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Trollologist posted:
Huh, I always heard that he was an rear end in a top hat backstage and was part of the lovely bullying culture of the time that lead to poo poo like JBL legit loving up a dude in the ring. Not a Hogan-like rear end in a top hat, but a dude who abused his status to be a prick backstage. But I'm someone who barely watches wrestling and only reads threads like this or the news when something breaks. I'd be curious to know what the deal is with those accusations. I suppose if Undertaker was that big of an rear end in a top hat there'd be a dark side of the ring episode dedicated to him.
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Mar 15, 2022 20:49
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https://twitter.com/CMPunk/status/1485709040059518976?s=20&t=8eIMc_5CzrW8TbcNdzcZmA
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Mar 15, 2022 20:51
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Deki posted:Huh, I always heard that he was an rear end in a top hat backstage and was part of the lovely bullying culture of the time that lead to poo poo like JBL legit loving up a dude in the ring. Not a Hogan-like rear end in a top hat, but a dude who abused his status to be a prick backstage. But I'm someone who barely watches wrestling and only reads threads like this or the news when something breaks. My impression was that Mark at worst engaged in the sort of locker-room politics that's common in your average sports team. Which is bad, but not on the "WTF!  " level that pro-wrestling stories rise too.edit: 16-bit Butt-Head posted:https://twitter.com/CMPunk/status/1485709040059518976?s=20&t=8eIMc_5CzrW8TbcNdzcZmA like yeah, turning a part of a company into your own personal fiefdom is bad on principal, but when you put it next to The Clique or Hulk Hogan or The Plane Ride from Hell it just doesn't raise any hairs. SirPhoebos fucked around with this message at 20:54 on Mar 15, 2022 |
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Mar 15, 2022 20:52
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SirPhoebos posted:like yeah, turning a part of a company into your own personal fiefdom is bad on principal, but when you put it next to The Clique or Hulk Hogan or The Plane Ride from Hell it just doesn't raise any hairs. Difference being that the above mentioned are considered exceptional instances of bad behavior or someone abusing the hell out of the hooks they have in the company, while wrestler's court is considered the "good and right" culture
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Mar 15, 2022 21:10
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SirPhoebos posted:I'd like an effort post on the Lex Express. I can oblige.
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Mar 15, 2022 21:59
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Mar 15, 2022 22:05
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SirPhoebos posted:My impression was that Mark at worst engaged in the sort of locker-room politics that's common in your average sports team. Which is bad, but not on the "WTF! What's the plane ride from hell?
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Mar 15, 2022 22:18
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Hollismason posted:What's the plane ride from hell? Oh dear...
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Mar 15, 2022 22:26
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Gavok posted:Lucha Underground did something like this. The show was run by Dario Cueto, a charismatic bastard and proof that you should just get trained actors to play non-wrestler roles. Throughout the first season of the show, Dario would reference and sometimes talk to some creature he kept in a cage hidden in the arena. In time it became apparent that this was his younger brother, Matanza and that he was possessed by an Aztec god. They even killed off a character by having his head shoved into Matanza's cage and Matanza eating his face off. We never got a clear shot of Matanza outside a little bit of his face/mask in the season 1 finale. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJja5iCVTYs
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Mar 16, 2022 00:09
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16-bit Butt-Head posted:https://twitter.com/CMPunk/status/1485709040059518976?s=20&t=8eIMc_5CzrW8TbcNdzcZmA Not nearly as embarrassing as his attempt at MMA.
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Mar 16, 2022 02:15
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Hollismason posted:What's the plane ride from hell? Short answer: a particularly bad plane ride in 2002 where numerous wrestlers were severely intoxicated or generally in foul moods, resulting in numerous incidents. The big one these days is that Ric Flair sexually harassed a/the flight attendants, which has resulted in him being erased once it became re-examined in the post MeToo era. Long story? Well if I don't tell it someone else will. Cornwind Evil fucked around with this message at 02:22 on Mar 16, 2022 |
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Mar 16, 2022 02:19
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Supreme Allah posted:Taker has so few title runs because in the words of Vince, Cornette and most any booker he never needed it, he was 'like Andre' -- the belt was almost beneath him was the perspective. Also why when he had the belt he would drag it around, whats a zombie want with a drat belt. no need to put it on someone like that when you can use it to elevate new draws That's the thing with characters, they have motivation. If you don't know what Perry Saturn is doing in your company, just stuff him in a title hunt for the internet cruiserweight TV tbs 24/7 hardcore european upsidedown title. But spooky wrestlers? They have goals. The Undertaker is trying to bury you alive, Kane wants to burn you with fire, Bray is trying to get you into his cult or something, the Boogeyman got screwed (where's his title push!?). Title, no title, it doesn't matter. They don't want gold, they want blood. Ps, I would love to see an angle where a wrestler has a heel turn by getting possessed by a demon but then wins the title because winning and then doesn't want to get an exorcism since it might cause them to lose the title.
