Pro Wrestling Discussion

[MikeandRaph87]

So Drew McIntyre is a good guy while Roman Reigns is a bad guy? Seems Bizzaro world! What makes McIntyre a good guy? Also, is Strowman supposed to be 'good' or is he still a jerk who breaks everything?

[Leo656]

Here's a few photos from last weekend's "SWF Storm Surge".

Before anybody says sh*t: I joined a f*cking gym this week, I don't wanna hear it. 8 months of at-home workouts doesn't always cut it when all the gyms in your area are shut down. I'm trying to make the best of a bad situation, same as everyone. So keep your sass-mouth to a minimum, a'ight?! You don't gotta say "Wow, you've certainly looked better", I already know. Working on it.

Anyways, here.









Hopefully I'll be in better shape for the January show.

While I am not proud of my lack of conditioning, I am very proud of my Rainbow Dash T-shirt.

[Leo656]

F*ck Vince Russo. Then, Now, and Forever.

F*ck Vince Russo.

[MikeandRaph87]

Originally Posted by Leo656

F*ck Vince Russo. Then, Now, and Forever.

F*ck Vince Russo.

Thanks for the video to watch during lunch break. I have not had the opportunity yet but there is one on Piper vs The Hitman from last week.

[ZariusTwo]

Originally Posted by Leo656

F*ck Vince Russo. Then, Now, and Forever.

F*ck Vince Russo.

Hogan vs Billy Kidman was...a thing that happened.

[Leo656]

Big fan of both, but it just wasn't credible. Kidman was Kidman and Hogan did the best he could given his limitations by that point, but it just wasn't believable that the guy who slammed Andre and conquered the world - even well into middle age by the year 2000 - could struggle against a guy like Kidman. It looked like me play-wrestling with my nephew. I know that pro wrestling is inherently about "suspension of disbelief" but some things just stretch it too far. Hogan selling for Kidman was one of those things. As big as Hogan is, he's much bigger when he's standing next to you. He's this incredibly imposing and powerful presence. I've been around a ton of "big guys" in wrestling and a few that are physically larger than him, but nobody "bigger" than him, if that makes any sense. The fans loved Kidman, but once you saw them standing next to each other, it was Game Over.

I have to confess, even as a small guy myself, I've never been in love with the Big Guy vs. Little Guy story in pro wrestling. Sure, it's all fake, and "David and Goliath" and all that, but you have to remember that David had a rock and a slingshot. He didn't win with a Frankensteiner or a Shooting Star Press, and his quickness and agility didn't net him the win over the crafty veteran; plain and simple, he cheated. So while it's "inspiring" to book things like Rey Mysterio winning over Big Show, for example, I always felt that things like Kevin Nash vs. Mysterio were a lot more believable. The little guy gets some flashy offense in while the big guy's not trying hard, but the second the big guy decides to take it seriously, he swats the little guy like a gnat. Sure, it's not much by way of "wish fulfillment" and it might not make the crowd happy, but it's a lot easier to swallow.

I've been in quite a few of these scenarios in wrestling, and - Spoiler Alert - I usually lose. You can still tell a decent enough story, but at the end of the day, every time I've had to wrestle a guy who was 6'8 or 300 lbs, or both, the booker's like, "I hope you understand, but it's just not very believable for you to go over." And I more or less agree. A guy 5'9, 180 probably shouldn't win over a guy 6'8, 300 or else we might as well just give up and admit it's a circus, start shooting guys out of cannons and whatnot.

Kidman was a LOT better than I've ever been or will be, but by most accounts he wasn't a whole lot bigger. Some things just don't make any sense. Neither he nor Hogan came out of that angle looking particularly good, but you have to give Hogan credit for playing ball and giving it his best shot. He was accused of not wanting to work with smaller, younger guys, and by no means did he have to. So he went along to prove a point, and I think his point was well-proven in the end that while he CAN go ahead and work with anyone, it doesn't always make sense and it's not necessarily gonna make either guy look good in the end. He mostly just did it to appease Kidman's whining about not wanting to work with him, and in the end it could be argued that both guys would have been better off if they'd never wrestled each other at all.

The first match wasn't bad, though. The rematch at the Great American Bash wasn't as good. They were both overbooked but the stuff with Bischoff and Horace in the first match felt more authentic than the stuff with Torrie Wilson and the brass knuckles in the second match. I'm probably the biggest Hogan fan there is but that last WCW run of his just really, really underwhelmed. It was like a bad marriage where neither party really wanted the other one there but they were trying to stick it out for the kids. I hated that he left the way he did, but on some level I'm sure he felt glad to be off the sinking ship. Jumping from Hulk to "Terry Bollea" and back to Hollywood within a 3-month span just showed how they didn't even know what to do with him, by that point. Just a really bad time for WCW in general and probably the most forgettable run of Hogan's career. Although TNA is up there. But at least he only wrestled twice in TNA, whereas in WCW 2000 he wrestled often and didn't have a lot to show for it.

Lots of people remember him laying down for Sting at Halloween Havoc '99, and everybody talks about the angle with Jarrett at Bash at the Beach 2000, but you almost never, ever hear people talk about how he came back for almost six entire months in between before the Russo "shoot". The Luger angle, the strap match with Flair, the Kidman feud... it's like none of it ever happened. I was still watching every single week by then but it was all such a disjointed mess that even my memories of it are hazy. And for what it's worth, I don't remember ANYTHING else from WCW during this time in any specific detail. Like I remember the New Blood vs. Millionaires Club angle happening, but mostly that guys kept switching sides with no rhyme or reason and the entire thing being dropped well before the "New Blood Rising" PPV. Everything of WCW from January 2000 to the night they went under is a total blur.

