supremebve

Supremebve Watches the 90s Yearbook. I finished the last two matches on Disc 1. The Rockers vs. Powers of Pain I don't remember this being part of an ongoing feud (I was 9, don't judge), but it definitely should have been. This is a great speed vs. power matchup. This is a Marty Janetty master class. His face-in-peril segment is really effective. He makes Warlord and Barbarian's offense look like they're killing him. He takes a back body drop and a flapjack that seem like he's falling from the rafters. He gets so much air that it makes a limited guy like Warlord look like a million bucks. Barbarian has some of the best big guy 80s offense. His big boot, his powerslam, and pretty much everything else (I hate wrong-way elbow drops and he does a few of them here) look great. If WWF was more of a workrate type company, I think he'd be much better remembered. This might be the best WWF match of 1990, it's really good in a year where most of the promotion kind of sucked. Hogan vs. Warrior is the only match I can think of that is even in the same range. Kazuo Yamazaki vs. Yoji Anjoh Much like Lucha, I don't have much of a background with shoot-style, but I'm going to watch these matches with an open mind. This was pretty entertaining. I don't remember who was who, but this was worked in a way that seemed like an overly dramatic MMA fight. It had some quirks that I don't quite understand, like the "Down" scoring, but I'm down to watch more of this. There was a really nasty gut-wrench suplex in this match that made me remember how much I love that move when done right. There are very few moves that make the suplexer look more dominant without damn near killing the suplexee. Ric Ric Flair vs. Bobby Eaton I forgot to talk about this one yesterday, but if you know anything about me at all, you'll know that I loved it. I talked about Arn Anderson being an underrated wrestling master, but Bobby Eaton is in the same class...and maybe even better. He made a series of head scissors interesting. Just think about that, when was the last time you watched a match and thought, "Man, he's really working that head scissors?" He took multiple crazy bumps and felt like a real threat to beat Flair. This is the kind of match that is just lost in current wrestling. Eaton is a guy who is never going to be a world champion, but at no point did he feel outclassed in this match. Credit goes to Flair too, for selling the work on his neck in a way that gave Eaton's offense credibility. I honestly think Flair's #1 contribution is that he's a rising tide that raises all boats. He's the Ace of the company, but almost all of his TV matches are him getting his ass kicked by someone who will never be in the main event. Everyone he wrestles gets a little bit of extra credibility, and they go wrestle someone else who looks better, and sooner or later that credibility earned in the Flair match compounds like interest. That used to be the responsibility of the champion, but I can't even remember the last champion who even tried to raise the credibility of the roster. We losing recipes.

If listening to a bunch of Con Funk Shun is a sign of a brain tumor, I need to go get a CAT scan. Love's Train is on damn near every playlist on my Spotify.

My last Spotify Wrapped said my musical age was 77. I'm 45. When I was in high school, I was bumping Al Green's greatest hits on the regular.

I'm much more into old school 60s and 70s soul. I can't imagine anyone who would rather listen to Musiq Soulchild when they could listen to Al Green.

I don't have any tattoos, but pretty much everybody is super surprised when I tell them that. I'm a millennial black dude with locs, and people just assume I'm covered in tats.

The Jet album is the one that sparked my idea that this was some sort of internet-too-cool-for-school thing. Jet is the exact type of band that a portion of the internet would decide sucks for no real reason. People have come back around, but hip-hop heads at one point just decided that Hammer was everything wrong with hip-hop. While he's not Rakim or anyone, Hammer is a perfectly competent rapper who made a lot of hit songs. If Pitchfork existed in 1993, I could definitely see them giving a Hammer album a 0.0. They had already decided they wouldn't like it before they ever listened to it.

This kind of makes me want to examine whether this is an honest review or a review tailor-made for the perceived audience of Pitchfork.

Just looking at the list, I can kind of tell that it's internet, "too cool for school," bullshit. I don't think I've ever listened to any of those albums, but most of those bands were either good enough or popular enough that I have a hard time believing that they put out anything truly unlistenable.

I didn't think the entire Jayden Daniels and his mom thing was weird until I saw him giving her a piggyback ride. I can't think of a non-emergency situation where my mom would have ever jumped on my back at any point in my life.

I started the 1990s yearbooks and I have some observations after about 90% through the first disk. First observation. I do not support most of what Jerry Lawler said in his interviews. I will acknowledge that he's exceptionally good at saying things that are toeing the line of abhorrence. Eddy Guerrero was in a tag with his brother Mando, and Eddy was already pretty awesome back in 1990. He's in a match with El Hijo Del Santo, Blue Demon Jr, and his older brother, all of whom have much more experience than him, but he's the one who popped off the screen. I don't know, maybe he was pretty good. I'm very much not a lucha guy. I haven't watched that much and what I have watched hasn't really clicked with me. Both lucha matches so far were pretty fun. Arn Anderson is perhaps the most underrated performer of all time. His match with Muta was awesome, but he did something in the promo after that shows he's playing at a higher level. He starts the promo pretty calm, but then he ups the intensity, and right as he's getting into it Buzz Sawyer interrupts him. He knows Sawyer is going to interrupt him, but instead of phoning in the promo, he gives it the same intensity he would have gave if he wasn't going to be interrupted. It was a completely unnecessary detail that makes all of this feel just a little bit more real. That's why Arn was great. He treats every detail like it matters. Cactus Jack is in a feud with his old jobber tag partner. This is a really interesting way to heat a guy up. Not only that, but the commentary is putting over the fact that he might not have a great win/loss record, but he's fucking dangerous. At one point, Kevin Sullivan asks Jim Ross, "Do you think he would hurt someone for money?" If Kevin Sullivan of all people would like to hire Cactus Jack as muscle, you know he must be a badass. We're also easing out of the Jumbo/Tenryu era into the Jumbo/Misawa era and I can't fucking wait. That may be my #1 all-time favorite in-ring wrestling feud. (Something I noticed in the Jumbo/Misawa vs. Tenryu/Fuyuki match. Tenryu's machine gun chops in the corner are much better than Kobashi's or Kojima's, but somehow those are the ones that caught on. Someone needs to steal that spot immediately.)

She was on the LeBatard show maybe two or three years ago, and whoo boy, she came off as completely unlikeable.

LOL, it would be hilairious, but sadly not true. I remember over the winter we were going back and forth about how terrible winters were growing up, him in Russia and me and Northern Ohio. We both swore our winters were worse, then we googled it, and the record low temperature in my hometown was the exact same as his hometown.

I work with a Russian guy, he's a jacked bald white guy. He looks exactly like the Russian wrestler stereotype.

I'm probably the wrong person to weigh in on this as I'm 45 with an almost supernatural ability to grow hair, but black dudes usually make the choice as soon as they start receding. Immediately shave it bald, with or without a beard, or hold on for dear life.

Yeah, they're talking about how the arena isn't up to snuff already and begging for public money that probably isn't coming.