WWE Network Conversation

[tbarrie]

On 7/29/2022 at 8:01 PM, SirSmellingtonofCascadia said:

@twiztorIf intelligible is a word, then telligible is a word, dammit. We're normalizing gruntled, and telligible is next!

https://tenor.com/biZSR.gif

So it's the opposite of "intelligible" then? When I read your initial post I thought you were using it as a synonym.

[Cleavy]

so the "This is Awesome" show is effectively the new "Countdown" show?

[SirSmUgly]

Clash of the Champions 33 Notes:

• They recap the Hall/Nash vs. Sting/Luger match from the Nitro before this. I mentioned in a post about that Nitro that they screwed up the initial camera shot on Nick Patrick's heel turn, and yeah, again, it's pretty bad. Craig Leathers and the production truck really fucked up the whole deal because the commentary can't even say anything about it until they show a different camera shot that shows Patrick yanking Hall out of the way of a Stinger Splash. Then, they don't show that camera angle in this recap and no one mentions Patrick is a heel now. Ah, WCW. Bless you.

 

• Dean Malenko matches up with Rey Misterio Jr. for the WCW Cruiserweight Championship. I like that Malenko is a heel because he'll do whatever he has to in order to be champion, including digging into his apparently deep bag of dirty tricks. His character being centered around how important it was to be champ offered so much immediate legitimacy to the title even as Bisch was rounding up the roster to make it a hotly-contested belt. I could watch Misterio be an amazing athlete all day. Anyway, you know this match is no worse than very good simply because of the competitors and their chemistry together.

 

• Malenko does a jumping brainbuster, too, which automatically adds an extra snowflake to the match.

 

• But yeah, they work the exact match they should in which Rey overcomes early Malenko chicanery and flies around, so Malenko immediately works on stopping all the flying around and tries to get a pinfall before Misterio starts flying around again. I think there's progression from past matchups because whereas in the past, Malenko tried to destroy a limb to stop Misterio's flying, this time, he tries to hit knockout blows for quick threes (which explains the jumping brainbuster). Misterio almost blows, but hits, a moonsault off the guardrail that no one pops for, not even the people who saw the move in the aisle. I feel like this is partially my less-is-more philosophy being proven right in this case. Or maybe Denver just sucks as a wrestling town tonight. Pee-Wee Anderson fucks up the call in kayfabe and fucks Malenko in kayfabe and unfortunately is the center of this weak ending that exists to justify another rematch. But the meat of the match is good!

 

• We're really doing VK Wallstreet/Jim Duggan on a Clash, huh? Fuck you, WCW. 

 

• Konnan/Ultimo Dragon is an interesting matchup in theory. Very much a matchup with a range of possible quality levels. The quality level of this particular match is "too short to really be much of anything." Konnan pulls the tights to reverse a rollup for three and continues his heel turn, so at least it served some purpose.

 

• Ice Train wears tape OVER his t-shirt while chatting with fans on Compuserve. He is attacked by Scott Norton to somewhat ineffective results. He yells NORTONNNNNN and stomps off. Sure. Does Compuserve still exist? Holy shit, it does! 

 

• I was all excited about Meng/Savage, but Savage is still selling the chairshots that Hogan gave him on Nitro and doesn't show. Meng wins by forfeit. Hey, this Clash kinda sucks so far.

 

• Braun the Leprechaun being on the same show as the nWo is soooooooo strange, man, so incongruous. 

 

• Madusa and Bull Nakano continue their feud. I was bummed at their Hog Wild match because they generally work well together; will this match be better? No, not really. It starts out fiery, but around the point that Nakano uses nunchaku ( ) to cheat, it goes off the rails. Madusa barely hits a crossbody and it ends with Madusa rolling Nakano up off a weak kick from Sonny Onoo that misses her and hits his charge. Jesus, these two were having these dope matches in WWF and they're reduced to this in WCW. Bleh. 

 

• I like the old-school promotional ads on this thing! The Super Soaker WETTER IS BETTER commercial with the drill sergeant is a classic, man. I loved when Nick Rewind was running because they left all the old commercials in. How American of me to be nostalgic for commercials, my God, but I can't help it. 

 

• I have hope for DDP/Eddy Guerrero as well, and they cut a nice pace early, with Eddy posting himself almost immediately. DDP hits a sweet gutbuster and a dope tilt-a-whirl sideslam. Man, I said this in another post, but I dig DDP's offense. Anyway, this just goes so quickly, like that posting was almost immediate so we could get through the control segment and to the comeback as quickly as possible. Like, both guys hit great offense and DDP drills Eddy with a sitout powerbomb that looks and sounds great, but why can't these two get an extra five minutes to really pace out an amazing match? Eddy hits a nice frog splash for three after shoving DDP out of a superplex attempt and is now the owner of the Battlebowl ring, which Tony Schiavone describes as Eddy's first WCW title. DDP offers a handshake, gets it, and uses it as a way to pull Eddy into a Diamond Cutter. He hits a top-rope Diamond Cutter on Eddy after shoving the ref out of the ring and Chavo (in for the save) away from him.

 

• They couldn't have cut the Wallstreet/Duggan and Konnan/Dragon matches to give more time to Madusa/Nakano and DDP/Eddy? 

 

• Flair cut a very late-era Flair-esque promo earlier tonight, and now Hogan cuts a very '80s-Hogan-in-the-'90s promo, which is to say it sucks and calling Flair a Stupid Little Man is not going to get over, please stop. 

 

• Benoit/Giant is a zero match that is great solely because of this: The Giant hits Chris Benoit with a dropkick while Benoit has his arm caught in his vest and then chokeslams him. This is awesome; so awesome, in fact, that it eases my initial disappointment that we didn't get fifteen minutes of Benoit trying to chop The Giant down. 

