SirSmUgly

I was initially thinking that it was an Xbox mini upon reveal and got momentarily excited. Give me a tiny Xbox that plugs into my TV via HDMI and has Halo, Kung Fu Chaos, Psychonauts, Fuzion Frenzy, and KotOR on it. (And Brute Force, I suppose.) If Xbox division wants to do some real Xbox anniversary shit, they should do what every real game company does and steal a successful Nintendo idea.

I keep buying books because I still have a problem. Edward Shawcross, The Last Emperor of Mexico - Also one of the funniest books that I've ever read in my life. If you like stories of European hubris that end in the dumbest way possible, this here tells the story of a dipshit Habsburg named Max and his equally dipshit wife who, at the behest of Napoleon III (also a dipshit), are placed on the throne in Mexico under French rule because Nap wants to check U.S. power on the North American continent (not a bad idea, TBH) while the U.S. Civil War is an ongoing distraction. Of course, Mexico just got done with their own civil war and as a result of that war democratically elected Benito Juarez to be their president. France sends just enough troops to land and eventually (after an embarrassing defeat) beeline to Mexico City, where Max is put on the throne as the new Mexican king. Hilarity ensues. The ending is satisfying because every moronic European royal mentioned in this book gets some form of comeuppance. Fucking Habsburgs. Anyway, if you even remotely enjoy North American history, you'll enjoy this breezy read. Keza MacDonald, Super Nintendo - I wanted to like this book, but quite frankly, I think it stinks. I think there's some value to it if you're giving it to a Boomer or old Gen-Z parent who doesn't understand why their adult child still plays video games. If you've had a parent visit your house and express surprise that you have a PlayStation or whatever even though you've been playing video games since you were seven, you might hand this book to them. Otherwise, it's got a shocking lack of insight for someone who a) is a legitimate reporter with material from her interviews of Nintendo higher-ups and b) who should be pretty solid at analyzing what Nintendo does and does not do well. This is pretty much hagiographic fanwank from a huge Nintendo fan, which is obvious in the title of this work, but which also was a bit much for me even considering the title. Plus, it rubs me wrong that a handful of things in this book are inaccurate. For example, Nintendo 64's analog stick was not a pioneering singular accomplishment of Nintendo - Sega had their own analog controller come out at the same time (it was paired with NiGHTS Into Dreams, which came out right around the same time as Super Mario 64). There are also small things that should have been caught by an editor (MacDonald gets Donkey Konga and Donkey Kong Jungle Beat mixed up). The Guardian has a pretty solid video game review team and MacDonald is the head editor of that section, so I guess that I expected something more insightful and polished. Michael Sokolove, The Last Temptation of Rick Pitino - This is a fascinating book because it came out after the big FBI/DoJ bust of college basketball programs and runners who paid players, but before SCotUS ruled that college players should be able to get paid for their labor and the NIL Era began. There is a pleasure in reading this book and having the foreknowledge that in just a couple of years after its publication, it would be worthy of a second edition with a very lengthy addendum. Obviously, a large part of the book focuses on how university officials, athletic apparel companies, the NCAA, and black market runners exploit young (and often working class or impoverished black American) basketball players. It focuses on Rick Pitino, then-Louisville AD Tom Jurich, and Louisville's focus on athletics to build the profile of the university and bring in donors to explore these wider concerns. Personally, I think there is a shadow issue here that would make for an equally interesting book which is college and university administrators using their positions to grift, hire friends and family, and skim whatever money they can for their own personal accounts. This is an issue from top universities all the way down to local community colleges, and Sokolove is writing a shadow book about that issue that deserves the same level of expose that this book gives to college basketball in the pre-NIL era. Great book, quick read. I've been on a sports kick because I also re-read Michael Leahy's When Nothing Else Matters: Michael Jordan's Last Comeback and Jeff Pearlman's Three-Ring Circus, both for the first time in a long time. Pearlman writes about topics I like, but I wish he'd stop trying to be funny because he isn't, but he keeps making dumb jokes in the middle of these compelling stories that he's telling. Leahy is an excellent writer, on the other hand. Still, I'm currently working through Jeff Pearlman's Football For a Buck (about the USFL in the '80s and a certain dogshit excuse for a businessperson helping to destroy it) and then it's on to Patrick Radden Keefe's London Falling (adapted from his excellent longform article about a death that is an indicator of London's very seedy black market financial underbelly). I've also been reading a chapter every other night of Mieko Kawakami's Breasts and Eggs, and as someone who is once again going through his own body transformation (it's going well!), I've been able to attack it through that angle (and through the angle of having been working class and strapped for cash) and have generally enjoyed it. I'll eventually write about it here, too. Finally, I'm collecting GamePro and EGM back issues from the 1990s. I feel bad about how nostalgic for ads that I am. Also, even as a kid, I knew these magazines had dogshit reviews with little rigor, but man, reading them as an adult really drives that home. They're great for historical perspective, of course, and for reminding me about games that I now have money to check out. And of course, they're great for feeding my nostalgia.

I'm only halfway through my KotR '94 review, so you're well ahead of me! It's an obvious mistake on Vince's part and a complete failure to not at least use Savage to put guys over (other than Yokozuna). I'll be interested to see how I feel about this show when I get to it in the next week or two. I thought Undertaker/Kane was the only bad match on WM XIV, so I've got some trepidation about its worse earlier version.

Crazy Taxi World Tour was so beautiful, people. I am also in on modern (open-world?) Spyro

That has been in development forever (for obvious reasons). Also interested in Blood Message and Stranger Than Heaven. Lots of interesting games shown.

Cuphead 2 sounds great. I am once again asking Capcom to give the modern remake treatment to Dino Crisis. Maybe once they finally get this long-anticipated C:V remake out of the way. In other news, Virtua Fighter: Crossroads is a day one purchase for me, which it always was, really. Seeing more of it reinforced this.

Wasn't there an Internet rumor back in the day that Triple H couldn't be shown getting beaten up in previews for their THQ wrestling games? One of those "sounds plausible enough to be true even if it isn't" rumors.

If I can squeeze it in during the summer, my plan is to start a Continental Europe wrestling match review thread, and one of the guys I'm interested in seeing more from is Train. IMO he's the epitome of a tag team specialist. That team with Norton was perfect, and it ran its course in weeks.

I don't think this is a hot take. A lot of people think this. My take - that it isn't even the best gimmick match they had against one another (that'd be their Casket Match at Royal Rumble '98) - would be much hotter than yours. Speaking of hot takes, I originally came here to say that WCW fucked up big-time by not keeping Fire & Ice together and making them a tag team of death whom up-and-coming babyfaces had to squeak past to establish their worth on a main event level.

Satrapi passing away really makes me sad. In Catcher in the Rye, Holden goes off about reading books and liking the author so much that they want to call them up and chat after they're done, and that's how I felt after reading Persepolis. Satrapi was so likeable and funny in that book, but I also understood her and felt that she'd be equally as understanding if we ever had a chat over coffee about life. I need to read more of her work and will make that a goal for this summer.

I'll get Rayman and maybe Onimusha in addition to Wolvie. Not a great SoP for me (per the usual), but it had some decent stuff. I might eventually check out Until Dawn 2. My out-of-left-field hope was an announcement that ASOBI was doing a new Ape Escape game, but alas.

