WWE Network Conversation

[zendragon]

I honestly think Disco was a bit of an underrated worker. He and Jericho had a very good match on WCWSN for the TV title where Jericho as champ was trying to run out the clock and Disco is trying to get a flash pinfall with a role up. David Penzer counts down the final seconds on the house mic.

I would love to see a Blood & Guts / Wargames match structured like the main. Let the faces win the coin flip so it seems like they have the advantage but someone gets injured and does a stretcher job out of the cage so the heels have the advantage.

[SirSmUgly]

Disco could definitely go when he needed to, but he worked as made sense for his character or match and with total commitment to his gimmick, which is admirable. He's certainly underrated as a worker. Well, by everyone except for himself. 

Edited July 14, 2022 by SirSmellingtonofCascadia

[DJ Hero Morganti]

I was just thinking that disco might be the best non chikara alum at working as their character in all aspects, from promos to in ring. 

[zendragon]

Disco on Jericho's pod a few years ago was really interesting. He talked about the importance having a character and a gimmick, which is something I feel a lot of young modern wrestlers miss it's like they all got the idea of being a great worker from Eddie but thats all they took. He also talked about how there was a lot of competition between the younger talent and he knew he wasn't the greatest wrestler so his way of competing was getting a huge "Disco Sucks" chant going.

[Pedro]

The next drop of classic content will be more WWF Superstars, it will bring the series up to October of 1995.

Was hoping for more WCW or something different but if it brings the 90's version of Superstars closer to a close I'l take it. 

[Matt D]

The frustrating thing with the classic content drop now is that basically the only thing we can hope for is them to fill in some MSG gaps we were missing matches or even whole shows on in the early 80s, but very likely they'll just keep moving forward into the area we already had instead.

[Pedro]

It isn't ideal when they have content but go from adding tons of shows and hidden gems to basically 8 shows a month.  I would love to see the ECW Supershows finished out, maybe see some SMW supercards added,  Old WWF Challenge, finish up Prime Time, and add a slew of older WCW TV.  Show your hand WWE!!!

[RIPPA]

Sami Zayn is the next Broken Skull guest

[RIPPA]

 

[SirSmUgly]

I miss London because I haven't visited since pre-pandemic, so I decided to watch Summerslam '92. This stadium crowd is impressive as FUCK, man. Why doesn't this company do more stadium shows outside of the country? You could do evening shows in London or Paris that are late morning/afternoon PPVs or PLEs or whatever. Or if you don't want to deal with time zones, do more shows like this in Canada. Put a WM in BC place or do a Summerslam in Tim Horton's Field or something. 

Edited July 24, 2022 by SirSmellingtonofCascadia

[SirSmUgly]

OK, separate post for my observations:

• DiBiase's all-white-with-gold-trim getup is swank as fuck. 

 

• IRS got the "everyday Brits leech off the Royal Family" relationship infuriatingly backwards, as a good heel should.

 

• Rocco is an exceptionally stupid idea. I feel bad for Paul Ellering having to carry that thing around. 

 

• Money Inc. is dull as dishwater as a tag team. The best guy on the team is Jimmy Hart, who is an A+ manager. Hawk played a disinterested FIP. But the crowd was hot!

 

• They should have repackaged Virgil as Soul Train Jones so that he could cut promos as Soul Train Jones and not as face Virgil. Also, they shouldn't have fed him to Nailz because Nailz sucks. Virgil kinda sucks too, but he has some value. Actually, though, he does work his ass off in this match and is the reason that it's not complete shit or anything. Also, it's short, so it doesn't have time to descend into total suckiness. 

 

• This Martel/Michaels/Sherri love triangle is fucking DUMB in the best of ways. Martel winking at Sherri and her daytime-soaps-level facial response was AMAZING. Holy shit, Sherri is fantastic, a total scuzzball in every way. This match is less than it should be because they worked around the stipulation and angle to maybe a fault, but Sherri is a treasure.

 

• Why is Martel dressed in tennis gear? To give Heenan a chance to say that someone would be "broken at love" after this match, which is pretty damned good tennis punnery? The Sherri version of HBK's music should have just been used all the way through his career, even after they broke up. When it comes to versions of Shawn's music, it's Sherri > Vince >>>>>>>>> Michaels.

