What are you watching?

[Big Pete]

Back when ROH was worth watching.

Good times.

 

[Big Pete]

WWE.com revealed their Top 25 matches of 2013.

Decided to check out two of them and see how they've held up.

CM Punk vs. Brock Lesnar
Parts were greater than the whole with this one. I sort of felt like they could have told a good underdog story, instead they opted more for a traditional face/heel structure with the babyface constantly having to fight from behind and receiving the odd break here and there. My problem with that is, that it was safe and a lot of spots felt very predictible. Still, sequences such as those surrounding the announce table and the MMA inspired mat-work were fantastic and I liked how they set the finish up with Brock finally getting his hand on the chair and being able to hit the F5 which he had been attempting the entire match. A great match hurt by it's own insecurities of abiding by familiar patterns and fugly elbow drops.

John Cena vs. Daniel Bryan
This was by far a more consistent match. While the story of Cena trying to earn respect from Bryan felt a little silly, shouldn't it be the other way around? They told it well and there was plenty of action, good psychology, good selling and some great reversals. The highlight for me, would have to be Cena catching Bryan into a Hurricarana and then just jumping off the top and putting him into an STF - cool stuff. But this match had so many neat moments, it's hard to not gush all over it. I think a few contrivances and the odd sloppy moment from Cena hurt this match a little, but it's still one of the best matches the WWE has ever put on.

 

[Big Pete]

Made my way through the Bash of the Beach 96 with my lil WCW project and just finished the Nitro where Hogan finally comes out and cuts another promo on the company and issues a challenge to the Giant at Hog Wild.

Everything nWo related blows WCW out of the water. The promos are better, they carry themselves like genuine superstars and they really make for good live television personas. In hindsight, what I like is how well paced the entire angle is - they're not blowing their loads with each appearance - there's enough advancement to keep things compelling and they pad each promo with enough witty stabs at WCW.

It does leave the rest of the company feeling very ho hum. The other major angles include...

IV Horsemen/Dungeon of Doom - Is a feud that just doesn't seem to end. When Benoit beat Sullivan in that grueling Falls Count Anywhere match, that should have been it and Benoit should have been advanced into another angle. Instead, it's just been dragged on and on and will continue to do so until mid-97. Otherwise, it's fairly run of the mill, both teams win some and lose some.

Mongo/Greene - The big NFL feud which started back at the Great American Bash when McMichael turned on Greene for money and a place in the Horsemen. Greene makes sporadic Nitro appearances, continues to remind everyone he's really angry and while he can't get his hands on McMichael, he'll have to wait until the NFL off-season. Boo-urns.

The rest of the angles are fairly run of the mill without being good or bad.

 

[Valheru]

Good overview Pete and expect to see more of the same. Mid 1996 until the end of 1997 was deifnitiely the golden age of WCW, the storylines were compelling and the in ring action good even if they couldnt produce a decent main event.

The fall of WCW has always been a subject that fascinated me, it will be interesting to see where you first start seeing the cracks in the armour....

 

[ParraSteve]

Great American Bash 96

Great Hard Hitting opener between the Steiners and fire & ice, A super Crusier match between Mesterio and Malenko, Sting and Regal have a pretty good wrestling match I thought and Luger and Giant have a decent big man match. The rest is mostly decent too

 

[Big Pete]

Good overview Pete and expect to see more of the same. Mid 1996 until the end of 1997 was deifnitiely the golden age of WCW, the storylines were compelling and the in ring action good even if they couldnt produce a decent main event.

The fall of WCW has always been a subject that fascinated me, it will be interesting to see where you first start seeing the cracks in the armour....

Oh yeah it's picked up big time since Hog Wild.

The nWo angle really picked up a ton of momentum heading into Fall Brawl. In recent times they've had The Giant, Ted Dibiase and even Sting (!) all join and cause havoc. Of course it was fake Sting, but WCW did a relatively good job of portraying it as a legitimate turn as they actually recorded the real Sting's voice making a deal with Dibiase.

They've also been bringing in more international talent - The Amazing French Canadians (aka The Quenecers), Juventud Guerrera, Chavo Guerrero Jr and Chris Jericho with the latter three being featured quite prominently in the undercard.

