WWF/WWE/ECW/WCW

Tonight it's the 1995 Royal Rumble:

The first RR for The Road Dog Jesse James Armstrong (with Jeff Jarrett as the Roadie).
The last major PPV appearance of Irwin R. Schyster.
The set-up for Undertaker vs. King Kong Bundy (the large no neck Uncle Fester).

Some more observations as they come to me.

After the previous year's Royal Rumble Bob Holly is now going by that name where before h was Thurman Sparkplug (my best friend jokingly refered to him as buttplug) Holly. Seeing him in those checkered tights with the mullet makes it hard to believe he a real life badass.

tohostudios wrote:

jstate wrote:

I actually kinda dug the Papa Shango character. Part of that may have stemmed from the fact we had a local wrestler who did a similiar character called Rasta The Voodooman. It was so dumb, it became great in it's dumbness. I also liked Shango because it had a darkness to it when he would light the people on fire and stuff.

I remember Rasta The Voodooman. Didn't he wrestle with Global Wrestling Federation? Or was that some other guy rippiing off the gimmick?

He did wrestle for the GWF. Rasta was before Shango and was played by a different wrestler.

1995 Royal Rumble was of course the one where Shawn won as the first entrant. Of course it's often overlookd that this Rumble only had 60 second intervals (instead of the traditional 1.5-2 minutes). I wish they still stuck with 2 minutes as I always thought that 90 seconds was a bit too short (of course 60 seconds was downright ridiculous).

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I remember Rasta The Voodooman. Didn't he wrestle with Global Wrestling Federation? Or was that some other guy rippiing off the gimmick?

Same dude. I was always surprised the WWF never gave him a shot.

Out of curiosity I looked up some Rasta The Voodooman..



Turns out the guy is now an actor with a bunch of big credits. I sorta remember the Office Linebacker commercial. I guess he played football at nearby Morgan State which would explain why he started wrestling in the Maryland area. That Global footage gives me flashbacks to watching it on ESPN weekday afternoons.

jstate wrote:

That Global footage gives me flashbacks to watching it on ESPN weekday afternoons.

Ah, the glory days before Vince bought everybody out. USA, TBS, and ESPN provided plently of wrestling for a young, hungry fan.

GWF started out really good, but it went down the tubes and ended up as a pretty crappy promotion after a lot of the talent left.

Tonight it is Royal Rumble 1996. Some observations:

This was the RR debut of both HHH and Goldust (Vader's RR debut too, but he didn't have th long WWE career of those two) and the very first appearance of Ms. Goldust, Melina. During Goldust's match with Scott Hall (Razor Ramon), I heard some fans chanting "Dustin". With HHH, you forget how thin (though well built) he used to be. A lot of specuation on whether or not he juiced up when he became "The Game" with all the muscle mass he put on.

This is also the first of these RR's to acknowledge wresteler's tenures in other promotions. They've mentioned NWA (Dory Funk), All Japan (?), and USWA (Doug Gilbert).

Though Aldo Montoya was in the last RR I watched, I just came up with this. He wasn't very impressive, he was just-in credible!

Kane makes his RR debut (as Issac Yankem) in this as well.

Another thing. I remember a while back reading a back and forth argument in the comment sections on Wrestlezone and someone said that there was no war between WWF and WCW until the NWO. Nobody trie to argue the guy's point, but they must have forgotten the Billianaire Ted skits with The Nacho Man and The Huckster.

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GWF started out really good, but it went down the tubes and ended up as a pretty crappy promotion after a lot of the talent left.

Not as bad as I remember but still pretty terrible. I had forgotten the Ragin Bull was a commentator.

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someone said that there was no war between WWF and WCW until the NWO. Nobody trie to argue the guy's point, but they must have forgotten the Billianaire Ted skits with The Nacho Man and The Huckster.

