Here are some more pro wrestling DVDs I never got around to mentioning on the site yet. All of them are of interest to fans of the respective relevant periods, or they wouldn’t be here. All are WWE releases through Shock here in Orstrellia, unless otherwise cited.
RIC FLAIR & THE FOUR HORSEMEN
Nice addendum to the main three-disc Ric Flair set from ages ago, but for fans of that period of WCW/pro wrestling in general, more than just an add-on, since this was the definitive heel team of our time, and changed the way business was done in a sense, since they brought in the “nudge-wink” concept, where the guys who were nominally the blackest of blackhearts re storyline, were also the most dynamic and popular, and were plainly positioned that way in programming.
It’s a two disc set, and there’s plenty from the heyday, with matches in addition to the documentary-style feature.
Probably it includes more than most people would need on later later versions of the Horsemen, and not enough on the immediately post-Ole Anderson versions that many of us remember as being as vital, entertaining and definitive as the Ole version.
That’s a quibble, and other than they maybe could have had another disc of prime NWA/WCW tv studio stuff and skits, it will satisfy the fans of the act, and make for some repeat viewing. They sure make it clear that a lot of the on-camera act was just a reflection of how they were living at the time, which is, and was, of course, the appeal of the Horsemen.
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THE MOST POWERFUL FAMILIES IN WRESTLING
Another two disc nostalgia set from WWE, bolstered by a lot of footage from the tape libraries they’ve purchased over recent years, inc (old) NWA, AWA, Florida Championship, etc.
This was a little bit of a surprise release, since it doesn’t feature any particular star (I beg their pardon - “superstars”) or event, or era. But it was a solid and creative idea for a nostalgia special, and even in the modern WWE slightly dumbed-down era of DVD releases, they do the history thing well.
Wrestling dynasties covered inc the Funks, the Briscos, the Von Erichs, the Grahams (a good choice but no huge surprise since Dr Jerry Graham was a Vince Jr favourite), the Gagnes, the Ortons, the Guerreros, the Maivia/Johnson connection etc.
There’s also a section on on-screen “families” who weren’t, so that little wrestling tradition is addressed as well.
It would have been better a few years back when they handled the scripting and interviewee comments more frankly, but it’s still a very enjoyable nostalgia wallow and some of the footage they’ve dug up of the old matches may be a surprise.
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THE NEW AND IMPROVED DX
Extremely generous three-disc set, all about the DX revival of 2006, which until some recent fun shows centred around the RAW 15th anniversary, Vince McMahon doing his famous McMahon-acting, and the return of Chris Jericho, was about the last time the current WWE did anything to vaguely entertain me, other than releasing DVD box-sets of old stuff.
It’s a very nice package of all the TV angles/skits of the 2006 HHH/Michaels DX reformation, taking it from the lead-up right through the gags, matches and some pretty great edit packages they did at the time. There’s PPV stuff as well.
Really, they rarely do anywhere near as comprehensive with using their recent-years TV stuff, as opposed to the documentary features, match reels, and old angle footage on other discs, but then there’s the issue of whether that much of the recent TV stuff is entertaining enough to sell. (I’ve got to think though, that packages of a six-month or one year wrap of TV storylines, with relevant pay-off match highlights, and additional comment in interviews would be a format that would at least sell to current fans, and this is one of the very few titles I can think of that’s done anything like that. A title along these lines on the “explosion” years of the late-90s, early 2000s when Rock and Austin took the whole deal mainstream should be a blast entertainment-wise as well as a decently hot seller. I guess they’ll get around to it.)
The downside is, well nothing as far as covering this subject matter - ie the DX “reunion”, if two out of five or six people is a reunion (albeit admittedly the definitive two, but Michaels wasn’t even in DX for a lot of a pretty major run) - is that there’s no old stuff, and now probably no chance of doing the original DX story properly on DVD, at least for a long time.
