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Cartoon Man posted:
"Where's Teller?"
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May 23, 2023 01:39
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The new AEW game is going to get a bit messy. https://twitter.com/AEWGames/status/1661054508363923461
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May 24, 2023 02:25
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I mean, Penta is basically just Scorpion as a luchador.
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May 24, 2023 02:33
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There's an AEW PPV this Sunday, so here are all the matches for Double or Nothing along with the build. MJF (C) VS. SAMMY GUEVARA VS. JUNGLE BOY VS. DARBY ALLIN AEW Championship Since AEW started, there were four young wrestlers considered the pillars of the company. Four wrestlers who were not really known outside of the company, but rose up the ranks and made their names known while helping carry the promotion. These are the Four Pillars of AEW. Britt Baker is also considered a pillar, but they don’t do intergender stuff, so ignore that. After defeating Bryan Danielson at the last PPV, MJF was immediately challenged by the other three pillars. Three men who he doesn’t like, but he does respect and see as his peers. You have three-time TNT Champion Sammy Guevara. Two-time TNT Champion Darby Allin. Former AEW Tag Team Champion “Jungle Boy” Jack Perry. They have all faced each other over the years, but each one considers himself ready to dethrone MJF. At first, the idea was going to be a mini-tournament to crown a winner. Sammy vs. Jungle Boy with the winner facing Darby. MJF helped Sammy win against Jungle Boy and made a deal with him where if it ended up MJF vs. Sammy at Double or Nothing, Sammy would get paid a ridiculous amount of money to take a dive. The two became very fake, but very energetic best friends after that. MJF helped Sammy against Darby as well, but Tony Khan wasn’t happy. MJF and Sammy would face Jungle Boy and Darby in a tag match. If MJF/Sammy won, the singles match would go on as planned. If they lost, it would be a four-way match. MJF and Sammy’s relationship imploded during the match and they lost. Now MJF is acting like his back is against the wall while the other three have been trying to gain momentum through their own matches. While Sammy has been acting more like a fiery face in the lead-up, Jungle Boy has become increasingly shady, such as desperately winning a match via cheating in the same way MJF once beat him. JAMIE HAYTER (C) VS. TONI STORM AEW Women’s Championship Back at Full Gear in November, Toni Storm lost the championship to Jamie Hayter. The whole situation was frustrating for Storm, as at the time she was only considered the “interim champion” due to Thunder Rosa dropping the title due to injury and her title run was only considered official after the fact. Adding to that, Storm was the face in the match and people were cheering Hayter for her use of cheating and outside interference. Saraya, formerly known as Paige in WWE, showed up and started a feud with Hayter’s friend Britt Baker. This led to the creation of the Outcasts, where Toni Storm, Saraya, and eventually Ruby Soho would become a women’s version of the nWo while spray-painting their fallen opponents and acting like big deals for being famous outside of AEW. Hayter and Britt have since brought in Hikaru Shida to help even the odds and at Double or Nothing, Storm gets another shot at winning back her title. The problem is that Hayter is pretty banged up right now, so her chances of leaving the show as champion are small. FTR (C) VS. JEFF JARRETT AND JAY LETHAL AEW Tag Team Championship with Mark Briscoe as Special Referee Jay Lethal and Mark Briscoe go back a long way and when Lethal suggested they work together, Mark was for it. Then Lethal’s entire heel stable ran in to celebrate and Mark was having second thoughts. Too bad he couldn’t get a word in edgewise. FTR have also been rather close to Mark and when a heel tag team brutalized Mark backstage, FTR were just as concerned for his wellbeing as Lethal and his buddies pretended to be. FTR ended up working alongside Lethal and Jarrett due to Mark’s suggestion, but the two sides definitely did not get along. With FTR being tag champs, it was very obvious that Lethal and Jarrett wanted a shot. Lethal, Jarrett, and their stablemates Sonjay Dutt and Satnam Singh tried to get in Mark's good graces by working on his farm for a day. When the time came to challenge FTR, they suggested Mark to be the referee. Lethal then spat alcohol into Dax Harwood’s face, blinding him. In this state, Dax accidentally grabbed Mark and took him down with a piledriver. Mark is still pissed about it, but he’s also openly pissed at Lethal for his manipulations. Right now, it looks like the special referee is mad at everyone involved. WARDLOW (C) VS. CHRISTIAN CAGE Ladder Match for TNT Championship After getting Arn Anderson as his manager, Wardlow has been able to win back the TNT Championship from Powerhouse Hobbs. Immediately after, Luchasaurus walked out accompanied by Christian Cage. From the looks of things, we were going to get another hoss-off down the line with Wardlow vs. Luchasaurus. Instead, Christian was the one interested in the title match. Christian pissed off Wardlow by making fun of his dead dad, but when Wardlow dared Christian to spit in his face, a brawl broke out and the two-on-one advantage took Wardlow out. Christian announced that their match would be a ladder match and proceeded to hit the Killswitch on Wardlow on a ladder. JADE CARGILL (C) VS. TAYA VALKYRIE TBS Championship Newcomer Taya Valkyrie is the latest challenger to get in Jade’s way as her undefeated streak just keeps going and going. The feud has centered around how Taya’s finisher, the Road to Valhalla, is exactly the same as Jade’s finisher Jaded. When Jade agreed to a title match, her lawyer Smart Mark Sterling had it ruled that Taya was unable to use the Road to Valhalla, as the move was Jade’s property. When Taya had the opening to use the move, she froze up a bit and became confused, allowing Jade to reverse it and win. Afterwards, Taya attacked the referee and was suspended. Jade started having a string of consecutive matches against jobbers for the sake of building up her streak. Taya made a surprise appearance, punched out one of the challengers, and laid out Jade. She said that they were going to have a rematch and this time her finisher was no longer off the table. BLACKJACK BATTLE ROYAL International Championship Orange Cassidy (C), Ricky Starks, The Butcher, The Blade, Bandido, Komander, Lee Moriarty, Big Bill, Ari Daivari, Tony Nese, Chuck Taylor, Trent Beretta, Kip Sabian, Rey Fénix, Penta El Zero Miedo, Swerve Strickland, Brian Cage, Jay White, Juice Robinson, Keith Lee, and Dustin Rhodes Ever since winning the International Championship (formerly the All-Atlantic Championship), Orange has gone against type to prove himself as the most fightingest champion in AEW history. More and more, he has been taking every challenge against him and has come out on top. These days, he’s taking on too many challengers. It seems like he has another title match every week and his body is getting more and more banged up. His right hand is barely holding on and his ribs aren’t doing so hot either. He’s exhausted, but he keeps going. At one point, he laid out an open challenge at Double or Nothing. Minutes later, he found out that 20 wrestlers went to Tony Khan to accept that challenge. Orange shrugged it off and decided that he’d take them all on in a battle royal. QT Marshall is trying to use this as an avenue to get his client Powerhouse Hobbs back in any kind of title picture (else Hobbs may beat the poo poo out of him). Ricky Starks is also in it, though he’s been having problems with Bullet Club members Juice Robinson and Jay White, who promise to keep ruining his life. As for Keith Lee and Swerve Strickland, those two have been feuding for forever without a singles match to settle things yet. Probably because covid hosed up Keith Lee’s lungs, mostly relegating him to tag matches. THE HOUSE OF BLACK (C) VS. ??? Open House Match for the AEW Trios Championship After winning the trios titles from the Elite, the House of Black fell back into the shadows until returning with a new way to defend their belts. Regularly, the trio will offer title defenses as part of their Open House rules. The match includes a 20 count when wrestlers are out of the ring, no rope breaks, rad lighting effects, and a “dealer’s choice” where the challengers can add their own stipulation. So far, Malakai Black, Brody King, and Buddy Murphy have been dominant. Their opponents for the PPV are most likely the Acclaimed, who have not only been on a tear in trios matches in the last month, but they won a trios battle royal. Then again, there’s always the possibility of the Dark Order challenging, as they have nothing planned for the show. BLACKPOOL COMBAT CLUB VS. THE ELITE Anarchy in the Arena A feud between Hangman Adam Page and Jon Moxley kept expanding more and more due to their rematches constantly upping the ante. Even though Hangman won their last battle, Moxley and his buddies at the Blackpool Combat Club refused to let things go. Unfortunately, Hangman’s buddies in the Dark Order have not been on the level of BCC and have not been able to be the best backup. During a brawl with the BCC, Hangman ended up in the ring with Kenny Omega and the Young Bucks, who had just taken part in a trios title match. Hangman’s history with those three is long and rocky, but he at least made some peace with the Bucks. The Elite scared off the BCC, but it was apparent that Omega was not interested in rekindling his friendship with Hangman. His manager Don Callis even helped keep that rift in play by making it seem like Hangman accidentally attacked him. The BCC started ambushing their enemies to divide them. The Bucks were hospitalized. Hangman went after the BCC alone (the Dark Order went home early, not knowing what he had planned, and now Hangman refuses to speak with them) and got a screwdriver shoved into his eye socket. Don Callis got beaten up by BCC so badly that he has a deep scar on his forehead. His new protégé Konosuke Takeshita also took a screwdriver to the head. To make matters worse for Kenny Omega, when he had a cage match with Moxley, Callis showed up and stabbed Kenny in the head with a screwdriver. Seems he’s either in cahoots with the BCC or he simply no longer wants to associate with Kenny for petty reasons. Hangman made his return to aid Kenny and the Bucks against the BCC and drove them out of the ring. Hangman announced that together they are once again the Elite and that they will face off in an Anarchy in the Arena match. It's a brutal falls count anywhere team vs. team match that Moxley and Bryan Danielson were involved in a year prior. ADAM COLE VS. CHRIS JERICHO Unsanctioned Match with Sabu as the guest enforcer Adam Cole had to take a lot of time off due to a bad couple of concussions. When he returned, Daniel Garcia asked to be his first opponent. Cole beat him in the main event of Dynamite and afterwards, Garcia’s mentor Chris Jericho appeared, angry at the attention Cole was getting for his win. Jericho was even more mad when he beat Keith Lee in a match, only for Cole to come out and comfort Lee, stealing the focus. Cole tried to tell Jericho that he was a longtime fan, but Jericho thought little of Cole. Cole’s girlfriend Britt Baker appeared and slapped Jericho, but then the Outcasts showed up and viciously beat Britt down with a kendo stick while Jericho had Cole handcuffed to the ropes. This pissed Cole off enough that he’d constantly attack Jericho, even during Cole’s own matches. Jericho figured he would just get a restraining order where Cole is not allowed to be in the building at the same time as him. One of Cole’s good friends Roderick Strong debuted around this time and challenged Jericho to a falls count anywhere match where the rest of the Jericho Appreciation Society were banned. Jericho agreed, but it turned out that Strong was tricking him. Once the fight went outside, there was nothing stopping Cole from getting to Jericho and helping Strong win the match. Furious, Jericho ripped up the restraining order and agreed to a PPV match with Cole. Cole responded by entering the building and once again going after Jericho. A week later, the two signed the contract. Jericho pointed out that he had a whole stable of followers while Cole just had Strong. Cole revealed that he got motherfucking Sabu to be there to keep the JAS at bay. ETHAN PAGE AND THE GUNNS VS. THE HARDY BROTHERS AND HOOK If Matt Hardy’s team wins, he gets ownership of Ethan Page’s contract Long ago, Stokely Hathaway of the Firm revealed that he owned the contracts of Matt Hardy’s proteges Private Party. As Private Party did not want this, a match was put together between Isiah Kassidy and Ethan Page where if Kassidy won, Private Party would be free, but if he lost, Stokely would also own the contract of Matt Hardy. So of course Ethan Page won. While things were rough in the beginning, Matt started to become a pretty good friend to Ethan. He earned his trust and was able to convince him to support the Firm in making match stipulations that would blow up in their faces, such as causing Stokely to have a singles match against Hook. Matt eventually turned against Ethan in a match against Hook. Hardy was able to win his contract back, as well as Private Party’s. This culminated in a pre-taped Firm Deletion match on the Hardy Compound where Matt, Jeff, Kassidy, and Hook beat down Ethan, Stokely, Big Bill, and Lee Moriarty. Ethan went off the deep end a bit after this and joined with fellow Firm members the Gunns. If they lose to Matt’s team in a six-man tag, Matt gets Ethan’s contract. Ethan led an ambush on his opponents and messed up Kassidy’s neck. Though the Hardy brothers were prepared to do 2-on-3, Kassidy named Hook as his replacement.
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May 27, 2023 05:59
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Nick Gage, probably.
