What are you watching? Part 6312

[2Xtreme_lives]

Icon Trading Cards have issued a card today, Kendos first ever signature autograph card interesting, mad to think he hasn't had a card or anything in the past

[Tim Healys Chutney Spoon]

Apologies if posted elsewhere and before, but this looks interesting 

 

 

[Supremo]

I threw a random episode of Smackdown from 1999 on today, as background noise whilst I worked. Went with one of the very first episodes, headlined by Undertaker and Big Show  vs. The Rock and Mankind in a Buried Alive match.

If I remember correctly, we didn’t get the first few months of Smackdown on UK TV and it pained me to read online about all this stuff going on that I couldn’t watch. Can anyone remember when we started getting Smackdown? Early 2000, maybe?

I know it’s not a particular hot take but my main thought throughout was how ridiculously rushed all the matches are. That same sense of panicked guys speeding through their spots that you sometimes see on AEW television, when they’re running low of time at the end of the show? That’s every match. It’s crazy.

Also, big shout out to Billy Gunn and Jeff Jarrett, knocking about on this show, and then being two of the best things on weekly TV twenty three years later. 

Edited November 4, 2022 by Supremo

[LaGoosh]

2 hours ago, Supremo said:

Undertaker and Big Show  vs. The Rock and Mankind in a Buried Alive match.

A terrible match with a textbook bonkers Foley bump off the entrance where he fucking bounces off the grass into the grave.

I always laugh when Attitude era wrestlers say today's lot don't know how to work. Their matches were either 3 minutes of nothing but rushed spots on TV or boring as fuck 10 minute matches on PPV.

You'd see highlights of Smackdown on Jakked, Metal etc and it looked so cool, so painful to feel like you were missing out. 

Edited November 4, 2022 by LaGoosh

[BomberPat]

I was watching some random stuff on the Network the other night, and the last match I put on was Jimmy Hart vs. Norman Smiley from an episode of Nitro in 2000 because I'd been watching another match from the same episode, saw that, and thought it was something I needed to see. 

Out of curiosity, I looked up that night's episode of RAW to see what that match was up against, and saw that not one match in the entire episode even lasted five minutes, and two were less than two minutes. 

[Guest]

That's the way we liked it though. Little outstaying its welcome, and no need to channel hop because someone else will be out in a minute. Just a constant procession of different shiny things, each giving us a new fix or at least pissing off quickly if it doesn't.

[WyattSheepMask]

27 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

I was watching some random stuff on the Network the other night, and the last match I put on was Jimmy Hart vs. Norman Smiley from an episode of Nitro in 2000 because I'd been watching another match from the same episode, saw that, and thought it was something I needed to see. 

Is that the one where Jimmy comes out in a suit of armour? 
I want to say Russo booked something similar for Jericho shortly after he arrived in the fed. It’s a No DQ match on an early Smackdown against Ken Shamrock where Jericho is decked in Ice Hockey gear

[BomberPat]

4 minutes ago, WyattSheepMask said:

Is that the one where Jimmy comes out in a suit of armour? 

It is! They booked mid-50s Jimmy Hart to do a splash off the ring apron through a table for the finish. 

Over the course of the same evening, we watched the Cactus Jack/Rock/Too Cool vs. DX/Radicalz ten men tag, Vampiro & The Misfits vs. Berlyn & The Wall, and Booker T/Sting/KroniK vs. Jeff Jarrett/Vampiro/Great Muta/KISS Demon, just an absolutely demented line-up of stuff to put ourselves through.

We also watched the genuinely fun, but often bonkers and nonsensical, Thunderdome Cage tag match between Ric Flair & Sting and Great MUTA & Terry Funk from 1989, and was amused by the fact that Terry Funk is the only person in that match to have not wrestled this calendar year, and at least two of the others are already booked for matches in 2023.

[Vamp]

To be fair there's some bloody boring long matches and some cracking short matches. 

Not necessarily the case during the Attitude Era but I'm not sure those matches would have been much better if they'd have gone on for 20 minutes. 

[CavemanLynn]

That was the point though, I thought. Here's a free sampler of the entire menu, now pay yer money for a pay per view of the REAL matches. Not like today's "every show is an EVENT!!! 111!!!" mentality, post-Monday Night Wars.

[gmoney]

13 minutes ago, CavemanLynn said:

That was the point though, I thought. Here's a free sampler of the entire menu, now pay yer money for a pay per view of the REAL matches. Not like today's "every show is an EVENT!!! 111!!!" mentality, post-Monday Night Wars.

Though 90% of Attitude era PPV matches were shit. 

[herbie747]

Been watching the Tales of the Territories series. The Andy Kaufman episode was amazing, but the rest of them I just find it so hard to believe a word any of them say. Old carnies remembering stories wrong, or exaggerating them, or just making them up. Exactly what I expected TBH, because we've heard it all before in shoot interviews. 

 

Funny moment in the AWA one though where Madusa calls out Greg Gagne for not having paid the same dues as everyone else, and then the moment where Ken Patera tried to proclaim his innocence over the McDonalds thing and nobody believed him and he got livid. 