 

• Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that Sherri's pants had the ass cut out, which was not altogether unpleasant! If MGFanJay and the internet were both around in 1992, we'd have gotten all sorts of far-too-uncomfortable-to-be-erotic creepcaps! Less pleasantly (for me, at least, YMMV), Martel and Michaels show a bunch of crack pulling each others tights during a pinfall sequence. Anyway, this match is basically an angle more than a match. In truth, the star of the whole thing is Sherri. The secondary star is Vince for somehow knowing that Twin Peaks was a show at the time that it was actually in the zeitgeist.

 

• Jerry Sags is RUDE about Sherri getting pelted with water in the last segment, but he's so bitchy about Sherri that it makes me laugh ("did you see that dog...the mascara running down her face was like an oil slick on the Thames").

 

• The Beverly Brothers are the first act on this card to get zero reaction. Their match against the Natural Disasters is good, though, the best match so far. I'm really impressed at Natural Disasters figuring out how to effectively work as faces. Tugboat is an effective FIP, though a big part of that is because the Beverlys are creative about how they keep control and find ways to cheat or doubleteam in a way that keeps Tugboat down before Quake can cut through their shenanigans and give Tugboat room to get a tag. I also dig the finish where Quake launches one Beverly off the apron in the process of hitting his sitdown splash on the other one. 

 

• Hot take: The Bushwhackers were never good. Not even when they were the Sheepherders. They cut a promo so that Vince can get Gene to make a London Bridge/dental pun about Butch's missing teeth. Oy vey. 

 

• DEMOLITION EXPLODED and it was fine. I dig how into character Darsow gets as the Repo Man. Crush's theme music was SICK. The crowd is insanely hot for the possibility of the Cranium Crunch. They love doing the hand signal for it, at least. 

 

• It's wild that Flair's first WWF run is basically a two-match experience. He has his Rumble '92 performance and the WM VII match against Savage, and that's it. It's like he fell off a cliff after that WrestleMania. I'm not sure if he has any truly great matches after that, though maybe Flair/Vader would count. He was forty-ish, so it's not like it's a sin to fall off or anything, but he did just didn't figure out how to adjust to his diminishing athleticism with any consistency. 

 

• It's also fascinating that Vince used Flair as a transitional champ to put the belt on a younger guy and then basically pushed him out of the company for being too old, and he essentially relegated Savage to commentary for the same reasons, but he put the gold on Hogan in desperation at WM IX. Like, what the fuck? If you're going to commit, commit. Even if you panic because you don't think Bret's your guy, strap a rocket to Shawn or Razor or something instead of going back to Hogan. 

 

• Warrior/Savage should feel like a bigger rematch than it does to me (though the crowd is fucking MOLTEN) after that retirement match. Then again, they could never top that match or come particularly close, so maybe that's the issue. The crowd favors the Warrior, the uncultured swine. But actually, this is a pretty solid match until the convoluted angle gets in the way of things. Savage brings out the very best in the Warrior in-ring. The crowd turns on Warrior when it looks like he's turning heel, which would have been way more interesting than what actually happened.

 

• I sort of want to re-book this card. If you're putting the World Championship match in the middle of the card, why not give a midcarder that you want to prime as a main eventer that spot? I would go with Warrior/Flair and Savage/Michaels on this card instead of Warrior/Savage with Flair and Perfect fuckery to protect both guys as the finish. 

 

• Undertaker/Kamala sucked and there was too much 'cism in the whole affair for me to stomach the little there was to this whole thing. 

 

• I forgot about a babyfaced Lennox Lewis leading the Bulldog out. Anyway, I don't know if there's anything else to say about this match. It's very good! Bret drags a cracked-out zombie to an all-timer! Bret's my G.O.A.T. and always will be, probably! I did love Davey Boy being out of position to catch Bret on an over-the-top rope splash and Bret just adjusting and damn near taking his head off with what looked like an impromptu clothesline. 

 

• Well, one other thing is that Bret talks in his book about Davey not making eye contact post-match to do the whole reconciliation spot, but I don't see that. Davey is aware of the Hitman the whole time and plays his part perfectly, at least in this edit of the show. Unless I misremembered what Bret said, in which case, boo me!

 

• Ric Flair didn't wrestle on this card. Roddy Piper made a small cameo on this card. Weird. This card needs a fuller re-booking, now that I think about it. The main event makes perfect sense. Everything else, eh. Hey, Razor was on WWF TV by now. I'd rather have seen him squash Virgil than see Nailz do it. It was overall fun, though!