 

• There's one of these awful triple threat tags that WCW likes so much for the gold: Harlem Heat (c) vs. Steiners vs. Sting and Luger. If it's not a tornado tag, don't do triple threat tags. It makes zero sense for Luger or Sting to be tagged in since both of them start outside the ring. It's a better one of these than normal, and at least Sting tags himself in at one point (and people tagging themselves in is more common than it has been in past WCW matches like this, so they're figuring out the psychology here), but I just don't like the match type, and so I'm not really digging it even though everyone works pretty hard. 

 

• I will note that Nick Patrick is the ref and that everyone has forgotten that he pulled Scott Hall out of the way of a Stinger Splash on Monday, even though they made a big deal of it on replay during that Nitro. I guess everyone decided to ignore that last part and just pretend that we didn't see it on replay? Commentary is treating Patrick like he didn't do anything and maybe is just having an off-week or something. So strange. Anyway Scott hits a Frankensteiner on Booker, but Nick Patrick glimpses The Outsiders standing way up at the top of the ramp after an attack on the brawling competitors outside the ring and calls for a no contest or something instead of counting three. I'm feeling like they're fucking up this Nick Patrick thing. HE ALREADY TURNED. Why try to gin up more intrigue? We all saw Nitro!

 

• Hogan/Flair for the BGB is the main event. I think, even with the passage of time, there's novelty in Flair working as a quasi-face here. He shows babyface fire, but also cheats whenever he can. Hey, he's still a heel to the rest of the roster. Hogan Hulks Up, and his idea of a subversion is to have Flair dodge the legdrop. I think actually, the subversion should have come earlier in the sequence. Like, Hogan shakes off punches, YOUUUUUUs, and then gets poked in the eye by Flair and gets his comeback killed. This ends in a big schmozz when Flair has Hogan in the Figure Four and everyone and their mamas run in. 

 

• Not a good show! It could have been, and probably this show needed fewer matches so they could give a couple of these matches more time. It also shouldn't have had a standard triple-threat tag title match and just done a straight 2v2 match OR done a tornado triple threat tag. The opener, the main event, and The Giant demolishing Benoit are worth your time, though. 

 

[SirSmUgly]

Royal Rumble 1993 notes:

• Time is such a strange thing. I was but a child in 1993 and a recently-turned teenager in 1997. The changes that I experienced still feel as though they came at a glacial pace even now. But four years is nothing, I realize, and so I look at this show in 1993 and think how in 1997, this company would be barely recognizable from what it was now. The Monsoon/Heenan PPV pairing is at its end, with this the last show (IIRC) that these two would do together. Shawn Michaels is still finishing his break-up with Sherri. Razor Ramon is a fresh face, but he'd be nWo four years later. This show doesn't feel completely like the end of an era - I think the rest of 1993 still feels as though it's clinging to the Hulkamania/Rock 'n Wrestling era, at least on PPV - but man, does it feel like the beginning of the end? Yeah, and to be fair, it is the beginning of the end. 

 

• It's a weird PPV for that reason, but it's also one of my favorite PPVs because I had it on tape as a kid and therefore have seen it many times. It's a comforting show, like split pea soup when you've got a cold. 

 

• Steiners/Beverlys is still one of my favorite PPV openers. It's just real good tag work between two teams that know their business. I don't get turning the Destruction Crew into prissy dudes from Ohio, but whatever, they can work. Their awesome entrance music is (mostly) excised from the Network version of this show. BOOOO.

 

• Michaels/Jannetty has the hurt limb mixup, but honestly I don't think I even noticed as a kid. It's still a great match! Jannetty sure seems like he's got a shot to win this thing. I've talked about how good Sherri is, and she's excellent at ringside here because she's oddly subdued, which is such a change from her normal bombastic nature that it's actually really effective? I'm totally on board with a re-evaluation of Sherri because she was pretty awesome at the pro wrestling and is one of my favorite pro wrestling actors because she acts juuuuust big enough, but not so over the top that you roll your eyes at it. She's very good at soap opera.

 

• I think I read somewhere that babyface Big Boss Man didn't lose a PPV match until this one, in which he puts over Bam Bam Bigelow on the way out of the territory. I haven't bothered to check that myself, but man, they could have gotten more out of a face gatekeeper like Boss Man than one loss on PPV to Bam Bam in 1993. This match is perfectly fine because the two dudes in it are perfectly fine. Boss Man is still mobile, so he's quite good. I feel like almost as soon as he went back to WCW, he had a sharp decline in his agility and mobility and became tougher and tougher to watch in the ring. There were fewer and fewer bright spots until at some point late in his WCW run, he's pretty much the shits, which he definitely was as Blackwater/Xe-employee Boss Man upon his second WWF run. 

 

• Razor/Bret is also good. I can guess why Vince panics a bit and takes the gold off Bret at WM because the crowd in Sacramento is somewhat subdued for a lot of this match and only really wakes up toward the end as Bret goes into his 5MoD to set up for a Sharpshooter attempt. I think part of the issue is that no one takes Razor as any threat to win, though. That's not really Bret's fault. They didn't have the heel challengers to line up for him. No one believes that Shawn Michaels or Razor Ramon is winning the big gold in 1993. In 1996, yeah. Not in 1993. 

 

• This is a weird Rumble and it has notable wrestlers like Tenryu (whose name no one can pronounce) and Carlito Caribbean Cool Sr. and Bob Backlund and no one really cares, man, no one really cares. This Rumble needed to do the "if you had a match earlier in the night, you can still be in the Rumble" thing so Shawn and Marty and the Steiners could be in here, at least. It doesn't help that the little star power it has is booked poorly for the purposes of the match - the Undertaker clears the ring and then gets destroyed by Giant Gonzalez, and Savage a) comes in late and b) forgets how the match works solely to take a shitty, fake looking elimination from Yokozuna. I don't think this Rumble is any good or anywhere near it. The best sequence is probably Earthquake and Yoko facing off, which the crowd is hot for and also, hell yeah, I'm into it. But yep, rough Rumble. 

