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Dolfan Watches Every Wrestlemania On Lockdown


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38 minutes ago, tbarrie said:

That's an interesting argument (and it would explain why this perception that the match wasn't good developed years after the match).

Not the case. I saw it within weeks of it happening, not knowing how it had gone, and didn't like it. And then the first review I read about it said it was a bad match. 

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I said that Dolfan would, in a couple posts, get to the other reason I didn't enjoy and/or rewatch Wrestlemania 12 the way I would with other PPVs I bought and recorded and HERE WE ARE.

Yes, it's the Iron Man Match.  I don't like it. And I'm glad to see my I'm not out on an island, and that many of the reasons why I don't like have already been shared.
 

1 hour ago, sydneybrown said:

The match going 0-0 the whole time is why it is terrible.  It was a good match watching it live because you didn't know.  There's no reason to ever watch it now.  You can literally just skip to the end and miss nothing (aside from the superkick on the floor.)  

EXACTLY.  Like Dolfan said, this ruins the gimmick.  A 60 minute Iron Man match that ends 1-0 is just a 60 minute match.  It becomes a baseball game between the two teams ahead of the team you actually root for in the standings; you flip back to every couple innings to see if you've missed any scoring, or if a key player's gotten hurt or suspended, you see that they haven't, and you flip back away, knowing that you've got an hour to kill before the 9th inning rolls around.  And after a while, you could figure out they were going to go 0-0 the whole way, and everything before the last minute was irrelevant.
 

1 hour ago, tbarrie said:

That's an interesting argument (and it would explain why this perception that the match wasn't good developed years after the match). I don't think I ever have rewatched it, so I'm not in a position to refute. But is rewatchability a good metric for match quality? Surely the primary goal of everyone involved was to entertain the people watching at the time?

Nor have I.  I mean, it's a 60 minute match!  Rewatching is a commitment and, when you already know the destination, the journey has to be real fun in and of itself.  And this isn't.  Especially when I'm geared up to see an Iron Man match.  Iron Man matches are normally one of my favorite gimmick matches specifically because it has the drama of scoring points, which allows it more than any other gimmick match to borrow from the narrative drama of real sports.  Fluke goal in the first two minutes and the other team spends the remaining 88 chasing the game against an opponent that is now cynically turtling.  The Epic 4th quarter 3TD comeback where a huge lead seems to disappear in the blink of an eye.  Trading falls like two run-and-gun teams that can't be stopped from hitting 3s any time they want.  Even a boxer struggling to keep his hands up getting saved by the bell in the 12th round.  Real sports are as dramatic as anything, and the Iron Man match is wrestling's one chance to tap into a reservoir of dramatic tension it uses so rarely as to keep it special and memorable.

But instead go 0-0 into overtime, which is the same thing as Every Other One Fall Match ever, just a lot longer and with need for a second pee break.  Waste of the gimmick, arguably even bait-and-switching.
 

1 hour ago, AxB said:

Not the case. I saw it within weeks of it happening, not knowing how it had gone, and didn't like it. And then the first review I read about it said it was a bad match. 

I didn't like even as I was watching it happen.  Especially once the last strand of my Markish denial was snipped and I realized who was going to actually win,  ? at which point I really disliked the match.

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It's possible to have a Marathon match (or a 2 out of 3 falls match, or a one fall match) finish 0-0 after sixty and have it still be compelling and exciting. But Bret vs Shawn wasn't. It was pedestrian and uneventful. 

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The match was pretty bad. It’s sort of like a movie that has all the right actors in it with a big name director and yet it turns out kind of terrible, but no one wants to really admit it, so it gets an Oscar nod and all that, and then years later the general consensus that it was bad all along starts to rise above the surface. 

Bret/Shawn Ironman is Million Dollar Baby.

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20 hours ago, tbarrie said:

That's an interesting argument (and it would explain why this perception that the match wasn't good developed years after the match). I don't think I ever have rewatched it, so I'm not in a position to refute. But is rewatchability a good metric for match quality? Surely the primary goal of everyone involved was to entertain the people watching at the time?

