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Lemme try to cleanse this with an effortpost I promised a week ago. Back in 2008, WWE hired a man who sounded like a perfect get on paper. On the surface, he was an awesome addition to the announcing team. He was an accomplished football player. He spent years as a football announcer, not only covering the NFL, but even the XFL! He was a journalist for ESPN. More importantly, he was the co-host of American Gladiators, the kind of “sports entertainment” experience that Vince McMahon would be excited about instead of burying you for having.  His name was Mike Adamle and he was hosed from the get-go. Adamle made his first WWE appearance as a correspondent at the Royal Rumble. In his first segment, he referred to Randy Orton’s opponent as “Jeff Harvey.” It became quickly apparent that although he seemed like a bargain, he had the big flaw of not knowing anything about the product. Wrestling fans have had experience with commentators who know nothing about wrestling. We had Susan St. James at WrestleMania 2. Art Donovan at King of the Ring 1994 lives in infamy. Already, Mike Adamle had blood in the water. It had already been about two years since the WWE ECW resurgence had started and while Paul Heyman and countless other old school ECW names were long gone, WWE had just gotten rid of ECW’s mainstay commentator Joey Styles. A massive blow for fans. So who was replacing Joey? Well, none other than Mike Adamle, as being a backstage correspondent on Raw wasn’t working out for him. Adamle had enthusiasm, but for some, that might have worked against him. Dude loved his catchphrases, like ending a match with, “Uno, dos, adios!” Most memorably, back when Kofi Kingston was in ECW and pretending to be Jamaican, Adamle would usually yell out, “JAMAICAN ME CRAZY!” once a match. Otherwise, the guy still didn’t know his stuff and for some reason referred to his broadcast partner as “The Tazz.” On one episode of ECW, during the main event, Adamle got up and walked off. Tazz removed his headset and followed him. While the fans in attendance didn’t seem to notice it too much, fans at home were confused. Some stories say that Adamle was having some kind of mental medical emergency. Other stories say that Vince told the commentators to get up and leave as part of a storyline that was immediately dropped. Either way, Adamle appeared in the ring the next week to apologize to everyone and give a heartfelt speech that he was trying his best. Truth be told, Adamle at least had a sense of humor about who he was. Miz and John Morrison had a weekly web series called the Dirt Sheet and Adamle made a guest appearance as part of a séance for Paul Bearer (this was in-between Bearer being storyline dead and real dead). Adamle played up being a tryhard douche who would try to impress his coworkers by having “Funk Soul Brother” as his ringtone. When Miz and Morrison insulted him, he happily remarked that it was the nicest thing anyone’s had to say about him in months. WWE realized that they were paying this guy way too much money to just be a commentator on the C-show. So they did the logical thing by... making him Raw GM out of nowhere? Sure, okay. I mean, the guy before him was Jonathan Coachman, so might as well try something new. Adamle spent months running the show, screwing up his lines (he would normally carry his script in hand) and being a lovable doofus. I mainly remember three things from Adamle’s time as Raw GM. First was the time John Cena and Mickie James were flirting in Adamle’s locker room, only for Adamle to walk out of the nearby bathroom and the other two reacting like he took the smelliest poo poo ever. Then there’s this bizarre storyline where Kane started screaming, “IS HE ALIVE OR DEAD?!” and took to carrying a burlap bag with something in it. Adamle finally confronted Kane about this and figured he was talking about Paul Bearer and the bag had Kane’s old mask in it. Instead, Kane revealed that he had Rey Mysterio’s mask in there as he had kidnapped him and spent several weeks torturing him half to death. Simple mistake. Finally, Adamle would bring up his “Adamle originals” ideas. The only one that comes to mind is the WWE Scramble, a rather unique match that was used three times in one PPV and then just forgotten about. The idea is that five wrestlers take part in a match with a time limit. Whoever pulls off a pin becomes interim champion until the next person gets pinned. Once the time limit is over, the reigning interim champion wins. This gave us the screenshot of forgettable midcarder The Brian Kendrick being labeled as the current WWE Champion. Near the end of the year, Adamle got in a confrontation with Randy Orton. Orton yelled that unless Adamle was fired, he would leave the company. Then he ran down Adamle for being such a failure, pushing Adamle into smacking Orton. The following week, Adamle apologized for his actions and told Shane McMahon that he was going to resign from his position. It got a huge ovation. But man, was that ever a fortunate decision. Adamle, as it turns out, is riddled with concussions from his years as a football player and he’s been showing increasing signs of dementia. Word is that at one point he was training to do a match or two, presumably against Orton. Since Orton was right about to do his run as a head-punting psychopath who genuinely delivered a concussion to Vince, Adamle was saved from even more brain trauma. Mike Adamle was never on WWE TV ever again. He won Wrestlecrap’s 2008 Gooker Award for worst thing in wrestling, but even the writer of that site admitted that in the grand scheme of things, he’s probably the least offensive thing to ever get that award. Besides, considering the company was only months away from the horrible stretch of Michael Cole as a heel commentator, Adamle was a breath of fresh air in retrospect.
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Mar 14, 2022 02:23
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BiggerBoat posted:"Gooker Award" is loving great Here's a list of all the Gooker Award winners from the beginning of Wrestlecrap's existence. Most of them have been covered in this thread. 2000: David Arquette wins the WCW Championship. 2001: WWF vs. WCW/ECW 2002: Katie Vick, a Triple H vs. Kane feud that involved Triple H wearing a Kane mask and humping a blow-up doll dressed as a cheerleader. 2003: Al Wilson's wedding, a storyline where Dawn Marie married Torrie Wilson's father and banged him so much on their honeymoon that he died. 2004: The 2004 Raw Diva Search, which was raunchy and out of control. 2005: Jim Ross being fired, which was part of a storyline that involved a skit of Vince as Dr. Hiney performing a colonoscopy on "Jim Ross." 2006: WWE doing storylines about Eddie Guerrero after his death. 2007: The mystery of Vince McMahon's secret son. 2008: Mike Adamle in WWE. 2009: The never-ending and one-sided Hornswoggle vs. Chavo Guerrero feud. 2010: TNA starts the second Monday Night War. 2011: Heel Michael Cole. 2012: Claire Lynch, AJ Style's self-proclaimed baby's mama. 2013: Dixie Carter as a heel authority figure in TNA. 2014 (co-winner): Vince McMahon claiming Cesaro doesn't deserve a push because he hasn't "grabbed the brass ring." 2014 (co-winner): The Brie Bella vs. Nikki Bella feud. 2015: The Rusev and Summer Rae vs. Dolph Ziggler and Lana feud, a storyline based on Vince's genuine disgust that Rusev has a hot wife. 2016: WrestleMania 32, the bonkers and never-ending PPV. 2017: Jinder Mahal as WWE Champion. 2018: Crown Jewel, the PPV in Saudi Arabia filled with godawful matches, including Shawn Michaels coming out of retirement. 2019: Seth Rollins vs. The Fiend at Hell in a Cell, featuring blinding red lights and a DQ due to weapon usage. 2020: Retribution, WWE's laughable answer to Antifa. 2021: NXT 2.0, or NXT in a post-Triple H world.
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Mar 14, 2022 18:13
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Trollologist posted:This bridge needs to be crossed at some point. But God you have to be careful to not just make it look like domestic abuse. Chikara did intergender wrestling really well. All of their different championships had been held by a woman at some point. Lucha Underground did intergender a lot with mixed results. They were mainly hurt from having a mostly bad set of women's wrestlers to choose from, especially with Sexy Star as one of the top names. On one hand, they were able to do a match where Brian Cage (face) took on Taya Valkyrie (heel) in a hardcore match and brutalized her in a way that miraculously didn't come off as gross. On the other hand, there was Angelico (face) vs. Ivelisse (heel) where Angelico spent the match being what I can best describe as "comically rapey." Apparently, the match was heavily edited for TV due to how negative the reaction was to it.
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Mar 15, 2022 02:16
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SirPhoebos posted:It was also well protected as a finishing move. Scott made it a point that if he was going to lose, he wasn't getting the Razor's Edge off. Which is something I feel is missing from wrestling today, as every match is trying to be "OMG he kicked out of X!" which I feel defeats the purpose of such moments. On the other hand, Razor would always do this setup where he'd act like he was going to Razor Edge his opponent out over the ropes and onto the floor, which would immediately be reversed into a backdrop. It was incredibly obvious because even as a kid I knew that there was no safe way to take that move without your spine shattering into 50 pieces. quote:It reminds me of a discussion I had a friend who said it would be amazing if for one Royal Rumble there was a surprise 31st entrant. My response was that it would be true the first time it happened, but both he and I knew that WWE wouldn't be able to resist doing again in every subsequent RR (and still acting like it was a big loving deal). Lucha Underground did something like this. The show was run by Dario Cueto, a charismatic bastard and proof that you should just get trained actors to play non-wrestler roles. Throughout the first season of the show, Dario would reference and sometimes talk to some creature he kept in a cage hidden in the arena. In time it became apparent that this was his younger brother, Matanza and that he was possessed by an Aztec god. They even killed off a character by having his head shoved into Matanza's cage and Matanza eating his face off. We never got a clear shot of Matanza outside a little bit of his face/mask in the season 1 finale. Season 1 ended with Dario on the run while another character ran Lucha Underground. Dario regrouped, lured people into being brutally murdered by Matanza as part of his training, and finally decided it was time to make his return. LU's version of the Royal Rumble is Aztec Warfare, which is a 20-person match where you can only be eliminated by pinfall and submission. The season 2 Aztec Warfare started with the debut of Rey Mysterio. By #20, there was a good chunk of names in the ring. Then Dario showed up and announced that he was reclaiming being in charge and Matanza was entering at #21. For the first time, we got to see Matanza (played by Olympian wrestler Jeff Cobb) in action and he hosed up every single opponent single-handedly via power moves and cool acrobatic poo poo. After about a year and a half of build up, he made his debut and became this terrifying threat who won the title in his first match. God, that show was so good until it wasn't.
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Mar 15, 2022 17:46
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SirPhoebos posted:I'd like an effort post on the Lex Express. I can oblige.
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Mar 15, 2022 21:59
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Lex Luger was a big deal before joining WWF. “The Total Package” was jacked, could move, and had just enough charisma to connect with the crowd. He was a top name in WCW for years. Also, fun Luger story that I can’t fit anywhere that’s worth talking about: back when he wrestled in Championship Wrestling Florida in the mid-80s, he was put in a cage match against Bruiser Brody. Brody was kind of a crazy rear end in a top hat and was annoyed that he had to lose to the rising new guy. As the match went on, Brody decided to no-sell all of Luger’s attacks. Luger would throw punch after punch, only for Brody to just stand there, staring at him. Kind of freaked out, Luger cheesed it, climbed out of the cage, and got out of there. Brody’s volatile behavior did NOT work out well for him in the long run, I can tell you that. So anyway, back in 1992, Lex Luger left WCW and signed with Vince McMahon... and his bodybuilding federation. Yes, instead of being a wrestler, Luger was set to be one of the big names in the World Bodybuilding Federation. Unfortunately, he was in a motorcycle accident that busted up his arm and by the time he was healed up, the WBF was already in the dust. Well, good thing Vince has a wrestling company and Luger was a wrestler. The timing worked out great too. One of the storylines going on was that Mr. Perfect turned on Ric Flair and Bobby Heenan. Flair had one foot out the door and was about to go to WCW. Heenan needed someone to manage. So at the 1993 Royal Rumble, Lex Luger made his debut as “Narcissus,” which was later changed to “The Narcissist” Lex Luger. Look up that debut if you want to see wrestling at its most homoerotic as Bobby Heenan sounds like he’s about to leave a shotgun exit wound out of the front of his pants. I always found this debut to be kind of interesting because Lex Luger and Ric Flair were both playable in WWF Royal Rumble for SNES. Technically, they were only in the company at the same time for a day, as Luger showed up at the Rumble and Flair lost a “Loser Leaves” match with Mr. Perfect on the following Raw. From that motorcycle accident, Luger had a metal plate implanted in his arm and they had him use that as an unfair weapon. With that, he defeated Mr. Perfect at WrestleMania 9. The next PPV was King of the Ring and Luger took on Tatanka. Luger was rising up as a major heel and WWF was very into making Tatanka an undefeated face, so neither was ready to lose. Instead, they reached the time limit and Bam Bam Bigelow got a bye into the finals. The important thing about King of the Ring was that Hulk Hogan dropped the WWF Championship to Yokozuna and shortly after decided he was done with the company. Even though Vince could have just pushed King of the Ring winner Bret Hart back into the top spot, he instead shoved Bret into a seemingly never-ending feud with Jerry Lawler while setting up a replacement for Hogan. On July 4, Yokozuna appeared at the USS Intrepid to do a bodyslam challenge. Athletes from all over would try to bodyslam the gigantic sumo. Going into the event, the favorite was Crush, who was the resident strong guy face and had a pretty big following. Crush could only get one of Yokozuna’s legs off the ground. Sadly, it looked like America would be embarrassed by its inability to pick up a fat guy. Then Lex Luger showed up via helicopter, shoved Bobby Heenan aside, got into it with Yokozuna, and kinda sorta bodyslammed him. It wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough. Also, this was the end of Bobby Heenan managing anyone in WWF, as he would just do commentary for a few more months until leaving the promotion. Luger was suddenly the top challenger for Yokozuna’s title. What was weird was that Luger didn’t do any wrestling around this time. He didn’t do house shows or build himself up through matches against midcarders on Raw. He was simply given a title shot and a unique way to hopefully get people excited over it: a bus tour. Luger spent weeks riding around the country in a bus called the Lex Express, meeting fans and posing with them like he was running for office. Because AMERICA! He would be riding this bus on his way to his big title shot at SummerSlam. There was a stipulation that this would be Luger’s ONLY shot at the title. He had to win it in one go or else. So Luger bonked Yokozuna on the head with his illegal metal arm plate, knocked him out of the ring, won via count-out, and celebrated like he won the Superbowl. You know, even though the title doesn’t change hands during a count-out. Luger was celebrating over winning the wrong way. Apparently Vince didn’t feel Luger was popular enough just yet, which makes sense, considering he was a wrestler who wasn’t doing any wrestling. It was just as well, as WWF didn’t have any viable heels at the time outside of Yokozuna. Well, they did just introduce an evil dude from Finland named Ludvig Borga. That was a start. Luger and his patriotic friends (including the Undertaker!) took on Yokozuna and his America-hating friends at Survivor Series. Luger ended up the sole survivor by getting his high-profile win over Borga. Months later, a debate kicked in: should Luger be allowed to enter the Royal Rumble? Whoever won the Royal Rumble would get a title shot and Luger was barred from further shots against Yokozuna. Eventually, it was decided that if Luger could win the Rumble, he deserved the drat rematch. Yokozuna’s managers paid off a couple Japanese wrestlers to rough Luger up backstage to hurt his chances. At the end of the 1994 Rumble, it was down to Lex Luger and Bret Hart. The two top faces ended up falling out of the ring at the same time. They were both recognized as winners, but Vince was using the scenario as an exercise to see who the fans cheered more for. Bret was definitely the most popular. As triple threat matches hadn’t been implemented in WWF yet, the big idea was a one-night mini-tournament at WrestleMania 10. Luger would face Yokozuna for the title. Bret would face his brother Owen Hart in an exhibition match. Win or lose, Bret would go on to face the winner of Luger/Yokozuna in the main event. There’s a story that Luger was heard at a bar boasting about how he was going to end the night as champion and the story got changed, but that’s just an urban legend. It was always going to be Bret’s night. Luger vs. Yokozuna had a returning Mr. Perfect as the guest referee. Even though Luger had the match won, Perfect was reluctant to make the count and ended up disqualifying Luger for a minor infraction. Backstage, the two got pulled apart with the insinuation that we were going to get another Luger/Perfect feud out of this. Instead, Perfect was deemed in no shape to compete and just vanished from TV. Luger had no avenue of revenge and came out of WrestleMania 10 looking like a total loser. "The Million Dollar Man" Ted Dibiase was strictly a manager at the time and started talking up how he was representing Lex Luger. Luger was very adamant that this wasn’t the case AT ALL. Good friend Tatanka was all, “Dude, how could you sell out your country like that? How could you join Dibiase?!” Once again, Luger would tell him, “I’m seriously not part of Dibiase’s crew.” And Tatanka would not believe him and everyone could see where this was going. So anyway, Tatanka was actually working with Dibiase all along and Luger was forced into a feud with the Million Dollar Corporation. This culminated at Survivor Series where Luger’s team lost to Dibiase’s team. The match ended with Luger taking on Tatanka, Bam Bam Bigelow, and King Kong Bundy. Luger got a surprise roll-up pin on Tatanka, then ate a splash from Bundy and lost. And that was it. No follow-up or redemption. Luger straight-up lost the feud and they moved on. Next up, Luger started teaming up with the British Bulldog as the Allied Powers. They opened WrestleMania 11 by beating the Blu Brothers and then just coasted for several months with only one failed title shot to their name. Said title shot had Luger getting pinned by Yokozuna, so that stings. Going into SummerSlam, the British Bulldog randomly turned heel on WWF Champion Diesel. At SummerSlam, Diesel defended against King Mabel and when Sir Mo interfered on Mabel’s behalf, Luger arrived to even the odds. Diesel attacked Luger, thinking he was a heel like Bulldog. There would be no follow-up on that. Even though Luger filmed some taped promos on Raw, his contract had lapsed and WCW was able to lure him away. Luger made a surprise appearance on the first episode of WCW Nitro a week later, where he faced Hulk Hogan in the main event.