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May 27, 2023 18:33
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poisonpill posted:I don’t know anything about wrestling but it makes sense that wrestlers would tend to be awful people. They live in an unwholesome intersection of combat sports and carny grifting culture. Which ones were genuinely nice people? Just going to add some context to what people have already posted while adding some more. Diamond Dallas Page: Is a self-help guru whose modified yoga routine has helped a lot of people get in better shape. He's also allowed wrestlers with addictions stay at his place to help clean them up, including Jake Roberts and Scott Hall. Mick Foley: Comes off as a really nice guy and down to earth, though he might toot his own horn about it a bit too much. Is in the Christmas spirit 365 days a year. Molly Holly: Nobody has a bad thing to say about her. New Jack, the man known for being a violent psychopath, talked up Molly Holly like she was a saint and would probably stab you if you said anything mean about her. Titus O'Neil: Uses his WWE status to do a shitload of charity work. Caused Vince to have a sudden tantrum on TV because Titus was trying to be polite. Tugboat/Shockmaster: I honestly don't know much about the guy outside of the ring, but he's fully embraced the joke of being the Shockmaster and that takes patience. Paul Bearer: He is like if George Bailey was so liked that even Mr. Potter was all, "poo poo, I gotta go help that guy!" There's an interview he did where he got pissed about how Kevin Dunn treated him and people say Dunn really must be a piece of garbage because Paul seemingly liked everybody. Brodie Lee: While there's something to be said about speaking ill of the dead, the unanimous outcry for how beloved Brodie was after he died said something. Everyone seemed to really like him and considered him a true family man. Bobby Eaton: A really popular guy in any locker room as he would constantly carry an extra suitcase of travel and wrestling supplies in case anyone needed it, like toothbrushes, toilet paper, wrist tape, etc. There's a funny story about how this guy Bill Dundee forbade his daughter from ever dating a wrestler, but then he realized she was dating Bobby Eaton and was like, "Oh, forget what I said. He's great!" The Insane Clown Posse: Apparently make sure every wrestler they deal with is paid handsomely and promptly, even if it's in a garbage bag filled with twenties.
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May 28, 2023 06:42
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Sydney Bottocks posted:Cornette was sure all hell was about to break loose when he and his team got back there, as Hayes and Garvin were already screaming and throwing poo poo around. Then Bobby Eaton yelled "We ain't just out there to get you guys fuckin' over!" And according to Cornette, that immediately stopped everyone in their tracks, because even Garvin and Hayes realized that if you got Bobby Eaton pissed at you, then you know you done hosed up. Whenever I see this story, I imagine Bobby Eaton being like this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37SrQdIqKiU
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May 28, 2023 18:45
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Mulaney Power Move posted:In general the WWF made Cornette miserable. That's when his cheeseburger addiction spiraled out of control. Now I'm remembering a great line from a PPV where Cornette and Jim Ross were on commentary. They were arguing over JR's status as a manager and Cornette told him, "You couldn't manage a Wendy's!" Ross' response was, "I could if you lived in town!" That discussion was about Fake Diesel and Fake Razor Ramon, which really deserves its own post. I don't think it's been talked about in-depth, so here you go. Other than Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels, the two biggest names of WWF's New Generation Era were real-life BFFs Diesel and Razor Ramon. By 1996, things were starting to slow down for them a bit. Diesel just spent a year as champion in what was a disastrous run that nearly killed the company. In response to losing the championship, Diesel had become a charismatic tweener and with his buddy Shawn Michaels about to reach the title picture, it was only natural that Diesel would go full heel and challenge for the belt. Meanwhile, Razor Ramon had been the king of the midcard and while he had a hot program going on with Goldust, he was definitely growing tired of it all. Both wrestlers would get snazzy WCW deals that they could not say no to. Diesel's punishment was to put over the Undertaker and Michaels on the way out. Razor failed a drug test (which he feels was a setup) and missed WrestleMania, having Roddy Piper finish his Goldust storyline for him. Once Razor came back, he lost a rather throwaway match against Vader at the next PPV and that was it for him. Then they went to WCW as the Outsiders, founded the nWo and were the hottest thing in wrestling for a while. More importantly, they made sure NOT to refer to themselves as "Kevin Nash" and "Scott Hall" for a while because they wanted the insinuation that this was not just two guys showing up to cause trouble. They wanted it to look like WWF's Diesel and Razor Ramon were invading WCW as part of a big collaboration. WWF did not take too kindly to that and sued the poo poo out of them. But it also got Vince thinking. Maybe viewers weren't so much fans of the talent as they were the personas. He had been trying to get guys like Lex Luger and Diesel to BE Hulk Hogan and it never worked, but he wanted to give it another try. Jim Ross turned heel, which nobody wanted, and cut a big promo about how he was bringing Diesel and Razor Ramon back to WWF. He was going to re-debut them on the next episode of Raw. Now, while this aired, Nash and Hall were watching this together and they were very, VERY confused. Then they got a call from WCW brass. They were very afraid that there was some contractual loophole that they might have missed and took JR's promo seriously. They offered to stack more money onto Nash and Hall's already insane contracts just to make sure they didn't jump ship. Their reaction was basically, "Uh... sure!" The next Raw followed and despite President Gorilla Monsoon insisting that Nash and Hall were contracted elsewhere, JR brought out Diesel and Razor. More specifically, Glenn Jacobs as Diesel and Rick Bognar as Razor Ramon. Bognar was a newcomer to WWF and almost, MAYBE looked a little like Hall's Razor if you narrowed your eyes and saw him for a split second. Jacobs, on the other hand, was coming off his run as Isaac Yankem DDS and looked even less like Nash. The crowd immediately felt deflated over it. There was a narrative confusion over the whole thing. Were they supposed to be treated as imposters or the real deal? I'm not sure Vince had that figured out. You would see Fake Razor intently watching Goldust matches backstage, though nothing came of it. In fact, since neither guy could talk and their mouthpiece JR dropped the heel turn pretty quickly, they couldn't really carry any stories. They were just there. They were thrown into random midcard matches, appeared in a thrown-together Survivor Series team, and so on. While Fake Diesel did rather well in the 1997 Royal Rumble and made it near the end, Fake Razor was immediately eliminated early in the match. As a fun piece of trivia, this is the only time ANY Razor Ramon had been in the Royal Rumble. Scott Hall, despite being on the show four times, was always too busy being in a singles match on the undercard. Other than a random house show match, that was it for the duo. Jacobs would be repackaged down the line as Kane, but Bognar was not so lucky. At one point, Vince gave him his number and told him if he ever had any questions or needed anything, just give him a ring. Bognar decided to take him up on that and did call him. He mentioned that his contract was coming up and he didn't know if they had any plans for him going forward after the Razor debacle. He asked Vince what the next step should be. "Never call this number again." *click*
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May 28, 2023 20:09
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The big (and absolutely idiotic) conspiracy theory was that Nancy's ex-husband Kevin Sullivan was behind it. Basically, he was married to Nancy and he was booking himself into a feud with Benoit where Nancy was into Benoit. Sullivan decided he wanted them to make it look as legit as possible to the point that they were sharing hotel rooms and poo poo, but then Nancy legitimately left Sullivan for Benoit. Oops!WoodrowSkillson posted:the book The Rise and Fall of WCW rules and it is staggering how utterly stupid the company was from top to bottom, and how they managed to gently caress up a good thing via sheer incompetence There's another good book on the subject called Nitro. It adds some more details to stuff and has some different perspectives. Probably the most interesting thing about it is how the two books handle the wrestler Swoll and the No Limit Soldiers storyline in WCW. Short version for those who don't know is that a face group called the Filthy Animals were feuding with a heel group called the West Texas Rednecks. The Filthy Animals then aligned themselves with Master P and his entourage, with Master P getting paid a shitload of money per appearance. Master P used his pull to bring in a couple gigantic friends of his, including a guy named Swoll who couldn't wrestle for poo poo, but got a massive contract. The storyline imploded for various reasons and Master P vanished after a few weeks. Rise and Fall of WCW pointed out how silly the whole thing was and took a second to laugh at how WCW was stupid and careless enough to give someone like Swoll such a contract. Nitro dedicated an entire chapter to it from Swoll's point of view, where he did kind of scam his way into his position (claiming he had a career in NJPW when he had like two matches in the early 90s), but watched how terribly the company was run and how much rampant drug use was going on backstage and was kind of freaked out by it. Then he lost his friendship with Master P because P was such an egomaniac that he didn't understand that "his team gets beat up one week so they can get revenge later" was a regular part of wrestling storytelling and cut ties. Swoll's time in WCW was very short, but he made the most out of it financially and felt like he escaped a dark fate if he stayed active.
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May 31, 2023 03:05
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Cornwind Evil posted:So it’s probably not surprising that out of the three ‘your opponent is you’ matchups in wrestling history that I know of (there’s probably others in Mexican, Japanese, and Indy wrestling, it wouldn’t surprise me if Chikara and Kaiju Big Battel have done that bit, more than once) Yes, Chikara did indeed do this in its early days. Chikara had a wrestler named Lance Steel whose gimmick was that he was a knight from medieval times who came to the present via time rift. He wore a colorful outfit that basically looked like a luchador knight. Later on, he would also wear "armor" (just a thick pleathery torso cover, looking like colorful shoulder pads) over his tights that made him immune to chest slaps and would hurt his opponent's hand. Anyway, Lance started as a face and teamed up with eyepatch-wearing wrestler Jolly Roger as the tag team with the incredibly dated name Knight Eye for the Pirate Guy. After Roger left, Lance needed a new partner. He decided to use a time machine to pull another Lance out from the timeline and we had Lance Steel and Lance Steel as Lance-A-Lot. They were initially successful and had a finishing move where one gave the other a piggyback ride, the rider put his fist forward, and the carrier ran forward to punch out the opponent, like a makeshift joust. The problem was that the second Lance Steel was younger (an entire week!) and there was a generational divide. For instance, Chikara had a couple dragon-based wrestlers as a satire on how many indie wrestlers had "dragon" in their name. One was Retail Dragon, a lesser version of Super Dragon who wore a Target employee vest. Then there was the infamous Dragon Dragon, who was just a guy in a dragon mascot costume. The younger Lance Steel liked to hang out with these guys, but his counterpart was aghast because knights and dragons were common enemies. After losing their chance at a title shot, the two Lances broke up and started feuding. Fans were... confused. As there was not enough room for two Lance Steels, they decided to have a Loser Banished to the Past match. The younger Lance Steel won via cheating, fully turning himself heel. The original Lance Steel was sent back in time.
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Jun 5, 2023 18:01
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The Iron Sheik moment that always comes to mind is this time he was doing a shoot interview with New Jack and Honky Tonk Man shortly after the whole Benoit tragedy happened. Sheik was crying to the camera and yelling as if he was talking to Benoit himself. New Jack was next to him, intensely staring off to the side, getting his thoughts together for when it was his turn to speak. Now, English was not Sheik's first language. The thing he was trying to convey in his ramblings was that while murdering your wife is absolutely horrible, murdering your own child is another level of disgusting. The way he said that? "Chris Benoit! I don't even CARE that you killed Nancy Sullivan!" The moment he said that, New Jack noticeably flinched, then went back to what he was doing.
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Jun 7, 2023 20:12
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16-bit Butt-Head posted:he lived to 81 which is well beyond his expected life expectancy of being a pro wrestler and the iron sheik When WWF did a Gimmick Battle Royal at WrestleMania 17 back in 2001, Iron Sheik won the match purely because he was too broken down to handle going over the top rope. A funny story someone told me years ago was that Sheik was doing an interview for an LGBT satellite radio channel. When they were asking about the Ultimate Warrior, Sheik said, "I hate the Ultimate Warrior! The Ultimate Warrior is SO GAY!" The host was all, "Hey, maybe don't use that word like that. This is a gay radio station. We're gay." His response? "He's even gayer than YOU!"
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Jun 7, 2023 21:50
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Haven't had the time to watch that video yet, but the dude behind it once got me emotional about a drawing of Jon Arbuckle as an archangel slaying a demonic Garfield, so I'm pumped for it.
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Jun 23, 2023 18:11
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Tonight is the AEW/NJPW crossover PPV Forbidden Door. It's kind of rad that it exists in this kind of capacity now. Last year's show was cursed in the lead-up as various wrestlers like CM Punk and Bryan Danielson had to bow out due to injury and some of the big names in NJPW didn't take part for one reason or another. The show didn't have much in terms of crossover dream matches that would build up hype. Then it ended up being one of AEW's best shows ever and completely kicked rear end. Now the second Forbidden Door appears to be the kind of show that will meet its potential for what an AEW/NJPW crossover could be. Because I've been busy as hell lately, I won't be writing up the backstories of these matches, but here's what's going on tonight: ZERO HOUR PRE-SHOW: - Athena vs. Billie Starkz Women's Owen Hart Cup Tournament first round match - United Empire (Jeff Cobb, Kyle Fletcher, and TJP) vs. Los Ingobernables de Japon (Shingo Takagi, Bushi, and Hiromu Takahashi) - Stu Grayson vs. El Phantasmo - Mogul Embassy (Swerve Strickland, Toa Liona, and Bishop Kaun) vs. Roppongi Vice (Rocky Romero and Trent Beretta) and El Desperado MAIN SHOW: - Kenny Omega (c) vs. Will Ospreay IWGP United States Heavyweight Championship - Bryan Danielson vs. Kazuchika Okada - Sanada (c) vs. "Jungle Boy" Jack Perry IWGP World Heavyweight Championship - MJF (c) vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi AEW World Championship - Le Suzuki Gods (Chris Jericho, Sammy Guevara, and Minoru Suzuki) vs. Sting, Darby Allin, and Tetsuya Naito - Blackpool Combat Club (Jon Moxley, Wheeler Yuta, and Claudio Castagnoli), Konosuke Takeshita, and Shota Umino vs. The Elite ("Hangman" Adam Page, Matt Jackson, and Nick Jackson), Eddie Kingston, and Tomohiro Ishii - CM Punk vs. Satoshi Kojima Men's Owen Hart Cup Tournament first round match - Orange Cassidy (c) vs. Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Katsuyori Shibata vs. Daniel Garcia AEW International Championship - Toni Storm (c) vs. Willow Nightingale AEW Women's World Championship - Adam Cole vs. Tom Lawlor
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Jun 25, 2023 19:55
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Flinger posted:I'm kinda shocked...Shibata's retirement was the reason I stopped actively following wrestling. Is he back full time? Also Danielson vs Okada holy gently caress this might cause me to relapse He came back at the end of 2021, then had just a few matches in 2022. One of which was against Orange Cassidy in AEW, which was his hand-picked opponent. Then in the beginning of 2023, he won the ROH Pure Championship and has been defending that regularly.
