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DECEMBER WRESTLING CHIT CHAT


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Some rumblings over at the board that Mae Young won't be on Raw next week due to her being ill and going into a hospice. Hope it's not true.

 

 

Terrible. She's one of the like 5 people in the "old as fuck"generation that isn't grumpy or angry or pissed that she is still alive.

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Sting vs Avalanche was good. 

 

Sting and John Tenta (as The Shark) also had a really fun three-minute match on Nitro, too. Sting is one of those guys who I love, but beyond Ric Flair and Vader, I don't remember many of his matches specifically as must-see matches. 

 

On the other hand, you were pretty much never going to get a stinker out of him or even a boring match. He would always do something really enjoyable and get the crowd into it. Sting had a fun run of matches before he was taken off TV to get Crow/Sting over. I forget the PPV in early '96 it was on, but he had an underappreciated match with Steven Regal (that is only marred by an embarrassing homophobic promo he cut before the match, so feel free to skip that part). 

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So I was talking to a non-wrestling friend of mine about the Kaufman/Lawler program. They asked if Kaufman was a good wrestler, and I said that he was perfect for what he had to do. Then I explained how a lot of celebrities can be afraid of getting hurt or hurting people so their angles end up looking bad, which is why the Kaufman stuff was great because he leaned into all of it when it was time to. So I tried to name other people who had that kind of commitment to the angle and all I could name were Floyd Mayweather and Mark Cuban. Am I forgetting anyone?

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So I was talking to a non-wrestling friend of mine about the Kaufman/Lawler program. They asked if Kaufman was a good wrestler, and I said that he was perfect for what he had to do. Then I explained how a lot of celebrities can be afraid of getting hurt or hurting people so their angles end up looking bad, which is why the Kaufman stuff was great because he leaned into all of it when it was time to. So I tried to name other people who had that kind of commitment to the angle and all I could name were Floyd Mayweather and Mark Cuban. Am I forgetting anyone?

 

LT?

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John Tenta is really awesome. He's definitely in my top fifty of all time.

 

My favorite work from Tenta is as one-half of the Natural Disasters. They were such an awesome fat-dudes tag team and are the best thing about that early-'90s WWF tag team scene, to be honest.

 

Is his early work in AJPW worth seeking out in your opinion? If I was to watch one or two matches of his from that company, what might you suggest?

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I'll have to find the promo, but he went beyond that to call Regal gay for calling people sunshine and insult him for drinking his tea in a feminine way and not being a man, saying "we don't breed American men that way". I just saw it a couple months ago and pretty vividly remember it. It wasn't the contract-signing, where he does just ask Regal not to call him sunshine, but it was the promo Sting cut on the night of the match. 

 

I could be wrong/oversensitive, but I remember thinking it was pretty ugly when I saw it.

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John Tenta is really awesome. He's definitely in my top fifty of all time.

 

My favorite work from Tenta is as one-half of the Natural Disasters. They were such an awesome fat-dudes tag team and are the best thing about that early-'90s WWF tag team scene, to be honest.

 

Is his early work in AJPW worth seeking out in your opinion? If I was to watch one or two matches of his from that company, what might you suggest?

 

 

Natural Disasters have some of the best wimpy matches of the era certain. I also think, pretty certainly though someone could argue otherwise, that the best match of Summerslam 1992 is Natural Disasters vs Beverly Brothers. Go back and check it out.

 

If you want to watch him in Japan I find his 93-94 stuff more interesting. I really like this one, for instance:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDzFb-fbKJs

 

It's so random.

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His last televised WWF match as Earthquake against Bam Bam Bigelow is a rely fun match between big men. I'm a real big Bigelow fan however, that guy was so watching else.

Edited with punctuation.

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Vader/Duggan was the for the US Title

 

Back then, they really didn't need much more backstory than that

 

Oddly, not only was there more backstory than that, I actually remember it.

 

Vader had one the triangle match to earn the Number 1 contender status over Sting and Guardian Angel (or whatever name Bossman had at that point) but didn't get the title shot at Starcade anyway, so he decided to challenge Duggan for the U.S. title because of the old school "the secondary champion is the automatic #1 contender to the world title" rule.

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So I was talking to a non-wrestling friend of mine about the Kaufman/Lawler program. They asked if Kaufman was a good wrestler, and I said that he was perfect for what he had to do. Then I explained how a lot of celebrities can be afraid of getting hurt or hurting people so their angles end up looking bad, which is why the Kaufman stuff was great because he leaned into all of it when it was time to. So I tried to name other people who had that kind of commitment to the angle and all I could name were Floyd Mayweather and Mark Cuban. Am I forgetting anyone?

Maria Menunos (sp)

Dare i say David Arquette?

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Really when it comes to celebrity involvement, Floyd Mayweather and Kevin Federline are in a class by themselves. Floyd turned himself heel and everything. Kevin Federline brought good heel mic work and took a couple bumps from Cena. All at the peak of Federline hate.

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Federline was the first guy who came to mind for me too.  You could tell he was a fan and loved every second of playing a heel.  I remember being all butthurt when I heard he was coming in and thinking it was stupid, and then being blown away by how good he was. 

 

I know Mike Tyson didn't do a match but man oh man the pull apart with him and Austin on Raw was something else.  He did a good job with that.  Also his slow, robotic crotch chops were endlessly entertaining.

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Some rumblings over at the board that Mae Young won't be on Raw next week due to her being ill and going into a hospice. Hope it's not true.

 

 

Terrible. She's one of the like 5 people in the "old as fuck"generation that isn't grumpy or angry or pissed that she is still alive.

 

 

I kinda expected she'd live forever. Or at least till 100.

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Really when it comes to celebrity involvement, Floyd Mayweather and Kevin Federline are in a class by themselves. Floyd turned himself heel and everything. Kevin Federline brought good heel mic work and took a couple bumps from Cena. All at the peak of Federline hate.

 

He gets trashed a lot because of the World title thing, but David Arquette was pretty competent any time he got in the ring for someone so inexperienced. 

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