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Reznor

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Posts posted by Reznor

  1. As horrible as it is in its own right, Starrcade '91 feels even worse when you consider the house show lineups they were running every other night that week, and how much better if it would've been if they'd just went with a similar card to those.

    Compare and contrast with the Christmas day Omni card for example; Sting vs Rude, Dragon/Dustin vs Double A/Beautiful Bobby (2 out of 3 falls), Flyin' Brian vs Liger, and the Steiners vs Luger and Austin in singles matches.

    With a lineup like that, on PPV, and with so many title matches, the show would've been a surefire success with the minimum of creative effort - all they'd need to do was put in a bit of thought for an angle to set up Sting/Luger at Superbrawl

    To be fair, I guess they needed a gimmick to sell the event due to a lack of any real money match at the time, but if they had to do Battlebowl, just have a plain old battle royal at the end without all the convoluted, overelaborate bollocks or the lethal lottery tournament that preceded it (although I do agree somewhat with the earlier post - that part's not necessarily a bad idea in theory for a Clash or something). If they needed to differentiate it from a bog-standard battle royal, have it  over two rings - that would create a pretty neat spectacle and you could still follow the action unlike World War III.

     

  2. 1 hour ago, Merzbow said:

    Here's a house show match but I'm not sure where it took place.

    From the French announcing, Molson adverts and the camera/lighting looking similar to the highlights I once saw from Jacques v Pierre, i'm pretty sure that's from the Jacques Rougeau retirement show in Montreal. I remember reading it was a pretty big crowd too, not far off 20,000 iirc.

  3. Everything points to it being deliberate imo. The set up; the look of the 'slam'; the camera widening; the skirting around that panel prior to the spot; the fact that they went back up a second time and that it was built as a big spot when it wasn't (relative to what had just gone before it). If the planned finish was in the ring, how was Foley supposed to get back down?

     

    In addition, if it was supposed to hold, where was the lawsuit? In that country, with that negligence and with the obvious injury, it would have been inevitable. As would Foley being more than a bit angry at the fuck-up.

  4.  

    Jacque Rougeau was always a cunt to jobbers. Whether it was in the Fabulous Rougeaus or with the Quebecers, he was just a prick. I dont think it was anything personal either, he was just that way. Always ragging people about by the hair, slapping them when in submission holds, just nasty annoying stuff. Then when he had Pierre Oulette with him, they stiff the fuck out of those poor sods. The Cannonball always looked rough. And always great to watch as well. The Quebecers were always the best squash matches.

    In relation, I watched The Rougeaus Vs Rockers from the WWF London 1989 show, and Jacques Rougeau is a fucking treat in that match. His heeling up in that match is superb.

     

    Absolutely. Because he was brilliant. And the Fabuous Rougeaus were brilliant. Arguably the benchmark for comical, chickenshit heels. .They could get more entertainment, more value, and more reaction out of 10 minutes of stalling and generally just pissing about without even coming into contact with their opponents than most wrestlers today can get from the onslaught of incessant highspots, choreographed reversals and sequences which typify their matches. Underrated babyfaces too from what I can tell from seeing a limited amount of their earlier Montreal stuff.

     

    Their hour long matches with the Rockers have always been a bit of a holy grail for me. None of them probably exist on film but at least there’s loads of Rougeau matches from those type of shows that Richard Land uploads which capture them in their element and is probably the next best thing. From those shows, the Genius is another guy who was great at that sort of hammy schtick too. It’s a simple act really. Mince around, be a prick, cheat like feck and piss the fans off, make them want to see you get your arse handed to you, then duly give them what they want in the most overblown, exaggerated way. It should be easy in theory, but only relatively few heels had the character, attitude, timing and instincts to actually do it well.

     

    Sadly, it's a part of American wrestling that's now practically extinct. You look at the insipid, soulless wrestling landscape today and see modern fans more influenced by wrestling from other countries. They're entirely fixated by the moves, workrate and snowflakes at the expense of all the dramatics and pantomine which was such an important part of what made wrestling what it was before the Attitude era came along.

  5.  

