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

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Loosely Formed Thoughts on WWF Unforgiven 4/26/98

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Owen Hart vs. HHH

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. New Midnight Express vs. Rock n Roll Express 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. Evening Gown Match: Sable vs. Luna

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5. New Age Outlaws vs. LOD 2000

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

6. Inferno Match: Undertaker vs. Kane

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

6. Steve Austin vs. Dude Love 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Best Matches:

1. Steve Austin vs. Dude Love

2. Undertaker vs. Kane

3. Owen Hart vs. HHH

Worst Matches: 

1. Sable vs. Luna

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

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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

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On Brand Segunda Caida: Vince McMahon

Vince McMahon/Steve Austin vs. The Rock/D-Lo Brown WWF Raw 5/11/98

ER: This was only the second time Vince put himself in a match on Raw, here as Austin's surprise partner. That means Vince was going to stay on the apron the entire time while Austin fought the Nation by himself for nearly 10 minutes. There was no chance Vince was going to do any exchanges with the Rock or D-Lo, although it would have been hilarious in retrospect if D-Lo Brown was the guy tasked with working Vince through exchanges in maybe his first ever match. Peak babyface Austin can do a match like this in his sleep and make it look good, and the crowd stays into every single movement he does the entire match. Vince is limited to a real wrestling strength of his: smirking on the apron like a guy who has it all figured out, every time Austin starts getting outgunned. 

Vince comes in to distract the ref and prevent an Austin tag, wearing his stupid bodybuilding pants while directing Patterson and Brisco. They're smart and don't have any long extended heat segment on Austin, so he always feels like a guy flying back into frame once you think the fight has been broken up. He cuts D-Lo off with an unexpected Thesz press, throws Rock to the floor, conks Patterson and Brisco's heads together, hits Rock with a mean clothesline on the metal ramp (with Rock bumping it on his shoulders like a lunatic), and Austin fighting against the odds was always a very entertaining role for him to shine within. The match ending bedlam was great, with Austin hitting D-Lo with a stunner, Vince coming into the ring and finally getting physically involved by pasting Austin with a stiff arm lariat. Patterson and Brisco try to hold Austin for McMahon but he fights them off (Brisco takes this great flipping bump after Austin punches him away), and suddenly Dustin Rhodes of all people comes out to fight the Nation with DX coming in close behind as we fade out. I remember watching this show with my friends in high school and all of us lost it during the main. All we wanted was Austin kicking ass and handing out stunners. 

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Cactus Jack is Who In Her Lonely Slip, Who By Barbiturate

Cactus Jack/Mr. Hughes/Big Van Vader vs. Steiner Brothers/Sting WCW Main Event 2/9/92 - EPIC  

PAS: What a murderers row in this six-man match. This was a super early Sting and Vader interaction and while it was brief, you could see the the magic that might be there. But the best match up was actually Sting versus Mr. Hughes. Hughes was clearly super underrated, he moves at a really shocking speed here, and goes over huge for slams and dropkicks. He was a college football standout, and moves like an elite athlete. He and Sting have a rope running exchange which looks like a pair of middleweight luchadores, not super heavyweight American wrestlers. It always fun to watch the Steiners throw folks, and they toss all three heels. Cactus was pretty minor in this match, he gets manhandled by Scott a bit and throws some of his fast forearms, but this was mostly a battle between the superhero faces and their giant opponents, and it was a blast. 

ER: Look at the heel team! Look at that face team! How do you pick a least favorite with a match like this? This was a match with no bad pairings, and a ton of noteworthy ones. Rick came off like the more electric Steiner here, really taking it to Vader and going even harder at Cactus. Cactus mainly got thrown on a heavy ass belly to belly by Scott or got Rick jumping on him from the apron, but Vader wasn't playing that. Vader came in throwing full arm lariats and dropped Rick straight down with a back suplex when Steiner tried to get a headlock. They build nicely to a big Vader/Sting showdown, but seeing Vader level Rick and Rick come right back was just as cool. Mr. Hughes is an insanely fast monster, a guy who should have been a new generation One Man Gang or a Japan superstar but we have such little footage. He takes an insane backdrop and works so fast for a guy his size while landing with such a wallop, it's easy to picture him as Vader in WCW. 

