Newsgroups: rec.sport.pro-wrestling From: hekunze@jeeves.waterloo.edu (Herb Kunze) Subject: Wrestling TidBits - 05/21 Message-ID: <1992May22.011509.19543@watdragon.waterloo.edu> Sender: news@watdragon.waterloo.edu (USENET News System) Organization: University of Waterloo Date: Fri, 22 May 1992 01:15:09 GMT Lines: 293 - Rumour has it that Randy Savage is talking to Vince about getting more money or threatening to walk. - Mr. Hughes, Ricky Morton and Big Josh have all been informed by WCW that their contracts will not be renewed when they expire. WCW will book them on a nightly basis when required if the wrestlers agree. - Super Invader (Hercules) and Big Van Vader will be teaming against the Steiners to bridge the gap before Sting's single title defence against Van Vader at the Bash PPV and before the Steiners' program with Terry Gordy & Steve Williams begins. - Steve Williams & Terry Gordy debut this weekend on WCW Saturday Night. - Jake Roberts should be appearing in WCW in the next couple of weeks. - Lex Luger will have his own posing time at the WBF Championships on PPV in June. There's talk that the Ultimate Warrior and the Legion of Doom will also be somehow involved in the the show. - Videotape: The master copy of the video is done. The match list appears below. The original items selected by the members of the newsgroup that took the time to be part of the process almost filled the six hours of the tape. The tape has room for about six hours and ten minutes, so I took some personal licence in adding two more items to the tape. The list gives the tape time for each match, the description of each match, my * rating for each match (out of *****, which I rarely give), a footnote number if there is more information on that item, a video quality (abbreviated VQ) rating for each item (on a scale of 5 - again, I rarely give 5), and the original ranking of the match as determined by the votes of the newgroup members. The matches are separated by a few seconds of blank screen (most often, video traders just run everything together, but I felt it would be nicer to separate them out a bit). As I mentioned before, I will be in Germany from May 29th until June 13th, so it looks like I won't be able to mail any copies of the tape out until I return from my trip. I will distribute copies of the tape as follows: 1. If you are interested in purchasing a copy of the tape, send me an e-mail note saying so. I will acknowledge your request and tell you your number in the request queue (assuming I'm in the country when you mail me ;-)). 2. When I return from my trip, I will step through the queue, and, in batches of some manageable size, e-mail people and tell them to put their cheque or money order in the mail. The cost of the tape is $25. 3. The same day I receive a cheque or money order, I will throw a copy of the tape in the mail to that person and send them an e-mail note to let them know. 4. I will continue working through requests in batches (on a first come, first served basis). Copies of the tape will be made on TDK E-HG T120 tapes (or possibly Sony extra high-quality tapes, if my stock of TDKs disappears) at EP speed. I have no idea how long it will take to get everybody that is interested a copy of the tape. I have to work in batches (as opposed to posting my snail mail address, say) because I do not want to get swamped with work on this - I'd rather have it at a constant reasonable rate. If you are at all nervous about the quality of the video or audio or matches on the tape, then *wait*. I'm sure that we can ask the first few risk takers that get a copy of the tape to post their opinions on it. I won't suddenly stop distributing copies of the tape. Many of you who have never traded tapes may be expecting something quality-wise that I just can't deliver. This offer is open to people in the US or Canada. If you are in Australia or Europe and want a copy, I'll have to dig up the overseas postage