SirSmUgly
-
Posts
8,149 -
Joined
-
Days Won
9
Posts posted by SirSmUgly
-
-
I guess that I'm the odd person out here because generative AI is a pretty handy workflow tool for me.
It's especially useful at helping me quickly make documents accessible.
It also handles extensive HTML so I don't have to.
And it is a strong proofreader of the instructions that I am writing for other actual humans.
That doesn't mean that I ask it to generate something and blindly take whatever it gives me. I need to be intellectually active in getting what I want out of it and discarding the suggestions or ideas that it is bad at. I need to think deeply about my prompts and my follow-up revisions/adjustments to the output from the prompt so that I get something useful out of it. That other people are lazy as shit about using it doesn't surprise me because people are lazy as shit about using all sorts of tools. Once we entered the information age, people started offloading thinking to Ask Jeeves and shit like that, so we've been dealing with this underlying issue for a long time (and the United States is an especially anti-intellectual, lazy-thinking culture which numerous thinkers have meticulously written about and made the case for, so for those of us in the States, this should be par for the course).
It's a tool that is not "smart" enough to replace human beings. Like any other tool, it has reasonable use cases and cases in which it shouldn't be used. But it's a tool, not a replacement. I think the typical braindead CEO would love for it to be a replacement for humans, of course.
I do think that generative AI use is a literacy that people are going to need to know across most fields lest they be left behind. The problem here is that we're not having useful conversations about best practices and respecting the human labor that both makes generative AI a useful tool in the first place and that also will be needed to utilize the tool successfully across fields in the second place.
-
57 minutes ago, SirFozzie said:
As I said, it's not necessarily gimmicks that didn't work, just gimmicks that no one expected should work. Like again, did anyone think someone talking about the Ho train would be a gimmick that would work?
In 1998?
Yeah, I would think it would work then. That gimmick probaly only works in the time period that it did.
But I understand your point.
I'd add Hugh Morrus (Laughing Man, Gen. Rection) to this list.
-
I listened to Jeff Gerstmann's review, and he said that the game is very parry-focused, which would be my big issue. Being parry-focused works for Batman because he's a normal dude using jiu-jitsu against like ten guys at a time in the Arkham Asylum games, which means that his strategy naturally has to be reactive. Being parry-focused for Wolverine makes zero sense because he's a mutant with a natural healing factor who's had claws implanted into his knuckles made from the same shit as Captain America's shield.
A Wolverine game should not have combat heavily focused on comboing out of parries. It should have combat akin to an action-adventure version of Bulletstorm or Doom 2016 where the player is pushed to attack first and keep the attack up or be at risk of getting murked. Wolverine should have combat that gives you a ton of offensive openers and a healing factor that is tied to continuous attack and not to making sure that you finish a combo out of a parry.
Of course, I've got to play the game myself to see, but if the combat systems are as Gerstmann described them, I'll enjoy the game well enough while also being just about ready to ditch the Arkham-style parry-focused combat in superhero games.
-
1
-
-
3 hours ago, SirFozzie said:
Let's see. Papa Shango - Kama the Supreme FIghting Machine the Nation of Domination - The Godfather - The Goodfather. (plus he gets bonus points for the sheer imagery if the Godfather gimmick was tried in 2026. I can just see Michael Cole trying to explain to Pat McAfee: "As you know, Pat, the Godfather boasts about being the leader of a nationwide prostitution ring".).
Papa Shango and the Godfather were entertaining gimmicks, though.
If it only takes two bad gimmicks to fit this category, Luger in the WWF went from the Narcissist to the All-American instead of just being the cocky, Torture Rack-using Luger everyone knew and loved.
-
2
-
-
39 minutes ago, Stefanie Sassypants said:
Co-sign, it might be in my top five of wrestling TV ever. It really puts over the importance of the stipulation, and Freddie Miller showing up and saying the loser would be welcome down in Georgia is just a fantastic touch. It's even better when you watch Memphis in chronological order for a couple of years and then it builds to this point.
I love that and the follow-up where Eddie Marlin is despondent that no matter who wins, he's losing a huge draw.
-
2
-
-
I think the nice thing about TLoZ is that everyone has their own favorite and all of those choices make sense.
Link's Awakening is by far my favorite as someone who thought the series was just fine before I played it on Game Boy. Even the less-popular games in the mainline series make fine entrypoints.
-
1
-
-
I don't think this has been posted here, but this episode full of build for Lawler/Dundee Loser Leaves Town is all here, and it's one of my favorite Memphis TV episodes around:
-
1
-
-
Yeah, Nintendo started split digital/physical pricing on its first-party games with the Yoshi game earlier this year.
I am fine with paying the extra ten bucks for a physical card.
-
1
-
-
Excited for a new 2D Metroid and that 3D Kirby looks fun (and I really liked Forgotten Land).
However, it's been a decade since the last full 3D Mario game and six years since the bite-sized Bowser's Fury. If the trade-off for getting a new 3D Donkey Kong was twelve or fourteen years between 3D Mario games, it was a bad trade for me.
-
2
-
-
That's my bad, it's meant for Cody.
I assume that would be Dustin's regular attire.
-
1
-
-
7 minutes ago, supremebve said:
I can't even picture Cody Rhodes in street clothes. I feel like he would have no idea what to wear if his gardener was sick and he had to go out and cut his own grass.
Sounds like there might be potential in a feud centered around a heel sneaking onto the Rhodes residence and getting a paparazzi-style photo of him pushing a lawnmower while wearing faded basketball shorts, a Texas Longhorns XL shirt with a hole in it, and trainers with frayed shoelaces, then threatening to release it to the WWE UNIVERSE (tm) unless he was granted an immediate title shot.
-
1 hour ago, Sex Machine Gun said:
Probably should have said my answer as to a potential Road Warriors-role team was a joke.
I got it. That's why I responded like Vince McMahon trying to hire Droz while self-consciously on camera during a documentary shoot.
(Though I did actually get a bit queasy at the idea of ol' Ron and Don destroying their opponents in three-minute squashes all over WWF television, I have to say.)
-
1
-
-
I think the card in general punched above its weight. What I've found is that when these 1995 WWF shows are mediocre or flat-out bad, like ninety percent of it is on creative. The talent roster can put on a watchable card in their sleep if they're booked half-competently.
-
1
-
-
1 hour ago, clintthecrippler said:
I did a Mid-South/UWF watch project a couple years back and there was a brief feud in summer 1985 between the Fantastics and the team of Bill Dundee and Dutch Mantel that was damn fun for the time it lasted, and any other year and territory it absolutely would have been a main event tag team program - and I think it can be argued that getting the tag belts over to this feud would have been better for everyone involved than what they ended up doing with Al Perez and Wendell Cooley a few weeks later.
I am still upset that we never got Fantastics vs. Jake and Barbarian with the titles on the line. Watts and Grizzly put the belts on the fourth-most over/heat-getting team they had.
This feud did rule, by the way.
-
1
-
-
10 minutes ago, zendragon said:
I'd say the Blu Brothers would at least be an upgrade over Bundy, not much but something
Yeah...but we are really scraping the bottom of the barrel here.