 

• The show reminds me of another favorite Rumble of mine that I have seen many times on VHS, the 1998 Royal Rumble, in which the Rumble itself kinda sucked (except for the end), but the show had a hot opener and was consistently fun elsewhere, with a very good WWF Championship match to boot. 

[SirSmUgly]

Battle Royal at the Royal Albert Hall (1991):

• I miss London, my favorite city on the face of the earth, and I have concrete plans to go back very soon. In the meantime, I must depend on tourism through the magic of streaming, though my Britbox subscription really isn't worth it (just sell me a license directly, BBC). At least YouTube has lots of Only Connect and Richard Osman quiz shows and Lucy Worsley edushows, and the PL is back. And also, there's this show at the Royal Albert Hall which I have heard much about w/r/t Davey Boy Smith being a battle royal specialist and am excited to watch today, in full, for the first time.

 

• The Rockers and the Nastys have an okay match. I think I've just seen way too much of the Nastys as I've watched through mid-'90s WCW. I'm sort of done with them. Even though the Rockers are a favorite of mine, I'm bored by the Nastys' heel control segment and find the finish to be weak from the point at which Sags rolls only partially out of the way of the Rocket Launcher even though I'm pretty sure it was supposed to cleanly hit, and the ref and Shawn Michaels both have to move a bit awkwardly to get into position for the distraction that allows a megaphone bonk on Jannetty for the unclean finish. Jimmy Hart and the Rockers are all favorites of mine, so I blame this mediocre match on the Nastys, I do.

 

• I sort of expect something out of Ric Flair/Tito Santana, and it's not bad. Tito has lots of babyface fire, as is his way. My man Tito is almost seventy! Wow. As Mattie Ross says, time just gets away from us. I really like Tito a lot and feel that he should have made it farther up the card than he did. He's just so easy to root for. He might not be the best on the stick, but he can make you care. Flair is pulling out the typical bag of Flair tricks. They have a surprisingly competitive match, actually, that Flair only escapes with a pull of the tights on a rollup. This is perfectly fine viewing, but it's disposable and I won't remember anything about it tomorrow. 

 

• Boss Man promo on Earthquake. Then Jimmy Hart and Earthquake come out and talk a bit before the match. Jimmy Hart is a treasure. Let's all give him his flowers while he still lives. Earthquake cracks a STUPID dad joke about how long it takes to sail from the U.S. to the UK. Oh man, what a silly dude. These guys are great. I just saw some John Tenta in UWF(i) shoot-style over in the Secret Santo thread, and he was awesome in those matches and remains awesome in general throughout his illustrious career. He was also lucky enough to be from Surrey, which I think is a lovely suburb (exurb?). I would love to get a house with some land and a few chickens in Surrey, or even Delta. Alas. 

 

• When I go see a wrestling show, I want at least one match to be something like this one. Two big dudes with surprising agility for their size do cool shit like powerslams and sliding punches and big man elbowdrops and the whole thing is a spectacle. Like, if you're putting on a show and trying to attract as many different people as you can, and you would like to attract me and fans of my specific pro wrestling interests, you book whatever is the modern-day version of Boss Man/Earthquake in 1991. Earthquake getting knocked down feels really earned and like a big success for Boss Man, and then Quake catches a Boss Man top-rope crossbody (!) and powerslams him (!!) shortly after. Like, fuck yes, this is what I personally would like to see out of my pro wrestling.

 

• I do think each match so far has run a bit long, though, particularly the last two. We could have cut five minutes from each of these, especially the extended Quake control segment after the previously-mentioned powerslam. I mean, it goes on for a long, long time and becomes a bit monotonous. They lose the crowd, which is really, really interested in a Boss Man comeback. They needed Boss Man to fire up and get cut off more often in this whole heel control segment; he does it once and the crowd wakes right up. I appreciate Boss Man's enziguri that sets off the end sequence. I also appreciate the Mountie, who is still heated after having to spend a night in jail, coming out and helping Quake get the win with an elbowdrop, even if the finish is weak. I mean, an elbowdrop from a man that big should KTFO most people, but that's not really established within the then-current WWF "moves that knock you out" system. 

 

• Kerry Von Erich and the Mountie? What a novel matchup! Jacques Rougeau is one of my favorite guys, and really the whole Quebec contingent that made it to WWF (minus Dino Bravo) are among my favorites. Like the last match, we get the face interviewed in the back and the heel interviewed out in front of the crowd before the match. How dare the crowd boo a LEO from the Commonwealth, but cheer for that traitorous Cousin Jonathan of a LEO from the United States? The Mountie says that he's going to '60s Scoop slam the Texas Tornado into oblivion.

 

• (He didn't actually say that.) 

 

• The Mountie stalls and wanders around and is upset at the JAILBIRD chants from the crowd because he understands that mocking people who have been sent to jail is not a healthy way to reintegrate them into society as productive and law-abiding citizens the Boss Man should be the jailbird, not him! Anyway, then they fight over a sleeper for what seems like forever. Even though this is late-stage Kerry, I still expected better. Anyway, this match suuuucks, rare for Jacques. KVE discus punches the post. It doesn't mean much in the end, though, as KVE just gets rolled up and pinned as the Mountie uses leverage to hold him down. The heels are four-for-four. I guess this is to set up for Davey Boy Smith being the guy with the spotlight? IDK, if I were in the crowd, I'd be bummed out. Well, not me specifically because I like Quake and the Mountie, but you know, the typical fan. 

