PeteF3
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Everything posted by PeteF3
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Been awhile since we've seen action from Mexico. Estrada's ring gear is spectacular, as he literally wrestles in his big glittery ring jacket the whole way through. I wouldn't call this one of the high-end lucha matches of the year but it's a lot of fun, especially the third fall. But I thought the technicos brought just as much as the rudos here. I especially liked them going all puroresu-style on Fuerza: Eddy takes him out with an exploder suplex and then they pummel him with a bunch of sick double-teams. Then they follow up with a tremendous dive sequence, both for the dives themselves and the rudos' insane bumping out to the floor, eventually leaving Fuerza alone to get taken out by Lizmark for the win. For all the hype and financial success AAA has gotten in '92 the promotion has been a disappointment from an in-ring standpoint, at least once they were out of L.A. But this was a good way to close the year for them. -
Badd is hilarious in contrast to everyone else. So is Barbarian, who does nothing but grunt and offer one-word responses. Rude is still being hyped as Simmons' Starrcade challenger, even though they had to know by this point that he wasn't able to go. Still a good focused promo from Rude, though his post-PPV feud with Erik Watts is also talked up, which doesn't speak much for his chances of winning the belt even if healthy.
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Armstrong has gone all-out in the search for the SMW title belt. By "going all-out" I mean he's looked in the locker rooms and asked Tim Horner where it is. God, this is cringeworthy as hell. Even as heavy as the subject matter is, your top babyface generally should not be crying on television. Or lying through his teeth to sick kids about winning the belt.
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There's a TONY SCHIAVONE soundbite during the intro to the song. Crazy to think of how this album changed music, considering that it was Simon Cowell who was behind it. Davey Boy Smith is featured prominently, coming off the WWF Magazine cover hyping the big Nailz/Undertaker feud. Mr. Perfect calls his shot and hits one out of the park. His swing looks better than his basketball shooting technique.
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This is the most deliberately paced shootstyle match since the mid-'80s, and there are no knockdowns and maybe one or two rope breaks. But it blows that '80s stuff away because the work is so focused, with Sano constantly on the verge of being placed in a match-ending submission and having to fight his way out. This is also one of the best representations of Takada wrestling as The Man--when Sano makes his comeback it comes off as a guy simply trying to keep his head above water, before Takada reasserts himself.
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I have nothing substantial to add, but as someone who hasn't regularly watched WWE in close to 10 years I want to chime in about how absurdly good Dustin Rhodes is right now. Just on the basis of viewing Monday's match and his online rep, he needs to be in a conversation with Tenryu and Lawler among the all-time greatest workers of middle age or older. I didn't find Cody all that compelling as a FIP and it was enough to have me wondering what was so great about the match (for the first few minutes), but his comebacks and transition moves are fantastic--both in concept and in execution.
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A few things I wanted to touch on during the show but just plum forgot in the moment, that I think are important enough to mention: - Speaking as someone who loves southern tag wrestling: this show proves that there is a limit on how much of it you can have on one show. Maybe with more quality control on the finishes and layouts, this would be less of an issue. It also really exacerbates the paint-by-numbers approach of the SSTs and Rotunda/Rich, since you had other teams doing similar spots but in a far more effective way. In hindsight, I would probably have booked a no-DQ stip to the 6-man tag and let them work a crazy tornado street fight, which would have made for something different while also working to those guys' strengths. - This is the final show of the Flair-booked era, and as subsequent shows will prove, it really felt like it. Flair was out by the time this show took place, but the prior build, from the awesome return of Barry Windham to the Midnight/Pillman attack to the surprisingly fun Rock 'n Roll/Freebirds feud, continued in the vein of the awesome 1989. But with the ridiculous, bullshit finish to the PPV, it really spells the end of the high-quality '89-'90 stuff. The ending was a retrogression to something Dusty would have booked, which is a startling contrast to the World title finish at Chi-Town Rumble which was a loud proclamation that the Dusty Era was over. This marked a retrogression back to an era and booking philosophy that at this point didn't really need revisited. There will be some good stuff to come in 1990, and this is a decent show in a vacuum. But it's also an ominous sign of a long downward spiral, that won't turn around from an artistic standpoint for 2 years and from a business standpoint for 5 or 6.
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He really looked like he had Marfan Syndrome--he looked like Pak Song. This is a total war with Kanehara throwing some awesome suplexes and kicks. The point systems in these matches aren't always intuitive (one suplex clearly gets treated as a knockdown, while others don't) but they can still be indicative of how a match is going. In this case it was fun to watch both guys lose like 6 points apiece in the span of 5 minutes. One of the better shootstyle matches of the year.
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I don't think the Liz/Savage marriage was totally on the rocks yet. Savage was essentially pressured to return when the WWF lost both Warrior (suspended/quit/fired) and Sid (tricep tear) in a matter of weeks--and that was with Hogan not working a full schedule due to Suburban Commando commitments. Savage resisted for awhile, though I think there was always a plan that he'd work an '80s Bruno or '10s Undertaker-style schedule at some point. This led to the re-hiring of the Genius, as a sort of goodwill gesture, and eventually Savage relented. Of course, Savage and Vince would be on opposite sides of the fence a few years later. Savage was single again and anxious to wrestle full-time, and it was Vince who wanted him out of the ring.
