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Dolfan Watches Every Wrestlemania On Lockdown


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2 hours ago, Dolfan in NYC said:

So the end... and I think there's an argument to be made that THIS was what made his career.... Not "Austin 3:16". Steve has fought out of everything Bret has thrown at him. He even gets the sharpshooter on Bret at one point. Austin does the chokeout spot I mention above until Bret clocks him with the ring bell. So Bret decides enough's enough, and locks in and I mean locks in the Sharpshooter. Austin is screaming in pain. Blood is pouring down his face, as the most famous shot of his career happens. The crowd is going nuts. Austin *ALMOST* breaks the Sharpshooter, but Bret just leans back into it.  Austin tries one last time to break, and passes out from the pain. The fight is stopped, Shamrock has to pull Bret off Steve.  Bret celebrates. Austin is dead on the floor, having never surrendered.

Being a middle school kid at the time with self-esteem issues this came at the absolute perfect time for me.  I remember watching the match and liking it a great deal.  But when this happened not only did my Stone Cold fandom increase ten-fold but it also affected me in a way that helped me with certain times at school (though that was temporary but it was good while it lasted)  He was just somebody that made me then really want to have that confidence and swagger to put up with whatever bullshit was going on and it's something that's hard to explain many years later.  And to rather pass out from the pain rather than giving up?  Yeah, middle school me was all over that.  Again, different times.  But even when things got better with me (thank goodness) it was still something that I appreciated about the guy up until I found out about his out-of-the-ring stuff.  So yeah, the match was indeed the best and most important WM match and looking back it's cool to think how much that affected me back then.

Man, I wasn't intending to watch this today but now I feel a need to.  Thanks for the review and man do you have a helluva way with words.

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Bret/Austin is probably my favourite Bret match. What a perfect storm.

I think if Austin hadn't had an injury that made, oddly his biggest run, full of a lot of matches that don't have a lot to them beyond punch kick stunner, he'd be seen as a superworker on par with Bret or Flair. The periods where he was actually healthy enough to wrestle the way he could are phenomenal.

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Bret vs. Austin is for me...  the best WrestleMania match of all time for the reasons @Dolfan in NYC laid out in his write up.  

Also,  I don't recognize Shawn Michaels as "Mr. WrestleMania".   He has a lot of good/great matches but I will put Bret's Top 3 up against any of Shawn's..  

Bret Hart vs. Roddy Piper WrestleMania VIII 

Bret Hart vs. Owen Hart WrestleMania X 

Bret Hart vs. Stone Cold WrestleMania XIII

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On 5/21/2020 at 8:54 AM, Dolfan in NYC said:

DAY 38

We've had two very big face vs. face matches in the WM's to this point, but I'm 99% sure that this is the first time we have a heel vs heel match, and it's for the Tag Team straps.  Vader & Mankind are challenging Owen & the Bulldog and to say the crowd is confused is understating it. Both teams come in to alternating boos and cheers, but there's clearly a segment of the crowd cheering for all 4 guys.  The storyline is Owen & Bulldog are on the verge of breaking up, because Owen's being a shithead and Bulldog is more concentrated on being Euro champ than anything else.  JR instantly stirs the shit when he asks, *during their entrance* if Bulldog is okay with Owen saying he's smarter and the captain. (I can instantly tell, this is Vince saying 'Fuck you' to the gotcha journalists of the time.  Thank god that's no longer an iss... Hmm.)

Having recently re-read Foley's book, here's the other half of the backstory of this match.  Foley was in a lot of pain from a bad back and growing disillusioned with WWE because he had the run with Taker but was being left behind by "New Era" guys like Austin.  Jim Cornette called up to offer Foley a chance to be on Wrestlemania by taking on Marc Mero to which Foley semi-famously replied along the lines of "If all you have for me is Marc Mero, then I'd rather not be on Wrestlemania at all".  Vince, being a big fan of what Foley had done in WWF brought him to see if they could come up with something for him to do at WM and Foley suggested a match with Vader, seeing as he wasn't doing anything, that could play off their prior history (The stiff as hell WCWSN matches and the maiming of his ear in Germany).  Vince, being Vince, liked the idea of him and Vader, but not the idea of doing a match based off their WCW history and suggested they create "new history" by teaming together instead of fighting, hence this match.

