Loss
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Everything posted by Loss
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Goldust's first appearance in front of an audience on the yearbook. Vince: "What a lifestyle Goldust must live." Jim Ross jokes that he can quote the entire movie Gone With The Wind. Goldust quotes House of Wax and Ben Hur and starts mentioning Bam Bam Bigelow. Bigelow quickly interrupts him. Not a good segment, but this was a worthy inclusion for a few reasons: (1) Bigelow had been promised the world just a few months earlier and now he was near the bottom of the card and being used to put over newcomers (2) Goldust's act took a few months to really catch on -
October: #1 - Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi vs Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue (AJPW 10/15/95) ****1/2 #2 - Rey Misterio Jr vs Psicosis (ECW TV 10/07/95) ****1/4 #3 - Toshiaki Kawada vs Gary Albright (AJPW 10/25/95) **** #4 - Mitsuharu Misawa vs Kenta Kobashi (AJPW 10/25/95) **** #5 - Eddy Guerrero vs Chris Benoit (WCW Monday Nitro 10/16/95) ***1/2 #6 - Owen Hart, Davey Boy Smith & Yokozuna vs Diesel, Shawn Michaels & Undertaker (WWF Monday Night RAW 10/09/95) ***1/2 #7 - Chris Benoit & Dean Malenko vs Blue Bloods (WCW Main Event 10/29/95) ***1/4 #8 - Owen Hart & Yokozuna vs Razor Ramon & 1-2-3 Kid (WWF Superstars 10/28/95) *** #9 - Keiji Muto vs Nobuhiko Takada (NJPW vs UWFI Tokyo Dome 10/09/95) #10 - Hayabusa & Mitsuhiro Matsunaga vs W*ING Kanemura & Masato Tanaka (FMW 10/28/95) #11 - PG-13 vs Tracy Smothers & Jesse James Armstrong (USWA TV 10/28/95) #12 - The Sandman vs Mikey Whipwreck (ECW TV 10/31/95, Ladder match) #13 - 1-2-3 Kid vs Razor Ramon (WWF Monday Night RAW 10/02/95) #14 - The Sandman vs Mikey Whipwreck (ECW TV 10/24/95) #15 - The Sandman vs Mikey Whipwreck (ECW TV 10/03/95) #16 - Cactus Jack vs El Puerto Ricano (ECW TV 10/10/95) #17 - Dean Douglas vs Razor Ramon (WWF In Your House IV 10/22/95) Overall thoughts: A few great matches at the top, but a lot of angle-driven stuff. The match list doesn't really tell the story, but I've enjoyed October quite a bit for the feuds. Last-legs SMW was fun for a while and is starting to look embarrassing. Sandman/Mikey is terrific. Landell is always good for a fun promo, and the Flair/Sting stuff has been hot.
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I wouldn't mind seeing Austin stop talking about WCW, but otherwise, he's gold here. To Woman: "It's you that married a midget, not me." He carries Woman off to the back without Sandman even seeing it. Mikey finally has his moment and wins the ECW title! Awesome moment. Love the post-match celebration. Probably the #2 U.S. feud of the year for me behind Snow/Unabomb vs Rock & Rolls. Maybe even #1. I need to think about it.
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A narrative yes, but not "You-punched-a-baby-in-a-parking-lot"-type stuff necessarily. Look at Japan. Definite angles -- some even ridiculously over the top -- but plenty of subdued stuff based on winning and losing too.
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11/25/94 from the RWTL is also available in TV form (20+ of a 30:00 draw). I pimped it for getting on the 1994 Yearbook, and kind of hope it's not forgotten. The only one of the nine matches that doesn't exist is 1995 RWTL "league" match, as opposed to the Final. John No worries - that is on the list and won't be forgotten. We even intend to splice the first few minutes from handheld with the JIP TV version so it's complete.
