PeteF3
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Everything posted by PeteF3
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Midnights against Wee Willie Wilkins (Wellington Wilkins, Jr.) probably also deserves mention--another match with the jobber going into business for himself. Maybe more interesting because unlike most of these other schlubs, Wilkins actually stuck around in the business for a good while. Friar Ferguson vs. Chris Duffy is particularly awful for a time when the WWF seemed a little more careful about what made it to TV. It takes like 5 or 6 minutes for the Friar to put Duffy away, which is an eternity for most TV squashes that don't involve guys like the Midnights. Crowd goes from indifferent to actively shitting all over it by the end. -
Don't have access to the match right now, but if Steele is actually Giant Warrior as he's generally listed...sheesh. He's not some wet-behind-the-ears trainee, he'd been wrestling for over ten years all over the world--Puerto Rico, South Africa, Global, and multiple tours of All-Japan! I mean, don't get me wrong, he was bad--but in AJPW he didn't strike me as incompetent. Nowhere near the same ZIP code as Raja Lion, or Giant Gonzalez. Basically on the same level as his Land of the Giants partner, Tyler Mane. Amazing that he deteriorated that quickly into making rookie-like mistakes.
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Midnight Express vs. Smelly Guy (Danny Little). Clips on Youtube, full match is on the Network. I think it was in mid-1988. Bad News Brown vs. Steve Reese. Sgt. Slaughter vs. Paul Fisher. Fisher is hands down the worst jobber I've ever seen--he literally appears to be completely untrained. Skyscrapers vs. Avalanche & Mike Blackwell. Blackwell became either Butch or Buster Blackheart from Global and basically no-sells his way through the entire match because he thought he was due for some big national TV contract. Ken Patera vs. Judo Joe Black. EDIT: And all 5 extant Mighty Joe Thunder matches, for matches where the squasher and not the squashee is at fault. The first one may actually be the worst.
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No fuss and no muss--Bischoff gets in absolutely zero offense, WCW finally holds off the NWO...and y'know, I even liked Savage's presence even if it was ultimately pointless and Gorgeous George served as a distraction, because with their past history it showed how huge this was that *he* was helping Ric Flair. It was rough going getting through this Yearbook because of time issues, a general malaise over the direction of late-'90s wrestling, and wrestling-viewing time that I had being devoted to modern stuff more than in the past 15 years for me. But this might be the best Yearbook-closing segment of them all. They didn't go about it the 100% right way, but by God, things are finally looking up for WCW!
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It's '90s cruiserweight action meeting classic southern tag wrasslin', and it works beautifully. There's some sloppiness and miscommunication in the early going that's quickly forgotten about once Rey is getting worked over, and both sides break out some pretty sick double-teams. The LWO picks up a needed win after Kidman ran through them last night. Not a #1 TV match of the year or anything but very, very good.
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"You are someone who's going to die of a heart attack--" "IF I DIE OF A HEART ATTACK, IT'LL BE ON TOP OF YOUR GIRLFRIEND, PAL." That's probably the best line of the segment but there are others that are almost as good. But there's no reason why they couldn't have built up to having these stips at Starrcade, given that there were weeks when this feud wasn't really going anywhere until they ramped it up with the attack on Ric's family. So this is horribly hotshotted and a desperate ratings grab that won't work, but Flair is so compelling that he makes this segment great.
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Yeah, this is really out of nowhere and not explained well at all. *Why* was Shawn holding the Corporation back? It doesn't matter, all that matters is that we got swerved. I'll make another sarcastic crack about how this is apparently building to Shawn vs. Vince and then I'll try to stop, because it's a useless thing to be complaining about now. Matches no longer matter and building to them matters even less.
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Re: Repo Man, I never would have guessed it myself either, but that was one of the secrets that PWI broke for me. I have to think Piper blurting out "That's the Iron Sheik!" was intentional, or at least approved. That shit was taped after the fact--just like his proclamation of "THAT'S TONY ATLAS!", it wouldn't have made it into the final cut if Vince really didn't want it there.
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The big difference from Rex/Smash is that they never tried to claim OMG and Akeem were two different people--they outright said the Gang had been "reborn." Sheik/Mustafa was a little weird...sometimes they acted like Mustafa was completely new, other times Vince would acknowledge him as a former WWF Champion, and sometimes it wasn't really talked about one way or the other.
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Andre the Giant could ruin friendships in that NES game.
