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JLM

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Fucking great to see this bumped again, great reviews too.

 

I just bought that Fall & Rise Of WCW DVD, might do a review of some of those matches at the weekend in-between cricket, football and chips.

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WCW Monday Nitro 12-1-98

I have this on tape, as aired on British TNT/Cartoon Network/TCM. It was a good show, though the UK edit meant no Jannetty and no Neidhart! :-(

 

Will have to dig out a few old WCW Worldwides for some Mustafa Saed and Gambler goodness!

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WCW Monday Nitro 12-1-98

I have this on tape, as aired on British TNT/Cartoon Network/TCM. It was a good show, though the UK edit meant no Jannetty and no Neidhart! :-(

 

Will have to dig out a few old WCW Worldwides for some Mustafa Saed and Gambler goodness!

 

Mustafa Vs 2 Cold Scorpio at WCWSN 93 is pretty good!

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I've started to slowly work may through the 1989 NWA World Championship Wrestling run and am up to the end of February (although my viewing got completely curtalied by the Grand Slam of Darts and also trying to keep on top of current MMA stuff). I wont go into complete lengthy details as it would take way too long, but here are a bunch of notes and musings on what I have watched so far.

 

In the ring the standouts have been Ric Flair, Ricky Steamboat, Eddie Gilbert, Barry Windham and the Midnight Express. Steamboat's return to the NWA is set up on the 01/14 show as Windham is facing Gilbert in a singles match (really good stuff, including a great headstand escape from Windham where he immediately drills Gilbert after the escape) and Flair comes to ringside to watch/support Windham. Naturally when Gilbert was in control, the Naitch interferes and they double team and put the beating on Hot Stuff. Later in the broadcast during a Windham and Flair interview, Gilbert comes out to challenge them to face him and his mystery partner on next week's show. They accept, and the partner is revealed the following week as Ricky Steamboat who gets the pin on Flair in the tag match with a crossbody off the top turnbuckle. From there it is pretty much a case of building the feud to the match at Chi-Town Rumble where Steamboat wins the gold. Steamboat is portrayed as the family man, trying to become World Champion to provide a good standard of living for his wife and son (and little Richie makes plenty of appearances).

 

The Midnight Express are feuding with the Original Midnight Express (of Randy Rose and Dennis Condrey), and the Original Midnights are managed by Paul E.Dangerously whilst the Midnights are managed by Jim Cornette. The interviews are great in this feud, although the Original Midnights are not the most exciting of teams to watch, whilst it is extremely difficult to get behind and into face Cornette and co. The feud built to a six man tag at the Rumble where the loser of the fall would be gone from the NWA. It is built in a way that you believe one of the manager will be gone; it is in fact Loverboy Dennis who drops the fall, and Randy Rose becomes prelim fodder.

 

Talking about struggling to get behind people as a face, I give you Michael Hayes. If ever a man was born to be a heel it was him, and he is an even less appealing face than Cornette. He appears to be in limbo withouhg his Freebird compadres as they have him teaming with various different partners each week, from JYD to Sting to Dick Murdoch. Murdoch doesn't fit in at all, and is probably one of the most boring wrestlers to watch so far. You are guaranteed an appearance from him every week, usually in a singles match, and doing his best to send me to sleep. In a similar vein to Murdoch is Mike Rotundo. Rotundo at this point is part of the Varsity Club (originally with Kevin Sullivan and Steve Williams, although Dan 'Spud' Spivey has just joined the faction) and is as tedious and boring as ever. A real chore to watch, although there is one heated six-man tag featuring the Varsity Club vs Road Warriors & Paul Ellering from the Saturday Morning show that aired on the evening broadcast. Rotundo is feuding with Rick Steiner (and Scott has just debuted to try and counter the continual interference and advantage that the Varsity Club had) whilst Doc & Sullivan are feuding with the Road Warriors.

 

The managerial side of things was extremely strong at the start of the year, as not only did you have Cornette and Dangerously, but there was also J.J.Dillon, Gary Hart and Paul Jones. Unfortunately, Dillon was not long for the company as after only a month into the year he took up an Office position in the WWF, and the NWA bought in Hiro Matsuda as his replacement and sort of faux leader of the Horseme, to which they also try to add Kendall Windham. Matsuda adds nothing and if he wasn't there you wouldn't have missed him. Jones is nothing more than a jobber manager (looking after the Russian Assassins) whilst Hart's charges were Al Perez and Abdullah the Butcher.

