SirSmUgly

The video equivalent of a hairy man in a gimp mask dripping wax on one's testicles. ...not that there's anything wrong with that if it's consensual.

For some reason, I would have expected the highest-grossing Houston show to be a Dallas-aligned show and not a Mid-South aligned show.

Exactly what I was going to say. Levesque somehow isn't the dumbest guy in the C-Suite at a U.S. corproation and may not even be close, and he's the idiot who pumped enough HGH into himself to almost have a myocardial infarction in his fifties all so that he could look the part while putting himself over as the best fake fighter on the planet. Shit, he's not even the dumbest guy in the C-Suite in TKO with Dana still around.

Before I found out that back compat to the X360 was limited, I was so excited to pop in WWE All-Stars, which I haven't played in years. That was a no go. I was in a local retro game shop yesterday picking up a couple of magazines and saw a version of the game for 3DS. This means that I have to use the 3DS, but it's worth it because it's basically a low-res version of the full game that still feels very good. I liked this game an awful lot, and I also enjoyed TNA Impact! It's too bad that the core of this team didn't stay together and make more arcade-style wrestling games.

Pro wrestling in the U.S. now trades on letting fans see all the pulleys and levers working in the background, so obviously that's what fans are going to talk about. Yeah, I wish wrestling had crowds who just want to hate the bastard in the ring who is cheating their favorite wrestler. There's nothing better than a group of fans screaming at the ref that the heel screwed over their favorite wrestler while wearing a screen-printed t-shirt to support the babyface that they spent their own money to print up, but it's not 1982 anymore, Trips, you idiot, you rube, you sucker.

The sweetest taboo.

Not quite as embarrassing as that one video with Moxley breaking out of jail, but not that far off.

Oh great, another Russo/Cornette pissing match to take up some episode space. Fuck off with all that. This was a low-substance episode. I don't want to trivialize the loss of a life to pill abuse, but to contextualize this, it's a story of a big man with excellent bump skills who burns his bump card quickly and is so broken down by the mid-90s that he understandably gets addicted to pain meds. That is a common story for pro wrestling, so this ep needed to maybe interrogate the practices of the '80s and '90s that helped lead Traylor down that road. I think DSoTR maybe should do a Killer Kalendar episode that touches on this, the death of Joey Marella, how taking all those bumps three hundred nights a year killed guys directly and indirectly, etc. I'm not sure going wrestler by wrestler is advisable, especially if it's going to end up with a bunch of filler where Cornette is bitching about trashy Attitude Era angles.

I checked and Literorica seems to still be going strong, so you are not alone! I don't know how much smut also teaches you about historical figures and periods, but I'm sure there's a fair bit of it. "Robespierre and the Executioner's Wife:" Did I make that title up, or does this story actually exist online somewhere? Either could be true!

I had it in by 11:56! It's Blackboard's timestamp that's the problem! I want to meet with your dean!

Reading for pleasure is at an all-time low as well. I learned about Robespierre from reading The Scarlet Pimpernel as a teen well before I took AP European History in high school. That is far less common now.

I love the idea that Admiral Yamamoto and General Eisenhower were sipping mai-tais at some resort and making small talk when Yamamoto casually let him know that the aircraft carriers at Pearl Harbor had as much chance of surviving the night as the Philadelphia Athletics had of winning the World Series that year.

I suppose this would be a good time for a list update! Here is the first post with my running lists of matches across all the shows that I've watched so far. It'll be updated regularly within this document (and updated semi-regularly within this thread). Great Mains and Semi-Mains Hidden Undercard Gems Charming Uniquities Total Misfires

