Loss
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Last few minutes. Owen is at ringside for Davey Boy staring at Bret. Rock is pretty green here. Austin runs out and attacks Davey Boy's leg. But Owen has his back turned and won't let Bret make the save. Bret limps after him, still selling a knee injury from the previous week and again, the crowd isn't really into this. Proof that Austin was not an overnight sensation. Rocky wins by countout. -
Any benefit they would have gotten from the Pete Lothario angle the week before - and it wasn't much - is ruined by Michaels acting all happy-go-lucky this week instead of seeking revenge. Sid does one of his fun promos in an empty Alamodome that actually does a great job hyping the Rumble match. Extremely well done. Shawn does an on-location promo surrounded by fans at Park Place in San Antonio, wherever that is. A good promo, but he seems a little wasted, and I don't really understand the build to this match.
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Like Kudo, Yagi was going through a retirement tour of her own in 1997. She's not someone who has been featured all that much on yearbooks to this point, but it was a fairly important story in 1997 Joshi. Speaking of, Joshi is two for two at his point of the yearbook. Yagi is a great *wrestler* and has a game dance partner who works hard to get over her submissions. What I like is that while it's obvious that Yagi prefers to work on the mat, she's a pretty versatile wrestler, and her highspots and strikes look really good too. She outworks Kuzumi by a lot, but this match is also about her, so I'm comfortable with that. I don't think these two are evenly matched enough for this to really be a great match for two reasons: (1) Yagi is so much better as a worker that I really had trouble buying Kuzumi's offense (2) Yagi seems like a great offensive wrestler but not a particularly good seller. Kuzumi's win seemed like a complete and total fluke. Still, this was very good with some really awesome moments, and I really enjoyed it overall. I'm looking forward to more Yagi matches in the future, hopefully opposite an opponent that's more aggressive.
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Raven cuts an actual wrestling promo and calls out Sandman for a brawl. This turns into kind of an impromptu match. They end up brawling through the building by the gimmick table. They end up in the BWO locker room. Stevie gets pushed out of the way when he tries to cheer Raven on, and that point is played up big on commentary. Sandman comes out of the locker room now wearing a BWO t-shirt and the brawl continues through the building and eventually back into the ring. I was surprised at how much I liked this segment, but the shirt was never explained.
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I told myself going into this yearbook that I didn't want to comment on match reputation at all this time around, but instead just talk about the merits of the match as I see it. So I won't do that here. This was a terrific match with some really nice matwork. It was reminiscent of Dandy/Casas in some ways (even with some of the same matwork). I don't think the "big" feeling was quite as strong here as for Espectrito/Sagrada at Triplemania, but this is probably a better worked match of the two, and the high-flying here was as picture perfect and clean as any you'll ever see. Guerrero works some nice cartwheel highspots into his arsenal that somehow don't seem hokey. Ramirez is the guy who blew me away in this, both with his ground attack and highspots. I'd say think Casas vs Dandy with more high-flying -- not in terms of match quality, but match style. This is a shade below the very best matches of the decade, but only a shade. I probably won't go the full five stars on this, but Guerrero accidentally slipping off the ropes in his post-match celebration and making the crowd laugh after such a graceful match makes me wonder if I should.
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Hogan starts getting pelted with garbage as soon as he hits the ring. Funny that the entire NWO clears the ring, but Nash stays inside the ring and stands in the corner. Hogan spouts off lie after lie for a few minutes before The Giant hits the ring. One-by-one, the NWO guys go after him. Nick Patrick gets thrown to the floor and lands on his ass. Ouch! Bischoff tries throwing a few double axehandles to save Hogan in a funny moment. Giant teases a chokeslam on Bischoff and Hogan hits him from behind with a chair. The NWO jumps on Giant like a pack of wolves once the situation is more favorable for them. Bischoff gets in a kick of his own and seems really comfortable in his TV role at this point, where when we left off in 1996 he was still finding his way a little bit. The NWO music plays while Giant lays face down in the ring, and the NWO decides to scare the announcers instead of returning to the locker room. Sting shows up and the NWO seems to think he's on their side. He whispers something to him and leaves the bat in the ring. Nash is funny, calling Sting an elusive cat, but a heck of a young man. Hogan and Nash order Vincent to go to the ring and crack Giant on the head one time for good measure, and Giant wakes up after being laid out for a long time and Vincent eats a chokeslam for his troubles. Giant then grabs the bat and starts fighting off the NWO by himself. The show closes with the crowd chanting "We Want Sting" and Sting lurking in the shadows. Great segment.
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Last few minutes. Shawn uses his time at the booth to shoot on Bret not being an angel but presenting himself as one and even cracking on him doing the same moves in the same order. Sid comes out and grabs a cameraman and runs to the back, which leads to Austin running in and hitting Bret with a stunner to zero reaction. Vader then pins Bret after a middle rope splash. We find out why Sid wanted the camera - so he could powerbomb Pete Lothario on a table backstage. We're supposed to care about this? Thankfully, the WWF gets better as the year progresses.
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I hated how they couldn't figure out if Sid was a face or a heel during this time. He tells us "You have to kick, or be kickened" and cuts his typical Sid promo that his fans love. Shawn comes out to do commentary after Sid issues a few words of warning and responds by taking off his trench coat to show the world he's shirtless. Wow, the first half of the year with babyface Shawn is going to be brutal. This segment shows the problem with him in that role better than any other example I can think of.
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Kind of an odd setup. The scaffold is much lower than in your typical scaffold match, but it's also draped over a barbed wire in a spider net formation, so take that! Crazy spots, including a senton bomb off the scaffold onto the wire. This is all about stunts with the barbed wire and highspots, and I had a real disconnect with this match overall, especially in the afterglow of Kudo vs Kandori. Notable for being the yearbook debut of Big Japan though.