I dropped Crawlers for Ball X Pit. Crawlers is an okay podcast game, but it doesn't have that addictive gameplay for me. I've been playing BxP with Hades 2 and Balatro sprinkled in. I've started collecting '90s GamePros and EGMs over the past few months. That led me to finding out that a previewed game in the overseas section, then named Spark, was eventually renamed Pulseman and released initially only in Japan before later being released on the Wii Channel and then again on the Genesis NSO app. I grabbed my OG Switch and fired that up in bed a couple times. It's a Game Freak game that, like the more modern Game Freak game Tembo the Badass Elephant, is very much an attempt at 2D Sonic gameplay. In the case of Pulseman, it harkens back to Sonic CD., specifically by asking you to quickly gain sprint speed in small or uneven spaces so that you can explore the level. In CD, you do that to activate the timeposts. In Pulse, you do that to build up electricity and fire off into spark form, which makes you invincible and allows you to climb vertically and reach otherwise unreachable places (or hit otherwise unhittable bosses). Like Tembo, it looks great from an art direction standpoint, but it just makes me wish I were playing the actual good Sonic games that it's aping more than it drives me to play more of it. I am going to mess with it more and probably start playing more Genesis games in general. I have an actual Genesis that I should yank out of storage and set up this summer, but probably I will mostly use Genesis NSO.

They at least set up a Dusty/Flair feud in 1999 and then eventually paid it off in 2001, but generally they needed to use Dusty more between '98-'01 instead of jettisoning him for a huge chunk of that time. As a side note, if you want to see a hot crowd die a thousand deaths, watch that Slamboree '98 main event. Rarely has a crowd been so clearly bummed out by a finish.

How about definitely JCW. All I know about Juggalos is that they like ICP and Faygo, so if you want to relieve my cultural ignorance and also talk about some wrestling that I don't know a ton about, I am here for it.

And yeah, I'd presume that Undertaker and Borash (one of those pairings where you wonder how these two even know one another) are getting a lot of help from people who know, understand, and respect how AAA approaches wrestling and lucha tropes and traditions.

He was probably fed a steady diet of Guerreros, Mascaras, Halcon and Lothario growing up watching Houston wrestling, yeah. My understanding of AAA is that when it came on the scene in the '90s, it was the more cross-border friendly Mexican wrestling company, too, so it's probably easier to fit WWE-ized tropes into AAA matches. I've seen AAA matches that look like they could have taken place in ECW and - though my experience with both companies is limited and someone else surely knows better - I feel like the CMLL brawls I've seen are different from AAA brawls, and that AAA brawls often veer toward ECW-style brawls.

OK, that one got me to laugh out loud. They should have done this exact match at Havoc 2000 instead of what they ended up doing. EDIT: Please write some more reviews! I like reading these. But not TNA reviews, for your own sake. Geez.

I think I'm higher than most people on this show, and I think most people have the more realistic view about this show's overall quality. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. That and two top-ten WWFE matches doing a lot of work to uphold this show.

Movies are just books with moving pictures, dammit! Either way, +1 for choosing the perfect reference. I looked up the IC title part in Bret's book just out of curiosity. Let me write out what it says in the book, noting that of course, Bret is giving just his perspective and maybe Vince or Bulldog said differently at some point: So I think both of us are on the right path. If SummerSlam were in DC, Bret would have dropped it to Shawn in a Ladder Match. But it was in London, so Bret dropped it to Bulldog, who was going to drop it to Shawn anyway. Looking this up made me want to read this book again, by the way.

Bret himself said that this wasn't a prematurely-stopped push. Bret was supposed to drop the IC title to Michaels at SummerSlam two months earlier, but he got Vince to switch the card around so that he could drop it to Bulldog in England instead. Bret says that Bulldog knew the plan in his book, but felt that he should have kept going with his push once the time to drop the belt came, and that (along with some issues with getting popped for steroid use) led to him up and leaving for that first ill-fated WCW run. I believe Bret because I watched that 1992 weekly television and they were building Bret/Shawn, Martel/Tatanka, and Bulldog/Repo for SummerSlam until one week when they abruptly stopped that build and shifted into build for Bret/Bulldog and Shawn/Martel instead, like super abruptly. The evidence suggests that Shawn was always the long-term plan and that Bulldog got a nice transitional reign and a big hometown win that he wasn't originally going to get. This also dates back to SummerSlam '92's build. When Savage was defending the title against Warrior, Flair and Perfect tried to stir up discord between them by claiming tha one or the other had sold out and agreed to join him. They united because they were sick of Flair trying to play them off of one another. +1 for the literary reference. I think Shawn's eye and the obvious sun damage he's taken on living in Texas and probably not keeping up a skin care routine have aged him quite a bit. Probably the years of drug abuse didn't help. He seems to have generally chilled out, funny enough.