I hear that that's one way the human brain copes with trauma.

[ZariusTwo]

Wow, you blank on Arquette as champion? I guess that was the trauma

[Leo656]

Oh, I remember it, I just prefer not to think about or mention it.

That entire year was just a bunch of scattershot memories that pop in and out, like "Oh, yeah... THAT happened." But you can't remember it all in one cohesive, flowing timeline and there's no firm recall of the "A-B-C" order of events as they actually happened. It certainly didn't help that they routinely burned through three months worth of storylines within a two-week span, over and over again.

"Wasn't Hogan just wearing yellow a little while ago? Why's he Hollywood again? That Kidman feud is over already? Whoa, BRET HART just showed up? But... why? And he's a HEEL now? Or is he? HEY, Randy Savage... aaaaaand he's gone. How did Kanyon go from getting thrown off the Doomsday Cage by Mike Awesome to TEAMING with him and dressing up like DDP? Why does this Sting/Vampiro feud suck so bad? How did it even start, anyway? Where'd these 'Natural Born Thrillers' guys come from and WHY are they suddenly in every single segment on the show? HEY, Dusty Rhodes is back! And that reminds me, what's with Dustin and those red leather pants? HEY, Random Road Warrior Animal sighting, that's kinda weird and pointless. Who exactly was in 'The Magnificent Seven', and are they faces or heels this week? Is Luger's clique 'Team Package' or 'Totally Buff', and how did he suddenly age ten years in the last 8 months? Does Sting even work here anymore? It feels like he keeps disappearing at random. Where's Goldberg been? OH, now he's a heel... aaaaaand now he's not. DAMN, Stacy Kiebler sure is hot, but man it's stupid that they keep trying to make her wrestle. Are they actually booking a goddamn Nitro Girls feud? Who let Kimberly have a microphone? Oh, God, they seriously booked a Hacksaw Jim Duggan heel turn... aaaaaand they forgot about it. Oh, LOOK, Cruiserweight Tag Titles... a week before the company goes out of business. And does Nash just feud with everybody ALL the time by picking random names out of a hat? WHAT THE F*CK IS GOING ON?!"

See, these are all things you remember, but it's impossible to remember them with any sort of context. It's all just a giant casserole of absolute nonsense.

For example, it's very easy to forget that goddamn Kronik was at one point the most consistently entertaining thing about the entire company, but damned if that ain't the absolute truth. And then they even f*cked THAT up, too.

Calling WCW 2000/2001 a clusterf*ck is an insult to the very idea of clusterf*cks. That was like a clusterf*ck where nobody even cums, they just one by one all get bored and leave halfway through without letting anybody know, and then everybody else has to scramble to cover it. And everybody secretly wishes they were at a much better gangbang with better production values and more attractive people involved.

It's a strained metaphor, I admit. But absolutely appropriate.

[ZariusTwo]

[Leo656]

I have a very violent distaste for Shawn Michaels.

He got away with more bullsh*t than anyone in the history of the business, but he made tween girls 'gineys tickle and he could do fancy sh*t, so people put him on a pedestal. Can't do a f*cking basic Figure 4, though. Oh, yeah, he's amazing.

Nobody buried more guys' pushes, pouted about having to lose and threw in-ring tantrums over it, faked/exaggerated injuries to avoid dropping Titles, and was a bigger all-around jerkoff than this idiot. All the stuff people hate on Hogan and Nash for, Michaels did way worse and way more often. And in most of those other guys' cases, the stories were either exaggerated or not even true. Watch the "Black Heart Owen Hart" video, and see how Michaels completely killed Owen's last chance at a main event push in real-time on live TV by completely taking the piss out of him and then making him look like a weakling for the next several months. What a scumbag.

Apologists love to blame the fact that he was a complete drug addict in the 90s on most of it, but he really didn't get much better after he "found God". Look at how he tried to tank the Hogan match, just because he was a pouty bitch about losing. Hogan sold his ass off for Michaels's feeble offense, taking those scrawny-arm punches of his like he was getting smacked around by Zeus again, AND he did a gigantic blade job for him. He literally gave up buckets of blood so Michaels could look strong in defeat, and Michaels STILL had to throw a sh*t fit because he was gonna lose. What an asshole. "OH, we talked about doing three matches, and I'd win the first one and then Hogan would win the second one, and then at the last minute he decided he was gonna win the first one and then that would be it?" Tough sh*t, Shawn. PERHAPS Hogan did his research and discovered that whenever Michaels tried the "I'll win the first one, you win the next one" game - Vader, Bret Hart, British Bulldog, etc. - that the "next one" never happened because he'd fake an injury or whatever to get out of wrestling the guy again and giving the win back. So he tried to "out-Hogan" Hogan, and he couldn't pull it off. Tough sh*t. Do your job, you scrawny balding bitch.

Not to mention what an idiot he looks like for all those decades of saying "I'm not gonna prostitute myself for money like guys like Hogan who never knew when to quit", and then took some dirty Saudi blood money to come back and put on a sh*t match that was an embarrassment to all involved. Sure, we all would have done it, but he banged on about it SO much over the years that he just looks like a gigantic f*cking hypocrite for doing it.

