Ask 411 Wrestling: Who Knew About Hulk Hogan’s Heel Turn?

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Ask 411 Wrestling!

It’s a fill-in week, as I am not Matt Sforcina. I am Ryan Byers, the Damien Sandow to Sforcina’s Miz.

. . .

. . .

. . .

oh god.

I just realized what I compared you to there, Mat.

I’m sorry.

I’m so, so sorry.

Let’s just banner it up to end this awkwardness.

Zeldas!

Check out Mat’s Drabble blog, 1/10 of a Picture!

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The Trivia Crown

The answer was James Storm. The answer is always James Storm. Unfortunately, I am throwing together the non-Q&A section of this column together at the last minute due to some unexpected kerfluffles at work, so I’ve not come up with a good question for you.

Next week, my pretties. Next week.

Getting Down To All The Business

Here’s a question from Sloop John P.:

I can barely remember what wrestling was like before commissioners/owners/executives/authority figures were on every week usually dictating the title story line, the main event story line, or both. Vince, Bischoff, and so many others seem to have become a staple of wrestling since the Montreal screwjob.

What was it like before then? I remember watching NWA as a child and every once in a while they’d cut to a boardroom or have some authority figure (like JJ Dillon) name a #1 contender, but my memory is that was pretty rare. Am I wrong about that? And do you think the “evil authority figure” is a creative crutch the WWE relies on too much? Again, from my youth, it’s hard to imagine Ric Flair being Ric Flair, world champion and number one heel, being better if he was really the number two heel and some sort of stand-in for Jim Crockett.

As far as what wrestling was like before authority figures became such heavily relied upon trope, your memory is basically correct. When it came time for a significant announcement from the powers that be, we would get a brief skit in a board room or at a press conference, with figureheads like Jack Tunney or real-life promoters like Jim Crockett, Jr. rarely if ever making storyline announcements during in-ring promos. Announcements which were not that significant were generally handed down from members of the announce team, who acted like reporters informing the audience of decisions that the powers that be had made. Also, there was much more matchmaking by the wrestlers themselves, with challenges being bandied about and accepted and the approval or “signing” of the match by officials being a relatively unimportant rubber stamp.

All of that changed in 1996, when Eric Bischoff, who up until that point had primarily been known as an announcer, turned heel and joined the New World Order, with his legitimate role as WCW’s executive vice president being used as the explanation for why the nWo, a supposed “outside” group, seemed to have so much access to WCW’s shows, production trucks, and the like. The question states that this type of character became prominent after the Montreal Screwjob, but, in actuality, Bischoff was doing it a full year before the infamous Survivor Series main event, with his heel turn falling in November 1996. (As an aside, this is one of several examples of a concept being innovated in WCW but history being rewritten so that the WWF takes credit for creating it, with Vince McMahon’s heel promoter character being played up as revolutionary when, really, Bischoff was doing it first on a major stage.)

As to the second part of the question: Yes, I absolutely believe that this type of character has been overused in WWE. The company has had a heavily-involved authority figure on every one of its shows (except for NXT, I suppose) since the Mr. McMahon character exploded in 1997. That means we’re SEVENTEEN YEARS into the shows revolving around this sort of character, and I can’t think of any aspect of any television property that wouldn’t start to feel stale if you kept it on the air for that long. Just think about all of the other ways wrestling has evolved over the course of the last seventeen years . . . is there any other act that is virtually identical to what it was other a decade and a half ago?

However, I see the continued reliance on the heel GM/commissioner/CEO/whatever as being problematic for one big reason other than its age, and I think that reason is something that was alluded to in the original question. In my opinion, having non-wrestling authority figures control the vast majority of professional storylines makes your wrestlers less appealing to fans because the wrestlers are not the acters controlling their own destiny, and the heels who you regularly see fight the babyfaces are not really the heels who all of the heat is on.

Think about it this way: Let’s say you’re watching Star Wars, which is one of the greatest stories ever told in modern media about good battling evil. You’ve got the young, underdog hero Luke Skywalker in one corner, and, in the other corner, you’ve got the insidious, powerful Darth Vader, who is a terrifying menace that our out-gunned good guy is going to have to overcome in a physical battle. It’s a great “heel vs. face” dynamic to put it into wrestling terms.

How would that same story play out if it was put through a different filter? What if, instead of writing the movie as it was, they instead focused the entire film on building up Emperor Palpatine as the primary threat to Luke Skywalker, with everything Skywalker does not being a result of Skywalker’s own decisions but instead being reactionary to the threats of Palpatine and Darth Vader being only the guy that Palpatine throws out to confront Skywalker at the end of the movie because Palpatine himself is in a position where he physically cannot participate in the climax himself. That would not be nearly as effective. By focusing so much on an acter who will not be involved in the final physical confrontation, you make the heel who will be involved in that confrontation look second rate and, by making your good guy a pawn in the hands of that acter, he comes off as weak-willed and unassertive.

