All this PG TV makes me want to see a brawl with chair shots and blood and tables and just two people beating the shit out of each other.
So for your viewing pleasure, Steve Austin vs. Dude Love from Over the Edge in 1998!
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So for your viewing pleasure, Steve Austin vs. Dude Love from Over the Edge in 1998!
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Pat Patterson's introduction of Gerald Brisco with the auto shop plug is worth *** alone.
ReplyDeleteThe 1st ppv I got on vhs was this show. One of my favorite main events of all time. Plus the finish is awesome.
ReplyDeleteAre they making the rules up as we go along?
Keep it clean!
ReplyDelete"DIS IS A REMINDUH!"
ReplyDeleteThe absolute pinnacle of the Sportz Entertainment (tm) genre.
ReplyDeleteThis is one of my 4 favorite WWE matches of all-time along with Owen/Bret from Wrestlemania, the Sheik/Slaughter boot camp match, and Flair-Savage from Wrestlemania.
The absolute pinnacle of the Sportz Entertainment (tm) genre. This is one of my 4 favorite WWE matches of all-time, along with Bret-Owen from Wrestlemania, the Slaughter-Sheik Boot Camp match, and Flair-Savage from Wrestlemania.
ReplyDeleteone of my top 5 favorite matches ever. I never get tired of watching this.
ReplyDeleteEven now, I still mark out (after probably 100s of viewings) when Taker pulls the Stooges out mid-count, and chokeslams them through the tables.
Patterson, btw, takes his chokeslam like a fucking boss.
Back in the good old days (94-99) when a babyface getting the title at Mania and successfully fending off his first challenger was a given.
ReplyDeleteI miss those brawls. They were more entertaining than the 20 minute snoozefests which you usually get today where they never leave the ring or going through the arena.
ReplyDeleteJim Ross was ON during this match.
ReplyDeleteAm I crazy for thinking Jeff Jarrett was a worse WCW Champion than Russo or Arquette?
No, because Jarrett was presented as being a top wrestler, when he wasn't what they made him out to be. Russo and Arquette everyone knew weren't meant to be taken seriously.
ReplyDeleteVince used to have such glorious hair. That battle of the billionaires where he shaved his head is definitely up there as one of his top 5 blunders of all time.
ReplyDeleteReally? That was actually my last favorite part of that era. I HATED the "brawl into the audience" thing. If you were watching live, you couldn't even see what was happening. And when you watched on television, it was a lot of: Pull the person by the head, hit them, pull by their head, hit them a few times, pull by the head, high spot.
ReplyDeleteJR: "SINCE WHEN?"
ReplyDeleteKing: "It's a just a REMINDER, JR."
JR: "And we all know who does the rear ends!"
ReplyDeleteKing: "WHAT????"
I just got this joke when Pat Patterson came out on Legends House a few weeks ago!
ReplyDelete/noob
EVERYTHING BACK IN THE DAY IS BETTER, DUH
ReplyDeleteThe opening of the match, where each of the stooges give the other glorious introductions with JR mocking them was classic. It makes me miss sniveling, heel King on commentary.
ReplyDeleteAustin and Foley had serious chemistry.
They still have chair shots and tables. Probably for the best they don't hit each other in the head
ReplyDeleteI love this match. It's just got all the best parts of the Attitude Era in it. A rabid crowd (Austin's entrance pop is INSANE), great brawling, memorable spots, a great story, fantastic commentary - just brilliant.
ReplyDeleteLove the sleeveless ref shirt for Vince.
ReplyDeleteIt is pretty jarring now to watch the chair shots to the head, like an Al Snow/Bob Holly match from St. Valentine's Day Massacre had one about 1 minute in.
ReplyDeleteUgh, can you imagine today's commentary team doing this match? Cole would be doing his over-the-top snickering during the introductions, while JBL would be doing far less funny inside jokes.
ReplyDeleteFoley takes so many of them that it's disturbing. Especially on throwaway RAWs
ReplyDeleteI thought JBL would work better than this as a pure heel. The announcing in WWE right now is just so terrible.
ReplyDeleteThe Eddie one JBL threw at Judgement Day made me cringe the other day.
ReplyDeleteJR's repeated, exasperated "SINCE WHEN?"s after every "reminder" will never not make me laugh and miss the Hell out of that guy.
ReplyDelete*Mike Graham closed-eyed headshake*
ReplyDeleteBut the intensity was much higher. Watch the first minutes of Austin vs Hart WMXIII or HBK vs Hart Survivor Series 97 or Austin vs Rock Backlash 1999. They had a ton of foreign objects and the matches were so much more fun than today where they are 99% of the time in and maybe shortly out of the ring and where they show only the same moves we see every week. I think we need mor NO DQ rules so that the wrestlers can get more creative during the match.