 

[SirSmUgly]

Warrior/Rude at Summerslam 1989 is so awesome. Their two Summerslam matches are GREAT. Rude should get more credit for being a great worker just off how much he got out of Warrior in the ring. Between the Warrior series and his 1992, he's truly one of the GOATs in my book. That and the Manny Fernandez tag team? He had a very short peak, but I prefer a short peak that is crazy great to a long career of being consistently good. 

So's I don't triple-post: Most of the formerly JCP talent on Summerslam 1989 came off really strangely. Rick Rude and His Incomprehensible Perm fit right in, but Tully, Arn, Schiavone, etc., seem so out of place. Even polka dot Dusty is still sort of surreal to watch in a WWF ring in '89. 

Edited July 28, 2022 by SirSmellingtonofCascadia

[SirSmUgly]

Triple- Quadruple-posting anyway.

Royal Rumble 1990 thoughts (because the No Holds Barred Match/Movie PPV isn't up on the Network. I don't need the Movie, just the Match, as I've never seen that show):

• Something about this night brought out the best in a bunch of dudes. I think the Bushwhackers are terrible, but that opener with the French Canadians was fun and nicely laid out.

 

• I'm not usually into Greg Valentine, but the submission match with Ron Garvin was genuinely awesome, from the early slap/punch exchange to Garvin taunting Valentine after blocking the shin-guard assisted Figure Four with his own shin guard all the way into the finish. I could watch Garvin and Valentine slap the shit out of each other all day. I also want to credit Valentine and Garvin for injecting some serious struggle into the second Figure Four spot. They also resorted to pinfalls to get out of tight spots, forgetting that it was a submission match in their desperation to just get a win and get the fuck outta the ring. They had me FULLY believing the whole way through this match. Easily my favorite Valentine match ever, and I'm glad that I watched this and reassessed it. I mean fuck, this was great. 

 

• The Genius's Gorgeous George tribute was genuinely awesome. He was the face as far as I was concerned. 

 

• Is it crazy to consider Sherri one of the best heels of all time? She's just fantastic in this role, even more than I've realized before. Watching all this old '87 - '93 WWF and '94 - '96 WCW has really driven that home for me. She makes entertaining segments out of even the dumbest shit. Anyway, the subtext of two Southern white people picking on a quiet black woman just trying to mind her own business during this Brother Love segment really enhanced the whole thing. I was legit heated at Sherri by the time this was over. I applauded when Sapphire slapped her. 

 

• Duggan still sucks, though.

 

• Heel Boss Man coming out to Jive Soul Bro is so weird. It was weird when I was a kid, and it's weird now. I'll never get over it. 

 

• Snuka cut a somewhat telligible promo? And he used a metaphor? And it was apt? Huh. Not bad. He was WAY more telligible than Warrior was. 

 

• Roberts cuts a nice little promo as usual. Honky needs to tune his guitar. Hogan yells a lot as usual. I'm trying to figure out if my current feelings about Hogan, which verge on "he was never great and his popularity is ACKSHUALLY an indictment on the toilet-level preferences of Americans in the '80s," are driven by my dislike of him personally or by just being overloaded on his act at this point in my life. I suspect watching mid-'90s WCW lately is probably the biggest factor in this. 

 

• The Rumble is solid. I feel like, to some degree, the other feuds weaved through the match aren't quite weaved together well enough to prevent me from feeling like we're all just waiting around for Hogan and Warrior to face off. 

 

• Savage is wearing tights rather than trunks, and I realize that he is well on his way from "dude with dope tri-star tights and sunglasses" to "garish cowboy man," and I am bummed. 

 

• The crowd is HOT for all the big names that come out in the first half of the Rumble, like fucking FIRED UP. Even your guys just below full-blown star level get shrieks and cheers. Maybe the format itself is still quite novel, and that's part of it?

 

• Quake and Haku had a staredown and I found it to be some serious shit. Almost as serious as the Warrior/Hogan staredown. Almost. 

 

• Warrior's sore-loser elimination act where he jumps back in, clotheslines Barb and Rude, and runs back down the aisle is funny as hell to me for some reason. Just the way he takes off to the back with such conviction. 

