What are you watching? Part 6312

[RIDDUM_N_STYLE]

1 hour ago, SuperBacon said:

Summerslam 96

A really crap PPV, saved by a pretty superb main event, as Shawn and Vader work a great match.

The Boiler Room Brawl is alright, and the turn at the end is great, as is the druid shit, but it must've been awful to watch live. 

Hilarious that WWE seemingly put what looks like four 20" TVs around the ring for people to watch. 

The rest of the card is terrible, so thank god for Shawn Michaels. 

Yeah the mid 90s run of Summerslams aren’t great but have 1-2 good matches to save it from being truely awful

95 has the HBK/Razor rematch

96 as you mentioned has HBK/Vader

97 is bookended by the Mankind/Triple H cage match and Bret/Taker

[SuperBacon]

Summerslam 97

In all honesty another dog rough show, saved by an absolute classic main event.

Opener was good, despite never being a fan of Triple H or Mankind, especially baby face Mankind. But they put on a great opener that the crowd is well into.

The rest is fairly awful, and seeing Stone Cold break his neck is rank obviously.

The main event is a genuine 5 stars. The crowd are hot, and go ballistic in the closing stretch. 

The spit-swing-chair shot is utter perfection and one of the best spots of all time. 

Bret is at his peak in this match and it really is the small little touches he adds that make him the best. The little shimmy he does after The Undertakers pyro goes off, him screaming FUCK as he goes hurtling through the ropes when the Sharpshooter is broken, him looking directly at Shawn when he makes the 3 count. He is just the best.

I also loved the NJ crowd booing the shit out of the senator or whatever she was. Always something that makes me pop. 

The opening "If life were fair" promo video is also top notch. 

 

Edited July 27, 2023 by SuperBacon
Grammar

[wandshogun09]

Didn’t Vince or Bruce Prichard try to act like Bret was old and breaking down physically after the whole Montreal drama went down, and that was partly why they didn’t want him anymore? Obviously bollocks. Fucking madness when you look back on Bret’s 97. It might’ve been his best year all around. 

Must’ve been quite a shock to be in that WWF locker room at the time just for the complete difference there must’ve been from 97 to 98. The Bret vs Shawn shit backstage would’ve been constant in 97 and must’ve been a right headache. Then within 5 months of Montreal, they’re both gone from the locker room and business (and I imagine morale) is going through the roof with Austin as champ. The atmosphere backstage must’ve done a complete 180.

It’s crazy to think how different things would’ve been if Vince had kept Bret and fucked Shawn off instead. Austin taking the belt off Bret at WrestleMania and finally getting that win over him would’ve been class. But beyond that, the Mr McMahon character wouldn’t have had the same impact without the Montreal shite, they mightn’t even have gone that direction at that time. Shawn might’ve died in WCW with the party scene there and reuniting with Scott Hall. Bret having big PPV matches with Rock and Foley etc in 98/99 would’ve been ace. And maybe with Bret around they don’t stick Owen back in the Blue Blazer outfit and he’s still here today. All silly pointless ‘what ifs’ but it feels like so much changes if Vince goes with Bret over Shawn in late 97. 

Edited July 27, 2023 by wandshogun09

[air_raid]

15 hours ago, SuperBacon said:

I also loved the NJ crowd booing the shit out of the senator or whatever she was. Always something that makes me pop.

As the Republican governor of the state it was akin to Vince rolling out David Cameron or Boris Johnson to say "thanks for having us" in front of rasslin fans.

13 hours ago, wandshogun09 said:

Didn’t Vince or Bruce Prichard try to act like Bret was old and breaking down physically after the whole Montreal drama went down, and that was partly why they didn’t want him anymore? Obviously bollocks. Fucking madness when you look back on Bret’s 97. It might’ve been his best year all around. 

Vince made sure JR was briefed at Survivors to mention that Bret debuted at the age of 19 in 1978. So everyone sat at home could do the maths and go "hey, this guy's 40." Which from Bob Backlund and Jake Roberts previously, they'd tried to condition viewers to believe north of 40 was past it, when it suited them. A nonsense to wrestling fans with a brain, given that the man celebrated as arguably the best wrestler of all time, Ric Flair, probably had his best year in 1989 at the age of 40.

[LCJ]

I think Bret said in interviews around ‘99 and 2000 that Owen would still have been around today if Bret had still been with the WWF. Bret said something along the lines of Owen used to bounce ideas off Bret and that Bret would tell him when to reject the bad ones. Bret would effectively have looked out for Owen and would’ve made sure he hadn’t have been doing something so dangerous that he wasn’t comfortable with. The whole incident still annoys me to this day. Still sometimes surprises me that Bret went back after the way he was treated and after Owen was killed due to the company’s negligence. I know it was an accident but for me, the Owen Hart tragedy is the most shameful day in WWE history.

