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— Scott Keith (@rspwfaq) February 22, 2020
Smackdown – September 23, 2005
Smackdown
Date: September 23, 2005
Location: United Spirit Arena, Lubbock, Texas
Attendance: 3,000
Commentators: Michael Cole, Tazz
No Mercy is coming up pretty soon and that means the card needs to start being set up. We already have the World Title match set and you can probably guess a few more from here. That makes for some interesting moments, though the Palmer Cannon story is already wearing thin. Hopefully everything else can balance it out. Let’s get to it.
WWF Wrestling Challenge – November 6th, 1994
This recap also includes the Yokozuna vs. Mabel match from the 11/6/94 “Action Zone” since I was unable to find a copy of the complete show.
November 6, 1994
From the Knickerbocker Arena in Albany, NY
Your hosts are Gorilla Monsoon and Ted DiBiase
This week in action are Mabel & Adam Bomb, Jeff Jarrett, 1-2-3 Kid, Jerry Lawler, and the Heavenly Bodies. Plus, an interview with Bret Hart.
Mike Reviews Every WrestleMania Main Event – I to V
Hello You!
I decided that, seeing as WrestleMania is on the horizon, I’d go and review every main event that has happened over the events 36 year history. I’m defining “main event” as the match that goes on last, so that will almost surely mean that I miss off some classic bouts, but don’t blame me, I didn’t book these shows!
I’ll be releasing one of these every week in the build up to Mania, with each one containing five matches. Hopefully they are fun and give you something to look forward to. If not, it shouldn’t be too difficult to ignore them at least what with all the other stuff going on here on the Blog of Doom during Mania Season.
This week we’ll be starting out with the Main Events from the first five WrestleMania’s.
Anyway, that’s enough chatter from me, let’s watch some chuffing wrestling!
Read moreMike Reviews Every WrestleMania Main Event – I to V
Of Course, The Real Question Is…
… will we be getting an Orange Cassidy action figure? And if so, which series??
“Hands-in-pockets Action” or we riot…
Yeah, but Orange is more of an Inaction Figure, isn't he?
Cancelling The Clash Of Champions
Was the reason WCW/TBS cancelled Clash Of The Champions had to do with Thunder starting up shortly thereafter, or was it something else entirely? I mean having a glut of programming never stopped them before then, so I don't know why it all of a sudden would at that stage.
They had been trying to cancel the Clash shows for years because of dwindling ratings and starting Thunder just gave them a perfect excuse. Producing TV costs money and if you can save a bit of it, why not?
More Fingerpoke of Doom
Reading the FOD questions got me wondering. What do you suppose was the Kayfabe reason that Nash agreed to the Fingerpoke given that he was now the number one guy in the company.?
Easy. Nash's motivation has always been money in both kayfabe and real life, and Hogan obviously offered him a lot of it to step aside. That one is an easy storyline to reconcile.
SEGA Saturn
I'm loving you answering these Video Game questions, so I'll send over another (You're bang on about VPW2 as well, great game!)
How big was the SEGA Saturn in Canada? Did you ever get to play on or own one? If you did, did you like it? If you didn't, what put you off?
I never did own one, and it wasn't big in Canada at all. I was working in video game sales at the point it came out, and it was barely a blip on the radar because most people felt like it was just another version of the Sega 32X. I've played around with it a bit in more recent years via emulation and it's never impressed me that much.
Now, on the other hand, Dreamcast is my JAM. I was all over that one in 2000 and had the Sonic games, Soul Caliber, the 2K sports games, CRAZY TAXI, etc. I'd be all over a nostalgia system for that one if they ever come up with one.
WWF Superstars – November 5th, 1994
November 5, 1994
From the Burlington Memorial Auditorium in Burlington, VT
Your hosts are Vince McMahon and Jerry “The King” Lawler
This week’s featured match is Tatanka vs. Billy Gunn. Also in action are Doink, Diesel, Duke Droese, and the IRS. Plus, we will har comments from Chuck Norris and more!
Daily News Update – February 21, 2020
Hey, I won a 55″ Roku TV at my super-late work Christmas party last night! That’s a pretty cool start to the weekend and end of my vacation.
Also, I’m gonna play around with scheduling stuff to post a little later again, around 7:00am CST instead of the 5:00 or so that I’ve been doing it. I’ve had people comment that the daily threads and rants are a bit too early for them as I’ve been doing them, so we’ll see how a change does.
DATELINE: All kinds of shows this weekend, with a UFC and Bellator and a couple of minor wrestling shows as well, such as the retirement show for Manabu Nakanishi. Man, and he finally got his name in the 95 Observer Flashbacks, too.
