Loosely Formed Thoughts on WWF Unforgiven 4/26/98

 

1. The Rock/D-Lo Brown/Mark Henry vs. Faarooq/Ken Shamrock/Steve Blackman

The Nation team is billed at 950 lb, meaning they could have gotten this to 1,000 if they subbed in Kama for D-Lo, meaning they fucked up.  

Blackman and D-Lo have very little chemistry but D-Lo's snap suplex looks excellent and Blackman throws the fastest spinning chop I've seen. 

Blackman is too hesitant this entire match and leads to awkward timing whenever he's in. He even tags back into the match when Shamrock was clearly setting Faarooq for the tag and Shamrock forces him to go back to the apron. Holy moly. Blackman has really bad timing with everyone, like he totally forgot how to bump for anything. It's really odd. Fans are noticing it and it's a bizarre choice to have him work the bulk of the match as FIP. 

Everybody is taking everybody else's offense slightly wrong, it's not just Blackman. He's merely the worst offender. 

The Rock's punch when he tags in to a dazed Faarooq is the best part of the match up to this point, and his clothesline is hard. I love all three of Mark Henry's quick elbowdrops when he tags in. Faarooq is a much cooler face in peril that Blackman but they cannot wait to get Blackman back into this match. I don't know why Steve Blackman is in this match so much. 

Blackman wailing on D-Lo with chops is a Better Blackman, and his punch exchange with The Rock felt like it should have looked a lot worse, but the Blackman FIP stuff doesn't work. People really dislike the Rock still, but they feel nothing for Blackman. He is just not a guy who should be selling in long matches like this. Use him like fucking Ernest Miller, let him fly into the ring in the last third throwing improvised kicks, don't have one of the worst physical actors on the roster go in there and sell for the bulk of your opener. 

The Faarooq hot tag could have been fire but it was way too rushed. I loved how he threw his body into the back of Mark Henry's knees and Henry took a great bump for the double leg spinebuster. Henry took another cool fall on a big Blackman kick. Shit, earlier he set up a nice powerslam on Blackman by throwing him into the Rock's knee and I didn't even mention it. Another strong Henry performance, really exposing all of us for not being fully into this guy the moment he re-debuted after his ankle injury. 

Boy this match did not work at all and on paper it really looked like it should have. This was a complete and total failure from the babyface side. Everyone in the Nation looked great, all standout performances. Faarooq's side all wrestled like they had just met each other backstage before their entrance, and none of them looked good during their brief windows to shine. Shamrock barely got involved, Blackman was taken way out of his comfort zone for far too long, hardly any focus was placed on Faarooq getting revenge on the Nation, just a full three person bag fumble. The crowd was quiet most of the match and it was due entirely to the uninspiring babyface squad. 

2. Owen Hart vs. HHH

Chyna in a tiny cage suspended near the ring feels like one of the last times Cornette convinced Vince to do a silly territory gimmick that WWF had never done at any other time. For all the things about territory work that HHH clearly never understood but constantly pretended he was an expert student, he at minimum does understand that he needs to kick the tires on the cage and rigorously test its sturdiness. 

This starts off a lot better than the opener but the crowd is still quiet. HHH bumps around ringside and Owen throws a nice headbutt that he doesn't use enough. Owen runs hard into HHH's jumping knee and it's among the best that spot has looked - equal credit to both - and Owen gets dropped kind of disgustingly chin first on the top buckle when HHH takes the legs out of his 10 count punches. 

Owen takes a lot of hard bumps in this, a great string of them. He makes all of HHH's knee offense look good, bouncing less on impact and making them look more painful. He hits the buckles really hard, and takes a couple more chin first bumps into them. This was the most spirited Owen performance since the rest of his family left for WCW 5 months prior. 

Neither of them can make HHH's Dragon Sleeper I Guess look interesting but at least HHH tries it out three different times, just in case the first two disinterested crowd reactions were a fluke. I don't think I have seen him attempt this submission before or since, but he's also done plenty of things that looked worse, so...

Chyna dangling from the cage is a really great, tremendously performed stunt spot. I forgot sometimes just how much my friends and I were excited for Chyna's further involvement in matches, dying for her to start doing more than hit Owen Hart in the balls. I forget sometimes how much of a Chyna Fan I was at 17. This was one of her greatest physical performances and a spot that looked actually dangerous the entire time it was happening. When she broke free of the little shark cage she was suspended from, and attempted to climb down it? That woman was at least 12 feet in the air, possibly higher, and did a full "hanging by one arm" stunt. Chyna was old John Cliffhanger up there, working with no safety net, with the very real possibility of her falling hard onto concrete or the entrance ramp. She was great at milking the danger, kicking her legs, making the cage sway, making it look like a struggle, making it completely impossible to focus on anything but her. What could have even been happening in the ring, HHH trying out another submission he saw a Japanese guy do better? 

Much better than their WrestleMania match, elevated by a big bumping Owen performance and Chyna's legitimately cool stunt. 

3. New Midnight Express vs. Rock n Roll Express 

I actually think it's pretty cool that they put the Rock n Rolls on a 21,000 house Greensboro show, but every criticism at the time of this match being put out there to fail, is sadly accurate. 

Bob Holly takes an awesome backwards cannonball bump to the floor from a Gibson shoulderblock, and Cornette still draws Greensboro heat by hugging him. Bart Gunn takes a nice bump off the apron too, after Ricky dodges a punch from Holly, and then they work another spot where the Midnights bump each other off the apron. The crowd should be responding much better to these bumps. 

What does not help is when Bart Gunn goes to an abdominal stretch like 2 minutes into this thing, the first heat they got on Ricky. The man tagged in and went straight to the stretch. 

Cornette plays this whole thing way too desperately, which is probably much more entertaining to the people backstage who wanted this idea to fail. I've seen Cornette start dozens of fights with referees and this is one of his worst, a fight with Tim White using the worst exaggerated "Let's Fight" mannerisms he's ever used. 

Ricky gets to take his own cool bump through the ropes to the floor and Cornette does wind up throwing the best worked punch of the match.  

I liked Robert's hot tag, leaping in quick on an advancing Bart, throwing fast punches, working 10 count punches with Ricky, sizing up the double dropkick. All of it looked good, none of it got much reaction, which is a drag. 

This was exclusively talked about at the time as something intentionally set up to look sad instead of cool, and that self-serving missions was mostly accomplished. Rock n Rolls were set up to fail in their WWF run, and that sucks because they were still a better tag team than basically any 1998 WWF tag team other than the New Age Outlaws. Robert especially was going hard every chance he got, they just couldn't have ever worked hard enough to succeed. It wasn't allowed. 

4. Evening Gown Match: Sable vs. Luna

I wonder how long it took the 40-something adult man in the front row to make his Sable Free Tongue Bath sign. This man had to go buy a poster board and at least two markers and had to have the commitment to thinking it was a great idea every step of the way. 

This is the first real misstep of their use of Sable. The WrestleMania match was excellent, and the pull apart brawl at Mayhem in Manchester was so authentic and natural that it seriously ranks as one of the best wrestling pull apart of the year. But every part of this suuuuuucks. 

The fans are undeniably into it, and that means something, but they are nowhere near as into it as they were the WM tag or the Manchester brawl. 

Also, why was Sable out there in such a dowdy gown? Talk about terrible lines and no sense of style. I know the dress wasn't staying on for long, but let's get your star in something that actually fits so she looks good in clothes before she is out of clothes. 

This whole thing is only two minutes long, and the only good part was when Sable booted Luna in the neck and then flung herself onto her and punched her several times in that same part of the neck. 

Also, it's wild how Luna often comes off as less trained than Sable. She looks lost in a two minute match where they only goal is to tear fabric, and the more of this I revisit the more I remember how Luna got 100% of the credit for anything that worked in this feud but it is very clear that Sable is responsible for all of it. Nobody was giving Sable credit in 1998 for any of this. 

It's two minutes long, Sable gets her Mama's Family funeral dress ripped off, and the whole payoff is Sable's 1990s Elizabeth Berkley long butt. The fans love to see those long flat white butts. Butts just used to be different and we can't ever put that genie back in the bottle. In 1998 America still liked 'em long and low. 

5. New Age Outlaws vs. LOD 2000

JR is still talking about the Outlaws shaving off Hawk's bi hawk like half a year ago. This entire feud is based around Hawk getting a 3/8" strip of hair shaved off part of his head two seasons ago. 