The truth is that the WWF midcard's revival was directly related to Hogan flushing out a bunch of interesting talent in WCW's upper midcard, and that is still in progress this early in 1995.
-
1
-
-
5 hours ago, MarcosLoura said:
I started playing 4 and they kind fucked this one up huh? I was really looking forward to talk with my main man Rodney Mullen and have to manual some crazy shit. No more career mode was kind of a gut punch honestly. Lots and lots of changes with the levels and goals.
Meh.
Yeah, I think these peaked at THPS 2. Some people say THPS 3 because they added revert, but it's like one extra timed button press before you go into your manual so you can keep chaining tricks and I like THPS 2's maps way better than THPS 3's.
Then they started doing open worlds and whole-ass stories in each game and all that shit. Fuck that. I just want my little arcade-style two-minute challenge, snappy platforming mechanics, and interesting level designs.
-
21 minutes ago, Sex Machine Gun said:
The Blu Brothers, duh!
I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna PUKE! I'M GONNA PUKE!
Lawler is at least a good worker. I'm not out here trying to watch anyone in the Million Dollar Corporation work matches outside of maybe Bam Bam and eventually (once the stable was finally, mercifully about dead) the 1-2-3 Kid.
The other problem is that Gary Hart was an expert talker and Paul Jones at least had that fucking mustache you wanted to punch right off his face. DiBiase on the mic is human Sominex more often than not.
QuoteLuger has the experience edge in a match that can be won by escaping the cage (IYKYK)
-
WWF SummerSlam ‘95 (27 August 1995):
A show in which most of the Kliq hurts their metaphorical backs from trying to carry the show and one of the Kliq hurts his literal back from trying to carry the show
- We are on the edge of the Monday Night Wars era, and the WWF is still stuck at a creative nadir. There is one famous match on this show that elevates it above most of the major shows in 1995 WWF, but having seen the full show once or twice in my youth decades ago, I can’t remember much about what surrounded that match. I don’t have high hopes for that stuff, honestly, but I’m always ready to be pleasantly surprised.
- Hype package: King Mabel vs. Diesel for the WWF World Championship, Bret Hart vs. Isaac Yankem, Kama vs. the Undertaker, and Razor Ramon vs. Shawn Michaels in the Intercontinental Championship Ladder Match get video clips and snippets of promos played over dramatic string music while Todd Pettengill does his best growly Vince McMahon voiceover impression to hype these bouts. First of all, Pettengill sucks at voiceovers just as much as he does at interviewing or hosting, in case you were wondering (but you probably already guessed that). Second of all, after being reminded of the “big matches” on this card other than Shawn/Razor, I have even lower hopes for that stuff and am further doubting the possibility of being pleasantly surprised.
- Gab Gab Gab: Vince McMahon and Jerry Lawler will stink it up in the booth tonight. Lawler is juiced about the chance that current reigning King of the Ring Mabel will beat Diesel. Then, oh fuck me, we’ve got Dean Douglas stationed at a chalkboard to give his opinions on some of the matches tonight. This WWF run for Shane Douglas was so catastrophic that it locked him out of jumping back to the WWF with the Radicalz in 2000 because Vince didn’t want him. If he could have just stayed in ECW in 1995 and then jumped in 2000 after his WCW stint, or stayed in ECW in 1995 and then jumped to the WWF in 1998 when Shawn wasn’t around anymore and he had guys like Austin and Foley who likely would have been open to working with him toward the top of the card, he'd have vastly altered his career trajectory and might have been able to avoid slumming it in TNA as a broken-down (and watered-down) version of the Franchise in the mid-aughts. This Dean Douglas run was only about four months or something like that, but it essentially doomed this guy’s career in the long run. I am comparatively low on him as a worker, but damn. Then again, there’s a decent chance he burns his bridges in the WWF anyway except a few years later, so who really can tell?
- Match: You know who was wasted this time as a regular midcard loser? The 1-2-3 Kid, who was a consistently over midcarder. They should have run with him as the Intercontinental Champion for a couple months in 1995 instead of sticking the belt back on Shawn Michaels. I get that they eventualy wanted to run a match with multiple titles on the line between Diesel/Michaels and Owen/Yokozuna, but there has to be a way to get to that match without needing all the titles on the line as a conceit. I suppose it worked out well from an aesthetic standpint since we got this second ladder match between Razor and HBK in service of that ultimate feudpoint, but still, I feel that the Kid deserved to break through as either a singles wrestler or a tag wrestler, and his two tag title reigns barely broke a week in total length between them. If belts are props, this guy needed to carry around one of those props to elevate his stature commensurate with his overness.
- Anyway, Kid is out here to wrestle Hakushi, which is almost certainly going to be good. Hakushi did a job to Barry Horowitz on Action Zone “earlier today” because of Skip’s botched interference. There was no better midcard heel available to take that loss? Really? I suppose since Hakushi can’t promo in English, Vince is about bored with him.
- The Kid and Hakushi trade go-behinds and headlocks and wristlocks, but Hakushi yanks Kid’s hair to take him down, so the Kid kips up and uses the top rope to lucha his way into an arm drag. Both men pick it up and do a nice rope-running spot into a stalemate. The crowd chants 1-2-3 instead of U-S-A. Good for them! Was Gorman in this crowd? If he was (as I think he has written elsewhere), the ham 'n eggers wisely looked up to him as a model for good crowd chanting.
- What an enjoyable opener; Kid and Hakushi keep countering one another. Hakushi establishes a stronger striking game, and Kid is squirrely and prefers counters, especially while on the run. When the match slows down, Hakushi controls. He sticks Kid with a Muta-style handspring back elbow and gets rapturous applause from a bunch of fans on the hard camera side. The babyface fans counter with boos and another 1-2-3 chant while Hakushi lands more strikes and a seated splash to Kid in the corner that would have been a Bronco Buster had Hakushi grabbed the ropes and kept bouncing. Maybe in kayfabe the Kid stored how humiliating taking that splash was in the back of his head for later use, huh?
- Hakushi feels confident; he sizes up a series of kicks to the injured Kid, who sells them very nicely. Hakushi unloads his offensive arsenal, next scoring a Vader Bomb and then going into a nerve hold that Kid almost immediately works to a standing base from; Hakushi drops the hold, chops the Kid, back body drops him into the lights, kicks him to the floor, and hits a somersault senton over the top rope. That sequence was sick as hell. Hakushi tosses Kid back into the ring and scores a diving shoulderblock, then covers for about 2.7.
- Watching Hakushi hit offense is fun, but it’s time for the Kid’s comeback; the Kid rolls away from a Hakushi top rope splash and scores a series of kicks before dropkicking Hakushi to the floor and landing a springboard splash over the top rope before putting Hakushi back in the ring and getting two on a cover after a slingshot guillotine legdrop. Kid looks for a knockout blow with a successful frog splash (!!), but that only gets two as well. The Kid picks up steam and hits the ropes as Hakushi wobbles on his feet, but as the Kid tries a wheel kick, Hakushi plucks him out of mid-air and buries him with a counter-powerbomb for three. Wow, put two good wrestlers in a pacey opener and it gets the crowd going! Who would ever have thought?! This one is absolutely an Undercard Gem. I do wish the Kid was getting a better (babyface) push, though. Instead, he’s going to end up as a heel in the fucking Million Dollar Corporation before leaving the company and vastly improving his station by instead being a heel in the nWo.
