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| RDT PPV Reviews | |
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| Topic Started: Feb 25 2014, 01:46 AM (5,512 Views) | |
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Jul 22 2014, 03:24 AM Post #91 |
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Tyler
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Posted Image ECW November to Remember ‘97 November 30, 1997 Monaca, PA Shane Douglas was the man Paul Heyman was putting his top heel money on. Douglas was…an okay choice. They could have been a lot worse (I assume he really wanted to use Raven). Douglas had some time in the WWF and WCW, so him as the top heel was a legitimate draw for ECW’s level at that point. Top face? You got me. Taz wasn’t ready quite yet, but he was clearly the one they would go with. Terry Funk was a nice nostalgia run. Sabu will always be an attraction (and I think was heel at this point anyway). Rob Van Dam was still coming along (and was still heel here too). The short term answer? Bam Bam Bigelow was still a name in wrestling, only two and a half years removed from main eventing Wrestlemania. I’ll hand it to Paul Heyman, big name wise, these two seem to be the right guys for the main event. As for the rest of the card, there is a mix of making new stars (RVD, Taz), just putting current ones wherever (Sandman, Dreamer, Sabu) or a lot of what the hell is going on (we’ll get there). But hey, wrestling was getting hot, to be fair ECW was pretty hot at this time as well. This is ECW’s 3rd PPV, let’s see how it goes. The Card Largest crowd in ECW history. My research says 4,600 fans. I think that’s not bad? Chris Candido vs. Tommy Rogers I’ll admit, I don’t even know who Tommy Rogers is. He’s Bobby Eaton’s old partner. I did know that, weird I didn’t make that connections. I was thinking this match was boring…then we got a “boring” chant. Tommy Rogers looks like he’s running at 80% speed. Rogers suplexing Candido to the floor looked cool. Seriously match is boring. It’s not even bad, it’s just a bunch of spots. Lance Storm is out here and he attacks Tommy Rogers. Now Jerry Lynn is here. And we have a tag match? Ref makes it a tag match. Sure why not. The singles match sucked. Hey, at least it got more exciting when Lynn and Storm got added. Rogers does the nicest Unprettier I’ve ever seen. Chris Candido and Lance Storm win when Candido pins Rogers in 16:42. Northern Lights Suplex wins it. Match picked up when it became a tag for sure. Storm and Candido would continue the Triple Threat storyline and even win the Tag Belts in the future. We get images of Mikey Whipwreck beating Steve Austin and Justin Credible beating the Great Sasuke. Take that WWF! Justin Credible vs. Mikey Whipwreck Mikey Whipwreck: the only ECW Triple Crown Winner in ECW history. In all honesty, a stat like that is what was wrong with ECW (I also thought Sabu had done this). My best memory of Credible’s manager Jason is Jazz crushing his balls at Heatwave ’99 (we’ll get there). Credible was doing his X-Pac (or Syxx at this time) impression at this point. I think Credible was a little underrated at this point. Sunset flip powerbomb was nice. Mikey Whipwreck pins Justin Credible in 7:15. Whippersnapper for the win! Jason gets involved, but Whipwreck counters and actually uses Jason to get in position for the Whippersnapper. I will say that the result makes no sense whatsoever though. Credible was supposed to be pushed as a top ECW guy, no? I mean Whipwreck sure as hell wasn’t. Joey Styles says that in the locker room Al Snow is getting Head. A lot funnier in 1997, and if I was 15, I guess. Snow makes the segment work though, and it’s pretty cutting edge to be fair, which Snow saying things like “get this guy over, and get this guy over” and doing the “J-O-B”. Joey Styles is hilarious sometimes. Sandman-Sabu promo…nope. Weird technical difficulties I guess. ECW Television Championship Taz© vs. Pitbull #2 Pitbulls turned heel at some point. The Pitbulls were two guys who just couldn’t do anything but brawl, and on PPV there just couldn’t be that much of ECW style brawling. Paul E. Dangerously is in the commentary booth…and they take shots at RAW. Pitbull #2 has Pitbull #1 and Mr. Wright at ringside. Pitbull #2 totally misses a spinning heel kick that Taz sells. Well, that was quick. Taz makes Pitbull #2 submit in 1:29. A few suplexes, then the Tazmission ends it. Makes sense. Taz looked like a killer in his run up to the ECW World Title. Taz calls out Brakkus, who is at ringside. Good thing that was never on PPV. Taz makes fun of a security guard, who gets in Taz’s face. Taz bitchslaps him then chokes him out. Weird. Paul E was worried about lawsuits and calls for something else. Somehow he did this stuff better than Russo. We get highlights of Bam Bam throwing Spike Dudley into the crowd. One of the things that made me an ECW fan for the record. I wrote about this in an earlier review. Now we get highlights of Bigelow winning the World Title from Shane Douglas in New York a few weeks ago. ECW World Tag Team Championship The FBI© vs. The Gangstanantors vs. The Dudley Boyz vs. The Chair Swinging Freaks We get some racist remarks from Tommy Rich to D-Von Dudley. Joel Gertner is pretty incredible. The Chair Swinging Freaks just come in and hit everyone with chairs. New Jack and Kronus have yet to show up. Here comes New Jack! Only took 4 minutes. Just how many times did New Jack do the run in and weapons thing? Jeez. The Gangstanators is the result of Perry Saturn going to WCW…and Mustafa doing…something. I don’t know what the hell is going on…although it looks like Jack and Kronus got killed here. Big Dick Dudley misses a big moonsault…but he chokeslams Kronus anyway. Kronus 450s Big Dick and tries to pin him, but he’s not in the match. I’m shocked the ref has still kept track. Bubba Ray Dudley over the top rope plancha was not something I expected to see. Wow. Tommy Rich takes a guitar to the head from an off the top rope New Jack! Bubba eliminates Kronus with a Bubba Cutter. Fans aren’t happy. Bubba Ray throws Little Guido into the top turnbuckle in a pretty sick way. Wow. That was better than Nash and Mysterio. What the fuck? They did the powder in the eyes and Bubba 3Ds D-Von by accident spot. I thought that was just something stupid TNA came up with in that Fish Market Match. Dudleys are gone. Evil referee! Evil referee! What else will this match have? The FBI retain when Guido pins Mahoney in 14:32. Judge Jeff Jones kicks Mahoney low, and Guido rolls up Mahoney. Fast count and its over! Wow. I feel like I just watched 4 matches in one or something. I can’t remember a overbooked clusterfuck quite like that…but…I admit I was quite entertained and enjoyed it. It was fun, even if it was all over the place. Rob Van Dam vs. Tommy Dreamer RVD was still pro-WWF here. Amazing how he did this as a heel gimmick and still became the most popular wrestler in ECW history. This is a flag match. How about that. Bill Alfonso is the Vice President of Senior Affairs for the WWF or something. At least that was the gimmick. 1997 was a huge year for RVD. He looked a bit sloppy at Barely Legal. Here, he’s nearly the Whole Fuckin’ Show. Not sure if he was the first, but the way RVD would jump on guardrails and do kicks and stuff (this one, Alfonso held a chair near Dreamer’s face and RVD double jumped on the guardrail and superkicked it) was just breathtaking at the time. Nice DDT counter from RVD. RVD does a split on the top rope as a tauntlike counter…but Dreamer sees it and kicks RVD in the middle, and then DDTs him off the top! Only 2! Dreamer with the most obvious Van Daminator counter…he hits RVD with the chair. Jeff Jones again! Horrible Dreamer Van Dreaminator there. We get a referee match in the middle of this, but Beulah low blows Jones and the two refs DDT Jones. Fonzie takes out the refs, Beulah takes out Fonize. RVD’s famous selling of Dreamer’s piledriver by popping up 4 feet (seriously) in the air. Doug Furnas and Phil Lafon are out here! Then Stevie Richards comes back! Short WCW stint there. Five Star Frog Splash on the garbage can! No Contest in 14:32. Not sure how 14:32 was the original time, as we don’t get a real finish. Dreamer is out from the Furnas, Lafon, Richards, RVD beatdown. We have no more refs. This was a pretty good match actually, but the finish hurt it a lot, really because we didn’t have one. We got Dreamer on a table and Sabu is out here. They wrap Dreamer in the WWF flag..but Sabu comes off the top and punches Beulah in the face! Wow I didn’t see that coming! Here comes the Sandman! Tables and Ladders Match The Sandman vs. Sabu I like how Sandman just takes his time here with his normal entrance despite the fact that Dreamer was in trouble. Sabu dives into Sandman’s kidney through the ropes. That seemed dangerous. Sandman throws a ladder at Sabu’s head that could easily have hit a fan. Looked great though. Sandman pretty much legdrops himself through a table on the floor but kinda gets Sabu. Really sloppy match, but it looks sick when the spots actually hit. The match is literally spot after spot. It’s like a rehearsal. Sabu and Sandman fall over on one spot, which leads to Sandman comically rolling over the ladder. Fans aren’t buying it. If I were to guess by that somersault senton through the table, I’d say Sandman is drunk. We get a screwed up fireball by Sabu. Sabu pinned The Sandman in 20:55. Atomic Arabian Facebuster with a Ladder for the win. Pretty horrible, but not the worst match of all time. They didn’t even try. It was literally set up spot, do spot, maybe hit spot. At least some of the spots look cool, like the javelin ladder. And we got some violence. Crowd seemed to hate it though. Or not care. Taz is here for commentary! Actually he just challenges Bigelow to a match at Living Dangerously…4 months from now. ECW World Championship Bam Bam Bigelow© vs. Shane Douglas Random personal thing: I always disliked Bigelow’s grey color scheme, I just thought the orange and red flames were better. We are near Douglas’ hometown, so he gets the cheers. Bigelow though was kinda a bad ass face, so it works anyway. He doesn’t care. This is all Bigelow. While Bigelow’s offense looks good, Douglas as the hometown face in peril, considering his character at the time, just doesn’t work. Douglas tries an over the top rope hurricanrana and gets powerbombed through a table. That was real believable. The Triple Threat run down, even though they are banned, and Bigelow tosses Douglas over the top rope and wipes them out. Bigelow is putting on a typical Bigelow performance here, and that’s not a bad thing. Shane Douglas wins the ECW Title in 25:02. Douglas gets a belly to belly through a half table propped up by a chair (the hell?) and gets the three. Douglas just doesn’t cut it as hometown face in peril and the match suffers greatly. This is the kind of match Bam Bam and Bret Hart would have owned with four years prior. Crowd popped huge. I’ll call it decent. Second ECW PPV in a row where Douglas wins the World Title. He would hold it through 1999 because of injuries, allowing ECW to become the Taz and RVD show. Nothing on this show barring Sabu and Sandman is horrible. I’d even go as far to say I liked the show. But we aren’t getting into B territory with the crap finishes to the tag title and Dreamer-RVD match. Nevermind Sabu vs. Sandman’s blatant spotfest. Historically, well, Taz and RVD looked great, no? Final Grade: C+ |
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Jul 25 2014, 01:50 AM Post #92 |
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Tyler
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Posted Image WWF Summerslam ‘94 August 29, 1994 Chicago, IL We are clearly past the Hulkamania era and in the Bret Hart era. 1993 had tons of questionable things in a period of transition, but the WWF clearly realized it needed to create newer stars and move on. There’s a lot of New Generation references for sure. We are in the midst of the Bret Hart WWF Championship run, and in the middle of the Hart Brothers’ feud. While maybe it wasn’t the biggest draw, it was critically an awesome feud that made Owen Hart. The hokey stuff was still there though. The Undertaker was arguably the 2nd biggest babyface in the company when he left at the Royal Rumble 1994 (yeah, sorry Lex Luger, but Survivor Series 93 proved this), but took an extended break. The storyline here sucks though, as it is the infamous Undertaker vs. Underfaker feud. Diesel vs. Razor Ramon is a notable match here, as it includes three guys (Shawn Michaels at ringside) who the WWF would be built upon for the next 18 months. LET’S FIGURE OUT THE MYSTERY OF THE UNDERTAKERS SHALL WE?! The Card Randy Savage is our host and introduces us to Summerslam. You know, Vince wasting Savage here was a big reason he left at the end of the year. We are told that Diesel and HBK won the tag belts at a house show last night. I don’t remember the storyline reason on why that was done. The Headshrinkers vs. Bam Bam Bigelow and IRS This was for the tag belts before the Headshrinkers lost them the night before. The odd Headshrinker face run. Bigelow and IRS are part of the Million Dollar Corporation. It’s sometimes jarring to see Fatu so skinny considering Rikishi later. Really good hart hitting action here. Workrate overall really went up in 1994. Makes 1995 even more perplexing. Samu backdrops Bigelow with ease, which was pretty cool. Pretty terrible double reverse Russian legsweep there Shrinkers… Bigelow and IRS win by DQ in 7:20. A billion managers (Albano, Afa, Dibiase all got involved and it leads to a DQ (Afa hit a headbutt first). Shame, this was a pretty fun match and I thought woulda been a good way to put Bigelow and IRS over, as the Headshrinkers were on their way out (which is also a shame). The Leslie Nielson stuff is pretty horrible. He’s trying to find the Undertaker. This is like the WWF version of those terrible WCW minimovies. Women’s Championship Alundra Blayze© vs. Bull Nakano Nakano has Luna Vachon with her, the story is Luna brought her because she couldn’t beat Blayze. Crowd is into Blayze. What a sick hair pull whip. Wow. Hurricanrana from Blayze! Standing sharpshooter from Nakano. Crowd popped huge. Probably because it was pretty bad ass. Blayze goes for a piledriver, and while Nakano is countering she actually finger waves to the crowd “no”. That’s pretty awesome. Blayze retains by pin in 