You knew the damn fix was in man, because directly after a segment where Lawler and Greensboro wolf whistled and unrolled their tongues at Sable's Classic Kelly McGillis Ass, Sunny is out here in her far and away hottest era. Her LOD 2000 gear made her look like the most incredible lead Fred Olen Ray could have found for Deathstalker III & IV. Babes don't come this hot in the apocalypse, but JR is busy talking about Hawk's mohawk. There should have been a social uprising whenever Sunny appeared in her LOD 2000 gear. 

The New Age Outlaws have aged really well as a tag act, especially during this early part of their run. They felt like a real natural team from go despite each completely languishing separately for well over a year before they teamed. Huge portions of their act would have killed in Memphis, and they threw in a lot of nuance that I didn't give them credit for at the time. I loved Road Dogg adjusting Billy's trunks for him, getting them just right while Billy was waiting to lock up. 

I also actually like this old out of shape Road Warriors era, because Hawk is still a really good puncher. So you get him pulling his tights up over his belly like a 60 year old luchador. He has no power whatsoever, but he also still hits a great fistdrop and is a great puncher. I would have watched another several years of Hawk as a punch guy. It's weird seeing a 40 year old Road Warrior work matches like 70 year old Jimmy Valiant but also I sincerely love Hawk as Jimmy Valiant. He fires off punches as well as anyone on the roster. I also remember liking 2006 Wrestling in Jeans Animal so it's possible I either have total dogshit taste or more likely really refined taste. 

Every match on this card feels like it's being worked the exact opposite from how it should be worked. Animal tags in and holds Billy in a cravat and I have no idea why we're building up to Billy's comeback but the crowd doesn't know either and they are silent. 

There's a cool and dangerous spot where Billy Gunn chops blocks Animal during the first Doomsday attempt and Animal crumples while Road Dogg just drops down onto him. That could have gone badly but instead just looked cool. The Outlaws try to get heat by working over Animal's knee, and Animal does a really great job selling the knee damage. All of the work looks good, it's just not getting any kind of response and it's always eerie when a crowd with this many people are this quiet. 

But the finish was incredibly insulting, and that's not going to help the crowd noise. Hawk pinned Road Dogg with a German suplex, they won the belts, but of course Hawk's shoulders were counted down. Why the ref was only looking at Hawk's shoulders, I don't know, you'll have to ask the Gods of the Bad Finish, but it's one of those wrestling finishes that can get no other reaction from the crowd than an annoyed "Oh seriously? Fuck off." It's a finish designed to get no heat, just insult everyone who saw it. Throw a flat as hell German suplex, ref gets down to count right next to Road Dogg's shoulders, but looks right past them to Hawk's shoulders. Nonsense. Well, have fun feuding with DOA for the rest of the year.  

6. Inferno Match: Undertaker vs. Kane

I don't know what any of us were expecting from this match. They kept details intentionally vague and I guess we were all supposed to believe that we would witness a man being burned alive, and that we were supposed to be intrigued by the idea of a man being burned alive? This PPV was primarily sold on one of these men being burned to death, and also on the possibility of you seeing Sable's tits. The Austin/Dude Love title match basically got added as the main event the week of the show. This was a PPV built on Fake Tits and Fire Death. 

Now, it's been long enough that my internal timeline has blurred and I don't actually remember if I saw this match first or if I had already traded for a 6 hour Sabu comp tape in 8th Gen quality and saw Sabu and Sheik and Onita and Tarzan Goto almost die in an outdoor wrestling fire. I had no idea who Atsushi Onita or Tarzan Goto or The Sheik were when I got that tape but I knew that it looked like several people almost died from Fire. Which match was my first Fire Match experience? That memory is lost to time. But damn this must have looked so fucking cool from the upper deck of Greensboro. The Colosseum darkened, the literal danger of INDOOR FIRE. Can you imagine being inside a building with open, flaring flames? Not me, not since the Great White incident. Fuck no. I'm not going to be one of those bodies trampled in a doorway. 

Hey, is this match actually really fucking great? This is fucking fire and it's also 300 lb. men fighting near fire! Normal Kane/Undertaker spots look better with fire! The flames shooting up the ropes when Undertaker does Old School is the best that a jumping punch to the arm is going to look. Undertaker's flipping clothesline now becomes a riveting miss because it sends him tumbling to the edge of the ring next to The Fire! And yes, they probably should have saved all of the fire flare-ups for big shit like chokeslams and Undertaker's superplex instead of doing them for every bump or impact, but it is also Very Funny seeing flames shoot up 6 feet in the air after Undertaker does a side Russian legsweep. 

A note about Kane: you know how Kane threw great worked uppercuts but couldn't throw any other kind of punch that looked good? Here he threw great overhand rights but didn't use any uppercuts at all. What is considered the Best Kane Era? 

Kane takes the biggest over the top rope bump to the floor of his life when Undertaker has to throw him far enough to clear The Fire. And how about the fucking VADER chant when Vader In Sweatpants runs down to ringside and starts punching and headbutting Kane in the face!! I get Undertaker needing someone like Vader out there to provide more landing coverage for his tope suicida over the fire. Great spot. Undertaker does a suicide dive over Fire and the crowd is left chanting for Vader. That's huge. That means something. Fans either still believed in the big man in 1998, or those Vader/Flair matches left a long lasting impression on the people of North Carolina.  

Paul Bearer hits a big bladejob after Undertaker hits him square over the head with Star Search band Sawyer Brown's kick drum. A big sweaty fat guy hitting a huge blade job is one of the great disgusting visuals unique to wrestling. You couldn't just fire up the internet in 1998 and see a fat guy bleed in a suit after a kick drum was slammed over his head. It was only a pro wrestling visual then. A fat sweaty guy dressed for the finest Sunday Service potluck gets his head busted open by the same kick drum that was used earlier in the night to perform Sawyer Brown's smash hit #1 single (from 1992) Some Girls Do.   

So it turns out the Inferno Match is really good. Let's turn this one into the new King of the Road Match. This one is due some revisionist history I think. I had openly wondered what the best Undertaker/Kane singles match was, and this has to be one of the absolute top contenders. Great spectacle.  

6. Steve Austin vs. Dude Love 

The wrestling sections in this were so much fun, and I love how it evolved from a classic wrestling match into sick bumps and bullshit. Dude Love running the ropes all fast and sloppy and Austin rolling in with a perfect dropdown, catching Dude on the run with a Thesz press. That falling elbow Austin does is one of my favorite moves in wrestling. I'm a person who hates having my neck touched, hates shirts that are too tight and rub against my neck, hated playing night game baseball in high school because it meant turtlenecks under my uniform. So I can't really picture the kind of trust I would need to have to be okay with Steve Austin sending the point of his elbow down towards my Adam's apple only to stop a couple centimeters short. It's one of our purest pieces of worked pro wrestling offense. 

All of Austin's classic pro wrestling exchanges look great, but when he throws Dude off the stage we all know a guy splatting onto concrete so early in the match meant that there was a chance Foley might do something even more painful. 

Nobody had lower crotches on his tights than Foley. Dude's tights fit like old long johns.

Austin is a guy who knew how to capitalize on Foley as an opponent. I guess a lot of guys did that - he took some terrible beatings - but you can tell Austin is really sinking things in. He back elbows his way out of a body vice (a Dude Love body vice!) and runs clotheslines at him as hard as he can. 

This is the first time (of what would be many times) that they milked the Montreal Screwjob as a Vince Tactic. I don't know if anybody I knew in 97/98 actually knew what actually happened in Montreal at this point in our lives and probably just assumed that Vince stopping matches was just going to be a finish we'd get every few months. We had a party to watch Wrestling With Shadows when it aired on A&E, but that was several months after this match. I don't remember how effective this angle was to me and my friends as teenagers, how much we bought into the worked shoot that we wouldn't have known was a work or a shoot. 

Foley does save some really great bumps for the finishing stretch, bouncing off concrete, getting tossed over the guardrail and back, and getting suplex off several corners of the ring steps. I'm not sure you could have suplexed a man into a more painful part of the ring steps. All edges. 

Vince McMahon takes a chairshot right off the side of his fucking head, a completely insane thing for a man with real money to be willing to do. Vince was willing to take a harder chairshot than Foley took (*in this match) and Austin was a man being paid to hit a sociopath in the side of the head with a chair. No wonder we all loved the Austin/Vince stuff so much. 