- Interview time [w/Dok Hendrix]: Hendrix is fucking annoying as he asks Mabel to reveal his elaborate “beat Diesel, become champ” plan for later this evening. Mabel refuses, and then quotes the common phrase, “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, won’t…won’t get fooled again.” Oh, no, wait, it was an idiot POTUS who said that. No, not that idiot POTUS. No, not that idiot POTUS either. Dammit, the point is that Mabel assures us that he won’t be fooled once or twice, and certainly not thrice, in his quest to finally end Diesel’s world title run. Then he cackles like he’s aiming for the nickname “Mad King Mabel.”
- Match: Hunter Hearst Helmsley makes his first PPV appearance, kickstarting a reign of terror that has probably not yet ended because I’m guessing that the guy has been on camera for a recent WWE PLE. Everything about Triple H is aggressively mediocre, from his wrestling to his promos to his presentation (and probably to his creative ideas, though I don’t watch the shows and am open to being wrong about this), but at least at this point, he has listenable theme music. That’s a plus! He’s wrestling the equally mediocre (except for that sweet dropkick) Bob Holly. You know who is up for some WWF action tonight? This very active Pittsburgh crowd. When Bob Holly is getting a solid babyface pop, you know a crowd is happy to be in the arena.
- Trips shies away from locking up with the smelly Southern race car driver, so Holly grabs and slams him. Hunter soon lands a few hard chops; Holly fires back with a big right hand and then charges Hunter, who hits him with a Snake Eyes and then lands a number of strikes in the corner. I’ll give these guys this much: They are exerting maximum effort. Holly takes a hard back bump off a corner whip which the crowd gasps at.
- Even considering the wrestlers’ efforts, this match is ultimately watchable without being much more than that, which is mostly the story of both these guys’ careers (with rare exceptions). During this match, we see the freshly heel-turned British Bulldog arriving at the arena on split screen, and since this is yet another dull-ass HHH heel control segment – though it doesn’t nearly reach the utter depths of bleakness that his typical 2002-and-beyond control segments would – I have no problem with taking attention away from it.
- Holly makes a comeback with first a counter DDT and then his very pretty dropkick. Holly successfully hits a series of moves, including a less-pretty dropkick than he normally lands, but he ducks down after shooting Hunter into the corner, and Trips rebounds off the buckles and quickly hooks Holly’s arms, then scores a Pedigree to escape with a pinfall victory. Inoffensive stuff that I won’t remember I watched tomorrow.
- Hype package: The WWF sent a team of wrestlers to yank a bunch of Pittsburgh-area firefighters into a lake or river or whatever for charity. Pettengill talks over this package in his regular voice. Still annoying, but at least not a bad imitation of someone else’s much more entertaining voice.
- Match: The Blu Brothers (w/Uncle Zeb Coulter) wrestle the Smoking Gunns. The camera catches some blonde lady in the crowd screaming BILLY, WOO!, which I think is an indicator of which guy from this tag team might be in line for at least a minor singles push someday. I mean, unless the other guy in from the tag team has a nasty right hand and goes around shoot knocking people out. Maybe you could push that other guy with a One Punch Man sort of gimmick where he gets a slick-talking manager to gab for him and his matches are worked around people trying to avoid that punch.
- Anyway, Billy starts out against whichever Blu Brother got that unfortunate SS tattoo on his right arm rather than his left arm. Lawler claims that the racist guy with the Nazi tattoo on his right arm is Jacob. Sure, whatever, let’s go with that. I’m not going to keep track, though, so we’ll probably just stick with Ja/oE and Ea/oJ going forward. The crowd is behind the Gunns, at least. The issue with this bout is that while the Gunns are a solid tag team, they aren’t the kind of team that can elevate a match against a couple of bums.
- The Blu Brothers take over after the shine segment with an H-Bomb behind the ref’s back, but the move has not reached the height of its powers yet and Billy kicks out at two. Some stuff happens. Billy, like Bob Holly, takes a hard corner bump after being shot in to try and stave off viewer drowsiness during a snoozer of a heel control segment. I do think that Billy Gunn tries awfully hard to be interesting. The truth of it is that he’s a good tag worker. He didn’t have it as a singles guy, but it’s more than okay to be a tag team specialist in terms of best use case. Anyway, Bart gets a hot tag, knocks Ja/oE into Ea/oJ, and then teams up with Billy on a Sidewinder to score the victory. This was another match that was competent if forgettable, but I do enjoy Billy and Bart on offense more than I enjoy babyface Bob Holly on offense.
- Hype package: Barry Horowitz stopped losing for long enough to embarrass Skip and Sunny. Horowitz has one pinfall victory and one “survived for ten minutes” victory against Skip, and this suddenly-peaking athlete is ready to go tonight, though in his promo pic, he’s dressed like a slightly annoyed accountant who is upset that you are asking him to procure for you a rebate on your tax return for office supplies, but you haven’t bought any of the receipts. I suppose this is meant to communicate that Horowitz is Jewish? And therefore naturally good with money? Is that why Vince had him dress up like some kind of dork with the huge glasses and the dress shirt for this promo picture?
- Look, as a black person from the West Coast, my understanding of Jewish Americans is different from someone’s from the Northeast. As a teen, I once (innocently, I promise) asked a Jewish person if they weren’t also white, having thought at the time that basically Jewish Americans counted as such (I think, in retrospect, that I thought that they eventually were considered pretty much white like Irish and Italian Americans). Anyway, the point is that most of what I know about Jewish American culture, I learned from Mel Brooks, Larry David, and Philip Roth, so it takes me a little longer to spot some of the slick shit that people do to portray Jewish folks in a racist manner, but I think this Barry Horowitz promo picture might be one of them.
- Match: Skip (w/Sunny, who keeps up a steady stream of smack talk on her way to the ring) faces Barry Horowitz on WWF PPV. I dig Horowitz, who was an excellent underneath guy, but if he’s on your company’s PPV in the midcard, you probably need to work harder at making new stars. I forgot that what sounds like a MIDI version of “Hava Nagila” was Horowitz's theme, so yeah, I guess “he’s Jewish!” is his gimmick. What is this, 1975 WWWF?
- Horowitz unloads on Skip and even does a Boss Man Punch spot, which is a cool spot that I would steal if I were a pro wrestler. Skip bounces around nicely before taking over and punching Horowitz in the face while making a shoulder slap for emphasis, and even though the camera is getting a close shot of these punches, Skip does a fine job of hiding the slap because Chris Candido is a professional who takes pride in maintaining the illusion that someone might actually be landing a strike in there. Bless him.
