Ask 411 Wrestling: Were Chyna and Sable Set to Feud In WWE?

Welcome guys, gals, and gender non-binary pals, to Ask 411 Wrestling. I am your party host, Ryan Byers, and I am here to answer some of your burning inquiries about professional wrestling.

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Charles is the dean of Ask 411 readers:

Can you provide some background on Gordon Solie and Vince McMahon’s relationship? I always wondered why they didn’t cross paths more. I heard about the whole Black Saturday deal but what I read it seems vague on the background of Solie’s departure and the nature of bad blood before or after with Solie and the McMahon family.

Honestly, I don’t know that there is much of a story behind a Solie/McMahon relationship. According to Bruce Prichard on Episode 134 of his “Something to Wrestle With” podcast, Vince had no personal dislike for Solie but just wasn’t a particularly big fan of his work. This would be consistent with a note in Solie’s obituary in the August 7, 2000 Wrestling Observer Newsletter. In discussing Black Saturday, the Observer states that, when there was fan backlash to the WWF taking over Georgia Championship Wrestling’s TBS time slot, McMahon started to tell people that he was going to make an effort to hire Solie in order to help extinguish the fire, but, in reality, a serious offer to Solie was never made.

In other words, there does not appear to have been any personal bad blood between the two men. They just had different approaches to working in wrestling and did not interact much as a result.

Tyler from Winnipeg wants to know when we were given the bird:

When did the “winged eagle” WWF Heavyweight Championship belt make its first appearance? Also the championship belt Hogan lifted at WM 3; how long was that particular design around?

We’ll take those questions in the opposite order of that in which they were posed, because that keeps us lined up chronologically.

The championship belt design that 78,000 paying fans saw in the Silverdome at Wrestlemania III had made its debut in late 1985, meaning it had been around for a year and change by the time that Hogan slammed Andre the Giant. That belt design continued to represent the WWF Championship until the February 1988 episode of The Main Event, which is when the Hulkster walked out with the so-callled “winged eagle” for the first time.

Also, because the subject has come up, I would like to lodge my standard objection that “winged eagle” is a dumb name, because almost all eagles have wings. It’s redundant.

Don’t treat Drew like a woman. Don’t treat him like a man:

I thought of this question while watching the new Vice Versa Chyna documentary. There were a number of women in the early Attitude Era WWF who stand out including Terri, Sunny, Jacqueline and Luna, but obviously Chyna stood out from them for the obvious reasons. The only exception though would be Sable, I remember both women being the two stand outs between ’97 and ’99 with both doing intergender stuff and both being key players in major storylines.

My question is was there any plans to have the two interact either as allies or enemies? The only time I recall Sable and Chyna sharing airtime was when Chyna faced the Stooges in a handicap match and Sable looked to join in as her partner but Luna jumped her before she could do it. If there’s any other moments I don’t know, and I think either a Sable/Chyna team or rivalry would have been remembered moment for that era. Was there plans for them to do something someday? If so, any word as to why it never happened?

I am not aware of there having been any plans for further interaction between Chyna and Sable, mainly because, at the time both were active in the company, the WWF considered Chyna to be more a part of the men’s division even though she was a woman. In fact, when both of them appeared on the Gallagher talk show on Canada’s TSN during the height of the Attitude Era, that is exactly the explanation gave when Chyna was asked if she was ever going to pursue the Women’s Title. There are also some catty shots back and forth that involve allegations of steroid use, but it’s not totally clear how much of that is a “shoot” comment and how much of it is wrestlers playing up animosity between each other for the cameras.

With the anniversary of their founding earlier this summer, we’ve been getting a lot of questions about the nWo lately, and Paul continues that trend:

To the best of my knowledge, Bobby Heenan was a heel his entire career no matter where he wrestled/managed. However, I would like to ask, in your opinion regarding when Hulk Hogan arrived at Bash at the Beach to save WCW from the Outsiders, turned and formed the nWo, do you believe, at that moment, Bobby Heenan turned face? He was now part of an organization under a hostile takeover, did not try to align with the nWo or even trying to ingratiate himself with them at any time afterward. Also, Heenan did NOT give away the surprise, he was being who he always was regarding Hogan, I’ll believe that til the day I die.

