El-P
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Everything posted by El-P
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Well, I don't know what the truth is, but the facts are that Rey got his world title push after Eddie death, and his entire push was centered on Eddie's death, complete with amazingly shameless promos from Orton. I guess it kinda oppened Vince's eyes a bit since Rey got another Wolrd Title reign, and Rey probably means lot of marketing for kids, but I haven't followed this one at all, I don't know how long and how it went. They also pushed Jeff Hardy so I guess they are slowly learning that size isn't everything (although I never bought Jeff Hardy as a main eventer myself). -
The big difference being, Onita never cared about what would happen with FMW after he would leave. He made money, made himself a star, and was ready to leave FMW in the dirt, which is basically what he did by putting himself over Hayabusa in his retirement match. It still gave Hayabusa a high profile, but there was no ace in FMW after this, and there was an effective restart in the Summer of 1995. And yeah, the product from this time to the end of 98 when Fuyuki took over was probably the best FMW delivered. Hayabusa eventually became the star of the promotion, but I'm not sure at what point exactly. Some would argue what kept FMW alive at first was Megumi Kudo, who became the female Onita, suddenly having bloody deathmatches with Shark and her minions. The 96 Kawasaki Dome Show had Funk & Pogo vs the two young future stars Hayabusa & Tanaka in the Main, but I would be willing to say that Kudo vs Combat in the first ever women exploding deathmatch was the main draw for this show. Then of course Onita came back right for Kudo's retirement show, and even wanted to go last if I recall. Not only Onita didn't help at all, but he effectively did damage to the perception that Hayabusa was the new ace by coming-back, drawing less than before and still not putting the new ace over. Hayabusa really got to the ace status from 98 and on. Misawa was one of the most selfless booker out there. And reading this stuff about Choshu's booking in the 90's reminds me how cool NJ was at this point with all the outsiders coming in.
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I haven't seen one D-Von vs Bubba match I would call watchable. And you know what I think about Spike. I'm not a Dudley fan at all, Bubba is by far the best of them all, excellent bumper, excellent promo, both funny and serious, pretty good offense. But I have a hard time finding a whole lot of *good* matches involving the Dudz (talking about ECW).
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Konnan is seriously one of the worst worker I've ever seen. Down there with the Harris Brothers and Crusher Maedomari. Flair had no chance in hell of saving this, and it's not like he had anything else to propose but an abridged version of his formula at this point. Him winning the US belt felt wrong too. Below his level, come on.
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So we replace an unreliable goofball who never drew shit by.... another unreliable goofball who never drew shit. I wasn't happy to see Sid come back, as I was bored to tears by his 1995 stint. Memories of those godawful matches with Diesel coming back... Yet, he prooved me wrong and delivered the most entertaining stint of his entire career, complete with his best matches ever. Well, thanks to Bret and Shawn, but still.
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D-Von really sucked actually. I liked the Dudleys until he showed up, and then the fun was ruined. Shitty matches against Bubba, shitty gimmick which consisted of smashing people's head with a chair, we know how good that is. And really, D-Von is a guy who dropped dramatically down during my ECW watching. Jeez, this guys brought nothing. He did get better toward the end, and probably in WWF, but for the most part, he really sucked.
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Not a good representation of either man's talent. They basically did a sick spot exhibition, which probably looked much more impressive then than it is now. Good garbage match, but they didn't click that well. I'm not sure what the deal was, but wasn't Quinones working with WWF a bit in 1996 ? He brought them the HeadHunters for the Rumble and a few house show (there's a really good Head Hunter vs Leif cassidy & Aldo Montoya match somewhere). Cactus already had the Mankind outfit (at least the boots and pants) and haircut at this point.
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This was awesome. Yeah, there was clearly a schyzophrenic nature in the product going on in 1996. It's a fascinating year for US wrestling because of how everything evolved so quickly.
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What was the point of this anyway ? A waste of everyone involved.
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Sullivan did an amazing job putting Benoit over as a killer, no pun intended. Funny how revisionnist history would tell that WCW never pushed Benoit yaddi yaddi yadda. The greatest thing about this match is obviously, Dusty's call of the woman in the bathroom. Just classic. Just thinking about it puts a smile on my face.
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The introduction of the complete Goldust package, with Marlena, which was a brillant idea. The fact that this creepy guy with ambiguous sexual behaviour had a female "director" by his side who smoked the cigar and was sexy as hell was just perfect. I remember liking the match a whole lot, and Goldust really went far into the unconfortable "I like when you hit me" deal. I wasn't a big fan of the Kid being the sole reason Goldust won, but I popped big time to see him get the belt. I was a big fan of Goldust. It's too bad they sterilized the character in 97 with that ridiculous and awful "Oh, I'm not gay nor bisexual, I'm actually a gread dad and a family man playing a role" interview.
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Bret and Shawn aren't small. Shawn is 6'1. I've heard that Jerry Jarrett played a role in them getting pushed at the time. Savage sure wasn't a small guy. Eddie, Benoit and Rey were small. Rey was pushed because Eddie died. Both Rey and Benoit's title reign were nondescriot at best, and they got back to the midcard afterward. But really, it's an accepted fact that Vince doesn't like small guys.
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Toyota and Inoue had the infamous überworkrate 60 minutes match in 1995. Amazing stuff. The Rock and HHH of all people had an excellent 60 minutes matches. Time doesn't matter. The way it's worked does. I have never seen Angle/brock going 60, but I don't want to see Angle going anywhere near 60 minutes.
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Well, the only point of Rey winning the Rumble and the belt was make money out of Eddie's death. The constant references to Eddie during that time were just unbearable. Plus since Vince hates small guys, Rey was never treated as a real champ anyway.
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It's the kind of match I would ave gone ga-ga over 12 years ago. Rewatching it a few years back, I thought it was actively boring. Just like the famous Dean vs Eddie matches from ECW rather bored me when I rewatched them last year. I was more interested by the Sandman's matches to be honest.
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I blame the workers for doing a NJ Korakuen Hall match before this audience. Neither of them had any will to try to involve the crowd, they worked like they were in a vacuum.