Loss
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Everything posted by Loss
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Just so it's clear where I'm coming from, Ricky Morton headlined NWA World title matches against Ric Flair and was involved in some of the most memorable angles a national promotion did during that timeframe. But he wasn't a star on the level of Jim Neidhart, to pull someone randomly, because Neidhart had the bigger stage. The WWF was a more successful promotion than the NWA, so that's a gimme. So if we're looking at overall stardom, the WWF teams win out. If we're looking at relative importance to the promotion and ring work, that's where I think WWF tag teams suffer. -
I'll cross-post what I just put in the podcast thread, then come back to do rankings later:
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The Fantastics are likely better than every tag team in WWF history. So are the Midnight Express, Rock & Roll Express, Chavo & Hector Guerrero and the Fabulous Ones. I don't think there was a single great WWF tag team match in the entire 1980s. The WWF tag team division meant nothing to the success of the promotion, and I think most fans saw the teams as interchangeable. Were any teams (except *maybe* Demolition) more noticeably over than others? They were the equivalent of cruiserweights in late 90s WCW -- they existed in a separate bubble from the rest of the promotion and sometimes their matches got over, but it wasn't often that people truly cared about the performers themselves. They didn't touch main events like the Rock & Rolls, MX and Road Warriors did in Crockett. They are only remembered fondly because (1) there were so many of them and (2) most of them had matching outfits. How's that for absolute and contentious statements? Sorry if I feel strongly about this. To further elaborate, to blame blowjob tag teams for backlash after a couple of years is not to understand wrestling fans in the 80s. It happened to every blowjob tag team at the time. Teams like that fared better in territories where they could work for 1-2 years, then go somewhere else and be fresh. The backlash was a result of the pretty boy image, where male fans eventually start booing wrestlers marketed to women because they saw them as threatening. It didn't happen in the WWF because at the time, the WWF didn't market itself to your average 20-something guy who would take his girlfriend to watch wrestling. The wrestling infrastructure collapsed that allowed blowjob teams to have a run and move on (and possibly return for a second run after absence made the heart grow fonder), and I don't think it's fair to blame the teams themselves for that, especially not the Fantastics when it even happened to the Rock & Rolls by 1987 in Crockett.
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Russo just didn't get it. His focus was on "shooting". Obviously, Russo sucked, but he sucks even more for creating a wrestling environment where people are afraid to inject reality into wrestling angles because that's Russo-like. Of course his other bad habits are picked up without hesitation. But I'll stop before I take this off topic. This is the right way to make a segment feel more "real", because the things they are discussing are relatable. I agree that this was a phenomenal segment.
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Randy Savage looks like the world's coolest candy striper. He calls Gene a turkey and promises to regain the WWF title. The rationale of Warrior not giving Savage a title shot was a part of this feud that never made sense to me. Not sure why they did this interview on a pay-per-view unless it was just to get Savage on the show.
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Last few minutes of a fun clusterfuck of a match. It was heel versus heel, so both sides were cheating like crazy. Of course, in a battle of cheaters, the Horsemen will always win. So they get their rematch at Starrcade, Flair keeps his yacht and limo, and Teddy Long has to be his Chauffeur For A Day.
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Here it is - a match that for years had the rep as the worst wrestling match of all time. Let's see how it holds up. Bryan Clarke was an Ox Baker trainee? How did I not know this? This is a horrible, horrible match, but I'm fairly sure I've seen a worse match at some point in my life. It was at least shorter than Zeus vs Abdullah the Butcher after all. I would love to do play-by-play on this sometime, but I just don't have it in me. As a side note, Sid being booked as a babyface is weird.
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Mike Rotunda debuts his new gimmick - Michael Wallstreet. He is managed by the debuting Terri Runnels, billed as Alexandra York. The idea that a word processor provides guidance to wrestlers on working a match is tremendous. It shows how little anyone really understood computers at this point in time.