[The Gaffer]

Still one of the best wrestling anythings ever 

 

[Merzbow]

I've been taking a trip back to the early ultraviolent days of CZW and today it's the first couple of 200 Light Tube matches, there's some unfunny cunt talking over them and I don't mean the commentator Morino or whatever his name was.

Out of the three guys in the two matches only Nate Hatred looks like he had any kind of real potential as a wrestler, Wifebeater was always dogshit and even in my most deathmatch crazed days I couldn't stand him. Nick Gage has none of that charisma he has today which has garnered him the cult GCW following, it's wild that 20 years later he would be given a spot on national TV against Chris Jericho.

 

[wandshogun09]

Twitter tells me that on this day in 1992, Razor Ramon made his WWF debut. So I just watched it.

Obviously the vignettes before this were ace as well. But as an in ring introduction, this was pretty much perfect. The look, the music, the complete and utter disdain for the poor job boy, then just when you think you’ve seen it all, he hits the Razor’s Edge. Nothing mind blowing as a move in 2023 but back then I’d never seen anything quite like it. Perfect on commentary bigging him up adds to it as well, especially now having heard Hall talk about Hennig’s influence on him and the advice he got from him in his early days. 

[The Gaffer]

Been going through some of the excellent feud recaps on this person's channel:

 

Started watching this expecting some halcyon days before the rot of the invasion angle really set in over the fall months, but it's brutal. 

People talk about Stone Cold's heel turn at least being an artistic success but this suggests otherwise. I know there was some brilliant individual performances in there, but for a storyline I thought I remembered as being hot - and one that culminates in a great match - this was a big turning point where it was suddenly okay for your main event to oscillate wildly between blood feud and goofy comedy.

I know that can work fine in the right context and dosage, but it just sucks the life out of everything here. It feels like we've finally reached a point where there's really no pressure to deliver, and in response Vince and the writers just have a good ol' laugh. Something that'd be a continuing theme throughout the next few years. Booker T gets a tummy ache after Debra's cookies. Kanyon and Lance Storm share a ring with Austin. RVD is wildly miscast being in The Alliance. Just standing there stoned off his tree clapping awkwardly with the rest of them, thinking "This is shit, I had way more fun at Heatwave." 

I'm not pointing out anything new, but I'd not watched weekly Alliance stuff in years and you can see from the off how everything's shattered and meaningless now. There's no proper hierarchy. Stuff is called up for a segment or two because it'll be hilarious, then forgotten forever. 

It's basically like having to line up in the schoolyard and cheer for the kids who bullied you because they brought home a trophy. 

Business had cooled off a bit by that point anyway, but wrestling was still cool. Then you put on Sky Sports and Austin's beating up Matt and Jeff. One bad taste like that was enough for so many people to decide "Fuck this, it's stupid now." 

[air_raid]

On 8/10/2023 at 9:14 AM, Gay as FOOK said:

I know there was some brilliant individual performances in there, but for a storyline I thought I remembered as being hot - and one that culminates in a great match - this was a big turning point where it was suddenly okay for your main event to oscillate wildly between blood feud and goofy comedy.

I know that can work fine in the right context and dosage, but it just sucks the life out of everything here. It feels like we've finally reached a point where there's really no pressure to deliver, and in response Vince and the writers just have a good ol' laugh. Something that'd be a continuing theme throughout the next few years. Booker T gets a tummy ache after Debra's cookies. Kanyon and Lance Storm share a ring with Austin. RVD is wildly miscast being in The Alliance. Just standing there stoned off his tree clapping awkwardly with the rest of them, thinking "This is shit, I had way more fun at Heatwave." 

I'm not pointing out anything new, but I'd not watched weekly Alliance stuff in years and you can see from the off how everything's shattered and meaningless now. There's no proper hierarchy. Stuff is called up for a segment or two because it'll be hilarious, then forgotten forever.

Of course, the biggest problem ever being that after a fairly even Invasion where the Alliance played their joker to win the 10 man main, that SummerSlam was such a one-sided slaughter that Fin Martin said the sub headline should have been "The WWF Strikes Back." RVD was the only Alliance player that won big, everyone else got smashed like jobbers. Unless you remember a six man that had Test and Spike Dudley in it, which nobody does. All the big matches, the WWF won, and Austin only weasled out with the belt. Might as well have scrapped it there and then, as for all the intrigue about "WWF vs WCW & ECW" the two top results were "Kurt Angle beats Stone Cold by DQ" and "The Rock wins the main event" plus the other winners were Edge, Jericho, Taker & Kane. So yeah, fuck WCW.