WCW Clash of the Champions XVIII (21 January 1992): A show in which hype for SuperBrawl II is successfully created I picked this show because I wanted to write about the Steiner Brothers vs. Mr. Hughes and Vader match for one, and for two, it’s under two hours. It’s a Kip Frye WCW show from 1992, so odds are that it’s going to be solid at worst. Hype package: Paul E. Dangerously has assembled the Dangerous Alliance to ruin Sting’s life and also to take over WCW in general. Paul E. should have added the Diamond Studd and Vinnie Vegas to his group if he wanted a decent shot at achieving that latter goal. Gab Gab Gab: Jim Ross and Tony Schiavone are your commentary team for tonight; Missy Hyatt and Eric Bischoff are on hosting duties. Match: You want a fun opener? WCW’s got a fun opener for you. Vader and Mr. Hughes (w/Harley Race) walk to the ring to face the Steiner Brothers, a team that I am conflicted about enjoying so much because they’re often reckless assholes, especially with guys beneath them on the pecking order. I mean, if they consensually caber toss dudes into the lights or dump them on their necks, okay. This opener is exactly the type of spotfest that I like – big dudes improbably hoisting one another up and tossing each other around. Scotty immediately single-legs Hughes and lets him know that it’s going to be a long night from the jump. Scott then wins a fireman’s carry takeover and essentially forces the big man to counter Scotty’s wrestling advantage with an eye poke and a punch. Hughes goes on the run and wins a shoulderblock, but after running the ropes again, Scott leapfrogs over him and waits for a celebrating Hughes to turn around so that he can overhead release belly-to-belly the big man. I remember watching this match as a kid, and it's because of spots like that. A dude as huge as Hughes getting launched absolutely popped me. The heels hop in the ring and toss the Steiners to the floor, but they re-enter the ring and land top-rope diving lariats when the heels take time to preen and pose. The match settles down; Rick and Vader face off, and Vader immediately back suplexes his way out of a headlock, then drops Rick with a vertical suplex and throws hammering rights at Ricky. Vader lands a huge military press and poses, then continues his assault with a successful corner splash. Vader tries another, but Rick counters with a Steinerline and then a release overhead belly-to-belly of his own before sending Vader to the floor with another Steinerline. Rick tries to press his advantage by leaping at Vader on the floor, but Vader catches him and posts his spine. Vader re-enters the ring and lands his own clothesline, then spends time celebrating before going up top. Scott shakes the rope to slow him; Rick is able to catch Vader up top and then belly-to-belly him off the top before tagging in Scott. Scotty lands a clothesline for two, then tries a belly-to-back suplex; Vader holds the ropes to avoid the move, but Rick punches Vader in the noggin a few times, and that unsteadies Vader and allows Scotty to complete the move. I’m just listing MOVEZ~ here because that’s what this match is all about. It’s about the spectacle of heavyweights and super-heavyweights managing impressive feats of strength while beating the tar out of their opponents. Scotty goes up for a top-rope dive, but Vader catches him and powerslams him out of the air, then halts a Scott sunset flip attempt and lands a sitout splash. Hughes tags in and lands a big powerslam on Scott for two. He shoots Scotty in and scores a clothesline, but he misses a corner charge and sells that he pummeled his own penis on the impact. Scotty tags out to Rick, who fucking back bodydrops Hughes – this is the spot where as a kid, I decided that this was one of the greatest matches I’d ever seen, which is nonsense, but you can understand why a child might feel that way, right? Sensing serious trouble, the heels try and cheat their way back into control. Vader invades the ring, tosses Rick to the floor, and then winds up for a lariat on Scott while Hughes holds him in place. Scott moves, Vader clears out Hughes, and Rick climbs the ropes and hits the disoriented Hughes with a diving top-rope bulldog to earn a three count. This opener is a statement of intent in that I now expect things to be high-impact and fun as fuck for the rest of the show. This match is also the Form of the Good for my Hidden Undercard Match list. It's gotta be Curtis Hughes’s best career match, right? Match: Did the Young Pistols turn heel, and if so, when? I ask because Young Pistol Tracy Smothers walks the aisle alongside Terrence Taylor, the Taylor-Made Man, and I hope Smothers’s back is well-stretched so that he can successfully fulfill the burden of carrying his tag team partner…and his tag team opponents, who are Flyin’ Brian Pillman and Marcus “Buff” Bagwell. On second thought, Pillman is fine, and actually, Buff and Pillman make for an incredibly energetic babyface team. The ladies in the crowd sure dig them because the cheers for their every move in the opening shine segment are particularly high-pitched. They have a pacey opening segment with lots of fun babyface double-team moves, like punching Taylor back and forth between one another or hitting stereo slingshot crossbody blocks to the floor. I like this Ross and Tony S. team. Tony is solid on color. In fact, he’s solid enough that I wonder if the right dying days WCW Nitro configuration was Scott Hudson on PBP and Tony S. on color rather than the other way around. Actually, the proper configuration was Tony S. on PBP and Stevie Ray and Mike Tenay on color, but Eric Bischoff is an idiot, so I presume Hudson would simply have to be part of this two-man booth. The heels take over and have an okay control segment, but they lose control of it briefly when Pillman makes a comeback. The heels end up doubling up on Pillman and leveraging him into the air for a rope choke. In a neat spot, Smothers then drops Pillman’s legs to walk over to the other corner and draw in Buff (and the ref); Taylor takes the opportunity to suplex Pillman to the floor from his spot on the apron, and Smothers immediately turns away from Buff to walk the apron and land a double-axe to Pillman on the floor. The heels get a couple of close two counts, including off a nice gutwrench powerbomb that Taylor scores on Pillman. I forgot that tag team wrestling helps a wrestler who is a dull worker in singles by halving the time they’re in the ring and allowing them to do some really good stuff and then tag the fuck out instead of following up with some not-so-good stuff. Pillman manages to land a slingshot clothesline and hit a hot tag to Buff, who is a house aflame. Buff sunset flips Smothers as both heels duck down for a double-back bodydrop, but Taylor holds Smothers’s arm to keep his partner from toppling backward. Pillman makes his way back into the ring and dropkicks Taylor away; Buff manages to scoop Smothers up iand complete the sunset flip, earning a three-count for his team. This was an enjoyable tag bout full of energy and was a pleasant watch, especially considering the non-Smothers participants. Recap: Jushin Thunder Liger defeated Brian Pillman for the WCW Light Heavyweight Championship at the Omni in a winter break show back in 1991; he’ll be defending that title at SuperBrawl II, but whom will he face? The result of this upcoming light heavyweight match might shed some light on that according to Ross. Match: Richard Morton is a heel because he’s using his full first name. Or maybe he’s a babyface – has Johnny B. Badd turned face yet? It looks like maybe he has. Badd is too big to be a light heavyweight, and on cue, Ross says that he’s just barely made the cut for the 235-pound limit. Badd takes his Badd Blaster from a tech and declares himself SO PRETTY, and then – what the hell? – we cut to a seven- or eight-year-old girl in the audience wearing a purple feather boa and waving a dollar bill at Badd as she screams his name. I, uh. Um. Well. She drops her dollar bill and looks quite aggrieved about it. Thankfully, Badd doesn't pull a Shawn Michaels and have an unfortunate stripper-like interaction with a child. Someone from the south explain to me how this gimmick got so over particularly with women and girls. Every time I watch these early ‘90s WCW shows, quite a few ladies of various ages in the crowd are like WOOOO, JOHNNY B. BADD, WOOOO. Some of them even wave dollar bills. Even the young ones, apparently. I’ve been watching Marc Mero as the Wildman on 1996 WWF television, and I think he’s the wrong person for Attitude Era WWF even if he doesn’t destroy his knees, but there is some alternate universe in which he’s a big star. Maybe if Golden Era WWF style booking became hot again or if WCW got big without needing Bischoff or the nWo to update the show. This match is okay; both men trade moves until a sudden finish in which Morton hits a crossbody, but Badd rolls through it for three. The commentary desk points out that Badd’s weight advantage earned him that win. Did Badd wrestle Liger on SuperBrawl II? Now I feel that I should watch SuperBrawl II, but I don’t remember that match ever happening. I still feel that I should watch SuperBrawl II whether or not it id because I don’t remember anything about it, and this show is selling me on the endeavor. I’m sure that I’ve seen it on VHS, but that was over thirty years ago. Interview time [w/Eric Bischoff]: Bisch interviews Brian Pillman and Johnny B. Badd, both winners tonight, to see what they think about being potential number one contenders to Liger’s Light Heavyweight Championship. Pillman looks serious; Badd looks to stick one of his kissy-lips stickers on Bischoff’s cheek. Badd manages the feat, grins, points at Bisch, and mouths SO PRETTY to the camera. Mero’s such a dork. Meanwhile, Pillman launches into a corny diatribe in which he complains about Japanese people buying up the United States. Badd shows this dumbass promo the respect it deserves by clowning around and grabbing more kissy-face stickers, including one which he puts on Pillman’s cheek. Pillman responds by punching Badd, who for some reason looks shocked that the xenophobic prick who is mad that Japanese automakers outcompeted American ones is such a dickhead. Pillman is a textbook BINO, of course – a babyface in name only. I do get a kick out of Pillman claiming that he had utmost respect for the Japanese people before saying a bunch of xenophobic