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| WWF WrestleMania X | Ian Serotkin |
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Hello again! Part 1: Obligatory Shots Out And The Like First of all, congratulations go out to Michael Cunningham (hereafter known as Mikey C, whether he likes it or not) for having the (dubious) honor of being the first inducted member of the Heatrate Cru. Speaking of Mikey C, go and read his Fully Loaded review RIGHT NOW. It's absolutely fantabulistic. Part 2: Rant Mode Listening to MacMahon say his goodbyes on RAW tonight, coupled with my recent viewing of "Hitman Hart: Wrestling With Shadows" (which is an absolutely incredible documentary that I would recommend to the greenest newbie or the avid smart), put an odd thought in my mind: Vince MacMahon has always been portrayed as the face. Think about it--in the start of the "WWF Attitude" era, people stopped cheering the hero and began following the anti-hero. The defining moment in this transition, for me, was the ***** match at Wrestlemania XIII where Bret Hart and Steve Austin beautifully executed a double turn double the match. After this, Austin proceeded to kick the living shit out of Hart nearly every week on RAW and get cheered like the messiah for doing it. As Hart says in "Wrestling With Shadows", he never stopped being the Hero. People just stopped believing in them. Fast forward to one year later, where we have Austin winning the WWF Championship from Shawn Michaels at Wrestlemania, the effective beginning of the MacMahon/Austin uber-storyline. MacMahon wants Austin to be a leader by example--to come to work, wear a suit, smile for the camera, and be a role model for the little kiddies watching at home. Austin refuses. Ever listen to one of Vince's rants while he tries to explain his actions? They actually make sense. If it had been 1991 instead of 1999, MacMahon would have been cheered and Austin would be booed out of the building. All MacMahon ever really did (save for a couple of arrests...nobody's perfect) was try to get (and keep) the WWF Championship Belt off of Steve Austin for being a bad champion. At certain points (early on) he even tries to forget about past transgressions on both sides and start a positive relationship with Austin. Steve Austin, on the other hand, will have none of it. He proceeds to physically abuse his boss every chance he got. He gets Vince arrested, and the crowd cheers. He kidnaps Vince and holds a "gun" to his head, and the crowd goes rabid. He douses Vince and Shane with pressurized beer, and the roof blows off the place. Fast forward to sixteen months or so later, as Austin has defeated the Big Bad Undie and gotten MacMahon kicked off television forEVER (read: for the next couple of weeks). MacMahon comes out on RAW, one last time, and attempts to explain his actions. Paraphrasing (read: copying from wrestlingheadlines.com) the events that ensued:
Part 3: Retro Heat Review for Wrestlemania X I decided to do a review for this one after reading Mikey C's Fully Loaded review and hearing about the lack of heat at the event. I vaguely remembered storing in my demented little mind the fact that the crowd at MSG for WM 10, the biggest and baddest of them all, was somewhat lacking. I decided to take a closer look, so off we go! Hey! It's WRESTLEMANIA X, LIVE from Madison Square Garden in New York City! It's Ten Years in the Making, you know. Your hosts are Vince MacMahon (No blue suit? Dammit!) and Jerry "The King" Lawler. Lawler has a cape on, but no shirt. I'm disgusted already. Match 1: Owen Hart vs. Bret "The Hitman" Hart. Owen gets a face pop until the crowd realizes that it's the wrong Hart. In what would be come the norm for the night, he then gets totally ignored by the crowd. Bret comes down to a decent pop, and picks the most disinterested kid possible in the front row when giving away his neato pink sunglasses. Owen is the MASTER of drawing cheap heat from the crowd. Quite an accomplishment with this crowd, too. Mere words cannot describe the technical beauty that is this match. Even more amazingly, both wrestlers manage to keep the crowd's attention for the duration of the match. This is before the crowd "Got It?" Two rather loudish "Let's Go Bret!" chants during the match. As much time as Vince MacMahon took up on my television set over the past year, just be thankful