wrestling / Columns

Ask 411 Wrestling: Why Didn’t Austin Fight Hogan at WM 18?

July 15, 2015 | Posted by Mathew Sforcina

Hello, and welcome back to Ask 411 Wrestling! I am your usual guy with a keyboard, Mathew Sforcina, and I’d like to thank Ryan Byers a great big bunch for doing his usual top shelf stuff filling in for me while I was off sleeping at normal human hours, which for me is unusual. Go follow him on the Twitter machines why don’t you.

I’m back in the saddle, so let’s get this off to the usual start. Got a question for me? Don’t post it in the comments, I don’t take questions there. No no, send it to [email protected], that’s the ticket!

You know what else is the ticket?

BANNER!

Although I must admit, I wouldn’t mind someone taking the Tri.Moon WCW Desire video’s champ roll call and making an alternate version of BANNER, just for balance and such, I’d alternate between the two.

Yep.

Zeldas!

Check out my Drabble blog, 1/10 of a Picture! I kept going on that, because I’m egotistical.

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Nothing this week, since I didn’t do last week’s. And man, that tag team one has been scaring me for weeks…

The Trivia Crown

Who am I? I share a link with Kane (directly), Homicide (indirectly), and The Big Show (with a 10 year gap between them). My first title came with a defeat over someone with a non-PG name, albeit a name with several WWE connections. I was the last person to hold a specific version of a title. One of my contracts came with a clause waiving the usual once every 30 day title defence rule. I won a title on the same night I changed my gimmick and name. I ‘retired’ an Englishman, I was managed by a shoot fighter and have a backstage role right now. A wrestler who tilts right, I am who?

Getting Down To All The Business

Ron is first because of course he is.

Back in the early 80’s (I know, I’m old…) I remember watching “Georgia Championship Wrestling” on TBS. Ric Flair was in the ring, and he may have been NWA champion at the time. At one point, he looked out to Gordon Solie at the announcer’s podium and asked if Gordon noticed his trunks were “Carolina blue.” Gordon then mentioned that Flair would, from that moment on, be introduced from Charlotte, NC.

One, can you narrow down my timeline any more than “early 80’s?” And B, where was he introduced as being from before this? I would guess Minnesota, since he also claimed to be related to the Andersons, and he grew up there in the first place, but where?

Annoyingly enough, searching for Ric Flair and Charlotte right now brings up a lot of false hits.

Anyway, after some searching, I found a Maple Leaf Wrestling flyer from 1980 where Flair is billed from St. Louis, MO. Apparently in a lot of Apter mags they continued to bill him as such for years. I was unable to find an explanation, nor the point where he switched over, but hey, maybe someone reading knows. I, sadly, don’t.

From a question I couldn’t answer to one that will have to wait to see if I’m right, Zach is up.

Who do you think will walk out of Battleground WWE World Champion? I wouldn’t mind seeing Sheamus but I think he cashes in at Summerslam. Brock shouldn’t walk out of Summerslam Champion unless he’s staying.

I don’t see Sheamus cashing in at all, to be honest. Nothing against Sheamus, but him cashing in seems like such a weird step. I think he’s in the same spot Damien Sandow is in, he won because they want to use him to transition the case to someone else. But like Sandow, they may not ever get round to doing the switch and thus he might have to cash in and lose or something. But I think at some point, Ambrose will challenge him and win the case in order to get just one more shot at Rollins/

As for who walks out as champ, Rollins. They tried the Lesnar as UFC style champ and it was a flaming disaster, and using him as a transitional champ is just… Weird. He MIGHT win at the Rumble if WWE seriously believes they can rerun Brock V Reigns at WM and this time it will work because reasons, but I think Rollins gets Brock DQed for excessive asskicking or wins by count out or threatens Heyman with bacon or something, something incredibly lame and cheap so he can crow about ‘beating the beast’ while we all know he’s a lying dick. Then you run Rollins/Brock 2 at Summerslam in a cage to prevent said lame cheapness. And then Brock loses when Cesaro pulls Rollins out, and you build to Brock/Cesaro at Survivor Series where they beat on each other for hours and we end wrestling because there’s nowhere but down from there.