8:10. German suplex gets the three and a HUGE pop. Great match. Blayze was the babyface in peril and Nakano was a bad ass. Why wasn’t this at Mania XI? HBK and Diesel interview with their new tag belts. Diesel wasn’t a promo guy at this point…although he looks like a bad ass here. HBK calling Walter Payton a munchkin was something. Intercontinental Championship Diesel© vs. Razor Ramon Ramon has Walter Payton in his corner. Let’s be clear, Shawn Michaels was already one of the best heels in wrestling at this point. This was Nash’s peak as a wrestler. Of course, he always did well against Kliq members. Diesel is moving fast. Watching him here makes it obvious he phoned it in later in his career. The dynamic of Shawn Michaels’ using Walter Payton’s inexperience to distract the referee…and attack Ramon…is fantastic. One thing to say about Kevin Nash: He had the best sidewalk slam in the business. Ramon is bumping everywhere. Diesel with the abdominal stretch counter I always want to happen: the hip toss. Shawn takes a punch from Ramon and goes flying off the apron into the guardrail. Wow! Razor Ramon wins the title in 15:05. Michaels looks to hit Ramon with the IC belt, but Payton gets involved. Ref goes to Payton though, so HBK tries to superkick Ramon…and gets Diesel instead! Payton stops HBK from interfering, and Ramon wins his 2nd IC title. Another great match. No wonder Vince thought to put the title on Diesel after this. This of course was the start of the Diesel-HBK split and Diesel face turn. Luger and Tatanka backstage with Todd. Tatanka has been claiming Luger sold out to Dibiase. Of course, how else will this end up? Lex Luger vs. Tatanka Fans are pretty dead, cheering Lex but not really. Tatanka is acting all heel though. Fans respond in kind. Here comes Dibiase! Just as Luger takes advantage. Tatanka pins Lex Luger in 6:09. Luger yells at Dibiase and gets rolled up by Tatanka. Luger continues to yell at Dibiase, and Tatanka turns. Was a big deal at the time, even if Tatanka absolutely sucked from this point forward. Match wasn’t much, but it wasn’t horrible or anything. Mabel vs. Jeff Jarrett This would be cooler if Jarrett came out to “Rap is Crap”. I mean, that’s not possible, but still. I have NO idea what Oscar is rapping. Mabel was fine as a fun midcard babyface. Of course, he was main eventing Summerslam next year. There’s a lot of Memphis style wrestling here (taunting, and wasting time). Jarrett shoving Oscar into the stairs is a highlight. Jarrett screws up a top rope fist drop. Looked terrible. Match is structured poorly. Jarrett already survived a Mabel elbowdrop and corner avalanche. What? Mabel’s spinkick was always cool. ABE “KNUCKLEBALL” SCHWARTZ in the crowd. He’s on strike! Way not to DQ Mabel for the Oscar punch ref. Lawler asks why that was allowed. GREAT QUESTION! Jeff Jarrett pins Mabel in 5:50. Mabel misses a sit down splash, and Jarrett pins him off that. Well, everything was solid or at least okay before this. Throw away midcard match being horrible won’t hurt the show too badly. Yes, this was horrible. At least Jarrett won. Ugh, more Mystery of the Undertaker crap. Behind them was a shadow of the Undertaker. It’s a shame this isn’t next, which I’ll explain later. History of the Bret vs. Owen feud. How much did this get Owen over? He was a practically a jobber or wrestled for lower level teams before this feud and Bret helped him so much some thought he should have been the World Champion. WWF Championship: Steel Cage Match Bret Hart© vs. Owen Hart Timeline here: Owen and Bret argue at Survivor Series ’93 after Owen was the only Hart Brother eliminated. They patch things up, but another miscommunication in their Tag Title match vs. the Quebecers led to Owen kicking “Bret’s leg out of his leg”. Owen Hart then upset Bret at Wrestlemania, but Bret won the World Title later, giving some credibility to Owen that he could be champ. At KOTR, Jim Neidhart helped Bret retain his title…but then helped Owen win KOTR. Now we are here. Note: The British Bulldog is in the crowd, which is his return. Lawler blames Stu and Helen Hart for this whole match. Lawler says that he’s happy to see the Bulldog because he beat Bret two years ago at Summerslam. They interview Neidhart too. Owen goes RIGHT for Bret as soon as he walks in. Amazing. No waiting around bs here. In any cage match, early escapes usually don’t make sense, but it’s an awesome dynamic here as Owen wants to win at any cost and Bret just wants this to end. Suplex off the top rope cageside by Bret. Owen nearly falls out of the cage, but I think it was intentional to get a reaction. Just great non-stop action from the start here. Sick crotch spot off the top rope by Owen. Bret actually keeps Owen in at one point by merely his hair. Awesome. Amazingly, the structure of this match is simple. Escape attempt, big move off the top rope. Bret and Owen make each attempt look like the match can be over. And it’s amazing. Perfect piledriver from Owen Hart! Bret with the most convincing door escape false finish I’d ever seen there. Owen stops him! They’ve got the crowd in their hands with these door finishes. Lawler’s commentary by the way, brilliant. Just adds to Owen’s legitimacy. Match has been fought at a 50:50 split exactly. I can’t state how much this made Owen Hart. Superplex from the (near) top of the cage by the Hitman! Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable. Amazingly that’s not the finish! Owen stops Bret from escaping out the door, somehow. Sharpshooter by Owen! Bret counters into his own Sharpshooter! Owen actually calls for Neidhart while in the Sharpshooter, which is genius in itself. It’s still not over! Owen stops Bret again! A punch, and both go flying off the side of the cage! Bret Hart retains in 32:22. Owen tries to escape again and Bret grabs him. Bret then leaves as well, and both men are a three foot drop from winning! Owen gets his leg caught and gets stuck in an inverted position on the cage, and Bret leaps down for the win! Yeah so that was incredible. It actually has a legit claim to Match of the Year over the Razor-Shawn ladder match at Mania, that’s how amazing this is. Non-stop back and forth action with Bret JUST coming out on top. No surprise this got five stars from Meltzer. One of my favorite matches of all time. Probably still the greatest cage match in WWE history, some may say of all time period. Owen and Neidhart then lock Bret in the cage, fend off the family, and beat the hell out of Bret. Also amazing. Bulldog eventually finds his way in to chase them off. You know what else that was amazing? That wasn’t the main event of the show. Kinda a shame to be honest. The Undertaker vs. The Undertaker We get a review of what happened at the Royal Rumble (which I also covered in my Rumble review). Taker died, rose, etc. Also a soliloquy. Can’t forget that. Yokozuna beat him. (So um…why not the Undertaker vs. Yokozuna revenge match here?). So apparently random people have seen the Undertaker, and Dibiase (which did make sense since Dibiase brought him in) claimed to buy him off. Then Dibiase brought in…the Undertaker! I like that in that segment, Taker was so over no one cared Dibiase was the one bringing him back and cheered him huge. Brian Lee played a good Undertaker on Halloween, but it didn’t really work. WWF kept with the story about Brian Lee being the Undertaker though. There’s a crazy Paul Bearer in this though. Todd Pettengill takes a great random shot at Lawler in all this build up. I’m gonna use the Underfaker term from now on, it’s just easier to write. Let me give you a (the only) positive in this whole debacle. Underfaker uses the same entrance Undertaker was using his whole career. Lights off, but nothing too crazy. Lee looks pretty stiff coming down though, like he hadn’t mastered the walk. This is the first half of this point. After Paul Bearer’s theatrics with a coffin and the urn and all, the real Undertaker shows up and admittedly, it’s pretty awesome. When he appears in all that blue/purple smoke Vince calls it perfectly (“NOW THAT’S THE UNDERTAKER”). Lawler also sells it brilliantly (from all there’s no Undertaker to “oh my gosh” in shock). That’s the second half of this point. The Undertaker had evolved. All of it does take WAY too long though. The purple gloved Undertaker is probably the most awesome version in terms of look. Of course, it led to perhaps a horrible run of opponents, so it was wasted. Unless you were a Mabel fan. Ok another positive. Undertaker I believe debuted the corner light turning on thing here. Also awesome. Onto the match. Sigh. The Takers mirror the hat and tie taking off deal. Taker is a few inches taller than Lee (way not to lead Lee’s boot). You really see the Undertaker vs. guy in an Undertaker costume on Halloween comparison once they meet in the middle of the ring. It’s worth noting that Undertaker’s style had clearly changed already. Leapfrog by the Undertaker, for example. The story becomes which Undertaker can no-sell the most. Seriously. Some kind of Undertaker into the ropes move by Lee. Vince says that the crowd is in awe. No, the crowd is silent because this sucks. Faker gets a chokeslam, and Taker sits up. Fans cheer as that probably means the end is near. Faker with a Tombstone! Sit up! Faker goes for another one, but Taker counters! Tombstone…and Faker isn’t getting up. Undertaker pins Underfaker in 8:57. Three tombstones. And it’s over. Pretty bad. Crowd was dead silent the whole time. I will say I think this a good attempt at an awful idea. (Unlike Kane vs. Kane, a bad attempt at an awful idea). Can’t go farther in the good column than that. Boring, terrible match, but it brought back the Undertaker and all and the fans are happy about that at the end. Probably didn’t help that Bret vs. Owen was incredible and right before this. Still, a big downer. Just put this between Tatanka-Luger and Jarrett-Mabel and you’re fine. Some last second George Kennedy and Leslie Neilson stuff, with a closed case pun. Whatever. This PPV was an A and even could have been pushed to an A+ with a great main event. Matches were mostly good, even Luger vs. Tatanka was decent. Jarrett vs. Mabel is inoffensive filler. There’s some big history too, as Diesel vs. Razor was a big sign of where the WWF was going, as well as the establishment of Owen Hart. Bret and the Undertaker held their places at the main event. But man, you know we complain about CM Punk not being in main events as champion…yet somehow Bret didn’t end one PPV in his 1994 World Title reign. The other times, I can kinda see it, but this time, what the hell? Maybe it was because they wanted to run the Owen thing and not finish on that, but the match absolutely ruled. Undertaker vs. Undertaker was that bad too. Cool entrance, even good finish, but it really messed up the flow this show had going. But the rest of the card was very good to great mostly, and Bret vs. Owen is just incredible. And since we never saw the Underfaker again, I can accept this conclusion to an awful storyline. Still drops it a little from A though. Final Grade: A- |
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Jul 27 2014, 05:16 PM Post #93 |
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Tyler
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Posted Image WWF Summerslam ‘97 August 3, 1997 East Rutherford, NJ Even before all the raunchy Attitude stuff, the WWF was putting on a solid product in 1997. It wasn’t the best in all cases (Gang Warz, for example) but the main event and the upper midcard titles had some good stuff in it. The roster was also bolstered from 1996, with LOD, The Headbangers, Ken Shamrock and Brian Pillman all debuting or making their returns. Of course, the return of Bret Hart in late ’96 was a big reason for it too. Bret coming back helped a main event scene that was basically all Shawn Michaels (to be fair, Goldust, Vader and Mankind were good to great, it’s just, in Goldust’s and Mankind’s case, didn’t have that mainstream view as a main eventer yet, and in Vader’s, he wasn’t the man he was in 1993 unfortunately). Undertaker was also there, usually in the semi-main. He finally got his 2nd reign as WWF Champion in 1997, which kinda went off the rails a little in June but came back strong with the Hart Foundation angle. The WWF was clearly in a period of transition here. We were getting some better characters up top: Stone Cold Steve Austin was coming into his own and was arguably the biggest draw in the WWF even at this time. It was pretty clear that he was gonna be the man by Wrestlemania XIV. Mankind and Hunter Hearst Helmsley were in a feud that helped give Hunter the edge he needed to be taken more seriously. Foley himself had just debuted Dude Love and was getting over with the dual (and soon, triple) personality. The Hart Foundation were the hottest heel group not named the NWO, and this was unfortunately their peak as the WWF changes course and old school heels weren’t the way to go anymore. Still, a WWF Title Match with Undertaker and Bret Hart, with special referee Shawn Michaels was the biggest match the WWF could have at the moment that wasn’t Bret vs. Shawn. The Card Of course with the hot USA vs. Canada angle, we start with the National Anthem. The opening promo here is one of my favorites. It’s a “if life were fair montage”, mentioning Bret’s turn, HBK’s injury and Undertaker’s secret (which led to Kane). Steel Cage Match Mankind vs. Hunter Hearst Helmsley Story here began at King of the Ring where HHH beat Mankind to win it. Mankind didn’t like the interference from Chyna and wanted a rematch, which led to a double countout (one of the best done double countouts ever, if that makes sense). Here are are. The story is the natural rich blueblood vs. deranged, er…, presumably not rich weirdo. HHH goes for the door right away. Brilliant start. Foley’s stump piledriver was always pretty awesome. Chyna finds some early ways to get involved, first closing the door when Foley was going for it, and grabbing Mankind’s hair when HHH was in the Mandible. Clever. Foley then tries to escaple, but Chyna climbs up and hits a low blow…and HHH superplexes him off the top of the cage, which looks pretty damn awesome. It looks like HHH could have left, but he decides he wants to punish Mankind and does so by throwing him into the cage, which looks great with the old school blue cage. I’m torn on this, as it makes sense,, but it did make Mankind look a little too easily