Sadly, WCW did a really poor job of booking an upper mid card so there's a major divide between the likes of Hogan/Savage/Flair etc. and Benoit/Eddie/DDP all around this time. I think the major problem is that the titles have been booked as mere props for main eventers to carry around. So Lex + Flair have been parading as TV and US champion respectively while rarely defending the belts on Nitro or on PPV. When Flair was made to defend the belt, it was in an after-thought filler match with Eddie which wasn't as good as their previous meetings.

Also, WCW needed to do a better job of booking the major babyfaces. It's difficult to understand why the nWo are constantly getting the upper hand when WCW clearly have the numbers to out-wrestle them. It'd be better if they made a point of WCW being at odds with each other and only having their main interests at hand. In fairness, that element of tension is there, but it just permeates in the background and only comes into play when Nitro needs a main event for the NWO to destroy and generate huge heel heat.

Given the show is 18 years old now, it's amazing how well some of the segments have held up. The NWO are a really cool group to watch, Anderson is cutting some amazing promos and there's usually a Mysterio, Malenko or Jericho match to look forward to. It's just a very hit and miss show - there's a lot of elements that seem at odds with each other.

 

[The Eagle]

I could tell you when it ends but that's a spoiler

 

[Valheru]

I just watched one night only from 1997 which was one of the last WWF shows from the 90’s that I had never watched before. For those that don’t know this was the first of the UK PPVs that were a staple of the 97 – 02 period in the WWF.

Every other UK PPV from that period that I have seen has been ordinary at best so I went into this show with low expectations. I have to say though that I was pleasantly surprised the show was well worth the price of admission. It’s important to note that I watched the show in context i.e. I was familiar with the storylines of the time (September 1997) as I had watched the RAWs leading up to the show.

The PPV started off with HHH against Dude Love which turned out to be the 2nd to last match of a 4 month feud between the two (Mankind as opposed to dude love in most of the matches). This was a great opener and 2nd best match of their feud IMO with the best being the cage match at summerslam earlier in the year.

Leif Cassidy (Al Snow) vs Tiger Ali Singh was next which was just filler and a dud

Next comes what is in my opinion the best match of the headbangers career when they defended their titles against Savio Vega and Miguel Perez

Another filler match followed with LOD defeating the Godwinns

Next came a surprisingly good match between Owen Hart and Vader. Being in the UK and keeping in mind the Hart Foundation vs USA feud at the time Owen played the face and was mega over. It was surreal seeing him as a face as the vast majority of his career was as a heel. Anyways, he played the role perfectly and this was a fun big man vs little man match with the little man almost pulling out the victory. IMO this is the 2nd best match of Vader’s WWF career behind his match against Shawn at summerslam 96

Bret Hart defended against the Undertaker in the next match and in my opinion it was the best match they ever had bettering both the Royal Rumble 96 match and their summerslam 97 match. Both wrestlers gave a lesson in psychology and it was clearly a MOTY candidate although clearly outdone by both Bret/Austin at mania and HBK/Undertaker in HIAC.

The main event was HBK defeating the British Bulldog for the European Championship in an infamous match. This was a complete shock for most people especially the crowd as it was thought that the bulldog would never drop that title in the UK. I have heard that he was told that there would be a bigger pay off match in Manchester down the road where HBK would return the favour which obviously never happened. As it was the bulldog was completely destroyed by DX at the end and the Hart foundation did not come to his rescue. In Hindsight this is the first real lead up to the Montreal Screw job as the Hart foundation had been dominant in 97 until this point and were made to look extremely weak on this occasion. The match itself though was great at around the 4 star mark bettered only by the previous match on the night.

If you haven’t seen this show I recommend you do, great wrestling from top to bottom with two 4 star plus matches and three other 3 plus star matches. As a show it was the 2nd best PPV in 97 including WCW shows behind only Canadian Stampede in July IMO.

 

[Iafeta]

I'm watching WCW Monday Nitro's of 1998. Currently up to April.

