PeteF3
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Everything posted by PeteF3
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Shawn introduces us to Jose Lothario. Bret rebuts--Shawn reminds him of a tennis ball bouncing around the ring, but doesn't have many effective moves besides the kick. Bret would fit right in at PWO, lucha-bashing aside. -
This is a pretty lucid, focused, and fiery promo by Piper. Good segment that improves upon the Diamond Mike-Pink Assassin dynamic thanks to the talent involved.
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DDP, having lost all of his money in putting it up to get more title shots at Badd, costs Johnny the TV title with a diamond cutter on the arena floor. And that's it for Badd in WCW. He had a truly amazing run considering he debuted at the same time as PN News and Arachniman. Badd cuts one of the most fiery promos of his career afterward, but it would be for naught. Good for him for cashing out, though.
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It's a spotfest, but holy fuck, what spots they are. The execution these two have is just unbelievable. Even Juvy's relatively basic Japanese-inspired suplexes and throws look awesome. Rey gets power bombed onto the hood of a car and then pops back up to give Juventud a huracanrana off the hood onto the sidewalk. Oh My God indeed.
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Pretty chaotic angle, with Pillman using his cousin and her toddler kid as human shields. Fascinating in its sheer audacity and not the last time we'll see a kid being uncomfortably close to extreme ECW action. Unfortunately this stuff looks worse in hindsight now that we know that Douglas-Pillman isn't going anywhere, that Hogan was already working to undercut Pillman by throwing him in the Doomsday Cage, and that Pillman's career and life would soon be altered by the big car wreck. Tod Gordon gets ECW security to get Douglas to the back after they eject Pillman, but Bill Alfonso ends up confronting him and they have yet another brawl that's better than it has any right to be. Taz lays out Gordon and Bam Bam Bigelow makes a surprise appearance to run off Taz.
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Sid sitting at the WMC announcer's booth wearing a suit and holding a mic is an image that could probably be my new wallpaper. It's a funereal scene as PG-13 have been forced out of the USWA, thanks to Tommy Rich and a timely use of a fire extinguisher, a move treated as the most horrifying possible act. Even Sid is shocked and appalled. PG-13 send in a taped goodbye.
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The Pitbulls change things up--this week, their threats are toward the Bruise Brothers. There's one I'll be sure to add to the Supplemental Viewing section. "Can of whoopass" is said on a wrestling show for perhaps the first but oh so not the last time. Sandman and Missy Hyatt make eyes at each other. Missy's still pretty hot at this point. Stevie and "Stan" Fargo strut for us. Dances with Dudley attempts the same. I wonder how many takes that Buh Buh Ray/Meanie bit took without either one cracking up. Brian Pillman cackles in his limo. "Wassamatta you?" JT Smith asks us. The Eliminators cut their weekly promo on the Pitbulls. Taz and Alfonso don't appreciate the ECW shakycam. Big Dick Dudley grunts. Pillman misinterprets the Constitution again.
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We get a helpful disclaimer for this one, informing us that all of the quotes from Turner are, in fact, real. A couple of ill-advised out-of-context statements and an off-color but clearly meant-to-be-humorous joke about women are read out as if any wrestling fan would give a shit. The bit with the Huckster was good, though, same with Nacho Man going down to a woman's shoe.
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Some motivation for the Mankind character in this one, as he promises to lash out at mankind for disfiguring him.
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Goldust makes double-entendres about Piper's "size" and describes in detail having an orgasm at the Jimmy Snuka coconut attack. Holy shit, this was even more over-the-top than I remembered. He also plays the bagpipes and there's an edit when it appears that he was about to do something obscene with the blowpipe.
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Another Clique special, as these two work together well to put on a hot TV match, with Shawn putting Kid over pretty big even though Kid's just about gone from the company. Kid gets in some brutal-looking spin kicks, and the way he can come off as a dominant heel at his size continues to impress, 6 years after the Jerry Lynn series.
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I liked this better than a number of other Flair/Sting bouts, though I still like the babyface-babyface '94 WCWSN title match and the first Nitro match more. This was slower-paced and while we got the usual Sting no-selling-chops/popping-up-from-suplexes bits that we always get in this matchup, Sting's Hulk-Ups felt a little more organic, for whatever reason. Shit finish that makes both Sting and Luger look like total idiots. There had to be a better way for Luger to cost Sting the match than that. Also, WCWSN is back on the road for the first time in forever. Thank God, as Center Stage was one of my least favorite weekly venues.
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Albright is a man ahead of his time, coming out to "Voodoo Child." No air guitar, though. Definitely a match of value if just to see the other AJPW types work with Gary and compare them to what Kawada did in October. This is decent but not nearly as good--the opening is a total waste as Misawa doesn't seem to know how to really work Albright's style of opening mat-wrestling, so we get a lot of lock-ups, stalemates, and resets that's broken up when Albright unleashes a German suplex. Gary locks on a cross armbreaker on Misawa's rolling elbow arm and doesn't break when Misawa's in the ropes, providing an opening for another psychological road to go down, but they don't follow up on it aside from Misawa paying Albright back by doing the same thing. I can't really call this a spotfest--there's some token psychology involving Albright constantly going for a dragon suplex and Misawa constantly foiling it--but there isn't a ton of substance outside of the big suplexes. Albright does take a great flying bump off Misawa's rolling elbow at the finish, and overall I think he was as good or better of a worker in this match than Mitsuharu. Not a bad effort, but unless Gary was going to work Kawada every match, this is strong evidence that he wasn't going to be a great fit for the company.
