Matt D Posted August 11, 2013 Share Posted August 11, 2013 Every Japanese wrestler in WCW during this time frame was basically a more athletic version of Kinji Shibuya and Mitsu Arakawa. They never actually bowed or threw salt in their opponents' eyes, but I always got the feeling they could. And if only they would. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dok Posted August 11, 2013 Share Posted August 11, 2013 House of Pain: Evolution 10th August 2013, Britannia Hotel, Coventry What a strange show this was. I thought I was going to some low budget little indie but it had 26 wrestlers spread over 7 matches and lasted a shade under 4 hours. The venue was a city centre hotel which can't have come cheap, and it was advertised as free entry for kids. I'm useless at estimated the size of crowds. 100 maybe? We were a noisy bunch, but that doesn't mean squat at the box office. It's not like all the wrestlers were scrubs either, star attractions were Mark Haskins and Doug Williams. Gotta worry about the financial acumen of anyone involved in this. An early highlights was "Textbook" Dave Breaks. With a picture of a schoolbook on his trunks, "Textbook" (or "Textbox" as the kids behind me were chanting) Dave is a bit of an Achibald Peck figure. Played cowardly technical heel tonight, and was loads of fun. Apparently he's usually face, where his cries of "Textbook, baby!" seem pretty over, and his act is a man charmingly deluded by a unwarranted sense of adequacy. He's a legend in his own mind, and a lower-card guy in the ring. The sense of disconnect is oddly lovable. But if you want lovable, then the night belonged to the phenomenon that is GRADO. The camp, chubby Glaswegian danced his way into the ring to Like a Prayer and the audience went nuts. He had to pause for a breather on the way down the ramp and he sat on my lap, so there's no way I can be impartial about the guy after that. But as underdog fatboy babyfaces go, he's gotta be one of the best around. He taps into the whole end of the pier/music hall side of British wrestling. He won his match against "Loco" Mike Mason (who is a dog - no, really a dog) by getting Mason to chase a ball into a cage at ringside and locking him inside. If you're not a fan of Grado's after watching the ring entrance in the match below, you're dead to me, man. And if you're not a fan after watching the match and how the crowd respond to him you're dead to yourself. Then, after 6 matches of family-friendly wrestling, the ring was stripped down for the main event. In front of a really mixed audience, we were treated to a "no canvas bare boards deathmatch". Wild brawling, staple guns, a giant corkscrew and blood. This was the weirdest experience I've ever had attending a wrestling show. How can you enjoy a spectacle like that when you can see kids getting upset by it? Just a colossal misjudgement. Solid performances from Clint Margera and Jack Jester, but let's just say the superplex through two steel chairs onto tacks on the bare wood wasn't the finish. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lazlo Woodbine Posted August 11, 2013 Share Posted August 11, 2013 Grado is the man. Crowds just love the guy. Here he is embarrassing Colt Cabana at the airport. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Domino_Not_Deuce Posted August 11, 2013 Share Posted August 11, 2013 Show has improved dramatically, but he has a lot more bad matches than good ones. He has been the best he's ever been since the 2008 comeback and the addition of the KO punch. He still has some stinkers in big spots, but most of those are due to him not having the best chemistry with Cena. I would argue with the "more bad matches than good" point, especially during his tag run with Miz and Jericho. His Smackdown run opposite Bryan, Orton and co produced some great TV matches too. Since 2008, he's been one of the most consistent workers in WWE IMO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stevie Ray Von Erich Posted August 11, 2013 Share Posted August 11, 2013 VICE has a good doc featuring Grado. http://youtu.be/c9Sr55fI6zU Also, someone mentioned adorable sigs, no? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gonzalez Posted August 12, 2013 Share Posted August 12, 2013 Grado is the man. Crowds just love the guy. Here he is embarrassing Colt Cabana at the airport. It seriously took me two minutes to realise that this man was speaking english. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dok Posted August 12, 2013 Share Posted August 12, 2013 It seriously took me two minutes to realise this man speaking english.Lowland Scots is a hell of a dialect. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
odessasteps Posted August 12, 2013 Share Posted August 12, 2013 Tommy Tomlinson from Sports on Earth writes about the mid-atlantic fan fest and the I Quit match between magnum and tully. http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/56368006/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Fowler Posted August 12, 2013 Share Posted August 12, 2013 Giant was credible to good in-ring no later than '96. I was also a big fan of his promos back then, but I don't really recall much about them now (except for promising to turn the Four Horsemen into the Four Geldings.) I've said it before about Show, but he's a guy who's absurdly consistently good, has a metric shit-ton of matches in the "solid to good" range, but very few great matches. HIAC against Sheamus last year, the Mayweather match, and... not much else. But he's virtually always good. And for a guy that big, that old, that established, and that rich, it's amazing the shit he's willing to still do in the ring. I still cannot fucking believe he took an electric chair from Sheamus. God, that feud was awesome. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Man Known as Dan Posted August 12, 2013 Share Posted August 12, 2013 Good god Gonzalez, what in the flying fuck is happening in our sig. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cool arrow Posted August 12, 2013 Share Posted August 12, 2013 Good god Gonzalez, what in the flying fuck is happening in our sig. It appears to be some sort of PSA on the dangers of white guys who think they can dance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Man Known as Dan Posted August 12, 2013 Share Posted August 12, 2013 Good god Gonzalez, what in the flying fuck is happening in our sig. It appears to be some sort of PSA on the dangers of white guys who think they can dance. It might actually be the perfect signature for him, because it somehow matches all the obnoxiousness that is Gonzalez. Well played. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sky Blue Sam Posted August 12, 2013 Share Posted August 12, 2013 House of Pain: Evolution 10th August 2013, Britannia Hotel, CoventryAn early highlights was "Textbook" Dave Breaks. With a picture of a schoolbook on his trunks, "Textbook" (or "Textbox" as the kids behind me were chanting) Dave is a bit of an Achibald Peck figure. Played cowardly technical heel tonight, and was loads of fun. Apparently he's usually face, where his cries of "Textbook, baby!" seem pretty over, and his act is a man charmingly deluded by a unwarranted sense of adequacy. He's a legend in his own mind, and a lower-card guy in the ring. The sense of disconnect is oddly lovable.Textbook is pretty great as a self-promoting heel. The one time he brought out an actual textbook which he used to explain the rules to the ref, then waffle his opponent lives long in the memory.I was going to go to this, but a combination of being massively tired and feeling burned by the first show which failed to deliver the advertised Marty Scurll or Mark Andrews meant I didn't bother. I heard this time the Fite Club vs Boneyard tag match was missing a member of each team and replaced them with unadvertised guys, so this may be a recurring theme.Next week Grado is back in Cov, this time in a tag match vs the Henchmen, which had the potential to be the greatest thing in wrestling. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LooseCannon Posted August 12, 2013 Share Posted August 12, 2013 I just watched the Wrestlemania IV battle royal and now I want to see Daniel Bryan and/or Damien Sandow get eliminated from one the way Jim Neidhart was. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Big Fresh Posted August 12, 2013 Share Posted August 12, 2013 Saw this on GameFaqs. Don't know if it's actually true, but I really want it to be: Lance Storm is currently in the process of suing the owners of a club in Maryland for using his image to advertise a male stripper competition. The Lux Upscale Eatery & Nightclub, located in Baltimore, supposedly had a poster hanging outside its walls with a WWE-produced studio picture of Storm with the caption: "Come see the live Mr. Baltimore competition, as a dozen of the city's hunkiest men display and disrobe with the hopes of winning the platinum trophy in addition to $10,000. One of the judges will none other than Oklahoma's sexiest man, O'Daddy Valentine!" "O'Daddy Valentine" is the name located under Storm's picture. There's no word on how much Storm is looking to receive from the suit. Our calls to the club have been unanswered. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ziggy Posted August 12, 2013 Share Posted August 12, 2013 Giant was credible to good in-ring no later than '96. I was also a big fan of his promos back then, but I don't really recall much about them now (except for promising to turn the Four Horsemen into the Four Geldings.) The WWE said Show was lazy lazy when he he first came from WCW. I don't think so, He just wasnt expected to go much being a WCW main eventer straight out the gait. Most the top guys half assed their matches every week, so unless you had a ppv match you weren't expected to go all out. He did bust out a missle drop kick during a squash match during his WCW run though Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Log Posted August 12, 2013 Share Posted August 12, 2013 Well, Show had taken up smoking in his WCW run. Probably didn't help the cardio much. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ultimoDANK Posted August 12, 2013 Share Posted August 12, 2013 So Lance Storm ISN'T judging the male stripper contest?!? Shit these plane tickets better be refundable. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Big Fresh Posted August 12, 2013 Share Posted August 12, 2013 Sounds like Necro Butcher had a serious injury at the Gathering of the Juggalos. They say the bone was sticking out of his leg. Eek. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bustronaut Posted August 12, 2013 Share Posted August 12, 2013 Was it his bone? 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cool arrow Posted August 12, 2013 Share Posted August 12, 2013 In the immortal words of Charles Burns, "When you wish upon a bone, just make sure the bone's your own." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ultimoDANK Posted August 12, 2013 Share Posted August 12, 2013 Poor Necro. Killing himself for peanuts with the smallest chance of it really paying off. I've often wondered what his goals in wrestling are. Is the big dream to be Mick Foley? He'd be delusional to think that was ever going to happen. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Newb82 Posted August 12, 2013 Share Posted August 12, 2013 Giant was credible to good in-ring no later than '96. I was also a big fan of his promos back then, but I don't really recall much about them now (except for promising to turn the Four Horsemen into the Four Geldings.)The WWE said Show was lazy lazy when he he first came from WCW. I don't think so, He just wasnt expected to go much being a WCW main eventer straight out the gait. Most the top guys half assed their matches every week, so unless you had a ppv match you weren't expected to go all out. He did bust out a missle drop kick during a squash match during his WCW run thoughHe did a missile dropkick at Halloween Havoc '98 too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Victator Posted August 12, 2013 Share Posted August 12, 2013 I think he just wants to make a living wrestling. I can't believe the star fuckers who run TNA, did not sign him after the Wrestler. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buy Me a Burrito Posted August 12, 2013 Share Posted August 12, 2013 The star fuckers in TNA didn't even promote Angle when he appeared as the scary Russian in that Warrior flick. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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