Ask 411 Wrestling: Why Did Triple H Lose the WWE Title to Hulk Hogan in 2002?

Welcome guys, gals, and gender non-binary pals, to Ask 411 . . . the last surviving weekly column on 411 Wrestling.

I am your party host, Ryan Byers, and I am here to answer some of your burning inquiries about professional wrestling. If you have one of those queries searing a hole in your brain, feel free to send it along to me at [email protected]. Don’t be shy about shooting those over – the more, the merrier.

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Jeff is doing the Bird:

Shortly after Bret Hart won the WWE title for the first time, there was a match on one of the syndicated shows (I think it was Challenge because Gorilla and Heenan were commentators) between Money Inc. and High Energy. Partway through the match, Koko B. Ware injured his knee and was escorted away from the ring. But for whatever reason the match kept going, with Dibiase and IRS double-teaming Owen for a few minutes before Bret finally ran in to fend them off. The heels taunted Bret from outside the ring before the segment ended.

My question is whether this was meant to lead to anything, or if it did and I’ve forgotten it. Did Money Inc. and the Harts have a series of house show matches after this? Was it just an excuse for WWE to get their new champ on TV for a few minutes? What was the thinking behind this angle, if anything?

It appears to have just been a one-off as something for Bret to do on television that week.

The match in question was taped on January 26, 1993 in Fresno, California and did in fact air on Wrestling Challenge on or about February 21, 1993.

No real programs, be they house show or televised, came from the angle. If you look at results after February 21, High Energy was working on the house show circuit against the Headshrinkers. In fact, Koko B. Ware was gone from the company at the end of March, though he returned for a brief run in 1994. Meanwhile, Bret’s regular opponents at the time were Lex Luger and Bam Bam Bigelow. Plus, this happened during the build to Wrestlemania IX, so the Hitman would have been otherwise occupied with Yokozuna as far as televised angles are concerned.

It is possible that something else was in the works but we didn’t see it come to fruition due to injuries. Owen did blow out his knee in a singles match against Bigelow at the March 8, 1993 WWF Superstars taping, and he was sidelined for a couple of months after making one last house show match against the Headshrinkers in Ontario. On his return, High Energy was effectively done and he wrestled as a single, so maybe the team was ending one way or the other and the knee issue ended some plans for Owen and Bret. That’s just speculation on my part, though.

Stu in Liverpool is always kind and rewinds:

What’s the earliest footage of professional wrestling known to exist? And I know stations used to tape over old footage to save on film, but are there projects out there to locate missing footage?

By all accounts that I could find, the earliest known footage of professional wrestling is a thirty-eight second clip captured in Germany and entitled “Ringkampfer,” which was created in 1895 by brothers Max and Emil Skaldanowsky. Max and Emil were the inventors of one of the first film projectors in history, the Bioskop, and they shot Ringkampfer as part of of a larger collection of short subject films intended to show off their new technology.

The two wrestlers in Ringkampfer are identified as “Sandow” and “Greiner.” Some sources have stated Sandow is Eugen Sandow, one of the world’s first bodybuilders who also wrestled at points in his career. However, I also located a 2013 paper by film professor Luke Stadel entitled “Wrestling and Cinema 1892 – 1911,” and he makes a passing reference to Ringkampfer, stating that identification of one of the wrestlers as Eugen has been “discredited.” I’ve also seen Greiner’s first name listed as “John” in some places, though I’ve not seen that established through what I would consider a credible source.

Oh, and did I mention you can watch Ringkapfer online?

Here it is:

Regarding efforts to preserve wrestling footage, they’re out there, but they tend to be pretty small and fragmented, which makes sense given wrestling’s territorial history in the United States. Recently, two fans’ work to preserve Portland Wrestling footage taped off TV by Buddy Rose snagged some media attention, and that’s the best recent example that I’m aware of.

Donny from Allentown, PA wants to know who the guy in the American flag shirt is:

I was just wondering if there was any specific reason Lex Luger didn’t participate in a match in the 1994 King Of The Ring Pay Per View? Undertaker was still gone at that point, so Luger was the number two babyface in the company behind Bret Hart. It was strange that he didn’t have a match. My only possible guess is that they had something planned for him and Curt Henning?

I think that he was just the odd man out from a booking perspective. At the time, Luger was feuding with Crush, and on WWF television leading into the pay per view, they each cost each other tournament qualifying matches. Also, for those who may not remember, Lex was present for the KOTR PPV even though he didn’t have a match. He interfered in the Tag Team Title bout that saw the Headshrinkers defending against Crush and Yokozuna.

