Loosely Formed Thoughts on WWF Over the Edge 5/31/98

The Propaganda-style intro to this PPV is fucking insane. It's all World War II footage of tanks and soldiers and fucking Stalin and Mussolini and actual Nazi footage and it's all interspersed with They Live CONFORM and OBEY block fonts but also video of Stone Cold doing shit like turkey tapping Vince from several angles. Best possible start. 

 

1. LOD 2000 vs. DOA

It actually feels impossible that LOD 2000 didn't become the biggest tag team of the rest of the decade with Sunny as their manager. I don't think I'm being overly horny here either. I don't think the fact that Sunny looked like this while I was 17 years old matters here, as I don't think this is a matter of bias. I think I'm being a very reasonable and appropriate level of horny in a way that the eyes of history agree with. 

This is Hawk and Animal vs. 8-Ball and Skull but Droz and Chainz are there. Up above I only wrote "LOD 2000 vs. DOA" and I didn't want anyone to get confused about what members of each group of friends was actively involved here. 

Skull throws a nice ugly big man swinging neck beaker and an actual good legdrop. It does not bring me great joy that 8-Ball and Skull's work from '98 is probably better than we assessed at the time. 

Animal is in strong style mode and does a dragon screw and I don't think I've seen that from him before or since. How much of his BattlArts work is available? 

8-Ball vs. Hawk is better than Skull vs. Animal. They did more punching and elbowdrops and an ugly piledriver that Hawk gets to ignore completely because that is Hawk's spot. 

Hawk has a way of looking off balance while also having this incredible balance and sturdiness on all of his clotheslines. He looks wobbly, but takes this incredible bump all the way across the ring off a missed top rope shoulderblock, flying out of the ring into an almost Halloween style sliding bump to the floor. Hard. I liked Drunk Hawk when I was a teenager but I don't think it was because I thought he was GOOD good. Accidentally, time has only proven me right. Further proof of how good he still was on fumes in '98: the 1-2 punch of his  neckbreaker -> fistdrop combo. 

The 8-Ball/Hawk punch exchange is good and should have gone three times as long. It's worth it for Chainz punching Hawk in the balls from the floor in a way that didn't even seem planned. Cameras weren't focused on it. You can see Chainz pop him in the nuts from the floor and Hawk reacts like a guy who just realized he got tapped hard enough in the balls to react. 

Nobody quite knew how to get to the finish, but Animal clotheslining his way through a hot tag and hitting a great powerslam for the finish plays well with any lead up. 

There is a Faarooq! Faarooq! Faarooq is on Fire!! sign and folks, that's a good one. 

2. Jeff Jarrett vs. Steve Blackman

Fuck I hope Steve Blackman tries a piledriver here but I have a parlay on Jarrett doing one. You see, in between matches backstage, Faarooq hit The Rock with the Piledriver To Beat tonight. We're 20 minutes into this show and we've had two piledrivers and we still have over 2.5 hours to go.  

Blackman is really fun to watch during this stretch. We don't get Reformed Musclehead Karate Guys Working Every Pro Wrestling Spot He's Ever Seen anymore. Blackman doing a baseball slide dropkick to start but then press slamming Jarrett back into the ring but also doing Ricky Steamboat double chops but also looking lost and kind of dangerous is just lightning in a bottle. I think he would get a lot less interesting the more he learned, but this is still in that magic window. 

Blackman hits a thrust kick on the floor that looks like the the most violent version of Chuck Norris kicking Jarrett down the aisle. 

Jarrett does a really good job icing this down the right amount while there's an Al Snow angle taking several minutes too long at ringside. Jarrett works Barry Darsow chatter like "He ain't going nowhere now!" and "Ring the bell he's done!" and is able to do essentially nothing for a few minutes, really well. 

They do a preposterously slow 9 count after Jarrett hits a back suplex. Jarrett had been working over Blackman in a chinlock for a minute so I have no idea why Jarrett was as knocked out as Blackman. I thought they would explode a bit more after the Al Snow angle, you know, to get everyone back involved in things, but they kind of do the opposite for no reason. They've turned the entire rest of the match into "every move keeps both of us down for too long" and it sucks.  

Steve Blackman is at his absolute beautiful best when he is doing moves with full commitment without looking as if he's ever even practiced doing the move before. It's only a detriment if a couple of miscues happen back to back, but has a remarkably high ceiling as a style. His elbowdrop is not thrown like any other wrestler has thrown an elbowdrop. It's like he was born with the knowledge but without memory of where the knowledge came from. He knows it's right, but it's informed by something beyond him. He is not inspired by anyone else who came before. 

Steve Blackman is Backyarder Doug Furnas and we didn't know what we had. We didn't know, and he didn't know how to continue giving that to us. 

3. Loser Leaves WWF: Sable vs. Marc Mero

I'll say it again: Mero and Sable were really great during the first half of '98. Neither ever did it better. Maybe when we get into Jacqueline Era Marc I'll determine that it has aged even better than his Sable Forced Separation arc but I'm not expecting it to be. Honestly Sable and Mero are fucking GREAT together. They really seem like they dislike each other, like their marriage was really already over instead of merely being on the start of a 5 year slide towards being over.  

Marc Mero is so good during this entire segment. "Sable what happened to us? This business ruins relationships... It ruined ours."  

Marc Mero pulling a small package after doing the honorable thing and lying down for Sable, then jumping around the ring in celebration is one of those things my sister will bring up unprovoked 25 years later. 

4. Bradshaw/Taka Michinoku vs. Kai En Tai

Bradshaw press slams Taka into everyone within the first 30 seconds. He's so massive, they look like Lilliputians wearing Miller's Outpost jean shorts. 

I remember this being a lot better, with a lot more heat. Crowd really isn't as into it as I remember. I'm not into it as much as I remember. The Kai En Tai stuff doesn't read as fluid or unique today. There are a lot more seams with 2024 eyes. Bradshaw is not actually reckless at all. Did we all have false implanted rose colored memories of Bradshaw recklessly fucking up everyone in the match or was that just me? This Wisconsin crowd doesn't understand a single fucking part of it. Arms are crossed in Milwaukee, politely not understanding any of Dick Togo's excellent senton variations. 

Jim Ross makes an extended Gulliver's Travels reference and then explains it and I feel like a stupid asshole who's only read three books in my life out here making the same similes as Jim Ross. JR and I each watched the Ted Danson Gulliver's Travels Two Night Television Event in 1996 and now we use it to describe pro wrestling when big man fights small men.   

Okay it gets good when Bradshaw finally tags in and that's when he starts throwing them around. It's still never unprofessional in the ways I remember it being. In fact, Bradshaw was actually a good sport believably taking Kai En Tai's offense, leaning into dropkicks and struggling really well while the Lilliputians tethered his legs with rope. He does polish Funaki with a clothesline and choose Teioh as his Only True Victim by throwing him - really throwing him - with a tiger suplex, but you could watch this match and have no actual idea that Bradshaw is a miserable prick.  

5. Faarooq vs. The Rock

I think Faarooq looked like a real badass (before the match started). This match was the best his Faarooq gear ever looked on him. Fuck how cool would Jacqueline have looked in Faarooq's exact gear? Faarooq looks like a lean cut Masa Saito, or the most bulked up Bernie Casey. He looks perfect, in other words. He looks like a guy really giving a beating to a guy he dislikes. A beating he's been waiting to hand out. His sparsely African-patterned gear looked great with the straps up, and even better when he takes the straps down. Someone who's good with computers, put Jacqueline in Faarooq's gear. 

I hate how guys like MJF or Austin Theory or Ricky Starks move like 1998 The Rock. It sucks. They all flop the same and walk around with their butts out the same and it's all theater kids goofing around doing People's Elbows. The Butt Out Walk must be the first thing they teach at Brahma School. 

I don't know why the crowd isn't more excited for Faarooq dishing out a beating. The Rock wore a big neck brace after Faarooq piledrove him earlier and takes a fun beating, and that combination of things deserved a reaction. His elbows on the apron looked good, Rock is acting like a real punk doofus, yet nobody cares. 

Real flat finish. This feud never had a chance. There was a weird 3 count that got a silent reaction and the camera shot it in a way where you couldn't see Rock's foot on the rope. This whole thing was only 5 minutes and felt really incomplete. Blackman/Jarrett got twice as much time without even being based around an actual feud, so this whole thing was just set up to fail.  

When DX runs in after the match to ambush The Nation they look like the 4 Horsemen of Rape.

6. Vader vs. Kane

Vader was getting real reactions in 1998. There was a powerful machine working against 1998 Vader. He does the Vader flex, he flashes the V's, a ton of fans have Vader signs. The People believed in Vader in 98 and the people in charge didn't want them to. Vader was done wrong. We all know it. The man was 43 years old, which is not an old age at all. I know this because it is my age and how could I possibly be old? I understand why they instinctively didn't want to get behind a 43 year old Vader, but you see things a couple decades removed from the original context and you realize just how mammoth a star Vader would have been in WWF had they just treated him the same way they treat Nakamura at the same age. 

