tons of noise but have no idea why they are.

Former WCW board member Kensuke Ishikawa has suddenly become evil Japanese businessman Sonny Onoo. Ugh, I forgot how terrible the whole New Japan storyline was. I also forgot how annoying the Worldwide/Pro crowds were. Liger is doing all these amazing highspots and is getting booed. Houston gets in some nice moves himself. He's far from a complete wrestler, but he has some really fun highspots. Northern Lights suplex on the arena floor, and a knucklelock into a bridge! Liger finally finishes him off with a brainbuster. About as good as a match this short in front of this crowd can be. I love that Liger takes the booing in stride and starts heeling on the crowd. They still suck, though.