PeteF3
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Everything posted by PeteF3
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The mysterious Bullet, who may or may not be the banned Bob Armstrong, will be putting his mask on the line against Cornette's newest charge Dick Murdoch. All Cornette has to put up is $5,000. Dick is hot, despite being shirtless in the Colorado snow swilling Coors Light. He informs us that all the people who died in the Alamo were in fact gutless cowards from Tennessee. This is a riot. Bob Caudle reveals there's another stipulation for the Christmas Chaos show in Knoxville: Cornette is putting up $5,000 AND his hair! Holy shit, there HAS to be a way to weasel out of this, isn't there? -
Little Eagle, with a mullet almost as tall as he is, is possibly the scuzziest-looking midget wrestler I've ever seen. This must be a pretty pro-heel studio crowd--they sing along rather loudly to PG-13's entrance. Lawler and Christopher heave Midget D over the top rope onto PG-13 on the floor in a pretty crazy-ass bump, but leave themselves open for a Gilberts attack.
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Great to see Toni make an appearance on the Yearbook. From reading the Observers, it seems the Brian Christopher/Chris Adams feud was one of the best non-WWF-involvement parts of 1993 USWA. Toni's changed quite a bit from her time in Texas--she's a bitter grouchy heel sporting a neck brace. She brags about all the beauty pageants she won as a child--I could see Honey Boo Boo growing up into this. Toni despite getting heel heat from the crowd, points out that if she had a dog that looked like one of the studio fans, she'd shave its rear end and make it walk backwards. That line gets a HUGE pop from the crowd that was just booing her. Toni is into self-improvement so she's been studying video, and asks that they play a Brian Christopher music video. We get a few seconds of Christopher action set to "Unbelievable," and Toni asks to contrast with a video of her. She's TOTALLY channelling Jeannie Clark in this, as if it wasn't somewhat obvious to start with. Toni reveals she's found a new partner for Doug Gilbert, and a stunned Dave Brown sees that it's a returning Eddie Gilbert. The WMC studio is happy to see him. Doug blows the Cool Hand Luke line. Eddie is incensed about how Lawler & Christopher teamed up on his brother and then gave Toni a piledriver. Gilbert closes with a VERY eerie-in-retrospect line about death. An intense promo where Eddie came close to being the Hot Stuff of old, and he certainly had an effect on the crowd. That said--and this may be the sour taste of the King of Philadelphia run still being there--each return to Memphis seems to bring about diminishing returns both for Eddie personally and the promotion as a whole. This must be the 4th or 5th re-appearance since 1990 alone.
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Owen skirts the line between being reasonable and being whiny and jealous, very effectively. He points out what he does better than Bret, and in a great little touch, points out that he eliminated 2 guys at Survivor Series, hence he was the one who carried the team the most. Then he criticizes Bret for not knowing where he was in the ring! Ha! "Bret is MY brother." Owen challenges Bret to a one-on-one match.
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I wouldn't say there's a ton of substance to this, but that can be overlooked when the moves are so well-done. Sato does some gorgeous dives here as well as some high-impact bombs, and Delfin sort of turns quasi-babyface with some really gutsy kickouts down the stretch. There is a sense of struggle that comes across here, of two guys competing to win rather than two guys reciting choreography, and that's always appreciated in these juniors matches. Delfin's bridging German suplex to win is particularly gorgeous-looking.
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Wasn't part of the reason his WWF stint was so short because he was under the impression he would be booked as a main eventer? Then there's getting elected to the Prefectural Assembly of Iwate and conducting business while still wearing his mask.
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Anyone want to explain the "two" matches here? They continued after the first fall, so I assumed it was 2/3 falls...then Hokuto gets a pin and they start handing trophies out. (Please don't tell me that Kyoko/Yamada forced a tie at the end of the round-robin and we had another "final"...that's like if Alabama and Auburn had to play each other again to see who went to the SEC title game). This was great and possibly a top 10 or top 5 MOTYC, but there's not a lot for me to add, because the two matches got split up between work. The execution throughout all of this was just superb, and while I've liked other Manami performances more than this because their lack of "Manami-ness," this is maybe the best Manami Being Manami match I've seen. All kinds of super-athletic spots set up beautifully by both her partner and her opponents.
