The "I've just watched ..." thread

[BomberPat]

I have a real soft spot for the ending of Buried Alive - it's interminably long and awkward, and so clumsy, but it's like nothing you'd get today. They realise that it's going to take a fucking age to actually fill the grave with dirt, so they just send out a random group of assorted heels to help out, while Terry Gordy's there for some reason ahead of getting Tombstoned with his boots full of water and fucking off a month or so later. 

These days, they'd have shot it from a hundred angles, rehearsed it to death, and you'd never get anything like that kind of on-the-fly "quick, send out the lads to help" decision making to try and salvage the match. Which on paper might sound better, but in practice just means everything is staid and unappealing - give me Goldust and Crush mucking in with a shovel any day.

[Guest]

Just watched talk’n’shopamania, and it’s beyond even the level of bad they said it’d be. It’s all over the place edit wise 

[buba3d]

just watching some wwf superstars from 92 and sid was in a match against mickey jay, saying to my self nah its not mickie jay the ref from wcw but sure enough it was.

[FLips]

13 hours ago, buba3d said:

just watching some wwf superstars from 92 and sid was in a match against mickey jay, saying to my self nah its not mickie jay the ref from wcw but sure enough it was.

Here he is vs Taker too. 

 

[The Maestro]

Mr Perfect vs Bret Hart from Summerslam 91. I don't think I've watched this fully for ages but wow. I know it's a match that I liked but you kind of forget how good it is and way ahead of it's time it is too. It's the only match I can think of off the top of my head where that's an atomic drop that actually looks like it hurts. Only slightly wank spot is Bret being lobbed outside and hitting an "international photographer" that looks as if he's been hit by a paper bag in the wind. 

[The Maestro]

Just to add to this, but I forgot how wonderful this whole event is. The vignettes. Post match promos. Jimmy Hart almost having a stroke backstage. Everything about Bossman/Mountie. It's not peak wrestling but jesus, what a fun event! I've always thought one of the biggest problems with modern day wrestling is treating everything barring the main event as fairly inconsequential. Everything on this is made as a huge deal and you honestly care watching it. Love it.

[WyattSheepMask]

Summerslam 91 was the first show I ever saw, Bret/Perfect first match although it wasn’t until years later I found out it didn’t open the show.

My brother borrowed the tape from someone at school, and for some reason I have a vivid memory of The Busheackers doing their arm/thing but to the tune of Michael Jackson’s ‘Bad’. My brother must’ve put it on the stereo while we were watching and I got it in my head that they played pop music during the matches.

After that I got bought WM7 on video (still got it somewhere) and I’ve watched pretty much ever since. In fact, I’m sticking on the network right now

[air_raid]

SummerSlam 91 is perfect. Bret wins, Virgil wins, LOD win, Boss Man sends The Mountie to jail, Hogan and Warrior win the Gulf War, a wedding. Perfect.

[WyattSheepMask]

The crowd are absolutely electric for virtually everything too. Such a simpler time

[The Gaffer]

IYH: Ground Zero. 

Fun little event to pass the time, in what must be the smallest building they've ever ran a PPV in. That Shawn/Taker outing is their third best match. It pisses all over the so-so Shawn retirement match. Just a great chickenshit heel encounter full of heat spots that got the crowd going wild. 

[wandshogun09]

I loved that match as well. I’d wanted to see those two square off for ages just because they’d never had a televised singles match before. Think they’d only crossed paths once or twice in tags and stuff. It was becoming a bit of a dream match for me in 96 during Shawn’s title reign but with them both being babyfaces at the time it just didn’t seem to be on the cards. That Ground Zero match delivered big time for me. Even the non-finish didn’t lessen my enjoyment at the time. And of course it led to that incredible Hell In A Cell match the following month. I’ve always preferred those early Taker vs Michaels matches from 97 over their WrestleMania ‘epics’ years later.

It was goofy as fuck but I loved them using the old In Your House set in the match at Ground Zero as well. Especially the bit when Shawn is desperately trying to get away and starts banging on the door of the ‘house’ set on the ramp. 

Edited August 19, 2020 by wandshogun09

[Pogue]

I imagine HBK spent a fair bit of time in the 90's rolling around out of it trying to get in the front door 

It's a great spot though, just proves you can do something that'd sound daft on paper that not only doesn't take away from a match but adds to it

[Chasingamymatt]

At the start of Lockdown (i'm still working from home atm) I began watching the Nitros / Thunders & PPV's for WCW from September 99 to close of company. My god that was a fun car crash. And anyone who says WCW picked up at all by the end is flat out incorrect. The only and I mean ONLY good thing on the shows is Scotty Steiner. Flair & co have never looked older, more out of touch and cartoony. The amount of turns were bewildering, even watching all the shows I missed tons of them. Still filled up the time until MLB came back.

[air_raid]

I’d given up on WCW by then, excusing whenever Bret was on. The number of turns between Uncensored and Road Wild turned me off completely. Losing track of who was on who’s side between Nash, Sid, DDP, Flair, Hogan, Sting, Savage etc and spotting lads on each other’s team that had cost each other the World title the month before was almost a weekly occurrence.

[BomberPat]

Watched Summerslam '88 with my other half, don't think I'd ever watched it before. Gorilla Monsoon and "Superstar" Billy Graham on commentary, which isn't a combination I think I've ever seen. Superstar was pretty good, surprised he didn't do more 

• Bulldogs vs. Rougeaus was great fun, as expected. Big fan of both teams, though would have liked there to be even more ridiculous heel stooging from the Rougeaus if at all possible. At one point Davey Boy press slams Jacques into a crotched on the ropes spot, lovely stuff. Dynamite looks roided as fuck. 
   
