Ask 411 Wrestling: Did Anyone Become a World Champion Faster Than Goldberg?

Welcome guys, gals, and gender non-binary pals.

Through Hel Stryer and brimstone . . . it’s Ask 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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Check out Jorge from Puerto Rico‘s classic car collection:

I remember the night after Owen Hart died Bret Hart was supposed to wrestle Kevin Nash at the Tonight Show. What was supposed to happen in that match? It seemed that Bret was on a path to a match with Goldberg and it being for the title would’ve made sense. Then again maybe Goldberg would’ve ended Bret’s career earlier.

You are correct, that match apparently was on the books to happen as part of the May 24, 1999 episode of The Tonight Show, following that evening’s episode of WCW Nitro.

According to the May 31, 1999 Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Bret Hart didn’t find out about his brother’s death for several hours until after it happened, because during the WWF Over the Edge pay per view he was on a plane flying from Ottawa to Los Angeles for the Tonight Show appearance, not having a cell phone available to him at the time.

The May 17 Observer reported that when Goldberg made a grandstand challenge to “Stone Cold” Steve Austin on the Tonight Show on February 19, 1999, the original hope by WCW was that they could get Austin and the WWF to agree to do something similar. However, when the WWF side didn’t bite, the idea morphed in to Goldberg and Bret Hart having a match on the Leno-hosted show. Then, it changed to Hart and Nash when Goldberg took a hiatus from WCW, in part to have a knee issue addressed and in part because he was upset with the company due to a lack of willingness to renegotiate his contract.

As for the planned match, there are not a ton of details, but the Observer did say that the bout would be held in a ring set up on the lot outside of where Jay Leno taped his show, and the whole thing would end in a schmozz when Nash and Randy Savage started double teaming Hart, only for Goldberg to make the save in what would have been his final angle before going out for the aforementioned knee surgery.

When the match had to be canceled due to Owen Hart’s passing and Bret’s consequent unavailability, it just never got rescheduled.

Bret is a pensioner:

Do the wrestlers get paid or any compensation for being inducted in the hall of fame? Also with Stephanie McMahon being inducted do you think Vince McMahon will ever be inducted in the hall of fame?

Yes, wrestlers get an appearance fee plus expenses covered for a WWE Hall of Fame induction. They are also typically signed to a Legends Contract, which allows for WWE to merchandise them and pays an annual fee which essentially operates as an advance on merchandising royalties.

As to Vince McMahon . . . it’s complicated.

Even if you put aside his current status with the company and the ongoing Janel Grant lawsuit, I’ve heard more than one person who knows Vince McMahon well say that he never would have approved his own hall of fame induction if he had any say in the matter. If that was his mentality when he was part of the promotion, I have a hard time believing he would come back for it having been ousted from the company.

Of course, Vince is closing in on 81 years old, so we may be looking at the possibility of a posthumous induction sooner rather than later. Will that happen?

That ultimately depends on what the current allegations and lawsuit do to his legacy. I have a hard time believing that anything will occur until the Grant lawsuit is resolved. After that is done, it is going to come down to money. Even if Grant eventually loses her suit and some believe McMahon to be “vindicated” as a result, the mere fact that these high profile allegations were made and they lead to Vinnie Mac’s ouster from the company means that there will always be somewhat of a cloud hanging over him, and those who believe the allegations to be true will always mount some degree of backlash to any HOF induction.

WWE and TKO are big business, and they’re savvy enough to know that backlash will be coming. The analysis will be whether the corporate brass feel that the money to be made as a result of Vince McMahon being inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame will outweigh negative financial consequences which may come from that backlash.

Blake is Ask 411’s rookie sensation:

From Goldberg’s first pro wrestling match to beating Hogan in the Georgia Dome was about a year. My question is, has anyone ever won a world title sooner after their pro wrestling debut?

Yes. There was one name that immediately came to my mind after reading this question:

Well, it’s the Big Show.

Or, more accurately, it’s the Giant. By most records Paul Wight had his first match on December 3, 1994, which was an indy bout in Clementon, New Jersey under his real name. Then, on October 29, 1995 in Detroit, Michigan, he walked out of Halloween Havoc as the WCW World Heavyweight Champion, though it was in a screwy match in which the title was allowed to change hands on a disqualification and he was stripped of the belt the next week.

In total, 330 days elapsed between Wight’s first-ever match and his World Title win, whereas Goldberg had 378 days between those two accomplishments.

Another name to consider is Salman Hashimikov, a decorated freestyle wrestler from the Soviet Union who was later brought into professional wrestling by Antonio Inoki, who always favored pro grapplers with legitimate backgrounds. Hashimikov’s first pro match was on February 22, 1989, and he won the IWGP Heavyweight Title on May 25 of the same year, defeating Vader in Osaka. That’s just 92 days between debut and world title victory.

If we are in a world where we are now considering top women’s championships equivalent to top men’s championships, you have to include Ronda Rousey in the conversation. Her first pro wrestling match was at Wrestlemania XXXIV on April 8, 2018, and she became WWE Raw Women’s Champion (which out of context sounds really gross) after 133 days, namely on August 19, 2018 at that year’s Summerslam.

There are also a group of guys who I would call the “gimmick” champions, world title holders who were never portrayed as serious wrestlers. In that class, Vince McMahon, Vince Russo, and David Arquette all won world titles within a year of their first matches. In fact, David Arquette’s WCW World Heavyweight Title reign began the day after his first professional wrestling match, as he beat Eric Bischoff on Nitro and then won the WCW Title in a tag match at a Thunder taping 24 hours later.