    Why would a non-contracted job guy be ripping one of the oldest heads in there? He must have been an idiot.

    Probably because he'd done so many jobs for the fed he thought he was familiar enough to do it. So yeah, he's thick as fuck.

     

    Also, they mention if you ever see Fatu doing the big splash to the outside on a jobber, that means that jobber had done something before hand and the Headshrikers wanted to hurt him. As you'd imagine, that belly splash with no support under you is stiff as fuck.

     

     

    They done that more than once? Nice visual, but not exactly the most soundly thought out idea if that was the reason.

     

    Another Headshrinker example was a squash I saw a few years back where Samu murdered a ham'negger with a ghostbuster and he just lay unconscious on the apron for the rest of the match (after being manhandled into that position). You'd assume his lights were out legit if he never moved, yet he appeared to just get left there as the match continued - no bugger even bothered to attend to him. Looked a bit odd.

  6.  

    The full listing for the Hidden Gems collection that goes up this week:

    * Lou Thez vs. Ray Gunkel - 2 out of 3 Falls 30/5/51

    * Dave Ruhl vs. Gino 'Gorilla Monsoon' Morella 16/3/61

    * Gagne-Metrics 23/9/64

    * NWA World Title Match: Dory Funk Jr. © Vs. Gene Kiniski 11/2/69

    * Andre's Feat of Strength 12/1/76

    * Vince McMahon interviews Muhammed Ali 12/6/76

    * NWA Champion vs. WWF Champion: Harley Race vs. Bob Backlund 22/9/80

    * Mid-Atlantic Championship: Roddy Piper vs. Jack Briscoe © 7/7/82

    * The Last Battle of Atlanta Steel Cage Match: Buzz Sawyer vs. Tommy Rich 23/10/83

    * NWA Title Match: Ric Flair © vs. Barry Windham 20/1/87

    * Smokey Mountain Wrestling, Unabomb vs. The Undertaker 19/8/95

    * Steve Austin vs. Bret Hart, Sun City South Africa 14/9/96

    * Terry Funk's Retirement Match: Terry Funk vs. Bret Hart, ECW 11/9/97

    * William Regal vs. Samoa Joe, Universal Pro Wrestling 11/10/2000

    * FCW Title Match: Seth Rollins © vs. Kassius Ohno 29/4/12

     

    Oh god thats a day gone! I am intrigued about Taker in SMW.

     

     

    That would have been from their huge Superbowl of Wrestling show, which took place a few weeks before that date. 19/08 would have been the TV airdate of the highlights

     

    Despite never airing, the full show is out there on the streaming sites if you can put up with the low res and annoying video counter plastered across the front of the screen. Fantastic show, must be one of, if not the best event in the US outwith the big two during the '90s. Shawn Michaels was on it too.

  7. This has probably been posted before but I've never seen it.

     

    Backstage footage from the WCW Great American Bash in 1988;

     

     

    Well I haven't and it was great, so nice find. Absolute mentalists.

     

    Coke or not, Hawk sounds like a complete roaster though. I can imagine loads of folk just tried to dodge him backstage.

     

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    I've been finished with all current day wrestling for a year or more now, so i'm always looking for stuff from the days when wrestling was good to keep me interested. Right now, if i'm on youtube, chances are i'm on Richard Land's page which is an absolute goldmine, not only of rare matches, but loads of full WWF cards from the mid 80s up to '90 from all the big arenas - with new ones seemingly uploaded on a daily basis.  I knew that MSG shows were taped and aired in full up until just after WM8, and that you got the odd match from some of the other big arenas - Boston/Maple Leaf Gardens, Copps, Philly Spectrum & LA Sports Arena... on Prime Time until 89/90, but I had no idea all these aired in full on local networks.

     

    They're very cool. Not exactly PPV level matches, but they're not normally phoned in house show non-efforts either. In some ways they're actually better than TV matches as they don't have the same restrictions, there's more crowd interaction etc. Especially when watching the likes of the Fabulous Rougeau Brothers and other such great arsehole heels.

     

    I just hope he's still got plenty more of them to put up!

