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Billy Gunn was always one of my favorite wrestlers growing up and I always wished he had gotten single tittle chances! In my eyes he should've been the WWF champion! Road Dogg and everyone else dragged him down. I also credit him for me liking butts ty rear end man
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Apr 16, 2023 00:05
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Since everyone is talking around it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vh6a1-qb5uw Watch a man in vampire makeup launch the career of Billy rear end’ kids
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Apr 16, 2023 00:49
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Animal-Mother posted:WWE tricked a guy into training his own replacement. They regretted hiring Sin Cara, so they told him they were going to do an impostor Sin Cara storyline. "We want the fans to think he's exactly like you, so make sure to carefully teach him all your moves." Then they fired the real Sin Cara and kept the impostor for years. To be fair, in THAT case at least, some of that was the original Sin Cara nee Mistico nee Luis Ignacio Urive Alvirde's fault. He didn't want to learn English, and he MIGHT (this might be the WWE's fault, I don't know for sure) not have wanted to go through developmental because he was 'too good' to start in the 'minor leagues'. As a result he didn't adjust to the specific style the WWE had and that just made his botching (a large chunk of which WAS the WWE's fault, with stuff like their trampoline entrance, the mask that he had great difficulty seeing out of, and them casting a 'blue light' on the ring when he wrestled) even worse. You could argue that Luis didn't do himself any favors by being a drama queen backstage, allegedly, though as has been shown, maybe that was just him refusing to be turned into a cog in the machine and grist in the mill. They hired him, and then basically went "Oh yeah, that style that made you a star? Stop doing that, we don't want that." and tossed him out in the deep end. I guess just how fucky the WWE was here depends on how much you believe, and to what degree, a lovely person Luis was. Crowetron posted:Didn't this lead to a storyline where Real Sin Cara came back and fought the Fake Sin Cara? Yes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyGxxRCsspo
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Apr 17, 2023 01:27
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it always sucked seeing a really acrobatic guy get signed to the wwe. I mean goodnight for them for getting pad and all but the wwe bookers would always make them wrestle slower and shittier
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Apr 17, 2023 02:33
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Animal-Mother posted:WWE tricked a guy into training his own replacement. They regretted hiring Sin Cara, so they told him they were going to do an impostor Sin Cara storyline. "We want the fans to think he's exactly like you, so make sure to carefully teach him all your moves." Then they fired the real Sin Cara and kept the impostor for years. It's actually even funnier than that. See Luis Ignacio Urive Alvirde's problems came from several different parts, but in WWE terms, definitely from not being trained in the WWE/American style (at least one article has pointed out that American and Canadian wrestlers work armbars from the left side, while Mexican Wrestling traditionally favours working armbars from the right side), but also importantly, not speaking English. Their solution to this was hiring/ calling up a Mexian-American Immigrant from El Paso, one José Jorge Arriaga Rodriguez, who notably did speak English and had both actually wrestled under the name Mistico before AND had spent a lot of time wrestling in both Mexican and America independant promotions. A slam fire dunk right? You get a wrestler who can speak English and still do all the moves, and has worked with enough promotions before to not rock the boat. Except José is an accomplished and trained amateur wrestler and a good 30 pounds heavier than Luis. He may have had luchador training, but Mistico's claim to fame was his speed, and José was just not as fast or comfortable with the high flying moves demanded of him as Sin Cara. So on the one hand, you have a hard to work with guy who can do what you want... but only kind of and when he botches it looks bad, and on the other you have a guy who is much less impressive acrobatically, but does get along with people and can follow direction. Two wrestlers, neither of whom is a great fit for what the WWE wanted. By the time the dust had settled, WWE had shuttered the experiment in favour of hiring another independant luchador talent in Octagón Jr., a Chicago-born Mexican American who fit the long list of what the WWE wanted far better than either of José or Luis. By that time, they had cut Luis, but José was still in NXT and ended up partnering with Octagón Jr., now rebranded as Kalisto in the team of The Lucha Dragons. Having a smaller partner (and being in developmental and thus out of sight from upper management) also meant that José was allowed to do more of the technical mat wrestling he was comfortable with. Sin Cara actually had a pretty sick one arm powerbomb in the latter stages of life.
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Apr 17, 2023 11:11
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Torchlighter posted:By that time, they had cut Luis, but José was still in NXT and ended up partnering with Octagón Jr., now rebranded as Kalisto in the team of The Lucha Dragons. The mention of Kalisto and thrown-together lucha tag teams reminded me of someone who I'm surprised hasn't been talked about in this thread, as his brief WWE story is pretty insane. THE RISE AND FALL OF LARS SULLIVAN Lars Sullivan (Dylan Miley) showed up in NXT in 2017, existing in the developmental brand during the last stretch of it being must-watch. In-ring, he was average at best. He was muscular, but not defined. He was tall, but not a giant. Still, he had the makings of a star simply because the dude had presence. He was simply a scary-looking guy. If this was the 1950's, he would have starred in a horror movie you'd later see on MST3K. Lars went through NXT rather quickly, a little over a year. They wanted to speedrun him, but in doing so didn't want him to get TOO big. He was depicted as dominant, but when it came time to lose, it was always due to either DQ or being the guy in a multi-man match who didn't eat the pin. This included being in a completely kickass six-man ladder match to crown the first NXT North American Champion. He finished his journey in the NXT cycle by challenging champion Aleister Black at an NXT TakeOver and losing, getting his first pinfall loss. Usually, TakeOver shows were filled to the brim with amazing matches, but this was not one of them. It even ended with a rough botch. Black's finisher was a roundhouse kick to the head. Lars turned around into the kick in what was supposed to be the finish, but the kick just barely missed his face and Lars didn't realize it and react to it until it was too late. He just stood there, wide-eyed and confused until Black eventually got him again. But whatever, Lars had been on NXT long enough and was ready for the big leagues. Five months later, WWE started hyping what's known as "The NXT Six." Introducing NXT talent had been an easy way to give the main roster a shot in the arm, so they leaned into it a bit too much by spending week after week after week announcing how six NXT wrestlers were on their way to Raw and Smackdown. At the time, Lars was considered the crown jewel of the six. He was the one they were really behind. They had SO MUCH faith in Lars Sullivan that his main roster debut was going to be used to set up a WrestleMania match against John Cena. Yes, Lars was going to be a huge deal. When the time came for Lars to show up on TV... he didn't. He backed out due to having a panic attack. His anxiety got the best of him. It's understandable, really. You're in front of a bigger audience, being watched by millions on TV, being thrust into a storyline that will make or break you. I wouldn't blame anyone for crumbling in that situation. Except... it was more than that. Lars had good reason to be anxious about his rise to fame. Several reasons, actually. Lars made his debut the night after WrestleMania, where he roughed up newly-retired Kurt Angle. He spent the next few weeks coming out to beat up other popular faces. And that's when the other she dropped and the thing Lars was so afraid of came to pass. Years earlier, Lars had an account on a bodybuilding forum. It was an account that he was locked out of and therefore could not edit or delete his posts. Those posts came to light and they did NOT paint a good picture. Over the years, he had identified as a nazi and used just about every bigoted slur under the sun. It didn't help that he had some unfiltered, perverted thoughts on future boss Stephanie McMahon. WWE responded by saying that Lars would be taking part in sensitivity training and would be fined $100,000. Whether that was legit is left in the air. So with this cloud over his head, Lars then got thrust into his first main roster feud: the Lucha House Party. LHP was made up of Kalisto, Gran Metalik, and Lince Dorado, three masked flippy boys that WWE didn't know how to use right. For instance, they would have LHP repeatedly take on the Revival in 3-on-2 matches, giving this face team the huge advantage for no real reason. When a commentator would bring this up, Michael Cole would explain, "Because they're so fun!" But you know what's not fun? Being put in a 3-on-1 match against three minorities when you have been exposed as a white supremacist. Just because Lars was supposed to win the feud didn't stop the three lucha guys from ruthlessly laying into him when they could. On top of that, in his last match with the three, Lars messed his leg up pretty badly and would be out for well over a year. On top of THAT, while Lars was off TV, it was discovered that he had done some gay porn years earlier. Which hey, no judgment normally, but it's a bit different when you have a history of being such a homophobe. Plus it probably didn't make him look good in Vince's eyes. Lars returned midway into the pandemic, where they tried to humanize him through interviews about being bullied when he was younger or whatever. He showed up to beat up more guys, got two wins, was taken off TV and was quietly let go.
