Ask 411 Wrestling: Were Hulk Hogan & Junkyard Dog Planned to be Tag Champions?

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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Ignacio is five months early, but he’s still pumped for the Royal Rumble:

There is the tradition that every Royal Rumble should include a surprise. A wrestler who has no contract with WWE or a blast from the past. Who was the first Royal Rumble surprise? The first wrestler from another era and/or not under contract with WWF to appear in the Rumble?

The first wrestler who was not a regular member of the WWF roster who appeared in a Royal Rumble match was Genichiro Tenryu in the 1993 installment of the bout. Carols Colon, also not a WWF roster member at the time, wrestled in the same match, but Tenryu gets the distinction of being “first” thanks to drawing an earlier entry number. He was at number nine while Colon was at twenty-four.

In an interesting aside that I learned about for the first time while researching this answer, Tenryu stuck around and wrestled on WWF television tapings the two days after the Royal Rumble pay per view, having matches against the Brooklyn Brawler and the White Shadow (journeyman wrestler Billy Anderson, a.k.a. Cheerleader Melissa’s uncle, under a mask). The matches appear to have never aired on WWF television in the United States but were taped for international broadcasts.

Tenryu and Colon were not surprise entrants, though. They were both announced as participants ahead of the match, so they answer one of Ignacio’s questions but not the other.

The first true “surprise” Royal Rumble entrant appears to have come in 1997 and been Jerry “The King” Lawler. At the time, Lawler was not a regular wrestler for the company, and he was sitting at commentary when suddenly his music played and he entered the match, lasting for seconds before getting tossed out. He then returned to announcing, pretending that his embarrassingly short tenure as a Rumble competitor had never happened.

Some people might argue that Lawler doesn’t qualify as an answer to this question because, even though he was not expected to be in the match and wasn’t a regular wrestler, he was under contract to the company and on its television all the time.

If you don’t want to count Lawler, then you probably have to go to 1999 for an answer, and that answer is . . . Mabel, who showed up unannounced and actually got several eliminations in that year’s match before getting abducted by the Undertaker’s Ministry of Darkness and eventually being turned into Viscera.

But wait! Some readers may tell me that Mabel doesn’t count, either, because he didn’t return in the Royal Rumble match proper. He actually returned on the episode of Sunday Night Heat that occurred immediately prior to the Rumble pay per view, being brought in by Vince McMahon and the corporation to wrestle WWF Champion Mankind on Heat to soften him up before he defended his title against the Rock in the PPV main event.

(You know, that Rock/Mankind “I Quit” match has been covered a lot between Beyond the Mat and Dark Side of the Ring, but nobody ever wants to mention that Mabel was tangentially involved . . .)

If you knock out Mabel because he wrestled on Heat earlier in the night, then let’s skip ahead to the year 2000 for it’s surprise entrant:

Mr. Bob Backlund. I think Backlund qualifies as an answer to this question with no caveats or asterisks, as he wasn’t an employee of the company at the time wand was not advertised as wrestling in advance. He was one of six men to participate in the elimination of Rikishi that evening, along with the Big Boss Man, Edge, Gangrel, Test, and the British Bulldog. Man, somebody get me a time machine so I can go back and put those men together as a stable.

Chad wants to know if you are now or have ever been a member of the Communist Party:

Have any other wrestling companies besides the WWF/E essentially told wrestlers departing for someplace else that they won’t be welcomed back if they flame out at their new place of employment? I’ve heard stories of Vince McMahon Jr. doing this, but nobody else.

Oh yeah, this has definitely happened.

Perhaps the most infamous promoter to engage in this practice outside of Vince McMahon is Paco Alonso. Alonso owned and operated CMLL beginning in 1987 and continuing until his death in 2019. During that time, he regularly banned wrestlers from ever returning to his company when they left in a way that he felt demonstrated a lack of loyalty or otherwise slighted him.

Perhaps the most significant example of this was his relationship with the wrestlers who left CMLL to form AAA in 1992. Lucha libre legend Konnan was one of those defectors, and he’s still not been back to CMLL to this day. Antonio Pena was the main man behind AAA, and not only did Alonso never work with him again, he even refused to acknowledge his death when it occurred in 2006.

Even the WWF would pay tribute to its former employees like Rick Rude and Randy Savage when they passed away, despite ill will over how they split with the promotion. That’s just how stone cold Paco Alonso was.

I’ve seen JN hanging out with Brother Love lately. What’s going on there?

I’ve always been fascinated by the Jake Roberts heel turn in 1991. There’s a lot of cool psychological elements to it, like how the death of Damien may have led Jake back to the dark side. Watching some of this stuff back got me thinking about how so much of this turn was done in pre-tapes rather than in the ring. Is this the only heel turn that didn’t take place in front of a live crowd? If not, can you please list some other examples? I can’t think of any. Same with babyface turns… I can’t think of any that didn’t happen in front of a live audience. Can you?