Edited November 6, 2022 by herbie747

[Butch2000]

On 10/25/2022 at 8:59 PM, CleetusVanDamme said:

Nash's on again/off again mentor/enemy thing he had going on with Joe in the first half of 2008 made for some really good TV. Their Turning Point match late in the year was excellent and really underrated. Joe, even in defeat rarely looked better than when he had a 7-footer pinballing around for him. Nash needing to bust out two Jackknifes, a chair shot, an exposed tunrnbuckle, a low blow and a feet on the ropes pin to just about keep him down made Joe look great.

The polar opposite to the Booker T feud in that Summer that killed Joe's title reign and any ounce of momentum stone dead. Whoever decided to have them work 50/50 and have Joe only able to win after cheating, at the second attempt should have been fired!

Christ, I forgot all about Booker T’s absolutely dogshit TNA run. A year of bog brush material.
 

I looked after and him and Sharmell at a Comic Convention though and they tipped me 200 quid, so he can shag my dad and I’ll cheer him on. A real class act, and Sharmell is even more lovely. So I’ll always defend ol’ Book. Also they still keep in touch with Ahmed Johnson (or at least did 8 years ago). Pure Class

[Butch2000]

On 11/4/2022 at 2:00 PM, BomberPat said:

It is! They booked mid-50s Jimmy Hart to do a splash off the ring apron through a table for the finish. 

Over the course of the same evening, we watched the Cactus Jack/Rock/Too Cool vs. DX/Radicalz ten men tag, Vampiro & The Misfits vs. Berlyn & The Wall, and Booker T/Sting/KroniK vs. Jeff Jarrett/Vampiro/Great Muta/KISS Demon, just an absolutely demented line-up of stuff to put ourselves through.

We also watched the genuinely fun, but often bonkers and nonsensical, Thunderdome Cage tag match between Ric Flair & Sting and Great MUTA & Terry Funk from 1989, and was amused by the fact that Terry Funk is the only person in that match to have not wrestled this calendar year, and at least two of the others are already booked for matches in 2023.

Or on the same night you could have watched Road Dogg beating Big Boss Man by hitting him in the swingers with pool balls, or watched Hak vs Raven vs Bam Bam Bigelow have an fucking worldie a few months apart in 99 on PPVs.

[BomberPat]

Last night's random bit of Network watching was (some of) No Way Out 2002. 

The New World Order debut is obviously the big moment, and that show opening promo is just as weird as it was first time around. 

The tag team gauntlet immediately feels like you're in the post-Invasion lull that, even as a teenage fan watching all the wrestling I could, I could feel at the time was a company struggling for its identity. The match is for the number one contendership at Wrestlemania, and JR repeatedly just says that the winners will face "the Tag Team Champions", so you know that whoever has the belts now won't have them come 'Mania. In a sign of how quickly times changed back then, the Hardys and Dudleys feuding feels pretty tired in this match, having happened for a couple of years. The first two teams are all a bit thrown together - Scotty 2 Hotty and Albert, and a pre-UnAmericans Christian & Lance Storm, followed by Billy & Chuck and the APA, who eventually win, feeling even more of a stale act than the Dudleys and Hardys. By the time 'Mania came along, Billy & Chuck were tag champs, and while the APA did get a title shot, it was in a four-way with the Dudleys and Hardys, and I have no memory of how the booking got them there. 
The actual good thing about this match is that the finishes flow really well, and make sense, everything feels like they're thinking two or three steps ahead rather than the "that'll do" approach I'd expect from this time period (and now). Scotty's elimination is great, and there's an extended period of Stacy Keibler and Lita interfering that requires two refs to be distracted, yet doesn't feel like it undermines their credibility, because it's active and dynamic enough, rather than a ref standing around impotently arguing with someone on the ring apron.

RVD vs. Goldust is a match I hated at the time. I was an RVD mark, and disappointed that this was a slow, methodical match that didn't showcase all his flippy stuff. Watching it now, I love it. Goldust is believably sadistic, with some really nasty torture holds, and using RVD's flexibility to make some of those holds and spots look really brutal. It was a good throwback to the early heel Goldust as a movie-obsessed weirdo, with less of the gay panic overtones, and it's a shame how quickly it was dropped in favour of WWE comedy.

Thrown together tag team central next, for a tag team title match pitting Tazz & Spike Dudley against Booker T & Test. A fun finish - Test argues with the ref, shoves him (actually bringing up his Immunity gimmick!), ref bounces off the ropes and pushes Test back into a Tazzmission. Other than that, mostly unmemorable. 

Last match I watched was William Regal vs. Edge, Brass Knuckles on a Pole. The gimmick is clunky, but Regal is vicious and makes it a more interesting match than it deserves to be. The finish could have been really clumsy - while Edge is crawling to grab the brass knuckles, Regal pulls another pair out of his trunks and hits a knockout punch. Jerry Lawler lays into JR, saying "I thought you said knux were legal?", and JR replies, "not those knux!". It seems at risk of being a stupid Russo-esque "decision overturned because the New Age Outlaws were put in the wrong dumpster" bit of business, but what elevates it above that is the work put in to make this finish actually make sense. At the start of the match, the referee searches Regal, looking for brass knuckles, but Edge jumps him before the bell - and before the referee has finished searching him. So the audience think they've been shown that Regal doesn't have anything hidden on his person, but actually, it's the exact opposite. Lovely stuff.