Cactus Jack/Chainsaw Charlie/Steve Austin/Undertaker vs. The Rock/Faarooq/D-Lo Brown/Kama Mustafa WWE 12/29/97 - GREAT

ER: My god this ruled. This was Terry Funk's return match to WWF, a post-Raw dark match I didn't realize was online, a fantastic house show style main that you know absolutely slayed everything else on the show. Funk is in his Chainsaw Charlie "gear" (what the hell was that about again?) but a few smart fans start up "Terry" chants whenever he's in. This is really the only interaction we got between Funk and The Rock, and it's a real trip seeing Funk stiff him up with hard right jabs and a big left. Funk also takes a fast bump over the top for Faarooq, all while wearing weird old man jeans, dusty red shirt and stockings over his face. Honestly his Chainsaw Charlie gear is probably the most "Alabama abandoned strip mall indy show attended by 13 people" look that ever made it onto WWF television. 

Austin works like an absolute fiend when he's in, and it's always shocking to me when WWF Austin works super fast. Here he's the quickest guy in the match (although admittedly there aren't tons of known speedsters here) and he absolutely crushes Rock with a falling elbow at one point, all while wearing his impossibly tight jorts. Rock was really great on the apron, honestly he could have stayed there the whole match and it would have been wonderful (even though his stuff in the ring was standout). At one point Kama interferes from the apron with a kick, and falls awkwardly into the ring over the top rope, trying desperately to slide back onto the apron as if nobody would notice the dude just literally fell into the ring. Rock looks over at him and gives him a thumbs up. I died, then watched it a few times. The finish is rushed, Undertaker only gets in right at the end and hits a chokeslam so weak that it was like he was practicing how he was going to chokeslam Mae Young, but damn was this whole thing still a blast.

PAS: Cool showcase for Funk, Austin and Rock stooging. I agree with Eric both on the speed and explosion in which Austin worked and the weird tightness of his Jorts. I mean he was wearing sexy lady showing off her ass at the club level tight Jeans shorts, I am not sure how he even walked, much less wrestled at that pace. Funk is on one here with crazy punches, big bump over the top, homeless schizophrenic wrestling gear. Rock is really entertaining working as an almost Jim Cornette level stooge, isn't a role I have seen him in a ton but he is a great clowning heel. He should be the villain in the Home Alone remake.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE CACTUS JACK

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WWF Raw 6/8/98: A Fine Episode of Wrestling TV

I didn't feel like watching AEW tonight, but here's an old episode of Raw filled with a ton of pairings that I loved. I did not write about any of the DX segments, but they happened - were plentiful - and were skipped. 

Kama Mustafa vs. Ken Shamrock

ER: This was an opening round King of the Ring match, and they worked it like a 3 minute round in a Different Style Fight. That's exactly what you want from this pairing, and it's one of the best Kama performances we have. He came off like a cool shoot fighting monster here, integrating kicks and strikes with cool big man pro wrestling like a heavy avalanche, hard clothesline to Shamrock's chest, and a brick wall shoulderblock. This had a nice Brawl for All feel to it, but if the fights were actually interesting in a worked way. Kama should have worked like this more often. Shamrock always tried weird things in the first year of his WWF run, here he gets caught in a big slam after leaping up knees first into Kama's shoulders like he was going for his rana on someone super tall, or adlibbing a chest breaker. Shamrock gets a cool roll into the ankle lock, this whole thing ruled. 

Marc Mero/Jeff Jarrett vs. Faarooq/Steve Blackman 

ER: This tag has a cool FMW feel to it, even though it features four guys who didn't work FMW. It's got a martial arts guy, a boxer, a Memphis guy, and a tough guy power wrestler. And they all wrestled as those exact styles so the whole thing was a constant style clash in the best way. Blackman was working somewhat awkwardly timed karate sequences, Jarrett caught Blackman in a nice Russian legsweep, Mero threw punches, Faarooq threw big blocks into shoulder joints and yanked on an arm, it was great. Over in less than 3 minutes, cool combination of the roster. 