That’s not to say that every heel authority figure storyline in wrestling has been a flop. To the contrary, Austin vs. McMahon was one of the greatest rivalries in the history of the sport. However, there are general rules and then there are the exceptions that prove those general rules, and I think Austin/McMahon falls into the latter category.

Don’t step to Quan:

Can you detail the MMA/Strong Style obsession of Antonio Inoki? I know the man want his promotion to be legit just like other fighting sports, but I don’t know what he did to cause NJPW to enter a period of decline. It’s still an interesting and intriguing topic for me.

These are the types of questions that make Sforcina look forward to my fill-ins.

First off, let me correct a little bit of the terminology here. You use the phrase “MMA/strong style” as though those two things are related. Really, they’re not. MMA is mixed martial arts, the roughly twenty year old sport hat you’ll see practiced in places like UFC and Bellator and that you would previously see in leagues like PRIDE. Strong style is a description of the style of professional wrestling traditionally employed by New Japan Pro Wrestling, which really doesn’t resemble modern MMA matches at all and pre-dates the existence of what we now know as MMA by over twenty years.

(Also, though it doesn’t relate directly to the question, I’ll add that “strong style” does NOT, when properly used, refer to all of Japanese professional wrestling. It refers to New Japan’s style specifically. New Japan’s historic rival, All Japan Pro Wrestling, which was succeeded by Pro Wrestling NOAH, had a distinct style commonly referred to as “King’s Road” . . . but that’s a different topic for a different question.)

Of course, the origins of modern mixed marital arts come from the idea of taking different fighting styles and pitting them against each other in order to determine which was the best. Inoki was a fan of the concept of using this gimmick in order to get himself over in worked matches, with the thought process being that he could convince fans that pro wrestlers were the toughest fighters if he defeated a bunch of guys from other genres of legitimate fighting. If you want to see an example, check out this video of him “fighting” pro karate practitioner Willie Williams:

The most famous of these mixed Inoki fights, which I’m sure virtually everybody knows about, was his 1976 encounter with Muhammad Ali, which, unlike several Inoki mixed matches, turned into a shoot with bizarre rules after some last-minute negotiations about what the true nature of the encounter would be.

By and large, this approach worked for Inoki and turned him into a massive star, one of the most beloved in the history of his home country’s version of professional wrestling.

However, things started to take a turn for the worse in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the sport that is now called mixed marital arts was ridiculously popular in Japan. Inoki, whose early mixed fights inspired MMA, still had the mentality that booking wrestlers against individuals from other genres would get the wrestlers over, and he also had the mentality that, because they were legitimate fighters, MMA competitors would be draws that pro wrestling fans would want to see on wrestling cards in MMA-style matches.

Unfortunately, this didn’t work out for a variety of reasons. First of all, the pro wrestlers who Inoki had cross over in to MMA did pretty poorly on the whole (though there were small successes). Yuji Nagata, who at the time should have become the company’s next major superstar, was humiliated in MMA matches despite having legitimate amateur wrestling credentials and had his reputation as a tough guy severely hampered. MMA competitors like Kazuyuki Fujita and Bob Sapp were put on top of NJPW, and they often wrestled very brief matches that looked more like MMA fights than they did professional wrestling matches or even the Inoki worked mixed matches of the 1980s.

I’m not sure exactly what the psychology behind it was but, while all of this was going on, professional wrestling fans turned their backs on New Japan in droves. Some people claim that this was because wrestling fans would simply have watched MMA if the watched to watch MMA. Others claim it was because MMA was the hot ticket in town and they were jumping ship to watch that sport, with Inoki’s treatment of wrestling not doing anything other than making traditional wrestling look second rate. All of this came to a head when video game company Yukes bought out a controlling interest in New Japan in 2005 and took Inoki out of power. Though he still has some affiliation with NJPW, Inoki now focuses much more on his own political career and a separate promotion known as the Inoki Genome Federation, which runs somewhat sporadically and consists almost exclusively of worked matches that mimic MMA.

So, what’s Inoki’s obsession with MMA? It stems from his own participation in mixed matches that, from his perspective, turned him into a star. However, that gimmick reached a point when it was no longer going to be productive, be it due either to the mixed match losing its appeal when legitimate MMA was born or to the pro wrestlers injected in the new wave of mixed matches not being able to have Inoki’s success in a shoot environment. In short, like many promoters before him, Inoki stuck with a pat hand for too long, and it burned him in the end.