Well, this was an overall underwhelming PPV, and it all started so promising with a direly serious Undertaker/Kane video package that's nothing but grim allusions to an afterlife spent in hell, broken up bouncily with a "1-800-COLLECT PRESENTS...." It's tough to top that. 

Best Matches:

1. Steve Austin vs. Dude Love

2. Undertaker vs. Kane

3. Owen Hart vs. HHH

Worst Matches: 

1. Sable vs. Luna

2. The Nation vs. Faarooq/Ken Shamrock/Steve Blackman

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THEE 23 Man Shotgun Saturday Night Battle Royal!

23 Man Battle Royal WWF Shotgun Saturday Night 9/19/98 

ER: This is the kind of TV battle royal I miss, and this just might be the closest this era of WWF ever came to the kind of brilliance we saw in WCW's infamous 1995 Nasty Ned battle royal. While doesn't have quite the same charm as that 1995 masterpiece, it still has the kind of charms found in Coliseum Video battle royals and I think that's a nice measuring stick. Its biggest strength is that it boasts a truly bizarre collection of participants, a real freak show of guys who weren't on the main programs of 1998 any longer and wouldn't be in any programs whatsoever in 1999. A great battle royal is one where there are several strong potential winners, or absolutely zero plausible winners. When you're looking over the 20+ guys involved and the only two who stand out as possible winners are Bradshaw and Dan Severn, then you know you have some incredible parity in your battle royal. 

Give me a battle royal with Tiger Ali Singh in his first match in a year, Bob Holly still in his Midnight Express gear two months after the Midnight Express existed, Kaientai wearing Michinoku Pro gear and not their street gang attire, Scott Taylor without Brian Christopher, Papi Chulo in his last appearance before becoming an exclusive part of the Super Astros roster for the next 6 months, Southern Justice getting the strongest crowd reaction of anyone else during their entrance, twin Nazis, Miguel Perez and Jesus Castillo still in their Boricuas gear before their shift to Super Astros, and the Oddities. Of course, my glee over who could possibly be considered the favorite among these names was deflated a bit when the final entrant was The Rock. Obviously the Rock is going to be winning this specific battle royal, but there is still plenty of 7th generation video quality joy to gleam from this. 

Where else will you see Golga having one on one interactions with Mens Teioh or Papi Chulo? Bob Holly and Marc Mero were fun unexpected standouts, with Holly always going right after physically larger guys, and then punching it out with The Rock and selling really well for him. Dan Severn does an amateur throw to eliminate Jesus, gets double teamed by Togo and Teioh in another odd pairing that couldn't have happened anywhere else, bullies Singh into the corner with hard shoulders to the stomach, then takes a cool cartwheeling elimination bump after being thrown over by Bradshaw. Mero was getting a great reaction from hotdogging the entire time, the way far more people should hotdog while in a battle royal. Mero would punch someone, then raise his arms, then punch someone, then raise his arms, and before long the crowd was erupting every time he raised his arms. It's more of a playful house show call and response game than anything you see on TV, and it's cool seeing someone random like Marc Mero be a noteworthy part of someone's WWF live event experience. 

The eliminations all come at once, like they were told to all go out there for 7 minutes and whomever is left who isn't the final 5, get the fuck out of there and quick. We get a lot of great elimination bumps: Togo gets backdropped over by Funaki for some reason, Papi Chulo gets the back of his head clotheslined and winds up tumbling all the way to the entrance ramp, Miguel Perez and Scott Taylor take the kind of bumps to the floor you would expect from two bump kings, and we wind up with a fantastic final 3: The Rock, Dennis Knight, and either 8-Ball or Skull. Dennis Knight comes off like a real badass in this battle royal, and when I saw how cool he came off during the finishing stretch it made me think back to Southern Justice getting such a big reaction during their entrance. I really liked the Southern Justice look and wish they got a long run with that gimmick. Wrestling SHOULD have tag teams that look like two of Ben Gazzara's toughest goons in Road House. And walking to the ring, they DID look cool. 

Knight really puts the boots to the Rock, with the kind of energy that makes me want to do a Godwinns/Southern Justice project, a Viscera/Mideon project, and - if those go well - a Naked Mideon project. It's crazy how much of an impression a guy can make in 30 seconds, but damn did I like Southern Justice here, and seeing Knight taking it to the Rock was great. Knight and [a Nazi] punch and stomp the Rock, Rock ends up eliminating the Nazi on a missed charge, then we get to see how perfectly Dennis Knight sells the People's Elbow before the finish. This was when the Elbow was really starting to catch on big, and the crowd went nuts for it, but it's not exactly a thing that finishes a battle royal. Well, when the elbow impacts Knight's chest, he gets up and runs around like he took a shot from a defibrillator, then gets leveled by Rock over the top. Dennis Knight sold the People's Elbow the way you'd picture Chris Candido selling the People's Elbow on a house show, and I know anyone reading this is picturing how that looks right now. This was a great battle royal, the kind you will never see on WWF C shows again.

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WWF Raw 4/20/98: A Good On Paper Episode of Wrestling TV

Long Island Street Fight: Faarooq vs. Kama Mustafa

ER: This would have played better as a still photo. I'm not sure if it makes sense, but this was a fairly middling match where both guys looked cool for large portions. The Nation comes out through the crowd, everyone is wearing all black, Kama's street fight gear is black jeans and a black sleeveless T, Faarooq is in black jeans with taped up ribs, just a couple of badass looking dudes. But the match never really matches the intensity of the stip or the look. Faarooq STARTS the match by hitting Kama with a hammer, and it's REALLLL tough to keep up the pace when a fight starts with someone taking a hammer to the head. What doesn't help things is that Faarooq sells a beating like a guy having a restless night of sleep. He's got his ribs taped up, and Kama attacks the ribs, drops a nice elbow, hits him with a heavy ass garbage can (WWF was new to weapons at this point and didn't know to use flimsy cans), and Faarooq sells it like a turtle who realizes he won't be able to get off his back so has given up. This needed a lot more intensity that they gave it.

Dan Severn vs. Mosh

ER: This was really cool, as it was basically worked like a Bloodsport match. Severn shot in with a fireman's carry takedown and double legs and kept Mosh down with his weight, but Mosh was no pushover on the mat. I've never thought of Mosh as someone with amateur wrestling tendencies in the ring, so it was cool to watch him not go limp on takedowns on throws. He was taken down with a reverse waistlock and kept fighting to his right and actually almost pulled off a go behind on Severn. It actually looked like Severn wasn't expecting it and they both tumbled into the ropes. Severn throws him with a couple of cool rolling gutwrench suplexes, and Mosh keeps trying to slow the momentum of them, making them only look cooler and fought for. Mosh even got a big arcing takedown while Severn was distracted, and Severn nearly took a huge head drop off it, like he was Misawa taking a big German. I really dug the two grappling on their feet, ending with Severn throwing what looked like a shoot bodyslam, then doing a similar lift into a powerslam before trapping the arm. The only actual strike that was thrown was a kneelift from Severn (and a really terrible punch on the floor, when Thrasher took out Cornette with a punch that landed somewhere around Cornette's elbow). 

Goldust vs. Bradshaw

ER: This was worked the way the opening street fight should have been worked, and this one didn't need weapons. Well, it did have Bradshaw's heavy chaps as a weapon, and Bradshaw charging Goldust with a big boot and beating him with chaps was more violent than anything in the street fight. Bradshaw was at his most Hansen here, and I swear he whipped those chaps straight across Goldust's face. Goldust is a big guy and Bradshaw isn't going to be able to bully him, so instead we get two guys having no problem working stiff with each other. Goldust is a more generous bumper than Bradshaw so Bradshaw is the aggressor, but the punch and chop exchanges all look good, and they are both really GREAT at making missed offense look like it was supposed to hit. Goldust is really fantastic at moving at the very last second, so when Bradshaw misses an elbowdrop it has the feeling of Bradshaw being actually surprised that he hit mat instead. 