The previously released DVD was one of the WWE’s few comprehensive botch-jobs on home video release. It was basically just a transfer of an old rushed, unfunny VHS release, which had massacred some pretty funny footage of the old DX and the then-new additions were useless skits with Michael Cole which added nothing. When they put it on DVD (I think just ahead or contemporary with the DX reunion) they didn’t apparently re-edit it or add one thing to it. They should have forgotten it entirely and done the job properly, and they certainly had the footage to do it.
Now with this one out, who knows if they’ll ever get around to doing the job on the old stuff properly?
Anyway for what it is, The New and Improved DX is well-done. The question is how many old-school fans will want to swarm over even reasonably entertaining 2006 material, and whether the current batch of kiddies have any interest in a perpetual memorial of last season’s big angle.
If they’d put in one disc less of this and replaced it with a decent highlights package of original DX dirtbag highlights, that probably would have filled the bill all round. But good and comprehensive for what it is.
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THE TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY OF WORLD CLASS CHAMPIONSHIP WRESTLING (WWE/Shock)
HEROES OF WORLD CLASS (Independent)
World Class Championship Wrestling (WCCW) was the Dallas/Fort Worth wrestling office that broke away from the NWA when owner Fritz Von Erich realised that the NWA wasn’t in any hurry to make all his kids world champions, and he figured he didn’t need them anyway, since business was going through the roof with the kids.
And it did. You get a full dose of the Shakespeares with these docos - you can’t have full-blown head-kicking tragedy without a great triumph somewhere in the past of the protagonist/s, and you get both here. The WWE doco in particular does something most wrestling docos can’t - it gives videotape evidence as well as anecdotal to show exactly how hot the promotion was and why. Those kids in Dallas identified with the Von Erich boys in a way that very few pro wrestling figures have ever been able to inspire, and that, along with the Freebirds as viable (and in a way almost equally identifiable) heels took Dallas wrestling out of the rassling ghetto and into the mainstream. These people were going NUTS for the Von Erichs - it’s like a localised outbreak of Beatlemania, with the girls screaming and crying and the whole enchilada.
In the early 80s, WCCW had TV production ahead of anybody else, the Von Erich kids were folk heroes at home, they were doing blow-out weekly business, the tapes were all over the States (and the Middle East), and they were doing stadium business for special shows as well.
Where it went wrong from there, mainly featuring an endless stream of Von Erich deaths (well it ended when they basically ran out of Von Erichs other than the one who got away, Kevin) and a litany of other deaths and misfortunes involving the WCCW wrestlers, plus the usual misjudgements and business errors, some of which are still award-winners by current standards, is where the tragedy part comes in, and inevitably there’s an element of both DVDs that feels like one long funeral.
The WWE one, does some of its story-telling in “code” although you can generally read between the lines and see what is meant in those instances. For example they allow contention over the official line that David’s death was due to gastro-intestinal causes, but they also tell that story. It’s more frank than the general run of the post-complete honesty policy WWE DVDs. The run of people they’ve got to talk about the old days is pretty good. You might have expected a little more Ric Flair, but he’s there. The main ones who are missing, well, as you find out if you didn’t already know, they’re mostly dead. It’s a bit of an eye-opener to see Jimmy Garvin as he looks these days. Very genial but not exactly “Gorgeous” anymore. It’s more of an eye-opener to see Buddy Roberts talking through one of those voice-boxes when he eventually speaks.
The Heroes of World Class DVD tells pretty much the same story, using a lot of the same people, with a few variations. It’s more warts-and-all on the visual side. For example, they clearly show the dilapidation that the Dallas Sportatorium fell into, and the WWE set doesn’t. Also the Heroes disc doesn’t have the friendly make-up/lighting jobs that WWE did on its interview principles, so the same people tend to look quite different between the two discs.
It’s an interesting enough story that you might want to have both. The WWE one is certainly easier to get here, so that might be the logical starting point. You might find you also want Heroes of World Class - I’m pretty happy to have both, if “happy” is the exact word you’d use given the content.
Both are among the few wrestling docos that could be shown to non-wrestling fans and hold an audience.