When I read this question, I immediately thought of one name:

Sgt. Slaughter.

When Slaughter left the WWF in 1984, he was a pro-American babyface feuding with the Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkoff. Even though he was away from the WWF for five years beginning in 1985, wrestling fans nationally still would have known him as a good guy, not just because of his continuing to wrestle in the AWA but more so because of his connection to the GI Joe cartoon series and toy line. Then, when he returned to the WWF in 1990, it was through a series of vignettes in which he claimed that he no longer respected the U.S. because it had “gone soft” and was making nice with “pinko commies” like Volkoff who had recently turned babyface in light of the end of the Cold War between the United states and the U.S.S.R. You could argue that this wasn’t a turn and that instead Slaughter was being reintroduced as a heel after several years, but given he remained nationally prominent as a good guy in other ways, I’d say this was very much heel turn.

(And, yes, this was a precursor to Slaughter becoming an Iraqi sympathizer in a highly controversial angle. A lot of people forget that when he first returned as a heel in ’90, he did it without the Iraqi schtick and instead using the heel drill sergeant character that he used in the early 1980s, before becoming a patriotic babyface in 1984.)

Interestingly, Slaughter also answers the SECOND half of JN’s question, because his face turn after the end of the Iraqi sympathizer angle also occurred primarily in a series of vignettes, this time with Slaughter being contrite and declaring “I want my country back!”

He did eventually make his return in front of fans as a babyface when he saved Jim Duggan from a beat down by the Nasty Boys that involved the Nasties choking Duggan with the American flag, but the promos had already established him as a good guy before that.

Want another name? People often forget that, when the Honky Tonk Man debuted in the WWF, he was a babyface, endorsed by none other than Hulk Hogan. Yet, fans didn’t really take to him, which lead to an angle in which he was trying to be a good guy who couldn’t believe that people didn’t like him. Ultimately, in a series of pre-recorded interviews with Jesse Ventura, Honky asked for a “vote of confidence” from the fans and, when the results came in showing that significantly more fans hated him than loved him, he threatened to slap their babies. No, really:

Brian‘s favorite movie is Hidden Figures:

Were Hulk Hogan and Junkyard Dog ever supposed to win the WWF tag team titles? I noticed that in 1986, LJN released a two-pack of Hogan and JYD as part of their Wrestling Bendies series titled “Tag Team Champions.” As best I can tell, they were the only two-pack released with the “Tag Team Champions” label.

No, I’m not aware of any plan to make Hulk Hogan and JYD the Tag Team Champions. This wouldn’t have made sense in 1986 because Hogan would have been in the middle of his first WWF Championship reign, and in that era the general rule is that double champions were not allowed. (See, for example, WWF Champion Bob Backlund and Pedro Morales immediately having to vacate the Tag Team Titles upon winning them or Ultimate Warrior dropping the IC Title upon becoming WWF Champ.)

Also, I wouldn’t put much stock in LJN’s labeling of their bendies two-pack as “Tag Team Champions.”

According to photographing evidence at Wrestling Figure Database – a website I didn’t know existed until answering this question – there were six different “Tag Team Champions” two-packs released in LJN’s “Wrestling Superstars Bendies” series in 1986. The sets were:

Hulk Hogan and The Junkyard Dog
Iron Sheik & Nikolai Volkoff
John Studd & King Kong Bundy
George Steele & Lou Albano
Randy Savage & Jesse Venura
Ricky Steamboat and Corporal Kirschner

Of those, only Sheik and Volkoff were ever actually Tag Team Champions. Studd and Bundy were a fairly regular team. Dog and Hogan had a handful of matches together, one of them being notable because it was an SNME main event. Savage and Ventura teamed together six times but never on television. Kirchner and Steamboat teamed together exactly twice, again never on television. Albano managed Steele, but they never teamed.

Thus, I would not put a lot of stock into these action figures when trying to determine potential tag champs.

Jonfw2 is breaking with tradition:

It seems like Paul Levesque is slowly but deliberately abandoning the traditional face vs heel dynamic in favor of a system in which characters just have different personalities and motivations and the crowd can choose who they like and who they don’t.

Has this “shades of gray” approach ever been attempted in a major promotion before? Or am I way over thinking this?

I think you’re overthinking this. I see traditional heels and faces in just about every WWE feud ongoing today.

