wrestling / Columns
Ask 411 Wrestling: Has Hogan Helped Or Hurt Wrestling Overall?
This, as it almost certainly says right above this line, is Ask 411 Wrestling. And I, unsurprisingly, am Mathew Sforcina, guy who normally writes Ask 411 Wrestling. And this week, we’ll be looking at lots of wrestling trivia and opinion and not even mentioning anything that happened on TV this week. Nope, we’re going to be just fine focusing on the past, we’ll be A-KO.
Ah dammit.
Anyway, got a question about Kevin Owens? Or a question that’s shockingly Owens free? [email protected] is where you send it.
And speaking of stuff that is Owens Free… BANNER!
Zeldas!
Check out my Drabble blog, 1/10 of a Picture! It remains Owens free to a much better degree than this column!
Me On Twitter~!
WWE Turn Alerts on Twitter~~!!
http://www.twitter.com/411mania
http://www.twitter.com/411wrestling
http://www.twitter.com/411moviestv
http://www.twitter.com/411music
http://www.twitter.com/411games
http://www.twitter.com/411mma
Feedback Loop
Lack of Credit: I’m very sorry for that, El Atomico, I did mention I was rushed last week. You can see that by how the Feedback Loop was blank last week. I’ll try to avoid it in future.
The Trivia Crown
Who am I? An Icon who once lost to an Idol, I share a nickname with a company. Billed mainly from somewhere that exists both everywhere and nowhere, I’ve only ever held tag gold with one guy, although I’m mostly known as a singles guy, if you know me as a wrestler. Because really, despite my holding a different position in the wrestling business for a long time, I’m most famous for something more blasphemous. A guy who once booked himself to receive an honor simply because he could, and who has come out of retirement to both replace AND fight a now retired movie star, I am who?
No-one? OK.
Who am I? An Icon who once lost to an Idol (A ringname was ‘The Icon’, and I once beat by a Japanese Idol in a TV commercial), I share a nickname with a company (F’n). Billed mainly from somewhere that exists both everywhere and nowhere (The Combat Zone), I’ve only ever held tag gold with one guy (Nick Gage), although I’m mostly known as a singles guy, if you know me as a wrestler (Wrestler/Owner). Because really, despite my holding a different position in the wrestling business for a long time, I’m most famous for something more blasphemous (JEEZUS!). A guy who once booked himself to receive an honor simply because he could (New Alhambra Hardcore Hall of Fame), and who has come out of retirement to both replace AND fight a now retired movie star (Necro Butcher), I am who? (John Zandig)
This week’s question: Who am I thinking of?
That’s it.
Getting Down To All The Business
Joey Joe Joe Shabadoo has a simple question that should lead to lively discussion. Maybe.
Which wrestler has the best name for a tag-team portmanteau? Jericho (Jerishow, Y2AJ, Jeri-KO, etc), Big Show (Showmiz, Jerishow), or someone else? Would you pop for a Jeri-Joe team with Chris and Samoa Joe?
I’d like that team, although the name is not the reason for it, but because Jericho as a heel with a bigger guy works well most of the time.
As for the best name for portmanteaus, which if you don’t know, is when two words are smooshed together to form a new word. There’s a lot of words that have this as the origin, although these days it’s mostly used to name celebrity couples. Brangelina and all that.
I think that the best name for such a device would be one with distinctly different sounding syllables, with a variety of different types of name. So someone called Sue Susan, for instance, would be a bad name, but Jackie B. Christmas, a.k.a Captain K, would be a good one.
Jericho then does spring out as a guy, as something of an obvious choice as he has had so many famous/working portmanteau tag team names, thus it would be logical for him to be the choice.
But actually, I think Vince McMahon could be the winner, in that he never really got one, but there’s so many ways you could have him team up with someone, given he has the name, the intitials, and the Chairman and a few other nicknames… But Jericho would win of guys who do form tag teams.