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Mar 16, 2022 02:34
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Hollismason posted:What's the plane ride from hell? Imagine a plane of pissed-up burly ego-driven rasslemans with an average height/weight of 6'4"/240lbs initially playing hijinks then getting into arguments and fights. For seven hours.
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Mar 16, 2022 02:35
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the boogeyman was a kayfabe actor who had a mental breakdown and then believed he was the boogeyman and then became a wrestler so the film company could make its money back after the movie went bust
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Mar 16, 2022 02:37
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Lex Luger was a big deal before joining WWF. “The Total Package” was jacked, could move, and had just enough charisma to connect with the crowd. He was a top name in WCW for years. Also, fun Luger story that I can’t fit anywhere that’s worth talking about: back when he wrestled in Championship Wrestling Florida in the mid-80s, he was put in a cage match against Bruiser Brody. Brody was kind of a crazy rear end in a top hat and was annoyed that he had to lose to the rising new guy. As the match went on, Brody decided to no-sell all of Luger’s attacks. Luger would throw punch after punch, only for Brody to just stand there, staring at him. Kind of freaked out, Luger cheesed it, climbed out of the cage, and got out of there. Brody’s volatile behavior did NOT work out well for him in the long run, I can tell you that. So anyway, back in 1992, Lex Luger left WCW and signed with Vince McMahon... and his bodybuilding federation. Yes, instead of being a wrestler, Luger was set to be one of the big names in the World Bodybuilding Federation. Unfortunately, he was in a motorcycle accident that busted up his arm and by the time he was healed up, the WBF was already in the dust. Well, good thing Vince has a wrestling company and Luger was a wrestler. The timing worked out great too. One of the storylines going on was that Mr. Perfect turned on Ric Flair and Bobby Heenan. Flair had one foot out the door and was about to go to WCW. Heenan needed someone to manage. So at the 1993 Royal Rumble, Lex Luger made his debut as “Narcissus,” which was later changed to “The Narcissist” Lex Luger. Look up that debut if you want to see wrestling at its most homoerotic as Bobby Heenan sounds like he’s about to leave a shotgun exit wound out of the front of his pants. I always found this debut to be kind of interesting because Lex Luger and Ric Flair were both playable in WWF Royal Rumble for SNES. Technically, they were only in the company at the same time for a day, as Luger showed up at the Rumble and Flair lost a “Loser Leaves” match with Mr. Perfect on the following Raw. From that motorcycle accident, Luger had a metal plate implanted in his arm and they had him use that as an unfair weapon. With that, he defeated Mr. Perfect at WrestleMania 9. The next PPV was King of the Ring and Luger took on Tatanka. Luger was rising up as a major heel and WWF was very into making Tatanka an undefeated face, so neither was ready to lose. Instead, they reached the time limit and Bam Bam Bigelow got a bye into the finals. The important thing about King of the Ring was that Hulk Hogan dropped the WWF Championship to Yokozuna and shortly after decided he was done with the company. Even though Vince could have just pushed King of the Ring winner Bret Hart back into the top spot, he instead shoved Bret into a seemingly never-ending feud with Jerry Lawler while setting up a replacement for Hogan. On July 4, Yokozuna appeared at the USS Intrepid to do a bodyslam challenge. Athletes from all over would try to bodyslam the gigantic sumo. Going into the event, the favorite was Crush, who was the resident strong guy face and had a pretty big following. Crush could only get one of Yokozuna’s legs off the ground. Sadly, it looked like America would be embarrassed by its inability to pick up a fat guy. Then Lex Luger showed up via helicopter, shoved Bobby Heenan aside, got into it with Yokozuna, and kinda sorta bodyslammed him. It wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough. Also, this was the end of Bobby Heenan managing anyone in WWF, as he would just do commentary for a few more months until leaving the promotion. Luger was suddenly the top challenger for Yokozuna’s title. What was weird was that Luger didn’t do any wrestling around this time. He didn’t do house shows or build himself up through matches against midcarders on Raw. He was simply given a title shot and a