• Bad News Brown vs. Ken Patera is absolute dogshit. Patera is woeful in this match, none of his strikes or clotheslines look like they'd hurt a fly, and Bad News is really only slightly better. 
   
• Rick Rude vs. Junkyard Dog next, and we're three for three on matches starting with the heels jumping the babyfaces. Rude's obviously great, JYD is past his prime but still a charisma machine and over as hell. A great stock Rick Rude promo before the match that got genuine heel heat from the other half, and shots of women in the crowd primed and ready with their cameras, which is the sort of reminder that this is first and foremost a live performance that you don't get in modern WWE. Finish is Rude pulling down his tights to reveal additional tights with Cheryl Roberts' face on them before jumping off the top rope, which triggers a very believably angry Jake Roberts running in for the DQ finish, and Rude bumping out of the ring with his tights hanging around his arse. Fun stuff, made work by the fact that it's some all-time greats doing it.
   
• A change of pace, as The Powers of Pain vs. The Bolsheviks starts with the babyface team jump-starting the match. I didn't know who The Baron was as the Powers of Pain's manager, turns out it's Baron Von Raschke, because nothing says Babyface Road Warriors Knock-Off like an aging pretend Nazi. This period of his career is covered in a single sentence on his own Wikipedia entry, and only slightly longer on the Powers Of Pain's, so he can't have made much of an impression. The match was fine - some genuinely impressive stuff from the big lads, who were thoroughly believable in this role. Can't remember much else. Volkoff already feels a little bit like a relic in this match, and he was still popping up in '95!
   
• Next is the only bit of the show I've definitely seen - Honky Tonk Man vs. Ultimate Warrior. I love how they "censor" the attack on Brutus Beefcake by Ron Bass that led to Beefcake being taken out of this match, it's a really effective use of TV being used as a tool to further an angle, rather than just the means by which to watch the show. This starts, astonishingly enough, with a jump-start before one of the wrestlers is ready. We're five for five on that. One of the all-time great squashes, with Honky Tonk Man shuffling into position for the Splash because Warrior doesn't even remotely try and get him in the right spot before knocking him down being a particular highlight. Wrestling these days really lacks this sort of energy, outside of a Goldberg match, and a large part of that is it because it lacks irredeemable stooge heels in the Honky Tonk Man mold - the Seth Rollins of the world still want to hit Phoenix Splashes and somersaults and the like, and work twenty minute matches when they're working heel, and the world needs more people who know the benefit of being a mouthy shitarse who gets properly beaten when it counts.
   
• Dino Bravo vs. Don Muraco was a bit rubbish. Really typical of midcard matches of the time, as it's just two big beefy lads not doing much of anything. Spent most of the match watching Frenchy Martin at ringside. Can't remember if this match was a jump-start or not, let's assume it was.
   
• Demolition vs. Hart Foundation was great. Neidhart does a dropkick and a fucking slingshot dive over the top rope to the floor. Not a move I expected to see in this match, and definitely not from the Anvil. Jimmy Hart was managing Demolition, which is not a pairing I'e ever been aware of, that I can recall. 
   
• Boss Man vs. Koko B. Ware, very early in Boss Man's run. Very babyfaced, in the literal, not wrestling sense. One of three animal mascots on the card here, which I just find uncomfortable to watch every single time I watch WWF stuff of this era. That poor parrot. Billy Graham repeatedly rags on Jack Tunney and the referee for allowing Boss Man to wrestle with a metal badge on his shirt and handcuffs and keys on his belt, which is entirely fair, but doesn't actually play into the story of the match at all, as he never attempts to use any of them as weapons. What's really clear in this match is that Slick is enormous. He's taller than Boss Man, and I don't think I've ever noticed that before. Koko hits some absolutely gorgeous dropkicks, Boss Man hits what feels very much like a still work-in-progress Boss Man Slam, and gets a pretty weak cover to win it.
   
• Jake Roberts vs. Hercules is mostly rubbish, but Jake does good work. Hercules scampers out of a DDT, which is good. This is slow and methodical, and in this case that's not a compliment. Another bloody animal mascot, and I cringe seeing Jake throw that snake around.
   
• MEGA POWERS VS MEGA BUCKS. Always going to pop for a MEGA POWERS HANDSHAKE. This almost feels, conceptually, like something more out of the Attitude Era than the late '80s - babyfaces thrown together into a tag team, odds stacked against them because the heel team have a manager and a bodyguard (and because one of them's a giant and the other's a millionaire), heel referee. Jesse Ventura referees the whole match in skinny jeans and a smashing blouse. His heeling doesn't really play into the match at all, which felt like a wasted opportunity - there's a couple of teased staredowns with Hogan that go nowhere, and then him being reluctant to count the winning pinfall until Savage forces his hand to the mat, which might have had more impact had he actually done any heel reffing or slow counts earlier in the match. DiBiase bumps like a trooper, some really lovely floppy fish selling, while Andre is just a sad sight already, constantly holding on to the ropes for support. Savage and Hogan do their thing, but it's nowhere near a top of the chart match for either guy. The finish comes when Elizabeth tears off her skirt, and in typical wrestling fashion, a 30-something year old millionaire and a 42 year old world famous Giant are frozen in shock at the sight of a woman's pants, for at least a full minute.
   

As a show, it was fine. Does what classic WWF does well - the good matches are good enough to not get bored, the bad matches are short enough to not outstay their welcome and, outside of Brown vs. Patera, everyone has a clearly defined and colourful character, and while Bravo vs. Muraco is rubbish, at least there's an angle. Even though very little of the show was involved in blowing off feuds or even really continuing storylines, it all felt like it had purpose. Aside from, again, Brown vs. Patera.

Edited August 20, 2020 by BomberPat