What do you guys think?
Speaking of names, Sachin asks about a big one.
Hey there thanks for taking the time to read my question. Let’s a imagine a world where the WWE for some reason got the legal rights back to the WWF name. If you were in charge of the company, would you want to change the name back to WWF, or would you want to stick with WWE? If they did decide to change the name back, what sort of impact do you think it would have? Would we see a resurgence of interest in the product based on the name change alone? If so, how would you leverage this interest in order to expand the audience? Would a full rebranding need to occur, would the product need to be changed or altered in some way to reflect the move from WWE back to WWF? How would this be accomplished?
They do have the legal rights to the name back, sort of, while also not having it. They reached a deal with the World Wildlife Fund back in 2012 that allowed WWE to stop blurring/bleeping out the WWF scratch logo/the WWF intitals on old footage, with the proviso being that the WWF initials and logo can’t be used in any new footage or product, hence why everything about WWE Old School uses the modified block logo.
But so let’s say the Panda Lovers all suddenly decide pandas taste delicious or they save all the pandas for all time or whatever it takes for the Fund to no longer exist, and thus no-one is there to stop the WWE from taking back the WWF name. Should they revert?
No, I don’t think they should. Sure, there’s a few great-uncles and the like who will be happy to hear that they’re back to calling it the right name, but WWE has spent a lot of time and effort to rebrand as WWE, and going back to WWF wouldn’t create any new buzz or draw back any old fan, and might possibly confuse/turn off a few younger fans, although that’s a long shot, but a shot there’s no need to risk.
I could see the argument if at some point WWE stopped being PG as such and wanted to re-brand and go in a more adult/serious sports direction, if for whatever reason they wanted to go Strong Style/Shoot Style, then having ‘Entertainment’ in their name is suddenly a liability, and returning to The Federation would help with the air of believability they would apparently be after.
But changing the name back for the hell of it, nah, no real benefit, possible negatives, not worth it. The current set up is fine.
Now for some actual trivia! Brian?
Why was Tugboat replaced by the Big Bossman in Hulk Hogan’s corner against Earthquake (with Dino Bravo) at SummerSlam 1990? They spent months building that angle, with Tugboat being Hogan’s loyal support (handing out the bracelets while he was “recovering” from the Earthquake attack, etc), and then it was only a week or 2 before SumerSlam that WWF ran an angle on Superstars where Tugboat got taken out, and suddenly Bossman was asked to be in Hogan’s corner. Thanks in advance, keep up the truly fantastic work!
There’s the story at the time/the historical guess, and the one that’s popped up recently.
The theory at the time was that Tugboat was pulled due to having an ego over his role, or because he wasn’t getting over, it was some sort of punishment to yank him and replace him. That’s been the usual theory, up until recently.
As has now been revealed by Bruce Prichard on Ric Flair’s podcast however, the replacement was possibly part of a larger story that was meant to lead to a HUGE angle…
The video goes through the original plan for Wrestlemania 7 was for a red hot babyface to turn into a red hot heel by turning his back on America, beating Warrior to win the title and then Hogan would come in, All American, win the title back in front of 107,000 people. With General Adnon, a legit family friend of Saddam as a child, it was perfect for him to manage a guy who had turned his back on AMERICA!!!
The babyface chosen to be the guy? Tugboat. Sheik Tugboat.
So, the replacement is one of two things, depending on if they’d agreed to bring in Slaughter yet. Because they obviously went with Slaughter instead.
If Slaughter was slid in before Tugboat’s “injury”, then it was to get heat on Earthquake, and maybe replace Tugboat with someone who was a little more over, given that they no longer had need of Tugboat there to turn on Hogan/interact with Hogan in some way to set up a later turn.
