Loss
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Terry Funk tears into Dewey and Collette! Funk says Cactus Jack is a nobody in a wrestling world and then says a bunch of unintelligible stuff, including a strange Foley impersonation of stuff he never does. This felt like a weird promo, like Funk said everything he needed to say and kept getting queued to talk more.
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This couldn't be more Jim Crockett Promotions if it tried to be. It's Arn Tenzanson and Masa Blanchono against Hirbarry Hase and Kenlexi Sasaki. (jdw is way better at combining names than I am.) The match starts crazy and ends crazy. The Wolves are laying out what I think is Junji Hirata (it's hard to tell from the camerawork) when Hase and Sasaki make the save and Hase prompts them to get their asses back in the ring. They quickly brawl all over the building before finally settling down and doing a more traditional tag match. This is such a blatant American-style match. Hase ends up as face in peril and Chono is even working ref distraction spots in the ring while Tenzan beats up Hase behind the referee's back. When Sasaki gets the hot tag, the New Japan crowd actually reacts like a U.S. crowd would to a hot tag and both guys start bumping their asses off for him. When Hase gets back in, they even do an Irish whip from each corner so Tenzan and Chono go crashing into each other, which is really amusing to see in New Japan. Chono ends up pinning Hase after a big boot and they try pummeling them after too, but the locker room surrounds the ring and after realizing they're fighting a losing battle, the Wolves bail. I absolutely loved this. If I didn't know better, I might think the S in the corner of the screen stood for Superstation.
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Fun match, but pretty empty. There's no real sense of strategy, so while everything is high-energy and they cut a good pace, there's no real rhyme or reason behind anything. It's just a bunch of stuff, the best of which is Shawn applying a really awesome short-arm scissors and Davey Boy doing a Backlund-like powerlift to counter. But yeah, empty. There are two times Davey Boy starts selling a knee injury, which you'd think would create an opening for Shawn, but he never goes after it. You get all the big standard Michaels bumps without any real sense of psychology. Like I said, fun match, but Shawn is exposed as a guy who hasn't really grown all that much since Survivor Series '92 (he's just a flashier bumper now), and he's even more exposed when watching a yearbook alongside his international peers. Side note: Vince and Cornette go together like oil and water on commentary. Cornette is too long-winded for Vince's tastes, and by the end of the match, Vince just starts talking over him to call the match.
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Not really that good of a match. The rudos are way, way, way dominant in the first fall and for a big part of the second, and at the end, the technicos make a late, unconvincing comeback in the last few minutes of the match. There is some fun stuff. Psicosis' top rope legdrop to the floor from the top rope is beyond words, but overall, I wasn't a huge fan. The tag the previous month is on another level.
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The Rotunda match you mean? Yes, very good match. There's also a Sting/Muta match from Power Hour that I think smokes Bash '89 (which I was never fond of).
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If we're looking for something a little less obvious, I always liked Sting's matches with Steve Austin. The 1/94 and 4/95 WCW Saturday Night matches are both terrific.
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Finish of a Vader/Patriot match. Vader goes to powerbomb Patriot and Hogan runs in with a strap and starts choking Vader out. Flair tries to make the save and Jimmy Hart pulls his leg. Flair ends up chasing Jimmy Hart away. The Nasty Boys and Duggan run in to pull Hogan off of Vader. The idea of Vader getting any heat on Hogan in this feud must have been too radical. We close out with Tony Schiavone interviewing Hogan.
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This was a very good TV match, and my favorite SMW match of the year so far. Cornette is managing the Southern Boys. Ross again mentions that The Gangstas don't represent any race, or political group, and that it has to be embarrassing for black people to watch, because The Gangstas only represent themselves. Again, they seem to be presenting this differently than they were early on. Smothers bleeds after D-Lo Brown hits him with the slapjack at ringside. What doesn't make sense is that New Jack is hiding a foreign object, but Scott Armstrong isn't going out of his way to point it out from the apron. The Gangstas win the match after D-Lo Brown interferes and then go after Scott Armstrong's leg. Bob runs in and throws some great punches, but he gets cut off. Then they bury him in a Malcolm X flag in a pretty obvious attempt to recreate the UWF angle with Bill Watts. Smothers makes the save with Cornette's racket, and after commercial, Cornette and Bob Armstrong vow revenge. I LOVE Bob Armstrong's promo. "They talk about the good, the bad and the ugly, you're not that good, you sure ain't that bad, but you sure are ugly." Good match and an awesome segment.