DATELINE: WWE stock rebounded a bit with news that they’re trying to make a deal for the big PPVs with ESPN. Speaking from a personal standpoint, that would SUCK. I do not want to go back to paying $60 for their shitty PPVs and I know I’m not alone.
Today we celebrate the glorious career of the Hall of Fame Bella Twins via a WWE Top 10 list.
The SmarK Rant for WWF Monday Night RAW – 07.17.95
The SmarK Rant for Monday Night RAW – 07.17.95
Nothing terribly interesting in the Observer for this week, aside from Meltzer’s incredulous note that he never would have believed that a UFC PPV could actually beat a WWF one, but that actually happened with King of the Ring. Now of course it’s a disaster if UFC doesn’t double or triple the WWE shows. King of the Ring, by the way, did 130,000 buys, which at the time was a “Wall Street stockbrokers jumping off the Empire State building” type of buyrate, but now would be a decent B-show number. How times have changed. He does get one zinger in with “Killer Kowalski is disavowing any knowledge of having ever trained the Renegade.” Ha!
(We’re getting closer to the point when I go from skimming the Observers for tidbits to actually recapping the Observers themselves!)
Taped from Danville, PA, the place my soul will go to die. Thank GOD next week starts a new taping cycle. (Wait, isn’t Danville the home of Phineas & Ferb? So that’s pretty awesome at least.)
Your hosts are Vince McMahon & Jerry Lawler
Smackdown – February 21, 2020
Smackdown
Date: February 21, 2020
Location: Gila River Arena, Phoenix, Arizona
Commentators: Michael Cole, Corey Graves
As tends to be the case far too often these days, WWE is building to several things at once. This time around it’s the go home Smackdown for Super ShowDown, Elimination Chamber is in about two weeks and we’ve got Wrestlemania (and its sign) looming over everything. The big story tonight is Goldberg being in the arena for a change as he’s ready to face the Fiend next week. Let’s get to it.
Mantaur’s daughter is missing
Former WWE Wrestler Mantaur posted that his daughter is missing near Omaha.
Maybe with sharing?
Best of luck to him.
Super Nintendo Vs Mega Drive/Genesis
Thought I’d stick with the Video Game topic
Which of these two consoles do you prefer? (I lean towards the SNES because I had one as a kid but I think they’re both great)
See, I'm not part of the whole childhood nostalgia deal with those, because they both came out when I was already a grown-up and I had to save money from a shitty first job scraping caulking out of a train car spill to buy them for myself. In this case, I got a Genesis first and then a Super Nintendo soon after. Head to head I'd pick SNES but I actually don't own the SNES Classic and I do have the Genesis Mini, so I don't know what that tells you. Mostly that the SNES Classic was expensive and impossible to find when it was available, I guess, but either way I can emulate both of them easily on my Raspberry Pi. I'd probably still want to buy an SNES Classic if I could find it for a reasonable price because I never really played games like Super Mario RPG back in the day and I'd like to try them.
It's actually the N64 and PS1 combo that really triggers my nostalgic member-berries, mostly because of Mario 64 and No Mercy, of course. I've been playing Virtual Pro Wrestling 2 on my Pi3 lately, too, and it's amazing that no one really ever replicated the dynamic of the shoot-wrestling guys mixing with the normal wrestling guys. I LOVE playing with characters like the Minoru Suzuki stand-in and Takayama, just mercilessly taking down and submitting Kobashi and Misawa. There's an English language translation ROM that's readily available and it's basically WM2000 but with All Japan, New Japan, PRIDE, RINGS, Michinoku Pro and BattleArts all represented.
“Fingerpoke of Doom”
Did you coin that term? I know "OF DOOM" has always been your thing.
If not, any idea where it originated?
Apparently I didn't coin it, but I helped popularize it. I believe the true coiner was CRZ, but that whole period was such a long time ago that I don't rightly remember exactly who first called things what.
What to do instead of Fingerpoke of doom
Since you just reviewed the Fingerpoke show, what should they have done instead? Have Goldberg win the belt back a week after losing it? Do a DQ in Goldberg-Nash where Hogan turns on Goldberg and they reform the NWO with Nash as champ and Hogan in a manger
type role? The fans gave Nash a big pop when he won the title so maybe he should have kept it
type role? The fans gave Nash a big pop when he won the title so maybe he should have kept it
They shouldn't have advertised the match in the first place. Have Nash and his guys turn on Goldberg during a match with Hall or something instead, and then Goldberg starts running through the nWo over the next six months of PPV shows, leading to him regaining the title from Nash at Great American Bash. NOT ROCKET SCIENCE.
