PeteF3
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Everything posted by PeteF3
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Stan Lane doesn't say a whole lot, but Stacy promises to be a distraction even if she's stuck in her own personal cage while the Fabs and Lawler/Dundee have their cage match coming up in Jonesboro. All is not so rosy between Lawler and Dundee, though it never is. -
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Satisfactory is the way to put this. Not a blowaway great Final, and maybe not a blowaway great match like you'd hope for if this were 1993 Vader and Kobashi, but a good match with a really hot closing stretch, and an improvement over their League match. Vader's counter German was a great transition spot that pretty much spelled doom for Kobashi despite a few nice kickouts. I know it's All-Japan and not the U.S. but Vader doing the handshake and hug with Kobashi afterward is a little jarring. In any case, Vader seems to have recovered any slowed momentum from his loss to Misawa and is now on a roll heading into his Tokyo Dome title defense.
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Flair complaining about not having a stamp so he doesn't cramp his hand is kind of funny, as is his macking on secretary Georgia. Still dumb, though.
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I didn't much care for the action here and judging by their volume level, neither did the crowd. Randy Anderson takes a terrible ref bump and goes into a coma and this goes way into overbooking territory, as this takes about 3 or 4 more twists and turns than is necessary just to set up Kimberly whacking Scott with a chair. Good to get some closure and comeuppance for that program but this has been about the slowest-burning heel turn of the entire MNW era. Nash gets the World title shot at Slamboree, because of course he does.
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Austin plunging into the river was a step or eight too far, but I did like the callbacks to December of '97--both the concept, and the re-do of the "316" page. Once again Austin and Rock make something out of material that could be generously described as subpar. And yes, this is in some ways better than, "Rock has a rematch clause, so he's going to use it" as far as a storyline for a second PPV.
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Mankind takes a backseat to an English big-game hunter character, to the ad's detriment.
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We come in with the crowd entertaining themselves with a "NITRO SUCKS" chant, which is the loudest they'll be for this match. I wasn't angry about this at the time, just confused. Looking back, I'm still confused, other than Russo deciding that it wouldn't be expected and therefore it should be done.
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What the hell happened to Tacoma that they went from being so hot for a promotion in its death throes, to completely shitting on the same promotion a couple of years later and sinking the biggest angle of the century? Anyway, the action here is kind of a mess as there didn't seem to be much thought put into the layout, and Savage dropping the elbow on Flair doesn't really make much sense in terms of either storyline or execution. Flair pops back up, then gets dropped with a Diamond Cutter with Sting not really convincingly being taken out of the picture. DDP winning the title is a nice swerve finish but I'm skeptical that he was really ready for this role. As Bobby Heenan said in a later shoot interview about him, "Good worker, good guy...sorry, he's not a World champion."
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We get a pre-match video before cutting to the finish, that's filled with all kinds of computer imagery and effects but doesn't actually tell us anything about why this match is happening or why it's important. Say what you will about the overwroughtness of WWE's videos, they do tell you the story. A good finishing stretch if nothing else, for sure, as we start with Goldberg doing a terrific bob-and-weave avoidance of Nash's blows and leveling him with a superkick. Nash leapfrogging the spear was a really cool spot, and they believably work the invincible Goldberg into an overcome-the-odds story with the presence of Luger. It's easy to be cynical about Nash and his booking, but on this night at least, he did business the right way. After all this, WCW still had something with this guy.
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This was a lot of fun. I don't think I'd call it a great match, but at the very least it's great by 1999 WCW standards. Everyone's touched on the odd match layout already, and in the end I liked the fact that they were willing to change the formula up a bit. Arn was a terrific manager, not just the way he got physically involved but the way he put over the in-ring action. Charles Robinson hit the right note as a very subtly biased ref, without beating it over your head or detracting from the action. Raven looks good here--for a guy I was absolutely dreading going into this Yearbook project based on others' thoughts on him, he may well stand out as the '90s' most pleasant surprise of them all. Not everything he did was a home run to say the least, but I can't say that I ever found him boring. The ending is ridiculous and cringeworthy and maybe the single biggest impediment keeping this at very-good-not-great levels. Still, a fun time with great crowd heat.
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His Ed Whalen was getting there before he left 6:05.
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Blitzkrieg was semi-untrained and boy does he look it at times. That this match is as enjoyable as it is comes down to Juvie, who delivers what is possibly his finest performance, at least in a WCW ring, holding this together. It's his version of Pillman vs. Badd, though obviously not as long, but with a much much greener opponent. Blitzkrieg blows a few things and looks lost at points, but his big spots look crunchy as hell and he's game for whatever Juventud wants to try, including the ridiculous finish. A fine choice for a PPV opener, well-executed.
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Even as the product gets worse, here's hoping the return of JR will make Raw more palatable. Even in Ross' diminished state today, he has a knack for improving upon the formulaic soundbites of modern WWE announcing. Running a boiler room brawl between Mankind and the newly turned Big Show is pretty weirdly random. Mankind gets in his line about Al Snow's new endorsement deal with La-Z-Boy, even though he doesn't sell chairs. Overall, a cute little segment for the B-show, amazingly devoid of angles and drama.
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A second straight WTF Dome main event with another oddly muted crowd, though they do react well to a few isolated spots. The thrown chair is great and a fine way to establish the severity of the exploding wire, but while Chono and Onita do a fine job of selling how vital it is to avoid the impact at all costs, neither do a very good job of selling the long-term effects of actually getting caught. This really goes off the rails with an eye-rollingly contrived spot where both wrestlers and the referee all get caught in an explosion, and Chono gets a visual fall while backup ref Tiger Hattori is tending to the other ref instead of counting, defeating the purpose of even having a second referee. That shit barely holds up in the U.S. where gaga is to be expected--in New Japan it looks especially bad. Then a horrible, horrible finish: since these two couldn't sell the explosions for longer than ten seconds, this doesn't feel like two guys leaving everything in their bodies out in the ring with nothing left to give, it feels like two guys going to sleep because this is where the finish is supposed to happen. Chono and Onita make nice or something after the match in an angle I give less of a shit about than the stuff with Roddy Piper and the U.S. title earlier in the year. A monumentally disappointing match considering I was genuinely intrigued by the build to all of this. WCW's derailment is going to overshadow everything, but New Japan really is starting to appear lost in the woods at this point, even moreso than All-Japan and their upheaval.
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Yeah, this was enjoyable enough, though not so enjoyable that the first 20 minutes seem like a lost classic or anything. Just a long, drawn-out finishing stretch. One minor thing I haven't noticed until now is that I'm not sure Vader is built for a match with a bunch of false finishes, because it sort of strains credulity that a man of his girth and power would really be unable to hold a guy down. There are a few instances where Kobashi nicely slips out from a cover but others where it's patently obvious that Vader has to just let him out because that's not the ending.
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Yeah, *this* had some piping-in. I'll never complain about wrestling stuff being destroyed when it's being replaced anyway (even though I sort of did for last week's Nitro).
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I recall liking this team as well. As it is, they stand out as a sign that 1999 WWF wasn't all terrible. I don't think this was piped-in heat--the crowd is visually going pretty nuts when X-Pac scores the pin.
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The smoking skull stuff started last week but basically petered out in the wake of the missing-Stephanie storyline. Austin warns that if they taunt him again by putting the belt on the TitanTron again, it's going to cost Vince a lot of money. Foreshadowing!