Uzoma is a World Warrior:

Low Ki stated in interviews that he didn’t mind being paired with LayCool despite most people’s objection to it considering Low Ki’s seriousness and dedication to wrestling. Because of how Daniel Bryan being paired with The Miz went out on the first season of NXT’s initial incarnation and regardless of how Low Ki felt, was Low Ki being paired with Layla El and Michelle McCool for the second season good or bad?

I would probably rank it as a mild negative. If you’re going to try to get a wrestler over as a legitimate star, you should probably present him as well as you possibly can right out of the gate, and the pairing of Low Ki (or Kaval, whatever) with LayCool didn’t exactly present him as a big star. First of all, the association was clearly being played up for laughs and, though there is room for comedy in pro wrestling, it’s rare that your comedic figures are big players in the industry. Also, from a cosmetic standpoint, attempts to portray Ki as a badass are undercut somewhat when you have Michelle McCool on one side of the guy dwarfing him and Layla El, who is not a large woman, standing on the other side of him and being virtually the same size.

However, the reason that I mention it as being a mild negative as opposed to a completely stupid idea is I think that, ultimately Low Ki was going to succeed or fail based on how they treated him when he became a part of the main roster, not on how he was treated in NXT. The audience of NXT was so much smaller than the audience of mainstream WWE programming, and I think that there was a perception among the audience (even the portion who watched NXT) that it “didn’t count” in many regards. If you look at how the guy actually fared during his main roster run, he got about as over as you would expect him to get based on how hardly he was pushed, and his association with the “Flawless” divas on SyFy did not seem to either hamper or help him.

Patrick wants some rankings.

As ever, I offer my heartfelt plaudits for your fine column. I have something a lengthy question for you (or at least, one that will require a lengthy answer). My wrestling viewing over the past decade has been somewhat sporadic, so I wondered if you could satiate my curiousity by rating the ’20s’ Wrestlemanias (20-29) from 1-10 with a wee little explanation of the good and bad points of each one. As I said, it’s a bit finicky, but I’d be much obliged if you could give it a go.

Of course, there’s a loooooooot of personal preference that comes into play for rankings like this, so your mileage may vary, but I’m more than willing to oblige you here.

10. Wrestlemania XXV: I’ll preface this by saying that I don’t think any of the Wrestlemanias from this era are bad shows. Throughout this period, the roster has generally had enough talent and the company has always had enough of a handle on how to create a spectacle that they’re all worth watching. XXV, though, is the one that comes the closest to being a “one match show,” with that one match being the Undertaker’s first Mania encounter with Shawn Michaels. The rest of the card is fairly weak, with an outright boring HHH/Randy Orton main event and weird stuff on the undercard like a women’s battle royale featuring Santino and Chris Jericho in a brutally boring gauntlet match against some aged legends of the sport, awesome hope spots by Ricky Steamboat aside.

9. Wrestlemania XXVII: This is another entry in which a subpar main event really drags the show down. Mike the Miz was the WWE Champion headed into the card, and he had such a heatless, Honky Tonk Man-esque title reign that his defense against John Cena captured absolutely nobody’s imagination and not even the Rock could save it. On top of that, you had Michael Cole vs. Jerry Lawler, which could’ve worked but got dragged out for too long and turned into one of the dirt worst segments in all of Wrestlemania history. Triple H and the Undertaker battling it out in a no holds barred match is there to balance things out a bit, and Edge’s last Wrestlemania match is passable, but it’s still not the best all around card. Oh yeah, Snooki’s there, too.

8. Wrestlemania XXI: We’ve got quite a bit of talking on this card, with Hulk Hogan and Steve Austin each getting their own extended non-wrestling segments, sandwiched in between the truly bizarre Akebono vs. Big Show sumo match and Christy Hemme against Trish Stratus in a shockingly bad women’s bout compared to the others that Trish was producing during this period. As with the two shows ranked lower on the list, this is a situation in which there is one match that is head and shoulders above the rest, and this time around it’s Kurt Angle taking on Shawn Michaels. What puts it a cut above the other two cards, though, is the fact that Angle/Michaels has a bit more undercard support than HHH/Taker II or Michaels/Taker I, as Rey Misterio, Jr. and Eddy Guerrero in the opener and the Undertaker and Randy Orton a bit later on were servicable lower card matches. Also helping is that, even though neither of them are great matches, there’s quite a bit of historical significance to John Cena unseating JBL and Batista going over Triple H for their respective championships.

7. Wrestlemania XX: Had history panned out a bit differently, this probably would have been close to the top of if not at THE top of my list. However, the Chris Benoit murder-suicide puts a huge damper on the conclusion of this show for me, to the point that I simply cannot enjoy it anymore. I know that there are other people out there who feel differently, and they have a right to that opinion . . . just as I do to mine. There is still some good stuff here if you throw out that main event, though, including strong performances in Eddy Guerrero/Kurt Angle, Chris Jericho/Christian, and Evolution/Rock n’ Sock. Even the “filler” matches, consisting of two four ways for the two sets of tag team titles and the Cruiserweight Title invitational, are pretty fun for what they are.

