Ask 411 Wrestling: Did Anyone Kick Out Of Jake Roberts’ DDT?

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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Night Wolf the Wise is sending for the man:

1. There was a video that came up on my Facebook feed that I had forgotten about. In 1999 on an episode of Nitro, Macho Man goes to confront Gorgeous George. Torrie Wilson was there and laughed at Macho Man causing him to slap her in the face. This was supposedly an unscripted spot. Has anyone ever come forward and said whether or not Torrie breaking kayfabe was the reason he slapped her?

2. I heard that this stunt angered Turner executives because they were trying to present themselves as the family friendly alternative to WWE which was in the middle of the Attitude Era. Macho Man got sent home and plans for his push were dropped. What were the original plans for Savage before this incident?

To provide a bit of background, the incident in question took place during the July 5, 1999 episode of WCW Monday Nitro from the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. Also, though it’s the part of the segment that has been meme-ified, Savage didn’t just slap Torrie Wilson. He also grabbed Gorgeous George, ripped off her shirt, and threw her across the room. The whole thing was meant to be evocative of a domestic violence situation, and it was pretty uncomfortable.

Did Savage slap Wilson specifically because she was not properly selling what was happening in front of her?

. . . maybe. It doesn’t seem that anybody has ever really gone on record with this one. Torrie did a shoot interview with RF Video in 2008, and, while she wasn’t asked specifically about this instance, she was asked generally about working with Gorgeous George and Randy Savage, and her response was that she really didn’t remember her interactions with them at all. While it’s technically possible that she was playing coy to avoid discussing an uncomfortable situation, she seemed to genuinely be answering the question when I watched it.

That being said, if you watch the clip, Savage didn’t hit her hard at all. A man his size hitting a woman her size with an unprotected open hand slap to the side of the head could do some serious damage, and not only did her head not move all that much, she also kept on smiling. Thus, even if he was throwing the slap as a prompt to get her to sell, he was pulling the strike. It’s not that he hit her hard for real and that was the problem. It’s that the whole scene, including the interaction with George, looked too much like real world domestic violence.

Though the powers that be were not happy with the situation, it’s incorrect to say that Savage was sent home and plans for him were dropped. According to the July 12, 1999 Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Savage was scheduled to be on the episode of WCW Thunder that immediately followed the Nitro that ended with the slap, and he was taken off that show.

However, that’s really all the time he missed. In fact, less than a week after the slap, Savage won the WCW World Heavyweight Title at that year’s Bash at the Beach pay per view, even though it was just a transitional reign and he lost the belt to Hulk Hogan the night after on Nitro. Even after that, the Macho Man was still a presence on WCW television for the rest of the summer, building up to his singles match against Dennis Rodman at the annual Road Wild event in Sturgis, South Dakota. It doesn’t seem that the Torrie Wilson incident in any way significantly impacted plans for Savage.

Tyler from Winnipeg thinks he’s cute, etc., etc.:

Do you think if Sherri Martell wasn’t Shawn Micheals manager he wouldn’t have become as big as he did?

Yes.

I love Sherri as a performer, and I think that she added something to every wrestler she was paired with, even guys like Randy Savage and Ted DiBiase who didn’t truly “need” a second.

However, Michaels is a generational talent that would have shown through almost regardless of his circumstances. It’s not as though Sherri was the one who taught him how to be a great wrestler. He already had most of those tools and just need the experience.

Matt from Saskatoon is challenging Tyler from Winnipeg for the title of “Ask 411 Resident Canadian”:

Most times, when a match is title for title, the person with the “lower” title beats the person with the “major” title as part of coming up/being pushed.

Can you list some instances where the World or “higher” title holder took the “lower” title?

I believe HHH did it a few times? With RVD for the Hardcore title and Kane for the IC?

Your recollection is somewhat correct. Triple H definitely defeated Kane to unify WWE’s version of the World Heavyweight Title and the Intercontinental Title at the No Mercy pay per view on October 20, 2002 in Little Rock, Arkansas. HHH was the World Champ at the time, and Kane was the IC Champ. This was the match set up by the infamous Katie Vick angle. Call my crazy, but if you’re going to accuse your babyface of necrophilia, he should really win in the end.

However, Triple H didn’t unify the Hardcore Title with anything. You’re probably thinking of Rob Van Dam’s Intercontinental Title reign in 2002. As part of that run, he defeated Jeff Hardy at Vengeance on July 21, 2002 in Detroit to unify the IC and European Titles, and then he defeated Tommy Dreamer on August 26, 2002 in Madison Square Garden to unify the IC and Hardcore Titles. That’s two more examples of the “higher” champion defeating the “lower” champion for unification purposes.

This isn’t just a 2002 phenomenon, though. There are other examples from throughout wrestling history.

On August 12, 2006 in Liverpool, England, Ring of Honor unified its World Championship and its Pure Championship in a match between Bryan Danielson and Nigel McGuinness. World Champion Danielson won the match to absorb the lower-level title into his.

HBK’s Smile slipped his cable guy a 20 to unscramble the premium channels:

This most recent RAW referenced legendary cage matches from MSG. They spoke about the Bruno-Koloff cage match from 1975 and said it was the first ever televised cage match and it had aired on HBO. When did HBO televise wrestling? How did such an arrangement come to be? Were they ever live events or were they all taped? Who were the commentators and the studio hosts, if any, and were these people specific to HBO at the time? Is the Bruno-Koloff match the most important match ever televised on HBO? And why did HBO stop televising wrestling?

When HBO started up in the early 1970s, it was based in New York City and, like many early cable networks, they carried a lot of programming that was local to where their offices were, because it was cheap and easy. This resulted in HBO striking up a deal with Madison Square Garden to broadcast sporting events that took place from the world’s most famous arena. As a result, HBO aired hockey from the New York Rangers, basketball from the New York Knicks . . . and professional wrestling from the WWWF.

