Loss
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Everything posted by Loss
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And I apparently don't know what "playing the bitch" means. I always thought the argument was that Ric Flair, as World champion, should give very few of his opponents any offense, to a point when I was surprised when I started watching Jumbo matches that he actually sold and gave people openings pretty regularly. The argument always seemed to be that top wrestlers are wrong to do that. -
If you were just focusing on the "NO" screaming, I might be inclined to agree with you. It's not my favorite part of Flair's game. But then when spots like this are described: You are describing a wrestler allowing others to get offense on him. If that is what constitutes "playing the bitch", then every wrestler who has ever had a competitive match is guilty of it.
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This thread is my Hotel California.
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I really think if you watch those closely you'll see that Ric bitches out to both (and the ref if needed). Steamer and Barry sell more for him that Big Guys, but it doesn't mean that the sum of the match is that they kicked the shit out of The Champ, and The Champ hung on to the title via fluke and/or cheating and/or being out of it at the finish. Look at the bolded parts. I believe that's what I said. This is a bad thing worth criticism? Flair's job was to get Morton over as a worthy challenger. Ricky Morton, a great wrestler, but one who was primarily a tag wrestler and weighed under 200 lbs. If Jumbo was tasked with getting over Kikuchi as his top challenger so the match could draw money, what do you think he would do? I didn't realize that selling or giving an opponent offense is now "bitching out". I also didn't realize that a top heel building all of his matches around the idea that his opponent has a fighting chance is a bad thing. That was his job, to create doubt over the outcome.
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Is Jumbo selling a forearm from the apron to the floor for minutes at a time "playing the bitch"?
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That's true now. It wasn't always true. I'm fairly sure everyone here has seen a chop that made them cringe at least once.
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Yes, wrestling is fake. If the goal of wrestling is to make its audience suspend its disbelief long enough to emotionally invest in something, one way of doing that is to work stiff, or at the very least, execute the moves well enough that people think there's some semblance of violence. Poor execution can take people out of a match, no matter how well it's laid out.
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Stiffness doesn't have to be reckless. Recklessly stiff wrestling sucks, but guys laying in their shots most definitely does not.
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He also wasn't facing too many guys like Luger, Sting, Nikita and the Road Warriors in the early 80s. When those guys became more common, Flair developed a formula for getting matches out of them that usually worked. There were limitations to it for sure, but it's what he did, and there were more good matches than bad by a pretty healthy margin. You don't see Ric Flair playing the bitch against Ricky Steamboat or Barry Windham to the same extent. He and Ron Garvin beat the hell out of each other in their matches, and he was an arrogant bully in the Ricky Morton series. He's also definitely a tough babyface in his 1989 run.
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That's awesome. Wrestling and puns, always a good combination. I remember the Clash with the Dinner and a Movie guy serving NWOkra, which always made me laugh.
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This makes me wonder if they had big plans for Tito's El Matador gimmick at one point, as he actually gets a win over Undertaker here. There is nothing more WWF than trying to build up Tito Santana as a big star in Spain. Nothing. Undertaker tries to put Tito into a bodybag during the match, which is weird. Not a bad match at all, and the crowd definitely ate up the finish.
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Lawler finally wants to settle this thing with Embry. Yeah, I've been waiting on that for months. Embry wins a short match after a ref bump and a guitar shot from BILLY JOE TRAVIS. I approve, but I would like to see Lawler vs Embry decisively blown off with Embry getting his comeuppance in a big way at some point. Is that a herpes sore on Embry's mouth?
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Eddie Gilbert is back! Lawler does his awesome thing where he makes it seem like he's shooting and he's completely working. Lawler gets in some shots against the WWF and WCW (but more the WWF) and they are hyping a unification match between Lawler and Gilbert at Mid South Coliseum, pitting the GWF title against the USWA title. Things start off cordial enough, until Lawler goes there, and says Gilbert has spent his career copying Lawler instead of trying to be the best wrestler he can be, and Gilbert responds that he's not an imitator, he's the successor. They go to commercial still arguing. Effective.
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Eddie Marlin, in his neckbrace, has a few words for Eric Embry. He was about to fire Eddie Marlin, but Jeff Jarrett and Robert Fuller talked him out of it. The minute he gets out of the neckbrace, he plans on getting his revenge. Awesome.
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Danny Davis wants to make sure everyone knows that he had nothing to do with Bull Pain interviewing in the match where he won the title from Dundee, and that he has always considered Dundee a friend. He weaves his trip to W*ING into this. He tells Dundee the belt is his, and he's willing to give him all the money he made on the Japanese tour. Dundee tells him he's still his friend, and thanks but no thanks.
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This is some first class cheating. Last few minutes of the finals of a TV title match. Bagwell! He has Gilbert beaten after intercepting a foreign object, but the ref is out. Clever finish, as Scotty the Body puts the brass knucks on Handsome Stranger's hand and Gilbert pretends like he got punched, so that the referee will DQ Bagwell and he can win the title. Awesome.
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Flair works hard but feels out of place in this environment. It's been fascinating to see how awesome he was at the beginning of 1990 and watch how much he has declined as we near the end of 1991. The match has Coliseum Video taping-level heat even though there were two good workers in the ring. Flair tries every trick in the book to get the crowd going crazy, but can't sustain any heat. Tito really sells Flair's attack well, but this crowd just doesn't ever go beyond polite in their response no matter what they do. I'm used to hearing Jim Ross call Flair matches, and hearing Gorilla do it puts in perspective how horrible he was at talking about wrestling.