Posts Tagged ‘Mailbags’

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Jake v. Undertaker

Friday, February 13th, 2009

Did Jake Roberts decision to leave after Wrestlemania 8 cause any plans to change, specifically with the Undertaker, or was that always the plan.  I just find it strange that they would turn Taker into a face against Roberts after spending all that time helping him torment Savage. It would seem the logical choice would be to have the final Savage/Roberts match at WM 8.  Although where that would leave Taker and Flair I have no idea (Taker would probably just squash a jobber).

Warrior's departure did more to screw things up than Jake's did, as they were supposed to do a prolonged Jake v. Warrior feud to play off Jake's heel turn, and they ended up having to turn Savage to be #1 babyface instead.  I think the Undertaker turn was just a natural continuation of the reaction he was getting, as there was little point in keeping him a heel by 1992, and squashing Jake at Wrestlemania was as good a way as any to kick off his face run. 

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Posted in Rants | 22 Comments »

What If…

Friday, February 6th, 2009

Plans always change in wrestling by different things (like injuries, suspensions, etc.).  So, there are a couple of questions I have on some storyline plans that changed because on certain events.  I know you might not be able to answer the questions with 100% accuracy unless you were actually one of WWE's writers, but I thought it would make for an interesting blog entry.
1) Before Shawn "lost his smile" what was the original plan for him for that year's WrestleMania?  I heard it was going to be Michaels-Hart again, but what would Austin have done?  And would Taker-Sid still be on the card?
2) Again its about Shawn, but it's a little harder to answer.  Had Michaels not injured his back in that casket match with the Undertaker, what would have happened post-Mania?  We all knew that Stone Cold was going to take the title from Shawn before the injury, but what would have "possibly" happened?  Would Triple H still say that Shawn dropped the ball and turn on him leading to HHH vs. Shawn Michaels being a top feud?
3) What if Bret Hart stayed with the WWF?  Would Hart-Austin headline WrestleMania 14 instead of Michaels-Austin?
Again, I know it's a bunch of "what ifs", but I like reading and talking about stuff like that.

 

A)  Shawn's crippling jobberitis of the knee didn't so much screw up the Wrestlemania plan as it did the title picture.  Shawn was always going to pass the title to Sid so he could lose to Undertaker at WM, it just made it more of a headache.  According to Bret's book, Shawn was going to drop the title to Sid and then do a ladder match with Bret at WM, with the loser (Shawn) getting his head shaved.  It was never going to be for the belt.  I don't think there was any serious plans in place for Austin's role at that point, unless it was going to be screwing someone over on the show or whatever, but that's just a guess.

B)  That whole period was not exactly a hallmark of long-term booking in the first place, as the original plan was of course Bret v. Austin for the title before the Montreal thing happened, so the whole Shawn v. Austin rework was all very last minute, relatively speaking.  However, watching the old RAWs on 24/7 from that time, I can definitely say that they were sewing the seeds for the Outlaws to join D-X, so I don't imagine that the gameplan deviated much from the original plan.  A rematch with Shawn at Backlash seems like the logical direction for Austin (rather than the thrown-together Foley feud) so they couldn't really turn him face at that point.  And then with Russo, who KNOWS where things would have gone because it was all made up on the spot anyway. 

C)  Again, Hart-Austin for the title at WM 14 was absolutely set in stone up until everything went wonky.  That was the whole direction of the promotion for the year leading up to it and nothing else would have made sense.  Bret was always under the impression he'd be dropping the belt to Austin, as soon as he got it back. 

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Posted in Rants | 39 Comments »

LIGHTNING ROUND~!

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

Oh man, I MAJORED in lightning rounds!

