PeteF3
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Everything posted by PeteF3
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Tsuyoshi celebrates his new haircut by getting obliterated, again. Jumbo manages to fend off a few Misawa pin saves while landing bombs on Kikuchi, but oddly finishes him off with an atomic whip and then a...sleeper. ISTR All-Japan on a bit of a submission kick at this point and I think they were trying to build up legitimate match-ending holds for each guy. Misawa already had his facelock, Kawada had the Stretch Plum and a sleeper of his own, and even Kobashi put out somebody with a body vice backbreaker. Or it could just be a bit of foreshadowing. -
Cut to the reception highlights, narrated by Lord Alfred Hayes. With Savage actually coming close to speaking in his normal voice (!!), not that it's much different from his wrestling voice by this point. They milk this for a long while, which is a nice effective way of getting over the shock of the cobra. Undertaker clobbers Savage with the urn and Jake terrorizes Liz with the cobra before being run off by Sid. I could have done without Hayes or the camera angle changes but this was a chaotic, well-done angle and a good way of hitting the reset button on Jake's heel turn. Generally speaking any wrestling show (or home video in this case) that goes off the air in the midst of brawling or chaos is automatically better than a show that doesn't.
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The presentation gap between this and WCW was huge, but...I really, really, really hated this whole set-up at the time, though not as much as the Rhodes feud. I chalk it up mostly to being an immature fourth-grader than a true failing on the WWF's part. But in some way it feels insulting to sell a PPV on a wedding and a foregone conclusion of a tag match with heels so long past their sell-by date. I didn't order it, but if I had and NOT gotten any sort of wedding angle on the show proper I'd have been furious. We get highlights of Savage and Elizabeth's WWF careers, including WM4 and Elizabeth trying to save Savage from the Honky Tonk Man. Really well-done stuff. Not Making This Up Dept.: Shazam has this song as "Together" and attributes it to Savage & Elizabeth's wedding. Did this song make it onto some WWF soundtrack CD? Some anonymous guy is the best man--after The Office finale in which Dwight and Angela's entire ceremony consisted of a few token family members and then all co-workers, and having it pointed out how little that resembles real life, I actually kind of find this refreshing. The WWF moreso than any other promotion was always one that tried to suppress any semblance of any wrestler's personal life on-air, I guess because they felt it would hurt their characters. Heenan is absolutely on fire here. And you just knew Savage would replace "I do" with "OOOOOH YEAH." This is quite the brilliant production, there's no denying that. Enough that I can sort of forget about how it all ended up.
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Warrior closes out his first WWF stint in anticlimactic fashion, chasing the managers back to the locker room so Hogan can have the victory and spotlight to himself. Hogan heroically tosses "victory powder" into Slaughter's face while Sid is distracted for the pin. Hogan invites Sid back out to pose. Bobby: "This must be the Match Made in Heaven, right?" Mountie gets on the wrong side of some derelict cellmate and has to answer to his buddy, who questions him about the feeling of leather against skin. That's probably the most shockingly adult bit of WWF programming until 1996 or so.
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Hogan is feeling the same rush he felt on January 23, 1984. Yep, the Andre feud, the War to Settle the Score, and the comeback against Earthquake don't quite compare against Sgt. Slaughter, a washed-up ex-champion, and a manager. Warrior makes absolutely no attempt to tie in his feud with Jake and the Undertaker--Hogan and Okerlund have to do it instead.
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Another match better than you'd expect, except that this is worked as a USWA-TX-style no-DQ match with referee distractions and cut-offs and man is that annoying. I knew a Nasties/Cactus Jack-style brawl was too much to ask for, but still. All four guys did work hard, though, and they cut a nice quick pace and threw in a few wrinkles like the swerve on the heel miscommunication spot with the motorcycle helmet. Mountie attempts to make a break for it, but the local hick cops throw him in the cell anyway.