WWF Wrestlemania X (20 March 1994): A show in which the WWF manages to put on two of its greatest ever matches in the midst of a wayward era This review feels like the most “it’s obvious what I’m going to say about the show before I’ve written a word” review that I’ve put together maybe ever. Hype package: Remember that first WrestleMania in 1985? Listen to this solemn piano and horns while we see shots of that frankly underwhelming event. Now, watch those memories fade away via the magic of technology. This isn’t the WWF of Hulk Hogan and Mr. T. anymore! No, this is the WWF of Bret Hart and, um, Yokozuna and Lex Luger. Gab Gab Gab (and then Sing Sing SIIIIIIIIING): Vince McMahon himself is in the ring to introduce “the originator, the original wildman of rock ‘n roll.” Of course, he’s talking about Johnny B. Badd. No, my mistake, he’s actually talking about Little Richard. Yeah, it makes more sense that Little Richard would be here, or that he would be considered the Original Wildman of Rock ‘n Roll, for that matter. Little Richard proceeds to sing the hell out of “America the Beautiful” with the backing of a little church organ and a black choir in what I think is the blackest thing to happen on WWF television to date. I forgot this happened, so I am already wrong about what I was going to say about the show. This actually is an amazing performance, and Vince’s instincts (if you’re absolutely hellbent on doing a nationalistic song before your event) to have performers sing “America the Beautiful” instead of the sorry-ass “Star-Spangled Banner” are correct, as were his instincts to have this specific performance of it with Little Richard and the choir. I almost never enjoy these sorts of things before sporting events, but I very much enjoyed this. It’s almost certainly the best musical performance that I’ve ever seen on a wrestling show, which isn’t nearly as low a bar to clear as some might initially think! Gab Gab Gab: Look who’s back. Jerry Lawler makes his return after "allegedly" (read: he did that shit) grooming and sexually assaulting an underage girl. I guess the heat was off. He’s on the call with Vince tonight. Recap: We see essentially the same hype/recap that builds up the Bret/Owen feud that we saw at the Royal Rumble this year, from the initial fault lines between the brothers at Survivor Series ’93 to their loss to the Quebecers at the Royal Rumble and Owen’s heel turn. All the Quebecer tag team title switch stuff is taken out, of course, as is Owen’s ominous line about it not mattering if the hurtful things he said about Bret were true right before he turned heel, but we do get Owen swearing in an interview the week before the show that he will beat Bret. Match: Are you prepared to relive the unquestioned best opener in WWFE history? Owen Hart and Bret Hart wrestle a great match with a finish so good that it is still my favorite finish to a wrestling match that I have ever seen. Owen comes out and tears apart his wraparound shades angrily. Bret comes out YEAHHH BRET BEAT THAT LITTLE TWERP BROTHER OF YOURS’S ASS and the crowd agrees with my hopes, I think. The kid who gets Bret’s glasses doesn’t want to mug for the camera, and when his dad tries to nudge his chin toward the camera, he turns around and sticks his tongue out, which Lawler jumps on (“Look at that, he’s a fan of Owen!”). Hilarious. Also hilarious: Owen stalemates Bret on a collar-and-elbow and celebrates. He wins a takeover, gets immediately and smoothly countered into a headscissors, flips out of it and to his feet…and celebrates. Bret is wrestling as though his heart isn’t really in this, but he’s still go this pride. He wins some nice counters and escapes, but he doesn’t press his advantage. Here, he escapes a waistlock by ducking down and lunging forward. That sends Owen to the floor, but Bret doesn’t follow; he just waits patiently for Owen to get back in the ring. Owen, on the other hand, is enraged. He thinks that Bret’s not respecting him as a competitor, which is his whole raison d’etre when it comes to his current pro wrestling career. He storms back into the ring and decides make Bret respect him and bring the intensity that he’d bring to any other opponent. He gets in Bret’s face. Bret very lightly shoves him in the chest – see, no intensity – so Owen slaps the SHIT out of this guy, HOLY SHIT that was amazing. Of course, he begs off as Bret pursues, but maybe he’s finally woken his tentative older brother up, huh? What follows is some dope mat wrestling in which they reverse and reverse again, but Owen reverses by taking shortcuts (hair pulls) and he’s a dick about it when he’s on top (boot wiping Bret’s forehead disrespectfully). Bret’s still just a bit better, even earning a quick two count on a rollup before whipping Owen back to the mat and locking on an arm wringer. Owen tries to pick up the pace, but he gets monkey flipped right into the ropes and then clotheslined to the floor…and this time, Bret pursues and tosses him right back into the ring or more. Bret indicates to Owen that he’s willing to continue showing him what exactly is what; they shove one another, and Bret slaps Owen this time. Bret still controls, even earning another two count on a flash pinfall, but he runs himself right into an Owen wheel kick, and Owen finally takes over, stomping the Hitman to the floor and posting his lower back against the post. Vince ponders whether or not Bret has the same killer instinct he normally has because he doesn’t really want to fight his brother, and I’m surprised it took this long for him to say something like that because the opening of the match was very explicitly telling that story. Owen now targets Bret’s lower back, slipping him into a Camel Clutch back in the ring; Bret fights up, but when he bounds off the ropes, he runs right into an Owen belly-to-belly. Owen’s corner whip is reversed, but he tries a rebound second-rope crossbody, and that crossbody scores, but Bret moves with the momentum and reverses the cover for two. So, the neat thing about this match is that Bret keeps trying to win with flash pinfalls and quick counters, but Owen is attempting to murder this dude with back attacks and nasty moves like this huge bridging German that he buries Bret with. Bret keeps trying to get out of here without hurting Owen too badly – a small package for two here, a sunset flip for two there – but Owen keeps piling on huge moves, including this (safely delivered!) Tombstone piledriver that, unfortunately for him, he has not mastered as the Undertaker has done. Owen goes up for a huge diving headbutt – what’s up with all the finishing move theft, Rocket? – but Bret survived the un-‘Taker-like force of Owen’s Tombstone and rolled away from the impact. Still, Owen’s done a lot of work to hurt Bret, and he manages to get to his feet first. Owen tries to bring Bret to his feet, but Bret counters into an inverted atomic drop and a clothesline; he covers for two, and now he’s going to try his best moves to keep Owen down since the flash pinfalls haven’t worked. Side Russian, backbreaker, second-rope elbowdrop, but none of that can keep Owen down either. Bret barks at referee Earl Hebner on that last 2.9 because he so desperately wants to get out of here with a win and stop fighting his lil’ bro, but that loss of focus means that Owen can catch him with a quick enziguri. Owen attempts the Sharpshooter, but Bret reverses into a Sharpshooter that Owen wriggles away from. Now Owen tries to roll Bret up, but Bret kicks out forcefully and Owen tumbles to the floor, where Bret follows with a slingshot crossbody. The Hitman sells a knee injury upon landing and limps toward Owen when he re-enters the ring; Owen spots that and immediately switches from targeting Bret’s back to his knee. He kicks at the bad wheel and then thrice wraps it around the post. Owen follows up with a Dragon Screw and an Indian Deathlock-y sort of deal. That doesn’t garner a submission, so Owen lands another Dragon Screw and then tries a Figure Four instead. Bret survives and manages to turn Owen; they end up rolling into the ropes, where the ref breaks the hold. Owen is wearing extra bracing on his knee and sells that the brief time he spent in the reversal hurt him, but he is on top of the limping Bret in the corner. Owen throws more kicks at Bret’s knee, but when he grabs Bret’s leg to do more damage, Bret hits Owen with his own signature enziguri – rude! – and peppers Owen with punches and headbutts, followed by shooting Owen into the corner (where Owen takes Brets signature chest-first bump). Regrettably for Bret, he’s now reduced to unloading his arsenal to beat Owen, something he was clearly reluctant to do. A bulldog doesn’t earn him three, nor does a piledriver or a superplex. But Bret is still searching for a way to get out of this match without totally destroying Owen. He lands a couple of lifters, ducks a wild Owen haymaker, and pops on a sleeper. Nice idea, Hitman, but Owen kicks a leg backward and busts his big bro’s balls, then locks Bret in a Sharpshooter. I mean, it’s a good Sharpshooter! It’s just that Bret knows the hold really well and he reverses it. Luckily for Owen, he’s at the ropes. Bret still wants to get out of here without doing more damage to Owen – or at this point, damage to himself since he’s got to face the winner of Lex Luger/Yokozuna at the end of the night for the WWF World Championship. He decides to bust out an old move that he used to put Bam Bam Bigelow away in the King of the Ring finals a few months ago; he catches Owen with a boot as Owen charges him in the corner and then hops up and onto Owen’s shoulders. When he did this against Bam Bam, he flung himself forward into a victory roll and caught the big man by surprise for three. But now that means there’s tape on the move, and Owen is nothing if not serious about beating Bret and demanding some respect on his name. He did a whole lot of kayfabe scouting of Bret before this match, his one chance to show Bret that he could hang, and to confirm that he’s also a Hart and thus a wrestling virtuoso in his own right, so while Bret is pulling a possible surprise way to finish the match out of his memory banks, Owen is remembering that Bret has done this before. As Bret rolls through, Owen just shifts his weight and sits down on Bret's shoulders, halting Bret’s roll-through and