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75%
Overall Rating
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Ranked #11,925
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The 1990s may have been the most turbulent decade in the history of sports entertainment. The biggest fight of the era was not in the squared circle, but rather between rival companies WWE and WCW, and survival was at stake. Like any good match, it saw its twists and turns, particularly when WCW brought WWE to its knees, winning the Monday-night ratings battle for more than 80 consecutive weeks. While WWE eventually prevailed, the real winners of the war were fans who got to see birth and rebirth of some of the biggest stars and factions in the history of sports entertainment. "The Greatest Stars Of The 90s" profiles 15 of them. Hosted by "SmackDown" announcer and former ECW champion Tazz, the 3-disc set is packed with matches, interviews, comedy, and more.
--Amazon
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Review by Chad
Added: November 1, 2013
Back in the nineties, I was a huge fan of professional wrestling and could not get enough of it. I got drawn into it as an eighties child, but that turned into a full-blown love affair when the mid-nineties rolled around. This is when Ted Turner started his WCW promotion, which led to Vince McMahon stepping his game up and giving us the "Attitude Era", while a little company called ECW was tearing things up on the east coast. All three companies had their strengths and their supporters, and it was a great time to be a fan. I was always more of a WWE (WWF at the time) guy, and I didn't miss a single episode of Monday Night Raw for years on end.
So, a documentary highlighting the top stars of the nineties should be a no-brainer for me, right? You guessed that one correctly! This is a three-disc set, with the first disc being a documentary and showing us the careers and highlights of the selected wrestlers. That list follows this paragraph. There are also twelve extras on this disc, which consist of various promos, interview segments, things of that nature. Discs two and three contain a combined total of sixteen matches - that list is not included here in order to save space, but it's readily available online.
Shawn Michaels
Yokozuna
The Rock
Women of the 90s
Kevin Nash
Owen Hart
Ric Flair
Mick Foley
Not So Great Stars of the 90s
Hulk Hogan
Triple H
Bret Hart
Vince McMahon / Eric Bischoff / Paul Heyman
Lex Luger
Sting
Razor Ramon
The Undertaker
Stone Cold Steve Austin
That's a pretty solid list of wrestlers when you limit your selections to the nineties. Hell, it's a damned solid list if you were making a list of the best of all time. Obviously, I know that every fan reading this will wonder why "that guy" was included when "this guy" wasn't - that's just how things work. We all have our favorites, and yes, there's a handful of guys that I thought should have definitely made the list who were nowhere to be found. Still, it can't be denied that each of the wrestlers included brought a lot to the table and are deserving of a spot on this list.
Each wrestler gets a fair amount of time devoted to them, with a look at how they got started, notable feuds or moments in their careers, short interview clips from other wrestlers about them, and why they were believed to be great enough to make the list. It's all classy stuff: even the section on Sting was respectful, and the man is currently working for the competition while having never worked a day for the WWE. Even the "not so great" section is a celebration of bad gimmicks rather than the people working them.
My biggest complaint, however, is the fact that a lot of the "good stuff" that should have been included here is missing. You see, this is all about the nineties, so obviously, these are the guys who were big during that decade. Common sense. Well, the nineties was when the so-called "Attitude Era" took off, which consisted of the company pushing the envelope on over-the-top violence, sexual content, language, the works. That's the past, and the company is now much more family-friendly, which isn't a huge deal in and of itself... but their new outlook spreads to their DVD releases as well. How can you have a section on Triple H and Shawn Michaels' time in Degeneration-X while cutting out any footage involving harsh language or potentially offensive content? How about Foley's status as the hardcore icon, without showing any of the crazy stuff that he did to earn that title? This isn't a deal-breaker, mind you, as there is a lot of good footage here; however, this complaint ran through my head more than once.
My only other complaint, and this is a minor one, is that there is some revisionist history in certain biography sections. It's also pretty inconsistent, which makes it even more baffling. For example, we see clips of Triple H's time in WCW, along with footage of Steve Austin and Kevin Nash's first run (before becoming Diesel). That's all great, but then we get to The Undertaker, and his pre-WWF career is completely ignored. He was by no means a top-tier guy back then, but he did have a fairly impressive run in WCW before coming to WWF - why was that ignored? Then there's Owen Hart, whose tragic death during a pay-per-view is completely ignored. I understand that it would have cast a more somber tone on the section, but still, it's a fairly important topic in a biography on the man.
So, there's two complaints on this set, but don't let that fool you: I had a great time reliving some of these memories, and I thoroughly enjoyed the vast majority of the documentary portion. The WWE may be a little formulaic in their documentaries and how they are presented, but it's a winning formula that works out wonderfully time and time again. The people in charges of putting together their DVD releases truly know what they're doing, and this release is no exception. If you were a fan during the nineties or if you want a history lesson, you definitely need to put this on your shelf. 8/10.
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