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REY MYSTERIO - THE BIGGEST LITTLE MAN
3-disc set, no documentary feature, essentially an expanded version of the old single-disc Rey Mysterio WWE release Rey Mysterio 619.
Fortunately a lot of the expansions are in the area of his WCW era matches, and there’s also more WWE stuff, in virtually all cases (with a couple of exceptions for major storyline match reasons) it’s material picked for match quality, which is why you want to watch Rey-Rey anyway.
There’s no extra stuff from Mexico (they haven’t bought anyone’s tape library down there) and only a couple of matches from ECW still. I guess that’s the downside, particularly re his years in Mexico.
Otherwise this is kind of the exact opposite of the John Cena release - no doco, and wall-to-wall great matches. Someone said to me that they found this set repetitive, but I think that’s because you weren’t meant to watch yards and yards of Mysterio matches in a row. Just watch one or three from time to time as a treat, and that’s the way to enjoy them. You’ve got a lot of picking and choosing to do here, as it’s three discs packed with material, and it’s about as much good clean fun as pro wrestling supplies to see Rey working with guys like Liger, Ultimo Dragon, Blitzkrieg, Juventud, Super Calo, Tajiri, and the Guerreros. (Incidentally, hard to fathom that they managed to misspell Eddie and Chavo’s surnames all over the booklet copy, given that they were spelled correctly on the back cover.) Nice bonus - the match with Shawn Michaels from the Eddie “Guerrera” tribute show.
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ROAD WARRIORS
Don’t know how I managed to leave this one out of past DVD wrap-ups.
The Roadies were the definitive tag-team of their time. Just the look of them enabled to become stars via the even-then dying wrestling magazine circuit, and they were a huge hit everywhere they went, which is why they had the titles put on them everywhere they went.
Doco feature goes back to the beginning when they were bouncers in an infamous bar, and works through their period of amazing success to later on, involving Animal’s period of insurance-enforced inactivity, and when Hawk fell prey to drug abuse, and his subsequent early death. They’ve mostly got the right people to talk to, including, of course, Animal, who provides a lot of comment along the way, and also revoices some commentary on old matches with Jim Ross. The insight isn’t exactly full-on all the way, but it’s always interesting to hear a participant talk his way through matches.
The WWE packages generally don’t cheat you for match content, and this one doesn’t aim to be an exception. There’s stuff from the championship runs in NWA Georgia, the later (WCW) NWA, and WWE, as well as the legend-making first USA world title run in the AWA. Smart-thinking bonus inclusion: their match with Hulk Hogan and Genichiro Tenryu from the Tokyo Dome card in the early 90s, one of Hogan’s rare losses at the time.
Also there’s a fair amount of studio interview material, which suits me just fine because I always enjoyed Hawk’s promos and that amazing granite-gargling voice. Once again you can “Snack on danger, and dine on death” not to mention have your memory refreshed (as mine certainly was) that “There are only two kinds of people to the Road Warriors - clam-heads, and neo-maxi zoom dweebies.” I have no idea what this means, but continue to draw great inspiration and pleasure from it nonetheless.
Have to say I also found the documentary section one of the most enjoyable of these, but to be fair, I always enjoyed their act anyway.
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BRIAN PILLMAN - LOOSE CANNON
I have mentioned this before, but didn’t say one thing that should have been mentioned. Part of the Pillman story was how he was ahead of the rest of the business when it came to working reality into the storylines. His “Loose Cannon” persona, and how he parlayed that in a very unorthodox way across three separate wrestling companies at the time was really a definitive blueprint for the approach that later paid off in the Outsiders/NWA angle in WCW, and the “Attitude Era” WWF/E.
It’s the other reason that this is a mandatory purchase for anyone with a vague interest in that period of pro wrestling.
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THE LADDER MATCH
The ladder match is the most frequently recurring major stunt-show themed match in major league pro wrestling, as well as the TLC (tables/ladders/chairs) matches that developed from it.
This three-disc set includes most of the major WWE stunt-fests in the wake of its official incorporation as a WWF stip match at Wrestlemania X in 1994, with Shawn Michaels v. Razor Ramon (Scott Hall). Actually there’s a few surprises here too.
