Heart Punch

I figure that someone should probably mention something about Ric Flair retiring. I'll admit it, I was practically in tears during his HoF speech and again at Raw. Haven't seen 'Mania yet, but I'm sure that'll have the same effect. I can't even begin to tell you what Ric Flair has meant to me as a fan of pro wrestling. I've been watching him since I was maybe five or six years old, so he's been a fixture of my entire life. Can't even imagine the wrestling business without him. At any rate, enjoy some stuff from various points in his career. Just doing this really quickly on a whim, so expect me to go back sometime this week and add more posts with even more matches, angles and promos. It's amazing how much of his work is available online. And rightfully so... Ric Flair vs. Kerry Von Erich (WCCW -12.25.82) Wargames '87 (NWA - Great American Bash 1987) Ric Flair v. Vader (WCW - Starrcade '93) Part One Part Two Ric Flair v. Eddy Guerrero (Ni...

Well, the first week of the sublime UWF show on ESPN Classic has come and gone (and by gone, I mean that this week’s shows start in less than an hour and a half as I type this. Procrastination!). I was originally planning to recap individual episodes, but that seems like it would lead to some sort of head explodey, so we’ll just cover an entire week at a time with whatever notes I bother to take while watching the show live. Should allow me to hold onto what little sanity I have left. -First thing I have to point out is Bruno Sammartino on commentary. He could care less about any of this and goes out of his way to disagree with Herb Abrams any time he can. Abrams, of course, was insane. His commentary fully bears that out. -The wrestling is…okay. Or okay-ish, anyway. Mostly squash matches where the job guys get in more offense than you’d really want to see. The main events tend to be decent, if not poorly booked. -Apparently, Gary Keyes nailed Billy Jack Haynes’ wife, because one doesn...

AGAINST: Vickie with a mic. FOR: Beat The Clock! FOR: Coach climbing up on the announce table to salute the fans. That's a JBL move. FOR: Is Finlay a face now or something? FOR: Coach pointing out that Finlay's style isn't designed for speed. FOR: Was that a real-time edit? AGAINST: Eight minutes already? This is a bad time. AGAINST: The double shillelagh swerve does get old. AGAINST: Vince? AGAINST: The hell was the point of that? FOR: HBK in the Rumble commercial. FOR: Michelle's pants. AGAINST: Has Kenny missed two spots for interference already? AGAINST: Coach doesn't think Victoria's utterly insane? FOR: Was that an attempt at a Rocket Launcher? Ambitious if nothing else. FOR: Nice kick by Michelle. AGAINST: And Chavo weighs in but doesn't really. AGAINST: Funaki? FOR: Chavo's getting pissed. FOR: Coach isn't doing a bad job. FOR: Chavo countering Funaki's rollup attempt from the corner. FOR: Whoa! 6:02. FOR: Figu...

More bite-sized recappery follows! SNME #27 (7/90) We've started getting into the heavily "themed" SNME episodes, which are hilarious for all the wrong reasons. I love how all of the promos through the night tie into the theme, which leads to some really awkward moments. This one is the "Wild Kingdom" episode, where Alfred Hayes and Gene Okerlund go on an "African Safari" and bump into various wrestlers being goofy. Gotta love the announcers randomly stumbling across the Bushwackers, for example, strutting down a set of train tracks as if it's the most natural place in the world for them to pop up. This is far funnier (mostly unintentionally) than it sounds, if you've never seen it. -Warrior vs. Rude is the opening match. This feud goes to show how great Rude was, because this was a really enjoyable match, even though Warrior did next to nothing, except run around like a lunatic. There's a stretch! Heenan took more bumps than he did, actual...

And since I actually vote in the Observer awards, and did this last year, and still having posting privileges... I'll expound upon views where they're significantly different from Shane's or common sense, and I'll go deeper on the ballot when I feel like it. I do watch MMA, so I vote on those too. I watch WWE, TNA, and ROH at least somewhat regularly, and CHIKARA, PWG, puro, and lucha when recommended. LOU THESZ/RIC FLAIR AWARD 1.) John Cena 2.) Shawn Michaels 3.) Hiroshi Tanahashi Man, this was tough to vote for this year. Had the MMA and wrestling not been split, I almost certainly would've had Rampage and Couture in this mix. As it is, Cena was tremendous and on top of the WWE A-brand almost the entire voting period. Michaels was phenomenal but missed a lot of time. Tanahashi was the Japan ace this year, although that's not saying much. Morishima had some fine work in the NOAH upper-mid and some fine work as ROH champion, but he really didn't draw a whole...

It's a new year. Hooray, I guess! Allow me to offer up the ballot that I'd send to one Dave Meltzer if I were still an Observer subscriber. Because dwelling in the past is so much cooler than looking on to 2008... As always, my personal biases are heavy, but I'll at least try to justify why my opinion is pretty much the only opinion worth having. Heh. P.S. I watched a *lot* more stuff from Japan this year, which will actually be reflected in my picks. P.P.S. I abstain from all shoot related questions. I only see what they air on television, so my voting would be really skewed and I'd look, perhaps, dumber than usual! P.P.P.S. I use the Wrestling Observer categories, obviously, but I don't necessarily use Meltzer's criteria for the awards. I can name an indy as the promotion of the year because, essentially, I want to. Drawing power doesn't tie into my twisted little world view at all. Now then, on to the show... Section A: Pick your TOP 3 1. Lou Thesz/Ric Fl...

