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Re-watching Royal Rumble 2011. Was there ever a reason given as to why they made it a 40-man that year?

They wanted to hype it up as THE BIGGEST ROYAL RUMBLE IN HISTORY.

I also think a big reason why was they wanted the Nexus vs. the Corre to be a big part of the Rumble. Which in the current age of Shield vs. Wyatt's, is hilarious.

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Starrcade 89.

 

Booking of this isn't particularly great.

 

Flair should have kept Luger in the figure four after the time limit expired, planting seeds for his heel turn, and making him look smart that he's letting Muta, who no longer poses a threat in the tournament take the fall over an injured competitor in Luger.

 

Muta doesn't drop points to all three guys. Luger taps quickly to play cowardly heel/put over the importance of the US title

Gary Hart explained it in his book. He said Flair wanted to have Muta lose matches while Hart wanted to push him as a heel undefeatable rival of Sting. Hart sarcastically said that Muta just ought to lose all of his matches in the booking meeting and Flair went with it.

 

 

I get that in theory, Sting wins it, but Flair retains the strap, whilst Luger doesn't drop a fall. Just seems silly.

 

Hard watching the Road Warriors/Samoans final and thinking it would make sense for the Steiners to run in and cause a double DQ securing the tournament, but such things just didn't happen in 1989.

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I love them cutting back from Doom breaking up and them asking some kid who won a sweepstakes to be there "Who is your favorite team here in War Games?"

 

"Doom"

 

"Well it doesn't look like they're gonna be a team anymore, now does it?"

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I forgot how pimp Akio looked before he became the asian redneck Jimmy Wang Yang.   Hopefully they put Velocity up so I can enjoy those Paul London matches again. 

 

Wasn't Wrestlemania 20 where Ultimo dragon slipped on a wet spot and fell on his ass during the entrance?  If so then that has been edited out.

 

I can't remember the last time I heard a Chris benoit promo.  seems like forever. 

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They just added the December 91 MSG show (Flair-Hogan) to the VOD list. 

 

Oh shit, nice!

 

I'm currently watching Judgment Day 2004. I've never seen this entire show but I did find it funny that it's rated TVMA because of "sexual situations" but no mention of violence. I'm not sure it gets more violent than the main.

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88 Rumble Match

 

The idea is there, but it still feels too much like a battle royal, with lots of dead weight clogging up the system.

 

89 Rumble Match

 

A lot better, albeit with a pretty terrible ending. I especially liked the Hogan/Bossman seection, and anything involving Shawn Michaels or Perfect.

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I love them cutting back from Doom breaking up and them asking some kid who won a sweepstakes to be there "Who is your favorite team here in War Games?"

 

"Doom"

 

"Well it doesn't look like they're gonna be a team anymore, now does it?"

 

The kid was totally crestfallen! I still laughed, though.

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Going through the '90 GAB now after having it get all iffy a couple days ago. Got through to Race-Rich and good lord, as slow as Race was in the AWA, he's even slower now. He's got a bigger singlet than even then. I do love Ross explaining the crown as being due to Race being a fan of the Sacramento Kings. HARLEY WINS!? Well that just seems odd. YES! MX VS. THE SOUTHERN BOYS! And of course it glitches out.

 

OH MY GOD, WRESTLE WAR '90 HAS A RAP SONG OPENING IT. With a wacky '80s Casio keyboard riff! And Terry Funk has a giant earring! TERRY FUNK HAS AN EAR PIERCING. Mind=blown. Holy Jesus, Buzz Sawyer got owned by the road. He went from looking like Festus in '84 to Festus's daddy in half a decade. Ace's mullet is amazing. Buzz's selling is wacky. Not making use of the "great amateur skills" here. Sullivan and his neon green glasses-holder are chopping the hell out of Shane. Sullivan and Sawyer as a pair of middle-aged looking balding crazy guys rules. Shoulder to the ROO'S POST. Nowadays, it would be near the National Guard Prep Point. Sawyer is a ton of fun to watch here even if he's well...not a great guy, kind of a horrible person, and looks to have just showered after a year of homelessness. I do love that even in this state, every single thing he does is different. A suplex has a unique look to it, gutwrench has a big snap on it. Sawyer checks Shane's oil...while biting his ribs. Okay then.