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New Jack does quite the heat-seeking promo. Ross makes clear that his opinions are New Jack's alone, not of SMW, which makes me think someone complained.
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They showed videotape apparently of Tommy Rich slapping Wolfie D's mom, which is a wow moment. Rich is with Gorgeous George III, and PG-13 runs in and goes after both guys. Big Daddy Cyrus attacks Wolfie from behind and Rich starts cutting Wolfie's mullet! Wolfie is livid, which anyone who lost a mullet would be in 1995. Pro wrestling.
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Shawn gives his Top 10 reasons why he will become the champ at Wrestlemania: 10. The Heartbreak Kid is a hot-blooded, heart-bounding hunk. 9. Judge Ito has overruled all of Jack Tunney's objections. 8. The natural God-given ability to take the WWF to new heights. 7. He already told Pam Anderson he would. 6. He has proven time and time again that the superkick is Diesel's achilles heel. 5. He made Diesel, and he can and will break him. 4. He told us he would go through 29 superstars at the Rumble and he did. 3. He can and will become a Triple Crown winner. 2. Because he said so. 1. "You could call him justice, you can call him vicious, you can call him psycho, but I call him Sid." Sid then comes out and rambles about something, and yes, they are clearly positioning Shawn as beneath Sid in the buildup, which is something either that I've never noticed before or that was acknowledged at the time and later forgotten. Shawn does a lousy top ten list, by the way.
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At the time, I'd say Dave overrated this match, but it's not one I generally hear people banging the drum too loudly for, so I probably won't ruffle any feathers by saying that. It is still an excellent match that seems to be focused on getting over two feuds -- Misawa/Doc and Kobashi/Ace. There is occasional crossover in the action, but those are the big rivalries the match is laid out to get over. I think this started off really strong with all the tempers flaring stuff on both sides. I dug the slapfests. But all of Doc's run-ins when he wasn't the legal man before the match built to a climax really annoyed me, and not in a "Wow, I hope this guy gets his comeuppance" way. I think one big thing I left this match thinking is how amazing a team Misawa and Kobashi were. Both Misawa and Kobashi work wonderfully with Ace, in a way where they aren't upstaging him even though it's obvious they're the ones carrying things. Kobashi's powerbomb on Ace really felt like it should be the finish, but I guess Kobashi doing the top rope legdrop made sense considering how loopy it made Ace just a few minutes before. Great match, but I couldn't get into Doc and Ace, so I had a tough time really connecting.
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This went on the yearbook because Bihari gave it ****1/4. I encourage anyone to watch the match so you can form your own opinion. But I thought this was a horrible match. This is the worst match I have ever seen involving Negro Casas without a doubt. There's enough talent in the ring that I expected it to be really good. I really wanted to like it. But it's terrible. The match never gets past the first fall. Felino and Salvaje are quickly eliminated, leaving us with a tag match of Dandy/Casas vs Jericho/Ultimo. Dandy does a half-ass job of working over Ultimo's knee and all this time, Jericho has never even entered the match. Eventually Ultimo submits and it's Jericho vs Dandy and Casas. Just a very strange layout. Jericho clumsily works some sequences with both guys and eventually pins both Casas and Dandy to bring home the big win. They were clearly positioning Jericho in a big way, but there's just no substance here. Even as a spotfest, this isn't that good and doesn't have much value, which is puzzling, considering that some of these guys have had great chemistry in other matches. Someone else take a look and tell me if I'm crazy.
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There was a similar angle with the 1-2-3 Kid in a match in January, but that was more the result of a bump.
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Stan Hansen didn't drop the AWA title, right?
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In terms of fan interest, this is the low point in the history of the company, but I find it interesting how willing they were to try new things during this time. It struck me watching the 1993 yearbook how much they were embracing Memphis-style booking, and it's already standing out to me going through 1995 how much of a 70s-style presentation they were going for with Diesel on top. Sit down interviews going out of their way to portray the wrestlers as athletes, an understated Vince McMahon selling 70s-style football vs pro wrestler angles, focusing on "real" themes like Diesel's history of knee surgeries (even shockingly mentioning that his real name is Kevin Nash and that he's married in one segment), comparing the athleticism of Bret and Owen Hart, talking strategy in the build to PPV main events, etc. Anyway, I don't think there's a direct correlation between this being the style they were promoting and the company being in a down period but it is interesting what they were willing to try to right the ship that definitely didn't mesh with Vince's normal instincts. The goofy characters with alliterate names were still there, but they had toned things down greatly from the boom years and were trying to be more understated and serious. I enjoyed it, of course, and I bring it up not to debate the merits as much as to point out that it seems to be a forgotten point when people recap the history of the WWF. Blaming Diesel and Shawn for drawing poorly on top is really oversimplifying what the WWF needed to do to rebound. It wasn't as simple as finding the right top guy, they had to reimagine the entire vision of the company. Maybe this thread could be used to talk about the impact that bringing in people who weren't fans of the WWF philosophy -- Jim Ross, Jim Cornette, Jerry Lawler, etc -- had on the company as well.