 

I've said before that I thought that I didn't like pro wrestling anymore. For whatever reason, old and new stuff had little or no appeal for me for like three or four years. At one point, I was watching some pro wrestling and it felt like labor, and I was like, "why am I doing this?" Deciding to watch mid-'90s Nitros brought it back for me, and since I have Peacock anyway, using the WWE section to watch WCW, AWA, Mid-South, and WWF from the '80s and '90s has really brought my fandom back. I wish I could find some new wrestling that's reminiscent of WWF and/or WCW+JCP from between about '81 and '97. 

 

 

Edited July 29, 2022 by SirSmellingtonofCascadia

[twiztor]

@SirSmellingtonofCascadiai don't know if i'm missing the joke, but "telligible" isn't a word.

re: thinking your love of wrestling was over, i went through the same thing ~5 years ago. ironically, it was rewatching late '90s WCW was what brought me back in too. to paraphrase Rick James, "nostalgia is a hell of a drug".

[odessasteps]

I fell off in 90 while In college and only got interested in when I started getting Japanese tapes and Liger. 

[zendragon]

On 7/24/2022 at 5:26 PM, SirSmellingtonofCascadia said:

OK, separate post for my observations:

 

• Why is Martel dressed in tennis gear? To give Heenan a chance to say that someone would be "broken at love" after this match, which is pretty damned good tennis punnery? The Sherri version of HBK's music should have just been used all the way through his career, even after they broke up. When it comes to versions of Shawn's music, it's Sherri > Vince >>>>>>>>> Michaels.

 

 

 

• It's wild that Flair's first WWF run is basically a two-match experience. He has his Rumble '92 performance and the WM VII match against Savage, and that's it. It's like he fell off a cliff after that WrestleMania. I'm not sure if he has any truly great matches after that, though maybe Flair/Vader would count. He was forty-ish, so it's not like it's a sin to fall off or anything, but he did just didn't figure out how to adjust to his diminishing athleticism with any consistency. 

 

• It's also fascinating that Vince used Flair as a transitional champ to put the belt on a younger guy and then basically pushed him out of the company for being too old, and he essentially relegated Savage to commentary for the same reasons, but he put the gold on Hogan in desperation at WM IX. Like, what the fuck? If you're going to commit, commit. Even if you panic because you don't think Bret's your guy, strap a rocket to Shawn or Razor or something instead of going back to Hogan. 

 

 

Isn't The Martel thing a Wimbledon reference?

I believe this is around the time Flair started having the inner ear problems 

[SirSmUgly]

@twiztorIf intelligible is a word, then telligible is a word, dammit. We're normalizing gruntled, and telligible is next!

https://tenor.com/biZSR.gif

[SirSmUgly]

28 minutes ago, zendragon said:

Isn't The Martel thing a Wimbledon reference?

I believe this is around the time Flair started having the inner ear problems 

Yes, it's Wimbledon. Martel and Heenan both take the chance to favorably compare the former to Andre Agassi. Also, to make tennis puns. But yes, Wimbledon is the general reference.

[Gorman]

12 minutes ago, SirSmellingtonofCascadia said:

@twiztorIf intelligible is a word, then telligible is a word, dammit. We're normalizing gruntled, and telligible is next!

https://tenor.com/biZSR.gif

When it comes to vocabulary, you can't doubt his telligence.

[SirSmUgly]

Hog Wild 1996 notes:

• I'll refrain from more notes beyond this one about the germ-infested dolts in this Sturgis crowd, but they suck and they ruined a lot of these matches with their lack of understanding about what they were watching. In retrospect, Bischoff is a fool for having the first PPV post-Hogan turn in front of a crowd like this rather than in Baltimore or Charlotte or Atlanta or somewhere that the fans would really know what they were in for. The Bash was so hot, and then this PPV happens?

 

• Rey is great at doing elaborate flippy shit without making it look like a gymnastics routine. The same is true for these high-speed epic exchanges that end in a standoff. Ultimo Dragon, not so much. If there's one wrestling trope I hate, it's "epic exchange, standoff, crowd goes apeshit." 

 

• Rey is a great wrestler, though. He actually got himself over with this crowd through his work. I'm slowly getting on the "Rey is a top-twenty wrestler ever" bandwagon, which I assume exists, and it's because he works miracles. The way he got himself over in front of this crowd = miracle. 

 

• LOL, Schiavone calls the Sturgis Rally attendants "odd" people and then says basically, but some of the bikes are cool. I fell out laughing. 

 

• Train/Norton was hurt by working around Train's worked shoulder injury, I think. Also, they broke up way too quickly for this match to have any emotional impact, but the match is worked like it expects the viewer to feel said impact. 