6. Wrestlemania XXII: This is the point on the list where the decisions start to get a little bit harder for me, as the cards generally become more well-rounded. Here, the main events are still a bit weak. Triple H vs. John Cena is a perfectly acceptable big show match, but it lacks something. The Misterio/Angle/Orton three-way was short-changed in terms of time, but it still turned into an enjoyable sprint. For whatever weaknesses the main events may have had, the undercard bouts did an excellent job of buoying them, with an imminently memorable hardcore match between Mick Foley and his protege Edge leading the charge. Meanwhile, Vince McMahon and Shawn Michaels had themselves a surprisingly good sports entertainment style brawl, while Trish Stratus and Mickie James had a championship match that was a fitting addition to what may have been the best women’s feud in WWE history.

5. Wrestlemania XXIX: The most recent Wrestlemania on the list was a fairly solid outing, all things considered. Despite there being some unfortunate injuries in the matches, Brock Lesnar and Triple H and the Rock and John Cena delivered to the extent that they were physically capable of doing so. Meanwhile, CM Punk and the Undertaker had themselves a bout that, though not to the level of Taker’s matches with Shawn Michaels or Triple H, was still a worthy entry the pantheon of epics that the Dead Man put on during the late portion of his Wrestlemania career. The Shield and Alberto Del Rio helped to pad out the card . . . and, really, the only truly bad or confusing thing on the show was Chris Jericho’s big return being wasted on the debut of Fandango, a wrestler and character that went absolutely nowhere, with a lack of potential that should have been apparent to anybody with half a brain.

4. Wrestlemania XXVIII: There are a lot of fans out there on the internet who claim not to like John Cena all that much. There are also a lot of fans out there on the internet who claim not to like the Rock all that much. There are some fans out there who claim not not like either man. Either those people are lying or they’re terrible judges of talent. These men are two of the biggest stars of the last fifteen years of professional wrestling and deservedly so. Their first ever encounter would make Wrestlemania XXVIII worth watching even if it was a stinker. Fortunately, it was not. In fact, it was a match that lived up to the hype that it was given. Supporting it on the big card from Miami was a strong show highlighted by CM Punk defending his WWE Championship against long-time rival Chris Jericho and the Undertaker and Triple H “ending an era” inside the demonic Hell in a Cell structure. It’s a fine show, goofiness with the Teddy Long versus Johnny Ace feud notwithstanding.

3. Wrestlemania XXVI: There’s no doubt about it . . . Shawn Michaels versus the Undertaker is the greatest feud in the history of Wrestlemania, so any card headlined by an encounter between those two men is going to do well in these rankings. The men put it all on the line, perhaps even topping their original encounter and putting a fitting capper on the in-ring career of the Heartbreak Kid. Just underneath that match, you had to the two largest stars of their generation in WWE, namely Batista and John Cena, putting on a rather good encounter for Cena’s WWE Championship, while former tag team champions Edge and Chris Jericho went at it for Jericho’s World Heavyweight Championship. The only real disappointment on the card was the match between Bret Hart and Vince McMahon. Though nobody was expecting a technical masterpiece from them, the company booked the “match” to go too long and perhaps even overestimated the extent to which current fans wanted to see the Hitman get his revenge on the chairman for something that had happened over a decade prior.

2. Wrestlemania XXIII: When you’ve got a show with so many quality matches on it that it allows you to forget the fact that you had to sit through a Kane vs. Great Khali snoozefest, you know you’ve got yourself a winner. There are three excellent matches on this show, and they’re all so great that, even if you filled out the rest of the card with Rosa Mendes vs. Vince Russo matches, you’d probably still get an all-time great Wrestlemania. The first of those three matches is the unexpected treasure between Batista and the Undertaker, with two men who were reportedly bothered by not being given the headlining spot going out there and doing their level best to steal the show, damn near succeeding. The second is, in my opinion, a historically underrated match, the Battle of the Billionaires pitting Vince McMahon’s charge Umaga against Donald Trump’s hand-picked champion, Bobby Lashley. The McMahon/Trump interaction and the hair versus hair stipulation was enough to make this Wrestlemania into the most purchased of all time up to this point in history, but lost in that is that Umaga and Lashley actually do put together a darn good battle of super heavyweights, particularly if you account for Lashley’s relative lack of experience at this point. Finally, the main event also delivers and delivers big time, with Shawn Michaels, who was a somewhat last minute replacement for his best buddy Triple H, giving John Cena what is probably still the best Wrestlemania match of Cena’s career.