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February: #1 - Bret Hart & Davey Boy Smith vs Owen Hart & Bob Backlund (WWF Action Zone 02/26/95) ****1/4 #2 - Juventud Guerrera & Fuerza Guerrera vs Rey Misterio Jr & Rey Misterio Sr (AAA 02/06/95) ****1/4 #3 - Hulk Hogan vs Vader (WCW SuperBrawl V 02/19/95) ***1/2 #4 - Shane Douglas vs Marty Jannetty (ECW Return of the Funker 02/25/95) ***1/2 #5 - Chris Benoit vs Al Snow (ECW Double Tables 02/04/95) ***1/2 #6 - Jerry Lawler vs Bill Dundee (USWA TV 02/25/95) *** #7 - Heavenly Bodies & Jim Cornette vs The Gangstas & D-Lo Brown (SMW Sunday Bloody Sunday 02/26/95) Overall thoughts: The WWF tag was just way beyond anything I might have expected it to be. A really great match, maybe one of the best in the history of the company. I did a pretty detailed review on Misterios vs Guerreras. I gave the WWF tag a slight edge just because the one thing I thought the lucha match was missing was a little aggression to accompany all the other top notch work. The New Japan tag I'm not completely comfortable leaving off, but to explain my thought process, it's really more of an angle than a match. If you look at it as a match, it's really too chaotic and has too much going on to really be good. As an angle/brawl, it's phenomenal and one of the best things on the yearbook. It does have me geared up to watch more Tenzan vs NJ matches throughout this set and it was a worthy yearbook addition. Hogan/Vader was also much better than expected, it felt like a very good New Japan match because for reasons I explained in the thread.
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Vince and Cornette ask LT about the rumors that he will have a match against Bam Bam Bigelow at Wrestlemania. Everyone involved is really good at selling this. I love when LT reveals that he has no idea who Cornette is: "Who is this clown?" Bigelow comes in via satellite and gets in LT's face over him saying Bigelow was beaten by a 13-year old, saying the 1-2-3 Kid is a WWF athlete and anything can happen. This is excellent 70s style build/trash talk to set up a match. The WWF was definitely booking a very old style (not even 80s, pre 80s) product at this point. I don't think that had anything to do with why they weren't drawing, but someone looking to troll could probably make that correlation.
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This doesn't have the heat that you'd think, which may be a result of the disappointing crowd. IIRC, the gate for this show was one of the early warning signs that things weren't going well. They also try to work MX/Cornette spots from Chi-Town Rumble '89, like the drop toehold and elbow, but the Bodies aren't as smooth as the MX and the rhythm just isn't there, so it comes across as a sad imitation. I'd even say that goes for other regular Bodies spots, like the flapjack. Cornette is also the centerpiece here -- I'm not sure if that's by design since I have no idea if he knew how long he'd have the Bodies at this point. But this match is too much about him, which comes across a little poorly, not because he's the one running the show, but because he looks too strong for a manager. Underneath all the awkwardness, the structure of a workable, straight up Southern tag is definitely there. And I think the biggest strong point of the match is the way the Bodies and Cornette keep outcheating the Gangstas behind even Bob Armstrong's back. But I don't think straight up Southern tags are something that anyone will point to as a strong suit for the Gangstas. Neither the Bodies nor the Gangstas sell well enough to make this anything more than awkward. Post-match, Bob Armstrong takes a beating (he was a pretty biased referee, so maybe it was warranted), but the Bodies and Cornette start swinging the racket and run them off.
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Bobby Blaze and Dirty White Boy are interviewed regarding the events of Sunday Bloody Sunday. This supposedly takes place 30 minutes after the match is over, so why hasn't Blazed washed his face? Anyway, Dirty White Boy is disappointed but puts over Blaze winning the title on his own. Then we cut to Buddy Landell, who doesn't exactly see things the same way. Buddy says there is a conspiracy involving nearly everyone in SMW against him, and he says not to let the suits fool anyone, he can be mean and nasty. He wants Blaze in the ring again and will put up anything Blaze wants on the line to get him back in the ring. This is a really good, angry promo.