Ask 411 Wrestling: Who Won the Rivalry Between Hulk Hogan and the Undertaker?

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.

Hey, ya wanna banner?

Did Uzoma just say . . . three minutes?

Was Three Minute Warning set to reunite following the future Umaga re-signing with WWE?

It definitely appears to have been considered. Interestingly, in the December 12, 2005 Wrestling Observer Newsletter – the first to report on the re-signing of Eddie “Umaga” Fatu – actually said there were rumors that his new role would be as an ally of John Cena.

However, those rumors either proved to be false or plans changed, as in the January 9, 2006 Figure Four Weekly, it was suggested that the company might not just reunite Three Minute Warning but also add the recently-signed Sonny Siaki to the group, turning them from a tag team to a Samoan stable.

Siaki never made it out of WWE developmental, though while he was there, he did form a tag team with a different member of the Anoa’i family, as he and Afa Jr. (later Manu) wrestled as the Samoan Fight Club.

Without Siaki, Rosey and Jamal did reunite as Three Minute Warning for one dark match, held on January 9, 2006 before a Monday Night Raw taping. They defeated a pair of indy wrestlers, Bison Bravado and Trent Acid.

. . . and then things just seemed to fall apart.

In the February 27 Figure Four Weekly, it was reported that Jamal was listed as a singles act on the Raw brand roster with no mention of what happened to Rosey.

Ultimately, Rosey was cut by WWE on March 21, 2006, while Jamal debuted as Umaga on April 3.

Somewhat appropriately, upon his departure from WWE, Rosey made All Japan Po Wrestling his home promotion, which is where Jamal and been competing as a top heel in between his two runs with the E.

JonFW2, Still Currently in Australia is sending for the man:

I read recently on a fairly suspect blog that Randy Savage went completely rogue in a Nitro vignette with Tori Wilson and Gorgeous George.

According to the report, he legitimately lost it with both of them and ultimately slapped Wilson when she laughed (out of fear, according to the report).

As a result, allegedly, all plans for Savage- including a run with their top title- were scrapped and a bunch of storylines had to be changed.

I find this pretty hard to believe since any backstage vignette like this would have likely been pre-taped and if it went south, they just would have scrapped it or re-shot.

What’s the real story here?

I actually covered this back in March.

Jon is not JonFW2. He may or may not currently be in Australia. However, he does have a question:

What happened with Zach Gowen in the WWE? On Smackdown in 2003, he was all over the brand with Hulk Hogan’s Mr. America. Then he was gone just as quickly out of nowhere.

Honestly, he was a novelty act that the company tried to make into a weekly character when he should have only appeared sparingly for special occasions. As a result, creative had nothing for him. Combine that with his developing a reputation for having a bad attitude backstage and suffering a concussion in his last WWE match, and the company made the call to cut him in early February 2004.

Tyler from Winnipeg pits the immortal against the dead:

Hulk Hogan versus Undertaker in singles matches – what is the win-loss record, including non-televised contests?

There were only seven Hogan/Taker singles matches in wrestling history, and the Dead Man actually won the series between the two, 4 matches to 3.

The first two bouts were dark matches following marathon WWF syndicated TV tapings, with WWF Champion Hulk Hogan defeating the Undertaker on July 29, 1991 in Worcester, Massachusetts and November 13, 1991 in New Haven, Connecticut. The records I found list the New Haven match as a DQ win for the Hulkster, though I would be willing to bet that both of them were.

Two weeks later, the Undertaker defeated Hogan for the WWF Championship at the 1991 Survivor Series, followed by Hogan reclaiming the championship roughly a week later at the first and only This Tuesday in Texas pay per view.

That was the last singles match between the two men for over a decade, as they wouldn’t meet again until Judgment Day 2002, when the Undertaker again defeated Hogan for the WWE Championship. The next month, UT successfully defended that title against Hogan on two house shows, the first occurring on June 28 in Washington, DC and the second occurring at the world’s most famous arena, Madison Square Garden.

