PeteF3
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Duggan SHOOTS on the spot monkeys while selling himself to the Powers To Be. Russo in his new role as Dr. Claw takes it under advisement. An overworked and underpaid censor attempts to mute the various sayings of the word "screwed" before apparently throwing in the towel. The Filthy Animals talk unintelligibly backstage. So does the Revolution. Goldberg attempts to cut a hate-filled money promo in the midst of this goofiness. Goldberg and the Outsiders are in different worlds right now. We're starting the big money-drawing feud between the Nitro Girls, and thank God for that.
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Jarrett insists he didn't hit Liz with the guitar. I don't see what the big deal is, Liz seems pretty with-it this week, suffering no ill effects. Nash *sort of* has the Vince laugh down when we see him backstage on the cell phone, but the wig and make-up are terrible and he doesn't even try to do the power walk, despite Heenan claiming he recognizes it. Nash is no Brian Christopher, not even a Spellbinder. Remember those weird battery commercials from around this time with the bizarre uncanny valley-esque wind-up people? That's what Nash really looks like. Schiavone and Heenan giggle along with this because shades of gray. Nash pathetically attempts to respond to "Ass-hole!" chants that don't exist--the late-'90s version of yelling "Shut up!" at an audience that isn't saying anything. What is it about "trouser snake" that Russo goes to it *more than once* for comedy material? This might be the worst segment of multiple prior Yearbooks. In '99, this might not crack the Bottom 5. "You gotta love the Outsiders." --Heenan, selling his soul before our eyes.
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There's some stuff that would be eye-rollingly contrived here (like Rhino and the Impact Players having to figure out how *not* to all clobber Sandman while he's on the apron with his back to them slamming a beer can against his head, and then their subsequent ninja movie-style one-at-a-time attack), but who can really care about any of that? It's weird, but even the sight of Sandman standing in a section of the ECW Arena that hasn't been fancied up yet is cool, like we all just stepped back into the 1995 Arena. And Joey shutting up and letting the action and the singing crowd tell the story was the perfect way to go. Even Raven has to give Sandman his props.
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Good match. I'm not as enamored with it as everyone else, as it's more of a good TV main event than a GREAT MATCH, and boy did that fucking crowd chant sour me on the whole viewing experience. A few other of the ECW Arena mutants clearly tried to get them to shut up, but that was a lot of people.
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Other than the look, Lou E.'s Paul impersonation isn't exactly spot-on. As soon as Lou talked about bringing back a former World Champion, I would have bet money that "Enter Sandman" was going to kick up just to troll the crowd, but they decide not to have the crowd shit on Mikey...why a heel gets on-air credit for all this, who knows.
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Is *that* what this is all leading to? I guess Christopher touched Doug in a real place with some of these remarks, but it seems like standard Memphis heeling to me. This is even better than last week's skit, and who knew the freaking Spellbinder would be so good at parody? Or that Tommy Gilbert defeated Moses? There's a program and proof and everything. Dave is great here, to the point where I wonder if he's at Scott Bowden levels of being legitimately pissed, and his set-up (fully on board that the real Tommy and Peggy are coming) is perfect.
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If it were "just" a house show then I doubt HHH would be wrestling on it (in a 25-minute match).
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Better than the tag match we just saw, maybe the #2 AJPW match of the year behind the March tag. Just a war--there's a slow feeling-out process that lasts for about 15 seconds until Vader pops Misawa right in the fucking face and then this is basically a 12-minute closing stretch. Usually if someone says "this match went 12 minutes but felt a lot longer" it's not a compliment...but this felt longer than 12 minutes in a way that's actually a positive, and I'm not sure if I can think of another match that fits that description. These two brutalized each other and the way it goes, you can't really envision this lasting any longer than it did.
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This match was set up by an actual angle, where No Fear laid out Burning after a 6-man tag match the night after their tag title win, leading to this non-title match being turned into a title match. Hard to remember the last time AJPW had one of its major belts defended in such a quick turnaround like this. Anyway, this leads to a pissed off Kobashi, and it leads to, yes, a better match than the tag title change. This was heated and hateful and suspenseful and dickish and all kinds of things that made this match, like its setup, different from a typical AJPW title match. Business had been tanking under Misawa's booking but even if they didn't draw, his handling and push of No Fear has been a high watermark for him. One of the better AJPW matches of the year.
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This angle has officially gotten more airplay on this Yearbook than Tony Atlas vs. Vic Steamboat did on ICW television. For the love of God, make this stop. Watching all this in a tiny screen-within-a-screen so we can show spiraling barbed wire in back of the "EXTREME REPLAY" graphic is pretty annoying when the recap goes for minutes on end. The sleazy Tammy Sytch interview had led to ECW's highest ratings on TNN with the initial plan of blending storylines with long matches and all-clean finishes a proven failure, so now the T&A is getting ramped up as we see here. Mercifully back to live action. Raven sits there cutting a promo on Dreamer while Tommy just stands there like an idiot, then lets Raven hit him with the microphone like a bigger idiot. Styles and Gertner remark on the oddity of the World Tag champions doing this to each other as if ECW hadn't run this angle repeatedly before. More Raven, doing what he should have done for his first promo, cut it as a pre-tape away from the ring. Raven has been one of the most pleasant surprises of the entire Yearbook project for me based on the hatred he got from previous viewers (except for El-P) but yes, this feud is played. They had a chance to freshen Raven up upon his return but they've gone with the same old same old.
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Telling stories, baby. Springing a bear trap on Road Dogg is somewhat fitting for Austin's character, at least. Boss Man and Albert stupidly decide to hide in a car even though they have a numbers advantage over Al Snow--for no reason other than to set up Big Show trapping them inside with a fork lift. This goes from contrived-but-reasonable to pretty stupid pretty quickly when Show drops a Dumpster on the car. Billy Gunn has fallen for the Bart Simpson floor-pie trap. Then a ceiling falls in on X-Pac with Austin's phone conversation conveniently getting played over the microphone for us to hear. The big net was kind of eye-rolling but the parade of run-ins is pretty fun, and you'd think you could put together a pretty hot 6-man tag out of this for a TV main event.
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More masturbatory (in more ways than one?) bullshit but...if it gets over, it gets over, and this did. Nash and Hall know how to work a crowd even for something like this. That said, this is a postmodern bullshit segment that would have Jim Cornette seeing red and I probably would have to agree with him. At least this ended with a payoff with Goldberg getting some revenge for last night.
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Kimberly ain't no Jim Cornette when it comes to personalized ring intros. Now it looks like DDP is being written off TV, though who knows if he'll be out for 3 months or back next week with some tape on his ribs. Hard not to say DDP didn't deserve this after last night, so I don't know why we're suddenly playing all this for sympathy.
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Heenan sums it up by saying it looks like Elton John with a date. I had no idea Savage came back in '99 but he manages to cut his best promo of the year--not saying much, but it's pretty good. He promises to announce a new protege but we don't get any further details and it sounds like we won't ever. CRASH TV, baby, as we go to backstage for shenanigans .5 seconds after Savage's music kicks up.
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That's a pretty flimsy reason to vacate a World title, but on its own this is a great segment--probably the best Sting has been as a heel. Dillon takes his beating like a pro and the Goldberg save is great, too. One might almost think that Russo is about to put together a hot main event program.