unique way to hopefully get people excited over it: a bus tour. Luger spent weeks riding around the country in a bus called the Lex Express, meeting fans and posing with them like he was running for office. Because AMERICA! He would be riding this bus on his way to his big title shot at SummerSlam. There was a stipulation that this would be Luger’s ONLY shot at the title. He had to win it in one go or else. So Luger bonked Yokozuna on the head with his illegal metal arm plate, knocked him out of the ring, won via count-out, and celebrated like he won the Superbowl. You know, even though the title doesn’t change hands during a count-out. Luger was celebrating over winning the wrong way. Apparently Vince didn’t feel Luger was popular enough just yet, which makes sense, considering he was a wrestler who wasn’t doing any wrestling. It was just as well, as WWF didn’t have any viable heels at the time outside of Yokozuna. Well, they did just introduce an evil dude from Finland named Ludvig Borga. That was a start. Luger and his patriotic friends (including the Undertaker!) took on Yokozuna and his America-hating friends at Survivor Series. Luger ended up the sole survivor by getting his high-profile win over Borga. Months later, a debate kicked in: should Luger be allowed to enter the Royal Rumble? Whoever won the Royal Rumble would get a title shot and Luger was barred from further shots against Yokozuna. Eventually, it was decided that if Luger could win the Rumble, he deserved the drat rematch. Yokozuna’s managers paid off a couple Japanese wrestlers to rough Luger up backstage to hurt his chances. At the end of the 1994 Rumble, it was down to Lex Luger and Bret Hart. The two top faces ended up falling out of the ring at the same time. They were both recognized as winners, but Vince was using the scenario as an exercise to see who the fans cheered more for. Bret was definitely the most popular. As triple threat matches hadn’t been implemented in WWF yet, the big idea was a one-night mini-tournament at WrestleMania 10. Luger would face Yokozuna for the title. Bret would face his brother Owen Hart in an exhibition match. Win or lose, Bret would go on to face the winner of Luger/Yokozuna in the main event. There’s a story that Luger was heard at a bar boasting about how he was going to end the night as champion and the story got changed, but that’s just an urban legend. It was always going to be Bret’s night. Luger vs. Yokozuna had a returning Mr. Perfect as the guest referee. Even though Luger had the match won, Perfect was reluctant to make the count and ended up disqualifying Luger for a minor infraction. Backstage, the two got pulled apart with the insinuation that we were going to get another Luger/Perfect feud out of this. Instead, Perfect was deemed in no shape to compete and just vanished from TV. Luger had no avenue of revenge and came out of WrestleMania 10 looking like a total loser. "The Million Dollar Man" Ted Dibiase was strictly a manager at the time and started talking up how he was representing Lex Luger. Luger was very adamant that this wasn’t the case AT ALL. Good friend Tatanka was all, “Dude, how could you sell out your country like that? How could you join Dibiase?!” Once again, Luger would tell him, “I’m seriously not part of Dibiase’s crew.” And Tatanka would not believe him and everyone could see where this was going. So anyway, Tatanka was actually working with Dibiase all along and Luger was forced into a feud with the Million Dollar Corporation. This culminated at Survivor Series where Luger’s team lost to Dibiase’s team. The match ended with Luger taking on Tatanka, Bam Bam Bigelow, and King Kong Bundy. Luger got a surprise roll-up pin on Tatanka, then ate a splash from Bundy and lost. And that was it. No follow-up or redemption. Luger straight-up lost the feud and they moved on. Next up, Luger started teaming up with the British Bulldog as the Allied Powers. They opened WrestleMania 11 by beating the Blu Brothers and then just coasted for several months with only one failed title shot to their name. Said title shot had Luger getting pinned by Yokozuna, so that stings. Going into SummerSlam, the British Bulldog randomly turned heel on WWF Champion Diesel. At SummerSlam, Diesel defended against King Mabel and when Sir Mo interfered on Mabel’s behalf, Luger arrived to even the odds. Diesel attacked Luger, thinking he was a heel like Bulldog. There would be no follow-up on that. Even though Luger filmed some taped promos on Raw, his contract had lapsed and WCW was able to lure him away. Luger made a surprise appearance on the first episode of WCW Nitro a week later, where he faced Hulk Hogan in the main event.