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Apr 17, 2023 15:45
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I was considering putting Lars in my final list of 'scorned stars' I was going to write about, but I didn't know the exact details, so thank you for that, Gavok.
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Apr 17, 2023 16:16
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I was fascinated by Tensai. I doubt Bloom came up with the gimmick. It had to be Vince who said let's put him in a leather diaper and pretend he's Japanese. Then it fails immediately because, what's with this fake Japanese guy poo poo? It's Albert. So then, it's his second squash match and they put him up against a Japanese wrestler this time. Immediately trying to do damage control. And you know this was all Vince. So Cole says Yoshi Tatsu called out Tensai for not really being Japanese so he could emphasize, "But Tensai never claimed to be Japanese! He's just inspired by their customs." Tensai then beat up the Japanese man and sat on him. They soon had him defeat Cena before the Extreme Rules PPV. They started de-emphasizing the Japanese stuff and he basically became A Train with kanji scribbled on his face. He had Sakimoto, his lackey or whatever, but eventually Tensai just beat him up and got rid of him. Not before he got real heat for being racist in a vignette in which Sakimoto is his chauffeur and the punchline was these slanty eyed Japanese can't drive. Again, though, that was almost certainly a Vince thing. Si his reward was to put on women's underwear and dance with Brodus. That was a little bit of a joke on PSP for a while. If a wrestler wasn't going anywhere the joke was he'll end up dancing with Brodus. Mulaney Power Move fucked around with this message at 17:19 on Apr 17, 2023 |
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Apr 17, 2023 17:16
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Mulaney Power Move posted:never claimed to be Japanese... just inspired by their customs. A tragically common IRL gimmick.
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Apr 17, 2023 17:29
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So there's an amazing podcast I am loving to bits 'X-Plaining the X-Men' where the hosts go through the entire in-universe history of the X-Men and their adjacent titles, starting from the Silver Age and going on in chronological order from there, doing a handful of issues each episode. Is there anything like that for wrestling? Like a podcast or series of articles that just start with, like, say, the Attitude Era and go in chronological order from each episode and PPV? Talking about the matches and insane storylines and poo poo?
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Apr 17, 2023 17:36
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Tensai/Bloom is a classic Vince failure. He was this athletic monster that could do all kinds of poo poo in the ring. He was a respected veteran. There is a reason he's the head trainer at the performance center. A ton of main events in Japan including Brock Lesnar. He could have just come back as Albert and been a good monster heel for at least one Wrestlemania run.center I think that was just too difficult for them to figure out. Giving a guy a new gimmick and just having him squash jobbers is a more straightforward path. If it's a returning guy you I don't know if it makes sense to make him go through a bunch of jobbers. I think then you just start with the. Sheamus feud right out of the gate.
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Apr 17, 2023 17:41
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:So there's an amazing podcast I am loving to bits 'X-Plaining the X-Men' where the hosts go through the entire in-universe history of the X-Men and their adjacent titles, starting from the Silver Age and going on in chronological order from there, doing a handful of issues each episode. I feel like the X-Men and wrestling history would have a lot more eerie similarity than you'd think.
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Apr 17, 2023 18:10
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:So there's an amazing podcast I am loving to bits 'X-Plaining the X-Men' where the hosts go through the entire in-universe history of the X-Men and their adjacent titles, starting from the Silver Age and going on in chronological order from there, doing a handful of issues each episode. sorry that's all I've got lol I have to imagine though that it wouldn't be easy to find wrestling fans with the preternaturally agreeable  energy that Jay and Miles have lole: I ended two sentences with lol but I'm leaving it. I'm just a jolly guy Cubone fucked around with this message at 20:08 on Apr 17, 2023 |
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Apr 17, 2023 19:50
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:So there's an amazing podcast I am loving to bits 'X-Plaining the X-Men' where the hosts go through the entire in-universe history of the X-Men and their adjacent titles, starting from the Silver Age and going on in chronological order from there, doing a handful of issues each episode. Look up Wrestling Bios on youtube. They have a video series that discusses and compares raw vs nitro and ppv's for each week of the Monday night wars. I'll be amazed if he actually finishes the series but i think he's made into 1998 so far
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Apr 17, 2023 21:22
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:So there's an amazing podcast I am loving to bits 'X-Plaining the X-Men' where the hosts go through the entire in-universe history of the X-Men and their adjacent titles, starting from the Silver Age and going on in chronological order from there, doing a handful of issues each episode. I've mentioned OSW Review a few times, but if you want to start at the beginning of the McMahon era, they start from Wrestlemania I and work through every PPV up until WM 9 before jumping around into some different stuff. Takes a couple of episodes to heat up imo, but probably your best bet if you want it to come with actual highlight footage so you don't have to track down and watch some of these dogshit 80s PPVs. If you look around Youtube there's also audio of Bryan & Vinny from F4W doing retrospective reviews of Raw and Nitro month-by-month, but that will only encourage you to binge-watch Nitro and hurt yourself
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Apr 17, 2023 23:26
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:So there's an amazing podcast I am loving to bits 'X-Plaining the X-Men' where the hosts go through the entire in-universe history of the X-Men and their adjacent titles, starting from the Silver Age and going on in chronological order from there, doing a handful of issues each episode. I'll recommend "The NXT Wrestling Fan" podcast. It covers NXT blossoming into appointment television for a time and acts as an introduction to how to watch wrestling. https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/nhepj-e3841/The-NXT-Wrestling-Fan-Podcast
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Apr 18, 2023 01:19
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Let's wrap this up. A Star Is Scorned: A Bunch of Others It can be kind of arbitrary deciding exactly how one could be said to have ‘failed’ as a potential wrestling star. Glacier in WCW failed, but he still hung around for months even getting his own ridiculous, Mortal Kombat esque storyline amongst the early days of the NWO. Drew McAntyre in the WWE ‘failed’ despite a heavy first push and ended up in a comedy jobber squadron, but time and time away would gradually change him into a considerably larger success. The Highlanders showed up with some interview time and a few unique gimmicks (tagging each other by slapping each other in the face), but then the writer interested in them was fired and they swiftly ended up jobbers, but they still got to appear on TV for months afterwards. So, it can be debatable just how many of the following entries ‘failed’, but I do feel they each stand out for their own reasons amongst their peers.  MORDECAI The Undertaker did not have what you could call a ringwork-wise, good early career. Once he turned face, he was tasked with being the WWE’s ‘monster slayer’, which put him in the ring with all sorts of incredibly large, often slow moving, and generally ‘bad’ wrestlers that the storyline was supposed to cover for. And sometimes, as in the case of Giant Gonzalez, it was even worse, and nothing could cover just how poorly equipped Calloway’s opponents were to do ANYTHING in a match. This trend was FINALLY broken when the WWE signed Mick Foley in 1996, and was further adjusted when Glen Jacobs debuted as Kane in late 1997, being a big man who could actually keep up with the athletic talent Calloway had. It’s unsurprising that the WWE would keep trying to replicate the success of the two over the many remaining years of the Undertaker’s career. From going back to the ‘old school’ with the likes of The Great Khali, to blink and you’d miss they existed people like ‘Hade Vansen’, to trying it with established WWE wrestlers like Mark Henry (arguably didn’t work) and Batista (fair argument it did and produced one of Taker’s greatest Wrestlemania matches). But perhaps the standout for ‘what if’ was Kevin Fertig, who after being in OVW a few years as a character called ‘Seven’, was called up to the main roster for a repackaging. He would now be Mordecai.  You can see what they were going for. The ‘evil light’ to the Undertaker’s ‘heroic darkness’, and even beyond that, early promos had Mordecai saying he was going to go after Eddie Guerroro, who was the WWE Champion at the time. The WWE went all in, with Mordecai getting an elaborate entrance on his very first appearance that many wrestlers would have had waited to be an established star to get. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXzOJ9leBrc Unfortunately, it was all swiftly downhill from there. Kevin Fertig hosed himself, getting into a bar fight at some point during this: exactly WHEN I could not determine. His planned storyline with Eddie was canceled, and Fertig would end up only wrestling three matches before disappearing completely; by the time he returned, it was in WWE’s version of ECW and the Mordecai gimmick was dropped and forgotten completely; he was now Kevin Thorn, a wrestling vampire.  It was likely for the best, as Fertig was still green, which showed a LOT in two of the three matches he had as Mordecai. Kevin Thorn never really took off either, and Fertig would join the pile of never-weres, only really notable that he shone so brightly and ultimately so briefly.  KIZARNY Mordecai, though, made a form of sense. It was clear they were going for an inverse Undertaker. The same could not be said for Nicholas Cvjetkovich, when promos began in October 2008 of an incoming wrestler dubbed, well, Kizarny. So who WAS Kizarny? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZWfyyUvgFw Well, he was a carnival worker slash ‘carnival life person’, demonstrated by Nicholas’ speaking in ‘carny cant’, which was a pseudo code where he would insert the sound ‘eaz’ into his words, for example, he would say “Welcome to the carnival” as “Weazelcome teazo theaze ceazarnival”. Yes, Pig Latin is another example of such a ‘cant’. And… That was it. Week after week, Nicholas would appear, talking in his cant and indicating that he was going to head to the WWE to…do something. Put on a show? Fleece some rubes? Educate people on an oft-maligned subculture? Who the heck knows? Now, this sort of gimmick in wrestling, the ‘What in the hell does this have to do with wrestling’ is nothing new. Just look at Jeff Jarrett as I earlier touched on. Or Adam Rose, the ‘party man’. Or the there and gone likes of ‘Phantasmo’, or ‘Friar Fergenson’ or ‘Battle Kat’. But the first two hung around, and the other three just showed up with no ‘warning’ before vanishing just as abruptly. Kizarny got several weeks of promos, all in his cant. And then, in January, on the first Smackdown of the year, Kizarny would debut, as part of the ‘This other wrestler called MVP is on a losing streak’ ‘classic storyline’. And… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ygWeex1NGk He was just a wrestler. There was nothing especially memorable about him. No real unique moves, no special routine, heck all I remember about the match is that he repeatedly yanked MVP’s leg out from under him repeatedly. He still won the match, and heck, maybe he would have been able to show off more in time, few get a truly GREAT debut… Except that was it for Kizarny. Outside of a brief appearance in a battle royale over a month later and a backstage segment a few weeks after that, Nicholas was gone a month later. Several months of build, and a grand total of one match. So what happened? Well, Wikipedia says he no-showed an event and got released for it. Nicholas himself has several theories that do sort of sound excuse-ish, but the fact that Nicholas never returned to the WWE in any form, despite being very good friends with Adam “Edge” Copeland (Edge was even the best man at one of Nicholas’ weddings), can only make one wonder just who the rube was. COUSIN NUNZIO One could argue this was a case of ‘the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing’. More likely, it’s a case of ‘Vince McMahon knows what HE’S doing and doesn’t care what ANYONE ELSE is doing’. The Invasion angle of WWE vs WCW-ECW/The Alliance was overall a flop, but it did have some interesting mini events. One of the wrestlers picked up in the initial WCW signing, Shane Helms, began using the name of ‘Hurricane Helms’. Which, after a backstage talk with Steve Austin(?), where he lambasted Helms for his Green Lantern ring tattoo, resulted in Helms becoming so enamoured with the superhero concept that he swiftly morphed into a literal superhero, The Hurricane.  And I’ll be honest, he’s one of my favorite gimmicks of all time because I’m a giant nerd, he had great entrance music, he even managed to hold his own against the Rock in verbal combat, and they probably could have done more with him. But, after the Alliance ended, Helms continued wrestling as the Hurricane, until he finally got a storyline which, IIRC, was based around him having a then-unknown storyline relationship with Nidia, who was the female winner of the first Tough Enough and actually making her on screen debut. The faux relationship that was never mentioned had ended, and Nidia brought in her ‘new boyfriend’ to get revenge, that being Helms’ former constant sparring mate Jamie Noble, as the pair had fought many times in WCW’s final year as members of the three man cruiserweight trios 3 Count and Yung Dragons.  Side note; the Jung Dragons were presented as a Japanese team. As you can clearly see, James “Jamie Noble” Gibson is not Japanese. So they had him wrestle under a mask and just pretended. Not the first time wrestling’s done that. Presented as being a ‘trailer trash’ couple, Noble would beat Hurricane for the cruiserweight title and hold it for the latter half of 2002 before losing it in November. Entering a feud afterwards with Michael “Crash Holly” Lockwood, Noble began expressing deep frustration over his recent failures and began talking about how if things didn’t get better, he’d call in ‘Cousin Nunzio’, who based on Nidia’s reaction, was not something she wanted. Nunzio was a dangerous man, so dangerous that she didn’t like the idea of him being around. Well, as Chekhov’s Gun states, don’t put a gun over the fireplace in Act 1 without the audience expecting it will be fired in Act 3, and as December 2002 rolled around, Noble finally ‘snapped’ and called in ‘Cousin Nunzio’, who promptly showed up to beat Crash Holly to a pulp. So who was Nunzio?  James Maritato. Best known as half of one of ECW’s main tag teams, the F.B.I, or Full Blooded Italians, where he wrestled under the name of ‘Little Guido’. Maritato had not been brought in as part of ECW during the Invasion storyline, and it was not his debut under his new name that caused any issues. He could very well end up being just as dangerous as Jamie Noble presented him as. Except… This is Bill Demott.  You might remember him from a brief mention during my Dungeon of Doom writeup. What I didn’t bring up is that Demott is likely an abusive, bully POS who is/was a never-was and deserved that fate and worse. Unlike Nunzio, Demott WAS a part of the Invasion angle, and had promptly fallen into the D-listers once that storyline was done. Par for the course of the man who’d been previously known as Hugh Morris and General Rection. Except, while taking time off to heal an injury from a motorcycle accident, Demott was recruited to be one of the on-screen trainers for the third season of Tough Enough. Where he promptly ‘distinguished’ himself (is there a good autonym for an example of conduct showing you’re a POS?) by using a ‘rough, controversial’ hand, ie, being an abusive bully taking out the fact that his career was essentially a failure on those with less power than him. Considering how Vince thinks, it makes perfect sense he got hired on as a trainer full time once he retired…and one can only wonder at the scope of his abuses afterwards as he did so many he actually managed to get canned over them, albeit long after he should have been. But, before he did all THAT damage, and having gotten some attention for being the ‘brutal’ coach on Tough Enough, Demott returned to in ring action in November 2002 and was given a push where he squashed jobbers... And literally the week after Nunzio had debuted beating up Crash Holly, the WWE would put him and Jamie Noble in a handicap match against Demott. And Nunzio, after being talked up as a danger, was promptly squashed by Demott alongside Noble, utterly killing his credibility right out of the gate. Even MORE insulting, the fans didn’t bite at all for Demott, and only scant weeks after utterly ruining any chance Maritato could have in starting out to be more than ‘just a guy’, the WWE gave up and he was back to being on the C-shows, where he remained until he retired, whereas Maritato would wrestle for the WWE in several forms until 2008. Now, there is NO guarantee that Nunzio would have lived up to his hype, but in being destroyed for a pointless failed push likely done because Vince loves his Giants and will always look down on the Not-Giants-By-WWE-Standards, he’s definitely, as another faux Italian mused, someone who could have been a contender. …or was that guy from Brooklyn? Eh, let’s move on. THE SHINING STARS Just because a gimmick misfires and lands with a thud doesn’t mean it’s irrevocably done.  These are Austin Watson, Kofi Nahaje Sarkodie-Mensah, and Ettore Ewen. Or as WWE watchers would know them, Xavier Woods, Kofi Kingston, and “Big E” Langston, or just Big E if you are randomly first or last name hating like Vince is. And as 2014 went on, none of them were doing well. Kingston had started strong, but a less than well received feud with Randy Orton at the end of 2009 had soured people backstage on his main event potential, and Kingston had spent the next four years and change firmly in the midcard, which, while he won numerous secondary titles and the tag titles with several different partners, was where he seemed destined to stay. Langston hadn’t even gotten that, being muscle for Dolph Ziggler and getting a pair of Intercontinental Title reigns before slipping into midcard hell himself. And Woods? Woods hadn’t even gotten that much, having debuted at the tail end of 2013 and only been involved in 1) Breaking up Tons of Funk, as I already spoke about, and 2) being in a tag team with R-Truth which never went anywhere. And so, as July 2014 rolled around, and Kingston and Langston were in the ring having lost another tag team match, a very serious Woods suddenly emerged and declared that they would get nowhere by ‘kissing babies and shaking hands’ and that they needed to seize ‘their time’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnXWQnsxNV8&t=62s At which point, the three…promptly disappeared. From TV, anyway. The trio would appear in dark matches and on house shows, wrestling in semi matching outfits, with whoever was actually in the tag team and whoever was serving as manager switching as necessary. It seemed like it would be just another forgotten misfire, but as October rolled around, suddenly, new vignettes began airing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAYc_XuOr7Q (This was Kingston's) The trio was officially re-debuting…as heroic, gospel singer, black positivity characters. Think those types who try and make things like learning about the dangers of drugs or science fun. The aggressiveness of the recruitment was forgotten, and the trio officially returned to TV in November, clapping their hands, chanting their name, and being that form of upbeat and energetic that tends to make adults suspicious, as it can come off as disingenuous and manipulative. While the WWE audience did have its share of children, it seemed like Cena had locked them all up, and they did not respond to the New Day’s schtick. Which meant that the crowd rapidly tired of their act and, within a few months, had begun audibly chanting ‘New Day sucks!’