  8. Jeff Hardy has hinted at wanting to top Shane's HIAC dive tonight at Slammiversary. He is going to kill himself, isn't he? The Swanton from the balcony on to Matt a few months ago was crazy enough!

     

    There's every chance. And if he doesn't then at best, he's already consigned himself to an excruciating middle age probably wishing he was dead.

     

    He's a moron. You could have had some sympathy for him back in the WWE when it could be argued that the self destruction and trauma he put himself through was a somewhat necessary, if risky, means to an end in terms of career advancement. But in TNA it's not even like there's any purpose to his stunts any more. He's already at the top of that small tree, nobody will see it, and he won't be any better off because of it tomorrow morning than he is this morning.

  9. The Shellshock looked super when he was smashing two jobbers a time with it, doing that funny little march round the ring. I think it's a decent finisher to he fair, it gives a good visual.

     

    The best one he ever done was the one he botched on Paul E. It was practically a fishermans jackhammer. He should totally have tweaked it to be like that all the time, it looked great

  10. The middle one in that island boys pic is The Tonga Kid (Rikishi's brother, one half of The Islanders with Haku) I think.

    It is. He was really good too. Surprising and disappointing that he appeared to do nothing after the 80s. I don't think I ever saw him again after leaving WCW in 1990.

     

    Cracking photo that btw. Can't be too often that you have the opportunity to snap half a dozen nationally recognised wrestlers just hanging around without necessarily any reason for them all being in the same place.

  11. The matches I remember most are the ones v Naked Mideon, Rikishi etc where we'd get those tremendously funny facials.

     

    Which is not to say I didn't like him doing all the brawling or technical stuff as that was always great too. He did have a unique way about him but to me that just differentiated him and was most definitely a positive. I do remember that the opinion posted on the last page of him being lumbering and shit tended to be the prevalent view among sections of the old internet workrate community.

     

    As great as many of his matches and runs have been, if all I could see was endless commisioner office skits and goodwill ambassador commentary of Al Snow matches, i'd still be as happy as a pig in shit. 

     

    He's a fine man. The world of American wrestling would have been a whole lot gloomier and less interesting over the past two decades without the presence of the bold William.

  12. I had some time to kill yesterday and ended up watching it against my better judgement. I never got a whole lot out of it, but I did enjoy the tag opener which was a lot of fun. It was a bit too modern for me to love it, but they got me into it despite having never heard of either team. It at least stuck to the traditional principles of American wrestling and for that it was a breath of fresh air. I particularly loved that creative hot tag cut off spot, which may be my favourite spot of the year so far.

     

    Also of note, Nakamura's entrance theme is pretty stunning, and Justin Credible being shunned was also amusing to the childish part of me. Oh, and Vinces old 80s jacket (minus badge) making a reappearance was kinda neat I guess.

     

    Kinda struggling for much more. Probably fair to say it's not a fed/brand i'm likely to become a fan of. 

  13. Yes! From what I've seen I've really enjoyed. In fact it was him who threw Lawler onto a table like a piece of paper breaking Lawler's leg leading to an awesome moment when he came back. And, of course, taking the "blood oat (sic)" that you mentioned.

     

    An absolutely spectacular visual and looked hurty as hell. And the best part of two decades before ECW invented all that sorta stuff! 

     

    His feuds with Lawler seem to be his most high profile in Memphis and is what I'm most keen to see more of, but I've got a suspicion that not a lot of it is out there on tape. That's the frustrating thing with some Territories which i'm finding out with Smoky Mountain in particular at the moment as I try to go through it from week to week. The TV shows are great for what they are, but ultimately the weekly TV was made for the locals. Their main purpose was to promote the arena/coliseum shows where the great in-ring stuff happens, and not much of that tended to be shown on TV. It's how it had to be and obviously it was never made for fans halfway across the world watching it retrospectively, but you can't help but think of the insane amount of great stuff that's no doubt been lost to time despite being taped (or at least being on shows where some taping was going on).

     

    I used to always have that disappointment with '90s/early '00s lucha libre when maybe 2 or 3 matches aired from 10-11 taped per week, but looking back to pre-90s US regional promotions, I imagine the the same will apply. Fortunately in LeDuc's case, at least his promos will survive!