pinning Bret to the mat for a well-deserved (and well-countered) three count. After the match, Bret sits there with a facial expression that clearly reads, “I should have known he’d watch a lot of tape on me.” Owen is too beaten up to celebrate like he did at the beginning when he was stalemating Bret on collar-and-elbows, but he has enough energy to triumphantly wave three fingers in Bret’s face before staggering out of the ring and back up the aisle. Bret contemplates his loss, but realizes that he’s still got one more match tonight and a huge goal to reach, having lost the world title a year ago and not gotten much closer to regaining it since then. He claps his hands, hobbles to his feet, and gets ready to go again. Look, this match encapsulates everything that I think is great and good about pro wrestling. Not only did it tell a classic story built on super-relatable older sibling/younger sibling conflicts, but they both wrestled the match befitting each of their positions in that conflict, and further, it rewarded viewers who have been watching this company’s shows by implicitly telling you that Owen scouted Bret heavily before the match, recognized the victory roll attempt, and stuffed it. No one at the desk says anything about this, but if you recognize it as a viewer, you feel pretty fucking smart (or at least I did when I was a kid). I remember seeing this match and immediately understanding the finish to a progression on the King of the Ring ’93 Finals finish. It elevated the match for me then, and it does so now. I would go so far as to deem this to be a perfect wrestling match. There is not one thing you could point to that wasn’t done at the highest level, and there is no possible improvement that you could suggest that would make it one iota better. It is absolutely the best WWF match ever, and I’ll die on that hill. It mixes story and competitive wrestling together more seamlessly than anything they have ever done or probably will ever do considering their house style being so focused on MOMENTS and commentators screaming about every callback that the wrestlers in the ring might do instead of letting you figure out some of the subtler stuff on your own. Interview time [w/Todd Pettengill]: I need about ten cooldown matches after that one. Haha, that fucking Owen had a gob of spittle on his face after the match, and he still hasn’t wiped it off as he sets up to interview about his big victory. Gross! Owen proclaims himself to be the new Best There Is, Best There Was, and Best There Ever Will Be. He also makes a flub again: “I’m gonna beat you **dawning realization in his eyes that says “Oh shit, man, I did it again”** here at WrestleMania, I beat you. This is almost as funny as the “kicked your leg outta your leg” facial expression. He also doesn’t think Bret’s injured knee or back are up to the task of beating either Yokozuna or Luger for the world title later tonight. Yeah, about that, Owen… Hype package: Remember WrestleMania 2? Yeah, it wasn’t that good, either. Match: We’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel here on celebrity appearances. Sy Sperling has some new hair for Howard Finkel. The crowd isn’t all that hyped about Finkel’s new hair. See, if this were 2026, Fink’d have flown to Ankara and got it done up right. Finkel introduces the perfect cooldown bout: Bam Bam Bigelow and Luna Vachon against Doink and Dink the Clowns. I’mma be real: Bam Bam still has some cache as an act even after doing quite a few jobs by now; he and Luna should blow away the clowns after putting up with some of their “comedy” for like two minutes. Doink squirts Sy with water as he enters the ring, thus proving Sy’s claims that his ‘dos are waterproof to be at least somewhat true. Bammer gets in there and murders Doink before the clown can even get his jacket off, but he misses a huge senton splash and allows Doink to get some control. Both men trade control back and forth; Doink dodges an elbowdrop and tags in Dink, who squares up to Bammer. Bam Bam has to tag in Luna, though, and they do some light comedy before Luna takes control and sit out splashes Dink against the ropes. She tries again; Dink moves and hits an elbow for two. Dink now runs circles around Luna while the kids laugh and one New Yorker screams at Luna to RIP HIS HEAD OFF. I have lost interest in this cooldown match, and that isn’t because of Bam Bam and Luna, let me assure you. Dink rolls away from a Luna top-rope splash and tags out to Doink, which makes Bam Bam legal again. Bammer knocks Doink to the floor, when Dink challenges Bammer. He and Luna both try to dive at Dink to grab him, but he’s a wily little guy and moves, and this is fine, but I actually agree with the mouthy New Yorker who wants to see Bam Bam and Luna annihilate Dink because I hate babyface Doinks act. I think if it were still Matt Borne under the paint, he could have brought enough of a puckish rogue’s edge to the babyface role, but Ray Apollo is just boring, man, a completely dull babyface. Anway, Bam Bam knocks Dink off the apron while hitting the ropes to attack Doink, avoids a Doink Whoopee Cushion, and drops a top-rope diving headbutt on Doink for three. Dink gets in the ring and squares up Bammer again, and then Dink fucks up a spot where he’s supposed to roll out of the way of both Luna and Bammer’s splash attempts, but he rolls right into Luna, who splashes him and frustratedly shoves him out of the way, sells for a second, and then seems to realize that it’s pointless because the spot was ruined. This match stunk even as hard as Bam Bam and Luna tried. Vince McMahon Reads the Papers: There’s a Bill Clinton impersonator in the crowd. “Hail to the Chief” plays while Vince marks out. My read of this pointless little segment: Post-Civil Rights Act, the only way to get a Democrat into the presidency when otherwise not coming off a Republican disaster term that is somehow even more embarrassing than the typical Republican disaster term (see: Carter, Biden) is to run dudes with a ton of charisma who a not inconsiderable portion of the electorate would like to fuck (see: Kennedy, Clinton, Obama). A quick marker for whether a Democratic candidate fits that role is whether or not their impersonators are commonly used in weird attempts at humorous skits for lowbrow entertainment (pro wrestling shows, braindead comedy specials, etc.). This is my political science analysis, and I’m sticking to it. Hype package: Remember WrestleMania III? It was the first good one of these. Match: One of the cool things about WrestleMania X is that it exists in a strange space between the well-standardized WWF wrestling tropes of the past and a changing landscape that is exploring fresh match concepts and that is influencing the “trying to figure out how to modernize” WWF and Vince McMahon to throw stuff at the wall in this New Generation. Those fresh match concepts have not been standardized with a series of best practices for the house style within which they exist, so what ends up happening is that companies right now are feeling out those best practices for these new match types, which retrospectively feels nearly as exciting as it did when I lived through it at the time. Obviously, tonight’s Ladder match is one of these, even if the match type had been around since the late ‘70s. I vividly remember being a kid and thinking that this match was going to be one of the most insane things I’d ever watched, and then of course I saw all the stills on the weekly television and got extra hyped. As soon as the Coliseum release of this show came out, I rushed to Blockbuster and rented it, and it was pretty much everything I could have imagined it would be and more. Of course, that particular Ladder match (which we’ll get to later) codified quite a lot about how those matches work, at least for mainstream companies. But also, you can see that sort of experimentation with match types in other places on this card – or in some cases, that the company was still behind in thinking about new match types. This latter truth is something that I am grateful for because while ECW was playing with Triangle/Triple Threat matches at this point, the WWF just wasn’t there yet conceptually, and because it wasn’t, we got a mini-tournament with Bret/Owen, Yoko/Luger, and the winner of Yoko/Luger getting Bret in the main event. If this show had been three years later, we’d have gotten no Bret/Owen and a (probably pretty bad) Bret/Yoko/Luger Triple Threat main event instead. And this next match, which pits Macho Man Randy Savage against Crush (w/Mr. Fuji) in a Falls Count Anywhere bout that is Savage’s last WrestleMania match – indeed, the last match that Savage would ever have on WWF television (though he worked extensively on house shows up until he left in the autumn of ’94) – is trying to figure out how hardcore matches should work. Of course, ECW basically took what you might witness in Memphis-style concession stand brawls and turned it up a few notches with all manner of household-item weaponry that made matches look like the messy aisles of the housewares section in a Big Lots full of a ton of crowd brawling and weapon shots, and the WWF and WCW borrowed liberally from that (as did other major companies in North America if my limited viewing of hardcore matches from modern CMLL or AAA is indicative of things). This Savage/Crush match is messy and fitful in its flow, but I admire it. Part of that is nostalgia – I was a huge Savage fan, and at this point where Vince had sidelined him (for reasons that I now feel are connected to his second and final world title run), getting to see him wrestle was a particular treat for me. There was almost no way that I wasn’t going to love this match. But I respect what it’s doing here even as its sort of a mess. Savage attacks Crush in the aisle and ends up eating guardrail off a military press; Crush quickly pins him. So, how this works is that we’ve got modified Texas Death Match-style rules in which pinfalls do not end the match, and instead, there is a period after a pinfall in which the pinned person has to get back into the ring before sixty seconds have elapsed or he loses. Part of the issue with this is the same as, say, the issue with Aztec Warfare bouts in Lucha Underground – moves that would never put down wrestlers in longer bouts are suddenly instadeath in a match