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It's the first leg of Kudo's retirement tour, all culminating in her retirement match at Yokohama Arena on April 29. Her path there is chronicled on the yearbook. Kandori dressing in all black with a tie for a streetfight is a pretty cool look. This looks like another strong Joshi For People Who Don't Like Joshi pick, based on the way the match is worked. Kudo really has a stronger US sensibility in how she works than most of her peers, where getting everything over takes precedent over simply getting everything in. I thought this was great because the brawling had some hate behind it instead of just seeming arbitrary, and while they brawled all over the place, every spot had meaning and some were teased and paid off later, like Kandori's attempted suplex on the ringside table. ("You don't want me to suplex you. No problem, I'll powerbomb you later instead.") I also loved that the heat was really out of concern for Kudo more than cheering of the spots. Kudo's selling of the hangman chain spot is frightening. I'm used to seeing Kandori as more of an asskicker, and she's that here for sure, but she also sells a lot and looks great doing so. It reminds of me of Dandy/Satanico in how they go to wrestling moves instinctively and out of desparation in the middle of a street fight. Kudo's pin attempts were her just throwing something at the wall to see if it would end this match. They do a long tease of someone getting thrown over the balcony to the horror of the crowd, with Kandori even wrapping Kudo in chains so she can't fight back, perhaps in the hopes of ending her retirement tour a little early. I didn't quite get the finish -- I'm assuming Kudo threw in the towel to save her life, but I'm looking forward to their FMW rematch in August. Quite an amazing spectacle. This would definitely fit in with ECW, but it's a level or ten above your typical ECW brawl -- deep down, the craziness is just noise, and at its core, this is just a well-worked wrestling match.
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Todd Pettengill hits the VIP lounge to talk to the WWF superstars on site. Goldust and Marlena are interrupted by a furious Bob Backlund, who can't believe how much cleavage Marlena is showing. Vince points out that she looks "mighty fine" while Sunny isn't impressed.
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It looks like Brother Love is with The Flying Nuns, who he renames the Sisters of Love. They make all sorts of sacrilegious jokes and drop in a few masturbation references for good measure. Mother Smucker and Sister Angelica. Early Shotgun really was a brilliant Vince experiment, even if logistically it couldn't last.
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Welcome to Shotgun Saturday Night, a creative and very brief WWF experiment in running seedy shows in hole-in-the-wall venues to create a sleazy television show. Bob Backlund warns us of all sorts of nefarious activities taking place inside the building before the show opening and a cut to hosts Vince McMahon and Sunny. They are confused that nuns are in the ring to wrestle. (It's the Headbangers.)
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The Blue Meanie and Stevie Richards trot around what looks to be early Guiliani-era Times Square and Rockefeller Center. Elvis's "Blue Christmas" provides a brief soundtrack to help make it clear this is how they spent their holidays. Stevie superkicks Santa Claus. They have to be cold.
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I'm going to go out on a very short limb and call this the last great match of Riki Choshu's career. This match should be studied and emulated. I've always thought there's no better way to make a match feel big than to work an extended collar-and-elbow tie up to start out. THIS working style is what I want from my Wrestlemania main events, in case anyone is listening and cares at all. These are two guys confident in their craft -- they know they have the crowd whenever they want them, so they take their time building the match. Everything, from the aforementioned collar-and-elbow, to the test of strength, feels like a titanic struggle of utmost importance. Hashimoto cheapshots Choshu with a few kicks during a lockup, to which Choshu takes exception and starts drilling him. I love how they get the vertical suplex over as a highspot just for Choshu having to try so hard to even lock in the front facelock and get him in position for it. What's cool about that is the way they call back to it in the finish, where a really earned brainbuster secures the win for Hashimoto, and also in a mid-match spot where Choshu puts Hashimoto in position for the superplex, just doing so gets a big "Ohhh!" pop from the crowd. I'm also always a supporter of the rule of threes with clotheslines to take a guy off of his feet, but especially when the sequence looks good. Aside from a quick blown spot when Hashimoto slipped off the ropes when doing his own superplex and Choshu had to cover for him by yanking his hair to pull him back in position, this was a nearly flawless match. It's is big and slow and stiff and grand and wonderful, and it's a near-perfect main event for a dome show, both in who the participants are and in how the match is worked. I think this is my favorite match between them.
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If it wouldn't register, what's the point in saying it at all? If the goal was to try to get Flynn over as someone who poses a threat to Goldberg, why not use terms that casual fans would understand? So there's that too.
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Just the entrances and finish. Ultimo has the 8 belts from the JCrown, along with the WCW cruiserweight title. A **** match in the WON, but not particularly heated or special, so we clipped it. I like Liger in the gold outfit. Liger wins the match and takes the JCrown as a result, and he seems to have gotten a fat lip at some point in the match.
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Chris Jericho debuts and retires the wildly successful Super Liger gimmick. We get the entrance, and I have to say the way Jericho fills out the costume is halfway between Liger and Psicosis. He doesn't seem particularly comfortable in the suit and if anything, seeing this makes me respect Liger even more -- he has had a legendary career wearing a really weird outfit. There were big plans for Jericho in this gimmick, but the idea was scrapped when the match was subpar. Jericho worked a few New Japan matches in the future, but never really had a big run.
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To answer the earlier question, using the term "shootfighting" did seem business exposing when I first heard it. You know, as opposed to "fakefighting", which is what pro wrestling is. It seems like just saying he's "skilled in many fighting disciplines" would have been better. If it wasn't intended that way, so be it, but that was my reaction.