PeteF3
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Everything posted by PeteF3
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Great hard-sell promo for the Clash. Not to sound like a broken record but it's great how Flair comes up with all these justifications for going after the U.S. title. First it was so he could get a title shot at Sting. That's still pushed here, but Flair also is out to turn the tables on Luger, who was constantly a thorn in his side challenging for his title and now he wants to do the same. Arn and Sid stand nearby. -
I'm so glad we get an actual Cowabunga match on this yearbook. It would be poorer yearbook without one. Gilbert's reaction to getting tickled is priceless. This is a pretty standard TV match with Memphis staples like hide-the-object. Cowabunga turns things around by tapping Gilbert on the shoulder as he's being pinned, causing Gilbert to think a 3-count was registered and get up. Cowabunga comes back and seems ready to score the pin when Sam Lowe interferes. Lowe takes some pretty reckless bumps from Cowabunga before Anthony & Dougie start a beatdown. That's quickly broken up by Lawler & Dundee, who send the heels running when Doug's hair is tragically lost again, making a waste of all that Miracle Elixir.
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This week it's the same 6 guys, in a Hospital Elimination Match, basically Survivor Series meets first-blood rules. Lawler does a fantastic job spelling this scenario out. An Idol music video follows, with clips against Stan Hansen, Jos LeDuc, the Zambuie Express, Road Warrior Hawk, and others.
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A positively giddy Dirty White Boy finally gets his wish to see videotape from the MSC. The Dirty White Girl gets the final word in this valet feud, using powder to win a loser-retires cage match over Tessa. The DWG is triumphantly carried out and makes the mistake of daring Lawler to bring out "another little floozy" so she can take care of her, too. Lawler & Dundee respond, with DWG speculating that their new valet came from a bar or street corner somewhere. It's "Vicious Vicki," a cigar-chomping woman who looks like that fat lady that Andy Kaufman beat up in that home video promo of his. Kimberly gets stripped (complete with a pretty blatant camera shot up her dress). Vicki isn't all that inspiring but they did blow off the valet feud that needed blowing off.
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Granny Gilbert's Hair Elixir! The 6-man looks as awesome as it sounds. I kind of shudder to think what Idol was like at this point but he's perfectly serviceable in the clips we see. They tease a split, but Lawler kicks out of an accidental Idol clothesline and comes back to pin Doug after the White Boy accidentally clobbers him with his boot. Goodbye to Doug's hair, but not for long! Dave Brown seems to be legitimately trying to hold it together.
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Warrior with another on-point promo by his standards. Warrior will go in, Rude won't come out. A little bullshit about not leaving any air for Rude to breathe, but what the hey--simple, direct shit. Where was this in March? Also clips from the SummerSlam Showdown of Jim Neidhart getting jumped by all 3 of Demolition after trying to make off with Smash's tag title belt. Promos from Jake, Bad News, and Savage. A full rundown of the card, one with a LOT of dross in between the matches that got some darn good build. Like I said earlier, I found it unbelievably insulting that a Sherri vs. Sapphire singles match was taking up space on a PPV. Hard to get worked up about Duggan & Volkoff vs. the Orient Express, Tito vs. Warlord, or Brother Love & Sgt. Slaughter either.
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I don't remember Heenan filling in on Superstars after Jesse's absence. I thought they went straight to Piper. Even Meltzer didn't know what the story was behind the sudden Tugboat de-push. Ottman recently did an RF shoot and of course that fucking imbecile interviewer never even touched on the subject. Brother Love smugly rubs in the fact that Hogan will be a Lone Ranger at SummerSlam and how Tugboat will never be the same again. Hogan cuts a pretty vivid promo about his feelings laying with a broken sternum and seeing Brother Love and the Earthquake & co. laughing, and how Tugboat helped him come back. Hogan will have the strongest force in the universe in his corner, and a man who stands for truth, loyalty, friendship, and the three demandments: The Big Boss Man. Hulk & BBM are just a little more buddy-buddy than the last time they were both on Brother Love's show. As mentioned, Heenan is on color, and the Boss Man mother jokes have already begun.
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The Black Scorpion is NOT AFFILIATED WITH THE HORSEMEN, no way, nuh-uh, not at all, Scout's honor. The Horsemen don't hide behind masks. After almost cutting a babyface promo for the first half of this, Flair takes some shots at the Turner brass and compares himself to Joe Montana and Sting to "a punk named Steve Young." Flair again makes challenging for the U.S. belt out to be the most natural, logical move in the world. Kudos to him for making this booking work. He then cuts another shoot-ish promo on Luger's wrestling skill or lack thereof to close things out. I don't need these interviews to necessarily be in front of a crowd but I do wish they'd invest in a proper set for either Cornette or Paul E. if not both.
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Dandy is just fucking absurd here. So far on the yearbook we've seen him as a primo mat wrestler, a chicken shit heel, and now he's flying all over the place. And we haven't had a bloody brawl yet. He really is one of the most versatile guys of all-time. Everyone hits their spots beautifully (and with impact--always an important part) and the fall finishes were particularly beautifully complex. It's a testament to Dandy that he stands out among this group of 5 here, and I'd have to put him as my Most Outstanding Wrestler at this point in the year and in rather comfortable fashion.
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¡El gran rudo de lucha libre! He wears a suit! He has a son who plays soccer! He appreciates fine sculpture! He drives a car! ¡Él es--Masakre!
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I guess they wanted to take this match around the horn and cut a generic hype promo to fit all the markets? Flair and Sting talk trash at one another with each mentioning their own personal posses. Flair's posse shows up in the form of Sid and Arn, and Sting walks off. Way to bitch out the World Champion and the Dudes with Attitudes as a whole.
