cabbageboy

I'd say this was the best WWE PPV of the year actually, and that is with a couple of the matches being bizarre and a bit of a letdown. I'm bewildered anyone would even dare say the Rumble is even a good PPV, much less the best. WM also had its share of mediocre crap on it. Once Orton took that spill to the floor I figured he was hurt. On HD I think I even heard him tell the ref "My collarbone is broken." HHH literally picked him up when he could have taken the 10 count, so you knew it was serious. The upside is at least it gets Orton off TV for a while, though the downside is that Raw now has no top heel at all...and once Orton returns from this injury we'll probably get him out for revenge on HHH, so we'll see this feud AGAIN. I don't know how to feel about Edge/UT. On one hand I didn't think they would seriously have UT lose with his career on the line, but after watching SD this week I had no idea how UT would fight off 4 jobbers that would obviously run in. Eventually I figure UT comes back on SD once Vicki is fired or whatever.

The Pistons of this decade are a ludicrously overrated team. Once we consider that the Eastern Conf. of this decade has been truly horrid, what exactly have they done that is special aside from being one of the top 2 teams in a lousy conference? They did win the 1 title in 2004, beating a Lakers team that was falling apart at the seams. But other than that year, here's what the Pistons have done in this decade: 2003: Nets swept them in Eastern finals. No one cared. 2005: The Heat had them beat until Wade was injured, Pistons were able to escape that series with a win, lost in 7 to the Spurs in an all time clunker series. 2006: Won a bunch of games in the reg. season, but since Wade was healthy this time the Heat beat them fairly easily in the playoffs. 2007: Blew a 2-0 series lead to the friggin Cavs and let Lebron go crazy on them. I'm sorry but in a real Eastern Conf. this team wouldn't be doing anything. The Pistons are a group of journeyman players who would be like the Charlotte Hornets or the Atlanta Hawks of the 1990s.

I found this old thread on here, and since there have been mentions in other threads of old horrible PPVs I figured some might enjoy reading this. By the way I have a new candidate for Worst PPV Ever: Halloween Havoc 2000. The last Russo Era WCW PPV and he was trying to book it with a serious concussion. It had David Flair vs. Bagwell in the DNA match, Mike Awesome vs. Vampiro with them missing every spot they try, Sting vs. Jarrett with an army of fake Stings helping JJ, a world title match with Booker and Steiner ending in a DQ, and the actual main event is Goldberg squashing Kronik.

I don't recall seeing Yokozuna until that Gardens show on Oct. 28, so was Yoko maybe just working dark matches until that point? Cause I'm pretty sure his squash match on the show I went to later aired on USA.

To get back to the Japanese for a minute, I remember a remark that Russo made when WCW hired him to the effect of "No one in America gives a shit about Japanese or Mexican wrestlers." People gave Russo a lot of hell about that interview, but didn't really understand what Russo was saying. What Russo meant (but didn't say well) was that American fans need some sort of reason to care about these guys. WCW used to throw these foreign teams onto PPVs a lot in the early 90s, when the viewers had no exposure to them and no reason to care. Boring, vanilla Japanese wrestlers hardly ever get over the U.S. Guys like Muta, Tajiri, Kabuki, Liger...these guys got over in the States because they had either a storyline or gimmick that clicked (or a cool costume). Oh and on this show, why not have Windham/Rhodes vs. the Japanese in the opening round, then have Rude/Austin vs. Freebirds as well and then set up Windham/Rhodes vs. Austin/Rude as a semi? It's like WCW booked it to reflect the way a real NCAA tourney bracket might go, instead of a scripted tourney to give fans the best matches.