- Horowitz manages two on a flash rollup, then catches Skip walking over to him as he stands on the apron and suplexes him all the way to the floor (to a really nice pop). Sunny gets in the ring in frustration and even tries to hand over a white towel to ref Earl Hebner so that Skip can stop getting his ass kicked in there. Hebner: THIS IS NOT BOXING; THIS IS WRESTLING. YOU! GET OUT! So I don’t think he’s going to accept that towel toss because this is a pro wrestling match, which I suppose means that Bob Backlund might have been right about never losing the WWF World Championship to the Iron Sheik in 1983.
- I don’t know why Sunny is so panicked; Skip takes over when the action re-enters the ring. The crowd starts a BAR-RY chant after Skip lands a guillotine legdrop and begins to celebrate. Skip ignores the noise and lands a gutwrench suplex and a glancing blow on a diving fistdrop. He high-fives Sunny, punches Horowitz, and boot chokes him before demanding that the cameraperson at ringside GET A SHOT OF THIS LOSER. Pride goeth before a fall, Skip; Horowitz starts his comeback, gets a couple of two-counts of shoulderblocks, and manages a third two-count on a sunset flip before Skip cuts him off with a lariat.
- This match surprises me in that I figured it would be a fun bout, but the crowd getting behind Horowitz and both men timing Skip’s cutoffs of Horowitz comeback attempts have made this better than I anticipated. This Pittsburgh crowd is game for tonight’s proceedings in general, and considering the previous Big Five shows from this year were full of mostly bored fans, I appreciate the hell out of them for improving this show.
- After both men try dropkicks at the same time and miss, they work a nice series of counters in the corner that ends with Skip dropping a diving headbutt for two. He covers Horowitz…and yanks him up at two. Horowitz makes his inevitable comeback after that and goes up top to finish off his opponent, but Sunny hops on the apron and trips him. That allows Skip to catch Horowitz up top and superplex him, but Hakushi walks back down to ringside having already gone one-for-one tonight and preparing to put a cherry on top of his victory sundae by helping Horowitz out. He squares up to Skip and challenges him, but instead of actually hitting Skip and causing a DQ loss for Horowitz, he springboards over Skip and rolls out of the ring. That distraction allows Horowitz to grab Skip in a small package for three and a third straight victory over the Body Donna, and what the hell is a “Body Donna” supposed to be, anyway? You tell me because I don’t know. This match didn’t quite hit that Undercard Gem level for me, but I dug the heck out of it for what it was.
- Gab Gab Gab: Dean Douglas reviews the end of the previous match and ham-handedly stuffs a definition of the word vivify into said review. It sucks. If this guy isn’t standing next to a cute lady with huge boobs while cussing, he isn’t close to making it happen on the mic.
- Interview time [w/Todd Pettengill]: Compared to Pettengill, Douglas is Terry Funk on the stick, though. Pettengill yammers over clips from the WrestleMania X Ladder Match before talking to Shawn Michaels, who claims that Razor and HBK are the only two guys who can put on a show in this type of match. I exclaimed WRONG out loud in the same tone as Dom DeLuise in Blazing Saddles. This is another slight toward the G.O.A.T. Bret Hart, and I won’t stand for it! Anyway, Michaels says that it sticks in his craw that he lost that WM X match (read: so he needs to get his win back) and then claims that the only thing he has in his whole life is the WWF Intercontinental Championship that he just recently won off Jeff Jarrett and is defending in tonight’s Ladder Match, which if you ask me is a depressingly sad and pathetic thing for a hero babyface to say. I don’t think you’re supposed to be bumming me out in your pre-match promo, HBK. This promo was solid, but seriously, get therapy or join a men’s group or something, Shawn.
- Match: So Rhonda Sing is in her “working a fat-lady-thinks-she’s-pretty gimmick" era, here portraying Bertha Faye (w/Harvey Wippleman). I presume that Faye’s gimmick boiling down to "trashy fat woman" was in some form Vince Russo’s idea considering that he booked her as a trashy fat woman during his first booking stint on Nitro in 1999. You see, the comedy here is supposed to be that Bertha is bigger than her beau Harvey. It’s hilarious. Trust both Vince and Vince. Faye is wrestling Alundra Blayze for the WWF Women’s Championship, which is about to disappear from WWF television along with Blayze herself. Of course, it ends up being tossed into a trash can on Nitro. If I had a nickel for every title belt that was tossed into a trash can on an episode of Nitro, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that I’d have even that many.
- Despite Bertha Faye having a Roseanne Barr gimmick that is about four or five years too late, both of these ladies are decent workers, so the match itself is yet another pretty good Alundra Blayze match. Blayze is probably one of those ladies who would have had a pretty good stateside career had she come along in the mid-tens. They work a nice big woman/little woman match in which Blayze uses her lightning kicks and speed to flummox Faye at the beginning before Faye hits a series of body blocks to knock Blayze down.
- I think Faye is fun because she talks shit in between moves, which is almost always a plus with me. She drags Blayze to the corner and goes up to the second rope, but her splash attempt misses when Blayze rolls out of the way. Blayze springs to her feet and scores a victory roll for two, but Faye blocks Blayze’s follow-up knee strikes and trips her, then slams Blayze and covers for two. Blayze matrices out of the pinfall attempt and knocks Faye to the mat three times, but Wippleman distracts the ref when she covers Faye.
- In a great spot, Blayze pulls off the cover and chases Wippleman around the ring. The part of the spot that makes it great is that Wippleman does a header over the ring steps accidentally, and so Blayze catches up to him and rips his jacket off as the crowd laughs. They easily save the spot when Wippleman wriggles away and takes off again, but his earlier distraction pays off: Blayze drops her pursuit, gets back in the ring, and gets two on a crucifix, then earns two more on a rana, but she misses the third in a trio of missile dropkicks and eats a sit out powerbomb for three. Bertha Faye hugs Harvey Wippleman as ol’ Harv brings Faye the Women’s Championship belt. Maybe you should keep the gold on her instead of putting it back on Madusa, McMahon. Just a thought.
- Interview time [w/Jim Ross]: Ross shouldn’t be on these fucking aisle interviews, and I’m going to keep typing this until he’s on lead PBP where he fucking belongs. Wippleman tells Ross that when it comes to Faye, Ross needs to keep his hands to himeslf and his eyes at face level, but Ross points out that he’s happily married, and having seen pictures of Jan, I genuinely salute him for having well outkicked his coverage. Wippleman and Faye talk about how rad they are and Faye asserts that she’s a hottie with a devoted boyfriend and gold jewelry, so who can possibly fuck with her? That’s a paraphrase, but she’s feeling herself and listed those things as evidence of how awesome she is. Fair play!
- Hype package: Todd Pettengill once again performs the voice over as we recap the latest in this dismally unentertaining series of events between the Undertaker and various members of the Million Dollar Corporation, with a focus on Kama stealing 'Taker's fresh new urn back at WM XI five – five! – months ago, melting it down, costing the Undertaker a King of the Ring tournament match, and finally attacking one of his planted Creatures of the Night on a 1995 Superstars episode that I recently watched.
