Loss
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Everything posted by Loss
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Lawler and Dundee are interviewed with their trusty baseball bats. They discuss Sam Lowe's heel turn and new alliance with Gilbert. Does anyone know which magazines he took pictures for? Lawler does most of the talking and does a fantastic job. They cut to a taped promo with Tessa, who reminds me of Robin Sparkles with a Southern accent. Kidding aside, she's a decent talker but I still find it humorous that such a big deal was made of her in two territories. -
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Slaughter - "Drill Sgt. Slaughter", as he's billing himself at this point - is still going on about this pinko commie Nikolai Volkoff. Then we cut to the ring where the Boy Scouts are doing a ceremony to present Nikolai Volkoff with a medal of honor. Classy ceremony and I'll bite my tongue about the political tinge of both of these segments.
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Pretty brutal match, and I'd say that even without the barbed wire explosion stuff. Goto works in pretty aggressive fashion. Doing more mat wrestling in these types of matches is something that works for me, as they're trying to stay as in the center of the ring possible to avoid getting exploded. Onita does his great facial expressions while bloody, wearing torn clothes that expose his bandages, and I realize that he is one of the most charismatic, "present" wrestlers that ever lived. The figure four is the big spot here, but they do a great job of working the hold, as Goto keeps doing other stuff while the move is locked in to keep it interesting, and Onita keeps getting the crowd going by teasing comebacks like only he can. The heat was weird, not in that it was lacking, but in that there seemed to be little rhyme or reason behind why certain things got a pop. I chalk that up to a Japanese fanbase that was still grasping this style more than I do Onita and Goto not connecting with them. I enjoyed this way more than I expected. This feels like something I might be overrating because they're doing some things that personally work for me, so don't put too much stock in me liking this so much. Definitely proceed with caution. But as far as early death matches go, I can't see them being much better than this. I would have liked this as a regular, no-frills wrestling match all the same.
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Lawler has his first match as a babyface in Texas and gets over big. This was a really solid tag match with some good work. I love how they're portraying Lawler -- The Heel With The Heart Of Gold. Great finish, as the heels think they can cheat against Lawler, and then Lawler outcheats them. They end up losing the match by DQ over it, and Lawler is upset and piledrives the referee. That will likely be an issue later. But this was really good.
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I thought this was the best of all the European matches to make a yearbook so far. It was definitely the most accessible. They didn't really work a classic tag formula here like you'd see in the U.S., but there was a structure that worked for the audience. There were lots of crowd pleasing spots and some great wrestling moves. Finlay was a fun heel, bumping big, striking hard and playing to the crowd. I'm not sure who was Zrno and who was Schumann on their team, as Googling photos of them produces two wrestlers who look very much alike. But they were a good team that sold well, had some fun highspots and energized the crowd. The only complaint I had is that this mach felt a little long, and there seemed to be a lot of recycled sequences. But I still don't fully get the European style, the crowd popped huge for everything, and the spots looked good, so I don't want to criticize it too much. Fun match.
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Football vs Karate! Its billed as a Come As You Are match. Austin wears a football helmet and padding, while Adams wears karate gear. Austin takes some insane aslyum bumps, including a suicide bump splashing the concrete floor with Adams moving. This was really good and is by far the best match of the feud, with Austin looking really good and Adams getting some high-quality revenge. Pringle takes a few shots too. I wish Adams had gotten the pin but this was still excellent.
