Ask 411 Wrestling 11.12.08: Out of Funny Subtitles Edition

Greetings, humanity! Welcome back to Ask 411 Wrestling with me, Chris Lansdell. Are we all having a good week? I’m thoroughly rested after a day off (love those Canadian holidays) and completely ready to talk wrestling trivia. This week’s shout-outs go to Ramon Aranda, coffee and inspirational notes on Facebook. Our musical accompaniment is Money for Nothing by Dire Straits. And this is a

BANNER!

Banner compliments of Benjamin Colon. See more of his work at soulexodus.com.

Cleaning Up

Regarding wrestlers in MMA: I have very little doubt that the people ridiculing my choices are bigger MMA fans than wrestling fans. I am the opposite, I’ve hardly seen any MMA. However, Low-Ki is a legit hard striker who has a ground game. Punk has a legit jiu-jitsu background. Danielson is a superb mat wrestler and also strikes hard. People like Benjamin and Haas are good on the mat but they don’t have the extra dimension the others have. Would they be champions in MMA? Doubtful, especially in UFC. But they wouldn’t embarrass themselves like, say, Triple H would.

Regarding Owen staying with WWE after Montreal: Vince did tell Bret he’d sue him (Bret) if he tried to talk Owen into leaving, but that doesn’t say anything about Owen deciding what to do on his own.

Regarding what I should read: I’ve read the Riftwar Saga, or parts of it, and I may have to re-read it. I’d love to catch up with the Star Wars books, the last one I read was where Anakin died, but I can’t be bothered looking up the chronology. Research on the internet is not so much fun after writing this column…

In Soviet Russia, 411 Ask You!

To the person who thinks the questions are too ambiguous: that’s the point. Straight trivia questions have been killed by Google and the internet in general, so if I want any chance at stumping you guys I have to go with multi-layered ambiguous clues that would be almost impossible to google.

Last week’s answer was, in fact, Maven. He fought HHH on Heat in a non-title match that was actually very good as HHH bumped his ass off for the youngster. He eliminated Undertaker from the Royal Rumble (certainly shocking, he was a nobody at the time), then got the tar beaten out of him (including getting his head rammed through a popcorn machine) without going over the top and being eliminated. As a result he got a title shot on Raw two weeks later, which he won in the Rumble. He also had a title shot against HHH as a result of the Team Orton victory at Survivor Series.

Another Who Am I question this week:

I’ve appeared on WCW and WWE programming. I’m a former champion in WWE who was involved with an obnoxious heel character for most of my run, but in WCW I was mostly comedy relief. I was involved in a group in WCW with several others that would go on to compete and appear in WWE, and one who would appear in TNA. I’ve also performed extensively in Japan under a typical Japanese wrestling name. Who am I?

Oh I got you guys this week. Right, ready for some questions? Then Let’s Get DANGEROUS~!

Question Time!

Matthew is looking for the identity of a guy…

Who was that guy in a tank top in the front row of EVERY SINGLE WWF pay-per-view in the early and mid 90’s? Did he like win the lottery or something? (that’s what I’d do if I won the lottery)

Wow. I simply don’t know. I ran through the list of known superfans (Hulk Hogan guy, Tie Dye Guy, Green Lantern Fan, Hat Guy, Sign Guy) but none of them fit this description. My DVD collection is a little thin on 90s PPVs and I do not own a working VCR (does anyone?). Anybody?

Chris, whose parents obviously have great taste in names, wants to know about stiffers. It’s the 21st century, we don’t judge.

In my opinion, you’re doing very well taking over the reigns for this column.

1. Are there any stiffers left in the WWE today? if so, who’s the most reckless and who’s at the top of the ladder?

*checks news section for releases* OK, there are a couple still around. Hardcore Holly is still on the roster, as are JBL, Finlay and Regal. Holly and Regal were the guys who were normally used to punish people who got ahead of themselves, but obviously with Holly being in rehab that’s not happening right now. None of these guys really qualifies as reckless, I presume you mean unintentionally stiff and reckless? I’ve heard that Mike Knox was sent back to developmental partly because he needed to work on pulling his shots, which is why he worked with Finlay as soon as he came back up, and there hasn’t been any recent news regarding other careless talent.