 

The ground bearhug looks odd, and shows off the weird WCW logo here - it's the same basic logo, but with the lower part of the C hacked off a ton. It looks more like a C than an O, but looks odd to the eye. "The wrestlers have a ten count if they haven't been, um, molested by that point". Jim Ross has had many strange calls so far, and that's easily the weirdest one. Terry Funk, here in 1990, is talking about being glad he's retired. Sullivan took a dropkick to the side and went through the ropes about as fast as if he was walking through them. The ring apron is massive here - I wonder if they used a bigger ring than usual for this show. Sawyer's superfly dive won. Norman the Lunatic is backstage macking on Missy Hyatt. HOLY GOD MISSY HYATT WAS UNBELIEVABLY HOT. And Mick Foley gained a ton of weight between '90 and '92. More horrible ROH-level lighting for the stage here. Terry suggested that Norman put the propeller hat on JR. I'm shocked Vince didn't do that at some point. And...it glitches out again and sends me to the main menu. Oh well.

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WCW World War 3 1995.

Edit: Part 1

This is my first step in the Chronicle of EDDY~!, as it's his first PPV appearance that I can find.

Schiavone and Heenan start us off. Heenan demands Schiavone make a prediction, (he picks Hogan,) and Heenan picks Savage, the Giant, and Flair in quick succession. This show is built around the 3-ring 60-man battle royal for the WCW Heavyweight Championship that had been stripped from The Giant, but there are a half-dozen preceding matches as well.

Before we get to any of those, we go to Mean Gene who has Hogan, Sting and Savage up on stage. Hogan has no facial hair, and I find that tremendously unsettling. Hogan is wearing a black t-shirt, workout pants and a bandana, fitting in with the "darkside Hogan" he'd been playing at, teasing a heel turn, though really just predating your Austin-style anti-hero, because other than some (more blatant) rulebreaking than he normally engaged in, he wasn't really playing that character as a heel at all.

In any event, while he talks, he pulls the black bandana away to reveal a red and yellow one underneath, and said heel turn is kicked down the road a couple years. Meanwhile he throws the black clothes into a bucket, though the shirt goes only partway in, and Sting makes sure to kick the rest of the shirt into the bucket in time for it all to catch fire for no damn reason at all other than to put over Hogan's return to the light side of the Force.

Because this is WCW, as Hogan talks and talks, (Sting and Savage each get about 10 seconds,) the bucket keeps burning, and eventually we see Sting grabbing a bottle of water trying to put the fucking thing out. Sting keeping the segment from turning into a show-interrupting hazard while Hogan natters on is about the best summation of mid-90s WCW you will ever see.

In a weird bit of shootiness-for-no-reason, Hogan holds up what looks like a copy of WON, (edit: Yep, it is) referring to it as a "rag sheet", noting it said The Giant was going to win, and Savage was hurt. Tossing it into the fire, he then says, "this thing is like a dinosaur compared to the Internet!" ...I'm not sure I can write a better punchline.

TV Title Match: Johnny B Badd © vs Diamond Dallas Page (w/ The Diamond Doll)

We get a promo package of DDP calling Badd "Johnny B Bozo", and irritating the fuck out of Kim, who puts herself up as a prize in the match as well. DDP comes out with JBB's "Badd Blaster" confetti gun, which gets mild boos from the crowd. Absent the Badd Blaster, Badd comes out with sparklers shooting out of his hands.

The match starts and within 30 seconds has spilled out onto the floor. Pretty loose, sloppy work to start off with, as both men are fairly green. Eventually DDP starts working the left arm of Badd to take away the dreaded left hook, using hair a few times to keep Badd off his feet. Eventually Badd gets up and pulls Page's hair to take him down, earning the ire of referee Nick Patrick. While Patrick admonishes Badd, Page gets up and runs at him, and Badd ducks, sending Page over the top rope. Badd teases his plancha, but Page moves and Badd catches himself, doing a 619 in the process. Badd then drops down onto page with a cross body over the top.