Although the idea of Reigns winning the Rumble, challenging champ Brock at WM, only for Ambrose to cash in and pin Reigns to win the title this time round… That’s an intriguing, if totally insane idea…

I know it’s early but if you had to guess who do you think will win the Rumble next year?

As I said above, Reigns if WWE is truly suicidal. But I suspect it’ll be Cena, with Cena overcoming the odds one last big time to win the title, since Cena as US champ isn’t moving the needle, you give him one big last reign to match Flair, he drops the belt to Reigns/Owens/Whoever at the following Wrestlemania.

Mr. Popular gives me a chance to regain lost ground from Ron’s question.

Greatly enjoy your column each & every week!
I remember watching a wrestling movie on tv as a kid back in the late 80’s and it was probably filmed in the late 70’s or 80’s. It was about a heel wrestler, and I don’t remember much about the movie except that at the end, he’s fighting with the face in a steel cage match, they’re on top of the cage trading punches, and suddenly it’s a double turn where the fans are all cheering the heel now….I wish I had more info but do you have any idea what movie this is? Thanks,

I believe that the movie you’re talking about is ‘Mad Bull’, also known as ‘The Agressor’, a movie designed as a vehicle for the acting talents of former football player/professional wrestler Alex Karras, who was a few years into the acting business at this point of 1977. Alex played Mongo in Blazing Saddles if that helps.

Anyway, the plot, as from imdb…

An embittered professional wrestler, convinced that his life has no meaning outside the ring, meets a beautiful woman. Unlike most of the women he has known, she seems to be interested in him for himself rather than his fame or his money, and he finds himself becoming attracted to her.

And here’s the climax of the film, where the Mad Bull, heel, fights the White Knight, face, inside a steel cage, with a punch trade at the top of the cage.


… Still shot better than Raw these days.

Anyway, if that’s not it, I’d be surprised.

Adrian has a simple enough question.

Concerning Wrestlemania 18; why the heck did they book Austin vs. Hall and not Austin vs. Hogan ? I know they had the tag match before WM but I don’t think they were in the ring together. Was it simply a case of nobody wanting to do the Job at the biggest stage of them all ?

Depends on who you ask, and when you ask them, as the story has changed a bit. But the most recent comments on it come from Austin, when he was interviewed on the first edition of the Ross Report podcast, when JR asked him about Hogan, and if he regretted not doing a program with Hogan.

Austin stated he was ‘hard-headed as hell’ at the time, and wasn’t about to do a job to Hogan when word was Hogan wasn’t going to do the favor to anyone else. Hogan was open to the match, but Austin thought their styles would clash, that Hogan wasn’t up to his standard, and he didn’t take matches just for a paycheck. (Which is why we’re unlikely to ever get another match from Austin.)

He does praise the Rock/Hogan match, admits that if he wasn’t as hard headed they should have worked together, and that he respects Hogan for everything he’s done. But yeah, Austin refused the match, for various reasons that are understandable on some level.

Jason has a few interesting questions.

1. While many wrestlers do what they can to have just one high-profile storyline for their characters, in mere months, Kevin Owens has found himself in the middle of at least five different ongoing storylines:

1. “Who’s better” best-of-three series with John Cena
2. Destruction of a long friendship with Sami Zayn
3. “Did he or didn’t he” with Hideo Itami
4. “Who’s the bigger badass?” with Samoa Joe
5. #1 contender battle with Finn Balor
And if you want to get technical, you could make the argument for two more:
6. “Broadcast bullying” with Alex Riley
7. “Authority conflict” with William Regal

Has there ever been a wrestler in the last 30+ years to be featured prominently in so many simultaneous angles? Is there anybody else in wrestling history who even comes close to being involved in multiple angles at once with different opponents?