shit about Japanese people in this interview, though. Huge I’M NOT A RACIST, BUT... energy. The crowd was as bored by his nonsense as I was. Match: Diamond Dallas Page is wearing a black vest that has the words GOOD GAWD written on it. His buddy Steve Austin of course later improved upon this idea by wearing a black vest with things such as BMF and AUSTIN 3:16 written on it. I’ve decided that in kayfabe, this is where Austin got that idea. Anyway P.N. News is the worst goddam rapper ever. I hate him, and I hate his shitty off-beat raps, and I hate that he’s probably going to go over DDP. I actually don’t hate having to watch News in a short bout all that much. The guy does a dropkick, and while it’s not nearly the best fat-guy dropkick I’ve ever seen, it’s not a total struggle dropkick. News uses his bulk to crush Page, hitting rolling sentons on the prone page and trying an elbowdrop that misses. Page gets control, and I feel that this is one fellow who was always at least pretty solid. He’s one of those guys who understands pro wrestling and what works in a wrestling match enough that I think he immediately had a high floor. You look at guys like Steve Austin or Mean Mark Callous who were in this company as well in the early ‘90s, and they were the same way. I’ve watched enough Mean Mark to recognize that he was always pretty solid. Even what I’ve seen of him in Dallas indicates that he basically got pro wrestling and what makes a match good early on. You can throw Cactus Jack on that list, too. It still staggers me that of those guys I listed, Page is the only one whom WCW really got big things out of – and even for him, he was underutilized and wonkily booked because of the need to keep Hogan happy and the nWo on top. I digress. Page controls for a few minutes and even gets two off a slingshot crossbody, but his corner whip is reversed, and he hits the buckles and stumbles back into News’s arms for a belly-to-belly. News follows with a top-rope splash for three. That was perfectly acceptable stuff. It’s fun to watch early Page being pretty good with the foreknowledge that he becomes extremely good later on. And now, let’s reveal this week’s WCW Top Ten!: Ah, a new segment just for these late ‘80s and early ‘90s WCW shows! Anyway, from ten to one, here are your top ten contenders all vying to become the holder of the big gold belt: Larry Zbyskzo (listed as from “Pittsburg, Pa” rather than Pittsburgh, PA), El Gigante, Vader, Dustin Rhodes, Cactus Jack, Rick Steiner, Ricky Steamboat, Steve Austin (reigning TV Champion), Sting, and Rick Rude (reigning United States Champion), with Lex Luger on top as the current reigning World Heavyweight Champion. Three singles titles, and three heels are holding them. Now, that’s the WCW that I know and that I sometimes wish would get away from their JCP-era mentality that heels should dominate the titles. Interview time [w/Tony S.]: Kip Frye…er, K. Allen Frye…is here to let us all know that Lex Luger will be defending his WCW World Heavyweight Championship at SuperBrawl and also, hey, here’s the WCW debut of Jesse Ventura! Is Jesse going to ref the Luger match or something or just do color commentary going forward? I don’t know; Frye was kind of nervous as he talked and didn’t make himself clear. Ventura is a welcome sight and a welcome addition to the desk (at least if you’re not Jim Ross). Anyway, Ventura is indeed now on color (which as we now know was indeed much to Jim Ross’s chagrin), and Frye asks Tony S. to introduce Luger’s opponent at SuperBrawl. That opponent is Sting. Poor Luger didn’t get his babyface title reign or win over Ric Flair, was given the belt in a panic move once Flair left for New York, turned heel when he finally won that belt, and has spent the past few months feeling like an afterthought until the point at which he could drop the gold back to Sting. Gab Gab Gab: Tony S. sends us to a pre-taped interview in which Luger says that he’s totes in shape, bro, and he’s super-prepared to defend his title against Sting, and he doesn’t care that Sting is his long-time friend (and his often frenemy) because he'll do what he needs to in order to keep the gold. Interview time [w/Tony S.]: Tony S. wants Sting to sign the contract for the match, which Frye hands over to him. Sting signs, then declares himself ready to beat up Luger right here and ow. You’re gonna have to wait until February and SuperBrawl, bud. Ventura hypes both the world title match and his own appearance for SuperBrawl. Yeah, I’m gonna have to watch SuperBrawl II, aren’t I? Match: As DVDVR’s foremost Van Hammer fan, even I can’t get behind Hammer possibly going over Cactus Jack. I hope that everyone who was ever reluctant to push Cactus realized that when you’ve got a wrestler who deeply understands what is compelling about the push-pull of a professional wrestling match and who can connect with fans when given the chance, you run with them even if they don’t look like your ideal big-time wrestler. Hammer walks down the raised ramp, shoots something out of his guitar end and into Cactus's eyes, which is a new one, and then dives over the top rope and onto Cactus for two. Hammer lands a clothesline, then a diving clothesline, and finally a legdrop for two more. Hammer clearly feels the need to end this match quickly, being a neophyte to the game in kayfabe on account of his huge rock career (also in kayfabe). He tries another top-rope clothesline, but Cactus lariats him out of the air and goes to work. The match goes to the floor where Cactus claws at Hammer and does his Mankind squeal before hitting a sunset flip to the concrete from the top. I mean, he does it in the way that he usually does – i,e., he totally misses his man and splatters himself on concrete like the fucking maniac that he is – but the “slab of human meat hits the floor” effect sounds amazing, as does this Hammer powerslam of Cactus onto the raised ramp that gets two. This is a Falls Count Anywhere Match, which I didn’t realize until now. Do you think that Mick would have laid off a bit if he knew that he could preserve his body for an extra two years on the backend of his career and keep collecting that big Attitude Era money in and around the main event? Or would he still take arm drags off the ramp and to the concrete like he just did right now? Probably that second one, huh? Hammer follows with a diving lariat and a cover, but it only gets two. Cactus makes everything an absurd spectacle by sacrificing his health. It’s impressive, but I also feel bad about it because there’s something to be said for making a match a spectacle without degenerating almost every disc in your back or giving yourself CTE. There’s a commercial break, and when we come back, Cactus and Hammer are fighting outside of the arena and moving toward a literal bullpen. A bunch of bulls look on, and maybe I’m personifying them, but I think they look baffled at these idiot humans and their antics. Missy Hyatt is the reporter on the spot, and if I recall the story correctly from Mick’s first book, Missy’s going to end up taking a bath. Anyway, Abdullah the Butcher pops out of hiding nearby; he swings a shovel that is meant for Cactus, but that hits Hammer. Cactus covers Hammer for three in the dirt of the rodeo ring, then resumes his brawl with Abby. Missy Hyatt looks on, and maybe I’m seeing something that isn’t there because I know the story behind these post-match events, but her facial expression as she watches this brawl screams, “I have no clue what these dudes are going to do, but whatever it is, it may involve me, so I’d better stay on my guard.” She also seems genuinely shocked by the unpredictability of the violence. Of course, they work their way over to her, and then Abby grabs her and dunks her in a nearby tub of water. Poor Missy. I can’t tell how much of her distress is acting and how much of it is that she just got dunked in a cold tub of water, but I’d guess that it’s 20/80 acting/genuine freezing distress. I’m sure she’s given an answer online about this at some point. This whole segment felt completely out of control and exciting, by the way. It’s such a weird match and aftermath that I’d put it on the Charming Uniquity list. Match: We come back from break to Big Josh and Brad Armstrong versus the Fabulous Freebirds (Michael Hayes and Jimmy Garvin). Am I happy to see the Freebirds? No. Is this tag match an okay cooldown match after Cactus once again was out here doing too damn much? Yes. Garvin with Precious in the ‘80s is watchable enough, but ‘90s Freebird Garvin is a real bummer. Hayes, of course, is a bummer all the damn time. The ‘Birds manage to hit Armstrong with a double DDT behind the ref’s back and escape with a victory. It was too short to be offensive. Hype package: The Steiner Brothers kick the shit out of a bunch of dudes. We see a list of the Steiners’ victims and titles won. We are also reminded that Dick Slater and Dick Murdoch were a tag team in WCW for a super-short time and put Scott out of wrestlingfor a short time with an injury. Oh yeah, I forgot about that. That team and that angle certainly didn’t last long. We also recall Rick pushing Lex Luger for the world title while Scott was injured. Interview time [w/Eric Bischoff]: Bisch interviews the Steiner Brothers live and points out that they’re the only team to have held the U.S. tag, World tag, and IWGP tag titles. Huh, are they still the only team to have done that? The U.S. tag titles were eliminated around this time (Slater and Barbarian are the final champs if I recall correctly) so they probably still are. Rick cuts a promo in which he promises Arn Anderson and Bobby Eaton an ass whooping so the brothers can get their tag belts back, which they had to give up when Slater and Murdoch kayfabe put Scott out with an injury (and when Scott got bicep surgery, I believe, for a legit injury he had at the time). For a second, I thought that Rick was threatening Murdoch and Slater because he talked about the belts being taken from them even though they never lost them in the ring and suggested that he’d be coming back to give them his own form of justice, but no, he was talking about Arn and Eaton. Match: Thomas Rich is a heel because he’s using his full first name. Aw, I wrote that sentence for Richard Morton, but I didn’t keep up the parallelism and write that sentence for Terrance Taylor. Still, you get the point. The remnants of the York Foundation have assembled on this show to do