2. I heard Vinnie Mac has beef with Vader. IDK why he would though, cause the only complaint about the guy i know of is that he stiffs and he doesn’t wash his wrestling gear. why would he have beef with VKM?

Vader fell. At the end of October 2005, Coach announced that Golddust and Vader would be in his corner the next night at Taboo Tuesday. After performing a beatdown on Batista, the three heels made a quick retreat…at which point Vader slipped on the mats at ringside and fell on his amply-cushioned rump. He swore rather loudly and had to be helped up by Coach, Golddust and a forklift, drawing much laughter from the live crowd. After taking a spinebuster from Batista (subbing for Austin) at Taboo Tuesday, Vader has not been contacted by Vince since. Monster heels being helped up by comedy acts and laughed at by fans don’t really work.

3. I noticed that those who filled as colour commentator in the WWE, whether it was either Jerry Lawler, Paul E., or Tazz! they were all Heel at a point in time. and i found it entertaining that they sided with the bad guy more than be neutral. why do they have to be neutral and cant sometimes side with the villain?

All the best colour commentators have been heels for the majority of their careers. I think you would be hard-pressed to find anyone who DIDN’T prefer the heel colour/face PBP dynamic, but like many other things it’s been stopped to satisfy Vince’s desire to make the product more realistic. Real people don’t always side with the bad guy, so the announcers cannot always side with the bad guy.

Dan is going to rile up the Comments section.

Are there any plans for Christopher Daniels to go back to his Fallen Angel gimmick? So far as Curry Man he’s been over with the crowd but booked to lose most times he wrestles. Daniels has the talent to be more than a side show and I think it’s a shame that he gets pushed nowhere. He was a staple of the X division and with the right booking and with his old gimmick he and other could make the X Division mean something again.

Before I saw the push that Eric Young is getting without his mask, I would have said no. Now I’m pretty sure it’s coming soon. TNA seems to be undergoing a rather serious shift in tone, with all the cartoony stuff being dumped in favour of the Main Event Mafia story. Eric has already changed, we haven’t seen Shark Boy and the return of Daniels would seem to be the best bet. Whether they unmask him on-screen or bring him back without mention of Curry Man (the announcers haven’t mentioned Super Eric) remains to be seen. The only stumbling block I see is that the Young Lions have Young, Creed, Lethal and Petey as X-Division guys, and I think Daniels is above them. Perhaps they tag him up with someone (NOT AJ again, as awesome as they were AJ needs to stay in the main event) and let them go after the Guns?

Todd is questioning the greatest moment in the history of shoot interviews:

What caused Iron Sheik’s long-standing beef with B Brian Blair?

In the event that there are still some people who don’t know where this beef is mentioned, I present to you the greatest shoot interview segment ever:

That never gets old. Ever. Anyway, the reason for old Sheiky Baby’s tirade is twofold. First, and most important, Sheik saw Blair as a Hogan stooge and had no time for him. As you may be able to surmise from his comments about B Brian Blair’s partner Jim Brunzell, who trained under Verne Gagne with  Sheik in Minnesota,  Sheik resPACK the wrestler who come up through the ranks the old (country) way: hard training, paying dues and hard work. He perceived Blair as only being in WWF because of Hogan, who himself only got where he was because of his physique and charisma. The second issue, which may well have a lot to do with the first, is Sheik’s perception of Blair’s sexual preferences, warranted or not. This is visible throughout the video above. Of course, there are some who believe that all these Sheik rants are a work and that he does it to stay relevant. This being the Internet, you can find someone who will believe anything.

Our friend jack the ripper is back with three questions:

1. Are some wrestlers made at to be mid carders for life? I look at guys like Mr. Perfect, Razor Ramon, Rick Rude and Roddy Piper. I know they’re old wrestlers but it seems in WWE they all held IC belts and in WCW the U.S. Title but never the World Titles.

Excellent question, although it bears pointing out that Rude was a world champion in WCW at one point. All the guys you mentioned, with the exception of Razor Ramon, had the tremendous misfortune of being very talented, very over guys in the Hogan era. If you weren’t a monster or Hogan for the vast majority of that time, you weren’t getting near the belt. You can add Ted DiBiase and possibly Jake the Snake Roberts to that list as well, although Ted was a tag champ and had some title shots, as did Mr Perfect. Razor was just getting pushed to the world title when he left with Nash for WCW. He did have a shot against Bret Hart before leaving, but once in WCW he was way down the pecking order. I don’t believe any of these guys were made to be midcarders, but they were forced there due to circumstances, not for want of ability. The are some guys who DO fit that mould however. A perfect example is Dean Malenko – buckets of talent, but not enough charisma or size to ever go higher than the middle of the card.