beaten. Chyna again keeps finding ways to get involved, and she punches Foley through the cage holes here. Good heel stuff. Really cool spot where HHH gets put in the tree of woe, but he’s hanging from the cage and not the corner. Mankind gets backdropped into the cage, which seems pretty dangerous. Cool stuff though. HHH’s let gets caught in the rope (intentionally), and Chyna slams the steel cage door right on ankind’s head. Cool as it looked, this hurt Foley big time and I believe he said it hurt worse than his toss off the Hell in a Cell a year later. Chyna takes out the ref and throws a chair in the ring, but Mankind gets the advantage and slingshots HHH into Chyna, who was hanging on the outside of the cage. Double Arm DDT on the steel chair! Chyna actually fucks up here, as Mankind is leaving the cage and Chyna gets in to drag HHH out (the finish)…BUT there’s one more spot left! Mankind wins in 16:13. Mankind takes off the leather mask and tears a bit of his shirt…Superfly Dive off the top of the cage! Also looked incredible. Chyna now does the correct finish and tries to drag HHH out, but Mankind gets to the floor first…and eventually turns into Dude Love! Anyway, great opener. Back and both hard hitting cage match with some innovative stuff and a great finish. Nevermind the awesome character development with Dude Love and all, and it continued to show that HHH had a bit of a mean streak. What a start! Gov. Whitman comes out with The Headbangers and Gorilla Monsoon. Apparently she helped get wrestling back to NJ. Tiger Ali Singh sighting. Woo? If Pillman Loses, He Must Wear a Dress Brian Pillman vs. Goldust The Hart Foundation all made stipulations against themselves (except Owen, which we will get to) to put pressure on themselves to win. Pillman said he’s wear Marlena’s dress on RAW if he couldn’t beat Goldust. Face Goldust was an interesting character. They did a similar thing with Mankind and it worked, but Goldust never gained too much traction as a face. According to Goldust’s book, there was already some issues with Goldust and Marlena behind the scenes, and he was also a bit intimidated by Pillman as, in real life, Pillman and Terri had a history. It’s worth noting that Pillman changed his entire ring style after his car accident. It’s pretty jarring after watching a lot of early 90s Pillman matches. Goldust misses the throw that is supposed to crotch Pillman and Pillman falls to the floor, but it still looked good. Pillman does a great job acting crazy and as a heel. Using Marlena as a shield, taunting her, etc. I should point out wow on Marlena’s dress. JR puts Pillman over by just pointing out his eyes. This is why JR is the best in the business. Awesome throw counter of the bulldog by Pillman. Goldust pins Brian Pillman in 7:17. Goldust goes for a sunset flip, but Pillman fights it. Pillman gets to the ropes…and Marlena smacks him in the face with his purse (JR thinks there is a brick in there). It completes the sunset flip and gets the three! Decent match, still jarring how much Pillman had to change his style. The Legion of Doom vs. The Godwinns Story here: LOD vs. Godwinns on Shotgun a couple months earlier, LOD broke Henry’s neck with the Doomsday Device and Godwinns wanted revenge and had been attacking LOD, biggest part being hitting them over the head with buckets. Godwinns had turned heel and were pretty disgusting overall. All LOD early on. Vince and Lawler tell the story on how LOD breaking Henry’s neck first was on accident…but this time they said it would be intentional. Impressive hangman’s neckbreaker submission from Phineas on Hawk. Godwinns looking to break Hawk’s neck. Surprisingly great psychology here. Hawk’s hot tag sequence is pretty good. Then a neckbreaker on Henry! They keep working on the neck with two big clotheslines in the corner. LOD wins when Hawk pins Henry in 9:15. Phineas breaks up the Doomsday Device…but Hawk takes him out. LOD then hit Henry with a spike piledriver! Pin gets it done. Probably the best possible match LOD and the Godwinns could have. Good psychology and hard hitting all around. We waste time with a Million Dollar Challenge that no one wins…but damn does Sunny look hot during the segment. Is the Discovery Zone still a thing? This might be Todd Pettengill’s last show, come to think of it. One of the guys they call says he’s not watching Summerslam. Nice. Vince sounds disgusted on commentary watching this. Like he knows this is a waste of good PPV time. At least it wasn’t rigged. Key #3 does open the casket with money in it. This for some reason was more entertaining that I thought it would be. Which doesn’t say much but still. European Championship: If the Bulldog loses the title, he will eat a can of dog food The British Bulldog© vs. Ken Shamrock The Bulldog has humiliated Shamrock after an arm-wrestling match by putting dog food all over him. Shamrock had debuted as a ref in the Mania I Quit Match, and then got put over huge when he beat Vader at In Your House (where was that feud? That would have made money). Match early on is dominated by Shamrock, and seems designed to get him over. Bulldog is now kicking all kinds of ass. They mess up a suplex on the floor, and collapse. The British Bulldog wins by DQ in 7:29. Bulldog puts dog food on Shamrock, and Shamrock snaps! Shamrock smashes the can on the Bulldog’s head, causing the DQ. He keeps going on the Bulldog, then shoves a ref. He then locks the Bulldog in a chokehold and no one can break it up. Bulldog is out. Shamrock finally lets go and takes out every official in sight, screaming “GET OUT OF MY WAY!” Crowd was hugely into this. This of course, made Shamrock a star (even though he storyline wise nearly killed someone). Kinda weird he’d only last two more years, but at this point it looked like him and Austin were the future of the company. Interview with HBK. Can he be impartial?! Los Boricas vs. The DOA Vince calls it a 10 man tag, but this is an 8 man tag. This all spawned from when Faarooq fired Savio Vega and Crush from the Nation of Domination. Crush and Vega formed their own factions. The Gang Warz! I actually never got why DOA and the Boricas hated one another, other than the implied racial tension. Wouldn’t Crush and Vega want revenge on the Nation? This match has mid 90s WWF legends the Underfaker, the Jacob and Eli Blu and Kwang. No idea why I think that’s relevant, but I do. Skull already blew the correct selling of a top rope bulldog. I like how Vince can’t tell the difference between Chainz and Crush, but Skull and 8-Ball (near identical twins) no problem. Savio Vega with a cool spin kick that sends him over the top rope, landing on his feet. I always thought Vega was a little underrated. Here comes the new Nation through the crowd. The Nation did help the careers of The Godfather, D’Lo Brown and later The Rock, but it killed Ahmed Johnson off. The Boricas win when Miguel Perez pins Chainz in 9:08. Chainz gets thrown to the outside, where he takes a shot at Ahmed Johnson. Ahmed hits a bad looking Pearl River Plunge and Chainz gets tossed in by Vega. Perez hits an elbow for the win. NOD and DOA go at it. I mean, not all matches can be good on a show, right? It could have been a lot worse, and at least the characters are developed here, for what its worth. Intercontinental Championship: If Austin doesn’t win the title, he’ll kiss Owen’s ass Owen Hart© vs. Stone Cold Steve Austin Owen got a pin on Austin in the 10 man tag at the Canadian Stampede. Of course, he reminded everyone of that fact. Austin made the challenge and the stipulation. Notably (or not), Austin gets interviewed by a rookie Michael Cole, who gets shoved away, and verbally chewed out. Owen attacks Austin during his corner taunts. More heels needed to do that. Owen works on the knee right away! Action packed start. Austin’s got the advantage now and begins to kick Owen’s ass. Austin is mega over here. This is the last technical wrestling match Austin would really wrestle barring some 2000 stuff with Benoit and Angle. There are two reasons for this. One: the WWF style changes with the Attitude Era. The second reason comes up later in this match sadly. Owen now works on the hand, and moves bodypart to bodypart. Austin with the old school stun gun, and powerbombs Owen out of a hurricanrana! Now Owen goes for the neck with a neck breaker. Austin tries to use a sharpshooter, but Owen gets out. Owen keeps wearing Austin down. This has been a great match, with Austin’s comebacks coming at awesome times. The moment that changed everything: Owen tombstones Austin in a sitting position…and paralyzes him. Stone Cold Steve Austin wins the title in 16:16 by pin. After the tombstone, Owen plays to the crowd to buy Austin time, and somehow, Austin, with a legitimate broken neck here, gets a weak rollup and the pin. Austin was legit angry that Owen kicked out right after three as well. The match was great other than the tombstone at the end, obviously. This changed everything as well. Austin’s style moved to a brawler when he came back. He also needed more surgery in 1999 (the who ran over Steve Austin angle) that stemmed from the piledriver, and was a huge factor that caused him to retire in 2003. This got Austin over even more though, as when he actually got to his feet with a legit broke neck it fueled the toughest SOB in the world environment. The piledriver just looks scary. Austin’s head is a good eight inches under Owen’s ass. Of course, with Austin in the main event, there was 0% chance Owen would ever become a main eventer in the WWF. Austin even said in his book that he didn’t want to work with Owen, and past Survivor Series ’97, he didn’t really have to. WWF Championship: Shawn Michaels is the guest referee. If Shawn favors Bret, he can never wrestle in the USA again. If Bret doesn’t win the title, he can never wrestle in the USA again. The Undertaker© vs. Bret Hart Huge heat for Bret. Bret calls for the Canadian National Anthem. More huge heat. Huge cheers for referee HBK, although that would change soon… Undertaker’s character in the ring has gotten more realistic at this point. He wasn’t sitting up from everything anymore, but still showed that he could take immense punishment, while we’ll see later. Bret actually hits Taker with the title belt before the bell. Common theme with the Harts tonight. Taker quickly gets into indestructible mode and beats the hell out of Bret. Nice backbreaker submission by Undertaker. It’s Taker who’s actually working on a body part early, the spine. Bret gets a chance and begins his going for the knee strategy that was obvious before this match began. Figure Four from the Hitman! Here comes Paul Bearer! He and Taker were not on the same page here… Taker gets out…then goes right outside and takes out Paul Bearer, which allows Bret to take out the knee again. Bearer does a great sell job on the punch. Bret with one of my favorite moves, the Figure Four around the post! This causes a Bret-Shawn argument. Here come Owen and Pillman now. Tremendous psychology here. Bret Hart and Taker are building a great match. Taker uses the damaged leg to stagger over the top rope…and surprises Owen and Pillman by taking then out. HBK gets Pillman and Owen out of here, and Taker chokeslams Bret and pins Bret, RIP pin and all, but HBK doesn’t see it! Taker grabs HBK here, the first seed planted. Bret then almost steals a win before Taker knocks him down again. Taker confronts Shawn one more time. Bret now goes for the spine, we should be getting into Five Moves of Doom territory. Backbreaker! Two count, but Taker gets out with authority. Vertical Suplex, then Bret with some sign language for the crowd before dropping the forearm. Taker sits up after a kick out. Russian Legsweep. It’s almost time… Sharpshoot….no, Taker grabs the throat! Taker makes his comeback…but Bret fights it off. Taker hits the flying clothesline! Taker chokeslams Bret from the apron to the inside of the ring! Fans react there, as JR points out no one has kicked out of two of Taker’s chokeslams. Bret with the logical counter to Taker’s rope walk…kicking the top turnbuckle. Sick top rope superplex! Sharpshooter! Crowd is stunned, but they light up when Taker tries to fight out…no one gets out of this one… EXCEPT The Undertaker! First break of the sharpshooter ever. Taker gets a clothesline and suddenly he’s calling for the end! Tombstone?! No, Bret gets out and pulls Taker toward the post…and locks in a Sharpshooter around the ringpost! It doesn’t look great though. Taker escapes and Bret lands on Shawn, incapacitating him at the moment. Bret gets a chair and wallops Taker. Bret doesn’t toss the chair out far enough (intentionally). Taker actually kicks out of the chairshot, which leads to a huge pop! Shawn sees the chair and grabs it, then confronts Bret about it. Bret denies it. Shawn keeps pressing and Bret denies it again…then spits in HBK’s face! Bret Hart wins the WWF Title in 28:19 by pin. Bret denies the chair usage…then spits in Shawn’s face! Shawn goes for a chair shot…and Bret moves and Shawn LEVELS Undertaker! It’s a hell of a chairshot. Bret gets the pin and Shawn is forced to count it, and Bret wins title #5. Amazingly built match with a super hot finish here. Bret’s reaction right after the pin is perfect too. An almost I told you so like taunt. Great match, and Bret Hart’s last great moment in the WWF, at least for 12 years. Anyway, everything pretty much hit for Summerslam 1997. The only low points quality wise were the Million Dollar Challenge and the 8 Man tag. Even LOD vs. The Godwinns was solid. The WWF needed a strong show as WCW was still ahead in the ratings, and a strong show they got that allowed them to hang on until Steve Austin put them over the top. Of course, Steve Austin barely survived this show. Historically, you have the creation of the great Undertaker vs. HBK rivalry. A piece of the Montreal set-up. Austin somehow looking more badass than he already was, although it was an unfortunate way to get there. Even the development of Ken Shamrock was shown here, as he would be a solid upper midcarder for the next two years. Mankind and HHH also furthered their storyline, with Mankind breaking into Dude Love for the next few weeks before Cactus Jack would show up. A great show all around with a lot of historical significance. Final Grade: A |
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| MPH | Jul 27 2014, 05:43 PM Post #94 |
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OMAHA!