. This, however, was a good thing. For two reasons. One, it meant they were getting a reaction. Two, the New Day LEANED INTO IT, becoming treacherous heels who still maintained their ‘power of positivity’ act and kept adding more and more absurd elements to it, like unicorn horns and Xavier Woods playing a trombone as the group tried to turn “New Day sucks!” to “New Day rocks!” (and failed, but this was intentional). And as I said, if you succeed as heels, eventually you’ll end up faces, as the New Day’s wacky antics grew on the crowd, and eventually turned them face within several months (having mostly discarded all the ‘heroic black gospel positivity’ stuff for pure silliness helped). They would end up claiming the tag team titles and being so popular that their run ended up breaking the nearly three decade long record of title reigns held formerly by Demolition, and while said reign did end shortly after the record became theirs, it would not be the last time the team would hold the titles. Indeed, the group’s antics would end up with them actually selling their own cereal for a brief time based on one of their catchphrases. And then doing the same with pancakes. As well as lots of other merchandise. Oh yes, and their popularity helped two of the members eventually rise to the main event and become world champions. True, said reigns had their deep issues, and neither ended well, but still. What had once been three midcarders ended up one of the biggest success stories of the WWE’s 21st century. The point being, a bad start does not guarantee a failure. But there are those who defy the odds, and then there are the Shining Stars. This is Edwin Colón and Orlando Nieves, or as they were known at first, Primo and Epico.  Primo was yet another remnant; in this case, of being brought in to team with his real life brother, Carly “Carlito” Colón. Carlito was yet another ‘could have been a great but it never worked’ WWE star, and while the pair did claim tag team titles, it wouldn’t last too long, and midway through 2010, Carlito would be released for a Wellness Policy violation and refusing to go to rehab for it. Primo, like many others spoken of here, would fart around on the C-Shows for another year and change, before he returned to align with Hunico (nee the fake Sin Cara, after he’d been defeated and unmasked, and who would eventually become the ‘real’ Sin Cara when the ‘real deal’ ended up released, as spoken about earlier in the thread) and Hunico’s partner Epico, who was Primo’s RL cousin. Hunico promptly lost his partner/minion, as Primo and Epico would break away to form their own tag team known as…Primo and Epico. Unfortunately, despite getting the tag belts, which I suppose makes them more successful than some of the teams listed in this article series, Primo and Epico were just sort of…there, probably more noted for their valet Rosa Mendez’s sexy dances than anything they did. They eventually fell into jobberdom and vanished from TV. But it would not be the end of the pair. Oh no, they were due a repackaging. As the Shining Stars? No, silly. As a pair of masked bullfighters named Los Matadores.  The impression being they were Spanish, but hey, with the masks, you could hardly tell! More convincing than Jamie Noble being passed off as a Japanese man, at least. But they would not return alone, no. They would have a mascot, the bull to their bullfighters… EL TORITO!  Ie talented midget/little person luchadore Mascarita Dorada. Who, of course, promptly completely overshadowed his generic tag team, due to his agile stunts. Los Matadores would hang around for another two or so years, with all the spotlight moments they got being tied to Dorada, such as a surprisingly well executed match against fellow little person wrestler/performer Dylan Postl, nee Hornswoggle. The pair eventually turned on their mascot, and that was basically the end for both team and mascot. Considering Dorada got paid to have a very light performing schedule during that time, more than a few people considered it an extended vacation for the man. Also, I was unable to find the video, but in an online exclusive bit, Dorada, as Torito, showed up and revealed he could also rock a sharp suit. Yes, he was wearing his bull mask with the suit. Take my word for it, he made it work. So, just being a pair of guys hadn’t worked, and being a pair of bullriders hadn’t worked. What else could be tried? We found out as April 2016 rolled around and began promoting the return of Primo and Epico. And how were they doing this? They were talking up Puerto Rico, trying to get people to visit there.  Yes. That was their whole gimmick. All the vignettes were based around “Puerto Rico is awesome.” Hell, I cannot contravene that claim. It was, as they kept saying, the Shining Star of the Caribbean. And they were now…The Shining Stars. So…they were anthropomorphic personifications of a country then? And that bad joke aside… …what the hell did that have to do with wrestling? Then AGAIN, what did doing a black gospel positivity bit have to do with it? Or being bullriders? Sometimes, you just need a try. But in my memory, few gimmicks have ever been as disconnected to the business as the Shining Stars, a pair of wrestlers who were seemingly just obsessed with telling you how great Puerto Rico was. Driven home when they finally returned in ring, billed as the Shining Stars, from the Shining Star (which was Puerto Rico, in case you forgot), with a new finisher called…The Shining Star, which they defeated a pair of local no-names. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNJnHPiiWJg The crowd…didn’t care at all. There was nothing there. The WWE seemed to recognize it, as Primo and Epico promptly vanished from TV for a few months. When they returned, they had actually added something to the gimmick, being presented as predatory time-share con man types who were trying to big up Puerto Rico so they could sell real estate there. Too little, too late. The pair would make occasional appearances for another 10 months before abandoning the gimmick and just calling themselves “The Colons”, but that also went nowhere and the two would be released in 2020. In my personal experience, the Shining Stars are the most recent example of ‘I have no idea why anyone thought this would be a workable idea in any way’, at least as it was initially presented. Nothing against Puerto Rico. But at least Dolph Ziggler, when he debuted as ‘that guy who liked to shake hands and tell people his name’, had enough to interest people in the ring to move beyond that. THE MACHINE What do all these presented failures have in common? They got promoted. They got weeks of build; even Nunzio got talked up in backstage segments for a few weeks before he showed up. But you don’t need a running start to faceplant so hard you’ll need plastic surgery afterwards. And now, we’re briefly leaving the shores of WWE, because this one is just too good not to bring up. Lots of people know about THE SHOCKMASTER, but not as many know about, THE MACHINE. No, this is not related to that comedy act that is being made into a fictional movie. THE MACHINE was Emory Hale, another giant of a man (for wrestlers), who had been brought in by Jimmy Hart to be Hulk Hogan’s next big opponent.  It did not work out, and Hale, wrestling under the name ‘Hail’ and his own name, would make a handful of appearances during the end of 1998 and 1999, losing every match he was in. Considering that 1999 was when WCW was starting to go completely off the rails, I won't blame you if you never saw him. But then, as 2000 rolled around, and WCW began it’s final utter collapse as I explained at length earlier, the February 2, 2000 edition of WCW began to promote a new wrestler, THE MACHINE. Solely on this show. He was first mentioned on the show, he was promoted the whole show that this was the debut of THE MACHINE, and just to try and make it seem like a big deal, his opponent would be one of WCW’s top stars, Diamond Dallas Page. In a vacuum, it would appear like WCW really wanted you to think that THE MACHINE was something. Not enough of a something to actually get multiple shows of promos and build, of course, but hey, he got several on THIS show! And so, at the top of the hour, Diamond Dallas Page headed to the ring, to be followed by, THE MACHINE! According to Wikipedia, they followed up the one episode build by giving THE MACHINE an elaborate entrance. He sure didn’t LOOK all that special, being a big man in black tights and a basic black mask, but hey, it worked for Stone Cold. And then… The rest of the match was forgettable. What wasn’t was when DDP went for one of his lesser known spots: his opponent would attempt to climb the corner turnbuckle, and he would get up and lunge/fall on the ring ropes, causing the wrestler to lose his balance and ‘crotch himself’ on the top turnbuckle, where DDP could then take advantage. THE MACHINE went to the top rope. DDP did his knockdown move. THE MACHINE did not fall down like everyone else. No. I will let the Death of WCW book say exactly what he did. “First, he stood up. Then, he emitted a scream of terror. Then he launched himself across the ring and crotched himself on the top rope seven or eight feet away.” There is video proof. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mshCWl3Jkyk Alas, the Death of WCW book played it up too much: it’s not QUITE as epic fail amusing as they present it. It is still ridiculous though, and after the half show of build, THE MACHINE got pinned and was never seen again. Death of WCW claims that DDP was still laughing about Hale’s choice of bump months later. So yeah, maybe Bert Kreischer deserves to have the official THE MACHINE story. He sure did more with it than Hale. But. BUT. EMMALINA At least Hale had a match. This is Tenille Dashwood.  Or as she was known in this picture, Emma. As has been said, Triple H and NXT is a truly odd bird, in the sense that Triple H seems to know what to do with a promotion pretty drat well, but never could do that with his own darn career. Dashwood would be a prime example of this fact. Signed by WWE as FCW was beginning its full transition into NXT, Tenille would start off 2013 by debuting her gimmick, where she was, more or less, a clumsy, odd dancer.  This did not immediately set the world on fire, as I keep saying. But the key difference between those examples and NXT was that NXT was a smaller, more intimate venue, and Tenille’s gimmick was given time to ORGANICALLY get over, as fans eventually found her wavy arms charming and started going along with her dance. Given the proper breathing room, Emma got over, and would be one of the top women wrestlers in NXT in the latter half of 2013. I am sure you see what happened here: Tenille got TIME to see if she could make her gimmick work. There are other differences between the likes of NXT and the WWE main shows, but that is undoubtedly the most important. So, when Dashwood’s popularity got her called up to the main roster as 2014 began… Well, it went as well as expected. She was basically tossed out with a “Look! It’s Emma! She’s so silly! Look at her dancing!” to a crowd that hadn’t had time to warm up to her. If we’re going to be UTTERLY fair, this isn’t a GUARANTEED ‘no chance’. The same basically happened with the NXT tag team of Enzo and Cass, and they promptly got over on the main show immediately for the same reasons they had in NXT: mike work and singalong catchphrases. Emma wasn’t so lucky. Given no time for fans to warm up to her, Emma did not immediately get over and promptly fell into 50/50 booking hell, becoming ‘just a girl’, her top star status on NXT swept aside. Getting arrested for a mistaken case of shoplifting at the end of June didn’t help: the WWE even released her on that basis, only to swiftly reverse their decision under a storm of immense criticism. Still, if she was going to have legs, that incident probably broke them. And to drive home that she’d ‘failed’, she was returned to NXT as 2015 started, with the on screen ‘acknowledgement’ that her time on the main roster wasn’t working out. For no real fault of her own, Dashwood had been demoted and more or less told to go back to the minors and shape up or ship out. Dashwood did what she could, turning heel in March of 2015 and returning to main event status swiftly, though she never managed to win the NXT Woman’s Title.  (Her heel look, shown to contrast something coming up...) Brought back to the main roster as her heel self in March 2016, Emma would be part of a big fight between the ‘Total Divas’, ie the WWE females who appeared on the titular reality show, and the ‘serious women wrestlers’ who didn’t need a reality show to get people to notice them. Her team lost, of course: the Divas were the ones getting outside attention, so of course they would end up on top. Emma moved on, planning to start a feud with not-yet-The-Man Becky Lynch, even as her old NXT teammate Dana Brooke would debut to aid her… At which point, Dashwood suffered a back injury, necessitating several months of recovery. And as she finished said recovery in the fall of 2016, the WWE decided that Emma needed a makeover. In every single sense of the word. On October 3rd’s Raw, this promo debuted.  Emma, as it said, would be becoming ‘Emmalina’. Just what did that mean? Uncertain. It was basically showing off the attractive Dashwood in revealing clothes. Eh, fine as a start…except the next week rolled around and we got another promo in that vein. And the next. And the next. And the next. Now, it wasn’t like weeks of promo packages was unheard of. The issue was that after starting putting them again, the WWE began looking at the ‘concept’ of Emmalina, which was supposedly going to be a ‘throwback’ to the gimmicks of earlier WWE female performers such as Sable or the Kat, which I’ll assume meant ‘focus on the pretty woman with the large breasts in various degrees of skimpy attire, except the WWE seemed to rapidly develop a form of buyer’s remorse and didn’t think Dashwood could do the gimmick properly. What did that mean? Maybe it meant in the PG era you couldn’t do that sort of setup any more. Or maybe some of the usual sorts (coughcoughKEVINDUNNcough) thought she wasn’t bottle blonde and big boobed enough.  Yes, truly a woman that men would cringe at the idea of being with. No wonder the guy she’s currently dating as of this writing has the word ‘Mad’ in his name, you’d have to be insane to want to be with her! So, they didn’t think the gimmick would work with Dashwood. Okay fine, drop it and move on. The WWE didn’t do that. Instead they kept airing Emmalina promos. November turned to December, and she kept being promised. The promos ended for a few weeks, but as January 2017 began, they were back. Noted wrestling insider Dave Meltzer described them as a ‘running inside joke’ and that creative, in reality, Had Nothing For Emma. You can perhaps see why this was not a joke for the likes of Dashwood. And so, finally, FINALLY, after four months of build, Emmalina would finally emerge onto her stage on the February 13th 2017 episode of Raw. EMMALINA, SEX SYMBOL FOR THE 21ST CENTURY, HAD ARRIVED. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzAoLT2GPcc At which point, she declared that the WWE would now see “The makeover of Emmalina to Emma”, and left the stage. And that was that.  Yes. The WWE didn’t just drop it. They didn’t just repackage or revert Emma offscreen. Despite believing the gimmick was a failure, they kept promoting it, and ended it with Dashwood coming out and saying “Nah” and walking off, Maybe all the other entries in this post failed on landing, but Emmalina managed to combine ‘fail on landing’ with ‘never actually launched’ to begin with. I have never seen a gimmick actually debut and end, immediately, intentionally, with all the build it was given, quite like that. Of all the possible responses to their second look making them change their minds, you would think the answer wouldn’t be ‘Just keep promoting the character, have her actually appear, then say she was leaving and never appear again.’ outright. Dashwood would return to her heel Emma gimmick, and at least it couldn’t be said that her career was RUINED due to the nonsense of Emmalina. But it was damaged enough that she’d be released from WWE in October of that year. She’d return in 2022, once again Emma the face, though not as Emma the clumsy dancer. Time will tell if Dashwood will be able to make something of herself on the main roster. Shame a chunk of that time was completely wasted on Emmalina. Corey Graves, who had done his best to get the whole thing over even as it dragged on and on, said it best. “Come again?” No, I don’t think I did in the first place. Cornwind Evil fucked around with this message at 07:49 on Apr 27, 2023 |
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Apr 18, 2023 17:27
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Mordecai looks like the leader of the Los Illuminados cult that kidnapped Ashley Graham.
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Apr 18, 2023 17:58
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Well, while I can keep trying to plug away at my old wrestling history thing, I was GOING to next tell Undertaker's No Good, Very Bad 1994...but lo and behold, Gavok already did THAT too. So my next idea was "The Strange Mad Career of Dustin Runnels." and the stuff he did to try and get out of his father's shadow. Or did I somehow miss THAT as well? Or people could ask questions and I could see if there's anything in my memory banks about it. It turns out there's stuff I never had any clue existed, like Shane Sewell, Angry TNA Referee.
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Apr 19, 2023 04:27
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Great thread, did someone already effortpost about Steve Blackman? Him getting simultaneous malaria & dysentery in South Africa and being bedridden for two years seems like a story.
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Apr 19, 2023 05:06
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Cornwind Evil posted:Well, while I can keep trying to plug away at my old wrestling history thing, I was GOING to next tell Undertaker's No Good, Very Bad 1994...but lo and behold, Gavok already did THAT too. So my next idea was "The Strange Mad Career of Dustin Runnels." and the stuff he did to try and get out of his father's shadow. Or did I somehow miss THAT as well? Do Dustin regardless. I like how that story ends.
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Apr 19, 2023 05:11
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Cornwind Evil posted:Time will tell if Dashwood will be able to make something of herself on the main roster. Extremely doubtful. HHH brought her back as part of his whole 'hey look I'm in charge now and I'm bringing back everyone you like (even though I have no plans for most of them)' movement. What happened on her first night back? Ronda Rousey squashed her.  In fact:  She's done nothing but eat losses since her return, and that's when they remember to actually put her on tv.
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Apr 19, 2023 05:22
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Vandar posted:She's done nothing but eat losses since her return, and that's when they remember to actually put her on tv. Eh, you never know. Look at New Day.