He's a jerkoff. He had good in-ring timing, and he could sell when he felt like it, but that's all. Totally undeserving of all the praise he gets, because he's an asshole and a hypocrite. My wife met him when he did an appearance literally right down the road from me last year; I had the chance but it was way too much money for a guy I have such low respect for. So I just stayed home.

I'm in line with Cornette on this guy: "People 'find God' when nobody else wants anything to do with them." I can't think of a better example than Shawn F*cking Michaels.

[Coola Yagami]

Originally Posted by Leo656

Here's a few photos from last weekend's "SWF Storm Surge".

Before anybody says sh*t: I joined a f*cking gym this week, I don't wanna hear it. 8 months of at-home workouts doesn't always cut it when all the gyms in your area are shut down. I'm trying to make the best of a bad situation, same as everyone. So keep your sass-mouth to a minimum, a'ight?! You don't gotta say "Wow, you've certainly looked better", I already know. Working on it.

Anyways, here.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw...-no?authuser=0
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw...-no?authuser=0
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw...-no?authuser=0
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw...-no?authuser=0
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw...-no?authuser=0
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw...-no?authuser=0
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw...-no?authuser=0

Hopefully I'll be in better shape for the January show.

While I am not proud of my lack of conditioning, I am very proud of my Rainbow Dash T-shirt.

Aw dude, you know the high amount of respect I got for ya. I'd never say **** like 'you've looked better'. I'd say you're larger than life.

[MikeandRaph87]

I just got around to watch Hulk Hogan: The Final WCW days. I love 1995-1998 and basically ignore it after Halloween Havoc 1998. That being said I never knew how The Hulkster finished out with WCW only he suddenly reverted to the red and yellow in 1999. It sounds like Terry/Hulk is like Nash arrogant and has his own interest, but also laid back and caring about fans, two sides of the same coin if you will. Vince Russo looks to be the villain of the picture despite that. I completely understand your hatred of this guy,Leo! Even Ric Flair and the WCW belt and Bret Hart and the screwjob did not go to court over a scripted sequence! So the 'Finger Poke of Doom' was not the only crap act, but Hulk Hogan lays down for Sting and then walks away? After everything that happened in recent years?? Then later Russo giving the belt to Hogan stating its worthless and his to keep as another belt is up for contention? I can only imagine how Hogan fans and wrestling fans reacted to Russo! Wow! Its almost like Russo was a double agent and won the war for WWE because the same formula does not work for WCW dominated by more seasoned and beloved wrestlers able to push back.

So old guys vs new guys a scripted disaster! I mean, if you want me to like Chris Jericho and those others then don't make them go against the guys I like and have an attachment to. It will make me hate them and want the old guys to bury the new guys thus hurting your product! I never heard of this Kidman guy. Maybe a competing mentorship of old guard Flair anointing someone and Sting taking on a protegee and they clash in a tag team and the new guys can shine and slowly move away from them.

[Leo656]

I mean, Russo assumed that WCW fans were as sick of "The Old Guys" as he and WWF fans were. He fundamentally misunderstood that the WCW audience was entirely different, rooted in "tradition", and that there's no way in Hell they would cheer for someone like Vampiro over someone like Sting. Or even someone like Kidman over someone like Hulk Hogan.

It bears mentioning that at least 40% of the WCW audience HATED Hulk Hogan from the day he showed up. To WCW fans, he represented the cartoon circus of the WWF, which was everything they always despised about pro wrestling. The NWA and WCW were presented as a "sport", not "sports-entertainment". The WWF with its immobile steroid monsters, fat guys, and cartoon characters was everything people mocked about wrestling, and WCW fans always resented that. And no man alive represented "The WWF Formula" more than Hulk Hogan did. So when he came to WCW, and brought all of his cartoon buddies with him and dove headfirst into that awful "Dungeon of Doom" angle, while at the same time driving guys like Steve Austin and Brian Pillman away... to say fans were resentful would be an understatement. Now, he was always popular with women and kids, but there was always a large section of WCW fans who would NEVER cheer for Hulk Hogan over almost anyone else. Part of the reason he turned heel and became "Hollywood" in the first place, was because the boos on WCW TV were so loud and so constant that it wasn't something they could hide anymore, and figured they might as well just lean all the way into it. He was never a favorite of WCW fans, to put it mildly.

BUT. When Russo booked him to feud with Kidman... the fans STILL sided with Hogan. And it was interesting, because point of fact is that up to that point Kidman was one of their most popular characters and more or less the face of the Cruiserweight division. Check out his two back-to-back matches at Starrcade '98, and you can see and hear just how much the fans loved Kidman. But against Hogan, they wouldn't cheer for him. Even if they knew Kidman was "a better wrestler" and Hogan was "old and washed-up"... they felt like Kidman was a whiny upstart while Hogan, even though they maybe weren't in love with him, still represented "old-school wrestling" to a POINT. They maybe hated the cartoon atmosphere Hogan brought to the business, but they still understood that he made wrestling popular and spent 20 years by that point taking beatings for the entertainment of the fans. Kidman, by contrast, had been there all of 5 minutes, and while he was exciting to watch, "Who'd he ever beat?" and all that.

Russo figured all he had to do was create an angle of "Old Guys vs. Young Guys" and have the young guys point out that the old guys were old and couldn't do backflips, and fans would automatically cheer for the young guys. That was the PLAN. But that plan self-destructed on the very first night when the fans decided that god dammit, maybe they didn't LOVE Hulk Hogan but he sure represented "wrestling tradition" more than this whiny, skinny guy in the jean shorts who'd only ever beaten other skinny guys.