he's not doing play-by-play any more. His three annoying habits (Interrupting himself to avoid actually naming any moves, making every word in a sentence sound capitalized, and overhyping near falls) produce linguistic gems such as: "Owen With The...Oh My! Reversal By Bret Into A.....Reversal Again, Owen Rolls Him Up, One, Two, Three, We Have A Wi....Oh...Two And A Half...So Close...So Very Close." Anyway, Owen reverses a victory roll ----> pin for the victory. The crowd is stunned, to say the least. Heat for Owen: ***. They don't make heels like that any more. Heat for Bret: ****. Heat for the match: ***. Considering this crowd, it's a small miracle. Actual Workrate: *****. One of the best opening matches ever. Match 2: Bam Bam Bigalow and Luna vs. Doink and Dink. Hey, what's Bam Bam doing coming down to entrance music? Doesn't help the crowd any, as they prefer to sit quietly and recalculate Newton's Laws of Physics just for kicks. Doink and Dink wake them up. Say what you want about the stupidity of the gimmick once they turned face, they pulled a **** entrance pop out of the crowd--and THAT'S all that matters The Heatrate Cru tells no lies and spares no smarts. Quote of the night: Vince: "Can you imagine what would happen if Bam Bam accidentally got stuck in the ring for a few moments with Dink?" Lawler: "Imagine it? I've thought about it, I've DREAMED about it, MacMahon!" Anyway, Dink is actually entertaining running circles around Vachon. Crowd is loud for the first minute of this, and then go back to researching particle physics. Bam Bam's flying headbutt on Doink ---> pin for the victory. Bam Bam and Luna kick the shit out of Dink after the match, making me a happy camper. It's about time those midgets got theirs. Heat for Bam Bam/Luna: DUD Heat for Doink/Dink: **3/4 Heat for the match: ** Actual Workrate: * Match 3: "The Nacho Man" Randy Savage vs. Crush w/Mr. Fuji in a falls-count-anywhere match. Savage gets the entrance pop of the night, at about ****1/2. This is old-style brawling, where the pinned combatant has 60 seconds to return to the ring after a fall. It's also known as a SUPREMELY BAD IDEA. Savage could still work at this point, and why they put Savage in a garbage match I'll never know. Hogtie (really) ---> 60 second count to give Savage the victory on the third fall. Heat for Savage: ****. The man still had incredible amounts of respect at this point. Heat for Crush: DUD Heat for the Match: *1/2, bogged down enormously by three 60 seconds counts that essentially are built-in rests. Actual Workrate: *1/2, maybe. Match 4: Men on a Mission w/Oscar vs. The Quebecers w/Johnny Polo for the WWF Tag Team Championship. Hello, Raven! Hello, Viscera! Now THAT'S what a heel's theme music should be like. I don't know what's wierder, thinking of Mabel as Viscera or thinking of Viscera as Mabel. Either way you cut it....WHOOOMP THERE IT IS!!!!!!! I've seen this once too many times (once), so sufice it to say I found something better to do until this one was over. Standard Fat Man match (I hit you, I hit you, I hit you, I hit you, I miss you, you sit on me, I'm dead). Crowd is reviewing Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle to check for mistakes. Countout ---> err...Countout lets The Quebecers retain the titles. This was telegraphed by the fact that there's NO WAY IN HELL one of those belts would fit around Mabel's waist. Heat for MOM: 1/2* Heat for The Quebecers: **. Decent old-school heels. Heat for the match: DUD Actual Workrate: Call it at *1/2. The Quebecers tried to do something with this, but...yeah right. Match 5: Lex "Made in Taiwan" Luger vs. Yokozuna w/Jim Cornette and Mr. Fuji for the WWF Championship. Yokozuna comes out first, just to annoy CRZ. He gets zero heat, Luger gets a decent pop. Nothing like he should be getting for a championship match, though. Guess that Lex Express failed :) Mr. Perfect is the special guest referee. The lowlight of this match comes when Zuna decides to enthrall us all with a ten-minute neck pinch. No joke. That effectively buried the *** crowd reaction that was progressing nicely through the first five minutes. Is it just me, or does Luger's LOADED NUCLEAR FOREARM OF DOOM look mysteriously like a clothesline? Perfect is a prick ---> DQ to allow Yokofatass to retain the title. Heat for Luger: *** Heat for Yokozuna: DUD Heat for the match: *, due to the