Both guys run face first into boots, Bradshaw throws a couple of wicked corner clotheslines, Goldust hits the best lariat of the match (a leaping one after a fast rope run), and this sadly ends when "Club Kamikaze" (forgot that's what Kaientai was called before they actually wrestled) runs in and attacks Bradshaw. Also, Bradshaw hit a fallaway slam on Goldust at one point, and Michael Cole called it a "desperation move". I think we really need to sit down and ask Michael Cole point blank if he can "What is a desperation move?" Because we now have 20+ years of evidence that shows that I most certainly does not know. Goldust went for a crossbody, Bradshaw caught him, held him, then threw that 270 pound man dead overhead. You could not pause a single frame of that sequence and find anything resembling desperation. For whatever reason, Cole has always used the phrase "desperation move/maneuver" to describe the moment that one wrestler stopped the momentum of their opponent, but never to actually accurately point out a desperation move.

Terry Funk/2 Cold Scorpio vs. The Midnight Express

ER: This was a cool match (one that was somehow given 7 minutes) that the crowd could not have cared less about. I don't think there was anything these four could have done to move this crowd. Bob Holly and Bart Gunn were a bad idea for a Midnight Express team, but we won't go into that because it was obviously supposed to fail. But they were a good team, just a team that the crowd couldn't have cared less about. But I was really surprised that a NY crowd didn't care about Scorpio or Funk. The crowd had just gotten their first Austin appearance of the night, a quick but good promo, and it's probable they were still mentally distracted. I felt bad for Funk, because the old man was out there trying. It felt like he was doing a classic album in front of a crowd who didn't recognize the band. His loud chops got reactions, but his buckled knee selling of Gunn's nice left hands played to cruel silence, his nice neckbreaker got no reaction, his comically wild missed punches got nothing, just a startlingly quiet reaction. 

The Midnight Express could have gelled nicely as a team, but that wasn't what they were there to do. Holly was clearly the most shaken by the silence. The guy dropped Funk with a nice piledriver, and again with a spike piledriver, and THAT gets silence? That would bug me, too. Gunn tried to fire people up from the apron and give us some big slams, but you have never heard bumps this loud because the crowd was just that quiet. Gunn and Scorpio each hit over the shoulder powerbomb - which is a really cool move - to nothing, Holly hits a big huracanrana on Scorpio, Midnights set up a nice drop toehold/elbowdrop double team, and nobody cares. It sucks. Scorpio finally wakes them up at the end by hitting a wild plancha into both Midnights, really flying far out past the mats. And the finish is big for this era, with Scorpio catching Holly's knees on a moonsault but still getting to hit the 450 a bit after. Scorpio's 450 was so beautiful and so impactful that I have no clue why he didn't break out as a guy in WWF. Should have been a super popular midcard guy during the Attitude Era. I'm happy we got his great NOAH run, but I've always wondered what if WWF did Scorpio better. 

HHH/New Age Outlaws vs. Owen Hart/LOD 2000

ER: This was a good longer match that the crowd also iced out, so there was just something with the crowd tonight. They win them over in the end, but LOD gets a big reaction during their entrance, DX obviously gets a big reaction, plus you have Chyna, X-Pac, and Sunny at ringside, so this match should have had some real heat. The opening Owen/Gunn sprint was really good, the two had good chemistry. Owen and HHH always had good chemistry too, so a lot of the pairings were crisp. Owen's spin kick to Gunn looked really good, he had a great drop toehold on HHH (and HHH was always strong at taking drop toeholds, underrated part of his game), and Road Dogg was great getting tagged in at the same time as Animal and doing some "Are you kidding me?" faces. His work with Owen was strong too, and he ran hard into LOD offense. LOD looked a little slow, but still hit hard. Hawk might look clumsy during this era, but he's still going to throw a strong lariat. Animal is a little more energetic, and the crowd does get into the finish. LOD gave Road Dogg a wicked doomsday device, Chyna grabbed Sunny and carried her off like King Kong, Animal decked X-Pac, lots of good action. This was a good trios match with over guys, and a lot of men suggesting oral sex throughout. It should have been hotter.

Steve Blackman vs. Dude Love

ER: This was the weakest match of the night, and it made me realize that there aren't any actually good Dude Love matches other than the two Austin PPV matches. Foley worked the character pretty consistently for a year, mid '97 to mid '98, and outside of those two matches I can't think of a single Dude Love gem. The tag title win was more of an angle, and I don't think he has any other singles matches of note. It's odd that a wrestler as good as Foley could go nearly a whole year with so few quality matches. There aren't even any intriguing on paper matches that I haven't seen, just a bunch of 4 minute matches against guys like the Sultan. This was really dry, and Foley looked like an actual untrained wrestler at different points. The dancing never got over, he paced matches slower, and his execution was loose and uncaring. It was like he was a proto Orange Cassidy except the joke never actually got over. Foley threw a swinging neckbreaker that physically went the wrong direction, and it was one of the only spots of the match. Blackman is another guy who would have been a fun add to modern Bloodsport indies. He had a Zero-1 mostly untrained MMA McCully brothers vibe (but more wooden), constantly looking for new offense that would stick, so he would always try out new strikes or surprise you with a diving headbutt. This mainly served as an angle, with the match kind of just killing time until Austin ran out to blast Dude with a lariat, then throw McMahon hard to the ground. Hot quick angle to end the show.


ER: I was unprepared for the crowd to be so quiet during these matches. The card looked real hot on paper with a lot of good pairings, but the Nassau crowd really didn't care about a lot of this. The strength of a lot of the matches was still there on the screen, but they all would have benefited from an engaged crowd. The unique matches made it well worthwhile.

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On Brand Segunda Caida: Heavenly Bodies!

Heavenly Bodies vs. Abdullah the Butcher/Giant Kimala AJPW 6/4/94

ER: I really wish more of the Heavenly Bodies' lone All Japan tour had made tape. The tour was filled with intriguing pairings, including several matches against Fuchi/Ogawa and The Fantastics, and a Holy Demon Army vs. Stan Hansen/Bodies match that has me drooling. They also had several matches against Abby/Kimala II, and one of those was taped for TV. It's JIP, and for the Bodies' sake I hope the early part of the match that we didn't see went better than the match we did see. Because this was a couple of big fat beasts absolutely decimating the Bods. And it's kind of great. It starts with Abdullah and Kimala working over Prichard's leg, and that leg gets worked OVER. I mean we get several minutes of these two chunks just falling directly onto that leg, with Prichard yelling "My leg! My leg!" the whole time. I love it. Abby is dropping his elbows on the leg, Kimala is dropping fat man Ernie Ladd legdrops on the leg, and my favorite part is that Kimala and Abby are both guys who take forever to stand back up. So one holds the leg, the other drops their piano body onto it, and then we see a lot of loose flapping body parts as they get up and do it all again. Kimala goes up top for an epic big splash. Giant Kimala is shorter than Kamala, but he is definitely fatter, and he doesn't even use the turnbuckle! Every single part of this splash looked hazardous as hell, and he just crushes Prichard with it, his giant godless savage momentum sending his body weight crashing forward and nearly making him faceplant. When Prichard is finally allowed to his feet, you better believe he was selling that damn knee. We get an incredible double team, where Kimala smooshes Prichard with a rewind worthy avalanche, and as he backs away Abdullah shoves him in the back to press him back into Prichard. Abdullah must have had awesome shoving strength, because Kimala really flies back into Prichard. Poor Prichard, just spending every second of his ring time getting flattened by these two.

Del Ray finally tags in, every bone in Prichard's leg turned to cornmeal at this point, and Del Ray goes right after Kimala. He drops Kimala with a nice DDT (Kimala takes a cool rolling bump off the side of his head), but Del Ray gets much too confident and splats hard on a missed moonsault. I like that aggression, and the DDT came off triumphant considering the completely one-sided beating that had taken place. After the DDT and missed moonsault, Del Ray only fares better in comparison to Prichard because his leg does not get pulverized into chalk dust. But Del Ray has no chance, as once he's laid out for Abby's running elbow, Prichard can't do a damn thing to stop it. The second Prichard gets in the ring, Kimala runs over and flattens him into his own corner. Prichard couldn't even make it past his corner. This is the kind of beating a team takes when they're moving on to a new territory, or a team is being punished, but you don't usually see these kind of one-sided matches in All Japan. I'm not sure what kind of deal they worked out to go on an AJ tour while they were in the middle of working WWF, but I can't imagine this is how WWF wanted them portrayed on TV. Doesn't bother me a lick, because this was nothing but two planet sized fatties crashing into two Heavenly Bodies.