If that's the case, why do the WWE Network have archives? Why did WWF Home Video exist for decades before the Network?

You're on the Death Valley Driver Video Review Message Board, yes? What is the most literal meaning of the word "Review"?

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13 hours ago, (BP) said:

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Bret/Shawn, but I remember there being a lot of limb work that goes nowhere and that isn’t sold for the second half of the match. 

Isn't the first half Bret's and the second half Shawn's? I remember Bret saying this in his book. Maybe that's why both halves are different.

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14 hours ago, AxB said:

It's possible to have a Marathon match (or a 2 out of 3 falls match, or a one fall match) finish 0-0 after sixty and have it still be compelling and exciting. But Bret vs Shawn wasn't. It was pedestrian and uneventful. 

Probably not to modern tastes, but Funk/Brisco or Flair/Steamboat or Gagne/Bock likely had some  compelling and exciting 60 minute draws. 

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23 minutes ago, PetrolCB said:

Isn't the first half Bret's and the second half Shawn's? I remember Bret saying this in his book. Maybe that's why both halves are different.

Shouldn't matter. If two wrestlers are having a ten minute match, one spends five minutes working armlocks and then the other takes over and doesn't sell the arm at all, either he's going an indestructable monster gimmick, or he just sucks. Or possibly he's sabotaging his opponent by physically implying that their offence is ineffective.

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23 hours ago, tbarrie said:

That's an interesting argument (and it would explain why this perception that the match wasn't good developed years after the match). I don't think I ever have rewatched it, so I'm not in a position to refute. But is rewatchability a good metric for match quality? Surely the primary goal of everyone involved was to entertain the people watching at the time?

I think this is a good point to bring up.  Yes, how a match holds up over time matters (“rewatchability”), but wrestling is first and foremost a live performance art, and in evaluating a match’s quality, how the match was received in its own time should absolutely factor into the equation.

As far as the historical context of this match is concerned, I recall the live crowd being into it, but I don’t really remember what the broader response was among wrestling fans.  I do think it should be pointed out that the vast majority of fans had never seen a 1-hour iron man match before (Bret had done them at two house shows against Flair and Owen*, years prior, but that’s it), so the format was completely novel to them.  My guess is they were more forgiving than we are now, looking back.

*QUESTION FOR ANYBODY: Does tape of either of these exist?

Edited by EVA
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That is AWESOME, @(BP).  Putting these on to watch while I work right now. 

EDIT: Owen Hart should be in the Larry Zbyszko "Expert Heel Stalling Tactics" HOF. He was pissing me off in post-kayfabe 2020 in that Ironman Match. 

Edited by Smelly McUgly
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OK, I'm going to cut into Dolfan's thread here to review these two Iron Man matches, starting with the Owen match and then ending with the Flair match.

Bret Hart vs. Owen Hart (60-minute Iron Man match)

The dude camming this for the first thirty minutes was like, "MORE ACTION AND PINFALLS PLEASE," and I get it, but I have to be honest, Owen killing the first fifteen minutes with annoying stalling really worked for me. Now, the downside is that the first half-hour was all chinlocks and stalling before Owen slipped on a banana peel to drop the first fall to Bret, but it infuriated me as a viewer (in a good heel heat way).

I thought it weird that after losing that first fall, Owen didn't get super-aggressive immediately, but he worked the leg and got a submission (!) off of a figure-four. Then comes some classic heelery from Owen. As the ref tends to Bret in the one-minute rest period between falls, Owen goes and rips the pad partially off of a neutral corner. He jumps on Bret and gets another submission off of another figure-four (!!) before going back and pulling the pad off the corner completely and surreptitiously kicking it into view so that when the ref sees it and has to go put it back on, he's drawn away while Owen attacks Bret's leg some more during what should be a recovery time. I love heel misdirection shit when it's pulled off correctly. It's so slick. 

The crowd is hot as hell at this point; lots of high-pitched voices are begging for a Hitman comeback. Of course, Owen gets overconfident as time goes on and lets the Hitman get a counter off of a corner charge before he gets 5MODed. He breaks a Sharpshooter attempt by Bret, but doesn't get so lucky on the second attempt after he eats a superplex and submits to bring it to 2-2 with five minutes on the clock. 