1. Wrestlemania XXIV: This is a true story, and, if you don’t believe me, you can dig through the 411mania archives and look up the column where I originally said it all these years ago . . . I briefly contemplated giving up on pro wrestling altogether after I finished watching Wrestlemania XXIV. I didn’t consider giving up because the show was bad. It was quite the contrary. ]I walked away from Wrestlemania XXIV feeling more emotional than I had ever felt walking away from a wrestling show, and it was such a strong reaction that I thought I would never feel it again. In other words, I’d hit a high that I knew I would never match, and it had me questioning whether it was even worth trying. That emotional reaction, that high, came almost exclusively from watching “The Nature Boy” Ric Flair put his career on the line and ultimately lose it to Shawn Michaels. No, the match wasn’t a ***** classic from a purely technical perspective, but it was laced with so much drama and so much history that I was still willing to consider it my match of the year over all of the ROH spotfests and hot Dragon Gate six mans that were being pumped out during this period. That one match alone probably would have been enough for me to consider putting Wrestlemania XXIV on the top of this list, but it’s far from a one match show. There is also an EXCELLENT main event championship match between the Undertaker and Edge, with Charles Robinson’s sprint to ringside being one of my favorite under-appreciated moments in Wrestlemania history. On top of that, the Big Show and Floyd “Money” Mayweather had what has to be one of the greatest celebrity matches that has ever occurred, approaching if not surpassing the levels of they much lauded Lawrence Taylor vs. Bam Bam Bigelow match from a decade prior. This Wrestlemania is the stuff of legend, loaded with all of the things that make professional wrestling great.

Hopefully that is what you were looking for, Patrick.

Long-time contributor Nightwolf the Wise is loading us up with the rocket fuel:

What would have happened if Ultimate Warrior would have lasted longer in the WWE as their face of WWE? How would that have affected Bret Hart and Shawn Micheals?

I don’t think that Warrior not fizzling as the “face of WWE” would have affected Bret and Shawn all that much. As we all know, the WWF Championship was put on Warrior coming out of Wrestlemania VI, and the title was taken off of him at the following Royal Rumble because his performance as a drawing card was disheartening. The company went back to Hulk Hogan as its focal point, building the next two Wrestlemanias around him.

The company did go back to Warrior as a top guy after Wrestlemania VIII, but that push was cut off quickly due to the pressure being put on the WWF’s locker room that would ultimately lead to the Vince McMahon steroid trial. It was as a direct result of this pressure that the Fed changed directions and went with Bret Hart as its top face as opposed to Warrior, with the idea being that the Hitman didn’t look like a stereotypical “steroid guy” and would attract less unwanted attention. To a lesser extent, this also lead to the smaller Shawn Michaels being selected as the heel rival to Hart, which is what really kickstarted his career.

In my opinion, the drug issues were going to be raised regardless of whether the Ultimate Warrior flamed out during his first and only championship run. (In fact, if he did better during that run, the questions about steroid use may even have been raised earlier than they were.) It was those questions that lead to the rise of Hart and Michaels, essentially meaning that their ascension was inevitable regardless of Warrior’s performance.

Pedro (I voted for him) has a question that is full of venom:

First, I want to thank Wilcox for answering my question before this one,
regarding Jack Veneno’s WWE HOF chances. This is one again concerns the WWE HOF, this time about Hugo Savinovich: Great heel, excellent color commentator, better performer (he’s the one who took the chair shot in the Hogan-Vince match). If Carlos Colon, from Puerto Rico, got inducted into the WWE HOF, what are the possibilities WWE would induct Hugo, since Jack Veneno, as per Wilcox, has no chance?

Also, FYI, the Hugo-Jack rivalry is for history, filling all places where they
wrestled, very good matches and great promos from both ways.

I’ll start with the disclaimer that I give every time I discuss the WWE Hall of Fame: It’s not a real, legitimate hall of fame. It’s a marketing tool that WWE uses to sell live event tickets, DVDs, Network specials, and the like. I’m not saying that because I’m upset about it or because I consider it to be a bad thing. I’m saying it because, if you’re going to intelligently discuss whether somebody will or will not go into the WWE Hall of Fame, you have to start with a basic understanding of what it is.

With that said, I think that Hugo Savinovich has a better chance of making it into the HOF at some point in the future than Jack Veneno would. Savinovich, unlike Veneno, was actually a WWE employee for many years (as an announcer) and apparently has connections to/friends with certain individuals in WWE, as evidenced by his inclusion in DVD projects like the Jake “The Snake” Roberts Story.

However, even though Savinovich’s chances of making it into the Hall are greater than Veneno’s, I still don’t think they’re that great. First off, at present time, Hugo is currently an employee of a rival wrestling promotion, Lucha Underground, and it’s been reported that all LU signees had to sign fairly extensive non-compete clauses. At a minimum, Savinovich isn’t going anywhere near the WWE Hall until his stint with that promotion is over.