Heavenly Bodies vs. 1-2-3 Kid/Bob Holly WWF Raw 1/16/95

ER: I started this episode of Raw for a different reason, but when I saw this match I clearly wasn't going to skip past it. It's a real hot showcase for the Bods, but I'm getting the sense that a ton of their tag matches were total showcases for them. I don't think it necessarily takes away from their opponents, but they seem to be filled with so many ideas that it's easy for opponents to get swallowed whole. Jimmy Del Ray usually feels like the standout in these matches, but this was more of a Prichard show. Del Ray had a great superkick, Prichard threw a cool gutwrench powerbomb, and the double teams always look great. Look at how damn hard Jimmy plants Prichard on the atomic legdrop, how precise the aim was; this could have easily been Prichard getting his tailbone slammed right into Holly's eye socket, instead it's a picture perfect brutal assisted legdrop. There are a couple things I don't like: It's a 5 minute match, structured with the Bodies mostly dominated the first 4.5, with the Kid hot tag signaling the near immediate end of things. So it felt like half a match. Also we had a spot I almost always dislike, one of those crossbody flipover reversals that just looked like Holly ate a full force crossbody...and then flipped over. It rarely looks like a guy is actually rolling through with the momentum of a move. The Bodies were so synced up though, a real treat to watch as a team. They have great tough guy spots, and great stooge spots. The best stooge spot in the match (and a great spot you don't see often past the territory days) was when The Bodies joined hands to run at Holly with a tandem lariat, only for Holly to dive onto their arms, which forces Tom and Jimmy to clonk heads. The best kind of spot to lead to a hot tag. Kid's hot tag is too cruelly short, a couple spinkicks (love how Prichard ricochets off the ropes after taking his) but the finish is MIGHTY inspired, a GREAT tag match finish. Bodies have Kid up for a tandem vertical suplex, and Holly spears one of them out of nowhere, allowing Kid to hit a fisherman's suplex variation. That's an awesome finish to a(nother) great Bodies showcase.

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WWF King of the Ring 1995

"Philadelphia, the city where the Declaration of Independence was signed! But tonight, MONARCHY will reign!" I love that line, and Vince shouts it like a deranged Kent Brockman. I am ready for this.

1. Savio Vega vs. IRS

ER: Razor Ramon injured himself at a house show a couple weeks before the PPV, so this was the match to determine his replacement to battle Yokozuna. IRS honestly has one of my favorite looks in wrestling history. His build was perfect for the Tom Fitton fit, with the sick cuffed short sleeves and deep red braces. It's a great look. The match was quick, 4 minutes, but worked fast. Vega starts the match with a super convincing small package, convincing enough that I thought they were pulling a "4 second record setting victory" type of angle to give Savio a push out of the gates. But Savio gets a good reaction with a couple more quick pins, with an especially nice high cradle. IRS presses the pace nicely, and Vega is good at quick bursts, so it's a surprisingly effective match. IRS goes up top because he's a dummy, and eats boot off an axehandle, then takes an amusing belly flop bump. The finish is a fun quick killshot, IRS running fast into a super high leaping Savio spinning heel kick. I like how this show is starting.

2. Yokozuna vs. Savio Vega

ER: Damn, they really gave Savio the short straw here, starting off the night fighting his way into the tourney and then immediately facing a force like Yoko? I do like Vince's reasoning that this is to Savio's advantage because Savio has his heart rate up and momentum rolling. Yoko is always so stoic to start matches that it makes sense Savio's fired up energy from his win would possibly overwhelm Yokozuna. And, naturally, Yokozuna would have been spending the past several weeks training specifically to fight Razor. Savio has inroads here. Yoko waves that Japanese flag in the faces of these freedom loving Philadelphians, and Savio waves a joint American/Puerto Rican flag to a surprising amount of cheers. 

And they play into that great Savio spinning heel kick I mentioned the match before, and it ties into Yoko training for Razor but gathering intel on Savio, as Yoko belly flops quickly to the mat early in the match when Savio tries to finish early with that same spinning heel kick. Yoko takes a couple of his big bumps here, a large missed elbow and a great transitional missed legdrop. The standing exchanges between the two are really strong, with Vega landing hard strikes and Yoko reeling before hitting back harder. Savio does hit his spinning heel kick but Cornette interrupts the pin, then takes a great bump to the floor after Savio belts him. The finish is lamer than the match deserved, as Owen Hart runs out to attack Razor Ramon at ringside, and then Savio runs out there, and then Yoko runs out there, but the camera completely misses big bump into the ringpost and ring steps, the bump that allows Savio to get the count out win. The count out win is cheap, and I am somewhat resentful of the Savio victory because it kills the chance of Mabel/Yokozuna. That's stupid.

3. The Roadie vs. Bob Holly

ER: Roadie is making his solo PPV debut, and you know he has a nice show vest for his entrance. But dear God the gear on Double J and Roadie is just woeful. Roadie also debuts his new PPV extensions and it makes him look like a weirdo creep maitre'd at a crime front restaurant in Strange Days. But the MATCH rules, outside of a second straight lousy finish. This is an awesome match with a real zilch of a finish, and that's too bad, but there's still a ton of match here that is really great. I kept thinking about 80s Brad Armstrong fast paced 10 minute singles, which is funny because Holly was the one giving me those vibes, not Brad's brother. This felt like a 1995 Rey/Psicosis match, only worked within the parameters of two southern wrestlers. 

It was worked super fast, Holly going for small packages and school boys and other flash pins while confounding Roadie with high hip tosses and shoulder dislocating armdrags. Roadie bails to the floor, comes back in and takes over. Roadie did have really good offense, different than his Road Dogg offense. The dancing was integrated better during his '98 run, but he has a couple things in '95 that he later unfortunately dropped. The best was a hard elbow drop to the back of Holly's neck, while Holly was sitting up. The whole thing was really good, good enough that if a couple of other matches hit this level of quality, I'll come away with favorable impressions of this show. Now, we do get some evidence of an ongoing problem, as this is the second match with a real lousy finish. Bob Holly goes up top, jumps off into Roadie with another downed opponent axe handle (already seen in the opener as a significant transition spot), but here Holly flies into Roadie's boot and gets pinned. I don't think I've ever seen someone get pinned from jumping face first into a vertically lifted leg. To his credit, Holly made it look almost plausible as a finish, and Roadie's scrambling opportunistic pin sank that in. But even though executed well, it came off flat as hell. Starting the main show with two sour finishes is a tough pill.

4. Kama vs. Shawn Michaels

ER: Well we definitely have established the theme of this show, which is very fun matches with very stupid endings. This one goes to a 15 minute draw, fully establishing the 15 minute draw as the Alone, Eating Over the Garbage Can of wrestling finishes. I was fully into this until they popped a countdown clock in the corner. Kama starts by throwing big telegraphed bombs, with Michaels hopping around like Ali, made all the more amusing when they cut to Joe Frazier in the crowd looking absolutely perplexed at Michaels. The two lady companions with Smokin' Joe are even pointing and laughing at what they're seeing. But there's a chance that those ladies were just plain wrong about pro wrestling, and that Frazier - some 20 years removed from his Ali and Foreman beatings - was actually just punch drunk. Because this delivered much more than I was expecting it to. And that's with me still miffed that Kama took Duke Droese's rightful place on this PPV! 

But the cat and mouse is good, and it leads to a great moment of Michaels skinning the cat but then getting lambasted with a great Kama lariat. Michaels takes a couple of big important bumps that play into the story, including a great version of his flipping corner bump that is just insanely fast, sending him upside down and over to the floor. Kama works simple stuff like backbreakers and that big man move I love where Michaels is bent backwards over Kama's knee, Kama pressing back on Michaels' chin. And what's awesome is that Michaels punches his way out of that, and he really tightens up his strikes in this match, clearly just punching Kama right in the head several times. That continues when Michaels gets on top and throws mounted punches, throwing 8 shots right into Kama's forehead, hard enough that Kama clearly checks to see if a cut opened. But the countdown clock really dampens the mood, as neither man seems to notice the countdown, so Michaels is doing slow corner 10 count punches with only a minute left to go, and while they built to a good "he woulda had him!" pinfall right as time expired, the fact that neither really acted like they were trying to finish really hurt it. Bob Holly worked the first several minutes of his match, they way they should have worked the final two minutes of this match. The fact that Michaels just immediately hits sweet chin music out of frustration post match, only highlights how stupid it was that he didn't go for that during any of the previous 15 minutes. Also, not having either guy advance is D-U-M-B DUMB. These finishes are brutal so far.

