Ask 411 Wrestling: Is Triple H Behind 205 Live?

Hello, welcome to Ask 411 Wrestling, the only column whose writer tried for a couple hours today trying to find a working video editing program for his crappy computer to make a Botchamania ending only to give it up without any progress!

Well, I have an idea for someone to steal then, I guess. Plus having MANFLU probably didn’t help matters. But I mean, it’s stupidly simple, just 15 or so seconds from one video then 5 or so from this other one and you’re done. Sigh.

Anyway, enough of Botchamania, let’s get to the questions and answers. Got one for the other? [email protected] is where you send it.

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The Trivia Crown

Who am I? I was trained by two WWE Hall of Famers. I’ve been a man of law, medicine and I wore a mask. I was born in the same city a current WWE star is billed from and lives and both, me and the WWE star, won titles in the same independent wrestling promotion; but I’ve been billed from a city a former AWA World champion made notorious. I won a championship in a match which featured current WWE and TNA champions and I won a tournament by beating a future ROH champion. Someone very important in my life was part of Tough Enough. Once, I was “damned” by Ron Simmons in a bathroom and also I’m a good friend of someone who was a champion in Liechtenstein. Who am I?

Genghis Khan, back from the dead and avoiding all those child support payments, has the answer for us.

Who am I? I was trained by two WWE Hall of Famers. (Killer Kowalski & Harley Race) I’ve been a man of law,(Thomas Whitney ESQ) medicine (Dr. Thomas) and I wore a mask (Prodigy). I was born in the same city a current WWE star is billed from and lives (Boston, Massachusetts, Sasha Banks) and both, me and the WWE star, won titles in the same independent wrestling promotion; (Chaotic Wrestling) but I’ve been billed from a city a former AWA World champion made notorious. (Milwaukee, Wisconsin Reggie ‘The Crusher’ Lisowski Dubbed “The Wrestler Who Made Milwaukee Famous”) I won a championship in a match which featured current WWE and TNA champions (won the MWF Television Championship on September 29, 2007 This was a Triple Threat Matchinvolving A.J. Styles and “Die Hard” Eddie Edwards) and I won a tournament by beating a future ROH champion. (Super 8 tournament in 2011 by beating Adam Cole) Someone very important in my life was part of Tough Enough (His wife Jessie Ward was in Tough Enough 2002). Once, I was “damned” by Ron Simmons in a bathroom (#gloriousbomb) and also I’m a good friend of someone who was a champion in Liechtenstein (Johnny Gargano). Who am I? (Tommaso Ciampa)

Who am I? I was part of the birth of a celebrated thing right now. In a famous Indy company, I was part of a group with a name that was, if nothing else, totally accurate. I made a couple appearances in another major Indy fed, each one of which was a tag match with a guy who appears to be heading to WWE soonish. I’ve gone through two major gimmicks in the big leagues, one of them teaming with the son of a very infamous tough guy and the other which I am working under today. From the streets to the skies, I am who?

Getting Down To All The Business

Let’s start with the elephant in the room, which I think means I’ve just insulted myself, but anyway, Doyle in South Philly has a question.

Why isn’t Massive Q on this list? How are you going to main event WrestleMania without a try-out?

So yeah, WWE held some tryouts down here as part of the NXT tryout, and… Oh wait, hold on.

So anyway, yes, WWE held tryouts, and I was not in attendance. However, given that I have never applied to WWE my absence is not really a comment on my abilities.

Now my not applying, that could be seen as a comment on my abilities from myself, but even if I had, honestly right now I’m not exactly near 100% physically and thus wouldn’t have been able to handle it right this moment. Plus with my age, you’d think I might have missed my window unless I backdoor it via becoming a writer or something and then sneak in from the outside…

But yeah, thank you to all those who checked in to see if I was listed, although a bunch of really talented people were there who weren’t mentioned, so maybe I was and I’m kayfabing you!

Anyway, onto the actual questions, with Brian asking about Scott Steiner.

I’ve just finished watching WCW Wrestle War 1990 and I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about the evolution(?) of Scott Steiner.

1. In 1990, we had Mullet-Steiner, quiet man, gifted athlete and excellent amateur wrestler but by 2000, we had Big Poppa Pump – fantastic charisma but limited ability. What happened? Did the steroids and his increased size just kill his mobility or did he have injuries to compensate for, and if so, were these possibly due to steroid use anyway?