Triple H, early 2000.

1. Retiring Mick Foley
2. Fending off Big Show’s rematch
3. Dealing with The Rock
4. Taking on/hooking up with Vince
5. Taking on/Aligning with The Radicalz
6. Dealing with everyone as part of McMahon-Helmsley Regime

Then you can add in Jericho, Earl Hebner and TAKA if you want, depending on how you draw it. But the entire WWF in 2000 revolved around Triple H.

Think I’m wrong, or have a better one? Do let me know below.

2. Like many fans who learned of the untimely passing of Dusty Rhodes, it had me reflecting on his – and his son, Dustin’s – career. In December 1988, Dusty was involved in a TV incident where he had Road Warrior Animal violently drive a shoulderpad spike into his eye and draw blood despite TBS management’s strict no bloodletting policy; Dusty was fired by the end of the year. Little more than seven years later, his son, Dustin, bladed during a match with Blacktop Bully at Uncensored ’95 and was fired immediately after. With both incidents being so similar, was it ever made public if either – or both – were intentional to get out of their respective contracts? Or was it mere coincidence?

Neither of them were an attempt to be fired, and beyond the issue of blood being spilt and the people involved the connection is a little less simple.

In late 1988, Dusty Rhodes was booking WCW, and he and Jim Herd were not getting along. Dusty’s booking wasn’t sitting well with the higher ups, and Dusty didn’t like the interference from above, plus he and Flair are butting heads. Then in late November of that year, possibly after an incident with Jim Cornette bleeding, Dusty is told that TBS has come down and insisted on no blood.

Dusty immediately books the Road Warriors to stab him in the eye with a spike.

Now you can argue that this is serving the purpose of getting the Road Warriors over as heels, but to so blatantly ignore a ruling, and cause over 300 complaint phone calls to TBS, all for what was by most accounts just a play by Dusty to prove he’s his own man and all that, it spelt the end for Dusty. He stuck around long enough to pay off the angle and then got fired.

As for the Uncensored 95 thing, the Blacktop Bully/Dustin Rhodes feud had been going on for a while, with the Bully, Barry Darsow, playing an evil truck driver thing with Col. Rob Parker as his manager. This culminated with a King of the Road match with Dustin, with the winner being the first man to blow the truck horn.

Oh, and the match is in the back of a moving truck.

Anyway, the match, unedited, supposedly, was really good. But because there was blood, Dustin and Darsow were fired. Now there’s two possible explanations. The one Darsow used at the time was that it was all hardway.

But what appears to be the real reason is that the two men were encouraged to blade in the match by Mike Graham, who was the road agent for the match. Both in the usual sense and a more literal sense as he was the guy driving the truck. Graham also got fired out of it, since the No Blood rule was firmly in place, and ‘storytelling’ was no excuse.

So no, they weren’t plays to get fired, but in both cases a booker/agent tried to ignore a ruling from the higher up, out of either bull headedness or just wanting to tell a story their way.

3. You often hear about owners of territories – and some bookers with close family & friends on the roster – prominently featuring themselves or their family in main event storylines & title matches at the expense of the other, perhaps more-deserving talent. (owners: Verne Gagne in AWA, Jerry Lawler in Mid-Southern, Fritz Von Erich in World Class, Angelo Poffo in ICW; bookers: Bill Watts in WCW (Erik), Dusty in WCW (Dustin in his early years)). Who would you say is the most selfless owner or booker in wrestling history? The key qualifications for this question would be: the owner or head booker of a territory was either active or had family on the roster at the time, and didn’t often push themselves (or their family) at the mid-to-top of the card.