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Mar 16, 2022 02:52
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TheSwizzler posted:After he lost his job as an agent for WWF in 2000, Jim Neidhardt was pretty out of control. I remember being present when he was driving everyone nuts after an indy show trying to score coke, eventually got it, got blackout drunk/wolverine high, then had to be dragged back into his room (it took like 5 very large wrestlers to do this) after he got naked and tried wandering around the hotel hallway. The hotel was a sponsor that gave free rooms for the shows in exchange for advertising so it was considered a pretty big deal to get him under control Were his pubes in the shape of a spike? Jamesman posted:Holy poo poo this is so overproduced it's hilarious. You need to watch the one on the UWF. The promoter Herb Abrams died during a naked, vasoline-covered coke binge and you can tell that the re-enactment actors were having the best time with it.
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Mar 16, 2022 21:55
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Hollismason posted:What was the UWF? It was a promotion that had talent that WWF and WCW didn't want, didn't really make any money and was run by a guy who snorted ALL THE COKE.
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Mar 16, 2022 22:08
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FullLeatherJacket posted:Plus I think I still have all of the episodes of Wrestling Society X on a DVD-R somewhere in the room I keep exclusively for boxes of stupid trash that I won't throw away. Instead of doing an effortpost in this thread about MTV's Wrestling Society X, I'm just going to link to the article about it I wrote five years ago.
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Mar 17, 2022 01:00
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Cornwind Evil posted:There are plenty of failings in the history of business, but there’s only a few that if you speak them, virtually all people will recognize, even if they have zero idea of the context. And one of those, I believe, is “New Coke”. I find this hilarious because last night I was writing an article on WWE 2K22 where I took a second to describe WWE 2K20 as the New Coke of wrestling games.
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Mar 17, 2022 18:54
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SirPhoebos posted:I once heard a story that Shawn Michaels was supposed to return at Wrestlemania X-7. But like a week before the show, Chris Jericho attacked William Regal while disguised as Doink. And Shawn was so blitzed that he thought they were giving the Doink gimmick to Chris and kept saying that it was a terrible idea even after people backstage had explained it was just a one-off thing. So they nixxed the plan to have him run in on the Undertaker vs HHH match. Yeah, Triple H was supposed to win that match, but since he vouched for Michaels and Michaels was zonked out, he lost as punishment. The Streak wouldn't have been a thing if not for that. Which should be my next effortpost: the Undertaker at WrestleMania or a bunch of goofy-rear end stories involving Sycho Sid? I swear, that dude was like the Forrest Gump of wrestling history mixed with a Will Ferrell character.
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Mar 17, 2022 19:43
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Hollismason posted:I'm sorry he did what to a squirrel? Sid traveled around with a pet squirrel because, well, of course he did. As the legend goes, one day the guys in the locker room dared him to put the squirrel down his pants for a certain amount of time. Sid did so and the squirrel bit and clawed at some vital bits of him, which ultimately didn't end well for the squirrel.
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Mar 17, 2022 21:01
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Sid Eudy was never going to be on the Mount Rushmore of wrestling, but he's a very decorated name in the business. He was world champion in WWF and WCW multiple times. He was a member of the Four Horsemen. He main-evented WrestleMania twice. He's one of the very, very few wrestlers to have a singles win over both Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels. He's also a total galoot. There's no better description of the guy. He's a galoot. His career is littered with ridiculous stories that just paint a picture at how bonkers wrestling really is. Rather than go over his entire career, I'm just going to tell screwy stories about Sid in loose chronological order. ROBOCOP IN WCW In 1990, there was a feud going on where Lex Luger and Sting were dealing with the Four Horsemen. Sid was introduced as the Four Horsemen's new muscle due to him basically being a constantly-wet Brock Samson. The main event of the PPV Capitol Combat was Luger vs. Flair in a cage and although Luger had Sting watching his back, they needed more help. They needed RoboCop. RoboCop 2 was coming out and this was WCW capitalizing on it because sure, why not. RoboCop himself would come to the PPV, which is weird, since RoboCop is supposed to be from the future. At one point in the show, Sting came out to the arena and was attacked by the Four Horsemen. They beat him up and locked him into a smaller cage to keep him out of their business. Suddenly, RoboCop marched out and intimidated the heels with his slow walking. As Sid screamed his face red at the cyborg, RoboCop tore the bars open and freed Sting. Alex Murphy didn't stick around for the main event, but that's okay, as Sting just got help from a debuting El Gigante. He was even LESS mobile than RoboCop. THE SQUEEGEE INCIDENT I was going to talk about Sid's match against the Nightstalker (Brian Clark/Adam Bomb/Wrath), considered the worst wrestling match of 1990, but there's not much to talk about other than two large, bad wrestlers did large, bad wrestling. One Sid match that is of interest is War Games, a team warfare match that takes place in two rings surrounded by a roofed cage. In 1991, Sid represented the Four Horsemen and got into it with Brian Pillman. The two genuinely hated each other and Sid decided to gently caress him up with a powerbomb. Only with there being a roof on the cage and Sid being so tall, he purposely slammed Pillman's head into the roof and knocked him out. Months later, Sid went from WCW to WWF and was given a massive push immediately. He was brought in to be the referee in a handicap match between Hulk Hogan/Ultimate Warrior and Sgt. Slaughter with his Iraq-loving henchmen. This match is notable because earlier in the night, Warrior demanded more money from Vince or he wouldn't perform. Vince ponied up, but towards the end of the match, as Warrior chased Slaughter's partners to the back with a chair in hand, Vince was there to meet him and fire him. To keep fans' minds off Warrior's existence, after Hogan won the match, he beckoned Sid to come to the ring and pose with him. The other "main event" of the show was Randy Savage and Miss Elizabeth getting married. In the reception aftermath (taped for later), Savage was attacked by the Undertaker and Jake Roberts, only for Sid Justice to come to his rescue. So yeah, this company was serious about Sid. Too bad he tore his bicep a few months later. Shortly after that injury, he ended up in a bar with some traveling WCW folk. Sid got drunk and boasted about how much better WWF was compared to WCW and how much money he was making. Mike Graham and Brian Pillman were not happy with this and had words with him. Pillman wanted to kick his rear end and Sid quietly backed off, as his arm was too messed up to get in a real fight. Sid came back armed with a squeegee, ready to throw down. The everyone in the bar laughed their asses off at this attempt at a weapon and Graham immediately yanked it out of his hand. Once again, Sid cheesed it. HOGAN'S THE GOOD GUY? The 1992 Royal Rumble is considered by many to be one of, if not the, best Rumble match. As the WWF Championship had been vacated, the title was up for grabs in this match. Sid made his big return and fought alongside established buddy Hogan. Also, hated heel Ric Flair entered the match at #3 and lasted a full hour despite taking all sorts of punishment. In the end, Sid eliminated Hogan fair and square. It's the same way Hogan had eliminated his own allies in previous years. The fans cheered this. Hogan proceeded to throw a gigantic hissy-fit over this, grabbed Sid's arm, and helped Flair win the match. The fans booed this. There was nothing in this that made Hogan likeable, but he was still supposed to be the face. Backstage, Hogan complained to Vince for putting him in this position. In later airings of the incident on WWF shows, the audio was changed so that Sid was booed for throwing out Hogan and Hogan was cheered for getting his revenge. The story led to the two of them facing off at WrestleMania 8. It was strange, as a lot of the time, Sid's behavior was justified. Like Sid apologized for his actions and the two were put in a tag match against Undertaker and Flair. In the pre-match, every time Sid tried to start a promo, Hogan would completely drown him out with his own promo over and over again. Of course Sid would leave Hogan mid-match to fend for himself. How could you not side with him? Part of the build for this match involved Sid showing up on the Barbershop, a talk show hosted by Hogan's BFF Brutus "The Barber" Beefcake. Sid angrily trashed the place with a chair, leading to a hilarious moment where a can of shaving cream exploded all over his face. THE END OF HERCULES Hercules Hernandez was a jacked midcarder who had been in WWF for several years, usually there to lose to guys like Hogan, Warrior, Earthquake, and so on. His career had a breath of fresh air when he started teaming up with Paul Roma as Power and Glory. After getting utterly destroyed by the Legion of Doom at WrestleMania 7, there wasn't much left for that tag team and they soon after split up. Hercules was floundering and a match against Sid at Madison Square Garden wasn't making him hopeful for the future. The match lasted mere seconds before Sid took Hercules down with a powerbomb. After the pin, Herc gave absolutely zero fucks, got up, and walked right up the ramp. He was done and he wanted everyone to know it. Funny enough, there really was something to him being partnered with Roma. A few years later, Roma was in WCW. They tried to make him part of the Four Horsemen, but nobody cared for it. Roma was put in a match against newcomer Alex Wright, who WCW had high hopes for. The frustrated Roma proceeded to no-sell much of Wright's offense and even kicked out of his finisher. On commentary, Heenan outright said, "His career is over." He wasn't wrong, as that was it for Roma. CHAOS AT WRESTLEMANIA Sid's contract claimed that he would get a WrestleMania main event, so even though this was just a regular singles match, it ended up closing the show instead of Savage challenging Flair for the title. As the match reached its end, evil voodoo priest Papa Shango was supposed to come out and interfere. Why? I don't know. Papa Shango had zero connection to Sid and Hogan going into the show. Also, Shango missed his cue. Hogan hit the leg drop on Sid and went for the pin. Since Shango was supposed to break up the pin and he was nowhere to be seen, Sid did the unthinkable and kicked out of one of the most protected moves of the era. His manager Harvey Whippleman then hopped up on the ring apron and the referee decided to just call the match due to disqualification. Because that tiny guy was jumping and yelling. Great reason to end the final match of the year's biggest show. Papa Shango finally showed up and put the boots to Hogan. Then the Ultimate Warrior's theme started playing and the Warrior – not seen since being fired at SummerSlam – raced to the ring to chase off Shango and Sid. Due to Warrior having different muscle definition, a different haircut, and different facepaint, there were widespread rumors that the original Warrior had died in a car crash and this was a completely different guy. It was the same dude, but it's funny how that idea spread in the pre-internet days. Hogan was going to take time off from wrestling, so Warrior was going to fill his shoes. For the next couple weeks, promos would air to hype up the feud between Warrior and Sid. Then after two house show matches in one day, Sid decided that he just could not deal with this face-painted rear end in a top hat and walked out of the company. Warrior then pivoted to a feud with Papa Shango that involved secreting black goo from his forehead and puking from voodoo curses. Up next: stormtroopers, beach movies, and a phantom title reign.
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Mar 17, 2022 23:49
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ZogrimAteMyHamster posted:Sting recoils with embarrassment at the mention of it. https://twitter.com/Sting/status/1258124169524305921
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Mar 18, 2022 04:03
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BiggerBoat posted:I remember watching a YT doc about WM3 where Hogan wasn't sure that Andre would put him over and it seemed weird that ever be any degree of uncertainty with this stuff, especially once they'd gotten in the ring. I suppose it's a testament to the good writing here that I actually started to wonder. Speaking of which, a few of these effort posters should seriously consider writing a book, which they've basically already half done. Forums poster "jerusalem" did amazing write ups in The Sopranos and The Wire threads in TVIV and I was encouraging him to publish that poo poo. There's a great Andre the Giant graphic novel biography by Box Brown that instead of having a basic narrative, is just a bunch of fun Andre stories told in chronological order. They go over this situation, which boils down to Andre being a prankster who genuinely liked Hogan, but especially liked messing with Hogan. In the weeks leading up to WM3, Andre was hanging out with Bret Hart backstage and noticed Brutus Beefcake (Hogan's buddy) nearby. Knowing that Beefcake was in earshot, Andre just started talking about how he wasn't sure if he was really going to let Hogan win and who knows what's going to happen when the bell rings? OF COURSE Beefcake told Hogan, who called Vince up in a panic because what the gently caress was he going to do if Andre decided to go into business for himself? Vince assured him that Andre was a professional and all would be good. Then again, as FullLeatherJacket said, never trust anything Hogan says. As you brought up the Wire, Hogan constantly reminds me of that dickhead reporter guy from the last season who proceeds to lie at every opportunity even when there's zero reason to do it. Hogan is the biggest name in wrestling history and it's somehow never enough for him.
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Mar 18, 2022 18:39
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TheSwizzler posted:I'm voting for Michael Shannon to play Vince That reminds me. In Groundhog Day, Bill Murray buys WrestleMania tickets for Michael Shannon and his wife. Considering when the movie was made, they were tickets for WrestleMania 9. Poor guy.