Outside, Badd is winding up for his punch, but page hides behind Kim, then tosses her at Badd and uses the distraction to punch Badd. Schiavone is livid at this despicable act, and while 20 years ago that might've seemed worse, the crowd didn't seem overly bothered by it either, (insert jokes about the South here). Schiavone says, "I hope that she's ok" as the camera pans over her looking perfectly alright and just mildly disgusted.

Page maintains control for awhile, although Kim is angry enough that she doesn't give him the 10 sign, and this is apparently a very bad thing for DDP. When Page throws Badd off the ropes, going for a big boot, but Badd catches his foot, Schiavone goes, "AND JOHNNY B BADD WITH A COMEBACK!" at which point Badd throws the leg to the side and DDP promptly clotheslines him.

Page gets a 2 count off of the clothesline. There's an amusing sequence where he throws Badd into a corner, and Badd basically falls out of the way as Page goes shoulder-first into the post. Page gets up while Badd is still on the mat, goes to kick him, and whiffs as Badd against just barely rolls out of the way, Page selling that he hit the back of his head on the mat. Good comedy in a spot I'm not sure is ideal for it. And then Badd tries to punch at Page but Page punches Badd in the head. Gotta think that was a miscommunication.

Badd gets the fightback, (Patrick's expression of sympathetic pain after an atomic drop to Page is hilarious) and gets a 2 count off of a sitout powerbomb. It's very weird to hear a tilt-a-whirl slam called a "spinning side salto", (and since it's Schiavone, my natural instinct to assume he got it wrong,) but near as I can tell that's correct. Page cuts it short, getting his knees up on a splash attempt, following that with a gutbuster that gets a 2 count.

Schiavone: "You can see you have to be in tip-top shape to compete in World Championship Wrestling." This is DDP in this match:

lP5b8un.jpg

At one point DDP goes to give Badd a tombstone piledriver, but Badd reverses it and gives Page one instead. It seems so odd to see someone who isn't a dead person and/or a demon do a tombstone. Badd throws Page out of the ring, hits the Badd Mood, then the Badd something or other (leg drop over the top rope) then kinda messes up pinning him, forcing Patrick to restart the count and noticeably losing the crowd a bit.

Badd retains the championship, and a decidedly concerned looking Kim Page comes in, then hugs Badd, still looking like she's got trepidations over the whole thing, while Schiavone says she has "been saved from more humiliation" by being won in a match by a guy doing a Little Richard gimmick.

Hilarious post-match interlude: Mean Gene shilling for the WCW Hotline (which WWE or someone has edited to say PHONE NUMBER NO LONGER ACTIVE) promising news about the WWF steroid scandal. Also hilarious: When Gene said "one nine hundred, nine oh nine" I immediately remembered the rest of the number.

That taken care of, Badd and Kim come out. Kim's looking decidedly happier now. Badd tells Kim he'd love to have her as his manager, but to think about it first, and decide later. The ultimate denouement would of course be that Marc Mero never learned the most important lesson about involving your wife in wrestling angles: Don't.

Big Bubba Rogers vs Hacksaw Jim Duggan (taped fist match)

The only backstory we get on this is that Bubba and Duggan have been getting cheap shots in on each other. And that's how this starts, as Duggan charges in from behind while Bubba's still walking to the ring and cheap-shots him. For no apparent reason, Hacksaw has the 2x4 on a rope slung across his shoulder. Heenan claims Duggan's grandma was a taped-fist champion. "And she had 3 less teeth than he did."

Duggan shouts "HOOOO!" and the crowd cheers his, uh, cowardly attack from behind and subsequent beatdown. Duggan then starts a U-S-A chant (against his American opponent) and Schiavone makes it worse by saying Duggan traces his "taped-fist roots" to Ireland. Apparently through his grandmother? Duggan goes to hit Bubba with the 2x4, which prompts Brian Hildebrand to intervene because "taped fist" apparently doesn't mean lumber is legal. Schiavone concludes the exact opposite, naturally.