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The story going into this was that a.) in an earlier 6-man, Akiyama had dropped Kawada with a Northern Lights bomb and "knocked him out," with Kawada doing a rare stretcher job after missing the rest of the match, and b.) in a later 6-man, Akiyama got a pin on Taue for his first victory over a top-level guy, and Baba had declared that the Big Four were now a Big Five. At the start this is all about the Holy Demon Army trying to put this upstart Jun in his place, and Jun not going along with it. Taue and Kawada do as much as they can to grind him into the mat, and he keeps bouncing back up. And when they try to unleash their big bombs, he has counters for them. Unfortunately Kobashi, upon tagging in, actually drags this down a bit. There's some token psychology with Kobashi apparently having a bad leg, but for the first time in his career Kenta actually brings down the energy of a match. Things pick up again when Jun tags Kawada with a hard slap from the ring apron after Kawada slaps him, tags in, and goes nuts with Exploders. Kobashi then starts pulling his weight as a force from the outside making saves and setting up double-teams with Jun, but in the end Akiyama is double-teamed, Kobashi neutralized, and Taue gets his win back. This was non-title, but being as Taue & Kawada were the tag champs it wouldn't make a ton of sense to job them in their first big match after winning the belts. I have a feeling that I may say this a lot, but this felt like a star-making performance by Jun. For the first time in a big AJPW tag he felt like the best worker in the match.
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Much slower-paced than their usual bout, with a bigger emphasis on crowd-pleasing spots. This felt like a WWF house show version of their match--not that there weren't some fine spots here, but a lot of it is stuff we've seen before. Kevin has that stuff with Rey doing feints while Psicosis is on the chair outside dead-on--no idea what that was supposed to accomplish. Psicosis blocking a Rey tope with a chair was a highlight, and I thought the finish was pretty great. Psicosis gets Rey to give the referee a flying headscissors (they make it work, trust me) then low blows him while the ref is out of the ring to steal a win, bringing his record against Rey up to 1-459.
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I don't hate Koshinaka the way I once did but this is a revival of an '80s series that made the NJPW '80s set a real chore to sit through at points. Here, the burial of UWFI continues as now even on a UWFI show they can't use actual UWFI rules or the style, as Kosh fills this with pin attempts, ass attacks, and rope-running. He drops Takada with a brainbuster and stands there while Takada's out, but no ten-count follows. Meanwhile Takada spends the majority of this match laying around trying to exert himself as little as possible. He does make a fired-up comeback and drops Koshinaka with a bunch of kicks and...oh, now we're doing ten-counts. Yay consistency. Takada slaps on a cross armbreaker and Koshinaka does the worst sell-job of the move I have ever seen, making absolutely no effort to get out, go to the ropes, or even act like he's in pain. He literally just lies there as though Takada's got a chinlock on him on a WWF house show undercard match. Eventually he submits, but he completely kills the hold in the process, which for all I know was exactly what he was told to do. I don't know what I was watching in comparison to everyone else, including the live crowd, but I thought this was total fucking horseshit. I've liked '90s Koshinaka as a guy who can bring hate and energy and make mid-card matches feel "big," but crowd reactions aside he does nothing like that here. Takada turns in a performance that actually manages to top the Mutoh matches for sheer laziness and lack of effort. I don't know if he was demoralized about the state of the promotion or what but it sure didn't make for entertaining viewing. Objectively I don't see how Warrior vs. Goldust or the Doomsday Cage Match can be topped for Worst Match of the Year, but this is absolutely a legitimate candidate for that honor--bad matches with good (or decent) workers are worse than bad matches with shitty workers. Throw in the continued spiteful, self-defeating booking and this makes for possibly the most overrated feud of the decade.
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Back to the spirit of the first War Room skits, with some more on-the-nose jokes about WCW booking and Hulk AstroTurfing, with some staggeringly unnecessary poopy sound effects. And the whining about how the WWF "made" Hogan and Savage stars is pretty pathetic, but this is a little bit better than the past few segments. Were they insinuating that Larry King was boffing Jane Fonda?
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God, with Vince out of the booth even Lawler has to gush about the reaction Shawn's getting, though he tries to play it off in that Bobby Heenan "make fun of a guy and put him over at the same time" manner. Shawn and Bret play mutual admiration, with the crowd not exactly thrilled with Bret. This is a typical WWF babyface vs. babyface yawner of a segment until Piper comes out and injects some passion and energy into things. I liked Piper shitting on the idea of Shawn showing off his abs as proof of great condition. He doesn't want a DQ or a copout finish or a fluke, so he makes it an Ironman Match.
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What a goddamned war. Anjo and Takayama come out in Super Strong Machine masks just to be dicks. At the same time, these four completely abandon any pretense of "shootstyle" while ramping up the shootstyle factor...but this time in the Lawler/Snowman sense, instead of the MMA sense. Hash absolutely beats the shit out of the UWFI guys with some of the stiffest slaps and chops you'll ever see, as this builds into a solid formula tag match on top of all the chaotic brawling and hatred.