The other big thing hampering Savinovich’s induction is that he’s not a part of any project that WWE is actively trying to promote. If you look at other personalities who have been placed in the Hall despite not being WWE performers, they were put in because WWE wanted to use their induction to market something. For example, Verne Gange went in when the promotion had an AWA DVD to sell, Antonio Inoki reportedly went in because WWE felt it needed a hook for Wrestlemania DVD sales in Japan, and Gorgeous George got his spot because, at the time of his induction, WWE Films was developing a movie project based on his life. Meanwhile, it seems unlikely that there would be some similar project involving Hugo Savinovich. WWE will probably never acquire the tape library of any Puerto Rican wrestling promotion and, even if they did, a full-blown DVD release or network special focusing on WWC or IWA seems like a pipe dream.

So, I wouldn’t hold your breath if you’re looking forward to a Hugo induction, but you can take solace in the fact that he’s probably not at the absolute bottom of the barrel . . . he’s ever so slightly above it.

Let’s keep things on the Hall of Fame theme, as Axl from Paris has a HOF triple-shot:

1. Do you know if Vince had planned to create a Hall of Fame before Andre died, or was it something of a spontaneous emotional decision? With the WWF expanding worldwide at the time, it seems logical that they would do anything they could to appear like a massive company with a huge history, so my guess is that they probably had the idea before André passed away, but I didn’t read anything on that subject.

There aren’t a lot of details out there about this subject. The best that I could find was the March 29, 1993 edition of The Wrestling Observer Newsletter, which states that “The WWF beat WCW to the punch in the Hall of Fame idea,” and goes on to report that WCW intended to create a hall of fame on that year’s Slamboree pay per view, only to have the WWF one-up them by announcing the creation of the Hall and Andre’s induction on the March 22, 1993 episode of Monday Night Raw.

There aren’t many details in the newsletter beyond that, but the tone of the story makes it sound as though both promotions had been bandying about the idea of a hall of fame for a little while but WWF executed it first, resulting either from the death of Andre, wanting to spite WCW, or some combination of the two. I would imagine that the first option is the most likely.

2. Why did the Hall of Fame go on a eight-year hiatus between 1996 and 2004? You probably already have answered that question, but I hope you will do it again, since I can’t find a decent explanation on line. It went on a fine start, with 22 inductees in the years 1994-1996, after the first year when Andre was the first man in. So why did it stop for so long, and why did Vince decide to do it again in 2004?

This one I couldn’t find a solid answer on, to be honest with you. If I were to speculate, I would imagine that the hiatus has something to do with the ramping up of the Monday Night War and the WWF not wanting to devote its resources to something like a Hall of Fame when it had more urgent concerns. Again, that is nothing more than speculation on my part.

In terms of the relaunch, I would imagine that somebody in a board room decided that they could use the Hall to make money, particularly since the reintroduction of the concept syncs up nicely with the early stages of the pro wrestling DVD market peaking, and nothing moves DVDs like nostalgia.

3. Also (and you probably already answered that as well), why don’t they build a museum or something like that around the Hall of Fame concept? It could be on permanent location in Stamford, or on special display only during the Wrestlemania weekend, but I’m sure people would love to have a physical WWE Hall of Fame museum to go to (and the WWE could maybe sell some nice merch as well [insert Koko B. Ware joke here]). Thanks a lot!

The idea of a physical WWE Hall of Fame has certainly been considered over the years and, for all we know, it may still happen down the line. However, I think one of the reasons that the E hasn’t really jumped at the idea is that, if you look at it, the company has never had any success with building large, physical attractions for its fans to attend. WWF New York (later known as “The World”), the company’s themed restaurant in Times Square, was a financial disaster that actually lost more of the company’s money than the XFL did. WWF Niagra Falls, a standalone merchandise store with its own giant amusement park ride, closed its doors in 2011 and never really made that much of a splash. A planned themed casino and hotel in Las Vegas never even got off the ground, despite the fact that, if I recall correctly, there was real estate acquired for it.

So, WWE would have to be careful with a physical hall of fame and enter into just the right deal to set it up in order to make sure it doesn’t meet the same fate as all of these other attractions.

Dan H. wants to know who the third man is:

I used to be a huge wrestling fan and during WrestleMania week, I often follow the Undertaker match and the main event just to remain a little in the loop. Since very few people knew of the Undertaker’s losing to Brock Lesnar at WM30 beforehand, how many people knew of Hulk Hogan’s heel turn in 1996? I imagine that Hall, Nash, Hogan, and Bischoff had to know, but how many actual people knew about it outside of those four? Bobby Heenan gave away the heel turn before it happened as he asked which side Hogan was on, perhaps Heenan was in the know.