Here are some questions for the blog. No need for long answers, just a series of random rapid fire questions.
Here we go!
1/ What's the best Sting match (non-Flair, non-Vader)
2/ Lane/Eaton or Condrey/Eaton?
3/ What is the longest wrestling feud of all-time? I'm thinking Sting-Flair sicne it started in 88 and went all the way till the end of Nitro in 01. Any other REALLY long ones?
4/ What's the oldest ***** match you've seen? Flair/Race at Starrcade 83 is the oldest I found  in the archives, but you never know.
5/ InsidePulse just listed their top 100 OVERALL modern era wrestlers. The top 10 were: Flair, Austin, Hogan, HBK, Benoit, Bret, Rock, Steamboat, Angle & Funk. Anyone not belong? Who would belong in their place?
6/ Of all you books, which is YOUR personal favorite to read?
7/ Better worker Bret or Owen?
8/ Is Citizen Kane really the best movie ever made?
9/ Hotest female ever in wrestling?
10/ have you seen any of the flair/steamboat matches from the 70s bother guys say are as good as the 89 matches?

 

1.  Sting/Luger v. The Steiners.

2.  As much as I've grown to appreciate Condrey watching week after week of him on the NWA show, Lane and Eaton took tag team wrestling to a whole other level.

3.  Dusty v. Flair ran from the late 70s until almost 1990, so that's another contender. 

4.  Complete footage of pre-1980 matches is very tough to find, but I actually would give Terry Funk v. Jerry Lawler in the empty arena match *****, and that's from 1981, so there's your answer.

5.  I would probably bump Kurt Angle and replace him with Undertaker, but the rest is good. 

6.  That's like making me choose between my children, man.

7.  At his peak, Bret.  On a more consistent basis, Owen.

8.  I'm more partial to Casablanca, but Citizen Kane is certainly the most influential and the one that gave us the most parodies on The Simpsons.

9.  Trish Stratus in 2004 or Lita in 2005. 

10.  No, the footage is incredibly tough to find.  Earliest I've seen from them is 1980ish. 

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Posted in Rants | 22 Comments »

Randomness

Sunday, February 1st, 2009

Just a few questions for a frequenter (is that a word) of your blog, and a book buying fan.

1. I was recently reading one of your old rants and you mentioned something about doing commentaries for wrestling shows on audio and then making them available to download so we could actually HEAR you rant on a show. Whatever happened to that idea?

2. When you watch wrestling shows, to rant on, do you watch them entirely in one sitting or do you watch a few matches here and there, till its finished? Just curious I guess.

AND...

A while back I sent you this link  http://www.freewebs.com/wrestlinglists/archivesnew.htm

to plug for me. At the time you were trying to sell your complete blog archives, and said you wanted to hold off on plugging. Just curious as to whether you could plug it for me yet?

It's quite handy to the loyal reader, eventhough it hasn't been updated in like 2 months.

 

I refuse your plug, sorry.

As for the questions:

1.  I get this question a lot, actually.  I dunno, do people really want to listen to me stumble through a three-hour commentary?  I'd be a little worried about getting sued by WWE because I know there's various people from the promotion who read this blog, and it might be crossing a line between fair use and copyright violation.  Plus, and this is the big stumbling block, it's a lot more work than just doing a written rant and I'm not keen on doing a lot of work. 

2.  I do them all in one sitting because otherwise I lose my train of thought and find it hard to form an overall opinion on the show.  There are exceptions, like the ungodly nine-hour DVD sets we've been getting lately, but even then I do them one who disc at a time. 

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Posted in Rants | 6 Comments »

Flair putting people over

Thursday, January 15th, 2009

Nothing going on this week, so let's go back to the inbox...

Hey Scott,
long-time reader, first-time e-mailer. I was reading JD Dunn's review of the Great American Bash '91, and he says this about the Jim Herd/Ric Flair situation: "Jim Herd wanted Ric Flair to get an ear ring or dress up like a gladiator. Ric Flair wanted dignity. The two simply couldn't co-exist, so Herd demanded Flair drop the title to Lex Luger. Flair refused because he thought Luger wasn't good enough to carry the company, so Herd stripped Flair of the title and sent him packing up to Titanland." If I remember correctly, wasn't Flair one of the people who was very critical of Bret Hart for not laying down for Michaels in Montreal because Bret was asked to do the job and thus should have done it? Maybe I'm not getting/understanding the whole story here, as I hadn't know about this earlier Flair stuff before, but after reading JD's summary of Herd/Flair, it seems Flair is a hypocrite to call anybody out after that, stupid as the earring/gladiator thing and the request to job to Luger may have been. Your thoughts?