2.Why does TNA get so much heat for signing old WWE stars? Seems like some become better utilized. I think of guys like Raven, Rhino and Christian who all were former TNA Champs yet in WWE none came close.

TNA gets heat not for signing former WWE guys, but for constantly putting them over the established, popular “home-grown” talent like Samoa Joe, AJ Styles and company. Bringing in people with name value is actually a great idea since people might tune in to see this guy they enjoyed in WWE, but when that guy wins the title almost immediately (especially if they were never on that level in WWE) and without fail, it makes TNA look second-rate. Neither Rhyno nor Raven was ever near the world belt in WWE, yet they won them very soon after coming to TNA. Christian was on the cusp of greatness, and Angle was already there, so they get passes. Regardless of what the IWC think of their skills (and frankly, I never bought Raven or Rhyno as champ material), the majority of wrestling fans only see them the way that Vince portrayed them.

>3.What’s up with John Morrison’s push? The dude is awesome and while I like him tagging with Miz I think he should be getting in the main event or at least upper U.S. title level. Any reason why or shall I use the common phrase “Who did he piss off?”

It’s more like what did he piss out. Morrison’s push died with the Signature Pharmacy scandal when he lost his ECW title to CM Punk (ALL HAIL!) before being suspended. Since coming back he has remained over and his team with Miz is one of the best things on WWE TV right now, so breaking it up would serve no real purpose.

Just Adam tries to do what many others have managed to do, that is stump me.

Let’s see if i can stump you here, cuz i sure as hell am…

When exactly did the Big Gold Belt make its début? I know Flair was the first to hold the belt, but was it during his first or second reign? Was it at the beginning of one of those reigns, a la the Spinner Belt for Cena? Was its début at any particular pay per view or was it a more out of the blue switch from the Gold Dome to Big Goldy?

Big Goldy débuted February 22, 1986. Ric Flair kayfabe introduced it to demonstrate his style and flamboyance, but in reality it was introduced because the NWA felt the dome-globe belt was old hat. According to officially recognised title reigns that would put it in Flair’s fourth, but if you include the Midnight Rider, Jack Veneno, Victor Jovica and Carlos Colon it’s more like his eighth.

Josh has a couple of questions:

1. Are there or has there even been wrestling groupies? I’ve never heard of any, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were.

My goodness yes. The old territories were FILLED with mat hags. I remember talking to Sailor White (former Moondog) a few years ago and he told me of one woman in particular who kept a record of each one she slept with in a notebook. According to him, his name was between Leo Burke and Dr D. The sluts looking to bang wrestlers phenomenon has cooled a bit but there are still groupies, mainly for indie feds, who will follow their favourite promotion everywhere. At the RoH show in Toronto I met people who had been to every show east of Dayton in the past 5 years, and quite a few west of that as well. Oh, to have that sort of time and money…

2. What is CM Punk’s thing with Pepsi?

Umm…he really, really likes it? It could be worse, one of my predecessors on this column is addicted to Mountain Dew. Basically he got the tattoo as a joke because a lot of his buddies were getting beer tattoos, and of course Punk does not drink. If you ask him, he’ll tell you “I like Pepsi.” If he’s not in a bad mood.

411mania’s own Ty Huston is asking about Billy’s long-lost brother:

Hey Lansdell, keep up the good work with Ask411. It is definitely a workload. Anyway, here’s my questions:

Just got done watching Halloween Havoc ’92 on WWE 24/7, and I got a pretty big laugh out of the opening match. It featured Arn Anderson, Bobby Eaton and Michael “P.S.” Hayes against Tom Zenk, Shane Douglas and Johnny Gunn. What the hell happened to Johnny Gunn? The guy had a good look but sucked in the ring, and even though he was billed from Philadelphia (where the PPV was taking place), he got booed to all hell when he pinned Hayes with the Thesz Press. Well, that’s what Jim Ross called it. It looked more like Gunn was dry humping him into submission. In case anyone else wants to catch the show, this is also the infamous Havoc where Sting fought Jake “The Snake” Roberts in the “Spin The Wheel, Make The Deal” match. It amuses me that it turned out to be the single worst gimmick match on the wheel, even beating out the “Prince of Darkness Match,” which we know is simply a blindfold match.