 

• Hey, it's a Funeral Parlor segment! Oh no, we're getting an Undertaker/Hacksaw Jim Duggan match. Aw shit. Why? The Undertaker says some stuff about rigor mortis and burials. Sorry I didn't catch more of that; I was distracted thinking, "Aw hell, I gotta sit through Undertaker/Hacksaw now?"

 

• Ooh, they play 'Taker's music live on an organ! OK, that's cool! Some guy dressed like the Phantom of the Opera does it, which is less cool, but look, we take the cool things as we can get them. Hacksaw had better come out here waving a Union Jack. Nope, he doesn't. "Where does he think he is," asks Heenan. Haha, "think." I really hate Duggan, who sucks and has always sucked and very rarely does anything worth watching. There is no one whom I'd rather watch less, I think. There are plenty of guys who make me roll my eyes or hit the snooze button or whatever, but the shitty work, the yelling, the jingoism, all of it SUCKS and I hate it. Anyway, Duggan gets DQ'd for hitting Undertaker with his 2x4, and 'Taker doesn't even give a shit about it, really, because he's a Texan zombie, TEXAS STRONG, etc. 

 

• When did Roddy Piper become insufferable? 1988 or so? This guy cuts a promo and sucks at it and says dumb shit and sounds like an asshole. I'm thinking of the upcoming 1996 Nitros that I'll be watching with the Piper/Hogan feud. Oof, I'm getting queasy. 

 

• Jimmy Hart is managing approximately half the heels in the company at this time, apparently. Now he's backstage to cut a promo for Typhoon. Okerlund is confused about the concept of foes. Oh man, please, let's do this battle royal already. No, wait, we're getting Power and Glory versus the Legion of Doom. OK, some faces might actually win something other than the battle royal tonight! 

 

• The tag title match is perfectly cromulent. Monsoon calls Roma "Romeo" and I'm not sure if he's being clever or just fucking up Paul Roma's name. Anyway, it's a back-and-forth match that actually is paced reasonably well and has a nice finish (Animal catching a top-rope crossbody for a powerslam). It's probably the best match of the night so far. 

 

• Bulldog cuts a promo in the back. He said he landed at "London airport." Heathrow or Gatwick? Be specific, my man. 

 

• Lord Alfred Hayes is the ring announcer for the next match: The Barbarian vs. the British Bulldog. I enjoy both guys, but this match is just there. The best part is Heenan going on an extended riff about Shakespeare after Monsoon says, "One move does not a match make, reminding Heenan of a similar-sounding line about light through yonder window breaking. Anyway, Bulldog wins with the running powerslam, but will he be able to turn right back around and win the battle royal that he's also a part of?

 

• Yes. He will. The battle royal is the main event. Everyone gets an entrance. Tito is not from Tocula, Mexico. Tocula, Mexico doesn't exist. Fix it. Fix your mistake. Anyway, everyone on the show is back out for the battle royal, which is a cool concept, but I think both commentators and wrestlers should have played up the "cumulative damage" thing a little more than they have done during the show. The last guy out is the only one who hasn't wrestled tonight - Roddy Piper. He should be the odds on favorite. He also seems to be getting lots of  love from the crowd in London even though he's Scottish (Canadian, but whatever) and while the Scots and English share a union, that union is historically fraught with disagreement. Not tonight, thought! Not tonight in this Royal Albert Hall!

 

• The crowd is real hot for this whole thing. I love battle royals even though they're mostly full of a bunch of guys throwing punches and tying themselves up in the ropes. I like that the ring announcer also calls all the eliminations. That's a nice touch. Michaels skins the cat and gets punched in the face by the Mountie while doing so, which leads directly to his elimination. Bulldog should have taken notes on this for later, but he was tied up in another corner. Duggan is looking at the crowd and HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO and as he HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO he gets dumped by Quake. Then he comes back in with the 2x4 and uses it to eliminate Quake. THIS PIECE OF SHIT. 

 

• Piper tosses Flair. Heenan, silent for a significant moment, composes himself and then deems it a smart move by Flair to get eliminated because he could just buy a nicer trophy. Oh, you! Piper also dumps the Undertaker, who then eliminates Piper from outside the ring, but he's a heel, so it's okay. Final four: The Mountie, Typhoon, Big Boss Man, and Davey Boy Smith. Boss Man punches Jimmy Hart like a dick, but The Mountie tosses him. Is Bulldog screwed because he's left to face off against Jimmy Hart's charges by his lonesome? I already told you. He'll be fine. A miscommunication between The Mountie and Typhoon creates a little dissension between them; another miscommunication eliminates The Mountie, and Bulldog gets his moment by eliminating the big man. Wow, the hometown hero won two matches, including the main event? How un-Vince-like! Well, I guess they have the Natural Disasters beat him up after he wins, so you can tell Vince was still booking this. Oh, now Andre comes down on a crutch to make the save, and it's sad.   The crowd pops, though!

 

• The show was neat to watch as a historical oddity, but it wasn't very good. Still glad I finally saw the whole thing. I think I only saw the battle royal before today. 

 

 

[GuerrillaMonsoon]

I'm watching the Nov 8 1988 episode of Prime Time Wrestling. It's utterly bizarre.

- Broadcast from France, all the ring aprons and signage is for CANAL (A French TV network), the camerawork is really unlike anything else shot in the Dunn era - no real hard cam per se, just one stationed in the crowd on on angle, and a weird roaming ringside one that never really shows anything effectively, always on the wrong side.

Andre comes out in his home country to a fairly mild/apathetic reaction. Few people throw stuff at him but that's about it. Him and JYD proceed to have possibly the worst match I've ever seen.

Rockin Robin and Sensational Sherri title switch. Crowd seem into it. The wide camera shots really take away from this one. Lot of looooooong rest holds to call spots.