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"What just happened out there wasn't supposed to happen, man." Suddenly, The Giant emerges dry and without a scratch. Even with the clipping (We just did the intro, then cut to the finish), this is a horrible match. Jimmy Hart turns on Hogan. Luger and Savage come to the rescue, but Luger turns on Savage. Then a giant mummy comes down and does a group hug with Hogan and Giant where I think he might be mating. The mummy continues spreading his seed to Savage, which gives Luger and Giant cause to celebrate. This is followed by Luger putting Hogan and Savage in the torture rack. And somehow Hogan was DQd in all of this (I guess because Jimmy Hart was Hogan's manager) and Giant walks out with the belt. Pro wrestling.
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I've seen this a million times. It's still great to watch as a Flair performance ("Come on, Stinger! I'm here!"), and it still makes no sense (Why does Flair need to turn on Sting? Why not just reunite the Horsemen? Not sure what he gained from it ...) Anyway, I understand Sting's frustration. And it's also interesting that Flair complained on his shoot that Flair vs Arn was cut short, when it was in the WON at the time that Flair was insistent on turning heel again while WCW wanted him to stay a babyface because he was so over (which he was).
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Awesome tag! One of Eaton's last good matches. Great to see him to do a lot of his big top rope spots. Also, Benoit and Malenko always work well with Regal. Benoit and Regal tear into each other and they are the standouts here. I feel like I should say more, as the match deserves it, but I'm not quite sure what to add.
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Buddy receives a present from the SMW fans wrapped in money wrapping paper. Rich, Punisher and Cornette are out to run him off and Cornette points out that the package is "slovenly wrapped in a sloppy box". Corny goes to look in the box and out jumps Butch Cassidy to attack him. Butch Cassidy? Yeah, time to wrap things up.
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Just the finish. Would have loved to have seen this full. Cornette tries to run in and Mark Curtis throws a tremendous punch at him. But this gives Punisher the chance to hit Rich with a blackjack, opening the door for Rich to hit every corner and win the match. Punisher attacks Landell after the match and they do a number on Landell and yeah, this is a promotion on fumes.
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Smothers does the always fun "I was here before and I got the shaft" promo. Randy Hales comes out to try to get them to come down, and he doesn't get far, so PG-13 comes out. This all results in an impromptu match. Good to see PG-13 in a studio match given some time. Solid match, but I think they've had better.
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Nothing I was too crazy about, but a good addition to the yearbook, if only because it shows Hayabusa's versatility. I love how all of his matches on this set feel completely different. Quadruple juice violence. I almost called this an ECW-style brawl, but ECW wishes it could do violence this well.
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I really enjoyed this match. You could see hints of some excess that I understand plagues some of the late 90s stuff, but nothing too bad, and they're generally on the right side of things. Kobashi in some ways wrestles this match like the World's Greatest Kurt Angle -- throwing suplex variations left and right and dishing out the highspots. In one amazing spot, he does a vertical suplex into a Liger bomb. I'm sure there's a name for that. But it's put over huge by Misawa, who rolls outside, only to eat a powerbomb on the concrete. Well so much for that. I think one reason Misawa and Kobashi work so well together is that Kobashi likes to be the center of attention, and Misawa is fine with that, so they're on the same page. This doesn't have the depth of Misawa/Kawada, but I've never seen a Misawa/Kawada match that can touch this for action. Kobashi eats a crazy headdrop, which he sells for several minutes with glassy-eyed facial expressions. One of my favorite spots in the match is when Kobashi does the second quick moonsault and Misawa is in the process of moving out of the way, and he hits him, but seems to take the brunt of it himself. Once this gets into the final few minutes, it feels like they've already done what they wanted to do and now they're just killing time, but I really enjoyed this. However, aside from the Carnival match that I really liked, I have yet to see a Misawa/Kobashi singles match that is at the level I hope for it to be. I know 1/97 is considered the peak match, and they had some other stuff in later years that people love, but I actually have found Kawada/Kobashi to consistently be a better match-up.
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Bumped just to say I haven't forgotten about this. I'll probably come back to it when finished with the '95 Yearbook while waiting for the '94 Yearbook to be completed. But I plan to start in 2005 instead of 2008 -- because that falls more in line with when I stopped paying close attention, and also because we probably won't do any yearbooks past 2004. I will probably also encompass other promotions, as there's a ton of stuff I have missed.