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I can personally vouch for the "let me connect you to someone else" = disconnected part. It happened to me at least 9 or 10 times. I also ran into some rather clueless CSRs in general, like one who told me that the Network wouldn't work in Chrome, and others who didn't understand that even if you were only signing up for the free trial, you still needed to provide payment info. That said, some of this guy's conduct seems pretty over the line.
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Believe it or not, Baba held the PWF title for something like 7 years--from the inception of All-Japan Wrestling--until Kamata of all people beat him for it (albeit in the cheapest manner possible--Baba was outside the ring choking Kamata with a TV cable and got counted out). I guess Baba wanted to get the belt to Billy Robinson and Kamata fit the Stan Stasiak "well, he's here in the arena tonight" suit.
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Am I the only one who does not see any "Get started" button, anywhere? Not in Chrome, not in Firefox, not seen either with or without ad blockers enabled. Without it there's apparently no way to sign up.
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Just out of curiosity, not as a "gotcha" question, what was your reaction to Montreal--whether watching it or hearing about it for the first time?
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Not to be too overdramatic, but with Okerlund and now especially Heenan's departure--on top of all the other horrible shit happening to the company--the WWF has felt like its completely lost its soul. I've been critical of Lawler's commentary but with him *and* Heenan gone, not to mention JR soon to follow, the announcing situation is going to be a total mess for the next few months. And Bobby won't ever quite be the same, either.
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This is one of the best mid-'90s WCW cruiserweight matches ever to air on Raw. Lots of staples of that style like Michaels dropkicking the Kid out of mid-air. Only thing missing was the "double cross body block" spot. Really hot ending and post-match, as Michaels is killing the Kid with Razor's Edges before Ramon comes out to rescue him. Razor is about to give Shawn what-for when he's knocked out by Diesel, and eats two Razor's Edges on the floor himself. Very timidly done, but I was amazed Michaels was able to get him up in that move at all. Shawn is "back" after spending much of the late summer and fall overweight--here he finally had an opponent he could dominate and bully and build sympathy on, and show off a little more offense than his usual standards. This results in a match probably as good or better than the Jannetty MOTY. As good as the post-match was, that faux-dramatic close-up of Razor's fallen toothpick was pretty groanworthy. Like something the modern "arty" WWE direction team would attempt.
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This picks up right where Dreamslam left off, with Kandori and Hokuto teasing a double-KO with punches and Hokuto juicing hardway. Hokuto was able to gut out a victory then, but this time for most of the match Kandori simply has an answer for just about everything she tries. Hokuto even throws a hail mary pass by Northern Lights bombing her on the floor, but it doesn't seem to get her anywhere. Then she makes the mistake of getting into a boxing match, and Ms. AJW does the job in the main event of her own promotion's show.
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I think I'll have to go back to DreamSlam II again, because for right now I have this one slightly ahead of that--which means it's probably the #2 MOTY. The heat isn't there at first, but it wasn't really there at all for Kong/Kudo, and they are certainly into it by the end. This is near-fall heavy to a crazy degree but for whatever reason they never got overwhelming and ridiculous like they have in some other joshi matches--I think it's because pin saves were utilized so well and the transitions and counters, while many, all tended to make sense. Ozaki even kicks out of the JOCS, which may be a first. The JWP girls attempt the same double-Splash Mountain finish that won them the tag titles to begin with, but Toyota counters that--there are several great payback spots and little historical touches like that throughout the match that I appreciated. Eventually Toyota puts Ozaki away with basically an inverted version of the JOCS, bringing the tag belts back home.