Where do you guys come UP with this stuff? I actually know the answer to this without looking it up. Zenk and Gunn were a regular tag team in WCW before he went to ECW and won the ECW tag titles with Tommy Dreamer. You might have seen more of him in WWF as Salvatore Sincere and then Tom Brandi, which were probably his best-known gimmicks. Brandi bought the Patriot gimmick from Del Wilkes and as recently as March was using it on the US Indy scene. I’d rather not think about him dry humping Hayes, and I mean that…sincerely.

Garyhas three questions, none of which pertain to the airspeed velocity of a swallow. More’s the pity.

I have 3 questions. One is what is with McMahon’s thing about dropping the “Jr.” off the names? Guys like Ted DiBiase, Chavo Guerrero and Rey Mysterio all had “Jr.” at the end of their names before they debuted for WWE and but Vince always drops them .Does he think it makes the guys wusses or something?

The “junior” does carry with it a connotation of youth an inexperience, of being second-rate and unoriginal. Of course Roy Jones Jr and countless others would beg to differ, but in this case the guys are all following their ancestors into the business. You’ll notice that when Chavo’s father had his run a couple of years ago, they called him Chavo Sr instead of calling his son Chavo Jr. Just another case of Vince thinking that wrestling fans, sorry the WWE Universe is too dumb to judge someone on anything other than first impressions.

Second, I’ve heard from a lot of my friends who’s been to TNA shows and they all say the same thing, “Alex Shelley is a prick. One I talked to said he’s TNA’s version of Kenny Dykstra backstage. Ouch. What have you heard about his rep?

I have not heard that, but then I haven’t been to a TNA show. I don’t see how someone who went to a TNA show would know what Alex is like backstage. Shelley and Sabin had been in the doghouse with TNA for a while because of their attitude, but seem to be out of that now. Has anyone met Alex and can confirm or deny this?

And the other has to do with The Undertaker. Now we all know how Vince likes to keep him in the kayfabe mode out of the ring (like at the HOF ceremonies and how he’s not allowed to go to them or other out of the ring events to ruin his gimmick) so I was curious to know how you think they’re gonna pull it off when he gets inducted in the HOF and he has to do his speech? Will he be “normal? “I’m curious to see how they do it.

It all depends on when he gets inducted. If they wait until he’s retired, he’ll be out of character I’d presume. If they do it while he’s still active, like before Mania this year, then it could be tricky. Frankly I don’t think anyone else will be inducted while active, that honour was given to Ric Flair and nobody else today deserves it, although Taker and Michaels come closest. If I’m wrong (it has happened), I still can’t see him accepting the honour in full black garb with the spooky voice. They could solve the whole thing by making him BikerTaker again, but I’m not that lucky.

As an aside, it’s not Vince who mandates that Taker maintain kayfabe. They both agree it’s in the best interests of what has become the most enduring character in wrestling.

Rex wants to know about the US Indy hierarchy:

I’m not in the US and we don’t get anything here but WWE and TNA. I know about some of the others from reading this site, mostly Dunn’s reviews and sometimes yours, you need to do more! Anyway, is Ring of Honor any good? Aside from them, who’s big? Do indy guys work for lots of promotions? Lastly, what indy guys would be good in WWE?

Ring of Honor is very good if you like wrestling. If you like sports entertainment, it’s not good. They recently changed bookers (as I’m sure you know if you read the site) so it remains to be seen what will happen with the company from here on in. Other big indy feds are CHIKARA, PWG, SHIMMER and I suppose IWA-MS. Recently RoH has signed some of its top performers to contracts as opposed to paying per appearance, but they generally only prevent talent from performing for TNA or WWE. Most of the top names appear for the three big indies (RoH, PWG and CHIKARA).

There are very few indy guys that I can see succeeding in WWE. Nigel McGuinness, Claudio Castagnoli, Brodie Lee, Chris Hero and possibly Tyler Black and Kenny Omega are at the top of that list. Many indy fans will now scream at me for omitting Bryan Danielson, Austin Aries, the Briscoes and the like, but their style and look will not fit with Vince’s preferences.