jobs, is the long and short of it, and Rich is going to job to Vinnie Vegas, who is currently terrible at pro wrestling and needs to get over to the Fed so he can get a few lessons on how to be good at the choreographed graps from Bret Hart. Vegas squashes Rich after ambushing him, scoring a Roll of the Dice (rechristened the Snake Eyes at some point because that’s what he called it in his Nitro-era run) for three. If you were imagining Reno's bad rolling neckbreaker, imagine instead a Hot Shot except onto the corner buckles, is what I’m trying to communicate. Interview time [w/Eric Bischoff]: The Dangerous Alliance is up next in the final two big multi-man tag bouts, and an agitated Paul E. promises to put one of the big babyfaces opposing them in these two matches out of pro wrestling forever. Paul ponders which of his men's opponents is going to be the one to be put out of wrestling (his paraphrased reasoning for why in parenthesis): Barry Windham (couldn’t uphold his part in the Four Horsemen), Dustin Rhodes (his fat daddy sucks and so does he), Ron Simmons (a potential embarrassment to the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. who could end up slumming it in the ghetto for his failures), Ricky Steamboat (will let down and scare his son when the heels disfigure him), or Sting (he gets off without an insult). Paul E. promises that at least one of these babyfaces will end up “in the Magnum T.A. Wrestling Retirement Home.” Oooh, so edgy! Of course, Paul E. can be edgy and also effective, but this promo came off as a bit tryhard. Match: The first match of the semi-main is a trios tag pitting the Dangerous Alliance (Larry Z. alongside the World Tag Team Champions Arn Anderson and Bobby Eaton, w/Paul E.) against Dustin Rhodes, Ron Simmons, and Barry Windham, the latter of which is quite the team. I was just watching 1996 WWF, so I currently see Goldust, Faarooq Asaad, and the Stalker. Hold on, just let me hit myself in the temple with a hammer. Ah, there we go; the mild concussion really cleared things up for me. That’s definitely Dustin, Simmons, and Windham in the ring right now, no gimmicks needed. (As an aside, I’ve been thinking quite a lot about writing about some of these 1996 In Your House shows because of all my 1996 Superstars watching, but that’s for another set of reviews.) This match starts out hot with Eaton and Windham going hard at one another. Windham drops Eaton with a superplex like a minute in at most. He covers, and when the heels try to break up the count, the babyfaces run in and get the heels in stereo Figure Fours. I didn’t recall ever seeing Ron Simmons lock on a Figure Four, so that was like spotting Halley’s Comet except maybe even more gratifying for a pro wrestling fan. Now Simmons is in the ring, and he's flipping out of Arn and Larry’s hammerlocks like a luchador (!!!) before hitting a double arm drag to the heels. Ron Simmons seems like he should be on the shortlist for the best American pro wrestler with the least top-tier matches. Simmons’s athleticism and explosiveness is wild. Dustin and Eaton go at it, and of course, Dustin is tossing Eaton onto the raised ramp and then hitting flying clotheslines over the top rope because the babyfaces are pouring it on. We’ve had some excellent shine segments in these tag matches outside of the Freebirds affair. It takes a little while longer before Eaton ducks a Rhodes crossbody and Rhodes crashes onto the raised ramp. Paul E. takes the opportunity to clobber Rhodes in the ribs with his giant brick of a cell phone. Rhodes is now your face in peril. I know that Rhodes got a lot of shit from fans at the time because he’s Dusty’s kid and nepotism was a common charge, but he’s a good worker on his own merit, and also, he’s usually the guy playing FIP or falling for the okey doke. He got pushed like a promising rookie who was prone to making mistakes and falling to savvy veterans, not like he was some killer, and he had the talent to back up his push. Anyway, Arn counters Rhodes's offensive attempts with a spinebuster and later a DDT. He then tags in Eaton, who drops a Savage Elbow successfully before covering Rhodes for two. Rhodes does get knees up on an Arn dive after Anderson tags back in; he avoids Eaton’s futile attempts to grab him before he can tag out to Windham, the latter of whom goes off until Arn sticks a boot in his back as he hits the ropes. This spurs Simmons and Rhodes to jump the heels; meanwhile, Eaton goes up top and jumps right into a sharp right hand from Windham that catches him on the chops and knocks him right out for three. Windham’s hand was taped because he’s selling a kayfabe hand injury that the heels gave him, so I’m sure Paul E. will complain about it, but hey, that punch was legal. We’re not dealing with a “Hacksaw Duggan tapes his hand in the middle of the match” situation here. Interview time [w/Tony S.]: Windham says the word “damn” twice on TBS! OOOOOH. Anyway, Windham makes it clear that he’s fine hurting his hand while knocking Dangerous Alliance guys out because after they slammed his hand in a car door to injure it, he’s glad to feel some pain as long as he’s dishing it out tenfold at the same time, especially to Larry Z. It’s a quite good promo, which usually isn’t something that I’d say about any of these Barry Windham joints! Gab Gab Gab: Tony S. was on interview duty instead of Eric Bischoff last segment because Jesse Ventura is bumping Tony from the desk and joining Jim Ross to call color for tonight's main event. Ross and Ventura opine upon the possibilities for the upcoming main event tag match. Match: The Dangerous Alliance (WCW World TV Champion Stunning Steve Austin and WCW United States Champion Rick Rude, w/Paul E.) tries to avoid going oh-fer tonight, but beating Sting and Ricky Steamboat is a tall order. Rude tells the slobs in the crowd to look at his chiseled body, especially the ladies who may be disappointed in the flabby guts of their slovenly partners. Austin doesn’t look right with hair. I don’t like it. Cut that ponytail off, ya hippie! Austin and Steamboat stalemate before Austin tries to punch Steamboat’s lights out. He doesn’t quite have his Mudhole Stomp fighting style down yet, so Steamboat punches him right back and wins that exchange. If Steamboat tried to do that to ol’ Stone Cold in 1998, I’m sure he would have inhaled a whole can of whoop-ass instead. This is the least of the non-Freebird match opening shines for a tag team on this show. I will say that getting five tag matches on a two-hour show is awful nice. Southern tags are basically the perfect wrestling match style in my view. You have to be a mega-fuckup to have a bad Southern tag match. Rude walks over and slaps Sting, challenging him to enter the ring. Rude then backtracks hastily as Sting tags in and stalks him. They tangle, and Sting gives Rude an atomic drop (here, Rude takes a wide base and sells the pelvic attack in classic Rude style) before giving him an inverted atomic drop (here, Rude somehow makes his base even wider and almost displaces his hips from their joints as he sells the move in a way that suggests that his pelvis has been temporarily paralyzed by the power of Sting’s knee). Rude’s selling of that move is such a comedy spot, but it still works in the middle of intense matches for some reason. Anyway, Sting splashes Rude before standing over his fallen opponent and stealing his taunt. Austin complains about it, so Steamboat hops in the ring without a tag, splashes Rude, and does the worst Rude hip swivel you or I or anyone who has ever lived has ever done. Austin’s complaining gets louder and more distracting to the ref, so Sting hops back in the ring without a tag (Ross, in answer to Jesse’s complaints about the cheating: “Well, you wanted the legal man back in the ring, didn’t you?”) and tries another splash. This time, Rude flips over and gets knees up, then combines with Austin to put the Stinger in FIP jail. Austin eventually loses control of the match when he blocks a Sting sunset flip, but punches the mat when he’s aiming for Sting’s head and Sting dodges. Sting gets a hot tag; Steamboat blows the heels away before getting a victory roll on Austin that the ref doesn’t count because Sting is milling about in the ring and distracting him; Rude sneaks in and breaks up the pinfall before summarily putting Steamboat in his own cell in FIP jail. Steamer almost steals one by flash pinning Austin, which is when the match breaks down; Rude gets a lecture in his own corner from the ref, and Sting takes the chance to yank Austin outside of the ring, though Austin tosses Sting away. Austin heads back to the ring and hoists Steamboat up, but Sting not only walks back to the ring and leaps off the top and onto Austin, knocking Steamboat backwards onto Austin for a lateral press, but he also stays on top to double the load…and the ref counts the pinfall anyway. What the fuck? Oh WCW, you just couldn’t get through one night without a stupid-ass finish, could you? Would you even be WCW if you didn’t, though? I can’t get mad at you for this. Bless your hearts, WCW. Bless your hearts. The heels bust into the ring and take over; Rude hits Steamboat with a pair of Rude Awakenings while Austin dodges a Stinger Splash. Paul E. gets in the ring and hands Rude a belt. Rude whips Steamboat with it first and then graduates to whipping Sting with it when Sting covers the fallen Steamboat’s body to protect him. Gab Gab Gab: Ross and Ventura send us off, hyping both the WCW Hotline and SuperBrawl. While I have no need for the first, this show did make me want to see the second, so it did its job. As the credits roll, I see text informing me that WCW’s crew dined at The Vintage on Gage Boulevard whenever they were in Topeka. I looked up the restaurant, and much like WCW, it doesn’t exist anymore. It was replaced by a gas station and convenience store. Quite the analogous situation, I’d argue. WCW is, like the Vintage apparently was, the formerly popular local institution and the gas station and convenience store is WWE television. Or AEW television. Whichever you think fits this analogy. Maybe both? I dunno. WCW in 1992 was always fun because of the top-end talent on the roster, even when Bill Watts got the book later in the year. I’ve spent a lot of time in 1992 for this thread, and I’m not sorry to be once again watching wrestling from that year, if only for baseline quality control purposes. 3.5 Digital Snowflakes out of 5.

