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[WWE NETWORK] What Are You Watching?


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Didn't they have a Smackdown Cage match a week or two later? Hardy's final WWE match.

Its not on the network. I watched on YouTube - its the worst of the series. My appreciation for Hardy has increased a ton by the series, and obviously it did wonders more for Punk than the first MITB cash-in.

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I loved the Hardy/Punk cage match, but then again I'm sucker for matches where guys sell their injuries from a brutal match a show or two before and Punk's heel character was just starting to blossom in WWE around then, so it was kind of a perfect storm for me.

 

On another note, I don't know what inspired me to look up this match, but I totally went back and re-watched TWGTT vs. Rey/Kidman from Vengeance 03. Ah, the days when Rey was mobile and Haas/Benjamin looked like future stars. Kidman was on the downhill side of his career by this point, but he rose to the occasion. This was a really fun match in the same vein as some of the better Raw matches from the 3-hour era, but weren't all too common ten years ago. The crowd was super hot also.

 

Any other ppv recommendations for mid 2000s SD tags? I remember WGTT, MNM, and London/Kendrick being really fun from that time frame, and I'd like to go back and see how those matches compare to Shield, Usos, Dust Bros, etc.

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Just watched the Clash XVII which is a really fun show with a great tag match and some decent undercard matches. The show is probably most remembered for the Sting/Rude injury angle with Rude winning the U.S. title. I noticed that the Z-Man/Diamond Studd match with the Sting angle in the background was edited out. This is also one of the WCW shows with the proper entrance music edited out (the great Rick Rude theme and the York Foundation theme).

 

Otherwise, one of the better Clashes since the first three or four.

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I've watched most of Starrcade 1991 today. I still don't understand why they wasted two Starrcades on this concept, but oh well. There's nothing on this show so far worth watching except Z-Man and Terry Taylor having a great match with Luger and Arn Anderson. They felt like the only four guys who put together a coherent match and build up a face/heel dynamic. They even gave Taylor, a heel at the time, a perfectly good reason to cooperate w/ Zenk through the bout by having Arn cheap shot me really early on. So simple and logical. 

 

I'm still shocked any time I see Terry use a Doctor Bomb, I forgot that was in his move set. 

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Yeah, that Sting preview is a really fun show. Between that and the E&C show I'm watching now, I've had a really entertaining morning.

Wouldn't consider any of them an all time favorite of mine, but I've been more engaged in this than anything I've watched in weeks.

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I watched about half of Wrestle War 89 last night.  Some random thoughts:

 

One big thing that stood out to me was how I'd watch this stuff as a kid (I was 14 when this show aired) and I automatically assumed all these wrestlers were consummate professionals and super competent.  Like, of course they are highly skilled...you couldn't make it to the big time if you weren't, right?  Watching today, holy shit.  Ranger Ross, for example, was so fucking green in retrospect.  Butch Reed carried that dude to something damn near watchable but god damn, it was a struggle.  Whatever happened to Ross anyway?

 

Why did Dick Murdoch and Bob Orton do a bullrope match?  I don't recall Murdoch as a babyface feuding with Gary Hart's stable of misfit toys.  And then they finished the match with a pretty heavy angle, with Orton hanging Murdoch.  Strange for a match so low on the card.  Did anything ever come of it?

 

I skipped over the SST vs Dynamic Dudes, as any sane and rational human should.

 

The last match I watched was Luger vs Hayes.  WCW had some weird stables happening in early 89.  I think it was the fallout of Windham, Blanchard, Anderson and Dillon leaving, but this was around the time where the aforementioned strange Hart stable, and then out comes Michael Hayes as a single with Hiro Matsuda.  Damn, just a bizarre pairing.  I seem to recall Matsuda managing Flair for a little while around this time as well.  This was an okay match.  What really stood out to me was how underrated Luger was as a worker and how much charisma he had.  Also, and it goes without saying, how important secondary titles were back then.  Luger was seen as a main event guy, ready to challenge the World champ whenever, and here he was with the secondary belt and nobody thought any less of him.  Crazy, I know.  Decent by the numbers match...shine, heat, comeback, heel cheats to win and Nick Patrick takes the worst phantom bump you will see if you live to be 130.  Also, fuck, Michael Hayes was bad at wrestling.  I know he was the mouth behind the Freebirds and had the charisma but it's amazing he couldn't even pick up a thing watching from the apron all those years.  

