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The Masked Reviewer reviews old school UWF...
Topic Started: Jun 11 2010, 08:30 AM (663 Views)
themaskedreviewer
Oglethorpe
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...but not super old-school. We're starting from Gold Rush '98 and going to the eve of Gold Rush '99 in this first edition. Why? Because that's when in my eyes, the UWF got readable. I started with some old '96 and '97 cards and just nope. Outside of a few people, a vast wasteland of not so great stuff.

Note, I did a stream of my brain thing through '98, then starting with L&I '99 actually started to take some notes.

Random Thoughts on getting through '98

* One, the jump in average RP and card quality jumps up huge throughout the year.
* Second, is this the first Pride face-turn? Because I've known we've been through a ton.
* Bishop wins the title, then retires. Really guys? Well, at least we got a long tournament to crown a long-term...oh Jericho jobbed the title to Alex Kidd right away? Oh.
* The Reformer? Where did he ever go to?
* Alex Kidd's heel run was quite unimpressive. Probably because he was only around for half of it.
* Scott Rogers debut in UWF! Awesome!
* Michael Augistine debuts...as part of a MLWO angle? Wow, 1998 was a long time ago. Oh, and Steve Spector in UWF. Forgot about that as well.
* The Mark Cutter run in MLWO does remind me somebody should do a promo from the MLWO Arena or what's left of it in Baltimore.
* Lots of tag teams I didn't remember.
* But, I do remember Paul Wong. Ah, Paul "I'm sorry for random powerbombs" Wong.
* Oh, and way too many real world references for my liking.
* It is a weird thing to read a UWF card w/ no women's division. I know this will end soon enough.
* 'Phantasm'. Wow, kinda lame.
* The beginning of the Kyle Backwood - CJR feud.
* Steve Ryott destroying a woman...again. Hrm.
* Next up...Live & Interactive 1999!


L&I 1999
* The Legion are falling apart! OH NOES!
* Serge Annis in the pre-show match? Ouch. Oh wait, here comes Willis & Ivan. Beatdown. But Annis 'Taker's up.
* I forgot Scott Rogers was actually a quasi-face for a while. Eh match, it descends to a brawl with Willis/Bryant vs. Annis/Rogers
* Decent aerial/comedy-style match for the Skyweight title. Ah, Snappy the Alligator & Joey Valachi. A story of love begins.
* The younger Vexton vs. younger Kidd. Decent match. Genoice kills Vexton. All is well in the universe.
* Sean Watts is in the UWF. Whatever happened to him?
* Cruiserweight tournament? Why were there two cruiserweight-type titles at this time? But hey, it's a better version of Chyna versus a Harlequin, who I mark for.
* Wow, Shawn Ryott hates women. A lot.
* Ryott vs. Garavello in the other Cruiser title. And here comes LiR to beat up Ryott! Interconnecting feuds FTW.
* Daniels in a career vs. career match. *Looks at the current roster* Well, I know who might win this match.
* Tag team battle royal! I don't really care! Ah, this is where the Machines came back.
* I'm basically scrolling past the dance off contest. It's humorous, but we got time contraints people!
* Ouch, Acorn just killed Garavello. And Tragedy's your new Cruiser champ. Yay for him.
* 8-man wackiness for the US title. Big plus for skipping six of the eight entrances.
* I will say it's nice bump (at the time) in prestige for the US title that relatively top guys like Reed, Backwood, and Spector were all fighting for it.
* Tawni gets hit, Osbourne kills men and as a result. Backwood picks up the belt. Nice way to continue the Backwood-Reed feud.
* Daniels vs. Ryott. Fun match and here comes Annis & Rogers. Wow, that was a TNA finish. Nobody loses!
* Fabolous Ones © vs. Twister. Fun little match and Kelli Perch turns on her own team. New tag champs!
* Alex Kidd vs. YGW. So, Kidd's a heel again after defending Paul Reed's honor? Hmm. OK then. And, the Tim Vexton Presidency is over. Well, at least your hometown is a good place to resign.
* Awesome match betweem Kidd & YGW w/ the return of Alicia Powers. THat got a little soap-opera-ish for me, but solid finish and hey, YGW doesn't choke in a main event!