Hulk Hogan’s heel turn at Bash at the Beach 1996 was known about well in advance of the show by many individuals. It was reported in the edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter that came out the week before the pay per view. A lot of fans remember it as a tremendous surprise because wrestling news wasn’t as freely available on the internet as it is now, but hardcore fans who read the dirt sheets and those in the pro wrestling industry certainly knew in advance.

Also, regarding Heenan’s comment, I think people read too much into that one. I don’t think that he was “giving away” or “spoiling” the heel turn, even if he did know it was coming. I just think that he was saying what the Bobby Heenan character should have said in that position. He’d spent over ten years playing a character that constantly hated and distrusted Hogan, so it was only natural that he would have it in the back of his mind that the Hulkster could be out there to do the wrong thing.

Speaking of Bobby Heenan, Josh has a question about him:

Hey man wanted to get your opinion on something. Do you think there is any particular reason why when heel NWA guys came to the WWF they were paired with Bobby Heenan? Harley Race, Arn Anderson, Tully Blanchard, Ric Flair and to a lesser degree Lex Luger? Why does putting these guys with Heenan seem to make more sense then say Jimmy Hart or Sherri or Slick? Would the Brain Buster not have worked if they were managed by Jimmy Hart? Would Harley Race and Sherri not make sense? Years later Sherri would go on to manage Flair in WCW, why not in WWF? Was there a method to the madness or was it all just coincidental?

There were some exceptions such as Sherri being paired with Randy Savage and Slick managing the Twin Towers for a limited run on top but, by and large, Bobby Heenan was the guy who got to manage the main event acts in the company who had managers. Flair and Luger were put right at the top of the company, so it made sense to give them the Heenan rub, while the Brianbusters were almost immediately elevated to the status of top tag team.

I think that’s the effect that you’re seeing.

Cheynne McPeanuts, which I’m sure is a shoot name, has three unrelated questions:

1) Would you be able to explain to me exactly what level guys like Stunning Steve Austin, Cactus Jack, Jean-Paul Levesque and Mean Mark Callaway were while in WCW? I ask because I was not watching at these times and I know they were on TV, including Austin holding the US Title and Foley main eventing against Sting. Who would you compare these guys to nowadays? For example, was Austin like a McIntyre in that he held some titles and was involved with some big names, but his release wasn’t really cared much about by the fans and it’s not noticeable he’s gone…. or was he more like a Cesaro in that he had a pretty recognizable role in the midcard and upper midcard and the fans were upset that he was gone as I’m sure the fans would be if Cesaro would be released within the next few months?

It’s just interesting to me as people say things about TNA taking WWE “rejects” whereas probably the only big time home grown star of the Attitude Era, or perhaps ever, is The Rock. Or is there somebody else they could consider?

Oh boy, these are exactly the sorts of comparisons that could get me in trouble with the comment section, but, since you asked so nicely, I’ll try my hardest.

I would compare Cactus Jack’s WCW role to, somewhat appropriately, Bray Wyatt. I’m not talking about the similarities in speech patterns or body types between the two men. I’m talking about their positions on the card, as the question asks. These are both men who are booked as heels but have somewhat of a cult babyface following due to their mentally unbalanced gimmicks. They are wrestlers who are, for the most part, solidly in the upper midcard but are protected well enough that, when they need to be, they can be quickly elevated into a feud with the promotion’s top guy, like Wyatt was with John Cena and like Cactus was with Sting.

I see Stunning Steve Austin as an analogue to Dolph Ziggler. When the two guys first set foot into their respective companies, they were relatively inexperienced and not much to write home about. However, over time, they developed into very strong in-ring performers whose styles were built around taking big bumps for their babyface opponents. (Austin, at one point, had a group of fans who thought that he would be the next Ric Flair.) They gathered several secondary championships and looked poised to break through to the next level . . . but then it all fizzled out. In Austin’s case, it fizzled because the Hogan regime came in and pushed him down the card, while we’re still not entirely sure what caused WWE to give up on Dolph (his recent push headed into the Survivor Series notwithstanding). Of course, the difference between the two men is that, when Austin got phased out by WCW, he found another place to go and develop his career further. Ziggler doesn’t really have that same option.

Mean Mark Callous was sort of a Luke Harper. He was a big, imposing guy in a tag team for a period of time, and eventually they broke him off for a program that saw him fight over a secondary championship. The difference between Harper and Callous, though, is that Callous lost his title program and quickly left the promotion thereafter, whereas Harper won his championship and has no place to go.

Last but certainly not least, Jean Paul Levesque (or Terra Ryzing, if you prefer) was essentially Fandango, just without the Wrestlemania victory over Chris Jericho. Both guys are opening card wrestlers who have difficulty making it on to big shows and are just barely kept over the level of being total jobbers.

