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[WWE NETWORK] What Are You Watching?


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Watching a Nitro from August '96 and heard Konnan and Larry Z. refer to the NWO as the "New World Odor" twice in the span of like three minutes. Come on, guys.

A little down the line, keep track of how often Zbysko says "The New World Order is in disarray."

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September-December 2013 was a dire time for WWE shows, but I remember Night of Champions being way worse. At least Battleground had the Rhodes/Shield match everyone liked. NoC was nothing but heel wins, until Bryan got the obviously tainted fast-count win in the main.

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Watching a Nitro from August '96 and heard Konnan and Larry Z. refer to the NWO as the "New World Odor" twice in the span of like three minutes. Come on, guys.

The Larry Zsbysko drinking game

Everytime he talked about his golf game, take a shot.

Everytime he mentioned the human game of chess, take 2 shots.

Everytime he said new world odor, chug your drink.

It also worked really well with JR's catchphrases.

 

 

Don't forget about "25 glorious years".

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Thoughts on SummerSlam 89

 

This show had an NWA feel, with Tony Schiavone as the first voice you heard, followed by a Tully & Arn match, and then a Dusty Rhodes match. Of course, Ronnie Garvin showed up as well to ring announce, specifically to insult Greg Valentine. It's surprising while watching this show that we had to wait two more years for Ric Flair.

 

The network edited out Mean Gene's "F--- It!" when the sign fell down during his interview with Rick Rude. But don't worry, King Hacksaw Jim Duggan provided the laughs by wearing a crown, royal cape and Demolition face mask, while carrying both the American Flag and a red-white-and-blue-wrapped 2x4 with a little crown on it.

 

Speaking of that match, Demolition and Duggan beat the Twin Towers and Andre by using the 2x4 as a weapon. This is same "babyfaces cheat! yay!" finish they did earlier in the year at the Rumble (Hart Foundation and Duggan over Rougeaus and Bravo) and WrestleMania V (Hart Foundation over Valentine & Honky Tonk Man).

 

Tully and Arn over the Harts was one of the best matches of 1989. Since the champs were going over by pinfall, it's weird that they made it a non-title match. 

 

I am actually going to give the MVP award to Zeus. Not only did he perform a lot better than expected in the main event, but he modeled the "monster who is absolutely impervious to pain (unless you hit him with a loaded purse)" template that was later used to great effect by The Undertaker.

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I'm working my way through Wrestlemania 4 right now.  It's not new to me -- I saw it on CLOSED CIRCUIT as a youngster.  It's  a pretty bad show so far and I can't help but think about the alternate reality where HTM didn't hold up Vince that January/February, Savage got the IC title on the Main Event leading up to this and DiBiase won the world title.

 

On a side note, it's funny how Meltzer, for example, bagged on Gorilla Monsoon for being a terrible announcer.  Monsoon and Ventura could smoke the current WWE announce teams in their sleep.  Man, I miss good commentary that actually discussed the match in the ring and treated it like a real athletic competition.  Something so simple really adds to a match and its absence today is striking by comparison.  If the clowns calling Raw can't be bothered to discuss the match like it means something, why should I care to watch it?

 

I also watched a random Flair/Guerrero match recently.  It was from one of the Hog/Road Wild shows and it was not good.  They blew 3-4 spots early including one botched back suplex counter where I swear both guys got hurt.  Dull Flair formula match where he's the heel so the babyface gets 80% of the match because Flair's going over.  Flair gets the pin with the figure four as Woman gives him leverage.  Bad.

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I'll always remember that Flair/Eddy match b/c Flair ripped his head off with a lariat at the end. It was a very out of character move for Flair. I don't recall him ever doing that before or after that match.

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I've been watching some 2000 WWF stuff to see what holds up from that time frame. Recently I watched Fully Loaded 2000, which was a fairly hyped show from that year, in its entirety.

 

The opener was a 6-person intergender match with T&A/Trish vs. The Hardys and Lita. Crowd was ridiculously hot (like no one outside of Bryan or Cena would sniff this kind of heat today) but the match was sloppy as fuck. I forgot how bad Matt Hardy was before like 2003. I think the faces won when Lita pinned Trish, but all three got beat down afterwards.

 

Tazz vs. Al Snow was next. The crowd wasn't nearly as hot for this one. Had a surprisingly fast pace with a lot of Al Snow offense for some reason, even though Tazz was the one getting pushed. Tazz did end up dropping Snow on his head and locking in the tazzmission for the win.