Don't forget the attempts to mess with each other's major shows (Wrestlemania with the Clash, Bunkhouse Stampede with the Royal Rumble, and Starrcade with the Survivor Series) in the 80's. Even beyond that, in the Baltimore/DC area we had a war over the local arena shows. Every month the Baltimore Arena shows were a "top this" card. They even had Bruno tag with Hogan on one show. When the NWA got into the Capital Centre we got a whole summer of awesome shows from both groups. Once again, competition = the fans winning.

Watching the 1997 Royal Rumble. Some observations:

Forgot that Mr. Hughes was HHH's bodyguard before the debut of Chyna.

The first incarnation of The Nation Of Domination before they became solely Afrtican American:

Farooq
PG-13
Crush (RIP)
Savio Vega
Clarence Mason
D-Low Brown (un-named and used as a shield by Farooq)

Just saw the fake Razor Ramon get eliminated. Just a matter of time for the fake Diesel which of course, was Glen Jacob's second RR appearance before becoming Kane later that year.

I'm starting to think that this was the infamous Rumble where Austic dominates the event for a while (the beginning of his first major push. I think I am correct as Austin is already clearing the ring. The change from his Ring Master character (during his first time in the previous Rumble) was already complete by this time.

This was also the last RR appearance of Jake Roberts before his life crashed.

Now I see the Sultan which was Fatu's last character before becoming Rikishi.

This RR has the uncle of Alberto Del Rio, Mil Mascaras. WWF had a deal with AAA at the time so many luchadors show up here. Actually a large portion of the wrestlers here are Mexican.

RR debut's of Sable and The Rock and Marc Mero (I still remember him as Johnny B. Badd in WCW).

One of my favorite moments in RR history. Lawler gets into the ring, takes two punches from Bret Hart then is very disoriented and rambling once he's back at the announcer's table.

Jerry Lawler mentioned he'd like to see Mankind and Terry Funk as a team. Of course that would happen sometime later (and Lawler would be against them by then). This was also the beginning of Bret Hart's eventual heel turn as he's threatening the refs and calling out Vince McMahon (also foreshadowing bringing Vince out as the man in charge) as he eliminated Steve Austin but the refs didn't see it and he won his first of 3 Rumbles. As far as Hitman calling Vince on everyone being against him. I remember when he yelled "bullsh!t" on RAW (the first time I ever heard it mentioned on WWF television-of course foreshadowing the attitude era-incidently where McMahon finally became an offical authority figure in his infamous feud with Austin).

I remember now why I really didn't like this Rumble because of the title match of Sid vs. Shawn. There is a constant high pitched whistle and scream from some b!tch in the crowd that NEVER lets up throughout the match. Whoever that was and whoever kept a microphone near her should have been shot (damn that whistling is causing me to get really pissed off).

One observation (and something I've always liked) is that, no matter how sadistic his character was, Sid still got cheers from the fans and actually aknowledged them with fist bumps. Long before the word tweener became popular (I have now turned the volume to barely audible and that damn whistling still permeates (sic) my headphones). Sid may have not been the best in-ring performer (and a bit of an irresponsible assh0le) but he was a pioneer in a time heels weren't supposed to be liked.

I was mostly a Sid fan because of his feud with Hogan. Sid was actually a big babyface back then but they were worried about him overshadowing Hogan so turned him heel. Of course, there were already plenty of people like me who were tired of Hogan's character at that point.

Sid just had that awesome look. If he could've just had a whole career of ring entrances (especially loved the Skyscrapers using the Scorpion's China White), power bombs, and screaming that he was "the ruler of the world" the guy could've been the biggest star ever. Unfortunately for him there is more to it than that. Why anybody ever let that guy throw a punch is beyond me. Instantly killed his whole mystique, that and the fact the dude was always injured. Less was more with Sid.

When he first came to WCW in the 80's it was amazing to see the reactions he got. I always felt bad for Dan Spivey and their opponents since the people would literally be screaming "We want Sid" the whole match.

My favorite Sid match was against Sting at that Halloween Havoc. The Residence Director at my college was a big fan and would host PPVs. He would post these big leaflets inviting people to watch. The "Sid Vicious vs. Sting" posting really confused people not familiar with wrestling. Plus that match had Barry Windham disguised as Sting. Goofy, illogical and totally awesome all at once.