Bret's ready to go in for the kill after the rest period as Owen begs off, clearly out of anger and pride since I'd assume that the tie goes to the champion. They end up in a slugfest before Owen hits the ENZIGURI OF POST-CONCUSSION SYNDROME~ for a nearfall and then trades two-counts with Bret, hits the TOMBSTONE OF DESTROYING THE TOP FACE'S SPINE~, and then goes into another Sharpshooter that doesn't get a submission before the bell rings as we end in a 2-2 tie. 

Anyway, we go into Sudden Death, so I was wrong about the tie going to the champ. Bret, who gets the same benefit of his opponent having broken the hold before an arbitrary ruling from an official called for a sudden-death period as HBK did against him, doesn't whine about that here! He should, though, as he should be walking back to the locker room as champ. Anyway, they trade submissions, shoulderblocks, and more submissions before Owen mule kicks Bret in the nuts, goes for another Sharpshooter, and gets reversed out of that into a Hitman Sharpshooter that gets the final submission for Bret.

This was WAY the fuck better than the HBK/Bret match because there was an actual flow to the falls, I loved how Owen chained his two falls together in a clever way to take advantage of the match format and rest period rules, and Owen's heel work was crucial to making me want to see Bret eventually twist him into a knot. This match was kind of the Owen Hart show, not to take anything away from Bret the HitG.O.A.T. Hart. 

Edited by Smelly McUgly
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Bret Hart vs. Ric Flair (60-minute Iron Man match)

I like Flair's WWF "Zarathustra" knockoff more than the actual original piece. 

Anyway, WOOs and chain wrestling to start. Flair works the arm and cheats just out of the ref's view to stay on top for awhile. Basically, it's ten minutes of this same armlock/hair pull/use ropes for leverage stuff. Flair eventually tries three straight pinfalls and gets three straight two-counts. Then more arm stuff. It changes up a bit from the arm-wringer that Flair has been working for what feels like the whole length of the previous Iron Man match that I watched, but then we're in a hammerlock situation and, look, I don't give a fuck. At least Owen stalling is entertaining because Owen is entertaining at chicken-shittery. 

More two-counts out of Flair working Bret onto his back out of a wristlock. More arm work that is totally unvaried and uninteresting and FINALLY Bret gets some offense in with a few gut shots and then straight rights to the jaw. Flair eventually shuts that down with an inverted atomic drop before whiffing on an elbow drop and getting reversed on a back body drop. Bret goes for the figure four, gets a couple of two-counts, and then Hebner kicks Flair's hand off of the ropes rather than, y'know, breaking the hold. I do like that once Flair's in the ropes again, Bret just lets Hebner untangle the hold rather than releasing it himself, which was something he always did and which added to the sense that he was super-ring-savvy. 

Anyway, we're five hours twenty minutes in and Flair takes control again, hitting an elbow strike and then a knee drop (that he does a nice job of selling even though he hits it). He then whiffs on a kneedrop and Bret figure-fours him, dragging him back to the center of the ring and working the knee with elbowdrops after a break. He goes back to the figure-four leglock, which Flair breaks, and eventually Flair gets control back only to get reversed into a rollup off an Irish whip for three. Bret's up one. 

Anyway, Flair on top after the break, Perfect gets booted for heel chicanery and distracting the ref while Flair cheats. Flair's broken down Bret's leg, using a chairshot among other things, and goes for the figure-four leglock, eventually getting a submission out of it after grabbing the ropes for leverage. After the rest period, he goes back to Bret's knee and again gets a submission off of a rope-assisted figure-four to go up 2-1. 

So basically, so far we've got a carbon copy of the Bret/Owen Iron Man layout except that Flair frankly is a clearly worse in-ring worker than Owen (yeah, I know, I know, hot take here that a very small minority would agree with). Owen stalling >>>>>>>>>> Flair's uninspired arm work and Owen's cheating >>>>>>>> Flair's cheating. 