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July: #1 - Midnight Express vs Southern Boys (NWA Great American Bash 07/07/90) ****1/2 #2 - Masa Fuchi vs Tsuyoshi Kikuchi (AJPW Brody Memorial 07/12/90) **** #3 - Mitsuharu Misawa & Toshiaki Kawada vs Jumbo Tsuruta & Yoshiaki Yatsu (AJPW 07/07/90) ***3/4 #4 - Jeff Jarrett & Billy Joe Travis vs Sweet Daddy Falcone & Chico Torres (USWA Dallas Sportatorium 07/04/90) ***3/4 #5 - Manami Toyota vs Bull Nakano (AJW 07/21/90) ***1/2 #6 - Mr. Perfect vs Tito Santana (WWF Saturday Night's Main Event 07/28/90) ***1/2 #7 - Jeff Jarrett vs Iceman Parsons (USWA Dallas Sportatorium 07/13/90) ***1/4 #8 - Doom vs Rock & Roll Express (NWA Great American Bash 07/07/90) ***1/4 #9 - Rick Rude vs Ultimate Warrior (WWF Saturday Night's Main Event 07/28/90) *** #10 - Steve Austin & Jeanne Clark vs Chris & Toni Adams (USWA Dallas Sportatorium 07/20/90) *** #11 - Harley Race vs Tommy Rich (NWA Great American Bash 07/07/90) #12 - Dean Malenko vs Ricky Rice (IWA TV 07/28/90) #13 - Stan Hansen vs Tommy Rich (NWA World Championship Wrestling 07/14/90) #14 - Ric Flair vs Sting (NWA Great American Bash 07/07/90) #15 - Demolition vs Rockers (WWF Saturday Night's Main Event 07/28/90) #16 - Steve Austin & Jeanne Clark vs Chris & Toni Adams (USWA Dallas Sportatorium 07/04/90) #17 - Bill Dundee vs John Tatum (USWA Dallas Sportatorium 07/04/90) #18 - Tommy Rogers vs Jimmy Backlund (IWA TV 07/28/90) #19 - Abdullah the Butcher vs Zeus (WWC Anniversario 07/07/90) Overall thoughts: The yearbook has picked up in a big way since the beginning of June. Every promotion featured did something worth watching at the very least. Even the "bad" is interesting.
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Gene ("Jim") and Alfred ("Marlon") continue their jungle tour, and Koko B. Ware and Frankie, Jake Roberts, the Bushwhackers, Jimmy Snuka and Akeem and Slick randomly show up in the jungle. Alfred's narration while Gene flipped out was laugh out loud funny. I'd probably get more out of this if I ever watched Wild Kingdom. This is brought to you by Burger King.
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They REALLY got the crowd going in this one. This is almost the perfect (no pun intended) SNME match. They cut a fast pace and did a lot of crowd pleasing spots, and worked their normal match in fast forward. Those false finishes are something to behold. This isn't really a great match in the sense that aside from the pacing and false finishes, there isn't much to it. But for the setting, it was awesome, as everything they did looked good and it felt special.
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The Rockers are really good at taking on bigger teams. Crush is even worse than Warlord, as Warlord could at least time his spots with the Rockers, while Crush is slightly off during this and they have to work around him. The match is still worth watching, as Smash is game when he's in, and Michaels and Jannetty are both in top form, and I do like a good switcheroo finish, but I do think it had the potential to be much better. After the match, the Hart Foundation come down to point out what happened and the Road Warriors eventually come out as well before Demolition bails.
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Hogan promises to respond to every letter sent to him during the Get Well campaign. Did anyone here write him and get a response? I'd love to see what the WWF sent out. Hogan is tremendous, and this is one of those moments where you see him and totally get his appeal. There are obnoxious things about Hogan generally speaking, but he was great in this feud. Earthquake, Jimmy Hart and Dino Bravo surround him, but Tugboat comes out to even the sides. Really good segment that made every point it needed to make.
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This is a good match, but after two months of training vignettes and a haircut, I felt like Rude doing his typical selling on the atomic drop and otherwise being schooled in the first few minutes just made it all seem pointless. They did all that work to make Rude seem like a serious top guy and there was no real difference in the way he worked to go with it. All of that said, Rude had a way of bringing out the best in Warrior and this is another example of that. I always pop for anyone applying a sleeper while piggybacking the victim. Rude throws some great punches when Warrior starts teasing a comeback and Warrior's Rude Awakening block is always one of my favorite spots in their matches. Rude kicking him in the gut and delivering the neckbreaker just after Warrior powered out also made me pop. And check out Rude's rapid bumping off of the clotheslines. Heenan takes a few lumps after saving Rude at the end, and Warrior takes the match by countout. Why? Bad booking aside, and ignoring that this match did nothing to make Rude seem like a threat at Summerslam, Rude gives a fantastic performance here, and Warrior is perfectly fine as well. I'll take this over Hogan/Warrior any day of the week.
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Malenko immediately goes for Rice's knee and does some really nice work. Rice is a plucky babyface, which is completely different from the act he had in the PWA. (There was a 35-minute match he had against Jerry Lynn in PWA that we really wanted to include, but sadly it only exists on YouTube, and the guy who ran the channel never responded to requests to pick it up on disc.) This is a couple of minutes shorter than Rogers/Backlund, but I like it better, and it's a great showcase for Malenko's nice matwork.
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Nice little match from Florida! I came across this looking through the indy stuff in the WON for matches that just might be out there. Luckily, Bix had it and there we go. It's not going to change the world, but both guys look really good. Backlund's attempted top rope legdrop got some mad height.
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