OSJ Posted November 1, 2014 Share Posted November 1, 2014 Y'all need to go read Matt's article stat! Good stuff indeed. cwoy2j brings up a great point, Jimmy Garvin when he wanted to be was as good as anyone in his era. When he was anywhere near Michael Hayes he dropped to the level of his partner and just mailed it in and mugged for the camera. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SirSmUgly Posted November 1, 2014 Share Posted November 1, 2014 As a totally irrational hater of the Freebirds in all incarnations, I typically avoid talking about them because I don't have any perspective to be even remotely fair. That said, Matt D's article was fantastic and brings up another reason I hate the Freebirds, Hayes in particular; they always got a lot of face cheers even as heels when they were working WCW in the early '90s, and it wasn't because they were cutting-edge heels or anything. They actively worked to undermine their babyface opponents whenever they thought they could. Who even let them go out there with Braves stuff on? Terrible. I just saw that show a couple months ago and had some of the same thoughts as Matt D did except with far less eloquence or critical development,. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gorman Posted November 1, 2014 Share Posted November 1, 2014 Thoughts on The Royal Rumble ------- (1988) This poor crowd had to suffer through a long, boring Dino Bravo weightlifting segment and a long, largely uneventful Hogan-Andre contract signing. However, all of the wrestling was entertaining. It was weird not to see Bobby Heenan with Rick Rude and The Islanders. The announcers said Heenan was vacationing in Barbados. The Islanders were the MVPs of the show. They looked fantastic while destroying The Young Stallions. They would have made great tag team champions, but they got stuck in the same era as Demolition, The Hart Foundation, Strike Force and The British Bulldogs. Congratulations to Butch Reed on being the first wrestler thrown out of a Royal Rumble. It was great to see Hacksaw Jim Duggan so happy over his win, especially since it was the only major victory of his entire WWF run. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gorman Posted November 1, 2014 Share Posted November 1, 2014 Thoughts on WrestleMania IV The Bravo-Muraco match had the exact same ending as the Rude-Steamboat match from the Royal Rumble: pull the ref into the babyface's attack. How does the heel think he's not going to get disqualified? Here are the results of the "I've Lost My Killer Instinct" Competition: Bronze Medal: Koko B. Ware, for wearing "WWF" on his trunks Silver Medal: Brutus Beefcake, for cutting Jimmy Hart's hair instead of trying to wake the referee to report that he had put The Honky Tonk Man to sleep Gold Medal: Ricky Steamboat, for bringing his baby to the ring and then smiling and waving to the crowd after his loss The decision in the One Man Gang-Bam Bam Bigelow was garbage. Bigelow is getting pummeled on the ring apron, and the ref just keeps counting to 10. He should have just sold an injury and gotten counted out after his spectacular bump over the top rope. Randy Savage is the obvious MVP, winning four matches and the WWF title. Hulk Hogan grabbed the belt from Robin Leach, who was supposed to present it to the winner. I bet Hulk never got on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous after that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cwoy2j Posted November 2, 2014 Share Posted November 2, 2014 Silver Medal: Brutus Beefcake, for cutting Jimmy Hart's hair instead of trying to wake the referee to report that he had put The Honky Tonk Man to sleep I was in 4th grade during this ppv and my friends were all MASSIVE Beefcake fans. I was a big NWA fan and thought that WWF was, to quote Christopher Daniels, "a lot of ticklebutt" but I remember I even marked out when Beefcake cut Jimmy's hair. My friends lost their shit when we watched the VHS together. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BurningBeard Posted November 3, 2014 Share Posted November 3, 2014 And it's so weird to think that Michael Hayes was only about 32 or 33 at that point. He's the same age as Hall and Nash and he seemed like a washed up older guy in the mid-90's while they were winning titles and forming the nWo. Hayes is like Arn and Malenko in that he's probably looked like he was 40 since he was 12. I'm burying this here since you've been watching this. I wrote about Halloween Havoc 91 (specifically, ironically, Michael Hayes and Big Josh) and it just dropped: http://placetobenation.com/wtbbp-the-column-beyond-the-great-match-robbery-of-1991/ Great write up but -100 points for not mentioning Johnny B Badd's salary 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SirSmUgly Posted November 5, 2014 Share Posted November 5, 2014 Savage selling cage shots at SuperBrawl '96 is pretty amazing. He hits the cage and then hangs over the middle rope like he's totally knocked out. It makes your typical cage-ramming look way more brutal than normal. Also: Dusty Rhodes: (talking about Ric Flair's gameplan against Savage): "But, you know, that's his mode o' referendi." Bobby Heenan: "His what?" Rhodes: "His mode o' referendi." Tony Schiavone: "You'll have to look that up in the Texas dictionary, Brain." Heenan: "It only has one page!" 