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"WE SPEAK THE SAME LANGUAGE! YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT--OOOWW!" A Nasty Boys interview is sandwiched around the Mountie arriving in jail and getting his mug shot taken. "YOU'RE NOT TAKING MY PICTURE!" "So, I guess the Boss Man kicked your butt, huh?" "WHAT DID YOU SAY?!" *click* The LOD are already hyping a feud with the Natural Disasters, as they rescued Andre the Giant from an attempted attack. Mountie gets fingerprinted before we hear from the Triangle of Terror and Sid Justice. Bootleg video surfaces of the Triangle of Terror attempting to make Sid Justice a First Lieutenant--hey, they actually made an attempt to make the camera footage and angles look impromptu instead of planned and rehearsed.
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Great attention to detail, as they point out that DiBiase wrote it into the contract that the belt would only change hands on a DQ or countout--in contrast to how DiBiase regained the non-sanctioned title at WM6. This is the #3 WWF MOTY behind the retirement match and Desert Storm Match, Virgil turning in a great fiery performance in his comebacks and splattering on the floor on a missed pescado to boot. DiBiase is just a supreme dick, and gets the crowd rabid for Piper to do something, but it was the right move to keep Piper physically out of things and let Virgil have the victory and the moment on his own.
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Hennig has fallen off since his AWA days, but considering the state of his back this is quite the gutsy performance with some particularly nutty bumps, especially getting hiptossed on the floor. Bret kicking out of the Perfect-Plex came off as a big moment, but I agree the build-up to the move wasn't that good--in hindsight I wish we'd have gotten the old "opponent tries a backdrop" finish that we saw in a million Perfect matches, as that would have been a much more effective false finish. Perfect puts over Bret big-time on his way out--for the second SummerSlam in a row, I got a Bret Hart title win that stunned me when I heard about it. "He's a TAG wrestler! He's not supposed to be winning singles titles!" The early '90s would be a period of me constantly being taken aback by each renewed Bret push.
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We get a Coliseum exclusive to open, as Savage is happy but nervous, and freaks out about Lord Alfred's crooked bow tie. We get the requisite psycho Vince intro. I like the Survivor Series and Royal Rumble intros better with Vince screaming out the name of every participant. I wanted to see Vince sell us on Greg Valentine vs. IRS.
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We open with a Memphis-angle-by-numbers, as Eric Embry interrupts a DWB promo to challenge him to an impromptu match, and of course Anthony turns his back and gets nailed. Prichard cuts off a DWB comeback until JIMMY VALIANT makes his return to make the save. Presumably that means a tag match this coming Monday. Christopher "Honey" Love is out with a big black box, and announces that his dear friend Eddie Marlin has hired him as a consultant to deal with the USWA's plummeting gate receipts and this is some crazily self-referential shit going down. Jerry Lawler has been the common denominator in the demise of the AWA, World Class, and "who knows how many other promotions." Wait, were Chris Cruise & The Creator lying to me when they talked up Lawler as a box office draw?? I feel we should have Eddie Marlin moderate another debate. Lawler has been given two weeks' notice or else he'll have to deal with the Dragon Master. Love makes a huge deal about how this guy is a legitimate 7' 3" and not one of those guys hyped as being 7' who's only 5' 10". He's big but I'm pretty sure he's not that big. Underneath all the freak show gimmickry is somebody evidently unleashing some genuine feelings. And yes, it appears that Memphis Crash TV has killed the Lawler/Embry feud before its time, just like it did Lawler/Gilbert. With how quickly television moved, how creative the angles could be, how compelling these guys were as talkers, and how the promotion was decaying, I don't get the reluctance to properly blow any of these programs off properly. Embry wasn't going to get killed as a draw any more than he already was just because he lost decisively to Lawler. And now out comes HUMONGOUS, and you can tell he lives up to his name because Dave Brown towers over him. Samantha Pain is out to play the Sherri to his Warrior, and with some help from Bull Pain manages to get his mask off. Brown and St. John matter-of-factly remark that it's "He-Man" Randy Lewis with all the excitement and shock of a Chauncey & Edgar bit. Somehow the WWF and USWA are morphing into one another, assuming the other's characteristics.