  14. Is anybody familiar with Jos LeDuc? I’ve known the name for years but it wasn’t until a few weeks ago that I stumbled across some of his interviews and started to see what he was all about. I was instantly captivated and have since been through everything I can find of his on the streaming sites. Only a limited amount of footage seems to have been uploaded, but from the promos, angles and matches, it’s more than enough for me to say with certainty that he was pretty great!

     

    For anyone not familiar with him, he was a wild and rugged Canadian lumberjack strongman who exuded an incredible aura of legitimacy, menace and unpredictability. He had a great look with those eyes giving psychotic facial expressions to rival Waylon Mercy. He was entirely convincing on the mic with fantastic promos, and his ring work befitted the character perfectly. The strongman feats he regularly done for TV skits didn’t hurt in establishing his credentials and aura either, and in “The Canadian Freight Train” he also had one of the best and apt monikers around. And yet for all that scariness, it appears that he had a few decent babyface runs which he managed to pull off without watering down the character too much.

     

    It’s a shame he doesn’t seem to be very relevant today because I’d say he’s essential viewing for any fans of wild and unhinged brawling characters. He’ll probably be best remembered for slicing himself up with an axe on live morning TV and that act would encapsulate his character pretty well, but there was obviously so much more to him than the controversial shock stuff.

     

    They just don’t make them like that any more, and I need to see loads more of him. You should check him out if you can – just don’t call him crazy....

  15. PN News, Tracey Smothers, The Musketeer from ECW, Glacier, and Wrath/Bryan Clarke all probably fit this criteria pretty soundly for me also.

    That's nuts, why on earth would you consider Tracy Smothers untalented and be a bit ashamed to say you're a fan of him? He was an absolutely fantastic wrestler and one of the best around in the 90s.

     

    To be fair, there's loads of posts on here that seem to have overlooked that #3 part of the criteria

     

    In the wider picture, the whole concept of 'Guilty pleasures' is a bit of a cop out anyway. Folk should have a bit more conviction about them.

  16. So are we assuming Rick Steiner took the 1993 tour snap?!

    If you were to assume it had to be a wrestler, it could also have been Tatanka. If that's an arm beside Jimmys head then it looks a pretty muscly one so maybe that belonged to one of them.

     

    Interesting photo. Almost half of them would be gone within a week or two. Also interesting to see the illusion of Duggan looking like he was somewhat slim and may not have completely stunk.

  17. I was watching a Macho Man v Bad News Brown match from MSG in late '88 earlier - good match it was too - and got a bit of a surprise to see Savage busting out a suicide dive. From what I could see, it looked a real man sized one at that too - none of your half arsed shite like that thing Dean Ambrose does every match.

     

    Unfortunately the camera didn't catch it all, but you saw enough to know what it was. As someone who has a particular liking for seeing that kind of rare, once-in-a-blue-moon type of thing in matches (so long as it fits the character / circumstances etc.), I found it pretty cool. 

     

    Has anyone saw him do this in another match? I'd like to see a decent visual of it. If he did, I'd guess it would've been from that same period - 87-88 as babyface in between heel runs.

  18. Bulldog and The Model would have been at a loose end too. Martel may have been given a Prime Time match or left out completely, but you'd imagine Bulldog would have made the show - probably against Repo Man who he was feuding with. Slaughter v Mountie was another that was talked about.

     

    I'm a bit surprised I had no idea about Von Erich/Shango. I didn't even think Tornado was still there as late as July/Aug. He must have been horrible beyond words at that point.

     

    Such an odd show it turned out to be. An event with no real top heels and barely anything in the way of heated feuds leading into it. Yet they somehow managed to make it all work out ok. 

  19. Big "what if" here, but "if" HBK vs Mr Perfect was the match it had the potential to be and "if" Luger had won the title, would Summerslam 1993 be remembered as one of the best PPVs ever?

     

    Great undercard on the show. A fantastic tag title match. A great little match with Doink vs Bret along with all the Lawler shenanigans. New blood Razor Ramon going over the veteran dibiase in the opener. Borger being made to look strong.