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From Choshu's big superplex on, that was a comeback for the ages. The ending was certainly one of the best-executed chop-down-the-tree sequences in wrestling. The opening parts were admittedly slow enough to keep this from being a truly great match (though I really dug Choshu going after the eyes, because you so rarely see that in Japan and was a good way to put across Choshu as fighting for his life), but it was definitely really good and a cool moment at the end.
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That ending kind of left me cold. The legdrop was sloppy enough to look like it killed Liger, but that 3-count was kind of out-of-nowhere. Before that this was quite good, though I agree it wasn't Liger/Sano. This had a lot of shit that faceless indy guys would imitate, like the fish-out-of-water sunset flip reversals and the trading armdrags & backdrops, but this looked way more organic and less forced than a typical indy-standoff spot. Liger's crunching top-rope somersault senton was absolutely sick-looking.
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I was ultimately let down by this, too. Frankly I thought the kendo-sticking was the most eye-rolling moment of the match. Bull has done nothing but cut off opponents and no-sell shit all throughout the set and now Aja fucking Kong, who's physically bigger, whaling away at her with a kendo stick doesn't phase her, either? I'm not well-versed on joshi history but the big blowoff when someone finally puts Bull down for the count better make WrestleMania III look like a studio squash at the rate this is going. And then, yeah, this meandered like crazy after the DCOR tease. Not a lot of near-falls, or any sense that either side was approaching danger or losing energy...it just ended because it was time to go home and that was the finish. Negativity aside, it's not like I hated this. Grizzly and Bison working the stiffest, most hardcore possible Jeannie vs. Toni catfight was fun. Bull was good dishing out on offense even if I'm really into her psychology at this point. This would be a MOTYC instead of just a joshi MOTYC if they shaved off ten minutes. (I'm missing the "filled with heat" part, too. I thought the crowd was noticeably quieter for this than the Toyota match, even if Vince McMahon or Gorilla Monsoon would chalk it up to "awed silence").
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Toyota just tries to annihilate Hokuto's broken leg, busting out every leg submission in the book. In a way it's almost a mat-based version of her go-go-go style, if that makes the slightest bit of sense, with how she cycles through the holds. She doesn't lose focus, though. Then we get dives to the floor and that stupid, fucking, dueling-tombstones sequence. Nope, it's not any better here when they're actually hitting spots. Then Hokuto goes into some LOOONG dragon sleeper work that isn't particularly well-worked, inasmuch as you marvel at how far Toyota's body can get twisted around. It's especially noticeable in contrast to the awesome leg work that they were working in the beginning. This picks up with some great near-falls before the time limit expires. Man, I was thinking I was in the midst of a MOTYC the way this started, but the middle portion and the ignoring of the leg will drag this down considerably. I get that joshi isn't really big on body-part-psychology but when the body part in question practically has a target painted on it and everyone knows that in advance, the blowing off of the legwork is an issue.
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Lawler is reached on the phone, where he makes threats towards the "ex-Red Rooster." Lawler cuts what's almost a shoot promo about Taylor's squandered potential before tying it back into his aligning with Akbar. Taylor rebuts after Lawler hangs up, citing Lawler's jealousy and declaring that no one in the WWF could get rid of him, and neither will Lawler. Good promo from both guys. It's useless to pretend the Rooster stuff never happened, so you may as well pull the Band-Aid off and get it out there.
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Jeff Jarrett tries to beat the identity of the mystery partner out of Akbar, but gets ambushed by Gary Young. As soon as Jarrett fights him off he gets leveled by TERRY TAYLOR, fresh out of the WWF! This starts a loooong beatdown with numerous jobbers getting tossed aside by the heels, ending with a spike piledriver. Its to everyone's credit that the Red Rooster comes off as a threat here but this probably could have been twice as effective in half the time.
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Chris and Toni have reconciled, apparently. It'll be Chris vs. Austin under "Queensbury Rules"--any rulebreaking is an automatic DQ--along with penalty box rules. Any interference from one of the valets puts them in the box for 1 minute. Toni spells out her plan: Jeannie will interfere first and get thrown into the cage, at which point Toni will blatantly slap the referee so she can get in the cage with her. It's a Prisoner: Cell Block H Match! Oh, and the winner gets to pick the gimmick match for another mixed tag the following week. This is a tad overbooked but Adams & Toni do a very good job of spelling all this stuff out.
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Wow, I thought this was almost complete dogshit. "Almost" only because of a few awesome Pillman dropkicks (none delivered the same way) and Eaton's way-cool backbreakers. Lane and Zenk were complete millstones here. Lane was only interested in stalling (not in a very interesting way) and blowing spots, and Zenk was Zenk. Absolutely hated all the spots of the MX selling for Pee Wee Anderson, too. This picks up a bit and just as I'm about to forgive everything we get this nonsensical Sid run-in and I have no clue what the fuck any of this is supposed to be about. Single biggest disappointment of the set and maybe my least favorite MX match that I've seen.
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The Freebirds have been coming out with a trophy claiming to be the South's top tag team, and have put it on the line in a 3-match series against Steve & Tracey. Hayes and Garvin are wearing a ridiculous glittering suspender/tights get-up, like something World Class-era Garvin or Double J would wear, except they had the sense to take it off before the match started. Garvin (after not tagging in the whole match) levels Steve with a DDT behind the referee's back to allow the Freebirds to tie the series. Match 3 to come on the Main Event! I wonder if that cover photo of El Gigante with Ted Turner was legit.