From: hekunze@barrow.uwaterloo.ca (Herb Kunze)
Subject: Wrestling TidBits   -   12/28
Date: 1995/12/29
Message-ID: <DKBsw7.DqB@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>
X-Deja-AN: 123087616
sender: news@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (news spool owner)
organization: University of Waterloo
newsgroups: rec.sport.pro-wrestling

{ This is really just a quickie post-Starrcade wrap-up.  Happy new year to
  everybody.                                                               }

 - WCW's Starrcade took place last night.  I'd give the show a definite
   thumbs up, even though a few of a the tournament matches were not
   great.  Highlights were:
    - Shinjiro Otani vs. Eddy Guerrero.  A super match.
    - Koji Kanemoto vs. Alex Wright.  An excellent match.
    - Jushin Liger vs. Chris Benoit.  A very good match, marred by an
      incredibly disappointing finish.
    - Ric Flair vs. Lex Luger vs. Sting.  A surprisingly good triangle
      match, even when Lex Luger was in.  When Ric Flair is up for a
      show he can still deliver an awesome performance.
    - The apparent ascension of the Four Horsemen.  With Ric Flair's
      WCW Title win, one can only hope that the Four Horsemen will get
      a better position in the mix.  I can even take the occasional
      major screw job involving the Horsemen, but it will be hard to
      create the right balance for my tastes.  Brian Pillman looked
      very good in his brief run-in on the PPV, having lost a lot of
      of weight, including the small gut he'd developed over time.
   Lowlights were:
    - The commentary.  Dusty Rhodes was definitely an unwelcome addition
      to the commentators' table.  He added nothing positive to the show,
      IMO, and added a lot of negatives.  Argh.  Tony Schiavone spouted
      a few New Japan facts and then claimed to have "done his homework."
      At least he knows the difference between a German suplex and a
      dragon suplex; it doesn't help when his co-commentators crack jokes
      about the move names in response.  And Tony was out of it when
      Kanemoto went for a tiger suplex.
    - The pre-match bit with Sonny Oono vs. Kimberley; I thought it was
      incredibly tasteless.
    - From a booking standpoint, I found it stupid that they spent a lot
      of time building up Masa Saito as the experienced captain of the
      New Japan team and then had him lose to Johnny B. Badd by a senseless
      disqualification.  This made the commentators look idiotic, not that
      I minded all that much.
    - Sting mentioning that "the internet" had a "top ten list" of reasons
      why he changed his hair colour.  What's the point?  Oh well, it was
      nowhere near as bad as Hulk Hogan's surreal interview last time
      around.

 - The big news continues to be all of the talent movement rumours that
   I listed last week.

 - The WWF has the Royal Rumble PPV on 01/21/96.  The line-up has:
    - Bret Hart vs. Undertaker for the WWF Title
    - The Royal Rumble match.  Jeff Jarrett is the first guy in.

 - WCW has a Clash of Champions on 01/23/96.  Tentative line-up has:
    - Nasty Boys vs. Public Enemy

 - The RAW vs. Nitro ratings war thus far looks like this (draw
   your own conclusions):

                   WCW Nitro                  WWF RAW
              Rating  Share  Live       Rating  Share  Live
   09/04/95     2.9      ?     Y            -      -     -
   09/11/95     2.5    3.8     Y          2.2    3.2     N
   09/18/95     2.4    3.4     Y          2.5    3.4     N
   09/25/95     1.9    2.8     Y          2.7    3.8     Y
   10/02/95     2.5    3.7     Y          2.5    3.5     N
   10/09/95     2.6    3.8     Y          2.6    3.8     N
   10/16/95     2.2    3.2     Y          2.5    3.6     N
   10/23/95     2.2    3.2     Y          2.6    3.8     Y
   10/30/95     2.5    3.6     Y          2.2    3.1     N
   11/06/95     2.3    3.2     Y          2.1    3.0     N
   11/13/95     2.0    2.9     N          2.6    3.9     N
   11/20/95     2.5    3.6     Y          2.3    3.3     Y
   11/27/95     2.3    3.3     Y          2.5    3.4     N
   12/04/95     2.6    3.8     Y          2.4    3.4     N
   12/11/95     2.6    3.7     Y          2.5    3.4     N

 - WCW has SuperBrawl on 02/11/96.

 - The WWF has an In Your House PPV on 02/18/96.

 - The WWF has WrestleMania in April.  The projected line-up has:
    - Bret Hart vs. Royal Rumble winner (Shawn Michaels?) for the WWF Title
    - Diesel vs. Undertaker

 - WWW: My home page is at http://barrow.uwaterloo.ca/~hekunze.  The
   wrestling portion includes this post, tape lists, awards history,
   Japanese wrestling stuff, and other things.

 - Videos: I have posted something about the availability of videos.
   If you missed it, I'll send it to you in e-mail upon request.
   The VideoMarinepiad III home video is now available.

                                                         Herb...