Things that surprised me looking back, some of the jobbers. They were experienced hands often who had a bit about them to get booked strongly elsewhere. The likes of the Minnesota Wrecking Crew 2 although they weren't referred to as this in WCW just plain 'Mean' Mike Enos and Wayne Bloom, then you have some of the gatekeepers to feuds like Marty Jarnetty, Jim Neidhart, Rick Martel, Norman Smiley... now I know WCW is oft criticised for these types of acquisitions, but some of them are fairly serviceable wrestlers and if given a few cheap wins on Saturday Night build a good match to put someone else on the roster over.

The other thing I find interesting, because growing up in high school NZ it certainly wasn't perceived to be the case (we were all Stinger fans), was how the nWo is seemingly not getting heat... you know when you have a heel that is great on the mic, in WWE if this was Hollywood Hulk Hogan he might be booed into submission. Here its all cheers, and the only thing you get is if you get a cheap finish the fans let you know about it by tossing soda and beer plastic containers into the ring. I guess its just... cool to fans. But, my question is how difficult then must it have been to book to know when to pull the trigger to end the storyline, how to end the storyline, and if there is such a pop for the likes of Kevin Nash then why not go with a face nWo team.

My only major disappointment is this point is given how popular Chris Jericho appears to be getting, why did they become so rigid and not promote him up the card? He seemed to have it all in that period. Good entertainer, excellent wrestler, good look. As far as the Giant goes, to this point he hasn't turned heel yet, and my question here is why did he want to leave WCW - my recollection is he was upset with the booking, but at this point he is being booked quite effectively in the Nash v Giant storyline as a really strong, viable wrestler.

Now we're getting into the Raven/DDP feud, and I'm loving it.

Also, for a promotion who was so heavily criticised for lack of wrestling, this must be later in the piece because at this point I reckon at least 70% of the show is in ring action.

 

[Big Pete]

Great reviews.

Valheru - I'm slowly making my way through 1997 as we speak, watching all three promotions and their big PPV shows so I'll eventually get around to this. I've seen a few matches out of context before, but I'm most looking forward to Vader v Owen since I have barely any knowledge on it and it sounds like such an oddity.

Iafeta - Love WCW circa 1998 since WCW/nWo Revenge was what got me into wrestling in the first place. I remember the first half of that year being really good but then a lot of stupid storylines begin to happen that achieve little but hurt the promotion. It's still watchable right up until Slamboree 1999 where the quality just drops off spectacularly.

Meanwhile, I'm working my way through WWF 1999.

It's been a really abstract project in the sense that it began with all the SmackDown episodes and then I just decided to watch through all the other B/C shows like Heat, Shotgun, Metal & Super Astros. It was enjoyable enough but to say 'I've seen it all' I've decided to go through each episode of Monday Night Raw and the PPVs to get a bigger picture.

Right now I'm up to April where The Rock has the Smoking Skull Belt, The Undertaker is interrupting women's matches and tormenting Vince by harressing Stephanie on a weekly basis.

It doesn't hold up, but I knew that going in. What I'm interested in seeing is that were there any good ideas that don't get enough credit, why didn't certain guys make it and were there any forgotten angles?

I'm picking up bits and bobs but nothing overly substantial.

 

[Iafeta]

Yeah aside from the fingerpoke of doom, that does seem a period where WCW is effectively jumping the shark. That said, the pity of it is in that PPV they probably put on one of their best tag bouts for some time with Mysterio Jr and Kidman, Benoit and Malenko, and Raven/Saturn in a three way match for the title. Things that seemed stupid at the time were any pushes for genuine nuffies like Horace Hogan, the return of the Nasty Boys, and frankly the No Limit Soldiers. Pity of it was that the No Limit Soldiers, as terrible as they were, did bring out the West Texas Rednecks and frankly they were quite funny. On top of that I was a fan of the Jersey Shore Triad, and the REvolution was the prelude IMO to the Radicalz, although its never noted as such anywhere.

 

[Iafeta]

Another thing I've picked up on, WCW at this point really don't care about the old booker mentality that 1 v 1 with two heels doesn't work - logically it shouldn't because there's no one to cheer or get behind for the fans. But I've seen a number of matches where its heel on heel. The face/heel divide is really loose, whereas when the nWo invaded WCW it was so obvious what the fans thought.

