Ask 411 Wrestling: Is the Bloodline the Largest Family in Wrestling History?

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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TaylorMade is branching out:

After the Rock showed off his family tree at the Wrestlemania kickoff show, I have to ask . . . do they have the most people from one family to be successfully involved in the wrestling business?

Yes.

I did a quick count, and if you’re only including the members of the Anoa’i and Maivia families, you’ve got 23 wrestlers of note. If you throw in Jimmy Snuka and his family, which some commentators do, that’s three more for a total of 26. If you add Haku and his relatives, which some may wish to do given current storyline affiliations, you’re up to 31.

At one point in time, the Hart family was pretty close in size to the Anoa’i family in terms of number of wrestlers produced, but with this most recent generation of wrestlers to get into the industry, the Samoans have really blown the Canadians out of the water.

The only other wrestling family that I can think of which even comes close is lucha libre’s Alvarado family, which includes Los Brazos (and my favorite Super Porky) as well as current star Psycho Clown. I counted 20 Alvardos active in wrestling, so they are still quite a few behind in the grand scheme of things.

JonFW2‘s arm tassels are cutting off the blood flow to his biceps:

In 1996, with Bret taking a break and you-know-who-and-who leaving for Atlanta, Vince brought Warrior back. He get a MASSIVE push, not only with crazy (for the time) pyro and music, but also free advertising for his comic book and weird inspirational Warrior lifestyle system.

And then totally out of nowhere – with a PPV main event coming up – he was just gone. Never mentioned again.

All I could find online is that he no showed some appearances. Do you know what else actually happened? Was there money involved? Did he ever give an account from his side? Did anyone at WWF?

It’s not entirely true that the Warrior vanished and was never mentioned again. In fact, in a segment that aired as part of the July 8, 1996 episode of Monday Night Raw, Gorilla Monsoon announced that Mr. Hellwig was being suspended for missing shows that past weekend in Indianapolis, Detroit, and Pittsburgh. Gorilla went on to say that the suspension would be lifted if Warrior posted an appearance bond to guarantee that he would show up at future events.

Even though Monsoon was merely the on-camera WWF President with no real authority, what he said in that segment was more or less exactly what happened in real life. Warrior no showed events in Indianapolis, Detroit, and Pittsburgh, and Vince McMahon really did get pissed off about it and really did demand that the wrestler put up a bond that would be forfeited if he missed another show. All this is covered in the July 15, 1996 Wrestling Observer Newsletter.

Also per the Observer, Warrior claimed that he missed the shows due to the death of his father, who really did die around that time, but the WWF side called that excuse into question because apparently Warrior had not been in contact with his father since the age of three. There was also tension in the parties’ relationship because Warrior felt the WWF was selling merchandise with the tagline “Always believe,” which he considered to be his intellectual property, without giving him a cut per his contract. Finally, the WWF was also ticked off at Warrior because he gave interviews to internet provider Prodigy without Fed approval, at a time when the WWF had an exclusive promotional relationship with Prodigy’s competitor America Online.

It’s not clear whether the merchandise issue caused Warrior to miss the shows, but it, combined with the Prodigy matter and the WWF’s disbelief that Warrior really cared about his father’s passing, probably lead to the relationship being fraught in such a way that the no shows immediately lead to the suspension, whereas a lesser punishment probably would have been doled out to other wrestlers.

Christopher‘s resume is a bit sparse:

Brock Lesnar has never won a secondary or tag title in WWE. What other WWE World Champions in the Intercontinental Title era won neither a secondary or tag belt? I see that Ivan Koloff and Stan Stasiak didn’t have other belts in the pre-IC era.

First off, just to be clear, the WWWF/WWF/WWE did have secondary championships before the creation of the Intercontinental Title, even though the IC belt is the most iconic secondary championship in the history of the company. They had a United States Championship and United States Tag Team Championships in the 1960s as well as International, International Tag Team, and Junior Heavyweight Championships at various points before Pat Patterson won the fictional IC tournament in Rio de Janeiro.