Okay I watched this show tonight and man was most of it ever boring as hell. Imagine the most Russo inspired PPV ever and then imagine the exact alternate universe opposite of that and it's this PPV. The booking of the show was horrible, but in a different sort of way. This was bad booking in a way that gave fans nothing to like, nothing to cheer for, and really no one on the show worked either heel or face for the most part. First off, why did they even bother having the first round on the Clash when they could have easily put that stuff on this show and cut the match times down a bit? Several of these tag matches are ponderous and were given too much time. The biggest example of that is Windham/Rhodes vs. Hase/Hashimoto, when no one in that GA crowd knew or gave a shit about the Japanese. Yet that match got like 15-20 minutes! I was like "Who cares about this match? Just have Windham and Rhodes go through these guys in about 8 minutes and move on." Obviously Sting/Vader is the major match on this show and it was very good, but I have no clue why you would follow a heel winning the world title with two heels (?) winning the tag tourney. Wouldn't Windham/Rhodes winning at least send the crowd home sorta happy and build to a WCW vs. NWA unification? As great as Williams and Gordy were supposed to be, they were insanely boring to watch, dressed in black trunks they were like the San Antonio Spurs of wrestling. They never really wrestled as heels or faces, they mostly just sorta won and were heels by default. That was WCW's biggest, hugest problem back then....the heels were the better men! The heels should NEVER be the better men, at least not better than the top faces in straight up clean contests. They didn't cheat the Steiners, didn't cheat Windham/Rhodes....they just beat them in the middle. Vader didn't cheat Sting, he just destroyed him for 20 minutes and pinned him. This is terrible for business and for the fans. You don't have your top faces all just get beat clean as a whistle.

I'll say this about Hogan: He at least put Luger over right there with a submission. Did Flair ever put Luger over? No. I think sometimes people equate Luger being a failure in wrestling to the lame way he was booked by various promotions. The NWA had him come up short time and time again against Flair due to the most absurd crap ever conceived (GAB 88 comes to mind). Then he finally won the belt by beating Windham and not Flair. Then the WWF pushed him hard for months only to not have him actually win the title against Yokozuna.

Yeah I do think I might have seen Yoko's debut at that Oct. 1992 TV taping though. Did he wrestle for the WWF before that point? I saw Gonzalez at the March 93 house show, where he lost to Tatanka by DQ. As far as this SNME, I almost thought the IC match was FIRST on the show since I had forgotten the tag title match. I remembered Bret's match being last. This is actually a very good show, taking my heartbreak as a 13 year old out of the equation. The wrestling style back then was just so much crisper and entertaining to watch.

I'm not sure I get the whole Booker/Dudleys/Angle alliance here. It's like they are all uniting to kick the crap out of AJ Styles. I know why Kurt hates AJ, but why do these other guys have a problem with him?

For whatever reason I am just having a feeling of cognitive dissonance over the Lakers, as in I can't really figure how they are this great all of a sudden. I think that Jackson may get his 10th and Kobe his 4th but it might happen next year.

You know, is it just me or was DDP quite good on the mic even back then when he first started out? You could tell he had some sort of future in wrestling, though I have to admit it's bizarre seeing him as a manager when he's a bigger dude than either Tanaka or Diamond.

I've made it through half of this show so far but I have to say Alex Wright interrupting the Nitro Girls by doing his silly dancing was brilliance.

I voted for Boston in 7. The Lakers have had home court in every round thus far but won't have it in this series. It's like on one hand I'd like to see Jackson get his 10th, but a part of me thinks Kobe needs a bit of a humbling this year (then he can win a title or two later).

These AWA shows are a lot of fun, since I didn't get to see them at the time. I was in grade school and didn't get home from after school day care until about 5:00. I did get to see plenty of Global on ESPN circa 1992 though, so hopefully ESPN will start showing that once these AWA shows run their course.

Well, for one thing virtually all First Blood matches suck since the gimmick itself sucks. Oooh, a guy starts bleeding, let's call for the bell! It resolves nothing and in this case is a cheap way for JBL to get a win without really having Cena put him over. That said, this show very well could be hell on wheels good. HHH/Orton is totally played out but this should be a very good match if it's like the previous LMS. Edge/UT is likewise played out but TLC should rock on this PPV.