Normally I’m somebody who believes in maintaining traditional heel and babyface roles in professional wrestling, because I don’t feel the “shades of gray” or “tweener” characters that some try to push really work in the context of wrestling’s storytelling, as you need a clear-cut protagonist to root for and a clear-cut antagonist to root against when it comes to the match, and wrestling storytelling is all about building towards a match. (Despite how much disciples of Vince Russo beg to differ.)

However, even I have to admit that Heenan’s character became something a bit more nuanced after the nWo formed. He certainly was an opponent of the nWo and particularly Hulk Hogan – as he always had been – but if you listen to his commentary on other undercard feuds that did not involve the New World Order, he continued to root for the bad guys pretty routinely.

I would still continue to call him a heel, just a heel who opposed an organization that operated beyond the normal heel/face dynamic and acted as an existential threat to the entire WCW operation that both heels and babyfaces had to rally to defeat.

Peter gives us yet more with the nWo:

I’ve read on numerous occasions that the original plan was for Thunder to be the NWO show. But never how this was supposed to work?

Was Nitro going to stay as WCW’s show with the NWO invading each week and beating up the WCW wrestlers? And Thunder? Were the WCW guys going to turn up each week for humiliation?

I’ve actually always heard the opposite. The nWo was supposed to take over Nitro and make the show theirs, while Thunder would have remained a WCW-branded program.

There was actually a test run for nWo Nitro on the December 22, 1997 episode of the show, and, if you go back and watch that card, presumably subsequent episodes of the new series would have looked more or less the same.

However, there was a small issue with the concept. As popular as the nWo may have been as a heel faction, their takeover of the program TANKED in the ratings. Some of that may have been that fans were just not into the concept. However, the much more likely explanation is that an absurdly large amount of the show was devoted to nWo members changing out banners and other portions of the Nitro set, all with no real commentary or action. It was mind numbingly boring, as you can see illustrated in the partial clip above.

Jacob prefers people who want to be cool:

Not sure if this has been asked before but was there ever any long term plans for Jesus? He was the guy that stabbed John Cena in a Boston nightclub under the command of Carlito Caribbean Cool. Cena was filming The Marine around that time.

No, there is nothing that I am aware of. He was brought in to be Carlito’s heavy, and chances are good that he was going to be Carlito’s heavy until such time that somebody got it in their head that they could get a couple of PPV matches out of breaking them up. Also, it’s not as though his work got particularly good reviews, so I can’t imagine there being too much of note planned.

Also, in a little bit of further backstory about Jesus, his real name was Aaron Aguilera, and he had wrestled for many years prior to WWE on the southern California indy scene, mostly under the name Hardcore Kidd. He broke his neck during his run as Jesus, which is what really spelled the beginning of the end for him. According to the January 3 and April 18, 2005 editions of the Figure Four Weekly newsletter, Aguilera actually delayed getting the spinal fusion surgery that was necessary to correct the problem and sought second and third opinions on treatment because he was paranoid that, if he opted for the surgery and extended recovery time, he would be fired. It turns out that he was right to be concerned about this, because he was in fact canned while he was still recovering.

Interestingly, once he returned from his injury, Aguilera’s first high profile match was not in professional wrestling but rather his first and only MMA fight, losing to Butterbean on a card in Hawaii called “Rumble at the Rock 9.” Bean actually submitted Aguilera with a rear naked choke, which has to be embarrassing because the former tough man champion was not exactly known for his ground game. Also, Aguilera apparently tried to throw a pro wrestling style dropkick in the match, which I have to imagine somebody put him up to, because there’s no way anybody could think that would be a good idea.

From there, Aguilera went on to be part of the sadly short-lived Wrestling Society X.

Jason S. from Brooklyn wants us to broaden our horizons:

What would you say are the top 5-10 angles that a wrestling fan should check out from a non-mainstream wrestling company? This would mean excluding: WWF/WWE, WCW/Jim Crockett Promotions, 1980s NWA primary territories (Georgia, Mid-Atlantic, Florida, Mid-South/UWF), AWA, World Class, ECW, ROH, TNA/Impact, and AEW. However, current NWA would count as would Herb Abrams’ UWF (if there was anything redeemable there).