I thought the crowd wasn't mic'd up that well given the mild response to Andre. And then they proceed to absolutely lose their shit for a never ending Lanny Poffo vs Barry Horowitz match that was kinda OK? The French are weird. Bobby and Gorilla spend the entire match just going full blown homophobe on the Terry Garvin/Pat Patterson jokes.

This is some really good subtle storytelling too with Hogan being managed for Elizabeth for the night against Haku. Elizabeth out of habit opens the ropes for Hogan to get in, only for Hogan to open the ropes for her to a big pop. The backstage interview with Gene making comments that they make such a great couple. The last great WWF angle for a number of years after.

 

Edited August 10, 2022 by GuerrillaMonsoon

[JLowe]

16 hours ago, SirSmellingtonofCascadia said:

• When did Roddy Piper become insufferable? 1988 or so? This guy cuts a promo and sucks at it and says dumb shit and sounds like an asshole. I'm thinking of the upcoming 1996 Nitros that I'll be watching with the Piper/Hogan feud. Oof, I'm getting queasy. 

 

You're being generous with 1988, Piper was pretty insufferable in retrospect through most of his WWF run, but let's say after WM1. And oof, his 90s WCW time was almost as bad as Warrior's.

[odessasteps]

As a non Piper fan, I’d say he was always insufferable, but it made sense as a heel. 

[The Great ML]

Go back to the WWE Old School section…check out the Boston Garden show from August 1986. If you can suffer through a match between a Tony Atlas / Ted Arcidi (where both men wear weightlifting belts)…the double count out finish saw them in a collar/elbow tie up around ringside, with neither man giving an inch. They dance their way over to the first row and completely squash a kid sitting on the second row. Horrifying sight as the kid is noticeably screaming in pain.

Gorilla Monsoon said in regard to the lackluster bout, “these two guys are moving like they are at death’s door”…that had to be Tony Atlas’ swan-song until Saba Simba years later, right? I know he showed up in World Class that Fall as Black Superman.

[Guest Stefanie Without Stefanie]

5 hours ago, The Great ML said:

Go back to the WWE Old School section…check out the Boston Garden show from August 1986. If you can suffer through a match between a Tony Atlas / Ted Arcidi (where both men wear weightlifting belts)…the double count out finish saw them in a collar/elbow tie up around ringside, with neither man giving an inch. They dance their way over to the first row and completely squash a kid sitting on the second row. Horrifying sight as the kid is noticeably screaming in pain.

Gorilla Monsoon said in regard to the lackluster bout, “these two guys are moving like they are at death’s door”…that had to be Tony Atlas’ swan-song until Saba Simba years later, right? I know he showed up in World Class that Fall as Black Superman.

If this sample commentary is anything to go by, I think you undersold the commentary completely trashing the match.

 

[SirSmUgly]

This fucking guy Vince McMahon introduces a Superstars (4/25/92) taped in Kalamazoo to note that it's the original home of Kaopectate so he can make twenty shit puns in his introduction of the major storylines. 

This fucking guy!

[The Great ML]

1 hour ago, Stefanie Without Stefanie said:

If this sample commentary is anything to go by, I think you undersold the commentary completely trashing the match.

 

That’s the one exactly. I couldn’t transcribe it all, I’d suffer carpal tunnel I’m afraid.

if anyone has a clip of the incident with the kid, it will legitimately make you angry to see it.

[SirSmUgly]

SNME from 11/14/92 notes:

• I miss the elaborate graphics that the WWF had for different wrestlers. Some of these are pretty dope, like the smoke from the Papa Shango face spelling out "Shango." The Shawn Michaels broken heart logo is fantastic. I dig the Ultimate Maniacs logo for incorporating the trademark facial apparel of both guys, too. 

 

• I was watching every week and was allowed to stay up to watch this when it first aired on Fox. However, I remember almost NOTHING about the UIltimate Maniacs team. Like, I remember they had a Summerslam match against one another, then Savage got Perfect to join him against Flair and Razor after Warrior got axed. 

 

• What I like about this match the Ultimate Maniacs have against Money Inc. is that there's almost no heel control segment. The IRS sleeper hold on Warrior doesn't last too long and there's a Razor/Flair/Perfect inset promo during it anyway. Not too long after that, Warrior gets a hot tag to Savage and Savage throws some rabbit punches, one of my favorite fired-up face things ever, and we get a Savage Elbow and a total breakdown of the match. The crowd was really into Savage and Warrior, so this was alright. The post-match heel attack is good, too. 

 

• My faulty memory recalled HBK/Bulldog as the main event for whatever reason. Nope, it's second on the card. This is the first time that Bulldog loses a mid-card title to Shawn and gets real bummed. I watched some of Bulldog's WCW run, and the guy just did not fit in 1993 WCW at all. I think Davey Boy is a much better worker than he often gets credit for, and so I had expectations for Bulldog/Vader that were not met. 

 

• Anyway, this match has a great feat of strength spot where Bulldog powers up out of the short-arm scissors, and that alone was worth the time watching this match. That was cool, man. Brain says that if H.W. had dumped Dan Quayle and picked Heenan as his VP, he'd have won re-election. Vince pretends to be shocked at the idea of a slimebag with no political experience being anywhere near an office of that stature. I digress. This match is worked around a Bulldog back injury that the announcers sell as a result of said feat of strength. Michaels works to exacerbate said injury, and it leads directly to the finish. It's not a bad little match!

 

• Let's see if the Hitman can get something decent out of Papa Shango! 

 

• So, before we see this, I do want to note a couple of things. First of all, the kids in the crowd are shook as fuck by Papa Shango. Second, Bret caresses the belt in an indecent way when he's interviewed backstage before the match. He cuts a nice babyface promo for the kids about never giving up.