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Jake tells a fable of a rabbit and a snake, that's basically a re-casting of the Scorpion and the Frog. I like that Jake didn't really need an explanation for turning--even as a babyface, he came off as evil and untrustworthy. Sid doesn't even have entrance music yet, which seems odd by the standards of the normally airtight WWF quality control. Okerlund accuses Sid of being a "true blue Hulkamaniac." They're still trying to ambiguate where Sid stands but I can't imagine even the densest WWF fan envisioning Sid as anything besides a babyface at this point. Heenan knocks on the Real World Title belt as simulation of what Hulk Hogan's knees are doing. They're still talking about how Ric Flair "may" be coming and openly acknowledging his contract situation, which I guess they legally have to do to protect themselves. It bears repeating how mindblowing it was at the time that the simple phrase, "another organization," was being uttered on WWF programming.
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Quite the build-up for Nagasaki, wearing the kabuki gear and getting accompanied by a geisha girl and two young boys/attendants/students/whatever doing a mock kendo battle. The match is a total blast befitting its over-the-top ring intros, as the rudos jump the tecnicos to start and things keep building from that. Just about everyone tries to top everyone else in terms of taking wicked shots into the ringpost, and even Nagasaki is good at getting in, getting his stuff in, and getting out. Morgan gets a clean victory after Sagrada misses a moonsault and things break down during a post-match interview. Pierroth is such a compelling talker, even when you don't grasp what exactly he's saying. I feel like with more listens I could justify ranking him on the Best Interviews list when the yearbook is over.
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Extremely basic first two falls, all about leglocks by the Guerreros in one and headlocks by Los Infernales in the second. It's the most straightforward lucha trios work seen so far. The third has more dramatics and high-flying and builds to a really nice decisive finish. Not an outstanding match but a well-done one that got better as it went along. Chavo was not totally washed up after all--he looks far, far better here.
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Lato is a big fat dude who gets a few openings which just serve to piss Fujiwara off, and he eventually kicks him into oblivion, and even busts out a spin kick that looks hurtier than 90% of Nobuhiko Takada's output with that move.
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It's amazing how many plans changed, and changed multiple times, around this time. Jake/Warrior teased as a feud, Savage/DiBiase teased as a feud, Jake/Sid started as a feud to replace Warrior and then abandoned with Sid's injury, Savage cajoled out of retirement to feud with Jake...and that doesn't get into the rather unexpected arrival of Ric Flair. I'm guessing this was taped before Jake's appearance at the bachelor party on Prime Time.
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Slaughter's bumping and selling are still good but this has some of the worst heel offense seen anywhere on this Yearbook, from Slaughter and especially from Mustafa and Adnan. Adnan cuts off the Hulk-Up with powder and a 3-on-1 results with no Warrior available--that's a nice touch. Sid Justice makes the save instead, but also keeps Hogan from using a chair. I've enjoyed Sarge's work, if not his material, since his return a year ago, but this heel run is just about played out entirely.
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Yeah, it's hard to envision Finlay drawing big heel heat for elbow smashes in any other environment. All of his offense looks great and his bumping is executed perfectly as well. The running, standing Bronco Buster in the corner was awesome. Benoit again shows some inkling of being able to work the crowd here, this time as a babyface. Really underwhelming finish as Finlay is apparently red-carded for dragging Benoit out of the ring and slamming him into the post, and that hurts this. As it is, it's a European version of a really good 1991 WCW TV match.
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This is built more around Taue and Jumbo being bullies than about dropping big bombs, at least until the final stretch. They work over Kobashi's face a lot with boot scrapes and rope burns, and throw in a bunch of double-teams to make sure the crowd is solidly against them throughout. Kobashi comes back to put Taue against the wall but Jumbo keeps saving, and then they start dropping the heavy artillery on him--but he keeps kicking out. Eventually Misawa makes the mistake of chasing Jumbo out of the ring and Taue uses a second golden arm bomber to put Kobashi down. Big push for Kobashi here and he comes through with a fine performance both on offense and selling.