Anyway, Flair back on the figure-four, but the rule of threes says that he gets caught this time and the ref doesn't let him get away with it. There's some back-and-forth up to the 45-minute mark. Flair uses the ropes for leverage on a few two-counts, and you know something that occurs to me? I think Flair is a VASTLY better worker as a face. He is actually really good working from underneath, great facial expressions, great desperation moves, dies when he gets crushed. That One Flair/Vader match is probably his best in-ring performance that I've ever seen. Honestly, I'd rate Flair/Funk Hardcore as his second-best in-ring performance. Flair as a heel is the greatest on the mic other than maybe The Rock or Jake Roberts, but put him in the ring, and the match is about whether or not his opponent is just right for fighting from underneath. For whatever reason, Bret ain't it. This match would have been much better somehow with Sting in it instead of Bret, and I can't quite put my finger on why. 

It's weird because to me, Bret is a pretty damned great worker from underneath. TBH, I blame Flair for this not being that great because this is the only time that I've been bored by Bret trying to hang on against his heel opponent EVER in my fucking LIFE. 

I'mma just rush through the rest of this review: Flair is in control for what feels like such a long time that he makes a HHH heel control segment circa-2004 seem like a mere blink of the eye. Then he goes up top, and you know the drill: he's tossed from his perch, he gets 5MODed, he gives up in the Sharpshooter. 

Heenan shows up and hands something to Flair behind the ref's back in the rest period, he punches Bret with it,  he gets a two-count only, he does some stuff, he gets reversed, he shows everyone his bare ass, he gets small-packaged off a figure-four for three just before the time runs out and the final bell rings, you know the deal. Crowd is hot for it, though.

Yeah, I wasn't a fan, but for different reasons than I'm not a fan of Bret/Shawn Iron Man. If you only have time to watch one Bret Hart Iron Man match, it should be the Owen one, IMO.

 

 

Edited by Smelly McUgly
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Alright, lemme finish this, that way I can be caught up when I start Mania 13 tomorrow.  

Blade Hart is sitting at ringside and gets his dad's sunglasses. So the match is underway, and they start with some strikes, but it's instantly clear, they are going to pace themselves for this.  I'm not blaming them, an hour is a long ass time. Vince and Jerry do agree that the winner of the first fall would "probably" win the match... boy you ain't kidding.

So, what it looks like they're going for, and what the announcers are putting over is HBK is "out-wrestling" Bret.  Bret seems annoyed that he's being put into headlocks and armbars right away.  So that's fine, I'm just wondering when we'll actually get a decent near fall (since I know this is going to be 0-0).  The headlock sequence starts at about 4 minutes in and continues for nearly 10 minutes(!).. Okay.  

HBK gets tossed to the outside and the first truly big spot of the match happens as HBK takes over, throws Bret into the timekeeper (is that baby Tony Chimel?).  Bret moves and the timekeeper eats a hellacious Sweet Chin Music. Chimel does a stretcher job from the kick and that actually eats up about 5 more minutes here.  So, now we're 20 minutes+ into this match and there has not been a legitimate near fall.  The guys in the front row I mentioned?  They're getting restless.  

Michaels keeps working the shoulder through arm wringers and bars...  and this is not making for a compelling match. Vince and Lawler are starting to get restless themselves as Jerry's gone through all of his Helen and Stu jokes and Vince is starting to say things like "the first fall is coming soon." And they keep saying that for about 5-10 minutes.  Now we're about halfway home.   There's just nothing going on aside from stalling. Three of the four guys in the front row have apparently gone and will be back later with merch(!)  

Okay, so this match is just dragging now.  They're doing the first 5 minutes of a long match in 30...  well 40, because they're still not really going.  Part of the issue is that they've got the clock of the match on and those zeros are looming large.  Bret finally starts his 5 moves of doom sequence at around 42 minutes in, and frankly, they should have caused at least 2 falls.

