Loss
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Everything posted by Loss
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This is one of my all-time favorite bad wrestling segments. Hogan shows up on his motorcycle at Fall Brawl to do a promo when The Giant shows up in a monster truck and tries to run him and all of his fans over, and ends up just hitting the bike and doing a really evil laugh while Hogan makes terrible facial expressions. I have a soft spot for this.
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First, Savage is lifting weights on the beach with the Baywatch cast when Sullivan attacks him, which is totally believable and stuff. Actually, I say that but the beatdown looks good. I crack up at Flair making the save, considering their history. "Come on Devil, that's enough brother." I'm glad they had Savage address the Flair save in his promo. "Thanks, but no thanks. See ya in another life." Savage says, "You -- constructive criticism -- are a horrible judge of character" to Hogan, which makes me laugh. He's referring to Luger accidentally (?) hitting Savage during the War Games match. Luger is out to take exception to Savage's comments, saying at least he's straight up about wanting to be world champion, unlike Savage. Things get heated and suddenly Luger means more than he has meant since 1993.
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I'm not going to go overboard praising this or anything, but this is a way better match than you would expect it to be. Good heat and intensity, nice brawling at the beginning, and Booker T is starting to show himself as a guy who may be better than he seems. The Males win the tag titles in a surprise finish, considering Harlem Heat just regained them the night before.
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To Mike's point, which I think was well put, someone inevitably always points out "Because it fucking hurts" in these types of discussions as the "why". Sure, that's competent psychology, but it's not great psychology on its own.
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Last few minutes of heel vs heel. Mo does a nice superplex. Owen pins Mo to wrap things up, and it's pretty clear here that the MoM push is over. Mabel would go on to feud with Undertaker, but he's clearly being phased down. Shawn and Diesel have a taped promo hyping In Your House. They weren't aware of it yet, but all the pre-tapes really made the WWF seem stale when everything was live and in front of the crowd on Nitro. After commercial, Owen, Yoko and Cornette are interviewed by Cornette.
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Logic and storytelling combined are psychology.
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Again, the difference in selling and output when the Clique are working each other compared to everyone else is pretty noticeable. This is a fun match and they cut a good pace. Kid is starting a heel turn, but it hasn't taken off yet. Here, Douglas attacks Razor after a ref bump, giving Kid -- who doesn't see what happened -- the win. Weird continuity here, as Douglas just did the run-in wearing street clothes and here he's in wrestling gear. This is better than most of the Report Card segments.
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The Dungeon of Doom video before this match with Sullivan has to be seen for Wrestlecrap value. We also get The Giant crushing Hogan's motorcycle in a hilariously bad skit. We also get a pre-match promo from the Hulkamaniacs, with Hogan saying the team drank half a gallon of Agent Orange. I'm sure they did. Then we jump to the last few minutes of War Games. Zodiac submits to a camel clutch from Hogan, which Tony Schiavone calls a reverse chinlock. As a result of the pre-match stipulation, Hogan gets five minutes in the cage with Sullivan. The Hogan/Sullivan action is as bad as you'd expect. The Giant comes down and does a number on Hogan.
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Every time I watch this, I expect to suddenly not like it anymore, considering the criticism this match gets at times. Then I watch it, see that this match is awesome, and realize that I was right all along! First, let's talk the big criticism -- that there wasn't the hate you'd expect, because when brothers fight in real life, that's what happens. Consider the build to this match. Neither guy turned on the other. They were briefly physical after the Flair/Sting match on the first Nitro and that was it. The build wasn't about two guys who couldn't wait to get their hands on each other. If you listen to Arn's promos, he needed the match, but didn't particularly want it to happen. But he had to prove a point to Flair. Flair, by the same token, wanted to prove to Arn that the social order the Horsemen had in place all those years was valid and right -- that Flair was The Man not because he was anointed, but because he was the best. (This is not me projecting, this is their promos.) So Arn needed to get through to Flair by showing him that he didn't achieve all that he achieved by himself, while Flair needed to show Arn that both were where they were in the Horsemen pecking order for a reason. So, going into this and considering that context, things like Flair doing his normal psych out at the beginning where he offers his hands then fixes his hair carry more weight. If Arn is nervous, he oughta be, because he's in the ring with RIC FLAIR. Arn quickly catches him with a drop toehold and takes him to the mat, slapping the back of his head a few times, to show him he won't be intimidated. Continuing that, they have a staredown and Arn slaps him. Within a couple of minutes, Flair takes exception to Arn working his arm so aggressively, and Arn slaps him again. Again, Arn is making the point to Flair that the stuff he does against everyone else won't work on him because he's too close to Ric to fall for that. Flair continues trying old tricks, like begging off, and nothing works. So now, it looks like everything is going Arn's way. Flair does the turnbuckle flip and Arn goes to clothesline him and Flair ducks. So Flair reacted to Arn knowing his routine by throwing a left when Arn was expecting a right, so to speak. He follows that up with a double axehandle to the floor. So Flair is in control for the next few minutes, finally locking in the figure four with Arn turning it over. So many of the tired spots seem fresh because of the context in which they're taking place -- this is a brand new match for both guys. I do think the finish takes something away from this. I guess it was necessary to further the storyline, but Flair was the heel until the finish, so it didn't really fit. Arn absolutely had to win to keep this going, otherwise what was the point? But it would have been cool to see Pillman align with Flair with Arn convincing Sting to be his partner, only to turn on him in the end. It's consistent with the feud up until that point, the Horsemen end up reunited and Sting doesn't look quite as stupid. Anyway, if you haven't watched this match in a long time and aren't a fan of it, I strongly recommend that you check it out again. It helps even more to do so in the context of this yearbook because you get to see all the buildup and promos, and you realize they're working a match that's perfectly in tune with the storyline.