I feel there has to be something said in defence of wrestler booker/owners at this point, in that a lot of the time, when a wrestler is a booker, often times his self-push is one that you can argue with at one point, it just invariably goes too long. After all, to be a booker, you need to understand wrestling. And if you understand wrestling, then you should, theoretically, get wrestling and thus be a good wrestler. Dusty Rhodes could easily argue that he deserved a main event push in 86, it’s just he kept it going too long after that. Even without the ‘I know I ain’t leaving’ argument, you don’t get the chance to book unless you’re in the business a while, and thus you’re almost certainly a main eventer, and thus shouldn’t you be pushed as such?

Eddie Gilbert is often given as the answer for most selfless booker, as you couldn’t tell when he was or wasn’t booking in ECW, as his role was never enlarged too big while he was booking. He’s the default (American) answer to the question.

If you go back a bit further, Bob Geigel when he ran the NWA’s Central States region while also wrestling in the 60’s and 70’s, he was near the top of the card but he wasn’t that overpushed, plus his title reigns, though numerous, tended to be transitional ones.

But the answer is probably Hiroshi Hase, given that his reputation of being stunningly unselfish as a booker. Despite name recognition and talent, plus being part of the Japanese Government, dude would almost never give himself a big win, Hase is the gold standard of selfless bookers.

4. In late-1995, Undertaker was embroiled in a feud with King Mabel which ended with a hard-fought victory in a relatively lengthy casket match at that December’s In Your House PPV. I believe the next night on Raw, Diesel challenged Mabel and beat him in about 10 seconds. Was this a typical clique power play at the time? Did Diesel (or even Vince himself) have heat with Taker for jobbing Mabel out so convincingly to Diesel after Taker went through a six-month long feud (and a high profile PPV match) to score a victory?

The casket match was about 6 minutes, for the record. Hardly lengthy.

Anyway, it was nothing to do with Taker and everything to do with Mabel. Mabel was not working out at all as a main eventer, despite a few months of trying, plus he was injuring people leading to breaking Taker’s orbital bone. So after waiting until Taker came back and giving Taker his big win over the guy who injured him, in about as long a match as you could do on PPV back then as a payoff match, they then buried him by having Diesel give him the quick exit, with one last appearance at the 96 Rumble to fill out the numbers and then he was gone for a few years.

I wasn’t able to find any heat from Taker to Vince/Diesel, as he almost certainly understood that Mabel was on the way out, with his IYH match being his last hurrah/a way to squeeze whatever blood could be gotten from the large purple stone before it was tossed aside. Mabel was on the way out, and jobbing him in 30 seconds on PPV would have led to possible complaints, as the Ronda Rousey phenomenon didn’t exist yet.

Jon wants to take a stand for racial equality!

With the New Day/ PTP match at Battleground, I got to thinking: until this matchup of teams, has WWE ever had four black superstars in the same match for a title with no white wrestlers on a PPV before?

Almost certainly not since that’s such a specific set of circumstances, but let me check…

… Or actually, yes, yes they have. Summerslam 2012, Kofi Kingston and R-Truth, YOUR WWE Tag Team Champions, successfully defended the titles against… The Prime Time Players. So yes, WWE has had four black superstars in the same match for a title with no white superstars on a PPV before.

For the same titles as the ones on the line at Battleground. And with 3 out of the 4 men being the same guys. Probably.

You can all read way too much into this… Now!

Cam keeps us in the aesthetics.

I read and enjoyed your answer regarding KO’s look, and wanted to share something that came to mind about it and ask your opinion.

Are we in a “Main Street” era, regarding looks? We don’t talk about the genres of looks but they come in and go out of style as well. Rock and Wrestling? Better have colorful gear and tassels or bands of some variety. 90s? Dress in black (seriously: Hogan, Macho, Goldberg, Sting, Austin, Taker, Hart…).

Daniel Bryan became so over the idea of questioning what would traditionally be a ridiculous look never came up. But why would we question his look? The teen/college generation we currently have is known for its love of second-hand stores, acceptance of non-ideal body types is way up, and the grungy flannel is back (albeit on a smaller level). Why wouldn’t Bryan have the look?

