From: hekunze@barrow.uwaterloo.ca (Herb Kunze) Subject: Wrestling TidBits - 01/30 Date: 1997/01/31 Message-ID: X-Deja-AN: 213414590 sender: news@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (news spool owner) organization: University of Waterloo newsgroups: rec.sport.pro-wrestling [Wrestling TidBits] --------------------------------------------------------------------------- I do not offer subscriptions to a mailing list! I do not e-mail images! --------------------------------------------------------------------------- I will be submitting my doctoral thesis in the next week or so. This means that I should finally be able to get a few stagnant things on the page updated (PPV buy rates, tape list, pics). Thanks for your patience. At the request of several people, I've adopted an image naming standard to make things easier for people who are collecting pictures. Names are 8 characters of the form ppaabb##.jpg, where pp is a promotion prefix, aa is the first two characters of a wrestler's last name, ditto bb, and ## counts images involving those wrestlers. I'll always put the wrestlers' names in alphabetical order. If an image is a promo shot of one wrestler only, bb will be the first two characters of the first name. I've also shrunk and softened the watermark I put on my images, so you'll find that much less obtrusive. When I've submitted my thesis, I'll start keeping an index of pics, with descriptions on the Pics page. I'm also going to stop using absolute addressing in TidBits. This makes links load more quickly, but it means that anybody linking this page will not see any images loaded. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pictures of The Week This week's big pictures feature All Japan action, with Jun Akiyama getting suplexed by Toshiaki Kawada, and Jun then returning the favour. Jun is easily one of my favourite wrestlers in Japan; he and Kawada often suplex the stuffing out of each other. I've also included a promo shot for Chikako Shiratori's video. Chikako is one of the younger wrestlers in All Japan Women. It is quite routine for the stars of Japanese women's wrestling to put out videos or hard cover photo books with very mild nudity. The wrestling product is always based on athleticism and strongly avoids any hint of T&A, but the wrestlers also try to build a star or idol image. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [ Giant vs. Sting ] [ - ]NWO Souled Out took place on Saturday night. The show was definitely nothing special; on paper it had promised one excellent match (Syxx vs. Eddy Guerrero). Unfortunately, that one excellent match turned out to be only good (***), making the whole show a disappointment. They did a good job of giving the show a different feel; but, I didn't really care for the differences: terrible live band, stupid camera shots. They did a Miss NWO pageant during the show that was among the most abysmal non-wrestling-related elements on any wrestling PPV ever; it supplanted the Gobbledygooker's debut as the worst such element in my book. The undercard consisted of mostly 1/2* to *1/2 matches. The only exception was Buff Bagwell vs. Scotty Riggs which hit **. Bagwell debuted a new finisher that was pretty cool: he did a somersault off the turnbuckle towards a standing Riggs, grabbing Rigg's head en route and taking him down for a neck breaker. Despite the match being worse than expected, Bagwell shows promise as the arrogant heel, I think, and he's really become a hell of a good worker (remember the Phantom Stranger in GWF? Who would guess he'd improve this much?). Steiners vs. Hall & Nash was about what you'd expect if you acknowledge that none of these guys really wants to work too hard any more. They did a hokey finish where the Steiners won the match with Randy Anderson's three count. Again, this match was ** at best. Giant vs. Hogan delivered little as well, as neither of these guys can really do anything. I'd give the show a thumbs down over-all, but not the "worst PPV ever" tag that many people are giving it. We've seen other shows of mediocre matches with a negative star match thrown in. In fact, from a wrestling perspective, it was at the same level as the WWF's Royal Rumble the previous Sunday. I got some heat in e-mail last week for calling the Rumble an event filled with ** matches at best, but, IMO, anybody who even moderately praised the Rumble's wrestling and dumped on NWO Souled Out's wrestling is being completely unfair. It's interesting to look at what the Observer had to say about the Rumble. The preliminary poll results were split 43% thumbs up, %46.1 thumbs down, and 10.9% thumbs in the middle. On individual match, Dave Meltzer writes: * Helmsley vs. Goldust: "...Helmsley has potential, but at this point, he's being pushed only on potential and politics, and because he's got a good head of hair. His work is only slightly better than average and his interviews and persona are below average....**" * Ahmed vs. Faarooq: "...Better than expected. *1/2" * Vader vs. Undertaler: "...Not a good match at all.... *1/4" * AAA trios match: "...The crowd didn't even know Aguayo and once that was the case, the match had no chance. To make things worse, for whatever reason, the giant screens in the building were turned off for this match until the final 90 seconds and since 95% of the crowd was watching the screens rather than the ring the entire show since they were too far away to actually watch the ring, it made a dead crowd that much deader. This made the match seem worse than it really was, not that it needed much help to look bad.... *" * Rumble: "...This wasn't one of the better Rumbles, nor one of the worst. ***" * Michaels vs. Sid: "...Shawn did a few nice bumps to carry things, but really the match was carried by the crowd heat as Sid looked really bad and the match was mainly long rest holds that they were able to get away with because of the crowd heat.... **" And overall comments, "From a match quality standpoint, this wasn't a good show. The Rumble was a one-man show with nobody else even making a dent. Michaels, bothered by the flu, had his worst PPV match in several years, although