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cwoy2j Posted November 9, 2014 Share Posted November 9, 2014 Stayed in last night and showed the stepkids a bunch of Y2J glorious 2008 run. Summerslam where Y2J punched HBK's wife, the unsanctioned match, then the Scramble match that Y2J wins, the ladder match and then finally Jericho's comeuppance at Cyber Sunday. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebbie Posted November 9, 2014 Share Posted November 9, 2014 Watching the RUMBLE~! 2011. Hot shit, was the best crowd ever for a Royal Rumble. But fuck off Morrison. You know a guy oozes charisma when they give up on his character and make sure everyone knows he is super duper athletic. When he came to the ring, talk about awkward. It looked forced. But the best part of all, when he does that stupid ass spot where he bounces to the barricade to keep from being eliminated, there's a guy in a Brian Urlacher with a look on his face like "Was that supposed to impressed me?" It was awesome tbh Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hammerva Posted November 11, 2014 Share Posted November 11, 2014 So according to Heyman on ECW Exposed, the return of Sabu at the 95 November to Remember was basically a "make good" to the fans for the fire incident a couple months ago. I mean I don't think anyone would have expected Heyman to say something like "We set a fan on fire" This was a fine 45 minute show before it really was more of an advertisement for the new stuff added on the Network than talk about the company. Except for the twitter questions it was mostly talk about everything early 95 to mid 96. Maybe they will do this again when they feel to need to have another "ECW week" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DMN Posted November 11, 2014 Share Posted November 11, 2014 It got me hyped to see Terrier Funk's return to the ring! Also, it got New Jack name-dropped AND PUT OVER on a WWE program, so, as a huge New Jack mark, I'm happy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clintthecrippler Posted November 11, 2014 Share Posted November 11, 2014 got home from work and fired up ECW Cyberslam '96 for my first viewing of it since the late '90s. Only about 30 minutes in so far. The Pillman promo is still intense, but the overall "worked shoot" hasn't really aged well, and Shane Douglas damn near derails the entire thing but shouting "He's shooting! He's shooting!" near the first open microphone he can find. But I'll be damned if I can't get enough of The Sandman laying waste to sacrificial lamb scrubs like The Bad Crew and The Dirt Bike Kid, and Taz destroying the shit out of Joel Hartgood and Donn E. Allen. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jiji Posted November 11, 2014 Share Posted November 11, 2014 I like Douglas more than most on here but "he's shooting! He's shooting" is the worst. I felt like it totally took the air out of that angle. And goofball fan with hilarious red hair was a bit too obvious of a plant. Pillman, though, fuuuuuck yeaaaaaaah. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cwoy2j Posted November 11, 2014 Share Posted November 11, 2014 I like Douglas more than most on here but "he's shooting! He's shooting" is the worst. I felt like it totally took the air out of that angle. And goofball fan with hilarious red hair was a bit too obvious of a plant. Pillman, though, fuuuuuck yeaaaaaaah. That's one thing I feel like all wrestling promotions have done kind of a shitty job with over the years. Nearly almost every plant looks like some independent wrestler. They'll either be jacked up or have that stupid 90's indie wrestler haircut that looks like a worse version of RVD's (the long slicked back hair on top and the shaved sides and back). 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
