PeteF3
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Everything posted by PeteF3
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"These guys can notes higher than Ella Fitzgerald sitting on a tack!" The Freebirds blather about their tour of Europe and make threats towards the Southern Boys--then switch gears and call out both Doom and the Midnight Express. Cornette freaks out and tries to make nice until they leave, then gets all pouty about how he tried to be nice to them, but the Midnights can beat them anyway.
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Oh, sweet Jesus, just the man to bring some youthful pep and workrate back to this promotion, Thunderbolt Patterson. At least there's some history between him and Ole. T-bolt cuts his standard "Ooh, I'm about to swear--no I'm not" promo and amusingly uses the same simile Kerry used in the previous segment about stink on...OOOOOH. 1990's Worst Angle continues. If this is the New Era beginning, then let's go back to the old one.
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"Percy Pringle...Chris is gonna be on you like stink on shit!" Cool opening promo aside, this is the least of the Kerry/Borne matches as most of the focus is on Chris and Percy, to the point where Kerry and Borne are actively fighting outside of camera range so we can see what the seconds are doing. Percy tries to handcuff Chris to the ropes and gets cuffed himself, and then Tony Borne--where'd HE come from??--gets knocked down somehow. DCOR and this peters out rather quickly.
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Good finish with both guys getting airtime on their top-rope moves before Adams hits a top-rope clothesline for the pin. Jeannie runs down and tosses a chair to Austin after the match, but as she makes her way to the back, Toni is blocking her path with a kendo stick. Jeannie gets a few shots before heading to the safety of the ring, where Austin cuts Toni off, takes the stick, and has Jeannie beat her down with it! Then she gets in a few shots on Adams for good measure. Toni and Chris are left laying yet again. A true "holy shit" angle that takes this feud to another level--I really wish Lowrance had been around to call it.
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Tatum tearfully offers to top Bill Dundee's marriage proposal with a diamond ring of his own. Before the match, he reveals he has been reading self-help books and is, yes, a CHANGED MAN. "Bill Dundee, I really have nothing against you, except you stole the woman I love and you're really not a good person." Suddenly the match starts and after a few handshakes, Tatum is in fact a CHANGED MAN--suddenly channelling Jimmy Valiant and hugging everything that moves. His goofy smile after Bronko Lubich avoids him is right out of a Mentos commercial (or Dave Grohl parodying one). Tatum overdoes this past the point where you think he's merely setting Dundee up...then as soon as Dundee accidentally knocks Tessa over he blasts him with a chain for the pin and the Southern title, and immediately takes off with the belt with no regard for Tessa at all. Absolutely glorious.
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Atlantis-Dandy is the big focus here, or rather Dandy running from Atlantis as much as he can. The LONG Azteca/Dandy sequence is so fucking gorgeous without looking overly rehearsed, and Dandy just saying, "Screw this" was an unexpected capper.
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No race-baiting in the pre-match promo, mercifully. JYD's entrance would have had a lot more effect if the jazz band had come out with him live. Actually the match starts fairly hot, and JYD certainly knows how to draw in a crowd, but...yeah. He's not interested in selling anything and despite some smoke-and-mirrors spots like the chairshot, Flair can't save this. A Horsemen beatdown is broken up by the Dudes With Attitudes, both here and again in Sting's post-match promo.
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Green screen promos and wrestler logos--the SNME-ization of the Clashes continues. I think Cornette and both teams are selling this match short if that's how they felt. There were a few moments where the execution was noticeably off, but nothing too bad. The Morton-in-peril segment was a little short (but boy, what a fucking awesome transition to get there, with the huracanrana attempt countered by Eaton off the top) and the finish kinda blew. Otherwise I don't think this was at ALL far behind the WrestleWar match--the new shit was pretty awesome shit and Eaton was an absolute monster here, between his offense and getting thrown from the apron to the guardrail again. A more-than-worthy additional chapter between these two teams.