 

The 1991 situation was a bit more complicated than that, as Flair's contract was expiring and Herd was going to lowball him and turn him into a midcarder.  And the belt was going to move to Windham, not Luger, so technically Flair never refused to put Luger over.  Back in the glory years of 88-90, though, Flair absolutely refused to put Luger over several times.  I haven't heard anything from him specifically about Bret (it's usually Bret talking about Flair) but absolutely I'd call him a hypocrite if he said that Bret should have dropped the belt when asked. 

The funny thing thinking about this stuff these days is that the current belts are pretty much worthless anyway.  Could you imagine someone leaving the WWE today because they were asked to drop one of the 14 versions of the World title out there?  MARK HENRY won a damn World title! 

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Posted in Rants | 49 Comments »

Punk’d

Tuesday, December 16th, 2008

Hi Scott.

I started thinking about the upcoming Punk / Regal stiff-fest and a question came to mind: How many former WWE / World Heavyweight Champs have 1) been dropped back down to the IC / US Title level and 2) successfully transitioned back up to main event status?

Off the top of my head, I can only think of a handful.

Flair had a late IC run, but never another World Title run. See also Benoit, Chris (although, he was penciled in for an ECW Title run, but you can still call that a secondary belt, IMO).

Booker T (Randy Orton too, but I can't recall.) seems to be, off the top of my head, the only one.

So does this "demotion" for lack of a better term, mean Punk is doomed?

 

I was frankly shocked he ever got a run with the big belt in the first place, but he'll always be kept around as a guy they can showcase for being drug-free.  Unless he does something REALLY stupid and gets fired.  So I wouldn't say "doomed", but I don't think they consider him a "top guy" either and I don't see him getting the belt again. 

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More on JBL

Monday, December 15th, 2008

No one is happier than I am that Joey Styles knocked out JBL and I take great comfort in knowing that the lockeroom won't let him forget it any time soon. But despite my intense dislike for JBL, I do think he was greatly misused: never a serious threat to any major face and the Honky Tonk Man cowardly heel world title reign did not draw, or at least hold my interest. Now he just seems like uppercard enhancement talent and too damaged to be a legitimate player.

So my questions is...don't you think they had a tremendous missed opportunity? Instead of the sudden elevation to the world title way back when, do they think a more gradual push followed by a dominant position on top of the card would have made JBL a powerful draw and even an all time great heel? He seemed to be the next coming of Ted DiBiase and I think JBL's mic skills and decent brawling could have made the E a good amount of cash.  Thoughts?

 

I think had they put the US title on him in 2004 instead of the World title, people would have bought his act just fine and he could have been very effective in that midcard heel role, and probably drawn some decent cash.  From there, a World title would not have been out of the question, because at least people were primed to accept it instead of just having him shoved down our throats.  By now of course he's broken down to the point where he was better off as a color commentator who did occasional matches, ala Jerry Lawler.

And I'm pretty sure that Ted Dibiase Jr. is more likely to be the second coming of Ted Dibiase.  He has an advantage that I can't put my finger on...

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Posted in Rants | 12 Comments »

Out with the old…

Thursday, December 11th, 2008

Ok so someone brought up the question to me today about what it would take for another promotion to dethrone The Almighty E. 

Essentially I think everyone agrees that it would be YEARS off. I use the example of WCW being the only guys to take down Vince ever. For them to do it 20 years of NWA, Flair, etc, then it took Bischoff, Hogan, Savage, live t.v, Vince getting in a creative slump, steroid trials, the Guerreros, Malenko's, Jericho's, Rey Jr's, Benoits, and it took the nWo. Thats a LOT and even then they couldn't stay on top. Mind you it took all of this while wrestling was at its hottest point maybe in history. Those days are gone, I fully believe that if John Cena showed up in TNA tomorrow it wouldn't have an effect on their ratings well maybe they'd be at 1.5 if they advertised it all month long.