Another Chris wants to talk about the venue change for Mania VII. I swear none of these questions are coming from me.

It is widely accepted in the IWC that the then-WWF moved Wrestlemania VII from Memorial Coliseum to the smaller Sports Arena because of low ticket sales and not for fear of a sniper attack as was reported at the time. Do you think this was the case? If I remember correctly, Wrestlemania VII had a larger PPV audience than any other Wrestlemania up till that point, including ‘Mania III. It seems unlikely that such a buzz wouldn’t translate to ticket sales. But even assuming that the WWF was unable to sell out the Coliseum, would it really be worth it to change locations? They had already sold 40-50,000 tickets when the change was made, which far exceeds the capacity of the Sports Arena, meaning they had to turn away and refund tens of thousands of fans. They also had to do away with all ads for the Coliseum and re-advertise for the Arena. Seems like a lot of time, money and expense just to avoid a few empty seats, no?

The Coliseum holds between 97 and 100 THOUSAND for wrestling. Had they managed to fill the stadium they would have shattered all sorts of records. The attendance at the Arena was 16,158 which was a sell-out. You rightly pointed out that switching venues would have been expensive, but running WrestleMania in an arena that was less than half full would have been both expensive (costs more to rent and run the Coliseum) and disastrous from a marketing standpoint. If they had only sold 85,000 they might have sucked it up and papered a few, but as it stood they really had no choice. IF the numbers are correct.

With that said, I have no reason to doubt the official story of a security threat. The USA has produced some extremely zealous patriots, moreso than most countries, and they are rarely more zealous than when they are confronted with one of their own who supports the evil foreigners. Slaughter was playing an Iraqi sympathiser at this point and has confirmed on numerous occasions (and not always when talking about Mania VII) that he was getting death threats. It’s a lot harder to carry out these threats in an indoor arena. Both stories are plausible, and I personally believe it’s a combination of both that lead to the change.

Geoff has an AWESOME question:

I was wandering through the wrestlecrap site the other day, and it got me thinking about the world of jobbers. I know jobbers have fallen out of fashion since the early 90’s, but before then was there ever a jobber who successfully made their way up to the main event. I know the WWF attempted to break a few jobbers into the midcard, particularly Steve “the Brooklyn Brawler” Lombardi and Terry “the Red Rooster” Taylor, but did anyone successfully go from jobber to main event without changing companies or radically changing gimmicks? (I’m thinking the Hardy Boys with that one).

It’s a tough one to answer because jobbers didn’t tend to have gimmicks when they still existed, making it hard to meet your restriction. Take John Cena, who débuted against Kurt Angle as a vanilla guy and only got a gimmick after dressing as Vanilla Ice for Halloween. The Hardy Boyz didn’t have a gimmick when they first started as jobbers, but Jeff at least has kept the same “emo grunge rocker” gimmick throughout, despite changing companies. The changing of gimmicks is virtually essential if you want to push a former jobber, because you have to reinvent the person in the eyes of the fans. Not many wrestling fans today will remember that JBL was Justin “Hawk” Bradshaw, for example. The closest I can get is Sean Waltman’s initial WWF run, when he got a title shot against Bret Hart as the 1-2-3 Kid.

The Way I C It…

Ben is looking for some fantasy booking:

I have seen postings already that have stated the obvious. WWE needing to sign Karen Angle. My question is does the potential for this “angle-wise” seem as huge to you as it does to me? I mean, imagine a stalking or “sexual assault” angle practically daring Kurt to respond?

No, I can’t see it at all. Karen Angle would bring nothing to the WWE product. She hasn’t wrestled, she’s not that good in interview segments, and there is no way Vince will want to bring in anyone who will cause fans to think of Kurt. In the days of competition this would have been a gritty move that could have toed the work-shoot line, but today’s Vince is more interested in entertainment and less in burying other companies. I hope they don’t try and sign Karen.

Well boys and girls, that’s the column this week. This is the part where I tell you that Bayani, someone pretending to be Small and the Fact or Fiction guys are in tomorrow. Stay Cool, Rock Hard.

Lansdellicious – Out.