Kane's punches were better in 1998 - better, not good - but his straight rights are not good. There is a reason he never threw them for most of the rest of his career. They have no weight behind them. His uppercuts don't look good either. He threw a bigger variety of punches then, not just uppercuts, and their form is good but the weight is absent. Kane's strikes look shittier the longer the match goes. He would go on to phase all of these punches out other than the uppercut.  

Vader's offense looks good against a big guy like Kane. His bear attack runs him over, but he smartly did one bear attack that stunned Kane, then a second bigger one that flattened him. Nobody was flattening Kane in 1998. Vader knew we build to that. "Vader using his mass now" fuck yeah he is JR. 

This match should be getting a bigger reaction. Vader is making this look like a big fight. He's swinging arms into all sides of Kane's head, even throwing them to the back of his head. Kane is in retreat! Vader sent Kane into retreat which is a thing that has never happened and nobody is reacting to it. Nobody is reacting to these beefy arms and it doesn't make sense. Nobody thinks it's cool that Kane scoop slammed Vader? Vader is a really big guy to take a scoop slam! He lands completely differently than you've seen because you just don't see 400 pound men getting slammed. 

This has not been a night of good matches, which often hurts a crowd, but I don't know why this crowd was not reacting to this match as if it was not Good or Big. It was both, but the crowd reacting so indifferently and Kane just not being that good limited how good it could get. 

I don't know why I haven't mentioned how ridiculous the mask stipulation is but it really didn't need to happen. It didn't make anyone care more about the match than they would have. Vader getting real red-faced revenge would have been cooler. A match built around "first to grab and use the large comical wrench" would have been cooler, probably.  

Kane's top rope clothesline is the softest contact Signature Clothesline of the modern era. It's a terrible clothesline and it never got better. It was only ever good if used in No Mercy. His running clothesline, which he stopped using, looked like a clothesline that would run Vader over and is the loudest contact of the match. 

Vader bumps to get Kane over but they react more to Vader on the attack than Vader bumping around. If Kane had the energy of Bradshaw it could have been a real fight, but Vader has to create his own energy off Kane's Lesser Jason Voorhees body acting. Vader knows how to build a reaction when going for the Vader Bomb, and he knows how to peak it by pausing briefly on the middle buckle before deciding to climb to the top, Milwaukee swelling as he leaves his feet and deflating when he crash lands. The Vader moonsault is a flat out insane and incredible spot for a man his age and size to be using. Vader understood PPV and They resented him for it. This man got up for a goddamn Tombstone and yep, it looks cool as hell when a guy the size of Vader is Tombstoned. 

I don't actually know how I feel about Vader calling himself a fat piece of shit. I think it's a raw promo, and his delivery is note perfect. I guess the problem is that I don't think they ever did anything other than kind of reflect on how sad it was that Vader called himself a fat piece of shit. I don't know if we needed to see vulnerable, sensitive Vader but I do think it was so memorable because of how real it was delivered. We've all been down on ourselves in our lives. A lot sometimes, for any little thing. Vader felt real, and maybe we didn't need Real Vader. Maybe, if it led to something of substance, a renewed energy and fight, it would have allowed people to reflect on themselves when they get too down on themselves. I don't think WWF was or is capable of writing that kind of character. Whatever. It felt like actual, real frustration, the kind we all go through. We don't get that kind of insight into athletes. They're insulated. Taught what not to say to the media. Me, personally? I do not think Vader is a fat piece of shit, but I believed in that moment that he did, and that's affecting. 

I forgot this was the PPV they did that weird Lawler/Crusher/Mad Dog Vachon angle. The Crusher, in his early 70s, kept looking cooler the more undressed he got during his segment with Lawler and Mad Dog Vachon. He looked cool the entire time and got a great big reaction from Milwaukee. He looked like such a badass grandpa in his brown Wrangler Wranchers throwing his bolo punches. This was such a weird thing for WWF to do. They had already used Mad Dog's wooden leg in a match and the idea of WWF honoring a local hero who had nothing to do with them is such a non-Vince move. 

7. HHH/New Age Outlaws vs. D-Lo Brown/Owen Hart/The Godfather 

If your friend had never watched WWF programming before, you could convince them pretty easily that Owen Hart was working some kind of hacker gimmick in his caution tape singlet and, well, hacker sunglasses. 

Owen tags in and runs straight into a Billy Gunn clothesline, Gunn punches and press slams him, Gunn goes up for a backdrop for him, really two of the only guys trying to make this work.

Helmsley's running jumping knee and his tilt a whirl backbreaker (!?) looked good. He always really looked like he enjoyed working Owen. 

Why was the Billy Gunn/Godfather pairing so good in this? They worked kind of fast against each other, and Godfather looked like he was throwing his kicks and missed clotheslines with different pep.

New Age Outlaws working over D-Lo is really good too, though not as good whenever HHH tags in. It's wild how much HHH really kills all the pacing and vibe of this match any time he's involved.

More Owen Sucks chants than I remember but his perfect piledriver to Road Dogg brings no reaction at all. Philistines. 

This match is going a lot longer than anyone could have reasonably expected. The fans get real restless whenever anyone considers doing any kind of hold. This thing is dying the longer they go, nobody is doing anything to bring it back to life even if a lot of the work looks good. It's crazy how bad HHH makes the DX act in-ring. He is actively hurting their vibe and wrestling image. 

8. Steve Austin vs. Dude Love 

Pat Patterson is so fucking funny introducing Gerald Brisco as the guest timekeeper. He has his readers on and a stack of at least a dozen 3x5 cards. He actually said that Gerald Brisco's heart "beats like the tom tom drum on the reservation, like the Heartbeat of America." I mean whoever wrote that line was onto something next level. "Some call him the reincarnation of Jim Thorpe. We call him...A Friend." This is incredible. I did not appreciate how amazing his intro was when I watched this as a teen. All my friends and I just wanted to see Austin beat everyone's ass. 

Vince looks like an impossibly hulked up Robert Carradine. A real geek, and a real freak in his flap pocket black chinos and sleeveless ref shirt. Incredible posture, but a freakish build sculpted onto that wealthy flawed Connecticut skeleton and Kennedy hair. He has a million facial reactions and it's incredible how good literally every one of them are. It's a real Gotta Hand it To. 

Foley sells a back elbow like Austin really spiked him in the nose, running himself into the ground like Terry Funk but more real. The longer the match goes, the more I know that each man was really taking these shots. I just didn't realize they were roughing each other up from go. 

Foley takes such a great bump on a clothesline to the floor. Austin really timed it well and collided with him well, but Foley went over so fast, in that way that Foley sometimes does where you don't know how controlled it actually is. Man would just throw his body to the floor with more speed than he used for anything else. Shouldn't really be a shock anymore that Foley took some crazy bumps, but his heavy lower half really whips him over the ropes. Nobody else has really been able to duplicate that. 

Austin throws Foley onto Brisco and then stomps on them both and punches Foley in the back of the head too many times before clotheslining him ass over elbow onto concrete over the guardrail. I probably haven't watched this match since the early 2000s (I bought the Over the Edge VHS from a video store in Healdsburg that was going out of business) and remember it being built around tons of bumps onto concrete, and that is exactly what it is, and they keep escalating. 

Austin taking a backdrop onto the hood of a fucked up old style Honda Civic, boot going through the windshield 20 years before Zona 23. Is Zona 23:16 anything? Austin gets thrown onto and over a tilted old Mercury and Foley sunset flips him off that Mercury's hood, it's awesome. Foley's body makes a wet splat as his weird torso and wide butt land perfectly flat. It's a sound you never hear and Foley has made it like three times in this match alone. 

Austin is bleeding and is always an incredible looking bleeder. The blood doesn't keep up but the initial color is strong. When he bleeds he always gets the best deep red color on his tanned bald head. For a match built around big bumps on concrete I forgot how many hard back bumps Austin takes onto concrete in this match. My man is out here taking backdrops and suplexes in parts of the entrance that at least 7,000 people can't even see. It's insane. This man broke his damn neck 10 months ago and he's bumping on concrete for himself. 

Also, Steve Austin is great because he manages to bounce a chair off the ropes and into his own face and makes it look like a complete accident. It's a spot that a lot of men have tried and few have made work well. I think there needs to be a level of alcoholism involved to make it work. Sandman was good at it too. 

Pat Patterson throws such a punch into Mike Chioda's lower orbital bone. There's no way any of these Patterson/Briscoe matches from 1999 are any good but damn they should have been using Patterson in more physical roles this whole time. He takes one of the best chokeslams of the year through a damn table. This is a man pushing 60 who retired four presidents ago and hasn't done physical stuff on screen since the mid 80s. How did he even prepare to take this? How did Vince psych himself up to get brained with a pre-Chris Nowinski research chairshot? No idea. 