Scorpio vs. Owen Hart

ER: This was always a great pairing, and this match is no different. We got this pairing a lot, and it felt more like a regular WCW series, like Malenko/Eddie. The crowd was real icy here for no reason, certainly not for lack of effort. I think Scorpio was pretty low profile at that point and people weren't taking to Owen's tough whiny guy heel turn. Confusing characters aside, the ring action was as fun as you'd expect. They were the only guys on this episode to go off the top rope, and they still worked as snug as the other matches. So you had sturdy landing German suplexes and a big heavy Scorpio crossbody, each had stiff spinkick variations, nice mix of snug work and flying. Owen takes out Scorpio's leg with a real nasty chop block, cool way to set up a submission finish. 

Chainz vs. Darren Drozdov

ER: Chainz was the worker of DOA, but it was pretty surprising to see him (fairly easily) beat Drozdov here. I liked the way they ran into each other, liked how Chainz actually made Droz duck on clotheslines, and thought Chainz made good use of his offense. He's got a good big boot, and a great high rotation powerslam, and he missed a kneedrop off the middle turnbuckle like he was Bobby Eaton. Droz at this point didn't have the poise of a wrestler, not quite blending from one spot to the next very well. Did that get better by a year later? I honestly don't remember anything about the in ring abilities of 1999 Droz. Chainz was gone from WWF this same month, so again it's so weird seeing him get a clean win off a Death Valley driver (was that Chainz' finisher?), but hey, I'm a Chainz guy. 

Mark Henry vs. Vader

ER: These two weren't in the same place for long, so I'm glad we got a few singles matches out of it. This was the first of their singles matches, and I imagine if these two crossed paths in another time, another place, we could have had some real classics. I still loved what little we got here, it really felt like something that could have been good for both if they ran with it. You know it's a big hoss battle when JR compares them to at least four different kinds of animal (we got bulls, Clydesdales, thankfully avoided comparison to large apes, but I got nervous the more he kept running through the large mammals), and it's awesome that these two are not only identically sized but really similarly built. They both do cool full arm strikes while refusing to budge, both standing chest to chest and throwing arms at the side of heads. 

Henry leans way into throwing a huge elbow strike, Vader boxes his ears, and we get some cool attempts at Vader slamming Henry. Henry makes a show of doing a clean jerk on Vader, snatching him up and walking with him a bit before slamming, and then hits a great elbowdrop and great legdrop (Vader sells the legdrop like Henry landed all his weight on his eye socket). It feels like a big moment when Vader finally bodyslams Henry, and I liked how they set up Henry powerslamming Vader, with Vader leaping off the middle buckle into him and Henry turning it into a slam. Sadly, Taker limps down to the ring wearing sweatpants and a weightlifting sweatshirt that hugs his gut, then relies on these two leaping into his chokeslam. Taker was interrupting stuff all night and it made Henry and Vader look like real dweebs to just lie there and put up literally no fight whatsoever. They should have flattened him together and then formed an unstoppable monster tag team, then taken that tag team to All Japan. 

D-Lo Brown vs. Dan Severn

ER: Thankless crowd, but some great stuff happened here. Severn was a little slow on the draw, more hesitation than in his other WWF matches so far, but D-Lo did a really great job of filling in the gaps. Severn kept locking in these real constricting rear waistlocks that led to some heavy landing amateur takedowns. D-Lo throws some nice overhand rights and was surprisingly good at neutralizing Severn as Severn went for takedowns. I don't remember seeing matches with much D-Lo grappling, and I can't imagine he was doing a ton of that pre-WWF vs. Wolfman or Power Ranger in Smoky Mountain. But you could see it here as Severn goes after takedowns like a Pitbull and D-Lo is great at grabbing Severn's leg to block things and make his body dead weight. That dead weight makes Severn's big suplexes look earned and finisher worthy. D-Lo knocks Severn down with a nice calf kick, then taunts him and clubs him while down, leading to Severn grabbing his arm and throwing him with a trap arm belly to belly. 

