Ask 411 Wrestling: Did Andre the Giant Challenge for the NWA Title?

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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I’m digging back into the archive of Tyler form Winnipeg questions:

Any chance Matt Riddle gets a world title win?

Well, I guess not now.

Memphis B-Rad is going round and round again:

What two wrestlers have faced each other the most in singles competition? I’m guessing either Flair-Sting, Flair-Steamboat, or Lawler-Dundee.

Sadly this is one of those questions we’ll probably never have a totally accurate answer to simply because of the lack of statistics maintained from so much of wrestling’s history prior to the internet era.

However, last year a poster by the name of Happ Hazard on the Wrestling Classics message board endeavored to answer this question as best he could, and the answer that he came up with was Haruka Eigen and Rusher Kimura, Japanese wrestlers who faced each other 1,473 over the course of their long and storied careers.

In fact, the top six spots on Happ’s list are all pairings of Japanese wrestlers. U.S. wrestling shows up for the first time at number seven, with that duo being Swede Hansen and Johnny Weaver, facing each other 569 times.

APinOZ is shopping for belt extenders:

I watched a video of an NWA Title match from Houston, a January 7, 1979 bout between champ Harley Race and Andre The Giant. A couple of questions come out of this.

Was this Andre’s only NWA Title match? I can’t seem to find any others. Also, it sounds like the ring is incredibly well miked-up, although Harley’s son (who is in a social media group I follow and posts some great stuff about life as the son of the travelling NWA champ) claims it isn’t miked up at all. Was it standard practice to mike the rings for arena shows, and how was this done?

It was not the Giant’s only NWA Title match. I have found records of the following:

Terry Funk faced Andre for the NWA Title on March 10, 1976 in Miami, Florida. Funk lost the match via disqualification.

Funk and Andre rematched in Calgary, Alberta on July 15, 1977, which again resulted in a DQ loss for the Funker. They then did basically the same match the next night in Edmonton.

On February 15, 1978 in Miami, Florida, Harley Race defended the NWA Title against Andre for the first time, wrestling to a double count out. The men rematched on October 13 of that year in Houston, Texas, again resulting in a DCOR.

On New Year’s Day of Billy Corgan’s favorite year – 1979 – Harley and Andre met again for another double count out, this time in Atlanta, Georgia. In all, Andre got seven shots at the NWA Title that year, on January 7 in Houston, on February 11 in Orlando, on Valentine’s Day in Hollywood, Florida, on February 15 in Tallahassee, Florida, on July 2 in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and on August 16 in Mobile, Alabama. All of those matches were against Harley Race.

Race and the Giant resumed their feud in 1980 with five championship bouts. These occurred on January 18 in Los Angeles, January 20 in San Bernadino, California, February 8 back in L.A., February 16 in Jacksonville, Florida, and June 19 in Lawton, Oklahoma.

Skipping ahead a couple of years, Andre had one NWA Title match against champion Ric Flair in 1983, wrestling to a draw in Orlando.

After that, the territory system falls apart and Andre becomes much more exclusive to the WWF, effectively freezing him out of NWA Title contention. Even though he wrestled quite a bit for promotions other than the Fed in the early 1990s (most notably All Japan Pro Wrestling), he did not receive another crack at the NWA’s top prize before his death in 1993.

Tell me I’m okay, Patrick:

I’ve been binging through the old WWF stuff as usual from Wrestling Challenge to Prime Time and Superstars and the old Royal Rumbles and Wrestlemanias.

Did Bret Hart and Jim Neidhart of the Hart Foundation ever get sick and tired of having to wrestle the British Bulldogs constantly over and over every week every month? This was before Demolition and the Rockers came along.

I think that you’re underestimating the depth of the WWF’s tag team division prior to Demolition and the Rockers. Yes, the Hart Foundation wrestled the British Bulldogs quite a bit, but they had several other opponents during that period as well. Looking back over results from roughly 1985 through 1987, they wrestled the Killer Bees just as much as they wrestled the Bulldogs. They also had quite a few matches with the American Express of Dan Spivey and Mike Rotundo as well as the Islanders and the Fabulous Rougeau Brothers before the eventual heel turns of those two teams. There are also a couple of longer stretches on the house show circuit where the Foundation was wrestling teams of thrown together enhancement talent, many times including Lanny Poffo.