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Jun 25, 2023 20:21
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Yeah, they started a new Saturday show called AEW Collision with Punk being kind of the marquee wrestler for it. The first episode was in Chicago, where he came out, cut a promo, made a jab at the Young Bucks, then came back later to take part in a six-man tag. It was Chicago, so everyone was unanimously for him. The following Dynamite was also in Chicago, so Punk returned for a segment and they made sure that the Elite's one appearance was a pre-taped backstage bit because they were explicitly supposed to be faces and they didn't want them to get booed out of the building. Then the next Collision, no longer being in Chicago, had Punk getting boos over cheers about 70/30. At Forbidden Door, the boos were more 90/10. Anyway, PPV loving ruled. Even if Bryan Danielson faked having convulsions mid-match.
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Jun 26, 2023 05:16
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Due to the new weekly show and the Fight Forever video game, I did a big-rear end AEW primer thread. Just a bunch of effortpost stuff on different wrestlers and storylines.
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Jun 28, 2023 04:42
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TheSwizzler posted:Apologies to Gavok because the dude I'm recommending put him on blast for no apparent reason in a video (actually p funny)  gently caress that guy.
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Jul 11, 2023 03:55
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Vandar posted:Never heard of Wrestling Bios. What's the problem with them? A while back, I did an article on Undertaker feuds and I mentioned how one of his opponents Charles Wright (Godfather/Papa Shango/Kama) was really bad in the ring, especially during his MMA Kama gimmick. During one of Wrestling Bios' videos, he did a tangent about said article and how I was being disrespectful to a legendary wrestler or whatever.
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Jul 11, 2023 15:44
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Busters posted:As someone who was abruptly exposed the the WWE with no frame of reference or friend to guide me, I find it enthrallingly over the top- But immensely overwhelming. There's over 40 years of lore behind modern wrestling, and I don't have a clue where to start. I thought choosing one wrestler and learning their story would be a good introduction, but Doink the Clown was a poor choice for depth (although very entertaining). Something you might enjoy is watching a handful of Royal Rumbles from throughout the years. There are only a scant few bad ones and they're a fun time capsule of the roster and overall company tone at any given year. WWE has over a dozen up on their YouTube channel.
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Jul 11, 2023 16:07
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spaceblancmange posted:why don't you settle this feud in the ring? I don't know what that guy even looks like. What if he's like 6'8" and jacked? No thank you. Cubone posted:watching the Darkside of the Ring episode on the Von Erichs and it's amazing how different the tone is from when Behind the Bastards covered the same ground I'm so interested in that Von Erichs movie with Zac Effron. But yeah, it reminds me of how WWE made two different Ultimate Warrior documentaries and they're as different as night and day. One from when he refused to be part of it and one from after he had shown up, made amends with Vince, then died a day later. poo poo, should I do an Ultimate Warrior effortpost?
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Jul 12, 2023 13:51
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Pope Corky the IX posted:There was another documentary recently that was a positive portrayal but still included the video where he was losing his poo poo because he had to film an apology after yelling at a kid. Warrior has four different documentaries as far as I know (two WWE ones, Dark Side of the Ring, A&E Biography). I kind of want to watch them all and do a comparison piece. The Warrior moment that always sticks with me is after Randy Savage died. Hogan did an interview or two where he made the dubious claim that he and Savage made amends in his final days, but also discussed his complicated relationship with the guy. This meant talking about Savage's rage problems, especially when it came to his awful treatment of Elizabeth. He wasn't wrong, but the body was still warm and it's Hogan trying to make himself look good in the aftermath of a dude dying, so it's also kind of messed up. Savage was one of Warrior's few genuine friends in the business, so he was pissed. He posted an hour long rant on YouTube (long gone) about Hogan being a piece of poo poo. And I was all for it because while Warrior was an rear end in a top hat, Hogan was also an rear end in a top hat and it was going to be cathartic to see someone who had good reason to hate Hogan just angrily running him down for a while. The thing is, by the time Warrior was done with his rant, I actually thought Hogan came out of it looking like the better person than Warrior and Savage. Mainly because Warrior DEFENDED Savage's controlling, abusive treatment of Elizabeth as absolutely necessary. What the gently caress? On the other hand, Warrior did end his rant by comparing Hogan to the cheese from Diary of a Wimpy Kid, so that's something.
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Jul 12, 2023 14:46
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That sounds bonkers enough that I should remember it, so probably not.
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Jul 12, 2023 15:14
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SirPhoebos posted:Well you do now, THE DIMINISHING RETURNS OF THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR: PART 1 James Hellwig was a bodybuilder who was lured into the interesting world of professional wrestling. In his initial few years, he competed various promotions with different names like Jim Justice, Blade Runner Rock, and the Dingo Warrior. Initially a tag team wrestler, his bodybuilding bro and tag partner was Flash/Blade Runner Sting. They were Road Warrior knockoffs and Hellwig’s partner would eventually go on to find his own career as just Sting. They both stuck with the face paint, though. In these early days, it was apparent that this guy had an interesting promo style. When a heel manager told him that Rick Rude said Dingo Warrior was a sissy, Warrior screamed, “RICK RUDE DOESN’T EVEN KNOW MY NAME!” before explaining that he was going to tear Rude’s arm off, shove it down Rude’s throat, make Rude puke, then make Rude write “DINGO” out in the puke 500 times. Holy poo poo. The Dingo Warrior got signed to WWF in 1987, where Vince McMahon eventually decided to have him drop the “Dingo” part of his name, as he didn’t know what the gently caress that was supposed to mean. Warrior made his first TV appearance in late 1987 on Wrestling Challenge, where he squashed jobber Terry Gibbs. He was a lot less frantic on his way to the ring and when wrestling as he’d be known for, but the character was there. Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby Heenan put over how jacked he was, how offbeat he was, and they showed a picture-in-picture promo of him intensely rambling about the Power of the Warrior. Warrior took part in the original (well, first televised) Royal Rumble. The Royal Rumble would be better figured out a year later, as the initially 20-man match was really kind of boring. You’d think Warrior showing up in this kind of match would be exciting, but he ran in, aimlessly brawled and grappled for a few minutes, then got dumped out. His first major feud was against Hercules Hernandez, the perfect “first boss in a beat’em up” heel. They wrestled on the WrestleMania IV undercard, overshadowed by the event’s gigantic 14-man tournament to crown a new champion. Warrior won the match and moved on. At the time, Hercules was managed by Bobby Heenan and this started a very lengthy feud between Warrior and Heenan. Over the summer of 1988, the two regularly had house show matches where the winner got to put the loser in a weasel costume. Sadly, we never got to see the Ultimate Weasel. Going into that year’s SummerSlam, one of the big matches was supposed to be the Honky Tonk Man defending the Intercontinental Championship against Brutus Beefcake. Unfortunately, this was when Beefcake got in his absolutely horrifying parasailing accident that turned his face into aquarium gravel. Honky Tonk Man, who had been IC champ for well over a year (still the record), decided to call out an open challenge, since Beefcake couldn’t make it. Warrior raced to the ring and absolutely destroyed Honky Tonk Man in seconds, abruptly becoming the new IC champ. The company was definitely behind Warrior. Granted, he had suffered a few losses, but they were all house show matches. He was never defeated on TV or on PPV, outside of battle royals. Now that he held a title, he was really gaining steam. This bothered Hulk Hogan, as Warrior’s persona was essentially a neon remix of Hogan. He was a coked-up muscle man who spoke gibberish and had the tendency of simply deciding to become invincible in the match’s final moments so he could hit his finishers and win. He tried suggesting to Warrior that he try a different direction, but he was rightfully ignored. Warrior’s next feud was with “Ravishing” Rick Rude, also managed by Heenan. At the 1989 Royal Rumble, the two had a “super posedown,” which was really weird. It was supposed to be a bodybuilding contest with Rude doing the real poses and Warrior just flexing like Animal from the Muppets in a muscle suit. Of course, the crowd sided with the good guy and Rude went all Frank Grimes by beating the poo poo out of Warrior. This led to a match at WrestleMania V where Rude beat Warrior thanks to Heenan’s interference. The real story was in the post-match. Warrior got his hands on Heenan and destroyed him. He was absolutely too stiff with him and genuinely hosed him up, especially his already bad neck. The idea was that Heenan was supposed to have a match with the Red Rooster immediately after, where Rooster would easily be able to win (as if he couldn’t already). The match itself, while short, is incredibly hard to watch because you can see that Heenan is in total agony and can barely move at all. Warrior would get his win and title back from Rude at SummerSlam 1989. Then it was time for the main course as Warrior started feuding with Heenan’s most powerful client: Andre the Giant. On paper, Warrior vs. Andre seemed too good to be true. It felt like a literal version of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object. In reality, it was a barely-mobile giant in his final singles feud against a guy who got tired quick because he was a musclehead with no cardio who zipped to the ring as fast as humanly possible. They wrestled the house show circuit and many their matches were incredibly short. Like, 30 seconds long. They did have a handful of matches that lasted about 8 minutes or so, like at MSG or on Saturday Night’s Main Event. It was actually a miracle the two could pull that off, especially the SNME one, which isn’t that bad. The feud had a perfect ending. At Survivor Series 1988, the main event was the Ultimate Warrior, the Rockers, and Jim Neidhart vs. Andre, Arn Anderson, Haku, and Bobby Heenan. With the other three faces in the ring, Andre was able to overpower them all by himself. Then Warrior raced to the ring and nailed a couple running clotheslines, with the last one knocking Andre out of the ring. Andre acted knocked out, got counted out, then came to and was told to leave midway into the match. Not only did Warrior win the match, but he once again got to annihilate Heenan. For the time, this was the finale to their rivalry. There was a funny story told by Heenan in one of the Warrior documentaries. All these endless house show matches involved Warrior running into Andre as fast as possible and hitting him a bit too hard. Enough to really annoy Andre. Finally, one day, Andre put his fist up as Warrior ran full force. In the matches that followed, Warrior was a lot safer on his running clotheslines. While all of this was going on, Hulk Hogan was WWF Champion, though he was stuck in a storyline that did not focus on his title whatsoever. He was dealing with a ridiculous, inexplicable feud that Vince planned to stretch all the way to WrestleMania. And thank God he had the Ultimate Warrior as the backup plan, because Vince’s initial idea for the WrestleMania VI main event was a whole lot worse.