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Andre the Giant is Captain Lou's guest this week. They apparently think it's 1985, as Albano asks Andre what he thinks of John Studd calling himself a giant. He frames the entire interview around that. I think we get the point that he's the true giant, Lou. Next up is John Tolos and Bob Orton. Tolos is managing Orton now. Quick spot.
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This is the first mention of the GWF scouters at ringside -- all the way from Barcelona, Spain. More on that in 1991. We join this in progress. Eddie Marlin is in Jarrett's corner, and Doug is in Eddie's corner. It's no DQ, so Jarrett swings a chair at Gilbert's knee and does some interesting work on his leg, even loosening his boot. Gilbert turns the tide by hitting Jeff Jarrett with "knuckle dusters", as Craig Johnson calls them, and it makes absolutely no sense why Gilbert is hiding his cheating when the match is no DQ and Jarrett is swinging a chair in plain sight of the referee. Doug waves the flag when Gilbert is stuck in the figure four, but the referee never sees this. Sam Bass comes out and lays out Eddie Marlin and raises the flag out of sight to make it look like Eddie Marlin was doing it and give Gilbert the match. The finish to this is pretty botched, but they did some good stuff. The two had a match in Louisville the next day as well. WCW escapee Jim Cornette was in Jarrett's corner. That got lost in the shuffle when mailing things back and forth between goodhelmet and I, but we'll include it on an Errata for sure.
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Teddy Long decided to finally look at the box that was delivered last week. It's a chauffeur's outfit. Teddy Long apparently signed in the contract - without knowing - that he must be Ric Flair's Chauffeur For A Day if Doom doesn't win. They did what they could to make this match interesting, but I still think they could have taken it up a few notches.
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Here we have the rematch! Sadly, Arn has switched his music. This isn't as good as the first match, but it's still decent. They do a lot of time shaving here, as this is billed as a time-limit draw when the match only goes a little over six minutes. But it does set up the third and final Arn/Taylor match the next week when Arn attacks Taylor after the bell.
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The top three babyfaces in the area -- each looking quite colorful -- come out for an interview. Dundee's outfit is tremendous. Lawler is here to show Gilbert and company that he *does* have friends that will prevent a beatdown like the one on Monday night from happening again. Dundee cuts a great fired up promo, and even Jarrett gets the job done.
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Gilbert is on a roll. I got tired of him for a while because of the Brody-like mystique surrounding him, but he was a talented guy, and this is the peak of his career. He brings out Black Magic, a masked steroid guy that he promises will take care of Dundee, Jarrett and Lawler, in that order.
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Gilbert really wants us to just humor him and go through the top ten. He's carrying a crown and insisting that he's the new King. He immediately chastises Dave Brown for the lack of excitement he has over announcing him as the Southern champ. Terry Gordy, Paul Orndorff, Ricky Steamboat, Steve Williams are all listed despite not even being vaguely associated with this territory.
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Survivor Series sure is going to be egg-citing, as Gene Okerlund says. I still love that Rick Martel called his team The Visionaries. Slaughter being paired with Boris Zhukov and the Orient Express amuses me. The Hulkamaniacs ... you know, it would really annoy me if my team captain insisted that the team be named after him. What a self-absorbed phony Hogan was.
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Some who aren't crazy about Joshi will accuse me of blasphemy for this, but this is Joshi's version of the New Japan multi-man tag match. The crowd is hot, the action is great and everyone picks up the pace a few notches. I appreciate Esther Moreno bringing a little lucha flair to this when she's in the ring. I really want to see more from her now. I need recommendations, and I really hope there's a Kong/Moreno match out there. Speaking of Aja, the crowd treats her as the star of this, and she delivers a performance to match. The dive train in the last few minutes of this is awesome, which culminates in Aja doing her dive much to the delight of the crowd. The eliminations happen awfully fast over halfway in, which tells me that even at 25+ minutes, this match could have used a lot more time. The garbage can stuff is bullshit, but it doesn't last long, and Aja is incapable of doing a match without it it seems. Great finishing sequence, though, and it really is a fantastic match - the best Joshi match of the year - and the multi-person format suits the go-go-go style very well.
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