 

Elsewhere Lex Luger looks really good in what he has done as he is really motivated and puts forth a ton of effort. The Samoan Swat Team have just debuted, and they did the old 'heel manager's all at ringside to scout them' routine. It was a hell of an impressive debut. 'Breakdancing' Vincent Young has also showed up (he wrestled in the WWF as jobber Mark Young, and I think is the son of Chief Jay Strongbow) and Butch Reed is a few weeks into the promotion. Finally, Gangrel is here as a jobber wrestling under his real name of David Heath, the wonderfully named Randy Hogan is also jobbing (complete with similar hair style to the Hulk), and a guy by the name of Kip Montana got squashed by the Road Warriors. Montana went onto become a certain Mr Billy Gunn.

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WWE In Your House I

 

Hakushi vs. Bret Hart

 

I seen so little of WWE in 1995 that I didn't even realise Hakushi had a manager. He's a right pestering wee fucker though, causing all sorts of shenanigans to try and put off Bret Hart. I was surprised at the lack of mental offense from Hakushi early on but the more the match went on, I began to realise why as he REALLY unloaded the big stuff on Bret. Was also weird to see a Suicide Dive from Bret. This was as good as you would expect it to be and was two sided as well.

 

The Roadie and Jeff Jarrett vs. Razor Ramon

 

I was surprised that it was JJ that Razor kept making the comebacks against in this one. The Roadie would come in and get a decent go of things and then JJ would come in and get punched all over the ring. I thought the beating on Ramon for the middle portion on the match went on forever though. Was wondering if it was ever going to end. Ramon winded up just being the hero and getting the win.

 

Mabel vs. Adam Bomb

 

Squash. Next.

 

Yokozuna and Owen Hart © vs. The Smoking Gunns - WWE World Tag Team Championships

 

I quite liked this one. The Gunns brought their usual cool tag team offense, Yokozuna was brilliant as the enforcer, beating the piss out of the Gunns so as Owen could attempt to pick them off. That latter gameplan worked brilliantly in the end. It wasn't pure amazing or anything, but it didn't outstay it's welcome.

 

Jerry Lawler vs. Bret Hart

 

This match was reminding me of Vince/Bret with how one sided it was. Well, apart from Hart being able to move in a decent way in this one obviously. Basically, he played possum to get Lawler wanting the match and then proceeded to kick the shit out of Lawler when he got the match. I thought the boatload of Flying Headbutts were a bit overkillish from Hakushi, but I suppose you can never be too careful. A nothing match really.

 

Diesel © vs. Sid - WWE World Heavyweight Championship

 

I quite liked this one as well. A bit boring aye, but I liked Sid's one track mind. "I'm just going to club on you untill you're knocked out." and that was basically what he tried, and it would have worked too on a lesser man. But this is Diesel we're talking about. What annoyed me BIG time though was Sid doing the Powerbomb and then waiting about two minutes before deciding to make the cover. If they want to protect the finisher, why not just have them not do it ?

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One of the things I remember about that first IYH show was how over Adam Bomb was, before he got smashed at least. He seemed the kind of guy that the WWF would've gotten behind in that period. Was he on the way out by this show? I can't remember too much Bomb stuff after IYH1.

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One of the things I remember about that first IYH show was how over Adam Bomb was, before he got smashed at least. He seemed the kind of guy that the WWF would've gotten behind in that period. Was he on the way out by this show? I can't remember too much Bomb stuff after IYH1.

He was, yeah. He was gone within a month or two. For a sub-2 minute squash, it was one of the more eventful ones with Adam bomb getting a fair bit of offence in the space of a minute including a dive over the top. It just seemed to end out of nowhere and felt a bit weird because that front slam thing wasn't normally considered to be a finisher. You're right, he did seem to be pretty popular and he even had a name for his fans, 'the Bomb Squad'. I quite liked him, but more as a heel than a face - not that he was a great wrestler or anything, but he was big, strong, intimidating looking, had a decent gimmick for the time, and was always pretty crisp at throwing guys around. As a face i thought he was a bit annoying, and tried to overcompensate for not having much natural charisma by just being as loud and animated as he possibly could - it looked a bit forced. He was pretty spectacular though and his offence was always more suited to a face than a heel with all his top turnbuckle or slingshot clotheslines and Jericho/Smothers jaw-jacker flying elbows. Gotta say though, those decorated goggles were a bit stupid looking

 

The Hakushi/Hitman match was great i thought. They had another one which iirc was equally as good the following night, similar to the Jean Pierre LaFitte feud - that PPV match also had a suicide dive which was nuts as he landed on his head. Looked a bit scary at first, a bit like that Nitro spot with Benoit and the back-suplex to the outside. Hakushi's manager was actually Sato from the original Orient Express wasn't he.

 

I've never saw any pre-WWF Bob Holly but i always found it funny when i read he played some kind of 'hollywood superstar' type character because he was no oil painting. Then again, if the Rock n Roll Express were considered a 'pretty boy' tag team, i guess anything went in the south :laugh:

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