Even if the Harts and the Bulldogs were wrestling each other every single night, I don’t think that I’ve ever heard a wrestler complain about having the same opponent for an extended period of time unless that opponent was totally incompetent. If anything, wrestlers tend to prefer to work with people they’re familiar with, because there are higher levels of trust and easier communication.

Simon from Coos Bay, Oregon has give me a real Sophie’s choice here:

Which wrestler shined brighter in the “goofy hardcore” wrestling era: Crash Holly or Norman Smiley? I gotta go with Norman.

Let me first state in no uncertain terms that I love both of these guys. If I were comparing the entirety of their careers, I would say that I preferred Norman, because he was so versatile and worked so well in so many different contexts. Though most people reading this probably know him best as the WWE Performance Center trainer or the WCW comedy wrestler, he had a lengthy career before that and was also a hit in lucha libre as Black Magic and even did some shoot style wrestling in Japan, back when he was walking around with 12-pack abs.

However, the question asks me to compare comedy hardcore wrestling to comedy hardcore wrestling, and if I’m limiting myself to that part of each man’s resume, I think I have to pick Crash over Norman. Crash’s stuff at Fun Time USA or being attacked by a circus clown was just more innovative and, frankly, better executed from a production standpoint. Plus watching Norman meant you had to watch WCW, and getting through Nitro and Thunder in that era could be pretty rough.

Jonfw2 is jumping the guardrail:

The 1996 ECW invasion of Raw is well known. What I had forgotten is that Paul E and ECW appeared numerous times after that over the course of more than a year.

Vince does nothing, of course, without an ulterior motive so what was it? Was he funding EC Dub at that point? Was it just that WWF’s roster wasn’t big enough for two hours a week? Or was he just trying to draw more attention and viewers due to WCW?

All of the above. The roster was incredibly thin in between Hogan’s departure and the Attitude Era beginning, which lead to the WWF working not only with ECW but also with Smoky Mountain Wrestling in order to bring in talent to fill out shows – in addition to the WWF sending some talent to those companies in what was almost a proto-developmental territory relationship. Plus, there was a need to do something in order to create buzz in light of the fact that WCW was super-hot thanks to the nWo at that point in time.

Paris is wrapping it up:

It might just be me but it feels like Chris Jericho might be going on a retirement tour. Bringing back past gimmicks (Pain Maker, last Stu dungeon student – I can’t wait for the man of 1000 and 1 holds to return) and the like. If this is a (quiet) retirement do you think it’s being done well?

It’s not a retirement tour. Jericho has said in interviews within the last six months or so that he has zero interest in retiring at this point.

IMissMarkingOut keeps us on the Jericho train:

With Chris Jericho tapping out to Claudio Castangoli’s Big Swing at Final Battle, I was wondering if there are any other times someone has tapped to a non submission move?

There is so much pro wrestling in the world that I imagine this has to have happened at least once, even if in a tiny independent somewhere, but I could not find a concrete example. If anybody wants to drop one in the comments, go for it.

I will say that even though I could not find a pro wrestling example, apparently there are several examples of MMA fighters tapping as a result of strikes thrown in their matches, including a Matt Serra versus George St-Pierre fight of note. There appears to be some discussion among fans as to whether tapping to strikes is a submission loss or a technical knockout, though most official sources seem to record that sort of loss as a TKO.

Sim always looks out for his elders:

I was rewatching the WM22 MITB match, where one of the biggest bumps of the night was a 57yo(!) Ric Flair taking a superplex off a ladder from Matt Hardy, after which he seemed to be legit injured (refs even threw the X sign).

However, he then wrestled later that month, so he was fine after all.

So was it a case of an injury which turned out not being as bad as initially feared? or was he just selling? maybe not cluing in the refs into the “injury spot”, which explains the X throwing?

According to the issue of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter covering that year’s event, the spot was just a garden variety work. Flair was fine the whole time.