 

[Big Pete]

I don't know about that Iafeta - while there was clearly a divide between the nWo and WCW, they didn't really shy away from the fact that the Horsemen and Dungeon of Doom were heels.

Only Sting, Savage & Luger were babyfaces and even then, they kept toying with either guy turning their backs on WCW at one point or another.

To an extent, I prefer it that way. I hate how the WWF can take two guys who were in a blood feud one month and put them in a stable the next. It rarely makes sense and I just stop caring about them as performers.

 

[Iafeta]

They may have been, but by '98, thats not what the fans in the crowd were picking up. The nWo was so over that the only face like pop that was bigger than the nWo appearing was Sting dropping from the rafters. Like I say though, the most surprising thing is heel v heel matches. The other things I don't recall but appreciate now, Larry Zbysko is hugely over, the crowd goes nuts for him and the commentary team badly need Mike Tenay because Tony Schiavone barely commentates the lower midcard instead heaping focus on the main event scene. At times Schiavone doesn't know anything about the lower midcard wrestlers, or their finishers. Tenay is there time and time again to bail him out.

Interesting to see a couple of wrestlers they're trying to push, but from recollection they drop the push fairly quickly. Lenny Lane was a cohort with Chris Jericho to beat Dean Malenko, and he's got a fair bit of heat, but he's soon reverted to jobber, to barely being on TV. I can only imagine how out of control WCW's wage bill is given I could probably name 30-40 blokes who were on their roster at this point that I've seen wrestle once, or who I know are there but haven't been sighted at all.

 

[Valheru]

So 7 years on and i thought thos is as good a time to bump the thread given what is going on in the world and all the spare time we have.

So what is everyone watching?

I am watching both major promotions concurrently starting in september 95. Currently just past mind games in 96. Will provide proper analysis later on.

@Big Pete did you ever get through WCW 96 and the piper stuff at the end of the year?

 

[Big Pete]

I can't believe it's been six years since I watched through WCW '96. I wrapped that project up around that time but the message board I posted my reviews has since gone belly up so I can't remember every detail.

I remember being surprised by it. I had only read about it in The Death of WCW and it was made to sound like two geriactrics getting it on. I didn't realise there was some legitimately heated segments and consider how scrappy a performer Piper was, the match was half-decent.

It still had some awful moments. I hated how they completely blew off Savage/Hogan at Halloween Havoc 96 by having Piper steal Savage's limelight and end the show on a massive ramble. That music video they kept playing was some of the hokiest stuff I've ever seen in wrestling. They must have played that clip 3 or 4 times in it's entirety and the whole point of it was this one brief image where Piper wanted a rematch with Hogan back in the early 90s.

But then Piper would cut an amazing promo and remind the fans why he was such a box office draw.

 

[Big Pete]

Currently I'm watching a lot of old Wrestlemanias. There's still a lot of shows from the late 80s-early 90s I haven't seen yet and while I'm familiar with a lot of the marquee matches I have next to no knowledge of any of the undercard matches.

I started with Wrestlemania III which I had seen before but it had been awhile between drinks and I had only watched it the one time. The last time I could barely remember anything about the show even after watching it and I believe that's because it's like a sample bag of 80s wrestling. It almost seemed like a show tailor made for non-wrestling fans with a lot of short matches and 50/50 booking where one guy would win the match, only for the other to attack them after the match and get the moral victory.

It's not an action packed show, but just about everyone was a star and had that balance of having a personality without being a total gimmick.

Also I can see why Steamboat isn't high on his match with Savage. It seemed like blasphemy but that match was 80% Savage with the vast majority of Steamboat's offence being fluke pins. I don't think it really did Steamboat any favours moving forward and if anything just made Savage's transition into babyface smoother. They worked at a nice clip and I think the match is heralded so highly despite there being very little wrestling is a feather in both men's cap.