5. Mabel vs. The Undertaker

ER: This lags at times, sputters a bit, but eventually evolves into a real nice Mabel performance. He really got a bad rap from the internet doofuses not long after this, but he's a guy who would have been a big territory start if he wrestled exactly like this 10 years earlier. So it's a shame he never fully took during this era. Was it the shiny purple onesie? If he just had the Big Daddy V gear. All black gear, with his size, big star. This is filled with both guys running into each other with hard shoulderblocks, Mabel falls all over the place, splats Undertaker and sits on him a couple times, and we get cool moments like Undertaker with his foot tangled in the ropes and a tug of war while that happens (Taker trying to pull Mabel to the floor while his foot is tied up, Mabel trying to pull him up), and a huge belly to belly from Mabel that looked really great. Mabel even hits a picture perfect piledriver, and the visual of a 550 lb. man doing a classic piledriver is so bizarre, but so amazing. I thought a lot of Taker's stuff looked a little too tentative here. Mabel had obviously a slower gameplan, slowly crushing Taker, and it needed Taker to respond with a little more energy instead of just working the same pace as Mabel. Mabel whips Taker into the corner and smooshes the ref, allowing Kama to run in and interfere, allowing Mabel to hit a great legdrop to the back of Taker's head for the win. This match really did not need a finish based around interference, and the inability to give any single person a convincing win in this tournament is just bizarre. "People didn't take ______ seriously and that's why business is bad" is a pretty obvious take when everyone who has advanced in this tournament has done so almost by accident. Let Savio pin Yoko, let Mabel pin Undertaker, let The Roadie get a normal win over Bob Holly for goodness' sake.

6. Savio Vega vs. The Roadie

ER: This was a perfectly fine match, treated to a really icy reception from the Philly crowd. It's hard not to buy into the narrative that a series of bad finishes was wearing on this crowd. You had to think all the kids were thinking they'd be seeing a semifinals of Razor Ramon vs. Yokozuna and Shawn Michaels vs. The Undertaker, and instead they're seeing Savio Vega vs. The Roadie and No Match because of a Draw. They shorted them a match due to a Draw! So I get the icy reception, even though the match was fine. They got real cold during Roadie's control segment, quiet enough that both men verbally appealed to the crowd at different points. It sounds so foreign in a WWF environment to see Roadie first go "What does everyone think of the Road Dogg?" to silence, followed by Savio Vega stopping his comeback so that he could go "Come on!" to the crowd. 

It rattles them a bit and some stuff suffers, like Roadie doing his flashy jab combo with the big finisher right hand at the same time Savio is doing a salsa hulk-up, so Roadie's big punch combo that he is now doing for the first time, is ignored the entire time. It's just a middling layout in a match that could have been better. Savio gets the win, and in what should be his biggest babyface moment yet, he does a full ringside interview in Spanish with Dok Hendrix doing the translating; it's actually a really funny bit, with Hendrix saying things like, "He's saying 'I don't have a shot at beating Mabel...I'm considering just not showing up and going home...I don't know how I made it this far and I'm having doubts..." It's a genuinely hilarious bit, but the whole entire thing was done at the complete expense of Savio Vega. Vega is a guy who had been in maybe 5 TV matches before this PPV, and this was supposed to be his big hard fought struggle through the finals: He won a last minute dark match to make it onto the PPV itself, then had his first PPV match in the very next match! This was a hilarious bit at the expense of the guy who needed some help in that moment.

7. Jerry Lawler vs. Bret Hart

ER: In the TV leading up to this PPV, this match had to have had the most TV time devoted to it. Vince was absolutely giddy at the prospect of the first ever in history Kiss My Foot match, so we had a TON of segments with Lawler showing off comically gunked up bare feet, and so many segments with Bret calling Lawler a scumbag (which, well). But the segments clearly worked because this crowd despises Lawler. They are certainly treating this match as if it was the most important match on the show (though we can compare the reactions to the Bigelow/Diesel tag and Savio/Mabel). And the match itself is fantastic. I've never heard much praise for this match in their feud, but that was tremendous stuff. It's their great complementary styles compacted into 10 minutes, both guys work snug as hell, Lawler takes some of his best and unique bumps, and it's based around such a stupid horseshit mudshow stipulation that is the exact level of stupid horseshit mudshow stipulation that Lawler can get it over in his sleep. 

Hart had some awesome strikes here, really smashing his forearm across Lawler's nose, fast short uppercuts, tight headbutts; late in the match he punches Lawler while Lawler is on his knees, and Lawler takes this gorgeous gunshot bump to the mat. This show did a reported 16,000+ in attendance, and Lawler takes this admirable approach to things and works it like it was in front of 250 people in a church rec room. And this small focus work, getting into verbal spars with fans on all sides of the ring, really hammers home the threat of the stipulation, and this small focus work really starts to work for the entire arena. The match gets great heat and it's a beautiful thing to see small crowd Memphis heel techniques working on a big "workrate" Philly crowd.

Lawler hits three big piledrivers on Bret, all angling Bret off the mat in different ways, but Lawler takes a ton of time between all of them to talk shit to the crowd. Lawler in Philly full time would have been legendary. Then we get a great bit of BS where Lawler takes off his boot and has a bloody moldy sock that he tries to choke Bret with, Bret desperately hold the foot at bay. On the floor Lawler continues to show how he's the best ringpost bumper in wrestling history, getting pulled face first into it in such a convincing bit of magic that I expected to see a bloody nose. There was botched interference from Hakushi, more violent fast bumps from Lawler, a mean snap to Bret's familiar comeback offense (the Russian leg sweep and elbow off the middle rope landed especially sharp), the exact right amount of BS to go with the BS stip, elevated by perfect execution from both. This match was such an excellent use of time and really paid off the perfectly dumb TV time spent on it.

8. Mabel vs. Savio Vega

ER: This was a very good King of the Ring Final, easily the best of the actual KOTR matches tonight. This was an excellent match that the crowd TRIED to turn on with a loud ECW chant, and the match was good enough to get that crowd reinvested in the finish just moments later. Savio came out at the bell looking more impressive than he has in any appearance thus far, as he chopped Mabel into the corner - convincingly - and the visual of him backing up this mountain with chops made him like like a total pitbull. When Mabel is the slumped into the corner, Savio laces in with the best chops of the night; sometimes with both arms, always landing with a huge whipcrack. Savio Vega's attack on Mabel was great, peaking with Savio muscling Mabel over the top to the floor with a huge clothesline, Mabel taking a spectacular tumbling bump. Mabel smooshes Savio, hits his big belly to belly, and works a long bearhug that gets the fans restless. I liked it in the context of the match, Mabel playing the smart game, the odds, but it leads to an ECW chant lead by Straw Hat Guy and several other fans you've been distracted by while watching wrestling shows. But shortly into the comeback they can't deny the quality of the ringwork, and the match gets cheered to the finish. Vega got a great nearfall off a high cradle schoolboy, and also hit one of his best spinning heel kicks, getting unreal height. He gets a big kickout after a huge powerslam, but goes down to a big splash where Mabel really lays him out. This was a main event that did the tournament justice, something the rest of the tournament matches had fallen short of. This eventually got the positive crowd reaction it deserved, but it deserved it earlier.

9. Sycho Sid/Tatanka vs. Bam Bam Bigelow/Diesel

ER: The TV build up to this was all about Sid injuring Diesel's right elbow, Bigelow pledging his undying friendship to Diesel, and Sid making the best possible blinking crazy eyes facials in wrestling. Touched and crazy has always been a mode that wrestlers have struggled with, most commonly going far over the top or being too scared to do so. Sid finds the perfect balance and plays the man just on the edge of snapping better than anyone else. I wish we had a Sid cam, because occasionally the cameras during this era catch Sid on the apron just blinking and talking to himself - and this is during moments where he couldn't possibly know there are any cameras on him. A lot of this is kick and punch, with Bigelow occasionally taking a big dangerous bump to get people back into it. Sid kicks Diesel's elbow from the apron and Tatanka throws some tomahawk chops at it, and we get Sid really bending that bad elbow back across the ring ropes in mean ways, and the heels upheld their end of the bargain. Diesel didn't pay a ton of attention to it, outside of one big moment where he hit an elbowdrop on Sid, using the bad elbow, allowing Sid to go back on the offensive. 

