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[1993-05-03-NJPW-Fukuoka Dome] Sting vs Scott Norton


Loss

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  • 1 month later...

Scott Norton is a bloody mess and does a lot of really good selling. Probably the most inspired performance I've ever seen from him. But the match isn't really that good. It seems really long, despite being only 10 minutes or so. The match is stopped due to blood, which Norton protests by attacking the ref and all the young boys who enter the ring. Sting just casually walks off. Weird.

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  • 4 months later...

I really liked Norton as the absolute brick shithouse who still managed to convey a sense of vulnerability. The posting that led to the blade job looked super nasty, to the point where I wasn't sure whether it was a blade job or not initially. And of course he bleeds all over the ship.

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  • 1 year later...
  • 4 months later...
  • 1 month later...

Hey Chad and Parv, if you stumble across this: I found the answer to your "Did Sting ever carry anyone?" question.

 

Oh, this is certainly a fine selling performance from Norton, who shockingly takes on the role of overmatched sympathetic babyface here as Sting pounds him to a bloody pulp. He does a great, great "loss of blood" sell as he just flails away at Sting, who's able to duck his blows easily. Sting just levels him with everything he can, though Norton can't bump around as well as Vader so no cool power moves. Then all of a sudden Sting calls for the ring doctor, who examines Norton's cut and quickly stops the match. Norton creams Mr. Takahashi and one of the young boys with an awesome clothesline while Sting just walks off. I know Norton was often weird about doing jobs around this time but that did not seem like a planned finish at all. His cut was sick, but not Hase or Muta sick. But up until the wonky finish I was really digging this, more than anyone else here it seems. Give this a big spirited Norton comeback and a real finish and it'd be a sleeper top 20 MOTYC candidate.

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  • 1 year later...

Norton looks like Ryback. Sting with an early dive and Norton thereafter selling a knee injury isn't how I envisioned these two start things. Norton is then posted and sports a sick blade job, selling it like a champ while having a couple hope spots including the powerslam that would make any babyface proud. We even get the ref checking the cut with his bare hands, which is far from sanitary, but they're not my hands, so get all up in that cut. What happened at the finish? Did the doctor stop it because of blood?

 

Given who was involved this was really incredible and what's even more incredible is that it had a much higher ceiling had it continued and had a proper comeback and finish. Huge tease of what these two do could do with others given this layout.

 

***

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  • 2 months later...

Im with ya here PeteF. I was shocked at how much I enjoyed this and Sting was inspired to me throwing the kitchen sink to Norton and making it feel like he took down a monster. This carried the Vader vs. Sting template and Norton was great at selling and hit a gusher to boot. I wish he would have made the trip to Slamboree as the finish was the only weird thing here as Norton loses his shit and Sting just sort of saunters away. Ill try to get Parv to watch this when we do our 1993 wrap up show. ***1/2

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  • 1 year later...

This was almost a total Sting squash. Between the cut which was already mentioned and the knee injury he suffered earlier, Norton was reduced to a punching bag, and Sting was uncharacteristically vicious in working over both the knee and the cut. The only burst of energy Norton really showed was when he went crazy on everyone in sight after the ref stopped the match. If he'd done that three or four minutes earlier we might have had something. Even before that, he looked like an idiot doing moves that required lifting Sting and holding him up while he had a bad knee. If this was supposed to have been a matchup at Slamboree, I'm glad we were spared.

 

Was Sting really supposed to be the heel here? It sure seemed like it, because if this had been in the States he almost certainly would have come back to stop Norton's postmatch tantrum instead of just walking away like he did.

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  • 1 month later...

This really did seem weird. I enjoyed the match, cannot really complain about any of the work and agree that Norton's selling of both the blood and the early leg injury was top class. I just found the way Sting was the bully and Norton the underdog so strange. The finish was quite peculiar as well. Overall I enjoyed it, I just couldn't help but wonder why they had it play out like that.

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  • GSR changed the title to [1993-05-03-NJPW-Fukuoka Dome] Sting vs Scott Norton

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