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Jul 13, 2023 05:46
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And now for a big tangent. THE DIMINISHING RETURNS OF THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR: PART 2 As I get closer to the Ultimate Warrior's WWF Championship reign, I'm going to do something completely on-brand for it by ignoring Hellwig so I can focus on Hulk Hogan. Through the 80s into the 90s, Hogan has had something of a bizarre film career. He's had some fun cameos in movies like Gremlins 2, Muppets From Space, Spy Hard, and of course Rocky III, but when it came to movies starring him... yeah, not so good. I mean, I'm a firm believer that Suburban Commando loving slaps. It's a genuinely enjoyable family comedy adventure and I want to watch it right now, but his other movies were garbage. No Holds Barred, on the other hand, was enjoyable garbage. It's one of those perfect bad movies and I'm sour to this day that RiffTrax hasn't touched it yet. It's a movie where Terry Bollea plays Rip Thomas, who is just Hogan with a different color scheme and taunt. If you haven't seen this movie, it's about an evil Vince-like businessman named Tom Brell (Kurt Fuller) who insists Rip work for him to the point of kidnapping, which does not work out and Rip ends up making a henchman poop his pants. Brell tries to get revenge by creating a cinematic prototype to ECW, where his champion is an invincible monster of a man named Zeus (Tiny Lister). Zeus goads Rip into a high-profile match, Rip wins, and Brell is electrocuted to death. The end. OR WAS IT? The movie came out in early June 1989. In WWF, Hogan was fresh off regaining the WWF Championship from his best-friend-turned-bitter-enemy Randy Savage at WrestleMania V. Days before the movie's release, Hogan was defending the title against the Big Boss Man in a steel cage on Saturday Night's Main Event. That's when Zeus walked out to taunt him. Not actor Tiny Lister, but Zeus the literal movie character. The narrative was that Zeus had played himself in the movie and was angry that he was written to lose. But this wasn't a movie, Hogan! This was real life! Meanwhile, the character Tom Brell showed up on WWF TV at least once, also putting into question the relationship between film and reality. Randy Savage liked Zeus' style and created an alliance. Savage, his manager Sherri Martel, and Zeus were quite the package when it came to promos. They were the most unhinged poo poo you'd ever hear with Savage somehow sounding the most grounded of the three. To promote this movie, which had already bombed horribly mind you, the main event of SummerSlam 1989 was Hogan and Brutus Beefcake vs. Savage and Zeus. Thank God, as Zeus was not actually a trained wrestler. He was just a massive actor who looked like a wrestler. He needed the other three (Beefcake especially) to carry him through the match and make up for his shortcomings. The final product was passable and ended with Hogan stealing Sherri's loaded purse and using it to knock out Zeus for the pin. Hogan beat Zeus, but through cheating. Justified cheating, but still cheating. The idea was to keep the feud going. Yes, the movie had long left theaters, but eventually it was going to be available to watch on PPV. Then it was going to be on VHS. There was still money to be made and in Vince's mind, the endgame was simple: Hulk Hogan vs. Zeus for the WWF Championship at WrestleMania VI! But that was months and months down the line. The next PPV would be Survivor Series 1989. Hogan would lead the Hulkamaniacs (Jake Roberts, Ax, and Smash) against the Million Dollar Team (Ted Dibiase, Zeus, Warlord, and the Barbarian). Within the opening minutes, Zeus was disqualified for strangling Hogan and refusing to let go. Regardless, Hogan went on to be his team's sole survivor. Later in the show, Savage and Zeus jumped Hogan and Beefcake in the locker room. This was to hype up their next match, which had a rather intriguing setup. During some TV tapings, they had a two-on-two cage match. The idea was that said match was only viewable if you ordered No Holds Barred on PPV or later bought the VHS. The package was referred to as No Holds Barred: The Movie, the Match and the cage match would begin after the closing credits finished up. The match itself, while not especially long, is a lot of fun. Beefcake and Savage both escaped the cage, leaving Hogan vs. Zeus. There, Hogan was able to overpower Zeus and pin him after three leg drops. Hogan got his decisive win and the story was finally over. Vince had finally come to his senses and decided to nix the WrestleMania match. Zeus was done with the company. Not that he was entirely done with wrestling, though. Zeus would show up in Puerto Rico to have his first and only singles match against death match legend Abdullah the Butcher. It was ATROCIOUS and laughably tedious, ending in a double count-out. He would show up a few years later in WCW as Z-Gangsta, joining the Alliance to End Hulkamania and taking part in the infamous Doomsday Cage Match. He ended his career with a record of 0-5. At least he got elected president in the future that one time and also thwarted the Joker. So with Zeus gone, what did that mean for Hogan's big WrestleMania match? He was still champion and needed a worthy opponent. Hogan vs. Savage had long run its course. Not only had Hogan vs. Andre run its course, but Andre was so broken down that he could barely hold together to do a tag match. The big new heel was Earthquake, but there wasn't enough time to build him up. Maybe they could have done something with Bad News Brown, who had become little more than a well-protected midcard act. If WrestleMania VI was going to be special, it needed a huge match. Perhaps it was finally time to do a face vs. face title match.
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Jul 13, 2023 15:34
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THE DIMINISHING RETURNS OF THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR: PART 3 After overcoming Andre the Giant and finishing his business with the Heenan Family, the Intercontinental Champion Ultimate Warrior moved on to... ugh... Dino Bravo. While not the worst worker of the time, Dino Bravo was maybe the most boring wrestler in an era of unforgettable characters. His whole deal was that he was a Canadian strongman, but his strength never really integrated itself well into his wrestling and he really just looked like a giant baby wearing a toupee. He was not the most compelling choice to be the Warrior’s new rival. Their short-lived rivalry did have one memorable and important moment. They decided to have a test of strength where they would each see how many push-ups they could do with somebody sitting on their back. Dino chose a very large, bearded man from the audience. This man turned out to be his good friend the Canadian Earthquake, who used the opportunity to crush the Warrior during his attempts at push-ups and leave him in a heap. Hell of a debut. Maybe WrestleMania VI would have had Warrior vs. Earthquake. Maybe it was just going to be a title defense against Dino while building towards the eventual Earthquake match. But plans changed and Vince decided it was time to truly get behind Warrior. It took several years for the Royal Rumble to truly mean anything. In 1990, it was still nothing more than a fun novelty of a match where the winner merely got bragging rights. Hell, Hogan was entered in it and he was WWF Champion! That year’s Rumble is one of my all-time favorites, in my top 5 or maybe even top 3. Fantastic pacing and a wonderful roster from start to finish. Warrior came in at #21. When Hogan came in at #25, poo poo started getting chaotic. Warrior and Hogan started to gradually whittle down the ring. Then Shawn Michaels came in at #26 and got thrown out immediately. Seconds later, Warrior threw out Rick Martel and everyone in the arena, all of the sudden, realized that only Hogan and Warrior were left and the audience lost their poo poo in excitement. It was an era where good vs. evil was so solidified that the very idea of having two faces hash it out was nearly unheard of. But these two invincible superheroes HAD to fight. It was every man for himself, and these were the only two men in the ring. The two only clashed for about a minute, but it was hype as gently caress. They slammed into each other a few times before knocking each other out with a double clothesline. Then the Barbarian entered, followed shortly by Rick Rude who didn’t even wait for the countdown, and it was no longer just one-on-one. Hogan accidentally-but-maybe-not eliminated Warrior and ended up winning the whole thing. It was really rad other than the fact that Mr. Perfect was originally penciled in to win until Hogan vetoed it. Hogan vs. Warrior was announced for WrestleMania with a “Winner Take All” gimmick. The build was rather nonexistent. There were situations where each rescued the other from Earthquake, only for the rescued one to take issue with it, but other than a contract signing where they cut angry promos at each other, that was about it. The best part of that was Warrior going into one of his batshit rants and Hogan’s response was just, “Sign.” Like he was just loving done with dealing with this lunatic's nonsense. Most famous was the Warrior doing a promo where he told “Ho Ko-gan” that he would commit acts of terrorism by hijacking the plane to WrestleMania and crashing it into Parts Unknown. Snarl. The WrestleMania VI undercard was mostly garbage outside of a sweet Jake Roberts vs. Ted Dibiase match. This whole event was being carried by Hogan vs. Warrior and, by God, they absolutely delivered. The match was awesome by playing it up like the wrestling version of Superman and Shazam punching the poo poo out of each other. It was two powerhouses in a near-mirror match, dealing out the same amount of damage. In the end, Warrior rolled out of the way from a legdrop and countered with a running splash to get the pin. Hogan, unfortunately, could not really help himself. He kicked out at 3.01 and went over-the-top in acting like he had been wronged. He would later claim that although he graciously admitted defeat and handed Warrior the title, everyone was more focused on him leaving to the back than Warrior celebrating in the ring. Kayfabe WWF President Jack Tunney insisted that there would not be a rematch due to fear of what would be left of the two wrestlers. It was also decided that while Warrior could be WWF Champion, he had to give up the Intercontinental Championship. The Warrior would hold the WWF Championship for a respectable amount of time. Time would call his championship run a failure as business took a bit of a downturn and it pissed Vince off that he did what the fans wanted and this is how he was repaid. Hogan would use this as political ammo to get the title back on him down the line. Thing is, Warrior never had a chance. His booking during the title run cut him off at the legs. While Hogan was having a compelling feud with Earthquake, Warrior had no viable challengers. They had to have Rick Rude – who had recently lost a feud to Warrior – step up because he was the one guy to have a televised win over him at one point. Granted, the two had great chemistry together and the steel cage main event at SummerSlam 1990 was pretty good, but Warrior felt secondary to what Hogan was doing. The other main storyline for Warrior as champion was having him as the sixth wheel in a feud between the Legion of Doom/Road Warriors and Demolition. Demolition (which had recently introduced third member Crush) was always blatant ripoff of the Road Warriors, so when the actual Road Warriors appeared, the feud wrote itself. The six-man tag matches were a regular part of the house show circuit and it wasn’t meshing right. LOD vs. Demolition seemed like an easy choice for WrestleMania VII, but they nixed it due to the bad chemistry. This feud did lead to Survivor Series 1990, which was an incredibly unique show. While remembered for the first appearance of the Undertaker and the disaster of the Gobbledygooker, this was also the one Survivor Series that was treated as a tournament. The idea was that the surviving faces would team up in the main event against the surviving heels in the Grand Finale Match for Survival. Warrior led LOD and “Texas Tornado” Kerry Von Erich against Mr. Perfect and Demolition. Warrior was the sole survivor and later joined Hogan and Tito Santana against Ted Dibiase, Rick Martel, Warlord, Hercules, and Paul Roma. This led to one of my favorite Warrior promo moments where he hyped up his team. He mentioned Hulkamania. He mentioned “Warrior Wildness,” which was apparently a thing in his mind. More importantly, he referred to Tito’s fanbase as, and I’m laughing while typing this, “Ariba Derci.” What the gently caress, Warrior? What the absolute gently caress? Anyway, Warrior and Hogan were the winners and the PPV ended with the two former opponents posing in the ring together. It was neat. While it was too little, too late, they did build up two interesting challengers for Warrior’s title. First was “Macho King” Randy Savage, who was openly very interested in taking on Warrior and had antagonized him a few times. Then there was Sargent Slaughter. The former GI Joe came back to WWF as a heel. When he returned, it seemed like the US was going to be staying away from the Persian Gulf situation, so Slaughter was playing himself up as a fascist war hawk who claimed this country was soft and didn’t have the guts to go to war. Then the US went to war after all, so they had to go to extreme lengths to make Slaughter’s heel run work by making him an Iraqi sympathizer. Warrior would face Slaughter at Royal Rumble 1991. Earlier in the show, Sherri Martel tried to seduce Warrior into giving Savage a title shot, but he just started shaking ridiculously and screamed, “NoOoOoOoOoOoOoOOOO!!!” in her face. In return, Savage showed up during the title match and shattered a scepter over Warrior’s head, allowing Slaughter to get the pin and become the new champion. Savage was supposed to be in the Royal Rumble match, but no-showed, supposedly chased off by Warrior. Nearly 30 years later, a WWE comic would depict these events where an angry Warrior chased him on to a Denny’s and they got in a food fight. Oh, and Hogan won the Rumble match and dedicated it to the troops. Slaughter’s challenger was immediately obvious. Savage was going to get the Warrior match he wanted, but at a great price. It was decided that there was not enough room in this promotion for the two of them. Somebody had to go.
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Jul 14, 2023 03:53
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Cornwind Evil posted:And from at least once source, that was also the end of Jim Hellwig the man. It's been suggested, and mentioned by myself, that when he got into the business, Hellwig was actually a somewhat quiet, shy person by nature, so he worked around that by throwing himself into the most bombastic, over the top character he could come up with. But, as I keep saying, be careful who you pretend to be, because you are who you pretend to be, and since wrestlers are expected to live their gimmick in a way other actors are not, Warrior's ex-wife basically said "My husband, Jim Hellwig, left for Wrestlemania VI. And Warrior came back, and I never saw my husband again." And I'd buy it, especially if you believe that Warrior seemed very keen to make amends with everyone for the immediate days before his death, like the Warrior had finally died and only Jim was left. I believe it. Something I've noticed in wrestling is that few things mess you up like being the face champ for an extended amount of time when business isn't great. Shawn Michaels wasn't the nicest guy to start with, but he and Bret will both admit that it was his initial title reign that really drove him over the edge. You've hit this major goal, followed immediately by having to maintain that level of effort as all eyes are on you and you have the company on your back. And as you work your rear end off, you are told that you aren't good enough and that your dream is a failure. Then you get paranoid and bitter whenever somebody is brought up as a potential next champ because if you hold onto the belt longer, there's a chance you can turn this around, but if you don't, it's over and they may never put you in this position ever again. I recall being in that position nearly broke Eddie Guerrero and I'm sure it didn't help Benoit's psyche.