I don't know how well this holds up as an All Time Great Brawl, but it's differently great for its big stunt show feel and old man bullshit that was at the center of a fight. It was messier than I remembered and was more about getting to specific areas and moments, but this is still a standout 1998 WWF match and surely the best WWF match of the year to this point.   

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE 305 LIVE

Read more!

On Brand Segunda Caida: Bradshaw & Savio Vega FIGHT

Bradshaw vs. Savio Vega WWF Shotgun 4/4/98

ER: Shotgun Saturday Night didn't air in my area in 1998/1999, and I've never gone back and watched most of it. It's never been uploaded to the Network and surely won't ever land on Peacock, so we have to rely on whatever guy in the Tri-state area recorded these shows at his mom's house and kept the tapes when he moved out. It feels like there are a bunch of potential gems on Shotgun that I've never heard about, and here's one of them. I'm sure others have talked about this match, but never in my company. Nobody was talking up Bradshaw in 1998, choosing to write him off as a lesser Stan Hansen clone instead of being excited that we were still getting Stan Hansen clones on American television. Do you know how incredible someone who wrestles exactly like 1998 Bradshaw would look on 2023 wrestling television? We didn't know how good we had it, and that applies almost equally to Savio Vega, who brawled as intensely here as he would in his best Puerto Rico stuff. Conversely, I'm not sure there are many Bradshaw performances - including the JBL run - you can point to where he looked better. 

Nobody told me that guys were beating the shit out of each other on Shotgun, but Bradshaw and Vega beat the shit out of each other and look like they hate each other while doing it. There was hate on display on fucking Shotgun Saturday Night? You rarely see punch exchanges this good on WWF TV, or any wrestling TV. They have a stand and trade section that is like Eddie Kingston/Chris Hero level. Bradshaw kicks Savio in the face a few times and lands every stomach kick like he really wants to kick him in the gut. Vega throws hands and chops and bumps around into perfect positioning to feed Bradshaw's assaults. I love how Bradshaw kept going for the Clothesline From Hell and threw every one of them like he intended to connect, and how he started going hard after Vega's arm to possibly slow down the return fire. His arm work is really nasty, throwing Savio by the arm and really yanking on it, peaking the attack when he starts throwing stiff punches at Vega's bursa joint. At one point Savio gets sick of Bradshaw's shit and just grabs him by the throat to back him into the turnbuckles. I love when a guy manages to throw a stiff spinning heel kick. The finish was great too, with Vega hitting the turnbuckles hard on his worked over shoulder and it flares up bad enough that it finally leaves him a sitting duck to be sent to Hell. This was a real fucking fight. 

Read more!

Loosely Formed Statements on WWF's No Way Out of Texas 2/15/98

 

1. Marc Mero/Goldust vs. The Head Bangers

Marc Mero is a 1998 Rising Stock. Always on. Endless energy. 

Marc Mero's high back elbow and precise elbowdrop. Stocking Rising. 

Marc Mero's ass over crown bump to the floor for a Mosh lariat. Heat Seeker. 

Goldust working dropdowns and leapfrogs and a high backdrop bump in black lingerie. Picturing him working 2000s AAA. 

Marc Mero draws real heat. His bumps for Thrasher's shoulderblocks are real. Online Mero Discourse will swell. 

We get real blood 10 minutes into No Way Out of Texas. Thrasher takes a real manly bump when Goldust snake eyes him onto the ring steps. Blood spidering down his face. Match at a new level. 

Mero - the worker of 1998 WWF - immediately targets the cut whenever he is in, including stomping Thrasher all over the cut to spread the blood. 

We'll see if any chant will be louder during any other match than this MERO SUCKS chants. Scotching heat in February. That's before he unwraps some wrist tape and chokes Thrasher until the tape is red, and then the chants resume. 

Mosh has four sincerely great punches on his hot tag. 

2. Pantera vs. Taka Michinoku

Pantera has the greatest offense. Multiple rolling armdrags, THAT running swanton to the floor, a tricked out headscissors that felt more World of Sport than lucha, and a fast flipping bump to the floor. 

Taka's springboard plancha flies 4 feet past the guardrail into the entrance.

Pantera's rolling headscissors from the top rope to the apron is in the discussion of Greatest Headscissors in History. The tope diagonally past the ringpost was triumphant garnish. 

Well Brian Christopher called Taka Michinoku "slant eyed" on commentary. Jesus. 

Cools down a bit when Pantera is working over Taka's back, but I like it. 

The cooldown burst into flames when Taka took one of the highest bumps over the top to the floor that I've ever seen, moments before Pantera leapt over the top rope with his running senton, the most incredible move on 1998 wrestling TV. 

The cool back work stretch is paid off many times over when Pantera fills every bit of space with elbowdrops aimed with precision at Taka's lower back, and two different backbreakers that looked...backbreaking. 

Pantera pulls off an effortlessly accurate top rope moonsault, the way I might take a bite out of a sandwich, then snaps off a hurricanrana with both of them jumping off the top rope just as easily. 

Brian Christopher was a...real presence...on commentary. The entire match. You have never heard louder slurs on commentary. 

3. The Quebecers vs. The Godwinns

I'm not sure why they even brought in the Quebecers in 1998. They brought them back to Raw with no re-introduction, just the two of them wearing the blandest and worst gear of their respective careers. Still a good team, but out of place and oddly presented. 

Rougeau keeps ducking Phineas's lock ups and then yells "How about those Canadians, eh?" to the crowd like a prick. 

Jacques is out here getting mowed over by shoulderblocks, and when Pierre tags in he starts working wristlock exchanges with Henry. It's kind of silly, but those big boys did really yank the hell out of those arms. 

Phineas works really vicious with Jacques. He hits a full on Glacier front kick into Jacques's stomach and tries to pull his arm off with a single arm DDT. 

Henry drops his head and Jacques kicks him hard right across the chest. Pierre is the only guy not throwing leather so far. 

They're working this as a classic WWF heel in peril match, the crowd completely silent as the Godwinns cut Jacques off from Pierre. For some reason, the fans do not cheer for Rougeau's sunset flip nearfall, and I have no idea what crowd reaction they were expecting when Henry held Jacques in a chinlock that could only build to Jacques fighting back to his feet. 

The match is actually really good but the role reversal fucks everything up. 

The fans do not want to see Jacques make a hot tag to Pierre. The cannonball that they hit is not triumphant. 

Jacques hits a pretty crazy plancha off the top to the floor, crashing into Henry. 

Everything was completely backward and the crowd was icy but it was a good tag if you pretend it was in Montreal with a poorly mic'd crowd. 

4. Bradshaw vs. Jeff Jarrett 

Say what you will about Cornette being given a dead in the water idea, but I loved the short-lived NWA stable. What a bunch of weirdos. Windham, the Rock n Rolls, and Jeff Jarrett with my favorite gear and hair of his career. Robert Gibson is wearing a duster with county fair sweatshirt art of him and Ricky on the back. 

The opening is really well worked, just Bradshaw swinging arms and chaps and boots at Jarrett and Jarrett taking all of it. I loved when Bradshaw ducked down and Jarrett finally landed something, a stiff kick to Bradshaw's chest, and Bradshaw just straightened up and booted Jarrett in the face. 

It's funny when they exchange strikes, as Jarrett is doing these nice worked right hands but Bradshaw is just hauling back and smashing Jarrett with the edge of his elbow. 

I appreciate JR pushing the story that Jarrett knew to target Bradshaw's knee because Barry Windham told him about Bradshaw's knee in secret, because I guess it's better than telling the story of Jarrett targeting the two foot long braced kneepad that covers most of Bradshaw's left leg.

All of Jarrett's kicks to Bradshaw's leg look good, but none of it leads to anything. 

This was a lot better when it was Bradshaw laying waste to Jarrett and the NWA. It loses steam once they went into more of a back and forth. 

When the NWA runs out after the match, Robert Gibson takes a really fast, pretty crazy bump to the floor. I have to remind myself that Gibson was only 39 during this run and was really busting his ass. 

5. Faarooq/The Rock/Kama Mustafa/Mark Henry/D-Lo Brown vs. Ken Shamrock/Ahmed Johnson/Chainz/Skull/8-Ball

I remember watching this PPV a couple days after it aired, getting the tape from a friend whose dad had a co-worker who taped the PPVs. Something something the kids will never understand what we went through. If your parents didn't let you actually order PPVs, that's how you got to see a PPV in 1998. 

I remember watching this match before school, and my dad getting actually offended by them clearly running a team of militant black people opposite several white supremacists. My parents already hated pro wrestling because of its stupidity. I don't think my dad had ever even considered that there would be angles with white supremacist good guys. I remember him reading the paper and putting it down, saying "It's VERY clear what they're trying to imply here" and being mad about it. 