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Paul Orndorff's poor career is going down in flames until he is approached by, and I quote, "GARY SPIVEY OF THE PSYCHIC COMPANIONS NETWORK?" I'm wondering when this period was when Orndorff had so many belts he couldn't carry them all, but this is the type of cheese that makes wrestling fun. He reminds him that he's Mr. Wonderful and suddenly, Paul Orndorff has a new lease on life!
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Bombs would have been fine here too. My point was that alternating between working two body parts in the same match made neither have the impact it should have. It doesn't come across as Taue expanding on his strategy by adding knee work. It comes across as Taue drawing blanks and doing two, completely disconnected things. Kawada did that just six weeks or so before this match. Taue even targeted it here again, so obviously it wasn't a dead issue. If he would have stayed away from the face completely and just worked the knee, I would have been fine with that. I didn't like him doing both at the same time, or more accurately, staying away from one or the other for minutes at a time and coming back to it much later. I think about Michaels/Foley from Mind Games. Part of that has Shawn working on Mick's hand and part of that has Shawn working on Mick's knee. But it works because he abandons the hand strategy and later goes for the knee when the opportunity presents itself. So I'm not opposed to shifting focus in a match. I am opposed to going back and forth between two match layouts, because it makes both points get lost. I had high hopes for this. And there were good things about this match. Had there been one match during this time period built around the eye/face work, and a separate one built around the knee work, with all the same stuff you see in either direction, I would have liked both. So you're saying Muto and Hashimoto were forgetting what match they were working in the G1 final and jumping back and forth between ideas, and that I ignored it? Also, jdw, you're a tastemaker, everything you like gets picked up by everyone. Who are these other people that didn't like Hash/Muto? Dave obviously rated it very well.
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I think Razor, had he stuck around, would have definitely turned in '96, so they could headline a PPV with the "rubber" ladder match.
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Really good match, with things fans in 1995 just weren't used to seeing in WCW -- kicking out of finishers, all the nearfalls, etc. It's good that they did this match in front of a North Carolina crowd which tends to pop for good wrestling even if the guys doing it aren't fully established. This match suffers a little bit in the context of a global yearbook because while it's extremely well laid out, they aren't really laying their shots in, so it looks like they're working too soft. I'm not trying to argue that as a strike against this match, just saying that's how it looks when watched next to stuff from Japan. Also, and this is a point I will make against the match, it's lacking aggression. It's exciting and again, well laid out, but nothing really looks like it hurts. Again, I may just be noticing that more because of what I'm watching around it. On a U.S. only yearbook, it would look really good, and on a WCW yearbook, it would look phenomenal. So give these guys credit for raising the bar in WCW, if only for one night. But when you watch everything else happening around the world, it's a little sobering for those of us who love this match. Part of it is also crappy WCW acoustics -- the in-ring sounds like the slapping of the mat from the referee and the impact of moves isn't nearly as loud as it should be. But give Pillman, who was past his peak by this point, credit for walking Badd through a near-30 minute match where he gets to do all of his big moves where they're spaced out in a way to make them all mean something. And give Pillman credit for going full on heel when he senses that's what the crowd wants. I always thought he may have been more heelish in this match than he was supposed to be, if only because they wanted his aligning with Arn later in the night to have a bigger impact. Badd more than held his own, and I agree with El-P that this makes the case for him being better than he got credit for, but Pillman is the glue.
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Pretty bloody match. Chigusa is awesome. Runs together with the Kansai matches a little, but a good match. The biggest positive I can give this is that if this weren't in street clothes, it would work easily well as a straight wrestling match too. There are a few times when they bring in props, but for the most part, this is focused on actual wrestling, without the chains and table breaking of the Kansai match. (There's one table spot, but it's not the focus of the match.) Chigusa wins when Ozaki can't get to her feet. This didn't do as much for me as the Kansai matches, possibly because Chigusa was overly dominant and there wasn't quite as much give and take as your normal Ozaki brawl.
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I was thinking I had seen this before, but I was mistaken. I had seen the match from the next ECW show, but not this one. This is a very good match. It's Rey and Psicosis doing their showcase match, but this is the best version of that match I can recall seeing. We'll see how the J Cup holds up. The crowd really gets into the highspots from both guys, which still look really impressive even by today's standards.
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