PeteF3
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Everything posted by PeteF3
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Joshi MOTY? It's a shit year for AJW and joshi in general, but quite possibly. Everyone here had a role to play and they all played it well, and the match was laid out in accordance with those roles. Kong as the monster, Ozaki as the sneaky opportunist, Satomura as face in peril, and Yamada as the game but ultimately overmatched veteran. There was some uncharacteristic sloppiness down the stretch which will hurt this a bit, but nothing to get too worked up about and nothing that wasn't nicely covered for. Lioness Asuka shows up afterward and turns on Nagayo and joins up with Aja and Ozaki. Well, I didn't like Asuka's match from this set in the slightest, but maybe in GAEA in '99 she'll be better. -
Sort of their usual match on fast-forward, nothing but spots. But hey, the spots hit and the finish is pretty brutal on slomo. I don't get the finish at all and Taz's post-match interview with Steven Prazak creates more questions than it answers. If the answer is Taz wants to give up the FTW title to focus on Shane's belt, why not just come out and say that? It's like Kevin Sullivan booked this.
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Jazz makes her debut, and Chastity is rather clumsily written out of the promotion as Credible wallops her with the cane and he and Jazz beat her down. Bob Artese gets destroyed as well, just for the hell of it, or out of desperation. Take your pick. Terry Funk as Justin Credible's new mentor isn't really a role that suits him at all and I don't think it really works with the crowd either. I hope this "Dreamer can't bear to hit Terry" stuff doesn't last forever, but knowing ECW there'll be about 6 or 7 more angles where he hesitates before punching him and ends up getting beaten down.
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PPW did have some good stuff, but in some areas they're not even trying: Derrick King using "Sexy Boy" as his theme? Tony Falk just nodding along as Randy Hales recounts his wife cheating on him and his divorce is laugh-out-loud funny. He's not as happy with his Turkey of the Year award from Hales, and throws the trophy down and storms off. Falk is back out confronting Brandon Baxter. He's wrestling somebody blindfolded at the show tonight--the guy appears to be some local DJ or celebrity, I'm guessing. I do like Falk as a Jerry Gergich-style sad-sack reluctant heel. The last two awards are pretty Memphis-by-numbers. I agree with Loss on Christopher--he's just being a delusional idiot and not in the good wrestling-heel kind of way. Sometimes it'd be a more refreshing swerve if Memphis or the Big Two did something that *didn't* turn into an angle.
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Not bad action and a decent enough twist at the end, as Vince apparently buys Kane by getting him out of the sanitarium. Kane teases a choke slam of the Rock just to get over that the Corporation won't be able to control him for long. We conveniently go off the air before any actual violence against women takes place.
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Henry gives it his all here, but this is pure Russo short-attention-span stuff that...doesn't go anywhere. Story of the night, apparently. Bob Ryder's subsequent column declaring the end of Western Civilization as a result of these segments was pretty ridiculous, as it's more eye-rolling than anything.
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Droz is the PUSHER MAN. Goddamn. The LOD reunion actually manages to get over, but I don't recall this actually leading to anything--in fact I'm not sure either Hawk or Animal were around at all after this. Lawler has the audacity to declare, "But there's no drugs in the WWF!" And the idea of Droz being a pusher for YEARS is pretty hard to swallow, to put it mildly.
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Holy shit, I called Flair's return the Last Great Nitro Moment, but again, we have a sudden contender emerge as the year closes. So many twists and turns in this mini-angle, with Bischoff getting some measure of heat and to some degree the last laugh, as we head into Starrcade. Flair and the Horsemen get some revenge on Windham and some NWO B-teamers, while you really, really *really* want to see Flair and Eric finally mix it up. WCW is attempting to close out their television on a hell of a high note for '98.
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With less than a week to spare, a late contender for Nitro Match of the Year. Misterio is such a great opponent for Eddy, as he's someone he can dominate and bully and really be a hurtful son of a bitch. Rey hits a lot of his usual great offense and somehow, whenever he comes back, it's hard to tell that he had knees of Silly Putty--it was true 20 years ago and it's true today.
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Very well-put-together segment that just ramped up the drama and anticipation as it went along, and has you wanting to stick around to see what's going to happen next. Last week and the Thunder angle were desperation moves of the Hail Mary pass variety, but maybe it was an Aaron Rodgers pass that worked, because new life has been breathed into this feud.
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This post cannot be displayed because it is in a password protected forum. Enter Password
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Some people are calling the main event *****+ and others are calling it ***1/2-ish. I'm somewhere in the middle--on Twitter it was pointed out that it would live or die by its closing stretch and I think even the hardliners would have to agree that it lived. Still, the first 15 minutes--up until Okada ate the big dropkick or Omega went through the table--were mostly filler with work that was good and workmanlike but not overly interesting. It would fall around ****1/2 for me, again by virtue of the finish. Still think Tanahashi vs. Naito gets MOTN honors at around the same star rating. All in all, I pulled an unplanned all-nighter to watch this and don't regret the decision, so it's an easy thumbs-up show with mostly decent matches, some really good matches, and nothing particularly bad. I say this as someone who's mostly entirely indifferent to modern-day NJPW.
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Good match--maybe the best in a weak year for joshi. Way more enjoyable than the '80s UWF which was a similarly new promotion still getting its feet wet in a new style. I've only seen one full match of this new Yoshida but I'm pretty sure Yoshida vs. Kandori is my new joshi dream match that may or may not have ever happened.
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This is awful. I mean, skeeviness aside, it's simply a bad angle badly executed. Bischoff rambles out an apology and NOBODY in the crowd is buying it--Eddie Gilbert's been dead for almost 4 years at this point and the phony-apology angle is so, so, SO played out. I've been quick to praise Eric Bischoff for when he's delivering the goods, but I'll be just as quick to call him out when he fails. I know he's probably *supposed* to sound somewhat insincere as a heel, but he doesn't even do a good job of attempting to play this straight at all.
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I don't get who he would work with as a heel, either. Savage? Vince wasn't putting him back in A-show main events, period. Bret? Was being moved into a feud with Papa Shango before the sudden change in plans. Davey Boy? Seems too early to be running IC vs. WWF title matches. Undertaker? Honestly the best option, since it'd be an interesting reversal of their '91 feud, and he did get some shots at Flair, but Undertaker was settling into more of an Andre the Giant-type attraction at this point than a real title contender. And where does that leave Flair? Do they turn Perfect anyway?
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What's the official source on the WWF wanting Warrior to turn heel? Because the only people I've heard tell that story are a.) Scott Keith, or b.) people who got it from Scott Keith either directly or from other people who got it from him. The concept makes no sense and I really won't believe it without some corroboration from somebody else. I read through each Observer as I finish each week of my '90s Yearbook watch and I don't remember Meltzer discussing the possibility at all. Edit: I don't see anything wrong with the date of the Jannetty debut. There was no Sherri at either SNME or Survivor Series, meaning the angle aired before either of them.