I need to be careful here, wouldn’t want to say anything and get Scott Steiner mad at me. I really want to visit a Shoney’s some day.

But yeah, Scott Steiner is one of those cases where the main event personality/gimmick came to them long after the point where they physically could pull off being a main event guy, like Eddie Guerrero or, sadly, Daniel Bryan. Mullet Steiner was a guy WCW wanted to push pretty hard, but he didn’t want to break up the tag team, while Big Poppa Pump was effectively used by WCW where the deficiencies that he had were hidden. Which is why when he came to WWE in 02 there was a big ol’ bed defecation, given that WWE didn’t realise that was needed and had little interest in doing it anyway.

The turning point was the bicep injury that occurred at the 15th Clash of the Champions, where after retaining the IWGP tag titles over Hiroshi Hase and Masa
Chono, Dick Murdoch and Dick Slater, the Hardliners did a run in and beat on everyone, and injured Scott’s arm.

What a couple of Dicks.

After that injury, which didn’t seem to have anything to do with steroids, Scott began to slowly become bigger and less athletic, quite possibly because he began to misuse steroids after perhaps utilizing them for legitimate medical purposes. It became something of a cycle, where he got bigger and that led to injuries, and he’d come back bigger and that would lead to injuries etcetcetc.

Allegedly.

2. Also, do you think if he hadn’t gone the steroid route, that he could eventually have had more success than he had? I mean, with the ability he had in his early days, combined with the charisma he showed later in his career, he could have been huge, no?

Maybe, sure. I mean, part of the big reason he didn’t get a super push in the early-mid 90’s was because, while he had been pegged as a future main event superstar, he couldn’t cut a promo and was injury prone. So if he doesn’t allegedly abuse steroids and if this leads to less injuries… It’s possible, but it still took Scott a LONG time to click. He turned heel in 98, and it wasn’t until 2000 where he finally worked out what he needed to do. The early days of ‘White Thunder’ and ‘Superstar’ were good but not great, by any means.

So while if he’d not gone synthetic, he probably would have been trusted more and gotten a few more opportunities, it comes down to him needing to work out the personality much earlier, and it’s debatable how much of an impact the drugs had on that aspect of him. But he would have gotten pushed earlier and more consistently as a singles guy without them, probably.

Stu had a bunch of questions, here’s a couple of them for this week.

With the number of people on the roster and the lack of time restraints on the Network, why haven’t WWE switched back to a 40-man Royal Rumble this year? And why have they never run with a female-only Royal Rumble? Roster depth?

They might still pull a 40 man Rumble, given that only 2 men have entered it so far, and it would be a way to stick it to Alberto by having someone win ‘the biggest Rumble in history’ and so forth. But then again, this is the 30th Royal Rumble, and having a number differential like that isn’t good branding.

But they could probably get up to 40, assuming you included say 5 NXT guys, 4 legends/unaligned entrants and then 1 Last Chance Battle Royal winner on the preshow, totally. But then again, maybe they’ll go 10 Raw, 10 SD, 3 NXT, 3 205, 3 Legends and 1 Last Chancer maybe. Depends on how they view 205 Live by that point.

As for a female Rumble, that’s never happened because they’ve almost never had a female roster large enough. The 15 man Royal Rumble they did on Smackdown that one time was just enough to work (the Corporate Rumble doesn’t count) and I’d be hard pressed to find a timeframe prior to this point where WWE had 15 women under contract/on good terms that didn’t include the champion. 15 right now is still a stretch, unless you use most of NXT’s roster as well.

But I suspect the 30th Rumble branding will be enough to ensure that there’s only 30 men in this year’s Rumble.

When was peak Shawn Michaels? Before or after his hiatus?

Are we talking peak wrestling ability or peak assholeness?

Assuming you mean the first one, I’d say that it was after his hiatus, given that while he was arguably more athletic beforehand, he was a much smarter wrestler afterwards, and more importantly, the level of his opponents was higher. Yes, he had some great matches with great opponents in 96, 97, but his work in 03, 04, 05 was of a more consistent quality, both in terms of his output and those of his opponents, for the most part. (Hello ‘epic’ HHH matches!)

But it’s certainly up for debate. I assume they’ll be some below on this subject.