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Jul 14, 2023 13:40
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THE DIMINISHING RETURNS OF THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR: PART 4 Ultimate Warrior vs. “Macho King” Randy Savage was signed for WrestleMania VII in a “Career Ending Match.” Despite there being only two months between Rumble and Mania, there was absolutely zero story during that time. Savage interfering at the Rumble was literally all there was to it. For those two months, we just got a handful of pre-taped promos from the two of them, which is all the entertainment you needed. Though there was something interesting about the Warrior’s ramblings. He claimed that a jewel from Savage’s scepter had been embedded into his skull from the attack. He talked about how the jewel allowed him to see Savage’s past, present, and future. He swore that Savage would lose at WrestleMania, but in defeat he would find that which he once lost. It sounded like your usual Warrior madness, but it was a cool bit of foreshadowing. With WrestleMania VII, they hyped it as a double main event with this match taking place before an intermission halfway into the show while Hogan vs. Slaughter for the title ended it. While Hogan vs. Slaughter was a boring slog of a bout, Warrior vs. Savage was easily the best match in Warrior’s entire career. Prior to the match, the commentators spotted Miss Elizabeth in the audience, looking sad and distraught. She and Savage had broken up in kayfabe slightly over two years prior and she made her last televised appearance at the previous WrestleMania. The match went 20 minutes and ended as decisively as possible. Partially because Savage really did plan to retire at the time. Partially because Savage was buddies with Warrior in real life and trusted him. Late in the match, Warrior hit his finishers on Savage and Savage kicked out. Warrior was so devastated by this that he questioned the gods and wondered if it was his time. Savage recovered and took down Warrior, delivering FIVE top-rope elbow drops. Warrior kicked out, turned invincible, and spammed his flying shoulder block finisher to the point that he was able to pin the lifeless Savage via foot on the chest. The post-match had Sherri scream at and attack the hurt Savage before Elizabeth ran out to protect him. Then there was this huge, emotional reunion between Savage and Elizabeth to write them off. Later in the night, Sherri aligned herself with Ted Dibiase, so everyone was a winner in this storyline. Savage, now a face, stuck around as a commentator. Warrior was put up against the Undertaker, a rivalry that made so much sense, but was still surprising as it was the kind of pairing where neither guy should lose. Warrior was coming off his big WrestleMania win and this was Undertaker’s first actual storyline. At the time, the Undertaker’s manager Paul Bearer had his own interview segment called the Funeral Parlor. Warrior was his guest. As there were several caskets setup in the background, one of them had Undertaker hiding inside. He stepped out, clobbered Warrior from behind with his urn, then shoved him into an airtight casket to murder him on TV. They played this completely serious with officials having to race against time and try to drill into the casket. When they finally got it opened, Warrior was unresponsive and the inside cloth had been torn apart from his desperation. Meanwhile, Savage on commentary had the best performance in this. When the attack happened and Warrior was thrown into the casket, Savage thought it was the best thing he had ever seen. He enjoyed seeing Warrior get his. Then as time went on, Savage started to get uncomfortable. It increased until he finally broke down and screamed for somebody to save the poor guy’s life. About six months later, Undertaker would pull the same poo poo when Hogan was the guest on Funeral Parlor. That time, Piper and Savage on commentary immediately dropped what they were doing and grabbed steel chairs to save him, as they were NOT going to sit by and allow that all over again. Speaking of Hogan, a segment on Saturday Night’s Main Event had Undertaker manhandle Warrior in the ring, only for Hogan to rush out to make the save. Hogan had the WWF Championship in hand and used it to smash Undertaker in the face and knock him out of the ring. Undertaker simply landed on his feet and no-sold it while Hogan looked a bit disturbed. It was an impressive scene to see Undertaker get a rub from the top two faces in one segment. Warrior vs. Undertaker was one of those feuds that only culminated on the house show circuit. I was fortunate enough to see one of those matches, where it was a Bodybag Match. Same as a Casket Match, but way easier to carry the prop from show to show. Warrior ended up winning by running across the ropes, jumping, and smashing Undertaker with the urn to knock him out. Most of their house show bouts ended with Warrior winning by DQ. Also, this series of matches went on for four months! Interesting about this is that Warrior had a tendency to no-show house shows. To make up for it, WWF used Randy Savage as a last-minute replacement at times. Sometimes he’d even wear a mask and compete as Mr. Madness because he kayfabe wasn’t allowed to wrestle. Regardless, this meant that the only instances of Randy Savage vs. Undertaker in wrestling history happened at a few random house shows that nobody filmed. The angle took a turn when Jake Roberts offered to help Warrior tap into the dark side so he could better understand Undertaker. That led to a series of hammy pre-taped segments where Jake buried Warrior alive, stuck him back in the casket, and put him in a room of snakes. The payoff was that Jake was secretly in league with Undertaker and betrayed Warrior’s trust by having a cobra bite him. No idea how Warrior got out of that situation, but he did and it looked like Warrior vs. Jake Roberts was on the horizon! But first, Warrior had some unfinished business. Minutes after Hogan won the title off of Slaughter at WrestleMania, he went backstage to the locker room area and ate a fireball to the face from the dumpy military man. Hogan vs. Slaughter was a regular house show battle as well and I got to see them in a Desert Storm Match at MSG. It was just a hardcore match where Hogan got to wear camo and a green mask. For SummerSlam 1991, there was a bizarre double main event put together. One was the wedding of Randy Savage and Elizabeth, dubbed the Match Made in Heaven. The other was Hogan and Warrior vs. Slaughter and his two subordinates General Adnan and Colonel Mustafa. Mustafa was the Iron Sheik repackaged as an Iraqi soldier which was... certainly a choice. Still, this was an incredibly one-sided match despite the numbers advantage. Two overpowered top faces vs. a major heel, a midcard heel, and a manager. To complicate things further, WWF was making a big deal about WCW import Sid Justice. Sid was made the special referee of this match as nobody knew what side he would be on. In real life, Warrior was frustrated with how he was being paid compared to Hogan, especially in terms of WrestleMania VII. He demanded Vince make it right or he would no-show SummerSlam. Vince told him he agreed to his terms, then waited for the SummerSlam match to end to say, “Haha, just kidding! You’re loving suspended!” Warrior wanted to quit, but that’s not how Vince’s contracts work so he would at the very least have to wait for over a year before his contract expired. The last thing we saw from Warrior was him chasing Adnan and Mustafa backstage with a chair so that Hogan could take on Slaughter one-on-one. After Hogan won, fully ending the whole heel Slaughter storyline, Hogan and Sid proceeded to celebrate in the ring for a while in what was partially a big distraction. So much focus on these two while Warrior’s throwaway exit practically faded off the radar. Back in those days, it took a while to realize most wrestlers were gone from the roster. It’s not like you’d check the internet or anything. You would just go a couple months before realizing, “Wait, when’s the last time anyone brought up the Ultimate Warrior? Is he still a thing? Did they fire the Ultimate Warrior?” One guy who was livid about this was Jake Roberts. Years earlier, heel Jake had an unaired run-in with Hogan where he DDT’d the Hulkster to set up a feud. Unfortunately, the crowd absolutely loved it, which was reason enough for Hogan to nix what would have followed. He didn’t want to fan the flames against him. Because of that, Jake lost a bunch of decent paydays that would have come from being Hogan’s high-profile foe. Now Jake was being cheated out of his Warrior feud as Warrior was sitting out before they could have a single goddamn match! Cooler heads would prevail for a bit months later. Though it would still be terrible timing for Jake.
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Jul 15, 2023 17:22
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Defiance Industries posted:I will always remember the Ultimate Warrior disappearing from TV because of what I heard about it on the playground. A kid who was one grade ahead of me said that he was off TV because the Macho Man "sexually assaulted" him backstage. Now I was in first grade so I didn't know what that entailed, but the older kid helpfully explained to me that "it's where you attack someone and you have a knife taped to your ding dong." Holy poo poo.
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Jul 15, 2023 17:40
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I do recall WWF Magazine occasionally explaining a wrestler leaving the company via kayfabe. Like how Big Boss Man's career ended after Doink the Clown squirted ink into his eyes. THE DIMINISHING RETURNS OF THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR: PART 5 The Ultimate Warrior was gone for eight months and a LOT happened while he was gone. WWF was in a transitional period. The Hulkamania Era (also known as the Cartoon Era) was fading out and the New Generation era was bubbling to the surface. Hogan was champion, but he wasn’t overwhelmingly the top name in the company. Not only was Sid being treated like a big deal, but Roddy Piper returned to in-ring action and Randy Savage was reinstated. Undertaker and Jake Roberts were major heels. Bret Hart looked unbeatable as the new Intercontinental Champion and looked like he could be inserted into the main event with little issue. Shawn Michaels turned on his longtime partner Marty Jannetty and started a heel run that looked like he was going to really go places. Sgt. Slaughter repented for his actions and became a midcard face, ultimately starting a tag team with “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan. Most importantly, WWF brought in Ric Flair. This culminated in the 1992 Royal Rumble, where the title had been vacated going into the show, so Jack Tunney decided that the winner would become the new champion. With a stacked roster taking part, Flair lasted an hour to win thanks to a heated moment between Hogan and Sid. They played it up like we were getting Hogan vs. Flair for the title at WrestleMania VIII, but that’s not what we got. Hogan vs. Flair was the biggest dream match in wrestling at the time. They had been building it up for months and even did a house show run on it. So why didn’t it happen? The main reason is simply that Sid had it in his contract that he would get to main event the PPV. They turned him heel and had Hogan relinquish his #1 contender spot to face Sid. Flair instead defended the title against Savage halfway into WrestleMania VIII. They had a feud built around Ric Flair’s use of Photoshop. Hogan vs. Sid got very complicated at the last minute. They were starting to play up the idea that Hogan was considering retirement and was at the very least taking time off after Mania. They definitely needed somebody to fill that void. The other last-minute aspect was the inclusion of Papa Shango, a newcomer who was a voodoo witch doctor. Shango had zero to do with Hogan or Sid, but he was shown doing some anti-Hogan voodoo stuff backstage of the show and was supposed to break up the pin when Hogan legdropped Sid, causing a disqualification. Well, Shango totally missed his cue. Sid became the first person to kick out of the legdrop. To improvise, Sid’s manager Harvey Whippleman jumped onto the ring apron, causing the ref to call for DQ. THEN Papa Shango entered the ring to make it two-on-one. Moments later, the Ultimate Warrior’s music kicked in and he ran out to rescue Hogan. The PPV ended with the final in-ring meeting between Hogan and Warrior in what was supposed to be a surprise passing of the torch moment. Now that I think about it, it’s also the last time we would see the Ultimate Warrior show up in the main event of a WWF PPV. I guess in terms of wrestling in the main event, his final appearance was Survivor Series 1990. The Savage/Elizabeth wedding went on last at SummerSlam 1991. Meanwhile, that night’s card included a newly-face Undertaker vs. Jake Roberts. Jake was pissed about being passed over for a job as a writer for the company and threatened to no-show WrestleMania if he didn’t get his release. So whoops, guess he missed out on that Warrior feud again! One of the big talking points about Warrior’s return was his new look and the widespread rumors that came with them. As he hadn’t been on the road for months, his body was still shredded but not as bulky. His hair was shorter and looked different. His facepaint was different. This led to claims that the original Ultimate Warrior died in a car accident and they had to get somebody to replace him. Some claimed that the new Warrior was really a repackaged Kerry Von Erich. It’s kind of impressive how much this spread as I’m under the belief that it was suggested at recesses all across the country. Then again, it is something Vince absolutely would have done. Hogan and Jake were gone. That would mean Warrior vs. Sid, right? They did do a couple pre-taped promos after the event to hype up the house shows. Then after wrestling Warrior twice in one day during that tour, Sid had decided he was just done with the company and walked out. Fantastic. That left Papa Shango. It worked on paper. Throw the face-painted cartoon superhero with magic powers up against the face-painted cartoon supervillain with magic powers. Shango decided to target Warrior by stealing one of his tassels and doing creepy chants in his general direction. After Warrior won a match on Superstars, he collapsed. Officials brought him to the back to look at him and Warrior proceeded to vomit all over the place. Sometime later, Warrior showed up in front of a crowd to cut a promo on how Papa Shango’s black magic was nothing compared to the power of the Warriors. As Warrior spoke, black goo started to trickle down from his scalp (in actuality, he was wearing a jacket with a pump inside of one of the pockets). Warrior saw this goo and responded by screaming, “WARRIORRRRRRS!!” The build was metal, but Warrior vs. Shango had little actual payoff. They filmed a match of Warrior defeating Shango in what was a big pile of nothing because, as I’ve mentioned earlier in this thread, Papa Shango was NOT good in the ring. He had a presence and had charisma as the Godfather, but from bell-to-bell, it was rough. Warrior was not all that much better. I don’t even think the match they filmed was on TV. I think it was just for Coliseum Home Video. Maybe it was on Prime Time. Anyway, what happened was that WWF wrote out Jack Tunney and had him replaced with Gorilla Monsoon. They played up Monsoon as the WWF President who tried to do the popular thing and made matches people would be excited to check out. His first announcement was that at SummerSlam 1992, WWF Champion Randy Savage would be defending against the Ultimate Warrior. That left Papa Shango in the dust. He didn’t have a storyline for the remainder of his tenure with the company until being repackaged as Kama the Supreme Fighting Machine years later. Warrior vs. Savage was a face vs. face title match, but they added some extra intrigue with Ric Flair and his advisor Mr. Perfect. The two kept suggesting that one of the wrestlers was in cahoots with them. That only created a mystery and distrust between Warrior and Savage. The two were even put together as a tag team against the Nasty Boys, but they couldn’t coexist and their conflict caused the Nasty Boys to win via count-out. Apparently, the original plan was for Warrior to turn and align himself with Flair, but he refused to go through with that. Instead, they went with the reveal that neither was in league with Flair. Flair was just using the threat to mess with them. He ended up smashing up Savage’s leg with a chair, causing Savage to be too weak to re-enter the ring and getting counted out. Understanding Savage was a good guy after all, Warrior ran off Flair and Perfect and celebrated with his enemy-turned-friend. To go back to my main event talk from earlier, the reason why this wasn’t the SummerSlam main event was because it took place at Wembley Stadium and the main event spot went to Bret Hart dropping the Intercontinental Championship to British Bulldog. While it would be Bulldog’s greatest height, Bret dropping the belt was helpful to free him up for what the next few months would ask of him. Flair’s big plan turned out to be a success, as he had a championship match with Savage days later at a house show (that was being filmed) and thanks to both Savage’s bum leg and surprise interference from newcomer Razor Ramon, Flair made Savage pass out to the Figure Four. Funny thing with this match was that they only showed the last few minutes on TV. Apparently, Vince HATED the match. It was just a regular by-the-numbers low effort boring house show match. Vince had them go out and do the match AGAIN and still hated how they did it. Normally, you would have expected Warrior to dethrone Flair. The two even did some house show title matches that ended in DQ or no contest. Flair insists they were the worst matches he had ever had, which is impressive when you remember that Flair wrestled El Gigante. Unfortunately for Warrior, his physique did not go well with all the heat on WWF for steroid accusations, so he was probably not going to be champion any time soon. It didn’t help that he messed up Flair’s inner ear thanks to dumping the guy on his head. So instead, Flair dropped the title out of nowhere at a house show to Bret Hart. So began the New Generation Era. I seem to remember hearing that Warrior was asked to put over the new champion at one point and he refused. Not that Bret Hart minded, I imagine, since the guy loving hated Warrior for the time he refused to leave the locker room and greet a dying child decked out in Warrior facepaint and a Warrior shirt. Because fascinating as Warrior’s career was, it can’t be understated that Jim Hellwig was a colossal piece of poo poo. So now that the WWF Championship was out of the picture, the big match being built up for Survivor Series was Ultimate Warrior and Randy Savage vs. Ric Flair and Razor Ramon. Warrior and Savage became the Ultimate Maniacs, decked out in matching outfits, and for several weeks we got the apex of absolutely batshit promos. “No sleep, no FOOOOOOOOOD, no nothing. Just maniacism. As a skeleton we stand before you as Ultimate Maniacs. We're already dead. What are you going to do? Bury us now?” For the final classic edition of Saturday Night’s Main Event, the Ultimate Maniacs faced tag champs Money Inc. The Maniacs won by count-out, brawled with Money Inc. by the entrance, then got jumped by Flair and Razor. At one point, Warrior tried to shield Savage’s body and take the beating for him. This show was pre-taped and Warrior did do a series of house show matches against Kamala after the fact. The details vary, but Warrior was caught either doing steroids or HGH and was either let go or suspended and no-showed enough shows out of protest that he got released from his contract. In kayfabe, they explained that the beating from Saturday Night’s Main Event caused massive injuries and Savage no longer had a partner for the coming PPV. Survivor Series 1992 aired a mere ELEVEN days after that SNME episode (Series used to be a Thanksgiving Eve tradition, hence the weird Wednesday airing). That meant they had to come up with a replacement that people would care about ASAFP. To the company’s credit, they knocked it out of the park with one of my all-time favorite face turns. Prime Time Wrestling was in its final days before being replaced by Raw. The format was two hours of a panel discussing current wrestling events along with some random pre-taped matches from house show tours. Two of the regular panelists were Mr. Perfect and Bobby Heenan, both cornermen for Flair. Savage appeared via satellite to explain that he had the “perfect partner” in mind and made it apparent that he intended to have Perfect come out of retirement to join him. Perfect and Heenan laughed at this suggestion and Flair later appeared via satellite to refute it as well. Over the next two hours, you could see the gears turning in Perfect’s head. Were Flair and Heenan really holding him down? Were they really trying to take him off the table because they saw him as a threat? Was being Flair’s lapdog really in his best interest? It didn’t help when Heenan and Flair would let something slip like, “Perfect would have no chance against Flair anyway!” Finally, Perfect angrily declared he would take Savage’s offer. Heenan slapped him in anger, IMMEDIATELY apologized profusely, and got a pitcher of ice-cold water dumped on his head while Perfect cut a promo on Flair. And once again, the stink of Warrior abruptly leaving the company was washed away. It wasn’t going to be the last time.