14 hours ago, Dolfan in NYC said:

 

Austin gets his famous glass shattering intro here, and Chicago greets him with, I'd say 75% cheers.  Bret comes in, and the crowd is cheering him too.... so it's a de facto face vs face match, even though, and this is part of what makes this match great, BOTH guys wrestle the match as heels.  

 

They had really been slowly turning Bret for a few weeks, maybe a month leading up to this.  You had Bret lose the RR by an already eliminated Austin; Michaels subtly and not-so-subtly burying Bret every time he was on TV; Bret growing increasingly frustrated on TV with being screwed over; Bret winning the title, then losing it the next night in fuck-finish-fashion to Sid, and again the week before WM losing to Sid on TV with tons of interference, then going on a profanity-laden tirade, including shoving Vince (Which I don't think had ever happened on TV before).  So, by the time WM came around, the fans were starting to lose empathy for Hart.

14 hours ago, BobbyWhioux said:

I mean, it's in the running for most historically significant Wrestlemania match as well as best.

Because yeah, this is what made Austin, not 3:16.  The absolute best example of protect someone in a loss and/or get them over with one. "Moral Victory" almost always rings hollow but Austin does defeat Bret metaphysically even as he loses physically (and cleanly/unambiguously to boot).

I think you could almost point to this match, and the preceding RAW as the birthplace of the Attitude Era which would allow WWE to eventually win the Monday Night Wars.  I remember that preceding Raw vividly and I think it almost needs to be watched before this WM for the context it brought to the Austin-Hart match but also because it was this brilliant piece of wrestling storytelling.  Bret got his long-requested (whined for) rematch against Sid, in a cage, for the title a week before WM.  It was announced that if he won, Austin-Hart would become a World Title match (Which is the kind of nuance WWE often just doesn't bother with anymore, but the fact that they discussed it prior to the match, gave fans more chance to believe that the WWF was actually going to change the WM card).  So, during the match, you had Austin, Hart's heated opponent and WM foe-to-be, come down to the ring and help out Hart because he wanted a World Title match.  Then Undertaker came down and helped Sid, because he wanted to protect his own title match.  So you had four guys with separate but equal motivations in one match.  Eventually, Sid sneaks out the win.  Hart stays in the ring and goes on a rant, shoving down McMahon, who goes on commentary and just BURIES the face Hart.  Austin comes up on the tron and berates Hart for not getting the job done and Hart defiantly tells Austin that his name is Stone Cold because his "stones are so cold" that he won't come out and face him, then talks about how everyone knows Hart is the best, which brings out Sid to a very loud "I don't know shit!" to Hart (Which sounds like a "I have half the mind that you do!" quote but actually comes across so badass that he's not going to stand by and let Hart run his mouth) which brings out Taker and Austin and both main events pair off and brawl as JR apologizes for the profanity, the ring crew tries to dissassemble the cage, Vince talks about not going off the air until the show is over and Shawn comes out and teases getting involved and is the best pre-Wrestlemania Raw that I think they ever put together.  I remember being so upset that I didn't have the money to order the PPV because I wanted to see it so badly.

Basically all the seeds for the better part of the Attitude Era are sown here: the gimmick matches, the brawling, the profanity, the skirting of the rules, the chaos and the real-life elements creeping in.

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And they double crossed Bret. He was unwilling to swear on TV, so they told him that they'd have the "Frustrated ain't the word for it! This is Bullshit!" happen in the commercial break, and then bleep it when it replayed on TV. But then they intentionally didn't go to break while it was happening.

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DAY 39

Alright, one of the all time great Mania matches is done, so we need something to cool the crowd.  Enter Faarooq and the Nation of Domination.