Night Wolf the Wise is taking us to deepest, darkest Africa:

I know there are a lot of people in the IWC who gave Vince McMahon crap for One Man Gang becoming Akeem the African Dream. I watched an episode of Stories with Brisco and Bradshaw featuring Slick. In the episode, Slick says he was the one who had the idea of One Man Gang becoming Akeem. The reason was that Vince McMahon was going to fire One Man Gang for asking for time off during a feud with Hulk Hogan. Is there any truth behind Vince wanting to fire One Man Gang over this?

Speaking of One Man Gang and Hulk Hogan, were there any major plans for a feud between the two? Because after that incident, Gang got pushed further down the card.

First off, I listened to the One Man Gang’s RF Video shoot interview and Bruce Prichard’s podcast on Akeem in preparing to answer this question, and neither one of them point to Slick as the mind that created Akeem. In fact, both Prichard and Gang say that the whole thing was Vince’s idea, though Prichard takes credit for coming up with the “African Dream” nickname after the gimmick was created – and, yes, he admits that it was intended to be a play off of Dusty Rhodes’ “American Dream” nickname.

Neither Prichard nor Gang said anything about McMahon wanting to fire the guy, either. In fact, Gang said that the reason for the gimmick change was that Vince simply didn’t think he was colorful enough for the WWF of the era as OMG.

Finally, I’m a bit confused about the question as to whether Gang was supposed to have a major feud with Hulk Hogan. He did have a major feud with Hulk Hogan. They fought for the WWF Championship in main events quite regularly between August of 1987 and January of 1988. Keep in mind that when we’re talking about the 1980s WWF, house shows are still a huge part of the business, and just because something didn’t get blown off on pay per view did not mean that it wasn’t a major feud.

Donny from Allentown, PA comes barging in:

I always wondered what the deal was with Tugboat (Fred Ottman). When he came into the WWF they started showing him on TV and would mention a few thousand times that he was good friends with Hulk Hogan. The two would team up against Dino Bravo and Earthquake, and it almost felt like he was getting a main event type rub. Then as soon as that feud ended and Hogan went on to Sgt Slaughter, Tugboat was fed to the newcomer The Undertaker – putting him over night after night in jobber type fashion. What happened to Tugboat’s push is what I am asking? Why did it fizzle out?

He was an adult man wearing a kiddie sailor suit and making foghorn noises with his mouth. Plus, he wasn’t a particularly good in-ring performer, even by the lower standards of the WWF at the time.

To the surprise of virtually nobody, it didn’t get over and he was cycled down the card accordingly.

JN is seeing stripes, not stars:

I have an attire-related question. The zebra/tiger pattern that Shawn Michaels made famous was previously worn by Brutus Beefcake (the two had very similar looks actually). Was there anyone else rocking the zebra pattern? I know Michael Hayes was wearing something similar in the early 90s – anyone else? Would love a brief history of the zebra print pattern in wrestling.

I was able to track zebra print in pro wrestling back to at least the late 1940s. At that time, a wrestler from Ohio named George Bollas adopted the masked gimmick of the Zebra Kid, which some reports say originated from people making fun of him for having stretch marks on his body. However, he didn’t just rely upon his natural striation. At various points in his career, he adopted both masks and other ring gear that incorporated zebra stripes.

Though Bollas was the wrestler who competed most consistently as the Zebra Kid, there were several other individuals who eventually adopted the gimmick in other territories in the 1950s and 1960s, including Lenny Montana, Billy Sandow, and Earl Freeman (a.k.a. Paddy Ryan). Many of them incorporated zebra print into the character’s look, though I have seen a couple of videos floating around out there of Zebra Kids who half-assed it and only used the name as opposed to the patterned clothing.

Decades later, a couple of other Zebra Kids popped up in the 1990s, one of them being UK wrestler Roy Knight (the brother of AEW’s Saraya Knight) and the other being a pre-ECW Blue Meanie.

Though I suspect Brutus Beefcake and Shawn Michaels were inspired to don their zebra gear by rock acts of the era, the print does go back decades further in wrestling.

And this may be the single most niche question I have ever answered for this 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.