But assuming they hadn’t chosen Slaughter until Summerslam, then the reason for the ‘injury’ is probably the same one as what ended up happening, in that when Tugboat returned, and formed the Natural Disasters…
You know, I keep saying you should own the WWE Network before you watch these, but that’s the wrong term, I should be saying you should subscribe to the WWE Network. Only Vince owns the WWE Network, and he’s not reading this, obviously. He doesn’t care about wrestling history after all.
Anyway, the logic Tugboat had for turning was that he’d been backing Hogan all through Hogan’s injury, and then when Tugboat was injured, Hogan had just gone with another guy and not called, the usual “Hogan’s actually a bastard” heel turn that in retrospect is totally in the right but was a heel turn at the time because Hogan.
So you can see a similar thing working if the end goal was Sheik Tugboat V Hogan at WM, except replacing the Bushwhackers with Hogan or something.
So yeah, the replacement was either a punishment with a possible storyline change, or more likely it was to set up an angle that never happened…
Andy has three wildly different questions.
Thanks for continuing to write the best article on 411mania. Some random, unrelated questions I was hoping you might take a stab at:
1. Regarding the Cruiserweight Classic, I’m watching (and really enjoying) it as it airs and have made a point of not looking at results online, so NO SPOILERS! That said, do you know how it was all set up? What was the pitch to some of the first-round losers like (“Hey, come be in a match on the WWE Network, and maybe we will like what you do enough to offer you a contract.”)? Any idea why they picked certain guys to win and how they chose those winners (“This guy has a better rep. That guy is a better worker.”)? What I’m trying to understand is why they chose one unknown over another to win a match and why they picked a certain guy to win (whoever that will be) the whole thing.
… I just noticed that CWC is an inversion of WCW, which birthed the Cruiserweights… Just a coincidence, probably.
Anyway, the set up, according to the soil reports, was somewhat on the fly, in that each taping was booked by Triple H and Ryan Ward somewhat on the day, as the original original plans were for Andrade Cien Almas to win, but by the time the thing started, he’d already popped up in NXT. So in theory everyone who turns up could have won the thing, as such.
That said, although some wrestlers are petty and self-absorbed, 95% of wrestlers are somewhat level headed. So if they get a call from Hunter, it’d go like “Hey, I’m doing this Cruiserweight Classic thing on these days, I’d like you in it, it’d be some great publicity for you, the pay’s good, and while you’re gonna lose in the first round we are of course looking to hire some good talent out of this, you in?” And almost everyone will say ‘Sure!’
I mean, it’s happened to me…
I’ve been asked to come in for a one shot for a company specifically to job in the main event. While winning is nice, losing in the first round of a tournament when you’re a freelancer is not an unusual circumstance. Most guys would come in assuming they’d be losing in the first round, but giving their all to prove that they shouldn’t.
As for the booking, it’s like booking anything, you judge it on a variety of factors, who’s over, who’s not, and what matchups you need/want in the later rounds. If you know that the final is going to be, say, ZSJ V Kota, then you’d work backwards and work out who you want them to fight and beat on the way in, and so on. As for choosing between ‘unknowns’, I’d argue that most of the winners were either ‘names’, guys with a good rep, or who come from an important part of the world. There weren’t any ‘coin flip’ matches, really.
As for the winner? Well, without spoiling it, those who are in it still, all of them are either under contract, rumored to be under contract, assumed to be under contract soon, or seriously considering it. So they’re fine no matter which way they go.
2. What is the “best” age to be a wrestler? Much has been made about John Cena being in his late 30s and being “over the hill,” but when I think about some of the universally regarded best matches, most of the wrestlers are well into their 30s and even into their 40s. Look at HBK and Undertaker’s match at WM, and they were way past their 30s! So, at what point are most wrestlers not too physically broken down but experienced enough to tell an effective story? As a side question, has anyone ever done a statistical analysis of the ages of participants in 5-star matches? Does any one want to?
The chronological age of a wrestler is somewhat meaningless, assuming it’s not so low they can’t sign contracts or some such. It’s a matter of how they are physically and how much TV time they have under their belt.