This is NOD version 1.0, who are filled with the flotsam and jetsam of the midcard of the WWF.  Faarooq leads Savio Vega, Crush(??), their lawyer Clarence Mason, an unnamed D-Lo Brown, and PG-13. (For the record, PG-13 actually do quite a good job rapping the NOD's theme song.) Their opponents are The Legion of Doom and Ahmed Johnson, very cautiously wearing a spare set of shoulder pads with spikes hot glued onto them.  This is a Chicago Street Fight.  In Rosemont, IL. 

The expectations of this match are instantly set by both teams bringing down lots of plunder to ringside, because I'm assuming you can't hide a 10 foot (3m) parking sign under the ring.  The LoD bringing down a literal kitchen sink was cute.  That's the last cute thing about this match.  The brawl starts instantly, and since it's no DQ, the match is basically a 7 on 3 handicap match.  Now, this match I've seen being reviewed as being a great garbage match/brawl, but...  where should I begin.

The match is shot terribly. This was the WWF's first attempt at a huge ECW style brawl, so I can all but forgive them for this.  But this is Kevin Dunn on cocaine levels of "what the fuck just happened" (because you've missed the spot).  That's the first handicap.  The next is that the Nation, knowing it's 7 on 3, should isolate one guy and beat him to death essentially, and move on to the next, and so on, until they win.  But - and I know I'm saying this about a plunder match, but there is zero psychology or storytelling here.  Next, it literally looks like they just grabbed stuff that was loose in the back and brought it to ringside to fight with.  No gimmicked things, which makes things look painful when they're not... and in the case of this match, probably makes things that don't look painful actually BE painful.  

The whole thing is a gigantic, incoherent mess.  D-Lo Brown is the best worker not named Ron Simmons among the 10 guys there, and he doesn't even have a god damned name at this point.  JR and Lawler are both clearly EXCEPTIONALLY annoyed at the workers because they just KEEP on using a fire extinguisher on their side of the ring.  One that very clearly is a very real fire extinguisher that leaves a cake of residue on the floor, and  sends everyone in the announce table into a coughing fit.   Yes, Vince too.   And both Lawler and JR get quite snippy with Vince from that point on.

Oh, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the spot where they literally HANG Ahmed Johnson *WITH A HANGMAN'S NOOSE* at ringside.  This spot is seared into my memory because the only thing I was thinking was, oh thank god they got Ron and Savio to do this spot, because the world of shit that would have happened if it had been Crush and PG-13 hanging Ahmed...

The finish comes when Crush gets the Doomsday Device and a 2x4 clothesline for the pin for the faces.   An insane brawl, but not in the good way, unfortunately.  This was the start of Vince Russo's Gang Wars angle, and it's got his fingerprints all over it.  

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Alright, I'm not going to repeat all the set up for this, but Sid beat HBK the previous November for the WWF Championship, lost it back to Shawn at the Rumble, Shawn vacated because of a knee injury (legit or suspension, I forget), Bret won the belt in a 4 way, Sid beat him the next night, so he's in his 2nd and last reign as WWF Champ.  The Undertaker had traded the strap with Hogan seven years (!) before this but hadn't had it since, so basically, he's due.  I don't think there was a person alive who was expecting Sid to win at the time, and that's kind of why this isn't as great a match as it should have been.  

Shawn Michaels is on commentary, and is very shockingly super positive about both guys.  Like weirdly so. 

We begin with both guys entering, and then right before the match began Bret Hart comes in to drag even the slowest kids across the finish line.  Yes, he is now a heel.  So, here is his promo in gif form:

Spoiler

tenor.gif

Sid gives him a powerbomb for his trouble.  

ANYWAY...  we roll through the match, which, for some reason is No DQ.  It's a standard Taker vs. Big Guy match. Sid rolls through stuff, occasionally overpowering Undertaker and roughly controls the first half of the match.  Now, the problem lies in this match being over 20 minutes, and frankly, that is just too long for a Sid match.  Sid is very good to great when he's got short matches, or he has someone who can bump for him like he's Jason Voorhees and they're a sexy teen camp counselor.  Taker's not that guy.  