And sure enough, look what’s working with the fans right now: Ambrose, Wyatt, Owens, and Bryan. Granted, these aren’t the only looks working but there is enough here to be able to say this look is having an impact. It is slightly dishevelled, perhaps a touch grungy. But more than that, it is authentic: it looks more like the audience and perhaps we should consider the idea that this is exactly why it is working. That doesn’t mean it will work forever, again these things go in and out of style like everything else, but maybe this is the moment we are in? It would help to explain an otherwise confusing landscape regarding why fans are choosing who they are. Would love to read your thoughts on this

With the exception of Wyatt, I think that the names you listed, and the current era in general, is less the acceptance of looking like us as it is the embracement of talent and ability over looks.

The internet has changed wrestling immensely, but we cannot ignore that it has also changed the world, and part of that change is a major, but not universal, rejection of slickness, of marketing, of glitz and glamour. Not that marketing no longer works, far from it, but today you have the slow food movement, stuff like Patreon, people want realness over flash, they want the steak not the sizzle. So if you apply that general philosophy, if you take the slow food/’hipster’ mentality to wrestling, what do you get? You get a desire to see people who may not look like a million bucks, but who are very good at what they do. Guys like Owens, Cesaro, Ambrose, all the NXT women who just debuted on Raw, Talent is now more highly prized than it used to be.

Plus you cannot ignore that the average fan is ‘smarter’ than they used to be. Yes, a lot of people just watch WWE and ignore all other wrestling, but the proportion of people who know about Owens’ career pre-WWE is higher than almost any other wrestling crowd not in a Bingo Hall in history. And with guys like that, if they were scruffy before, like Owens, we want them scruffy now. If they were showy before, like Balor, we want them showy now too, thank you.

Whereas with Wyatt, and with a lesser extent Ambrose, the look is more about fitting the character than tapping into some sort of movement. Wyatt has to dress like a swamp dweller, fits the character. If Wyatt debuted in the 80’s or in 20 years, he’d almost certainly look the same, or at least the equivalent.

Heck, he kinda did!

Anyway, I can see the argument that the real look is ‘in’, but I think it’s less that the look is popular as it is that the fanbase is now less concerned with the look provided you’re able to bring it in the ring. But sure, doesn’t hurt with making a connection to the fans like the new guys have to make, to look like us.
Raza asks why WWE doesn’t save a bit of cash.

What is the main reasons that WWE hold its weekly flagship program i,e Raw in a different city each week (same goes to Smack down and Nitro of WCW in past). Let say WWE buys/rents a large arena in vicinity near Stamford, Connecticut and hold Raw there weekly. By doing so they atleast might be able to do away their employees with all the logistics constraints. What’s the point in moving around when earnings through gate money and TV deals with Spike, TNN etc. are already secured?

Because TNA.

I mean, TNA did that, holding all their shows from the one location, and what quickly developed is that the audience became jaded and lazy, since it was the same people week in, week out. TNA had to do it for costs, since when they tried going on the road it bombed, but WWE is big enough that they can afford to go out to a new venue each week and get a crowd who will, in theory, be new and hot.

If you can draw a crowd and can afford it, you travel. Staying in one location is fine if you’re small, if you’re building your crowds up and keeping costs low, but for a company like WWE, holding their flagship in one location would be horrible.

But, I hear you cry, Raw used to do that! They used to run the Manhattan Center all the time! And that’s true, all the old Raws were in the one venue. But that’ the thing, that was back when Raw was small time, when it was just their new show that was there to be another cog in the wheel along with all the syndication and other shows. The minute Raw became important, it went on the road.

But, I hear you cry again, NXT is in one location! And yes, they are. Because NXT is like OVW and the like, a separate, small company, albeit one that is drawing above its weight. Thus, them being in one location is fine.

Raw has to be on the road. It’s too big to be in stuck in the one place.

Speaking of ECW, which we were, kinda, Rahil?