A Different Ryan wants to check in on Wrestlemania III:

I was watching the build to Hogan-Andre at WMIII and on the Piper’s Pit segment where Andre and Hogan both receive trophies (Hogan for being champ for three years and Andre for being “undefeated” for 15 years) Jesse Ventura says Andre owed him because he got Andre reinstated. What was he talking about? Also, he teased fighting Piper. Did Jesse and Piper ever wrestle each other? Lastly, during the Andre-Hogan match, commentary made it seem like Andre never had a world title match in 15 years. That can’t be true, right?

As to the first question, Andre had to be “reinstated” because in WWF storylines he had been suspended by Jack Tunney shortly after Wrestlemania II for missing appearances. (In reality, he was touring Japan and filming The Princess Bride.) This is the same storyline suspension that lead to Andre wrestling as the Giant Machine during August of 1986. The idea was that Bobby Heenan made maneuvers before Tunney to get the suspension lifted, and this is part of the reason that the Giant turned heel and aligned himself with the Brain.

Regarding a Jesse Ventura/Roddy Piper match, there was never a singles encounter between the two men. They were both in the same battle royale in St. Louis on June 10, 1983 (won by Crusher Blackwell), and they also faced each other in a tag team bout in Portland, Oregon for Don Owen’s territory. That was on February 24, 1979, Billy Corgan’s favorite year. Piper teamed with Killer Brooks to retain the Pacific Northwest Tag Team Titles over Ventura and Jonathan Boyd.

On the subject of world title matches, Andre actually never challenged for the WWF/WWWF Championship before Wrestlemania III in 1987 – that much is true.

However, that’s not to say he didn’t have other world title matches in the preceding fifteen years.

On June 11, 1985, Antonio Inoki defended the IWGP Heavyweight Championship against Andre in Tokyo on a New Japan, winning by count out.

In Juarez, Mexico on February 12, 1984, Andre challenged for the UWA World Heavyweight Title against El Canek, losing in a two out three falls match.

Andre the Giant and Nick Bockwinkel regularly wrestled for the AWA Championship, as Bruce will tell you. November 11, 1983 in Denver, Colorado saw a title match between the two with Andre winning by DQ. Almost exactly one year earlier, the same match with the same result occurred on November 10, 1982 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Bockwinkel and Andre locked it up for the championship four times in 1979, with Andre getting a DQ win on June 30 in Chicago, a rare sixty minute time limit draw occurring in Minneapolis on November 4, and finally double count outs on November 7 in Omaha and November 12 in Winnipeg. They had four more title matches in 1978, consisting of a bout on August 23 in Honolulu, a September 10 count out win for Andre in Toronto, a November 3 double count out in Omaha, and a November 5 double DQ in St. Paul, Minnesota. There was just one match between Bock and the Giant in 1977, which occurred in St. Paul on February 20 and resulted in a double DQ. They also had a double DQ against each other on August 27, 1976 in Chicago’s Comiskey Park.

The NWA World Heavyweight Championship was on the line in Orlando, Florida on February 13, 1983 as Andre went to a double count out with champion Ric Flair.

In early 1980, there was a three-match series of NWA Title bouts between Andre the Giant and champion Harley Race. Race and the Giant went to a double DQ on January 18 in Los Angeles, Andre bet the champ by DQ on January 20 in San Bernadino, and finally a double count out occurred on February 16 in Jacksonville, Florida. Race and Andre also had a series in 1979, with a New Year’s Day double count out in Georgia, a second double count out in Houston on January 7, an Andre DQ victory on February 11 in Orlando, and yet another double count out on Valentine’s Day in Hollywood, Florida. The two also locked it up in 1978, featuring a double DQ on February 15 in Miami and an October 13 double count out in Houston. There was a sole match between Race and Andre in 1977, for Stu Hart’s Stampede Wrestling in Calgary. The result there was a disqualification win for the challenger.

On June 1, 1977, Andre challenged Antonio Inoki for his NWF Heavyweight Title, which at the time was used as the primary championship of New Japan Pro Wrestling before the IWGP Championships were adopted.

Terry Funk defended the NWA World Heavyweight Title against Andre the Giant on March 10, 1976, with Andre winning via disqualification.

I’ll leave it to you whether you want to consider it a true world heavyweight title, but I’ll include it because it is in fact the name of the championship: Champion Ox Baker faced Andre the Giant for the WWA World Heavyweight Title (the main championship of Dick the Bruiser’s Indianapolis territory) on September 21, 1974. Ox was the winner by DQ.

Andre also had a crack at the WWA World Title on January 22, 1972 in Detroit, though at the time he was not yet known as Andre the Giant and was instead billed as Monster Roussimoff. He was defeated by reigning champion Baron Von Raschke.

And that’s every world title match Andre the Giant received in the fifteen years before Wrestlemania III.

That does it for this week. 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.