The biggest shock to me was Adonis-Piper which I remember liking the first time around but having no recollection of. I had completely forgotten about Piper using Jimmy Hart as a weapon during the opening stages. I had also forgotten about the crazy finish with Adonis giving up the sleeper before Piper's arm had limped for the third time, a freshly turned babyface Beefcake reviving Piper with a massage and then a fan running into the ring to congratulate Piper before being swarmed on by security.

Currently I'm half-way through Wrestlemania IV and just saw Dibiase go over Muraco with Austin's old finish the stun gun. The highlight of the show so far is Hogan's promo on Donald Trump which maybe one of the best coke-fuelled 80s promos. It's one of those ones where you're better off seeing it for yourself. Otherwise Wrestlemania IV has done a pretty good job of highlighting a few stars coming through like Ted Dibiase, The One Man Gang, Ultimate Warrior, Rick Rude, Bam Bam Bigelow and Bad News Brown who had all joined the company between III and IV.

I've got 5-7, 9, 11 and 13 left to watch. Not exactly my type of Pro Wrestling, but a learning experience and I really owed it to myself to go back and watch through every Wrestlemania.

 

[Valheru]

Currently I'm watching a lot of old Wrestlemanias. There's still a lot of shows from the late 80s-early 90s I haven't seen yet and while I'm familiar with a lot of the marquee matches I have next to no knowledge of any of the undercard matches.

I started with Wrestlemania III which I had seen before but it had been awhile between drinks and I had only watched it the one time. The last time I could barely remember anything about the show even after watching it and I believe that's because it's like a sample bag of 80s wrestling. It almost seemed like a show tailor made for non-wrestling fans with a lot of short matches and 50/50 booking where one guy would win the match, only for the other to attack them after the match and get the moral victory.

It's not an action packed show, but just about everyone was a star and had that balance of having a personality without being a total gimmick.

Also I can see why Steamboat isn't high on his match with Savage. It seemed like blasphemy but that match was 80% Savage with the vast majority of Steamboat's offence being fluke pins. I don't think it really did Steamboat any favours moving forward and if anything just made Savage's transition into babyface smoother. They worked at a nice clip and I think the match is heralded so highly despite there being very little wrestling is a feather in both men's cap.

The biggest shock to me was Adonis-Piper which I remember liking the first time around but having no recollection of. I had completely forgotten about Piper using Jimmy Hart as a weapon during the opening stages. I had also forgotten about the crazy finish with Adonis giving up the sleeper before Piper's arm had limped for the third time, a freshly turned babyface Beefcake reviving Piper with a massage and then a fan running into the ring to congratulate Piper before being swarmed on by security.

Currently I'm half-way through Wrestlemania IV and just saw Dibiase go over Muraco with Austin's old finish the stun gun. The highlight of the show so far is Hogan's promo on Donald Trump which maybe one of the best coke-fuelled 80s promos. It's one of those ones where you're better off seeing it for yourself. Otherwise Wrestlemania IV has done a pretty good job of highlighting a few stars coming through like Ted Dibiase, The One Man Gang, Ultimate Warrior, Rick Rude, Bam Bam Bigelow and Bad News Brown who had all joined the company between III and IV.

I've got 5-7, 9, 11 and 13 left to watch. Not exactly my type of Pro Wrestling, but a learning experience and I really owed it to myself to go back and watch through every Wrestlemania.

Mania 7 is an interesting one. It is unheralded as the 80s boom was well and truly over by that stage and it is wedged in between mania 6 which had possibly the most famous main event in history and mania 8 which was just an all round good wrestling show (main event aside).

Ill leave you to review it yourself but IMO 7 was quite a good show, it just suffered from way too many matches. Dropping 3-4 of the matches and adding time to others and you would have had the best mania top to bottom to that point IMO.

 

[Big Pete]

4, 9 and 11 at a bare minimum remain lower on the list for me.