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Mar 16, 2022 02:52
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Gavok posted:There’s a story that Luger was heard at a bar boasting about how he was going to end the night as champion and the story got changed, but that’s just an urban legend. It was always going to be Bret’s night. I think that was for the Summerslam match, they'd done some TV tapings where he came out as champ and they brushed it off to the crowd by saying he was trying to annoy Yokozuna
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Mar 16, 2022 03:23
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if someone goes through and makes a linked list to all the megaposts by topic, i'll add them to the OP so people can easily read them all
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Mar 16, 2022 03:24
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Cornwind Evil posted:Short answer: a particularly bad plane ride in 2002 where numerous wrestlers were severely intoxicated or generally in foul moods, resulting in numerous incidents. The big one these days is that Ric Flair sexually harassed a/the flight attendants, which has resulted in him being erased once it became re-examined in the post MeToo era. I'd like to read more about it. My google isn't really getting anything.
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Mar 16, 2022 04:40
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theres a whole dark side of the ring episode about it, which is a good show for the people in this thread who like the longposts
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Mar 16, 2022 04:43
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Ad by Khad posted:theres a whole dark side of the ring episode about it, which is a good show for the people in this thread who like the longposts So very, very good, and I mourn the loss of it from my On Demands every day 
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Mar 16, 2022 04:54
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Gavok posted:Sexy Lexy On one of the OSW episodes that was covering the Wrestlemania X pre-show, it has a segment where Vince and Lex corner Fuji and strongarm him into letting Lex parade around with belt for funsies. Considering that the card was well and booked by that point, it was a particularly sad display of Vince feigning confidence in a guy but ultimately getting cold feet.
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Mar 16, 2022 05:19
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrEEv0GZNTM
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Mar 16, 2022 07:27
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Luger has Cenaface. Also goddamn Cornwind that some postin! 
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Mar 16, 2022 11:13
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YeahTubaMike posted:So very, very good, and I mourn the loss of it from my On Demands every day I got you, friend.
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Mar 16, 2022 17:34
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Vince’s bell will ring someday soon I think
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Mar 16, 2022 18:20
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16-bit Butt-Head posted:the boogeyman was a kayfabe actor who had a mental breakdown and then believed he was the boogeyman and then became a wrestler so the film company could make its money back after the movie went bust I don't know what episode of Raw or smackdown this was on, but I wish I had seen it. Holy poo poo.
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Mar 16, 2022 18:20
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I suppose if you had to pick a pair of words to describe the first years of Bret’s career, it would be “dark horse”. Ironic, as the first gimmick offered to Bret when he made his way to the WWF in 1984 was that of a cowboy. Bret turned it down, on the basis of “You’d better actually BE a cowboy if you decide to play one.” Smart choice. By ‘dark horse’, it meant that Bret semi-lurked in the background, with his contributions being more subconsciously noticed unless you were exceptionally perceptive (which was probably so rare as to be non-existent) or with the benefit of hindsight. Case in point: Japan in the early 80’s. While “Dynamite Kid” Tom Billington, working with Satoru Sayama, ie the first Tiger Mask, more or less codified, if not outright invented, the precise mix of acrobatics and dramatics added to wrestling holds and slams that would define the modern ‘great match’, whose DNA would spread through the industry to shape the likes of the Wrestlemania 3 Savage/Steamboat match, to the Wrestlemania 10 ladder match and many ladder matches to come, to Jose “Mistico/Sin Cara” Rodrigeuz in his mid 2000 highpoint, all the way to modern day Kenny Omega and Kazuchika Okada, Bret Hart would also work repeated matches with Sayama that were also classified as “excellent”, just not ‘revolutionary’. Likewise, when Stampede Wrestling was consumed