El-P

That's hilarious !!

They sure got some fresh blood around Capital Combat. One week Barry Windham is coming back after his failed WWF stint to join the Horsmen back. The following week Ole unveils Sid as the fourth Horseman. Dutch Mantell and the Southern Boys debut on TV. And then you got Junkyard Dog coming back at CC, which is not exactly "fresh" blood, but he was still over I guess. And Flair is wearing a ponytail. Odd. I see how they downplay Robocop as much as they can, with all the heel color guys basically shrugging his involvment off as meaningless after the first week, Arn calling him R2D2, it's obvious they just didn't want to put him over as a big deal. Watched the first hald of CC, with the excellent MX vs Pillman & Zenk match, with great work from Eaton & Pillman, some great nearfalls you didn't usually see back then, and a (relatively) clean finish to boot. And the Rock'n Roll Express vs Freebird match which was as good as you can get from Hayes & Garvin, much better than I thought it would after the dreadfull 2/3 falls match. The RnR were awesome of course, but the difference maker was Hayes showing up and working as hard as he can. Never thought I would enjoy a Freebird match as much as I did after months if shitty work. Garvin still pretty much sucks though.

I haven't seen this in ages, but I used to like the entire Razor vs Jarrett feud quite a bit. They had a good chemistry, the three of them (Road Dog on the outside brought his share to the matches). I enjoy their WM match too. I've awlays been a fan of Jarrett 95-98.

Yep. Compare that with Owen in New Japan two years before. It's kinda sad to see how WWF style fucks up good workers.

I like the fact that they didn't pretend Raven was someone other than who he previously was. Raven smacking Stevie around was always fun, and their interactions was always gold during that period. I love the Raven character.

Despite grunge actually being dead at this point, this was as pop-culture relevant as US wrestling could ever be. Really striking difference with what WCW and WWF was doing at the time. Raven was also the first depressive wrestling character I think.

Some fascinating stuff I wasn't aware of happened in 1995 I see.

It's stricking to see how much Luger had fallen at this point. The previous year he was the favourite to win the Rumble, did co-won it and went to WrestleMania to face Yoko. One year later, after a long boring feud against the Million Dollar Corporation, one could think he would be launched back in the mix on top. Not quite.

I have watched quite a bit of UWF (1st one) last month, and I'm back at watching WCW 1990.

In the lights of the recent "Muppets on Raw" controversy, I must admit Robocop being Sting's big surprise does come off completely idiotic. First huge brainfart of the Ole regime. The most surrealistic aspect of it being Jim Cornette having to sell it in a serious way, and Ole and Arn cutting promos about Robocop. Just doesn't work on any level. The Freebirds continue to be unbearable in the ring, even the Rock'n Roll Express can barely make them tolerable, just way too much stalling, way too little offense and way too much restholds. Nice little undercard feud between Samu and Eddie Gilbert, having pretty long matches for TV format, going to draws. Samu was easily the best samoan so it's good to see him feature in singles matches. I finally got around to enjoy Eddie Gilbert. Took me years. I had no idea Joel Deaton worked a bit in WCW, but although he was a really good worker in All Japan, his matches with Tommy Rich aren't exactly setting the world on fire. He also has a very weird left pec muscle which actually distracts me at times. I'm not feeling Tommy Rich at all most of the times, unless he's with a really good or hot worker. I've cooled off on Stan Lane recently (meaning he doens't annoy me like he used to), as his kick don't bother me as much as they used to, so I guess it's a matter of getting used to it, and he had a good little single match with Z Man. Cornette on commentary was gold. Hell, Cornette was gold in any capacity at this point, commentary, interviews, manager. Teddy Long is pretty damn good also, lots of good promos and good heel color man work. The Minnesato Wrecking Crew II already reverted to JTTS status after a few weeks, being beaten by Z Man and Pillman in a US tag title match. They don't appear much of a threat to the Steiners all of a sudden. These guys really couldn't catch a break, it's a bit sad.

What happened with Hijo del Santo ?

Definitive Aja beats the fuck out of Toyota match. Great match.

Overrated. Just punching the fuck out of each other doesn't make a match good. Having this but not the awesome Bull Nakano vs Kyoko Inoue match is quite the faux pas.

Not really memorable, but at least it wasn't boring since it was so quick. Also you had shitload of stupid mid-90's characters like Duke Droese and Mantaur (I think), so it has a place in my heart. Nice Michaels vs Bulldog interaction, at that time I was a big fan of those two so I enjoyed that quite a bit. It's also infamous for the Bushwhackers walks in/walks out elimination I believe. Wasn't Dick Murdoch involved in this ? Also remember Pamela Anderson looking like she couldn't care less.

Nope, he had a run of several months as a face in Montreal in 1986-87, feuding with Bruiser Brody, Sheik Ali, and The Creatchmans (Eddie and Floyd). Thanks, didn't know that. Those wacky Quebecers, turning Abby face. Someone needs to dig up those Montreal territory shows from the 80's. Hearing Eddie Carpentier again would bring me right back the birth of my wrestling markdom.

