So I'm watching a few minutes of NXT last week and while the concept isn't the worst thing I've ever heard the execution is very poor.
They are taking mostly developmental talent (and of course more experienced guys like Danielson) and making them wrestle each other in fairly boring contests.
Thank god we’re finally getting the Steiners match on DVD. Hard to fault them for quality or completeness here, although there’s a couple of repeat matches that were going to be tough to avoid. Like really, the Summerslam 92 match AGAIN? Still, looks like a winner.
This wraps up my rants for the rest of the weekend and will give me a chance to relax and enjoy the Super Bowl.
Have a great weekend guys. Be careful.
The Netcop Retro Rant for Royal Rumble 1988
- Live (on the USA network) from Hamilton, Ontario.
- Your hosts are Vince and Jesse.
- Okay, so the story here is thus: The NWA decided to put on a PPV, unopposed this time, in the form of the god-awful Bunkhouse Stampede show. It ended up being so bad that the only remnant of the show on videotape is the actual Bunkhouse finals, which is wedged into the Crockett Cup video for that year. Anyway, just to be an asshole, Vince decided to run a three-hour show on the USA network at the same time, with a cool gimmick and everything. And thus was born the Royal Rumble.
(Apparently this Bret Hart guy is all the rage right now among the kids, so here’s a repost of the DVD rant from 2004, with some formatting and spelling errors fixed)
The SmarK DVD Rant for Bret Hart: The Best There Is, The Best There Was, and The Best There Ever Will Be.
So here's how this is gonna work -- I've of course been hit by endless requests for this DVD, but didn't get the DVD until recently. I managed to watch the documentary portion previously and posted thoughts to the blog, but everyone wanted rants for the matches included, too, and I didn't really feel like going back to take notes on the documentary portion to do the entire DVD set. So the documentary portion is going to be a guest rant by longtime blog contributor and friend of mine Princess, who covered most of what I would have written about it anyway, and then we'll hit the matches with fresh rants for stuff I haven't done before or haven't done in a long time. For time reasons and for reasons of efficiency, I copied stuff where my opinions haven't changed or where an updated version wasn't going to be different enough to warrant a redo.
So after 64 teams and seemingly endless polls, here’s the final showdown…
- The Hart Foundation is your first finalist, crushing the British Bulldogs with 67% of the vote, probably thanks to a crooked refereeing job from Danny Davis.
- And in a stunning result by my count, with a 52% upset win, your final match is:
This vote will automatically close on November 11 about 9:00 EST, maybe sooner if it's a blowout one way or the other. Good luck to both teams!
Sorry if this is seeming compressed, but voting totals are pretty consistent each time and we have decisive winners, so I’m wrapping this up so we can move on and get it done with. I will say, two of these results shocked me.
- The Steiner Brothers (59%) take out the Road Warriors (41%) in something of an upset, as I was thinking that the Roadies would have cruised to victory in the end. But then this match actually happened and the Steiners won, so maybe that influenced things.
- In another mild upset, Edge & Christian (59%) defeat the Midnight Express (41%), as I had thought that E&C’s huge run was coming to an end and we were headed to an all-NWA final. Guess not.
- The Hart Foundation (78%) crushed the Hollywood Blondes (22%) in a result that I completely agree with. I’m as big of a Blondes fan as anyone, but they were in far over their heads at this point.
- The British Bulldogs (65%) beat the Guerreros (35%) to end the other flukey run of the tournament. I should not that vote totals were 50% higher on this one than any other match of this bracket, which might mean someone was trying to powervote and screw with the totals. However, I’ve been monitoring the voting all day and the Bulldogs were clearly the winners the whole time even without another 300 votes on their side, so it didn’t affect anything.
There were some REALLY close votes in this round, as you’d expect by this point, but you probably wouldn’t expect which matches were so close.
OK, these are all runaway victories, so let’s call it now and move on:
- Eddie & Chavo Guerrero (71%) cheat and steal their way over Strike Force (29%), as Eddie bribes Martel into turning on his partner with promises of giving him the low-rider. Of course, Eddie steals it back afterwards.
- RVD & Sabu (72%) handle the Fantastics (28%) without much trouble, as they finish off Fulton with Rolling Thunder to advance into the Sweet Sixteen. They got a REALLY lucky draw thus far, I’ll say that for them.
- The British Bulldogs (74%) manhandle the Dudley Boyz (26%), as D-Von gets the tables, but Dynamite comes off the top with a sunset flip to pin Buh Buh Ray in the meantime.
- And in the biggest rout of the bracket, Tully & Arn (80%) squash Haas & Benjamin (20%) after a spirited go by the World’s Greatest Tag Team.
So the next round will give us:
- Eddie & Chavo Guerrero v. RVD & Sabu
- The British Bulldogs v. Tully Blanchard & Arn Anderson
And that final round of sixteen begins NEXT!
My my, you folks just keep surprising me with some of these results. I was waiting until I had decisive results in as many races as possible before I called it a round, but one race just refused to die. Finally it became apparent that the losing team just wasn’t going to catch up, so I closed the polls and called it for the surprise winners. To the results…
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