Well, the best laid plans of mice and men and all that.
Since a cancellation from a friend caused the Saturday evening plans to
go up in smoke, and since there’s a video store right next door to me,
my roommate and I decided to waste a weekend with a couple of the new
WWF videos, an old WWF video, and Extreme Catfighting, Vol. 1. I shit
you not. I didn’t bother to do a rant because most of this was talking
and recaps, but here’s a summary…
Tape #1: “Banned In Canada”
Okay, this was a 35-minute tape from the new series, available only in
Canada to satiate the needs of those of us here who bitch at TSN for
cutting the good stuff out. It went like this…
– Ten minutes of Austin swearing and drinking beer (we can’t see the
latter due to TV laws up here).
– Ten minutes of Val Venis and all the choppy-choppy stuff that was
edited out by TSN with a chainsaw
– About 6 minutes of Degeneration X, including the New York trip (again,
edited out for the most part), the flasher, and Hunter’s Buffer
impression (which is bleeped out on TSN when shown up here).
– Another assorted 5 minutes of Mankind bleeding and going through
tables.
Realistically, the Austin stuff is available on the new Austin video,
the D-X stuff is available on the D-X video (which I highly recommend,
btw), and we already saw the Foley stuff when it was originally
broadcast. I had, however, never seen the Venis skits or the John Wayne
Bobbit speech. Not really worth the four bucks, however. Wait until it
gets to the 99 cent rental bin. But Zenon was paying, so who cares?
Tape #2: The Three Faces of Foley.
Now this is a must see. The tape is narrated by Foley as he completely
shatters character and gives a pep talk to the Hardy Boyz during the
setup of a RAW show. It covers the past year and Foley talks about the
origins of Dude Love and how amiguous he is towards the character, his
relationship with Terry Funk, Jim Ross and others, and the Hell in the
Cell match. Tons of great highlights are interspersed. I wish they
still did 2 hour videos so they could show the entirety of the matches
(HITC, Funk v. Foley from RAW, Cactus v. HHH from the MSG RAW,
Austin/Love v. Bulldog/Owen and a couple of others) but it’s a great
little fix for Foley fans as it is. Definitely worth a rental.
Tape #3: Gripes, Grudges and Grunts.
This is a Coliseum video from about 1993 that I would have added to a
Coliseum video rant, but I only wanted it for one match because the rest
is junk. It’s got the two Michaels v. Duggan matches from RAW, the
Natural Disasters title win over Money Inc, Perfect v. Papa Shango, Ric
Flair v. Tatanka (no, he couldn’t carry him, sorry), Hogan/Beefcake v.
the Beverlys, Bushwackers & midget v. Beverlys & midget, and then
finally the match I wanted to see: Randy Savage & Bret Hart v. Ric
Flair & Shawn Michaels. From 1992 no less. Ho-lee shit, who thought of
that one and can I please have their baby? Anyway, the match rules by
the standards of time. Flair and Michaels play EVIL TAG TEAM like
they’d been teaming for years while Perfect does everything in his power
to piss off Bret Hart on the outside. Randy Savage takes a shitkicking
and then Flair and Michaels go into this surreal selling contest to see
who can act the most hurt from the weakest punch. Wild stuff. It was a
$1.87 rental so that’s worth the price, I think. Bobby Heenan and Jim
Ross do all the commentary and they are GREAT together. Heenan is
really funny and insightful during the Flair matches, as he “rates the
chops” among other things. The whole tape is like 1 for 12, but the “1”
is really good.
Tape #4: Extreme Catfighting, Vol. 1.
Have you ever been watching the UFC and thought “I wish I could see
this, except with ugly Californian chicks with no fighting ability and
skimpy t-shirts”? Well, neither have I, but Zenon was intrigued enough
to rent it. The premise is pretty simple: It’s an “underground”
shoot-fighting promotion based in Mexico, with female fighters who have
no formal training. In fact, their recruiting pitch is “If you’re a
beautiful woman with no fighting ability…” and goes downhill from
there. I CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP, PEOPLE! The production is worse than
amateurish — it looks like it was edited on an Amiga with a Video
Toaster. The announcing is horrible. The fights, shockingly, don’t
suck. I’ve actually seen worse UFCs than this show. Severn v. Shamrock
springs to mind right away. The women all have dumb names (Kitty v.
Pony! Dannie v. Ginger! etc.). The summary:
– Kitty took out Pony in the first match in one round after Pony broke a
nail or something and didn’t answer the bell for the second round. Not
a good start Kitty is a trained martial artist and held Pony in the
guard for most of the fight, and Pony had no clue what to do with it.
– I forget the names of the second couple, but it only lasted about a
minute and, again, the trained one came out on top. Syndie (I think)
tried a hip-block takedown on the other girl, and instead of falling
with the move the other girl tried to plant her foot and hyperextended
her knee. It looked UGLY as the leg bent WAY too far in the wrong
direction. They showed that replay about 14 times, ala David McLane and
that episode of GLOW. Anyone who knows what “GLOW” is will understand
the reference, I’ll bet.
– Easily the best fight followed as “Dannie” took on “Ginger”. Really
good match with Dannie being an untrained street fighter and Ginger
doing a *lot* of wrestling. She even pulled out a DDT at one point,
looked better than Raven’s! The punches looked terrible because
neither girl really has any boxing training, but the on-the-ground stuff
was actually very good and they were evenly matched. This wouldn’t have
been out of place at all on your average UFC. Ginger won by judge’s
decision.
– Due to a last-minute pullout, Pony got hauled out again to fight
Miranda. And once again, Pony took a shitkicking for about a minute
before her corner claimed a “windpipe injury” and she threw in the
towel. What a wuss.
– In the final fight, Jade kicked the hell out of Brooke. Apparently
they’re co-workers, but it was an A-Level Asskicking. Jade hauled off
with about 15 punches to cause a standing 8-count (which should have
stopped the fight right there) and then the idiot ref let it go again
and Jade nearly knocked the poor girl’s head off before he stopped it
again for good.
Anyway, if you can look past the amateur-hour production, cue-carded
commentary, replays of bared breasts for token titillation, horrible
refereeing, lack of a crowd, bad ring announcing, endless intro
interviews which serve no purpose, bad post-match interviews and overall
cheesy attitude, it’s actually not that bad of a show. I seriously
doubt we’ll ever see Vol 2, but they have a web site at
www.catfightproductions.com if you want to check them out for yourself.
The video box plays up the nudity aspect, but there’s nothing aside from
the occasional boob shot. It’s hardly as degrading as the “Catfight”
title would indicate.
So, all in all, an interesting evening to say the least. I’ll go 2 for
4 on these videos, with Foley and Catfighting being our winners.
Btw, I suggested the HULKAMANIA MARATHON RANT~! to Zenon, but:
a) He threatened me with physical violence and;
b) Someone had Hulkamania II rented out already.
So no go this week. Maybe next.
Happy video hunting…