- Match: This Undertaker (w/Paul Bearer) vs. Kama (w/Ted DiBiase) bout is a Casket Match, which I somehow failed to realize until the end of that previous hype package. This would be a better prospect for a match if the casket worked like it does in Lucha Underground and Kama died after being put in it, only to be resurrected in that updated Papa Shango gimmick that WWF creative didn’t go forward with. Yeah, that would have been amazing. Alas, we’re probably just going to get a shitty Casket Match, which is a shame as this is one of my favorite gimmick match types.
- I suppose upon immediate reflection that my suggestion that this would be a “shitty Casket Match” was an emotional overstatement. I’ve seen shitty Casket Matches. For example, the one at Survivor Series ’92 where Kamala was just too broken down to work it properly. ’83 Kamala would have been fun in that match, but alas. At least Kama in 1996 is a solid athlete who does a good job of selling fear when he’s knocked into the coffin. Plus, he’s one of ‘Taker’s boys, so ‘Taker is working hard for him. Hell, he hits a diving clothesline from the top rope on ‘Taker, so that’s cool! It’s just that for his look, his size, and his athleticism, he should be better. That’s the issue. He’s a guy who is entertaining when he has a fun or interesting gimmick (Papa Shango, Nation of Domination Kama, the Godfather) and when that gimmick isn’t working (Supreme Fighting Machine Kama, the Goodfather), he’s not compensating for that with good matches. He’s just dull, with some nice kicks and the occasional impact move, but with no interesting connective work or anything of that nature.
- So mostly, this match is just “generally dull” rather than “actively shitty.” There are solid spots scattered sparsely throughout this thing: the aforementioned top-rope clothesline, the Undertaker taking a crisp back bump onto the lid of the coffin after eating another clothesline, Paul Bearer knocking out referees while trying to get at DiBiase after DiBiase kicks the Undertaker. That last one is so out of character for Bearer that it might be my favorite spot in the match. Bearer is sick and tired of this never-ending feud between ‘Taker and the Million Dollar Man’s proxies as I am, huh?
- ‘Taker blocks a piledriver attempt on the casket, but he rebounds into a Kama floatover powerslam and gives his old buddy a visual three count when Kama makes the cover and begs the ref for a count. This is a Casket Match, of course, so no dice. Kama then puts ‘Taker in a chinlock, but it’s an awesome chinlock. Here’s why: Kama hoists his feet onto the ropes for leverage, so Bearer walks over there, knocks Kama’s feet off the ropes, and then - and I replayed this twice just because I enjoyed it so much – Fargo struts away in celebration. Some guys seem like they were built in a lab to be pro wrestling managers, and Paul Bearer is one of those guys.
- Kama follows up with a much-less-awesome chinlock, but look, it’s okay. After entirely too long, ‘Taker back suplexes his way out…and then doesn’t make his comeback. Hurry it up in there, fellas. OK, finally, ‘Taker lands his signature diving clothesline and begins his final comeback. Both men spill into the coffin after a ‘Taker lariat, and they do the spot where Kama tries to crawl out and gets dragged back in, though Kama doesn’t make as much of a meal of it with his facial expressions as Shawn Michaels would when performing this exact same spot at the ’98 Royal Rumble. Then again, who would or could make more of a meal of that spot than Michaels?
- Finally, both men get back in the ring, where the Undertaker lands a chokeslam and then spikes his large opponent with a Tombstone in a very impressive spot for such big men before rolling Kama into the casket and closing the lid for the victory. That Tombstone got a huge fucking pop, by the way. There is a camera placed in the bottom of the casket, and they’ve been cutting to shots from it when one or the other competitor has been knocked into it. They cut to this shot so we see the Undertaker slam the lid down from the same viewpoint that Kama would see it. That is actually a unique and creative shot, a neat visual signature for this type of match, as it makes the end of the match and likewise the feud seem definitive, a literal lid being closed on it. I loved that. Kama’s work is competent, but dull. What are you gonna do? Still, the stuff going on around Kama was interesting enough that this match is fine, but like a number of the other matches on this card, it is also forgettable.
- Hype package: Todd Pettengill, again on voice over duty: “It seems that the feud between Bret 'The Hitman' Hart and Jerry 'The King' Lawler has been going on since the beginning of time.” Yeah, zendragon and I agree, Todd. They start this package by showing the start of the feud at King of the Ring ’93, and the accompanying text says TWO YEARS AGO. No, actually, it’s TWO YEARS AND TWO MONTHS AGO at this point. Fuck. And now I’m being subjected to Kane on top of it. Sure, he’s just Isaac Yankem, DDS at this point in his career, a typical Vince McMahon “day job” gimmick that has no chance of lasting, but once he gets that coveted spot as the Undertaker’s long-lost brother, we’re gonna be stuck with this guy on WWFE television for years. FUCK.
- Interview time [w/Todd Pettengill]: The Hitman is like What the fuck man, a wrestling dentist? What’s next, a wrestling chiropractor? Why am I even still feuding with Jerry Lawler? I’ve beaten him. I’ve beaten him and beaten him. Anyway, I’m obviously going to beat this big dummy dentist tonight. That is all paraphrase, but if you watch the interview, that paraphrase pretty much nails it.
- Match: Bret Hart carries Isaac Yankem DDS to a decent bout on the second-biggest WWF show of the year because Vince McMahon loves pushing Bret Hart only slightly less than he loves getting a root canal with no Novocaine.
- Isaac Yankem is a DDS; Britt Baker is a DMD. The only difference in those titles is in origin. DDS is a title that was first given to diploma holders at a small college in Baltimore; DMD was the title used at Harvard College’s dental school (because DMD is gratuitous Latin). I’d rather get a deep dental cleaning right now rather than watch either of those two wrestling dentists, but here we are.
- I don’t have the time or energy to talk much about a match between the best wrestler to ever do it and a guy who was so much worse at being a mayor than a wrestler that he ran almost ten points behind Donald Trump in 2024 in the middle of deep-red Tennessee. Though from that perspective, I guess as a wrestler he’s successful? No, he’s just somewhat less dreadful at wrestling than he is at carrying out mayoral duties. I’m otherwise protesting by truncating my reviews of Bret Hart matches until Bret gets put in matches befitting his stature as a huge babyface, which thankfully he will at the next PPV. In between his ’95 Royal Rumble title match against Diesel and his upcoming ’95 Survivor Series title match against Diesel, he wrestled Bob Backlund, Jerry Lawler, and Kane in the fucking midcard of the other three Big Five PPVs. That is goddam malpractice on Vince McMahon’s part.
- Anyway, Kane barely makes contact on his big guillotine legdrop spot and his timing is off in a few places. Bret makes things work through sheer talent and effort for most of this before finally wining by DQ after Lawler and Yankem hang him in the ropes. Despite the Hitman being the Hitman, this match was still too long. This shitbird of a finish promises another match between the two, but that rematch was probably at the September In Your House and I don’t have to watch it to complete this mini-project, so thank goodness for small miracles.