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Jul 15, 2023 23:17
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THE DIMINISHING RETURNS OF THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR: PART 6 Having left WWF, Warrior went on to wrestle here and there for a couple years, usually taking on Hercules Hernandez. He also starred in the movie Firepower, which I have only seen once back in 1993 in the middle of the night on HBO while wondering, “Wait, is that the Ultimate Warrior?” It was about an underground fight club version of Mad Max’s Thunderdome, where Hellwig played the final boss character the Swordsman. During these fights, random weapons would be lowered into the battleground and his deal was that he got to basically cheat by always getting twin katanas as his powerup. He also decided to legally change his name to “Warrior,” figuring that it would allow him to bypass copyright law. It somehow worked. While he was gone, the wrestling landscape had changed a lot. The New Generation Era was in full effect. While it began with Bret Hart’s groundbreaking “fighting champion” reign, Hulk Hogan hosed over Bret’s spot by becoming champion himself and setting up a passing of the torch match at SummerSlam 1993, only to bow out of the company and soon go to WCW. As WCW brought in Hogan, they also started to bring in a lot of his buddies and people who were WWF names in the 80s and early 90s. Sometimes they would have to change up their names and gimmicks, but even then, that meant that Big Boss Man and Earthquake would be the Boss and Avalanche. Everyone from Randy Savage to Junkyard Dog made their way over, so when Hogan hyped up the “Ultimate Surprise” and showed the silhouette of a jacked, long-haired man with tassels, many eyebrows were raised. I can almost applaud WCW for what they must have been thinking. If people thought the real Ultimate Warrior was an imposter after being gone for the better part of a year, maybe they could create an Ultimate Warrior imposter that people would think was the real deal! And so, Richard Wilson arrived as the Renegade. He was what you would expect if Warrior came over to WCW and had to make his persona similar, but legally distinct from what WWF owned. His outfits were a bit different. He had a facepaint “R” in multiple colors. He still acted like a wild man and he was aligned with Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage. Renegade had a run with the WCW TV Championship, but otherwise, his career never took off. It didn’t help that he was arguably worse in the ring than Warrior. He became a throwaway jobber for years in WCW before being let go. With no other promotions interested in him during wrestling’s cultural high point, Wilson fell into despair. Tragically, the man Hogan introduced by claiming he would bring Hulkamania into the 21st century wouldn’t even make it that far and took his own life in 1999. When Vince decided to bring Warrior back to WWF in early 1996, the company was in a rather volatile situation. Diesel’s year-long title reign killed business and they were in a spot where Diesel was no longer champion, and he and Razor Ramon were on their way out of the company. Shawn Michaels was being set up to get his first WWF Championship run. Bret Hart was about to take a lengthy vacation. They had fresh, new heels in Mankind, Goldust, Hunter Hearst Helmsley, and especially Vader. Yokozuna was on his way to a face turn. Ahmed Johnson appeared to share the same mystique as the Warrior, but in a mid-90s, grounded package. Then there was this guy Steve Austin, who was shaking off his failed Ringmaster moniker. He seemed to have potential. This company was very different from what Warrior left behind four years earlier. But that’s okay because Warrior was fuller of himself than ever before! He was going to be a huge special attraction and in return, WWF had to promote his comic book, wrestling school, and show some motivational videos about living your life like the Warrior. Something about how it’s okay to steal from a blind man if you really need that money. The comic was your usual third party 90s comic Rob Liefeld knockoff. I’ve never been able to bring myself to read it, but I have read articles about it. Like many failed comics of the era, the first issue or two were colorful while a few issues later, it was nothing more than sketches and inks. The comic is infamous for Warrior doing S&M with Santa Claus and constantly talking about “destrucity.” Apparently the word means “the truce between destiny and reality.” That almost sounds like a thing. Almost. Little is known about Warrior University, where he turned his private gym into a wrestling school. We just know that he charged a shitload of money for what had to be a terrible learning experience. There are no testimonies from people who went there and no success stories of people who came out of it and had any kind of career. Similarly, in 1995, Warrior released his own 30-minute workout tape. It was literally just him working out for a half hour with zero instructions. Bringing Warrior back might have been a big mistake on Vince’s part, but at least he was smart enough not to completely poo poo the bed with it. The main event scene was pretty busy at the moment, so it was best to reestablish Warrior for a few months before putting him on top of the card. Without showing him, Warrior was announced as coming back for WrestleMania XII. His first opponent would be one Hunter Hearst Helmsley. I think I remember Jerry Lawler on commentary insisting that he has word that Warrior gained like 400 pounds since he was gone, only to be shocked when Warrior came out looking like his normal self. Thing about this run is that nearly all of his late-80s/early-90s comrades were gone. He had no friends to keep his ego in check. No veterans to respect. He wasn't going to be generous like he would with Rick Rude or Randy Savage. Apparently the only guy on the roster he really gave a poo poo about was Owen Hart. That meant that when they asked him if his match against Hunter could be at least slightly competitive, Warrior told them to gently caress off. And so, Warrior hit the ring, Hunter attacked him, hit the Pedigree, Warrior sprung back to his feet, and then hit his finishers to win. Just over a minute. Many see this squash as a villain origin story for what kind of an rear end in a top hat Triple H became down the line. Warrior’s next feud was against Goldust. An odd choice to be sure, as Goldust was Intercontinental Champion and also injured. Even if Goldust could wrestle at the time, the IC title seemed a bit below Warrior. The two had a PPV “match” that was seven minutes of Goldust stalling outside of the ring and not getting counted out while Warrior sat in Marlena’s director’s chair and smoked one of her cigars. Goldust had a bodyguard (played by the former Mantaur) there for the sake of getting beat up by Warrior while Goldust disappeared and finally got counted out. The two had a rematch, which was a qualifier for the King of the Ring tournament. This one was at least a match, but it wasn’t a very good one. It ended with Goldust deciding once again to just walk away. The ending was awkward as Warrior decided to exit the ring and slowly stalk Goldust and Marlena. Instead of getting attacked or anything, Goldust simply backed away into the curtain. The two were counted out and Jerry Lawler decided, rather out of the blue, to pick up Marlena’s golden director’s chair and try to sneak up on Warrior. Warrior noticed him before he had a chance and then destroyed the chair in the ring. So now we were getting a PPV match of Warrior vs. Jerry Lawler and there was this exhausted feeling of, “OH MY GOD nobody wants this!” But then again, that’s how I felt about any time Jerry Lawler had a feud in the mid-90s. Yes, he threw a good punch, but to people who didn’t grow up in Memphis, he just came off as a chubby commentator who was about as threatening as your run-of-the-mill manager. One segment between the two was based around Lawler (a talented artist) giving Warrior a peace offering in the form of a framed Warrior painting. Warrior would admit the talent and effort that went into making it, but still insisted he would destroy Lawler at King of the Ring. Then Lawler would smash the frame over Warrior’s head. It was sugar glass and Lawler had already promised to use the back of the frame anyway. Warrior was in no real danger, but he was really paranoid, so without telling anyone, he wore a baseball cap with cushions inside it to protect him from the blow. This removed some of his wild man mystique and annoyed the hell out of Lawler, who never really had a reputation for shooting on his opponents. The match happened at King of the Ring 1996 and was three minutes of garbage. It was Warrior’s last WWF PPV match. Not much happened on this show, well, other than that Steve Austin guy winning the big tournament and cutting some legendary promo on Jake Roberts. Oh man! If Warrior didn’t chase after Goldust and get eliminated from the tournament, we totally could have finally gotten Warrior vs. Jake! Over these few months of Warrior’s return, his usual house show opponent was Vader. From Royal Rumble to SummerSlam of that year, Vader was being treated as the most unstoppable heel monster. So it was good that none of those Warrior squashes saw TV. In fact, Vader was pissed about these matches, feeling that word would get to Japan and make him look bad. He even walked out during a match and was told by officials in the back to get the gently caress back in the ring or go home. Considering his losses to Hogan caused him to leave WCW, dude was probably having flashbacks. They were going to finally pull the trigger of bringing Warrior into the main event. The next In Your House was going to have a six-man tag match of Camp Cornette (Vader, Owen Hart, British Bulldog) vs. Shawn Michaels, Ahmed Johnson, and the Ultimate Warrior. This would not play out as hoped because Vince was getting extremely frustrated with Warrior’s tendency to no-show house shows regularly. He had finally had enough and suspended him, which led to him being full-on fired. Now, back then, Raw had a schedule where they would do a live Monday show then tape the next week’s episode on Tuesday. That worked out great for the promotion, as by the time Warrior got suspended, they already had an episode in the can where after a match with Owen Hart (easily the best one of Warrior’s 1996 run), Warrior got jumped by Camp Cornette and Vader completely hosed him up. With no follow-up to this, optics made it look like Vader had destroyed Warrior to the point of sending him out of the company. Everything's coming up Leon! When the episode aired, it began with Gorilla Monsoon announcing Warrior’s suspension and airing the dirty laundry about Warrior’s no-shows. He said the suspension would take place after his match with Owen and that Michaels and Ahmed had to come up with a replacement. Near the end of the episode, Michaels and Ahmed were shown via satellite, revealing their new third man: Sycho Sid. Jim Cornette was always being interviewed via satellite and looked like he poo poo himself. Once again, Sid would be getting a push to distract us from Warrior being sent back to Parts Unknown. WWF was still hurting and WCW was getting stronger with their New World Order storyline. Over time, WWF started to figure itself out while WCW proceeded to make mistake after mistake. The momentum shifted and Eric Bischoff started to realize that WCW needed a shot in the arm if they were going to retake the lead. Perhaps they could go back to that Renegade idea, but get the real deal this time...
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Jul 16, 2023 21:59
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SirPhoebos posted:I saw the OSW review of the Warrior comics, and something about the depiction of Parts Unknown triggered some neurons in my head that lead to me deciding that Archaon from Total Warhammer should have the voice and cadence of the Ultimate Warrior. It is a marked improvement over the default presentation. Back when they were airing that short-lived Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes cartoon from the early 2010s, I wanted to see Hercules voiced by Randy Savage and Ares voiced by Warrior.