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It's funny you mention historical significance. This was one hell of a PPV and set up a lot moving forward; something the PPV I am currently writing a review on seems to be lacking in a lot of ways (save one). |
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| Joshoeuh | Jul 27 2014, 06:01 PM Post #95 |
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Go Seahawks
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Summerslam 97 is always the first PPV I think of when I think of that era. |
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Aug 1 2014, 02:12 AM Post #96 |
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Tyler
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Posted Image WWF Summerslam ‘00 August 27, 1997 Raleigh, NC Could the WWF survive without Stone Cold Steve Austin? The answer was clearly yes. The Rock and Triple H carried the main events while newcomers like Kurt Angle, Chris Jericho and Chris Benoit were all on their way to becoming stars. Add in a fresh Undertaker and you were still very strong up top. Ratings had survived Austin’s departure just fine with consistent low 6s and high 5s each week. It may have not been quite the Attitude Era, but people were still watching. Interestingly though, the WWF Attitude product was different by this time. There were still your Attitude gimmicks…but it wasn’t AS much as 1999. Instead, you got top notch wrestling from Jericho, Benoit, Angle, Eddie Guerrero, Perry Saturn, Edge and Christian, The Hardyz and Dudleyz. Even guys like Tazz, while not a big a draw as he hoped to be, was an improvement in opening matches than the Blue Meanie. Of course, there is a small debate that this style led to ratings falling off at the end of 2000 (I think the real reason is “I did it for da Rock” and that disappointment), but for now, it was full steam ahead. As a bonus, WCW was practically dead at this point quality rise. I had reviewed New Blood Rising and it would only get worse with Halloween Havoc a couple of months later. So, Summerslam 2000! The Card Interesting intro promo for Summerslam, going with the love triangle of Angle-HHH and Stephanie, playing Ode to Joy, which coincidentally was HHH’s old theme. I also think a lot of the visuals were in Christian’s future titantron (white masks in opera). Right to Censor vs. Rikishi and Too Cool Right to Censor is one of the greatest midcard acts in wrestling history. Perfect heel group for this era. The Rikishi heel turn sadly killed Too Cool…although Christopher would have done that in 2001 anyway. Victoria actually debuted as a Godfather ho at this time, then joined Rikishi and Too Cool when he turned into the Goodfather. Goodfather actually shoves Victoria and ho #2 down. “Save the hos” chant. Good heat. For those who think the RTC killed the Godfather and later Val Venis, I think the WWF going public killed that. Right to Censor defeats Too Cool and Rikishi in 5:12 when Richards pinned Scotty. Scotty goes for a WORM that will obviously be countered somehow as Buchanan is in the middle of the ring and Scotty doesn’t have room to do it. Richards Steven Kicks him and that’s that. Match wasn’t much, but the crowd was hot for the whole thing as Too Cool and Rikishi were over as hell, and so was RTC. We get a history of the Kurt-Steph-HHH triangle…and Kurt kissed Steph on Smackdown, which added a whole new element. Hardcore Champ Shane McMahon! Steve Blackman finds him. Although I am not a big Shane fan, this is my favorite feud of his. Road Dogg vs. X-Pac People stopped caring about the rest of DX after King of the Ring 2000. Road Dogg and X-Pac kept going, but eventually had problems and this led to a “friendly rivalry”. Considering Road Dogg was rapping with K-Kwik a few months later and X-Pac was nowhere to be seen (due to injury to be fair) that should tell you how this went. Road Dogg kicks X-Pac in the ass and he sells it as way stronger than it was and goes flying out of the ring. Looked funny I guess. To me since I just watched Mania XI, this feels like a culmination of a five year storyline (the Kid vs. Roadie stuff after the IC title match). To be clear, no one cares about this. DX died with the McMahon-Helmsley Era. I think it always hurt, especially Road Dogg, that Billy Gunn got injured as the Outlaws were still a big deal earlier in the year. X-Pac pins Road Dogg in 4:42. Low blow from X-Pac and X Factor for the win. Pretty bad. And still no one cares. X-Pac declares it’s over, Road Dogg fakes a handshake and gets revenge. X-Pac would get to fight Jericho before he got hurt at least. Intercontinental Championship Val Venis© and Trish Stratus vs. Eddie Guerrero and Chyna The catch here is Val can lose the title if Trish is pinned or made to submit. The Eddie Guerrero and Chyna team seemed so random after years of HHH and Chyna. Of course, it was entertaining, probably because everything Guerrero did was. Trish laments Chyna being centerfold material and asks Val Venis who’s prettier, and Val snaps at her. I always liked this dynamic, as Test and Albert were always clearly Trish’s henchmen, while Val actually stood up to her. Not that it mattered soon. Weird double team mistiming early on where the ref just lets Eddie do it after stopping him. At this point if you told me Trish would be arguably the greatest WWE Women’s wrestler of all time and Chyna would be unemployed in 8 months I wouldn’t have believed you. Chyna wins the title when she pins Trish in 7:13. Chyna gets Trish alone and press slams her for the win. Match was a surprising mess, as Guerrero seemed off with several timing issues. The booking is weird too. I’d get protecting Val if he was gonna be in the hunt, but Val joined RTC right after this. So why the tag? Why not a triple threat. I do understand Chyna needing to win as it set up Guerrero’s heel turn. Match quality wise, this card is off to a tough start, but the characters not Road Dogg and X-Pac are over and it doesn’t really matter. It’s amazing how much better Stephanie McMahon is now than she was in 2000. Jerry Lawler vs. Tazz Yeah, the Tazz run didn’t last. The feud here is Tazz came back as a thug after a middle of the year injury and attacked guys like Al Snow and Rikishi. Then he attacked JR for some reason and this led to a feud with Lawler. Tazz did have one of the all time great heel lines to JR: “I’d slap you in the face, but it looks like God already did it”, a reference to his balls palsy. Tazz looked pretty bad ass in this build up, too bad it’s being wasted on Lawler. On Smackdown Tazz smashed in the window on Lawler’s rental car, with JR in it (blinding him). Tazz comes out with a cowboy hat acting blind, which is pretty funny. Lawler dominates the first part of the match. Well then. Tazz takes over, but it’s nothing exciting at all. Tazz with a missed senton bomb, which is odd considering I’d never seen Tazz do that and his neck was always an injury concern. Tazz no sells the piledriver! How ECW of him! Jerry Lawler pins Tazz in 4:24. Tazz chokes Lawler out with the Tazmission, but the ref was knocked down. Tazz calls out JR while choking out Lawler…so JR gets a glass jar of candy and smashes it over Tazz’s head. Lawler gets the pin to a big pop. Good moment, but if Tazz wasn’t dead before he was as good as dead losing to Lawler. Also, another subpar match. WWF Hardcore Championship Shane McMahon© vs. Steve Blackman Shane gets interviewed…but Blackman finds him again. We head to the ring! For those who liked the 24/7 Crash run, I always thought Blackman’s run was more entertaining. Shane runs for his life! Shane takes an entertaining ass kicking in a garbage can. Lawler is disappointed that he doesn’t think Shane can tap out in a Hardcore match. Er…why not? Jeez, a half crab, but Blackman also wraps a strap around Shane’s throat and pulls. Sick hold. Here comes T and A to “even” the odds! This is how Shane matches should be booked. Good midcard note you don’t see anymore. JR explaining why Test, who was left at the altar by Stephanie last year, is helping Shane (Test last saw Stephanie and was counting his blessings). You just don’t see that anymore. They go for a drop the amp spot on Blackman, same move they took out Big Show with at Judgment Day. Blackman moves. Blackman beats the crap out of T and A with a kendo stick, then Shane runs by climbing the titantron! Steve Blackman wins the Hardcore Title in 10:08. Blackman chases Shane up the titantron and catches his legs with the kendo stick (also underrated, as Shane didn’t just stop to wait for Blackman). Blackman gets some shots to the back…and Shane goes flying 50 feet! Blackman climbs down a little, then drops a elbow drop from about 20 feet up! Wow. Obvious pin here. Really fun Hardcore match that could have helped rebuild the Hardcore division after 24/7. You know what amazes me? Even though fans were really into Blackman and all…he never got over from this at all. Once he stopped fighting Shane, no one cared about Blackman again. Very odd. Really fun match though. Stephanie is distraught about Shane, and Kurt comes in with the line of the show (“I think he just got the wind knocked out of him”). They hug, but Mick Foley comes in and says that Shane might have hurt his kisser. Funny stuff. Best Two of Three Falls Chris Jericho vs. Chris Benoit Interesting feud here. So, the Judgment Day match seemed to be the blow off between these two as Jericho moved to HHH and Benoit had feuds with Rock and Rikishi. But, once those feuds ended it seemed like there was nowhere else to put these guys, so they just continued their feud. Of course, this feud was incredible and they’d have one more PPV match at Royal Rumble 2001. Then they’d be tag champs. Jericho and Benoit take the referee out of the ring with their roll around punch sequence. Creative and unique. STF from Benoit. Regal would be here soon so that would be the end of that. Benoit gets the crossface 5 minutes in and Jericho taps. Normally I’d be against that, but I’ll explain at the end why I am okay with it and I think it’s actually genius. Benoit let’s go…and goes for it again! Jericho can’t tap out this time obviously and fights it. Great psychology there all around. Another unique submission. Benoit locks Jericho in the Tree of Woe, then goes to the outside and puts him in a Full Nelson. Jeez. Jericho fights back and counters a German into the Liontamer, and Jericho gets the tap out, tying the match at 1-1. Perfect powerbomb reversal from Jericho, but Benoit reverses one to pin, which Jericho bridges out of it. Perfect. Benoit then busts out a full nelson (Dragon) suplex! Top rope frankensteiner…but Jericho actually leaped up there! Jericho lands on the shoulder Benoit’s been working on, so he can’t make the pin right away. Still, some amazing stuff here. Lionsault, but more Jericho shoulder stuff. Chris Benoit defeated Chris Jericho 2-1 in 15:33. Jericho gets a roll-up, but Benoit with an awesome reversal in which he also grabs the bottom rope to win! Awesome match with awesome psychology. The commentary really put over that Jericho chose to tap in the first fall to survive, which is why I am okay with it. These last two matches have really kicked Summerslam into gear. HHH has arrived! They replay Angle and Steph from earlier, and Lawler even thought Angle’s “wind knocked out of him” line was ridiculous. WWF World Tag Team Championship: Tables, Ladders and Chairs Edge and Christian© vs. The Hardy Boyz vs. The Dudley Boyz We already know this is awesome. Small dynamic change from Wrestlemania 2000’s Triangle Ladder Match. Edge and Christian are now cocky chicken-shit heels. The Dudleyz are faces due to powerbombing women through tables. Hardyz are exciting faces. TLC was such a cool concept, even if the only difference is that chairs and tables are readily available (because you could use them in regular ladder matches) around the ring. WWE has a PPV named after the match now, which should say how marketable it was…it also should get credit for Money in the Bank as well. The Hardyz are the hometown team! Matt Hardy busts out some Sabu chair throwing. Bubba gets his leg caught in the ladder as he’s thrown off. That coulda been a lot worse. Bubba Bomb from the top of a ladder! Matt Hardy gets tossed into a ladder…I don’t know how to describe it, but it also seesaws and takes out Jeff. You don’t see creative spots like that in today’s MITBs. WASSSSSSUPPPPP! D-VON! GET THE TABLES! Jeff Hardy looks dead from the seesaw. Christian gets 3Ded through the table! Bubba begins to build his own resting place with the table structure on the outside. Jeff’s leap over the ladder legdrop always owned. Jeff goes for another crazy Swanton on the outside, but unlike Wrestlemania 2000…Bubba moves! Jeff’s broken on the outside. Bubba goes flying through the 8 billion tables on the outside! Serves you right Bubba! Lita saves the titles for the Hardyz as Edge and Christian were guaranteed to win it! Matt Hardy gets tosses through ANOTHER table structure I didn’t notice…then Edge takes out Lita with a spear! First ever hanging from the titles