The angle never recovered from that. When given the choice of Kevin Nash or Mike Awesome, fans cheered for Nash. Sting or Vampiro, they chose Sting. Ric Flair or Shane Douglas, they chose Flair. WCW was not the WWF. In the WWF, you could show up and say, "Get out of the way, Old Man!" and people would cheer for you because you were "young, hip, anti-establishment, wave of the future" and all of that. To WCW fans, that just meant you were a disrespectful punk who needed to be put in his place.

They tried to shift gears and present it like the "New Blood" were always supposed to be the heels, but it didn't ring true, and once guys started jumping back and forth the whole thing fell apart and it was just a new flavor of the nWo, again. Like, why would Goldberg - a guy with two years in the business who didn't even have a million-dollar contract yet when he was World Champion - side with the Millionaires Club, aside from the fact that those guys ended up being babyfaces by accident? And then when they TRIED to turn him heel because "Yeah, he really should be a New Blood guy", the fans rejected it because they liked Goldberg. Scott Steiner was a "New Blood" guy despite the fact that he'd been wrestling for over 10 years and was already breaking down from injuries and steroid abuse, hardly a "Young Upstart". Shane Douglas had almost 15 years in the business by that point and was only about two years away from retirement, and HE was "New Blood", somehow. How the hell was JEFF JARRETT, a guy who bleeds "Southern-Style Rasslin' Tradition" with a family that's three-generations deep in the wrestling business, who was in his late-30s at the time, a "Young up-and-comer" who was being held back? His Dad ran a territory and pushed him to the moon, for f*ck's sake! That's how he got in the business! He was standing side-by-side with these "New Blood" guys, ranting about the "Good Ol' Boys System" was holding him and the rest of them down, when NOBODY had benefited more from that very system than Jeff Jarrett. It's like they thought the fans were morons, and wouldn't see right through all this sh*t.

Russo's fatal flaw in booking the angle was simply underestimating that WCW fans were NEVER going to boo the guys they knew and liked. They liked Flair, Sting, Nash, Diamond Dallas Page, and they "grudgingly accepted and tolerated" Hulk Hogan. They were supposed to cheer for a bunch of guys they didn't like as much, "Because they're younger", and instead, they said "Nah."

Vince Russo was like CyberCubed type, in that he figures people should like everything New and Different simply because it's New and Different. But in reality, that's simply not how these things work.
-----------

As to whether guys like Hogan or Nash are "arrogant", I more call it "Knowing your worth." Nash tells a story about working with PCO - Pierre-Carl Oulette - who's gone on to have a second life in ROH in recent years despite being kind of old, but in 1995 was working a dumb pirate gimmick, and before that was one-half of a jobber tag team with Jaqcues Rougeau. Oulette tried to politick his way out of jobbing to Nash in Montreal, since he was the "hometown favorite" and he tried to reason fans wouldn't like it. He went to Nash in the locker room saying, "I figure maybe it'll be 50/50 out there, maybe we do double-count out?" Nash says "F*ck you, buddy, you're taking my finish, that's what they laid out." Oulette says, "How about I work babyface, then?" even though he was a heel at the time and Nash/Diesel was the top babyface. Nash is like "Fine, whatever" just to get out of the conversation.

They get in the ring, and wouldn't you know, the "hometown crowd" in Montreal decided to cheer for the 7-foot ass-kicker in black leather over the goofy pirate guy. Nash worked as a heel anyway, and every time he did something dirty the crowd just cheered more. Every time Oulette tried to get his "hometown crowd" behind him, they booed him. Nash grabbed a hold and said "Sounds like it's about 99-1 for me, asshole, you wanna flip this sh*t, or what?", meaning they should go back to working their regular babyface/heel roles. Oulette, in his "wisdom", said "No, no, we'll get them back". So Nash said "whatever", and they had a sh*tty match because the heel/face roles were flip-flopped for no reason. They got chewed out over it, and Nash simply pointed out to the boss, "Hey, that guy (Oulette) said he was over in Montreal, I tried to get him to do business but I guess he f*cking knew better." Oulette got fired not long after that for being "difficult".

I met PCO, he's a really nice guy, but that was a dumb thing to do.

Point being, guys like Nash and Hogan who people call "arrogant", are simply very aware of their value and don't settle for less. That's how they get to, and stay, at the position they've enjoyed for so long. If anybody could achieve their status, then everybody would be a "top guy". And if you know what you're worth and you don't advocate for yourself, it's rare that anyone else will.

There's a reason why "arrogant, selfish" guys like Hogan and Nash have tens of millions in the bank, and guys like Flair are beloved by fans yet barely scrape by. it's all about knowing your worth and fighting for what you know you deserve. That's not a bad thing. It's to be commended.

[MikeandRaph87]

https://mobile.twitter.com/the_irons...868817408?s=12
This made me laugh!

[Leo656]

I used to laugh a lot more at "Sheik's" Twitter until I found out that it wasn't him, just two guys who "manage" him in some fashion and have permission to post whatever they want using his name. Sheik doesn't even know what Twitter is. It's literally just these two guys who were like, "Hey Sheiky, can we post as you on Twitter?" and he's like "Whatever bubba."

In a way it was even worse than finding out there's no Santa Claus.

[MikeandRaph87]

Originally Posted by Leo656

I used to laugh a lot more at "Sheik's" Twitter until I found out that it wasn't him, just two guys who "manage" him in some fashion and have permission to post whatever they want using his name. Sheik doesn't even know what Twitter is. It's literally just these two guys who were like, "Hey Sheiky, can we post as you on Twitter?" and he's like "Whatever bubba."