Looking at the rest of the card, I just don’t know where you would have Luger wrestle. Because of how he was being booked at the time, he shouldn’t have been in the tournament unless he was going to win it, and coronating Owen Hart as a contender to his brother Bret was a more important use of the tourney. It was premature to give Lex a WWF Title match, and other than that the only bouts on the card were the Tag Title match and the grudge match between Roddy Piper and Jerry Lawler.

There’s just not a spot where the guy fits in.

It is doubtful that they had anything planned with Mr. Perfect. It is true that the two had a dustup at Wrestlemania, but as I covered back in July, the post-Mania return for the Perfect one was initially delayed by an injury and then fell apart altogether due to disagreements over pay. They would have known he was a no-go well in advance of King of the Ring, which is why Luger’s program was transitioned to Crush both on television and on the house show circuit.

Also, though Luger may have been the number two regular babyface at the time, Roddy Piper as a part-timer was a bigger star than Luger at that point, particularly to WWF audiences, so the perception was probably that a Lex match wasn’t necessary with both Piper and Bret Hart wrestling on the card.

James is here on a technicality:

Has a wrestler from the WWE or WCW ever lost a televised match from count out by the referee for waiting too long on the top turnbuckle?

I couldn’t find a WWF or WCW example of this, but in Pro Wrestling Guerrilla on November 18, 2005, TJ Perkins (a.k.a. TJP) was counted out of the ring for spending too long on the top rope in a tag match that pitted him and Rocky Romero against two of PWG’s founders, Excalibur and Disco Machine.

Also, I think “Disco Machine” is one of the great underrated ring names.

Let’s get a participation trophy for Christopher:

Why haven’t any WWE shows been nominated for Emmys? Considering how successful RAW and Smackdown have been and how long they’ve been on the air (over 55 years total between the two shows), I would think they’d have a ton by now.

First off, WWE did receive its first-ever Emmy nomination in 2022 Their Peacock special “Woooooo! Becoming Ric Flair” was up for the Outstanding Long Documentary award at the 44th Sports Emmys in 2023. The doc did not win.

Why haven’t regular WWE shows been nominated for Emmys?

I think it’s a result of the fact that pro wrestling exists in the odd liminal space between sport and scripted television. It’s too “sport” for the regular television Emmys to touch and, until recently, it was too “scripted” for the sports Emmys to touch.

We will see if changing attitudes to wrestling result in more award nominations in the coming years.

Tyler from Winnipeg is changing faces:

Mask vs Title: Kane vs HHH, Raw is War, Kane should have won, thoughts?

I disagree.

Kane had been around for a while at this point and had been damaged a fair amount by the Katie Vick storyline, so he needed something to reboot his character. The unmasking and returning him to his roots as a horror movie villain (though with a bit of a twist on the original), were a solid way to do that. I was even fine with the part of the story in which we learned that he was mentally scarred as to being physically scarred.

That being said, the decision to put him up against Shane McMahon as his first feud was idiotic, and the booking of that feud to involve car crashes and car batteries to the nards was even more idiotic.

However, the error wasn’t unmasking Kane. The error was the feud he was put in after the unmasking. Give him almost any other initial rivalry and keep his violence more based in realism, and he could have had a solid run.

Joe is crossing the line:

One thing I’ve always wondered: How difficult/tedious is it for wrestlers to apply to wrestle in other countries (even with a clean record)? For example, if I was hired by WWE and they wanted me to go up to Canada, on a tour of 6 or 7 countries in Europe, maybe a month in Japan, and/or maybe down in Australia, is this a headache inducing mound of paperwork for everyone involved? Or does WWE just do some easypeasy forms that covers everything?

WWE is a multinational corporation and a major player in the live entertainment industry. They’ve got lawyers on lawyers on lawyers. Talent may have to sign some forms, but I have a had time believing that they have to put forth much effort at all when they’re getting ready to go overseas. Everything runs smoothly in the background for them, no doubt.

JonFW2 isn’t even drawing flies:

This question was inspired by the recent 411 article on Edge’s reaction to hearing about the “Greatest Wrestling Match Ever” line:

What’s your Mt. Rushmore of worst promotional ideas for matches in history? Not necessarily the match itself, but just the way it was specifically promoted.

In my mind, calling Edge versus Randy Orton the “Greatest Wrestling Match Ever” was a dumb, dumb idea, but I wouldn’t call it among the worst in history. To me, significantly worse promotional ideas are those that are actively gross or offensive, and pro wrestling has had plenty of those.

Without further ado, my top four are . . .