spot from D-Von and Jeff, and crowd pops huge when D-Von actually crashes to the mat. Edge and Christian retain the title in 19:33. Once Jeff and D-Von crash, Edge and Christian are all that’s left. Somehow still the 2nd best mutli-man ladder match ever (Mania X7). All the MITB’s are great, but there’s so much creativity here and it never looks like they are just setting up spots. Also, big credit for this being the first match at this level of its kind. Absolutely incredible. It took three days, but HHH finally confronts Steph about the kiss. Steph sells Angle down the river of course. Stinkface Match The Kat vs. Terri For some reason Al Snow is with the Kat. These two actually fought at Mania. Oh, Snow was feuding with Perry Saturn here, who was with Terri. I mean, the crowd loved it, so I get why it’s here. I’ll leave it at that. The Kat wins in 3:06 Here’s a Al Snow Head shot in this, for what it’s worth. Something to bring down the crowd I guess. APA is at the bar! The Undertaker vs. Kane I sense this was to be Big Show vs. Undertaker, as there is a much forgotten Big Show return and heel turn, but I guess WWE wasn’t happy with him since Taker got revenge and tossed Big Show off the stage and he was gone till the Rumble. Kane then turned heel because Taker returned “as one of them” and Kane is a MONSTER. Really the same logic that he used to bury Taker alive three years later. This was the start of the new Kane look, the “Bret Hart look”. Randomly this is a No DQ brawl. We never got a bell here. Taker rips part of Kane’s mask off, which is the only thing making this match worthwhile. Taker goes for the mask again! Taker gets it off, and he kinda see Kane’s face! A lot bigger of a deal then. Then Kane runs for it. The bell never rang, so this isn’t an official match? Not sure why it was done this way but whatever. Not really good either, just a random brawl when we’ve seen two better ones earlier in this show. A very forced storyline. WWF Championship The Rock© vs. Kurt Angle vs. Triple H Angle’s shot at the main event. The HHH-Steph-Angle love triangle was the main part of the feud, with the Rock kinda on the side. They got this title shot by double pinning Chris Jericho. The love triangle was also smartly hinted at as early as December 99, when HHH and Steph would watch in the locker room and she would call Kurt cute. You don’t see things like that anymore either. Angle on the mic tells HHH he gave his wife more passion that he ever could. I loved how Angle’s character got more confident after his feud with Undertaker in July. Of course, HHH comes down to beat the crap out of Angle. The infamous table breaking spot happens here. HHH goes to Pedigree Angle through the table, but the table gives way too early, and Angle gets a concussion. It’s CLEAR what happens to Angle here as well, he looks totally out of it. Really scary moment in retrospect (and then too). HHH gets the sledgehammer, but here comes the Rock! For the record, this entire match was improvised from Rock and HHH as Angle had to be carried to the back, and while he played a part in the finish, it’s all HHH vs. Rock. HHH actually comes down and stops the stretcher and hits Kurt with two punches. Of course they are worked, but it’s interesting they did that (although it made sense storyline wise). Stephanie comes out to tend to Angle. Even the backstage improvising was smart. You see Hebner say something to HHH with the camera goes away from while HHH yells at Steph to get the belt for a spot. According to some research, Hebner told HHH that he (I assume Vince) wanted Stephanie to go to the back, to film the upcoming angle. Sledgehammer to The Rock. I guess it’s a given it’s no DQ for this too. Backstage Stephanie begs Angle to help HHH as Rock took control. Angle says he’ll do it for her. Here comes Angle with Steph. Angle is dazed, and I assume he’s acting now. Angle pulls Rock’s leg as he hits the ropes, leading to a Pedigree. HHH clearly checks on Angle to see if he’s in position, then goes for the pin as Angle breaks it up. Angle nearly stealing the title got a huge reaction as he pinned Rock after that pedigree. Angle seems to be on point. While wrestling with a concussion is seriously dangerous, Bret Hart sadly showed it could be done at the end of 1999. HHH accidentally punches Stephanie, then Angle takes HHH out with the hammer! The Rock retains the title in 24:33 when he pinned HHH. Rock dumps Angle, then the People’s Elbow to the KOed HHH wins it. Considering the match was already screwed up from the start, Rock and HHH saved it and the ending was very good. In fact, they pulled it all off so well people had no idea if Kurt was really hurt until later. Angle then carries Stephanie to the back, continuing that. I will say though, especially as I’m older and I’ve learned more about concussions, that sending Angle back out there kinda scares me. That doesn’t seem like a safe decision. Also, HHH vs. Rock, while good, didn’t have the normal heat it had earlier in year as Angle vs. HHH was the main story here (and a hot one at that) and Rock was just a part of this one. This is especially apparent as the crowd doesn’t buy too much until Angle returns. The WWF PPVs of 2000 are…pretty awesome it seems. Summerslam was another excellent show with Beniot vs. Jericho, TLC, the main event and Blackman vs. Shane. Historically it put Kurt Angle in his first PPV main event and he somehow shined despite getting legit hurt and not being in 90% of it. TLC also debuted here and is part of WWE today. Once Austin came back booking did get a bit jumbled (as this whole Angle-HHH thing was leading to a HHH face turn which died when he became Rikishi’s accomplice), although that jumbling seemed apparent with Benoit, Kane, Taker and Jericho anyway. Can’t give it a solid A as there was some stuff here that was meh (Lawler-Tazz, Kat-Terri, Road Dogg-X-Pac) and the main did have some small issues. But it’s still a great show. Final Grade: A- |
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Aug 3 2014, 12:44 AM Post #97 |
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Tyler
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Posted Image WWF Summerslam ‘03 Agust 24, 2003 Phoenix, AZ We are in the era of Triple H and his wannabe Ric Flair run. The Brand Extension is off and running, although the talent level still hasn’t quite caught up. In June we just started with Brand-specific PPVs which led to a rather weak Bad Blood 2003 and Vengeance 2003 (although, neither show was really weak, it was just a clear talent dropoff from the combined PPVs from before). The Smackdown Brand seems strongest wrestling wise, although holding them down a little bit was perhaps the weakest Undertaker year, the back in the main event Big Show and the injury to Edge. It still had Guerrero, Benoit, Angle, Mysterio and Lesnar etc., so not all was lost. RAW was the HHH vs. WCW show, as through 2003 HHH would go over Scott Steiner, Booker T, Kevin Nash, and now, he is matched up with Goldberg. Goldberg wasn’t working as well as WWE liked, a lot of that was his booking. Goldberg is limited in that he is only really effective as a top guy destroying everyone. Remember that for the review. Also worth noting that a some of the seeds of the future were planted around this time. Batista was injured (some things don’t change), John Cena was fighting Undertaker and Randy Orton is notably in the main event. In fact, Orton’s PPV debut was in a main event World Title match. You don’t see that often. 2003 was a tough year for WWE. Let’s see how they did with Summerslam! The Card I always approve of a Lilian Garcia National Anthem. This is one of the best PPV intro videos for sure. Sadly, the Network doesn’t have the St. Anger theme. World Tag Team Championship La Resistance © vs. The Dudley Boyz I could name probably three teams off the top of my head would should be in this spot other than La Resistance. But, when you got Pat Patterson connections it doesn’t really matter…(one of those teams would be The World’s Greatest Tag Team). This feud did have the debut of Rob Conway, if that matters at all. The Dudleyz were staler than stale at this point. Nice telegraphed hiptoss by D-Von, although not sure who’s fault it was. More mistiming between the two when a D-Von tackle is off. Greiner and Dupree were just too young to be in this spot. Dupree would get better later on at least. WASSUP! I can’t believe this was still a thing in 2003. La Resistance retains when Dupree pins D-Von in 7:49. 3D to Dupree, but Bubba and Greiner go at it and the ref doesn’t see a cameraman nail D-Von with a camera. Totally killed the crowd. Camera man was Conway obviously. Match sucked and the fans really wanted the belts on the Dudleyz. And I don’t think it was just because they were the faces. Coach interviews the Dudleyz and mentions that La Resistance was clever in their tactics. Bubba doesn’t have the strongest interview. Christian questions Eric Bischoff about the IC Champion not having a match (great question!). Bischoff blames Stone Cold Steve Austin. The Undertaker vs. A-Train The A-Train run in 2003 was not a good one. Pretty horrible that this is Taker vs. A-Train and not Taker vs. John Cena. By the way, who the hell thought this was a good idea? Taker vs. A-Train? DIdn’t Taker beat him AND Big Show in a handicap match at Mania? A-Train brings out Sable with him. Sable’s 2003 comeback was a little funny considering her role and what she sued WWE for 4 years prior. This feels like a Smackdown main event. Not sure if this is a compliment or not. This match isn’t much so far. Basic Undertaker offense and A-Train doesn’t really offer anything unique. Sleeper from the Undertaker! Woo! I don’t remember seeing a lot of that. Blocked Snake Eyes looked botched to me. It wasn’t though. Ref takes an awesome bump on the Taker clothesline. Undertaker pins A-Train in 9:19. Taker goes for the Tombstone, but it’s countered and Taker gets a chokeslam for the three. Why tease the Tombstone? Sable postmatch saves A-Train from a Last Ride trying to seduce Taker, but Taker grabs her throat for Stephanie McMahon to come out and take her out. Woo? Anyway, we are 2 for 2 in bad matches. Eric Bischoff vs. Shane McMahon This was a spinoff of the Kane turn after he tombstoned Linda. Bischoff put JR in a position to get burned alive, and this led to him having to face Shane. Shane was back obviously defending his mother as well. This match seems like it should have many bucketloads of money. Shame that Bischoff’s name value was lowered too much at this point. The idea that Bischoff raped Linda McMahon is pretty uncomfortable, although to his defense Bischoff isn’t presenting it that way. Shane kicks Bischoff’s ass all over, leading to… The Coach HEEL TURN! Coach smacks Shane with a chair twice, and Bischoff declares the match no DQ and Falls Count Anywhere! Really, the Coach heel turn is so out of nowhere it’s awesome. Lawler and JR was in total shock. Bischoff cuts JR and Lawler’s mics off. He lets Coach do play by play and he makes fun of JR. It’s not bad! It does go a little too long. Shane gets a comeback, but Coach hits a low blow. Here comes Stone Cold! Coach reminds Austin he can’t touch him unless physically provoked, but Shane shoves him into Austin! Charles Robinson’s reaction is great here. Coach doesn’t last. Shane makes Bischoff slap Austin, and Austin responds with a Stunner! Shane McMahon pins Erich Bischoff in 10:33. Shane decides to put Bischoff on the announcer’s desk and drives him through with a top rope elbow drop. Sure why not? Match wasn’t really a match, but I got a laugh out of the whole Coach deal. Still, did the Coach heel turn need to be at the 2nd biggest show of the year? Ric Flair tells Randy Orton that HHH has to leave the Chamber as World Champion. No what ifs. United States Championship Eddie Guerrero© vs. Tajiri vs. Rhyno vs. Chris Benoit Guerrero had just won the new US Title beating Benoit. He also was part of a team with Tajiri when Chavo went down, but turned on him after Tajiri landed on his low rider. Benoit and Rhyno had also been feuding. This Eddie heel run didn’t last. He needed to be a face at this point and the fans wouldn’t stop chanting “Eddie” until he was. At least we should finally get some good wrestling here! Funny Eddie stuff with him running from everyone, but sneak attacking everyone when he can. Eddie just non-chalantly suplexes Benoit over the top and out of the ring. The issue with this match is that it has no flow. It’s some good spots, but then someone breaks up something. Lasso From El Paso! Crossface! Nice spot. Eddie breaks Benoit’s crossface by hitting a LOW dropkick to Benoit. Nice! Tajiri goes for his handspring again but he runs into Rhyno on the apron, which leads to Benoit hitting a German. That spot woulda been better if Benoit just caught the normal move and Germaned him. Tajiri with the best German Suplex of the night! GORE to Eddie…but Eddie had the title belt and Rhyno hit his head! Tajiri with an awesome save! He went from the Tree of Woe to stopping a pin in a second! Eddie Guerrero retains