In a way it was even worse than finding out there's no Santa Claus.

No worse than finding out as a kid that wrestling is scripted. So are a few of their Twitter accounts as well.

Sheik does have beef with Hogan and Sheik is not all there so the tweet was believable.

[Leo656]

That "beef" is all a work, brother. C'mon.
----------------

Nothing better to do after coming home from dinner, so since my wife pays for The Network I figured I might as well put it to good use by putting on a semi-random selection of matches.

- Nasty Boys vs. Steiner Bros, WCW Halloween Havoc 1990: Probably the best match on a show that's more well-known for the Sting vs. Sid Vicious main event and Barry Windham's "imposter Sting" fiasco. Great old-school tag team match for the U.S. Tag Team Titles. Really intriguing because both teams were very much "on the way up" here, having lots of success and trading the U.S. Tag Titles a bit but still a ways off from the peak of either team. Also, you've got two teams that were possibly the very best of their "style" of tag team wrestling, the Nastys with their pure brawling and the Steiners with what I like to call "Scientific Violence". Sometimes a clash of styles can happen but sometimes you get a good match and that's how this one worked. Although newer or younger fans should keep in mind that for one thing, PPV matches went a lot longer on average back then, and secondly, that long stretches of the good guy getting beaten up and not being able to tag out where just the standard way tag matches operated back then. They go for a while, and the heat almost feels too long - particularly since there was never anything flashy or special whatsoever about the Nastys' offense - but it was never "dead" and the crowd always came alive whenever it looked like the hot tag might finally happen. It's actually a good psychological clinic from the Nasty Boys - yes, you f*cking heard me - because of the way they constantly stay over on the much bigger and more-skilled Steiners by using hot tags and constant cut-offs. Literally every time Knobs or Saggs takes a bump, he immediately tags out and they get in front of the hot tag. It's little things like that you don't see as much of in tags anymore, because most tag matches nowadays are just four guys spamming high spots and constant "go-go-go" without any storytelling.

Good match. The only thing that takes it down a hair is that the Nasty Boys' offense was always as bare-bones as it gets. But "They hit hard, and they cheat" was good enough to get a good match out of the Steiners despite the risk of a clash in styles. Scott wins with the Frankensteiner, spiking Knobs pretty hard on top of his head. Nastys jump Scott after the match while he's fumbling through a promo - News Flash: Scott Steiner can barely talk in full sentences, even as far back as 1990 - and Knobs's observation that "Your brother don't know his name!" is easily more memorable than a single word of Scott's promo.

Match Trivia: The Nasty Boys would be in the WWF by January before winning the WWF Tag Team Titles from the Hart Foundation at WrestleMania in April. Rumor is that this match helped get them the gig.

- Nasty Boys vs. Cactus Jack and Maxx Payne, "Falls Count Anywhere", WCW Spring Stampede '94: First off, Spring Stampede was by most people's opinion the best PPV of the entire year 1994, and at the absolute least the best WCW PPV that year, so the entire show is worth checking out. But THIS match ended up being one of the most talked-about of that whole year, simply for its level of violence in a time when ECW wasn't quite "ECW" yet and most people hadn't heard of or seen it anyway. Nothing fancy here, just a 10-minute brawl that goes all over the place and saw all four guys take time off with injuries shortly after. Cactus had a love/hate thing about working the Nastys, as on the one hand they knew how to brawl and so the matches always looked good despite very little "wrestling" going on, but on the other hand, they were sloppy and worked stiff and had a very "Oh Well" attitude about anybody getting hurt. And you see that on full display in this match. Lots of "open-seat" chair shots to the back and head that looked particularly rough, and quite a few times after they hit Foley with something you can clearly see a look on his face like "Why the hell did I agree to wrestle these assholes all Spring?" I mean he took a particularly rough sh*tkicking here. Before the Japanese Death Matches, and way before he fell off of The Cell, THIS match was the one that made people concerned that Mick Foley might one day die during a match. Payne (who'd be "Man Mountain Rock" in the WWF a year later) gets some hope with a slam through a loaded merch table, but most of the match is the Nasty Boys trying to murder Cactus Jack with whatever they can find. Cactus gets a nice spot by suplexing a table onto one of the Nastys, in a cool spot you never see.

Ugly, brutal finish that was mostly-improv. Saggs goes to Piledrive Cactus through a table on the ramp, but it's a non-gimmicked table and they weigh a combined 550-600, so it collapses under them. So Saggs just casually shoves Cactus off the ramp onto the unprotected concrete, and Mick takes it all on his shoulder in a very rough bump to watch. Just for icing, Saggs gives him just enough time to prepare before smacking him across the face with a snow shovel for the pin and the win. Plastic snow shovel, but thank Goodness for small favors, as Mick confirmed later on that even a half-speed shot from a guy like Saggs with a plastic shovel was enough to knock him goofy, given that the back of his head was on the concrete. If it were metal he would'a killed him. Ugly match, but tons of fun. It pretty much set the script for every ECW Tag Team match that would ever happen.

Match Trivia: Not so much to do with the match itself, but seeing the Nasty Boys do sh*t like this make it all make more sense when you hear the story about how they once beat Ken Shamrock "to death" and threw him over a second-floor balcony. I am not making this up, by the way. The details change based on who's telling it, but the bare facts are, The Nasty Boys once got into a legit hotel room fight with Ken Shamrock, beat him unconscious and threw him off a balcony, after which his heart stopped and he had to be revived by paramedics.