As long as you can move and wrestle safely, then it doesn’t matter what age you are. DDP’s rookie year was 35 years old, and I know a couple of teenagers who began training then dropped out for health reasons. Being able to tell a story effectively is usually attached to age, not so much because the older you are the better you are at it, but because the older you are the more experienced you are, and the more experienced you are the better, usually. Plenty of young guys have ‘gotten’ storytelling early on, plenty of old guys still suck at it.
John Cena’s main problem isn’t so much his age, although it is a factor given that he seems to be physically worse off than before, but more because of how he’s been on TV front and center, for the most part, for over 10 years, which is a LONG time in wrestling, for one promotion, non-stop, especially without real evolution. Doesn’t matter how old someone is, if they’re new to audiences, they start fresh, and then ten years later, no matter what age they start at, they’ll be stale if there’s not any marked evolution.
As for statistical analysis of what age is the peak for wrestling, it has been done. The analysis is not exhaustive, by any means, and there’s a certain amount of data fuzziness, but the conclusions reached were that 33 and below, it’s best to be a tag team wrestler, and then 34 upwards is when you should work singles.
3. I notice on WWE PPVs, they make a point of introducing the announce teams for all the other languages. The American team(s) have gotten a little better since the brand split, but I think we can all agree, with their endless plugging of hashtags and their inability to focus on the match, the US teams still aren’t good. Do you know if the other language teams are as bad? Are they forced to talk about stuff that isn’t going on in the ring and push social media? Do they have someone translating what Vince says and yelling it in their ears? And do you know why there is no Arabic speaking team? I thought WWE had made some good in-roads to the Middle East.
We’ve covered this before, and the general consensus is that they aren’t direct 1 to 1 copies of the American announcers, and while they are given directions like other announcers, it isn’t a live in their ear one from Vince. Reddit user Shomononosh gave a run down on the French team a year ago.
Our usual announcers are Christophe Agius and Philippe Chéreau, and have been the main team since 2000, going through the last days of WCW and then switching to the ‘E, with a brief break between November of 2001 and July of 2002, and then again in mid-2012, when Agius quit for a few months (it’s been said that he quit over the lack of interest the new bosses of one channel -NT1, which switched hands from AB Group to TF1- that aired wrestling, pushing the programme to the late, late night, so late actually, that in the middle of the summer Raw would end at dawn). Agius is a huge fan, he used to run a pro-wrestling newsletter and when RTL9 began airing Nitro, he was a bit disappointed by the less than stellar announcing, who treated the show and the performers as a joke, so he decided to send a letter to the channel, who then invited him for a tryout. One of the execs basically told him that he sounded like shit (and it’s not quite wrong, he sounded very much like he still was a teen and his voice has taken quite a while to get deeper, though he already was able to ham it up, which is one of his trademarks) and put him with Philippe Chéreau, a sports journalist who told him that it’d get better and that there was no need to worry. The beginning of Agius’s career was pretty much what you’d expect if you give an outlet to a smark, it was pretty cringey. And now he’s the voice of WWE in France.
Agius is the heel of the team, antagonising Chéreau every occasion he gets, and sucking up to the Authority (despite the fact that they’re working for the AB Group, he’ll often say that the WWE are their boss), and at a time being pretty “old France” (conservative, like calling Cena, or R-Truth “caillera”, or thugs); his announcing quirks are that he brings home the ham (the dude can grunt), he’ll be the first to yell “LARIAAAAAAAAAT”, with maybe a hint of an o at the end, or “LUCHA LIBRE STYLE”, or some cultural references that fit way better into the tone of the commentary than whenever the English announcing team does it, he used to do characters, well, mainly one character, Papy Agius during the “From the Vault” segments, or will only say “Roman Reigns” in the tone Roman used during the Shield promos, and that’s just a few examples of the things he brings to the table. Also, he kissed CM Punk’s feet. Great stuff.
