PeteF3
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Everything posted by PeteF3
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I agree there wasn't much new here, but these two are so good at the basics that they can still craft a compelling match just on stuff we've seen. Both guys have standard, but awesome transition spots to really carry the momentum swings throughout, and Bret finally looks like a fresh new arrival in this setting rather than a third wheel as he's mostly looked like in his WCW run. I do kind of wish they'd changed something up at the finish, but Bret wins decisively after pretty much methodically tearing Flair apart. Incidentally, the sniping between Schiavone and Heenan is really reaching a breaking point with me--it doesn't reflect well on either guy and I'm not going to try to blame one more than the other, the bottom line is we're really reaching the point where they seem to be at each other's throats and not in an in-character heel-and-babyface-banter type of way. -
Giant with one of the worst hot-coffee sells I've ever seen...I can't believe I just typed that or that I have other incidents to compare this to. He just bends over for like 30 seconds while Nash gingerly sets him up for the power bomb. Crowd goes almost silent with shock when Giant hits. Announcers in the post-match don't know whether to get over an eye injury or a neck injury.
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Well...you can't accuse this finish of being predictable, now can you? Still dumb on just about every level from both a booking and execution standpoint--Spicoli bumping around for Dusty jumped out at me, too. What was the point of that? And why exactly do we need to protect Larry with a DQ finish? Dig that "LARRY SUCKS" post-match chant, too, so at least this got Larry over as a sympathetic babyface. /s In an American wrestling environment that's falling steadily more under the influence of Vince Russo, the most Russoriffic turn yet so far is one he didn't even book.
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That finish was holy-shit worthy, because it looked for a second like Jericho was going to ganso bomb him off the turnbuckle. But Rey's short enough that he just transitions into the Lion Tamer. Rey has to tap due to an injured knee, and Jericho is AGHAST that he would be greeted with boos afterward. So he obliges the crowd by tearing Rey apart some more, chaining his leg to the ring steps, and whacking it with a giant steel box. Strong post-match angle to give Rey some more time off and get Jericho over as the biggest the division had ever seen, and the run that made Jericho a superstar is going full-speed ahead now.
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Yeah, probably Raven's best singles match--and it's not a broomstick job as he brings his (orthopedic) working boots here. There are some good payback spots giving this more structure than a typical ECW run-in-fest, like Benoit doing the drop toehold on the chair and then Raven taking a bump into the guardrail as Benoit did at the outset. Huge pop for the Crossface, and I'm going to become a broken record shaking my head at how WCW didn't capitalize on all these hugely over mid-carders, aren't I? Raven's pre-match spiel is also good--quick, to the point, and actually serves a purpose as Raven promises to "feast on Benoit's pain" and then does exactly that at the finish. The only big knock on this is the cringeworthy-in-hindsight and monumentally stupid diving headbutt onto the chair.
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Good opener and the kind of thing you were only going to see from WCW in a PPV or Monday night setting. Chad mentioned this already but what struck me is how much some of this stuff looked like it *hurt*--they really lay in some of the chops and punches to a degree not normally seen in lucha, and even a lot of the dives and misses were high-impact, particularly Silver King's fall to nothing on the floor and Dandy's tope. Sadly the #1 takeaway of this is that La Parka should have been pushed way harder than he was. His charisma and antics transcend any language barrier.
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This restraining-order angle is SO, SO dumb, but there's some other good stuff here with Nash refusing to help Savage and of course the great closing visual of Giant tearing the ring apart. The WWF/E would later make this a staple of Big Show matches and angles but WCW shows that they could pull a stunt like this off effectively when need be.
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Yep, that's a MOTYC. I thought Tamura carried this totally but Mikhail to his credit didn't fuck anything up, and did a great job of matching Tamura as they were in dueling leglocks at several points during the match. Mikhail's other high point was his back-and-forth rolling to try to escape a knee bar, which was almost something you might see on World of Sport but works seamlessly in RINGS here. Tamura continues to be the Best in the World , a master class in striking, mat working, and good old wrasslin'-style theatrics.
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Of course the use of all the wrasslin' spots has already been covered extensively. In addition to that and all the awesome matwork there was really good build to Ishikawa's finishing double armbar, with Otsuka really putting over the struggle to the point where you really believed it'd be over if Ishikawa could get it fully applied. A very good match...neither Ishikawa nor any other BattlArts-centered guy made my GWE ballot and I have a feeling that if I could have completed the Yearbooks before the project ended that wouldn't have happened. Oh well, something to keep in mind for '26.
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Speaking of Schumann footage, is any of his Japan stuff on tape? He worked a Super Juniors tournament in the early or mid-'90s.
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Hansen/Jumbo had their issues together as well. I wonder if that was a case of two guys being *too* similar, sort of like Shawn-Perfect but in reverse, if that makes any sense.