by Vince in the early 80’s (some say in a scheme by Stu that would play out in a way so that he could take his business back later while also securing a spot for Bret in the WWF) and Bret was teamed up with his brother in law Jim Neidhart, forming The Hart Foundation with manager/lich Jimmy Hart, the team’s initial focus was Neidhart’s act as a lunatic with a proper evil laugh, and Jimmy Hart being his loud, heel manager self, while Bret, wearing sunglasses for the first time to hide his nerves, provided the strong wrestling element that made the tag team matches come together. In retrospect, it’s hard to explain just why Bret slowly being noticed and getting over was just so drat astonishing. But in the 1980’s WWF, where cartoon characters, spectacle, and less than great matches ruled the day, and the ‘true fans’ having been driven away by it and looking for their ‘wrestling fix’ elsewhere, a guy with minimal verbal charisma slowly getting more and more over solely via the strength of their ring work is all the more amazing. Basically, imagine if instead of losing his belt in his first defense after knocking out Mike Tyson, Buster Douglas proceeded to reign on top of boxing for the next four or so years. That’s more or less what Bret Hart becoming a star through sheer ring work would be the equivalent of. This is probably a bad analogy and if someone has a better one I’ll gladly hear it. It’s perhaps even more impressive as for a time, the Hart Foundation was adjacent to some of the more reviled heels in the mid 80’s, including their semi-minion, treacherous referee turned wrestler Danny Davis, and Wayne Ferris, nee the Honky Tonk Man. And yet, Bret’s work, by inches, slowly gained more and more notice. Most wrestlers have a ‘moment’ though. For Bret, it was Wrestlemania IV, where he entered a battle royale to open the show, and ended up being one of the last three participants, with the late Sylvester Ritter, nee the Junkyard Dog, and the late Allen Coage, ie Bad News Brown, a former Stampede wrestling foe, being the other two. With Bret and Brown both being heels at the time, they teamed up to eliminate Ritter, and then after it seemed like they were going to share the victory, Brown promptly turned on Hart and tossed him out, winning the royale. Furious, Hart would promptly kick Brown out of the ring and utterly destroy his victor’s trophy, turning him face, an act that would ‘redeem’ his tag team partner in turn when Neidhart came to Bret’s aid in the subsequent feud. As 1989 came around, the WWF began to slowly split apart Bret and Neidhart, with Bret wrestling more singles matches, including one against the late Andre the Giant which Andre, apparently, personally requested, as well as his first match against many time foe (and great match creator) Curt Hennig. Maybe the best sign of what was to come was Bret being placed on Hacksaw Jim Duggan’s team for the 1989 Survivor Series: while Bret, and the team, would lose, the pop his entrance got when he was tagged in was noticed. Still, it would be another 18 months before it was fully acted upon, as the Hart Foundation was reformed in early 1990 as a focus, the team winning their second and last tag titles in August 1990, before losing them at Wrestlemania VII, in a match where Neidhart took the pin. After that, the team was again split. Bret would face Hennig at Summerslam 1991, in the match that gave the picture to that magazine I found, and Hennig, seemingly having to retire from a back injury, friends with Hart, and a great seller on top of that, would put Hart over huge, Hart winning the IC Title off of him and fully beginning his singles career. By this point, all of Bret’s schtick had been introduced and firmly set in place: his pink attire, often mixed with black (which had been a lucky break: Bret’s outfit maker had just decided to experiment with his and Neidhart’s outfit colors; note how in their appearance at Wrestlemania 2, they wore blue and black. She had made up some new outfits featuring, as the contrast color, “hot bubblegum pink”. Vince, according to Bret’s book, upon seeing it, mildly raved that that ‘was it’ and he wanted the team in pink from that point forward. And so it was), his wraparound mylar shades (and giving them to a young fan before his matches), his leather jackets with tassels, his skull with wings on a heart symbol, his thrumming guitar theme, and his signature leglock submission finisher, the Sharpshooter (which supposedly was taught to him by Charles “Konnan” Ashenoff, who was briefly in the WWF as very short lived and pure 90’s cheese gimmick Max Moon). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-iv3L9fX1M Indeed, Bret’s unexpected rise brought offers from WCW, which Bret did somewhat entertain. On the basis that he might leave, the WWF would have Bret drop the title at the very start of 1992 to the unlikely victor Jacques Rogueau, performing under the name of “The Mountie”, an odd gimmick where he was supposedly one of the Canadian elite police, except he sang his own theme song and used a taser cattle prod, which isn’t something that mounties traditionally do. (Amusingly, the RL RCMP didn't care for Rogueau's representation as the Mountie as a villain and said theme. So when the gimmick got reworked into "The Quebecers", who also wrestled in 'Mountie Gear', this was their theme song.) When Bret re-signed with the WWF, the excuse was given that the Mountie had beaten Bret while he was ill and that Bret had wrestled with a 101 degree fever, and Rogueau promptly dropped the belt to Roddy Piper, giving the famous 80’s star his only singles title in the WWF before Bret beat him for it again at Wrestlemania 8, becoming one of the few wrestlers ever to get a clean pinfall on the notoriously protective Scot. Once again IC Champion, and with there only being four PPVs in those days, and the longest gap between them being between the March/April Wrestlemania and the August Summerslam, Bret would be set up to do what he considers his crowning accomplishment, ring wise. When the WWF decided to hold the event in England, Bret would enter a rare face vs face match against his RL brother in law Davey Boy Smith, with “the family is being torn apart” getting inserted into the mix. That match would not only main event the PPV, but likely helped a LOT in selling out the 80,000 seat Wembley Stadium, which might well be the highest crowd size the WWF has ever ‘officially’ drawn (events like Wrestlemania 3 and 32 have some asterisks next to their reported numbers; the official claim for WM 3 is 93,000, but people in the know have said that it was likely closer to 78,000, due to how space was set up and how it eliminated seats, IIRC. I suspect it was the same for WM 32). The match would be chosen by the WWF as the greatest match in Summerslam history, and Bret considers it his best match ever. See for yourself. And this is all without mentioning that it is very possible that Smith cracked under the pressure, disappeared for weeks before the match to smoke crack with Neidhart, and when he showed up that night he was blown up (winded) within two minutes and claiming to Bret he’d completely blanked on everything they’d planned. Which meant that Bret basically spent half an hour wrestling himself. Now, is this true? Even I, the massive Bret mark, am a little suspicious. Between the fact that as I said, Bret was in a dark place (I believe) when he put together his autobiography (this stuff taints your viewpoints), and Smith tragically died years earlier and hence isn’t around to provide a counter viewpoint, I think Bret might be misremembering or misrepresenting just how severe Davey Boy Smith hosed up on his end. I think Smith carried himself better than Hart claimed; the match just seemed too smooth for it to be ENTIRELY Bret. Maybe he remembered all the spots and controlled the flow, but Davey had to at least hold up his end by following instructions and not botching, which he managed to do. I’d say the match is more 75 percent Bret and 25 percent Smith, rather than the 95+ percent that Bret’s account insinuates. In the end, Hart put his brother in law over, but Bret was the one who came out of it the real winner. Shortly thereafter, with the steroid trials breathing down Vince’s neck and him having to get rid of all the super obvious roided to the gills sorts either entirely or until they were long off the juice, with said wrestlers very obviously shrinking as a result, the need to make the main guy someone who was ‘smaller’ and ‘more natural’ came to the forefront. With the title on not-exactly-WWF-guy Ric Flair, Vince made the call to suddenly have Hart beat him on a random large house show. Just like that, the Hitman was the top guy. I remember being in utter shock when I found it out. Bret promptly made his mark on the title by defending it against ‘anyone who wanted a shot’, working with a wide variety of opponents of varying skill levels and generally dragging good matches, or at least entertaining moments, out of them. Take this match he had with Kamala: I’ll always have a soft spot for the little bit after the finish, of the ‘dastardly heel manager reaps what he sows’ vein. Bret’s creative streak in the ring more than made up for his less than great talking skills; another spot I remember (though I think this technically came later) was him wrestling Brian “Crush” Adams, then in his third phase of the Crush gimmick, that being the evil Japanese sympathizer. Crush challenged Bret to a test of strength, which Bret was losing; Bret promptly dropped on his back, rolled backwards, and came back up, turning the losing strength test into a double arm/twisting fingers lock, a spot I have never seen anyone else do, even Bret. In a business where great moves tend to become signature parts of matches, the fact that Bret had great moves that never got used again just really drove home how deep his tool kit was. Sadly, despite being promised a reign of ‘at least a year’ by Vince, Hogan’s return to the WWF in early 1993 promptly stirred up Vince’s erection for giant men, and Bret would lose the title to the giant Samoan playing a Japanese man wrestler Rodney “Yokozuna” A’anoi; more annoying to him was that Yokozuna supposedly mildly panicked and basically stampeded their main event match at Wrestlemania 9 to an early close, forcing Bret to have to play catch up and losing the flow of the match and the spots Bret had planned out. Hogan promptly emerging and then beating Yokozuna heralded Bret’s seeming fate, as he’d be semi depushed into a very long program with Jerry Lawler as Vince quickly soured on the OG Hulk Hogan, then did what he loved despite that and tried to recreate Hulk Hogan with Lex Luger. Which, as Gavok outlined, completely failed, and ultimately, Bret would be ‘allowed’ to return to the top. Better late than never, Bret would again have an insanely great match at Wrestlemania, this time with his brother Owen, which the famous ladder match on the same show only BARELY overshadowed: one was like a magnificent steak, and the other an expertly crafted plate of seafood, not the same but both amazing for their own reasons, before defeating Yokozuna in the main event to regain his belt. Bret would spend most of the year primarily feuding with Owen, while also pulling great matches out of other wrestlers, including the still green Kevin Nash at the June 1994 King of the Ring. Then Vince’s erection got in the way again, and Bret would drop the belt to Bob Backlund in November. There’s a small story there; Backlund, who had reigned as WWF Champion for six years at the end of the 70’s and into the 80’s, before he unexpectedly lost the title to Iron Sheik so Hogan could come in, crush him, and kick off Hulkamania, had returned in the early 90’s; while for his first months he played the old friendly veteran, a match with Bret in June that saw him lose had him suddenly go completely insane and turn into a crazy old man. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ApvubZN6l0 And a little more of that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KahsJ9SJveE The original plan, supposedly, was that Charles Wright was going to return with the Papa Shango, voodoo priest gimmick, and he had ‘possessed’ Backlund, but Backlund took that original idea and made it his own, ultimately rendering it unnecessary. Backlund as heel champion could have led to some interesting places, or maybe it wouldn’t have worked at all. We’ll never know, because a little more than a week after beating Bret, Backlund dropped the title to Kevin “Diesel” Nash in nine seconds and promptly lost all his momentum, as Vince again tried to recreate Hogan through Nash. We’ve gone over why that failed already. But as said, the Clique had begun gaining influence by now, a lot of it, and Bret was shoved into the background, again, during 1995. While he still managed some great matches with Nash at the Royal Rumble and debuting evil heel Japanese wrestler Jinsei Shinzaki, who wrestled under the name of “Hakushi”, he had more duds than hits, having a dull rematch with Backlund at Wrestlemania 11 and being unable to get anything good out of the newly debuted Glen Jacobs, who was three years away from his defining gimmick of Kane, at Summerslam. And then there was his brief feud with Jean Pierre Layfitte, who he fought because Layfitte was an evil pirate who stole Bret’s jacket. There was also his ‘Kiss My Foot’ match with Jerry Lawyer as their feud renewed itself, but while the match was bad, I will always love the post match denouement of it, in pure kid nostalgia form, and you won’t be changing my mind on that. And once Vince finally gave up on Nash as WWF Champion and had him drop it back to Bret in November 1995, Bret would discover he was basically going to be a transitional champion to Shawn Michaels, whom by now Bret had developed a deep dislike of for his politicking, backstabbing, drug addiction, and generally being a POS human. Not only that, but outside of one PPV, all of Bret’s matches between his third title win and loss were built around developing another feud, that being between the Undertaker and Nash, his defenses of the title being treated as secondary and in a way, ‘lucky’. Ticked off about it all, Bret decided to take several months off to heal injuries, film some appearances in TV shows, and entertain an offer to jump to WCW, though it never even reached anything resembling official contract negotiations. And while Bret was gone, a newly debuted wrestler named Steve Austin won King of the Ring, and suddenly started calling Bret out in his promos, saying he was the real best there is, was, and so on and Bret was the past and should retire and go away. It was clearly meant to be a great chance for the hero Bret Hart to return and vanquish the arrogant, dastardly heel Austin, which is just what Bret did in November, returning at Survivor Series and having a drat great match with Austin, who was pre neck injury and could also go like a drat mother in the ring, before Bret defeated him with the same spot that he used to defeat Roddy Piper. That should have been that… Except it happened in Madison Square Garden. A very smarky building. And Bret, to his shock, found himself being booed and Austin being cheered, the bastard smack talker being seen as ‘cool’ and ‘badass’ and Bret being too ‘old fashioned’ and ‘kiddy’. It wasn’t anything approaching John Cena or Roman Reigns levels, but to Bret, who really cherished the idea of playing the hero, it must have been akin to a bucket of cold water in the face. Still, in a better world, he would have adapted. But in the world we got…the Montreal Screwjob might have already been in the works in some way. Cornwind Evil fucked around with this message at 23:41 on Feb 12, 2023 |