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Mar 18, 2022 20:49
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As we last left Sid, he was annoyed with having to deal with the Ultimate Warrior and left WWF. It didn’t take long for him to return to WCW. BEACH BLAST: THE MOVIE During this era of WCW, they went in a rather odd direction to promote their PPV main events. As this was a Ted Turner-owned company and came with Ted Turner money, it also came with the idea of tying in with Ted Turner’s love of movies. Why build up a big PPV match with interviews and highlight reels that tell their own story? Why not simply make a movie? They are some of the hammiest and most unbelievable things to watch. There’s the time Sting and Jake Roberts had a showdown in a secret tavern that ended with them shooting lightning out of their eyes at each other. Sting once received an invitation from Big Van Vader to ride a helicopter and meet him in his elusive White Castle of Fear. Speaking of Vader, Sid aligned himself with the round monster and they became the Masters of the Powerbomb. Going into Beach Blast, they were set to face Sting and the British Bulldog. Naturally, this got its own mini-movie to hype it up. It’s a hell of a thing. Sid, Vader, and their managers Col. Parker and Harley Race are on one of those D-Day landing crafts, on their way to confront Sting and Bulldog, who are busy hanging out on an island, playing volleyball with randos. As the heels offer to pay for the faces’ retirement ventures if they call off the match, Col. Parker secretly sends a one-eyed dwarf dressed as a shark named Cheetum to sneak a bomb onto Sting and Bulldog’s boat. The fact that Space Ghost is the announcer at the end is just the cherry on top. THE SHOCKMASTER As wrestlers jumped back and forth between WWF and WCW, it was easy enough when they wrestled with their real names or names that they legally owned. If they mainly wrestled under a cartoony gimmick, then they had to be repackaged, because their previous employer owned the concept. Sid was lucky as he only had to change his last name depending on where he wrestled. Fred Ottman, on the other hand, needed an overhaul. Ottman wrestled for several years in WWF. First, he was called Tugboat, which I can best describe as “what if Bluto from Popeye was a good guy.” Then he turned heel and joined his rival Earthquake, changing his name to Typhoon as they became the Natural Disasters. Now that I think of it, his gimmick was literally the Chris Farley "El Nino" SNL sketch. After a long enough run, Ottman left WWF for WCW. WCW actually had big plans for the guy and intended to make him one of their top faces. Another War Games match was being set up. It was going to be Sting, British Bulldog, Dustin Rhodes, and a mystery partner vs. Sid, Vader, and the tag team Harlem Heat. On a live edition of Clash of the Champions, Ric Flair hosted his own interview segment, where he had on several of the wrestlers who were going to be involved in that match. As the two parties argued about the upcoming War Games match, Sting finally decided to announce their mystery partner. “Our partner is going to shock the world because he is none other than the Shockmaster!” This was Ottman’s cue. He was supposed to burst through the wall and intimidate the heels. In time, he would get the decisive win at War Games. From there, he would be accepted as a major name in WCW. It did not work out that way. First off, Shockmaster’s appearance was laughable. He was wearing a pair of jeans, a black, puffy vest, and a literal Star Wars stormtrooper helmet covered in glitter. More importantly, when the pyro went off, the Shockmaster broke through the wall, but he tripped on a plank. On live TV, he fell flat on his face in what was supposed to be his big, badass debut moment as his stormtrooper helmet fell off. He crawled over, put the helmet back on, and tried to act like none of that actually happened. All the while, you could vaguely hear the other wrestlers’ reactions. Lots of variations of, “OH GOD,” including Bulldog straight-up saying, “He fell on his loving arse!” Instead of having the Shockmaster conduct his own promos, they had former wrestler Ole Anderson do a Dr. Claw voice over the speakers while the Shockmaster pointed and mimed. This was extra funny because when Sid started screaming, “I don’t care who you are!” at Shockmaster, Ottman thought that was Ole and started pointing and acting like Sid was talking for him. They knew they hosed up. Even though Shockmaster still got the decisive win at War Games, they changed him up immediately and turned him into a clumsy dumbass who wore a construction helmet instead of a stormtrooper one. His career never recovered. WWE did release a limited edition Shockmaster figure a few years ago, where he’s shown upside down in the package. SCISSORS AND THE PHANTOM CHAMPIONSHIP The WCW guys were put on a rather hectic European tour that saw lots of traveling and performing, but very, very little in terms of rest. When they did get some slight reprieve, various wrestlers hung out in a hotel bar, getting drunk as gently caress. As the guys discussed what was going wrong with WCW and why they couldn’t catch up to WWF, Sid put some of the blame on Ric Flair. Flair’s buddy Arn Anderson did not like this and the two got in a big confrontation. They were separated and went to their rooms. Sid couldn’t sleep and was too pissed off to let it slide. With a chair leg in hand, he went to Arn’s room and knocked on the door. At first there was no answer and Sid decided to just drop it. He threw the chair leg away and started walking off. That’s when Arn opened the door and lunged at him. Having seen the chair leg, Arn armed himself with a pair of scissors and stabbed Sid with them four times, including a deep wound in the stomach. Sid yanked the scissors from Arn’s hands and lost his poo poo, stabbing him over a dozen times before finally snapping out of it and stumbling off. Blood was everywhere and if not for the help of Too Cold Scorpio and Vader getting involved, at least one of them would have died. The two were stitched up and neither wanted to press charges. Sid took the brunt of the punishment and was fired. Over time, the two would reconcile. In the wrestling sense, another thing that makes this interesting is how it ruined some major plans in a unique way. During this time, WCW’s weekly show was WCW Worldwide, which was taped in bulk at Universal Studios. Maybe a month of shows at a time. In other words, they would tape episodes taking place AFTER a PPV weeks in advance. One of the storylines going on was that Sid turned face and was feuding with Vader over the championship. Sid was supposed to defeat Vader at Starrcade for the belt. Obviously, that was no longer the case. So even though the main event of Starrcade ended up being Ric Flair vs. Vader, there was taped (albeit unaired) footage of Sid showing up on Worldwide as WCW Champion. IT’S LIVE PAL Sid went back to WWF and redebuted at WrestleMania 11. Immediately, he ended up in a feud with WWF Champion Diesel and soon joined Ted Dibiase’s Million Dollar Corporation. This led to one of the funnier botches in wrestling history where nobody got hurt. During the PPV pre-show, we saw Sid and Dibiase being interviewed by Jim Ross. Ross asked Sid about how he compared to Diesel and Sid started ranting, only to immediately trip over his words, apologize and ask if they could try that again. Ross noted, “It’s live, pal!” and Sid tried to mumble himself into coherency. Sid was active as a heel for the rest of 1995, before having to take time off due to neck injury. MSG FANS BREAK VINCE In 1996, the Ultimate Warrior had another run with WWF that really didn’t go anywhere. After a big falling out with Vince due to no-shows, Warrior was written off TV. It’s just that he was supposed to be part of a big six-man tag match where he’d team with Shawn Michaels and Ahmed Johnson. With Warrior gone, they simply brought Sid back in (now calling himself Sycho Sid) and made him a huge face. Sid was crazy popular during this time. Fans couldn’t get enough of this large psychopath coming to the ring, fist-bumping everyone, and then powerbombing the poo poo out of his enemies. They spent months pushing him as Michaels’ ally, including having Michaels help him win a #1 contender’s match. Keep in mind, Michaels was the champ at the time. Michaels vs. Sid was the main event of Survivor Series 1996 and both went into it as faces. This was at Madison Square Garden, which has a big fanbase of hardcore fans and they were pretty tired of how overpushed Michaels was at the time. When the climax of the match had Sid turn heel by picking up a camera, slamming it into Michaels’ elderly manager/mentor Jose Lothario and later using it on Michaels (who gave up his chance of pinning Sid in order to check up on Jose), the crowd didn’t show sympathy for Michaels. Instead, they went completely nuts for Sid and cheered the hell out of him for powerbombing Michaels and winning the WWF Championship. You have to understand that Vince McMahon absolutely LOVED Shawn Michaels to the point that this reaction made him feel personally insulted. Prior to the Montreal Screwjob a year later, it was never too apparent on TV that Vince actually owned the company. He was simply a host and a commentator. But man, having all those fans loudly boo Michaels and cheer Sid’s dastardly win broke something in Vince. The next night on Raw, he was near tears, doing a monologue about how he was so disappointed in the fans for being so mean to the guy who was trying to save his manager’s life. I swear, it’s like an origin story for how Vince booked Roman Reigns. Meanwhile, Sid would go onto get his own Christmas carol. Up next: 22 is the magic number.
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Mar 19, 2022 19:41
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SID MAY OR MAY NOT KNOW poo poo Sid was WWF Champion for just a few months as they were doing a rematch in Shawn Michaels’ hometown for Royal Rumble 1997. While Sid lost to Michaels, he did regain it weeks later. There’s more details on that in the Montreal Screwjob write-up. The setup to WrestleMania 13 was rather chaotic and the main event ended up being Sid defending the title against the Undertaker, with both being faces. There was virtually no story going into this other than some ties to the infinitely better Bret Hart vs. Steve Austin match on the undercard. As Bret became a furious jerk earlier in the night when he finally snapped on Austin, he ended up showing up to rant at the fans during the main event. Ultimately, he inadvertently helped Undertaker win the title. Speaking of accidents, there’s an urban legend that Sid poo poo himself during this match. It’s pretty unfounded, considering how noticeable it would have been considering his ring gear. Supposedly, if it DID actually happen, it would have been at a house show. Undertaker did once say there was truth to it and that giving the soiled Sid the Tombstone was not the happiest experience. During this whole storyline, there was a hilarious moment where Bret Hart was in the ring, screaming about how he should be champion and how he keeps getting screwed. As he put it, everybody knew he was the rightful champion. In response, Sid marched to the ring and said loud enough to hear on TV, “I DON’T KNOW poo poo, CRYBABY!” THE MILLENIUM MAN After dropping the title, Sid just kind of faded in and out of WWF right before the Attitude Era was really beginning to kick in. He returned to WCW two years later, dubbing himself “The Millennium Man.” At the time, WWF was building towards the debut of Chris Jericho with a “countdown to the millennium” that was going to reach its end during the summer of 1999. WCW decided to give Sid that nickname as a way to beat them to the punch. Soon into showing up in WCW, Sid was put into a feud with Goldberg. Now, back when Goldberg was undefeated, he was known for his awesome streak of wins. Fans would hold up signs of “[wins]-0” up until Goldberg finally lost. Though WCW started to artificially increase the number for no reason, which soured lots of fans on keeping track of it. Sid was a parody of this as he started talking up his own winning streak. It was a streak that only seemed to make sense in his own mind. He would arrive during a random tag match, powerbomb everyone in the ring, and walk off, claiming that as at least four wins. But you know what this feud needed? Destroyed cars and hammy overacting. One night, Goldberg had Sid’s car crushed into a cube and Sid lost his poo poo. In the follow-up, in a story stretched across the whole episode of Nitro, Sid tried to get revenge by having the same thing happen to Goldberg’s car. Through lots of tomfoolery, Sid’s car ended up getting crushed again as he parked in the doomed spot of 22. I insist you watch this clip. Once you’re done, you can enjoy the Taylor Swift remix. VACATION’S ALL I EVER WANTED The world title picture in WCW was a gigantic mess in its final years, but even before David Arquette and Vince Russo held the belt, there was an even messier string of title reigns that were constantly plagued with the title being vacated for one reason or another. Sometimes as part of the story, sometimes not. October 25, 1999: Storyline. Sting lost an unsanctioned match against Goldberg, lost his poo poo, and attacked the referee afterwards. Even though the title wasn’t on the line during the match, Sting’s actions caused him to be stripped of the title. A big tournament was put together to crown a new winner. December 20, 1999: Storyline. Bret Hart won the big tournament and went on to defend the title against Goldberg as Starrcade 1999. Roddy Piper was the special referee and screwed over Goldberg in some ill-explained attempt to make up for the Montreal Screwjob happening to Bret. The next night, Bret vacated the title and offered a rematch to Goldberg to crown a true champion. That was part of the ruse, as Bret restarted the nWo and they helped him win. January 16, 2000: Real. Bret Hart suffered a nasty concussion during that Starrcade match and just kept wrestling through it in the weeks following. His brain damage got too severe and he had to drop the belt and retire. Chris Benoit vs. Sid was put together as a PPV main event to crown a new champion. Benoit won. January 17, 2000: Real. While all this poo poo was going on, Vince Russo was sent home and was no longer in charge of the booking. Benoit did not like that his career would be in the hands of Kevin Sullivan (as Sullivan’s wife Nancy left him for Benoit) and was allowed to leave the promotion, along with some of his buddies. They tried to make him champion as a way to entice him to stick around, but he didn’t care. On-air, it was explained that Benoit was being stripped of the title because Sid’s legs were under the rope when he was tapping out. January 25, 2000: Storyline. Kevin Nash became the heel authority figure and told Sid that he could face him to crown a new champion, but first he had to defeat the Harris Twins earlier in the night. Sid defeated the Harris Twins and later Nash to become champ. On the following episode of Thunder, Nash stripped Sid of the title because he pinned the wrong Harris Twin during the tag match. Sid became champ by winning a cage match against Nash and Ron Harris. April 10, 2000: Storyline. Eric Bischoff and Vince Russo were basically rebooting WCW while creating a storyline about the Millionaire’s Club vs. the New Blood. This meant having everyone give up their titles for a new start. Sid was in the middle of a heel turn against Hogan and this pretty much killed that story. He was told to come to the ring and give up his title. Because Russo was writing this poo poo, he overestimated how much people knew or cared about the Arn Anderson/Sid incident from years prior. So he had Bischoff laughingly say to Sid, “What did you forget your SCISSORS?” It got zero reaction. Bischoff repeated, “I said, did you forget your SCISSORS?!” Still no response. Instead of trying to regain his title or play into the big storyline they were trying to tell, Sid just faded away for a few months. WCW had less than a year left at that point and there were STILL other title vacancies during that time. SID SNAPS IN A BAD WAY Sid came back eventually and challenged for the title, now held by Scott Steiner. At the PPV Sin, a four-man match was put together of Scott Steiner vs. Sid vs. Jeff Jarrett vs. a mystery opponent. The mystery opponent showed up on TV a few times, looking like one of those padded attackers from a self-defense class. During the match, Sid tried to do a jumping kick off the second rope, a move that management pressured him into doing in order to add to his meager moveset. Due to Sid’s lack of experience with the move and whatever all that steroid use did to his bones, the leg he landed on snapped like a twig. As he agonized in horrific pain, the mystery opponent finally showed himself on the ramp as Road Warrior Animal (a decent surprise, all things considered, since Rick Steiner seemed the obvious choice). But this reveal was a mere afterthought as Scott Steiner had to go for the pin and end this trash fire because Jesus gently caress, Sid’s leg was nasty. The initial plan was for the next PPV, SuperBrawl Revenge, to have a main event of Kevin Nash, Diamond Dallas Page, and Sid vs. Scott Steiner, Jeff Jarrett, and Road Warrior Animal, but that was changed to just Nash vs. Steiner. WCW would be bought up by Vince McMahon a month later. Sid would recover enough from his leg injury to do some indie wrestling shows (including the bizarre matchup of Sid vs. AEW’s Eddie Kingston). Also, he made a surprise cameo on Big Brother as one of the contestants was actually his son. Sid was never the best wrestler or the most memorable wrestler, but he was a fun dope who added some color to the business. Usually, that color was red from his screaming face, but still.