Chéreau, being less knowledgeable in all things wrestling, cheers for the faces, no matter what they do. He sometimes goes for long tirades that Agius won’t keep from criticising, or makes some pretty bad jokes, that will often be met with “C’était la WWE Chéreau of the week/the month/the year”, depending on the context or just how bad the joke was. That’s pretty much the sassy version of the audible groan you’d do in response to King’s jokes about Divas.
They’re plenty popular, so much so that they actually got the biggest audience for the channel on which Raw and Smackdown aired, not only once, but twice in 2009. They’re sometimes credited as one of the forces that helped bringing a live show in Paris that same year, after 14 years without coming here, and despite being at first looked at like you’d look at kids in a china shop (notably after filming two seconds of unauthorised promo with Kofi Kingston), they apparently got praise from a former VP for the way the handled their time in the ring to hype up the crowd. Agius compared it to the time he went to a WCW show in London and sat with a friend for hours and hours on end in a locker room and got interviews with wrestlers simply by asking. They also got their own skit-based show, called Catch-Off (a play on catch, our name for pro wrestling, and face-off), before the JBL and Cole show. It’s a few minutes long and it usually airs before and/or after WWE programming.
When one goes on holiday, Marc Chavet will fill in for the missing one, being kind of a tweener, adapting his commentary style to whomever he’s announcing with. During Agius’s hiatus, Sylvain Guernalec, a journalist for MMA and Pro Wrestling magazines, announced with Chavet. I don’t have a lot of memories of that time, because it was when I was watching more in English than in French, being the only one in my family still a fan (I actually was on the brink of stopping watching altogether until the Pipe Bomb the year before). I could have a ton to say about the French version but just to close it off nicely, I’d only say that I would watch Raw and Smackdown in French way more often if it didn’t air a week after the USA, though you can see the work done on the broadcast.
As for Arabic, WWE does broadcast all their shows in the UAE and other countries, so presumably they have an Arabic commentary team, they just don’t get to be ringside. Anyone out there able to comment on any of the non-English languages?
David is all about belts and such.
Since the Universal belt is getting some universal non-love at the moment, I noticed that a LOT of comments were ‘lazy design’ for keeping the same bones as the WWE World Championship but for the retina-burning red leather… If the logic holds, the WWE World Championship belt should go blue. A blue belt of equal sheen to the Universal Championship…
This was found on a Google Search, and I think they look better (and don’t scald eyeballs)
So, the questions:
1) Has anyone had a sook about the UFC having the exact same belt design for every champion? No difference whatsoever, unless I’m missing something.
Not that I know of, but then UFC’s history with their title belts is a little all over the shop.
That said, I’m sure someone somewhere has complained, but I’m not into MMA so I can’t really comment. As for the comparison, that I thought someone asked but I couldn’t seem to find, the idea that why are WWE fans complaining when UFC does the ‘everyone has the same belt’ deal, the issue is that Wrestling fans have been trained for years that all titles look different, so for WWE to move to having all the belts be paired off, like they are, it’s a bit of a bitter pill, at first. Eventually we’ll get used to it, we always do. Although I really want Smackdown to bring in a Hardcore division to counter the Cruiserweights, with the HC belt a smashed up Cruiserweight title…
2) Would the black/white leather alternation for male/female belts, while keeping the standard design, be so bad?
Congrats David, you called it, this email was before the reveal.
I get the logic, you want the branding to be the key, so you have the equivalent titles look the same except for the Raw Red/SD Blue. I get that, I get how you’re positioning it as the generic look with the branding of the show, plus if you ever go to a third brand you can just make a new color set. I understand the logic.
