Monday, October 20, 2014

WCW Halloween Havoc 1991 pt1

Since the Pro Wrestling Torch site has a new Wayback Playback show with Jim Valley and Pat McNeill where they watch shows in a few parts and do alternate commentary, I've decided I'll watch the shows and write alongside them. The only thing I don't like about this is it is split into three parts spread across a couple of weeks, so actually watching the shows in a single sitting isn't done by either them or the viewers/listeners, and the flow is all messed up. I'll give it a shot for tonight since it's only an hour and I'm in the mood for something that isn't Raw.

In an annoying bit, the show starts off just fine, then immediately starts and restarts for an ad. And it happened again. What in the fuck. It gets to Simmons's face on the tombstone and ends. All right, this is a failure on the Xbox One, so I'll try it on the PS4 where it defaults to 1080i and thus makes getting good screens much harder than the 720p max output I get on my Xbox One. Plus, the PS4's UI doesn't leave the screen for quite some time, so I can't get any good shots of the silly opening. Tony has a peach-colored bowtie on. Jack and Abby are out in a large car and they joke about it having to be the biggest car he ever rented. DDP's out with Hall, who has an awesome shirt on. Barry's out in a fairly old Benz by this point. The Enforcers jump him and he's saved late by Dustin. Dustin drives him to the hospital. El Gigante is out first, followed by Vader, the Diamond Stud, Cactus Jack with a chainless chainsaw, the Steiners, Abby, and Sting - so the chamber of horrors is the opener!

Rick's orange and black Halloween getup looks so much better than a lot of his early '90s crap.  EARLY STING-VADER! Someone hops out of the coffin and is beaten up. Rick slams him and he then goes to casket #2. Oh God, it's the refer-eye camera! A small cage with the CHAIR OF TORTURE LOWERS and takes up tons of the ring. This means that like a dozen guys have nowhere to move. Sting tosses a tiny coffin lid onto Jack's head and he bumps for it. Stud is slammed on a coffin and guys in white shirts are out. Scott busts a stick on Jack and busts his head open. Sting and Jack fight on the cage, which is nice. They handcuff the masked man. Jack took a bump over the top to the floor that they basically miss. Jim and Pat go over the Cruncher nickname's origins. They show the switch in the down position, which Mick brought up before and Jim and Pat talk about now. Abby is choking Sting. They show the guys in white shirts, and they have white face paint on because why not. The announcers talk about the issue with the switch. Lots of random weapon bonks, which is all anyone can do due to the chair taking up so much real estate. Mick flips the switch and Abby gets fried with the headgear nowhere near Abby's head. Pat and Jim talk about the "kid-friendly" era here where you had a death penalty match and in the WWF, Jake using the snake on Randy. Abby gets up and walks on the guys putting the stage back up and beats up the goons.  Tony is just gobsmacked by all of this.

Bischoff is backstage as a vampire, while Missy is a showgirl. A rather hot showgirl. Young Pistols are backstage with them in less garish getup than Miss. THE CREATURES are coming out to Psychosis's theme.  Creatures are apparently Johnny Rich and Joey Maggs. They're facing PN NEWS AND BIG JOSH. PN News rapped and the very white fans danced to it. PN attacks his with fat and a dropkick. Then again with his fat. BEAUTIFUL German from Josh! PN's whole body is covered and he just looks so fat. News misses the corner avalanche by a mile and even Tony says he missed it by a mile. Borne no-sells their stuff, and just kills Maggs with a powerbomb. Josh hits the Earthquake splash and the Rapmaster sofa drop wins.  They do a slow-mo replay of the finish and somehow miss it.

Jim Ross is excited about Eaton-Taylor. Bobby's shiny jacket is a bit garish, but not too awful. Taylor looks odd, while Terri with dark red hair and lack of giant tits is bizarre. Taylor looks like a ripoff of the Million Dollar Man with the suit. Nice fast action between the two sets up a lariat from Bobby. It's so great hearing the Torch guys bury the laptop at the time for mostly being off and point out that Terry shouldn't have worn the same red gear he did as the Rooster and that Race wore his King getup on WCW TV. A bad jawjacker gives Taylor the lead here. SLAM ON THE RAMP followed by a flying knee to the ramp. Ouch. Taylor takes a silly flip bump back in. Eaton eats a knee and is sent to the barricade. Flair-ish knee from Taylor gets 2. Pat tells a story about Bill Dundee not wanting his daughter to to marry a wrestler - until he found out it was Bobby. Doctor bomb on the ramp!  Slam to Bobby shows off how nasty the ring looks. Splash gets 2 from Taylor. Rear chinlock from Taylor kills time. Jim Ross talks about Taylor just now cracking the top 10, and the winner here being in the hunt for the TV Title. I love the little things like that. Sunset off the top gets 2 for Bobby. Taylor gets the non-arm clutching camel clutch. Bobby back elbows out of things. Sleeper from Terry gets a jaw breaker here, and wow is Bobby in shape. Taylor gets knees up for a splash, while Bobby does the same thing for a pump splash. Bobby gets a nice punch flurry mid-ring. Bobby gets the corner punches and Terry tries to get him mid-ring, but gets atomic dropped and hit with a swinging neckbreaker. Taylor avoids the jam, but eats a punch going for a superplex and then takes a GIGANTIC bump for that, eats the jam, and that's it. This was long, but pretty good overall. Tony is near-comatose right now.

Screens -







No comments:

Post a Comment