Now, for what it's worth this isn't a bad match.  I said what I said earlier because the finish is never really in doubt. Both guys are hitting their spots and hitting them well.  However, there are rest spots a-plenty here.  And there's a spot where Sid goes to the top rope... a spot I never, EVER, EVER want to see him go again.  I really wonder if he winces whenever he sees himself going up the ropes again these days.  Hopefully, he's sitting somewhere in a  large house in... let's say Arizona somewhere, retired, relaxed, and happy.  

Anyway, the finish comes when Taker finally goes for a tombstone, which Sid reverses into one of his own! (Roman Reigns could never.) Sid even cheekily does the corpse cover on him, but Taker kicks out.  Sid gets sent to the floor where Bret Hart comes out and pays Sid back with a gigantic chairshot. He tosses Sid back in where he gets chokeslammed for two in a pretty good false finish.   Sid eventually gets Taker in the spot for a powerbomb, but Bret distracts Sid, hits him on the ropes, Sid walks into a tombstone, and that's it.  6-0, and now WWF Champion.  Sid got a raw deal, and probably should have turned face, joined Austin in trying to destroy Bret, but aside from some spot appearances here and there, this was basically it for Sid in WWF.

Bret should *not* in any way have figured into the finish. Undertaker was going to win here regardless, but having it not come on a clean finish hurts Taker and the belt.  Whatever.  I know this is not the sort of thing you can expect in the incoming Attitude era.  

---

Overall, Mania 13 is buoyed up by an absolute all-time great match, and a shockingly good heel on heel tag match.  Time has not been kind to the Chicago Street Fight. The main event was fine, but had a bad finish.  So, you take the good with the bad. Speaking of bad.... Mania 14 is up next!  

End of Day 39. 

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47 minutes ago, Dolfan in NYC said:

I really wonder if he winces whenever he sees himself going up the ropes again these days.  Hopefully, he's sitting somewhere in a  large house in... let's say Arizona somewhere, retired, relaxed, and happy.  

He accepts quite a few bookings for conventions and meet and greets still. I mean, he doesn't actually show up to any of them, but he accepts the booking.

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19 minutes ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

Why the fuck would Sid being living in Arizona? Witness protection?

Softball leagues run in the winter.

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There's an alternate universe somewhere in which Sid Vicious stuck with Stan Hansen for like a year or two and then teamed with Vader and learned how to be a great brawling big man from the two best at it. Was a great squash worker admittedly. But yeah, he was so fucking cool. I mean Brock Samson's character design is based off of him. And the whole psycho laugh thing and master and ruler of the world deal? So great! OH and let us not forget the fist bumps, bb. Looked like a comic book character. Had tremendous presence. Just was flaky and not very good bell-to-bell. What could've been. Still had a fun career. And a way better promo than given credit for due in large part to the half a brain bit. 

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I'm watching Great American Bash '89 a couple weeks ago. In the middle of the match w/ the Dynamic Dudes, they're chanting for Sid to the point where Sid kinda breaks character and does the N64 wrestling video game get on one knee and gesture with both your hands pose to the adulation of the crowd. If Ric Flair wasn't the champion at the time, someone would have ran out with a belt and put it around Sid's waist at that very moment. He was like a year and a half into the business and that over doing nothing but being a giant man with boulders for traps and a dry ass Jheri curl perm. 

That's why I cannot even be mad at him in shoot interviews where he thinks he was better than everyone else. He was working with and against guys who had been in the business for several years and struggled to get half a pop. He came in and became a star very quickly and didn't have to have a big feud or a series of awesome matches to do it or any other pre-requisite of paying dues.

 

Edited by Elsalvajeloco
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My favourite thing about the Chicago Street Fight is Jamie Dundee being pissed off in his shoot interview that because he was on a $500 per appearance contract, working technically the semi-main event of Wrestlemania paid him five hundred dollars.