I still think it’s lazy and a bit silly, but I get the logic. I’d be more likely to want all the belts to look different so as to increase sales/chances you’ll like the look of at least one of them. But hey, at least it’s not a butterfly or a spinner or something…
*1/1000th of a Chandler*
3) If yes, should the IC Title go black-belt? I believe it was at one point in time with its current plates…
That belt has been almost every color at some point…
Anyway, I’m not sure about the IC title. As it stands, it looks different enough from every other belt that I think you could keep it. I’m just worried they’ll make belts that are halfway between the IC and US belts and then make one background is red, white and blue, the other some other color…
4) Would WWE not have gone with the leather colour alternating because another promotion had? TNA still do I think… and once had their own red-leather title.
Well they have, so… no.
And a random one that just popped into my head: 4) Are Enzo & Big Cass meant to be a modern-day version of the Full Blooded Italians?
I think it’s a more modern-day, friendlier version of Chester And Spike, to be honest.
I mean, a big part of the gimmick of the F.B.I was that they weren’t actually full blooded Italians, at least for the most part. Enzo and Cass are legit and certified letters and building supplies and units of measurement, so while their’s an accent overlap, the two gimmicks aren’t the same at all.
Michael wants me to BOOK THIS!
The ending of Royal Rumble 2005 is astounding with the fact that John Cena fucked up and by sheer luck both him and Batista landed both feet simultaneously. My question is let’s say Batista’s feet actually did hit first….what would they have done? HOW WOULD YOU BOOK IT?
Sure Cena vs JBL was the plan regardless…but how would the Batista aspect go about with the “will he or won’t he challenge HHH” not to mention the awesome slow burn of a face turn. Would Batista win a RAW battle royal to become #1 contender? Challenge and beat Cena for the WM shot at No Way Out? Or some other shenanigans to have him face HHH?
Well, depends on if it was on-air, or at least arguable. If the feet first thing is like The Rock’s feet hitting first at Royal Rumble 2000, where the camera didn’t see it, I’d ignore it/do what they did, restart it as sudden death.
But if DAVE somehow manages to completely whiff it and it’s impossible to argue, impossible to avoid…
What I’d do is that I’d have a tournament set up, where 6 matches happen to set up a six pack elimination match for the title shot, where the entire thing is ‘rigged’ by Evolution to give Triple H an easy WM win. So, the matches would be something like:
Stevie Richards over Christian (Evolution making Regal think Christian was making fun of Eugene’s injury)
Simon Dean over Chris Benoit (Pedigree to Dean in front of the ref)
Rob Conway over Shawn Michaels (Evolution sneaking Kurt Angle into Raw)
Chris Jericho over Viscera (Evolution Mistake)
Kane over Snitsky (They didn’t care)
Batista over The Hurricane (Squash)
Then DAVE gets Stevie, Simon and Rob on his side to eliminate Kane and Jericho, then when DAVE kills Dean and Conway, HHH and Flair at ringside are all smiles, then call out for DAVE to lay down for Stevie with big thumbs up, DAVE responds with the thumbs up… Thumbs down, Batista Bomb to Stevie, pinfall, DAVE is off and running as #1 contender.
Bit messy, yes, but the idea has to be DAVE playing along with HHH’s plan when it can help him, then turning on him to take on HHH when it’s best for him.
But by all means, dear readers, if you have a suggestion, do say it below!
We’ll finish up with SgtDawkins and his questions.
1. Let’s say that Ric Flair is considered the most prolific, celebrated champion of all time. If you were to tally the results of every single one of his matches, starting with his first world title win, do you believe he has a winning record? If he is disqualified, it counts as a loss, if he is counted out, its is a loss. Count tag matches as well, why not? I’m guessing that he has actually lost more matches than he has won, which I find amusing.
I’d probably argue that his ProFightDB record would be a good judge, and that says he’s got a 50% win, 5% draw, and 45% loss record, which I’d say was fair, I think, certainly he’d probably have a better record if all his matches were included, his time as NWA World Champ saw him win most of his matches against the local hero, just…
I’d ask which wrestlers have the best records, but I’ll say it’s Goldberg, Hogan, and Warrior. But the worst record for prominent wrestlers? I was hoping that maybe you had some ideas.