But the problem is Diesel used his bad elbow for EVERYTHING. Every strike thrown, his big side slam, even posting up on the top rope while he was waiting for a tag. He used that elbow the whole damn match, and it really took away from the work of Sid and Tatanka. Bigelow tried some big things, including basically chokeslamming himself off the top rope. Sid backs him in the corner and gets Bigelow seated up on the top, choking him while Bigelow paws at Sid's face. I assume the plan was for him to be chokeslammed off, but Sid, didn't quite grab hold of him, and Bigelow just went for it anyway, taking a nice arcing bump and then selling it well on the mat; later Bigelow his a somersault senton on Tatanka and I'm not even sure that was supposed to happen, as Tatanka drops down and Bigelow does a big cannonball, but lands a little too vertically up on his neck. Considering the cannonball isn't a move that Bigelow commonly used, it felt like he was actually bumping but wasn't expecting Tatanka to be there? Vince and Dok were confused on commentary as well, but I like hearing Vince call it a cannonball. 

They also muff the hot tag to Diesel, as the way everyone was positioned in the ring made it look like Hebner was supposed to miss the tag, and to the crowd used to how tag wrestling works they clearly thought Diesel was going to be sent back to the apron, and even Vince was saying the referee didn't see the tag...but Diesel's hot tag was allowed, and this just means it was performed to no heat. I can't tell if Diesel was selling his elbow when giving Tatanka the Jackknife. He could have been, but if that's the case it just looked like he hit a really poor Jackknife. I do dig the finish of him pulling up Tatanka at 2, then challenging Sid to get in the ring, only for Sid to back down before Diesel pins Tatanka. On a show with too many screwy finishes, at least Sid committed to standing down as a classic heel move.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE WWE 305 LIVE!

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On Brand Segunda Caida: Bob Cook in WWF, Part 1

Bob Cook vs. Bob Holly WWF Wrestling Challenge 2/19/95

ER: This was a brisk 3 minutes with a great long section of Cook totally outshining Holly. They were pushing Holly as a kickass young part of the New Generation, and Cook gave him a cool grizzled vet beating actually made Holly feel like a young upstart babyface (even though Holly looked like a freedom rock Walton Goggins). Cook buries a great low knee in Holly's gut, throws several great punches, drops a beautiful kneedrop, and just makes a snapmare look the way a snapmare is supposed to look. Holly hits a big elbow off the top for the win, but this was a cool showing for Cook.

Bob Cook vs. Man Mountain Rock WWF Superstars 2/25/95

ER: This is barely a minute, but it is a great minute. Cook's stretch of offense is a kick to the stomach and 5 punches, but they are 5 excellent punches perfectly thrown to the Rock's jaw. Rock is a huge guy, a guy whose offense correctly consisted of him running into and falling onto people. It's a damn shame he didn't get to mix it up with many people on the main roster. There were a lot of potential great big man matches, and the crowd was clearly into Rock squishing guys. He threw a heavy elbowdrop, big shoulderblocks, and landed and missed avalanches with big speed. Cook sidesteps him on a fast avalanche and just lobs the most perfect pro wrestling punches at his face. It would be tough to rank these 1-5, they're all keepers. God they could have done Cook vs. Lawler for 10 minutes and it would have been one of the great gems of 1995. Alas.

Bob Cook vs. Doink WWF Raw 2/27/95

ER: This was the final Doink, Ray Apollo, and Bob Cook did not get a lot of play versus Doink. Dink had some nice moments, running across Cook's stomach while he was in a sub and then hitting a rolling senton, bouncing on the bottom rope to liven up the crowd during some long Doink matwork. A lot of this was grounded, but I liked Apollo's amateur approach to a jobber squash. He was working hammerlocks and drop toeholds, and there was one brief competitive moment where Apollo got his own really great drop toehold - the kind where you really force your opponent somewhat slowly down to the mat once you scissor his legs - but Doink quickly reverses. Doink muscles through a cool gutwrench suplex and drops the Whoopie Cushion, but this was a missed opportunity. Cook is a guy who could work simple compelling mat sequences, but also work compelling sequences with a midget, but they wouldn't let him get too involved in either.

Bob Cook vs. 1-2-3 Kid WWF Superstars 3/4/95

ER: These two were natural opponents for each other, a guy with some whip fast kicks and big bumps against a guy with perfect bunches and a desire to bump fast for whip fast kicks. Kid throws out some nice ones, and we get a famous gif sequence of Cook wheeling around and punching Kid in the face right out of the corner. Sadly the only video of this online appears to be from a garbage YouTube account who zooms way in on their videos and intentionally adds glitches (for effect?). I'm unsure why some people take so much time to upload completely worthless files, but it's a thing.

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The 1995 King of the Ring Qualifying Matches, Part 1

Mabel vs. Adam Bomb WWF In Your House 5/14/95

ER: This was big man perfection. Barely 2 minutes, all killer no filler, a great Bomb performance in a quick loss. A lot of guys could get pouty knowing they have to lose on PPV in under 2 minutes, but Bomb just took the opportunity to show off all his offense. Mabel is a total giant fat guy superstar, he starts the match squishing Bomb with an avalanche, then missing a full speed avalanche bump that shakes the ring. Adam Bomb goes on his big offense run, hits a big flying shoulderblock to Mabel's back - Mabel taking a super fast forward rolling bump through the ropes to the floor, crazy bump - which leads to a nice Bomb pescado. He is constant motion because he knows he has basically one minute to shine. He climbs to the top and hits a big shoulder tackle that Mabel takes his big back bump for. I mean this whole thing kicks ass. Mabel makes quick work on the comeback, hits his rolling heel kick hard into Bomb's stomach, and drops him with a full weight powerslam and just flattens him on the pin. This is how you do a two minute match.


Bob Holly vs. Mantaur WWF Raw 5/15/95

ER: When the Vince biopic eventually gets made as a moderately well received theatrical release, I hope they get Walton Goggins to play known Vince workout buddy Bob Holly. Danny Huston will be Vince but you gotta have a couple weird workout scenes with Walton Goggins. And this match was really good, definitely the best Mantaur match of the batch that I've retroactively watched. Mantaur mauled Holly while Holly bumped effectively, with some nicely peppered in Holly nearfalls and a triumphant Holly win, it was a really fun match structure. Mantaur got to show his power with a couple big powerslams and a sidewalk slam, and dropped nice elbow drops (among his best from what I've seen). He has a nice elbowdrop and should have done it even more. Holly bumped around impressively for all of it, real good babyface. Holly takes an especially big bump to the floor and it was the first time I'd really seen Mantaur come off like a monster. Holly's comebacks were all good, with a convincing school boy and a really great missile dropkick that I don't remember him having. Mantaur really leaned into it and it added to the harder than average hitting feeling of the match. Mantaur loses in convincing fashion, but it felt like Holly got an upset. This was a good TV match.


Razor Ramon vs. Jacob Blu WWF Superstars 5/20/95

ER: On paper this feels like a 15 seed taking on a 2 seed. I mean Jacob had worked exclusively tag matches, but he got an itch to just go and join a singles match tournament? I mean they had some interesting singles match guys that would have been far better utilized as an opening round guy. Lawler, Hakushi, Pierre, Man Mountain Rock! All could have slotted in nicely. But here's Jacob Blu going up against one of the tournament favorites...and the match is fun as hell. Blu is limited, but willing to work active. He throws a bunch of big running boots, many hitting Razor right in the head, but leaving nice openings when they miss. Razor is a good puncher whose name should be included more often in the great puncher discussions, but Blu holds his own. He is wrestling a much more interesting style here, before more of the tenets of white nationalism had crept in. White supremacy dulls you too much. But a big guy who just attacks with big boots, yakuza kicks, elbow drops, and a grounded headlock will go a long way with me. Jacob doesn't even have a great headlock, but I'm a total sucker for those great headlocks where the person applying it lies down flat to increase the pressure. Razor takes a huge bump over the top to the floor, gets a surprise nearfall on a small package, hits a big bulldog off the middle buckle, and then gets a school boy when Savio Vega comes out to attack Eli and Zeb. I was surprised at how much Razor gave to Jacob here, but this was a Jacob Blu dominated match. Leave it to Razor to take a guy who had never worked a singles match before any of these people, and make him look like a guy who belonged in the KOTR tournament.