rates for small packages and get back to you. Here's the match list: Time Match Rating FN VQ Rk 0.00.08-0.43.39 - Re-cap of the Dump Matsumoto vs. Chigusa Nagayo hair vs. hair feud ****3/4 (1) 3.00 13 - 08/28/85 - Chigusa loses a hair vs. hair match to Dump (clip) - 09/10/86 - Chigusa singing pre-match, Dump runs in with scissors, beats up Chigusa and tries to cut her hair - 09/12/86 - Press conference contract signing for hair vs. hair match; Dump tries to beat up Chigusa afterwards with a dead chicken - 11/07/86 - Dump vs. Chigusa in a hair vs. hair match 0.43.45-1.03.33 - Bull Nakano & Condor Saito vs. Dump Matsumoto & Yasuko Ishiguro ****1/2 (2) 2.50 23 from Koga, 11/86 (shaky video quality) 1.03.36-1.29.06 - All Japan Women 05/19/91 TV Aja Kong & Bison Kimura vs. Esther ***** (3) 4.50 10 Moreno & Manami Toyota for the WWWA Tag Titles (2 out of 3 falls) 1.29.12-1.42.27 - Tiger Mask vs. Dynamite Kid from 1981 **** (4) 3.50 17 1.42.34-1.56.32 - Jushin Riger vs. Naoki Sano from 7/13/89 ****3/4\ 4.25 10 1.56.40-2.11.36 - Jushin Riger vs. Naoki Sano from 8/10/89 ****3/4| 4.25 8 (Riger loses the title) |(5) 2.11.45-2.20.06 - Jushin Riger vs. Naoki Sano from 9/20/89 ****3/4| 4.25 12 2.20.13-2.35.33 - Jushin Riger vs. Naoki Sano from 1/31/90 ***** | 5.25 1 (Riger regains the title) / 2.35.43-2.44.46 - Jushin Riger vs. Pegasus Kid ****3/4\ 3.75 7 from 8/19/90 (Riger loses the title) |(6) 2.44.51-2.51.20 - Pegasus Kid vs. Jushin Riger ****1/2| 4.50 19 (from 11/01/90, Riger regains the / title, only last minutes aired) 2.51.30-3.08.09 - Keiji Muto & Masa Chono vs. ****3/4\ 4.50 16 Kensuke Sasaki & Hiro Hase for the | IWGP Tag Titles from 11/01/90 | (Hase & Sasaki win belts) | 3.08.18-3.23.51 - WCW SuperShow from Tokyo Dome 3/21/91 |(7) 5.00 25 Steiners vs. Hiro Hase & Kensuke Sasaki ****1/2| for the WCW and IWGP tag titles | (15 mins, real match length 18 mins) / 3.23.59-3.33.16 - Steiners vs. Road Warriors from **3/4 (8) 4.25 18 Starrcade '89 3.33.24-3.51.16 - Bruiser Brody & Stan Hansen \ vs. Terry & Dory Funk from 1982 ****3/4| 3.00 6 (tracking lines on video) |(9) 3.51.22-3.59.19 - Bruiser Brody & Stan Hansen **** | 2.50 22 vs. Abdullah The Butcher & Carlos Colon | from 1986, Puerto Rico (arena brawl) / 3.59.24-4.09.04 - Lex Luger vs. Bruiser Brody from Fort \ Lauderdale, Fl., 1986, in a cage match **1/2 | 3.50 2 (raw, Brody shoots on Lex after | ~5 minutes) |(10) 4.09.11-4.18.21 - WWF & SWS Wrestle Dream from Kobe, Japan | 04/01/91, Earthquake John Tenta vs. n/a | 4.50 3 Koji Kitao (shoot, Kitao gets fired | after) / 4.18.28-4.34.02 - WWF & All Japan Tokyo Egg Dome Card, 4/13/90, Randy Savage vs. Genichiro ****1/2 (11) 3.50 20 Tenryu 4.34.09-4.52.44 - WWF & All Japan Tokyo Egg Dome Card, 4/13/90, Hulk Hogan vs. Stan Hansen ***3/4 (12) 3.50 15 4.52.52-5.06.41 - Fantastics vs. Midnight Express from ****1/4 (13) 4.25 21 Clash of Champions I 5.06.52-5.12.50 - Eddie Gilbert & Terry Taylor vs. Sting & Shane Douglas postmatch **** (14) 3.25 24 brawl with Chris Adams running in. Great brawl in concession stand, quadruple juice. 5.12.59-5.14.22 - Cactus Jack jumps off his house onto a n/a (15) 4.00 5 mattress - Cactus Jack vs. Eddie Gilbert from \ Pennsylvania Hall in Philadelphia, PA, | in a best two out of three match | match, 08/03/91: |(16) 5.14.36-5.25.15 - Match 1: Falls count anywhere ****1/2| 3.75 4 5.26.15-5.38.45 - Match 2: Stretcher match ****1/2| 3.25 9 5.38.45-5.58.56 - Match 3: Cage match ***1/2 / 3.50 14 5.59.04-6.07.35 - Stan Hansen & Terry Gordy vs. Jumbo Tsuruta & Yoshiaki Yatsu (great brawling/wrestling/heat) ****1/4 x 6.07.39-6.09.14 - Lead-in clips for an 02/88 New Japan n/a x Pro-Wrestling episode (to set the Antonio Inoki vs. Big Van Vader and Hiro Hase vs. Shiro Koshinaka matches) Footnotes: (1) Not a lot of pretty wrestling in this match, but the intensity of the wrestlers and the crowd is incredible. Dump was out of control in the match, using all kinds of weapons on Chigusa