Mark wishes to get to the bottom of a infamous angle in WWC.

I consider myself a pretty smart wrestling fan, (30+ years of watching and researching etc..). However, one thing I just cannot get to the bottom of is Manny Fernandez and Invader #3.

During a match Fernandez dropped a knee from the top rope, onto Invader, which forced him to spew blood all over the ring. Fernandez claims this was done as a receipt for the murder of his friend Bruiser Brody. I have watched the video many times and cannot really tell if it’s legit or not. If I was forced to say one way or another I would say it’s a work but given they never worked a match on the back of it, (as far a know), and Fernandez maintains it was legit I can’t be 100% sure. If I watched the match without knowledge of Brody etc.. it just looks like a well worked angle but, again, background knowledge causes that doubt.

I wonder if either yourself or the readers may have other knowledge on the incident.

It’s fairly brutal to watch, so be warned before you click play on this one.

This occurred in 1989, after Invader #1, a.k.a Jose Gonzalez, was acquitted of murdering Bruiser Brody because of a claim of self-defence. He comes in and wants revenge against the Invaders, gets #3, tries to kill him with knee drops, all the blood comes out, match stops. But was this a shoot?

Certainly Manny has claimed that, he’s said it was a shoot. About halfway through this video.

However, I’m fairly certain that this was, in fact, a work. For starters, there was a follow up match, at the big Aniversario 89 show later in the year.

Add in that Invader #3 moves into position for the knee drops, and the fact that if you vomited that much blood shoot you’d be dead (it was a mixture of vodka and pig blood that he drank prior to the match, supposedly), points to this being a work. Plus, the angle was done elsewhere, in the Amarillo territory back in the late 70’s, there was a famous tag match where the Fargo Brothers, Don and Johnny, kept jumping off the apron and attacking Moose Morowski’s throat in a tag match against him and Al Hayes, where Moose did the same blood throwing up gimmick, albeit without the mask for added spray.

So yeah, an angle done elsewhere, with a blow off, in a territory known for walking a fine line between edgy and disgusting, against a guy he has no real reason to hate… Yeah, it’s a work.

Speaking of angles, William asks about a more famous one.

Hey Matt, love the column. I had a question about the Austin run down. Was it always planned to be rikishi as the driver and triple h as the mastermind? The only other driver I could think it would have been was billy gunn, since they were kind of building him up around that time.

No, given that at the time it occurred, Rikishi hadn’t actually debuted as a character, hence when they decided on him they had to have Scotty 2 Hotty place him on the scene. When you watch the show, Billy Gunn is notable by his absence at the time of the incident, and by most accounts was the original guy they wanted to go with. But not only had the creative team radically changed by the time Austin was back, so had the roster, and Billy Gunn would have been a poor choice.

Well, poorer.

In any case, when they then chose Rikishi, he was meant to be the sole guy, since they had a few too many babyfaces and needed a heel turn near the top of the card. But then when the reveal and the reasoning (Whitey kept the Samoan Boys down!) was DOA, they went with the HHH reveal to try and salvage it a bit, and it worked to some degree, even if it ended up as part of the ‘All Storylines Revolve Around HHH’ problem they had at the time.

Next up, Brendan has a follow up from a previous question.

Thanks for answering my question about Vince’s financial risk with WM1. As a follow up, I looked at WWFs bookings immediately after the event on History of WWE (Link). WM1 was on March 30 but their next show(s) weren’t scheduled for two weeks later on April 13. While I agree with your opinion that the WWF wasn’t going to go bankrupt if WM1 failed, it does seem like Vince was preparing for the worst by not booking any shows right away. Was Vince trying to give himself a buffer to figure things out before his next shows in case WM1 was a bust?

I don’t think so, although I was unable to find anything about the logic behind such a move. But at a guess, I’d say that it wasn’t so much a “if everything goes pear shaped I need time to work out what to do next” as it was a “we just did a huge media blitz before the biggest event in our history, everyone take a couple weeks off” break.

There wasn’t any TV deal that said they had to perform the next night, all the TV was recorded in the days leading up to the show, so after doing this big event, it seems logical that Vince would want time to wind down, and why not let everyone else cool off too? These days everyone knows how to do a Wrestlemania, plus they’re contractually obligated to turn up in front of cameras the next night. Back then, they had neither. So why not put in for some downtime? Seems logical to me…

Michael asks an evergreen.

