PeteF3
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Everything posted by PeteF3
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So, Kawada's working with a bad wheel, both in real life and in storyline. Taue is forced to carry the work load, and here he decides to do that by going up to Bubba before the match and saying, "Just fucking punch me in the mouth as hard as you fucking can." And the Boss Man obliges--holy shit, does he oblige. He absolutely murders Taue with strikes here--this is the best BBM performance yet, and he's really a vicious animal working Taue over and Kawada to a lesser degree. He also throws in some classic weeble-wobble selling--I love his stagger-around-on-one-foot sell of big strikes. For such a big dude, Boss Man really did have some incredible body control. I have no clue if he could have kept adapting, or become a legitimate TC contender as a single, but this tour was certainly promising. Anyway, this is pretty much awesome on all levels--Doc works hard though I honestly thought Boss Man was more exciting, and this is a standout performance by Taue who's stepped up really nicely when he's had to. -
The crowd was mostly quiet and respectful for the first big Baba/Hansen tag, but here they're way into it. I don't care about airdates or how widespread results were--I prefer to think of the fans seeing Baba & Hansen take the Holy Demon Army to the limit with Baba in position to win at the bell, and realizing that the Old Guys are for real. That raises the stakes for this match. Baba's strikes are what they are and he can't bump like the other AJPW guys, but damned if he doesn't attempt everything that he's capable of--offensively and defensively. Seeing Kobashi and Misawa execute even their mid-level moves, much less the Kobashi moonsault, is a big deal just because it's Baba. Kobashi works a tremendous FIP segment but the Misawa/Hansen interactions are another highlight. Not really a true MOTY but definitely one of the most fun matches of the year to watch.
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At the time (well...not by this point, but in the early part of the month) Bret-Lawler was doing relatively hot house show business while Luger-Borga was a disaster. The Lex push was effectively dead before the Rumble, though I don't doubt they did some crowd-testing at the event anyway, because why not. The Superstar of the Year trophy looks almost exactly like a half-sized version of the WM4 battle royal trophy. If Bad News Brown comes out and smashes Bret's award, this will be the greatest piece of continuity in the history of wrestling. Luger cuts a lame pro-sports-locker-room-style bag-o'-cliches promo before introducing Bret, who gets a noticeably larger pop. On an objective level, shouldn't the winner of this have been Yokozuna? Whoa, Bret acknowledges his wife and four kids--even after Luger's family showed up on-camera at Survivor Series, that was unexpected.
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Yeah, they decided on a site to host the show 1 month in advance. The set for this is cheap and horrible, though Okerlund is still Okerlund and shilling to the best of his ability. They couldn't even spring for a damned podium. Flair shows up and gives Vader a contract. Vader isn't impressed with Flair's credentials, until Race shows him the clause stating that if Ric doesn't win, he retires. Vader rattles off the injuries sustained by Sting, Ron Simmons, Joe Thurman, Nikita, and Cactus Jack (still "with no memory"...Jesus Christ, the feud's over and they still can't get the story right). Setting aside, Flair and Vader are terrific. Flair closes by reminding Harley about "A Flair for the Gold" ten years earlier.
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Tom Nunnery comes out, presumably unsolicited with timing that can only be described as "fortuitous," to bloviate about all the charity work Jerry Lawler has done! I can only assume he'll be up for a Michael Landon Award in 1994. THE STORY'S MADE UP, SO LET'S MOVE ON. LET'S HEAR IT FOR THE KING! Jesus, this wasn't desperate or anything--at least the WWF was able to layer some subtlety over their pandering (not much, but more than there is here). And then this gets WORSE. This could only get creepier if we saw footage of Jerry Lawler hanging out at the Penn State campus, and I'm not just saying this to mine for tasteless humor. OK, so what was the final story with this? Lawler did it but got off basically scot free? A Ben Roethlisberger situation, where Lawler & co. paid the girl to go away? A Mike Tyson/Desiree Washington situation, where Lawler may have actually been truly innocent in this particular case but was guilty of enough other similar (or worse) shit that things stayed karmically aligned?