For no apparent reason, Duggan's forearms are taped as well, giving him about a .8 Orton times 2. I guess it's to give him more moves, since literally everything in this match is either a punch, a forearm, or a clothesline. Heenan: "Why does everybody have to fight on the floor? What do you think that thing between the ropes is called?"

As Duggan moves towards Bubba, he bitches at the cameraman "Out of my way!" and then proceeds to walk right past the camera which doesn't move because it wasn't at all in his way. Ok, he's attacked Bubba from behind, tried to use an illegal weapon, and now is yelling at the little people. How on Earth is Duggan a babyface here?

I correct my earlier comment: Duggan rams Bubba's face off the apron of one of the other rings. That didn't make any use of tape. Duggan rolls Bubba into the other ring. Hildebrand follows, and isn't counting, so I guess any ring is a legal ring. Bubba gets about his first real offense when Duggan leaps at him on the outside and misses, going chest-first into the railing. Bubba comes out and nails Duggan with an uppercut. I see what Cornette means about Bubba's punches looking like shit but hurting like hell. He's laying them in there but he's got this tentativeness about him that makes it look like he's pulling more than he is.

They trade punches and in a moment of massive incongruity, Bubba goes for a kick, Duggan catches his boot, and then Bubba hits him with an enzuigiri. Referee counting, and I'm wondering if pins aren't a thing in this match? The announcers haven't said, but it's WCW, so we can't count on them to know. Bubba takes something out of his pocket as Hildebrand counts, and it's...tape. So he tapes his taped fist...more. Ok.

Duggan fights back, including two solid punches to Bubba's manboob. Schiavone: "You know what I'm very surprised about, but I guess it's because it's a taped fist match. Ring #1 is your official ring, but they've been fighting into two, into three. The referee's just followed them. Couldn't he count them out, there?" Heenan: "Well, I don't know!" Amazing.

Bubba then starts taping Duggan's fist to the top rope. He gets about three loops around, and Duggan looks like he could break it by sneezing hard, but he hangs onto the top rope while Bubba is pounding him.

Bubba backs off a bit and the referee starts to count....very very slowly. Duggan gets to his feet, Bubba bounces off the ropes opposite Duggan, and Duggan holds his other fist up, with Bubba going face-first into it in a spot that I hope looked good in the Tom and Jerry cartoon they stole it from, cuz it looked idiotic here.

Hildebrand is trying to free Duggan from the rope (that tape is actually holding pretty good, now that I look at it,) but I am moved to ask WHY? If it was legal for Bubba to tape Duggan to the rope, why is the ref interfering by trying to take that tape off? Bubba is back up, he makes a run at Duggan, who back-body drops him over the top rope before freeing himself.

Schiavone: "Well this match has been everything we thought it would be, Brain." Heenan: "It certainly has. And a little more." Schiavone: "Yes, it has."

Duggan hits Bubba with the running clothesline, prompting VK Wallstreet to come down, wrapping a chain around his fist. He climbs onto the apron, but Duggan grabs the 2x4 and swings it into the midsection of Wallstreet, knocking him off of the apron, but Wallstreet drops the chain into the ring, where Bubba picks it up, wraps it around his fist, and he uppercuts Duggan, tucking the chain into his pants. Ref starts a 10 count, Bubba gets up, and gets the win.

Post match, Bubba very nearly rolls onto the announce table. Heenan: "No no no no!"

Schiavone talks about an upcoming "big grudge matches, a US title match, and a match for bragging rights for Japanese women's wrestling". Me: Oh sweet! Schiavone mentions Compuserve chats featuring WCW superstars, then he asks Heenan if he has ever "chatted with anyone electonically on the Compuserve computer service." Heenan says he does it all the time. Tony asks who does his typing for him. Heenan: "Well I have my man do it. That's what he's paid for, right?" and then proceeds to mime typing at a manual typewriter while Schiavone sends them back to Mean Gene with Ric Flair.

Flair does his thing, and it's Norfolk Virginia, so the crowd is pretty well behind him.