Was Tommy Dreamer supposed to be in the main event of Hardcore Heaven 2000, and what was the reason why he was not in the match which was believed to be a triple threat match (dreamer/credible/storm) ?????

The storyline version: The original announced match was the triple threat of ECW Champion Justin Credible V former partner Lance Storm V the guy Credible stole the belt from, Tommy Dreamer. But Credible threatened to toss the belt into the trash on Monday night if Dreamer (who Credible had already attacked earlier in the day) entered the match, and Heyman told Dreamer to leave.

The actual reason: I’ll just copy from the Observer here…

Even as late as the day of the show, the main event was being changed around again. The original main event was a three-way with new champ Justin Credible, his soon-to-be-departed tag team partner Lance Storm, and the former champ who held the belt for literally a few minutes, Tommy Dreamer. At one point during the day there were plans of turning the three-way into a four-way, with Raven, as a way to eliminate Dreamer to leave the Storm v Credible as the ending with Credible winning clean, which was the idea they wanted to get to. Technically the plan going in was for Storm and Credible to work together as a tag team to attack Dreamer, and take him out with stuff piledriver. Raven was to hit the ring for a hot comeback, but eventually also be double-teamed and stuff piledriven. Credible would pin Dreamer while Storm would pin Raven, and they would tease that they were still together as a team, but then Storm would attack Credible and the match would go on as a singles match. When Raven was pulled from the show, they changed the scenario because they didn’t want emphasis on Dreamer being pinned (with Raven being pinned at the same time, the emphasis on the Dreamer pin would be diluted), since he has to headline the next PPV against Credible, so they switched to where Dreamer never got into the match in the first place.

Storm was on the way out to WCW, so they wanted Credible to pin him regardless, but since ECW did elimination triple threat matches, and they didn’t want to have Dreamer get pinned, Heyman found a way around it.

Evil Jeff has a couple questions.

got another quick one for you – been watching some classic WCW PPVs on the Network ($9.99), specifically Beach Blast ’93.
Two questions come to mind:

1) WWE doesn’t own the right’s to WCW’s Slam Jam Album (hence the awful dubbed-over production themes)? I would have presumed they got that with the video and trademarks..?

They ran into legal trouble over them. The WCW Slam Jam album was composed by James Papa, a Texan songwriter/composer. He filed a lawsuit claiming that WWE was using his work without permission or consent, and that WWE had cheated him out of money by using a soundalike to ‘Badstreet USA’ on the Legends of Wrestlemania game.

WWE denied all wrongdoing as they maintained they had the rights since Papa had “consented to use” of his music in broadcasts of WCW and World Class Championship Wrestling material, that WWE would have the rights to use the material since they had acquired the copyrights to that material “lawfully”.

So when you watched it, they had replaced the music while they sorted the legal issues. The lawsuit was settled in May last year, and so since then they’ve reuploaded the videos, checking Beach Blast 93 now, Sting and Davey Boy come out to ‘Man Called Sting’.

2) What was the deal with the finish to Ric Flair vs Barry Windham NWA title match? It seemed really abrupt and subdued – did the ref jump the gun in counting a pinfall off a figure-4-leglock?

Ah, the Disney Tapings period, where title changes were known months in advance since TV had already been taped with said changes in place.

Anyway, yeah, the ending was botched, in that even though Windham was working with a bum knee, he was still going to keep going in the match, but he didn’t get his shoulders off the mat high enough for the ref, Randy Anderson’s, liking, the ref doing his job of counting a pinfall even if it’s not the finish. Certainly the match wasn’t going to go too much longer, and the figure four was almost certainly going to be the finish to explain the injury, but the ref either jumped the gun or counting a legit fall, or both.

But the celebration may have been subdued because of the finish, but Flair was very clearly putting the joy over since he was already filmed losing it to Rick Rude a few months prior…

And on that note, I bring this edition of Ask 411 Wrestling to a close. Always takes a couple editions to get back into the swing of things, so do come back next week, why don’t you…