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And it looks like Dubba J's turning heel on his way out of the territory. Now that he's the Unified champion he can't concern himself with tag title defenses. Christopher's only option is to either forfeit the rest of the titles or go it alone, so he goes it alone. Well, if Christopher wasn't firmly entrenched as a babyface before, this oughta do it. Really fun match follows with the crowd backing Christopher all the way, but a foreign object to the back fo the head nets PG-13 the tag titles. Dave Brown is about to uncover this controversy and the object in Wolfie D's pocket, when out come Mike Anthony & Jeff Gaylord. Gaylord has improved tremendously since we last saw him, as he's able to spit out an entire sentence without fucking it up. PG-13 beg off defending the belts, but will do it if Anthony puts up his hair. Good stuff--the best non-WWF USWA stuff we've seen this year, in fact. The USWA hasn't had a tag team anchor since the end of the big Moondogs feud, and now they do.
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Monsoon announces a tournament for the new WWF Women's Championship--I can never remember if this actually took place in Memphis as Gorilla said or not (prowrestlinghistory says it was just a final). I found an answer to that Bret/Owen screen shot question somewhere, either Cawthon's old board or on KFM: Owen vs. Lawler was taped for the same Survivor Series Showdown, and it ended with Bret running into save Owen when Lawler had him tied in the ropes, and that got Owen upset. Obviously it never made it to air. Gorilla tries to browbeat Owen while Owen tries to talk low-key. His request not to be called "the brother of the Hitman" sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Monsoon talking into a phone seems like an unnecessary visual, too. This is played beautifully by Owen, coming off as a whiner and passive-aggressive at the same time he's raising reasonable points in a realistic way.
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Holy shit, I thought that was Cheryl. Yeah, this is incredible--probably the lucha MOTY. Morgan in particular provides a great blend of brawling, mat work, and high flying and incorporates all three styles organically, depending on the situation, instead of coming off as haphazard. This is worked as heel vs. heel, and is a standout example of how that style of match can work. Great to see the standouts of the early '90s turning up again late in the game on this set.
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The Gilberts end a tag match against each other in 13 seconds, then Doug gets on the mic and pledges his allegiance to Giant Baba and All-Japan. Yeah, that really paid off. No reaction at all from the crowd for any of this. 1993 has been a disaster for Eddie, starting with his shoot promo on USWA TV.
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Hey, fuck you Boston--I know these guys aren't quite as skillful as four fucking Doinks, but the WWF pushed this match-up as well as they could for a mid-card bout and gave both teams TV time leading up to it. They weren't *that* unknown. The dead/hostile crowd hurts this but the work is outstanding, particularly the Bodies' offense. Del Ray busts out an Asai moonsault to the floor and there are some sick double-teams. And I thought Del Ray catching the thrown racket while balanced on the top turnbuckle was spectacular. Ross had a standout call--he even referenced the Midnight Express! And Monsoon at least stayed out of the way. The stuff about the top rope rule was clever, but it was incongruously placed in this match when Marella wasn't bothering to discern who was legal and who wasn't and partially botching the finish. That sort of sums this match up--incongruous. The work was as good as or better than SuperBrawl, but that was in the heart of NWA/SMW country. This was in a WWF home arena and the whole presentation--from the WWF-style officiating to the crowd to the presence of Monsoon and even Finkle--made this southern-as-country-fried-steak presentation just seem off.
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I remember Heenan name-dropping Terry Funk on Raw around this time for seemingly no reason whatsoever, so there's some legit basis for the idea that he was supposed to be a Knight (and unmask during the match). Can't remember the match or the context, though. This is really the Brain's true WWF swan song, as throughout this interminably boring match with 5 non-regulars, Bobby was absolutely on fire throughout. He was the best thing about most of this match, though the clip we jump to shows some pretty good action. Owen collides with Bret, and while Keith & Bruce are checking on the Hitman Owen gets rolled up and pinned and he throws a fit. Michaels gets put over huge during the match and on commentary, and gets out of doing the direct job, too. That out of the way, the big angle of 1994 begins in earnest, as Owen runs back to get into Bret's face. Owen immediately gets some good heat for this.
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Sort of a longer version of Steiners/Money Inc.--not a ton of high-end offense considering Hansen can't bump the way the others can, Baba is Baba, and Kawada was practically working on one knee. But the basics are so well-done that it makes for a pretty good, '70s-style match anyway. They sort of telegraph the draw as no one is in any real danger of losing until about the 27-minute mark, but the last minute is pretty cool with Baba taking all the offense he's capable of taking and almost hitting a miracle last-second victory.