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Mar 20, 2022 20:33
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gbs but from 2004 posted:I understand the terms work and shoot but can someone explain what a worked shoot is please Remember in Black Dynamite when Bullhorn slapped that guy during a fight scene and the guy's actor got really mad and they suddenly cut and Bullhorn was shown fighting a completely different actor? That was a worked shoot.
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Mar 23, 2022 13:40
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I figure it might be fun to discuss the Undertaker’s Streak and the aftermath. It’s a good look at a lengthy career of a company man who was always at least near the top of the card. It’s how years of random decisions somehow naturally formed into something the wrestling business treated as absolutely mythical. WRESTLEMANIA 7 (1991) Mark Calloway wrestled in WCW for a time as “Mean” Mark Callous, whose deal was that he was tall and mean. He left for WWF, where Vince had a special gimmick picked out for him. Calloway was initially a bit scared, as Survivor Series 1990 was coming up and they were building towards some kind of mystery involving a giant egg. Fearing for the worst, Calloway thought that he was going to be some kind of egg-themed wrestler. Luckily, that disaster had nothing to do with him other than how he debuted as the Undertaker at the same event. Well, with an asterisk. He taped some matches for TV as “Kane the Undertaker.” But this was his televised debut with the company. Undertaker’s appearances at Survivor Series and the following Royal Rumble painted him out to be a total monster. While his offense was limited, he simply showed zero pain. At most, his head would bounce back when being punched. He didn’t have any major storylines and WrestleMania wasn’t going to give him one. In real life, a WrestleMania paycheck is huge. It’s like a gigantic Christmas bonus and Vince McMahon, for all of his faults, at least wants to give out as many of those paychecks as possible. That’s why there are so many battle royals at WrestleMania. He’s trying to fit in as many names as possible. WrestleMania 7, known as “the patriotic one,” due to it tying into Operation Desert Storm, had a bunch of throwaway, unnecessary matches. Stuff like Tito Santana vs. the Mountie, which went on for a minute. The Undertaker took on Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka, an aging WWF mainstay who was on his last legs. Also, he killed a woman one time and Vince helped get him off charges. Can’t forget that. The match was a big pile of nothing with Undertaker dominating, Snuka getting just a little bit of offense, then Undertaker taking back control and finishing him with a Tombstone. There was no follow-up and Snuka just made sporadic appearances in the company for the next couple years before moving on. As for the Undertaker, within the next year, he would feud with top faces like Ultimate Warrior, Hulk Hogan, Sid Justice, and Randy Savage. He even got a short title reign in there too!  WRESTLEMANIA 8 (1992) During the Undertaker’s feud with the Ultimate Warrior, there were these silly pre-taped bits where Jake “The Snake” Roberts tried to mentor Warrior and teach him about the dark side in order to help him better understand the Undertaker. Then Jake betrayed Warrior and revealed he was in league with the Undertaker. What followed was a short, but incredibly sweet heel run for Jake, mostly focused on feuding with Randy Savage. In the aftermath of that feud, Jake was inexplicably betrayed by the Undertaker. It was never truly explained why the Undertaker took offense to Jake maiming Randy Savage and Elizabeth with a chair, but he stopped it anyway. When Jake demanded to know whose side he was on, Undertaker simply said, “NOT YOURS.” And so, they had a WrestleMania match. Even though Undertaker was a face, his fighting style was still really dull and he didn’t have much going for him other than sitting up from taking damage and doing the Tombstone. Jake was actually well-protected in his loss, as he delivered a couple DDTs and got distracted by his decision to beat up Paul Bearer. Undertaker recovered and Tombstoned Jake onto the outside floor. This would be Jake’s final WWF match for several years as he was looked over for a backstage position and felt betrayed over it. He was so angry that he demanded a release from his contract, else he’d no-show WrestleMania.  WRESTLEMANIA 9 (1993) With Jake gone, Undertaker ended up feuding with Kamala the Ugandan Giant. Yeah, he was both an uncomfortable, racist gimmick and also not in good shape whatsoever. The feud was mainly just Undertaker no-selling Kamala and constantly scaring the poo poo out of him to the point that it started to feel kind of sad. At the very least, Kamala’s manager Harvey Whippleman saw Kamala as damaged goods due to what the Undertaker did to him. At the 1993 Royal Rumble, Undertaker was kicking rear end midway into the big match when Whippleman came out with one of the most ridiculous-looking wrestlers to ever exist, Giant Gonzalez. So, this guy. Jorge Gonzalez was an exceptionally tall dude from Argentina who was signed to play for the Atlanta Hawks. His knee got messed up and his career went up in smoke, but since Ted Turner owned both the Hawks and WCW, he made the transition to wrestler as El Gigante. He was not very good. Eventually, he signed with WWF, where they made him wear a bodysuit with fake fur all over. Gonzalez showed up at the Rumble, not as a competitor, but just as a Whippleman’s revenge. He absolutely hosed up the Undertaker in a way nobody had seen by that point. Like, he did better than guys like Hogan and Warrior. Undertaker was a smoldering pile by the time he was done. WrestleMania 9 is infamous as being one of the worst WrestleManias for a variety of reasons, but one of them is this match. Giant Gonzalez was one of the all-time worst wrestlers to ever exist. The Undertaker was not all that good at this point and it’s not like he could do many of his moves to a guy who was so much bigger than him. It was an atrocious match with an ending that WWE likes to gloss over. Gonzalez couldn’t keep Undertaker down, so the unstoppable giant resorted to the horrifying attack of...using chloroform. Yeah, he chloroformed the Undertaker and got disqualified for it. Then he left and Undertaker eventually got up to stagger after him. They had a rematch at SummerSlam where Undertaker got a decisive win. Gonzalez only lasted a couple more months before getting released.  WRESTLEMANIA 11 (1995) Undertaker missed WrestleMania X because he had been written out as part of the ridiculous “Yokozuna and friends killed Undertaker and he’s reborn to fight his evil doppelganger” storyline that I went over in an earlier post. As the Fake Undertaker fought for Ted Dibiase, Undertaker continued to battle with Dibiase’s faction. At WrestleMania, he faced King Kong Bundy in what really should have been the final boss battle in all of this. Bundy was enjoying a brief resurgence in the company. He was a somewhat big threat in the 80s, main-eventing WrestleMania 2 against Hulk Hogan in a cage. His stock fell afterwards and he was gone shortly after WrestleMania 3, but he was certainly being treated as a major threat again eight years later. There was nothing to their match. Undertaker was up against another opponent he couldn’t really Tombstone, so he had to finish him off with his jumping DDT. Bundy immediately fell back down into obscurity, being released months later. Undertaker continued his feud with the Million Dollar Corporation, which would finally come to an end when he fought Kama the Supreme Fighting Machine at SummerSlam. One notable thing about this match is that one of the commentators does casually mention that Undertaker is 3-0 at WrestleMania.  WRESTLEMANIA 12 (1996) Diesel was at an interesting point in his career. He had just spent a year as champion and it was a financial failure. Vince McMahon took a giant badass trucker dude and tried to make him into a smiling replacement for Hulk Hogan. It did not work and upon losing the title to Bret Hart, Diesel was suddenly able to let loose as a psychotic wrecking machine who gave no fucks. He felt like an early attempt at what Steve Austin would become. He also had one foot out the door due to a beckoning WCW. He spent several months messing with the Undertaker, such as preventing him from winning the WWF Championship. Undertaker started playing supernatural mind games with Diesel, constantly getting under his skin. This match ended up being a million times better than it had any right to be. The two just worked well against each other. It ended with Diesel doing his Jackknife Powerbomb, egging Undertaker on to get up, doing a second Jackknife, and acting horrified that Undertaker got up a second time. Undertaker eventually Tombstoned Diesel and ended their beef. Diesel would go on to challenge Shawn Michaels for the title (as wins and losses mean nothing) and then move to WCW. As for the Undertaker, he would soon meet up with Mankind, someone who would be treated as a major threat to him while being small enough to be mobile in the ring! What a concept!
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Mar 24, 2022 04:32
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SirPhoebos posted:Requesting effortpost on Cody Rhodes in AEW. If this hasn't been touched by the time I finish with the Undertaker posts, I'll do it. Especially since by then we'll probably see him redebut in WWE.
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Mar 24, 2022 20:44
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 WRESTLEMANIA 13 (1997) This one we’ve already talked about to death. What was originally supposed to be a title rematch between Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels somehow turned into Sycho Sid defending the WWF Championship against the Undertaker. While there was nothing much going on between these two compared to being the main event of the biggest show, Undertaker was having a rough year, storywise. Mankind was able to make him look vulnerable time and time again and even Paul Bearer turned heel and left the Undertaker. With Undertaker winning (thanks in part to Bret Hart interfering), there was a feeling of “it’s about time.” Other than a few days in 1991, he has always been treated as an all-powerful sideshow who was too busy or unlucky to be champion. At least now he would be able to hold onto the belt for a few months.  WRESTLEMANIA 14 (1998) Two major things had been going on. Shawn Michaels, acting as a special referee, accidentally smashed Undertaker upside the head with a chair at SummerSlam when he meant to hit Bret Hart. Because of that, Bret Hart had won the title and Undertaker wanted to tear Michaels in two. This in turn helped create D-Generation X as Michaels became more and more of an rear end in a top hat. Undertaker seemed to have a handle on the whole Mankind/Paul Bearer feud and even set Paul’s face on fire at one point. For months after, Paul started screaming about Undertaker’s never-before-mentioned brother Kane and how he was alive. This threat went on for a while, culminating in the first Hell in a Cell match between Michaels and the Undertaker. Kane appeared with red mood lighting, tore the door off the hinges, and Tombstoned his brother. It's still considered to be one of the all-time best wrestler debuts. In the months that followed, Kane continued to terrorize the Undertaker, despite a brief suggestion that he may have forgiven him. This led to their match at WrestleMania and... sorry to say, Undertaker and Kane have never had a good match against each other. They just never meshed well as opponents. Much like the Undertaker vs. Fake Undertaker match from years prior, the Undertaker won by just hitting the Tombstone three times and finally getting the pin.  WRESTLEMANIA 15 (1999) It was the Attitude Era and Vince Russo was the head writer, so poo poo got weird and frantic. Since the last WrestleMania, Undertaker got a high profile match for the title against Stone Cold Steve Austin that he lost, he reconnected with Kane for a bit, and he started his own demonic cult. His Ministry of Darkness started encroaching on Vince McMahon’s territory and even outright stalked his family. Vince sent the Big Boss Man after him in a Hell in a Cell match. This seemed like an odd choice of a match because Boss Man was like a middling henchman while Vince had guys like the Rock and Big Show on his Corporation payroll. For many years, this was considered to be the worst Hell in a Cell match as it didn’t really do anything interesting with the concept. Well, at least, during the match. Undertaker won the lovely match and his Brood underlings appeared to go all Mortal Kombat by having a post-match Fatality. Big Boss Man was hung lifelessly from a noose as the cage rose up. Commentator Michael Cole made sure to segue from this grisly sight by talking up how much fun fans had at WrestleMania Axxess that weekend! Interesting aftermath to this match. Big Boss Man was fine, of course. Him being hanged was just handwaved. Eventually, it was revealed that Vince was behind the Ministry, giving us the Corporate Ministry. There was a thing about Steve Austin being gifted 50% of the company via Linda McMahon or the Board of Directors or whoever. Austin was going to face Vince and Shane in a handicap ladder match with a “winner take all” stipulation and if anyone else from the Corporate Ministry got involved, the McMahons would automatically lose. Austin earned the right to make it a ladder match by beating the Big Boss Man. For his failure, Boss Man was fired. During the ladder match, when Austin had it won, someone had mysteriously lifted the briefcase so Austin couldn’t reach it. The McMahons ended up winning. Then the next night, Boss Man was allowed back into the fold. Lots of people still consider the briefcase thing to be this huge unsolved mystery, which is why you have to spell out every little loving thing to wrestling fans.  WRESTLEMANIA 17 (2001) At some point, Undertaker got tired of being an undead wizard in an age of more grounded wrestling gimmicks. He left for a while and came back as a biker, calling himself “The American Badass" and alternating between having Kid Rock and Limp Bizkit theme music. Kane was still the same as ever, though. Together, the Brothers of Destruction became enemies of Triple H and Big Show. Triple H had made a big deal about deserving to be in the main event as he had defeated all the major names in the company. Undertaker pointed out that that wasn’t true, since he was around and they never had any matches against each other. Undertaker ended up kidnapping and ransoming Stephanie McMahon for a singles match with Triple H. Now, initially this was Triple H’s match to win. He would have ended the Streak before it would be recognized for what it was. The problem was that Shawn Michaels was going to be brought back, having been on the shelf since WrestleMania 14. Triple H vouched for him and Michaels was SOOOOO hosed up on drugs and was sent home. Triple H ended up losing to Undertaker as punishment. WrestleMania 17 is considered one of the all-time best PPVs, so this match was fire. Funny enough, the company would like to pretend it never happened down the line. We’ll get to that later.  WRESTLEMANIA 18 (2002) The entire WWF vs. WCW/ECW storyline happened in-between the previous WrestleMania and Survivor Series. In the aftermath, the Undertaker turned heel and called himself “Big Evil.” The setup of the company was that Vince (heel) and Ric Flair (face) each controlled half of the promotion. Flair ended up increasingly finding issue with Undertaker’s behavior and attacked him with a pipe during one of Undertaker’s matches. They became the Earth-3 version of Austin vs. McMahon. Undertaker wanted a WrestleMania match and Flair was reluctant, as he was more of an office worker than a wrestler. Undertaker then went and beat up Flair’s friends and family until Flair finally relented. It was a no disqualification match and was pretty great. Probably the best part was Arn Anderson sneaking into the ring to hit a picture perfect spinebuster despite being forced to retire years ago. Undertaker defeated Flair with a Tombstone and held up both fists. One-by-one, all of his fingers uncurled to express that he was now 10-0. Up next: the Undertaker’s protégé was certainly not 
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Mar 25, 2022 04:05
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Elephant Ambush posted:and now for a musical interlude And now for another. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbbBlcGeh6U
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Mar 25, 2022 18:02
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 WRESTLEMANIA 19 (2003) Undertaker’s opponents at WrestleMania 19 were Big Show and A-Train. A-Train, otherwise known as Albert, Giant Bernard, and Lord Tensai, was a regular fixture in the WWE midcard and one of the most underrated big men in wrestling. Big Show is well known enough that I probably don’t have to talk about him. Either way, these two guys are not what’s important. What’s important is the Undertaker’s non-existent partner, Nathan Jones. You might remember him as the gigantic War Boy from Mad Max: Fury Road who didn’t have any albino defects. Jones signed with WWE and they did a hell of a job building him up with vignettes that played up his real life history as a convict. “The Colossus of Boggo Road” was gigantic, in awesome shape, and had some serious charisma that made him look like a psychotic killer. Then, for some reason, WWE decided to introduce him as a face and treat his criminal career as something he was moving away from. The Undertaker took Jones under his wing and started training him in storyline. As Undertaker made enemies with Big Show and A-Train, a tag match was put together for WrestleMania. The problem was, Jones was just too awful in the ring. He was a liability. They could not, in good conscience, let him compete that night. Instead, they did a storyline about A-Train and Big Show jumping him backstage and making him too injured to wrestle. Undertaker had to compete by himself in a handicap match. Undertaker going over A-Train? Absolutely. Undertaker going over Big Show? Sure. Undertaker going over both of them at once? Eh... that’s a little too overpowered. But whatever. At the end, Nathan Jones returned on the ramp and did a roundhouse kick to one opponent while Undertaker pinned the other. Nothing became of Nathan Jones in WWE. He bided his time until they toured Australia and then ran off into the night, leaving WWE in the dust.  