This match was set up by The Rock hitting Shamrock in the face with one of the most disgusting chairshots in history. 

Does anyone actually know any differences between Skull and 8-Ball? Is one of them better than the other? Does anyone actually know which one is which? Did they themselves actually keep track of which was Skull and which was 8-Ball? When JR tells me that Skull is in against D-Lo, should I trust him? Should I trust JR to know the separate identities of Skull and 8-Ball, even though this is a War of Attrition match and JR very clearly did not know the definition of "attrition" when Lawler asked him to define it, and JR had to use schoolyard tacts like "*I* know what it is, do you?" until the moment you can tell someone came on the headset and told him the definition. You can tell someone came on, as JR was *floundering* and fucking seething at Lawler for pressing him on this, and after 20 agonizing seconds suddenly JR blurted out 6 synonyms for "attrition". (Skull has a slightly rounder face, FYI)

Shamrock dumps himself on his head doing a Japanese armdrag to D-Lo. 

Chainz drops several fast elbowdrops but I'm not sure if any of them are good. His big boot is better. 

Mark Henry looks like a total badass calling for Ahmed, and the crowd really comes alive when he and Ahmed start wailing on each other. 

D-Lo does a frog splash onto Ahmed's ass and legs, committing to the splash even as it looked like Ahmed was a man not expecting a frog splash. 

It is wild how much smaller Shamrock looks than everyone else in the match. 

Who could possibly give a shit that D-Lo Brown is a Certified Public Accountant, JR? How would that be interesting to any person watching D-Lo Brown in this War of Attrition? Talk about his nice Hitman elbowdrop.

Jesus now JR is talking about The Rock's degrees. JR tanked this match. They're fucking fighting JR, stop talking about everyone's fucking GPA. 

6. Vader vs. Kane

The cameras cut away just as Vader was about to do some V-hand crab dancing and shit this company hasn't known how to film wrestling in 25 years. 

Vader is throwing punches straight at Kane's forehead and then swinging his whole arm into the side of Kane's head. 

Vader gets a rear waistlock and grabs Kane by the hair with his left hand so he can punch Kane in the back of the head a bunch with his right, including one shot from behind that snuck up and under into Kane's temple. 

Kane isn't bad in control, but things are much better whenever it is Vader punching Kane in the head. 

Vader has taken big bumps for clotheslines. 

My dad would have made such a good Paul Bearer, if he was someone who ever dressed up in a costume for any reason (I have never seen my dad in any costume for any reason). My dad is more handsome than Paul Bearer, but the body shape and parted brown hair are too similar. 

Kane does his uppercut but he hadn't learned how to arm slap yet. 

Vader tests just how sturdy Kane's mask is by punching him directly into the face six times until Kane literally responds as if he's being swarmed by bees. 

Kane is wearing some insane Boris Karloff lifts, and whenever Vader rocks him with a standing clothesline you can really see them throwing Kane off balance. 

Does Vader have the best standing splash? It's up there. 

Kane's strikes don't look great, his top rope clothesline doesn't look great, but there's absolutely no denying how awesome it looks seeing Vader get tombstoned. 

7. Savio Vega/HHH/New Age Outlaws vs. Steve Austin/Cactus Jack/Chainsaw Charlie/Owen Hart

Savio Vega sure makes a lot of sense as a kayfabe partner and as a guy who would be able to work this match, but when a teenager hears Mystery Partner and that Mystery is replacing the World Heavyweight Champion, well...

All of the Austin/Gunn exchanges are really great. Gunn scrambling out of the ring to avoid a Stunner, then bashing Austin with the edge of a trash can on the floor, Austin running him the hell over with a clothesline, beating him with 1998 chairshots

Billy Gunn is doing all of Hunter's Flair bumps better than Hunter

Funk is in there taking nothing but damage, beaten by trash cans, getting powerbombed through a pair of chairs, taking a piledriver on a trash can lid, back suplex onto a lid, also threw a trash can into the air and taking the hit when it comes back down.

Billy Gunn has that Paul Koslo weave

Cutting Funk off from everyone else is a cool way to work this 8 man

Austin throws a mashed up trash can so hard at Billy Gunn's head, and again, Gunn bumping for Austin is perfection

Nobody backstage told Savio and Funk that they were wearing the same thing? Both got that big ol dad butt denim 

Owen Hart's best role is running in from the apron to back off DX, and then returning to the apron. He hits a great missile dropkick into Savio and later runs across the ring to hit a big dropkick and take swings at all of them. 

Ending is a bit abrupt, with Austin tagging in, wasting everyone quickly, and then just hitting a Stunner on Road Dogg, but the match was a really fun brawl. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE WWF 305 LIVE

Read more!

The Continuing Saga of Dirtbag Era Barry Windham

 Barry Windham/Jeff Jarrett vs. Legion of Doom WWF Raw 1/26/98

ER: The was a little scruffy, but I thought a lot of this was real good. I love this era of uncertain Windham looks, vacillating among different levels of dirtbag. Cowboy, biker, lazy pool guy, man who offers to wash office building windows and also smells, etc. This week he's still got the Blackjack hair, but now has a freshly shaved smooth fat face. He looks like a guy who wears a clip-on tie and makes fake IDs and licenses. Most notable about this was what I thought was a strong Hawk performance. I really liked his selling while getting repeatedly cut off from Animal, and I thought the pace pushing in his sequences with Jarrett were the best parts of the match. Windham works this like Buddy Rose and gets better the longer the match goes and Animal works a nice hot tag, but Jarrett and Hawk elevated this. There was a killer little sequence where Hawk stops Jarrett's sunset flip and punches him right in the forehead, and Jarrett instinctively trips him by the ankle and drags him down to keep control. 

This was the first of only *three times* that Windham and Jarrett teamed, and it's too bad. They had real chemistry and would have been a real upgrade to the tag division over the summer, and I loved the Aztec ring gear for Jarrett. I liked their ring control and simple things like a Windham vertical suplex followed up by a Jarrett elbowdrop. Both Road Warriors had some big long arm lariats and Animal's high rotation powerslam looked great, and I liked Hawk's role in this even before he hit his leaping fistdrop. The finish is messy but in kind of cool ways, with Hawk leaping recklessly off the top rope with a clothesline while he should have clearly seen that his target, Jarrett, was *not* facing him. Because of that, Hawk basically hooked Jarrett's neck and crashed himself, while Windham gave a weird but kind of cool short piledriver to Animal. The finish had Windham at his asshole heel best, blasting Animal with the tennis racket and then bat flipping it way out of the ring, back to Cornette. I need a GIF of Barry tossing that racket. 

Barry Windham/Jeff Jarrett vs. Bradshaw/Flash Funk WWF Raw 2/2/98

ER: If Windham was a low key document forging dirtbag last week, this was more of him as a guy talking too much shit at a birthday kickball game. He had a smooth smug look on his face and kept obnoxiously flashing peace signs, a cheap shot artist even though he was the biggest guy on the field. Not coy about it, just smiling and getting away with it, with two improbably 40 year old Rock n Rolls laughing and helping him cheat. The match was better on paper than it was in execution, but only because Flash gets taken out of the match early, and his exchanges with Jarrett showed uncharacteristic hesitation. Most of the Windham talk from this era was about how out of shape he was, but this match shows that this man can flat out work regardless of what his body looked like. I guess that's always been something said about him, though. His crowd work during his brief WWF NWA heel run showed that he could still connect to the crowd as a heel, he was just doing it in a way that WWF didn't like looking at. He taunts the crowd from the apron the entire time he was not officially in this match, and only enters the match after the Rock n Rolls distract Bradshaw, allowing Barry to sneak around the ringpost with a western lariat. 

When Windham tags in, he hits two excellent punches, long uppercuts that started from behind his right lovehandle, and continued to mock the crowd any chance he got. It surely wasn't a good sign for the NWA angle that Bradshaw still managed to win this match despite having no partner and going against 5 people, but it was worth it for the post-match beatdown. Cornette blasted Bradshaw with the racket and Bradshaw completely ignored it, before being jumped by Ricky and Robert. I loved the visual of the Rock n Rolls holding Bradshaw by the arms while Jarrett ties up his legs, Windham hitting standing splashes on Bradshaw's bad leg. I wish we would have gotten a Blackjacks Explode PPV match instead of just a 3 minute Raw match two months later. The whole feud could have been so much more. 

Read more!