DallasBlack wrote:

Just found out that the NXT guy Bo Dallas is actually the son of Mike Rotunda/IRS/Michael Wallstreet. Had no idea. So many second/third generation wrestlers on the current roster that do not go by their real names or the last names of their father's characters (cause they can't be copywrited):

Michael McGullicutty (Joe Hennig)
Husky Harris/Bray Wyatt (Windham Rotunda)
Roman Reigns (Leati Anoa'i)
The USO brothers (the Fatu brothers)
Alberto Del Rio (Dos Caras Jr.)

There is another one I forgot. Camacho, the Mexican hoodlum bodyguard of Hunico is a fourth generation wrestler. Not only that, he is in no way shape or form Mexican. Hell, he's not even hispanic. He is actualy Tongan and his daddy is:



That's right. Haku/Meng, probably one of the toughest wrestelers if all time.

speaking of the nWo I saw the latest dvd documentry on them. The Revolution and thought it was quite good most of it I already knew but some things I was thought was interesting.

It also made me miss the Outsiders, I also kind of wished they talked more about the Wolfpac a bit more too. Ah well

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That's right. Haku/Meng, probably one of the toughest wrestelers if all time.

When he was King Haku he got into this bar fight at the Baltimore Sheraton... or I should say he destroyed about seven guys. Even the police were afraid of him and the riot squad was called. Was the big news story of the night. I'll never forget the veteran officer describing how in all the years on the force he'd never seen an individual that dangerous. It was like the perfect wrestling angle. And sure enough not long after they had Haku face Hulk Hogan at the Baltimore Arena while making veiled references to the bar fight thing. This was even after they already had Hogan destroy Haku at a Saturday Night Main Event taping months prior.

The best part was the guy who apparently got his nose bit off sued claiming that Haku attacked him and was forcing him to "bow to the king". I'm sure the WWF paid dearly for this whole episode but it was a fun thing to follow locally since they weren't really doing much with Haku at the time. And now he's like the local legend of the baddest man alive. With no one disputing this at all.

Well, HHH has succeeded where Vince failed time and time again. He got Bruno Sammartino to agree to be in the WWE Hall Of Fame. Bruno was believed to take his grudge against Vince to his grave and never accept to be in the HoF. On Monday, 2/4/13 Hell froze over while the pigs flew.

DallasBlack wrote:

The first incarnation of The Nation Of Domination before they became solely Afrtican American:

Until Owen Hart came around in early 1998, it was really weird.

DallasBlack wrote:

Well, HHH has succeeded where Vince failed time and time again. He got Bruno Sammartino to agree to be in the WWE Hall Of Fame. Bruno was believed to take his grudge against Vince to his grave and never accept to be in the HoF. On Monday, 2/4/13 Hell froze over while the pigs flew.

I guess Sammartino in the end just said what the hell and accepted it. As far as i know, his grudge was mostly because McMahon wasn't interested in pushing his son beyond Midcard level (David Sammartino wasn't a great wrestler, he was like David Flair) and ending his career in the so called "Phantom Submission Match" in 1985.

Or it was a money case. After all, even Superstar Billy Graham was inducted to the Hall of Fame and him and Vince aren't Fans, they had a grudge for years and years, same with Bret Hart.

Hell will really freeze over when Sting shows up at the WWE.

ShadowAngel wrote:

DallasBlack wrote:

The first incarnation of The Nation Of Domination before they became solely Afrtican American:

Until Owen Hart came around in early 1998, it was really weird.

Yeah, that move always puzzled me. Of course the black vs. white schtick was getting old by then (if you ask me, the whole finding racism even when it's not there thing gets old pretty quickly).

Watching Raw and The Miz still can't put on a decent firgure four. They really need to drop the whole Ric Flair protégé angle as Miz doesn't really have what it takes to pull it off.

It's amazing how much a little blood intensifies a wrestling segment.
I'm sure the opening of Raw where HHH busted open Brock Lesnar was an accident but damn, it made the segment so much more believable and enjoyable!