     

    Its no WM17, but for 1993 they pulled this one out of the bag. Could have been oh so perfect.

     

    **sub note** For everyone's own sanity, we can pretend Taker didn't have a match on this show.

     

    It would have made for a brilliant show, and I think I've said as much when talk of this PPV came up on here recently, but one of the best ever' would probably be taking it a bit far. More realistically, it would have given the preceeding PPV a run for its money as best of '93. As you say, the undercard is generally great.

     

    I wouldn't say that Borga being booked so strongly is a particular plus point though, not when it's at the expense of one of the most exciting, popular and dynamic babyfaces they had, who had been on fire throughout the summer. It served a purpose I guess, but it wasn't good viewing and I don't think a complete squash with Marty playing Sonny Trout was what most folk wanted to see. Jannetty's stock was at a decent level at that time, and any decisive win over him would have enhanced Borga's credibility for a feud with Luger, so they could at least have made a match of it imo. My preferred scenario would have been to quickly feed the outgoing Duggan to him, with Jannetty facing either the Model as originally planned or Diesel if he'd been an active competitor at that point (Maybe even combining the Razor and Kid v Money Inc matches to make room). 

     

    Regarding Hacksaw though, If that match w/ Kamala v the Headshrinkers I saw the other night was anything to go by, he was such a dick that if he was to lay down he'd just have Herculesed it anyway, ruining any impact.

  20. I get that they probably couldn't call it a Samoan Drop because it wouldn't fit with his gimmick, but surely they should've called it something else when there was already a move called the fallaway slam?

    They did. Or at least the Brain did. It was the Papoose to Go! Then after the heel turn, the End of the Trail.

     

    They done the same with the previous guy to use it as a finisher too - Saba Simba. His was coined the 'Nairobi drop'.

     

    EDIT: name change already mentioned in another thread. weird. Guess someones clicked on this thread to reply to the other, and not a massive coincidence.

  21. After the steroid trial did he go straight to Indies and then retire early? I'm surprised he didn't join barbs in wcw thinking back.

    He did, they had a (very) short lived run in the mid 90s - someone thought it better not to acknowledge their history and threw them under generic masks.

     

    I remember they were supposed to have had a match on one of those silly indies a few years ago vs Marty and the Kid, I couldn't help thinking what an amazing match that would've been in '93, bearing in mind that one of the Rockers best matches imo (and one which seems to fly under radar) was at MSG vs the Powers of Pain.

     

    The Warlord was one of those Internet Wanker Community hate figures back in the day, along with the likes of Crush, Hakushi, Mutah in gimmick, pretty much any fat guy who wasn't Vader etc etc. Truth is though, like the others, he was always pretty decent. He was a bit 2 dimensional for sure, but that's how wrestling was, and he was perfect in his role. All the Bulldog matches are testament to that.

  22. Personally, I think they missed a trick with Baylor, especially him in that series of vignettes about him. He's clearly a bit soft-spoken and geeky, so they should have played that up from the off instead of being a kick throwing hardcase like Itami and however many other 'serious' wrestlers. He needed to get his arse kicked more, squeaking victories with quick bursts of offence when he's all but dead, scratching his way up the ladder on sheer will rather than 'taking his opponent to the limit'. Then at the big match, after numerous TV taping kickings, he lets on about having to go to his 'dark place', and at the PPV, Demon Balor debuts, where he straight-up murders his opponent with the offence we know he can do. TV taping after the win, he's back to being meek lil Finn, thanking everyone and his PPV opponent, whilst warning everyone he doesn't want to go the dark again.

     

    I've said this over and over again, I know. He'll get over as is and make a shitload of merch money (that action figure mockup in the Toys thread was mega) , but it still seems like a creative misstep what they've done with him, or at least a missed opportunity.

    This scenario, or variations of it, has become generally accepted online as the can’t miss best way to use Balor. Unfortunately, it's bollocks imo and the reality of what would happen would be very different to what you guys envisage.

