PeteF3
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Everything posted by PeteF3
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These guys are working *way* too fast, because there's blown shit all over the place. Sabu steals the victory when Taz is on the verge of tapping Douglas out, leading to dissension in the New Triple Threat. Taz vs. Sabu again, what a bold direction for this company. Why is the World title still on Douglas?
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What a bunch of overbooked horseshit. The stuff with Jeff Jones and the Japanese dictionary is material that the WWE writing staff would be ashamed to pitch. Tanaka kicking out of the 3D should be a big moment...but guess what: that Great Announcer Joey Styles fucking telegraphs it by declaring the match over, which of course gives away that the opposite will happen. If my bitching about this sounds repetitive, then Joey should probably stop doing it.
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Definite MOTYC--1/97 is still the peak of '90s AJPW much less this rivalry, but I definitely think this is more epic and memorable than 10/97. If you'd have told me this match would have had Kobashi kicking out of the TD'91 and the match continuing for another 5-6 minutes complete with a full Kobashi comeback, I'd have rolled my eyes--but that's what they did, and damned if they didn't make it work. I'm as cynical as anyone about self-conscious epics and just ranted about them again in the Olimpico review, but this is an instance where even if these two guys do overreach a bit, I still feel like applauding the effort instead of shaking my head. I think it's at least partly because the matwork they did for the first chunk of this was so well-done and so technically sound. Just strong work around holds, no rote preplanned chain wrestling sequences or contrived faceoffs to applause. I do find myself agreeing with what Chad said--Kobashi should have won this. He'd beaten Misawa twice already on this tour which sort of telegraphs this result, but if there ever was a time to change the AJPW formula, this was it. Yet, at year's end I could easily see this in the #1 spot. At the least, it's neck-and-neck with Kobashi's TC win over Kawada for the #1 spot for 1998 All-Japan.
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This was pretty good but it did have that "self-conscious epic" pall about it--Olimpico was GREAT at timing his kickouts for the last microsecond, but there reached a point where he almost seemed to be showing off how close he could make the count instead of building an organic story. It's also another point in favor of just doing a one-fall match if you're going to book a 2/3 fall match like this--I know, tradition and everything, but I say if you're going to get through the first two falls in like a minute apiece you may as well just skip them. Loved Halcon's funky reverse Gannosuke clutch to win the primera caida, though. I think I liked the first match better just because it was my first time seeing two relative unknowns. Here, they actually had expectations to live up to.
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This reads too much like that entire season of Dallas being a dream--"sorry folks, everything you watched for the past 3 years has been a lie!" it takes It Was a Plan All Along, which was being played to death in late '98 already--to a new level. Of course I realize the implication here is that Austin probably shouldn't have turned, period.
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Ah, I've been waiting for it...the infamous "Bret Clark" intro by Buffer. Some conspiracy theorists have posited that this was deliberate sabotage on the part of Hogan or somebody. Bret shows that he can still bring the goods when he's pushed, and DDP is just the guy to do that. He takes some great bumps and unleashes some big offense like a killer superplex. Page wins the U.S. title, which surprises me.
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All-action but kind of sloppy and not on the level these two could provide in a perfect world--even accounting for Austin's physical state. The finish would have come across better if it wasn't a re-do of the Dungeon Match. Still, JR did point out that the match could end if one person was incapacitated and Shamrock was certainly that, so it doesn't feel excessively cheap.
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"You've taken this incompetent, somewhat underachieving kid and turned him into a MONSTER!" Good way to put some sympathy on Shane before his whiny monologue. I still don't get what this plan was all about--Shane re-hires Austin just to turn on him? Maybe we'll get an explanation that this re-hire and family drama was legitimate and then Vince and Shane reconciled.
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I don't get how Austin suddenly got stale in 8 months of being back on TV. And on top of trying to execute the turn in Texas, he turned at a time when there were no top babyfaces to oppose him. I daresay Kane and Undertaker as top challengers did almost as much damage to the WWF's bottom line, though in the end turning Austin was sort of like trying to turn Bruno in 1980. If you couldn't trust Bruno, what babyface *could* you trust?
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WADA did such a bang-up job with the Russian track teams, they're definitely efficient and trustworthy to handle this fairly.
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Just for the record, I looked in the OED and it doesn't have any listing of "abortion" in that specific context. It's been used since the mid-1500s to describe the deaths of pre-born children.
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I think it's more his personality than anything. What set this thing off initially was someone rather innocently asking Dave if he still "marked out" on occasion. Dave's only response was a rather assholic reminder that "mark" is a stupid term used by people who looked down on fans. There's an *actual* parallel there between "mark" now being appropriated by wrestling fans and the other word being appropriated by the black community, but damned if I'm the one to talk at length about it and damned if this is the place.