Ask 411 Wrestling: Would Hulkamania Have Survived COVID-19?

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.

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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Jeffrey wants to interject some current events into the column:

In your opinion, if COVID-19 hit in the 1980s or 1990s, do you think wrestling would have survived?

It certainly would have been much harder for pro wrestling if this pandemic hit thirty or forty years ago, simply because of how the economics of the business were structured.

Throughout most of the 80s and 90s, there were two primary ways that professional wrestling promotions in the United States made money: Selling live event tickets and selling pay per view events, with live event tickets being a more significant piece of the pie the earlier into that period you go. Though there was a lot of professional wrestling on television, the amount of money received from it was negligible if any, and, in fact, during points of the 1980s even the WWF was paying television stations to air its television as opposed to being paid to produce content.

However, here in 2021, things have done an almost 180 degree rotation. The primary source of revenue for both the WWE and AEW is television rights fees, including the E’s deal with Peacock. Both companies could probably never sell another ticket to a show and be just fine as long as their TV deals held.

Thus, if the nation were put on a hard lockdown before television networks started paying out like broken Las Vegas slot machines, wrestling’s major promotions likely would have to have innovated and innovated quickly in order to keep money coming in the door. If they could find an alternative revenue stream, they likely would survive. If not, I do not see how they would fare too horribly well.

Shuan is going long:

Is at least one match a year for the last 51 years the longest consecutive streak of matches? That 51 year streak is by Jerry Lawler.

I don’t think that’s the longest consecutive streak of matches, because I don’t think it’s a legitimate streak. By most sources, the King had his first match in 1970, which would mean that he’s wrestled at least once a week for each year since his debut.

However, based on the best records available, it doesn’t look like that’s happened.

Both Cagematch and the Internet Wrestling Database show Lawler as having taken the vast majority of 2020 off from wrestling, specifically the period during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. If those sources are to be believed, he wrestled on January 18, 2020 in Little Rock, Arkansas and then not again until September 26, 2020 in Jackson, Tennessee for his own 50th anniversary celebration.

Lawler also appears to have taken a significant break after the September 10, 2012 episode of Monday Night Raw, when he suffered a heart attack on live television. After that evening, there’s no record of him wrestling again until May 25, 2013, when he teamed with Dory Funk Jr. on one of Dory’s !BANG! shows in Ocala, Florida.

Is it possible that one of those databases missed some Lawler matches? Yes, it is. However, it seems highly unlikely that they would have missed several months’ worth of matches given how thorough they are otherwise.

Thus, I think you’re getting worked a bit on that number.

Tyler from Winnipeg wasn’t going to sit this one out:

How come HHH wasn’t at the Wrestlemania with Trump vs McMahon? Seems nobody talks about it.

He was injured at the time. He tore his quad at the New Year’s Revolution pay per view in January 2007 and did not return until Summerslam of the same year, missing Wrestemania XXIII and its “Battle of the Billionaires” main event as a result.

In fact, it was rumored that the Shawn Michaels/John Cena match on that show was originally supposed to have been a rematch of HHH and Cena from the prior year’s Wrestlemania XXII.

Will is taking off the stripes:

My question regards AEW female referee Aubrey Edwards. It is pretty obvious from watching her in action that she likes to be in the spotlight, oftentimes distracting the viewers from the in-ring action. I was wondering if you had any idea why she just didn’t train to become a wrestler? She has the look and is obviously in good shape.

The answer is because she doesn’t want to. She’s stated in multiple interviews that she simply does not want to be a wrestler (aside from doing one or two indy shots here and there) and is comfortable in her current role. That’s all there is to it.

Rex has a series of nine questions. Normally I wouldn’t take this many inquiries from one person in one column, but I think I can get through these fairly quickly, so here goes:

1. At Summerslam 1989, Slick was Rick Martel’s manager. How long did he manage Martel, and why did he stop managing him?

Slick started managing Martel very shortly after Martel’s heel turn at Wrestlemania V, and it continued until late 1989. Slick was in the corner of the Survivor Series team Martel was on that year, but it’s not entirely clear whether he was there because he was still managing the French Canadian superstar or whether he was there because some of his other charges were on the team. They were certainly done before the end of the year and before Martel officially became the Model.

According to an interview with Slick on a September 2019 episode of Sean Mooney’s podcast, the pairing between the two men came to an end because, though they got along personally, Martel developed the opinion that Slick did not add anything to his act (and in fact may have detracted from it), which caused Martel to put in a request to Vince McMahon that they no longer work together.

2. Also at Summerslam ’89, The Hart Foundation wrestled the Brain Busters in a non-title match. Why wasn’t it a title match, and did the Hart Foundation ever receive a title shot against the Brain Busters on house shows, etc?

They kayfabe explanation was that the match had been signed before the Brain Busters had won the tag team titles.

There was never a Foundation/Busters WWF Tag Team Title match, on house shows or otherwise, that I was able to find record of. It makes sense if you think about it, because, if the champions beat a team in a non-title match, why would that team be deserving of a shot at the belts?

In an interesting side note, in looking into whether that title match ever occurred, I found an unusual series of matches. In October 1989 on the house show circuit, the Brain Busters were regularly defending their Tag Team Titles against Ax and Smash of Demolition. However, 10/20, 10/21, and 10/22 cards in Montreal, Winnipeg, and Edmonton, Ax was apparently unavailable, which lead to the Brain Busters wrestling the oddball team of Smash and Jim Neidhart.

3. At Summerslam 1990, Power and Glory wrestled Marty Jannetty in basically a handicap match after Hercules injured Shawn Michaels’ knee with his chain, but what was the real reason for Michaels not competing? Also, what happened to Hercules after he left the WWF?

