I remember it like it was yesterday. I was watching Saturday Night’s Main Event where the big angle for this Wrestlemania started. The main event was scheduled for Hulk Hogan vs. The Magnificent Muraco and instead of Muraco’s regular manager Mr. Fuji by his side, Bobby Heenan was in his corner. They said that Fuji had the flu, which was an angle alert. However, I was only nine so I didn’t know about angle alerts. During the match, Hogan went after Heenan and King Kong Bundy came in to attack Hogan and “pearl harbor” him as Vince McMahon would say. It was a sneak attack that left Hogan laying in the ring, taking big splash after big splash. As a young Hulkamaniac, I was devastated. I had just been turned on to wrestling the year before by my best friend at the time, and I bit hook, line, and sinker. There I was, up at midnight, watching my hero take the beating of his life. Bundy was played up huge. He was a mountain of a man. He actually resembled the letter “O” with his short but fat torso and lack of neck. He used to be called a condominium with legs. As Hogan lay lifeless in the ring, I was upset at this guy with the bald head and wrinkled forehead. But I was smart enough to know my guy was going to get revenge. The storyline was that Hogan was in the hospital suffering from rib injuries and you could write the Hulkster to wish him well. I wasn’t that gullible, but I know other young kids were. They even had Mean Gene Okerlund talk to the doctor and they showed x-rays of Hogan to sell the angle. They would meet again in the main event of Wrestlemania 2 and in a steel cage.
So I got this DVD comp of the short but sweet, late eighties, heel run of Haku and Tama, The Islanders. Wasn’t totally sure what to expect going in but I was assured it was great, so I decided to dive right into it when it came in the post.
May 30th 1987 Superstars
Islanders vs. Can-Am Connection
Going into this match both teams were babyfaces, and dammit, Bruno on commentary was oh so excited about the good clean technical match we had in front of us! However something smelled fishy as Bobby Heenan came down to ringside and Jesse Ventura seemed to have the scoop. He laughed a knowing laugh and Bruno and Vince weren’t happy. Then the Islanders did the greatest pop-in interview, they simply did a nice big belly laugh. Bruno: “I don’t know what dat was allll about Vince”. Of course about 5 minutes in, Haku and Tama go rudo all over the Can-Ams asses and Bobby gets in the ring and hugs them.
The first three post-turn matches are a great squash, a match against THE YOUNG STALLIONS~! and a match against Rick Martel and JYD (I dunno where Zenk went). The main thing that came out of these was how unbelievably great Tama was as a heel. Just such a total cocky prick. He was great.
August 15th 1987
Strike Force arrives! (and my sister was born, but that’s significantly less important)
So with Zenk having disappeared, Martel was out on his own in singles action (against Big Bad Barry Horowitz). The Islanders apparently weren’t through with making him a sad little model, so they hit the scene and beat the crap out of him. However they didn’t account for Tito Santana (who was working the Spanish broadcast) hitting the ring for the save. Tito was all fired up and Strike Force was formed!
A couple of weeks later, the Islanders squashed a couple of fools and then made their way over to the Spanish table. They had a bone to pick with Tito. A brawl broke out, the feud intensified.
October 3rd 1987 Boston Garden
Islanders vs. Strike Force
On March 31, 1985 Wrestlemania was born. It was born at the Madison Square Garden in New York City. While history will try to say that this was a great event, some 25 years later, it’s not all that watchable. But for its time, it was built as something very special. It was glitz and glamor. The legend says that Vince McMahon put all of his money into the show and was either going to live by the sword, or die by it. As you can tell, they lived.
The show was an event that tried to make wrestling mainstream. It had Muhammad Ali, Billy Martin, Cyndi Lauper, and Mr. T. It would be like Oscar De La Hoya, Joe Torre, Rihanna, and Vin Diesel being involved in a wrestling show today. It was Vince McMahon’s official statement that wrestling was no longer just a regional business. Vince was in New York City with Liberace at the piano.