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9 hours ago, Dolfan in NYC said:

Alright, I'm not going to repeat all the set up for this, but Sid beat HBK the previous November for the WWF Championship, lost it back to Shawn at the Rumble, Shawn vacated because of a knee injury (legit or suspension, I forget)

The knee injury was real. Now the severity of it...yeah, that can be questioned.

 

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12 hours ago, Death From Above said:

My favourite thing about the Chicago Street Fight is Jamie Dundee being pissed off in his shoot interview that because he was on a $500 per appearance contract, working technically the semi-main event of Wrestlemania paid him five hundred dollars.

Other favorite thing is that led to the incident later that year where The Sandman was dressing down Jamie Dundee for some sort of ECW locker room etiquette breach, and Dundee's response was "I was on Wrestlemania, bitch! What the fuck have you done?"

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Sid just looks like a star.  Some dudes just got "it" and Sid is one of those guys.  He always seemed like a cool dude,  even when he was in the horsemen he had these little mini feuds with Motor City Madman, Big Cat and the Nightstalker and he was over like a MF.  

Sid rules.  

AcclaimedDecisiveGarpike-max-1mb.gif

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DAY 40

WRESTLEMANIA XIV

The last two pay per views are definitely the infancy and adolescence of the Attitude Era.  So now, we're here in the young adulthood of it.  Things are going crazy, and you can definitely feel the change in the crowd and the product.  So, welcome to Boston for WrestleMania XIV, which on the face of it appears to be a one (or arguably two) match card. That frankly, I'm not holding out much hope for, despite having watched it back in the day.  Let's get started...

We begin with a 15 team Battle Royal to determine the #1 contenders to the WWF Tag Team Championship.  I should note that like one's young adult years, the WWF is becoming friends with weirdos that they'd never associate with afterwards... in this case USWA. Now, I'm not about to sit here and list 15 teams, but if you ever want to do a wrestling trivia night and want a HELL of a tiebreaker... making people list the names of the teams in this match would be good. It's basically every tag team on WWF's roster and a few from USWA.  I am very amused however to be able to instantly pick out PCO because he already has an eyepatch in 1998.  Plus the first incarnation of Too Cool makes their debut here, and it's clear at this point Jerry and Brian Christopher are still on speaking terms, as Jerry is openly rooting for him.  I'm shocked JR never calls him out as to why... 

I'm actually shocked to realize this is Sunny's first appearance at a WrestleMania (she would not reappear until Mania 25 however), she's here managing LOD 2000 (Hawk and Animal with haircuts and new outfits).  This match is a giant, incoherent mess and the announcers themselves have a lot of trouble keeping up with everything happening in the ring.  But this is just a coronation for the pseudo-repackaging of Hawk and Animal.  They eliminate "The New Midnight Express"  (Bart Gunn & Bob Holly) last and we move on. 

TAKA Michinoku is up next against Aguila (Essa Rios) for the recently minted Light Heavyweight Championship.  I know I'm in the minority here, but I did like the WWF using "Light Heavyweight" as the moniker for their belt, since it meant the same thing as everyone else's "Cruiserweight" and distinguished them from everyone else.  Anyway, I'm sure Vince saw the insanity that was going on in WCW at this point where the Cruisers were consistently putting on the best matches every night and wanted a piece of the action.  However, since WCW had basically claimed everyone worth a damn, Vince quickly stopped giving a shit about this title when it was clear the matches weren't on par.  To wit....

TAKA and Aguila are basically doing a very abbreviated spotfest.  They get about 5 minutes to run through the best of what they've got... and they hit those quite nicely.  Aguila hits a corkscrew plancha that actually got the crowd to give a shit, because I'm guessing they'd never seen a human being actually do that before in their lives.  The Michinoku Driver ends this for TAKA to retain.  Like I said, the crowd could have cared less outside of the nice spots, but the guys did the best they could with the little time they got. 

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PCO was rocking that eyepatch in 1995 when he feuded with the Hitman and stole Bret's jacket. 

1997/1998 WWF is like the biggest waste of TAKA that I can think of. I genuinely wish he could have mixed it up with WCW's Cruiserweight division in 1997 and 1998. 

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