PeteF3
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Everything posted by PeteF3
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Oh come on, who's going to be "surprised" by the CHOKESLAAAAM at this point? Not sure why Lodi is pro-Nash all of a sudden but he's an effective enough sacrificial lamb. The whole Flock gets taken out with Kidman borrowing the Spike Dudley bump over the guardrail from the ring. Nash is out dressed to the nines in pajama bottoms and flip-flops as they push this ridiculous legal angle--to paraphrase a line from The Force Awakens, THAT'S NOT HOW RESTRAINING ORDERS WORK. -
Pretty good match--I was sort of going to dismiss the drama because I didn't really feel like there was a chance LCO could lose, but they managed to pull me in down the stretch anyway with a few isolated but well-timed hope spots by the GAEA team. I agree the weapons are a little overdone but LCO are just such gigantic cunts in this from the opening bell that it doesn't exactly kill the match either. Satomura is still probably my favorite of the GAEA-bred girls and I hope there's more of her in '98 and '99--her desperate, fired-up comeback attempts remain awesome and she throws about 500 forearm smashes that are just as awesome and satisfying as any Flair chop or Lawler punch. And her managing to drop Mita with her own Death Valley Bomb and Shimoda having to take out the ref to prevent a pin was the best highspot of the match and the moment where this turned for me. There's some sloppiness down the stretch and some lulls in the middle that keep this from being a high-end match of the year but this was about as enjoyable as any AJW match from 1997.
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I'm with Zenjo and Childs here--this was technically sound with some really neat counters, especially by Teioh, but it ultimately felt soulless. It was better than the Eddie/Dean ECW matches but it had that same vibe where the only real story is "these two are evenly matched." They trade counters and roll-ups and then Teioh arbitrarily uses a rollup that ends it. Unfortunately some of those final pin attempts look REALLY cooperative, especially the Billy Robinson/Johnny Saint move where Teioh literally just lets go in the middle of the pin attempt so they can run to the next spot. I've always had trouble making big grandiose statements about how I evaluate wrestling, whether in the GWE project or as part of the general board discussion, because every "rule" I can come up with has about a million exceptions to it. But I think the #1 takeaway I've gotten out of the GWE is that the closest thing to an absolute criterion I have is, "Do I care whether this guy wins or loses?" This match was better than I'm making it sound, but the fundamental failure, just as it was with Eddie and Dean, is that they couldn't make me care who the winner or loser was.
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Benoit made up a story about a family emergency to get out of a PPV appearance right before the murders, and we're still going to try to claim that this wasn't premeditated?
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But Jake didn't quit until the morning of WM8 when he found out or realized that he wasn't getting Patterson's job. (Which, by the way, would have mitigated being in mid-card hell even if it was strictly a pipe dream.) External chaos aside, the WWF was still in the business of having a plan for the next several months to a year's worth of booking. Who knows if Warrior goes along with said plan, but even Bret has said he was penciled in to feud with Jake post-WM.
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Clearly plans were being thrown out all over the place, because another tidbit that Dave dropped on Lapsed Fan was a plan to get Bret over by having him get a submission win over Warrior at the Royal Rumble--presumably for the title. This after winning a planned feud with Jake Roberts and then starting the build for the big SummerSlam '93 showdown with Hogan. Of course, as Steve Austin said in that famous ECW promo, WELL ALL THAT SHIT NEVER HAPPENED.
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I thought Bigelow had a hell of a run as Vader's partner in 1991-92. No, he wasn't as good as Vader, but his stock shot up in a fairly big way watching that stuff again.
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This was okay-ish, but one of those Tenryu WAR matches where he tries to put the result in doubt and it doesn't work, because there's just no other native on his level in the promotion. Both guys work hard and do their best to put on a good match, but it tops out at about average. Tenryu's a little thicker but is pretty much the same as he ever was, but WAR as a promotion sort of feels like it's running on fumes.
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It was a nightstick match, and it was a standard weapon-on-a-pole match, though at least it'd never been done in the WWF before. I forget what title they'd given Sarge around this time, but he was supposed to be a "rules enforcer" overseeing the referees. This came at a time when the WWF was handing down new internal directives about not brawling outside the ring or using low blows unless specifically directed, I think to combat injuries and possibly as a PR move as well. The whole thing was literally forgotten about in like two weeks.