- Interview time [w/Dok Hendrix]: Razor Ramon is confident that he can duplicate his IC Ladder Match victory from about sixteen months earlier once again tonight against the man that Hendrix declares is “the Evel Knievel of the World Wrestling Federation.” Razor, while momentarily distracted by an injured Hitman storming through the forefront of his interview, eventually asserts that HBK’s “pain brings [him] pleasure." Come to think of it, you still have a dearth of top-level heels who can talk and work, Vince. Just pointing that out for no reason right now.
- Match: It’s a WrestleMania X rematch as Razor Ramon challenges defending champ Shawn Michaels for the Intercontinental title in a Ladder Match sequel that achieves the rare goal of being as great – and honestly, I think greater – than the original by taking a very different approach than the original did to this type of gimmick bout. Michaels gyrates in the ring. A couple of young ladies in the crowd are interested. Vince McMahon screams YEAHHHHH GET DOWN on commentary. I could probably copy and paste those lines into the beginning of every Shawn Michaels match review for the next six or eight shows in this series.
- Since Lawler left the booth to consort with Yankem in the previous math, Dok Hendrix comes out here and somehow drives the quality of the commentary even lower by joining color. Anyway, the match: I believe the story is that the WWF was under fire from Tipper Gore-inspired parents’ groups that were whining and crying about violence on television what with the pro wrestling and the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers and the VR Troopers and such. And don’t get me started on violent video game hysteria! I must admit, I was so affected by playing Night Trap that I turned to vampirism in my teens. The scolds and the losers who had nothing better to do than to write to politicians and advertisers about, um, the Red Ranger mowing down Putties in what was the most harmless martial arts entertainment ever put on U.S. television? They were on Vince’s case, so he told Shawn and Razor that they couldn’t escalate things with blood and that they had to be careful about using the ladder as a weapon as freely as they did in the first match. These fellas came up with the idea to work the match around their big finishers and also around crippling their opponent’s limbs so as to make climbing the ladder in the first place a physical impossibility. They managed to execute on both premises within the same match excellently (heh).
- As someone who thinks that Scott Hall is basically a genius at thinking about how to keep ladder matches grounded and brutal in their violence, this match could be his masterpiece. Both men attempt their signature finishers in the early going; Razor grabs the top rope on a rope run to squelch HBK’s flash Sweet Chin Music attempt, and Michaels wriggles away from a Razor’s Edge attempt before Razor can lift him. They circle and tangle up again when Razor winds up and whips Michaels into the corner. Michaels takes a wild bump over the corner and all the way to the floor. It’s a spectacular bump (obviously considering who we’re talking about).
- With Michaels momentarily disoriented on the floor, Razor leaves the ring to grab the ladder standing in the aisle, but it’s too early, and Michaels chases him down and drags him back to the ring. He tries to suplex him back into the ring, but Razor reverses it and suplexes Michaels from the apron to the floor. Michaels’s foot hits the guardrail for some extra pop. Razor lays boots in on HBK on the floor while a male fan audibly yells DO IT AGAIN with each boot. It’s worth noting that both men are getting cheered, but the cheers for HBK are considerably higher-pitched than the ones for Razor, which is forewarning of the issues that Michaels would have with crowd reaction a year later as WWF World Champion.
- Razor attempts another Razor’s Edge, but Michaels slips out of the back and tries a Sweet Chin Music that Razor ducks; they then hit one another with clotheslines. So, both men have gone for a “use my killer move early and just climb up while they’re knocked out” approach, but that didn’t work because both men know one another too well and are simply too cagey. Razor hits another big move after he gets to his feet, this time a super fallaway slam, and that finally keeps HBK down long enough for Razor to stumble down the aisle and grab the ladder.
- We cut to Syko Sid watching this match on a backstage monitor, so I suppose he’s getting a shot at the winner on RAW or at In Your House or something. Razor puts the ladder on the apron, and in a nice psychological callback to the first match, it’s bait for Michaels. In the previous match, Michaels hit a baseball slide into the ladder as Razor put it on the apron and knocked it into him. This time, Michaels tries the same move, but Razor sidesteps it well in time to indicate he remembered getting punished by that move the last time around before leveling Michaels with a huge right hand.
- Razor finally climbs the ladder, but Michaels shoves it over and then bangs Razor in the knee as he swings it around to reposition it. HBK sells it as a lucky mistake before climbing and being *sigh* caught and *sigh* having Razor pull down his pants just like Ric Flair does it in a less fortunate callback to the first match. HBK shoves him away, but then Razor comes back and shoves the ladder over, and Shawn does a great job of twisting his knee within two of the steps as it falls. Razor notices this and goes to work, stomping on the ladder twice while Michaels’s knee is still wrenched within the ladder. Razor continues to put in work on Michaels’s knee, slamming the point of it into the ladder and swinging the ladder low and into the back of HBK’s knee as Michaels attempts to rise.
- Hall’s offense is fantastic; this is one of the best control segments in WWFE history for my money. He slams Michaels so that his lower legs contact the ladder, then wedges the ladder onto the second rope, kicks Michaels in the knee, and tries to shoot Michaels in. Michaels falls onto his face because he can’t run on the injured leg, which Razor takes note of as he stomps the knee and then attempts a Figure Four. Wedging the ladder boomerangs on him, though, as Shawn presses a boot to Razor’s posterior as Razor turns to complete the move and shoves him headfirst into that very same ladder. That counter spot felt natural because Razor wasn’t being dumb; he wanted to shoot HBK into the ladder and didn’t expect HBK to fall over because his knee work was so effective. Then, he hyper-focused on the knee (understandably) and forgot about the ladder and its dangerous position in the ring.
- Razor continues to think up new and creative ways to use this ladder. He is back to his feet first because of how badly he has worked Michaels over, so he grabs Michaels and hoists him up for a shinbreaker…but instead of using his own knee to complete the shinbreaker, he lugs Michaels over to the corner and completes the shinbreaker by dropping Michaels’s lower leg against the ladder. Fantastic spot. That wedged ladder is the devil right now, I’ll tell you, and it’s doing nothing but sitting there.
- On the other side of the ring, Razor props Shawn’s knee on the rope and splashes it once, then twice, but Michaels uses his other leg to shove Razor over the top rope the third time. Again, Razor quickly recovers and slams HBK’s knee into the apron before wrapping it around the post a couple of times for good measure. I would say the only limb attack I’ve ever seen in this company that is in the same atmosphere as this one is when Sasha Banks destroyed Becky Lynch’s arm at NXT Takeover: Unstoppable. It’s hard to pick one over the other because Razor got super creative with a tool that normally isn’t used for limb damage, but Lynch bent her arm around in directions that looked legitimately like it should have snapped as Banks tried to snap it. Both of these matches up the viciousness, and it’s funny that Vince told Razor and Shawn to be conservative with ladder spots in this match, but that just led to the bout feeling more violent than if they’d gone ahead and done more bumps off the ladder.
- Michaels is barely able to run when Razor shoots him in, but he bounces off the ropes, runs right into a drop toehold, and sells magnificently as Razor snaps his knee and ankle. Finally, Razor walks over to that wedged ladder, thinks about setting it up, and then instead casually shoves the ladder so that it falls right across HBK’s knee. That was some rude shit, and a fair contingent of the crowd applauds Razor’s viciousness.