Tag Team Match: Mayumi Ozaki & Cutie Suzuki vs Akira Hokuto and Bull Nakano w/Sonny Onoo

They bring Tenay out for this match in what I can only describe as a moment of clarity and self-awareness on WCW's part. Tenay notes that Hokuto and Nakano are in AJW, while Ozaki and Suzuki work for JWP, noting the photographers at ringside covering this. The heels double-team Ozaki before the ball. Randy Anderson seems massively confused about what to do.

Nakano beats up Ozaki for a bit before taking Hokuto in. Hokuto gets Ozaki in an abdominal near Suzuki, holding the arm out mockingly towards Suzuki. Randy Anderson tells Suzuki to climb down off of the rope. Nakano distracts the ref when a tag is made, with Suzuki kicking Nakano in the butt a bit to no great effect before Anderson orders Suzuki back out. Heels are double-teaming pretty frequently with or without tags.

Against Hokuto, Ozaki fights back, turning a back body drop into a DDT (called "a form of a DDT" by Schiavone) before tagging in Cutie. She hits a dropkick and Schiavone says, "AND SHE'S GOT A...two" Schiavone was ahead of his time expecting women's matches on PPV to go about 3 minutes...

Suzuki gets Hokuto in a single leg crab, when Bull slowly sneaks her way in, heading towards Cutie only to get met by Ozaki with a double axe handle across the chest. Ozaki reaches down for a double-leg, then rolls Bull over into a boston crab. She lets go of one leg to raise her hand and gives us dueling single-legs. Crowd is definitely into this.

Ozaki and Nakano leave, and Hokuto reaches the ropes. After the break, Suzuki starts stomping on the leg of Hokuto, running off the ropes and stomping on the leg, (Schiavone calls it "a foot in the midsection") Tenay goes on a long story about the NJPW shows in Pyongyang and Hokuto marrying Kensuke Sasaki. Schiavone: "So how about that?"

Meanwhile, stuff has happened, the heels have retaken control, and Nakano plants Suzuki with a powerbomb. Nakano goes up for a moonsault but misses. Ozaki jumps off the top rope, landing with a double stomp on Nakano's midsection, followed by Suzuki doing the same, followed by them each doing it once more. It gets a 2 count.

Ozaki comes in again, and Anderson seems to give up and let them go. Both girls try to suplex Nakano, but she reverses it, suplexing the two of them instead. Hokuto climbs to the top rope, makes a tag (apparently legally) and goes for a crossbody that misses both targets. Double dropkick to Nakano. They set Hokuto up on the top rope, apparently looking for a double superplex, but Nakano grabs the both of them and yanks them back off of the ropes.

This time Nakano holds the two for Hokuto's crossbody and it hits. Both Suzuki and Ozaki are thrown to the ropes, and we see tandem powerbomb into hurricanrana reversals. They go up top and we see not quite tandem clotheslines off the top. Cutie gets a two count on Hokuto.

Ozaki tags in and gets two off of a tequila sunrise (called by Schiavone first "a form of a dragon suplex" and then "some kind of half-nelson suplex" before Tenay corrects him. Hokuto ducks a clothesline and reverses it into a bridge German that lands Ozaki right on the top of her head.

Nakano tags in, throws both girls off the ropes, goes for a double clothesline. They both duck, but Hokuto nails both of them with a MISSILE DROPKICK. Nakano pulls them both out of the ring while Hokuto climbs the ropes somersaults into the two. Ozaki is pulled into the ring and is given a Doomsday Device (that on replay looks like a nasty bump on the head), but Suzuki reaches through the ropes to break up the pin at two.

Suzuki is tossed back out, Nakano lands a guillotine legdrop on Ozaki, and that's all she wrote. Heenan calls it "the greatest women's match he's ever seen."

This is what I love about mid-90s WCW. On a show built around a gimmicky battle royal that I'm only watching in the first place because Eddy Guerrero is in it, you'll just randomly see some of the top joshi stars of the era having an interpromotional match in Norfolk cuz hey why the fuck not?

