PeteF3
Members
-
Joined
-
Last visited
Everything posted by PeteF3
-
-
Beefcake actually has his back to the aisle to start with, then stupidly turns around after playing to the crowd. Compounded by a Crockett-like replay job that shows Beefcake ignoring Perfect's run-in and showing Perfect throwing forearms instead of the chairshots. They push broken ribs for Beefcake but I don't recall that ever being brought up again through to WM6.
-
Warrior mentions "28 men" and Okerlund clairvoyantly surmises that the guy he left out was Hogan. Nope, I don't remember a Hogan/Warrior build either, though I guess it should have been fairly obvious in hindsight. Warrior closes out with threats for Earthquake and Bravo and threatens to more or less assimilate Bravo's power, Borg-style.
-
Terrence Garvin is a rather lamely transparent attempt to jump on the heel-commentator bandwagon when every promotion decided they just had to have a Jesse Ventura in the booth. He was beyond unnecessary at this or any other point. Lawler stalls, begs, pleads, and negotiates his way through the opening minutes and then has magically gained control during the commercial break. Great shot of the chain dangling in the corner as Lawler is being frisked by Tony Falk. Eventually Garvin gets involved and gets chased out of the arena by the Dog as the show goes off the air. Lawler was game but man, JYD was just sad at this point. Even his wind-up headbutt, which you'd expect to still be a decent-looking move, looks loose.
-
-
"Elvis P. Presley"?? Surprised JYD didn't cite who made the "We shall overcome" speech, Martin S. King. Strong promo, though. "Needing to be outside for cell phone reception" has to be one of the lamer reasons to justify Lawler not being live on the WMC program. Lawler promises to send JYD back to the junkyard and more or less baits black fans into showing up to support the Dog, then throws in a shoeshining reference to add some class to the promo.
-
-
Yes, it barely is worth mentioning because it's so self-evident, but I miss 4+ weeks of knowing the entire card for a pay-per-view. Dusty refers to Sapphire as his "brown sugar"...how did I miss stuff this overt as a kid? As a kid whose favorite event was the Rumble and had most of the early matches practically memorized, I feel the obligation to point out that Gene only mentions 29 guys. The Widow Maker was gone at this point (for awhile, but for some reason was announced for the Rumble anyway) and evidently the Red Rooster hadn't been named as a replacement yet. Pretty amazing how much hype the Brother Love Show with Sherri and Sapphire got. The undercard matches don't even get a mention.
-
Hogan starts off somewhat respectably, even the talk about hoping to draw #1 isn't TOO over-the-top, and he at least has the decency to refer to "29 top contenders." Then he talks about eliminating wrestlers by posing and causing them to faint and it all goes off the rails. Hogan calls out the Warrior beforehand and all but guarantees they'll meet one-on-one, which I had no recollection of whatsoever. Brother Love corrects him and tells him that Mr. Perfect will be his opponent at the end--well, score one for Brother Love on that one.
-
I actually thought this match was about 5 minutes longer than it needed to be, but when Tenryu was in it was fucking ON. The Jumbo/Tenryu stuff is the stiff hatred you'd expect with some great fluid sequences thrown in. More well-done worked-shoot type stuff with the stiff kicks and the other folks at ringside seemingly objecting to his treatment of Takagi, prompting Tenryu to go nuts on them with a table and everything else before getting beat down for his trouble. Unfortunately that leaves Kawada alone in the ring with Jumbo and that ends predictably. It sucks that there are only about three more months of this feud.
-
And he was barely 30 years old! This wasn't quite as good as the title change but Buzz brings lots of varied offense all centered around Arn's back and ribs. Arn's comeback is just getting going when he gets laid out by J-Tex. It's a wonder Ole even bothered to sell the splash, because he didn't sell anything else.
-
-
The babyfaces really come off all as selfish dicks here, or at least Embry and Adams do. As much as Lowrance tries to sell Embry's shove of Toni to the floor as an accident...yeah, no way on that. Then they beat the shit out of each other over a misunderstanding while leaving Dundee to the wolves. This continues the Embry/Adams split that was beginning at the end of the World Class '80s set, and I'm intrigued as to where this is going, knowing that Steve Austin is going to be making his presence felt soon.
-
Hah--I liked the first UWF match and found this to be everything I hate about the style. Circle each other, trade holds, get up, circle each other some more. Every so often unleash a shoot kick to keep people's attention. That's a gross oversimplification of course and there was stuff to like here, but it felt like trawling through a sea of nothing much happening. I didn't get a sense that either man was ever in danger outside of some work over the cross armbreaker towards the beginning and Maeda trying to escape the anklelocks at the very end. Yeah, I get that building parity was the point but there are ways to show parity outside of getting up and resetting 38 times.
-
-
A fucking power bomb from the Warlord! You know it's a great WWF tag when you watch it immediately after an All-Japan tag and come away thinking the WWF match was better. And I think it was. The POP worked as good of a pace as you can expect and Warlord...bumped well for the huracanrana, at least. They worked some fun squashes in JCP but this is probably their standout match. I haven't seen anything else that really comes close. Even Fuji was useful here, being a strong presence at ringside without overwhelming the match or bringing it down with blown timing.
-
-
This might be the most Southern tag match in AJPW history. Plucky babyface Tiger Mask gets brutalized and bullied around for a long FIP segment before making the hot tag and Jumbo goes nuts. They do a great job of holding off the Tenryu/Jumbo one-on-one confrontation while giving us a few violent outbursts to keep us satisfied while wanting more. Finish was very clever, and I actually thought it was a super-cheap DQ for a second. The set-up to it, with Tsuruta seamlessly knee-breaking Fuyuki off the top turnbuckle, was also pretty awesome. An apparent schism appears in Tenryu's stable afterward.
-
-
-
-
Dear Lord, Champion looks disturbingly like a girl I knew in the 4th grade, only his hair is even bigger. The other jarring thing is how different Steve Austin sounds. Cobra's comments are much stronger and more focused now that he's a challenger again instead of the champion, and that he has the upper hand on Lawler.
-
I get Lawler is a legit Browns fanatic but I don't totally get how buddying with Art Modell and insulting the Denver Broncos is quite supposed to be heat-gathering in Memphis, but that could be part of the cell phone bit's almost dadaist charm. Actually the funniest part of the whole thing for me is Lawler making sure to hold the working phone up to the mic so it could send feedback out to the annoyance of everyone within earshot.
-
-
Not an all-time classic but it's everything you'd want out of Arn vs. Muta at their peaks. Especially loved Muta busting out the not-yet-a-cattle-mutilation and Arn powering out of it. The failure to land Tully Blanchard is really what cocked everything up for 1990 and onward. My dream scenario would have been rival Horsemen gangs, with Flair, Arn, and Sting on one side and Tully having his own side. That could have prevented the babyfaces from being too dominant of a force while adding a new dimension to what was growing into a tired premise.