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Cornette is on a heavy diet of Twinkies, chocolate covered pretzels, and carbohydrates. Joe Weider wants him on the cover of Muscle Mag! And to prove his newfound athletic prowess, he displays a phonebook for Campell County, Kentucky which is about the size of a magazine. Cornette settles for ripping the corner of one page out in lieu of tearing it in half. Prichard: "That ICOPRO is dynamite!" So is this segment. Cornette can take the corniest, most rehashed scenario and make it entertaining as hell. The Rock 'n Rolls are out for an interview, and Cornette goads them into the ring--"I'll hit you so hard, your grandkids will be dizzy!" Morton takes the obvious bait and leaves Gibson to get jumped on the outside by the Heavenly Bodies. As Morton turns around, Cornette decks him with his towel and produces a full Coke can inside. Lane and Cornette gloat, with Lane pointing out that Cornette has gone from 100 to 2,000 push-ups a day and has moved on from beating up kids and fat old ladies to both R'nRs at the same time. Ricky & Robert are back out after this, and an impromptu tag is on. Good but sort of routine tag action follows, until the Stud Stable come to the ring as the match breaks down, and toss the tennis racket in, only for Lane to get sunset flipped and pinned. Further dissension between the heels. This was a total blast, from start to finish and all points in-between. So many great quotes, a hot angle, and a solid match with an unexpectedly clean finish. The 9-man three-way brawl that this is leading up to was something I first saw at a get-together in 1995 and it was the most mind-blowing fight I'd ever seen to that point. Something I really can't wait to revisit in 1993.
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I've never, ever been able to differentiate between Mitsuya Nagai and Masashi Aoyagi. I'm not entirely convinced that one is not a secret identity of the other and would welcome proof that they've been seen in the same place at the same time. Nagai does come off as a gutsy bastard, as Sergei basically takes him down and ties him up at will for most of this ,while also throwing some beautiful kicks at him. Nagai creates distance with some awesome kicks of his own before finally landing one that puts Sousserov down.
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Memphis vs. World of Sport! Talk about two different worlds colliding. Gilbert brings his working boots and unleashes some new stuff, like the abdominal stretch roll-up and a dropkick off the top. Still, quite a lot of stalling--and Finlay is as guilty if not moreso than Gilbert. Really fun closing stretch of reversals and counters, before Finlay murders Gilbert with a sick tombstone for the victory. Finlay would have fit in perfectly in Memphis, especially if he still had Princess Paula as part of his act. This was overlong, but I'm still glad I saw it.
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Schumann seems like a lost worker--he came after the era of televised European wrestling and before the era of maybe landing an undercard cruiserweight spot in WCW. I think he worked a Top of the Super Junior tournament but that was it as far as Japan. He's looked really good in the tag match and this, and I thought this was pretty great overall. You could have maybe asked for more pure matwork, but some of the takedown sequences they worked looked very nice. And of course Liger is familiar with this style and knows how to pace things through a round system. These Austro-German crowds normally come off as very provincial so it was cool to see such a pro-Liger crowd here.
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The crazy thing is that angle promptly led to Dusty ditching the yellow polka dots and morphing into Crockett Dusty all over again, just in time for him to leave. It was a goofy premise but Dusty was cutting the most heated promos of his WWF stint. Then it went to another level when DiBiase busted Dustin up on SNME, which is a fabulous angle that's almost right out of JCP-land. I hope you get to the end of the '90 Yearbook, Parv, so you can see for yourself. Dusty vs. Savage is possibly my least favorite WWF feud of the '84-'92 era, but the follow-up feud actually could have gone places. It's not really up there at the top but I have a soft spot for Val vs. Rikishi from 2000. It was one of the first mid-card feuds of the Attitude Era based on two guys just fucking hating each other, rather than skits. Not to get too back-in-my-day but I honestly wonder if there's been as good and intense of a mid-card WWF feud since (Edge vs. Matt Hardy, I guess).
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I was chalking this up as a disappointment due to a slow start where Koshinaka sat in a Fujiwara armbar doing his best Doc/Gordy impersonation, not accomplishing much. But eventually Tenryu busts him open with kicks and this gets really good really fast. That "did he or didn't he?" reversal pin attempt by Koshinaka that Loss brings up was great, like an actual controversial call you'd see in a real sporting event rather than the typical blind pro wrestling officiating. This feud continues to be a blast.
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A very good closing chapter on a terrific year for joshi in '92. AJW, with some help, picked up the slack in a major way as the other promotions fell off from their unsustainably great first half of 'the year. I really liked how they went through a big closing stretch where the only big "finishing" move that actually hit was Kyoko's Niagara Driver. Everything else--Kong's backfist, Toyota's JOCS, and Yamada's Gory bomb--was attempted, teased, and countered, sometimes more than once, but never hit. Great way to get those moves over as killers while also educating fans that falls can happen on other moves, too.
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Rude supposedly once dared anyone in a WCW locker room to try to take him down. The man who stepped up and succeeded: one Erik Watts.
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