actual interest at the beginning before the dastardly neck pinch. Actual Workrate: *. Yokozuna ate the other four stars. In the backstage argument between Luger and Perfect, you can see Dave and Earl Hebner in the same shot. Neato! Not-really-a-Match 6: Adam Bomb vs. Earthquack. Finkel gets the third biggest pop of the night (I'M SERIOUS--it's ****) by slapping Whippleman after the Whipster says some not so nice things about his toupee. Bomb comes out, Earthquake comes out, and about thirty seconds later we have the butt splash ---> pin for Earthquake. Heat for Adam Bomb: 1/4* Heat for Earthquake: 1/4* Heat for the Match: DUD. What match? Actual Workrate: DUD. What match? Match 7: Shawn Michaels w/Diesel vs. Razor Ramon in a Ladder Match for the WWF Intercontinental Championship. Ahhh, the good ol' days, when this was one of two stipulations on the entire card. What can I possibly add to this match? I just put down my pen and watched the masterpiece. Michaels falls off ladder, gets tangled in ropes ---> Ramon climbs and gets the belts to retain the IC belt. Heat for Michaels: Oddly enough, DUDDUD. About * of face heat cancels out the * of heel heat. Heat for Ramon: ***. About **** of face heat and * of heel heat. Tossing the toothpick in the attendant's face made no sense considering how big of a face he's supposed to be now. Heat for the match: ****1/2. Crowd starts out interested and is rabid for every move in the last five minutes of the match. Would have been ***** with just about any other crowd that I've seen. Actual Workrate: *****. If you don't like this match...there's no hope for you. We get a BAD video recap of the Yokozuna/Hart feud. It's bad because there ISN'T any feud, hence the first half is Hart walking and the second half is Yokozuna buttsplashing people (I still cheer when he does it to Hogan). For those of you who don't know the story, Luger was scheduled to win the title in the first championship match from Yokofatass, and then to lose it to Hart here. Luger, however, got piss drunk the night before the show and blabbed to some reporter that he was slated to win the title the next night. It made the New York papers, and MacMahon was NOT HAPPY. As punishment, they changed the booking so that Yoko would retain in the first match and lose it to Hart later on. The WWF video people had to scrape together a Hart/Yoko tape at the last minute, and that's why it sucks compared to their usual title feud recaps. Match 8: Yokofatass w/Jim Cornette and Mr. Fuji vs. Bret "The Hitman" Hart for the WWF Championship. Yokofatass comes out first, just to make CRZ's head explode. Let's play "Count How Many Steps Yokozuna Takes To The Ring Before He Starts Sucking Wind Again." One...two...three...fo--there we go. Three and a half. Bret is still selling the knee injury from his match with Owen. God bless him. Piper is the special referee, getting a decent pop from the crowd. I can almost SEE Yokozuna trying to set Hart up for a nerve pinch and Hart telling him not to, knowing it'll kill the crowd. Crowd comes alive for the endgame--it's Wrestlemania, most of THEM even know what's coming :) Missed butt splash ---> Pin to give Bret Hart the WWF Championship. Heat for Hart: ***3/4 Heat for Yokozuna: DUD. Heat for the match: ***. Endgame saved it. Actual Workrate: *. I betcha this one isn't on Bret's personal Greatest Matches tape :) After the match: Luger comes down ---> Babyface Embrace. Practically the entire face locker room follows and celebrates in the ring. For the record, it's Hart, Luger, 1-2-3 Kid, Razor Ramon, Bob Holly (without his imaginary B.O.B. Squad--I told you I'd get it in the next review, Corey! What? You want an explanation of an inside joke? Bah, okay...just this once. The "B.O.B. Squad" is what we're pushing Holly to name his millions and millions of fans in his new character incarnation as The Big Shot), Tan-lack-of-talent-aka, Randy Savage, Gorilla Monsoon, Burt Reynolds, that ditz from Up All Night, Donnie Wahlberg, and Vince MacMahon. Owen Hart stands in the entranceway to pout, and we're out. Recommended for the two mindblowing ***** matches, but I did not like this show overall as much as everyone else does. Still pretty recommended, though. Until next time, I'm Ian Serotkin Jobber-at-Large and Founder of the Heatrate Cru Mail the Author |
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