Ok, this is already long as hell, so I'm gonna make this next match the last match of Part 1. Before that, though, Mean Gene is shilling the hotline, and then talking to Jimmy Hart and Luger. "Oh yeaaahhh!" Hart does a pretty decent Macho. Luger gets some decent intensity into his voice...which is entirely ruined cuz he can't look at the camera for more than a second without his eyes going downward to what I can only assume is a cue card someone is holding.

US Title Match: Kensuke Sasaki © (w/Sonny Onoo) vs Chris Benoit

I can only assume this is not only a title match, but a bitter grudge feud over who has the more awesome mullet. Schiavone notes that we just saw Sasaki's wife wrestle. "Can you imagine being their next-door neighbor and knocking on their door and saying 'Hey, your dog's in my yard?'" Heenan: "Can you imagine not finishing all your rice?" Schiavone: "Oh my goodness..." Tony, not like your joke was anything to be proud of either...

Finding it hard to make notes on this. One, the match is great and fast. Second, Heenan's comment "Boy that's why they call him the Crippler. He takes you apart piece by piece by piece. And look at the condition this man's in. And he's young! He's got everything going for him in this sport," kinda puts a hell of a damper on the mood.

At one point, Benoit dives through the ropes into Sasaki, and you can tell he hits his own head on the guardrail. How do you watch things like that and not feel a bit unsettled? Sasaki elbows his way out of the 3rd rolling German, and follows that up with a huge lariat. Sasaki wins with a Northern Lights Bomb.

I've left out the vast majority of this match, but it was quite good with the wrestling and all. Part II to come at some future date.

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I can't seem to get this running on my 360, but works perfectly fine on my kindle fire hdx.  screen res is great on the device, better than my flat screen, but the screen is much smaller.  I keep getting the error that my user name and password don't match, but I'm typing it in the same way I do on the hdx...so fuck if I know.

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An ex-roommate who is sort of a wrestling fan struck up a conversation with me after my posting of stuff about WWE Network on FB. I tried talking about WW3 but he said I'd be able to watch Sunny in her glory days, then segued the conversation to how he had a copy of her video with Missy Hyatt, then assorted nude modeling Francine had done. Sensing he had little interest in discussing Sasaki/Benoit, I said I had to go, and he said "Enjoy Sunny!"

...man I'm glad I don't live near that guy anymore.

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REPO MAN STOLE SAVAGE'S HAT! And his hair. He should've taken at least a few hundred of the colors off of Savage's getup. Terrific Terry Taylor is a terrible moniker. Nice match with Perfect though. Marty is in...one of his most early '90s outfits ever. HE'S FACING THRASHER! He's pale, pasty, and has neon trunks and a thinning hairline. It's impossible to think that he'd become Thrasher. Rocker Dropper gets the win. Recap of Doink THE ALLEGED Clown being mean to Crush. Repo Man said Macho's late on the payments for his hat. The Savage clown misses Repo. Darn. Vince yelling at Savage to get the hell out of MOVING TRAFFIC is something else. Vince puts Tito as one of the WWF's all-time greats who could win the Royal Rumble...well, part of one of those statements is arguably true. Tito-Flair should be solid. Bartlett has the gall to insult Flair's fashion. Flair goes up top and gets taken down. Flair flip leads to a bump off the apron, and a heck of one from Flair too. The super-smooth flying forearm hits, but he doesn't go for a cover. Instead, Tito goes for another one and goes over the top. Flair and Perfect are brawling. Sarge and Patterson are trying to separate them and failing. VINTAGE FLAIR PISSED OFF promo. He really didn't cut many of these in the WWF, so this is a great farewell for him.

 

Time for the '92 Beach Blast. I remember loving this show a ton. Scott Flamingo's getup is just so goofy, and he's randomly shaking his ass. Shame he's not also rapping like he did in the GWF. I love the yellow, black, and blue color scheme for the ring and ropes.

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Someone recommend me some WCW. I'm looking for some good Sting/Dustin/Steamboat/Vader/Dangerous Alliance-era stuff without all the shitty British Bulldog stuff. 

 

My memory is so fuzzy.

Pretty much everything in 91, 92, and 93 until Bash at the Beach outside of Bash 91.

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