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Ranger Ross, for example, was so fucking green in retrospect.  Butch Reed carried that dude to something damn near watchable but god damn, it was a struggle.  Whatever happened to Ross anyway?

 

IIRC, he robbed a bank and spent some time in prison. The rumor is that he tried to burn down the police station to destroy the evidence. Don't know if that's true or not but that's the story that's been circulating for years.

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Oh, good. They could talk about how Bischoff raided Adam Bomb.

And later Brian Adams. That motherfucker. Amazing how Vince McMahon single handedly managed to overcome Bischoff's shady business practices.

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Watching Edge and Christian host the best of Smackdown makes me wish that they were the weekly hosts/GMs of Smackdown.

 

Agreed. Just wanted to chime in to say how refreshing it was to see a shtick that didn't feel all that rehearsed and was actually funny. 

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Watching Edge and Christian host the best of Smackdown makes me wish that they were the weekly hosts/GMs of Smackdown.

Watching this made me wish they had a weekly show on the network. It doesn't have to be about wrestling, just give them an hour and tell them to fill it.

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I watched the One Night Only 1997 ppv and man was HBK a dick in that match. And I'm not talking just being a heel, he comes off as a real-life prick. Tossing Davey's kneebrace at Diana and Davey's cancer ridden-mentally handicapped sister for instance.

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Thoughts on Survivor Series 87

 

I was there! My brother and I were in the upper deck. Watching on the Network, I see three of my friends with floor seats. If you drive by the Richfield Coliseum today, it's just an empty field.

 

Hercules not only failed to save Ron Bass from being pinned, he accidentally dropped an elbow on him. That was pretty funny.

 

The women's match was a total dropkick-fest. Even Moolah threw a dropkick! It was a weird seeing another "Dawn Marie" who wasn't the one from ECW. Donna Christenello looks like the wrestling version of Rachel Dratch from Saturday Night Live.

 

The Killer Bees and Young Stallions didn't get much of a boost from winning the tag team match. With Strike Force as the champs, they weren't going to get any title shots.

 

Honky Tonk Man was the MVP of the show. Running away from Randy Savage, Ricky Steamboat and Jake Roberts didn't stop him from calling out Hulk Hogan for a title vs. title match. So by the end of the night, Honky could draw money against the top four babyfaces in the company. Nice work.

 

I was near the stage for Honky's promo, but we were all paying more attention to the huge fight going on in the upper deck.

 

This conversation took place during the main event:

 

Daughter: Who's the shiny guy?

Gorman: That's Sir Oliver Humperdink.

Daughter: I will rename him Sir Shiny-faun Elfling.

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I know he's an easy target, but maaaaaaaaaan FUCK Vince Russo. Him running down the masked cruisers as nameless and faceless and then not getting that the WCW crowd was still very wrestling-oriented without needing the big characters that made WWF crowds happy is infuriating. This is the first time I've seen a MNW special - I just jumped into this one mid-stream - and I'm already irritated. 

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It's so funny watching this Cruiserweight show and listening to all the complaints about how WCW failed to push these guys, instead going with the status quo of the top guys which ultimately led to their demise, and knowing that you can lobby the exact same complaints against today's modern day WWE product.

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It's hilarious that someone who drew a paycheck as Head of Creative in both top level wrestling companies couldn't see that Eddy Guerrero, that Psicosis, that Juventud, that Rey fucking Misterio Jr. had clearly defined personalities and loads of charisma. I assume this is just because they didn't come out and repeat a rote catchphrase every week.

 

Also Russo is quite possibly special needs.

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It's hilarious that someone who drew a paycheck as Head of Creative in both top level wrestling companies couldn't see that Eddy Guerrero, that Psicosis, that Juventud, that Rey fucking Misterio Jr. had clearly defined personalities and loads of charisma. I assume this is just because they didn't come out and repeat a rote catchphrase every week.

Also Russo is quite possibly special needs.

Calling Russo special needs is an insult to people with special needs. I'm not quite sure what Vince Russo is. Perhaps one of Bad News Brown's Harlem sewer rats that lost its tail and starting walking upright.
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