So, I'm surprisingly *without* plans for New Year's Eve (which is the first time I've said that with a straight face in several years), so I figured I might as well post something here. If Matt has the time to bring SD back, then dammit...I can man up and actually get my lazy ass in gear for, I don't know...10 minutes or so. Anyway, after much consideration, I figured that I could do really capsulated recaps of the indy stuff I watch. It's how I post junk on other boards, so I might as well bring it here as well. We'll start off with a Pro Wrestling Guerrilla show, because that just happens to be the last show that I watched. Crazy how that works! PWG is usually pretty hit or miss with me because I'm not all that big a fan of most of the "native" SoCal guys. I just can't get into the Quicksilver/Ronin/Excaliburs of the world. I don't know what it is, but I find myself being bored to tears by most of the PWG undercard stuff. This, however, w...

FOR: Having time to do these again. FOR: Edge as champ. AGAINST: Wait, when did Teddy become Vickie's assistant? (Yes, I've been gone a while.) FOR: There are still Edgeheads? FOR: So they're not really the Major Brothers. AGAINST: Is Curt Hawkins reciting his personal ad? AGAINST: Mimosas, Hawkins? Really? AGAINST: Is anybody buying Edge and Vickie as lovers? Anyone? FOR: The unintentional comedy in this Edge-Vickie video is off the charts. FOR: Teddy shaking his head. FOR: Batista/Edge tonight? AGAINST: Why is Singh out here with his shirt off? FOR: Cole to JBL: "You're gonna miss me. You know it." JBL: "You miss things in many ways." FOR: JBL on Khali: "What about this man is not big?" Cole: "Nothing, I guess. I don't know about all of it." FOR: They're going Globetrotters on us. FOR: GIANT SWING~~~~ FOR: The look on Khali's face afterwards. FOR: Flair with a mic. AGAINST: Maryse is still ar...

-Back with another week of TNA. We even have EXTRA CONTENT! as I recap the first run match from the Road to Bound For Glory show. Okay, that’ll probably take like two lines, but dammit, it took effort on my part. Appreciate me! Roxxi Laveaux v. Ms. Brooks -Here’s your extra content. Roxxi is pretty cute. She apparently has blue hair this week. This is all really basic and boring, though they’re both laying in the chops a bit harder than you’d think they would in a throwaway match that isn’t even being featured on the weekly show. Roode distracts Brooks, who gets planted with the Dominator, giving Roxxi the win. I have no idea if they have a gimmick name for it, but looking at the crew of chicks in TNA, I’m officially dubbing it the “Implant Smasher.” You see what I did there? God, am I ever clever! -Angle arrives at the building wearing Sting’s son’s football jersey. That angle was laid out so well that they needed to run with it again this week, I see! Awesome! -The main event this we...

-I couldn’t bring myself to watch two hours of TNA, so yeah…this is *real* late. Heh. These pretty much have to be done “random thoughts” style, because I’m not sure I can stomach this much of this show otherwise. Incredibly, though, Impact this week wasn’t all that bad, with the final hour making it more than worth watching. Perhaps there’s hope yet. Of course, I might also sprout another head tomorrow. The odds are against both of these things. -They really overuse the James Earl Jones sounding voiceover guy and, by extension, the big melodramatic opening. Sometimes, you just need to let the action speak for itself. Therein lies the problem, I guess, since we haven’t gotten all that much that can be referred to as “action” as of late. -First match they hype is Team 3D versus Team Pacman. Who gives a fuck about Pacman Jones? Really. ESPN bit for maybe three days and even then they shat on the angle and didn’t get the TNA name right. If you’re going down the “any press is good press” r...

FOR: Leading off with the Cena announcement. FOR: I hope that thing's made out of wood. AGAINST: This has never been a good idea. FOR: Oooh, chain wrestling. FOR: JBL with the Mets joke. FOR: This match, especially the last 30 seconds. AGAINST: Push-ups? FOR: Technically, Matt's already ahead. AGAINST: A what fan base? FOR: The camera view from Matt's corner during the Boston Crab sequence. AGAINST: Sure looks like Matt saw the low blow. AGAINST: What, Kane couldn't wait a couple minutes? FOR: Victoria's jumpsuit. AGAINST: Why is Kane doing sitout dropkicks? Or attempting them, even? FOR: Who's that? FOR: MVP's big mouth tripping him up. AGAINST: Is that a title match for Sunday? AGAINST: Is Kennedy the new Nash? FOR: There's that virus thingy. "SAVIOR_SELF"? "bookshelves"? Totally Jericho, right? FOR: Jesse and Festus! Finally! FOR: Jesse's running counter into the monkey flip. FOR: JBL, to Cole, on Fest...

I don’t think I’ve ever recapped a handheld show before. Basically, if you’re not familiar with the concept, these are house shows where someone managed to sneak in a camera to film the show. Sometimes you get a complete show…sometimes not so much. This one only runs 48 minutes, so I’m assuming that the undercard stuff just didn’t merit being taped. That’s a shame, because I loved the 1992 WCW undercard, but I’m silly like that. What did make tape here is pretty cool, though, so it was a quick way to both alleviate some boredom and produce some content. So…yeah. Here you go. WCW Handheld - 3.7.1992 - Oakland, CA Cactus Jack v. Abdullah The Butcher - I’ll try, since I’m watching the WCW Saturday Night set from 1992, to relay a bit of the backstory to these matches. In this case, Cactus brought in Abby as one of the surprises in the box for Sting. They teamed up because both off them are insane, then broke up because both of them are insane. They ended up getting together again like a mo...