However I think thats pretty much fact there is no other promotion uprising to take Vince down, there aren't enough stars to do it with, there isn't anyone that we know of with enough money and interest to do it, and the popularity of the business just isn't strong enough for it to happen.

That brings me to my question though. Do you think that its coincidence that our generation. I'm 26 which means I was 5 at Wrestlemania  III. Which makes me think that all of the kids that watched the Hulkster, and Macho Man, Warrior, etc they grew up into teenagers wanting something to rebel against in comes ECW, in comes the nWo, later Vince, Austin, Rock, attitude. However that was in itself 12 years ago. Now I have a wife, kids and I'm looking for something different. Do you think its those images of Hogan, Wrestlemania, those early 80's childhood memories that kept our wrestling bellies full until the late 90's refueled our tanks? If thats the case then it would seem as our generation was the sole reason wrestling has the hot streaks it did.

What I'm trying to say is do you think its because we're older that we're no longer as big of fans of wrestling? Or do you believe that maybe these kids and their visions of John Cena, Randy Orton, Batista will fuel them and allow them to continue supporting the business like we did until the next big thing happens? Will wrestling sink as we grow older, or do you believe the "next generation" is just as strong as ours was?

That's the big question that Vince McMahon has been trying to figure out for years now, and I don't think there's an easy answer to it.  I can tell you that there's no single reason why I have lost my passion for the current product, but I can still watch WWE 24/7 on a constant basis without getting sick of it, so it's the product presented and not the business in general.  I think for me and many others of our generation that UFC is replacing wrestling with their own larger-than-life characters and yet action that you can watch without getting mocked.  Brock Lesnar is the Next Big Thing, but for UFC and not wrestling.  And I think that the current generation of fans, despite having unprecedented access to history unlike anything we ever had, will cycle out like WCW's audience did and continue dropping the WWE's fortunes.  But really, who can guess these things?

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Posted in Rants | 30 Comments »

Random wrestling stuff

Thursday, December 4th, 2008

How are you buddy?
Long time reader of your colums. Really like the setup you have now.
I was reading through some old posts and I saw you mention that Shawn Michaels was supposed to do the JOB to The Undertaker at Wrestlemania 2000 but HHH had to take his place because Shawn was to messed up to perform. I seemed to have missed this at the time time and was wondering if you could elaborate more on the topic as I thought Shawn had no thoughts of performing between basically Wrestlemania 14 and Summerslam 2002.

It was Wrestlemania X-7, actually, and Shawn wasn't going to wrestle, he was going to interfere and give HHH the win over Undertaker.  Then he showed up in no condition to do much of anything and the result was changed to punish HHH, who had basically gone to Vince and vouched for Shawn's sobriety.

If you could pick one guy who could end the streak of The Undertaker at this years Wrestlemania who would it be and why?

I don't think there's any value in ending the streak at this point, but if you HAD to give the win to someone, the only logical choice is John Cena. 

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Posted in Rants | 16 Comments »

Denny Brown

Sunday, November 30th, 2008

I was reading one of your latest rants and saw something about Denny Brown. Apparently, he held this belt three times, and Giant Baba was somehow involved. Do you know anything more about him? He doesn't register much in my childhood memories of NWA television.

He was a regional guy, decent worker, looked like Steve Perry with muscle tone.  I don't know how Giant Baba would be involved but he did nothing of note aside from being a former jobber who got a decent push as junior champion, lost to Hector Guerrero in a Lazer Tag costume, and then became a jobber again before retiring.  On the NWA shows I'm reviewing right now he just dropped the belt to Steve Regal and should be regaining it shortly, but he was never really anything memorable as a worker or anything. 

http://www.obsessedwithwrestling.com/profiles/d/denny-brown.php

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Posted in Rants | 4 Comments »

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