2002 Big Boss Man Runs Into Bradshaw

Big Boss Man/Mr. Perfect vs. Bradshaw/Faarooq WWF Metal 3/23/02

ER: Okay well this is the match right here. This is the kind of match that makes me want a series, and  makes me mad that most of the Boss Man/Perfect team's existence happened on house shows. Everyone came off tough, a real hardscrabble match that was cooperatively stiff in the best way. Perfect really works heavyweight here, and while he takes the most bumps of anyone they aren't athletic stooge heel bumps, they're hard back bumps off a shoulderblock or powerslam. Perfect and Boss Man cut Bradshaw off from Faarooq, which wasn't the direction I thought this was going, and I liked it. Boss Man is great on the apron, doing his "gotten to" expression to the crowd the first time he's tagged in, stalking up the apron, letting them chant Boss Man Sucks. His feeding into the chant is always so good, because he shuts them up quick by going right in and always punching a guy. Those chants never continue on into the match, he makes sure to quiet them quick, and having a big punch out with Bradshaw is a really cool way to guarantee they stop.

Boss Man and Perfect hit Bradshaw with a hard double shoulderblock, and Perfect is the one that Bradshaw throws around, but not in any kind of dominant way. I dug how Perfect got up quick after taking the fallaway slam, as it actually makes sense that a rolling bump like that wouldn't be as impactful as a suplex bump, and there's a killer tangle where Perfect kind of stops short but Bradshaw snags him and turns it into a hardway suplex. I'm not sure if it was a miscommunication, but I don't think it was, and it just made the spot look way cooler. Faarooq was the big hot tag while Perfect was getting run into the ringside steps, and I like that Faarooq couldn't fully lift Boss Man. He hit a spinebuster but it wasn't clean, but still enough to put a big man down. The most intense moment of the match came right after, when it looked like Faarooq was actually going to hit the freaking DOMINATOR on BOSS MAN! He hits a powerbomb instead - which is great - but my mind was racing at how both of these men just might injure themselves doing a move that I am still stunned was allowed to be used at all. Knowing this match exists should excite you, and it delivered on its potential.

Big Boss Man vs. Bradshaw WWF Heat 4/14/02

ER: First things first, this match is 30 seconds long. Second, it's the greatest 30 second match in wrestling history. I love 4 minute Wire songs, but I also love 45 second Wire songs. I love 2 minute Minutemen songs, but I also love 30 second Minutemen songs. I would certainly love a 5 minute bruise filled good ol boy fight, but Boss Man will also put the same effort and story progression into 30 seconds. It's got everything: Stiff work, loud crowd heat with immediate Boss Man Sucks chants, 8 great punches, a sternum breaking chest bump in the corner, and one highlight reel worthy Clothesline from Hell. It's as much heat and fight and payoff as a 3 minute match. Greatest Hits Played Faster. Boss Man has phenomenal timing, and it makes spots like Bradshaw's missed elbow look that much better. Boss Man hangs into spots like that until the last possible second, Bradshaw committing all of his weight, and before long Boss Man is throwing punches like he's trying to bust Bradshaw's eyebrow. Boss Man got incredible steam on a missed corner charge while everyone in the arena let him know how enthusiastically he siphons, and he turned around just in time to be obliterated by the Clothesline. Big Boss Man: Ultimate Tik Tok Wrestler. 

Read more!

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.

Read more!

On Brand Segunda Caida: Dirtbag Era Barry Windham

Barry Windham/Jeff Jarrett vs. Legion of Doom WWF Raw 2/9/98

ER: How did I not remember the killer fast working cutthroat big bumping tag team of Jeff Jarrett and Barry Windham? I very much remember the bad NWA reboot, but forgot we got an actual cool tag team from that, where Jarrett looked flat out the best he ever looked (work wise, look wise, everything). This is a straight up 1985 NWA style tag match taking place on 1998 WWF TV, and it's great. Windham and Jarrett were an awesome team that didn't get enough of a chance, and this whole tag played like a stiff old guy brawl. LOD and Windham are all 38 and up, which was old for this era WWF. But Hawk worked stiff the whole match, dropping Windham with a heavy Thesz press and punching him right in the ear, and later throwing chops to Jarrett that looked like backhands right across Jarrett's face. Windham bumped around for LOD but also gave right back, hitting a couple great lariats and his best punch of the match right on the floor while close to some fans. The crowd was lit up for LOD the whole match. Neither Hawk or Animal were working any complicated power spots here, but they were working quick and throwing themselves into punches and shoulderblocks. Two big dudes in face paint running into people is almost always going to be enough. Cornette comes out and we get a hard racket shot, and Bradshaw runs out and looks as pissed and dangerous as peak Stan Hansen. This was great TV tag wrestling.

Barry Windham vs. Bradshaw WWF Raw 3/23/98

ER: THE BLACKJACKS EXPLODE!! WWF bringing back the NWA for a few months in early '98 was really weird, and I'm pretty sure I remember that it was all just to make fun of Cornette, so who's to say who the bad guy is here. We get a pretty cool mini video package before this match, something they don't do now as interestingly as they did here, and definitely not as efficiently. Within a 20 second video they had already explained why the Blackjacks broke up, how Barry was jealous of Bradshaw, showed several clips of Bradshaw murdering people, Bradshaw chasing Barry up the ramp after interference, and then we cut back to a smug dirty blonde Windham waiting in the ring. They had me at Hello. This feels like a match that would have fit nicely onto the WM14 card, though I get why it was not on the card. Windham seems pretty broken down by this point, which is weird as he was somewhat resurgent not too much later in WCW. Still, this was 3 fun minutes with a dozen different moments of two giant dudes smacking each other with vests and chaps. Seriously, I'm pretty sure half of this match was them removing their respective vests and chaps, and smacking the other a few times with each removal. Take off a vest, smack your opponent with it. Get them chaps off, smack your opponent with them. It's the 2019-present LA Park formula and it works, as documented here 20 years prior. Barry is moving a little slow and those knees seem to be barking, but he takes a couple of awesome bumps into the ring steps, getting run knees first in nasty fashion, eats a big boot from Bradshaw and falls into them again. Windham hits a cool DDT in the ring and we get a goofus roll up finish. You have Windham and Bradshaw in there, at least let one of these two hit their diving lariat! 

Read more!

Heel Tommy Dreamer: It's a Gag!

Tommy Dreamer/Mike Awesome vs. X-Pac/Albert WWF Metal 10/27/01

ER: This was only a technical heel performance from Dreamer, because nobody was going to be booed opposite X-Pac at this point. Living through X-Pac Heat was a really weird time. I'm not sure what other situations are comparable to it. He'd been a very popular babyface for a long time, and was then a popular babyface who acted like a heel, and at a certain point people just got loudly tired of him. The Uncle Kracker theme didn't help matters. But X Factor are clearly supposed to be the faces in this match, and it's worked with them as the faces, only the crowd didn't react to it that way. In fact, Mike Awesome got the biggest cheers of the match, any time he would do damage to X-Pac. Dreamer doesn't work as an overt heel, but he has one quality in his heel work that isn't around his babyface work: he staggers and stooges amusingly into position for offense. There are a couple of instances of this here, with the best being he and Awesome missing a double clothesline on Albert. Watch how Dreamer misses versus how Awesome misses. They both whiff, and Awesome just turns around and waits for Albert to bounce back off the ropes to level them both. But Dreamer whiffs, then acts like the motion threw his whole balance off, staggering into place to fill the perfect amount of time before getting leveled by Albert. Dreamer is a real satisfying heel bumper, as he's a good bumper in general for a man his size, but it's better utilized bumping for a big babyface Albert comeback. Dreamer was good from the apron, too, loved him nailing X-Pac with a knee to slow him down for Awesome, and Awesome's top rope clothesline looks great leveling X-Pac. This was a short, tidy, but fun match, and Dreamer makes the Baldo Bomb look crushing.

One Year Immunity Battle Royal WWF Survivor Series 11/18/01

ER: Rock solid battle royal regardless of how stupid the stipulation and the Invasion was. Bradshaw was a real beast, potatoing anyone close to him from WCW or ECW (as I typed that sentence it didn't really sound that surprising) and we got a lot of big spills on eliminations. All you really want from a battle royal is some surprisingly stiff shots, a couple of guys taking death wish elimination bumps, and no lying around. This ticked those boxes, was worked quick (only flaw might have been this needing a couple more minutes to space out eliminations), and had a nice extended run once they got to the final 4 (and I loved that the final 4 was Bradshaw, Billy Gunn, Test, and Lance Storm of all people). It started with a perfect moment: Shawn Stasiak being the first to charge into action, getting backdropped to elimination as the match started. The eliminations were strong, like Bradshaw hitting big lariats to send guys out, Tazz eliminating Crash and Tommy Dreamer while Dreamer was powerbombing Crash, Bradshaw throwing out Kidman with a fallaway slam, just a bunch of guys smacking the ground hard. We also get the great battle royal joy of noticing guys who were in between gear, like Stevie Richards wearing black slacks and a black t-shirt, post Right To Censor/pre-Anything Else. Test wins this thing, but what he sadly doesn't know is that the winner of this specific battle royal gets a) immunity from being fired for one year, but also b) a death sentence within the decade. They did not tell that to Test before the battle royal, he found out after. Also, Crash's death was not related to the battle royal, only Test's was.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE HEEL TOMMY DREAMER

Read more!