that needs pinfalls (or submissions!) to happen either multiple times (as in this match) or compressed into a single match (Aztec Warfare). If you think about this fact too much, it shatters the illusion. Savage is never eating a pinfall thirty seconds into the match because he got draped over the guardrail except for in this match because he has to take the pinfall and ratchet up the drama. If the commentators worked to explain that Savage chose not to kick out because he needed the time and space to recover, and kicking out would have only subjected him to more immediate punishment from Crush, the illusion might waver, but it would maintain itself upon that explanation. Here, Vince and Lawler are not up to that task, so the match immediately struggles to feel real in that regard. The other issue with this match is that sixty-second period, which admittedly has a lot of crawling and stalling to build drama as a pinned wrestler cuts things close in keeping the match going as they painfully and slowly advance upon the ring. Maybe it should have been only thirty seconds to keep the match from feeling so stop-start. I do think that period is well worked after Crush’s initial pinfall in the aisle; Fuji smacks Savage in the back with the flagpole that he is wielding and halts Savage’s progress with ten seconds to go in Howard Finkel’s count. Savage makes it at two and gets a nice cheer from the crowd, so it works. However, it does slow things down a bit more than one might hope for in a hardcore brawl such as this one. Crush puts Savage in the Tree of Woe and punches him, then grabs salt from Fuji. This match is, as Vince says on commentary, “no holds barred,” but for some reason, Crush hides the salt and Fuji runs a distraction on the ref, which makes zero sense psychologically. Anyway, Savage knocks the salt back into Crush’s face and starts a comeback in which he drops a Savage Elbow on Crush in the ring, rolls him to the floor, and covers him out there for three. Crush is right outside the ring, so he doesn’t have far to journey to re-start the match. Savage drops a mean elbow that knocks pretty much everyone out (unless you’re Warrior or Hogan, I suppose), so Fuji has to douse Crush with a cup full of water to wake him up; Crush barely makes it into the ring with two seconds to spare. See, this is a disjointed match with lots of laying around that cools off the crowd a bit. There are too many breaks in the action. Crush backdrops a charging Savage to the floor, and they brawl around ringside and then over the guardrail and into the stands. Lawler claims that Savage probably maneuvered Crush out there because “he’s got a plant in the audience to help him.” Maybe he procured the services of a stunt granny? If he did, she wasn’t needed; Savage busts Crush through multiple sets of double doors and pins him on the concrete in a staging area. Savage makes to leave, but then realizes that he can use the cables to string Crush up by his ankles. Savage hangs Crush, who immediately falls back to the concrete, but who also is in no shape to free himself. Savage pops Fuji one back in the ring as Finkel counts out Crush and declares Savage the winner. This match could have been so much more than it was, and certainly the worked recovery periods were a bit long even though there were only three in the bout, but this was a charmingly weird attempt at doing hardcore wrestling during a transitional period for the WWF, and therefore it is made for my Charming Uniquity list. I mean, the WWF never ran this type of hardcore bout ever again, did they? It is one of one, as unique as a match could possibly be for this company. Interview time [w/Todd Pettengill]: There’s a fucking interview with the Clinton impersonator and I.R.S., and I.R.S. supposedly loves Clinton for raising taxes. I think I can practically hear Vince McMahon’s annoying HAH HAH HAH from up here. Fuck off, Vince. Also, H.W. raised taxes, so Shyster’s theoretically been in heaven for years by now. Hype package: WWF Fan Fest is a proto-version of today’s pre-WrestleMania fanfare. It looks fun! You could enter one of the Undertaker's coffins and look around! Hype package: Savage celebrates his victory with the fans in the Paramount Theatre section in MSG. We move on to another past WrestleMania memory: WrestleMania IV TRUMP PLAZA TRUMP PLAZA TRUMP PLAZA HAH HAH HAH TRUMP HAH HAH fuck off, Vince. Match: Not that it’s probably worth all that much in 1994, but I’m glad to see Leilani Kai get a WrestleMania payday! She wrestles defending champion Alundra Blayze for the WWF Women’s Championship. I don’t get why Vince didn’t at least try to build a women’s division to see if it could bring in new viewers during a down period. Lawler won’t stop talking about the looks of the wrestlers before discussing the Clinton impersonator, so he’s fucking useless on color. This match is decent. Kai attacks early, gets sunset flipped twice for two, and gets back on top, including with a nice double-underhook slam. Blayze comes back with a nice clothesline and a spinning heel kick. Blayze earns a couple of two counts, ducks a Kai lariat, and scores a bridging back suplex for three. This was a mere morsel of a match, but it was inoffensive. Hype package: WrestleMania V. TRUMP PLAZA. MORTON DOWNEY JR. HAH HAH HAH HAAAAH! Seriously, fuck off, Vince. Match: Men on a Mission (w/Oscar) challenge the champion Quebecers (w/Johnny Polo) for the WWF World Tag Team Championships. Lawler is still making jokes about Alundra Blayze’s looks even during M.O.M’s entrance. Is it effective heeling if I want Lawler to shut up so badly that I genuinely hope someone shoots him in the throat so that he can’t talk anymore and maybe takes up a new line of work? You weren’t funny the first twenty-seven times you called Madusa ugly, dude. MOVE ON. Fuck. The auto-captioner reads one of Oscar’s lines as MSG, glad we’re back/Gat is ready, time to cap. I hope this match ends with Mo pulling out said gat and firing it right at Lawler’s larynx. Interview time [w/Todd Pettengill]: Before the Quebecers come out, Pettengill is standing with Rhonda Shear, but HBK moves Pettengill out of the way to get with Shear, but then Burt Reynolds shoos HBK and his too-hairy (according to Burt) chest off somewhere else so that he can get with Shear instead of Michaels. We get it Vince, there are still people who work in Hollywood who acknowledge you and your company. Back to the match: The Quebecers make it to the ring and jump M.O.M., but it goes poorly for them; the match settles into Mo and Pierre as the legal men, and these burly dudes crash satisfyingly into one another when Mo lands a cross body block. He tags Mabel in; Mabel lands a legdrop and dances. All this gets a pop from me. I like M.O.M. Sue me. The Quebecers finally jump Mo and continue to be one of the absolute best tag teams in control that I’ve ever seen in my life. Jacques backdrops Pierre over the top rope and onto Mo at ringside. Their double-team spots absolutely rule. I could spend all day watching Quebecer heel control segments in which they alternate between well-timed cheating and huge double-team bombs. They don’t get enough flowers for being a fantastic tag team because they were at their zenith in an era of WWF that no one actually liked. They were also an automatic fun time on WCW television a couple years after this. The match is worked around the Quebecers trying desperately to keep Mo from making a tag to Mabel, but they are speeding through this bout, so the Quebecers don’t put in enough work on Mo to make the eventual hot tag as effective as it could have been. Mabel gets a tag pretty soon, and he runs over the Quebecers, but they jump him and try a double vertical suplex. They don’t hit it, clutch their backs, commiserate with one another, and try it again…and it works. Fantastic spot! Polo celebrates outside the ring. It actually garners a babyface pop, it was so impressive. The Quebecers follow with their signature Cannonball finisher, but Mable powers out of Pierre’s cover at two. Mabel absorbs three of Pierre’s punches to throw one of his own, and his one blow is far more devastating. He works out of trouble, maneuvers Jacques into Pierre’s path to avoid a double-team attack, and then wheel kicks Pierre, which looks great and which gets a nice OHHHH from the crowd. Mabel and Mo team up to score a Mabel splash on Jacques but Polo distracts the ref, who doesn’t make the count. Oscar goes after Polo; Pierre tries to save Jacques, but Mo moves and then helps Mabel splash Mo at ringside. Polo then grabs Jacques, pulls him out of the ring, and leads him back down the aisle, taking a cheapie count-out loss. BOOOOOOOO. M.O.M. holds the belts up and celebrate their win in the ring, but this is as hollow as Luger’s “big” win over Yokozuna at SummerSlam ’93. The thing is, the work in this match was awesome. The two issues were the shitty cheap-o finish and the fact that the middle part of this match was truncated. Give it five to seven more minutes of Quebecer heel control before Mo can manage the hot tag to properly build up the anticipation and then just have M.O.M. win the titles at the end – the crowd was with them – and boom, you have a memorable match with a great finish and not a forgotten middle-of-the-card bout where all four guys put together an awesome framework with cool spots, but are let down by Vince et al. and this overall subpar booking and timing of the show. Hype package: WrestleMania VI. Warrior vs. Hogan. Title vs. title. First international WrestleMania, but not the last. Thankfully back then, thery didn't tear down the Air Canada Centre after using slave labor to quickly construct it. Match: Donnie Wahlberg in NKotB (NOT New Kids on the Block, dammit) and Rhonda Shear are the guest ring announcer and timekeeper respectively for the upcoming WWF World Heavyweight bout between challenger Lex Luger and champion Yokozuna (w/Mr. Fuji and James E. Cornette). Wahlberg gets booed. Obviously. Mr. Perfect, who is the special guest referee, gets a nice pop. Now, if you’ll recall the previous year’s WrestleMania, Luger and Perfect were embroiled in a nasty feud, culminating in a WrestleMania IX match that ended when Luger used his metal forearm to knock Perfect clean out. Though a confused Jerry Lawler thinks that Perfect is going to help out Luger