They worked with MTV to help with promotion. MTV was hip and definitely on the up and up with pop culture America and it was the perfect launching pad. With Lauper in tow and MTV in their back pocket, they could market Hulk Hogan, Vince’s hand picked superstar. History may try to say that Hogan was the star of the show, but in reality, it was Hogan piggybacking Mr. T’s popularity to rise to stardom. Hogan was already a huge wrestling draw while working in the AWA, but his popularity there would be peanuts compared to what he was about to become. There was an MTV special titled The War To Settle The Score which was recap of all the angles they did with Cyndi Lauper, Lou Albano, and Roddy Piper. Piper felt that Lauper had no place in wrestling and the new Rock N Wrestling connection was ruining wrestling. It was absolutely silly. Kenny Loggins made fun of Roddy Piper’s skirt. Tina Turner thought Piper was wrong. Dick Clark thought Piper would get his. Hulk Hogan had to come and save the day. Hogan and Piper wrestled on the show, which set up the Wrestlemania main event. It was to be Roddy Piper and Mr. Wonderful Paul Orndorff against Hulk Hogan and Mr. T.
From a work rate standpoint, this was a bad Wrestlemania, but Vince didn’t set out to shock the world with a wrestling show. He wanted to shock the world with how “in” wrestling could be.
While reading Bret Hart’s Hitman: My Real Life In The Cartoon World Of Wrestling, you never get the feeling that he’s happy writing his memoirs. He does remember happy moments in his life, but you get the idea that he’s telling his stories with a chip on his shoulder. And if you understand the Bret Hart story, it’s not a surprise. But I truly wonder about those folks who don’t know his entire story like I do. I wonder if they think he’s just a bitter old wrestler. Because if anyone has a right to be bitter about wrestling, it’s Hart.
When I was growing up, Bret Hart was a tag team wrestler who Gorilla Monsoon called “The Excellence Of Execution”. I never thought he’d become the singles star that he did, winning the WWE championship on a number of occasions, and recently, on Wrestling Observer/F4W, a hardcore wrestling/history site, was voted the best wrestler who ever lived via a fan poll. When I was twelve, never did I think he would become that wrestler. He wasn’t huge in a big man’s game. He had good size for a normal human being, but not for a business in which being 300 pounds is a positive. But he was always the one wrestler who was believable in the ring. You couldn’t see much phony in his art. And he had this magnetism about him that wasn’t the result of pandering to the crowd. He was just good.
Well haven’t done one of these in a while so I figured I should step up. Some random thoughts on old stuff I’ve watched recently.
ALL JAPAN 1993
Kobashi & Misawa vs. Hansen & BIG BOSS MAN (?)
Boss Man in All Japan!!! Weirdness, but greatness. He immediately gets the crowd into him by busting out a bunch of crazy athletic stuff with Kobashi. Yes Big Boss Man doing a bunch of crazy athletic stuff. IT RULED~! Misawa tries his hand with the former Midnight Express bodyguard and gets met with a sweet backbreaker. All his signature stuff like the slide to the outside into the uppercut and the windup punch gets met with a load of OOOH’s and AHHHH’s. Stan Hansen, not to be outdone, goes nuts on Kobashi, DDT’ing him on the floor, throwing a chair at his face and then hitting the sickest kneedrop you’ve ever seen (with knee pad rolled down I might add). Both gaijin then win my heart forever by taking turns droppin’ PHAT ASS ELBOWS. Finish came with Boss Man making the crucial mistake of going for a top rope splash and getting a moonsault from Kobashi and Frog Splash from Misawa for the Uno-Dos-Tres.
IWA Japan 1995 2nd Anniversary
So I haven’t seen much mid 90’s garbage wrestling from Japan in my time, but upon being directed to a bunch of stuff from someone who knows good wrestling, I decided to check it out. What I got was the greasiest, sleaziest, most scummy pro wrestling I’ve ever seen. AND IT WAS AWWWWESOME!
Cactus Jack vs. Tarzan Goto
Cactus was so the fucking man here. He cut a promo at the end, slapping himself and screaming and such and it was gold. So much heinousness in this match - bottle breaking, bottle STABBING, a giant flip bump from the top to the floor, etc. etc. I liked that Tarzan Goto guy too and man was that lad over. I’d only ever heard his name before, but never seen him. They did a bunch of hot nearfalls which I really wasn’t expecting including one from the ugliest/greatest brainbuster I’ve ever laid my eyes on. Goto won with DDP’s old pancake move onto a chair.