JM wants to pay tribute to one of wrestling’s unsung heroes:

I was watching a short 1960s documentary on wrestling at the old Montréal Forum called La Lutte (highly recommended, it’s online at NFB.ca) and I was surprised to see Dominic DeNucci, who I mostly know of as the guy who trained Mick Foley. I was wondering if you’d do one of your little capsule writeups on his career? (And piss off the readers who just want you to cover whether Ryback really hurt CM Punk or whatever.)

Yeah, sure, why not.

DeNucci was an Italian immigrant and was trained to wrestle in 1958 in Montreal by a fellow named Tony Laza. (No relation to Blackjack Lanza.)

Originally, DeNucci wrestled in Quebec under a hood as the Masked Marvel, though in late 1959 he changed his ring name to Dominic Bravo and became the tag team partner of Dino Bravo – though not the Dino Bravo who you’re probably familiar with from the WWF. This Bravo was another Italian immigrant to North America. The Bravo “brothers” worked together in a variety of territories in the early 1960s, including Ohio, Ontario, and Calgary’s “Big Time Wrestling,” which was the forerunner of Stu Hart’s Stampede Wrestling. In the early part of ’61, the fake brothers did briefly break from teaming, at which point Dominic returned to Montreal and competed under the ring name Dominic DeNucci for the very first time. Throughout the early 60s, he would be Dominic Bravo in some territories and Dominic DeNucci in others.

The Bravo Brothers had their last recorded match as a team in October 1962, after which Dominic remained in Big Time Wrestling and teamed regularly with Ron Etchison, eventually winning the Stampede International Tag Team Titles in January 1963.

In April of ’63, DeNucci – now exclusively using that name – decided a change of scenery was in order and relocated to San Francisco, California. While there, he wrestled in Roy Shire’s Northern California territory and became a fairly big star, largely due to his connection with Italian Americans in the audience. He feuded with “Crippler” Ray Stevens over the United States Championship, at the time the top title in the Shire territory. The two had several brutal matches against each other, including a “wire fence” bout (a precursor to the steel cage) and a Texas death match, both of which were in the historic Cow Palace. Though DeNucci did wrest the U.S. Title away from Stevens for a time, it was the Crippler who held it at the end of the men’s feud.

DeNucci stayed in San Francisco for about three months after the Stevens feud ended, wrestling names like Dick the Bruiser and the Destroyer when they came through town. He even got a match against a young Antonio Inoki when Inoki had been sent to the United States for a learning excursion.

Not long thereafter, DeNucci himself would be traversing the Pacific Ocean, as, in October 1964, he was booked to appear for World Championship Wrestling. No, not the WCW that engaged in the Monday Night War with the WWF. We’re instead talking about the original WCW, a wrestling territory promoted by Jim Barnett in Australia from 1964 through 1978.

DeNucci was effectively WCW’s first main event babyface, locked in a brutal feud with Killer Kowalski over the IWA World Heavyweight Championship. The two toured all over the country putting on championship matches, leading to a major wrestling boom down under. Once Dominic put his feud with Kowalski to bed, a familiar face showed up in Australia to challenge DeNucci for the IWA Championship . . . none other than Ray Stevens.

Stevens and DeNucci reprised their feud from San Francisco in Australia, competing in not just singles matches but also tag bouts pitting Stevens and Kowalski against DeNucci and Cowboy Bob Ellis. Just like in San Fran, Stevens held the title at the end of the DeNucci feud, though Dominic remained a popular babyface in Australia. His later opponents in the territory included Mitsu Arakawa, the Mongolian Stomper, and Dory Funk Jr.

In September 1965, after almost a year in Australia, DeNucci left the country temporarily and returned to San Francisco. This time, he captured the territory’s version of the World Tag Team Titles, partnering with Pepper Gomez against the Blond Bombers of Pat Patterson and . . . you guessed it . . . Ray Stevens. DeNucci also challenged for his old United States Championship during this run, though he failed to unseat champion Kenji Shibuya.

In the new year, 1966, it was back to Australia and WCW. He recaptured the IWA World Championship and put it up against names like Waldo Von Erich and Art Nelson. Also during this run, he teamed up for the first time with a man who would become perhaps his best friend in the professional wrestling industry: fellow Italian Bruno Sammartino. Eventually, DeNucci would drop the IWA Title to Professor Toru Tanaka, freeing him up to go back to North America in August of ’66.