WWF 305 Live: Bradshaw! Rhyno! Undertaker! Mark Henry! Big Daddy V! Kane!

Bradshaw vs. Rhyno WWE Smackdown 12/11/03 - VERY GOOD

ER: It's pretty jarring how much faster some the house style was in 2003. Guys obviously move fast now, but an absurd amount of the time is based on missed moves and reversals and learned behavior garbage. This was worked super fast but built entirely around both guys colliding. Learned behavior wrestling is a real curse, give me 4 minutes of two big guys throwing punches and boots and taking big spills. Rhyno starts by running at Bradshaw before the bell, Bradshaw turns and sticks his boot up and Rhyno stops. No contact made, but a fun way of doing it that you rarely see. When was the last time you saw a guy try to get a cheapshot, get caught before delivering the cheapshot, and agreeably stop the cheapshot? Bradshaw hits a nice floatover suplex early, which is a neat way to hint at the finish. There was a weird delay in his floatover, that also planted a visual seed for the finish. He hit the suplex, but didn't immediately float, instead they both lied there as if he was considering rolling into another suplex...but then floated over. The delay felt odd, but I understood what he was doing after the finish.

We got plenty of big chops, Bradshaw throwing short right hands and big elbows, a nice big boot, and the whole thing was go go go while always based around collision. I loved how Bradshaw missed an elbowdrop: as quickly and close to Rhyno as possible, the kind of miss that looked like it was aiming to hit. Bradshaw was really good at working cutoffs, my favorite being when Rhyno climbed to the top and Bradshaw just grabbed his hair and headbutted him. What I was not expecting was Bradshaw to hit him with a fallaway slam off the buckles. Bradshaw headbutts Rhyno (who is already mostly to the top buckle), then climbs to the middle buckle while also lifting Rhyno, and it would have been so easy to lose his footing and drop Rhyno directly onto his face, the whole thing looked super dangerous. Now, the finish was both solid and a little too manufactured. Bradshaw hit a fantastic superplex, and then - just like that earlier vertical suplex - they both lie there. For a bit too long. I'm starting to thing "did they BOTH get stingers? That's why huge dudes shouldn't do superplexes", but then Bradshaw goes for the floatover, and Rhyno sees it coming and gets a small package win. So, yes, Bradshaw was really showing his work to the fans, making it a bit too easy to connect the cause-and-effect dots. "Ohhhhh, he waited a couple seconds to floatover with that suplex earlier, and this time his habit of waiting several seconds to floatover cost him the match." It's a neat idea to leave breadcrumbs like that in a match, and it often makes for a much better match. But it's not neat when it's something like this that looks so out of place. I'd never seen Bradshaw delay a floatover on a suplex, so when he delayed even longer on the finish floatover it looked even weirder. This wasn't a regular thing he did, it was an odd pitfall invented only for this match, and not a very good one. When you leave match psychology breadcrumbs for fans, their takeaway shouldn't be "wait why was he lying on the mat for so long after hitting a suplex?"


Undertaker/Kane vs. Big Daddy V/Mark Henry WWE Smackdown 2/1/08 - VERY GOOD

ER: This is an on paper dream pairing for 305 Live, a match they ran a few times on house shows (wish any one of those made it as a handheld), and I really wish they had given Henry/V a run as an unstoppable monster team. They paired them infrequently enough that they never completely gelled or felt like a team, and they were around so much at the same time that they really should have been given that chance. This was their highest profile tag together, and also their last time tagging together. The match itself is kind of aimless, and more than a little repetitive. It was made by Undertaker flinging himself into the corners off of big whips from giant men, and Mark Henry leaning into every single piece of offense thrown at his head. Taker and Kane hit him with four big boots over the course of the match and he's out there taking all of them with his face. Henry is the real slugger of these four, and it's wild how much that stands out here. You'll have Kane hitting these bad stomach kicks and you know it blows, but then Henry will counter with two nasty clubbering arms sounding like he's beating a rug. Henry hit a knee right to Kane's jaw that was probably the coolest thing in the match, and that's saying something because put four 300+ pounders in a ring and it is impossible for there not to be cool stuff. BDV came off a little too tentative, not so much in his offense as in how he was treating the storyline. The week prior Undertaker had debuted his triangle choke on him, and they did a cool angle where V tapped quick and then bled from his mouth. He gets backed down by Taker a couple times here and obviously I was hoping it was building to Taker getting crushed and flattened (it wasn't), but V has no problems smooshing Kane. BDV really crushes Kane with a corner clothesline, and Kane pays that back by hitting his big flying clothesline that stops a few feet short of the target. This actually could have been a really cool feud with some legs to it, easily could have seen this getting a big street fight stip on a PPV, but this was always going to be a Brothers of Destruction slaughter. Henry gets big height on the chokeslam and also bleeds from the triangle, putting this epically mammoth tag team to permanent rest.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE 305 LIVE

Read more!

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.

Read more!

WXW Yokozuna Memorial Show 11/29/01

Full Show

I've never seen this show before, but had seen it in match lists, and it always stood out because of all the guys WWE allowed to work the show. Several big WWE names combined with a ton of early 2000s east coast indy guys I dig, seems like a show that might have some good stuff lurking within. There are somehow 36 guys booked onto this 2 hour show across 11 matches, so we're probably looking at a lot of 5 minute matches, and when we get to the end of this I'll likely find myself saying "Well, that's why nobody had written up that show before". But Roy Lucier threw it on Twitter, and it has a Low Ki match I didn't know existed, so let's roll those dice! (Also Reno is on this show, so dice will certainly roll)


Tommy Suede vs. Supreme Lee Great

ER: These are both guys I remember liking in my tape trading days, and wager that I haven't watched either since those tape trading days. But you know out of the gate it's going to be good because the ring announcer announces Supreme Lee Great as "ranked #498 on the PWI 500". Tell me no more. This match is worked fast, both guys running through their lines quick, but it works. SLG is a really good base, and Suede's strikes hit a lot sharper than I was expecting. Both guys threw themselves into their flying, and really didn't come off that differently than 2019 indy fliers. I mean both of them dressing like they're Matrix coders is going to come off dated in 2019, but their flashy styles could each blend in on a modern super indy card. Suede takes a super high backdrop bump, and both are good at landing on their feet after other backdrop bumps, Suede hits hard elbows, Great gets great height on a top rope elbow, their whole thing has aged surprisingly well. Little Jeanie is out accompanying Great, some woman named Arial is out with Suede, and their interference builds to a crazy moment where Arial hits a 450 off the top to the floor into Great, before Great gets pinned back in the ring by an air raid crash. I have no idea who Arial was, but there weren't too many people I had seen break out a 450 to the floor at that point (Low Ki and Extreme Tiger I know for sure, unsure who else) so it should have been a huge deal, but luckily Metal Maniac is on commentary talking about how hot both the girls are, before making poop jokes.

Afa Jr. vs. Nuisance

ER: Afa Jr. was Manu for a brief bit in WWE several years after this, and it was a run I enjoyed (and have no memory as to why it was so short). Nuisance is someone I have not heard of, but someone I enjoyed here. Make no mistake, this is an Afa Jr. showcase and was always going to be that, and Nuisance is good at setting up Afa to shine. Afa had genuine talent at this point and again, I'm not sure why it took him so long to get to WWE, or why his stay was so short once he was there. Though now that I'm looking it up he is apparently only 17 in this match, so I understand why he wasn't on their radar. But he has impressive agility here; his armdrags look a little light and require Nuisance to fly into them just to make them work, but his bigger spots seem fully formed. Afa comes off the top rope easily and lands sturdy, catches Nuisance with the back of his thigh on a spinning kick, finishes with a big frog splash, and generally works a little more daredevil junior than I was expecting. Nuisance doesn't get much but I liked the way he took offense and fed into Afa.

Danny Inferno/Nardo/Reno/Shane Black vs. Billy Dream/Protege/BADD/The Original Doink

ER: You know this is good because the guy doing commentary clearly doesn't know who at least three of these guys are. It's a mix of mostly WXW trainees and Reno from WCW (billed during his entrance as "Reno WCW"). I don't know who this Doink is, but he's only in for 30 seconds or so. All of the students are good and bad in different ways, but all come off like Power Plant adjacent guys getting a showcase match on a dead era episode of Worldwide. All of the trainees threw fixably bad punches, but in a uniquely bad way that doesn't happen often: Shane Black, Billy Dream, and either BADD or Protege had accurate punches with big wind ups, with an impact that slowed to nothing upon arrival. So they kept looking like they were going to be good punches, but consistent speed from wind up to delivery to follow through is really important, or every one of your punches will look overly pulled. But they're probably better off than guys that punch a foot past their opponent's head. Nardo is in this longer than anyone, and he's green as hell, and named Nardo, but has a lot of energy and makes weird yip sounds while doing literally anything (leapfrogs, armdrags, dropkicks, all with a bunch of high pitch yelps). A lot of these guys try rope running stuff that is beyond their abilities, and get in a little over their heads, but I like guys getting in over their heads in matches like this. Danny Inferno brings some professionalism, the cameras completely miss Reno rolling the dice for the finish, but trainee multiman matches are always some degree of fun.

