PeteF3
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Everything posted by PeteF3
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I don't think any of that is available besides what aired on Now It Can Be Told. I believe it's been determined that he did some Event Centers for the Springfield, MA market, and maybe a few others--but none of the places where most of the circulating footage seems to come from (Boston, NYC, and Nashville). It would be kind of a holy grail in a way, but if Bix hasn't found any (to my knowledge) then I doubt Parv can. Sorry, Parv. -
That reminds me--I'd like to see a discussion of the transition between local promos and Event Centers, which happened I think with the first syndie shows to air after WM4. Along with the change in format (which had to have saved untold amounts of time for everyone), house shows began to get more uniform. Savage did have I think a handful of one-off defenses against Boss Man and King Haku, but otherwise you had a traveling troupe putting on the same show each night as opposed to things being booked for one particular city. Compare and contrast Hogan in the '80s to Hogan as champion in '89 and '91. You didn't see any Hogan-Mountie, or Hogan-Martel main events. The only "random" guy he faced in '91 was the Warlord for a few shows in the fall, after Slaughter was finished but when it was too early to have him facing Undertaker or Flair.
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I know, knock me over with a feather. Since I don't have hard info on Norton, I'll provide this bit of Meltzer-ian humor from the WCW brass: the Prisoner was announced as being from Green Bay, Wisconsin, because that was the site of the TV taping where he attacked Vince McMahon.
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Sorry folks--for once, I have no off-the-top-of-my-head information on what happened to Scott Norton here. I believe it was just usual bullshit over money, and/or not doing the job, with or without possible NJPW involvement. Norton *did* already lose the Dontaku match by blood stoppage, IIRC, so maybe he actually had a point.
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Kaufman was Foley's first professional opponent, in fact.
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I still say Watts' most progressive move ever was not pushing JYD or any other black star, it was making Ernie Ladd a booker.
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Even though it originated as terminology referring to shootstyle, I personally see it as a marketing term for New Japan and nothing more. It's their "sports entertainment."
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This is smoke-and-mirrorsy just like the title match last night, but there are some good moments that kept me guessing. Test makes his debut and uses the Meltdown to put Triple H away. I'm left scratching my head as to how the fuck we're going to get from here to Michaels turning babyface and making Vince #2 in the Rumble, as these storylines are starting to get foggier and foggier in my memory.
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I found Cole more bearable here than he's been in any other segment tonight, but yeah, Ross' absence is palpable. At least Cole is attempting to respond in the proper way to get this over, whereas earlier he was guffawing indiscriminately (even at the Rock) or missing key details while Lawler had to fill in. This was another fun and to-the-point segment.
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Man, I was stunned at how bad I thought this was. There's Cole's stupid laugh, and almost the entire parody is just stuff about asses and sphincters. Jason Sensation referring to "HBGay" isn't something that's going to get replayed a lot now, either. I'm sure Vince was giggling up a storm backstage, though. DX or Russo or whoever put this together are so creatively bankrupt that X-Pac has to repeat his line about sphincters putting him in the zone, verbatim, for no particular reason. Shawn is mercifully out to save this segment, which isn't something I say very often. I don't generally care for Michaels' above-it-all act but it's never been more appropriate than it is here.
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This is infuriating, because IT WAS A PLAN ALL ALONG and phony apologies have been so played out in 1998, and most of the crowd (not all, but most) just isn't buying Bischoff's sincerity. We've all felt that the Bischoff/Flair feud needed to be kicked into another gear after a few weeks of repetitive interview segments but boy was this not the way to go about it.
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The NWO Black & White is pretty much nonexistent now, as Bret and Giant aren't even bothering to wear the colors (not that Bret ever did). DDP takes a devastating choke slam off the WCW sign into some...cardboard, or something. There's a limit to how many devastating injury angles you can book on one program, even a 3-hour one.
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Jericho recaps how that Baby Huey-lookalike Konnan assassinated his TV title reign from a grassy knoll--"he put the brass knucks on his stubby little fingers...", then beats the impostor up for good measure to show what he'll do to Konnan at Starrcade. Maybe one of the last really good WCW Jericho segments
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Any chance of having people believe in the heart attack was killed with the rather hokey transition to Bigelow, Hall, and Nash, with Schiavone going right back into Wrestling Announcer Voice when Bigelow attacks Hall. I still can't decide if this is as bad, not as bad, or worse than the Hawk TitanTron angle, but it's definitely comparable.
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When specifically was this? Meltzer makes no attempt in his recap of the Pillman-Sullivan match to pass it off as a shoot. He even includes the amusing story that the entire locker room was worked with the exception of Disco Inferno, the only guy to declare that they were working the boys. None of this speculation means anything without some hard examples. As in cited quotes from the newsletter itself. I'm not asking you to cut and paste entire newsletters but if this is that prevalent it shouldn't be too difficult to find a specific example.
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Good Lord, this is awful. No heat for the match, lots of grab-me-and-you'll-walk-with-me, and a stupid finish that the crowd has no patience for as a backhoe very, VERY ineffectively buries the Undertaker. They have the sense not to show any shots of Undertaker in the grave after a bit after it's apparent that there's no way they're actually going to be able to bury him. This might have a new record for most ridiculous announcer exaggerations: a "six foot" grave that goes up to Austin's waist, and repeated references to the "hundreds of pounds of dirt" that barely cover Undertaker's bottom half.
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Sue me, I thought this was the most enjoyable WWF segment in weeks. The pre-match stuff about Rock forfeiting the title that doesn't go anywhere is a little backward since Rock is a heel, but it served a larger purpose in setting up the I Quit Match at the Rumble, and in that sense with all the emphasis on Mankind not being able to say "I quit," it was very well-done and shows that someone is still thinking long-term amidst all the Russoficiation of the product. I got into the action down the stretch too, and so did the crowd. The finish is a screwjob but an effective and sensible one, since so much emphasis was placed before the match on having to say "I quit" to win the title. This definitely would have been more effective with Ross or another announcer who knew how to get this aspect over, as opposed to Cole who can't talk about anything other than Mankind's lifelong dream. Even then, bits like Finkle about to announce the new champion only to have the mic snatched out of his hand by Vince is one of those little touches that separate the WWF from what WCW is doing. Compare and contrast this with how ham-fisted the Hogan-Flair first-blood match was, or really any other attempt at doing a complicated screw finish in the late '90s. You could argue that this should have all been on Raw, rather than a pay-per-view, but in my mind this kicked the Mankind-Rock feud into another gear.
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Sort of a lesser version of the Honaga vs. Liger series--Hayabusa's the big flashy star and Oya is barely an athlete, but he's tricky and crafty and knows enough to keep Hayabusa off balance and to stay in the match. I agree with Chad that they kept this from being overindulgent. I thought we were headed that way after Oya kicked out of the Firebird Splash, but they went to a flash pin--and a very cool one--right after that. I've been far more down on 1998 FMW in general and Hayabusa specifically than anyone else (I can't believe, at this point, that I put him in my GWE list) but this was fun.