WRESTLEMANIA 20 (2004) Hold onto your hat, because we’re going to get into some loving crazy Vince McMahon territory. Undertaker was still in his biker phase and had issues with Vince. He was put in a match where if he won, he’d be able to have any match of his choosing. Vince figured he would just challenge for the title, but Undertaker instead laughingly said that he wanted Vince in a Buried Alive match. Vince freaked out about this. And not in the way you’d expect. On the next episode of SmackDown, he made some demands to his underling Paul Heyman. He wanted to – and I’m not making this up – 1) have the Undertaker’s children kidnapped, 2) have terrorists blow up the Undertaker’s house, and 3) have bikers rape the Undertaker’s wife while the Undertaker is forced to watch. Heyman simply went, “Yeah, what the gently caress is wrong with you? You defeated Ted Turner and the US government and look at this poo poo. You've changed, man.” When the Buried Alive match happened, Undertaker was attacked by Kane. Kane had gone through his own transformation around that time, having finally gotten rid of his mask. Turns out he wasn’t horribly burned after all! He was just an ugly dude who sort of looked like Bull from Night Court was on steroids. It was a new lease on his career and he was once again being treated as an unbeatable monster. Kane helped Vince win the match and buried his brother, claiming that he took offense to how human Undertaker had become. Undertaker was gone for months, but started to haunt Kane. Kane would freak out more and more, screaming that he killed the Undertaker. The match was signed for WrestleMania. Undertaker appeared as kind of a hybrid of both versions of his gimmick. He was still a magical zombie man, but with a grounded MMA style to him. He returned with druids and Paul Bearer at his side. The whole battle was rather quick, with Kane refusing to believe it was real and Undertaker just whooping his rear end. The two would go back and forth between being allies and enemies for many years. But hey, this was probably the best match they had against each other, minor as it was.  WRESTLEMANIA 21 (2005) Once upon a time, Triple H started his own Four Horsemen knockoff called Evolution. There, he was joined by his mentor Ric Flair and his proteges Randy Orton and Batista. Things worked out great for them for a long while until SummerSlam 2004. See, Triple H had lost the World Heavyweight Championship to one Chris Benoit and he could not seal the deal when it came to rematches. Orton earned a shot against Benoit and beat him cleanly, ending SummerSlam with the two shaking hands. Triple H was furious that Orton was champion and had him violently kicked out of Evolution. Unfortunately, Randy Orton’s title reign and run as a top face were doomed. He quickly lost the title back to Triple H and lost the feud. Then they changed the focus to having Batista take on Triple H, which overshadowed anything Orton had going on. Instead, Orton decided to challenge the Undertaker. For the first time, they started really pointing out that the Streak was a thing. Undertaker was 12-0 and as WrestleMania 21 was an exercise in giving John Cena and Batista their breakout moments as world champions, Orton planned to be the first guy to give the Undertaker a loss at WrestleMania. This obsession soon turned him heel as he started dropping allies with RKO’s, including his on-air girlfriend Stacy Kiebler. It was a pretty good match where Orton just couldn’t get the win. He and Undertaker kept feuding for a few more months. One of their matches was a Hell in a Cell match, which got Orton’s father Bob Orton Jr. in trouble. Bob was involved in the match and everyone in there was busted open. Bob forgot to mention until after the fact that he has hepatitis. Whoops! Another thing of note here is that this WrestleMania played up its LA location by doing a series of videos of wrestlers reenacting famous movie scenes. Triple H doing Braveheart, Booker T and Eddie Guerrero doing Pulp Fiction, Eugene as Forrest Gump, John Cena and JBL in A Few Good Men, etc. Undertaker did his own version of Dirty Harry, which didn’t have much parody in it. He was just being Dirty Harry.  WRESTLEMANIA 22 (2006) After the Streak was recognized, every opponent had an air to them that they could very well be the person who beat the Undertaker. Every opponent, that is, except Mark Henry. Mark Henry was the definition of buyer’s remorse for Vince McMahon. Competing as a power lifter in the 1996 Olympics, he was offered a ten-year contract with the promotion that was worth millions of dollars. Not only did he not place in the Olympics, but he just wasn’t very good in the ring either. Vince tried to run him out of the company by putting him in all sorts of embarrassing storylines, including stuff like Henry admitting to sleeping with his sister, Henry being in a relationship with an elderly woman, and who can forget the trans panic incident that aged like fine wine? Henry would not budge and by the time his contract was over, he had figured himself enough that he was given another (albeit less lucrative) contract. Henry was a few years away from hitting his peak with the Hall of Pain gimmick, but he was doing okay as a threatening heel near the top of the card. After Henry failed to beat Kurt Angle for the World Heavyweight Championship, he decided that the Undertaker would share his fate. He interfered in a match between Angle and Undertaker, ambushing the latter and causing it to end in a disqualification. Undertaker and Mark Henry would then face off in a Casket Match. It was decent, but nothing to write home about. Undertaker would seal Henry into the casket and keep the Streak going.  WRESTLEMANIA 23 (2007) Finally, the Undertaker won the Royal Rumble. He also became the first to ever win at the #30 spot. Despite his late entry, the Rumble ended with Undertaker and Shawn Michaels battling it out for a long, long stretch of time. Seeds were planted for the future with that pairing. Undertaker had his choice between the WWE Champion Cena, World Heavyweight Champion Batista, and ECW Champion Bobby Lashley. He chose Batista and chokeslammed him. Batista dusted himself off and was like, “Hey, cool. I respect the Undertaker.” Then Undertaker kept attacked him more like a dick and Batista had finally had enough. They did a tag match where Batista and Undertaker had to face Cena and his WrestleMania challenger Shawn Michaels. Batista hit Undertaker with a spinebuster and abandoned him to get thrashed. The WrestleMania match was off the charts. In my opinion, it was both Batista’s best match and the best Streak match. The two just had amazing chemistry and there was something neat about their dynamic. Batista was on Undertaker’s level, but being a powerful face, he didn’t crumble to fear like others would. He saw through the otherworldly dramatics and took on Undertaker man-to-man. Undertaker won, but the two continued to have matches in the months that followed. It was good poo poo, ultimately ruined by Undertaker’s next WrestleMania opponent. Up next: DX hits him with everything they got.
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Mar 26, 2022 05:52
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Prof. Crocodile posted:So last night I saw my friends who like wrestling, and they insisted I watch an AEW show from a few weeks ago. It is the second time that I have watched wrestling in like 25 years, so here are my observations as an uniformed spectator, in no particular order: CM Punk was a popular wrestler from the indies who went to WWE, became a huge name as kind of a counter-culture kind of guy, but the whole experience broke him down physically and mentally to the point that he just quit wrestling for seven years. He came out of retirement to sign with AEW, which was seen as the biggest deal. MJF is considered the future of the company and also one of the most hated heels. The two had been messing with each other for months and a couple weeks prior to the match, MJF said what amounted to, "I went through some bad poo poo as a teen, then my favorite wrestler upped and quit when I needed him the most, so now I'm an rear end in a top hat. I don't quit so I'm better than you." Punk was all, "Oh, that's... huh. Sorry?" and MJF kicked him in the balls and brutalized him. Also, MJF has a bodyguard named Wardlow who he regularly pushes around and abuses. Wardlow is done with MJF's poo poo. quote:[*]Jim Ross is still calling wrestling matches, but he's a shadow of his former self. Honestly, the announce team was kind of worthless in general. I think we could have safely muted the show. Jim Ross is definitely over the hill at this point, but the rest of the announce team is considered to be top of the line. Well, except when Chris Jericho does commentary sometimes. quote:[*]There are two women's champions. One of them is named Jade and looks like the Soviet scientists from Rocky 4 used their machines to design the perfect woman wrestler. The other one is a cartoonishly bitchy dentist, and she is loving wonderful. Both champions seemed to be worse at wrestling than the face-painted Latinas that they were fighting, but not egregiously so. Fun fact: Britt Baker is legitimately a dentist. One of the reasons why she didn't sign with WWE is because they wouldn't let her keep that job. Similarly, she's dating Adam Cole, the guy with the Halo costume, who didn't re-sign with WWE partially because they wouldn't let him stream on Twitch. But yeah, Jade is something special. She's only been wrestling for just over a year, but they understand her star power. Recently they've been having Bryan Danielson (arguably the best performer in the business) personally training her and it's been paying off. quote:[*]Sting is still (kind of) wrestling? I think someone itt mentioned that, but I guess I just assumed he was a manager or just randomly showed up and hit people with baseball bats. He's looking rough. Maybe he needs the money? Sting more wants to end his career on his terms. He was a mess during WCW and while TNA treated him fairly well, the place was a dumpster fire. WWE wasn't much better. He was signed to AEW to do a match here and there, but people have been digging it and he's been loving it, so they let the 63 year old do his wacky tag matches.
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Mar 26, 2022 16:14
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 WRESTLEMANIA 24 (2008) There were some complications in 2007 due to some injuries. Ken Kennedy won the Money in the Bank briefcase at WrestleMania 23 and announced ahead of time that he planned to cash it in for a WrestleMania title match. Then Kennedy had an injury that at the time seemed severe and he dropped the briefcase in a match against Edge. Soon after, the Undertaker needed some time off, so they had Edge cash in on the briefcase when Undertaker was vulnerable and he won the World Heavyweight Championship. Shortly after, it was discovered that Kennedy’s injury wasn’t all that bad to begin with. Whoops! Edge had become more of a cartoonish and entertaining take on Triple H’s "Cerebral Assassin" persona. He gained a major advantage by courting SmackDown GM Vickie Guerrero and abusing her power. When repeatedly faced with the likes of Batista and Undertaker, he would constantly outthink them, like using decoys. He had a stable called La Familia made up of himself, Vickie, the Edgeheads (Zack Ryder and Curt Hawkins as his fanboys/decoys), and Chavo Guerrero. The Undertaker won a really kickass Elimination Chamber match to become #1 contender, last defeating his rival Batista. Going into WrestleMania, Edge played up how they were both undefeated at WrestleMania (well, in singles competition, as Edge had lost a Money in the Bank match) and how he was going to make Undertaker 15-1. Edge would admit years later that he was asked to be the one to end the Streak, but refused, not feeling it was right for him to be the one. WrestleMania 24 is one of the better WrestleManias and this was a drat good main event. Undertaker fought off La Familia and took out Edge with his new MMA submission move, the Hell’s Gate. Then his celebratory pyro went haywire and accidentally burned some fans. The feud between Undertaker and Edge would continue for months, including a stretch where Vince McMahon had gotten around to seeing Dark Knight and decided to have Edge behave like a hybrid of the Joker and Two-Face. This all culminated at SummerSlam, where Undertaker defeated Edge in Hell in a Cell and afterwards chokeslammed him through the ring and into Hell itself.  WRESTLEMANIA 25 (2009) I mentioned that the 2007 Royal Rumble ended with Undertaker and Shawn Michaels battling it out for a long stretch until Undertaker won. The 2008 Rumble began with Undertaker and Michaels as the first two and they continued the rivalry until Michaels was able to eliminate the Undertaker. By 2009, Michaels wasn’t allowed to enter the Rumble due to storyline reasons. Michaels had fallen on hard times. He had mentioned that he made some bad investments and he was doing horrible money-wise, while too proud to ask Triple H for help. Meanwhile, John Bradshaw Layfield was having his own issues. Despite being a former champion, JBL felt himself slinking into obscurity and parody and wanted to fight against that. WrestleMania 25 was going to be in his home state of Texas and he wanted to be a big deal at that show. JBL ended up buying Michaels’ services and made him his personal henchman. He kept trying to use him to help him procure world titles, but for one reason or another, it never worked out. Michaels hated himself for being part of this and Undertaker briefly appeared before him, explaining that sometimes you need to go through Hell to reach Heaven. JBL’s failures led to an all-or-nothing match with Michaels where if JBL won, he would practically own Michaels. If Michaels won, JBL would cut him loose and pay off all his debt. Michaels ended up winning. JBL still saw opportunity going into WrestleMania and made a public challenge to the Undertaker. Michaels popped up and said that he wanted to end the Undertaker’s Streak. The two had a match over it and Michaels won. Then Vladimir Kozlov, a bland Russian brute who had once beaten Undertaker clean, showed up and said he wanted to fight the Undertaker. Michaels beat him too. Even though he didn’t have a perfect win-loss record, Michaels was regularly considered to be “Mr. WrestleMania” due to his lengthy career of memorable matches. With the Undertaker’s Streak being a thing, that meant that this was the ultimate battle of who best represented the show itself. Some would call this the greatest match in WrestleMania history, marred only by Undertaker taking a nasty dive on the outside due to a cameraman failing to catch him correctly. Otherwise, it was a great stuff from start to finish, ending with Michaels doing a backflip off the top rope and getting caught into a Tombstone. They made a dumb decision not to make this the main event as Triple H vs. Randy Orton followed it and put on a less-than-stellar bout as the fans were just too tired to care. As for JBL? He won the Intercontinental Championship going into WrestleMania and figured that would give him the big dick energy needed to thrive. Instead, he lost the belt to Rey Mysterio in mere seconds. Afterwards, dumbfounded and embarrassed, he angrily yelled that he quit.  WRESTLEMANIA 26 (2010) Shawn Michaels vs. the Undertaker won the Slammy Award for Best Match of 2009, and deservedly so. During the award ceremony episode of Raw, Michaels accepted the award and started talking up the match. He trailed off for a second before angrily ranting that, drat it, he was not done. He wanted his loving rematch. He KNEW he could beat the Undertaker at WrestleMania! Undertaker was World Heavyweight Champion at the time and told him that he had moved on. He didn’t want to run it back. Michaels figured, okay, fine. He was going to do this the old fashioned way. If Undertaker was a world champion, then Michaels would just win the Royal Rumble and get his title shot. He lost near the end of the match and had a total breakdown over it. He later tried to get over it by suggesting that he and Triple H could do some fun D-Generation X stuff at WrestleMania 26. Triple H shot him down, as he wanted to do his own thing and maybe get his own title shot (he didn’t). At the PPV prior to WrestleMania, the Undertaker defended his title in an Elimination Chamber match. This was rather infamous, as there was a pyrotechnic accident and Undertaker was literally set on fire on his way to the ring. He went into his pod, removed his leather coat, and repeatedly poured bottled water on his chest whenever the camera wasn’t pointed on him. Anyway, the desperate and frustrated Michaels had somehow snuck into the Chamber and sabotaged the Undertaker's chances at retaining. Chris Jericho ended up World Heavyweight Champion and Undertaker was pissed. Undertaker decided that he would grant Michaels a rematch, but only if Michaels put his career on the line. Michaels agreed to his terms, claiming that he had no reason to continue his career if he couldn’t pull this off. This time the match was the main event. The two put on another classic, this time without count-outs or disqualification. In the end, Michaels weakly kneeled before Undertaker, knowing that he was done, but refusing to give up. He slapped the poo poo out of him, which caused Undertaker to angrily deliver a jumping Tombstone. That was it for Michaels, who afterwards stumbled up the ramp while remarking that his family was going to be so sick of him in a few weeks. Shawn Michaels would stay retired...except for that time the prince of Saudi Arabia gave him a shitload of money.  WRESTLEMANIA 27 (2011) Undertaker had yet another feud with Kane, which not only wrote him off TV for months, but also ended his status as a regular part of the roster. While he would return, he would only compete part-time and sometimes only once a year for the rest of his career. In the beginning of 2011, vignettes would start airing of a man in a black trenchcoat dramatically walking through the rain, following with a specific date. At first, fans were pretty psyched because this looked to be an announcement that Sting had signed with WWE. But no, it was just the Undertaker. They were making a big deal about a guy who was already on the roster showing up on TV. Funny enough, TNA did a remake of one of these videos to announce that Sting was coming back. Undertaker came to the ring, said nothing, and suddenly Triple H’s music started playing. Triple H stepped up to Undertaker, pointed at the WrestleMania sign, did the “SUCK IT!” gesture, and left. Yes, Triple H basically signed, “At WrestleMania, you will suck my dick!” and Michael Cole literally followed this up with, “Is this the Undertaker’s fate at WrestleMania?!” Also, WWE made sure to not make any mention of their previous WrestleMania match 10 years prior. Triple H proceeded to verbally bury the locker room by claiming that he and Undertaker were on a higher level than anyone else back there and none of the full-timers measured up. When Sheamus – a guy who had a win over Triple H and even put him on the shelf, storywise – stepped out to comment, Triple H just thrashed him like he was nothing, completely negating their whole rivalry. While this was Triple H trying to avenge Michaels’ retirement, Michaels himself was pretty adamant that this was not a match that Triple H could win. And he was right! After one of Triple H’s usual plodding epics, Undertaker put him in the Hell’s Gate. Triple H tried to get his hands on a nearby sledgehammer, but in the end had to tap out. Undertaker was too hurt to stand and celebrate while Triple H was able to walk away. Fun fact: for this match, Undertaker’s theme was Johnny Cash’s “Ain’t No Grave.” NBC did a special where they replayed parts of the show and they changed Undertaker’s theme to Katy Perry.  WRESTLEMANIA 28 (2012) Triple H’s take away from WrestleMania 27 was, “I walked away and Undertaker didn’t, so in a roundabout way, I actually won!” Undertaker hated this and kept bugging him for a rematch. After being called a coward over it, Triple H accepted a rematch, but it was going to be Hell in a Cell and Michaels would be the referee. Said match did give us the closest nearfall of Undertaker’s WrestleMania career when Michaels hit a superkick, followed immediately by a Triple H Pedigree. Undertaker still kicked out and eventually took Triple H out with a Tombstone. Afterwards, Undertaker and Michaels helped Triple H to the back and the commentators made a big deal out of this being “The End of an Era.” I mean, it really wasn’t, but this is the same WrestleMania where they did a Cena vs. Rock rematch and the first one was called “Once in a Lifetime.” Up next: Paul Heyman guys.