Shawn Michaels needed knee surgery headed into the match, and the attack by Hercules was a means of writing him off of shows for a while. In fact, after the Summerslam appearance, Shawn didn’t have another match until October 1990. Jannetty mostly wrestled singles matches on the house show circuit during that period, many of them against Hercules and Roma to play off of the injury.

Regarding Hercules, he stayed with the WWF until early 1992, after which he jumped to WCW and wrestled as the masked Super Invader, who was allegedly from Thailand and managed by Harley Race. He finished up there in the fall of ’92, and the next major promotion he wrestled for was New Japan, starting in March 1993 and appearing on tours through spring 1994, with the most notable part of his run being an IWGP Tag Team Title reign with Scott Norton under the name the Jurassic Powers. (Not to be confused with the current-day Jurassic Express.) He continued to do independent dates throughout the mid-1990s before retiring. He passed away on March 6, 2004.

4. What was really in Bad News Brown’s pet carrier at Summerslam since the WWF didn’t show it, and why didn’t they show it? Was there anything in it at all?

I’m not aware of there having actually been anything in the box.

5. At Summerslam ’94, why did Brian Lee a.k.a. the fake Undertaker have very little offense in his match versus the real Undertaker, therefore making it a squash match?

Essentially, the WWF felt heading into the show that the impostor Undertaker angle had been a failure from a business and creative perspective, so a couple of weeks prior to Summerslam, they decided they were going to give up on it. This was reported in the August 22, 1994 Wrestling Observer Newsletter, which previewed Summerslam.

Apparently on a WWF special that aired on the USA Network to promote Summerslam, Vince McMahon very clearly stated that the match would be the only encounter between the two wrestlers and that it would finally determine who the true Undertaker was. The Observer also noted that, at one point in time, Brian Lee (who played the fake Undertaker) had been scheduled to continue wrestling for the company on September house shows, but, a couple of weeks before Summerslam, he was pulled from the cards, as the company decided they were done with his character.

If you’ve made the decision that the fake Undertaker won’t be a going concern moving forward, there’s no reason not to put the real Undertaker over as strong as you can.

For what it’s worth, on the episode of his “Something to Wrestle With” podcast covering Summerslam 1994, Bruce Prichard disagreed with some of this reporting and claimed that there were never any plans to do anything with Brian Lee as the fake Undertaker after Summerslam 1994. According to Brother Love, it was always meant to be a one-off return for the original Taker.

6. Why did Arn Anderson, Tully Blanchard, and Tony Schiavone leave the WWF?

Arn Anderson and Tully Blanchard have gone over their departure in several interviews over the years, perhaps the most recent one being on Arn’s own podcast in January of 2020. According to him, the Brain Busters were a little bit upset about money, because Vince McMahon guaranteed them that they would be making just as much money as they were with Jim Crockett Promotions when they joined the WWF, but, towards the end of 1989, this was proving to not be the case. Because of that, they put in their notice.

The team worked out a deal to return to their prior employer, but, before their WWF deals came to an end, Blanchard failed a drug test, which not only resulted in the WWF putting him on ice (which is why Anderson appeared on several shows on his own in the latter part of the year) but also resulted in his new job offer being rescinded. Turner also used this as an excuse to cut Arn’s pay when he came in.

As to Schiavone, according to an interview with Lucha Libre Online in February of this year, he departed the Fed because he had moved his family up to Connecticut while working there, and they simply preferred living in the southern states that JCP/WCW operated out of.

7. Did the Undertaker ever wrestle the Million Dollar Man or the Macho Man one on one at house shows?

There has only been one Ted DiBiase/Undertaker singles match as far as I know. It took place in Auburn Hills, Michigan on July 24, 1992 on a house show, with Taker winning in six minutes and thirty seconds.

Savage and Taker, meanwhile, had three matches with each other, all within the same four-day period in 1991. On July 30 of that year, Savage was victorious in a dark match held as part of a WWF Wrestling Challenge taping in Portland, Maine. On August 1, Taker got his win back on a house show held in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada. The rubber match was held on a Pittsburgh house show the very next evening, with Savage picking up the win in the bout and the series.

8. Did the Ultimate Warrior ever wrestle Jake Roberts on house shows or anything during their feud?

Nope. Actually, they were a tag team on several occasions. In February and March of 1989, they had several matches against the Heenan Family team of Andre the Giant and Rick Rude. Then, in February and March of 1990, they paired up again, wrestling seven matches against the unusual team of Ted DiBiase and Akeem the African Dream. Two of those matches had special guest referees, one of them being officiated by the Big Boss Man and the other by Hillbilly Jim.

9. Last question: Did Rick Rude ever wrestle the Big Bossman during their rivalry on house shows, etc. If not, then why not?

Yes. They had four matches on the WWF house show circuit in March of 1990 and a fifth in October of the same year. Three of these were actually steel cage matches. Boss Man won all of their encounters, which took place in Moline, Illinois, Portland, Maine, South Bend, Indiana, Auburn Hills, Michigan, and East Rutherford, New Jersey.

Interestingly, the old rivals would face each other again in two singles matches in WCW. On December 13, 1993, the Boss Man (then simply known as “The Boss”) defeated Rude in a match taped for WCW Saturday Night. This lead to the Boss challenging for Rude’s WCW International World Heavyweight Title – a.k.a. the “Big Gold Belt” – at the 1993 Starrcade pay per view on December 27 in a match where Michael Buffer did the ring announcing and there were Hooters waitresses at ringside in an odd bit of cross-promotion. Rude retained the title that evening.

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.