I played enough of these Virtual Boy games to give you a few proper rankings: Games ready to be placed: Mario Clash - Yeah, this is a hell of a game, one of the few (really, one of the two along with Wario Land) Virtual Boy games that absolutely deserves a remake of some sort. Nintendo missed a trick by not porting this game to the 3DS. It's single-player Mario Bros. amped up to eleven, with all sorts of enemies, most of which you have to hit from the foreground when they're standing in the background or vice versa. Some of them shoot back, some of them have strange movement patterns, and so forth. There is quite a lot of variety to the enemy design, actually. The game also adds elemental challenges to its levels (e.g. floors that have been frozen over and thus slow your movement, especially as you initially try to get momentum to run or jump. In short, it's a classic Nintendo game where they just try a bunch of shit in one game to see what happens. Think of this game in the same spirit as Captain Toad Treasure Tracker, Donkey Kong '94, or for that matter, Super Mario Bros. 3 (which is possibly the best "we just threw a bunch of mechanics and challenges and level designs and enemies and shit, hope it all shakes out okay" game ever made). The other element that makes this game work so well is that it's frantic. You can only jump on Koopa shells; everything else kills you if you touch it. Koopa shells act as they do in other games, so if you hold onto one too long while waiting for the perfect shot, the Koopa Troopa pops his head back out and costs you a life. If you stand in one place too long, a Poodoboo appears and tries to murder you, drifting across the screen at you. The enemies are all moving, smacking into one another, walking through pipes and appearing and reappearing in the background and foreground. You are under a whole lot of pressure to move quickly and be deadly accurate. The feeling of missing a shot that you badly needed, or of triumphantly nailing a shot that you attempted, are pretty much the feelings that you're looking for if you're playing any actionized game. That's a bit diminished on the Virtual Boy NSO, which has a rewind function that I will cop to using when I was sure I made a shot that hit two enemies and then it split them, dammit, and the levels are timed so I only have fifteen seconds left, DAMMIT. I did play this back in the day on native hardware, but I never owned it, though I do recall the welcome tension within the game and can report that it does indeed exist and wasn't just a figment of my nostalgia. Do I have quibbles? Sure. Mario's jump is way too floaty for my tastes, for one. For two, it does take some time to find the rhythm while lining up shots. You might whiff on more than a few shell tosses early on. If you stick with it, though, you get some rewarding gameplay. And again, knocking out an enemy with a well-placed shell toss feels good. The sound effects, the visual of knocking an enemy into the ether, the shell that you scored a hit with sparkling with "try to combo with this bad boy now that it's got a body on it" effects, all of it works incredibly well. TIER: ESSENTIAL. Virtual Bowling - Bad pin action, a shitty meter, striking feels weak instead of feeling like a facsimile of the real thing, bad ball physics...anyway, there is a tournament mode in which silhouettes (because I guess it was too much to draw in features) taunt and/or compliment your bowling skills, so that's neat. I can't imagine that Nester's Funky Bowling is worse than this, but I sure hope that Nintendo helps me find out in an upcoming VB NSO update! TIER: AVOID, AVOID, AVOID. Jack Bros. - Yeah, I hate this game. The opening cinematic is a charming little explanation for what's going on in the game. One of your Jacks stayed in the human world to trick o treat on Halloween too long, and they missed the portal home, so they've got to go the long way. The long way is a series of very short maze segments full of keys that you need to unlock the door to the next part of the maze, but that you can barely see because they're small and also tinted in a red that is too similar to the red that tints the floor. Also, there are boring enemies, some of which you hit because the controls are quite unresponsive. Each time you're hit, you lose time rather than a life; the levels are pretty tightly timed, and at the end of them, you need to efficiently defeat a floor boss. Lose enough time in the maze before you get to the boss (whether through getting hit too often or just from taking slightly too long to reach the boss), and you might as well pound the reset button. I'd still rather play this over any other Shin Megami Tensei game, but that's not saying much. It's only worth a check-out because it's such a weird little entry to that wider series. TIER: NOT WORTH COLLECTING, BUT WORTH PLAYING ON AN EMULATOR. Space Invaders Virtual Collection - Space Invaders is fun, but these motherfucking ships shooting five straight times in a row while I'm slamming the button on this somewhat unresponsive ship I'm controlling to shoot back is not fun. Nor is dying when you think you can fit your ship between two shots, and visually it looks like you should be able to, but you can't. Non-3D Space Invaders (and Space Invaders 2) is also in this package, and while it's not as visually appealing (I do like the 3D space background in the 3D version of the game), it's probably easier to play. I'm not sure why you'd play this version unless you're the type of sicko who loves the Virtual Boy. And YO, that's me! But most of you probably just want to check out the 3D version of this game and then dip after you get your fill of it (so, in about fifteen minutes for most of you, I'd guess). TIER: NOT WORTH COLLECTING, BUT WORTH PLAYING ON AN EMULATOR. V-Tetris - This is regular old 2D Tetris, but in red. Again, I'm not sure why you'd play this unless you were a VB sicko. For me, all of these games would be worth collecting because I have a fucking problem. But for you? TIER: NOT WORTH COLLECTING, BUT WORTH PLAYING ON AN EMULATOR. 3D Tetris - This is irregular new 3D Tetris, and it's ugly and terrible and you're looking straight down the well and trying to place pieces and it's an abomination unto a great puzzle game. TIER: AVOID, AVOID, AVOID. Eventually, I'll write about more N64 games. I did collect a couple more since the last time I wrote about them (Knockout Kings 2000, CyberTiger), and I added a couple more to the list to grab if I can find them at decent prices because of the Jeff Gerstmann N64 project that he's working on (Rat Attack, NHL Breakaway). I have too many games to play, too many books to read, etc., and that's always a great thing, right? I could live to five hundred like David the Gnome and never get bored.