Severn's German suplex is a real highlight, and this one was closer to a Tamon Honda Dead End than any other suplexes being thrown in 1998 WWF. Severn threw D-Lo much more like an MMA suplex, the form looked a lot like Frank Shamrock dropping Igor Zinoviev. It would have been a cool time to try a stoppage finish. The match was already getting a completely icy reception, it's not like a KO stoppage would have made things worse. The German didn't read as a pro wrestling suplex, it made no loud ring bang noise, it was just a crazy throw. I'm sure it would have made Severn look like more of a threat than the bow and arrow submission he finished D-Lo with, if only because the application of the hold took far longer than it should have. The hold itself looked awesome when it was fully applied, looked like he could snap D-Lo in half, but the application was unnecessarily sluggish. Still, the overall match was one of the strongest match-ups for Severn, and I wonder what a full return match would look like. Wait is this the submission that lead to D'Lo getting his chest protector? Maybe it was a worthwhile finish. 

Val Venis vs. Dustin Runnels

ER: This had a kind of weird match dynamic on its face, as Venis got his full entrance and long pre-match promo, while Dustin was already waiting in the ring. But Venis works heel through the whole match, and Dustin gets arguably the best in ring babyface reactions of the night. The crowd was mostly quiet ALL NIGHT through a lot of wrestling, but when Dustin comes out of the corner punching Venis and hitting a swing for the fences lariat to knock Val to the floor, the crowd was loud and alive. They don't fully capitalize on that reaction, as they quiet things back down as Venis controls with decent punches, and I liked how they worked through a miscommunication. Dustin had gotten Irish whipped into the ropes and came out with a great back sell, dropping to his knees after it sounded like he knocked the turnbuckle loose. Val had clearly been running in with a clothesline right as Dustin dropped to his knees, and Val took the opportunity to use his outstretched arm to lock in a sleeper. I really like how they transitioned things back to Dustin, with a good version of that transition Faarooq always puts in matches, where he catches knees to his balls after dropping his weight down on his opponent. Venis works it far more plausibly than Faarooq and Dustin aims the knee perfectly, and Venis was incredible at selling his balls, doing his hip shimmy as a ball sell instead of as a towel removal. Dustin hits an inverted atomic drop after, just to give us more of Venis selling balls. Dustin practically takes Val's arm off with a great arm drag, and the crowd reacts big to his dropdown uppercut and great old school style bulldog. Sweatpants Undertaker also interrupts this one with chokeslams for both, so we get deprived of another finish. It was cool to hear the crowd so fully into Dustin, as I'd remembered the Runnels Era being a more unappreciated era for him. 

8-Ball/Skull vs. LOD 2000 vs. New Age Outlaws

ER: I really like Washed LOD. Both still do cool things while also occasionally stumbling and/or losing their balance, it gives this great vulnerable monster feel to their matches that was never there. Animal works a fast rope running/drop down exchange with Gunn and hits a great powerslam and Hawk hits a nice wobbly enziguiri after an exchange, adds in these little suck it taunts to the Outlaws all match, love my old washed boys. The Outlaws were the ones who saved this, as they actually looked great. The highlight for me was this great drop toehold/kneedrop combo they did, which I get sounds like a way to backhand compliment a match, except it was a perfect drop toehold/kneedrop. Gunn's drop toehold was especially great, really grapevines that leg to force a faceplant, right at the exact moment Road Dogg is there with a knee. Billy Gunn was great at working with Animal and there was this cool Road Dogg moment against 8-Ball where he skidded to a stop after ducking a clothesline before reaching back with a punch. This is the match that made the "Outlaw Rule" as both wind up in the ring together while the other four guys have to distract themselves so none of them can get in the ring in time to break up the pin. JR even points out what fucking idiots LOD and DOA are for trying to get the NAO to fight. Strong Outlaw performance in a mostly bad match, but the Outlaw highlights were enough, while Sunny in her Never Hotter LOD 2000 gear at ringside was undeniable. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE WWF 305 LIVE

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On Brand Segunda Caida: Mark Henry/D-Lo Brown

I really liked the late 90s Mark Henry/D-Lo Brown team. It was early, raw Mark Henry trying out new things every week, and it was really the only time Mark Henry was a tag wrestler. For a guy around as long as he was, it's kind of cool that he was only a semi-regular tag partner to D-Lo, but they were a super complementary team. It didn't last long, so I'm going to tackle all of their matches.