However, that’s not the question. The question is which WWE World Champions never held another title for the company.

Christopher is correct that Ivan Koloff and Stan Stasiak qualify. The same is true of Superstar Billy Graham, with the WWWF Heavyweight Championship being his first and only in the promotion. From there, we have to fast forward fourteen years to Sgt. Slaughter, who was a strong main event star for the WWF for quite some time but never held a belt there until he turned his back on the United States in the buildup to Wrestlemania VII. Five years later, Sid Justice would become the first two-time WWF Champion who never held a secondary title for the company.

Moving to the 2000s, Christopher already mentioned that Brock Lesnar qualifies, and he was correct on that point. Also qualifying is a former rival of Lesnar’s Bill Goldberg who held the WWE version of the World Heavyweight Title represented by the Big Gold Belt and the Universal Championship before it got unified back into the mainline WWE Championship.

A name that I totally forgot about as a former World Champ until I started putting this answer together is the Great Khali, who also never had another championship.

And that’s it. Eight men total who held a World Title in WWE without holding a lower level championship in the company. If we go with the initial qualification from Christopher’s question, only five of them did this after the introduction of the Intercontinental Championship.

Donny from Allentown, PA has starrs in his eyes:

I have heard a lot of people over the years come down hard on Starcade ’89: Future Shock because it had no championship matches, just a tournament. I thought it was well done. Starcade ’91: Battlebowl on the other hand was a total pointless disaster. Do you agree?

I don’t think either show was a good idea, to be honest. When it comes to the history of pay per view, shows that have not been marketed around one or two marquee matches tend not to do as well as those with a clearly defined main event or main events . You had literally no idea what the top match on Battlebowl was going to be. Though you knew what matches you were going to see in the Iron Man tournament at Future Shock, you had no idea what the most important matches of the evening were going to be heading into the night, because you didn’t know how the tournament was going to play out.

Plus, the structure of the Iron Man tournament doesn’t work for me creatively, because you have to have so many top guys lose so many matches on one night that at least one of your main eventers is going to walk away looking pretty weak.

Tyler from Winnipeg is in the zone and may snap:

What did you think of The Rock vs Ken Shamrock matches in the WWF?

They weren’t barnburning, five star classics, but they were well executed showcase matches that I think did quite a bit to bring both men up the card. It was about as good a first major feud for heel Rock that you could have hoped for. I’m apparently not the only one who thinks along those lines, either, given that the Rock decided that he would provide footage of himself to Impact Wrestling when it came time for that company to induct Shamrock into their Hall of Fame.

Redmond won’t stop reminding me that she was his before she was mine:

What was the best Macho Man-Ric Flair match? I always loved the Wrestlemania VIII match, but it seems like regard for that match might have diminished over time – your opinion?

I can’t think of a bad match between these two men by any stretch of the imagination, but the best one has to either be Wrestlemania VIII or Great American Bash 1995. Unfortunately, I think both of those matches tend to be a bit forgotten, with the WM8 bout slipping through the cracks because it was on a Mania that wasn’t particularly noteworthy and the GAB match falling by the wayside because WCW between Hogan’s arrival the nWo tends to be overlooked as a whole.

Big Al is getting snubbed:

I ask every year after Wrestlemania who is still missing from the WWE Hall of Fame. My top two are Chyna by herself and Demolition. Would be your top picks and why? Please use only fully retired wrestlers.

As of 2024, I don’t think that there are any glaring omissions from the WWE Hall of Fame. If you go back many years to when guys like Bruno Sammartino and Randy Savage were missing, you could say that there were wrestlers so key to the company’s history that the HOF was illegitimate without them.

There just aren’t uninducted wrestlers out there like that anymore.

So, yeah, you could put in a Chyna or a Demolition and it would be a nice moment, but I don’t feel as though the Hall is missing anything critical because they’re not in there.