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That's how I always saw it happening--Funk essentially got Piper's spot. Same "you don't deserve a title shot because you've been in Hollywood" angle, even.
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Think that's all about the promo. The match itself is inconsequential--Douglas' opponent could have been literally anybody.
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I don't know anything about Skyler or Lee but that looked like a 4* match to me. The matwork was pretty darn tight, no execution problems there at all, and the guys really came across as thinking of how to get out of their various holds and counter them, and then executing what they came up with. Rather than the "I wristlock you, you reverse it" dance routines. Moves that were teased early on were paid off later, and moves that were executed early on were countered later. Little not to like from a psychology standpoint. I really didn't care for the floor stuff at all, particularly since they completely disregard any semblance of a countout, but at the beginning of the spots Skyler is working to break the count and then they do a countout near-fall tease at the end--either work the countout or don't, guys. That ends up being a fairly minor blight on the match in the end. The crowd wasn't frothing at the mouth, but they did seem to be watching the match and reacting to everything--and I'm not a guy who holds up "This is awesome" chants as a sign of the decline of western civilization, but it was refreshing to see a modern-day indy without a single chant at all. And that big lady in the blue shirt who was practically praying to the heavens when Lee was in trouble...she was doubtless flashing back to the days as a young lady in the Greensboro or Charlotte Coliseum madly cheering for Steamboat & Youngblood.
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Goldberg vs. Lesnar might have been a healthier and more far-reaching match than we all thought at the time.
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Yeah, this was pretty good action and a good comic-book-splash-panel type of match--for the most part. One of the better Nash in WCW matches for sure, thanks mostly to Goldberg as this might be the first and only time he outright carries a match. The ending...ugh. Beating Goldberg at all was a mistake, but I'm 100% convinced that if you do decide to end the Streak, you have to end it legitimately and not through bullshit. Kevin Sullivan agreed with me and knowing the directive that Goldberg was to lose, proposed a finish where he'd go for the spear and knock himself out against the turnbuckle. But instead, we got a finish lifted from a mid-card Mountie match from 1992.
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Dumb. Dumb dumb dumb. Bischoff should not have been able to successfully fake a knee injury, should not have been able to get the advantage at all without interference or a weapon or something, and should not have won this at all, much less with one knuck shot. Let Flair have one kickout, please. Flair shouldn't have bladed, either, or if he did it should have been off NWO interference and not just Bischoff kicking him or ramming him into the guardrail. There was some decent work here in-between the problematic match layout, but in the end it's pretty much an egofuck for Bischoff and a cheap set-up to try to score viewers for Nitro. I get that Hennig's apparently been gone for a bit, but why are we acting like it's some gigantic SWERVE that he's helping Bischoff?
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Holy shit, this is a slept-upon pair of matches that ended up blowing me away. The triple threat is a lot of fun as they throw in a lot of ambitious and complicated spots that all hit, and avoid most of the 3-way cliches. No triple sleepers, triple suplexes, or guys being out of commission for minutes on end where the match devolves into a series of quickfire singles matches. Rey's Asai moonsault and Kidman's shooting star plancha are the highlights, but there are a lot of nice other touches like Kidman doing a tornado bulldog on Juventud while also dropkicking Misterio--stuff that utilizes the 3-way format without coming off as contrived. The finish is clever, with a bit of bullshit but with Kidman coming off as crafty and resourceful in victory. The Eddy match may be even better, since if you're never big into 3-ways at all and thought the action there may have been contrived or spotty, this tells a much more coherent story. Eddy is fresher, and smarter, and bigger, and Kidman actually wrestles in a way that puts this story over instead of a way to just get all of his shit in. He gets plenty of shit in, but there are lots of moments where all he can do is punch, stomp, and flail away at Eddy. It's the type of thing that Kenny Omega would probably never even think of doing, but that Kidman pulls off well. It's like that point Parv raised about guys whose entire movesets are finishers--I've made the point with Kidman a few times that he's still very good at executing very basic moves. Anyway, Kidman guts out another win with another finish that's satisfying with just a hint of gaga to it. Crotching Eddy on the top rope while also knocking him into Juventud was a nice way to set up a brutal SSP finish. I almost have to evaluate these matches as one since they're so tied in with each other. As a complete package I'd say this is the #2 domestic MOTY behind Austin-Dude Love, and it's a pretty close call on that front as well. Between the go-home Nitro and the opening here, you might think WCW was still on fire as a company.