Mark Henry/D-Lo Brown vs. The Head Bangers WWF Raw Saturday Night 9/12/98

ER: Damn this was good! It got robbed of an actual finish, but this was a good tag match. Fans responded louder to the Head Bangers than they did to a lot of people on this show, and D-Lo actively sought heat throughout played more to the crowd, which kept them much more engaged than during the other matches. D-Lo works some fun fast rope running exchanges with them and we get an actually awesome Santo up and over sunset flip spot between D-Lo and Mosh. Santo would join WWF a couple months after, I'm going to just assume that this was Mosh staking his claim to the offense before he got there. Thrasher is quoted on documentary film stating he was going to steal a move from Mike Modest. These Head Bangers are no good move thieves! It's a great spot, Mosh leaping up for a rana but D-Lo catching him, fighting for a powerbomb before Mosh goes up and over. They built nicely to Henry coming in, Head Bangers keeping him away. And Henry is cool when he comes in, moving quick and hitting a nice press slam. What didn't I immediately see in this man? The match was worked pretty even, which I liked here, as it gave us cool spots like Head Bangers hitting a cool vertical suplex on Henry, but also stuff like Henry catching a crossbody and holding it and walking around before hitting his powerslam. D-Lo hits his awesome running powerbomb (though for it unexpectedly made me feel odd, since I had seen Droz working a match earlier this same episode), they have a couple nice double teams, and I dig the dichotomy of D-Lo's nice legdrop and Henry's crazy vertical leap elbow. Chyna runs in to attack Henry, so we don't actually see where all this is going...but I see these teams matched up a couple more times. They had some magic going here. I'm curious if they can sustain it.

Mark Henry/D-Lo Brown vs. The Head Bangers WWF Raw 11/2/98

ER: A weirdly paced match, as it kinda felt like they were all killing time until the inevitable Kane run-in, and Thrasher clearly tweaks his knee within minute one and continues to work. You can easily see the moment the injury happens, as Mosh shoots D-Lo into the ropes and Thrasher comes off the middle buckle with a clothesline. Thrasher lands it on his feet and every part of the landing looks awkward. He still works as much of the match as Mosh, but he's noticeably hopping through it. There's a nice spot where Henry catches Thrasher on a crossbody, walks around getting him in position for a powerslam, but then eats a missile dropkick from Mosh to get them a nice nearfall. Later Mosh tries to leap up for a rana on Henry and - much like when he tried the same thing two months prior with D-Lo - Henry catches him, planting him with a spinebuster. Henry also throws a few nice low missed clotheslines, and drops a nice legdrop (something he didn't use for much of the rest of his career). Thrasher really impressively guys things out, even doing a team vertical suplex on Henry; I know it's a team spot, but he was still doing some lifting. D-Lo takes a big flapjack bump and Thrasher continues to surprise by hitting a pescado!! Now again, there was a feeling of waiting around for Kane, but I give them credit for getting Henry the hell out of Dodge so people didn't get a visual of Kane easily dispatching him with a chokeslam. That's something. We'll see if they mention Thrasher's knee injury during their Survivor Series match a couple weeks later.

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On Brand Segunda Caida: Bill Irwin in WWF (Non-Goon Edition)

So Bill Irwin is a guy I've been digging a lot lately, and I had planned on writing up all of his matches as The Goon. But then I noticed three separate appearances he made with WWF - two Before Goon and one After Goon - and that kind of stands out. Were these tryout matches only televised? It's odd for an established guy to just work occasional one off matches with a major fed without having some kind of deal. But, here we are. Three non-Goon WWF Bill Irwin matches, and they are all genuine gems:

Bill Irwin vs. El Matador WWF Mania 1/16/93

ER: I love these kind of oddities. Here we get a territories battle between two guys who would have never crossed paths. I don't know why WWF brought in Irwin for a one-shot debut at the age of 38 (we already established they also brought in and pushed Pierroth at 38, which makes me - a 38 year old man - still feel viable) but it's a fun match. Tito works armdrags and hiptosses, Irwin takes a couple surprising bumps. The first is off a do-si-do hip toss, where they keep reversing each other until Irwin is tossed over the top to the floor. Later Irwin gets plastered by the forearm and falls butt first out the bottom two ropes to the floor. Irwin always has a couple surprises, from something little like a short jab, to something unexpected like a slingshot splash. The finish is cool too, with Tito hitting the forearm to the back of Irwin's head, almost like a slash attack. Irwin would not appear on WWF TV for another 3 years. The announcers talked the entire time like Irwin was an actual established guy, he got his "Wild" Bill nickname announced, got to  use the bullwhip before the match, then he went and had a great match...but this was it for 3 years. 

Bill Irwin vs. Duke Droese WWF Superstars 3/16/96

ER: Oh, so...this was great? This was really great? Is Duke Droese actually great and people haven't told me about it? This was during the era when I was not watching wrestling, so I have blindspots throughout (when I started playing catch up 20 years ago I wasn't running through Superstars episodes from a couple years prior to do so), but never remember hearing anyone talk up Droese. Droese fires off hard and fast straight right hands to start, and absolutely nothing was skimped on. Droese's punches looked great, he keeps a good base on his chops so he can throw them fast and cutting, lands boot on kicks to the stomach, even clonks Irwin with a hard trash can shot behind the ref's back. This whole thing was pretty relentless and Irwin hit back just as hard as he was being hit, hit a diving headbutt WAY too far across the ring, scraped his boot across Droese's face in nasty fashion, hit a full extension pump kick that didn't seem like it would reach (he started way early as Droese had barely come off the ropes) and yet it landed clean, clubbed him hard in the back of the neck, oh, AND Irwin takes a crazy high speed Harley Race bump to the floor. Irwin gets whipped in, flips backwards to the floor, hits the apron just about headfirst and then spills to the floor. Irwin took some great bumps in his first two WWF matches (three years apart), so we can only hope that he's the curly haired bump freak that WWF lost when they sent Berzerker on his Viking funeral. This whole match was an excellent pairing. It was a total hidden gem, just the tastiest peanut butter/chocolate combo, and it ruled.

Bill Irwin/Kit Carson vs. Mark Henry/D-Lo Brown WWF Shotgun 2/21/98

ER: The third and final of our "Bill Irwin" matches in WWF, and he remains an odd guy to only be bringing in for occasional job duty. If that's all they wanted out of him then I'm sure it would have been easy to offer him full time work, put him in a team with Windham or Bradshaw or job him out on weekend shows. But it's also weird for them to bring in a guy in his mid-40s for job duty, so I don't know what to make of these scattered Irwin appearances. I do know that WWF talent has looked fantastic opposite him (which again makes it weird that he wasn't used full time, this Irwin ouroboros is confusing me) and that's what matters. This match is basically about the asskicking team of D-Lo and Henry. D-Lo was a mean dude here, and everything he did landed hard. Hard punches, back elbows, and the best lariats I've ever seen him throw. We get this awesome sequence of Irwin getting ahold of D-Lo's left arm and wrenching it, leading to D-Lo rattling his teeth with a right back elbow, unspooling his arm from Irwin (like he was rewinding a Rainmaker), and nails him with a short arm lariat. Hell yeah. This was early in Henry's TV time with the company, and he had just joined the Nation a month before, so he was green but clearly had the goods. I loved his brick wall stuff, big man elbowdrop, and two humongous slams. His powerslam finish is great, and a huge arc Henry powerslam topped by a D-Lo splash is a great team finisher. This made me want to go watch a bunch of D-Lo/Henry tags.

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On Brand Segunda Caida: More 90s Terry Funk!

Terry Funk vs. Tito Santana NWC 10/8/94

ER: To my knowledge none of the '85 WWF Santana/Funk matches made tape, which is a shame as those two in '85 would have been perfect dance partners. And we know this even more, because they were pretty perfect dance partners here, almost a decade later. Early 90s Funk was about as much of a guaranteed great performance as you could get on a 90s indy card. You know people were talking about Funk on the way home from these cards, which was no small feat with people like Sabu on the undercard. Funk just knows how to own any environment. The Aladdin theater was a big venue with a cool concrete riser in the middle for performances (it's one of several places my mom saw Neil Diamond "in the round"), so you knew Funk was going to incorporate that. Pre-match Funk is almost always as good as in-match Funk, and here he stalks and hobbles around, whips his ring gear at fans, bullies the ring announcer, and then laces right into Tito. Every strike exchange between the two was fire, and Terry takes a big bump over the top to the floor off a Tito chop. 