Has there ever been an instance where a wrestler “accidentally” won a title. Like the champ didn’t get his shoulder up time, etc… where it wasn’t a work? If so, have they ever just continued the title run or did they hot shot it back the following night or day?

Sure there has. Men on a Mission’s tag titles, Hardcore Holly’s Hardcore title win at WM2000, Mickie James Women’s title at a house show. Mabel was too fat for a Quebecer to get off him, the buzzer didn’t go off right, and Melina didn’t break up a pinfall on Victoria in time. MOM lost the belts a couple nights later, Hardcore lost it back on Raw the next night, and Mickie James lost the title back to Melina that very night.

There’s been plenty of ‘wins’ that did go the right way but the ending wasn’t exactly as planned (Batista winning the ’05 Rumble, Cena winning MITB, Sheamus winning the WWE Title at TLC over Cena), but those results were right, just in the wrong way.

The only three times I know that come close to continuing the reign as you ask were the Booker T TV title win when Rick Martel was supposed to win the belt off Booker then defend it against Saturn at Superbrawl VIII, but Martel was injured on a hiptoss, leaving Booker to win the title then he and Saturn to call a match completely on the fly. Gail Kim wasn’t meant to win the WWE Women’s Title in her first match, Jazz was injured midway through so they went with Gail to win instead. And then there was the time Kaitlyn won a #1 contenders Battle Royal by mistake when the winner (Eve) slipped and got eliminated by mistake. She didn’t win the title out of it, but it was the start of her push.

Speaking of the female gender, Ben?

Do you think that WWE realizes the investment they have in Charlotte BEYOND being Ric Flair’s daughter? I mean to look at her, it is totally apparent that she has the physical attributes that would greatly support the personality/charismatic part. What do you think?

I think that if they were only using her for her name, they wouldn’t have stopped her using the last part of it for a while, and more importantly she wouldn’t be getting quite as huge a push. Yes, I think it’s safe to say WWE is aware of how freakish a talent Charlotte is, given her level of experience. She’s going to be the center of the division for quite some time, less injury or some other freakish event. WWE is fully aware of the investment, as you put it. Why wouldn’t they be?

… Don’t answer that.

Speaking of questions without good answers, Raj.

Has there ever been a W-W-F or W-W-E chant at WWE events or any other promotion? The only instance I remember is some guy screaming ‘Dubb Dubb Eff’ at
a RAW during the Invasion storyline.

Not that I’m aware of, at least not without a ‘sucks’ attached. It tends to be companies that portray themselves as being the scrappy underdogs fighting against the behemoths that tend to draw this sort of chant, ECW, TNA, ROH, NXT, CZW etcetcetc. But maybe a reader has a better memory than I do.

Uzoma actually continues the discussion of the fans.

Like NXT and CWC, is 205 Live all on Triple H?

Not directly, in that it seems the main reason 205 Live exists, among the justifications like how the Cruiserweights needing more time and not working out all that well on Raw and so on, is that in one of WWE’s fan surveys, when they asked what sort of programming WWE Universe (TM, C, R, Ours Not Yours) members wanted to see on the WWE Network (Pat Pending), a live weekly Cruiserweight show polled very well, and one guy seems to LOVE Speedo Guy.

Which is not to say HHH isn’t involved with the show, he’s involved with most things now, but it wasn’t that HHH said “We should do this” as it was an idea they floated, lots of people saluted, and so they ran with it.

EZE asks a question about the Undertaker.

With it being rumored that WrestleMania 33 might be his last do you think it may be time to update his wardrobe? I mean for all the mystique, prowess of the character his costume doesn’t quite emulate the “deadman”. Would there be anyway you could see a return to the funeral parlor style outfit that he originated with or even a variation of the more “sinister” ‘taker for his final sendoff?

I don’t think Undertaker truly knows if this is going to be his last WM or not, I mean, for a while there his match with Shane was going to be the last one. Which is not to say your idea doesn’t have some merit, I can understand the idea that if/when they are sure that Wrestlemania 20XX is the last one, they should do like at WM13 and loop back around to his original Deadman look, or at least have a touch of it, have grey gloves perhaps. Certainly if he knows it’s the last one, he needs a black leather look that equals the opulence of Ric Flair’s retirement robe, at least in terms of magnificence, not in terms of look. And if it can play off his origins, so much the better.