They're two of the nicest guys I ever met in the business, so knowing sh*t like that makes me really, really glad that they like me.

- Brian Pillman vs. Alex Wright, WCW Great American Bash '95: Not often talked about, but a real hidden gem. Wright was on the way up and still in his very first year not only in WCW, but in the business period, but guys didn't want to put him over or make him look good, despite WCW kind of trying to push him hard, which requires people to both put him over and look good. Wrestling locker room bullsh*t at its finest. Meanwhile, Pillman was kind of meandering as a good guy and had no storyline or direction. So with neither guy having anything to do, and with WCW needing to kill time for the PPV opening segment, they randomly threw this match together and booked it to go 20 minutes, figuring that since nobody cared about either guy it couldn't possibly hurt anything, but it absolutely wasn't supposed to matter. If anything, if it sucked they were hoping they could take both guys off TV and quietly release them.

Instead, they tore the house down and had one of the all-time best PPV openers and definitely one of the best in '95 - until Pillman topped it in September, under similar circumstances, but we'll get to that.

Hard-hitting, fast-paced, scientific and high-flying. You can tell that Wright was out of his league a couple of times, especially when he gets tired near the end and some of his strikes start looking a bit weak, but both guys brought it hard and Pillman worked his goddamn ASS off to get Wright over, something Alex needed after guys like Hunter and Paul Roma refused to make him look good. No hokey, contrived, overly-choreographed bullsh*t, either, like today's "high-flyer" matches. Pillman was one of the only Cruiserweights I've seen besides Malenko, Benoit and Liger who made every single thing he did look REAL, whether it be in the execution or the psychology. It starts out scientific, gets into a scrap when Pillman starts to lose his temper, then gets into the aerial moves when each guy starts getting desperate to put the other one away. Pillman plays a subtle heel as it goes on, even though both guys were babyfaces, and the crowd would have been fine with either guy winning even though Pillman played dirty a few times. In the end, Pillman goes for a Crucifix into a sunset flip but Wright simply sits down on him halfway through it and gets a SUPER tight cradle for the pin, and the place goes nuts. They do the babyface handshake/hug gimmick and the crowd cheers for both guys. Everything they did looked GREAT, and again, Pillman worked his goddamn ASS off to make a "nothing" match look great from bell-to-bell and to make a kid nobody wanted to put over look like a million bucks. Brian Pillman was a true f*cking professional in every sense of the word.

Match Trivia: This match was the first signs of Pillman possibly turning heel, which he did in September when he joined The Horsemen.

(Cont.)

[Hamato Yoshi]

I enjoy HBK the wrestler , the private man , as you said , is a jerk

Went to WM 25 , 26 , 27 & 28......thank you , Taker

[Leo656]

- Brian Pillman vs. Johnny B. Badd, WCW Fall Brawl 1995: The stakes were a bit higher here, and not just in-storyline with the winner getting a shot at Sting's U.S. Championship on Nitro. WCW was in cost-cutting mode, and neither guy had much going on storyline-wise that year that was worth bragging about. So AGAIN, WCW took two guys with barely any storyline history, no feud or angle with each other whatsoever, gave them THIRTY minutes in the opener, and expected them to sh*t the bed so they could justify firing one or both of them. And AGAIN, they put on the best match of the show. Credit to Badd/Marc Mero, but Pillman pre-car wreck was a f*cking machine in 1995.

The first half is a bit slow for some younger/newer fans, and I get that, but it's a very good "pure" scientific match between two babyfaces, again with Pillman playing a subtle heel. Everything looks good, there's no "botches" or goofy-looking sh*t, it's a very "deliberate" pace but you have to do that when you know you're going 30+ minutes, and especially when you know that the last 10 of those minutes are as fast-paced and hard-hitting as this one ended up being. So much back-and-forth with both guys looking great with some unique and innovative offense. Again, Pillman starts to lose his temper as he gets frustrated, but Badd, who'd often been accused of lacking killer instinct, was right there for every bit of it. Again, Pillman was a god but I really, truly think that people who ride the "Marc Mero Sucks" train NEED to watch this match, and see for yourself just how good he was with the right opponents. He and Pillman had the crowd in the palm of their hands for every second of this one. There's really too much going on to describe, and the escalation as it went on was a thing of beauty.

The go to 20-minute time limit, Michael Buffer announces that since the winner gets a shot at Sting "There must be a winner", so they hit Sudden Death. At this point, they decide to just beat the SH*T out of each other, trading Signatures and Finishers for the next ten minutes until each guy can barely even stand and you swear it's legit (I do think Badd was pretty gassed by this point). They did about 20 false finishes in the last ten minutes and the crowd SWORE that was the end on every single one. Both guys did a perfect job of selling "How the F*CK do I BEAT this guy?!" Finally, they collide mid-ring at full-speed and Badd gets a little more of it to squeak out a victory that 100% felt like it could have gone either way. Both guys earned every bit of that one. PROBABLY the best opening match of 1995, even with the slow start. Easily one of the top 10 from all year, period. Definitely check this one out. Not bad for two guys who were literally sent out to sh*t the bed and get fired.