This match would have been so much better if they'd been 1-1 or 2-2 going into the final 15 minutes or so.  Bret working his ass off to take HBK out, and then Shawn countering something out of nowhere with a superkick to even it up.  What they're going for, I think, is two pitchers throwing dueling no hitters.  But we are at the 50 minute mark now and there have again been *no near falls*.  If you're really going to book zero-zero, you really need this to be something where the crowd is teetering at the edges of their seats because they think that all important first hit will come any second.  That just has not happened.

The guys in the first row are now visibly frustrated and/or bored.  The crowd is extremely restless now.  And 2 counts are being met with boos.  

It's about 55-56 minutes in when Michaels *FINALLY* hits Sweet Chin Music on Bret causing the crowd to wake up.  Now both guys are down and stay down, so we miss our first true near fall chance.  I can see the faces in the crowd are pissed now because just nothing has happened and this first legit chance at 1-0 is wasted.   But Bret makes a comeback of his own and we're now at 59 minutes in... and there's the tease of a Sharpshooter that gets the crowd off their asses because HERE'S the first true chance of a fall, 59:45 in.  

But... HBK holds on and we have a 60 minute draw. Bret takes his belt and isn't really happy, but he's still champ so, you know whatever, he's leaving. So of course, Gorilla has to stick his big fat nose into it and orders Bret back and says sudden death OT to determine the winner.   

Bret is nonplussed.   

But he heads back to the ring dutifully as he rightly thinks he's basically got Michaels beat anyway.  So away we go again as Bret is coming close to reapplying the Sharpshooter, HBK works out and finally nails a huge SCM.  Now the crowd is really ready.  HBK is up, and crushes Bret with the third and final Sweet Chin Music for his first WWF Championship.  

Of course, here's where it gets interesting.  As HBK is kneeling and Bret is out, Hebner is basically ready to present him with the belt, and I'd forgotten about how Shawn *AUDIBLY* tells Hebner to "tell him to get the fuck out of this ring."  Bret was clearly expecting a handshake spot or something, gets up and leaves, and is clearly pissed off at this.  (I can tell because he angrily PULLS... HIS STRAPS... DOWN.)

LOL Blade Hart is singing HBK's music.  

HBK orders Lothario OUT.  And Hebner's about to leave but then Michaels ORDERS him to put the belt on him.  Hebner can't quite get the snaps on, and *now* HBK is pissily telling him to GTFO too.  Once he's out and all alone... THEN the celebration can begin.   I'm sitting there, finishing my ride, mouth agape because I honestly had wiped all this from my mind.  Shawn is being the Bridezilla and needs HIS MOMENT to be special, goddamnit.  He's very lucky he was so good.

---

Mania 12 is such a mixed bag.  In some ways it was looking to the future, and many ways it is stuck in the past. Diesel-Taker was great and would provide such a template for future great Undertaker matches. But man, Warrior-HHH was a colossal mistake although an argument can be made that it indirectly gave us Austin 3:16 (HHH was supposed to win KotR, but he was till pissed about Mania, so he participated in the MSG Incident...)  Also, I can safely say, history is not at all kind to the Iron Man match.  

Well, all in all this marked my longest ride to date, clocking in at 81 minutes. So, I took the weekend off and just walked around. Good times.  

End of Day 36. 

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I've always believed that Brett-Shawn would've been better if they didn't announce that it was an Iron Man match, and just let it be a regular title match that went to a sixty-minute draw. I wonder if it would've been received better by its critics.

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51 minutes ago, Dolfan in NYC said:

LOL Blade Hart is singing HBK's music.  

I don’t know if this was supposed to go anywhere as a story, but there was an issue of WWF magazine right after this where Blade interviews Bret and they tease that he’s a Shawn mark who’s uncomfortable with his dad’s animosity towards HBK. 

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And thus I became an obnoxious smark who cheered all the heels and booed all the faces.  The more WWF went all-in on sweeping Bret under the rug and trying to tell me I should be happy about the ascent of HBK, the more I rejected him and by extension every other face on the roster (didn't hurt that Foley, Vader, and Austin had all just come in and were all clearly cooler, nevermind better, than the tools in the midcard and especially HBK, who I was already inclined to think was a much more natural heel and sounded insincere phony every time he tried to cut the "top babyface" style promo a WWF champ is expected to cut.  Even The Undertaker became somewhat Guilty By Association; if he was a WWF face there had to be something wrong with him).  It was extremely easy to start liking WCW better, especially once the NWO angle started up.  For the first time, but surely not the last, the WWF seemed to be telling me that my fandom and my fan dollar Was Not Wanted.

