PeteF3
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Everything posted by PeteF3
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A testament to working smart over working hard, though it's not as though there isn't hard work on display here. The 'birds are out of shape and have perhaps the scuzziest, sleaziest look in the history of national wrestling promotions, but this is about as good of a match as you can hope for--especially with them going a half hour and having to work on top in three distinct FIP periods. Good lucha-esque opening fall that's mass chaos and ends quickly before we slow things down. The 'birds apparently lash the R'nRs with a leather belt after the match which Jim Ross says will not be shown in kind of a weird bit of censoring, setting up the Country Whipping Match at Capital Combat. This almost reminds me of WCW trying to hype the Hogan/Flair first-blood match without being able to say "first-blood" on television.
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Woman is a paragon of sartorial pulchritude! The Midnight Express-as-Horsemen tease has apparently evaporated already. Great, heated segment with Luger coming off like a million-dollar star. Luger temporarily fights off Flair and an interfering Ole Anderson before Woman's high-heel shoe is used for possibly the first (but oh most definitely not the last) time. Arn, Ole, and Flair have enough time before the cavalry comes to leave Luger laying.
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We apparently caught Ole in the middle of his day job as head coach of the University of Minnesota football team. Ole assumes that Sting is going to announce his retirement from wrestling, and Sting pretends to waffle on the decision before putting Anderson in his place. Sting promises a BIG surprise for Capital Combat. I know of two surprises Sting unveiled at that show and neither of them are good.
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So this one has its own interesting backstory, as the advertised match was Hulk Hogan vs. Terry Gordy for the WWF title. When AJPW got word that Hogan dropped the title to the Warrior, Baba was quite upset and Gordy ended up backing out of the match entirely, supposedly (according to a Meltzer post on Classics) at the advice of Stan Hansen himself. Guess who "selflessly" volunteered to step in and do a job to Hogan in order to save the show. Great performance from Hogan, who is all business and vicious aggression here, which is fitting in the face of his title loss and is something that I really wish the homogenized WWF product could have touched on at some point. Double juice and that a hot finishing stretch of countermoves before an Axe Bomber puts Hansen down.
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Great to see Tenryu being drawn into a WWF Sportz Entertainment match in the face of what's to come with Hogan later. Sherri is working for about 6 outside, getting into arguments with Tenryu, the crowd, the AJPW officials, and everyone else within earshot. She also has a tremendous moment where she's putting her high heels back on after clocking Tenryu with one, and she flashes a ridiculously insincerely innocent smile and wave at Kyohei Wada as she does so.
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Bret and Misawa work like they're underwater, and the crowd shits on the ending in a major way though it seems the (in)action didn't lose them before. Supposedly the WWF policy of not doing time limit announcements was one of several factors working against this. Of interest to see that, yes, Bret and Misawa worked each other once.
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Rude points out that he's already beaten Warrior for one title, and he aims to do it again. The vignettes and interviews were good but Rude never seemed to get a quality win that really established him as a main event threat in the WWF. It would have been nice to see one of the WWF's myriad top babyfaces do a job for the greater good. I saw Rude pin Roddy Piper at a house show in February (albeit with a ref bump and a Bad News Brown distraction and a ring bell to the head). Such a match on SNME would have accomplished wonders.
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Jesus Christ, this NEVER FUCKING ENDED. I've watched Ironman Matches that seemed shorter and had fewer finishes than this. I mean, I like the left turn this takes from shoot style to ECW brawling to blood, but don't ever ask me to watch this again.
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Long drawn-out spots to try to beat the "50/50" drum over our heads, though the crowd seems pretty solidly behind Hogan, particularly when the Warrior goes after the knee injury. The knee spot was constructed as a deliberate shot at Sting, and Gorilla even mentions a possible dislocated patella which of course Hogan shrugs off. 50-50 is the story of the match and Patterson deserves credit for consistently laying it out as such, but...well, this is a bunch of comic book splash panels come to life. There is some certain appeal in that, but this is SO much looser and not all that well-executed compared to the other matches of the time period--long chinlocks and a bearhug that really kills the crowd. Warrior also pretty much blows up running the whole length to the ring and it really shows by the end of the match. This didn't hold up as well for me either. Part of that is greater exposure to what else was going on in the country and in the world, and part of it is knowing now the extent that Warrior's title run was a failure and that the reset button wasn't all that far away.
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Hogan promises to "save" the Warrior and the Little Warriors and bring them into the light. Hogan is already hedging his bets by saying what kind of winner or loser you are is more important than winning or losing. Ha. "And Warrior, I just hope you're a good loser" is the kind of lines we needed more of than the pseudomysticism bullshit both guys were spouting. Warrior foreshadows the coming of the Rock by abusing his interviewer. Warrior draws on then-current US/USSR events and pledges to bring the Little Hulksters and Little Warriors together. Warrior is now actively attempting to come off as a babyface (once Mooney's out of the way) but as I said in his last, more straightforward promo...too little, too late. I was off the Warrior bandwagon by this point.
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"How appropriate...that the money you beg for will be your very own. A victim of your own greed. Wallowing in the muck of avarice." Yeah, that's legitimately chill-inducing. Virgil certainly earns his pay on this night--he gets DiBiase the victory, successfully protects the Million Dollar Belt after the match, then comes back to rescue DiBiase from Damian. I dub this the most successful night of Virgil's professional bodyguarding career. The finish itself is sort of bullshit but I can also understand it. DiBiase needed protecting more than Jake and Jake didn't really need the Million Dollar Belt. DiBiase gets to keep his gimmick and Jake gets the last laugh after the bell. This feud ran for a full calendar year (it began at WM5), an eternity by WWF standards, and this is about as well-done of a blowoff as they could have done under the circumstances.
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Piper goes over Bad News' physical deformities--his bug eyes, his giant ears, and his left nostril hair that's 3.5 feet long and that he can "slice and dice" with. Except for his mouth, which works just fine, but Piper's going to shut it for him. I have no earthly fucking idea what this Two-Face look was ever about, not then and not now. I can still understand Bad News' opposition to working this program, though.
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This was a sad match to watch in full as Haku literally works the entire bout. Even as they're trying to push dissension within the team it's clearly obvious that Andre has literally nothing left. The crowd pop gets dissipated by the stupid fucking music overdub, though now I wonder how the atmosphere would have been different if they'd opened the SkyDome roof. Andre gets to go out as a babyface (and it's clear that Heenan doesn't have much left physically himself).
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Not MOTY so far but perhaps not out of the top 3-5. The most southern wrasslin' brawl ever to take place in Japan, with the street clothes and use of the cowboy boot. Dragon Master goes absolutely nuts with the chairshots and literally destroys one as Onita blocks it with his leg towards the end. Eventually they manage to get a double team in on Kurisu and Onita puts him down with two thunder fire power bombs. Chaotic but not to the point of being hard to follow, with four guys focused on hurting and destroying one another than on being "extreme."