The WWWF shows that were on HBO were not shows specifically put together for HBO. They were just the company’s major monthly(ish) cards from MSG taped and put on pay cable, similar to the way that local television networks in cities like Boston, Philadelphia, and Toronto would broadcast the WWF house shows that were run in their arenas. In fact, HBO stopped running the WWWF in 1978 because the owners of Madison Square Garden wanted the shows to be exclusive to the MSG Network that they owned rather than being on what was technically a competing television outlet.

In all, I found record of 36 WWWF shows that aired on HBO between June 1973 and June 1978, all of them with play-by-play from one Vincent Kennedy McMahon.

Was Bruno-Koloff the most important match that aired on HBO?

I would suggest that it was not. One more significant match in my book would be the April 26, 1976 bout between Sammartino and Stan Hansen, during which Bruno broke his neck on a bodyslam, even though it was kayfabed to Hansen’s lariat being the crippling blow. On top of that, one of the last WWWF shows on HBO was the February 20, 1978 MSG card, which featured Bob Backlund defeating Superstar Billy Graham to become the WWWF Champion for the first time – back during the era when you only saw that title changing hands every few years.

Also, though not directly relevant to the question, I feel like I should also note that HBO ran one and exactly one Georgia Championship Wrestling card on the station. The show took place on December 10, 1976 and was headlined by Terry Funk defending the NWA World Heavyweight Championship against Mr. Wrestling II. The broadcast featured the odd pairing of Vince McMahon and Gordon Solie on the mic together, presumably because HBO thought its fans would be familiar with Vince from the regular WWWF broadcasts.

I think Ossie accompanied Jake Roberts to the ring at Wrestlemania III:

Can you find any example of anyone kicking out of Jake Roberts’ DDT – ever? He was protected during his first WWF face run of ’86-’91, but during his entire run, face or heel, I don’t recall anyone ever kicking out of the DDT. The closest I can recall is Undertaker sitting up after the DDT at Wrestlemania 8, but this wasn’t during a pin attempt after the “finisher.”

A kick out from Jake’s DDT was exceedingly, exceedingly rare. According to a recent episode of his Snake Pit podcast, Jake generally refused to let other wrestlers kick out of the move, knowing the importance of protecting it.

However, that’s not to say that absolutely nobody did – and the most noteworthy example of a wrestler kicking out of the DDT will probably surprise you.

It’s the Snowman.

Who is the Snowman, you ask? He was Eddie Crawford, who in the early 1980s was taken under the wing of Jerry “The King” Lawler in Memphis and trained to be a professional wrestler. After only a couple of years in the business, he was plucked from Tennessee in 1985 by “Cowboy” Bill Watts, who brought him to Mid-South Wrestling for a very specific purpose.

That purpose was to become the promotion’s new major Black babyface after the departure of the Junkyard Dog in 1984. Replacing the Dog was no easy feat, so Watts had to strap a rocket to him. One of the ways he did that was by booking a match between Snowman and Jake Roberts at the Superdome in Louisiana on June 1, 1985. Not only was that match made, but the promotion put MUHAMMAD FREAKING ALI in Snowman’s corner.

During the course of the bout, as Ali was chasing Roberts’ second Nord the Barbarian around the ring, Jake the Snake hit the DDT, and Snowman . . . kicked out at two. He would also go on to win the bout, retaining is Mid-South Television Championship in the process.

Redmondthe2nd is a silver medalist:

The question often comes up of who was the best to never win a world title? But I ask you: who were the best wrestlers to never win the Intercontinental Championship? And similarly, who were the best teams to never win the tag titles? Qualifiers here being they had to have fought for said titles at some point. I’d have X-Pac on my own IC list, with the Killer Bees and The Fabulous Rougeaus on my tag list.

If you’re talking about best wrestlers to never win the Intercontinental Title, the obvious choices are the wrestlers who were so big so early that they basically leapfrogged right over that particular belt: Guys like Bruno Sammartino, Hulk Hogan, Ted DiBiase, Andre the Giant, the Undertaker, or, fast-forwarding many years, Brock Lesnar, John Cena, and Dave Batista.

However, based on the way the question is worded, I don’t think you’re asking about those guys. I think you’re asking about guys who seemingly spent the majority of their careers at that IC level but never held the championship for whatever reason.

Here’s a handful of those, in addition X-Pac – who I think was a good choice:

Bam Bam Bigelow comes to mind. Whether in his 1980s run or his 1990s run, I could see him being a good monster Intercontinental Champion that would have the mobility to mix it up with smaller contenders like Ricky Steamboat or Shawn Michaels.

Bob Holly had several moments in which he conceivably could have wound up an Intercontinental Champion, including a series of matches with Jeff Jarrett for the belt in 1995 and getting mixed up in the Chris Jericho/Chyna feud in late 1999 and early 2000. He wouldn’t have seemed out of place with the belt.

R-Truth has been around for so long and has been so consistently over at a midcard level that he feels like he should have been an Intercontinental Champion, but he never actually has been. The brand split comes into play somewhat here, as he did hold the U.S. Title, but that’s not the right secondary belt for purposes of this question.

As far as the Tag Team Titles go, I feel like the most obvious answer is the Rockers. Yes, there was the title change with the Hart Foundation that WWE has gone back and forth on recognizing, but they never got a true reign even if they got the win, so I think it counts for purposes of this question.

I’m also a bit surprised that the Twin Towers never got the belts. Yeah, they had the feud with the Mega Powers and that got them more notoriety than being tag champs would, but a Tag Title run could have brought some much needed attention to the division after Akeem and Bossman got the rub from their work with Hogan and Savage.

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.