That's part of it, and I've said before how the stuff that was hot in Japan in the '90s like death match wrestling and juniors wrestling pacey matches with lots of good moves being laundered through ECW and into both the mainstream in a sanitized form and through the indies by workers who sometimes had a surface-level sense of what they were aping wasn't my bag. But also, as I think the first few minutes shows with the chatter about how and why this match even got made, this is where the internet discourse around wrestling starts to veer toward a weird mix of people performatively showing they are Serious and Sensible Wrestling Fans by spending tons of keystrokes condemning Workers Who Did Bad Things and the current dystopian endstage of the parasocial relationships that a lot of online wrestling fans have not only with individual wrestlers, but with whole-ass companies that don't give a fuck about them. Again, ECW and the WWF were attempting to build this sort of relationship with their fans in the 1990s, but about here in the early aughts is where social media started to become more common and a more solid line can be drawn to the weirdo WWE and AEW stans who have seemingly wrapped up some part of their personalities and senses of self in what people are saying about the wrestling company that they prefer who post all over the internet today. Hell, Dave Meltzer has become one of those guys, and he's supposed to be a legitimate wrestling journalist and historian, so yeah, we're all the way down the rabbit hole. Anyway, I think a lot of this has roots in the discourse around stuff like Joe/Necro, which they share a bit of in the episode and which matches what I remember. This is where "indie wrestling fan as true fan/fandom gatekeeper and judge of all that is good and bad about wrestling" really started to develop into a full-on subculture in a way that it couldn't back when a small amount of tape traders might have been feeling that way while on Usenet in the 1990s.