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Jul 17, 2023 00:02
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Literally A Person posted:Macho Man was a sick voice actor. There's an episode of Dexter's Lab he guest stars in and he's just drat good. I once cosplayed as Savage's greatest role. https://twitter.com/Gavin4L/status/784458309831131137
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Jul 17, 2023 00:32
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THE DIMINISHING RETURNS OF THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR: PART 7 If you look at the PPV match Warrior was supposed to have in WWF before getting the boot, you can see how much the company was going to change in the next couple years. Warrior's would-be partner Ahmed Johnson was primed for a title run, but was too sloppy and injury-prone to exist and his worth fizzled in time. Shawn Michaels suffered a career-threatening back injury that kept him out of the ring for all of the Attitude Era. Their opponents, Vader, Owen Hart, and British Bulldog would all fall victim to Michaels’ scummy backstage politics and fall down the card. When Bret was screwed over in Montreal, Owen remained with the company and it led to his doom. Bulldog escaped to WCW and, sadly, that also led to his doom. In the fall of 1998, WCW was in its last gasp of being a viable contender against a WWF that was getting more buzz by the week. WWF had regained the ratings lead, but it was close. The video game WCW/nWo Revenge was about to hit shelves, showcasing the last picture of what the company looked like when it was considered the cool promotion. The last snapshot before things started to fall apart. And funny enough, while Warrior’s run in WCW was indeed really stupid, it was only a footnote. It was not known for leading to the downfall of the company in any real way to the point that the Nitro: The Incredible Rise and Inevitable Collapse of Ted Turner’s WCW barely even mentioned him to begin with. He was just a dumb highlight of two months, quickly overshadowed by even worse decisions. They just finished Road Wild, a PPV where Diamond Dallas Page and Jay goddamn Leno defeated Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff. At the time, Bill Goldberg was the undefeated WCW Champion and was easily the most popular part of the promotion, but that didn’t mean that he was in the forefront. The champ was a borderline background character as focus was on the war between WCW, nWo Hollywood, and the tweener offshoot nWo Wolfpac. With Fall Brawl coming in a month, the focus was on the War Games match. War Games was a long-running specialty match in WCW that initially sounded cooler than it really was. Teams of four or five would gradually enter two rings with a cage over it. After everyone had entered, the match would end when somebody gave up. Initially, it was regularly WCW’s top five faces up against the Four Horsemen... and some other guy. Like, their manager or just some random dude in a mask. It was obvious who was taking the loss, making the match feel kind of pointless. The match was booked better throughout the 90s, up until the nWo became a thing. Then it became an exercise in the nWo outsmarting everyone instead of getting their just desserts. In WCW’s final years, it mutated into different matches that just did not work. This included War Games ’98. This time, it would be a single ring and with three teams of three. Using three teams sounded interesting, but it actually wasn’t about team warfare. It was really a nine-man every-man-for-himself situation. Once somebody got pinned (even if not everyone has entered yet), the match was over and the winner would get to challenge Goldberg at Halloween Havoc. Already, the match was screwy and logic was out the window. With a few weeks before the PPV, Hollywood Hogan came out to cut a promo at the beginning of the second hour, when Nitro was up against Raw. He was joined by Eric Bischoff and the Disciple (formerly Brutus Beefcake). He talked about who DDP might choose to be part of Team WCW for War Games and explained that he could defeat any “warrior.” That was the cue for Warrior to show up. While played up as a surprise, there were signs for him all over the place, as word of him signing was a big internet rumor. Funny enough, when asked about it months earlier, Bischoff insisted that it wasn’t going to happen because everyone he knew who worked with Warrior told him he was the worst. But I guess Bischoff got desperate and Hogan got in his ear purely so he could get his win back from eight years earlier. Yes, Hogan is that petty. He also wanted them to bring in Yokozuna for the same reason, but with his excessive weight gain, he was too much of a liability that even Bischoff had his limits. Now, in his heyday, Ultimate Warrior’s promos were beloved because they were high energy, brief, and they were filled with batshit sci-fi/fantasy stuff. He’d talk about aliens, gods, spaceships, forcefields, and so on. We didn’t know if this was his lore or if he was just crazy and thought it was his lore. By the time he was in WCW, his cadence had slowed down completely, and he spent his endless promos talking more like a motivational speaker whose monologue was translated into a foreign language and then translated back to English. It was still gibberish, but it was no longer entertaining. As he intimidated Hogan and his buddies (asking if Disciple was Hogan’s barber), he droned on for so long that the segment went on about 20 minutes longer than it was meant to. Bischoff had to rewrite the rest of the show on the fly and add another commercial break. Warrior ended his promo with his new catchphrase, “Same Warrior time, same Warrior channel!” before a Bat-Signal with the Warrior facepaint appeared in the arena. For the next several weeks, he would torment Hogan by having the ring fill with smoke in order to teleport in and out. This also included Warrior teleporting into a cage to secretly and magically knock out the Giant before scaring Hogan away. There was also a thing where he didn’t own EVERYTHING from his WWF run. At times he would shake the ropes and the ref would have to remind him that he’s not legally allowed to do that. For War Games, we had Team nWo Hollywood (Hogan, Bret Hart, Stevie Ray), Team nWo Wolfpac (Kevin Nash, Sting, Lex Luger), and Team WCW (DDP, Warrior, Roddy Piper). Piper’s time in WCW is a lot less memorable and longer than Warrior’s but honestly almost as depressing. Not only was the man a shell of his former self, but his promos were him trying to see how many different ways he could say, “Hulk Hogan is a homosexual,” and use every instance over the course of several years. Despite the star power of that match... and obvious pinning victim Stevie Ray, War Games was atrocious. Warrior was the last entrant in the match and proceeded to teleport into the ring. Hogan attacked him from behind, but then the ring filled with smoke again and Warrior was gone. Then the real Warrior came out the entranceway. In reality, the double that Hogan attacked was the Renegade, which was fitting. Warrior entered the match and within seconds, Hogan escaped the cage. Warrior kicked through the cage and went after him. This left DDP to pin Stevie Ray and get his title shot. More importantly, earlier in the night, the opening match was the British Bulldog and Jim “The Anvil” Neidhart vs. Disco Inferno and Alex Wright. Bulldog was slammed onto the part of the ring that Warrior used as a trap door for when he “teleported.” This hosed up Bulldog’s back irreparably, killed his maneuverability, and led to a pain-killer addiction that would eventually kill him. Warrior would publicly say Bulldog was at fault for falling to his own vices. For the next PPV, Halloween Havoc, the double main event was announced: Goldberg defending the WCW Championship against Diamond Dallas Page and Hogan vs. Warrior II. Warrior spent the next month cutting his nonsense promos and also kidnapping and indoctrinating the Disciple into being his own follower. Warrior had coined the term One Warrior Nation (oWn), which was a neat way to show his independence in a promotion filled with factions, but having Disciple as the second member kind of killed the branding. It's during this build that we got Warrior’s most infamous WCW moment. As he was using his supernatural powers to get in Hogan’s head, Hogan was freaking out backstage in the locker room as the Warrior was appearing in the mirror, taunting him! Bischoff thought Hogan was insane as there was nobody there! Except... the commentators could see him. The fans could see him. The only person who couldn’t was Bischoff. Weird flex, but okay. With two weeks before the PPV, Warrior put together one hell of a tag match to main event Nitro. For the first time in 12 years, Warrior and Sting would once again become a tag team against the dream team of Hogan and Bret Hart. This was the perfect example of why WCW died as despite this epic tag match being their main event, it went only a few minutes before the nWo guys swarmed the ring and it turned into a lame brawl. Meanwhile, WWF countered it with their own awesome tag main event combo. It was Steve Austin and the Rock vs. Undertaker and Kane and it actually delivered. Plus it gave us that awesome spot where Rock set up the People's Elbow, Undertaker sat up during it, Rock stopped, kicked him back down, then completed the move. At Halloween Havoc, Hogan vs. Warrior went just over 14 minutes and holy poo poo was it not the match they had eight years earlier. I’ll even give Warrior some praise for still being able to do top-rope axe-handles and maybe, just maybe, if he remained active through the previous couple years, he would have been almost passable. But here, he was tired and rusty and Hogan was just completely over-the-hill. When it wasn’t stalling, it was the most basic, boring poo poo between the two. There was no urgency and it’s a regular on lists of the worst wrestling matches of all time. Near the end of the match, Hogan tried to throw a fireball at Warrior’s face. We watched him fiddle with the flash paper and lighter for way too long and by the time he did it, the fireball sparked out far before it could reach Warrior’s face. Warrior was confused how to sell it and angrily kicked Hogan’s fireball supplies out of the ring in frustration. In the end, Warrior gestured that he was going to press slam Hogan (which probably would have shattered Hogan into 200 pieces), but Hogan’s talentless nephew Horace showed up to hit Warrior in the back with a chair. Hogan got the pin, Horace attempted to light Warrior on fire before security intervened, and that was it. The funny part of this show was that although it was scheduled to go for three hours, Bischoff intended to have the main event of Goldberg vs. DDP go well over the limit. Unfortunately, due to some miscommunications with cable providers, once Halloween Havoc hit three hours, the feed cut for many households. Goldberg vs. DDP was an incredibly solid match, possibly Goldberg’s best match ever, and people were cheated out of it with Hogan vs. Warrior being the last thing they got to see. Ouch. The next night, Nitro aired Goldberg vs. DDP in its entirety. It would be the last time Nitro would defeat Raw in the ratings. As for Warrior, there was just a little more juice there. He came out to cut a promo on Hogan for his lack of honor and for the way he stained what should have been a legendary match with a bullshit finish. Hogan and some nWo guys showed up and Warrior kicked all their asses. Two weeks later, Warrior would do a run-in to protect Disciple from some lesser nWo members. That was the last time we’d see Warrior in WCW. Warrior was suffering an injury that would keep him on the shelf. While injured, WCW took some turns for the worse, including the end of Goldberg’s streak and the infamous Fingerpoke of Doom. Soon after, Eric Bischoff was sent home and replaced with one Vince Russo. Russo actually talked to Warrior about coming back and at one point, they planned to do one of the wildest “dream matches” to never happen: Warrior vs. Goldberg. It would have been terrible. It would have been historical. I can’t imagine how things would have gone with that match and the build around it, but the world is a worse place without it. God, what could have been. Warrior didn’t come back after all and was pretty bitter about his WCW run. He decided to retire. Years later, Bobby Heenan would sit down and do a recorded interview with RD Reynolds, the man behind the Wrestlecrap website and books. When Reynolds asked about Heenan’s thoughts about Warrior in WCW, Heenan got up and asked him to follow. In the minute or so after, you could hear the two leaving the room, walking down a hallway, then entering another room. “You wanted to know what I thought of Warrior in WCW?” Heenan flushed the toilet. Next up: What doesn't make the world work? The answer may surprise you!
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Jul 18, 2023 03:28
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Pope Corky the IX posted:It's Wrestlemania VII that has the depressing number of dead wrestlers if I'm not mistaken. I'm curious now. Living Wrestlers Shawn Michaels Marty Jannetty Barbarian Haku Warlord Jerry Sags Brian Knobbs Bret Hart Jake Roberts Rick Martel Undertaker (yes, I know) Genichiro Tenryu Smash Greg Valentine Paul Roma Virgil Ted Dibiase The Mountie Tito Santana Hulk Hogan Sgt. Slaughter Living Non-Wrestlers Slick Jimmy Hart General Adnan Jim Duggan Sean Mooney Marla Maples Earl Hebner Danny Davis Mike Chioda Paul Maguire Bushwhacker Luke Dead Wrestlers Texas Tornado Dino Bravo British Bulldog Jim Neidhart Jimmy Snuka Ultimate Warrior Randy Savage Koji Kitao Crush Big Boss Man Mr. Perfect Earthquake Hawk Animal Hercules Dead Non-Wrestlers Bobby Heenan Paul Bearer Sherri Martel Elizabeth Mr. Fuji Andre the Giant Roddy Piper Gorilla Monsoon Lord Alfred Hayes Regis Philbin Gene Okerlund Alex Trebek Howard Finkel Joey Marella Dave Hebner George Steinbrenner Bushwhacker Butch That's a total of 32 living and 32 dead. 21 to 11 if you're going with just those who wrestled that show.
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Jul 18, 2023 21:06
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Cornwind Evil posted:Now that's just rude, Gavok. They appeared in a segment so bad that it was never on any of the DVDs or the streaming version of WrestleMania VII. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb9JZxTHOhU It's less than five minutes, but it feels like 20. Also, I guess I forgot to include Vince on the list of non-wrestling talent. So the living have one point over the dead. For now.