Match Trivia: Both guys' stock went up 100 points after this one. Pillman became a Horsemen within two weeks and Johnny B. Badd got another run with the TV Title before leaving in Spring of '96 to join the WWF. Once again, by many accounts it was this match that did a lot to put Mero on the WWF's radar. You can clearly see why. If this was the only match you'd ever seen of Badd/Mero, you'd think he was a god and wonder why he didn't have a bigger run. Much credit to Pillman, sure, but it takes two to tango.
-----------------------------

A brief note/rant on Brian Pillman, here. Now, much is spoken of regarding his "Loose Cannon" gimmick, the car wreck, and his untimely death, but what's unfortunate about that is that what's lost in the conversation is the simple understanding that he truly was one of the very best to ever get in the ring. He worked harder doing f*cking JOBS than guys like Shawn Michaels did in matches they were booked to win.

I see Pillman bust his ass to get Alex Wright over in a no-reason opening match, and make the match incredible, and it reminds me how great pro wrestling can be. I see him go 30 minutes with Marc Mero and put on a classic, and I think "Damn, both of those guys were better than I remembered." Then I remember Mick Foley telling Vince, "If I have to work with Mero at WrestleMania, then just leave me off of WrestleMania because I don't want to work with Mero," and I remember that even the "nice guys" in the business like Foley can be jerkoffs for no reason sometimes. I see Shawn Michaels try and tank a PPV main event match with goddamn HULK HOGAN, because he's pissy about losing to Hulk, and it makes me wanna puke.

Brian Pillman deserved the run Shawn Michaels got way more than Michaels EVER did, because he at least understood that the wrestling business wasn't all about himself and making himself look good at the expense of everyone around him. And it's a tragedy that he couldn't keep his head on straight, because he really was incredible in the ring without the taint of being a selfish, callow narcissist. Too many of our "heroes" in wrestling, or guys we put on a pedestal, either sh*t on people or sh*t on a match because it didn't go their way. And it really pisses me off, because people like that ought to know that the business is really about taking your allotted time and making it the best it can possibly be, no matter who you're working with or who's winning. Just do a good match and try hard. Don't pout. Don't sandbag the other guy. Just do your job.

I f*cking really miss Brian Pillman.
------------

- Brian Pillman vs. Jushin "Thunder" Liger", WCW Light Heavyweight Title Match, SuperBrawl 1992: There are simply no bad Pillman/Liger matches. Simple story, this was a rematch for the WCW Light Heavyweight Title, 1992's short-lived precursor to the more well-known "Cruiserweight" Title that came around in 1996. Pillman won it in a tournament, lost it to Liger, this is the rematch.

ANOTHER opening match where Pillman stole the entire show (while Lex Luger sleepwalked his way through a loss to Sting for the World Title in the main event, before f*cking off to the WWF in April). As was often the case in WCW, the climate of the opening match versus the main event couldn't be more different. Liger, headed back to Japan, put on a classic in the first match most American fans had ever seen of his, trying to make a great impression on a global stage. Luger, on his way to join Vince's World Bodybuilding Federation for an easy six figure income, figures "Screw it, I'm leaving anyway" and has a forgettable match with his good buddy Sting because "Why work hard, right?"

Nothing I can say can do this match justice, you just need to watch it. It's Pillman vs. Liger, for God's sake. They had a prototypical "1996 Cruiserweight style match"... in 1992. Look at ANY matches that year in WCW OR the WWF and they almost all fall way short of this one. They literally looked like they came from a different time and place compared to everything else at the time. Liger misses a diving headbutt, Pillman wins the Title back clean as a whistle with a spiffy bridge/cradle. You just have to see it, there really are no words.

Match Trivia: Pillman also wrestled Liger on a very early episode of WCW Monday Nitro in 1995. It wasn't as good, due to time constraints and both guys being slightly older, but still worth checking out. The "worst" Pillman/Liger match is still better than most guys' best match.

(Cont.)

[Leo656]

At this point I decided to totally shift gears and do a run of WCW Hogan matches. Which are pretty much the polar opposite of WCW Pillman matches.

Hulk Hogan vs. The Butcher, World Championship Match, WCW Starrcade 1994: The most nepotistic main event in the history of PPV, as Hulk Hogan carries his old gym buddy through a half-speed main event in WCW's biggest PPV show of the year.

Full disclosure, as a kid I ate this angle up. Hogan was my favorite, his history with Brutus Beefcake was well-known, and furthermore, I had met Brutus just a few weeks before he turned on Hogan and formed the 3 Faces Of Fear with Kevin Sullivan and Avalanche (Earthquake). The idea that Beefcake, of all people, would ever turn on Hogan, after Hogan stayed by his side when Beefcake's face was crushed in that parasailing accident and everything was just unthinkable to me. Meanwhile, the thought of Brutus Beefcake wrestling in the main event for the WCW World Title in 1994 was unthinkable to literally everyone else on planet Earth.

I can't lie, I did and do like the idea of the angle. Beefcake's "You kept me in your shadow!" reasoning throughout the whole thing has some real-life smoke to it, as we've since come to find out, so it was believable in that sense. It just had no business headlining WCW's biggest show during the most popular period they'd ever had up to that point in time. Might've been a decent "filler feud" for one of the lesser PPVs in mid-year or something, but it had no business being at Starrcade. I totally grant people's point on that.

It's also just plain not a great match. Beefcake hadn't worked as a heel since 1987, so when it came time to actually work the match it was like he "forgot" how to be a bad guy, and his attempts to "be a bad guy" are so exaggerated that they're comical. He also hadn't worked a main event PPV match since goddamn 1989, and headlined a PPV in a singles match f*cking NEVER, so despite Hogan's efforts to keep it moving, Beefcake was thoroughly exposed and the entire outcome was a foregone conclusion. Although it would have been GREAT to see Butcher win the Title, just because Meltzer would have f*cking had a stroke.