Regarding your last point, I think that there’s a big difference between the WWF being praised for picking up guys like Austin and HHH from WCW and repackaging them and TNA being criticised for booking themselves around WWE’s castoffs. In the case of the Fed, you were dealing with a promotion signing younger wrestlers whose careers were on the upswing and pushing them to the next level, turning them into consistent main eventers for the first time in their careers. In the case of TNA, more often than not you had the promotion signing WWE wrestlers who were past their primes (Booker T, The Dudley Boys, Kurt Angle, etc.) and trying to put them over like they were still hot acts. That’s why they were mocked relentlessly while WWF seemingly got off Scot free.

2) Is there any rhyme or reason behind placing the commentary tables at different locations during different time periods? Is there a reason the WWE table is near the ring where the WCW was toward the front? Was the Raw one only moved up front because Bischoff was in charge and they wanted to channel WCW or was there something more than that? Is there any interview or information from any of the commentators as to which they prefer or which is better?

Jim Ross mentioned during a recent podcast appearance that one of the reasons his announce table was put up by the stage during the period where Eric Bischoff was GM was because it meant that the announcers would have to have the (incredibly loud) pyro go off behind them, which some of the higher-ups backstage thought was hilarious. I’m not even kidding about this.

3) Why did Ken Shamrock never win the WWF Championship? I was a middle school kid during his run but I swear they were prepping him to be a main eventer given his KOTR win and several Intercontinental Titles, as well as a main event spot against HBK and his association with the Corporation and The Union. What happened with him? Did he have a bad attitude, did he want to leave to return to UFC and burn bridges, or was he just not as good as I remember him being?

He hurt his neck very badly in 1999, which essentially brought an end to his professional wrestling career before he could realize his full potential.

Prodigious comment section poster D2KVirus wonders whether TNA was ever capable of being saved:

With the news/rumours/speculation/whatever of Spike not renewing TNA’s contract, I thought now was as good a time as any to ask a question that’s always bugged me: back in 2003, when TNA were in their weekly PPV phase, they were making overtures towards bringing in Hulk Hogan and even shot that angle where Jarrett attacked Hogan at a New Japan show – only for Hogan to string TNA along as he waited for WWE to make an offer, and re-signed with them.

My question is, if Hogan agreed to appear in TNA, do you think this would have given the fledgling company the boost in publicity and the knock-on boost to their PPV numbers to give the company a more robust footing in those early days – or do you think, just like his 2009-13 run with the company, Hogan’s wage demands and insistence that his cronies be given spots in the company would have potentially crippled TNA financially without a TV deal for them to fall back on?

I don’t think that Hulk Hogan signing with TNA in 2003 would have helped the company in any appreciable way. I’m not saying that because I think that Hogan would’ve demanded too much money or because I think that the Hulkster would have been poison to the company from a creative or a political perspective. I’m saying that because running a PPV-only business model with no television to support it was the absolute dirt worst business model for a professional wrestling company in history, and nothing short of a miracle was going to make it work. If you don’t have a large, easily accessible platform with which to convince people to buy your wrestling PPV, people are not in any substantial numbers going to buy your wrestling PPV, as pretty much the entire run of TNA’s weekly pay shows demonstrated. The only thing that kept them alive through that era was financing by Panda Energy and the Carter family.

Conor Watson has a loaded question:

Why does everyone hate Tony Schiavone?

I don’t think that everybody hates Tony Schiavone. I hear that his mother quite likes him.

Seriously, though, I think that Schiavone having gone down in wrestling history as a joke is a shame. If you listen to the man for 90% of his professional wrestling career, he was a pretty damn good play-by-play guy. He wasn’t exactly Jim Ross, but, aside from Jim Ross, who is? Go listen to Tony call some classic Jim Crockett Promotions or even some early Monday Nitro, and you’ll have very little to complain about.

The problem is that, when WCW really started to tank towards the end, Schiavone worked to the level of the product that he was given. It was abundantly clear that he thought the show was shitty and couldn’t muster the false enthusiasm necessary to even begin to excite wrestling fans about the shitty show. Thus, he went from one of wrestling’s best announcers to one of its most grating and, unfortunately, this transition occurred probably at the point when he had more fans listening to him announce than at any prior point in his career.

Also, I think he suffers somewhat from the fact that WWE in its whitewashed history of the Monday Night War paints him as a bit of a bad guy for revealing Raw spoilers on air and knocking Mick Foley for his first championship victory, when, in reality, Tony was probably following a directive from on high there as opposed to going into business for himself.

And that will do it for this week. I’ll be back in seven days. Feel free to talk to me on the Twitter until then.