 

Guerrero vs. Saturn was just kind of there. Pretty comparable to their match from Halloween Havoc 99, these two just didn't quite click together. Saturn won after Terri interfered.

 

Edge and Christian tried to fake food poisoning to get out of their match with the APA. Not their best work, but you could tell they were having a lot of fun. The JFK pre-match promo was pretty ridiculous, kinda surprised that got green lighted. One big thing I've picked up from watching attitude era shows is that Bradshaw was always really good, not just as JBL as is the common IWC narrative. He was really inspired with his promo and brawling. E/C were decent as the cowardly heels, although the intentional DQ finish is always lame.

 

I found the much talked about Val/Rikishi cage match to be really overrated. Serious Val Venis was super boring, and his music was god-awful. The match was pretty aimless until the end. Rikishi was decent here, and his splash off the cage was definitely an all-time holy shit spot. The fact that it didn't end the match was atrocious. Possibly the biggest waste of an amazing spot ever. Tazz interfered to help Val win.

 

Angle/Taker was ok, but not anywhere near what these two would do in the coming years. Angle had the charisma, but was still finding his way in the ring. Along with Bradshaw, Bikertaker is one of my biggest turnaround guys as far as how felt about them at the time vs. now.

 

The LMS with Jericho and HHH also got a lot of hype, and it was solid. I wasn't really digging the submission work for the first 2/3 or so, but it got really good after Jericho's comeback. The chair shots to the head still get me every time now. HHH blades huge of course, and between that and Jericho's pre-existing rib injury there was finally a sense of urgency for both guys. The finishing spot was really smart, even though it went completely against the traditional kayfabe idea that tables = death. HHH delivered a suplex to Jericho where Jericho landed on the concrete, but HHH went through the table and was thus able to beat the 10 count when Jericho couldn't.

 

Rock vs. Benoit was also a really good match. Seems to be the one people talk about the least, probably because of who's in it and the fact it didn't have any spots that would stand out 15 years later. It was sort of the opposite of the LMS where the first 2/3 was excellent, but the finishing stretch wasn't. It was a really inspired back-and-forth brawl from the get-go. Benoit was always really good at those, and don't let Rocky's 2013 run make you forget what a great athlete he was in 2000. Loved watching these two go toe to toe for 15 minutes or so. The finish with Shane intereference and a commisoner Foley restart definitely took the wind out of the sails at the end.

 

Overall, this show wasn't nearly as good as advertised. The last two matches were good despite some flaws. The rest of the card was pretty skippable outside of Rikishi's dive, which was essentially no-sold (since anything less than Val getting picked up with a spatula would be inadequate).

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The LMS with Jericho and HHH also got a lot of hype, and it was solid. I wasn't really digging the submission work for the first 2/3 or so, but it got really good after Jericho's comeback. The chair shots to the head still get me every time now. HHH blades huge of course, and between that and Jericho's pre-existing rib injury there was finally a sense of urgency for both guys. The finishing spot was really smart, even though it went completely against the traditional kayfabe idea that tables = death. HHH delivered a suplex to Jericho where Jericho landed on the concrete, but HHH went through the table and was thus able to beat the 10 count when Jericho couldn't.

 

In his 2nd book, Jericho said that despite numerous signs warning people to "Stay away from the Spanish Announce table" the second announce table got destroyed during the Saturn/Guerrero match which is why they changed the ending spot. It was supposed to be HHH suplexing Jericho from one table through the other.

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Thoughts on Survivor Series 89

 

"Wrestling" is such a bad word in WWE that they blurred out "Of Wrestling" when they showed clips from "Superstars of Wrestling." Are they trying to convince us that we're not watching wrestling?

 

After Brutus Beefcake pinned The Honky Tonk Man, he totally left Dusty Rhodes hanging for a high five. He gave a big double high-five to the Red Rooster. Dusty reached out for his, but ... nothing.

 

I liked when Hacksaw Jim Duggan's team (The 4x4s) marched to the ring together with their 2x4s. Too bad they botched the part where they tossed the boards to each other. Also, the fans really got behind Duggan when he faced a 1-on-3 deficit against Savage, Bravo and Earthquake.

 

Jesse Ventura accused referee Earl Hebner of being biased in Hulk Hogan's favor after Hebner disqualified 75 percent of Ted DiBiase's team. Of course, this was less than two years after Hebner screwed Hogan out of the WWF title.