Interesting. Maybe they realized they had no idea either. Flair wasn't gonna lose his hair. Luger wasn't either. And they surely couldn't use the cop-out of Woman losing her hair. No way to deliver the stip. I just realized too that it was duirng this period they stopped using cool "real" music for the entrances. No more Halloween for the Samoans, no more Hot Stuff for Eddie Gilbert etc... Wonder what happened there.

I wouldn't say excited, but I admit I'm curious about some "new content". I don't get my hopes up though.

Gone back to watch some WCW 1991, I'm in March/April. I'm amazed at being entertained by the ridiculous Norman/Abby/Rotunda vs Kevin Sullivan/Cactus Jack feud. It's stupid, but the face trio is so random, and I like Cac/Sullivan, so... Early Cactus Jack is an interesting beast. I wonder if that's the only Abby face stint in his career ? Always odd to see Abby without the blood. I didn't notice before that Bloom and Enos had a stint in WCW at this point as the Minnesota Wrecking Crew II. These guys really are underrated, they would have deserved more high profile matches, they were really good. I lile Ole much better in his manager role, because quite frankly, the whole Andersons deal by this point was quite dated. Jimmy Garvin is officialy the laziest wrestler in the company. And Johnny Ace had a single match with Flair which Flair couldn't make any good with his usual routine. That's how bad Ace was at this point. MX vs Zenk & Pillman is a pretty good undercard feud, and Cornette is gold on promos as usual. Mostly tag team programs, with the Rock'n Roll vs Freebirds feud (which was lame), and the RW vs Doom. On that topic, it's interesting to see Animal vs Simmons have a pretty bad and boring match, whil Reed vs Hawk was quite good in a bomb throwing way. Things are clearly moving slowly at this point. They show Sting making progress after the surgery, preparing him for a big comeback. In a way, it didn't bode well for Luger, who should have got the title at this point, he was hot and since he chocked once before, another loss would just not look good...

And let's be fair to Alvarez, I'm listening to the November 1st show, he did say that he thought Smackdown was awesome this week with really good wrestling and really good promos. I don't see the blind WWE hate at all, he puts over tons of WWE stuff too.

I understand your point. Rick Steiner menacing Chucky was one of the most retarded thing ever. That said, it's a different case simply because it's the Muppets. Muppets are cool by definition, so people are willing to accept the fact that hell, it's a Muppet episode of Raw, and should be seen as such. Maybe in execution it came off as stupid as Chucky, I have no idea since I didn't watch after all. And maybe the fact that it's the Muppet just makes it an automatic double standart. But since I think every backstage skits with the invisible camera have been pretty much an embarrassment and one of the reason I can't stand the modern WWE format, having the Muppets thrown in the usual idiocy wouldn't change much for me, except maybe make it a little bit funny for once. So I can get why people who don't mind WWE format loved it.

I don't get how WWE Superstars interacting with the Muppets is much more of a kayfaybe/suspension of disbelief killer than Slick going into the Deepest, Darkest Africa to get Akeem. Or say, The Undertaker's soul floating above the ring at Royal Rumble. Or every invisible camera backstage skits you have to suffer through since 2000. Doesn't mean it's necessarily good, as all the example above are pretty stupid, but it's not anything ground breaking either. Now, I haven't watched the show, and don't really intend too, but I hear what John and Dan say about Muppets 2011 vs Muppets 80's. Anyway, I'm watching those "World of Hurt" episodes, and it's actually a decent little show, chockfull of TV reality bullshit and really heavy shoe editing, but with a nice wrestling content (much better on that respect than Tough Enough). But I can't get over the irony of Lance Storm of all people teaching these guys to 1/ show agression 2/ show a strong personality 3/ cut a promo. That was the funniest part, have Lance all of a sudden cut the blandest heel promo ever complete with the lame Calgary, dramatic pause, Alberta Canada bit, as a way to show these guys how to "turn it on". Lance probably doesn't realize that people used to stare at Dawn Marie's boobs when he used to do that in ECW, and at Major Gunn's ass in WCW. Can't wait to see him teach them about throwing a dropkick in the corner... Gotta agree with Alvarez about the French Stallion, this guy is damn funny and shows more personality than 90% of the current WWE roster. Too small to ever get signed though, but he would for TNA of ROH I guess.

One spot that was pointed out to me as a kid by one of my uncles, which became one of those things that I noticed in every tag match afterwards... How come the referee always needs to see the babyface make the tag with his own two eyes, even forcing guys who have made a clean tag out of the ring because he didn't see it, but always accepts that heels are making honest tags behind his back just because he hears a clapping sound behind him? Aren't the heels the ones far more likely to lie about something like that? The best explanation I've seen is that since it happens with the heels dominating, the ref feels it doesn't really affect the integrity of the match since they're just doing it to be dicks. The babyfaces, however, are going for the hot tag, which is a major change in the direction of the match, so he has to witness the tag himself. That's what I always thought about this. Make sense than when you are in control of the match and you got your opponent down and beat up, you can make a tag without much problem, so even if the ref doesn't see every tag, it's not such a big deal.

First name that came to my mind when I saw the title of the thread was Sting. He's the stupidest baby face ever.

What I get from this thread is : watching wrestling these days is a whole lotta work. That's the downloading era I guess.

I remember Eddie Carpentier putting him over as a really good wrestler on commentary, despite Rose used as a JTTS (or even jobber) then. Of course I didn't get why back then.