This episode is a good capsule of many of the reasons that I slid off most of the indie scene right after WCW died. Samoa Joe is endlessly entertaining, though.

I knew someone would type this. I disagree, but I respect your point. On the other hand, I respect nothing about anyone in the FGC who likes KI. "What if we did a dial-a-combo fighter, but worse? And our black character could initially have enhanced arms, but he could get rid of them in the second game? It's not the same!" Rare were some Vanilla Ice-assed motherfuckers.

Speaking of those Spider-Man games, I spent ten minutes with Sunset Overdrive and it's going to be just like that, I think. I'll save it for after I get done with Crackdown. I was surprised at how cheap a used copy of Rare Replay is. I was even more surprised that the game downloads separate copies of a number of the 360-era Rare games in that collection. That sure cluttered up my home page. Rare is one of those publishers with a lot of beloved games that I think actually somewhat stink, but when they make a good game, they make a good game. Perfect Dark is now playable since it's on a dual analog controller, which means that I can write up a little something about how unnecessary it is to bother with Perfect Dark on its original console in 2026. I'm looking at all this N64-era stuff in the collection, and I feel confident that even minus Goldeneye and the Donkey Kong games, Blast Corps is still easily the best N64-era Rare game to ever be released on the actual N64. I'd probably rather have Goldeneye or Perfect Dark if I had a proper dual-analog controller. Also, if you ever wanted to know what Mortal Kombat would be like if it absolutely sucked, just pick up a controller and fire up some Killer Instinct!