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That fucking ref bump...God, I seriously, without any hyperbole think that was one of the worst spots of the year. I get it was probably politically motivated for Kudo to get a visual fall given the interpromotional nature of the match, but it was SUCH a lame goddamn way to try to shoehorn extra drama into a match that was going perfectly well on its own. I thought it was absurd to expect that Aja would have gone down that easily after one big move under normal circumstances, so the whole thing felt completely false and artificial. There have been some great examples of American-style match booking being used internationally, but this year it's almost always been confined to AAA. Here they needed to leave the American-style bullshit to the guys who still do it the best. The rest of this was better. Kudo is insanely overmatched--you can practically see it in her eyes during the intros--but carries out an effective strategy trying to take out Aja's arm, but it isn't quite effective enough. The hope spots after that fucking ref bump are really good, particularly that sunset flip power bomb off the top when Aja's going for one of her standard finishers. Even after Kudo appears to be completely out cold from that last uraken, Aja quickly dives on top and holds on for dear life, which is a cool way to put Kudo over even in the midst of a dominant victory.
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Is this the match listed on the disc as 12/5? No thread for that and I haven't posted in this one, so... With this being a title match and the controversy involving interference in their previous bout, I was hoping for something worked more like a "traditional" lucha title bout, instead of Metal working Memphis heel shtick for a lot of this, begging off and asking for timeouts. There is some good work over the leg by both guys, but most of this is Metal simply covering up. On top of that, we get a LAME double-pin finish. I really don't need to see this feud continue--blow it the fuck off already.
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That came later--IRS served Tatanka papers for a "gift tax" on the headdress, and when Tatanka tore them up, IRS retaliated by attacking Tatanka during a match and trashing the headdress. He even beat up fat decrepit Jay Strongbow.
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The best use of the drop-down spot is in tag matches--the guy running the ropes has the option of either getting tripped or committing to jumping, leaving himself defenseless for a dropkick/elbow/clothesline from the dropper's partner.
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I actually thought Vader looked overmatched for a lot of this, particularly during the stand-up portions--he's fun in this setting, but he's still so not a shootstyle guy. He acquits himself as well as he can, though. I'm sure Thesz was dying inside seeing Vader challenge for his belt in this environment.
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There was a little too much laying around for my liking--Berkovich pretty much sucked, actually, and was only good for cheap-shotting guys on the ropes like a UWFI Memphis heel. I enjoyed watching the Soviets in '89 NJPW and I was looking forward to watching four big beefy guys suplex the shit out of each other and there wasn't as much of that as I'd hoped. Still, the visceral hate on display here was something dramatically different from standard shootstyle and it was enough to make this memorable.
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Is this the commentary debut of Stan Lane? Sounds like him. I have absolutely NO recollection of Reo Rogers--or of the Wizard, Bruce Prichard's other persona from a few months later. And I was watching '93 WWF fairly religiously. This is the most blatant yet of about 37 WWF potshots at Dusty Rhodes. We would have been better off with Brother Love back. Shawn Michaels declares that he follows no man and no rules. Doesn't ask us, "You think you can tell us what to wear? You think that you're better?" at least not yet. Words for the impostor Intercontinental champion Razor Ramon. Razor's music then kicks up magically--God, this segment is ahead of its time in more ways than one. Effective segment, with Shawn being a class A jerk.
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And with the final match for the promotion of the year, this I...well, not strongly, but am fairly sure...is the '93 MOTY. It's in a fight with the Dream Rush tag rematch, Hokuto/Kandori, and Doc/Kobashi (yeah, I said it). And maybe it's sticking out because it's the freshest. But this felt like not only the best-worked match of the year, but the most historically significant. Kobashi earns his biggest victory to date, even if it came as a result of he and Misawa double-teaming Kawada into oblivion. Kenta establishes himself as the year's best worker here--I do think he may have gotten shortchanged by the Yearbook but the RWTL combined with his widespread reputation has put him over the top. A perfect segue into 1994 All-Japan.