Kayfabe! – YouShoot with Teddy Long

KAYFABE!
YouShoot with Teddy Long

As far as YouShoots go, this is rather middle of the road. It’s not a train wreck like Jamie Dundee’s, and Teddy isn’t trying to be political as far getting back to the WWE, like Chyna and Kong. But, this definitely doesn’t have the entertainment value of either of the Cornette or Iron Sheik YouShoots. Teddy is comfortable in the setting, and well spoken, but, honestly, he didn’t get a ton of material to work with. Teddy doesn’t play any of the usual games, but he does play a couple of new ones. He gets a list of several of the most random personalities, both in and out of the business, and has to make a tag team match, since that was his specialty as Smackdown GM. And, being the dapper dresser he is, he gets to critique some photos of people in the business wearing some of the most hideous looking clothing you’ve ever seen. But, it’s a shame that the ‘Ho Bag and ‘What’s in the bag?’ were jettisoned

Probably the most interesting thing here is Teddy talking about his time as a ref in the WWF, specifically the incident in which he counted X-Pac down for three at the Royal Rumble, when he was going over Gangrel. Teddy’s defense is that the wrestlers are supposed to know when to kick out, and, if he tried doing something like intentionally slowing down, or saying he got up a shoulder when he didn’t, then Vince would have fired him for exposing things (note from Mike: that’s one thing that irritates me about big lucha matches, the ref’s always telegraph a near fall). That leads to a funny story when Tajiri really leveled Christian with a roundhouse and Christian stayed down even though he was supposed to go over. Teddy talks about his WWE character after he graduated from referee duty, and how the bulk of the character was his own stuff. All the famous catch phrases were things that Teddy actually says, the dance was something that he actually stole from his grandson.

But, on the whole, I just didn’t find the bulk of this to be all that interesting. For as long as a career he had, from Jim Crockett Promotions into WCW, and then fifteen years with the WWE, you’d think there would be tons of good and/or funny stories, but they just aren’t there, or, if they are, nobody asked about them. Only one of my submissions was used, and that was what the boys thought about Jason Hervy, since he would make a cameo every now and then in WCW, but, it doesn’t really go anywhere. He tells a couple of unflattering stories about Ric Flair, one of which involved Flair using the N-word when confronting him. There is one thing unique about Teddy though: he might be the only person that worked for WCW and didn’t hate Jim Herd *and* word for WWE and didn’t hate John Laurinaitis.

7.0

The final score: review Good

The 411

Again, this isn't bad, but it's not really all that interesting. It's disappointing, because this had a lot of promise, but it just doesn't live up to the hype.