For starters, that match isn’t on here, (a few highlights are shown), but a later Michaels-Hall ladder match is.
Also they acknowledge that the match was used earlier in WWF, and the match they use to prove it is a Michaels vs Bret Hart match from Wrestling Challenge in ‘92 that I’d completely forgotten about.
Also, there’s an archive-buster in there - a ladder match from Stampede Wrestling in 1979 between Jake Roberts and “Big Daddy Ritter”, aka Junkyard Dog.
The rest is pretty much the suspects you’d expect, with one WCW exception, which is a flying stunt-fest involving 3 Count (at that point Shannon Moore and “Shane” Gregory Helms), Jamie Knoble/Evan “Karagias” Kavagias, and the psychologically-inclined Jung Dragons (Kaz Hayashi and Jimmy Wang/Yang).
There’s no documentary feature as such, not that that would really have worked for this subject matter. Instead Todd Grisham does his alternative to comedy to set up the matches. This is no bargain, but mostly kept short, and does include the basic information. What’s better is that some of the participants join him to briefly discuss the match in question. Edge is the only one who can generate actual comedy working with Grisham (”I’m not going to allow you to speak again in this segment”, as well as describing himself as the “Wolfgang Puck of the ladder match” and brutally parodying Grisham’s delivery of non-comedy) but it’s kind of nice to have the guys there, and makes the thing feel a little less thrown-together. Also when Jeff Hardy and Shawn Michaels are talking, Todd Grisham isn’t.
22 matches in total (bearing in mind that these matches tend to be longer than the norm). Again, like with the Rey Mysterio set, you wouldn’t necessarily want to sit down and watch the lot in one hit, but as a treat spread over time, it’s a good deal. Also the ladder matches tend to breed innovative spots, and this isn’t really as inherently repetitive as something like, say, the cage matches box set.
For anyone to whom this is an issue, this must have been in production if not completed before the Chris Benoit murders/suicide occurred, and Benoit is featured in three matches as well as a brief promo vignette (and on liner packaging).
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LIPSTICK AND DYNAMITE (Independent)
Non-WWE release, a legit documentary on women’s wrestling with a heavily historical slant, although more recent WWE “divas” (their code term for women pro wrestlers) are featured in some extras material.
They interviewed some of the big names from the past, including but not limited to Moolah and Johnnie Mae Young, as well as a few that really weren’t as big names, but still have some interesting stories to tell.
The real theme that comes through in all cases is highly individualistic and unusual women who found a way to express themselves and make a living at a time when the world just wasn’t oriented that way. This makes it sound kind of like a feminist tract, but I make that point because it really isn’t like that at all. It’s inevitably got its feminist side, though set at a low constant hum in the background rather than rubbed in your face, but it’s really about the amazing characters you meet in the movie and their perseverence and humour in the face of times and events which were roughly often as hilarious as they were harrowing and horrible.
It’s a super-easy watch, and although some of the material included could have benefitted from another point of view (eg. the material on olde-tyme women’s wrestling impresario Billy Wolfe really needed a counter-balance, because there’s a lot more to that story than hinted at here), for one thing, it still imparts plenty of little-known history and there’s a lot of revelations in there anyway (Moolah’s domestic arrangements will come as a surprise to most people not in the business, and it’s the kind of surprise where you may want to have a wrestling mat positioned behind your chair), and for another, probably a lot of the people you’d need to speak to for the other point of view are either dead, not able to speak, or not willing to speak.
There’s some good historical footage in there (including vintage TV appearances by some of the women involved in interviews) although you’ll probably wish there was a little more match footage to illustrate the interviews, and also some of it directly contradicts the content of the interviews.
Overall, it’s extremely entertaining, and I’ve already watched it a few times and will doubtless see it again.
If you’re interested in the history of the wrestling bizness, you need to see it. It’s another wrestling-based documentary that could play to a non-wrestling audience with no problems whatsoever.