in his home town with a crowd that had come largely to see only one match, it came off well as a spectacle and to many hid the workrate. Sid may also have not been 100% due to having an auto accident nine days earlier although he had worked three house show dates in the interim, as he did almost nothing. The crowd shots and generally strong production were the highlights of a show that contained average to fair wrestling. The booking was way below par as only one match, a Mexican trios match that nobody cared about, had a finish that didn't involve either a referee screw-up or outside interference. I enjoyed the show based on the atmosphere, because the size of the crowd and the heat and the emotion in the title match is something that even the best matches on the biggest shows of the year can't duplicate. But if any two other wrestlers in front of that crowd, or those two wrestling in front of any other crowd, or for that matter any other two wrestlers in front of any other crowd, had move-for-move the same match, it would be a one-star match and people would be vehement about how awful a world title change match it was." My opinion of the Rumble (last week) was pretty much the same (and I received some e-mail saying I was anti-WWF; I wonder if I'm anti-WCW this week?). My attitude towards Souled Out is close. The match quality was close to the same, with the ladder match taking the place of the Rumble as the best, but only mildly good, match of the show. Both main events were pretty lousy. The booking on both shows was fraught with screwy stuff. The commentary was lousy on both shows, with embarrassing moments on each event. The big difference is the atmosphere and the production elements. I hated the special camera they used at Souled Out, the Miss NWO contest, and the live band. When comparing wrestling shows, I think you have to focus on the wrestling first and foremost. These shows were equivalent on that front. Rumble squeaks a thumbs in the middle because the wrestling was **ish at best, but the atmosphere & other elements (ignoring commentary) were great. NWO gets a mild thumbs down because the wrestling was **ish at best, but the atmosphere & other elements were poor. From a wrestling standpoint, both shows were put to shame by the free Clash of Champions in this week of much live wrestling, because of the great Dean Malenko vs. Ultimo Dragon match and the trios match raved about last week (rated ****1/2 and ***1/2 in the Observer, respectively). [ - RAW ] this past week was back to being bland, after the better than average live show last week. We always rave about the production values of the WWF, yet it seems like the post-production on the taped RAWs really hurts the atmosphere of the shows. This time around, Doug Furnas was pinned by Davey Boy Smith. Surely, all of the recent losses are setting things up for LaFond & Furnas to win the tag titles at the February In Your House, where Smith will likely turn face. [ - ] It appears that All Japan and Frontier Martial-arts Wrestling have reached an agreement of some sort, but factual details are still non-existent. Shohei "Giant" Baba met with Atsushi Onita in a hotel room to discuss working together. Various top All Japan guys have spoken openly about not wanting to work with FMW. So, they are working the Japanese public before announcing whatever arrangement they've reached. FMW surely has no leverage with All Japan; any joint show will almost definitely feature All Japan wrestlers winning in most every match. Should Onita decide to wrestle again, he's the only guy that I can see being put over, and then only by somebody who is on the down spin. With all of these minor interpromotional things happening in All Japan and New Japan, the Japanese fans' appetite for interpromotional matches between the big two has been whetted. Just like in North America, though, you've got to think that politics can never let it happen. [ Misuhara Misawa vs. Akira Taue ] [ - ] Masa Chono returns to New Japan on 02/02, taking Scott Norton & Buff Bagwell along for the tour. New Japan will use the NWO angle in this tour. It's possible that Bagwell could get over. [ - ] The WWF has [In Your House ] on 02/16/97. Line-up features: * Bret Hart vs. Steve Austin vs. Undertaker vs. Vader in a no DQ elimination match for the WrestleMania WWF Title shot. * Owen Hart & Davey Boy Smith vs. Phil LaFond & Doug Furnas for the WWF Tag Titles On paper, this looks like a better than average show already. Now, if only the Undertaker is the first guy eliminated from the main... I look for a title change in the tag match and a face turn for Smith. [ - ] WCW has SuperBrawl on 02/23/97. Tentative line-up has: * Hollywood Hulk Hogan vs. Roddy Piper for the WCW Title [ - ] WCW has Uncensored on 03/16/97. [ - ] ECW has their first PPV on 04/13/97, airing from the ECW Arena from 9pm to 11:55pm. Tentative line-up includes: * Sabu vs. Taz * Terry Funk vs. Sandman vs. Stevie Richards in a triangle match for a title shot against Raven later in the show * Shane Douglas vs. Pit Bull #2 for the TV Title * Great Sasuke & Gran Naniwa & Gran Hamada vs. Dick Togo & Taka Michinoku & Terry Boy [ - ] The WWF has [In Your House ] on 04/20/97. [ - ] [Nitro ] beat [RAW ] on 01/13 with a 3.4 rating (5.1 share) against a 2.3 rating (3.3 share). Nitro's two hour broadcast rating is averaged. The detailed ratings are a click away. [ - ] I will try to get the PPV figures updated in the next week or two. Apologies. The details as they stand are available. [ - ] The WWF has [In Your House ] on 05/11/97. [ - ] The WWF has King of The Ring on 06/08/97. [ - ] The WWF has [In Your House ] on 07/06/97. [ Giant vs. Sting ] [ - ]The WWF has SummerSlam on 08/03/97. [ - ] The WWF has [In Your House ] on 09/07/97. [ - ] The WWF has [In Your House ] on 10/05/97. [ - ] The WWF has Survivor Series on 11/09/97. [ - ] The WWF has [In Your House ] on 12/07/97. [ - ] 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. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks to: Masaki Aso. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Click here to return. E-mail: hekunze@jeeves.uwaterloo.ca