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Mar 16, 2022 18:27
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Fuckstick posted:Vince’s bell will ring someday soon I think Why is Eddie Guerrero in this picture when we already know he's in hell? (A real thing said on WWE television)
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Mar 16, 2022 19:43
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After he lost his job as an agent for WWF in 2000, Jim Neidhardt was pretty out of control. I remember being present when he was driving everyone nuts after an indy show trying to score coke, eventually got it, got blackout drunk/wolverine high, then had to be dragged back into his room (it took like 5 very large wrestlers to do this) after he got naked and tried wandering around the hotel hallway. The hotel was a sponsor that gave free rooms for the shows in exchange for advertising so it was considered a pretty big deal to get him under control
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Mar 16, 2022 20:15
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Thank you! You're doing the lord's work. Fuckstick posted:Vince’s bell will ring someday soon I think Where the gently caress is Kanyon? 
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Mar 16, 2022 20:26
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it has Piper and Owen but it's missing Canada's true wrestling superstar, Dino Bravo
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Mar 16, 2022 21:08
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I think the canadian mafia killed Dino, of all the mafias to get killed by
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Mar 16, 2022 21:27
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Eagerly awaiting the rest of the Bret Hart story.
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Mar 16, 2022 21:32
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Holy poo poo this is so overproduced it's hilarious. I got up to the dramatic re-enactment of a ponytail being cut off with horror music playing and I needed to pause and take a moment because I was choking from laughing so hard.
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Mar 16, 2022 21:43
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TheSwizzler posted:After he lost his job as an agent for WWF in 2000, Jim Neidhardt was pretty out of control. I remember being present when he was driving everyone nuts after an indy show trying to score coke, eventually got it, got blackout drunk/wolverine high, then had to be dragged back into his room (it took like 5 very large wrestlers to do this) after he got naked and tried wandering around the hotel hallway. The hotel was a sponsor that gave free rooms for the shows in exchange for advertising so it was considered a pretty big deal to get him under control Were his pubes in the shape of a spike? Jamesman posted:Holy poo poo this is so overproduced it's hilarious. You need to watch the one on the UWF. The promoter Herb Abrams died during a naked, vasoline-covered coke binge and you can tell that the re-enactment actors were having the best time with it.
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Mar 16, 2022 21:55
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Jamesman posted:Holy poo poo this is so overproduced it's hilarious. The overproduction is hilarious but it's kind of weird & awkward when it's like, the Chris Benoit episode or something
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Mar 16, 2022 21:56
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Gavok posted:Were his pubes in the shape of a spike? What was the UWF?
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Mar 16, 2022 22:01
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the randy savage episode involves some very heavy and dark subject matter but its hard to take seriously when the reenactment features hulk hogan and randy savage in full ring attire arguing in a hotel room lmao
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Mar 16, 2022 22:03
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16-bit Butt-Head posted:the randy savage episode involves some very heavy and dark subject matter but its hard to take seriously when the reenactment features hulk hogan and randy savage in full ring attire arguing in a hotel room lmao i have no reason to believe that didn't happen entirely as depicted
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Mar 16, 2022 22:07
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