The Tonga Kid/The Hungarian Barbarian vs. The Twin Tackles (Gene Snitsky/Robb Harper)

ER: The Hungarian Barbarian looks like 911, so basically he looks like a much bigger Al Hrabosky, which is a cool way for a wrestler to look. He's raw as hell, but that means he's still early enough in his career that he's throwing big dropkicks on the floor but trying to flip and land the same way you would if you threw them in the ring. Twin Tackles are a super green Gene Snitsky (picture him without all of the ring polish you remember from his WWE days) and another guy with lumpy caveman steroid head with odd stringy patches of long hair attached. Robb Harper is wearing football jersey 69, and Snitsky is wearing 67. I would love to know how that conversation went down, and I am curious why Snitsky went ahead and chose a number so close to 69. Hungarian Barbarian had a little of that Rocky Mountain Thunder energy, but this is definitely all built to Tonga Kid's big hot tag (the match was only a couple minutes long, so there wasn't enough time for things to cool down) and 2001 Tonga Kid still dropped a fantastic Samoan drop. He was so young during his WWF run that it's crazy to think he was only 36 here. Feels like a guy who should have shown up on more Japan and US indies for a decade plus after WWF.

The Island Boys (Ekmo/Kimo) vs. Cory K/Malaki

ER: Cory K's valet looks like Aida Turturro, Malaki is working an Amish gimmick, and The Island Boys looks ridiculously ready for prime time, and they elevate this to a real nice big man slugfest. Malaki and Cory K are Afa trainees who are willing to bump around for the Island Boys, Cory taking a big bump over the top to the floor and Malaki going down hard in the ring from strikes. Island Boys moved aggressively, bumping big and hitting hard. Kimo takes a huge bump over the top to the floor off a missed avalanche, and flies just as hard off the top for a rib crushing splash. Ekmo (Umaga) already comes off like a guy with major star potential, just moving with huge confidence. I don't remember them looking this fully formed and exciting when they got called up as 3 Minute Warning, my memory is telling me they were underwhelming compared to what I had seen on HWA tapes. This quick fun brawl made me want to go revisit 3 Minute Warning and look for gems.

Big Dawg Molsonn vs. Eric Cobian

ER: Here are two more large Afa trainees working a green big guys match, and it's not great, but they're stupid and they try some things. Big Dawg looks like if Dr. Death were a sloppy gamer, Cobian moves like and has a similar build to Erik Watts. All of their criss cross rope running stuff looks terrible, but Cobian hits a crazy plancha into the entrance aisle with one foot on the top rope and the other on the ringpost, the camera cuts away to the crowd during what was shaping up to big a Big Dawg overhead belly to belly suplex that I really wanted to see, and Big Dawg finishes the match with a shaky legs moonsault off the top that sloppily lands him knees first into Cobian's balls. So it was about as great as could be expected.

Billy Kidman vs. Low Ki

ER: This was the main match that drew my eyes to this card, a dream match of the era from two guys whose paths wouldn't have otherwise likely crossed. I guess Ki *was* doing frequent syndicated program job work for WWF around the time Kidman came over, so this was basically the best possible version of these two getting a match on Jakked. They would have gotten 3-4 minutes on Jakked, here they get 7, and both make the most of their time by breaking out all their tricks. Kidman was so damn exciting around this time, as he had put on a little size since his earliest WCW days but was still bumping as fast as his WCW cruiser days. So he was hitting harder than he ever had, while still moving around with a death wish. It was literally the perfect time for him to match up with Low Ki. Ki is one of the crazier bumpers in wrestling history, taking some that most guys just wouldn't be capable of taking, but here's Kidman showing that he can outbump Ki. Kidman takes crazy bumps like a guy trying to get noticed by WWF, not like a guy already on WWF PPV with a belt. And so you had two big bumpers, and you had Kidman working as stiff as Low Ki. It's glorious. Ki would be kicking Kidman's chest in, Kidman would throw tight close elbows and a couple of lariats that really looked beheading. Every strike from both guy looked really sunk in, and I loved how they worked the match as equals. Kidman came off like a big confident star and Ki looked like a guy who was outpacing a big confident star. I was just giddy through this little gem, watching Kidman take a big German suplex or Ki fly super hard into a rydeen bomb, it's a total crowd pleaser.

PAS: This was fun, this was right when Ki was at his early peak, a couple of months after the Red classic and right around the Dragon matches. This was pretty formula Ki, but 2001 formula Ki is pretty great. Eric is a little more nostalgic for 2001 WWE than me, as I don't have a ton of love for Kidman. He was fun in this though, as he didn't seem to be working total formula. He did take a huge bump to the floor, and was clearly excited returning to the fed he was trained in. I could have done without the chinlock and the stuff with the heel manager, but I also love a Ki match I haven't seen before.

Shannon Moore vs. Jamie Knoble

ER: This was a super common match up during this era. They constantly matched up down the WCW home stretch, constantly matched up in HWA, these are two guys who have a match and are good at that match. Knoble is a nice No Guilt Benoit, locking in cravats and throwing hard back elbows to get out of go behinds, pressing in on side headlocks, high backdrop bump, quick suplexes, and even cooler stuff like a nifty over shoulder backbreaker. Moore works this like Psicosis, all big bumps and daredevil flying. Moore hits a gorgeous tope con giro to the floor and a corkscrew moonsault into the ring (Knoble makes sure to get flattened by both) but also goes down with a shot for big Knoble moves and even misses a flipping bump off the turnbuckles nearly exactly like Psicosis. They really had an impressive way of working super fast go behinds and managed to do several quick "reversal of a reversal" spots without making it look like untethered dancing, actually throwing in that sense of struggle with their quick reversals. This was only 5 minutes, and they cut to the finish too quickly after Moore took a massive superplex, but it also kind of made sense as Knoble's bump off the superplex looked just as bad. This was like an even faster version of their match, and these two psychos felt like they worked better the faster they went.

Homicide vs. Skinhead Ivan

ER: The way they came out of the gates I knew we were getting a quick match, really felt like they were sprinting through a few things, but even expecting a quick match you want this to be more than two minutes. No idea why they felt they were running long, but we knew from the beginning they had way too many guys spread across way too many matches, but it's ridiculous that out of all the matches to get cut this short, it's two of the guys who actually look fully trained. Homicide and Ivan could have worked an excellent Worldwide 5 minute sprint, what's 3 extra minutes? No, we get a 2 minute match with Ivan taking a couple nice bumps, both working some super fast counters (they felt like they were rushing to the finish right at the bell), big top rope cutter from Homicide, and a nasty cop killa to end it. Homicide looked pissed after the match, rolling immediately out of the ring and not slapping hands with any of the youth who wanted hand slapping.

Kane/Undertaker vs. The Acolytes

ER: You know, this wasn't great, or maybe even good, but I just kept thinking how exciting it must have been for the kids in attendance. This was during WWE's huge boom, and these kids are getting to see Undertaker on the smallest show he worked that year. Seeing some guys in an intimate setting while they're at their recognizable peak is a special thing. Nobody went hard in this match, which would have been fine, if Kane didn't look as bad or worse than literally any of the Afa trainees on this show. There was genuinely no difference between the greenest trainee on the card (Big Dawg Molsonn?) and Kane in this match. Not only was Kane working noticeably slower and lighter than everyone else in the match, but he got crossed up on every single spot he was involved in. If someone had told you "This was Kane's first match" you would have responded "Yes that statement checks out". There was one sequence, with Bradshaw merely trying to get Kane out of the corner with an Irish whip, where Kane looked worse than anyone on the show. He couldn't figure out where he needed to be, and I was still laughing about it when he hit a clothesline on Bradshaw that was essentially Kane falling towards Bradshaw with his arm out. But the fans were flipping out for Undertaker, and that's really all that matters.

The Headshrinkers (Rikishi/Samu) vs. Da Hit Squad

ER: Well this is one of the bigger tragedies in wrestling history. Who would have ever thought these two awesome teams would cross paths? Do you know how easy it would have been for these two teams to just slam into each other for 8 minutes? The match goes 1 minute. There's a Samoan drop, and 30 seconds of the 60 is spent on Rikishi setting up the stink face. This is the worst case scenario for a match that sounds great on paper.