- Razor tries to climb, and Michaels drags himself up to the top by one leg and leaps off the top rope and into the ladder. That stops Razor momentarily, and HBK continues to buy time by slipping out of the back of a Razor slam attempt and shoving Razor into the ladder. Razor is up once again, but HBK is wrestling like he needs to win this match because he’ll never be able to live down a second straight Ladder Match loss and because if he loses the IC title, he might drown himself in pills and booze. He gets up again as Razor climbs and back suplexes Ramon to the mat, then sets up the ladder in the corner and wins one corner whip, then another, and then after that a flying forearm. The one microscopic ding some critics make is that Shawn is moving on the leg, but he’s still limping around and buckles his knee after a jumping stomp on Razor, so I think his selling is great. He’s gutting through it, still feeling pain, but moving on the leg because he has no other choice since losing is no option.
- HBK walks back over to the ladder and moonsaults off of it and onto Razor. This gets high-pitched cheers from the majority of the crowd and a lower-pitched, more persistent set of boos from a significant minority. Michaels goes up one more time, fully in bomb-throwing mode because he knows he’s got to hit home runs to have a chance to keep Razor down long enough to climb the ladder on his injured leg, but he misses on a huge top-of-ladder splash. More than a few dudes applaud as Razor rolls out of the way.
- The one actual ding this match should get is for Dok Hendrix being trash with his flipping between rooting for HBK and Ramon like it's some kind of funny or memorable bit. At this point, he’s repeating, “C’mon Shawn! C’mon Razor!” over and over like some kind of poorly constructed pull-string doll that gets stuck and then you wait for your kid to go to school before you toss that piece of shit doll in the dumpster down the block and when your kid gets home and asks what happened to Snappy, you tell them that a bird got him and flew off with him after you washed him and put him out on the patio to dry. What was I saying? Oh yeah, so despite Dok’s commentary, there is genuine tension in the air as both men slowly climb up opposite sides of the ladder and trade right hands. After Razor headbutts Shawn, they both topple over and crotch themselves on the top rope.
- Ramon fell to the floor, so Michaels is nearer the ladder in the ring, but when he grabs it and tries to barge it into Razor as Razor climbs the apron, Ramon moves and HBK falls to the floor. This match is firmly in “war of attrition” mode, and I’d say that war is going to end soon because Razor grabs a backup ladder from under the ring even though the first one is still working just fine. I love the idea that after both men broke the ladder in the first match, WWF officials figured that they might as well put a second ladder under the apron just in case. Vince actually does a good job of explaining that it’s a standby ladder, though I wish he had reminded everyone that the ladder broke in the first match, which is why there is now a standby ladder, just to remind the viewer and to cement the logic of there being a second ladder.
- Anyway, Michaels retrieves the first ladder and stars climbing, but Razor drops the second ladder and walks over, then hooks Michaels from his position halfway up the ladder and hits him with a Razor’s Edge. It takes the wiped Razor a bit to stir, but he sets up one of the ladders, though he notes Michaels beginning to revive as well. Michaels sets up the second ladder, and in a spot that I think is probably the weakest in the match, he goes up and hits Razor with a weak Sweet Chin Music while standing on his ladder that knocks Razor off the other ladder. Then, and I am unsure if this is a fortuitous botch that ends up enhancing the match or a planned spot (though I suspect the former), Shawn goes up his ladder and I think is supposed to grab the title since he was the guy who finally won the “hit your finisher and win the match” battle that started way back at the beginning of the bout. However, his ladder is off-center, and he lunges for the belt and totally crashes and burns. It’s a wild spot, so if he was supposed to whiff, awesome spot that sold the cumulative knee damage. If he wasn’t supposed to whiff, this is a prime example of how some botches can be enhance the story of the match because his leap was too low and came off as the desperate risk-taking of a man whose knee was barely still functioning.
- Either way, they keep the match’s final beat centered on both men’s deadly finishers because Razor tries another Razor’s Edge that would deposit Michaels out to the floor, but Michaels backdrops out of it, sending Razor out to the floor, and then climbs the ladder and…falls while trying to retrieve the belt again, which I think safely indicates that the first whiff was accidental as well. He throws a legit temper tantrum and flings one of the ladders around (so yeah, both whiffs were unplanned), but that honestly also fits the tenor of the match because I’d be pretty fucking pissed off too at this point if I were in the middle of a huge match and had two clean shots at the belt, but I whiffed on them. Anyway, he goes up one more time and finally retrieves the Intercontinental Championship to retain it in what at worst is a top-five match in the history of this company. Everything about this violent match was brilliant. Even the botches at the end. Razor gets in the ring and angrily grabs the belt, but he hands it over and congratulates the champ rather than swing it at him, thus babyfacing himself again with the lady fans after basically being the most vicious heel in this company for twenty-plus minutes during the actual match.
- I get why Scott Hall never got a run with the WCW World Heavyweight Championship even though he was basically as over as Goldberg the whole fucking time he was in the company on his second run even though he was never actually a babyface. This is not an exaggeration. The crowd refused to boo four people in that company, in no particular order: Sting, Hall, Flair, and Goldberg, and Hall was just about as over as Goldberg even into 2000. But at this point, unless his drinking was already reaching WCW-levels of insobriety by 1994, I am shocked that Vince never tried him at the top. If Vince couldn’t stomach Bret Hart as his babyface torchbearer no matter how many cheers and fan letters the Hitman got, there were two topline babyface options that at least would have made reasonable sense as alternatives: Razor Ramon and the Undertaker. That Vince McMahon instead destroyed Lex Luger’s credibility with a half-assed super-push and then tanked Diesel’s babyface run with another half-assed super-push instead of running with either of Razor or 'Taker at the top will always be beyond me, and I will never be able to stop bringing it up.
- Gab Gab Gab: Unfortunately, Francine is nowhere around, so I can’t even placidly male gaze my way through this Dean Douglas segment in which he criticizes Razor Ramon for choking away that ladder match and insists that for the “Bad” part of Razor’s nickname “The Bad Guy,” we should use the standard definition of the word and not its slang definition. Razor shows up and is pissed off because now he’s relegated to feuding with Shane Douglas. No, sorry, I mean he’s pissed off because Douglas is shit-talking him and then tries to backjump him after begging off. Razor lays him out; Douglas revives and angrily scratches his nails across his chalkboard, but they obviously dub in that weird scratching sound they use at the start of Dean’s theme over it. Despite this bad character and the bland matches, I’ll give this to Douglas: He’s still not the worst wrestler named Dean to compete in the WWFE. That’s something! I guess!
- Match: Speaking earlier of Diesel and his tanked babyface run, he’s got to follow a legitimate pro wrestling masterpiece by attempting to have a good main event match against King Mabel (w/Sir Mo). I’m glad we got Razor/Shawn II, but that match was a glimpse into the level of danger that a heel Razor could have brought to a feud with WWF Champion Diesel. A bunch of dudes lug King Mabel out here on a palanquin. They really sell the task as strenuous, but they probably don’t have to try all that hard to sell it.