babyface-to-babyface, you and I might remember that Mr. Perfect never forgets. Walhberg is a pretty solid guest ring announcer, by the way. I hate to give a compliment to a Wahlberg, but hey, I calls ‘em as I sees ‘em. Now, Perfect still holding a grudge against Luger for targeting him on Bobby Heenan’s behalf and then bonking him into unconsciousness with his metal elbow is a great callback, and as Luger and Yoko have a fairly energetic opening complete with a ringside brawl and a top-rope crossbody from Luger (!!), the problem is not the upcoming disappointing DQ finish, but that 1) it didn’t lead to a Perfect/Luger feud that directly called back to their previous issues and that 2) it follows another lukewarm finish in the tag match, thus amplifying the feeling that these finishes outside of the opener have been some collective bullshit. Luger and Yoko actually go hard early on in this match, probably because it’s not going as long as their SummerSlam ’93 bout and they can really unload on one another. Yoko rips a pad off the turnbuckle early at one point. Eventually, Yoko slows down and does his typical nerve hold bullshit, but at least he breaks it to throw forearms at Luger when Luger won’t give up before locking it on again. I mean, a five-hundred-plus pound dude clawing your shoulder and neck with his giant meaty hand should logically hurt, but visually, it’s not the most exciting move. After Luger fights up and elbows his way out of the hold, he bounces off the ropes, runs right into the giant slab of dude that is Yoko, and crisply bumps to the mat. Yoko and Perfect yap at one another about the rules which all pro wrestlers are bound to follow in a standard match before Yoko hits a few chops and goes right back to this fucking nerve hold. My eyes glaze over a bit, but eventually Luger gets chucked to the floor; Luger rolls back into the ring, eats a chop, and…gets put in a fucking nerve hold again, FUCK. FUCK. FUUUUUCK. Someone pair Owen Hart with Yoko so that Owen can do all the interesting minute-to-minute work and Yoko can rest on the apron between big spots instead of being in there all gassed and having to slow down to work minutes-long nerve hold spots. Luger fights up, Yoko responds with a chop, and then NERVE HOLD. Everything is NERVE HOLD. Yokozuna loves the NERVE HOLD. He loves it so much, he wants to marry the NERVE HOLD. He doesn’t worship the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. He worships the NERVE HOLD, the NERVE HOLD, and the NERVE HOLD. Luger fights up again and hits the ropes, but Yoko catches him and hits a huge belly-to-belly. Yoko signals that he’s going to finish Lex off and brings him over to a corner where he previously stripped off the buckle, but Lex blocks the buckle bonk, lands one of his own, and commences a comeback that ends with a low body slam and a running forearm. Cornette tries to get involved, but Luger cuts him off and punches him; the same goes for Fuji. Luger then covers Yoko, but Perfect checks on Cornette instead. Luger grabs Perfect and exhorts him to count his cover, but Perfect checks on Fuji instead. Luger grabs Perfect again, and Perfect disqualifies Luger for accosting an official and walks away. I mean, Luger looks like a fucking doofus, doesn’t he? Hilarious. This crowd is silent for a full thirty or forty-five seconds after that dogshit finish; they settle on a BULLSHIT chant. Can you blame them? Interview time [w/Todd Pettengill]: Perfect justifies his decision to Pettengill, but Luger busts in and screams at Perfect. Luger declares that if Perfect had problems with him, he should have talked it out with him before the match. Perfect claims not to have any problems with Luger, but we watch the shows, Perfect! We remember last year! Perfect gets his kayfabe revenge. It doesn’t go anywhere in storyline, and it genuinely let down the live audience, but he gets his kayfabe revenge! Hype package: WrestleMania VII was disrupted by a bomb scare. No, not like explosives. Like the show was a ticket sales failure, a total bomb. The featured match for this look at history? The Martel/Roberts Blindfold Match. Match: Harvey Wippleman interrupts Howard Finkel’s ring introduction to rack his brain for his best insults and fire each of them toward Fink. “Banana Nose,” a Memphis favorite that was often lobbed toward Lance Russell, gets a drop here. Fink shoves Wippleman to the mat after Wippleman grabs his suit. That brings Wippleman’s charge Adam Bomb out to threaten Finkel, but Bomb’s opponent Earthquake charges to the ring and squashes Bomb both literally and also in the parlance of the wrestling business, winning a flawless victory over Bomb via Earthquake Splash in about a minute, if that. I mean, did we have to cut this match to the bone so that Yokozuna could do an extra three minutes of NERVE HOLD last match? Really? Who scheduled this show? Herb Abrams?! Interview time [w/Todd Pettengill]: Man, Pettengill SUCKS. He’s so annoying. Jim Cornette storms up and calls him Pettingzoo, which makes me laugh. Cornette and Yoko are fired up after that cheapie victory over Luger; Cornette reminds Luger that they both agreed on Perfect as the special referee, so he doesn't want to hear any complaints about the officiating. Then, he turns his attention to Bret Hart, who was earlier beaten by his lil’ bro and suffered a knee injury in the process. Cornette seems pretty optimistic about Yokozuna’s odds against the Hitman in tonight’s main event on account of all that! Hype package: WrestleMania VIII featured the Undertaker. Also, Randy Savage won the world title, but you wouldn’t know that from this here hype package. Match: Two Intercontinental title belts hang from a hook above the ring. Whether the currently sanctioned champion Razor Ramon or the former champion with a claim that he never lost the belt in the ring Shawn Michaels (w/Diesel) will possess those belts depends on how good they are at climbing ladders. Razor is somehow incredibly cool for a country dude from Florida; he puts out his arms and does his Razor strut right underneath the open legs of a ladder standing in the aisle because he doesn’t believe in superstition. No ladder is stopping the Bad Guy from getting in the ring and fucking this yappy little pinball up before grabbing his gold. I mean, Razor doing that ladder walk shit and then flipping his hair was peak aura to me. On my list of peak aura moves from the ‘90s, it’s Razor strutting under the ladder and Deion Sanders high-stepping into the end zone after another pick six. The opening of the match is designed to get Diesel out of here so that there is no focus on whether or not he’s going to cheat for Shawn; once Diesel attacks Razor when Razor spills to the floor after a pacey opening exchange, ref Earl Hebner sends him to the back and we can put all our attention on Razor and Shawn, and especially Shawn, who starts flinging his body around the ring and bumping like Ric Flair on methamphetamines. Razor pulls the padding up from the floor, but he ends up taking a backdrop onto the concrete after Shawn takes a break from bouncing himself around like a hyperactive toddler to counter Razor’s charge. Shawn grabs the ladder standing in the aisle, but Razor gets up and lets Shawn do most of the work of dragging the ladder to ringside for him. He puts the ladder on the apron and climbs up after it, but Shawn scrambles to his feet, hits the ropes, and baseball slides the ladder into Razor’s solar plexus. Why does this ladder match hold up so well? I’ve seen countless ladder matches, but precious few of them have lived up to this match. I wonder if part of it is a subconscious echo of the very real feeling I had about this match when I first saw it, where every spot felt new and crazy dangerous. Even spots like Shawn slamming the ladder over Razor’s back felt incredibly violent and still do. Shawn flings the ladder right at Razor’s back as commentary does its first decent job all night by pointing out that the ladder is currently more weapon than climbing tool, setting an expectation that we’ll get lots of creative uses of the ladder as weapon first. Unfortunately, we have to see Michaels’s bare ass when Razor yanks his pants down while trying to halt his climb up the ladder. Michaels kicks him away and drops an elbow, then (probably) congratulates himself on how good he is at being A New Ric Flair For the ‘90s before he climbs the ladder and launches with a successful top-ladder splash. Anyway, back to this match being seminal: I think one of the reasons that it holds up is that there’s not all this “ladders as contraptions in a Rube Goldberg machine” nonsense that ladder matches evolved toward by the TLC matches of the late Attitude Era. The ladder is used to a) hit someone, b) dive off of, or c) climb. That’s it. There’s nothing cute about how this ladder is used, which is a standard of Scott Hall ladder matches specifically. He was the absolute best at this match type partly because he understood how to preserve the brutality of it all and not let the match descend into spots for the sake of new, innovative, and cool spots. Scott Hall ladder matches feel like nasty fights. It also helps that Shawn’s instincts to do some LOOKATMELOOKATMELOOKATME flip-floppy bumping and flailing are right for this match because he’s doing stuff like falling off a toppling ladder and Hot Shotting himself, so it plays as a more natural and less theatrical reaction – he plummeted from ten feet and caught the rope, after all – than it otherwise often does. I think probably Hall’s best match of this type in terms of quality-to-opponent-talent ratio is the one he worked in 1999 on WCW free television with a washed Bam Bam Bigelow that is just an incredible bout. I don’t want to minimize Bammer’s performance in that match, because he was on point, but he also sort of didn’t have any business having a match that good by 1999. It’s a violent little bout that limits the cute complex ladder spots and heads straight into painful ladder-assisted moves and big bumps that feel like crushing blows. Razor is absolutely destroying Michaels with the ladder, and Michaels is making a meal of all the bumping. He crashes into the ladder in the corner and bumps himself to the floor, then gets slingshotted into a ladder and makes sure to topple backward after smashing into it and let the ladder fall on