But as long as whatever he wears is suitably impressive, then it doesn’t matter all that much if it’s totally new or a complete throwback, or anywhere in-between. It’s about the overall spectacle, having small, nice touches isn’t really the main issue, it’s more that it’s just impressive.

Nightwolf asks about sadism.

Who would you say is the most Sadistic wrestler to ever lace up a pair of wrestling boots? When I mean sadistic, I’m talking about their wrestling style and how violent their matches were, etc. I would say Abdullah the Butcher

Abdullah is pretty much the solid pick for that question, yes, assuming you focus solely on blood and impact, given that he has a very specific match style and you had to work it, even if you didn’t want to. But sadism comes in many forms, a guy like Stu Hart was notorious for stretching and punishing guys in his Dungeon as he trained them, a lot of old school trainers would beat you up, break your leg or some such and then see if you came back or not.

Freddie Blassie in his day was pretty sadistic, he filed down his teeth into points and would bite and draw blood on his opponents all the time, guys like that and the original Sheik and such were pretty bad.

But at the end of the day, I think true sadism in wrestling is about hurting guys deliberately. Working a deathmatch style like Necro Butcher or Zandig or whomever, that’s rough, but you should in theory know what you’re getting. Old school hookers/shooters could in theory be sadistic if they wanted to be, but if you worked with them, you’d be fine.

And then you have a guy like New Jack. He’s pretty sadistic, you know, Mass Transit, Gypsy Joe… Probably a toss up between him and Abdullah for me. How about you, dear readers?

Nate asks about Vince McMahon and forward planning in the past.

In the Feb 22 1999 episode of Raw, Undertaker and Kane are in an inferno match made by Mr. McMahon as retribution toward Undertaker threatening to take over the WWF. During this match, Cole and McMahon are conversing on commentary about “The Undertaker answering to a greater power,” to which McMahon responds, “Well, let me tell you tonight, here on Raw, he’s answering to me, pal, that’s who he’s answering to!” (The conversation in question can be found around the 5:12 mark in the following video.) In context he’s referring to the inferno match, but was there any deliberate foreshadowing in that statement? Was McMahon always planned to be revealed as the Higher Power, or did Creative have someone else (or not yet anyone) in mind at that point?

As a basic rule, for any question about booking and plans in 99, you’re dealing with Russo at his Russoest. Ideas like ‘long term planning’ and ‘foreshadowing’ were foreign concepts to the man at the time, given that he was focused on drawing big TV ratings and, for better or worse, ‘he’ was doing so.

There were names floating about for who the Higher Power was to be, most of them the burgeoning IWC sorta plucked from thin air based on what sort of made sense, guys like Jake Roberts or Shane or Steph. But according to the rumors at the time, while HBK was considered but not approached, the main guy they offered the role to was Mick Foley, but he turned it down as while he did want to turn heel, he felt it would be such a sudden and unexpected turn as to be unworkable. Although the notion of him running both the Union and the Corporate Ministry at the same time would have made him look super clever.

So no, this video does not show clever foreshadowing, just coincidence.

Speaking of that, Connor asks about Hogan’s brush with the dark side.

What was the deal with Hulk Hogan going to the dark side and dressing in black in late 1995 to fight the Dungeon of Doom? he even wrestled at Halloween Havoc in black that year

The deal was that Hogan in WCW wasn’t working out, given that while his first few PPVs and appearances did work out well for them, the WCW’s main fanbase wasn’t the sort to put up with an All American Superhero Face winning all the time. That wasn’t what they wanted on their shows, and so WCW tried to give Hogan an edge. They had the Dungeon Of Doom shave off his moustache, and had Hogan go to all black and ‘embrace the darkness’ as a way to try and give Hogan an edge to him, on the basis that WCW fans liked heels, and thus if Hogan is a little more heelish, they’ll like him. Or something.

Basically it was a case of them trying to tinker with the Hogan formula enough that it was still the Hogan formula, but different enough to be new and exciting and work for the WCW fans. It didn’t, so they went back to red and yellow and then turned him full heel, which did work out for them a little.

*1/1000th of a Chandler, Brother*

And on that note, it’s extremely hot here right now, but I’m going to try and sleep. Wish me luck, and I’ll see you all next week, maybe.