(No Rope Barbed Wire, Barbed Wire Boards & Thumbtacks Death Match)
Kenji Takano vs. Shoji Nakamaki
I don’t know which guy is which so I’ll just go with “little guy” and “big guy”. The little guy was insane and WILLING to die for his cause. The big guy was more than happy to help him out by killing the hell out of him. There’s a fine line for me between cool deathmatch stuff and grotesque, “I don’t wanna watch that” deathmatch stuff. These guys went right up to said line but never crossed it which made it very enjoyable. Everything meant something within the context of the match (even the face first thumbtack bump). Big guy won with a big guy knee drop.
Though I’d been following the UFC for about a year through newsletters and the Internet, I hadn’t bought a PPV until UFC 43. I was a big Chuck Liddell fan, mostly because my co-worker Jeremiah Miller was a college buddy of Chuck’s. He gave me a signed poster that I still have today and I’ve been a big Liddell fan since. Jeremiah was even named in Chuck’s biography.
I remember buying this show mostly because my then wife was out of town on business and I had two toddlers to watch all weekend. When they went to sleep, I didn’t really have anything to do and figured that because I was a young dad home alone with his two young boys, I deserved to spend some money on an event. But also, I expected Chuck Liddell to win the interim light heavyweight championship in his match with Randy Couture and I wanted to see it happen. Let’s just say that I wasn’t a happy Chuck fan that night.
Couture wasn’t necessarily a set up for Liddell that night, but the fight was there for Chuck to win. Couture was a former heavyweight champion, but he was 38 years old and people were saying that he was now over the hill. He dieted down to make the 205 lb weight limit and looked to have nearly zero body fat. The reason Randy and Chuck were fighting rather than Chuck and Tito Ortiz (who was the champion at the time) was because Ortiz bailed on the fight. After beating Ken Shamrock (which was actually the first UFC PPV I ever saw), Tito seemed noncommittal about fighting Chuck after pretty much saying that he had to take care of Shamrock first and then he’d be ready. When push came to shove, Tito wasn’t there so Dana White and company decided to put Liddell in there with Couture to determine the interim champ. And then, Ortiz would have to face the winner.
Chris Bell’s Bigger, Stronger, Faster* has been sold to the public as a movie about anabolic steroids. But more so than that, it’s a movie about morals, and how a family struggles with the guilt of family members taking steroids.
Chris Bell and his brothers were always enamored with guys like Hulk Hogan, Sylvester Stallone, and Arnold Schwarzenegger from watching television and movies. They looked at them as super heroes and idols, and whatever those men said, they believed. When Hulk Hogan said to, “Say your prayers, take your vitamins and believe in God,” the Bell brothers were hook line and sinker. And when it was found out that Hogan testified that he was indeed a steroid user, the brothers, especially Chris, were deflated.
But the movie isn’t simply about whether steroids are right or wrong. Bell interviews many subjects on the issue, including weight lifters whose idea is that steroids, if used properly, aren’t bad for you. He interviews a US Congressman, who seemingly doesn’t understand what the exact law is on steroids. But where the strength of the movie lies is in his storytelling ability to show that while steroids may be cheating, there are other things that seem to be cheating, but are allowed. The big issue with people when it comes to steroids isn’t that it’s an illegal drug. The issue is simply about an unfair advantage that people believe it gives athletes. Bell notes that the overwhelming majority of steroid users aren’t even professional athletes, but that of the guy who simply wants to look big and jakked. I’d have to slightly question the way he came up with his number because there are far less professional athletes than weekend warriors.
Dana White shows the guys UFC 84, which I attended live in Las Vegas.
Krzysztof Soszynski (he needs a nickname by the way) says that Junie and Shane hit the wine bottle and the tequila and then start riling up the red team. Junie throws a glass at Kyle and cuts his arm. Junie thinks he’s gone for throwing the glass. But then he says that he doesn’t care because he’ll beat anyone who wins if he doesn’t.
Shane starts challenging all the 155′ers on the red team and starts pushing people. And he’s way drunk. Together, they start breaking stuff and throwing furniture in the pool. Krzysztof has enough of it and gets in Junie’s face. He then put Junie’s clothes in the pool when he decided to take a swim. Junie pushes him and Krzysztof calls him a bitch. Bader throws his clothes back in the pool and Junie tries to pull him into the water. He then kicks one of the guys down who is trying to control him. He breaks down and tries to sober up.
He says he’s destined for failure and calls himself a screw up.
Dana calls him a punk and possibly an alcoholic. He calls Shane a drunken retard. But he’s not kicking anyone off. He tells Junie to be a fucking man.