Ossie, Ossie, Ossie, oi, oi, oi:

How many clean losses did Jake “The Snake” Roberts have as a face during his first WWF run? The only clean one-on-one pins or submissions I can remember were all as a heel: a few to Ricky Steamboat during his first feud, to Randy Savage at This Tuesday In Texas in the blowoff to the wedding/cobra angle, and to The Undertaker at WrestleMania VIII, which was the Snake’s last match during that first run. The closest I can remember as a face is Honky Tonk Man using the ropes in Wrestlemania III. Mr Perfect and Ted DiBiase also pinned him in Survivor Series matches: Perfect after Andre choked Roberts out & got disqualified, and DiBiase with his feet on the ropes. When you speak of some of the most protected people of that era, I was surprised to think of Roberts in that group, but he went over – or at least drew or avoided a clean loss – in all virtually all his major feuds as a face: Rick Rude, Bad News Brown, Rick Martel, DiBiase, Earthquake – even Andre. Am I missing any? Pretty good record to not lose clean over four or so years.

Though he had been gaining some cult popularity for a while, Jake the Snake fully turned face when he was attacked by the Honky Tonk Man during a Snake Pit segment in February 1987. He remained a face through summer 1991, when he turned on the Ultimate Warrior. So, that’s the time period we’ll be looking at for these losses.

Kamala did pin Roberts on the episode of Saturday Night’s Main Event that aired on May 2, 1987 (taped April 28), but that doesn’t count as a clean loss because Kim Chee whacked the Snake with a rabbit clothesline before the Ugandan Giant hit his big splash for the victory. Kamala also won a July 12, 1987 match between the two on a house show in Miami, though records are vague as to how that win occurred – and it may even have been a count out since that’s the finish the two did when they faced each other in Jackson, Mississippi on June 25.

There are also numerous house show matches that Roberts lost during this period of time, though results do not record exactly how he lost them. These include bouts against the Honky Tonk Man, Rick Rude, Andre the Giant, Randy Savage, Mr. Perfect, Earthquake, The Warlord, King Kong Bundy, and many against Ted DiBiase. If I were a betting man, I would guess that almost all of these were not clean losses because other results from the same tours that show how wins and losses occurred reflect Roberts having lost by count out or DQ.

However, at least one of the DiBiase matches referenced above is available online because it took place at the Boston Gardens and was aired on local television there, and that bout featured the Million Dollar Man winning via a rollup and a handful of tights after Virgil provided a distraction. It’s possible that they also did variations on this finish elsewhere on the road.

JN is pointing to his head in an exaggerated fashion:

Recently watching some Bobby Heenan shoots and I realized I never really noticed his transition from being a manager to being a commentator. I remember he would take really wild bumps forHogan and Warrior etc., but when did this stop? At what show was his last major bump ? Did it coincide with his transition to commentary or was he managing in a less physical style for a while before making the switch?

Heenan got out of managing full time in 1991, and that’s basically when he stopped bumping as well. In fact, the Brain was still wrestling matches on the house show circuit pretty regularly through February of ’91, continuing a program with the Big Boss Man that had started in November 1990. After a nearly six month long hiatus from the ring, Bobby did come back for a really weird one-off match on August 2, 1991 when he wrestled Mr. Fuji in a heel versus heel match on a house show in Uniondale, New York. This was actually the final match of Heenan’s career. I doubt video footage of that exists, but there’s a perverse part of me that really wishes that it did. Hey, at least we’ve got some of the localized promos for it:

APinOz will not be televised:

Is WWE’s house show schedule as extensive as it was when house shows were “where the money was” or have they scaled back?

They’ve scaled way back.

As an example, I decided to compare WWE’s house show schedule in May 2024 to WWE’s house show schedule in May 1987. In May of ’24, the company ran a grand total of five main roster house shows. In May of ’87, the company ran fifty main roster house shows. That’s not a typo. There were literally ten times as many house shows back then.

This is in part because the company had two different touring groups of wrestlers in 1987, whereas in 2024 house shows are most often run as combined brand “supershows” even though there are separate Raw and Smackdown rosters. It is also in part because, in 1987, it still was not outside the realm of possibility for the same crew of wrestlers to appear on both afternoon and evening house shows in the same day in two relatively nearby cities.

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.