Yeah I don't think that was Killer Kowalski. I recall Big K talking about some stuff from the past so I figured he was some old dude that was a wrestler, but they needed to emphasize who he is a bit more than they did. See, with Memphis while I have mentioned in this thread that in 1988 they were probably the strongest of the 3 promotions (AWA, CWA, WCCW) by no means was their business booming really. They popped a big crowd for Lawler's title win over Hennig, but if you read Foley's book he goes into Memphis' struggles in the late 80s. Guys went from making $1500 a week 5 years earlier to making like $300 a week by 1988. But since I'd say Memphis' TV was still good stuff and they weren't really going under that the CWA was still better than the AWA or WCCW.

You know, the Spurs to me are going to go down as a fairly ho hum team to win so many titles. I mean the Lakers beat them handily in 5 games here, and when Shaq was there they used to bury the Spurs every year (aside from 2003, which was kind of an injury plagued year for the Lakers). In fact 2003 is really the only time they beat a Phil Jackson coached team, since I think Rambis was coaching the Lakers in the shortened 1999 season.

I read elsewhere that it's a rumor that UT might end up on Raw and HHH might finally move over to SD. I am torn on how I feel about that if it did happen. On one hand it's nice to see UT back on Raw, and amusingly HHH will finally work Tuesdays. On the other hand it's the same crap we went through in 2005 with champs switching shows just to keep the same stale challengers (like JBL) going in the main events. For instance if HHH goes to SD he'll likely feud with Edge, while UT will feud with Orton for a while.

I too am baffled at the Big K. I have no idea who this guy is and yet he shows up every show acting like he's some really well known guy given us his take on wrestling. That said, I enjoy these shows for the time being. This last show had a bit of Lawler/Dundee from Memphis thrown in and there was ZERO context as to what was going on here. I'm sure there was some actual feud going on in Memphis yet the AWA simply shows the ending of the match cold. No reason why Lawler reached into his tights for a foreign object, etc.

Yeah that was the show with Bret and Bigelow. It also had Tatanka vs. Giant Gonzalez on it. It was a memorable night for me on a couple of levels: 1. My mom, my friend, and I were sitting next to some really scary rednecks. 2. My friend Chris brought his tape of The Chronic with him and that was the first time I had heard it.

Eddie/JBL was a good match almost entirely due to Eddie's massive bladejob, but it's hilarious to hear people pimp JBL due to this match.

Oddly enough I kinda like N2R 98 since I laughed my ass off at Terry Funk running in on half the matches on the show. It's about the context, I wouldn't put up with that from a WCW PPV for instance but with ECW I went with it and had fun. I've never seen that WrestlePalooza show. Besides there wasn't anything on either of those ECW shows that wrecked the company, or hideous booking, etc. With GAB 91 I have seen some individual matches on it, stuff like Oz vs. Ron Simmons, OMG vs. El Gigante, Sting/Nikita. It's hurt by the deadest crowd ever, but there wasn't anything so offensive in any of it that made me scream "This is the worst shit ever!"

I don't even remember some of that stuff, but wow I recognize a lot of those jobbers in retrospect. That was the first show I ever went to and I had a blast. The next show I saw was a 1993 house show in March and it had like 9 matches or something, I was disappointed since I had seen 35 or so!

D'Amore is a decent booker I have a feeling when he isn't on TV himself or booking his boys. Know what I mean? Cause the Team Canada stuff was all pretty much trash and I truly detested his awful on screen persona. I sense the hand of Dutch Mantell in the women's booking. Don't ask me why exactly, maybe it's the Memphis style head shaving and such.

This is the equivalent of the old "I walked a mile in a foot of snow..." stories. Yes dammit, I had to watch 4 Nailz matches at my very first wrestling show. And I loved it dammit! The world title match on that show was Bret vs. Kamala, very early in Bret's first title reign. Oh and since it was maybe the last big TV taping of 1992 they had the returns of Jannetty and Backlund on that show, so there were some pretty interesting things on it. I bet there were 35 matches in total, I loved it.