 

• The Hitman does, in fact, get something decent out of Papa Shango. He beats the shit out of the guy into the first break, culminating in a crossbody over the top rope to the floor. Then, he bumps and sells nicely for Shango. I mean, Shango does a fucking nerve hold because of course he does. Did anyone benefit from the Attitude Era more than Charles Wright? He showed up with a bunch of hot strippers, danced around, did a clothesline that he revved up like he was a locomotive, and pretty much every match went under five minutes. The crowd is into Hitman's comeback, he hits the 5MOD, and dodges a corner charge that leads to a Sharpshooter win. I mean, that's the best you're gonna get out of a Papa Shango match.

 

• That's the end of the wrestling, but not the talking. Next up is a Funeral Parlor segment. Paul Bearer is on the "buys completely into the stupid character" all-star team. Oh man, 'Taker and Kamala are still feuding three months after Summerslam? Vile. I can't believe that the crowd is so into the Undertaker's gibberish-filled promo. I can't believe that I was, either, but I note that my brain was not fully formed yet. 

 

• Well, actually, we end with Bret and Shawn, two champs, in the back hyping their now champion vs. champion match at Survivor Series, which is the first of two champion vs. champion matches these two had at Survivor Series. This one will go better for the Hitman than the one after, obviously. Shawn talks pretty good heel shit, tbh. 

 

• At the desk, Heenan is on the phone, where he hears a rumor that the Ultimate Maniacs are dead and that one of them will have a new partner for Survivor Series. I guess this is when Warrior failed the 'roid test. Now, Bulldog also did, but was he not on his way out anyway because he didn't want to lose the IC title yet and was disenchanted? 

 

• Weird show during a weird transitional time for the company, but "weird" does not mean "bad." This was an interesting show, at least. 

 

[SirSmUgly]

Papa Shango using voodoo (and good old fire paper) to set a jobber's boots on fire and make him bleed black goo is some of the dumbest fun WWF has ever done.

[GuerrillaMonsoon]

On 8/17/2022 at 2:45 PM, SirSmellingtonofCascadia said:

That's the end of the wrestling, but not the talking. Next up is a Funeral Parlor segment. Paul Bearer is on the "buys completely into the stupid character" all-star team. Oh man, 'Taker and Kamala are still feuding three months after Summerslam? Vile. I can't believe that the crowd is so into the Undertaker's gibberish-filled promo. I can't believe that I was, either, but I note that my brain was not fully formed yet. 

 

Did Kamala ever do anything to get his heat back during this seemingly never ending feud?

Lost fairly convincingly at Summerslam, bunch of tag matches for the Coliseum Videos with Warrior/Nailz/Shango/Bossman etc that the faces always won. Gets destroyed at Survivor Series. 

Strange one.

[Shartnado]

18 hours ago, GuerrillaMonsoon said:

Did Kamala ever do anything to get his heat back during this seemingly never ending feud?

Lost fairly convincingly at Summerslam, bunch of tag matches for the Coliseum Videos with Warrior/Nailz/Shango/Bossman etc that the faces always won. Gets destroyed at Survivor Series. 

Strange one.

Well, he turned face by attacking Whippleman and Kim Chee, joined Reverend Slick and proceeded to job to lower tier and mid card heels for the remainder of his stay. Hardly counts, does it?

[Shartnado]

On 8/22/2022 at 5:33 AM, SirSmellingtonofCascadia said:

Papa Shango using voodoo (and good old fire paper) to set a jobber's boots on fire and make him bleed black goo is some of the dumbest fun WWF has ever done.

Yeah, he was an intimidating looking, half decent power wrestler with a cool looking gimmick. Just the smoking skull and the spark-throwing stick for the show, and it wouldn't have been offensive at all. Later on, when he was not really pushed anymore, there was no more voodoo spells and he was much better. They could have handled that better. That said, I always liked everything about the visual aesthetics of Papa Shango.

[SirSmUgly]

On 8/23/2022 at 3:29 AM, GuerrillaMonsoon said:

Did Kamala ever do anything to get his heat back during this seemingly never ending feud?

Lost fairly convincingly at Summerslam, bunch of tag matches for the Coliseum Videos with Warrior/Nailz/Shango/Bossman etc that the faces always won. Gets destroyed at Survivor Series. 

Strange one.

Not that I know of. I think the same is generally true of Gonzalez. 

Which would be acceptable except that Kamala is unwatchable as a gimmick and in-ring talent on top of it. 

 

19 hours ago, Shartnado said:

Yeah, he was an intimidating looking, half decent power wrestler with a cool looking gimmick. Just the smoking skull and the spark-throwing stick for the show, and it wouldn't have been offensive at all. Later on, when he was not really pushed anymore, there was no more voodoo spells and he was much better. They could have handled that better. That said, I always liked everything about the visual aesthetics of Papa Shango.

I don't think Charles Wright was ever any good in the ring, unfortunately, but man did he hit the jackpot with gimmicks. Papa Shango and the Godfather are obvious ones, but he also got to be in the Nation, which was an amazing stable before it got all watered down. 

Agreed a thousand percent on the visuals, with the hat and the charms and the face paint. The aesthetic is VERY cool. 

[SirSmUgly]

Fall Brawl 1996 notes:

• Chavo/DDP was fun, as expected. I probably need to revisit my opinion of Chavo, who did young fiery babyface and hardened vet so well, who was versatile enough to work face or heel, and who even *whispers* looked like he might get that incredibly dumb Kerwin White gimmick over before Eddy passed and they nixed it. Meanwhile, Page uses his size and his cool offense to great effect, and Chavo countered a few of Page's usual power moves, which is understandable since they'd wrestled already and Guerrero is put over as a young student of the game on commentary. It's enough that DDP gets a little desperate and does stuff you don't normally see from him, like a diving clothesline from the top rope that gets a massive pop.