Initially, DeNucci wrestled in the Pacific Northwest, on both the U.S. and Canadian sides of the border. He won the version of the World Tag Team Titles promoted by NWA Vancouver with Don Leo Jonathan, eventually losing them to Chris and John Tolos . . . who Ask 411 Wrestling fans will remember from the last time I did one of these overly long career retrospectives on a 1960s wrestler.

For the first part of 1967, DeNucci spent some time back in the Shire territory, but by the fall of that year he landed in the World Wide Wrestling Federation, where he was reunited with Bruno Sammartino. In addition to their being friends outside the ring, Sammartino and DeNucci were portrayed as being close in storylines as well. They were frequent tag team partners, and DeNucci was oftentimes the guy that a big new heel challenger would have to go through first before getting a shot at World Champion Bruno. This lead to bouts with the likes of Gorilla Monsoon, Baron Mikel Scicluna, and Virgil the Kentucky Butcher.

Though largely a WWWF wrestler at this point, Dominic did go back to WCW for a tour in the summer of 1968, winning the IWA World Tag Team Titles on two occasions in the span of a couple of months, once with Antonio Pugliese and once with Mario Milano. And then, after that, it was back to the WWWF, where he had a respectable for not particularly spectacular career. In fact, from this point on, unless I say otherwise assume that in between these trips to other territories, DeNucci is spending time back in the WWWF as an upper midcard wrestler.

Between July and November of 1969, DeNucci wrestled a bit in Ontario and Quebec, which saw him face both Abdullah the Butcher and The Sheik, which I can only imagine involved a lot of bleeding. Then, in the first quarter of 1970, there was another tour of WCW, this one seeing him trade the IWA World Championship back and forth with King Curtis Iaukea.

In 1971, DeNucci captured his first championship sanctioned by the WWWF, as he and Sammartino defeated the Mongols – Beppo and Geeto – for the short-lived WWWF International Tag Team Championship. For those not in the know, Beppo of the Mongols would, a couple of years later, get repackaged as Nikolai Volkoff. Later in ’71, Dominic also toured Japan for the first time in his career, accompanying Sammartino on a tour for the Japan Wrestling Association. While there, he was billed as “Don” DeNucci for some reason, and he and Bruno had a noteworthy tag match against Giant Baba & Antonio Inoki.

For most of 1972, DeNucci actually wrestled for the NWF, a territory which covered Ohio and upstate New York and had quite a bit of talent overlap with the WWWF. In October and November of that year, he toured with All Japan Pro Wrestling during what was the promotion’s first year in existence. He was “Don” instead of “Dom” again, and he again teamed with Bruno against Giant Baba and a couple of different partners.

1973 and 1974 were not particularly noteworthy years in DeNucci’s career, as he bounced around the NWF, Toronto, and Pittsburgh some more, with another tour of AJPW towards the end of 1974.

When he got back from Japan, DeNucci took his career in a different direction. Rather than returning to the northeastern United States or Canada, he headed to Championship Wrestling from Florida, where he reformed his team with Antonio Pugliese, who by this point had been renamed Tony Parisi. The Italian team captured the NWA Florida Tag Team Titles and defended them for most of the first two months of 1975.

Come April, DeNucci was back in the WWWF territory, and he very quickly became a WWWF Tag Team Champion, which is the version of the championship that would remain in existence until 2010. His partner for this run was Puerto Rican wrestler Victor Rivera. They feuded with both the Valiant Brothers and the Blackjacks, but in May Rivera left the territory and was replaced in the championship team by “Irish” Pat Barrett. Yes, his nickname was just his ethnicity. Doubt that would fly today. Eventually, the Blackjacks took the belts off DeNucci and Barrett, though the two teams would battle in rematches for a couple of months after that.

On October 25, 1975, Superstar Billy Graham wrestled his first WWWF match, and it was a tag bout that saw Graham team with Spiros Arion to defeat DeNucci and Bruno Sammartino. This lead to a Graham/DeNucci singles match a couple of months later, which was part of an MSG card broadcast on the early days of HBO. This was all part of the process of building Graham up to be a challenger for Bruno’s WWWF Championship.