and the referee. The referee juiced from a nunchaku blow. (2) Chigusa Nagayo was attacked by Dump a month or two earlier to this to set up their second hair vs. hair match, so Chigusa attacked Dump here before the match. Chigusa beat up everyone for the first 6 minutes. Match was a great brawl, with scissors, chain, oil can, nunchakus, kendo stick and Dump playing babyface (she was AJW's big monster heel, and is still emulated today by Bull Nakano and Aja Kong). Dump and Bull were regular tag team partners at this time and when the match finally got underway, they hedged about working against each other to tease the crowd a bit. Eventually, they went crazy on each other, and at the end teased the break-up before getting back together. Commentary is in English. (3) Aja Kong and Bison Kimura are both pretty large women, near or over the 200 pound mark. They work incredibly hard. Esther Moreno was in AJW from Mexico, and stole the show here. She juiced a gusher and kept on working like a little dynamo, doing all kinds of nifty moves: moonsault, moonsault out of the ring, Frankensteiner, etc. Esther may be 100 pounds. Manami Toyota is a little bigger, but still small. She's the most flexible woman in AJW. When she's put in a Boston crab, the soles of her feet touch the back of her head. Her ability to bend like this helps to sell a lot of moves. I voted for this match as the best match I saw in 1991 in my year end achievement awards. (4) Sean Ryan tells me that this was Satoru Sayama's debut match as Tiger Mask. The crowd went nuts for all of Tiger Mask's spots. Dyanmite look great: really ripped, but nowhere near his steroid filled WWF days (He was probably <225 pounds). This isn't their best match, but I have no other singles match pitting these two against each other (only tag matches involving them). (5) The Jushin Riger vs. Naoki Sano series provided pro-wrestling fans with some of the best matches we will ever see. Sano had been a reasonable performer prior to this series, but would never have been considered a main-eventer. Keiichi Yamada and Sano had trained together and had, in fact, worked against each other in their debut match in 1984. After winning the IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Title from Hiroshi Hase, Riger handpicked Sano to be his first feud. (Yamada maintains a strong control over Riger's programs. He designs Riger's costumes, too). Sano didn't waste the chance to shine. He did everything imaginable to get over with the crowd, throwing caution to the wind to execute one more high-risk spot. The 01/31/90 match was voted match of the year by the Observer. It stands alone as probably the best match you'll ever see. Yet, watching the series of matches in order is like watching a great story being told. In their first match, both guys got caught by the other's flashy moves. In the next match, they had a counter move. In the next, a counter to the counter. Unbelievable story-telling. Naoki Sano would end up leaving New Japan Pro-Wrestling shortly after this feud to work for Super World Sports. He dabbled a bit with shooting, and is now the SWS/WWF Jr. Heavyweight champion. (6) Jushin Riger's second title loss came at the hands of Pegasus Kid (Chris Benoit). These two matches show you Riger losing the title and then regaining it a few months later. (7) Some IWGP Tag Title changes. The first match has Hiro Hase & Kensuke Sasaki winning the belts from Keiji Muto & Masa Chono; they would lose these belts a couple of months later to the Steiners. I guess the first match is a little more intense because the crowd didn't know what to expect and was very hot. In the Steiners vs. Hase & Sasaki match, the crowd generally knew that Sasaki would be doing the job and while the match was great, the crowd was a little less hot. (8) I'm not sure why there was so much interest in this match. It came in 18th in the voting. It's a pretty good match by North American standards, but