 

• By the way, DDP is over and getting face pops for his offense at this point, not just here, but even on Nitro sometimes. The nearfall on the spinning sitout powerbomb and then the eventual Diamond Cutter for three are loudest.

 

• I'm not vibing with this ten-minute long recap of the nWo angle. I would assume that anyone who bought this PPV kinda was already following the shows religiously. I will say that it might be useful now, though, in the streaming era during which a viewer randomly picking shows from the past that they want to see might need the recap to orient themselves to what's going on at the time of the show. 

 

• Ice Train is built like a brick and has some nice agility. He's a good leaper for his size. I wonder why he never quite put things together. Norton is another guy whom I like, but who didn't really ever put it all together, at least stateside. Fire and Ice lasted too briefly, and I wonder if maybe they should have just kept them together long-term instead of what they ended up doing.

 

• Speaking of never quite coming together, this submission match doesn't ever quite do so, though there are nice moves and sequences within the match. There's no real flow and no proper build-up to any of the submission attempts. Also, Teddy Long being a doof who wants to throw the towel in for his charges as soon as they get into trouble is genuinely terrible. What a waste of Teddy Long, who is actually pretty funny and a good actor in angles and skits. Everyone in this match feels wasted, is what I'm saying. Except maybe for Mark Curtis.

 

• I do like that Norton is so red already that it legit looks like he's passing out in the full nelson.

 

• Konnan and THA JOOCY ONE throw bombs at each other for ten or twelve minutes. The crowd is entertained by this, and so am I, generally. But the most entertaining thing in the match might not be the Juice ropewalking across both rings into a rana or Konnan powerbombing Juventud out of a rana on the floor, but Jimmy Hart looking into the camera and yelling VIVA LA RAZA before cackling like an idiot. 

 

• Chris Benoit and Chris Jericho have the match you'd expect them to have. The Horsemen fans in the crowd are solidly behind Benoit, and Jericho is too new to sway the rest of the crowd to his side. Jericho's work is good, but he's not the most convincing fiery babyface, so he can't pull off what a Rey Misterio Jr. can in getting over through his work. I should probably say more, but honestly, I don't care about/am sick of both of these guys. It's a perfectly cromulent PPV-length match, is pretty much it. 

 

• Speaking of, Rey Misterio Jr. is over, but no one gives a fuck about Super Calo, especially the guy in the crowd that yells BOOOOOO-RIIIIIIING at him while he's in control early on. My favorite thing about watching Rey wrestle is that he does all this super-athletic stuff, but he seems like be might be on the verge of wiping out, of losing control and spilling dangerously, as he works. One of the things that I dislike about wrestling is when a guy hits their shit too cleanly and the illusion is broken. Rey walks that fine line between doing wild athletic shit and looking like he's in an actual fight. 

 

• I think it was a mistake to lay out three straight matches that rely on slick counters and aerial maneuvers. DDP/Chavo was a high-energy opener, but Ice Train/Scott Norton should have been swapped with Benoit/Jericho.

 

• It doesn't help that the crowd wants to cheer for Rey doing cool offense, but the match is mostly Calo in control while Rey sells. They probably should have booked this as a five-minute glorified squash for Rey. 

 

• The Nasty Boys and Harlem Heat are over, but this match is mid, largely because the Nastys were negative value past about 1994. They probably needed to go full-on wild brawl between both rings, but instead, they centered on Sherri and Parker running interference in multiple spots. My sense is that the crowd was hoping for more wild clubbering, too, as they popped for it early before it basically went away for the rest of the match. 

 

• The production truck played the old Giant Dungeon of Doom theme before remembering ten seconds into it that the Giant was now nWo and hitting that theme instead. VINTAGE Craig Leathers! 

 

• The crowd is excited for crazy Randy Savage showing fire, so of course we get the Giant working a backbreaker and the crowd looking at a fight elsewhere in the stands instead of at the match. I can't be too mad because the Giant actually targets Savage's back in a logical way within the match itself. But man, no one wants to see a long backbreaker and then a Boston crab and then a bearhug. This is another match that desperately needed more wild brawling. Really, this is a match where what happens is logical, but probably not what the situation called for. Giant works the back/smothers Savage, Savage targets the leg and goes for high impact moves. That makes sense! But IDK, man, IDK.

 

• Savage bodyslams the Giant, which both I and the crowd pop for, then hits the Savage Elbow before Hulk Hogan lures Savage into the aisle. Savage is smart enough to guess that it's a trap, but can't overcome Kevin Nash's chair shot. Referee Nick Patrick ostentatiously fails to notice said attack because he's checking on the Giant in the ring, so there's no DQ and the Giant wins by pinfall once the rest of the nWo get done with Savage and toss him back in the ring. The crowd is deflated. I'm already bored with Nick Patrick, Heel Ref (as anyone who has peeked into my Nitro thread lately will know), so obviously I thought that this glorified Nitro main event was mostly shit, when it comes down to it.

 

• Lex Luger is SO SHITTY A FRIEND that in the pre-main event interview, Sting busts in, and Luger says he looked that obviously fake Sting "right in the face" and "kn[e]w" it was Real Sting. What a piece of SHIT. This guy Sting stuck his neck out for Luger how many times? I'm fucking heated, I'm HEATED right now. Sting should've been like, "I'm out, gonna get Vince McMahon on the phone and try to get that Bret Hart contract for myself. Fuck y'all, WCW." The "stick around, dress like the Crow, and go on a one-man crusade to save WCW" thing is way more noble than I'd be, but of course that's why Sting is Sting. 