- Interview time [w/Todd Pettengill]: Diesel knows that Mabel and maybe even the British Bulldog are up to some shit tonight, but he lets Mabel know that he’s GONNA GET MEDIEVAL ON YA, BABY. This was a dorky-ass promo. Bring Shawn and Razor back out here instead. Shawn talking like he was going to Soma himself into oblivion if he lost the ladder match was genuine as hell, especially compared to Diesel’s little promo here.
- (Back to the) Match: Defending champ Diesel saunters to the ring for this match. I don’t recall if this is the match where, after having asked Mabel to go easy on his injured lower back, Mabel fully crashed down on that very same lower back with force on a sit out splash. Mabel hits a shoulderblock and yells I’M GONNA BE THE FIRST BLACK CHAMPION! Bruh, we didn’t even get a first black Intercontinental Champion until halfway through 1996. It’s probably not gonna happen for you tonight.
- Speaking of black world champs, this SummerSlam main event is comparable to Kevin Nash’s WCW World Heavyweight Championship Match against Booker T. at Fall Brawl 2000 in the sense that both of those matches are world title matches with Black American challengers that run under ten minutes. Those are the only ways in which they are comparable, as the Booker T. match is a) in a cage, b) ends with a title change, c) crowns a black world champion who was not the first black world champion in WCW, and d) a good little sprint. This match has Diesel hit a struggle slingshot crossbody to Mabel on the floor, but that match had Nash blading, which was novel as hell.
- This match isn’t bad, but it’s plodding and not particularly exciting. It, much like a number of the other matches earlier in the night, exists as an unmemorable but competently worked affair. Well, except for that sit out splash that hurt Diesel because holy shit did Mabel splatter Nash. This man is not having to do much to sell it. This man is trying to fucking breathe. You know when you hit your humerus and your whole body goes rigid from the pain for a bit? That shit definitely happened to Nash right there. They show the replay, and I think Mabel was trying to sit down on Nash’s butt, but he missed and got Nash’s back.
- Anyway, there’s a ref bump; Mo helps Mabel beat up Nash. Lex Luger runs out for a save, but Nash doesn’t know that Luger’s on his side, so he knocks Luger to the floor. Luger doesn’t get mad about it, though, and fights Mo back up the aisle to even the odds. I believe that this is the last appearance Lex Luger makes on WWF television before heading back to WCW and that the next “appearance” Luger will make in the WWFE is via footage on WWF Confidential when the company buries him for abusing a pilled-up Miss Elizabeth before she died of an overdose or whatever.
- In the meantime, Mabel hits a belly-to-belly in the ring and covers, but in a pretty solid false finish, the revived ref only gets to two before Diesel kicks out. Mabel tries a second-rope splash to bury Diesel entirely, but Diesel rolls out of the way, then goes up to the second rope and hits a Lawrence Taylor-style diving forearm for three in what felt like a weak finish. This was fine, but it was more appropriate as a spot defense on an In Your House card rather than a main event on the second-biggest show of the year.
- After the twin failures of WM XI and KotR ’95, this show at least ends up on the positive side of the ledger, but the opener and the IC title Ladder Match are really the only matches worth revisiting. This show still doesn’t have its performers in the best positions, from sticking two of the three most popular babyfaces in the Hitman and the Undertaker in midcard feuds with questionable dance partners to jobbing the 1-2-3 Kid to a midcarder who ultimately is going nowhere when Kid should be winning consistently (a booking concern since the Kid’s SummerSlam debut loss to I.R.S. of all people back in 1993) to Jim Ross doing a single aisleway interview while I am subjected to Vince McMahon, Jerry Lawler, and Dox Hendrix on commentary. There is a low ceiling on show quality because Vince still doesn't understand how to get the most out of his personnel, and I think the fact that Razor/Shawn is legitimately a top-five WWFE match in history and still can’t drag this show’s overall rating to at east three digital snowflakes is evidence of that low ceiling. 2.75 Digital Snowflakes out of 5.
-
15 minutes ago, odessasteps said:
Maybe this will bring enough appreciation of his career to get into the HOF. I think Dave put him in the booker category last year.
I'm sorry, he's not already in?!
-
Goldberg/Steiner is marred by the ending, but it's another match to point to whenever someone erroneously claims that Goldberg couldn't wrestle long matches in WCW.
-
1
-
-
Did Dundee do any creative while he was also acting as Sir William in WCW, or was he just there doing shots accompanying Regal to the ring?
-
4 hours ago, zendragon said:
Jim Cornette obviously doesn't follow the NFL. Once on his Podcast he claimed that LT was a star in New York only and didn't mean anything to the rest of the country. I guess he thinks all sports stars are like territory era wrestling stars.
Cornette is a lot like Vince in that he barely knows about anything outside of the wrestling bubble.
QuoteKAMA The Supreme Fighting Machine v Ken Raper (dude about that name!)
Chalk another one up for the list of random Memphis guys who came in and jobbed on WWF television in 1995/1996.
-
1
-
-
I watch this match once or twice a year because it's an instant mood lifter.
Terry Funk's steady stream of invective followed by his screaming about his eye injury is incredible, as is his immediate switch back to shit-talking Lawler once Lance goes off to get him a doctor. Lance Russell being the exasperated guy just trying to get some useable tape while Funk deliberately cusses at him kills me. I know this is a classic that everyone here has seen, but sometimes it's fun to heap praise on the matches that everyone knows and loves, too.
This match is a match that works so well because of all the talking happening before, during, and after it. I'm not trying to discount the other work in this brawl, but the best move anyone performs in this bout is Funk shrilly whining SON OF A BITCH after eating a bunch of chairs and backing away from Lawler as Lawler pursues (that or Funk screaming ASK HIM at Lance as Lance tries to get him to calm the fuck down). I think the incredible thing about Funk's performance is that he's a detestable piece of shit who totally deserved getting stabbed in the eye, but his sobbing about getting injured at the end always makes me feel bad for him.
Do you think that a segment like this could be pulled off in the modern era? I know today's wrestlers have the cardio to alternately talk shit and whine about being hurt during a match, but would this type of match get bought by some portion of modern fans? This feels like a real relic, but if there were a way to do this for fans in 2026, some company should absolutely do their version of this.
Some days I think that if I were going to make a "Best Matches Ever" list, this would be number one. I feel like this and Bret/Owen at WM X are the (U.S.-centric) contenders.
-
On 9/4/2026 at 1:24 PM, zendragon said:
Jim Cornette was on commentary this night, not Jim Ross. Who might or might not be fired at the moment.
Ah, wrong Jim.
Ross was at WrestleMania, but not at the Rumble, so who knows.
As an aside, I looked up Stephanie Wiand and she ended up being a cute older lady. Her haircut and makeup in the WWF were a detriment.
-
1
-
2026 VIDEO GAMES CATCH ALL THREAD
in COMPUTERS & GAMES & TECH
Posted
Never apologize for this sort of thing, dammit!