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OTHER DVD RELEASES
There’s a John Cena set out, John Cena: My Life. I’d probably pronounce that more in the traditional Jewish way of speaking: “John Cena? My Life!!”
Look if the kids go for him, it’s fine with me. I’ve adjusted to it (admittedly mostly by hardly watching wrestling anymore), and after a long time of his in-ring resembling a lump of wood with limbs, he finally did learn a trade to the point where he could be carried in big matches if the storyline allowed, he had a rock-solid worker on the other side of the ring, and there was plenty of detail-work in the booking. Prior to that development roughly 18 months-two years ago, only Chris Jericho had been able to extract a match from him, and that was pretty much Jericho doing everything and Cena joining the audience on the sidelines. And his mike work and presence on camera have always been above-average, not that anyone will ever confuse him with The Rock or anything.
That doesn’t make me particularly interested in him though. This three-disc set, which seems a vastly over-generous allotment by at least one disc, includes a documentary feature, Cena talking about all the cars he owns (really) and some more filler, plus a walloping 7 (seven) matches. The Vince McMahon set had nine matches on it. This tends to tell a story, I think. Jericho’s in two of them, and of all the matches with “WWE Superstars” they could have put in, two of the others feature RVD and Edge. Can you guess why? And yes, those selections also tell a story. They fill the other disc up with promo stuff. At least there’s some OVW stuff of him as the character “Prototype” which some of the young Cena fans won’t have already seen. That’s probably all I’ll watch of this.
There’s a three-disc set about the Undertaker that came out a while back. Boy, that was about as eagerly anticipated as the annual flu bout here at Leapster Towers. Why you’d want to see three full DVDs-worth of a character about as well rounded, ever-developing and fast-moving as Iron Maiden’s mascot “Eddie” is beyond me. I mean, people like to see Eddie at those shows, but it’s not like he’s the main act.
Of course, this was never going to be the behind-the-scenes expose on how Mark Calaway developed the character and his influence over the WWF/E business behind the scenes, which I for one would have found of some interest. From memory, there’s not even material of him wrestling as “Mean Mark” Callas in WCW. Anyway, I somehow misplaced my copy. This is not a euphemism. Just when I was writing this, I realised the thing must have gone missing ages ago, and I was never going to bust an arm looking for it and I’m not going to start now. I can imagine something more useless than this though - the Undertaker 15-0 DVD of all his Wrestlemania victories. 3 DVDs of Undertaker sounds like a life sentence to me, but that one would be the death penalty. For those who still love the character, now you know it’s out. The best I can say about the guy is that he was always capable of wrestling a half-decent match if he was in there with someone pretty good, and in recent years, he’s busted a hump to have the best matches he can, even with some guys who weren’t any good at all. On the negative side of the ledger, I don’t think he sold anything in the ring during at least three US presidential administrations, and Undertaker and I have had the same disagreement as HHH and I during that period - ie both of them generally want their matches to run way longer than I feel is completely necessary.
There’s a relatively new Shawn Michaels 3 DVD set out - Shawn Michaels - Heartbreak and Triumph. Haven’t had time to wade through any of it yet. I presume it’s an expanded version of the single disc release they’d previously had out of him, along the lines of what they did with the Rey Mysterio set. Michaels had claims to being THE big occasion player of US pro wrestling for a period in the 90s. (And night to night he may well have been best, although Bret Hart has counter-claims purely on a big show basis in the same time-frame, and you’d have to consider guys like Benoit, Jericho and, later, Kurt Angle to potentially eclipse either of them on pure in-ring, moving on in that time-frame.)
Michaels post-back-injury comeback has been pretty much of a triumph in-ring, although until recently I didn’t feel he was accepted as a star on the same level as he had been previously. Anyway, you’d be struggling to miss with match-quality on a Michaels set is what I’m saying, although I sure took the long way around to get there. To put it mildly, I struggle a lot less with the necessity of a 3-disc Michaels set than I do with a Cena one. On the latter score, well, let’s just say that the human imagination tends to lose elasticity with age.
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