 

• The War Games itself is fine. It's not like any of the classics from earlier in the decade or anything, but it's perfectly acceptable wrestling. This format is good, almost impossible to fuck up (though of course, WCW would find a way to do that later down the road). Luger has taken advantage of the face turn and is probably the #2 face even in front of Savage at this point. People are also hot for Luger/Hogan when Hogan hits the ring. As soon as the heels use the man advantage to take over at that point, the crowd immediately starts chanting for Flair. Flair gets in and they pop even louder for Flair/Hogan (this is in North Carolina, but still). They brought in Piper to go into Starrcade as Hogan's opponent, but they could have gone Savage, then Flair for Starrcade and saved us from experiencing Roddy Piper. It's not like the Flair/Hogan match at the Clash ended definitively, after all!

 

• Fake Sting comes out and everyone on commentary is dumb and stupid and thinks it's actual Sting like a bunch of assholes. Well, not the crowd, which clearly is like look at this fake fucking Sting and is totally dead when he enters the ring, unlike if actual Sting was out here. Hell, they fire up a WE WANT STING chant not long after Sting enters. Fake! Sting! Angles! Don't! Work! 

 

• Anyway, Sting comes in, clears house, asks Lex if that was proof enough for him, and then leaves because Fuck y'all, WCW. Luger gets his ass beat, Nash gets his foot caught in the cameraman's cord while moving between rings and has to get said cameraman to untangle him, and then Nick Patrick claims that Luger quit even though maybe he didn't, I don't know or care. The crowd is straight DEAD, fellas, DEAD. 

 

• Fake! Sting! Angles! Don't! Work!

 

• I do get that they needed a way to get Sting to become Crow Sting, but in practice, WCW looked like stupid assholes. If the fans knew it was a fake Sting within two seconds of seeing him, why wouldn't WCW know? Luger can't tell what Sting looks like from up close? What the hell? Actually, Fake Sting could have worked if they maybe just had fuzzy footage of Fake Sting meeting with the nWo secretly so I could buy that no one from WCW could quite tell, rather than the Fake Sting attack on Luger that Luger should have easily seen through. With the former plan, maybe I could forgive commentary for losing faith, especially after the Giant turned the week before. 

 

• Savage runs out post-match, gets beat down; Liz comes out and tries to protect him, gets spray-painted. She usually wears a black dress, but made sure to wear a white one tonight so the spray paint would show up. Well, it gets heat - HOGAN SUCKS - so I guess that's something. Hogan cuts a promo while twirling his mustache and everyone stands around and brandishes spray paint and stuff. I sort of zoned out there. The Giant actually is pretty funny. He walks over to the camera and compares his spray paint abilities to Michelangelo and Da Vinci, but Hogan thinks it's the end of a Nitro, so of course he comes over and cuts the Giant off so that Hogan can steal Ric Flair's catchphrase. Oh man, then Hogan goes to the desk and talks some more.  Please let Nash and Hall talk instead. 

 

• I did not like this show! The opener was good, and then I thought it was sharply downhill from there for the most part. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[GuerrillaMonsoon]

4 hours ago, SirSmellingtonofCascadia said:

Not that I know of. I think the same is generally true of Gonzalez. 

Which would be acceptable except that Kamala is unwatchable as a gimmick and in-ring talent on top of it. 

Gonzalez at least beat the shit out of him at the Rumble and Mania, and was the first guy to steal the urn. 

Taker dominated Kamala at Summerslam, beat him in tag matches all round the horn, and then squashed him at Survivor Series. There was no reason for that feud to continue as long as it did, beyond some form of Vince being vindictive towards him for up and leaving in the midst of the Hogan program.

[SirSmUgly]

I typically argue that Crush's singles run as a face was killed dead by how he was booked against Doink the Clown. After watching more 1992 WWF, let me amend that argument. He was dead in the water as soon as he showed up dressed in the colors of a macaw, speaking in a shitty Hawai'ian accent, and making puns about crushing things. 

[GuerrillaMonsoon]

The KOTR title match killed it for me where he was like the 6th most interesting person in a one on one title match.

They were already building to the Perfect/Shawn match. Marty Jannetty had just returned, Diesel debuted, Doink cost him the match after beating him at Mania and he never really got his heat back. 

Having him not wrestle in the 93 Rumble was stupid. Instead of selling the beating from Doink, there was a huge opening for him to dominate that Rumble - give him the Diesel spot from the year after and just come up short against Yokozuna who comes in late.

[SirSmUgly]

6 minutes ago, GuerrillaMonsoon said:

The KOTR title match killed it for me where he was like the 6th most interesting person in a one on one title match.

They were already building to the Perfect/Shawn match. Marty Jannetty had just returned, Diesel debuted, Doink cost him the match after beating him at Mania and he never really got his heat back. 

Having him not wrestle in the 93 Rumble was stupid. Instead of selling the beating from Doink, there was a huge opening for him to dominate that Rumble - give him the Diesel spot from the year after and just come up short against Yokozuna who comes in late.

I feel like if I ever did a re-booking project, it would be a re-book of 1990 - 1995 WWF, and I would want your input. 

Having that steroids-trafficking case on his head and Hogan/Savage leaving for WCW really fucked up Vince's judgment.

[Gorman]

12 minutes ago, GuerrillaMonsoon said:

The KOTR title match killed it for me where he was like the 6th most interesting person in a one on one title match.

They were already building to the Perfect/Shawn match. Marty Jannetty had just returned, Diesel debuted, Doink cost him the match after beating him at Mania and he never really got his heat back. 

Since there were two Doinks, I guess we can call Crush the seventh most interesting person in that match.

[SirSmUgly]

I was disappointed when Crush turned heel because he lost his dope entrance music. 

Then when he came back, he used the heart punch for awhile and was awesome viewing again during that brief time. 

I remember enjoying KroniK a lot, but I was a teenager. 

Brian Adams was one of those guys who looked like he should be a star, but just didn't have the intangibles he needed. He wasn't a great worker, but he was good enough. He wasn't great on the mic, but he was good enough. He was definitely a good athlete. Oh well.