ReplyDeletethe introduction is all sorts of awesomeness... dude love the corporate hepcat
ReplyDeleteOr he shaved it because he realized it was maybe going away. =)
ReplyDeleteThe thing I miss most about this era was that everyone involved looked like they were having the time of their fricking lives. There are times when you can tell the performers/announcers are enjoying things as much if not more than the audience and this match is definitely one of them.
ReplyDelete"All this PG TV makes me want to see a brawl with chair shots and blood and tables and just two people beating the shit out of each other."
ReplyDeleteYou're a top sheila, princess.
He gets to go through the full Hollywood Revue of emotions in 45 minutes, from unfiltered excitement to righteous indignation to cutting sarcasm. It's a beautiful thing to witness.
ReplyDeleteAwesome match. Just the right mic of unique, and super talented people, a bit of desperation on the company's part to be going in such a new direction, and the can't-be-duplicated rise of Vince McMahon from simple commentator to Owner, which we all knew, but seeing it acknowledged was mind blowing. The brand new idea that anyone in the building was fair game too, from Vince on down, was another incredible, and un-duplicatable boost to the era.
ReplyDeleteSimply the best "overbooked" match ever.
ReplyDeleteSuch an important match. Shawn and Bret were gone and the company needed a great main event to begin the Austin era. This also kicks off such a great through line, with the Foley/Rock, Austin/Rock, Foley/HHH, HHH/Rock and Austin/HHH classics deriving from this one match in some way, either historically or stylistically.
ReplyDeletePat: "And they can be reached at 874..."
ReplyDeleteJR: "Oh, COME ON!"
Finkle reading off the cue cards and comparing Patterson to great Canadian legends such as "Wayne Gretzky and the great Anne Murray" took some sort of genius that I don't think any modern writer could replicate. If that's a Russo line I have to give the devil his due.
LOVE that ending sequence with Taker. Such a great match
ReplyDeleteSINCE WHEN?! SINCE WHEN?!
ReplyDeleteWords cannot express how beautifully this was written out and planned. THIS is overbooking at its best and why we love that era of wrestling.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite part is when he absolutely loses his shit after Austin clotheslines the hell out of Foley over the barricade.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that JBL just sounds like a guy reading his lines. He doesn't actually believe anything he's saying, just being the he heel because he's supposed to be.
ReplyDeleteI can't get over how young and slim Foley looks here.
ReplyDeleteI think he wrote in one of his books that he took it real seriously that they were giving him the first run with Austin as champion and got himself into really good shape.
ReplyDeleteI always feel a tinge of guilt about Arquette when DDP revealed that he gave all his money to Pillman's widow. Should have never happened, of course. It was a complete joke.
ReplyDeleteYou're bringing up the very best of those types of brawls. For every Austin/Rock there were a million other matches that went absolutely nowhere and opted for nonstop wandering n the crowd in lieu of actual wrestling. It got pretty stale by late '99, which is why the influx of WCW guys like Benoit and Jericho was a godsend.
ReplyDeleteThis was Vince McMahon at the peak of his micromanagement. He was all about the details and the introductions alone tells you about what the writing staff had to execute. It's brilliant. It's almost as entertaining as the match itself.
ReplyDelete"Inside this man beats the heart of America."
ReplyDelete"Some call him the reincarnation of Jim Thorpe, we call him a friend"
"We've laughed with him, we've cried with him...but through it all he made all of our lives worth living. He's given us hope, love, understanding and the will to say 'Yes I can'."
How Patterson pulled this shit off without breaking down in laughter is a really a credit to him being a professional.
Paired with how tightly it's tucked in and how high he's wearing his pants it's just a beautiful disaster.
ReplyDeleteAnd let us not forget the wristbands
ReplyDeleteThere was also a huge element of self-awareness and self-deprecation, to a degree that the WWF had never seen before or since. Sort of an unspoken element of, "Yeah, we got our ass kicked for 2 years, and maybe this guy's actually one of the reasons why." It was refreshing then and even more refreshing to watch now.
ReplyDeleteHas any wrestler ever been as over as Austin in 1998?
ReplyDeleteTHE HUMAN BODY IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE SMACKIN' CONCRETE!!!!
ReplyDeleteI think it showed the office's faith in Foley that for two years in a row he was the first opponent for the champion post-Mania title win.
ReplyDelete