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Mar 28, 2022 02:25
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As brought up by Cornwind Evil, the Undertaker’s Streak had become such a big deal in WWE’s mythos that it became part of the WWE games. After all, if becoming champion was like defeating M. Bison, then defeating Undertaker at WrestleMania was like defeating Akuma in the secret, nigh-impossible boss battle. One game had you face Undertaker at WrestleMania, armed with hilariously cheap AI and other bullshit like teleporting. SmackDown vs. Raw 2011 had a story mode where your character is intent on ending the Streak and poo poo gets nuts. Not only do you resurrect Paul Bearer so you can beat information out of him, but there’s a part where the Undertaker fucks with your head as you prepare to take part in a Royal Rumble. In one of the strangest WWE video game moments ever, you enter a Rumble match in a darkened arena where all the crowd and opponents are made up of druids. When you win, you snap out of it and everything’s back to normal. Anyway, back to the shows.  WRESTLEMANIA 29 (2013) CM Punk’s lengthy run as WWE Champion had come to an end because drat it, Rock vs. Cena II needed to be for the title. He, Big Show, Randy Orton, and Sheamus had a match to determine who would challenge the Undertaker with Punk winning. People hated this route to the match and the writer who was behind it was fired. I always thought it was weird, considering Undertaker vs. Michaels at WrestleMania 25 was so beloved and it literally started because Michaels won matches against JBL and Vladimir Kozlov. Tragedy turned itself into inspiration as a day later, Bill Moody/Paul Bearer died for real. With many believing that Moody would have genuinely loved having his death used to push such a storyline (not being sarcastic), Punk came out the next Raw to tell the Undertaker how this was a blessing in disguise. In Paul’s eyes, the Undertaker would always be perfect. Paul was spared from seeing the Undertaker lose to Punk. That night, Punk was put in a match against Kane. Kane won thanks to Undertaker’s magic interference because, WrestleMania build or not, this was in memory of Paul Bearer. Afterwards, Punk stole the Undertaker’s urn, which was now said to hold Paul’s ashes. A week or so later, Punk disguised himself as a druid so he could ambush the Undertaker and pour Paul’s ashes all over him. WrestleMania 29 was a lousy show overall, but Undertaker vs. Punk was a breath of fresh air. Pretty solid, the crowd seemed to be split up until an amazing spot where Punk put Undertaker in his submission, the Anaconda Vice, and Undertaker straight-up just sat up and angrily looked a terrified Punk in the face. Undertaker ultimately won with a Tombstone and the feud was over. Punk would not last long enough to partake in the next WrestleMania. As for the Undertaker...  WRESTLEMANIA 30 (2014) The night after WrestleMania 27, Brock Lesnar made his big return to the ring after a seven-year disappearance. Even though he was booked to look like a monster, he proceeded to lose his first match against John Cena. He had a series of matches against Triple H that had him win 2-1. He had a hard-fought win against CM Punk and a quick squash against the Big Show. Only wrestling sporadically, he was going into WrestleMania 30 with a 4-2 record since returning. Not the most spectacular of runs for someone who was supposed to be seen as such a big deal. Brock wanted a shot at the championship (both titles were united at the time) and since the world title situation was a little too busy at the time going into WrestleMania 30, the Authority offered Brock an open contract to have any other match. At first, this wasn’t good enough for Brock, but then the Undertaker came out and confronted him. Brock, no longer caring about that title match, signed the contract. The Undertaker stabbed his pen into Brock’s hand and signed the contract in blood. A funny moment going into the show had Brock come into the ring and call out the Undertaker. “I’m here. You’re here. LET’S DO THIS!” Only he pronounced it so weird. “Lets... do... THIS?!?” And that’s why he had Paul Heyman there to talk for him. As Undertaker always has dramatic entrances, this time he came out with 21 labeled caskets. It’s pretty funny because it cut away before it could show the one with CM Punk’s name on it because WWE really did not want to reference him ever again. The match was a bit of a dud. Brock dropped Undertaker on his head within the first couple minutes and he spent the rest of the time with his bell rung. Everything seemed sloppy and disoriented until Brock hit Undertaker with his third F5. A three-count later and the Streak was over. Fans were shocked to say the least. We would see confused reaction shots all about, and it was only until the “21-1” graphic appeared on the various screens that it really sunk in. Due to being kind of hosed up from the match, Undertaker went to the hospital and Vince McMahon went with him. That meant that Michael Cole’s commentary for the rest of the night was actually very good, as he was left to his own devices. As the man who ended the Streak, Brock Lesnar made the most of it. He became S-tier compared to the rest of the roster. At SummerSlam, he defeated John Cena for the title in a match that was ridiculously one-sided. As Paul Heyman put it, winning a world title was being elected president. Beating the Undertaker at WrestleMania was like being elected God. Crazy to think that at one point they were grooming Ted Dibiase Jr. to one day be the guy to end the Streak.  WRESTLEMANIA 31 (2015) WrestleMania 31 overall had a messy build. On the main show, there were seven matches and three of them were based around part-timers. That meant little in matches going into the show and more in one-sided promos. Not only did this affect Triple H vs. Sting and Roman Reigns vs. Brock Lesnar, but it especially affected Bray Wyatt vs. Undertaker. Bray Wyatt had been introduced as the next Undertaker-type. He was supernatural and spooky and could shake off all sorts of damage. They just didn’t have him win too many of his major feuds, so after a while, he started to meander. Wyatt spent weeks calling out the Undertaker, doing his promos that sounded cool, but basically meant nothing. Undertaker hadn’t appeared on TV since losing to Brock and wasn’t going to be appearing on TV until WrestleMania, so the most we got out of him was a lightning bolt appearing and setting Wyatt’s rocking chair on fire. The show was at an outdoor arena and they tried to make the match late enough that it would take place at night. They didn’t quite pull it off. While the match was fine, it was ultimately forgettable and considering Undertaker needed to rebuild his legacy a bit, Wyatt didn’t have a chance. Another big loss for “the next Undertaker.”  WRESTLEMANIA 32 (2016) This one is out there. After being gone for about seven years, Shane McMahon appeared and started to annoy his family members. He mentioned some kind of “lockbox” that had dirt on Vince and they made a deal. Shane would compete at WrestleMania. If he won, he could run Raw. If he lost, he would give up the lockbox. Vince decided to put him in a Hell in a Cell match with the Undertaker. Nothing like putting the WrestleMania legend in a match where he’s the third most important part of it. To make up for that, and to make the winner obvious, Vince claimed that if Undertaker lost, it would be his final WrestleMania. This could have been okay because a lot of the time, Shane understands what works as a wrestler. Like his father, the idea is to absorb punishment and exploit your opponent’s openings when possible to make up for the lack of actual training and in-ring know-how. Unfortunately, Shane has a tendency to believe his own bullshit too much and treats himself like a top tier wrestler. Dude really thinks his punches don’t look like dogshit. Somehow this match went a full half hour. Cut off at least ten minutes and it would have been fine. Having Shane constantly stun Undertaker so he could set up spots and try doing sloppy MMA? Not so much. At least it ended well with Shane putting Undertaker on a table, climbing to the top of the cage, and doing an elbow drop that went through the table after Undertaker dodged it. Undertaker gave him a respectful pat on the cheek and finished him off with a Tombstone. On the next night of Raw, Vince decided to give Shane the show anyway. The lockbox remains a mystery to this day.  WRESTLEMANIA 33 (2017) The 2017 Royal Rumble was built up as having the most star power ever by putting Brock Lesnar, Bill Goldberg, and the Undertaker in it. Plus Roman Reigns was #30 despite losing a world title match earlier that night. Whatever, Randy Orton won the whole thing and nobody really remembers that part. After Undertaker eliminated Goldberg, Roman took out Undertaker. Undertaker angrily glared at Roman and his WrestleMania match was figured out. Granted, they seemed to be hinting that Braun Strowman would also be involved, but he was just someone that Undertaker and Roman could beat up without harming the mystique of the match. Besides, word was that Undertaker was not very fond of Braun and did not want to work with him. In a night that gave us an explosive sprint of a Universal Championship match between Brock Lesnar and Goldberg and a laughably stupid WWE Championship match between Randy Orton and Bray Wyatt, the main event was Roman Reigns vs. the Undertaker with nothing on the line. Just who gets to do the, “This is my yard!” catchphrase. By this point, Undertaker was just cooked. Dude was too broken down and Roman wasn’t good enough to counter that. The two botched a lot and couldn’t pull off certain spots. Finally, Roman ended the whole thing by bouncing across the ropes several times and hitting the Spear. The show ended with Undertaker removing his gloves and setting his hat and coat in the middle of the ring as he walked off. This was his big goodbye. WWE didn’t have the guts to have Roman go full heel after this, but they at least had him play up how much hate he was getting on the following Raw by coming to the ring, soaking up the boos for a long stretch of time, announcing, “This is my yard now,” and walking off.  WRESTLEMANIA 34 (2018) One of the best things a wrestling promotion can do is figure out what their biggest possible match is, hold off on it long enough, then do it with the highest profile possible. It had been many, many years since John Cena and the Undertaker had cross paths in the ring. In terms of a singles match, it was about 15 years earlier. Maybe it was because Undertaker couldn’t live up to the hype, but the way they did Cena vs. Undertaker at WrestleMania was certainly questionable. Cena tried the usual routes to have a big WrestleMania match. He lost the Royal Rumble, he lost at Elimination Chamber, etc. He was talking about just going to the show as a fan, but then he thought about it and said he wanted a match with Undertaker, not caring about how he supposedly retired a year ago. Cena acted like people behind the scenes were telling him not to do this, but he kept verbally railing on the Undertaker for being a coward. At WrestleMania, Cena was in the crowd, enjoying the show until a referee told him that the Undertaker was seen showing up at the arena. Cena later entered the ring, expecting the Undertaker, but instead was greeted by guitar-playing troll Elias. Cena beat up Elias and finally the Undertaker arrived. Cena vs. Undertaker was 3 minutes of Undertaker absolutely destroying Cena and beating him with complete ease. There was zero follow-up to this.  WRESTLEMANIA 36 (2020) Undertaker skipped WrestleMania 35, which was the first time he had ever missed one of these shows without being injured. He still appeared on the following Raw to beat up Elias. At one of the Saudi Arabia shows, they did a gauntlet match where AJ Styles cheated his way into beating Rey Mysterio by forfeit. As he celebrated what seemed like his victory, Undertaker showed up and easily defeated him to win the gauntlet. In the weeks that followed, AJ Styles kept calling out the Undertaker for a match at WrestleMania, dropping real life references like calling him by his real name and mentioning his wife. Considering this was right when COVID was kicking in, they decided to make their match the first ever Boneyard Match. What is a Boneyard Match? Well, it’s a pre-taped fight in a cemetery that looks like something out of a late-night Cinemax movie, albeit without the boobs. Cinematic matches had become the flavor of the month in the pandemic, for better and for worse. This was easily for the better as Undertaker was really unhappy with his inability to have a good final match and putting him in an overly-edited match with someone like Styles was the best case scenario for him. The main event of WrestleMania 36 Night 1 was this brawl, which ended with Undertaker kicking AJ Styles into an open grave and burying him in dirt before riding off on a motorcycle. Finally, Undertaker could move on with his life. He could rest in peace. Then again, it is a bit deflating that they could have done Undertaker vs. Sting in a cinematic match and chose not to. Good going, guys.