Men who got more ring time than Mack, Mafia, and Homicide on this show: Nardo, Big Dawg Molsonn, Shane Black, and a whollllle lot more guys who are not close to as good as Homicide or Da Hit Squad. Well, that's why nobody had written up that show before. BUT. Ki/Kidman and Moore/Knoble slayed, and those were two of the three matches that brought me here. A tremendous waste of time overall, but those two matches would easily make a perm tape.

Read more!

On Brand Segunda Caida: 90s Terry Funk

Branding Iron Match: Terry Funk vs. Virgil NWC 2/11/95

ER: Funk had a really fun formula for these 90s indy matches, and it's a formula that really gives the crowd their money's worth. He really makes sure he does a ton of stuff on all sides of the ring and even into the crowd, really giving so many of the fans an up close shot of a legend acting like a lunatic. Funk comes out with his large open flame branding iron and is literally waving it inches from peoples' faces, jamming it at the ring announcer, chasing ref Jesse Hernandez around ringside with it, almost lighting his own hair on fire rolling into the ring with it, constantly looking like a man going through with a completely terrible idea. And then he stooges around the whole damn building for Virgil. 

The match opens with Funk taking a punch from Virgil and falling off the apron through the timekeeper's table. The match literally starts with a table spot, and we brawl through the crowd from there. Chairs get thrown (and they're those solid as hell hotel conference event chairs), Funk takes spills over the ropes, gets hung up in the ropes, elbows the promoter in the head, literally hits a fan that gets too close (and if it was a plant it was extremely well done as Funk got him and then security from all over the building swarmed in and they never went back to it), throws garbage cans all over the place after emptying them, gets busted open (with the announcer regularly noting that Funk was covered in blood and ketchup and mustard), hits a big piledriver on the floor, staggers straight off the apron, eats two nasty DDTs from Virgil, just total chaos. 

The finish is overdone, but played well by Funk. He gets locked in the million dollar dream and headbutts the ref to get out of it, then wallops Virgil with the branding iron. Promising the loser getting BRANDED is an absolutely ridiculous stipulation, as who is going to actually get branded!? But Funk brands Jesse Hernandez who sells it as well as you can sell getting your flesh pretend burnt. This was not a great Virgil performance (and nowhere near as good as his genuinely great WCW heel run) but obviously Funk was going to show up. We even get a fun JYD appearance at the end (NWC was the home of the very last JYD matches) and he blasts Funk right in the chest with a hard lariat.

Terry Funk vs. Mark Henry WWF Raw 6/1/98

ER: This match is so cool, and one of the first genuinely good matches of Mark Henry's career. Sometime around March '98 things clearly began to click for Henry. His Raw match against Owen was legitimately his best performance to that point in his career, but he was also a standout in his six man tag at Unforgiven, and looked like a monster in a Shotgun squash against Jeff Hardy.  

This is Terry Funk crafting a tight 5 minute match around a still limited opponent, with Henry shining right at the moments he needed to. Lawler was obviously the expert at these matches (there's a reason so many people were sharing his King Kong Bundy matches after Bundy passed) but he's 53 year old Funk taking it to a massive Olympian. There are moments where you can see Funk guiding Henry through things, but they happen early and by the time this match gets going Henry looks like a natural. Funk dishes out chops and a neckbreaker, then more chops and another neckbreaker...except he instead heel kicks Henry in the balls while standing with the neckbreaker. Ridiculous. 

This gets really crazy when they go to the floor, as Funk tries a Vader bomb from the middle rope to the floor (!), but gets caught by Henry and slammed into the ringpost. Very unexpected. Henry takes an awesome bump tumbling into the ring steps head first, and Funk does arguably the craziest thing he did during this WWF run when he hits an Asai moonsault on Henry, crashing with almost ALL of his weight directly into the guardrail. I mean holy shit. His hip and leg just smashed into the railing, and Henry actually sold the impact perfectly, knowing to sell it as a graze and not as a KO. Lawler's, "He's 53! How many 106 year olds do you know?!" response to JR's "middle aged and crazy" quip is genuinely funny, but seriously this spot was pure insanity. Henry had to have zero experience catching a moonsault, so this was the natural result of that, but I also think the spot worked better because Funk crashed and burned so hard.. Truly nuts. Back in the ring we get a hard shoulderblock with both slamming into each other, Funk going flying, but Henry merely staggering. The smack on that collision was LOUD, and I dug Henry's elbowdrop, his legdrop that showed no light and perfect form, and his two standing splashes. It was super impressive seeing how fast Henry could scramble to his feet, serious quickness, and I really loved how these two matched up. At this point Funk wasn't really being put in a position to carry young talent in a match, and it was awesome to see that he could still craft a cool match around a talented but green opponent who had major unique abilities.

 

Terry Funk/Bradshaw vs. Too Much WWF Shotgun 7/14/98

ER: You knew this was going to be a mauling, and it was a fun one. Bradshaw honestly may have been at his best in '98/'99, as his work may have gotten somewhat smarter a few years later, but he lost a lot of that intensity and energy. He was super imposing and moved really quick, so he could have fast exchanges with smaller guys like Scott Taylor, all while it was obvious that the quick exchange was going to end with Taylor getting flattened. This was a lot of Too Much stooging, which, of course that's what it was going to be dummy, and it was great seeing those two stooge while getting occasionally punched. I think the most offense they got was a couple of tandem dropkicks on Bradshaw, and an eyerake to set those up, but there was so much movement that it never felt like an outright squash, even though 95% of this was dominated by Funk & Bradshaw. Brian Christopher takes three big bumps to the floor, Scott gets to throw a couple nice punches at Funk's jaw, Funk locks Taylor in a rolling abdominal stretch that sees Christopher running after them in circles not knowing how to stop it, all great stuff. I really liked Funk hitting a southpaw lariat to send Christopher over the top, and Bradshaw during this era really carried himself like a guy who I desperately would have sought out in All Japan and later NOAH. I like Bobby Duncum Jr., but damn Bradshaw would have been so much cooler in late 90s All Japan than Duncum. The clothesline from hell was a clothesline that should finish a match, and both of these teams ruled.

Read more!

On Brand Segunda Caida: Acolytes! West Texas Rednecks!

Acolytes vs. Blue Meanie/Gillberg WWF Shotgun Saturday Night 12/18/98

ER: This was Meanie's WWF debut match, and he's still probably one of the weirder WWF signings. I'm sure nobody actually remembers Meanie as a guy who was literally in WWF for an entire year during his initial run. And even before we knew what we knew about these guys, this match had Bad Idea written all over it. It was pretty shocking to see as it's not exactly unprofessional, but more that I've seen countless jobber matches where the jobbers were treated more human. You would have never guessed Meanie and Gill were actual members of the WWF roster if you used this match as your entry, as they don't get a single millisecond of offense, and often aren't even put in control of their own selling. There was no chance for these two to put any kind of their own personality on any part of the match, as they were essentially treated like heavy bags of sand that Bradshaw and Faarooq were trying to tear open. Bradshaw is one of the greatest "entrance ramp" guys of all time. That man had a presence to him as he was walking to the ring that reallllly made you know when an assbeating was about to take place. They jump on the JOB Squad the second they hit the ring and don't let up for three minutes. When I say that Meanie and Gill weren't even allowed to show personality in selling, I mean that once the Acolytes would do any kind of move, they would be picking up the JOB Squad before they could even process what move they were selling. Meanie at one point gets dragged into the ring by Bradshaw, tries to walk in on his own, but basically gives up because Bradshaw was just muscling him in anyway. Any move was immediately followed up by something mean; I think I counted 3 times where Bradshaw kicked Meanie right in the back after having already given him a nasty move, a real insult to injury match. Gill takes a Dominator on the floor as well as a big Bradshaw clothesline and some boots in the face, a cool gutbuster from Faarooq, both guys take big bumps to the floor, a definite massacre. I'm honestly not sure I've ever seen a 3 minute match where two guys got less time to shine. Quite the debut.

Chris Benoit/Dean Malenko vs. Curt Hennig/Barry Windham WCW Nitro 2/1/99

ER: Legitimately one of the stiffest matches in Nitro history, really felt like every guy in the match had something to prove. Benoit beats Hennig like Hennig had hurt his sister, throwing some of the absolute meanest chops, elbows, and headbutts that I've seen from Benoit. And Hennig gave it right back, working this like late AWA Hennig, still with some big bumps (his trademark flip in the ropes was especially nasty, really fast and he dropped right on his head and shoulder) but a lot of stiff chops. The chops these guys were throwing weren't just hurting the skin, they looked like they were rocking through their core. Windham looked like Terry Gordy in this, towering over Benoit and Malenko and getting across the ring super quick. He throws his diving lariat here as well as any time I've seen. Malenko is always fun when he gets mean, his snaps off some sharp elbows here and while he doesn't hit as hard and look as dead eyed as Benoit, he still fits into this. Things fall apart a little at the finish, with Benoit breaking up a finish with a diving headbutt that whiffs, but this went 10 minutes and at least 8 of them are really great.

Read more!