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Jul 19, 2023 01:52
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THE DIMINISHING RETURNS OF THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR: PART 8 With his wrestling career finished and nobody else wanting to deal with him (or having the deep pockets to get his attention), Warrior did the unthinkable: he cut off those luscious locks. Horrible. The man had a great hairline and he chopped it down. Also, he started a website based around motivational blogging, answering fan mail, and... problematic ranting. A lot of this ranting was political stuff as Warrior realized he could use his fame of being a half-naked space viking and become a paid speaker. And so, Warrior shook the ropes and ran top speed into being a conservative nutjob. This led to a speaking engagement that went off the rails and became featured at this very site. Now, initially, I was going to just gloss over it and mention that he said some bigoted poo poo that got people’s attention and then move on. Well, then I got an intriguing little private message. A goon who chooses to remain anonymous (for reasons they will explain), was in attendance when Warrior went to speak at the University of Connecticut. As this goon was lurking this thread, they wanted to explain a more in-depth take on what happened that fateful day with some context for the straw that broke the camel’s back. quote:Warrior's meltdown at UConn in 2005 has become somewhat famous on Something Awful because of legal threats from his camp in the wake of his very public freakout. His complaints went nowhere because he had no rights to the video as the school's public access station had recorded the event and to this day every YouTube video of his speech is from that recording. I'm trying to write this so the reader doesn't have to go spend an hour watching Jim Hellwig (nee Warrior) spew out Iraq War era conservative talking points, but if you do go and find a video skip to about the 30 minute mark to get to the parts people recall nearly 20 years later. Britta from Community would be so proud. This situation led to a brief internet feud between Warrior and Lowtax, which is one of those kaiju battles Ken Watanabe watches from a distance. The shocking part is that David Lewis, the representative who threatened to sue Something Awful for claiming Warrior was racist, was NOT Warrior himself but an actual person. Go figure! Warrior’s ego would take another hit around that time. WWE was planning on putting together a DVD set that would feature classic Warrior matches and a documentary on his career. They asked Warrior if he would like to be involved with this. He promptly told them to gently caress off. So they rolled up their sleeves and cracked their knuckles. Out came the Self-Destruction of the Ultimate Warrior. It was an absolute hit job. While it did discuss why people enjoyed his style (Hogan’s description of “a good guy character with a maniacal edge” always stuck with me), it was mostly wrestling folk talking poo poo about how he was a talentless goofball who lucked himself into getting a cup of coffee on the top of the ladder. Even those who enjoyed his work were focused on how ridiculous he was. One of the absolute highlights was Chris Jericho doing a perfect impression of what kind of batshit promo Warrior would pull out of his rear end, followed by the line, “And I was like, ‘I don’t know what that means but it sounded cool, so YAY!’”  It’s a great documentary to watch if you can find it, as it’s mean and petty as hell, but he absolutely had it coming. Warrior was not happy and tried to sue to have it taken off shelves. It did not work. Another guy who took notice of the documentary was Bret Hart. Bret had plenty of reason to separate himself from WWE due to how they hosed him over and killed his brother. But then one day, at a doctor’s office, he met a kid who only recognized him because he was still being featured in WWE video games. When WWE came calling about a Bret Hart DVD set, the Hitman knew that his legacy was in their hands and he had to make nice or else they were going to call him an overrated, self-serious crybaby who everyone hated working with. Funny enough, Roddy Piper did not get the memo that Bret was involved with the project and went into full character assassination mode when doing his segments. Don’t feel too bad for Warrior in all of this. He was busy going on hateful internet rants on practically everyone. On one hand, I can at least understand him taking pleasure in the news that Bobby Heenan was suffering from cancer. The two of them had a lengthy history and genuinely hated each other, even if it appears that Warrior started it. On the other hand, Warrior chalking up Heath Ledger’s tragic death to karma for being in the gay cowboy movie was just hosed. Not to mention his unnerving take on Hurricane Katrina’s victims. Despite his bitterness, Warrior did carve out some happiness in these later days. He married a woman named Dana and had two daughters. As they got older, he felt that it wasn't right that they never got to see him wrestle. It was time for one last match.
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Jul 20, 2023 05:43
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THE DIMINISHING RETURNS OF THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR: FINALE It had been ten years since Warrior and Hogan had made fools of themselves at Halloween Havoc 1998. I don't know the details and what the payday was, but Warrior was offered a deal to come out of retirement for one last match. Being in great physical shape for 49, having two young daughters who had never seen him perform in the ring, and probably wanting to go out on a higher note than that Hogan match, Warrior went with it. It would not take place in WWE, TNA, or even Japan, but in Nu-Wrestling Evolution in Spain. Warrior would be competing for its championship against Orlando Jordan. Jordan was a former WWE name from the mid-00s who spent much of his time as JBL's henchman. He was... fine. He was another tall, muscular, mediocre guy in an era that was filled with them. Jordan was an interesting choice for an opponent as he's bisexual and therefore not capable of making the world work. Though Jordan was problematic in his own right as there were some allegations about how young he liked his boyfriends when in WWE. I looked up various takes on Warrior vs. Jordan on the internet. The Warrior fans treat it as a "you still got it!" situation. Other folks laugh at it for being garbage. On Cagematch, the IMDB of wrestling, it has a 0.5 out of 10 ranking from users. I'll admit that I watched the match for the first time just for this write-up. And well, this is one of those matches where you have to grade it on a curve. Not just for being a Warrior match but for being a wrestler's final match. Final matches in wrestling are a hell of a thing. You have some outliers out there. Steve Austin's body broke down during his prime and forced him into retirement, but 17 years later, he was healthy enough to do one last brawl-based match at WrestleMania and make it a good one. Before Triple H's body completely crapped out on him, he was able to say goodbye with a house show tag match featuring three former NXT names. Undertaker's finale was a pre-taped cinematic match, which is cheating, but at least allowed him to go out on a match he felt proud of. The Rock just had a joke 4-second match, though Vince is holding out hope on one day getting Rock vs. Roman. Otherwise, the truth is that seeing the 49-year-old Warrior wrestle for 17 minutes in Spain is far less depressing to watch than the final matches for Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, Andre the Giant, Bret Hart, Ric Flair, and even Shawn Michaels. The situation reminds me of that bit in Rocky Balboa where the trainer explains to him that because of his old age, he has none of his mobility left and they have to work around that. Hell, Warrior apparently messed up his knee while training, which is apparent when he does a limping run to the ring. Jordan took Warrior and carried him into something that isn’t great or exciting, but at least competent. It was very different from your usual fare as Warrior was doing hammerlocks and reversals and stuff early on. Warrior was breathing heavily throughout the whole thing, but Jordan was able to put them in situations that allowed Warrior to take a break when need be. Warrior even pulled off a top-rope crossbody, which is pretty impressive. The match ended with Warrior hitting a jumping shoulderblock and pinning Jordan to become the new NWE Champion. Afterwards, he cut a promo where he threw respect at Orlando Jordan and vacated the title so they could hold a tournament to crown a new champ. That ended up being Mr. Anderson (Anderson) of all people. Fast-forward five years. Something rather strange about the mid-2010s is how important the people at 2K Games were when it comes to shaping wrestling history. There have been three instances where their decision to do pre-order bonuses for WWE 2K## would have HUGE ramifications on the entire business. Certain wrestlers who wanted nothing to do with the company at least had merch agreements that allowed them to be in the WWE 2K series (in Warrior’s case, he was pretty pissed off when he heard about the concept of create-a-wrestler and probably figured he should at least make money off of being in a WWE game). For Ultimate Warrior in 2013, Sting in 2014, and Goldberg in 2016, these pre-order bonus campaigns would lead to them getting involved with WWE and changing the course of things to come. I won’t get into Sting and Goldberg’s stories right here, but for Warrior, the commercial had him cutting a promo and causing havoc in the WWE offices. It was surreal to see him associated with the company after so many years, but he definitely seemed into it. Triple H’s rule over WWE was starting to take shape and it was apparent that what he truly wanted was for everything in wrestling to fall under WWE’s umbrella. That meant making good with everyone that Vince had alienated over the years, like Bruno Sammartino and Mr. T. That meant getting on the phone and offering Warrior a spot as the head of the WWE Hall of Fame Class of 2014. Warrior accepted the invitation and chilled out about Vince online. He did have one demand, though. If he was going to take part in this event, then they had to do a new Ultimate Warrior documentary. One that “told the truth.” So when Warrior and his family went down to New Orleans in 2014, a camera crew followed him around. During this weekend, Warrior went and made amends with various people, including Vince and Jake Roberts. Triple H specifically went out of his way to tell Hulk Hogan to keep his distance from Warrior, as he was afraid of their history derailing everything, but Warrior and Hogan did eventually meet up and buried any beef the two had. The funniest thing about this documentary was that there was a moment taking place in one of the WWE offices with a Royal Rumble 2014 framed poster in the background. As this was only a couple months after CM Punk got pissed off and walked out on the company, somebody had placed a yellow sticky note over Punk’s face on the poster. During WrestleMania weekend, Saturday night was all about the Hall of Fame ceremony. Warrior was inducted along with Jake Roberts, Lita, Paul Bearer, Carlos Colon Sr., Razor Ramon, and Mr. T. Mr. T’s speech was RIDICULOUS as he went on for about 25 minutes, had nothing to do with wrestling in any way, and apparently he said the word “mother” 73 times. It went on for so long that they had to send out Kane (who was inducting the late Paul Bearer) to tell him to wrap it up while T awkwardly kept repeating, “I’m sorry.” Warrior’s speech was also incredibly long, but at least he talked about stuff people cared about. When fans chanted, “ONE MORE MATCH!” he said that it wasn’t happening. There were scant rumors that WWE was playing with the idea of doing Warrior vs. Ryback (who was like Warrior mixed with Goldberg) at WrestleMania, but that fell through. Probably for the best for so many reasons. Have I done on of these about Ryback yet? I really should do one of these about Ryback. Other than how hurt he was by that Self-Destruction DVD, Warrior did take a moment to discuss one of the unsung WWE employees who had been there for years and died back in 2002. Warrior thought that maybe they should have an award for people like that. He made a quick appearance at WrestleMania on Sunday. On Monday, he came out on Raw to cut a rather thoughtful promo while wearing a cardboard mask of the Warrior paint. He definitely seemed winded and red. In fact, people would later say that he looked like that all weekend. Considering his speech had him discussing “breathing his last breath,” there was a disturbing sense of finality to it. And then, the very next day, Warrior collapsed when getting out of a car. He died shortly after at 54. WWE honored him as a full-on legend. It was like a PR redemption story. Hell, Vince probably felt relieved as the knowledge that Andre the Giant died hating him is something that haunts him to this day. Warrior showed up, made nice, got celebrated, and keeled over. So they released the DVD. They gave Warrior's wife a job as a writer. Then they introduced the Warrior Award at the next Hall of Fame, but in a way that completely ignored what he wanted. It was not about unsung employees in WWE, but PR about a sick kid who really liked Daniel Bryan or the loving Susan G. Komen Foundation. It was gross and disrespectful, but there was something fitting about twisting Warrior’s wishes and using it to focus on the same kind of ill child that Warrior once ignored. The cosmic humor of it all really came into play a year later when Hogan was caught on a sex tape, dropping the n-bomb and talking up how racist he secretly is. WWE went into full panic mode, scrubbing Hogan from their website, never airing footage of him, and having to completely rewrite several animated projects (ie. Camp WWE and a Scooby Doo/WWE crossover). Around this time, WWE was rereleasing the crappy old NES Game WrestleMania: Steel Cage Challenge as part of one of those plug-into-the-TV controllers. Guess which wrestler WWE chose to replace the disgraced bigot. Snarl.
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Jul 22, 2023 05:10
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Hyrax Attack! posted:Whoa I didn’t know WWE games mattered that much. Is that like the one aspect of the business that results in money going to retired talent? From all the sad go fund mes mentioned on wrestler Wikipedia pages had assumed Vince didn’t give anyone a penny once they left. I forgot where I read the story, but I remember somebody saying he and his family was having dinner with a family friend who was a retired wrestler (pretty sure it was Matt Borne, the first Doink) and he was talking up how great a payday it is when they make a new WWE game. quote:Interesting how Hogan had to be scrubbed, but is he back in good odor again because a prince offered a dumptruck of money for him to show up at Crown Jewel? The show they brought him back for was also the one that everyone was especially pissed about because it was like two weeks after that reporter got horribly butchered by the Saudi government and Vince decided, "Unless Donald outright tells me not to, we're going." They decided that if the show was already controversial, they might as well bring back Hogan and have him kick off the show. Nobody in the crowd really cared one way or another when he showed up. Hogan was also asked to apologize to the locker room, but his apology was for getting caught and not for the stuff he said. He later showed up at a Hall of Fame ceremony and you could see New Day behind him, collectively staring daggers. Ghost Leviathan posted:I feel it's inevitably at this point someone's just gonna explode in the ring. Just full on Fist of the North Star. I mean, that pretty much happened to Joey Mercury's face that one time.
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Jul 22, 2023 20:58
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Cornwind Evil posted:Bollea's racism mystifies me, in a 'I don't know how he could have picked those sort of opinions up' sense. Which probably just shows my ignorance or overthinking about racism. I have my own strange armchair theory about Hogan's racist statements. The short of it being, "Hulk Hogan doesn't actually hate black people, but he WILL tell the wife of an rear end in a top hat shock jock that he hates black people because he thinks that will make him look cool in the moment." It's still racism, but it's more in line with the sad way Hogan's mind works. Plus part of it is that I just can't see him keeping that kind of behavior under wraps so well for years. He pissed off a lot of people and you'd think somebody would have referenced it against him.
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Jul 24, 2023 14:40
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