Brawl from the Mall 2

* Paul Reed Memorial was a nice little show. No real angle advancement, but fun matches with Rogers playing Joey Styles
* Brawl from the Mall 2. Fun little beginning w/ Owens making an entrance via helicopter.
* Hey, it's Augustine's debut match. Nice promo to break himself from the MLWO angle. Oh, and he kills Taurus.
* 4-way tag dance I didn't really care about. No Fat Chicks, Masters of Motion, and Too Damn Sexy are all basically the same team. Oh, and the Darknight Express.
* Heh. The Scud vs. Elliot segment was fun stuff, and the Skyweight title vs. Alligator could be fun stuff. The running joke of who banged Scud is fun stuff and hey, here comes Osbourne. Nice promo basically telling Andrew Parker he's going to die.
* Tragedy vs. Valachi. Fun little angle advancement match oh and Tragedy's a heel. I think. Kinda. Oh right, he's a Harlequin.
* Goldstone & Cameo promo. They're in love. So beautiful. This will not end well.
* Jimmy Dangerous, AEWA champ but a midcarder here. He interviewed YGW and basically Wild played the fighting champion character. Oh, and here comes Scott Daniels. Nice line from Daniels about not wrestling until he's middle-aged and balding. Eleven years later, look who's still in the UWF! Joke's on you, Scott.
* Backwood vs. Daniel Kidd. Short match, here comes Mark Cutter for the finish. Jason Jones & a random new guy are Cutter's new charges, but hey, they turn on Cutter writing him out of the UWF. I think. Hopefully.
* Scott Daniels vs. Dave Bryant. All right match, but basically an extended squash for Daniels. Which ya' know, makes sense.
* Ryott promo where he calls out Genoice and then gets beat up by a bunch of woman. All right then.
* Battle Royal for a World title shot. Ryott & LiR go out first to continue their feud. Rogers eliminates a bunch of guys because hey, he's Serge's tag partner. Battle Royal comes down to Love vs. Rogers and Love pulls off the win. Perfect acceptable win for an upper-midcarder like Love.
* Annis vs. Willis - Mall match. Yup, they go batshit crazy. Ton of crazy bumps and such. Annis gets the win, but Willis looks good.

Road to Gold Rush

SR 1/30
* And Beeby's back as President. How long until he turns evil?
* watts debut was solid. BUt again, where did he disappear too?
* Oh right, John DeWolfe is filling the evil Corporate tool quota.
* Kyle Backwood face promos. Ergh. Just no good.
* Fun little Insanity Society promo setting up Hurt vs. Osbourne in a comedy violence match which is perfect for the MBC announcers to come out. Hey, there they are!
* Wacky match w/ Hurt & Osbourne that ends with them beating up Tommy Elliot. Fun times.
* JD interview w/ Kabuki Kid. Standard "I'm injured, but I shall return promo" leads up to Sean Watts coming out and well, being an asshole.
* Time for the Ryott vs. LiR blowoff. Good solid hardcore match with LiR winning for the honor of woman everywhere.
* Machines promo and right, this is back in the days when Wong was a face and O'Neal was a heel. Here comes the Fabs. Wong apologizes, but O'Neal is O'Neal and it's brawl-y time!
* Main event time. Fun match, but obviously it's not a main event main event as Desire causes Daniels to lose. DUN DUN DUN!