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Yeah, I've always thought of Bigelow as a perfectly good talker. He's the type of good talker who probably is better with a good manager anyway a la the Road Warriors, because how's *he* going to book flights, negotiate title contracts, etc., but he was effective cutting multiple kinds of promos in multiple roles.
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I remember watching that All-American segment! I was just as confused watching it as Bix was having it described to him. I think it was just shit that Polo wrote to entertain himself.
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Our first brawl is triggered when Shamrock goes after Mark Henry, who turned on him and joined the NOD either this week or the week before. Austin is one of the last men to enter, but comes in through the back, whacks somebody with the tumbler, drops Phineas with a Stunner, and exits as everyone else ends up brawling with each other. But Austin gets laid out on the ramp...okay, why is Savio working with the Nation, exactly? The WWF still kicks WCW's ass when it comes to attention to detail but there are still some pretty big slip-ups going on around this time.
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Shawn has ridiculous white-boy cornrows that make him look like an even bigger douchebag than usual. He quickly gets to the point: Kane apparently split from Paul Bearer last week out of loyalty to his brother, and he's inducting Kane as the newest member of DX. We've finally reached the point where the announcers aren't buying these anymore and looking like morons. Undertaker comes out instead. He nearly chokeslams Shawn and then Chyna, but takes a crutch shot from Triple H and a superkick from Shawn and gets beaten down. Instant "WE WANT KANE!" chants--crazy! The Observers were really hammering how there was big money in Kane as a babyface, even before this "turn." The lights finally go out to a MONSTER pop and Kane sends DX running, and does the kneel-and-arm-raise gesture towards Undertaker. I think we all really knew where this was going to go, but this crowd is absolutely buying into these two in an alliance, so good on them. The "fake turn that's not really" would get played out to death by Russo in the months and years to come, but here it functions as an effective way to keep these two from having to wrestle just a little bit longer. It was clear that it was going to take a truly despicable act to get Undertaker to agree to a match.
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Highlights of Jim Cornette introducing the NWA to the WWF--holy shit, DENNIS CORALUZZO made an appearance. It's the WWF's Dennis of the Week! Back live, Cornette introduces the newest members of the NWA--the Rock 'n Roll Express. Robert's cut his hair and they're using the Rockers' music, but otherwise they look just as they did in SMW. I know the fact that these guys were anachronisms was the entire point of the gimmick but it still isn't that fun seeing this group slide into irrelevance. It does make for a great trick question for if you're playing the Worked WrestleMania + Starrcade game on Sporcle, since nobody remembers that the R'nRs wrestled at WM14 in the tag battle royal.
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Quick and dirty segment, with Austin mentioning how the rug was pulled out from under him last year. Austin welcomes being a target at the live Rumble drawing later tonight. Later we go to MSG where Austin hypes up Celebrity Deathmatch Death Bowl '98--yep, I remember watching that. The Super Bowl was just nearing the end of being sort of a highly-rated joke at this point, as the days of annual NFC blowouts would come to a halt. Counterprogramming halftime, though, was just getting started.
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The Outsiders still have a few tricks to show that they know how to work a logical tag match, but overall this isn't that good as the Steiners continue to deteriorate. Hogan interferes liberally and DiBiase *takes a bump* on the floor after Hogan decks him--no recollection of DiBiase doing any of that ever again. Savage tries for a top-rope elbow and hits Rick Steiner, but appears to have been aiming for Nash. It nets the Outsiders the tag titles again but dissension is in the ranks. This isn't the angle of the decade or anything but after weeks upon weeks of the same old shit on Nitro, a potential Savage or Nash turn seems fresh, at least if they pay it off in a timely manner. Raw was amassing more and more viewing time in 1998 (and would go to 100% after the Fingerpoke of Doom), so a lot of this WCW stuff is incredibly blurry to me. Viewing it with fresh eyes will be...well, I don't know about fun, but interesting at least.
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Neidhart isn't really well-built for Pure Sports Build talking segments, but Flair once again is out to save a segment. I'M DAVY CROCKETT, JACK--KING OF THE WILD FRONTIER! Flair and Neidhart end up making an impromptu match, but Flair makes sure to go retrieve something from the back first. As soon as he gets in, he clocks Neidhart with brass knuckles and gives Billy Silverman a shot for good measure. Ric applies the ringpost figure four and Bret finally is out to run him off. Another awesome segment thanks almost entirely to Flair--they did a good job of building this up from friendly disagreement to rivalry to finally a physical assault over the span of a few weeks.