IV would have been such a strange show to experience live. I'd imagine going in it would have been hotly anticipated since it was coming off the back of the Hogan/Andre rematch which drew a monster rating and sent shockwaves through the promotion. I could only imagine the disappointment after Hogan/Andre where you had three really anti-climatic results. First Steamboat is eliminated in the first round denying the fans of a Steamboat-Savage rematch, then Rude/Roberts stall for 15 minutes before Hogan and Andre are both eliminated through some typical shenanigans. Outside of the tournament the only real distraction is the WWF Tag Title match which was a solid piece of business. Savage winning the championship would have salvaged the show, even if the win was marred somewhat by Hogan's interference. It reminded me a lot of Wrestlemania XXVII which was just a lead into Wrestlemania XXVIII with the main takeaways being Taker fluking a win against HHH and The Rock coming to blows with John Cena.

IX would have to have been the worst card. Bret was a solid champion but lacked the star power of all those who came before him and he was in the ring with this virtual unknown in Yokozuna. I could only imagine the reaction to not only seeing Hart do the job but watching Hogan come out on top again. It would have been like Goldberg beating The Fiend but on steroids (or maybe not due to wellness). I really wanted to like the show because I liked the Caeser Palace theme and thought a lot of the guys worked hard but the booking just killed the show. There were only two matches with clean finishes - Razor/Backlund and Steiners/Headshrinkers. The latter is a solid tag team match but the former maybe the worst match in Wrestlemania history and it didn't even last 4 minutes.

XI just came around at a weird time for the company. The WWF had yet to find their Hogan, so the card felt extremely weak and outside of LT-Bam Bam all the marquee matches under-delivered. Bret-Backlund maybe the worst match in Bret's career and Diesel just seemed out of his element against Shawn. It was the least remarkable Wrestlemania at that stage and as cheesy as Hogan winning the title was, at least he was still a star that fans cared about.

 

[Valheru]

IV would have been such a strange show to experience live. I'd imagine going in it would have been hotly anticipated since it was coming off the back of the Hogan/Andre rematch which drew a monster rating and sent shockwaves through the promotion. I could only imagine the disappointment after Hogan/Andre where you had three really anti-climatic results. First Steamboat is eliminated in the first round denying the fans of a Steamboat-Savage rematch, then Rude/Roberts stall for 15 minutes before Hogan and Andre are both eliminated through some typical shenanigans. Outside of the tournament the only real distraction is the WWF Tag Title match which was a solid piece of business. Savage winning the championship would have salvaged the show, even if the win was marred somewhat by Hogan's interference. It reminded me a lot of Wrestlemania XXVII which was just a lead into Wrestlemania XXVIII with the main takeaways being Taker fluking a win against HHH and The Rock coming to blows with John Cena.

IX would have to have been the worst card. Bret was a solid champion but lacked the star power of all those who came before him and he was in the ring with this virtual unknown in Yokozuna. I could only imagine the reaction to not only seeing Hart do the job but watching Hogan come out on top again. It would have been like Goldberg beating The Fiend but on steroids (or maybe not due to wellness). I really wanted to like the show because I liked the Caeser Palace theme and thought a lot of the guys worked hard but the booking just killed the show. There were only two matches with clean finishes - Razor/Backlund and Steiners/Headshrinkers. The latter is a solid tag team match but the former maybe the worst match in Wrestlemania history and it didn't even last 4 minutes.

XI just came around at a weird time for the company. The WWF had yet to find their Hogan, so the card felt extremely weak and outside of LT-Bam Bam all the marquee matches under-delivered. Bret-Backlund maybe the worst match in Bret's career and Diesel just seemed out of his element against Shawn. It was the least remarkable Wrestlemania at that stage and as cheesy as Hogan winning the title was, at least he was still a star that fans cared about.

Yep good synopsis.

I try to judge manias in hindsight based on the circumstances at the time.

With that being said you have to list 15 and 16 as disappointments IMO which is strange to say given the company got so much right in that period. 16 especially stands out as everything around it was brilliant with backlash arguably being the best PPV of all time (I have a few ahead of it but it is in the conversation). I would have to look at all the PPVs again but mania that year may well have been the worst show (excluding the UK PPVs).

15 was just a poor show, there is no way around it however 1999 was an odd year on PPV in general as it was really quite poor. TV was great but they never hit the heights of 98 and 2000 on PPV. There are a couple of exceptions with summerslam being chief among them.