1976 was pretty uneventful for ole’ Dom, though he would occasionally get loaned out from the WWWF to the Sheik’s Big Time Wrestling territory in Michigan and Dick the Bruiser’s WWA in Indiana. 1977 was largely the same, except DeNucci did get two rare shots at major singles championships, challenging Billy Graham for the WWWF Championship in Pittsburgh in June and Nick Bockwinkel for the AWA Championship in October at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

In 1978, DeNucci did become a tag team champion again, though it was for the WWA, as he and Wilbur Snyder defeated the Valiant Brothers. DeNucci didn’t stop there, though. Later the same month, he also won the WWWF Tag Team Titles again, this time with new partner Dino Bravo . . . and this time it’s the SECOND Dino Bravo, the guy who would go on to challenge the Ultimate Warrior to a bench press competition. They would lose the titles to the Yukon Lumberjacks three months after winning them, and just a few weeks after that DeNucci and Snyder would drop the WWA Tag Titles back to the Valiants. Bravo and DeNucci would continue to periodically challenge for the WWWF Tag Titles throughout the back half of 1978.

Now, we head in to Billy Corgan’s favorite year . . . 1979. DeNucci started the year back in All Japan, competing in its annual New Years’ battle royale. He also got singles matches with Kintaro Oki, the Destroyer, and Jumbo Tsuruta during this tour. Back in the WWWF – which was renamed the WWF this year – DeNucci became a tag team specialist of sorts, and his level of success largely depended on the quality of his partner. He would team with guys like SD Jones and Steve Travis to do jobs, but he could also credibly main event or semi-main when teamed with Andre the Giant or Ivan Putski. In other words, he was a bit of a utility player.

In early 1980, DeNucci slipped even further down the card in WWF, as he spent the first several months putting over the Wild Samoans in tag team matches with various partners and putting over Hulk Hogan in singles matches. In July, he was back in All Japan, where perhaps the most interesting part of the tour was him teaming with David Sammartino, much has he had done with David’s father for years and years. Towards the end of 1980, DeNucci was back in the WWF, though now instead of putting over Hulk Hogan and the Wild Samoans, he was putting over Sgt. Slaughter and the Moondogs.

This pattern largely continued into 1981, but in the fall Magnificent Muraco and the team of Mr. Fuji and Mr. Saito became DeNucci’s most frequent opponents. Though he would make occasional one-off appearances later in his career, 1982 was DeNucci’s last year as a full-time member of the WWF roster, and he was also done with AJPW around the same time.

This lead to DeNucci becoming a bit of a journeyman, mostly working smaller territories against obscure opponents, though he did keep a pretty regular schedule of wrestling through 1985. After that, his matches became more sporadic. Notable matches in DeNucci’s late career include getting two shots on indy cards in his native Italy in 1988 and being brought in by WCW (the U.S. one) to reprise his team with Tony Parisi as a nostalgia act in 1996 when they ran a show in Buffalo, New York.

Also, in the early 1980s, DeNucci began training professional wrestlers. As noted in JM’s question, he trained Mick Foley, with his other notable students being Larry Latham (Moondog Spot), Shane Douglas, and referee Brian Hildebrand, a.k.a. Mark Curtis. In fact, when Curtis was suffering from the stomach cancer that ultimately ended his life in 1999, DeNucci wrestled on the “Curtis Comes Home” tribute show in Pennsylvania, which raised money to help pay the ref’s medical bills and was one of the few shows in the 1990s that featured talent from WWF, WCW, and ECW competing on the same card.

Just about anybody would have predicted that the Curtis Comes Home match would be DeNucci’s last, but in 2005 he actually came out of retirement and started working some limited indy dates at the age of 73. His very last match took place on April 14, 2012, when he was 80 years old, teaming with Shane Douglas to defeat Lord Zoltan and Shawn Blanchard.

Also in 2012, he was inducted into the version of the Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame that was originally based in Amsterdam, New York before moving to Wichita Falls, Texas and eventually closing altogether. DeNucci passed away on August 12, 2021. Though an official cause of death was not widely circulated, it was reported that he had heart issues in the prior year.

And there you have it. That’s Dominic DeNucci.

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.