What is your current dream match?
You got some awful questions today, so here is a fun one: what is your current dream match involving active wrestlers?
Because as of about 10 seconds ago after catching up on NJPW, my new dream match is the NJPW tag champs vs the AEW tag champs.
Yeah, that'd be pretty fun. I really feel like Orange Cassidy v. Minoru Suzuki is just gonna some kind of crazy awesome when it happens this year and it's a match I didn't even know I needed until it was announced. Not every dream match is five stars.
WWE Friday Night Party Thread, Episode 21 — LA VITA BELLA
We made it!
So it looks like it’s Get People In The Hall Of Fame season. With that in mind, A Moment of Bliss will have the Bella Twins as their four guests tonight. (What? They’re both pregnant. What did you think I meant?) It’s been heavily rumored that this will result in announcing them as Hall Of Famers, a rumor that has made people very Mad Online because the Bellas were the old guard the women’s revolution was supposed to knock out. As a reminder, wrestling is a work.
(Side note: Davey Boy Smith and John Bradshaw Layfield are also said to be going in. I may have to watch the HOF ceremony just to hear JBL’s speech. His inductions of the Briscoes, Ron Simmons, and Teddy Long were amazing. The dude can give a speech, lemme tell ya.)
Meanwhile, it’s official that Goldberg will face the Fiend at In Your Mosque: Riyadh or Die. (I wish I could remember which of you weirdos coined this so I can give you credit.) But something like this needs the proper build-up. And that means Goldberg will be on SmackDown tonight! He might even be in the building, who knows?
As for the actual roster (what a concept), Carmella and Naomi have a match tonight. Carmella is the resident #1 contender for the SmackDown Women’s Championship, but she lost her match to Bay Lee Billionaire last week. So now Naomi wants her turn; why not have the top 2 contenders go at it? Sounds like a plan!
There’s an NBA doubleheader on ESPN. Or if you want to kill two hours with wrestling in front of a HAPPY crowd, go check out my review of Hoppy Place before watching it in the IWTV archives!
Internet Burn of the Week goes to CM Punk, who — when someone suggested Saudi Arabia get an XFL team — said they should be named the Riyadh Bone Saws.
All right, everyone, we’ve been over the rules. I expect you to follow Scott’s orders at all times. No porn, no personal attacks; let’s keep it clean. Now shake hands and come out swinging. Enjoy the weekend!
LET’S GET IT ON!
Impact Wrestling – February 18, 2020
Impact Wrestling
Date: February 18, 2020
Location: Sam’s Town Live, Las Vegas, Nevada
Commentators: Josh Matthews, Don Callis
We’re off to a different taping cycle now and things are getting interesting around here. Last week’s show without a bunch of the luchador guest stars was an improvement and if they can keep that up, we might be in a good place. If nothing else it’s the go home show for Sacrifice, so maybe things can get more interesting in a hurry. Let’s get to it.
What the World Was Watching: USWA Championship Wrestling – January 7, 1995
While Smoky Mountain Wrestling (SMW) was a nostalgic look at wrestling’s past, the United States Wrestling Association (USWA) stubbornly fought for its existence, casting itself as a major promotion that was on the same level as the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) or World Championship Wrestling (WCW). Based in Memphis, Tennessee, a classic wrestling hotbed and arguably the only place to successfully fend off Vince McMahon’s territorial expansion in the 1980s, the USWA was created from a merger of the Continental Wrestling Association (CWA) and World Class Championship Wrestling (WCCW) in 1989. The promotion tried to run shows along the East Mississippi and Texas in the early 1990s, but the venture proved unsuccessful. By the middle of the decade the USWA was back to running its weekly shows in towns such as Louisville, Kentucky and Evansville, Indiana, as well as holding weekly supercards on Monday nights at the Memphis Coliseum. These events were heavily promoted on USWA TV, filmed at the WMC-TV 5 studio in Memphis. While that may have made USWA TV seem second rate, the company had a talented core with owners and bookers Jerry Jarrett and Jerry Lawler, as well as announcers Lance Russell and Dave Brown (who had a full-time gig as WMC-TV 5’s meteorologist). They were supplemented by older territory stars such as Tommy Rich, Doug Gilbert, and Bill Dundee and a crop of new talent that included Lawler’s son Brian Christopher, PG-13, and wrestlers that the WWF and WCW sent for seasoning as the USWA had a working agreement with both.
Read moreWhat the World Was Watching: USWA Championship Wrestling – January 7, 1995