 

As Hogan celebrated, my daughter asked, "Is the show over? There should be an hour left." This was the WWF's first experiment with Ultimate Warrior in the main event spot. Warrior delivered, and earned the MVP award. He clobbered Andre the Giant at the beginning of the match and destroyed Bobby Heenan at the end. I like how he mowed Heenan down while running back to the dressing room to end the show.

 

So now, I've watched every WWF pay-per-view from the 80s on the Network and given an MVP award for every show. As you might suspect, the overall MVP Is the Macho Man.

 

Randy Savage 3 Wrestling Classic, WM4, WM3

Bobby Heenan 2 Big Event, WM V

Ultimate Warrior 2 SummerSlam 88, Survivor Series 89

Islanders 1 Royal Rumble 88

Honky Tonk Man 1 Survivor Series 87

Terry Funk 1 WM 2

Mr. T 1 WM 1

Bad News Brown 1 Survivor Series 88

Andre the Giant 1 Royal Rumble 89

Zeus 1 SummerSlam 89

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Thoughts on Survivor Series 89

 

"Wrestling" is such a bad word in WWE that they blurred out "Of Wrestling" when they showed clips from "Superstars of Wrestling." Are they trying to convince us that we're not watching wrestling?

 

Not sure if serious. Anyway, the reason the "of Wrestling" was blurred out  was because the WWF was sued by another promoter who had rights to the "Superstars of Wrestling" name. That's when the program's name changed to just Superstars.

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I started the Tough Enough shows, and it was totally obvious that Maven was the standout.  Josh Matthews reminded me of Orin from Parks and Recreation.  I remember rooting for him so bad when this originally aired and being disappointed when he lost but now he seems like just a skinny smart mark who can barely flip into the ring.  All the auditions were basically horrible except maybe Nowinski and a couple others including of course, Maven.  As soon as he stepped into the ring he presented himself amazingly well. 

 

It was also a trip seeing ODB there since I had no clue she was on this show.

 

This show also became the Kevin Dunn show, for me.  I got a real kick out of seeing him but he didn't really do or say anything too stupid.  He did a little mouth breathing and his teeth looked horrible but that's about it. 

 

I'll probably watch the next episode soon.

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Thoughts on Survivor Series 89

 

"Wrestling" is such a bad word in WWE that they blurred out "Of Wrestling" when they showed clips from "Superstars of Wrestling." Are they trying to convince us that we're not watching wrestling?

 

Not sure if serious. Anyway, the reason the "of Wrestling" was blurred out  was because the WWF was sued by another promoter who had rights to the "Superstars of Wrestling" name. That's when the program's name changed to just Superstars.

 

that's also why they never really released giant hunks of Superstars on 24/7, right?

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I imagine that had something to do with it. It was probably bad enough for them to have to make the "WWF" audio edits and blur out the Attitude scratch logo, no less do the same process with Superstars of Wrestling. Although I believe the online version of Classics on Demand had more diverse content, perhaps they uploaded Superstars there? I never had that service so I have no idea.

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I started the Tough Enough shows, and it was totally obvious that Maven was the standout.  Josh Matthews reminded me of Orin from Parks and Recreation.  I remember rooting for him so bad when this originally aired and being disappointed when he lost but now he seems like just a skinny smart mark who can barely flip into the ring.  All the auditions were basically horrible except maybe Nowinski and a couple others including of course, Maven.  As soon as he stepped into the ring he presented himself amazingly well. 

 

It was also a trip seeing ODB there since I had no clue she was on this show.

 

This show also became the Kevin Dunn show, for me.  I got a real kick out of seeing him but he didn't really do or say anything too stupid.  He did a little mouth breathing and his teeth looked horrible but that's about it. 

 

I'll probably watch the next episode soon.

 

 

yeah it is funny in looking back that ODB was turned down for Tough enough for a woman who only wanted in to get in Playboy.    

 

I remember watching the show thinking that Greg Matthews had tons of potential.  Then he didn't win and went to PA indy hell working with Rockin Rebel and never turned into anything

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Maven was busted on coke recently right?

 

Maven definitely had potential. The problem with him is that WWE never really gave him any new music or anything outside of 'Hey Everyone! Remember Maven from Tough Enough?!". Towards the end I remember his promos being really good and he looked like a star, but when it came match time- it was all very paint-by-the-numbers. I am not sure if it was Maven not finding his second gear, WWE purposely telling him that 'rookie' is his wrestling style, or a combination of both. Of all the people they should have kept around for a commentary/backstage announcer gig- its that man.

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