SR 2/06
* Hey, it's Kevin Slater. Back when he was relevant!
* Dewolfe vs. Scud! A feud for the ages!
* Harlequins debut and killify jobbers. After being around for a few months. Oops.
* Sam Willis promo. As a heel, going after heels. Ah, e-wrestling.
* Hmm...Backwood dropped his US belt to a Torugawa at a Eurasia show. Well, nice way to make UWF-E look legitimate.
* Kyle Lee promo. Announcing _another_ Cruiser title. That makes like, three? Jebus 1999 Mike Beeby. The actual Willis/Lee match was kinda of a squash though.
* Legion promo. Basically saying they're still Legion. Oh, and some intrigue w/ AEWA, but I can't really care about it.
* Lady in Red with a solid promo setting up her "last" match with a 2/3 falls match versus Joe Reed.
* Daniel Kidd/Rogers match was a poke of doom. So, is Kidd a member of Genocide or will Serge Annis kill him? I'll soon find out.
* Fun little six-man pushing the Masters of Motion/Twister and FO/Machines quasi-feuds.
* Parejas incredible! YGW/Love vs. Desire/Acorn! Not surprisingly, Love walks away and Desire/Acorn advance. Continues the YGW/Love feud in a way. Oh, and Sam Willis fireballs Elan Desire for no good reason. FUN!

SR 2/13

* Hey, the Reed cup is cancelled. Cutter must really be gone. Gauntlet matches ahoy!
* Simple Lee/Garavello match. Perfectly acceptable wrestling.
* Ricky Johnson vs. Jack Banks. I don't really care. Ah well.
* Gauntlet fun! Oh and Osbourne dstroying the locker room. Fun stuff to build the undercard feuds.
* Fun match between Watts & Kid but I'm guessing Watts wasn't around for long if he jobs in Kabuki Kid's return match.
* Parker promo to setup a feud w/ Osbourne despite the fact he's leaving. Hrm. Then he jobs to Kevin Slater. I guess he is gone.
* Gaunlet Part II. Oh, it's a setup for a beatdown. As any good heel gauntlet should be.
* Backwood wins the US title back. Um...yay?
* Desire is added to the scaffold match. A three-way scaffold match? This might work. Maybe. Oh, and Desire is kinda randomly getting a push. Or not. As he was there to die on the big bump.
* Solid promo by Love to setup the blowoff to the mini-feud during the cycle.
* Shorter main than I expected, but good way to put YGW over strong as champ.

SR 2/20

* Ugh. Supposed IC deaths of e-wrestlers always make me slightly queasy.
* Sorry, I really don't care about the UWF tag division at this point in time. Maybe later on.
* Good stuff from Ellliot setting up the fact the Skyweight title is hanging from one zillion feet in the air.
* Wow, Daniel Kidd's fallen down the card a bit from being part of a near main event angle down to being the designated recepient of a beatdown from Augustine. Solid promo from Agony though.
* All right promo from Scott Rogers playing his 'Fop' character to a tee. Character does seem kinda of directionless at the moment though.
* Fun tag match between Harlequins and Too Damn Sexy. I do find it odd though that Too Damn Sexy were being pushed as World Tag contenders, but they job to the 'Quinns.
* The promo to setup Revenant as a Roger's fan was done well, but the match wasn't anything special.
* Oh, I guess the Reed Cup isn't cancelled. Daniels basically picks a Generic Dude I vaguely remember from the past to take on Elliot & Osbourne. Another solid match setting up Daniels basically carrying his partner to the win.
* I'm ignoring the long pointless Too Damn Sexy segment.
* Fun stuff as we get Elliot bungee jumping from the top of the arena and continuing the good little midcard Insanity Society vs. DeWolfe Pack feud.
* I didn't mind the little Pride skit, but again, I didn't like RL references and I'm guessing there were some EMWC shooting I'd probably would've gotten at the time.
* Random YGW title match against Acorn and....hmm. Is Acorn gone? Well then. Then, we get Annis responding to being DX'd by the Pride and ya' gotta' love a tweener vs. tweener feud.
* Good little match to main event with LiR vs. Reed which was interesting, all right, but was basically a long angle of a match to set-up Reed asking LiR to marry him. SPORTS ENTERTAINMENT FINISH~!

SR 2/27

* Random note - Overload actually had two news notes to mention. The UWF debut of the Fraternity Boys & Genocide (Annis & Rogers) winning the World Tag Titles. Stuff happening on the B-Show!