offspring515 Posted November 11, 2014 Share Posted November 11, 2014 So that ECW Exposed show was dreadful until the last ten minutes when it went to a Q and A session. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mco543 Posted November 11, 2014 Share Posted November 11, 2014 It was so bad. Is bitterness Joey's gimmick now or is it a shoot? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skeeball Wizard Posted November 11, 2014 Share Posted November 11, 2014 Yeah the ECW exposed show was awkward and pretty lame,but the new ECW content is wonderful. Already watched Cyberslam, and while its not a great show in technical terms, its damn sure alot of fun. I'll take fun over technically sound any day. Really looking forward to watching some Hardcore TV the rest of thr day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lovchunky Posted November 11, 2014 Share Posted November 11, 2014 Wasn't the "fan" at Cyberslam WWF jobber Red Tyler? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pipGofern Posted November 11, 2014 Share Posted November 11, 2014 I kinda enjoyed the ECW Exposed thing although the Styles-Heyman banter was surprisingly awkward. Him calling out the guy for dropping something off-camera was pretty funny, though. I heard almost all the stories before but I always find Heyman's rationalizations and explanations endlessly entertaining. Such as "Hey, Jay-Z records in his home so why did people get on us for filming in some dude's basement?" Uh, yeah, because a 30,000 square foot house with a state of the art recoding studio attached is the same as using an ECW banner to hide your mom's washing machine... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SirSmUgly Posted November 11, 2014 Share Posted November 11, 2014 While injuries turned the KotR '95 tournament itself into a mess, I really like Diesel/Bigelow vs. Tatanka/Sid. The way they structured the FIP part of the match was pretty cool - Diesel has a hurt elbow that Sid caused at the last PPV, so the idea is that Bam Bam is purposely being judicious with his tag outs and taking chances himself where he might otherwise tag out in a normal match. This turns what looks like it should be a fairly comfortable win for Diesel/Bam Bam into a dogfight where Bam Bam is trying to hit home runs early (and he got an early visual pin off of a flying headbutt except that DiBiase distracted the ref) and then once he gets inevitably overrun by the fresher team, trying to survive long enough to let Diesel rest his elbow. There's even a nice spot where Bam Bam gets a needed tag, but then is immediately tagged back in after Diesel tweaks his elbow, putting Bam Bam right back into danger. The only thing that I didn't like was that Tatanka had to lay around for like a minute after the powerbomb from Diesel so that the latter could jaw with Sid. It would have been nice for Diesel to tag Bam Bam back in after Sid left and let Bam Bam hit the headbutt and get three to let him have the pinfall over Tatanka and close their little feud. This was surprisingly good and actually worth seeing, IMO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hayabusaage Posted November 11, 2014 Share Posted November 11, 2014 Rewatching some ECW Hardcore TV. It's amazing some of the stuff Paul had the ladies do. While some of it is distasteful most of it was entertaining. Beulah McGillicutty & Francine are legends in my book. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Craig H Posted November 12, 2014 Share Posted November 12, 2014 New Rivalries is up: Dusty vs Flair 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Victator Posted November 12, 2014 Share Posted November 12, 2014 Wasn't the "fan" at Cyberslam WWF jobber Red Tyler? Think his name was Brian Cruger. He got an introducing column in the Wrestler. Styles is awful and hates wrestling. He has been that way since at least 1999 and shitting on everything. If he praises something, he makes sure he buries something to maintain equilibrium. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Valcourt Posted November 12, 2014 Share Posted November 12, 2014 Joey does seem to hate wrestling, but he seems to love his era of ECW. WWE must pay him a LOT to not return to his previous career. Through the clips that were shown I realize now how OVER USED the OMG! was. Oh well. Some of the stuff that Heyman talks about is pure carny crap and he surely forgets how he screwed a lot of his dudes over (if he built those guys or not doesn't matter) but I suppose that wouldn't make a good narrative for that show. WWE has got to be aware how re-hashed all these stories are by now, correct? Most if not all of this stuff is covered elsewhere on the network or in WWE previous releases (Paul Heymans Doc, Rise and Fall)... I just felt like there were a lot of eye rolling moments on the show. I love how Joey Styles always makes it seem like saying wrestling on a WWE show is sooo edgey. I hate "WWE SUPERSTARS" and "SPORTS ENTERTAINMENT" as much as anyone, but it always makes me smirk when Joey makes sure to call it WRESTLING. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shane Posted November 12, 2014 Share Posted November 12, 2014 Really enjoyed the Flair/Dusty Rivalries show. It's odd, but the biggest mark out moment for me was seeing Tony Schiavone talking about pro wrestling again. Dude took too much shit for things that were apparently out of his control. Bunch of good talking head stuff in this one overall. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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