him. Meanwhile, Razor is swinging the ladder to kill, knocking Michaels to the floor with a vicious, uppercutting swipe that I would have bought as a knockout blow if Michaels hadn’t hurried up the ropes to stop Razor’s climb with a diving double-axehandle from the top rope. I guess I have to say something wild here, but I feel it to be true on this watch; Hall is basically walking Michaels through this match. Michaels is bumping like a lunatic, but Razor is the guy structuring this thing, preserving the violence of the bout, legitimizing everything about the use of the ladder and its impact on the competitors when used. Michaels would be too showy in his bumping and selling if Razor weren’t grounding things here. Razor superplexes Michaels off the ladder, and he topples with the ladder as he completes the move; the ladder is done with nearly five hundred pounds of human using it for purposes that it was not manufactured for and twists at the bottom, as irreparably broken as the bodies that are crashing into and plummeting off it. Razor tries to climb the ladder again, but Michaels climbs to his feet and dropkicks it, shoves it into Razor, and catches Razor with a Sweet Chin Music. HBK looks at Razor and steals Razor’s “It’s Over” taunt, but he merely piledrives Razor rather than attempt a Razor’s Edge. He then grabs the ladder and goes up top while holding the ladder in place on the mat in front of him, and in what is just a nasty spot, he rides the ladder down and into the prone Razor’s gut. I don’t know how you protect yourself to take a move like that. The answer is pretty much that you don’t. Shawn opens the ladder over the prone Razor’s body and starts to climb, but Razor gets to his feet and manages one more burst of energy; he bounces off the ropes and shoulderblocks the ladder as Shawn climbs. Shawn falls from the ladder and tangles his ankle in the ropes. He finally frees his ankle, but in doing so tangles up his wrist, a forlorn Wile E. Coyote who thrashes around and watches the Roadrunner eat the birdseed bait and race away. Er, I mean he watches Razor climb the ladder and take possession of both IC title belts to win the match and become the undisputed Intercontinental Champion. The crowd is tired out after this one, and how could they not be? This match isn’t even the greatest Shawn/Razor ladder match – we’ll get to that one probably fifteen or twenty review posts from now at the low end – but it’s still probably a top three or four ladder match ever. It’s also not the best match on this show – I still rate Bret/Owen as better – so it’s probably the greatest match that somehow also isn’t the greatest match from a weird perspective. Gab Gab Gab: The story I believe I’ve heard is that Shawn and Razor took too long in their match, so the ten-man tag got cut, but that ladder bout is perfectly timed and needed every second, so maybe the fuckos who laid out this show should have spent less time with the WM reviews and the Bill Clinton impersonator, cut five minutes from Yoko/Luger, and not blamed Shawn and Razor for using exactly the length of time they needed to have a bout that laid a blueprint of best practices for any future Ladder matches that might ever happen. Anyway, since the heels can’t agree on who should be the captain for their team because they’re all egotistical fucks, that match is cut. But you know what’s not cut? Interview time [w/Todd Pettengill]: This promo with the Clinton impersonator and Ted DiBiase. Because this show is preserving time for the things that really matter! Hype package: I’ve reviewed WrestleMania IX as part of this Big Five PPVs from 1993 to 2000, Maybe 2001 series, so you can just read that review if you need a reminder of the finer points of all its misbegotten booking failures. This final review does remind us that Bret Hart was jobbed in his title defense against Yokozuna and that it’s time for Our Canadian Wrestling Hero to get his revenge, dammit! Hype package: The Hitman rules. Here’s some footage of the Hitman in his natural habitat: being awesome in a wrestling ring. I don’t know about this twangy guitar music, though. The package ends by reminding us of his beef with Owen and his first WWF Championship victory over Ric Flair, which was nearly two years ago at the point this show aired. Time flies! The record scratches and we cut to video of Yokozuna destroying dudes. Match: With Jennie Garth as guest timekeeper, Burt Reynolds as guest ring announcer, and Rowdy Roddy Piper as guest referee, we finally fucking crown the Hitman on a WrestleMania. Reynolds gets a subdued pop from the crowd and semi-snarkily exclaims, “I’m happier to be here than you are!” Vince: HAH HAH HAH, I DUNNO ABOUT THAT. But seriously, they’re a bit burned out by the previous match and the long show, though they wake up for Piper’s entrance. Piper is more over than Burt Reynolds in the Northeastern United States. That seems right, honestly. That region of the country fucking LOVED this guy. Piper’s NO FEAR shirt has the Tazmanian Devil wearing a kilt on the back of it. It was the ‘90s. We put Looney Tunes characters on everything. Speaking earlier of Wile E., I had a t-shirt with Wile E. wearing a bandana and looking like an OG on it in the ‘90s. That’s just how it was, man. And I say that wistfully. Yokozuna (w/Jim Cornette and Mr. Fuji) attacks Bret right as Bret gets in the ring. So, this match is what it is: Another match with Yokozuna being boring for stretches at a time and also a questionable finish, though at least this one is clean. I wanted Bret to win square in the center with the Sharpshooter, so when I first saw Bret win with a quick lateral cover because Yokozuna was very fat and somewhat concussed and fatigued, causing him to tumble off the middle ropes while attempting a Banzai Drop, I was incredibly disappointed. Piper spends time threatening the heels and counting way too quickly for these standing ten-counts. Bret headbutts Yoko and hurts himself, so I guess Yoko is Polynesian rather than Japanese tonight. Notably, though, it also does hurt Yoko, hinting at Yoko's lingering head injury. Bret sells the leg and does his best to do something memorable here, but this bout is pretty forgettable, honestly. Piper also spends a lot of time getting himself over. He knocks out Corny when Cornette yanks him out of the ring to stop him from counting a Hitman cover. This gets a ROD-DY chant. I don’t blame Piper; he can’t do anything without being bombastic. Does he need to consistently get up in Yoko’s grill and argue with him? No. Do I think he’s consciously trying to pull attention to himself? No, not really. I just think that it’s pure attention-grabbing instinct on his part. Meanwhile, this slow Yoko beatdown isn’t very fun. Yoko misses a corner splash; Bret quickly lands a diving bulldog from the second rope for a perfectly timed 2.9 that the kids in the crowd bit on. They also bite on this well-timed close two count after Bret scores a second-rope elbowdrop. Bret tries a flying clothesline next; he’s been going for knockouts this match instead of working a body part, with lots of punches and forearms and now a noggin-based attack, and though commentary hasn’t noted this odd approach from the usually limb-focused-in-attack Hitman, I'll remind you that the reason why in kayfabe is that Luger knocked Yoko out with the metal forearm, so Bret’s thinking that he might be able to concuss the big man and get a quick one on him. It’s a neat little departure from Bret’s usual measured limb attacks. Anyway, Bret leaps from the second rope and gets caught and hit with a belly-to-belly, but Bret moves when Yoko falls off the second ropes while trying a Banzai Drop. Yoko sells a head injury as he falls and Bret pins him to a huge pop, but I feel that Bret should have directly caused the head injury to win it. It also doesn’t help that Yoko pops up instead of selling that he’s punch-drunk. The idea of the finish is fine, but the actual finish was poorly executed, which is pretty much the story of this show outside of Bret/Owen and Razor/HBK. Yoko even chases Piper down the aisle and to the back after the count, totally unconcussed. Meanwhile, starting with a congratulatory Lex Luger, a group of babyfaces come to the ring to celebrate with the Hitman and give him his props for finally vanquishing Yokozuna, but you know who isn’t happy about all this celebratory hubbub? Owen Hart. He stands in the aisle and glares at the Hitman, thinking that he just beat the champ earlier in the night, so by all rights, that WWF World Heavyweight Championship should be his. Macho invites Owen into the ring to join them, but Owen’s having none of that…and a seed is planted for the continuing Bret/Owen saga. I don’t think I realized until I wrote about this show, a show that I hadn’t seen in full in years and maybe in decades, how meaningful it was to me and my fandom. I think the way I feel about this show mirrors how I generally felt (and maybe still do feel) about the New Generation era. On the whole, it was a failure of an era and 1995 is almost certainly the nadir of WWF television pre-millennium and a serious contender for “worst year in WWF history” when it comes to show quality, but even then, I could watch a run of boring, braindead WWF Action Zone, Mania, and RAW episodes, and watch In Your House PPVs full of Remember that Guy? candidates and still tell you with a straight face that I enjoyed WWF as much as I enjoyed the much hotter, much better in quality WCW (especially by ’95, even with Hogan desperately clinging to relevance as a babyface all over their cards). That’s how I feel about this show, which everyone always notes is a two-match show, but is also a show in which I give a lot of love to, say, the good parts of Savage/Crush and minimize the show's drawbacks and failures – Clinton impersonator here, a NERVE HOLD there, and back-to-back dogshit finishes in the middle of the card, among other questionable creative choices. The score that I am giving doesn’t reflect how much I adore this show (hell, I just wrote over nine thousand words about it) because while I’ll remember this show for its greatness and forget the questionable show scheduling and finishes among other things in time, that stuff I hated is still fresh in my mind only ten minutes after watching it again: 3.75 Digital Snowflakes out of 5.