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Apr 19, 2023 05:30
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I really liked Jamie Noble. Just thought you should know
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Apr 20, 2023 02:41
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I thought it was funny how the male Tough Enough winner was "MAVEN! THE FIRST TOUGH ENOUGH WINNER! LISTEN TO HIS AMAZING THEME SONG! LOOK AT HIS DROPKICK! LOOK AT HIM FEUD WITH UNDERTAKER!" And then the female, co-winner of Tough Enough was "Trailer park slut." By funny, I mean sad.
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Apr 20, 2023 05:54
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Jamesman posted:I thought it was funny how the male Tough Enough winner was "MAVEN! THE FIRST TOUGH ENOUGH WINNER! LISTEN TO HIS AMAZING THEME SONG! LOOK AT HIS DROPKICK! LOOK AT HIM FEUD WITH UNDERTAKER!" And expected. To paraphrase Game of Thrones, if you think women are going to get anywhere near the chances in WWE under Vince as the men do, you haven't been paying attention. And speaking of Game of Thrones... --- All That Glitters: The Strange Mad Career of Dustin Runnels (Part 1) If you are born the child of a wrestler, to paraphrase Game of Thrones again, the gods toss a coin. And then toss a die, probably. The first is whether you follow your wrestler parent into the business. The die is both how successful you are, and just how much your blood lineage plays in it. You never know the exact results you’ll get. Ted Dibiase supposedly got into wrestling to honor his father, only to find he had a lot more talent and charisma than his father had. And when HIS son, Dibiase Jr, broke in, they found out that unfortunately, he didn’t. Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson would explode far, far past anything his grandfather and father achieved, in the business and beyond it. Randal “Randy” Orton and Ashley “Charlotte Flair” Felair would have a much more stumblebunt (is that even a word?) ascent; IMO Randy never QUITE managed to completely and utterly click with the number of things he achieved and did, and while Charlotte might still have another ten or twenty years ahead of her, it really does feel like a large chunk of her achievements ride less on the innate talent she has and more than she was given many chances and much attention because of her father, who DID earn everything he did. And even with their flawed accomplishments, not everyone is so lucky as those last two. There are those who were crushed by their father’s shadow, like David Sammartino, or James Snuka, or the ones who got a bunch through nepotism, but it couldn’t get them anywhere. I remember being oddly saddened seeing Greg Gagne, son of Verne Gagne, being described as “a scrawny beanpole no one wanted to see in main events’, both for the same reasons Billy Gunn and Jeff Jarrett’s limits are oddly, mildly sad, and also for the fact that you can bet part of the reason Greg was rejected so thoroughly was because his father likely pushed him so drat hard when he was neither ready or capable. Or maybe we can bring up Erik Watts, son of Bill Watts, whose only notable thing in my memory was being part of a forgotten tag team in the mid 90’s WWE death spiral. Or Garrett Bischoff, who has the double whammy of nepotism and it being provided by someone who now has a very negative reputation as being part of the reasons one wrestling company died and another was reduced to being on life support in a body cast. Curt Hennig had great talent, his son Joseph seemingly not so much, or maybe he was denied the same opportunities that Curt had (and Curt was still held down). The British Bulldog Davey Boy Smith has several memories tied to him, I doubt anyone here can name anything his son Harry has done. And some don’t make it at all, like Ritche Steamboat, cursed with a short career by the same kind of back injury that hobbled his father, Ricky Steamboat’s, or Jesse “Jake Carter” White, son of Leon “Big Van Vader” White, who apparently tried out the business for a few years and decided it wasn’t for him, as Wikipedia says he retired in 2013 after beginning his career in 2009 with no information why he stopped wrestling entirely and what he was doing afterwards. Noelle Foley, firstborn daughter of Mick Foley, didn’t even start, being trained as a wrestler for a time before deciding she would rather be an Instagram model. And yet it continues on. Will Bronson “Bron Breakker” Rechsteiner, son of Rob “Rick Steiner” Rechsteiner get the rocket to the heights, or a Space X level failure, downfall and crash? How about Austin and Colton Sopp nee Gunn, nee the rear end Boys: will they achieve the same success of their dad, or more, or less, or will being pseudo-mocked by Danhausen be the pinnacle of their wrestling careers? One wonders if any of Triple H or Stephanie’s daughters might catch the wrestling bug, and just how THAT might go. Firstborn Aurora Rose is closing in on adulthood within a few years… But, of all the people listed, and others I didn’t, perhaps no one had quite the career, and made quite the same efforts, to both benefit from his father’s legacy and also get out of it as much as he could and be more than ‘Dusty Rhodes’ kid’. And there’s the old question of “We won, but at what cost?” Well, maybe not QUITE that severe…but you’ll see what I mean. This is, as of 2023, is Dustin Runnels.  He’s had some other names during that time. Seven. Black Reign. The New Year’s Baby. And of course, the one he’s best known by, the name of the gimmick he took to try, so very hard, to separate himself from just being his father’s son. Fittingly, a name shared with the men who started really turning pro wrestling into performing back in the earlier 1900’s, because Dustin sure as hell went all in the concept of ‘performing’. The Prince of Perversion, the Bizarre One, Goldust.  Fittingly, such a story has a very expected, almost cliche start. By the time Dustin began being trained as a wrestler, his father had been a top star in wrestling for a good two decades, working around his ‘untraditional’ aspects via sheer charisma and surprisingly good work rate. You hear plenty of stories of massive roid cases being exhausted and ‘blown’ up before matches began, or a minute or two into them, but between the fact he did who knows how many 30/60 minute draws with the likes of Ric Flair and others and the fact I haven’t heard any stories of Dusty getting ‘blown up’ when in his prime shows that there was a drat refined engine under that bulk. Dustin looked far more like a traditional wrestler, which meant that unfortunately, he didn’t stand out quite like his father did.  Even so, Dusty Rhodes was his father. Less dues were going to have to be paid. Dustin would have a cup of coffee in WWE teaming with his dad before the pair lost a feud to Ted Dibiase and Virgil and both left the WWE, with the feud being more notable in it being the turn of Virgil on Dibiase and the biggest moment in Mike “Virgil” Jones’ less than stellar career. It would in WCW, under the name of “The Natural”, that Dustin started reaping the benefits of his father; he’d briefly win the tag titles for a few months with Ricky Steamboat, and again with Barry Windham, and after a breakup feud with Windham, Rhodes would get to be the one to dethrone Rick Rude for the WCW United States title. Or rather, that probably would have been the case if Rude hadn’t been forced to vacate the title due to the back injury that would ultimately end his career and kill the man through painkiller abuse. Dustin, having been the winner of a tournament to crown a No 1 contender, would instead face, and defeat, Ricky Steamboat for the title, and fend off Rude when he returned, just in time to be the forgotten man in the Shockmaster War Games debacle before losing his title to not yet Stone Cold Steve Austin at Starrcade at the end of 1993. From what I can tell, with Hogan coming in and bending the whole promotion to his whim in 1994, Dustin spent the whole year feuding with someone called Col. Robert Parker and his “Stud Stable”, who pulled in old wrestlers to fight Dustin (namely Terry Funk and the currently Horseman-less Arn Anderson, with Arn starting out on Dustin’s side before turning on him) and Dustin responding by bringing in his father. Somehow, this feud just kept going and going (and keep in mind, this was when WCW had begun the monthly PPV cycle, so big shows weren’t separated by months) and by the time 1995 rolled around, Dustin was now feuding with Parker’s latest minion…The Blacktop Bully.  Ie Barry Darsow. Better known as Smash of Demolition. And the Repo Man. And a wrestling golfer who was apparently either going to be known as “Steward Pain” or was actually called that for a very brief time before assumingly someone connected to the golfer Payne Stewart threatened a lawsuit and it was changed to “Hole In One” Barry Darsow. Which, considering Stewart’s sudden death a year after the gimmick had come and gone, was probably best. With the feud being SO LONG GOING, it seemed like a special match would be needed to settle it. And with WCW debuting a new March PPV called Uncensored, whose theme was going to be ‘every match had NO RULES’ (except the rules they did have) and special gimmicks were not only encouraged, they were allowed, as one wrestler infamously botched, they had just the match for it. THE KING OF THE ROAD MATCH. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r77868CA-DE Where Dustin and Darsow would fight on the back of a moving 18 wheeler truck. This is one of those ideas that sounds interesting and could produce some possible fun results on paper, but just like the next year’s Doomsday Steel Cage match, perhaps the idea, at best, had come far too early. It was, in essence, an ancient precursor to the New 10’s “Cinematic Matches”...except worse in every way. WCW, even at their best, was known for having subpar camera work and filming technique compared to the WWE, and between that, the decision to film chunks of the match via cameras outside the cage making it hard to see what was going on, and WCW actually filming the match several days before and editing it so sloppily that during the match it changed from day to night more than once, oh, AND the fact that even with the truck going on a crawl, it was clear both wrestlers were having GREAT difficulty moving, and the match turned into a painful slog that Darsow ultimately won by an EYE RAKE (the match didn’t end via the traditional methods, so it was to distract Dustin while he did what did win the match, which was to reach and blow a horn. Yeah.) Oh yeah, and despite WCW forbidding intentional bleeding and bladejobs (this was at a point where they had dipped into sanitizing, PC content to the point where they called “foreign objects” “international objects”, or so I have heard, never actually HEARD any evidence they did this ie video of them doing it more than once), both Dustin and Barsow bladed during their ‘match’. Or they bladed each other, I have heard both. Why they did this, I don’t know. Maybe they felt that the match was so poo poo that it needed something, ANYTHING out of the ordinary. Or maybe they saw what Hogan was doing and wanted out. Or maybe, no one told a Runnels that they COULDN’T blade, as Dusty had done the exact same thing in the mid 80’s. Whatever the reason, both Dustin and Darsow were quickly fired, and Dustin, who was still young and HAD been one of WCW’s secondary stars for the past few years, headed over to the WWE. I am unsure exactly where the idea for Goldust began and ended with Dustin and the WWE’s parts. It might have been an unconnected idea that Dustin seized on, or maybe it was primarily his idea. Maybe he remembered what had happened to his father, with the polka dots and dancing, and thought that if he went far away from the Rhodes name, he’d have a better chance of not being chained down by it. Maybe Dustin Runnels is just a weird sort and this was the first time he got to indulge in it. According to Wikipedia, Dustin claims that he was offered the gimmick, and accepted without knowing what the word ‘androgynous’ meant, and was shocked when he looked it up. But, having accepted it to get a separate identity at the time, he went for it, and worked through the first few uncomfortable months before he finally got used to it and devoted himself to redrawing lines. That has just as much chance as being whole truth and complete lies. Later Edit: It seems like it was much more Dustin was offered the idea whole cloth and mostly took it because he'd had a bad falling out with his father at the time and wanted to get as far away from being 'Dusty Rhodes' kid' as he could. But, whatever the reasons, I am fairly sure as the second half of 1995 began, short cryptic promos that was just the theme and the name began popping up on WWE TV. In August, a face would finally be put to the name. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyUl2GB7kAM Two months later, Goldust would make his official WWE on air debut. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j9KFh_5cDs …and boy oh boy, having watched this to check something, I definitely give a lot of credence to the Wikipedia and video claims that Dustin was offered the gimmick, accepted without knowing some details, and was very uncomfortable to begin with. First of all, there are virtually no signs of the traits that the initial Goldust character would become known for. Presented more as a Hollywood loving lunatic than anything else (which is semi fair, as the look was based on the design of the Oscar statue), Goldust clearly wrestles more like ‘Dustin Runnels, generic wrestler, working heel (for the first time, so he's learning on the job), in a fancy costume’ than with any of the traits and methods Goldust would later utilize. The best we get is a shortened version of the 'upward chest rub' that is blink and you'll miss it fast. And in terms of the actual debut? Heck, not only does he not squash Jannetty, but JANNETTY arguably looks better than Goldust in the match, especially his thwarting of Goldust’s dodge effort at the tail end of the match. This is not a character that is really bizarre or androgynous, despite McMahon word dropping it in his commentary. Then AGAIN, considering what was to come, maybe that was intentional. They needed to acclimate the audience. If they'd goner heavier at the beginning...the results could have been bad. Because when Goldust actually started becoming…well, Goldust, the reaction, and some of the stuff Dustin would do to keep redrawing that line, would be bad enough. Cornwind Evil fucked around with this message at 04:34 on Dec 29, 2023 |
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Apr 20, 2023 17:03
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Ultimate Warrior to Golddust: HOLD IT RIGHT THERE.....FREAK!!!!
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Apr 20, 2023 19:51
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Ted jr really trying to live up to his dad's legacy. https://www.wrestlezone.com/news/1367417-ted-dibiase-jr-charged-with-theft-of-millions-in-mississippi-welfare-funds
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Apr 21, 2023 00:05
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Baron von Eevl posted:Ted jr really trying to live up to his dad's legacy. he was tryin to gently caress ON ME
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Apr 21, 2023 00:18
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This is so America. The first part is sad as you're like oh great let's make mental illness a national spectacle. But the who's who that follows is remarkable.
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Apr 22, 2023 03:19
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Jelly posted:This is so America. The first part is sad as you're like oh great let's make mental illness a national spectacle. But the who's who that follows is remarkable. Sounds legit, I wish her luck.
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Apr 22, 2023 05:23
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Several universities. I wonder what the arguments are for each entity she is suing
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Apr 22, 2023 05:26
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https://i.imgur.com/cIF8LDV.mp4
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Apr 22, 2023 11:57
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All charges dismissed except for against Steve Keirn for having been a lovely Doink the Clown.
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Apr 22, 2023 19:28
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Cornette somehow manages to piss off the judge so much she wins everything
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Apr 22, 2023 19:44
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Szyznyk posted:All charges dismissed except for against Steve Keirn for having been a lovely Doink the Clown. Fry his rear end
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Apr 22, 2023 23:01
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A reminder of just how freaking carny this business can be. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GKdHdreyv0 "Yeah, gonna take your money, then do my best to steal it, and when that doesn't work, just ghost you." And this is a 'funny' story.
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Apr 23, 2023 23:09
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Cornwind Evil posted:And expected. To paraphrase Game of Thrones, if you think women are going to get anywhere near the chances in WWE under Vince as the men do, you haven't been paying attention. Love these write-ups you do.
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Apr 24, 2023 00:47
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All That Glitters: Part 2 Let’s be fair. Dustin Runnels as Goldust was not the first gay panic gimmick. They existed long before he started putting on facepaint and rubbing himself on wrestlers before kicking them in the balls. Heck, you could argue the first real ‘gimmick’ that gained national attention was a gay panic gimmick, that being “Gorgeous George” Wagner.  How that could be demonstrated in the 40’s and 50’s was considerably different than what Goldust did, of course, but it was there. With coiffed blonde hair and always sporting a suntan, tossing (golden) bobby pins to the crowd and flipping out if someone touched him (declaring “GET YOUR FILTHY HANDS OFF OF ME!”, and getting his second, a man called Jeffries to literally get out a small brush and brush where he had been touched), George flew in the face of what a ‘man’ should be. He was flamboyant and fussy. He, as infamous female wrestler Fabulous Moolah described it, would anger crowds by being proud of his ‘beautiful natural body’. True, he was also the classic cowardly, cheating heel, but underneath it was that faint rumbling that he was Not Masculine. Which meant he was Feminine. Which meant he was a…and the rest was human failing at its usual work.. Also, he came to the ring in fine robes, and was perhaps the first to use theme music, specifically the classical piece ‘Pomp and Circumstance’. Fitting that two men who WOULD be considered ‘winners’ as men, in terms of success with ladies and general masculinity presentation, would follow in those parts of George’s footsteps. There were others besides George; Mick Foley recounts in his first book when he was wrestling in a specific territory and happened to be fighting the show’s booker (who was also a wrestler, I think his name was Eric something) in a multi man match. The crowd suddenly became very loud, and Mick’s opponent/the booker fed into it, getting more and more intense in his theatrics for how he was going to fight and destroy Mick…not realizing as Mick did, as he could see past the booker, that the crowd was actually reacting to two other wrestlers having cornered and pinned down a third, who according to Mick, was doing a ‘gay gimmick’ as “The Beauty”, and had spread his legs and were threatening to go to town on his genitals. So yes, the crowd was roaring over the concept of ‘destroy the dick of the disgusting homosexual deviant’, and maybe I’m being too severe in that assessment, but I doubt it. There’s also a Japanese wrestler I know whose name escapes me who would take it to his own extremes I think some time after Goldust started his bit; the picture that I couldn’t find/really didn’t want to search for was him setting up for a piledriver with the opponent’s head literally stuffed into the front of his brief-style tights. And sure, it’s all just a show… Except pro wrestling has a bad history of laughing off stuff that should have been taken