PeteF3
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Everything posted by PeteF3
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Jerry also described Man-Hands, "It's like dating George 'The Animal' Steele." -
Pretty good action considering one of these teams I'm slightly more excited to see as Tag Champs than I was the Jurassic Powers. Sasaki and Koshinaka can do sprints if they can do nothing else (and indeed they can't).
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Another Taz-Sabu match that fails to live up to the hype. Hopefully this is done with, but if it is Taz is rather disturbingly out of fresh challengers already. And come on--on the same show in 1999 ECW we're teasing a "referee's decision" finish *and* a towel throw-in finish? No Heyman worshipper should ever complain about ether again with these false finishes out of 1965. I'm not opposed to the idea of any of those finishes, but they only work in a promotion and an environment where they're put over as actually having a chance of happening.
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I enjoyed parts of this just because the elaborate spots they do are, well, elaborate. And well-executed, and creative. But that's all this is--I know it's easy to get snarky and sarcastic about the phrase "self-conscious epic" but that term could have been invented for matches like these. The teased draw and the "referee's decision" which makes no sense on any level sure don't help this. Of note for historical purposes considering this series' reputation, and it's not like I felt like my time was wasted, but absolutely nothing that you really need to see for actual good wrestling. This is the type of match that would look like a classic in music video or highlight form.
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ECW has the audacity to hype this as a "unification" match. Get the fuck outta here--the same belt that Taz willingly gave up a few months ago? Taz talks about how ECW is trying to "cover up" Sabu's broken jaw even though he was wrestling with white tape all over it during the match we just saw with Styles telling us that his jaw was, in fact, broken. Then he cuts promos on Ric Flair and the top WWF guys because ECW has in no way gone from being an innovator to being a clinging hanger-on, no sir.
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Kaz, in full Glacier gear, decides to brutalize himself on a low-level syndie show, God bless 'im.
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Way too many people involved here, and Justin Credible gets put over yet again at the finish. In theory it's not an awful go-home angle for Living Dangerously but Sabu vs. Taz is too played out by this point.
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Stasiak is history, on to bigger and brighter (?) things. That finish was certainly an eyebrow-raiser. It's probably a few years too late to really make money out of the Fabs vs. Lawler & Dundee, but I can get behind this match myself even in 1999, especially if what Lawler says is true, that they never ran the match before.
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I'm again not as high on this, but only in the sense that I don't really see it doing any better than "on the list" as far as MOTYCs rather than an unquestioned 1 or 2. The drama was certainly high down the stretch--Santo leveling Casas with the tope was a great way to create sudden doubt when the technicos had to be seen as heavy favorites based on both their reputations and how the match had been going. Its setup, with Santo taking time to kick one rudo before attemping the tope, was just as good. Casas continues to be the stiffest worker in lucha, and it's glorious to watch. I could watch him clothesline motherfuckers all day.
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Way better than the match before and I was losing faith in FMW long before I lost mine in Kanemoto. This was laid out beautifully, with good solid fundamental wrestling building to some good solid fundamental crazy-ass high-flying, and a guess-what-can-happen-next type closing stretch where it seemed like anyone could pin anyone else at any time. I could see this making the MOTYC list, certainly.
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Not as into this as everyone else--I'm about over Koji Kanemoto entirely because I go into all these heavily pimped matches of his and he keeps letting me down. He's shown to me between the Wagner match and here that he's a fucking shitty comeback, so the drama doesn't build and the wins don't feel earned. And I found the dueling shoteis to be eye-rolling instead of climactic. Let me know when the title's back on Otani.
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In a vacuum I might have liked this more, but Chad summed up my feelings quite well already. The pall of the nonsensical booking hangs over this no matter how good the action or the star power is. It can't be un-noticed that the first Hogan-Goldberg confrontation doesn't get much heat--not a whiff of what Rey and Kidman were getting a few segments ago. The crowd is hot by the end but clearly they don't really know who, besides Goldberg, is supposed to be getting cheered. And I didn't like the fade-out at all, reeking way too much of Raw's "we don't have the attention span to write an ending, just go home" finish. From what we saw, a much better Nitro than usual, but with the exception of the upcoming Spring Stampede "better than usual" appears to be the new upside for WCW.
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A Short Attention Span special--the action is good but they seem desperate to get to the finishing stretch right from the beginning and I didn't feel that it was totally earned...at first. Two things got me to forget about that. One--and this is not something that was said often about WCW--I *loved* the direction when Kidman attempts the first SSP, as the camera follows him up to the top turnbuckle and Rey goes out of frame. Kidman flies off, and we don't find out until he hits the mat that Rey has moved. Then Rey hits the springboard rana for a HOT 2-count that had me totally biting. I was with them from then on, and the finish is great, creative, and suitably match-ending no matter how many minutes it's gone. The point about the big reset button being hit on Rey's push is well-taken, and Zbyszko's comment at the very end, "You can call him the Cruiserweight Killer now," is definitely the most unintentionally revealing of the night.
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Miss Robinson is not hotter than Torrie Wilson. A bold proclamation, but I stand by it. So that's yet another thing wrong with this segment. How is seducing David Flair supposed to be a "man's job"? Even while trying to discuss this, neither Nash *nor* Torrie can refrain from giggling and joking, so if they don't care about this, why should we?
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One justification for the WW(W)F paying managers is that they were at least partially credited with drawing the houses. Even if they weren't at ringside, they were the ones selling the matches through promos in the weeks leading up to the show. That may have continued in '88. Also, Jimmy Hart was quickly made an exception to this rule because of one of those great bits of wrestling logic: Honky Tonk Man had to defend the IC title with Jimmy "banned from ringside," which naturally meant that Hart had to be there (disguised as Peggy Sue holding a bandana in front of his face).
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I'm about 90% sure that Gorilla also never bothered to learn which Nasty Boy was which. Every time he referred to one of them by name he seemed to be following the lead of Heenan.
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I know they've bought content from tape collectors for stuff they don't have in their vault for DVD sets (like Bret vs. Andre), but have they ever put a handheld bootleg on an official release? Maybe the curtain call? There's no reason to believe any of the ironman matches were professionally shot, is there? If there's an ironman match that's going to be unearthed, I'm not sure I'd not rather see Rockers vs. Rougeaus from the Boston Garden (just a month or two after they stopped airing on NESN), just because it was the first of its kind to my knowledge.
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Steiners vs. Money Inc., the first of the 3 title changes, would be a much bigger prize among Steiners matches. Maybe it wasn't a better match but it was at a Challenge taping and is completely unreleased. I'll take "less than HD VQ" over "no VQ" any day.
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Sabu wanting the U.S. title is funny--you just know that Sabu wanted that title as tribute to his uncle, who was something like a 12-time "U.S." champion even though it was a completely different title.
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This was pretty good, but hey, another segment with no ending. I wish they could have taken the time to just ring the damn bell since the match was a clear no-contest, but that's probably too wrasslin' for everyone. Okay, okay, I'll stop bitching--this was a fun tag match, especially the Rock-Austin interactions and counters to finishers. Show was well-protected with only a minimum of a physical altercation with Austin, keeping that match fresh for what's sure to be a big-money showdown when they finally face each other *cough*.
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Triple H calls out KANE-UHH. Yeah, they fooled me on this one, too. We get a patented Vince Russo segment that he can't be bothered to write a real ending for.