[wandshogun09]

The Sunday Night Heat match from WrestleMania X8. Mr Perfect, Lance Storm & Test vs Rikishi, Scotty 2 Hotty & Albert.

Too short to be anything really, goes about 3 minutes, just a case of getting these guys on the card. Fun while it lasted though. And I love the cheer Perfect gets when he tags in. Shame they never found a way to get him on the actual Mania card. Especially in hindsight knowing this would be his last WrestleMania. Him against Kurt Angle, playing off their fun interaction in the Rumble that year, would’ve been cool. It’d have been better than Angle vs Kane anyway. 

Edited August 15, 2023 by wandshogun09

[The Gaffer]

Ooh I love a random Heat match on some of these WrestleManias. You sort of were on WrestleMania but weren't, and it always messes with my memory/default image of what a particular WrestleMania was like. Mr. Perfect being on a giant, shiny WrestleMania from that era - for example - is just completely bizarre to me. 

[air_raid]

1 hour ago, wandshogun09 said:

Him against Kurt Angle, playing off their fun interaction in the Rumble that year, would’ve been cool. It’d have been better than Angle vs Kane anyway. 

Ahhhh, another Mania where they had no idea what they were doing for fucking ages.

Dave Lagana says that all the negotiations they were doing with Sting during the Invasion/Alliance period to try and twist his arm into signing, were done with half an eye on doing Angle vs Sting at Mania, which was always a pipe dream, knowing Sting as we do. Otherwise, Angle's Mania plan hinged on whether or not he was going to be needed at the top end. Heel Austin vs babyface HHH was being kicked around for Mania before Hunter did his quad, Rock vs Austin was considered as a blow off to what they were doing prior to/at Survivor Series before Vince realized he could get Hulk Hogan in to wrestle one or the other. Which of course, Austin famously said no to. Steve then wanted to wrestle Benoit until it was clear Benoit wouldn't be back in time, and Vince persuaded him to work Scott Hall but Austin had Vince agree that if Hall's behaviour got himself sacked or otherwise got their Mania match cancelled, he'd wrestle Kurt at Mania instead. So if it felt like Kane vs Angle was thrown together really late in the day, it's because it was.

 

[waters44]

Had a few ciders last night and in my haze I put the Boneyard match on. It’s such good campy fun that only wrestling can deliver! Couldn’t stop laughing at this little bit at the start when Taker turns up -

AJ - “Hey Taker, does Michelle know you’re out this late?!”

Taker - “….Yes”

Taker Mankind HIAC or 99 Rumble are usually my go to matches when drunk but this one did nicely 

[Tommy!]

I've started raw and smackdown from Jan 2000. See how long it lasts before I get fed up or distracted.

First episode down and it's amazing to see how cold some people are compared to a few weeks later at the rumble.

- Opens with a Rock & HHH promo exchange. Rock is amazing. HHH sounds a bit out of his depth, how quick that will change in this Foley run. Gunn also takes Rock off his feet sliding into the ring too far.

-The Ice cold Dudley's plod along with 2 cool to continue APA and MSP pissing about on the outside. 2 cool get a good reaction for dancing even this early and the doodleys look like shit and no one cares about them.

- HHH beat show nearly clean and incredibly decisive at the top of the hour with a low blow and pedagre for the belt. 

- kurt and Kane have a nice little match before blackman gets involved for a DQ. It's clear there's something there with kurt.

- Chyna tops bob holly with Jerichos help in a bit of a mess, she clearly gets lost and he needs to stand by the ropes telling her what to do, after they are crowned co champions by Steph.

- a nothing test vs bossman and Albert with comedy mae & mullah with Harvey & Henry. Meh overall but mae going for the bronco buster got a good response.

- a short brawl to nothing to build APA vs NAO as APA get jumped by the Dudley's and NAO when there hands were tied behind their back vs MSP.

-jeff hardy beat Al snow by escaping the cage. Total silence, again its amazing how that will have changed in 3 weeks. Matt looks useless selling his fingers after getting them whacked climbing the cage and snow looked a right nob as a heel. Sooner he's an opening act goof again the better, he's ok at that. Terri is dragged in the cage before the match and stands cowering in the corner but it never plays into the match so why they did that fuck knows.

- Rock beat pac & NAO 3 on 1 after the "fired" Foley ran in with a chair before running off. By the numbers but everything Rock & pac looked great together when they had time.

Highlights

- Rock in Miami had them in the palm of his hand

- mideons mankind impression in the "have a bad day" videos.

- Rock being awesome to open and close the show

Lowlights

- The deafening silence from the crowd in that cage match

- HHH doing a china man impression as "Hung Low" in the "have a bad day" videos.

- Chyna vs bob holly and the co champs bit