when he pinned Rhyno in 10:50. Tajiri and Benoit fight to the outside and allows Guerrero to hit the Frog Splash for the win. What a shame. If this got five more minutes I’m sure the middle sequences would have been better and there woulda been more flow. Instead we get a disjointed four way with an awesome finish. Oh well. Still pretty good. We see a video of Lesnar getting close to killing Zach Gowen. Matt Hardy also made sure that Gowen lost by forfeit on Velocity. WWE Championship Kurt Angle© vs. Brock Lesnar Angle won the title he lost to Lesnar at Mania XIX back at Vengeance in a three way. Lesnar turned heel and aligned with Vince as he felt Angle stole his title. Basically, the roles are now reversed from Mania XIX. Lesnar was a lot better as a heel. Fun fact, the build-up contains the only Lesnar vs. Vince match ever. This is a pretty action packed match, but I will say it’s not their Mania match so far. Lesnar actually presses Angle over his head and throws him out of the ring. For someone with a fragile neck as Angle, I’m surprised they did that. Then again, Angle’s nuts, as we all found out later. Crazy tilt-a-whirl from Lesnar. Lesnar seems to be doing more power stuff and less technical stuff, probably because he’s a heel now. Good psychology with Lesnar holding the shoulder as he’s German suplexed (he hit the post before). Lesnar barely survives an Angle Slam! Angle took off the straps for the Angle Slam. Hilariously, he puts them back on, just to take them back off for the Angle Lock! Angle puts Lesnar in a crazy sleeper, but with his legs. Tazz calls it as a Figure Four which is incredible for all the wrong reasons. Birthday Vince breaks up an Angle Lock when the ref was out. Kurt Angle retains by submission in 21:17. Angle Lock gets it done. Lesnar tapping is an odd choice. Angle hits an Angle Slam on Vince through a chair, which had to hurt. A very good match, but not as good as Mania XIX. Lesnar tapping seemed pretty counterproductive, but it IS Angle and it didn’t matter in the long run at all. Jaime Koeppe won the Diva Search. I have no idea who that is. No Holds Barred Rob Van Dam vs. Kane This was the blow off for the Kane taking off his mask angle. I love RVD, but lol at this whole idea. The Kane taking off his mask angle could have made HUGE money. This feud also already lost steam as Shane McMahon and Kane already began interacting. The idea that the Kane mask angle had nothing to do with the Undertaker is ridiculous. Moonsault from the barricade from RVD! Some ladder action. RVD seesaws it into Kane’s face. To be honest for a big monster they are having Kane give way too much here. This and Unforgiven 2003 were big reasons this Kane run went nowhere. JR calls Kane and hideous and smelly monster. That B.O.! Match really slows to a crawl with Kane’s offense. It’s edited out, but Kane actually falls off the top rope going for a flying clothesline to the outside. He misses anyway. RVD begins killing Kane. Rolling Thunder on a chair and a skateboard! RVD actually goes for the Van Terminator, but Kane moved out of the way…JR calls it as it hit. Moving JR and Lawler away from ringside was a bad idea. Kane pinned Rob Van Dam in 12:49. Kane tombstones RVD on the steps. That’s it for RVD. This match had some good spots a lot of meh inbetween. Like RVD was ever winning this anyway. Kane for some reason doesn’t make a convincing monster here, probably because Brock Lesnar looked a lot more intimidating as a monster earlier. At least he hasn’t yet been owned by a non-wrestler! Linda gets a good slap on Eric Bischoff! World Heavyweight Championship Elimination Chamber Match Triple H © vs. Randy Orton vs. Kevin Nash vs. Chris Jericho vs. Goldberg vs. Shawn Michaels Fun fact about this match. It was supposed to be Goldberg vs. HHH, but HHH suffered an abdominal injury (we’ll get to that) and we got this instead. I wonder what this card would have looked like otherwise. Also, there are 3 minute intervals between each entrant as opposed to five last November. Nash had lost a hair vs. hair match with Jericho right before this on RAW. Needed it for a movie. HBK and Jericho start us off! HHH is wearing longer tights, so maybe it was a quad injury. Jericho beating Rock and Stone Cold in the same night kept him over for a LONG time. I mean, he woulda stayed over anyway, but this only helped. I wonder what the last PPV that was brought up in is. This is 21 months later. Good opening sequence but no one cares. They want Goldberg. Here comes Orton. Orton’s old finisher, the High Crossbody, comes out here! Not much to say there. Here comes Big Daddy Cool! Best sidewalk slam in the business! Jericho eliminates Nash after a HBK SCM. Two minutes of work for Nash there. With one bump. This would be the last time we’d see him in a WWE ring until the Royal Rumble in 2011. HHH is next! HBK promptly superkicks him and HHH falls back into his pod. Nash powerbombs Jericho and Orton as his last act. The Nash 2002-2003 run wasn’t pretty. A little preface here. HBK, Orton and Jericho (and HHH, kinda) are left. What is about to happen is the best 3 minutes of booking that WWE Goldberg has ever had. Goldberg kills everyone not named HHH, as HHH is still in his pod. Goldberg nearly breaks Orton in half. He almost does it again as he spears Orton! Orton is gone. Goldberg proceeds to destroy Y2J next, tossing him from the ring into the chain wall. Goldberg actually breaks Jericho in pieces when he spears him through the pexi-glass! It wasn’t a clean break, but, um…yeah it looked awesome. Poor Jericho is 2 for 2 in being thrown through pod class walls. We get some Goldberg vs. HBK, which is historic I suppose. Goldberg kills him too. Jackhammer and he’s gone. Goldberg pulls what’s left of Jericho and spears him again for good measure. Jackhammer and we are down to HHH vs. Goldberg. Fans are in a frenzy! Anything that went wrong with Goldberg before this show was fixed by those three minutes. HHH hides in the pod, so Goldberg BUSTS through the glass! Goldberg begins to whip HHH’s ass. This is like the rich man’s December to Dismember Chamber match. HHH comeback! Er…what? Goldberg ends that quickly thankfully. HHH retains the title when he pins Goldberg in 19:12. Goldberg goes for a spear, but Flair throws the sledgehammer into the ring through the chain wall, and HHH gets Goldberg in the head mid spear! HHH pins him for the win. Well, that put the nail in the coffin for Goldberg’s WWE run. He’d win the title the next month in a 20 minute boring match and the draw was just gone. I mean isn’t this the perfect way for Goldberg to win the WWE Title? Destroying everyone, spears and jackhammers everywhere? That is what Goldberg is! What a horrible result of the reign of terror from 2003 HHH. Unreal. Nevermind that HHH wrestled a total of 3 minutes here because of his injury! Once HBK superkicked him we didn’t see him until the end! Just horrible all around. Historically, Goldberg won the title but no one cared anymore. Angle and Lesnar kept going and Lesnar would win the title, but he would be gone six months later. Kane was done after Taker beat him at Mania, although Benoit almost brought him back. I mean, Eddie Guerrero won, that matters right? Oh and Randy Orton’s PPV debut (how many people have made their WWE PPV in a world title match? It’s him, Hogan and Piper, right?) A lot of bad stuff, some good stuff, nothing really great or notable here. And that finish is just incredibly bad. Final Grade: C Edited by RDT, Aug 3 2014, 04:28 PM.
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| Hajjhowe | Aug 3 2014, 06:24 AM Post #98 |
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Halfcourt Heroes
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The Big Show made his in ring & PPV debut in a world title match, and won the belt. |
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Aug 3 2014, 04:25 PM Post #99 |
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Tyler
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I do strictly mean for WWE. WCW had a lot of guys who did that I think. Flair, Giant, Hogan all come to mind immediately. David Arquette as well. |
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Aug 9 2014, 01:32 AM Post #100 |
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Tyler
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Posted Image WWF Summerslam ‘95 August 27, 1995 Pittsburgh, PA Well, we saw arguably up onto that point the worst Wrestlemania of all time a few months prior. How did Vince respond? By giving us Diesel vs. Mabel! The WWF in 1995 had the talent but for some reason wouldn’t use them correctly. Mabel, DDS Isaac Yank’em and Kama all have high profile matches against top guys here. Why? I have no idea really. Despite Vince having a loaded roster there is no Owen Hart match. Or British Bulldog match. Jeff Jarrett? Bam Bam Bigelow? Yoko? But Mabel! Woo! When Nitro came around the WWF started taking things a little more seriously. But overall it looked like the WWF had no idea of what they are doing. They also made the Summerslam ’94 mistake of putting the wrong match as the main event. According to Mabel it was because “Vince said the title must be on last”. Where was that at Summerslam ’94?! Anyway, Shawn vs. Razor II is on this card, so there’s that to look forward to. Shawn had turned face the night after Mania XI (made little sense really, WWF needed top heels). The Card Dean Douglas is standing by! I wonder if Vince brought him in to show the WWF taught kids or something. 1-2-3 Kid vs. Hakushi Not much of a story, but apparently no one wanted to really help out Hakushi except Bret Hart backstage, so once that feud ended no one cared about him. Meaning no one wanted to adapt to Hakushi’s unique style. Kid was an amazing worker before he hurt is neck in 1997. A feel like that tilt-a-whirl slam was supposed to be a backbreaker. Bronco Buster from Hakushi! Kinda. Nick kick to the back of the head. Moonsault from Hakushi, nice! PERFECT Flying Space Tiger Drop! Someone needs to add that to their repertoire immediately. Kid gets some aerial moves of his own! This has picked up! Hakushi pinned the 1-2-3 Kid in 9:27. Kid goes for a spin kick, and Hakushi drops him right on his head with a one arm powerbomb! It’s over there. It started a bit off, but turned into an excellent match. Too bad it wasn’t longer. That Tiger Drop was ridiculous. King Mabel interview: BIG DADDY FOOL! Actually a pretty decent Mabel promo here, saying if he thought the Bulldog heel turn was a surprise, tonight he will have something bigger. Hunter Hearst Helmsley vs. Bob “Spark Plugg” Holly I believe this is the PPV of HHH. He still had the cane with him, and no lady yet. Normally I’d lol at Holly’s WWF Racing jacket, but after reading his book it turned out that was a real race team! HHH is acting like Regal with the lock up refusal. No surprise, he was just working with Regal in WCW. Holly gets the early advantage! Pretty nice turnbuckle bump from Holly there. Lawler makes a speeding reference. We see the Bulldog has arrived! He attacked Diesel and turned heel in a tag match recently. HHH hiptosses Holly over the top rope. Holly was an underrated worker. Miscommunication on the Irish Whip there. Led to a great dropkick from Holly though. HHH pins Bob Holly in 7:10. HHH turns a backdrop into the Pedigree (and not a facebuster!) for the win. Okay match, Holly looked good and HHH was fine too. It’s a match that feels like it shoulda been on RAW or even the main event of Superstars though. Not at Summerslam. The Smokin’ Gunns vs. the Blu Brothers Well, their Mania match was awful. Let’s see what the Harris Twins give us this time. Random note, I was watching a DX vs. DOA match earlier, which had Billy Gunn against the Harris Twins. Just a weird coincidence. There’s a almost messed up knee drop from one of the twins. Billy Gunn pins Jacob? in 5:31. Sidewinder (awesome finish) for the win. Match was pretty nothing. Barry Horowitz vs. Skip Bodydonna Sunny is with Skip! Horowitz is like a Mikey Whipwreck/Eugene/Zack Ryder hybrid. Story here is Horowitz always lost, but he upset Skip in a tag match. So we are here. Skip is suplexed out of the ring! Sunny tries to throw in a towel, and gets ejected. Odd spot. The crowd is behind Barry. Hakushi is coming down to the ring! Fans know he does like Skip, which led to the Hakushi face turn. Barry Horowitz pins Skip in 11:21. Hakushi springboard jumps over Skip, then Skip turns into a small package for the win! Horowitz wins! Horowitz wins! Match was okay I guess, pretty boring. The crowd popped big for Horowitz, but let’s be real, this isn’t a winner gimmick and the Horowitz push was gone shortly. Also, again, this hardly feels like a match worthy of Summerslam. Dean Douglas goes over the last match, with “vivify” as the word to learn or something. Ref gets an F! Whatever. We get some Ladder Match hype! Interview with IC Champ HBK! WWF Women’s Championship Alundra Blayze© vs. Bertha Faye Ugh, Bertha Faye. What happened to Bull Nakano? Kinda defeats the point of the monster if you knock her down in the