Nick has me trapped in his keylock:

Why did Daniel Puder disappear from the WWE after winning “Tough Enough”? It seemed they had big plans for him after winning the competition.

Prior to Tough Enough, Puder had little to no professional wrestling experience, so he wasn’t ready to be on television in any significant capacity. This meant that he had to be sent to developmental to learn the trade before getting integrated into the main roster, as had happened with most Tough Enough winners before him.

Unfortunately, after that, there were money issues. According to Issue Number 534 of the Figure Four Weekly newsletter, WWE had advertised that the winner of Puder’s cycle of Tough Enough would win a $1 million prize. However, if you looked at what was told to the competitors once they signed up, the “$1 million” was a four-year WWE contract with a pay rate of $250,000.00 per year. Only the first year was guaranteed, though, meaning the company was free to cut him after year number one.

. . . and that’s exactly what they decided to do. The powers that be in WWE decided that they didn’t want to pay that much money to somebody who was just learning to wrestle in Ohio Valley as opposed to being a star on Raw or Smackdown, so they let him go. He was offered a standard developmental deal in place of his Tough Enough contract, but the pay there was $750 per week, which works out to $39,000.00 per year or an 85% pay cut.

I don’t know if your boss has ever suggested reducing your pay by 85%, but I’m guessing that, if they did, you wouldn’t be working for them much longer either.

Marc is going home:

How do professional wrestlers come up with their finishing move? Is it something that is left up to them, or does management assign them one?

There is no hard and fast rule. It happens on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes, a wrestler will pick their finish when they are on the indy scene or in training where there is very little oversight from any “management,” and it will just follow them throughout their career. Other times, for character or other reasons, a booker, agent, or creative team will help develop the finisher as an aspect of a wrestler’s overall persona.

If you look at somebody like Mark Briscoe, no wrestling executive ever went to him and said, “Hey, you’re going to use a DVD variant as a finisher and we’re going to call it the Cutthroat Driver.” It’s just something that he came up with on his own early in his career, and it has stayed with him for over twenty years now.

In other instances, a finisher is more tied to the development of a wrestler’s character by a company. For example, when Mick Foley first went to the WWF, he began portraying Mankind, which was a gimmick created by the company as opposed to by him as a performer. Multiple people have said in shoot interviews that there was a need to come up with a finisher that fit the new character, and Jim Cornette (part of the WWF writing team at the time) delved into his vast knowledge of pro wrestling history to suggest the mandible claw, which had originally been used by doctor-turned-wrestler Sam Sheppard in the 1960s.

Tyler from Winnipeg is having a meteoric rise:

Brock vs. Rock at SummerSlam, where does it rank in Lesnar’s all time matches?

I would put it in the middle of the pack. At that time, Lensar was still relatively early in his career and, though he was light years beyond where a lot of wrestlers are with the same level of experience, he was also not where he would be several years after the fact. Though it remains one of the single most important moments of his career, I wouldn’t say the Summerslam match is near the top of the list for best matches.

Big Al chartered a helicopter to be here:

When Lex Luger “slammed” Yokozuna on the U.S.S. Inteprid in 1993 what would have happened if Lex was unable to slam him (more of a hip toss). Would Lex still have become the patriotic character that he did?

There was no risk of Luger not being able to slam Yokozuna, because Yokozuna was 100% cooperating with the spot. If you go back and watch the video, he’s got his first leg up off the ground to feed into the “slam” before Luger ever makes physical contact with him. Then, he pushes off with the other, and as soon as his body gets horizontal, he just falls into a flat-back bump.

I’m not saying that the Total Package had no role in the maneuver, but there was a negligibly low chance that the slam wasn’t going to be able to happen.

Bryan is rummaging through the cabinet:

A few months ago, HHH was chosen by the U.S. President to be the spokesman for physical fitness and was mocked because he had lost his physique due to no longer being chemically enhanced.

This made me wonder: Wouldn’t DDP be the best guy in the wrestling business to encourage people to exercise? I have no idea what Page’s politics are, but at 70 he looks unreal and he’s just so, for lack of better word, positive that he’d be perfect. Regardless of political leanings, exercise should be encouraged

So do you think Page would be the best guy to convince Americans to exercise?

Yes, Page is a great motivator who has helped many people get a better lease on their lives.

However, he’s not the guy I would chose from the wrestling world to head up the President’s Council on Physical Fitness. One of the main reasons I wouldn’t make that selection is that, try as I might, I am not the President of the United States.

Even if I were, Page still wouldn’t be my pick, because a spokesperson position like this isn’t 100% about merit or qualification. It’s largely about celebrity and choosing someone who will get as many eyes on the initiative as possible. In that regard, Triple H is miles ahead of DDP, because Page, though a major wrestling star at one time, hasn’t been at that level for almost 30 years now. Trips was a significant on screen character in the wrestling world much more recently and still has some cache as a high level executive for WWE and part of the corporation’s public face.

With the job being more about fame than anybody else, the best person from the wrestling world to have the gig would probably be a Rock or a John Cena, if they’d do it.

Jase wants you to meet his buddy:

What do you think was the best storyline involving a tag team?

It’s the Rock n’ Roll Express versus the Midnight Express.

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.