 

• Madusa and Bull Nakano have had better matches than this one. It wasn't bad, but it was sort of disappointing. It was nothing approaching their RAW match.

 

• Malenko/Benoit was very good. Benoit is good at infusing matches with a sense of struggle, which I think is what elevated the match most.

 

• Malenko is a bit too clean in his work and, when paired with someone else trying to cleanly bump or hit moves, it all feels like a stage play to some degree. Benoit wrestles like he's actually in a fight, which might be the single-best quality that a wrestler can be great at in the ring. His issue is, of course, having negative charisma (as I'd assume many family annihilator weirdo types do, tbh), so it's hard to feel the weight of his in-ring struggle, particularly as a face. Few wrestlers were less suited to a prominent spot in WWE. 

 

• Woman getting on the apron and Heenan saying CHECK THE GAMS ON HER was like the somehow charming version of PUPPIES. It's the word "gams," is what it is.

 

• Likewise, if you're going to do well-tread spousal humor, you need to get it right. Like so. Heenan: [Woman's] yelling at [Benoit] to encourage him. When a woman yells at you [Tony], isn't it to encourage you? Tony: Nah, she just yells at me. Heenan (taking a second to get his composure, laughing): She just YELLS at you? Tony: Yep. Heenan: You deserve it. 

 

• The crowd audibly booing at the second overtime announcement from Penzer during this match is hilarious for so many reasons. 

 

• I want to give some credit to Harlem Heat and The Steiners for running with the crowd reaction. Stevie and Booker immediately start hating on the crowd vocally and cartoonishly reacting to the engine revving, hands clapped over their ears and stomping around angrily. Scott incorporates stuff he doesn't do a lot of like the ten punches in the corner because he knows that this crowd will recognize that spot and count along with it. Also, Scott yells SHUT UP, BITCH at Sherri, which is totally uncalled for and unnecessary considering that he's the face, but also which obviously pops this crowd. Booker crotching himself on the ropes: great spot for this crowd. These teams just worked the whole thing really smartly for the audience they were in front of. I mean, I think Booker was legit irritated, but he used those feelings to his advantage!

 

• They have a montage of all these WCWers on bikes and shit, but the best part is Mongo holding Pepe, who is wearing a motorcycle helmet, and declaring that they're ready for the Outsiders. Then he flicks a tiny switchblade, positioned so that it looks like Pepe flicked it. This guy is a fucking treasure. 

 

• Eddy/Flair was great on Nitro awhile back. This is not nearly as good for many reasons. But I do wonder what Flair has said about Eddy in the past because he clearly respects the guy and works hard when he's in the ring with him. Or maybe he respects the family name/other Guerreros he's worked with in the past?

 

• Luger/Sting and the Outsiders was a quality matchup. The Outsiders started their really good 1997 tag run here and didn't let up for the next few months. 

 

• Hogan/Giant is what it is. Hogan mixing in a few chickenshit heel spots into his routine isn't enough for me in 2022, but of course in 1996, the shit felt revolutionary. The Giant being laid out for like twenty minutes in the post-match fuckery is funny as hell, like Booker laying around for a half-minute after getting Pedigree'd and still not kicking out level funny. 

Edited July 30, 2022 by SirSmellingtonofCascadia

[Curt McGirt]

Heenan said the audience was throwing gravel, did you notice any of that? 

[Shartnado]

On 7/30/2022 at 3:01 AM, SirSmellingtonofCascadia said:

@twiztorIf intelligible is a word, then telligible is a word, dammit. We're normalizing gruntled, and telligible is next!

https://tenor.com/biZSR.gif

So without hitting that link, gruntled is like "being OK with whatever one's situation is at that point", right? As opposed to being disgruntled.

[SirSmUgly]

14 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

Heenan said the audience was throwing gravel, did you notice any of that? 

They threw lots of trash, but I didn't see gravel, at least on camera. 

7 hours ago, Shartnado said:

So without hitting that link, gruntled is like "being OK with whatever one's situation is at that point", right? As opposed to being disgruntled.

Yes. 

(The link is supposed to be a GIF, but it didn't paste properly.)

[Robert S]

Was that the show where Heenan was clearly drunk and got problems backstage or was that a year or two later?

[Curt McGirt]

Dunno. The gravel story is from his book and I don't think he went into any detail about being drunk on the air... though he certainly was. A lot.