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/wrestling /guests /Serotkin |
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/wrestling /guests /Serotkin |
| Guest Columns | Ian Serotkin |
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Part 1: Obligatory Shots Out And The Like Finals week SUCKS. Part 2: Heatrate Report for WWF Armageddon '99 And we're LIVE from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, hosted by the usual bums. Match 1: Dudleys vs. Edge & Christian vs. The Headbangers vs. the Hardyz vs. the Mean Street Posse vs. The Acolytes vs.Too Cool vs. Godfather & Mark Henry in a Tag Team Battle Royale. Oh boy, battle royales. We will of course remember the last good tag team battle royale for reference...oh wait, it still hasn't happened yet. Everyone gets eliminated in short order to leave the Dudleys, Hardyz, and Acolytes. The Hardyz won this match twice, but the ref was out of position and couldn't see. Acolytes get the victory after Jeff Hardy takes a supercool bump, vaulting about eight feet above the top rope and crashing to the floor. As is the "chic" trend, I don't rate battle royales. Match 2: Kurt Angle vs. Steve "The Lethal Heatkiller" Blackman in a Kurt Angle Is Going To Win match. Oh my god, Blackman is getting face heat. During the match, no less. Look for Luke Johnston and Sean Shannon to open an amusement park together shortly. Both men show that they're technically skilled, but also extremely green as well. Angle wins, inevitibly. Heat for Angle: **3/4 Heat for Blackman: *1/2. Most ever! Heat for the match: **1/2. Let the "Boring" chants commence! Workrate: **1/4 Total Rating: 4.75/10 Match 3: Ivory vs. Barbara Bush vs. Jacqueline vs. Miss Kitty in an Evening Gown and Swimming Pool match for the WWF Women's Title. Mae Young and Moolah are Your Special Guest Referees. Jackie gets stripped in about twenty seconds, prompting "Racist bastards!" in jest from my viewing partners in crime. Bush goes soon after. And hey, there goes Ivory too in under three minutes total. Miss Kitty is your new WWF Women's Champion. And then, in quite possibly the most historic wrestling moment of the year (which will be immortalized on teenage male computers worldwide), Miss Kitty removes her dress, goes for another dip to make her bra and panties see-through...and then removes her bra entirely. Sgt. Slaughter covers her up about half a second later with a towel...but hoo boy. TITTIES! Heat for the match: ***** for the, ahem, extracurricular activities. You'd think Ricky Steamboat was winning the IC Belt at WM III or something. Workrate: DUD Total Rating: 5/10. A technical masterpiece! Match 4: The Hollies v. Viscera & Rikishi Phatu (Boy, are they fat) in a Super Heavyweights match. Miscommunication leads to "Vis" nailing Rikishi with a cappo kick, allowing Hardcore to cover for the victory. Heat for the Super Heavyweights (Boy, are they fat): ** Heat for the Hollies: **1/2 Heat for the match: ** Workrate: 1/2* Total Rating: 2.5/10 Match 5: The British Bulldog v. Val Venis v. D-Lo Brown for the WWF European Championship. Let the blown spots commence! Not my spot, not my liver spot, but the blown spots! Not horrible or anything, but slightly painful to watch. Bulldog really needs to retire and go have some tea and crumpets. Venis wins with the Money Shot on D-Lo after D-Lo hits the frog splash on Bulldog. Val Venis is the new WWF European Champion. Heat for the Bulldog: * Heat for Venis: *. Mixed, but not very loud anyway. Heat for D-Lo: ***1/4. Push him. Please? Please??? Heat for the match: **. Loud whenever D-Lo did something, that was about it. Workrate: * Total Rating: 3/10 Match 6: Kane v. X-Pac in a Steel Cage match with Funky Stipulations. You see, Kane can only win by pinfall, while X-Pac can win by pinfall or climbing out of the cage. I wish they'd just pick rules for these damn things already and standardize. This is chapter 47 in the Kane vs. X-Pac "epic" storyline. I lost interest at Chapter 2. I Hate X-Pac. In something UNPRECEDENTED in an X-Pac match, both guys hit their high spots and almost nothing else. Gee, never seen this before. Oh, here come the Outlaws to add to the hilarity. Here comes Torrie to stop them. Kane with a nice clothesline from the top of the cage, tombstone seals the deal as Kane wins relatively cleanly. Sure, technically the match was fine. It's just