Some examples that come to mind for me:

Jerry Lawler/Austin Idol/Tommy Rich/Paul E cage angle
Eddie Gilbert running over Lawler
Patriot vs. Dark Patriot (GWF)
Dirty White Girl/Tom Prichard “I need to talk to Tom” angle
Colt Cabana/Adam Pearce Seven Levels of Hate
Randy Savage/Poffo Family vs. Jerry Lawler (ICW vs. CWA angle)

No worries if your selections overlap with the above. I’m just looking to shine light on interesting angles that have been lost to time because they never received the exposure of the more national companies.

First off, I’m going to presume that Jason wants this list to be limited to the United States, in part because that’s where all of the examples that he listed came from and in part because, if we were going to include Japan and Mexico, we could give far, far more than 5-10 examples.

I would also love to see people drop their own suggestions on this one in my comments, but here are a few ideas from yours truly:

McMemphis: In 1993, the WWF had a working relationship wit the USWA, the dominant promotion in Tennessee at the time. That relationship saw Vince McMahon himself appear as heel both on USWA television and even at some live events, cutting promos that were forerunners of those that he would become famous for as a bad guy in the WWF. Not only is this interesting from a historical perspective, but it’s also widely available on YouTube.

Jerry Lawler vs. Andy Kaufman: It shouldn’t be a surprise that so many entries from both my list and Jason’s involve the King, in part because he’s one of the GOATs on promos and in part because the Memphis territory was one of the largest that isn’t disqualified by Jason’s criteria. As to this specific feud, Kaufman was a brilliant heel, and this essentially created the template for how non-athletic celebrities could be used as antagonists in professional wrestling, as the star of Taxi never physically dominated any wrestlers, nor should he have.

Jerry Lawler vs. Terry Funk: Yup, it’s Lawler again. This is an excellent feud, with the real highlight being their empty arena match and the consequences thereof. Terry Funk yelling “My eye! My eye!” is one of the few sounds that is forever burned into my memory and probably the best selling of a professional wrestling injury that I have ever seen.

Roddy Piper vs. Chavo Guerrero: This is the 1978 feud from the old Los Angeles territory that first made a star out of “Rowdy” Roddy Piper. Granted, there was a lot of race baiting involved, and some people might consider that to be cheap or easy heat, but, even putting aside, the intensity between these two wrestlers is unquestionable, with both of them (particularly Piper) knocking it out of the park on the microphone and getting Lana-style nuclear heat from the crowd. It’s not quite complete, but there is a fair amount of footage from this on YouTube, though some of the matches are versions with Spanish commentary.

Heavenly Bodies vs. Rock n’ Roll Express: This is the feud that Jim Cornette’s Smoky Mountain Wrestling was originally built around, and it went on for quite some time, taking many twists and turns but always producing excellent tag team wrestling. Probably by favorite part of the angle involved the Bodies bringing in member Stan Lane’s former partner Bobby Eaton to form a trio, forcing the Rock n’ Rolls to recruit a mystery partner of their own. I’ll let you watch the video above to see who it was, but it’s probably one of my favorite mystery partner reveals ever, particularly because this is a guy who you think should be on the heels’ side, but he explains perfectly why he isn’t. This all culminated in the Bodies, the RnRs and their mystery partner, and the Stud Stable having a fun three-way street fight at Bluegrass Brawl.

Portia Perez vs. Allison Danger: Coming from all-women’s promotion SHIMMER, this one was unique because, even though the two had faced each other previously, it really picked up during a one-of-a-kind interview segment in which Perez attempted to attack Danger when Danger was legitimately pregnant with her first child. Only referee Bryce Remsburg intervening prevented what could have been a very messy situation. From there, the two wrestlers had a couple of hardcore matches the likes of which were very rare to see women engaging in during this era.

That will do it for this week’s installment of the column. 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.