seriously. There’s getting people into the show, and then there’s getting people so deep into mob mentality hostility so that they actually try and do the wrestlers harm. Jim Cornette might reminisce fondly over having to escape rioting crowds; I doubt he would if said crowds had badly hurt or killed one of the wrestlers he managed. I don’t know if the late Captain Lou Albano thought of just how well he’d gotten people going when he got slashed in the arm by a knife as he was leaving the ring once, and then to add further injury to injury had the wound tied with a filthy rag that made it get infected and nearly killed him, as he recounted in his autobiography. And there’s far, far too much poo poo in real life that dovetails into the very ugly thing that such gimmicks are baiting. Like Matthew Shepard, who wasn’t just murdered, but tortured horrendously. Or Harvey Milk, whose murderer arguably got off with a light conviction and sentence despite nonsense like claiming it was clear he was deeply depressed and this sufficiently proved diminished capacity and as evidence of his depression, how his diet had altered to include far more sugary foods than before (this got simplified down to the “Twinkie Defense”, which is incorrect: the defense at least did not claim that eating Twinkies made Dan White, said murderer, commit his crime). Or Gordon Church, who was tortured and murdered because he was gay, and one of his killers explicitly said it was done because he was gay…and did I mention that during the murder, Church was also raped? With one of his murderers still saying afterwards that he and the other killer, both men, killed him because he was gay? Okay this is probably far too grim for what is supposed to be a wacky wrestling analysis, moving on. But needless to say, it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye. Or worse. The various things I have looked at while refreshing myself on some finer details seem to have more or less confirmed that Runnels was darn uncomfortable and needed time to fully lose himself in the character. As the video of his on screen debut shows, there’s virtually no traits of the Goldust character that would get over, for better or for worse. For his next big match, at Survivor Series 1995, where he would defeat the departing Scott “Bam Bam” Bigelow in what was the latter’s final WWE match, there was a little more of what was to come, as Goldust had started fully doing his ‘upward chest rub’, but besides that, Vince McMahon’s constant commentary on how ‘bizarre’ and ‘androgynous’ Goldust was seemed to be happening in another universe (so, how Vince usually lives). But, as 1995 turned over into 1996 and Goldust began a feud with Intercontinental Champion Razor Ramon, Dustin finally, it seemed, became comfortable in the skin he was inhabiting, and began displaying more obvious ‘tells’. He would send flowers to Ramon, and begin using double entendres about the man’s incredible ‘machismo’. In a TV interview that I was surprised to find, Vince actually outright brought up that Goldust was exploiting homophobia (while mentioning that it could well be mind games), which is far more on the nose than I expected. Another piece to make the initial Goldust puzzle complete would come at the 1996 Royal Rumble, where Goldust would debut his ‘director’ Marlena, nee Goldust’s real life wife at the time, Terri Runnels. With a character of a dispassionate observer sitting by ringside smoking a cigar, it was perhaps moreso the fact that Goldust now had a pretty woman constantly by his side that let him crank up the antics even more. It is also fitting that while Goldust’s original bodysuits were a more yellow spandex fabric than gold, at the Rumble Goldust would also debut a properly gold, more rubber in texture outfit, which 90 percent of his outfit designs would follow. Goldust would win the match, and the title, albeit because of another feud Razor was engaged in with a recently heel turned Sean “1-2-3 Kid” Waltman interfering and kicking Razor in the back of the head… And it would be very shortly after THAT, according to Dustin, that the Goldust character would finally, fully emerge, thanks to Juan “Savio Vega” Rivera. The pair would work a match at Madison Square Garden, and assuming the story is true, Rivera, showing the thought process of a man fully comfortable with his own sexuality, would make suggestions for Dustin to go one step below molestation levels of fondling of him in the ring. It worked, getting absolutely gigantic heat (for better or for worse), and Vince approved of it as well. When the two would work another match in the same arena a month and a half later, the heat hadn’t dissipated. It would be Rivera that finally allowed Goldust to fully become the gimmick that would gain the infamy it did (and a man who in his choices showed just how much more of a man he was than his peers: Compare Anthony “Ahmed Johnson” Norris, who would be the one to take the IC belt off Goldust, and in the lead up to the match, would be given ‘mouth to mouth’ by Dustin, and apparently utterly flipped his lid, beyond reason, when Goldust didn’t do the ‘conceal with hand to hide no actual contact’ pseudokiss, but actually made fully exposed lip on lip contact. Now, I get that he was allowed a negative reaction: that IS an abuse of trust. But considering there’s far more negative stories about Norris than positive, it’s not much of an assumption to think that Norris’ real rage was based around the fact that a man did it). With Goldust now established as part Hollywood weirdo, part drag queen, and part ‘homophobic manipulation psychological mastermind’, rough plans would be drawn up for Razor to regain his IC Title at Wrestlemania 12, in a ‘Miami Street Fight’. It would not end up that way, as shortly thereafter Hall would be suspended for several weeks for ‘unprofessional conduct’, causing him to miss Wrestlemania entirely. Hall has claimed the suspension was a farce and done because it was well known by then he’d soon be leaving the WWE for WCW, but who knows. With no opponent, Goldust would find a new and unexpected one in “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, then playing the on screen role of WWF President. Goldust would decide he ‘liked’ Piper and began his act towards the man, leading to Piper telling Goldust that he’d ‘make a man out of him’ at Wrestlemania 12. Not in a Miami Street Fight though. In a ‘Hollywood Backlot Brawl’. There are probably two things that people who know anything about the match remember. One was that it used footage of the ‘slow speed chase’ that OJ had led the police on a few years previously as part of the ‘match’. The other, I’ll get to. As many people sneer, ‘wrestling is fake’, but many don’t realize just how much reality there is in two (or more) people trying to convincingly fake violent combat between each other. In few places is this more obvious than the Backlot Brawl, which for whatever reason, HAD to be filmed in one take, with no retries. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YedDn72DFQs This would, per Dustin’s own words, result in Piper cutting himself when smashing open the window of the car Goldust arrived in, Dustin getting concussed when Piper threw him into a dumpster, and Piper breaking his hand trying to bust Dustin open ‘hardway’, as the WWE had a rule against blading, and this time Dustin decided to follow the rule…not to blade: if it happened ‘naturally’, the WWE would more or less allow it. So Dustin tried to get Piper to do it with a specific way of punching downward against the eyebrow, only for Piper to fail in said move twice, breaking his hand and not actually making Dustin bleed. To top it off, when Goldust attempted to retreat in his car, Piper apparently decided to use his stuntman training on a whim and, instead of dodging out of the way as planned, let himself get 'run over' by the car. Somehow, the mess came off as credible (enough), and on the night of the show they’d air the taped segment and then have Dustin and Piper show up near the show’s end to ‘conclude’ the ‘match’. Which left the WWE with a problem. They didn’t want Goldust to win, but if Piper won in any normal way, it would have seemed like he should have won the IC Belt, and they didn’t want that either, as Piper’s time as serving as on screen President was over and he’d be leaving after Wrestlemania. Dustin, who by now had seemingly finally gotten into Goldust’s head, came up with a solution. Piper would strip off Goldust’s bodysuit to reveal he was wearing lingerie underneath. And Goldust would run away in shame and disgrace while the match just sort of…finished. Piper ‘won’, but not in any way that suggested a title change, like say, a pinfall. Say what you will, but it was some drat good smoke and mirrors, with Piper showing his own (somewhat) masculine security by concluding his beatdown of Goldust by giving him his own violent kiss in a ‘YOU WANTED THIS, HERE IT IS!” fashion. I guess in terms of such things, it could be considered a ‘Wrestlemania moment’, and a herald to the nonsense of the Attitude Era. Dustin, in retrospect, likes how it turned out, and he apparently gifted Piper’s son, who joined his father in the ring to celebrate his odd victory, the Goldust outfit he’d worn for the show. Not the lingerie though. Even Dustin doesn’t know what happened to THAT. --- Videos: Goldust vs Bam Bam Bigelow, showing that Goldust was far more Hollywood weirdo back in those first few months. Dustin talks about the Savio Vega match that fully clicked the character. Dustin talks about the Backlot Brawl and the 'match' that followed. The full Backlot Brawl, including the stripping. And finally, Goldust on Conan O'Brian, showing that by the time March 1996 had rolled around he'd fully 'gotten' the gimmick. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnluXJ9NegE Cornwind Evil fucked around with this message at 07:53 on Apr 27, 2023 |
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Apr 27, 2023 07:43
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I read somewhere that Muhammed Ali met Gorgeous George at one point and/or watched a match, and got the idea to play the heel to the media to sell tickets to his matches, figuring it'd work for a real sport as well as a fake one. He was right.
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Apr 27, 2023 07:48
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