Subtle storyline to the match here, as Hogan puts over how angry he is at Beefcake's betrayal by deliberately attacking his surgically reconstructed face, including a running chairshot which I'm sure Brutus was at least a tiny bit nervous about taking. Still, Beefcake's offense was as one-dimensional as it gets, including a goddamn VULCAN NERVE PINCH that goes on forever, and it never felt like Hogan was in any jeopardy. You know the finish, you've seen Hogan matches before.

I will say, though, that part of me loves the whole deal, selfishly. Remove it from "wrestling as art" or even "wrestling as a business", for a second, and consider this: Two guys break into wrestling together, owning a gym and sleeping in their van on the beach, trying to get a break. They make a pact to always take care of each other, and when the one guy (Hogan) gets his big break, he honors his word and makes sure that his buddy always has a paying gig. And when he gets that magical "Creative Control" in his contract, he says, "Hey, man, y'know what'd be cool? If me and you just said 'F*ck everybody' and wrestled for the belt at the biggest show of the year, just like we always talked about 20 years ago."

Yes, it was a poor match. Yes, it was selfish as hell. But c'mon. Look at their faces. They're like two kids, both clearly having the time of their life even though they know it's totally driving everyone else insane. I have to find that a little bit beautiful, even if the match absolutely was not. They definitely had much better matches, though, back in '85 particularly but even as late as 1999. This one just never got out of first gear.

The most memorable part of the entire ordeal was the aftermath, where Randy Savage joins Team Hogan in his first WCW PPV appearance, and Vader challenges Hogan to a match during the post-match press conference.

Match Trivia: This was Beefcake's first ever, and last ever, PPV main event as a singles wrestler. I love Brutus, but you can kinda see why.

BONUS TRIVIA: This entire angle was mostly an accident. You see, Brutus only "betrayed" Hogan (by wearing a mask and attacking Hogan's knee with a pipe before a Title defense against Flair) because the guy who was SUPPOSED to be under the mask was abruptly unavailable. The original guy chosen, who would have gone on to wrestle Hogan at Starrcade instead? "Mr. Perfect" himself, Curt Hennig. Yep, WCW was gonna bring him in as early as August 1994, reveal him as the masked assassin conspiring with Flair, and HE would have gone on to wrestle Hogan at Starrcade instead. But he couldn't get out of his insurance policy deal with Lloyd's Of London, which was paying him a lot of money to NOT wrestle, so he had to bail on the angle and WCW had to come up with a guy under the mask on short notice. So we got Beefcake, because they more or less didn't have any choice. CRAZY!

Hulk Hogan vs. Vader, World Heavyweight Title Match, WCW SuperBrawl 1995: This was a Big Huge Deal simply because this was an era where EVERY "Dream Match" hadn't happened already 50 times. At one point people were convinced that Hogan would never even wrestle Vader. The "Big Fight" feel during the pre-match introductions was HUGE, and when Hogan and Vader went nose-to-nose, there was legit electricity in the air. The entire feud was hotly anticipated, especially after Vader had a huge run as a monster in 1993-1994.

Sadly, the match is "Just Okay". As usual, politics intrude and dilute the overall product. See, the "Hulk Hogan Brand" was worth a ton of money to WCW in 1995, so there was no way Vader was going to be the same "Vader" who tore Cactus Jack's ear off, and you can tell he's going half-speed at times, even though the match is still snug and hard-hitting. It's just that as far as Hogan matches go, he didn't fight Vader much differently than he fought King Kong Bundy, and the match feels rather formulaic. It's good, probably the best of their series together, but it felt like both guys held back. To his credit, Hogan takes all of Vader's Big Moves - Vader Bomb, Choke Slam, and a sick Power Bomb - and never once threatened to get him fired for hitting him too hard, SHAWN. Like sure, he got up from the Power Bomb, but he still took it. There were guys in 1993 and 1994 who legit quit WCW rather than take Vader's Power Bomb, so points to Hogan on that one. He didn't HAVE to take it.

Politics screw with the finish, as neither guy could job clean so Vader kicks out of the Leg Drop at 1 (!!!), Hogan gets up from the Power Bomb, and so Ric Flair runs in and attacks Hogan to draw the DQ. Some people swear that Hogan should have just dropped the Title to Vader here, and gone on to win it back in the Summer. But here's the Real Life Reasoning that prevented that: Vader had been good on top in 1993, but the number of people watching in 1993 wasn't HALF as many as were watching when Hogan came in. If your company is finally making money for the first time in its history, and ALL of that money is coming from Hulk Hogan working on top as World Champion... do you REALLY wanna tinker with that formula, even for "just a month or two"? The plain truth is, no, you really don't take that chance.

It did hurt this entire series, though. Since neither guy was "allowed" to lose clean and Hogan couldn't drop the Title, everything got seriously over-booked to the point of becoming nonsense, and by the end of it Vader looked weaker than he ever had. He came into the feud as U.S. Champion on a huge undefeated streak, and by the end of it he had zero wins over Hogan, clean or otherwise (not even in tag team matches) and had the U.S. Title taken away for attacking Commissioner Nick Bockwinkle. He was out of WCW by mid-September, after a face turn that teased him TEAMING with Hogan, I guess because, like everyone else, he got sick of losing to him all the time and figured that was the only way to get his heat back.

The SuperBrawl match had a few flashes of brilliance and a few hints at What Might Have Been, but in the end the Hogan/Vader series was a bit of a missed opportunity.

(Cont.)