first 10 seconds… Hair pull botch. This isn’t going well. Bertha Faye wins the title in 4:37. Horrible sitout powerbomb for the finish. All Blayze, but a pretty bad match. No one cared. Why didn’t Vince just let Rhonda Sing be herself I have no idea, but this was the 2nd to final nail in the coffin, with Madusa dumping the title in the trash can on Nitro being the final one. The crowd reaction difference from Summerslam ’94 and Summerslam ’95 is massive. No one cared here. Casket Match The Undertaker vs. Kama Story here. Kama was able to steal the urn from Undertaker at Mania XI when part of the Million Dollar Corporation. Kama would melt it down to a chain (which was kinda awesome). So, Taker’s out for revenge! Taker is seriously over here. Kinda shows how not over everything else had been since the opener. Taker has cut the small sleeves of his shirt, leading to the #1 look he’s ever had in my opinion. Kama catching Taker mid-Stinger Splash was pretty impressive. They do an obvious Undertaker skinning the cat spot with Kama being sent into the casket by Taker’s legs. Looked bad. Cool intention though. Paul Bearer is going after Dibiase! He’s got the blazer off and everything! Kama tries to piledrive Taker on the casket, but Taker backdrops him into the ring. Pretty cool. Both men are in the casket. It’s a draw! The Undertaker wins in 16:26. Tombstone then casket roll for the win. Pretty much 16 minutes of nothing. What a boring match. Bearer was the highlight. At the piledriver attempt on the casket. But overall, yuck. Bret Hart vs. D.D.S. Isaac Yank’em A spinoff of the Bret vs. Lawler feud after Lawler lost a Kiss My Foot match to Bret. Weird, seems like Hart vs. Lawler blowoff should be here. DDS is the future Kane of course. Bret had an uncanny ability to go even with guys way lower than him and not lose anything as a result…and the other guy looks great. Yank’em looks solid here. DDS tries to hang Bret on the top rope, but it’s a little bit short… Legdrop off the top on a hanging on the top rope Bret! Nice, even if it missed a little. Lawler saves Yank’em from the Sharpshooter! Bret ties DDS like he would Diesel a few months later to the ringpost! Blatant interference from Lawler doesn’t cause the DQ…right away. Bret Hart wins by DQ in 16:07. Eventually the ref calls for the bell as Lawler and DDR tie Bret in the ropes and choke him. Match was good. Bret makes DDS look like a credible threat, but it is obvious DDS wasn’t ready yet. This was apparent when post-Bret he had zero notable matches until he was Kane two years later. Not sure why we got a DQ with a big new guy at the 2nd biggest show of the year, but whatever. WWF Intercontinental Championship Ladder Match Shawn Michaels© vs. Razor Ramon Backstage story here: this was originally Shawn vs. Sid, but Vince realized he needed a good match on this card. Also, Vince told Shawn they couldn’t use the ladder as a weapon in this match due to violence stuff. Nice fake SCM spot early on. Good a good reaction from the crowd. Now Razor goes for the Razor’s Edge! Crazy suplex from the inside to the outside by Razor to Shawn, and Shawn’s foot nails the steel railing. That looked like it hurt! They go for their finishers again, but no dice. No ladder so far. Fall Away Slam off the second rope! Razor is the first to go for the belt! Shawn shoves him off. Haha, Shawn hits Razor “inadvertently” with the ladder. Nice creative spot considering the limitation. Shawn gets his leg caught in the ladder and goes down with it. Looked brutal! Razor now stomps away on the knee! Razor nails HBK with the ladder in the knee, and Vince covers it on commentary by saying Razor was trying to set up the ladder and hit HBK accidentally! Slam on the ladder. Ouch! Great psychology, HBK is selling the hell out of that knee. Kneebreaker using the ladder. Just great stuff here. Indian Deathlock from Ramon! Wow! Ramon just drops the ladder on HBK’s knee! Backsuplex off the ladder by HBK! What a match! Ramon sells being slammed into the corner ladder by flying over the top rope. Great stuff. Moonsault off the ladder by HBK! HBK tries his top of the ladder splash on Ramon, but unlike Mania X, Ramon moves! Double crotch spot, but Ramon misses a bit. Still looked good. HBK misses Ramon on the apron and basically suicide dives with a ladder onto nothing. Ouch. Ramon grabs a second ladder! There’s innovation! HBK goes to climb…but gets Razor Edge’d off the ladder! HBK climbs up one, and Razor climbs up the second ladder! HBK superkicks Ramon off his ladder! HBK leaps for the belt and misses crashing to the mat and hurting his arm it looked like. Was that supposed to be the finish? Ramon goes for the Edge but HBK backdrops him over! Michaels doesn’t set up the ladder correctly and actually does screw up as the belt doesn’t come down with him. Shawn Michaels wins in 25:03. HBK actually throws a fit in the ring before going up and grabbing the belt to win. There was even a crowd shot thrown in. Way to go HBK. Anyway, the match saved Summerslam. It’s pretty amazing and had great psychology, which is something you will never see in a ladder match today. But overall incredible. More Douglas. He’s defining bad here. Ramon gets in his face and punches him down. WWF Championship Diesel© vs. King Mabel HBK standing tall with the IC belt would have made a great finish to the show. Anyway, story is Mabel won King of the Ring and now got a title match with Big Daddy Fool! Quick Diesel interview before the match. He’s gonna get MEDIVAL on Mabel! They almost mess up the first spot, an Irish Whip. Shrug. Diesel goes for a slam! Mabel stops him. FLYING DIESEL OVER THE TOP ROPE. You can tell Diesel is at least trying here. Mabel angles Diesel incorrectly on a whip into the post, so Diesel actually hits the bottom turnbuckle somehow. Horrible Bossman slam there. Come on. Diesel in a shoot said that he asked Mabel not to do the sitting on the back spot. Mabel does it anyway it looks like it hurt like hell. Diesel said he couldn’t feel his legs for a minute afterwards. Probably why we follow with a terrible camel clutch. For some reason Mabel runs over the ref. No idea why. Mo is in the ring! Double team on Diesel! Here comes Lex Luger! Diesel actually takes a shot at him, smart booking there, as it seems like this is Mabel’s “surprise”, like the Bulldog heel turn. Luger attacks Mo. This is the last time we’d see him till 8 nights later on Nitro! Diesel retains the title by pin in 9:14. Mabel misses a 2nd rope splash (although he grazes Diesel). Diesel comes off the second rope with a flying clothesline! And we end the top two PPVs in 1995 for the WWF with flying clotheslines! Horrible. Mabel sucks. You know, sometimes I don’t blame Diesel for the poor title run. Just look at some of his opponents! Anyway, we got one five star classic, a very good opener and Bret carrying a green Glenn Jacobs to something good. Everything ranged from bad to horrid. Diesel vs. Mabel is in Undertaker vs. Undertaker territory you know. Historically? PPV debut of HHH and Kane, even though both wouldn’t really be the same guy when they got over? I have a hard time giving this less than a C with the Ladder Match, even with Mabel vs. Diesel’s bad match. There was enough good stuff scattered around to keep it. Jeez, why not just use the already over talent you had already Vince. How is Owen Hart not on this show? What was the point of the Bulldog being at the arena anyway? Final Grade: C |
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| Baldwin | Aug 20 2014, 12:03 PM Post #101 |
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6x EBL Champion
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I want to request Slamboree 1998 |
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| Hajjhowe | Aug 26 2014, 12:10 AM Post #102 |
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Halfcourt Heroes
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I'll recommend TLC 2012. |
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Aug 26 2014, 11:34 PM Post #103 |
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Tyler
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In December 2014 I will do this for sure. |
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Aug 27 2014, 12:41 AM Post #104 |
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Tyler
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Posted Image WWF Slamboree ‘98 May 17, 1998 Worcester, MA The WWF was coming back! Eric Bischoff had probably thought he won the war 7 months prior when he signed Bret Hart, the then-WWF Champion, in late 1997. Somehow though, led by Stone Cold Steve Austin and Mr. McMahon, the WWF came storming back and a month prior had taken the TV ratings lead. Bischoff panicked. While WCW did hotshot some big main events on Nitro already, now it was really go time. The WCW title changed hands on the Nitro after Spring Stampede, which was the week after the WWF re-took the lead. In the months after this Goldberg would win the WCW Title on Nitro, the ultimate hotshot move. Bischoff seemed to be ignorant toward who was drawing for the WWF. It probably hurt him that Austin and Mick Foley were main eventing, two guys Bischoff had let go from WCW over the last few years. It led to Bischoff stating that Vince’s character was the reason for the ratings…and actually challenged him to show up at Slamboree (with loads of legal issues obviously). It will go down as one of the most bush league things WCW had ever done. It was WCW’s own damn fault for being in this spot. The terrible booking ruined Sting’s run after over a year of build-up. Then Randy Savage caught fire and somehow he got ruined too. Bret was already directionless…although to be honest it looked like he didn’t give a damn at this point (which’s he’s admitted no less). WCW wasn’t quite in 2nd place yet, but the companies were neck and neck. The WWF was on the rise. WCW was falling. With proper booking WCW could perhaps make a move to squash the WWF…but it would be hard. Notably, Slamboree is run in a “WWF town”, Worcester, MA (where Foley would win World Title #1 in December). I think that explains the two main events. The Card Cool intro music! The main WCW storyline was that the NWO was splintering, and no one seemed to know who’s side was on who’s. The biggest thing is that Giant (he dropped the “the” for some reason) joined the NWO before this PPV. Yet still him and WCW-bred Sting are facing The Outsiders for the Tag Titles. And we get some Bischoff stuff about the challenge to Vince. Vince of course never brought up this on RAW, which was the smart thing to do. WCW Television Championship Fit Finley © vs. Chris Benoit Story here: Booker T has been bringing life to both his singles career and the TV title ranks with his reigns…but somehow Finley took the title from him. Benoit beat Booker to get this match. Crowd gets into it early on a Benoit chop. Odd mistake on a bridge sequence. The start of the match has taken the crowd out of it. I think that chop was letting on this was gonna be a hard hitting contest and then we got some technical holds, which the fans weren’t expecting. I probably haven’t seen enough Finley from the late 90s, because from the looks of this he pretty much sucks. (He was solid in the mid 2000s). Benoit nails Finley with a chair right in front of the ref. I guess no DQ? Benoit goes for a suicide dive but Finley puts up the chair, leading to Benoit going in head first. A cool spot for its time, but admittedly I now cringe anything Benoit takes a chair shot to the head in any way. Nevermind this was done tons better at Royal Rumble 2001. Benoit is pretty over here. Finley just wasn’t the guy to get heat on him. Here comes Booker T! Benoit turns his attention too. Finley nails Benoit in the back of the head (and it looked like he actually kicked him) with a baseball slide. Finley retains by pin in 14:52. Tombstone Piledriver! Finley wins it and the crowd hates it. Finley would lose the title to Booker I believe shortly thereafter, leading to the critically acclaimed Best of 7 series between Booker and Benoit. Finley kinda disappears with random appearaces until 2006. Surprisingly bad match. I would have never guessed it but it just didn’t click between these two. Jericho with Lee Marshall. Jericho was the evolutionary Zack Ryder for the record. Lex Luger vs. Brian Adams A pretty surprisingly departure from workrate leading to the big names for this show. Lex though kept dropping down the card ever since Road Wild 1997 where he lost the WCW title to Hogan. He was still pretty over at this point though. Pretty slow offense from Luger on the outside. It’s like he couldn’t even be bothered to actually follow through on moves. Yikes. Brian Adams almost fucks up a piledriver. Looked horrible. He didn’t even kick his legs out the whole way. Lex Luger wins by submission in 5:05. Torture Rack for the win. Pretty uninspiring offense everywhere. Very bad match. Unless you like random kicking and punching everywhere with no rhyme or reason. Luger was over though, fans popped for the Rack. Saturn speaks. Originally