Warrior’s the classic ‘best’ guy, again, according to profightDB, with Hogan and Goldberg are up there too. As for worst, that’s not an option on the site, but I’ll take a punt and say it’d be Foley. He won a measly 30% of his PPV matches, but if you have a better suggestion, dear reader, do say so.
2. When Hulk Hogan shuffles off this coil into the wrestling pearly gates, do you believe he will be judged worthy of wrestling heaven or will he be consigned to wrestling hell? My first reaction is to say that the good he has done over the course of his career outweighs the bad, but I haven’t kept up on the goings on since the end of the Attitude era. Do his contributions to “legitimizing” wrestling as a viable entertainment entity as the sport’s number one draw (for a good period of time) outweigh all the damage he has done to those he has helped hold back, to aiding in the squashing of Ventura’s proposed wrestling union, or to his part in the death of WCW? You know better than I!
There’s also the whole racism thing to consider, for the record.
It’s hard to say, because the issue is that heaven/hell is a personal concept in these sorts of questions, and thus it ends up not being a search for objective truth, but instead a question on what you judge wrestling by.
If you consider wrestling to be an artform, wherein Flair and Steamboat’s battles are the peak, for instance, then Hogan’s a monster who ruined everything with his making wrestling a showy rock and roll crapfest. But if you’re a WWF fan from way back, and thus a Hulkamaniac, then he’s a hero who took WWF to the promised land and saved America and made WWF lots of money which is good, I guess? It’s a question on what you judge wrestling by, first and foremost.
I try to take a balanced view, and to that end, the guy helped ensure two of the biggest periods in wrestling history, with Hulkamania running wild, and then being the third man. They both revolutionised the business, and for that, he deserves a spon on a cloud.
Unless he’s still racist, in which case to hell with him.
3. Final question. What was the deal with Michael Buffer in late 90s WCW? I’ve honestly never seen (on a wrestling program) a tv personality more disinterested in doing the job he is being paid to do. The guy couldn’t muster any emotion during any of his speeches, famously got the names of main event wrestlers incorrect, and had numerous awkward deliveries which did more harm to those performing than good. Couldn’t anyone tell the guy to plaster a smile on his face for the two minutes he is forced to be on camera? Anyway, do you think that if you asked Michael Buffer today to name ten WCW wrestlers who performed during the four or so years he was an announcer, he could do so? I say no, and I don’t think I’m being ridiculous. Thanks, as always. I’ve been saving up my questions, so prepare yourself for more crap!
Actually, I think he might be able to. He’s done interviews since then, and he’s spoken about having memories of Ric Flair and such, he could probably get to ten. Just.
*3/4 of a Chandler*
The deal was that Buffer was something of a name at the time, having risen to prominence via Top Rank boxing on ESPN. This led to Buffer being under contract to HBO for their boxing, and since HBO was owned by Time Warner, it meant he could announce for WCW as well. And since he was well known, and could make an event seem like a bigger deal via his unique delivery and voice, he was part of the push from Bischoff to make WCW the #1 promotion via any and all means necessary. Give away results, hire all the talent, have the well known ring announcers, whatever it took.
But outside of the Bret Clark thing, he did his job well, and while perhaps he was overused a bit, he did give WCW a tiny boost. And when you’re trying to kill another company, every boost helps.
On that note, I sleep now. See you all next week!
…
…
More Trending Stories
- More Details On Mercedes Mone’s Deal with AEW, Confirmed To Be Multi-Year
- Raquel Rodriguez Reportedly Pulled From Active WWE Roster, Listed As ‘Out of Action’
- Tiffany Stratton, Jade Cargill, Rhea Ripley Top This Week’s WWE Superstar Instagram Photos
- Backstage Reaction To Booker T Saying He Had a ‘Run In’ With CM Punk At NXT