HBK coming in on zipline while Bret got his usual entrance didn't make HBK cool or exciting, it made Bret look disrespected that even as champ and company torch bearer for 3 years he somehow wasn't seen worth of his own special Wrestlemania entrance. Ditto to having it end 1-0 which, on top of what I mentioned in my previous post, I also interpreted as disrespectful and/or a strain of my credulity (I wasn't quite internet-smarky enough to know "burial" as a term but if I had I'd probably have been using it in my dismay over this result.  You're telling me Bret, who's been beating Michaels consistently over the last 3 years and successfully defended championships against him several times before, suddenly can't get a fall on him in 60 whole minutes?  Bret somehow isn't WORTHY of the respect of at least going down 2-1?  Get the fuck outta here!  Gorilla Monsoon wasn't fan friendly for spontaneously adding sudden death over time to ensure a definitive winner, he was ratfucking Bret by arbitrarily & spontaneously changing the rules of the match after the fact to sabotage part the traditional Champion's Advantage (retain the belt on a draw). For Gorilla -- 1/2 of the primary reason I even got in to watching wrestling regularly in the first place -- to do this to my favorite and the first top guy I ever embraced (and almost the last) was like a betrayal. Imagine Mr. Rogers flicking a cigarette at a child and telling him to eat shit for being so stupid as to believe everyone is special. That's Gorilla Monsoon going in the tank for HBK, for me. I don't think I even saw the "get him the fuck out of my ring" stuff because I turned it off rather than subject myself to Vince McMahon spazzing about "the boyhood dream" as if a WRESTLER wanting to be the WORLD CHAMPION OF WRESTLING is somehow such a unique fuckin' aspiration.  And then, I guess so Bret couldn't overshadow HBK from the under-card and remind people who was really the best like he'd done during Diesel's reign, Bret was just off TV entirely for six months, effectively retired, unable to be an antidote to Michaels being shoved down my throat.  The more Vince tried to tell me I should LOVE Shawn Michaels, the more determined I became to despise him forever.

And I pretty much did.

And it all started with Wrestlemania 12, which I'd bought with my own money, recorded with a tape I'd bought with my own money, blew off phone calls and did chores early so I'd have the afternoon clear and free to watch interrupted, and before it was even officially over I never wanted to see it again.

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basically it would've been the most awesome and well done "hook a fan for life" type heel triumph that ensured I'd tune in every week just to make sure I saw it when the rat bastard heel finally got what he had coming to him of my early fandom.  Except he happened to be a babyface. ?

"The First Screwjob"

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Shawn Michaels was like the ur-Seth Rollins when it comes to WWF, except that Michaels actually got over for good as a singles act eventually. 

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3 hours ago, (BP) said:

I don’t know if this was supposed to go anywhere as a story, but there was an issue of WWF magazine right after this where Blade interviews Bret and they tease that he’s a Shawn mark who’s uncomfortable with his dad’s animosity towards HBK. 

One of the best parts of Bret's book was this paragraph about Blade

Quote

One warm, beautiful night, Blade got upset while I was putting him to bed and started stomping around slamming doors.  I finally picked him up and put him to bed and told him to go to sleep.  I was downstairs again chatting with Julie when Blade wandered defiantly past me wearing a Shawn Michaels T-shirt, hat and heart-shaped glasses, opening and closing his red leather-gloved fist.  Julie and I struggled not to laugh.  I coolly said to Blade, "What are you supposed to be?"  He put on his most serious face and said, "I'm with the clique."  Then he broke into a big grin and said, "Nah, I'm just buggin' ya, Dad!"

II wonder if they brought up HBK more often, whenever they wanted to get a rise out of dad.

Edited by caley
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