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I like Shawn-Diesel (the IYH match only) and the Diesel-Bret matches a ton, but I think it's insane to say that Nash's output equates to Piper's considering a.) Piper spent a lot of his prime very much in the pre-everything-on-tape era, and b.) there's the stuff we *do* have: the Valentine dog collar match, the Perfect match from MSG, the Orndorff brawls, the Rude cage match, the Bret match...I'll take Piper's output comfortably over Nash's any day. And even in some of those great Nash matches he was being broomsticked, which I can't say for any of the great Piper bouts.
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I was going to say I don't really associate Roxy Music with yuppies, though some quick Googling indicates that some people see a connection. I think Phil Collins is a better fit (and don't tell me there isn't just a trace of Patrick Bateman in Flair).
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Our first 1998 segment that reaches or maybe even surpasses the heights of 1997--and that's some high praise indeed, considering there was a span of a few weeks where the WWF was topping itself with historically great angles. Everyone else has explained why this segment is so great and so legendary, so I'll try to point out that this is a rare instance of the WWF actively using a celebrity to get a wrestler over instead of just piggybacking off of them. And of course, the Austin-Vince rivalry is back on after a month-long hiatus. And so, as it was on Memorial Day '96 and Montreal in '97, things will never be the same again.
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The fire jokes are better than the penis jokes--and Triple H, dammit, is starting to find himself on the mic. At least when he's talking about Owen. JR's reaction to his line about his rocket-penis was laugh-out-loud hilarious and funnier than almost any DX skit by itself. Michaels' delusional promo works since he's so over-the-top in talking about how he won singlehandedly. Then we shift gears: for the first time in months, Michaels and Austin are about to cross paths. Shawn talks a good game here but he's finally about to meet his match, thank goodness.
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"Shank of the evening"...until now, I had never heard of that phrase before. Another strong segment between these two, helped because Bret cuts his best and most focused promo since jumping ship. Even as the rest of WCW's booking is in disarray, these two can sell a glass of water to a drowning man. In retrospect it's not hard to see why this show did better than expected.
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I still think I liked Ground Zero better, but this was another match that was much better than I remembered as I watched it live. Shawn has another bevy of vicious spots here, including the great piledriver on the steps (five years later and he's finally taken up the Brain's "good amateur move" advice!) And a good number of teases and cut-offs to show how well these two know each other and also serves to keep us, the viewer on their toes by switching up some of the usual spots. The tombstone into the casket was an amazing false finish as well--really, the only complaint is Earl Hebner somehow managing to fuck up officiating a match where barely does anything with that business with the lid--what a horrible referee. Now I'm starting to talk myself into thinking this *was* better than Ground Zero, because now I'm struggling to remember a whole lot about that match besides the big post-match plancha--and it had its share of overbooking gaga, too. As for the Kane turn...well, yeah, you could criticize it for being pointless and Russoriffic, but a.) the story was that Kane could not bait Undertaker into fighting him, no matter how many times he attacked him or other people, so you get the idea that he had to try something else, and b.) even if we, the smark audience, saw it coming, the crowd at large TOTALLY bought into it. When the Outlaws and Boricuas are pounding Undertaker down, they're chanting for him. When the lights go out, they pop. And when he turns on Undertaker, they boo. It also should be noted that in the Observers of this period, Dave is *constantly* hammering how much potential money there is in Kane as a babyface, though he does say that they'd have to run the Kane-Undertaker match first before going full-bore with it. The post-match with the axe and the burning casket is over-the-top in another Russoriffic way but it's a cool image in any event. Shawn's an afterthought, but they may have figured that if they ended yet another show with DX celebrating, with the crowd really buying into a possible title change, that there'd be another riot, so they got him out of there for everyone's safety. All in all, this is a presentation that hit just about every note it needed to hit. It's not a top-end MOTY, but it may well place in a WWF or even an American-centric list--it's a good Sportz Entertainment production all the way around.
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Pretty much a pure formality, but credit Russo (or one of the other members of creative reigning him in) for not trying to overthink things and SWERVE us all. All they really needed to get out of this was Austin winning, and that's what they did. The only other storyline we see put over is the Nation being in disarray--they have four Nation members at the end but none of them work together and they're often fighting each other, and this climaxes with Rock sneaking up to dump Faarooq. Huge crowd pop for the big Austin-Rock showdown, a sign of things to come and also a sign of just how far Rock had come in the past few months.
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I actually actively disliked this match when I saw it at the time, but I haven't watched it since. It's a lot better than I remembered--not really as good as a really good WCW TV match nor as good as the best Vader/Dustin matches, but for the rapidly diminishing standards of late-'90s WWF it worked. I agree that there could have been more of Goldust on offense but even at this point, heel control segments aren't exactly Dustin's forte, especially working against a much bigger babyface opponent. Initial negative feelings about the match aside, the finish was awesome and memorable then and it's awesome today.
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I liked this quite a bit--actually at times it felt grittier than almost any other Rey match you'd care to name. There was some intensity and hate behind that forearm/chop exchange. There were lots of pretty moves of course, but that stood out to me as well. And the lack of competition on the other channel may have something to do with the at-times more deliberate pace. Excellent finish as Juventud kills Rey with a power bomb out of the huracanrana, misses the 450, lands on his feet, but is caught with another huracanrana for the title change.
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