* YGW/Genocide/Pride/Legion Angle - I really like the fake out on the Vexton leaving the Pride angle, mainly because I had forgotten about it from before _and_ Vexton going heel because Daniels has gone soft is not exactly the biggest surprise. The 3-way main event was solid and the best possible TV main event to further a feud. Oh, and didn't Ronnie D show up and disappear before? Oh yup. He did. Fun times. Finally, the big finish with Alex Kidd coming back was done real well and set him up as almost a 4th corner of a 4-way feud.

* Comedy for President - I kind of remember this before and this was actually some good stuff. Oh, and the Tragedy/Garavello was an all right face/quasi-face match w/ Tragedy looking strong.

* Edward Love is a bastard - Hey, Mike Beeby got attacked again. Oh, and back to the midcard for Love. Oh, and I guess Elan Desire isn't actually dead. Yay.

* Fab Ones/Machines - Fab Ones cheat to win, so this feud continues? I guess?

SR 3/6

* Shooting Gallery - I'm sure all these shoot comments were much more interesting in 1999. Also, I never really got the Ronnie D character. Never seemed like a great promo guy or that wonderful a character. But, hey he's challenging Annis for tonight, so there ya' go. The actual match was pretty good and hey, Ronnie D got the win.

* Legion Reborn - Alex Kidd's a shiny happy babyface and we're gonig to get another Iron Man match out of him and Annis. Sounds like it'll be great. I'm guessing the YGW-DeWolfe showdown was supposed to be something more and something fell through. BTW, who is YGW facing at Gold Rush? I still don't know.

* Machines/Damiyo Continues - Odd that this is the #3 feud on the show. But hey, Machines beat Ronin, we almost get Miss Miki dying again and Wong has to talk O'Neal down again. Good stuff.

* Kyle Lee's challenge - Setup of a nice four-way and I'm assuming Landis gets screwed by Lee somehow. I don't know where Sherrick as an amnesiac fits in though.

* Insanity Society vs. DeWolfe - OK, so a random tag match for Tag Titles I didn't even realize existed and Osbourne versus a random bodyguard type. OK then. Wrap this up.

* Revenant/Augustine/Other Fun - So, Revenant's not under Sebastian's control, but still can only beat Augustine by countout? Well, at least it leads to Augustine/Rogers in a nice heel-heel match.

* Other Stuff - Wow, I really don't like Kyle Backwood as a face. Brewster Cogburn seems like a character from the really old school days of UWF and he just doesn't fit in. But hey, it ends the Reed Cup quicker. Oh, and Edward Love still wants to destroy people. Good for him.

SR 3/13

* All right, so Rogers is getting the World Title shot at Gold Rush. That didn't come up at all in the last show so I'm guessing this was one of those never announced on TV things.

* Damiyo/Machines/Kyle Lee - In a weird way, this was sort of the actual main angle of the show. Sure, they had Genocide in the main event, put Rogers over strong, and had a nice JR-style interview w/ Alex Kidd, but this was the show-long storyline. We get the Machines being tense w/ each other, Miss Miki getting shaved bald, Kabuki Kid becoming MBC champ, and then getting challenged by Kyle Lee for the PPV. Good times.

* Genocide/Augustine/Beeby/CJR/Backwood - Oh yay, fighting tag partners. Again, this is one of those things that I'm sure seemed all right in 1999, but is old looking at it in 2010. On the other hand, the American Dragons debuted and they're the special enforcers for the Augustine/Tragedy match. That will not go well.

Gold Rush up next!
The Masked Reviewer is a long-time e-wrestling veteran looking back in the past to see if things hold up.

FIRST UP : The UWF! (Current date : Gold Rush '99!)
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KliqerT
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Doughy
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Wow, this was unexpected. Um... thanks? to the masked reviewer. I'm not sure I agree with everything you've written here, but there certainly are some truths to be had here. As I can't respond point by point (partly because of JTF's style, partly because I don't have three hours...), here's a few things at least:


-UWF '96-'97 was a vast wasteland outside of a few people? I'll admit the writing style definitely won't hold up to today's standards, but that was still the norm back then. Outside of the Double Eye, I don't know of anyone who had formatting and longer RP styles down. There's a reason why just about everyone since '98 has adopted the IIWF style in some way or another. But as far as storyline content goes, I couldn't disagree more. Sure, there were some sketchy characters and the first few months of the fed's existence we were a simmed fed, leading to some truly terrible match results, but from about the summer of 96 when we ditched the GWF "alliance" onward I'd say we got out act together fairly well.