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Mar 31, 2022 00:47
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SirPhoebos posted:Reposting my request for an effort post on Cody Rhodes in AEW (in case that was forgotten). I will start on this very soon. But in order to talk about Cody in AEW, I have to talk about Cody in WWE. And before I can talk about Cody in WWE, I have to talk about Dusty in WWF. Which I will have in a little bit.
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Apr 3, 2022 03:03
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Gavok posted:And before I can talk about Cody in WWE, I have to talk about Dusty in WWF. Dusty Rhodes was a big deal in Jim Crockett Promotions, which was absorbed into Georgia Championship Wrestling/World Championship Wrestling. While there were better wrestlers in the ring and definitely better looking dudes in every direction, the guy could connect to a crowd like nothing else. This flabby, funky dude had charisma pouring out of him. He had his problems, of course. Namely as a booker who had himself win all the time and ran some of his bigger ideas into the ground. Like the infamous “Dusty Finish” where a face would win a title match and either immediately after or the next day, the ref would be all, “Actually, it turns out there was some bullshit technicality I didn’t notice, so we’re just going to pretend the match never happened.” Most of all, he did not get along with standards and practices at Turner Broadcasting. They did not want any blood and let me tell you, one things that the Rhodes family loves is bleeding all over the place. Just look at any picture of Dusty’s Ruffles potato chip of a forehead. He did a storyline where the Road Warriors got pissed and stabbed Dusty in the eye with one of their shoulder spikes. WCW kicked him out the door right after that. Dusty was brought into WWF eventually, which was natural in one sense, but also...interesting. Vince McMahon always seemed to have an axe to grind when it came to Dusty in particular. In fact, there are no less than THREE WWF personalities from the late-80’s/early-90’s who existed for the sake of making fun of Dusty. 1) Virgil. Ted Dibiase’s manservant and bodyguard was named after Dusty’s real first name. 2) Akeem the African Dream. At one point, WWF decided to take their mountainous biker One Man Gang and transform him into a guy who thinks he represents Africa. Debuting the gimmick in a segment that is impressive in how racist it is, Akeem’s whole deal was meant to parody Dusty’s tendency to dance around and talk jive. 3) Reo Rodgers. A very shortlived character played by Bruce Pritchard, Reo was just a heel commentator and backstage interviewer in the form of a bad Dusty impression. He was around for maybe a month before they dropped it. While Dusty got to actually interact with Virgil and Akeem, Reo was introduced years after Dusty had left the company. The big talking point about Dusty being in WWF was that Vince had him wear yellow polka dots on his gear. People will treat this like the most horrible, petty act, like this was worse than the Montreal Screwjob. Personally, I never saw it as a big deal. He was already an ugly fat dude bouncing around in his underwear. Sorry that Vince “made him look ridiculous.” Dusty was given a solid spot in the upper-midcard, but a spot that unfortunately did not come with any chance for growth. It was an era where Hulk Hogan was the champ and the best you could do is have him temporarily be replaced with someone who was Hogan-esque like Randy Savage or the Ultimate Warrior. Dusty presumably could have been Intercontinental Champion, but the stars never aligned with that. Instead, he was given Hogan’s leftovers. He would take on those who Hogan was done feuding with, albeit with less formulaic matches. Dusty’s main feuds were against Big Boss Man, Randy Savage, Ted Dibiase, and he even had a match or two against Akeem (Spider-Man pointing at Spider-Man) in there. In addition to one of the greatest theme songs in wrestling history, Dusty was soon accompanied by Sapphire. Sapphire was a middle-aged black woman who was a Dusty superfan and would eventually go from sitting in the front row to being in his corner. Apparently, Dusty wasn’t a big fan of this, but people dug it and it really sold the whole “champion of the common man” gimmick he had going on. To give you an idea of how he was getting Hogan’s leftovers, Hogan main-evented WrestleMania 5 by beating Randy Savage for the title. Their feud would keep going until the end of the year. Immediately after, Savage would be busy feuding with Dusty and WrestleMania 6 would have Dusty and Sapphire defeat Savage and Queen Sherri in the company’s first mixed tag team match. It wasn’t until SummerSlam that Dusty’s run started to hit a snag. I guess it became apparent that Dusty only had a few months left and was planning on returning to WCW (where, once again, he would be given booking power), because it all went downhill. Sapphire was written off TV due to Ted Dibiase paying her a shitload of money to betray and abandon Dusty. Dusty found out about this during a match with Savage, so by running off to find Sapphire and getting counted out, Dusty basically lost his long-running Savage feud. Dusty’s young son Dustin was brought in to help him take on Dibiase and Virgil. A tag match was put together for Royal Rumble 1991. How buried was the Rhodes family at this point? The focus going into the match was how Virgil was starting to lose his patience working for Dibiase and was ready to turn on him. The match had a major miscommunication between Virgil and Dibiase for the sake of Dibiase getting pissed and setting up a post-match confrontation to set off Virgil’s face turn. It’s just that EVEN THEN, Dibiase and Virgil still won! In any other situation, Dusty and Dustin would have won this because that’s how wrestling logic works, but even after the big in-story gently caress-up, Dibiase still won the match and the aftermath made people forget Dusty was even there to begin with. Dusty and Dustin went to WCW. Funny enough, Dustin left WCW under similar circumstances as his father years earlier. He was in a King of the Road match, where he and his opponent wrestled in the back of a truck as it drove down a long stretch of road. He and his opponent Blacktop Bully cut themselves open to add some blood to the match and despite the PPV being called Uncensored, WCW made sure to edit the poo poo out of that match to hide as much blood as possible. Dustin returned to WWF in the mid-90’s to become Goldust. While he would be fired and rehired a million times over, the Goldust gimmick would become a huge mainstay in the company up until the late 2010’s. As for Dusty? After Royal Rumble 1991, he worked with practically every wrestling promotion under the sun in one way or another. WWE brought him back in in 2005 and inducted him into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2007. He was inducted by Dustin, as well as another one of his sons. People online noticed how charismatic the younger son was and wondered how long until this kid got himself a WWE contract...
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Apr 4, 2022 00:00
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Bringing us back on topic. https://twitter.com/jonmoxIeys/status/1510817532055277587
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Apr 4, 2022 04:27
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Cody Rhodes started his WWE career with one of the worst gimmicks you can have: generic wrestledude who is famously the son of another wrestler. It’s only slightly better than being a generic wrestledude who is famously the son of another wrestler but has a different last name. He went through his early months getting beat up by Randy Orton and eventually taking part in a feud with Hardcore Holly with the story being that Cody gradually earned his respect through losing a bunch of matches and they went on to become a tag team. Cody and Holly became tag champs for a short while, which led to a feud with Ted Dibiase Jr. Ted Jr. challenged the two of them to a tag title match against him and a mystery partner. The payoff, which is still great, was that Cody was Dibiase’s partner. By betraying Holly, Cody Rhodes won the tag titles off of himself. Around this point, WWE started to realize how many second generation wrestlers they had on their roster and considering they were about to really get behind Randy Orton for a bit, it made sense to do a stable of them. And so, Legacy was created, made up of Randy Orton, Cody Rhodes, Ted Dibiase Jr... and also Manu (son of Afa) and Sim Snuka (son of Jimmy Snuka) for a couple weeks. If Legacy was the monster cereal icons, then those last two were Yummy Mummy and Fruit Brute. Legacy was pretty rad for a while. Cody and Dibiase made for great henchmen for Orton and despite Orton having a character of being a total lunatic who would snap at any moment, he treated his teammates with respect and care. Orton won the 2009 Royal Rumble simply because Cody and Dibiase were there to back him up and help him swarm everyone else. While Orton was busy defending his world title, Cody and Dibiase ended up feuding with the reunited D-Generation X. All things considered, it wasn’t the worst feud. Sure, DX won in the end, but Legacy won an I Quit match in there and even their loss in a Hell in a Cell blow-off match was played up as them having ample chance to win but screwing themselves over via being assholes who couldn’t leave well enough alone. As time moved on, Legacy was running out of gas and Orton was starting to become more abusive to his charges. This is when WWE straight-up dropped the ball. Two moments of note happened around this time. One, Orton had a match with Dibiase where he kicked his rear end with Dibiase not allowed to fight back. Dibiase looked so pissed about it and the crowd was so behind him to do something, but nothing ever happened. Dusty Rhodes showed up to aid Legacy because WWE was doing a gimmick where every week they would have a celebrity guest host Raw like it was SNL. Raw ended with Legacy standing tall and Orton just randomly decided to RKO Dusty. Cody was furious, but held back his instinct to attack Orton. The crowd loudly chanted “CODY!” In the recap package on the next episode, they edited it so that the crowd was chanting “CENA!” To give you an idea, Legacy lasted nearly as long as Dusty Rhodes was in WWF. It went on and on and fans just wanted Cody and/or Dibiase to do something against Orton. They kept dragging it more and more and when Orton finally beat the other two up by himself, the fans cheered Orton because he was at least being proactive. It was so weird. Something was missing with Cody during all of this. There was something that Dusty and Goldust had that Cody had yet to tap into: insanity. What linked Dusty and Goldust was that in their own ways, they were loving insane and off the wall. Cody was being a generic wrestledude, even after Legacy was done with. He needed to figure out his own unique way of being crazy. WWE’s website did an article where they polled all the women working for WWE and had them vote on who the most handsome man on the roster was. Cody ended up being the winner. Cody came out to bask in that win and said from now on he wanted to be known as “Dashing Cody Rhodes.” He repeated the name. Then again. And again. And again. He kept repeating his new name with different inflections and it was becoming apparent that not only was he a narcissist, but he was a deranged narcissist. Disaster turned into opportunity as Cody endured an injury during a match with Rey Mysterio. Mysterio’s knee brace messed up Cody’s face and since Cody was both a narcissist and a real-life comic fan, he turned it into a Doctor Doom gimmick. During his entrance, newspaper headlines would appear, labeling him as “GROTESQUE” and “DISFIGURED.” He’d wear a see-through plastic mask and wear a green entrance hoodie. The mask would even double as an illegal weapon. The whole thing ruled. Cody and Dibiase reunited during this time with Dibiase going around handing out paper bags for fans to put on their heads so as not to disgust Cody. This revised alliance gave us Cody’s beautiful story about how they were involved in a six-man tag that was supposed to go about 20 minutes and the ref hosed up and counted the pin in less than three minutes. When they went backstage, Vince looked like he was ready to tear them a new one, but Dibiase stormed over and yelled, “That referee was trying to gently caress on me!” More confused than angry, Vince slowly put his headset back on and sat back down. Up next: friends with a genius.
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Apr 4, 2022 11:53
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16-bit Butt-Head posted:vince may not even know that the marvel cinematic universe exists... i envy him Same. He still gets to experience all those awesome movies for the first time.
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Apr 5, 2022 13:34
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And now for the conclusion of Cody Rhodes in WWE. Er... the first time around. Cody’s Undashing gimmick came to an end after another feud with Randy Orton, who destroyed the mask. Cody moved on to a neat little young vs. old feud with Booker T and eventually won the Intercontinental Championship. He was very insistent about making the IC belt a major thing again and even had it redesigned to look like how it did in 1990. As IC champ, he feuded with Big Show. A lot has been said about the infamous Sheamus vs. Daniel Bryan “18 seconds” match at WrestleMania 28, but while I have no confirmation, I’m pretty sure the original plan was for Cody to suffer that fate. He went into WrestleMania constantly pestering Big Show about how bad his win-loss record was at that show throughout the years and how Big Show never got to have a big WrestleMania moment. Big Show beating Cody for the belt in mere seconds with one knockout punch would have made plenty of sense as payoff. Instead, the two had a very average match that Big Show eventually won. In the aftermath, we got one of the funniest match endings of all time. Big Show defended the title against Cody in a Tables Match. On paper, there was no way Cody stood a chance. At the end of the match, Big Show was about to reenter the ring, but Cody dropkicked him. Big Show lost his balance just enough to lower from the ring apron and put one foot through a nearby table. Big Show had the most amazing, “Well, gently caress,” expression like he just sat in something and lost the match. Cody then spent time in the tag team division, teaming with Damien Sandow, who a friend of mine once described as “if Vandal Savage was a professional wrestler.” The two became partners based on being smarmy smart guys and called themselves the Rhodes Scholars. Cody grew a mustache around this time. They had a very lengthy series of matches with tag champs Team Hell No (Daniel Bryan and Kane), but could never actually win the tag titles. At the Money in the Bank PPV, they did two Money in the Bank ladder matches. One featured all faces, the other all heels. Cody was in the latter, but was treated as a face by comparison. Sandow betrayed him to win the match, causing a feud between the two. To push the idea of how much of a face he was, Cody had his mustache removed. Which reminds me: Around this time, Cody was absolutely killing it on a weekly YouTube vlog called the JBL and Cole Show. Somehow, this weekly look at the goings on between the two commentators became a bunch of skits involving Cody Rhodes, Wade Barrett, and Clem Layfield (Heath Slater claiming to be JBL’s long-lost nephew). It was pretty hilarious and only fell apart due to Cody and Wade having injuries and not being around. They even explained away Cody’s mustache on that series by showing Barrett being the one who shaved it. Afterwards, Barrett told Cody that his mustache-based t-shirt was outdated, causing Cody to sigh and say, “Bad News Barrett...” followed by a "BAD NEWS BARRETT" logo being stamped over the screen. This eventually translated into Barrett getting that as his wrestling gimmick, but WWE cut it off at the knees because people would yell, “I’M AFRAID I’VE GOT SOME BAD NEWS!” along with him and you can’t have people cheering for a heel. WWE is very stupid sometimes. As for Sandow, his attempt to cash in his Money in the Bank briefcase did not go so well. Even though John Cena had a busted shoulder and Sandow destroyed the briefcase by slamming it repeatedly into said shoulder before demanding a title match, Cena still handily and cleanly defeated him. While incredibly popular, Sandow spent the next year or so being completely poo poo on by WWE until being let go. Then he gained weight and went to TNA. That also did not work in his favor. Cody had gotten married and they came up with a decent way to write him off for his honeymoon. The whole “Authority screws over Daniel Bryan” storyline was in swing and Cody had mild criticism for champion Randy Orton. And so, Cody was put in a non-title match with Orton where if he lost, he would be fired. Cody lost and gave a really intense promo about how the McMahon and Rhodes families have been at war for years, yelling about Dusty having to wear polka dots and how, “Vince put my brother in facepaint and he’s never been the same since!” Goldust was also put in the same match against Orton with the same stipulation. He too lost. In the weeks that followed, the Rhodes brothers started to show up illegally to attack the Shield and screw with the Authority. They ended up earning their jobs back via winning against Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins, who were tag champs at the time. In a rematch, they won the titles. It was a really hot time for Cody. A notable thing happened during this storyline. Cody, Goldust, and Dusty were in the ring doing a promo with the Authority. At one point, Stephanie McMahon tried to talk over Dusty – as she’s wont to do because she’s really bad about overusing her actual authority in storylines – and Dusty put his hand up as a way to tell her to shut up. Apparently, this legit pissed Stephanie off and Dusty was taken off TV because of it. Cody and Goldust gradually lost their titles and soon started losing a bunch of matches. Cody blamed himself for the streak of losses and swore that he would find a more fitting partner for his brother. After a handful of replacements who didn’t work out, Cody then reinvented himself as Stardust. At the time, it was brilliant. He completely changed his in-ring performance and played off his brother perfectly. He was a fun loon of a character to the point that Goldust happily remarked that he was no longer the weirdest one in the family. After about nine months, including another tag title reign and ramblings about finding "the cosmic key," the partnership seemed to have run its course. They started to lose a few matches and Stardust was losing his grasp on reality. When Goldust would call him “Cody,” Stardust would lose his poo poo. This was meant to lead to one of the things Cody wanted all along: a WrestleMania program with his brother. At Fastlane, the PPV before WrestleMania 31, we got Stardust vs. Goldust. The ending had Goldust win via roll-up, but it was all very sloppy and deflating. Even though this was supposed to build towards a bigger bout between the two, Vince decided that he no longer wanted that. Even with WrestleMania having so many drat matches, there was no longer room for Stardust vs. Goldust. Damien Sandow got screwed even worse with that PPV but... actually, he might be worth an effortpost of his own later. Sadly, Dusty Rhodes would pass away a few months later. Not counting the Hall of Fame red carpet special, Dusty’s last TV appearance would be during the aforementioned Stardust vs. Goldust storyline that never got its ending. Without any conclusion to that, there was no real reason for Stardust to exist. Not that Cody didn’t try and make it work. The dude is a big comic fan, so he tried to act like the Frank Gorshin Riddler and make something of it. It led to a SummerSlam tag match where he and King Wade Barrett faced Neville and Arrow star Stephen Amell. Amell actually looked pretty good for a celebrity guest and Cody even got a guest spot on Arrow out of it. Cody also spent some time with face-painted monsters the Ascension as his henchmen, calling themselves the Cosmic Wasteland. It didn’t go anywhere. Cody was so frustrated. He really did not want to be Stardust anymore. He kept trying to pitch anything that would let him move on, but writers would ignore him and Triple H would tell him to put on the drat face paint. Triple H even told him not to worry about trying to break out into the main event as the roster needed guys like him to be in the midcard. Cody finally got his release in May of 2016. He had been Stardust for nearly two years by that point. More importantly, it had been a year and three months since the Goldust feud had fizzled and he was left with no reason to still be Stardust. WWE oddly removed Stardust from their Jetsons crossover movie, but kept in Stardust’s futuristic robot doppelganger. I don’t know. Now free to find himself, Cody tweeted a photo online of a list. A list of opponents and events that he would like to deal with now that WWE wasn’t holding him back. Cody was going to prove that he could be a top star.