King Kong Bundy vs. Shawn Michaels WWF Raw 5/22/95

ER: This was a real good Shawn performance, because there were some moments where Bundy came off like a total load. Shawn made up for that by hitting Bundy in the face and really flinging his body into him. With a stronger Bundy control segment this could have been a real gem. Bundy tries to jump Michaels during his awful Striptease entrance, eats the buckles, and Michaels hits a sweet jumping knee to bump Bundy to the floor (big bump through the ropes to the floor from Bundy), allowing Michaels to finish removing his chaps and vest and police hat before he goes up top and hits a great plancha. Shawn was hammy in a good way in this one, as he kept taking aggressive attacks to Bundy, while fitting in time to antagonize Dibiase at ringside. Bundy is a bit too tentative to really step to that next level as an egg shaped monster thumb. It's very possible he was going through some pain, as he just holds up a lot on some of his stuff. There's a missed splash that looks like he was getting down on his knees to look for a contact lens. And when he blocks a sunset flip by just plopping onto Shawn, he really needs to plop, in that Super Porky "I can't hold this back to only 80%" kind of way. But he does drop a nice elbow as Shawn was trying to get up, grabs a nice meaty bearhug, stands on Shawn's throat with his boot, all of that stuff was great. But he was kind of clunky at taking offense, particularly a big crossbody from Michaels. He totally brick walls Michaels, but not really in an intentional or cool way. Michaels just bounces off of him with the crossbody and then Bundy just tips over as if he was doing a trust fall with nobody there. It felt so disconnected from the actual move. Still, the structure was sound and Michaels worked hard, and even a tentative fat guy is going to have several cool fat guy moments.

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Getting Ahead of the Whole Mantaur Thing

So Mantaur is going to be wrestling on one of the Joey Janela shows this upcoming Wrestlemania weekend. Mantaur has never been a thing, there have been no darkened corners of the internet where I've seen Mantaur referenced in hushed reverent tone. So let's get ahead of it. Let's see how much excitement Mantaur is worth!

Bruiser Mastino vs. Rambo CWA 9/23/93

ER: I had no idea what kind of crowds CWA was pulling in 1993! This is a pretty big set up, and this match completely rules. It's a "Bodyslam Contest" and I love the tricks and teases they use to make one of the more common moves actually seem special. I love stuff like this, like the amazing Kabuki/Adams superkick match, or the Austin/Flair no punches match, this match just ends whenever one of them hits a bodyslam. Mastino is a guy I haven't seen a ton of. He wasn't in WWF that long, and I'm a west coast guy so missed any east coast indies or ECW. But he's good here and I only imagine he'll be even more improved by his WWF run. This is also exciting because it's THE TRUTH COMMISSION EXPLODING! How odd that they'd wind up on a short-lived team just a few years later. Rambo became Sniper, Bruiser became Tank, but the WWF are fucking cowards so they never pulled the trigger on Mantank or Tanktaur. Anyone who has seen the 1986 gem Eliminators needs to go out and watch that after you watch this dope bodyslam contest, then we can grouse about the incredible missed opportunity of a Mantank.

Anyway, this is great. We get a bunch of fun teases around a bodyslam, Rambo turns a slam attempt into a crossbody, later he hits an actual cross body and Mastino tries to steady himself to turn it into a slam before falling backwards, Rambo gets him up for a slam but Mastino grabs the top rope to save himself, all great stuff that played well in the match. And the match works because it's not just 12 minutes of guys shoving one hand into their opponent's nethers to try for a slam, they actually work a nice match with slam attempts peppered in. I think my absolute favorite deep psychology part of the match is when Rambo goes on an offensive sequence that almost always ends in a bodyslam. Picture any hot tag where the opponents are charging the hot tag: you get guys running into hiptosses, dropkicks, and usually a bodyslam or two. Well Mastino starts running in, eats a couple hiptosses, and then when he runs in for what our brains have been conditioned to think "this is the bodyslam", Mastino just rolls out of the ring. Brilliant. Rambo was so so here but the crowd was into him. Mastino though, I really liked. He hit and missed a nice avalanche, threw lariats with a heavy arm, had a nice stout guy standing splash, a good smothering chinlock....Huh. There is some fire to this smoke.

Mantaur vs. Jason Arndt WWF Raw 1/9/95

ER: This felt like an important note to hit, as it was Mantaur's Raw debut, and it was against a guy I really like in Jason Arndt (the future Joey Abs/C&A candidate with the Mean Street Posse). So it's a big debut against a guy I like, and it's a fun squash! It's under 2 minutes, and Mantaur does a lot of running avalanches and body attacks, which is obviously something he *should* be doing. His avalanches look good, and the running body attacks could use a little more quick burst. Think of Vader leaping into someone with his belly, his arms also move forward as if he's hurling his body at his opponent, even though he's not attacking with his arms. Mantaur just runs in belly first, arms outstretched, and it looks kind of funny. But he's got a nice powerslam, and an amusing standing splash (not leaping so much as just falling onto Arndt). There is still some fire to this smoke.

Mantaur vs. Leroy Howard WWF Raw 1/23/95

ER: Our next logical step was Mantaur against a BattlArts guy. Howard is a large guy who did mostly job work on US TV but somehow got the BattlArts gig as Rastaman. This is another Mantaur squash, and we get a bunch more really nice avalanches, a big belly to belly, and two great spots where he catches a Howard crossbody and gives him a big powerslam. The first was really impressive, with Mantaur catching a crossbody off the top rope like he was Mark Henry, and the next was catching a crossbody running off the ropes. So the power spots look good and the avalanches look crushing, and he committed nicely to a missed elbow. But he does seem to have trouble filling time, which can be problematic. There was a moment that looked very first year wrestler, where Howard was on the mat, Mantaur threw a half-hearted stomp, bent down to lift Howard but didn't, walked a couple steps away, looked around, walked back, and then picked Howard up. It looked like he got lost and didn't know what to do next, which is weird since his offense is almost entirely made up of avalanches and powerslams. A fat guy shouldn't ever get lost and wonder what to do to an opponent on the mat. Step on him. Drop an elbow. Sit on him. Do anything. The fire may be going out.

Mantaur vs. Razor Ramon WWF Superstars 2/21/95

ER: We get a chance to see Mantaur against a major name, but it does not go great for Mantaur. This is basically an extended Razor squash. And I get it. There weren't many guys the crowd was into more than Razor, and Mantaur was an egg shaped man who moo'd and wore Future Ronda makeup. The competitive parts were really fun and showed what this match could have been. There's a great early spot where Mantaur keeps shoving Ramon into the corner, only for Ramon to casually walk out and slap him hard. You don't see shoving a lot in wrestling, outside of Flair matches. It can be an effective way to build a spot. And when Razor takes over it's really fun. He hits a cool Rick Steiner bulldog off the middle buckle, and a nice back suplex that looked extra cool because it's a fat guy splatting on the mat from a back suplex, duh. I figured we weren't getting a Razor's Edge to finish, because holy cow (right?), but the actual finish is even more spectacular: Razor tosses Mantaur over the top to the floor like he was eliminating him from the Rumble, and Mantaur takes a HUGE bump, flying way past the rope and crashing hard to the floor, getting counted out. This was a major bump and totally made the match.

Mantaur vs. Bob Holly WWF Raw 5/15/95

ER: This was actually really good, definitely the best match of the Mantaur that I've retroactively watched. This match shows the potential the Razor Ramon match had. Mantaur getting to maul Holly while Holly bumped effectively, with some peppered in Holly nearfalls and a triumphant Holly win, was a really fun match structure. Mantaur got to show his power and did more nice elbow drops than he's done in what I've seen. He has a nice elbowdrop and should do it more. Holly bumped around impressively for all of it, good babyface. Holly takes an especially big bump to the floor and it was the first time I'd really seen Mantaur come off like a monster. Holly's comebacks were all good, with a convincing school boy and a really great missile dropkick that I don't remember him having. Mantaur really leaned into it and it added to the harder than average hitting feeling of the match. Mantaur loses in convincing fashion, but it felt like Holly got an upset. This was a good TV match.

Mantaur might actually be a thing.

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