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Okay, I've only seen the tag title change on this set and a singles match against Jun Akiyama out of '93 AJPW DiBiase, but Boss Man here completely fucking blows him out of the water. His punches look good, he works well with Doc (love that double-powerslam), he bumps his ass off, and he goes up for some fairly advanced offense like Kobashi's rolling cradle and Misawa's closing German. He even whacks Misawa with the nightstick at one point, which was fun to see because it was so incongruous with the '90s AJPW style. He had other fun matches in his first tour, like a singles match against Kobashi (not high-end by Kenta's standards but a perfectly acceptable match) and actually a really fun 2-minute rush job against Mighty Inoue that's like the '90s All-Japan equivalent of a syndie squash. "Novelty," okay, but considering he was a sub for the scratched Gordy the crowds had every reason to shit on him or at least be skeptical. As it is, he and Doc had the potential be a stronger team than Doc/Gordy, though I think to be a serious contender with the company he'd have to start wearing regulation gear. I just can't see a guy in a prison guard outfit ever challenging for the Triple Crown. Anyway, this match is a fucking blast and BBM more than pulls his weight. He could have been something with All-Japan, but with the WCW work we got out of him, it's not exactly the crime of the century that he didn't make it back after this, either.
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This was quite the labored angle to swap Shawn into this match on short notice, though I get the WWF didn't have much choice. Shawn actually acknowledges what happened to him the previous Survivor Series, before they enter Stu and Helen's house and are greeted by someone wearing a decrepit scary old lady mask. Shawn contrasts the size of Bret's poster with the size of Owen's--foreshadowing!
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We open with footage from 1989 of Dandy and Charles going to a DCOR, resulting in both men losing their hair--I see CMLL operates under the same "boy who doesn't win" precedent established in Simpson v. Flanders. Back to the present day--Charles does some of the absolute sickest ringpost-shots ever on Dandy, to the point where it was uncomfortable to watch, let alone listen to. Dandy follows that up in the third fall by ramming his shoulder into the post as hard as he can, like "how the fuck did he not shatter his shoulder?" hard. This was one of the stiffest lucha fights I've ever seen--some blood would have been nice and this isn't 1990 levels of greatness, but it's nice to see at this late point in the year that Dandy has kept on keeping on. Fairly consistent story of contrasts throughout as Charles aside from a few token submission is all about brawling, while Dandy works almost entirely cleanly, on the mat. It occurs to me that Charles is pretty much a mini-Brody except that he's about a million times better than him in the ring by every conceivable measure. Awesome ending as Dandy is about to secure the Dandina but gets low-blowed, and Charles locks in a funky rollup of his own to steal Dandy's hair. Dandy got doubly screwed as the referee missed a visual fall while yelling at the seconds.
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I thought this was the least consequential Big Two PPV of all-time (and one of the least successful ever, financially) but this was a hell of a closing stretch that hit all the right notes. Sting delivers another awesome fired-up performance, Austin looks like a guy on the verge of breaking into the main event scene (hah!), Vader looks like a killer, and Flair even gets put over in the act of being put on the stretcher--never officially eliminated, and as Schiavone points out Race & Vader come off as afraid of him. One of the best battle royal closing stretches you'll ever see.
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I think Devil's awesome and she embodies a lot of what I love about JWP. But this is two times now where she's been heavily involved in a major match that simply went too long for its own good. She's like the Ricky Steamboat-wrestling-Haku-for-20-minutes of joshi. And truthfully the first half or so of this match I could have taken or left. Just a lot of disjointed and meandering trading of holds, though the work itself was fine. Then this picks up when Devil and Chigusa start trading near-falls, with the partners acting as accessories to make saves or participate in double-teams. That leads to a bunch of hot near-falls, and some really cool submission work with the dueling sleepers and Plum's leg submissions. I could have forgiven how indulgent this gets but the girls start messing things up down the stretch--first Plum doesn't position Chigusa properly for Devil to dive off the top and we have a really awkward, drawn-out reset. Then a groanworthy spot where Devil German suplexes her and just releases at 2, without even an inkling of an attempt by Chigusa to kick out. Incidentally, after her miracle series with the Scorpion, Cutie Suzuki has seemingly been less and less impressive every time out. She kind of stays out of the way here, but she works SO ridiculously loose--like WWE diva loose--that it grossly stands out in a world of Nagayos and Kansais kicking the shit out of people. All this to say that while parts of this were great, the previous JWP tag was so much more enjoyable because it was tighter and still conveyed everything that needed to be conveyed.
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