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Apr 6, 2022 21:40
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Regrettable posted:Freddie Prinze Jr. was another one. This reminds me of a great story that I forgot to include in the Undertaker WrestleMania Streak stuff. In December 2008, a video randomly aired on SmackDown showing some dude in an alley, trying to cut an edgy promo. Specifically, he was targeting the Undertaker. This guy was Hade Vansen (named after Vader and Stan Hansen) and he was a Freddie Prinze Jr. pet project. Prinze's idea was that this guy was going to be an evil mastermind who was going to be attacking the Undertaker with his own X-Men-like faction of freaks. This was going to lead to Undertaker vs. Vansen at WrestleMania 25 as the big payoff. Problem was, Vince didn't know anything about this. When he saw the promo, he was all, "The gently caress is this guy?" and cancelled all over Prinze's plans immediately. Hade Vansen was never seen on TV again and he was let go within a couple weeks. Undertaker wrestled Shawn Michaels instead. I think it worked out better.
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Apr 7, 2022 00:57
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It's not even the "I'm sorry, I love you" part that makes that ending great. Earlier in the match, Michaels had a shot to end it, but hesitated and Flair almost got him in a Figure Four because of it. At the end of the match, Flair knew he was done and was straight-up beckoning Michaels like they were Rorschach and Dr. Manhattan. After WrestleMania, there was a pretty cool Michaels vs. Batista feud where Batista's POV was, "You could have held back or even let Flair win and you didn't. You ended his career and I'm going to make you pay."
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Apr 8, 2022 20:41
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Cornwind Evil posted:Hell, I'll do one better. ZACH. GOWAN. He had ambition. You buried him for it. Because he wasn't 'supposed' to get over. I take it you meant Zack Ryder?
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Apr 9, 2022 13:49
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As we last left Cody Rhodes, he told WWE to shove it and went off to find himself. Once Cody left WWE, he went on a tear, competing anywhere that would have him. Not only was he stopping by so many indie promotions, but also nearly every major wrestling promotion around the world. He and Brandi had something to prove and drat it, he was doing it. In Cody’s words, he was “doing the work.” This was a lot better than his other catchphrase, “Daddy eats first!” Whatever the gently caress that was. From there, a lot has already been said. Cody joined the Bullet Club/The Elite and became buddies with Kenny Omega and the Young Bucks. He started to show up a lot on their vlog Being the Elite. A fan tweeted a question to Dave Meltzer wondering whether a non-WWE wrestling show could sell out a 10,000 person arena. Cody decided to test Meltzer’s theory that it couldn’t be done and they did a big show called All In that featured wrestlers from various promotions. All In is an interesting show to revisit. It’s less a prologue show to AEW as it is a proof of concept. Comparing the two, it’s like watching two different movies by the same director who likes to reuse the same actors in their work. Cody took on Nick Aldis, the NWA Champion. Nick Aldis is one of those guys that the wrestling industry keeps insisting is really, really good, but nobody ever seems to give a poo poo about him because he really isn't interesting in any way. Luckily, he’s one of the people on this show that Tony Khan saw and went, “Pass!” Same with Joey Ryan, who appeared after “Hangman” Adam Page’s match along with an army of “penis druids.” Khan’s instincts not to sign him later on were correct, considering the guy whose claim to fame was dick-based offense was in fact a total creep. All In was a hit and even WWE was impressed. They wanted to bring in the Elite and things came close. What stands out to me is that Cody came the closest to signing with WWE. He wanted respect and I guess he felt that this was him getting respect. In the end, they went with Tony Khan and started AEW. Now, AEW did not start out fully formed. The promotion was announced on January 1 and the series AEW Dynamite didn’t start airing until September of that year. In the meantime, they did two major PPVS (Double or Nothing and All Out) and two free lesser PPVs (Fyter Fest and Fight for the Fallen). So how did they build up these shows with no TV? Two ways, really. First, Being the Elite was able to set things up in its own low-budget and absurd way. Second, AEW did a series of official YouTube videos called “Road to ____.” It’s something they still do every week to hype up their TV shows, but back then it was the biggest worldbuilding we had. It also meant that we got a LOT of Cody Rhodes, as he was the Elite member who was most treated as a serious boss character, in addition to being a wrestler. Cody truly felt like the figurehead of AEW through these videos, more than the other Elite members, and certainly more than Tony Khan, who was adamant about not being portrayed as an on-air personality. Being shown as the protagonist of sorts, Cody would not only talk up putting together matches, but putting together his own special match against his brother Dustin Rhodes/Goldust at the Double or Nothing PPV. They were also building towards Cody vs. Jericho by having Jericho annoyingly take all the credit for AEW’s early success and asking everyone to thank him for it, including an irritated, but polite Cody. Between Road To and BTE, Cody’s main supporting cast was Brandi Rhodes, MJF, and QT Marshall. QT was a schlubby-looking wrestling trainer and MJF was Cody’s rear end in a top hat protégé. The two had a dynamic where MJF would treat everyone like total garbage, but would put a pin in it when Cody was around and would regularly act like his best friend. Everyone could tell that it was only a matter of time before MJF would betray Cody, but there was still this feeling that deep down MJF still genuinely liked Cody. For some fans, the comparison went to Sting and Lex Luger in WCW, where the two were portrayed as best friends despite Sting being face and Luger being heel. Luger would be an rear end in a top hat to fans unless Sting was looking in his general direction. Cody was very open to the knowledge that MJF was a bad guy, but he felt it was okay because MJF was “his” bad guy. Speaking of Cody’s friends, as Double or Nothing was building towards the first ever Casino Battle Royale (AEW’s awkward Royal Rumble counterpart), it was announced that Shawn Spears was going to be signing with AEW and would be taking part in the match. Spears had wrestled in WWE as Tye Dillinger, a midcarder who got over with the crowd by being obsessed with the number ten. WWE never did much with him due to believing that he was merely “chant over” due to the fans regularly chanting “TEN!” for him. Cody watched this reveal video for Spears and casually talked up how great this was. He mainly claimed that AEW would be better off because Spears is “a good hand.” In other words, he was a good guy to throw in the middle of the card and have people work off of. To his character, this was a complimentary remark, but keep in mind how Cody really felt about Triple H’s insistence that he forever belonged in the midcard. At Double or Nothing, Cody finally got to have that big match against his brother that he always wanted. Cody vs. Dustin was a kickass, bloody battle that Cody eventually won. Afterwards, he grabbed the microphone and cut a heartfelt promo about how he didn’t need a teammate or a friend, but his older brother. From crying, his voice cracked while saying “brother” as he and Dustin went to hug. It was easily one of the best moments of the night on a show with amazing matches. With all this Cody stuff going on, what of Brandi? When she was in WWE, she was a ring announcer and she swore never to do that again. Though she was working behind the scenes at AEW, she also wanted to wrestle. And fair enough, they were going to need to build a women’s roster. One of the matches signed for Double or Nothing was Britt Baker vs. Nyla Rose vs. Kylie Rae. Brandi appeared pre-match to announce a fourth competitor. While fans groaned, fearing she was going to insert herself into things, it was all a swerve as the legendary Awesome Kong appeared as the fourth wrestler. This was a cool as hell surprise, but would lead to one of AEW’s worst concepts in its early days. But that will wait for the next entry. At Fyter Fest, as Omega and the Bucks were busy with their own match and making as many Fyre Fest budget jokes as they could, Cody was put in a match against youngster Darby Allin. The match ended up going to the time limit, thereby treating Darby as a big deal early on. Afterwards, as Cody tried to have the match restarted, an angry Shawn Spears showed up and smashed him upside the head with a chair. He hit him WAY too hard, but it made enough of a statement that almost three years later, chairs are a major part of Spears’ in-ring personality. Spears was pissed about the whole “good hand” comment, like Cody was looking past him and didn’t see him as a possible main eventer. I mean, Cody was absolutely right in every aspect here, but it made for a good motive to turn Spears heel. We also got this fire Brandi promo out of it. They would wait a bit for that match, though. Instead, the main event of Fight for the Fallen was a tag match of the Young Bucks vs. Cody and Dustin. The build for this match? For months, the Young Bucks would constantly make fun of Cody’s dramatic speech on BTE. Nick would randomly show up covered in fake blood, crying, and saying “I need my baby BRAH-ther!” as the two hugged. The Young Bucks ended up winning, but the two teams made amends by eating some Dominos backstage together. Cody vs. Spears would be saved for All Out, the last PPV before Dynamite would start airing on TV. Spears was joined by Tully Blanchard, former member of the Four Horsemen and former enemy of Dusty Rhodes. Cody, on the other hand, brought in Tully’s old tag partner Arn Anderson to interfere and drop Spears with a spinebuster. Cody won the match, which people felt split about. On one hand, he was definitely above Spears and needed to be pushed high on the card, but on the other hand, it kind of deflated Spears’ push and completely killed his momentum. Considering Spears was two PPVs away from losing a comedy squash match against Dustin Rhodes, which involved Spears wearing underwear with Tully Blanchard’s head over the crotch, yeah, that loss did a number on his trajectory. Up next: AEW Dynamite begins and Brandi makes new friends.
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Apr 11, 2022 04:05
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TheSwizzler posted:Gonna plug a Youtube Channel I've found that's basically video essays on 90's wrestling where they do some fairly deep dives on different angles/matches/etc One of that guy's videos features a tangent where he calls me out for an old article I wrote where I briefly mentioned that Kama/Godfather/Papa Shango wasn't very good in the ring, so gently caress that guy.
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Apr 13, 2022 00:34
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TheSwizzler posted:Oh wow, okay, I did happen upon the specific video by accident and I'm kinda with the youtube guy (though I agree it's definitely a bit weird that he'd go specifically after your statement given how much ink has been spilled everywhere) Most of those names, while worse than Wright were also just a flash in the pan. Papa Shango was a killer gimmick with a great look, but his matches were plodding dogshit. He's fondly remembered because of the Ultimate Warrior's acting, which says a lot. The Godfather was just "tall Road Dogg." He was charismatic, which translated to a repetitive opening match spiel and a popular spot he'd do in every match that was "taunt + regular move." That was all he had. I mean, I think his finisher was the Death Valley Driver, but hell if I can remember him using it. Godfather was the first time I remember noticing WWF's crowd sweetening. It was a taped Raw and Godfather had a match or brawl with Tiger Ali Singh that was so bad looking that you could see the crowd booing the poo poo out of it despite the cheering audio they were playing over it. In the article I was writing, I was talking about Kama the Supreme Fighting Machine and that was Wright at his worst (except maybe the Goodfather). He lacked the badass of Papa Shango or the fun of the Godfather. He was just this lanky, uncoordinated attempt to be an MMA guy before that was really a thing. He only had one high-profile match during that whole run, where he was treated as the end boss to the Undertaker's extremely long feud with the Million Dollar Corporation, which was certainly a choice. Maybe he's not on the level of Giant Gonzalez or Great Khali, but I would label Wright as slightly worse than, say, Titus O'Neil.
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Apr 13, 2022 07:57
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Her Dryer posted:I relistened to the Attitude Era Podcast the other day and it was fun to hear them realise that the New Age Outlaws, who they had remembered fondly, were actually just having the same match over and over again. Yeah, Road Dogg's move set was extremely limited to basic moves with added taunts. His go-to moves were "punch, punch, punch, dance, punch" and "dance, knee drop." His finisher was "pretend to hump the opponent, pump handle slam," but he rarely ever used that. It worked fine when he was in tag matches because he could sprinkle those moves out throughout the match. When he was in a singles match and he'd do the punch combo followed by the knee drop, that was a signal that this was going to be an extremely short match for one reason or another.
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Apr 13, 2022 13:51
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