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Lawler cuts the same dinosaurs/mind-readers promo he cut on Mike Awesome, a promo that applies almost too perfectly to Kerry Von Erich. I do like that Lawler puts over KVE as a physical specimen and points to the brains as a point of difference between the two, rather than just talk about another incompetent opponent who couldn't beat anybody.
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The Triple Crown Champion challenging for the IWGP Heavyweight title? Why is this match not well-known (to my knowledge)? The lack of lost eyeballs? Anyway, it's a Hansen match that's not in All-Japan. The ring announcer intro may as well have gone, "This contest is scheduled for one fall with a bullshit finish." That's just sort of a basic prerequisite. And I thought this was pretty awesome and the match of the night. A super-hot start with furniture being thrown all over the place and Vader taking a spectacular pop-up bump off the Lariat. I could watch these two pound the crap out of each other all day. I didn't get any stalling vibe from Hansen--I thought his bailing out fit in quite well considering he was in the rare position of facing someone whom he couldn't bully around. If anything they probably do go outside one time too many. Brawls outside the ring being a near-fall as they are in Japan, it's sort of an unfair tease considering we were getting a no-decision anyway.
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Hamaguchi takes the same opening gambit he used against Jumbo when he was similarly overmatched, jumping Choshu before the bell. He quickly bloodies Choshu outside before Riki screams something as he reverses Hamaguchi into the guardrails and the double juice is on. Hamaguchi runs through his whole arsenal, but YOU CAN'T HEADLOCK RIKI CHOSHU. The Outlaws seem to be awfully premature in their attempts to throw the towel in, and Choshu has none of it, dispatching Super Strong Machine as he tries to cover Hamaguchi up and pinning him after a third or fourth Riki Lariato, despite Hamaguchi's best attempts to Hulk Up his way through them. Really fun match and another great feisty performance from Animal. The Outlaws leave their mark on Choshu afterward.
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Definitely broader and more theatrical than a typical UWF match, and also one of the fighters is dressed as a cartoon superhero. Aoyagi is pretty much on the defensive for most of this, actually. He gets in a few nice kicks but the mask-ripping just serves to piss Liger off and Aoyagi pays for it. Yeah, it's not a great match, but it's really really fun and engrossing just to see Liger sort of out of his element...is Liger vs. Sano: The Sequel (as part of the UWFI feud) anything like this? They had a match then, right? The only thing that actively annoyed me about this was the round-ending bell...with all the "saved by the bell" false finishes it felt like the match had like 3 endings, and then when the ending finally came no one was quite sure what to make of it until Tiger Hattori raised Liger's hand.
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USWA Texas has so many segments that are similar to each other that I can't always tell what's new or what's a repeat, and the same goes for this. This is either a repeat or the second time that Dundee's been rammed into a chair set up on the ring apron after saving Tessa from a Tatum kidnapping. "Everybody seems to want to close the barn door after the horse leaves." Jesus, Bill, could you not come up with a good lipstick-on-a-pig metaphor?
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Matt Borne is the Boogeyman, and he's GONNA GETCHA. Pringle cuts an absolutely psychotic promo directed towards Chris, who's sitting on Doris' couch watching this. If Fritz & Doris don't keep Chris away, they're going to "lose another one." Holy merciful fuck, that tops the promo where Pringle praises his "idol" George Wallace on the tastelessness meter. Not BAD, maybe not even really objectionable...but tasteless. Pringle comes off as a guy completely over the edge, which separates his tasteless bullshit from the tasteless bullshit the Horsemen are spewing. I dug the little nod to history with Pringle taking credit for making Eric Embry and preserving the USWA, too.
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Poor Chris. Unlike Mike, he really did badly want to be a wrestler. His promo isn't bad at all, actually, and then Percy comes out to browbeat him. I absolutely could not stand Pringle as the manager of Rick Rude but he was great as Eric Embry's call-to-action babyface manager--a very tricky role to play--and he's good here. Percy attempts to slap Chris but Kerry Von Erich and Matt Borne are quickly out and Percy is exposed as quite the coward, having to protect himself from Chris with a chair.
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I approve of psychotic babyface promos. Orndorff in particular is spazzing out something fierce.