Say what you will about TNA creative at this time, but that was a faultless use of the Bucks on this show.

....AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *gasp* ...HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *whew* HA!

What little Hybrid Heaven progress that I made was lost because I have an old-ass Memory Card Plus for my N64, which means that the battery is dead. Rather than open it up and change it, I went looking online and ended up just buying a Forever Pak 64 after doing a bit of light research: https://4layertech.com/products/forever-pak-64. I am looking forward to it getting here because I also ran into a copy of Snowboard Kids to replace my long-lost cart that probably a sibling has in a closet box somewhere. It still has its PROPERTY OF BLOCKBUSTER seal on it. I paid almost as much for it as I otherwise could have paid for a physical copy of the new Bond or Yoshi games, so yeah. I mean, the original MSRP was fifty dollars in March 1998, which in 2026 dollars is about a hundred-and-three bucks, so I guess I got a deal on this very used (but still in good condition) copy of Snowboard Kids from that perspective? Anyway, I spent too much money on myself and on games (I also got a couple of GamePro and EGM back issues), but it's cool. I can't wait to dig into SBK and Hybrid Heaven and actually save my progress. However, I did buy one more game. For the first time ever, one of Nintendo's Game Trials has led me to a direct purchase. Usually, I download the Game Trial even if it's something that I have zero interest in, run the app, get to the title screen, close the app, delete the app, and the collect my platinum coins, but this time, I played some Ball x Pit. I knew good and well that this game was probably right in my wheelhouse, but I didn't check it out at launch. Now, with a trial and an on-sale price of ten dollars, it was inevitable that a fucking Breakout/Arkanoid roguelite was going to get its hooks into me. This game is essentially drugs, but a video game. When I say that it hits like crack for me, I mean that if a neurologist ran a scan of my brain while I played it and then put it next to the brain of someone doing crack, I suspect that at least some of the same parts of our brains would be highly active. First of all, it's fucking Breakout. I love Breakout. You give me a 2600 and Breakout even in the year 2026, and I will have lots of fun. And then there are all the block-breakers that built on Breakout that I love. Arkanoid, sure, but Kirby's Block Ball is a top-ten OG Game Boy game. Holy shit, is it good. It has engaging boss fights! Guess what other game has engaging boss fights? YOU GUESSED IT! The blocks in this case are advancing monster armies that you need to clear before they get to the bottom of the screen and can freely attack you. They can also attack if you progress up the well, which in this case is a, y'know, pit that reveals a play area like a cave, but if you stand at the bottom of the well, they can't reach you until they get there. Of course, staying at the bottom of the well and firing ammo in the form of various cannonballs is not going to go well for you; you have to be aggressive, fire paths into the hordes so that you can angle a cannonball or five through it, off the cave wall, and slamming endlessly along the top lines of the monster formation to be especially destructive. The other thing about this game besides it being a fun block breaker - though block breakers are always fun all the time, IMO, even the sort of plain ones, so this is an especially fun block breaker, I guess - is that it masters the art of many P2W mobile games without being a P2W mobile game. There is a version of this game that lives on mobile and sucks dollar after dollar from its users. Rarely have I seen games that are quite this good at Making the Numbers Go Up. There are always numbers that you can drive upward. As you kill monsters in the well, you pick up essence to level up your character and get a weapon upgrade or different type of weapon (cannonballs that pulse lasers, cause 3x3 earthquakes upon impact, crit. when hitting enemies on diferent sides, etc.), fusions to level up or fuse together your shots, blueprints to build new buildings that unlock new characters, and so forth. Oh yeah, between each run, you are rebuilding the town near the giant pit, and you place buildings and elements for harvesting, and you harvest elementst by shooting your characters like you shoot the cannonballs in the well, and they bounce around and harvest stuff for you to build other stuff. Did there need to be a whole town-building element? No, the game in the pit with all the balls is enough. But they added it so I could see numbers of stuff - ore, wheat, etc. - go up while I'm not in the pit. Also, since this is a roguelite, after each run, your characters gain experience and level up permanently. In the well, Numbers Go Up. Outside of the well, Numbers Go Up. I have been thinking about this game a whole lot since I bought it last night, let's just say that. It feels good to fire cannonballs and watch them smash the shit out of groups of enemies. The light vertical shmup elements (some enemies and the first boss all shoot back) are just the right amount of challenge without being frustrating. And there are numbers. So many numbers. You are always progressing in your run and also outside of it with every go. Fuuuuuuuuck this game hits just right. If any of this sounds like your type of gameplay loop, trust me that you should check this game out.

I mean, look right above you on this very page at the kind of posts the standard-bearer for pro wrestling newz is making on Twitter (and believe me, it's not just one weird tweet). Funny enough, Meltzer is also a shameless water-carrier for AEW, which I think fits in line with your comment about Raj; most of these dudes are water carriers for one promotion or another, and a single short news story from WrestlePurists isn't really indicative of the state of things when it comes to pro wrestling journos.