All of the crowd brawling was really exciting, as Funk threw stuff around like a modern (younger) LA Park, ripping up the guardrails, throwing garbage cans, scaring girls that were in the front row, clonking Tito with a can, laying him out with a piledriver on the floor, the stuff you'd be flipping out for had you wandered in off the strip that night. Tito gets some nice comeback moments, gets to eventually pay Funk back with his own great piledriver, smacks Funk through the ropes again (with Terry taking a fun tangled up in ropes bump to the floor), and we get a really nice moment where Tito is on his knees, and Funk keeps rearing back to wallop him with a left, but Tito keeps punching him in the gut each time. It was a really nice twist on a babyface fighting back to his feet, arranged like only Funk can. We even get Funk tossing out a few headbutts only to stagger around before going down like a felled tree. Even after Tito wins you get Funk kicking the ref out of the way so he can choke out Tito with his wrist tape. This is the perfect environment for Funk. The dude should have done a Vegas residency.

Terry Funk/Cactus Jack/Steve Austin/Undertaker vs. The Rock/Faarooq/D-Lo Brown/Kama Mustafa WWE Raw 12/29/97

ER: My god this ruled. This was Terry Funk's return match to WWF, a post-Raw dark match I didn't realize was online, a fantastic house show style main that you know absolutely slayed everything else on the show. Funk is in his Chainsaw Charlie "gear" (what the hell was that about?) but a few smart fans start up "Terry" chants whenever he's in. This is the only interaction we got between Funk and The Rock, and it's a real trip seeing Funk stiff him up with hard right jabs to the chin and a big knockdown left. Funk also takes a backwards bump over the top for Faarooq, and does it while wearing weird fitting old man jeans, a dusty red longjohn shirt, pantyhose pulled over his face. Honestly his Chainsaw Charlie gear is probably the most "abandoned Alabama strip mall indy show attended by 13 people" look that ever made it onto WWF television. 

Austin works like an absolute fiend when he's in, in that way where it's always shocking how fast WWF Austin works can work. Here he's the quickest guy in the match (although admittedly there aren't tons of known speedsters here) and he absolutely crushes Rock with a falling elbow at one point, all while wearing the most impossibly tight light wash jean shorts. D-Lo was a standout on the Nation side, a great foil for all the babyfaces. His energy plays so well off them all. Rock was really great on the apron, much better than any time he was in the ring. His apron work was so strong that he could have stayed there the whole match and it would have elevated everything. He makes a show of not tagging D-Lo's hand multiple times, and Rock makes fun of partner Kama Mustafa at a crucial point. Kama tried interfering from the apron with a kick to Foley's back, but Foley hits the ropes so full that Kama falls awkwardly into the ring over the top rope, struggling desperately to slide back to the apron as if nobody noticed the 300 pound dude who literally fell into the ring. Rock looks over at him and gives him a thumbs up. I died, then watched it a few times. Nobody ever falls into the ring by accident, it's incredible we caught it on camera. The finish is rushed, Austin gets an effortless Stunner on Rock and Undertaker only got involved at the finish, but these Big Star dark matches are always small gems.

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Matches from Black Label Pro 8/18/18

C.W. Anderson vs. Filthy Tom Lawlor

PAS: Always excited to see CW, he really should be the next old guy to get the PCO indies push, he is still excellent and doesn't seem to have lost a step at all.  I really liked the opening mat exchanges in this, it wasn't shootstyle at all, but Lawlor is also really good at basic hammerlock, drop toe hold headlock US territories matwork. There is some great punches, a cool guillotine choke counter of a spinebuster and Lawlor doing a go-to-sleep into a sleeper and putting someone to sleep. You would expect this to be a styles clash and it wasn't at all.