the Flock was supposed to wrestle Goldberg in a gauntlet match to see if the Flock would stay together or disband. But this was the lead up to Saturn’s turn on the Flock, as he says he wants Goldberg one on one, and if the Flock doesn’t like it too bad. Cruiserweight Battle Royal Super Calo vs. Chavo Guerrero Jr., vs. Ciclope vs. Damien 666 vs. El Dandy vs. El Grio vs. Juventud Guerrera vs. Marty Jannetty vs. Billy Kidman vs. Evan Karagias vs. Lenny Lane vs. Psychosis vs. Silver King vs. Johnny Swinger vs. Villiano IV Story here: Chris Jericho had become one of the best performers on either show. He was booked brilliantly too. He injured Rey Jr. at Souled Out, unmasked Juvi and forced Dean Malenko into a sabbatical after beating him and talking trash about his family. Jericho had been collecting trophies of the people he’d beat and humiliate, such as Juvi’s mask. Chris Jericho announces all the participants (hilariously burying them all). Best one might be “if Silver King wrestles 12 more matches he gets upgraded to Gold King” and “representing Villiano 1 through 62, Villiano IV!” Odds are this comes down to Kidman vs. Guerrera. Chavo would be a dark horse. Everyone else was just there. I mean Marty Jannetty? Chavo should have never stopped using the Tornado DDT. Brilliant move. Psycohsis’s bump into the ropes was always awesome. Down to Chavo, Kidman, Ciclope, Psychosis and Juvi. Kidman gets rid of Chavo. Psychosis terrible telegrapshs his elimination. Juvi dumps Kidman. Ciclope wins at 8:27. One of the greatest WCW swerves of all time. Juvi and Ciclope shake, and Juvi eliminates himself. Ciclope unmasks…and it’s DEAN MALENKO. Crowd pops HUGE! WCW Cruiserweight Championship Chris Jericho © vs. Dean Malenko Malenko kicks Jericho’s ass early on. Jericho actually gets the upperhand with a nice slingshot. Jericho yells that “this is a conspiracy!” Jericho was such a tremendous heel. As soon as he gets the advantage the fear is gone and he’s an arrogant jerk again. Put over Jericho huge too. Jericho slaps Malenko. Total arrogance. Malenko nails Jericho off the top rope with a gutbuster, but messes it up and injures his knee a bit. Dean Malenko makes Chris Jericho submit in 7:02 and wins the title. WE GOIN TO TEXAS! Crowd pops HUGE when Jericho taps out. The match actually wasn’t all that great, but the whole angle was so well done that really, who gives a shit. Awesome moments all around. This was the angle that showed that Chris Jericho could be a top star. And, the aftermath was done correctly, as with all due respect to Malenko, the star to be made here was Jericho. He’d get the belt back on a technicality (Malenko wasn’t an official participant in the match!), leading to ANOTHER great moment at Bash at the Beach 1998. Too bad WCW didn’t like money. Vinnie Mac cam! Was there really any surprise they got sued? Bowery Death Match Diamond Dallas Page vs. Raven Story here: I actually don’t completely remember. I know Page and Raven had problems from the Flock vs. Benoit series in late 1997 and it led to this. There was a triple jeopardy match between the three at Uncensored. It was odd as the Raven feud seemed to be between Page being near the top of the card. I mean, he’d be wrestling Hogan and Rodman in two months. This is a cage with a roof, but with Last Man Standing rules. There are weapons in the corner. It’s basically the TNA Clockwork Orange House of Fun Match. Raven also came out with a Riot Squad for protection from “fans”. I believe this was an extension of when Goldberg beat him for the US title, as the fans threw Raven back into the squared circle. A VCR is in the ring! Raven takes an awesome into the cage bump by way of noose. Page tries to hang Raven of the cage top. Jeez. VCR TO THE HEAD OF RAVEN! In all seriousness somehow this match sucks too. Just weapon hit, 10 count, weapon hit, 10 count etc. Schiavone also says that there are a lot of RPMs behind a cookie sheet shot. Safe to say Tony didn’t watch NASCAR. Ref takes a hit to the back of the head with a trash can! The Flock are here and they fight through Raven’s Riot Squad? Okay? For some reason Van Hammer was waiting under the ring to attack the Flock. Riot Squad in the ring! They attack Page…and they are Kidman and Horace! No one really cares. Page takes out Horace with a Diamond Cutter, and takes out Kidman with a cool Cutter where Kidman was hanging from the top of the cage. Page survives an Evenflow. Diamond Cutter by Raven! He might beat Page with his own move and that’s a really believable finish. DDP wins in 14:35. DDP survives again. Raven goes for a chair shot, but Page ducks and hits the Daimond Cutter. Page JUST gets up in time. It was done well where fans weren’t sure if it was a draw or not, so well done there. I understand the cage’s purpose, but the cage turned this into a boring uninspiring hardcore match. And some weird Riot Squard booking where Van Hammer got involved. I mean the hell? Should have been a lot better than it was. A Riot Squad member handcuffs the Flock to the cage and then beats up Raven. And it’s Mortis! Mortis unmasks, which is a first. He is angry because Raven didn’t let him into the Flock. He copies the Tommy Dreamer chairshot from ECW and Raven sells it beautifully. Fans don’t know what to make of all of this. Apparently he has always been one of the “fans” that’s attacked Raven. This led to a weird match with a billion Mortis’s at the Great American Bash though. Vinnie Mac cam! We get some storyline about Giant and Sting. It’s pretty non-sensical, which I will get to. Eddy Guerrero vs. The Ultimo Dragon I believe if Dragon wins this match, Chavo Guerrero Jr. is freed from Eddy Guerrero. Where was the Dragon in that Cruiserweight Battle Royal? Shame Eddy Guerrero wasn’t all there personally at this point. He’s another who would have been the best heel in the business at this point. Of course Guerrero would redeem himself years later. Pretty cool test of strength sequence from both. Schiavone actually brings up a good reason why Eddy and Ultimo weren’t in the Battle Royal earlier. That they both were involved in this family issue and it mattered so much to both that they wanted to be 100%. I’m fine with that. The crowd is dead for this. The Ultimo Dragon sadly was just a guy at this point. The thing is the heat is with Chavo in this storyline. The fans come alive as a fat white guy takes his shirt off in the crowd. Pretty cool inverted airplane backbreaker from Ultimo there. Pretty cool reversal from Eddie. Dragon had him in the Dragon Sleeper, but Eddy flipped over and locked The Dragon his own move. Eddy Guerrero pins the Ultimo Dragon in 11:09. Eddy holds the ropes on the Dragon Sleeper, and Chavo kicks his hand off. Dragon though accidentally spin kicks Chavo off the apron. Eddy nails Dragon with a suplex and the Frog Splash for the win. Chavo then beats the crap out of the Ultimo Dragon because he lost. It’s great character development for Chavo, as this was the moment that he snapped and he got over. Match was pretty disappointing considering who was involved. But it was decent enough. Vince McMahon locker room! I mean seriously. Why not throw up one for Stone Cold while you are at it. WCW US Championship Goldberg© vs. Saturn Saturn lost to Goldberg last month, and is out to prove himself…WITHOUT the Flock. Saturn with a nice dropkick off the apron and Goldberg crashes into the guardrail. Maybe Saturn will become the one in 87-1! Springboard dropkick off a chair by Saturn. And we get a weird taunt from Saturn. Weird because he was supposed to be turning face. Goldberg retains in 7:01. Saturn goes for another springboard but Goldberg spears him in midair! Jackhammer ends it. Pretty entertaining Goldberg squash! Not bad at all! I wonder if this was Goldberg’s best match at this point. Pretty awesome Raven Great American Bash promo. Eric Bischoff vs. Vince McMahon I covered the storyline for this in the background info. It’s a waste of time, but eventually Bischoff has Vince counted out because Vince obviously didn’t show up. I hope the lawsuit was worth it. I wonder if Michael Buffer was ever embarrassed doing this stuff for WCW. Bret Hart vs. Randy Savage Story here: Savage finally left the NWO for good. This happened because he beat Sting for the WCW Title at Spring Stampede, but Hollywood Hogan won it from him the next day with surprising help from Bret. There’s a lot of who’s side is who on and stuff, but this is the precursor to the Black and White vs. Wolfpac stuff. Roddy Piper is the referee. I don’t really know why to be honest. Savage actually still has NWO music. So he didn’t really leave. He just would transition to the Wolfpac. Buffer actually announces Savage is wearing Red and Black of the Wolfpac. So I don’t know where the transition happens, but the Outsiders are in the main event. Bret trying to smash Savage with the steel steps seemed so un-Bret Hart like. We get some fighting in the crowd action. Overall you can just see the passion gone from Bret Hart. He’s just going through the motions here. Also, Bret Hart doesn’t fit as a heel here. The only time being a heel worked for him was the Pro-Canada deal. That only worked because he really believed a lot of the things he was saying. Sharpshooter…but here comes Miss Elizabeth! Savage reverses the Sharpshooter into his own…which seems odd. Liz gets in and shoves Piper. For some reason Bret nails Piper in the back of the head with brass knuckles. Ok? Hollywood Hogan is here! He trips up Savage and slams his leg in the ringpost. Bret Hart makes Savage submit in 16:38. Sharpshooter wins it. I guess Bret is part of NWO Hollywood now? The motivations don’t make a lot of sense for anyone to be fair. Bret wanted a title shot in all this. Match was decent. It was clear Bret didn’t care and Savage was past his prime as a worker here. Also, on Nitro Piper reversed this decision, for whatever that’s worth. WCW World Tag Team Championship The Outsiders © vs. Sting and Giant Story here: Giant joined the NWO on Nitro and offered a shirt to Sting. No idea why this match is still happening…but it is. You’d think Sting would back out. I THINK based on watching that Nash and Hall are Wolfpac at this point. Nash and Hall come out in Red and Black, so tells you how much I knew about the story. Scott Hall seems to stumble on his way out. They come down with Dusty Rhodes and it looks like they are holding Hall up, which is embarrassing. He seems fine once he hits the ring though. Hall with a “yeah, we missed you too”. Seems like a WWF reference to me. Survey time! Hey at least Sting is in the main event! I can’t think of why Sting would still team with Giant now that he’s NWO. Whatever. Scott Hall makes fun of Giant. Pretty smart booking that will be unveiled later. Kevin Nash gets a huge pop when tagged in. Fans are behind the Wolfpac in general. “Let’s go Wolfpac” chants. Sting terrible takes a big boot. I was once told by a friend of mine that it was okay that Hogan beat Sting at Starrcade because Sting was suddenly a shell of his former self. I don’t know if I believe that, but I don’t remember a lot of great Sting 1998 matches. Wolfpac now use heel tactics on Sting (abdominal stretch, partner grabs the arm). How confusing. Wrestling in 1998 would be a lot less embarrassing if everyone didn’t point to their dick every 2 minutes. Giant goes for a top rope splash…but misses. Giant and Sting win the title when Giant pins Nash in 14:46. Nash goes to jackknife Giant, but Hall nails Nash with the title belt! Hall turns! Sting is shocked as well, although I mean, I have no idea what outcome here would have made Sting happy. Giant wants Sting to join the NWO as the PPV comes to a close. Match was pretty decent and well booked too. Hall and Giant never go at it which is smart booking here. Sure, everyone’s motivations were all screwed up (for the last time, why would Sting want to be in this match?) but at least we had a direction here. It led to Sting joining the Wolfpac. Weird PPV as the usual awesome undercard actually wasn’t awesome at all. It wasn’t even good. But I have to give some credit to Slamboree 1998. Chavo Guerrero Jr., Mortis/Kanyon, Saturn, and especially Chris Jericho show some promise with storylines here. Chris Jericho steals the show and gives Slamboree a boost by himself with the Malenko-Jericho angle going off as well as it did. The main events were decent, which is better than the usual WCW bad. We could have done without the Bischoff-Vince thing for sure. Too much silliness and not enough good stuff to get it into B range. But not all bad either. Just listen to that pop for Dean Malenko! Final Grade: C+ Edited by RDT, Aug 27 2014, 09:58 AM.
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| Baldwin | Aug 27 2014, 01:24 AM Post #105 |
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6x EBL Champion
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I think it is a combo of the Jericho segment and Bischoff calling out McMahon, but of all WCW PPVs I watched as a kid, I remember Slamboree 1998 the most vividly. |
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