Considering the Fantastics' theme, they may have had more of a claim to that title than either Duggan or DiBiase. Is Coach TK a big territories guy? I thought he was more into '90s New Japan and old Super 8 tournaments.

Tremendous.

You know, people used to meme on that game back in the day, but it's a very fun party game, and the ability to bet your earnings in the final big contest and either go way out ahead or lose most all of it was also a neat twist. I thought the minigames were mostly fun, especially that fireworks minigame. I still haven't played the second one, though. First Light and Second Son are also perfect podcast games where the traversal is so enjoyable that it carries the game and makes the collectathon part enjoyable. Saints Row IV scratches that itch as well.

I remember how excited I was for Crackdown 2 after the twist ending to the first one. Like yeah, I was excited to see how they framed the second game based on that. But then I got Crackdown 2, popped it in, and there were a bunch of zombies or whatever. Boy, was that disappointing. Yesterday, when trying to get to an underboss standing near the top of the lighthouse, I swum behind it, climbed the cliffs next to it, and then jumped up planks on the back of the lighthouse before dropping down onto him and simply booting him off the walkway, not a bullet fired or needed to kill him. It's too bad that the third one doesn't give you that freedom, but I'm going to play it anyway. My short list of XBOX One-specific games to look for when I hit one of the nearby retro stores this weekend: Sunset Overdrive Rare Replay Crackdown 3 In other news, I ghosted the CIA Listening Post in Rome for the first time while playing Alpha Protocol. Feels good! As I make the transition away from PlayStation and to PC, I'm slowly gathering GOG games. I have 360 discs for games like AP and Fallout: New Vegas, but having cheap backups via GOG doesn't hurt. I'm in the market for an external disc drive for my all-in-one so that I can burn those installers to disc AND so that I can reinstall my publisher copy of Lionhead Studios' The Movies, a game with a gameplay loop that is even nastier than Civilization or Football Manager. Once, I popped it in at about ten in the morning, played for what felt like a couple hours, then looked up at a clock and saw that it was seven in the evening. Disgusting. After that, I put myself on a strict time diet for this game. I set timers on my fucking phone when I play it. It's been a few years since I have, but it's the summer and I have time to waste six hours of a random Tuesday putting five different movies into production on the lot at the same time. God, I love that game so much. I'm in the market for the first device that is essentially about as easy as a console while being open like PC. I want a device that docks like a Switch, so something like a ROG Ally, but without having to make a bunch of shit work to play a game, which is the worst thing about PC gaming. Even playing Alpha Protocol on PC is a pain in the fucking dick sometimes with controller issues, etc., and that's a sixteen-year-old game or whatever that should (in my console-enjoying eyes) just run. It really did not like my PS4 controller at all, and then even with the XBOX controller occasionally, the left bumper won't trigger the special abilities and I have to exit and mess with the settings. There has to be some way to make PC gaming consolized enough to make people like me happy. I also dug my Saturn and OG Xbox out of storage. They both need some TLC, so I'm going to clean them. Right now, I'm gearing up to create a little area in the home office/guest room with a CRT television that has a VCR in it and then a series of my old consoles ready and playable next to it along with some of my old VHS tapes (and I'm going to collect a few more just for the heck of it). I'm going to go deeper into retro game collecting, as expensive as it can be.

I've moved over to revisiting 1982 Mid-South while riding my exercise bike, and JYD is so fucking cool. That is all.

My wife does a lot of Buy Nothing, both picking up stuff and giving away stuff. She went to pick up some shelving from a fella in our area who worked at Microsoft, and he gave her a loose console that he was planning to get rid of for free. I didn't even look at it; I thought it was an XBOX Series S, which is useless to me since it's an all-digital console. We kept it around on one of the new shelves. A couple of days ago, I figured out that I needed to get an XBOX controller to effectively play Alpha Protocol (it does not like the Dualshock 4's analog triggers, which makes lockpicking an adventure). I went to check out this console and see if the dude had thrown in a controller, and I found out that what this dude actually gave us was an XBOX One S, not a Series S. And best of all, it's a One S with a disc drive. Long story short, I'm playing through Crackdown for the first time in years, and it's one of the best podcast games ever. They could have cut out all the combat and driving and just put orbs around the city, and I'd have fun hunting for and collecting them without needing any other gameplay. I killed off half a Between the Sheets mainline podcast after the dishes were done and the house was quiet last night The list of emulated games is sadly short, especially for the OG XBOX, so that's disappointing, but I'll probably play through Crackdown and Panzer Dragoon Orta soon. So much for Shining Force. And then I'm gonna check out this Developer Mode deal...