Big Nog chooses Efrain against Shane. In the house, Shane tried to challenge him and now he gets his opportunity.
Efrain says he came into the house undefeated and he’s going to leave the house undefeated.
Junie says if Efrain beats Shane it will be boring because all he will do is take him down and hold him. Junie and Efrain talk mess to each other and Junie gets heated again. He tries to get Efrain to submit him in the house. This had to be just a day after Dana told him he had one more chance.
Mir says that Shane is a purple belt under BJ Penn and he thinks it’s a good match-up for Shane.
This was one of my favourite WWE TV shows in years! Every single segment entertained me in one way or another. There was good wrestling, GREAT comedy and a hot ass crowd.
The opening was better than every other “guy interupts guy” interview segments in the last while. Everyone’s mic work was real good or whacky (KNOCK IT OFF GUYZ! - Adamle). Cody vs. Punk was a hell of a match. Cody bumped like a mother and leaned right into all Punk’s stuff like a champ. Punk was crisper than ever too. It was great.
You can’t go wrong with three Santino segments.
Sydal got the best match out of Kane in YEARS. And for all his trouble he got dropped by the big goof on his moonsault and landed on his face. How Kane fails to catch someone 1/3 his size is beyond me. But still, a cool match.
Cryme Time vs. Miz/Morrison was a damn miracle match. They had the building rocking towards the end. JTG and Shad have improved a ton to the point where JTG is a very good tag wrestler with awesome selling and Shad is able to pull off his big man moves and be a great HOUSE OF FIYAAH. Oh and the video hyping this was greatness.
Dave’s plowing young Kelly. Good times.
Charlie Haas as Mr. Perfect was GLORIOUS.
The main event was great. I guess the “all 6 man Raw main events are excellent” rule applies to 3 on 2 matches also. The heat towards the end was nuts.
It’s taken longer than I thought but I got back to watching some KENTA & Marufuji stuff. On the docket today we have their final four big matches as a regular team - all three of their matches from the 2005 Differ Cup and the big June 2005 title change against Sugiura & Kanemaru.
Differ Cup 2005 1st Round: KENTA & Marufuji vs. Ibushi & Kudo
This was before Ibushi and Kudo had everyone’s attention and going into the match they were merely two young DDT (small indy group) guys who were gonna get their butts handed to them. What actually happened was they stepped right up to the plate and put on what was at that time a career performance for them. K&M sold their asses off throughout the match, eating all of Kudo’s kicks full on and taking Ibushi’s flying perfectly. The went about 15 minutes and it was a damn fine 15 minutes. KENTA & Marufuji of course progressed to the semi finals, with the end coming from a brutal Busaiku Knee Kick on Ibushi. ****
While reading Bret Hart’s Hitman: My Real Life In The Cartoon World Of Wrestling, you never get the feeling that he’s happy writing his memoirs. He does remember happy moments in his life, but you get the idea that he’s telling his stories with a chip on his shoulder. And if you understand the Bret Hart story, it’s not a surprise. But I truly wonder about those folks who don’t know his entire story like I do. I wonder if they think he’s just a bitter old wrestler. Because if anyone has a right to be bitter about wrestling, it’s Hart.
Couture wasn’t necessarily a set up for Liddell that night, but the fight was there for Chuck to win. Couture was a former heavyweight champion, but he was 38 years old and people were saying that he was now over the hill. He dieted down to make the 205 lb weight limit and looked to have nearly zero body fat. The reason Randy and Chuck were fighting rather than Chuck and Tito Ortiz (who was the champion at the time) was because Ortiz bailed on the fight. After beating Ken Shamrock (which was actually the first UFC PPV I ever saw), Tito seemed noncommittal about fighting Chuck after pretty much saying that he had to take care of Shamrock first and then he’d be ready. When push came to shove, Tito wasn’t there so Dana White and company decided to put Liddell in there with Couture to determine the interim champ. And then, Ortiz would have to face the winner.
Chris Bell and his brothers were always enamored with guys like Hulk Hogan, Sylvester Stallone, and Arnold Schwarzenegger from watching television and movies. They looked at them as super heroes and idols, and whatever those men said, they believed. When Hulk Hogan said to, “Say your prayers, take your vitamins and believe in God,” the Bell brothers were hook line and sinker. And when it was found out that Hogan testified that he was indeed a steroid user, the brothers, especially Chris, were deflated.
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