Atsushi Onita vs. Jose Gonzalez (FMW 1990): Also known as Invader #1, Gonzalez is the man who stabbed Bruiser Brody, resulting in Brody’s death. (Though it should be noted that he was acquitted at trial on self-defense grounds.) Just two years later, Gonzalez was set to go to Japan to feud with Atsushi Onita in Onita’s FMW promotion, culminating in a match at the company’s first anniversary show. Onita decided a great angle to build this match would be to fly to Puerto Rico and stage Gonzalez stabbing him in the chest. I hope I don’t have to explain why that’s a problem. There was immediate backlash, and the match never happened with Onita wrestling Mr. Pogo on the FMW anniversary show instead.

Hulk Hogan vs. Sgt. Slaughter (WWF 1991): Most readers are familiar with this one, involving Slaughter becoming an Iraqi sympathizer in the buildup to the first Gulf War. If you hear those associated with WWF creative at the time tell the story, they’ll say it began before the war started (which is true) and became more problematic when the war broke out (which is true). However, at that point in the story the WWF brass waves their hands and acts as though once they’d started they couldn’t possibly back out of it, when the reality is they could have reversed course at any time. Also, this is one where you can objectively say that a tasteless angle hurt business given the need to move the venue for Wrestlemania VII due to poor ticket sales.

Chris Kanyon vs. DDP (WCW 2000): This is one I’ve always personally hated but doesn’t get a lot of coverage by others who have discussed distasteful wrestling angles. David Arquette was WCW Champion going into the show (yup), and he defended the title against Dallas Page and Jeff Jarrett in a triple-decker cage match of the sort featured in the movie Ready to Rumble. Chris Kanyon and Mike Awesome ran out for a post-match angle, and it ended with Awesome chucking Kanyon off the cage and through the entrance ramp with the announcers selling it like a shoot injury angle. The problem? This was 2000, and the show was at the Kemper Area in Kansas City, where Owen Hart had fallen to his death just a year earlier. The whole thing felt like an effort to play off the Hart tragedy and left a sour taste in my mouth.

Triple H vs. Kane (WWE 2002): It’s the Katie Vick angle. So much ink has been spilled about this one. Heck, I’ve already mentioned it once in this column. You don’t need me to write more about it.

The Wise Mankey seeks to add to his wisdom:

If there’s one thing I constantly always go back to, it’s what was initially the start of Roman Reigns’ push when he won the Slammy for the 2014 Superstar of the Year. I always have and always will have trouble believing that this result was legitimate, as the other nominees included Brock Lesnar, John Cena, Daniel Bryan, Seth Rollins, Dean Ambrose, and Bray Wyatt. When we think about what everyone in the category accomplished in 2014, can ANYONE truly say that anything Roman Reigns did in 2014 outdid what all the other nominees managed to do that year to justify him and him alone to win that award?

According to PWInsider reports from the time, the 2014 Slammy voting was 100% legitimate.

So, there you go, he really won it, as unlikely as you think it may be.

Ross dresses for less:

I was thinking about the fallout from Wrestlemania X8, specifically how short Triple H’s title reign was after winning the championship (and the subsequent short title reigns that lasted the rest of the year). It seems like whoever wins the title at Mania usually holds it for at least a few months, but Triple H dropped it at the very next PPV to Hogan. Was that title change just a reaction to the huge face reception Hogan got at WMX8? The title got hotshotted around quite a bit that year in general (Hogan had it for a month, Taker had it for 2 months, Rock held it for a month). Was the plan always to pass the title around that year, or did circumstances arise that forced WWE to have title changes so often?

According to the April 29, 2002 edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, the decision to put the championship on Hogan at that year’s Backlash show was a last minute decision that was not finalized until the day of the show. Though there was an understanding that when he re-signed he would likely be turned face and win the championship at some point, the crowd reaction at Wrestlemania XVIII likely sped things up.

The issue goes on to say that virtually nobody knows what was to come next for the championship, because there was no long-term booking and Vince McMahon changed his mind regarding the company’s direction on a day-by-day basis.

That’s one of the things that I think people don’t realize when they write into this column and ask what “the plan” for a particular year title reign is. Oftentimes, especially when you’re talking about WWE from the 2000s onward, there isn’t a long-term plan. Though some promotions have booked that way, just as many have flown by the seats of their pants.

We’ll return in seven-ish days, and, as always, you can contribute your questions by emailing [email protected]. You can also leave questions in the comments below, but please note that I do not monitor the comments as closely as I do the email account, so emailing is the better way to get things answered.