     

    The only thing that's interesting about Balor is how he’s presented - the theme, the logo, and most importantly, the makeup. That doesn't say a whole lot for his skills as it's all the WWE's doing. The mechanical stuff can keep him reasonably popular with the NXT crowd who knew him from before, but he hasn’t shown anything that suggests he can capture the imagination of the masses if he was brought up. He isn’t even particularly suited to his ‘gimmick’ as he’s essentially a conventional looking, clean cut guy who doesn’t give off any sort of weird, enigmatic or alternative vibe at all.

     

    Anyways, the point is that very few people are likely to care about plain old Finn Balor. The kids would only ever want to see the ‘demon’, so it makes no sense to run the sort of gimmick where fans have to endure shit they’re not interested in for a month or two in order to get the payoff. Especially when it’s done in some sort of routine and cyclical way like you’re advocating. People would just be disappointed at paying their money or tuning in only to be met 9 times out of 10 with a bland, robotic fellow who does workrate instead of a vibrant, exciting comic book antihero.

     

    Then again, character-wise he’s so unconvincing that even in gimmick, he’s basically just the same but with paint and fancy entrance.

  23. Ian Mac's Wrestling Radio Show. Started as a weekly show and eventually went daily. This was pre-internet days so all the "real" news came from this show. I remember one show starting with a somber Ian Mac telling us that Kerry Von Erich had killed himself. They used to play vaguely wrestling related music like "Attitude Adjustment" and "The Mighty Quinn" he also LOVED Hillbilly Jim's "Waking up alone" and used to play that daily.He played a few other WWF theme songs as well. I won a competition on there: "who played Peggy Sue", the answer of course being Sherri Martel, they sent me a Survivor Series 91 VHS. Good times. Ian asked all his listeners to take "Arn Anderson is God" posters to the London '93 WCW show and quite a few did, I met him at the show, nice guy, he gave me an Arn Anderson Galoob.The channel/station wanted to eventually cut the time slot down to 5 minutes a day so Ian Mac packed it in. Fond memories of these times.

    Fantastic, thanks for the info, man. It's interesting to finally find out what the hell I was actually listening to and had remembered for all those years!

     

    Coincidentally enough, my most prominent memory from it was also hearing about Tornado's death, and I think they might've mentioned his amputation whilst they were at it which confused me no-end. I remember well the calls for fans to take the Arn Anderson signs to shows too. Another insignificant thing that sticks in my mind is the little german voicover recording giving it the "guttentag mein damen und herren" at the start of every show.

     

    Happy days.

  24. Its pretty heartbreaking to look at Starrcade 97 and the card they could have done, but didnt. They could have probably could have done a stadium for Hogan vs Sting. It was at that point the hottest PPV in history. Everything from the match lineup, to the finishes, to not exploiting how hot the PPV was pretty much summed up WCW at that point. No Flair on the card, Randy Savage in a 2 match six man tag. Scott Hall wasnt wrestling, so it would have been pretty simple just to slot Hall in for Nash and still give the fans a decent name bout. No Rey Mysterio either.

     

    It was bloody dreadful. I remember having a moan about it a while back so being the lazy fucker that i am, might as well just paste & repeat myself;

     

    Starrcade 97's a bit like that for me too. In absolute terms, of course it's not the worst, but relatively speaking, and taking all circumstances into account, it doesn't get much poorer. Nothing obviously needs said about Sting/Hogan, but we were also let down with Flair/Perfect and Raven/Benoit, both which could've been great. No Nash/Giant either, and not even a replacement match even though Hall was there. Eddy/Malenko was at least a step up from their ECW wankathons, but still lacked any excitement. Luger/Buff went on forever and slowly drained your will to live, and 'pre-Goldberg' Goldberg and Mongo were putting on a clinic. On top of that you had no Rey jr or Jericho (even though that would've been a perfect opportunity to sow the seeds of his heel turn), no luchadors, Savage hidden away in multiman filler, no sign of half the midcard - Finlay, Booker, Disco, Faces of Fear etc. It was just such a limp show, and it couldn't have happened at a worse time with such a big audience. I can't imagine too many of the newcomers would be too impressed.

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    - Big Show done a top rope missile dropkick at least once in the WWF btw, against Viscera.

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