-Bishop's retirement after winning the title was NOT planned, and that 32 man tournament to crown a new champion was pretty much booked on the fly. The retirement without any warning pissed me off then, and still pisses me off to this day.

-Reformer, Sean Watts, Acorn, and a few random others mentioned... dissapeared pretty much because their handlers did likewise. Watts in particular I remembered tried 2 or 3 stints and still never managed to stick around. And I have no memory whatsoever of whatever 'Phantasm' was, but I assume it was as successful as the Fire Warriors or Jack Banks.

-Alex Kidd's heel turn was unimpressive? And he was only around for half of it? All news to me. Kidd won the world title BECAUSE the turn was working quite well, not the other way around. As I recall, Jericho's winning of the tournament caught his handler off-guard because he'd been planning to sub him out for Sam Willis, which is why the belt was taken off Seb fairly soon after. And why Jericho's departure was used as the entrance for Willis.

-The Lady in Red's "last" match actually end up being her last match, save for a one-shot return in the Angels and Amazons battle royal either last year or the year before (I want to say '08 though.

-No Fat Chicks and the Masters of Motion "are basically the same team." That actually made me laugh... until I saw that Too Damn Sexy got lumped in together too. THAT hurts.

And ultimately, this means I really need to get off my ass and get the full (or as much as I have) archive up on the website as a real place to download the shows.

I do hope there's more of these coming.
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Flouzemaker
The Luther Burger
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KliqerT,Jun 11 2010
01:01 PM
-The Lady in Red's "last" match actually end up being her last match, save for a one-shot return in the Angels and Amazons battle royal either last year or the year before (I want to say '08 though.

It was A&A 2008, yes.
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Flouzemaker
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KliqerT,Jun 11 2010
01:01 PM
And ultimately, this means I really need to get off my ass and get the full (or as much as I have) archive up on the website as a real place to download the shows.

I do hope there's more of these coming.

The archives are incomplete on the website, but they seemed to be all there in the newsgroup, I found out...
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themaskedreviewer
Oglethorpe
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I will note I'm turning the snark up to eleven on a lot of these comments. My avoidance of the UWF from '96 to '98 is about 3/5 format/style and 2/5 content. I saw some of the stuff was good, but it just didn't grab me.

I'm doing this from just the memory I have of old UWF, so some things I remember (American Dragons upcoming destruction of Mikey's opponent) and some I don't (whether Lady in Red came back).

On Kidd, the actual performance was good but it didn't feel like he was the 'focus' of the fed as he probably should've been. Also, the one or two show quasi-face turn to defend Paul Reed kinda didn't help matters. The YGW-Kidd match was absolutely awesome at L&I though.

But yeah, I am planning to do as much of this as possible. The positives of a desk job with lots of downtime. :)
The Masked Reviewer is a long-time e-wrestling veteran looking back in the past to see if things hold up.

FIRST UP : The UWF! (Current date : Gold Rush '99!)
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keenings
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Guards! Seize him!!
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KliqerT,Jun 11 2010
12:01 PM
And I have no memory whatsoever of whatever 'Phantasm' was, but I assume it was as successful as the Fire Warriors or Jack Banks.

Banks was a Goldberg clone who should forever go down in e-w history as the guy that Black Jack Baldwin of The Wild Cards de-pantsed in the middle of a CIWF ring.

Best... matchwriting... moment... ever!

:banana: :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana:
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The DeWolfe Pack
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Oh man, John DeWolfe as evil corporate tool? I preferred his second run, tormenting the women's division, but that was fun.Though I think I flaked out on the UWF not long after the Insanity Society feud, IIRC.

The history lesson out of all this? The quality of the UWF at any given time is inversely and exponentially related to the amount of handling I'm doing in it.
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