not entertaining. I Hate X-Pac. Heat for X-Pac: ** due to the mixed reaction. Heat for Kane: ***1/4 Heat for the match: **3/4 Workrate: *** Total Rating: 5.75/10 Match 7: Chyna w/Miss Titty v. Chris Jericho for the WWF Intercontinental Championship. Ah, now THIS was what I shelled out $30 for. Not that Kitty's little show wasn't worth that price right off the bat. :) A surprisingly crisp, flowing match that's much less awkward and choppy than the Survivor Series incarnation. Crowd is literally 50/50 here, popping for just about everything no matter who does it. Neat little bit as Chyna gets caught in the ropes and Jericho mercilessly attacks her injured hand--culminating in a dropkick to the thumb, an unorthodox move if I've ever heard one. Walls of Jericho after 10 minutes or so, and Chyna taps out as the crowd goes bonkers. Holy shit, a clean victory? For a heel? When was the last time we saw that? Chris "God" Jericho is YOUR new WWF Intercontinental Champion. Heat for Jericho: ***1/2 Heat for Chyna: **1/4 Heat for the match: **** Workrate: ***1/2. I genuinely would have liked this to be given some more time. Total Rating: 7.5/10 Match 8: New Age Outlaws v. The Rock n' Sock Connection for the WWF Tag Team Championship. Yes, this is Chapter 91 of this epic war. Practically the same exact match we've been seeing for the last three months, until Al Snow comes in to cause the DQ. Heat for Rock n' Sock: ****1/2. I have to deduct half a point because Mick came out seperately and to much less pop, but the hometown Florida crowd nearly shook the ring down when Rocky came out. Heat for the Outlaws: -**, yet another highly mixed reaction. Heat for the match: **. Total silence reigning most of the time, alternating with epic noise levels when Rocky gets involved. Workrate: ** Total Rating: 4/10 Match 9: Big Show v. Big Bossman w/Prince Albert for the WWF Championship. This match was exactly what everyone expected--and more importantly, what everyone wanted to see. Bossman getting his ass kicked and chokeslammed all the way to China in under five minutes. Oh yeah, Spanish Announcer's Table bites the big one here as Prince Albert gets chokeslammed through it. Big Show retains. Is the Hardcore belt dead? Heat for Big Show: ***3/4. Heat for Boss Man: ***1/2. Say what you will, he's over. Heat for the match: *** Workrate: 1/4* Total Rating: 3.25/10 Match 10: HHH w/sledgehammer vs. Vincent K. McMahon in an Anything Goes, Falls Count Anywhere match. Again, just call it a FUCKING HARDCORE MATCH. Is the concept really that difficult? Stephanie gets a front row seat, also known as the worst seat in the house for a hardcore match. Decent brawl--but it drags on unneccessarily for 30 full minutes. Come on, give Jericho five or ten of those, will ya? They climb some of the entranceway scaffolding at one point, allowing HHH to drop Vince into the SPONGY MATERIAL BREAKING HIS FALL OF DOOM~! Vince does a pretty good blade job here. Destruction of more of the entrance set leads such historic proclamations by Ross as "Into the helicopter!" and "He hit him with the machine gun!" Match progresses back to the ring, where Vince grabs the sledgehammer. He's about to smack HHH...when Stephanie climbs into the ring. She wants to hit Helmsley herself. But she wimps out. HHH takes the sledge from her, levels Vince, and covers for the pin. This means that HHH gets a title shot some undeterminate time in the future. And here's the "Hug a la Heel Turn", as HHH and Stephanie embrace and celebrate over Vince's prone body. Not epic or anything, but it got the job done. I was predicting that Test would turn heel and join DX here, but so much for that theory. I pretty much had the rest of the card right, though. Heat for Vince: **1/2 Heat for HHH: ***3/4 Heat for the match: *1/2. I hate rating heat for hardcore matches that go backstage for 80% of the match. Workrate: **1/2, I guess. Aside from one or two highspots, it was a lot of stalling. Total Rating: 3/10 Part 3: Thoughts... Rated segments go 38.75/90 for the Mega-Total Rating. That's the highest percentage (43%) for a PPV since I've started doing them. And hey, TITTIES! Well, back to studying differential equations and computer architecture. Ian Serotkin Jobber-at-Large (for Shooters!) and Founder of the Heatrate Cru Mail the Author Visit the Shooters |
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