if you watch all the preceeding AJW and Riger matches in the same sitting and then hit this match, you'll probably be tempted to hit the fast-forward button. I guess I really hated the cheap finish. (9) A couple of very good Bruiser Brody matches. I'm not sure if the match against the Funks is the All Japan Tag Tourney finals match from 1982 or not. They had a few matches in this time frame and (as is often the case in the world of video trading) I don't know exactly which match this is. It is great, though. The fans filled the ring with streamers during the ring announcements (as is often the case in older Japanese matches), and the streamers were swept out of the ring by an attendant. Later in the match, Terry Funk would take a bump out of the ring and land in the streamers, roll around a little, and be completely covered in them (You honestly can't see him at all - the streamers were about a foot high where he took the bump!). There are some tracking lines on the bottom 10th of the screen that sometimes flare-up. The match is so good that they are easy to ignore, though. The second match is a brawl throughout the arena in Puerto Rico. The cameraman follows the wrestlers when they leave the ring and retreat to the locker rooms. They brawl up and down several flights of stairs, through the showers, etc., and somehow end up back on the arena field. Pretty insane. These matches may actually give you an appreciation for Stan Hansen too if you don't already have one. (10) Two legitimate shoots. The first is raw camcorder footage of a match between Bruiser Brody and Lex Luger from Florida. The rating is for the actual match, which only lasted 5 minutes. After that, Brody decided to have some fun with Luger, who got really worried really quickly. Luger ended up throwing the referee aside so the ref would have a reason to end the match and then Lex didn't even wait for the cage to open, instead just climbing over it and hightailing it back to the locker room. The other shoot is the one that would see Koji Kitao get fired from SWS. This one is filled with Tenta swearing at Kitao for playing dirty. These were probably of interest more for curiousity than anything else. (11) Genichiro Tenryu and Randy Savage have wrestled twice against each other. This is their first meeting. I have both matches, but this one is far superior, with some of that being due to Sherri, and a little being due to the hotter crowd (this is from the WWF's first Egg Dome show, where Vince papered the house with American servicemen, so the reaction is very North American). I believe this match has Savage's first power bomb bump ever, and it was clear he didn't know how to take it properly. (12) This is the highest rating I've ever given a Hulk Hogan match. Stan Hansen carried the Hulkster through a very good match, making the big guy look great at all the right spots. The Americans in the crowd were into Hogan's gimmick, and the Japanese in the crowd were into Hansen being over, so the crowd was very hot over all. This match is available on a Coliseum Home Video, but it was felt that the original match, with original crowd reactions (I don't know if Vince changed them for the Home Video) and Japanese commentary (as opposed to Sean Mooney, or whoever) was highly preferred. (13) I have a few matches involving the Fantastics and the Midnight Express. This match was phenomenal. Everybody involved worked incredibly hard. (14) They brawled into the concession stands, whacking each other with beer kegs, tables, garbage cans, and chairs. A really good brawl. (15) Cactus jumps off the roof of his house onto a mattress. I guess some friends (or brothers?) are there and one tapes it on a camcorder. Cactus would send this tape around to promoters to show how crazy he is to see if he could break into the business. (16) These matches are raw comcorder footage, and so we aren't treated to the luxury of a variety of camera angles, etc.