ER: I wanted more out of this one, but I like these guys, and overall I liked this. C.W. really is ageless (not only in the way he moves, but facially he still looks really young for being late 40s) and I fully back him getting a big tour of the indies. Really I have no clue how he hasn't been brought in as a veteran presence in NXT. I liked how the two kind of met their two styles in the middle, with Lawlor working more wrestling holds and throwing a heavy, non-stylish German suplex, and C.W. throwing more elbow strikes than normal but not attempting some silly MMA crossover. I love the way Anderson moves in the ring and I loved the build to that big left hand (coming not long after a new thrust headbutt that he's been integrating), and Lawlor grabbing a guillotine choke to block the famous spinebuster was a really great spot.

PCO vs. Darby Allin

PAS: This is an on paper banger, which doesn't fully live up to it's promise. Allin is my WOTY so far, and PCO has become a super hot act. This never fully kicked in though PCO has kind of morphed into almost an Undertaker like monster character, I love the videos, but I think it is a weaker in ring act. The WALTER match worked because it was kind of a wild sprint. This match was kind of ponderous, and even killer Darby spots didn't get as big a reaction. I did love his tope with PCO draped over the guardrail, and his big senton looks great. Destro coming out with the car battery is kind of goofy, and really ground the match to a halt. Some fun stuff, but ultimately disappointing.

ER: Same. I think the PCO hype train is a little off the rails at this point, and really I'd just want to see Quebecer instead of this quirky Frankenhooker character we got now. He moves a little stiffly and slowly, and is also now doing Undertaker no-selling, and it's kinda hard to tell sometimes which he is doing because his staggering sell looks nearly identical to his Undertaker no-sell. He bumps big but there can be a delay to his bumping, so sometimes there was awkwardness waiting to see if he was just going to no sell Darby and let him bounce right off...or let him bounce right off but then also bump. But once this gets going it was good. The very beginning is fun, with Darby hitting a hard dropkick that believably knocks PCO through the ropes, then gets caught on a dive, and Darby blocks a chokeslam by landing feet first on the apron. Coo, sequence. PCO takes a plausible Code Red and we also get some neat stuff with big splats: PCO catching Allin and slamming him into guardrails before powerbombing him into the rail, and then a sick powerbomb across a few chairs. But I love how Darby is a guy you just can't take your eyes off. Once PCO heads back to the ring Allin is leaping over him, catching him on the railing, and then hitting a bonkers tope to PCO while he's draped over the railing. Absolutely crazy spot (I wrote "absolutely crazy spot" before I watched the match, with Allin it's just a matter of where I put it in the review of any of his matches, not if I'll need to). Allin also hits one of his all time great cannonball sentons off the top (shame we didn't actually get a battle of the cannonballs here, mais ce sont les pauses), but here's where Destro comes out to freaking Andrew Lloyd Webber like he's a Wednesday night dinner theater magician, then puts us through an act more interminable than the magician who was working the Wednesday day shift. PCO and Allin - who have kicked the shit out of each other the whole match, are now just forced to lie motionless in the ring, selling more damage than any one of them has ever sold. We've seen Allin get concussed and break his elbow, pretty sure he sold doing his own senton more than he sold any of those actual injuries. And then PCO sees if that's still the case and drops Allin on the back of his head with a package piledriver. There were flaws before Destro did his routine, but that just left my sails totally windless.

D-Lo Brown vs. Joey Janela

ER: This is of interest because we've all seen Janela attempt to break his neck doing crazy things in a wrestling ring, but now he's in the ring with an actual certified neck breaker. But this match was fine. D-Lo is bigger (I appreciated Dave Prazak's speculation that the added size might be because D-Lo was wearing his chest protector underneath his t-shirt), but not crazier like PCO. Still, this was a perfectly fine older star/younger indie guy match. D-Lo had loud chops, dropped a great elbow, took a low and fast dive from Janela (that sent D-Lo sprawling down the entrance). There was nothing spectacular, but nothing bad. They didn't bog it down with comedy, kept the shtick to the opening sequence, D-Lo hit signature spots and took a big bump off the top when Janela tossed him while attempting the Lo Down, and it went the right time. Expectations, met.

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