Ask 411 Wrestling: Which McMahon Has the Best PPV Record?

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.

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It’s back to the column, and it’s back to Tyler from Winnipeg:

The Dirty White Boy was ranked #25 in PWI’s top best singles wrestlers out of #500 in 1994. Why was real name, Tony Anthony, not given any chance to be at least an IC champ challenger?

I think it all comes down to cosmetics. If you take a look at Anthony/White Boy, his body type, his balding hair, and his overall look, he does not appear to be somebody who the WWF would be willing to push near the top of their roster during the cosmetically-oriented 1990s, even if they were at a point where their talent pool was notoriously shallow.

After all, they did have him in their company for a period of time, and the only thing that they did was turn him in to TL Hopper, the wrestling plumber, and used him as one of several members of a troupe of “gimmick jobbers” that they were putting on television around the time, which also included luminaries like the Goon, Who, and Freddie Joe Floyd.

He did work much harder than his push in the WWF, though. Just look at the match above against Hector Garza Jr. of all people. Yes, there are some spots where either their styles don’t mesh or they do not communicate well, but Anthony/Hopper is still doing everything within his power to make Garza look like a star, taking some remarkable bumps for a guy his size.

No chance. That’s what CJ has got:

With Vince recently getting involved at Wrestlemania, which McMahon family member has the best win/loss record on PPV? I’ve got a weird feeling it might actually be Stephanie, but I’d love if you could confirm or deny that. If you’re so inclined, it would be good to know which McMahon has won the most matches total, but I thought it might be easier for you to focus on PPV.

Believe it or not, this is remarkably close, assuming that you include both tag team and singles matches in everybody’s records.

As of this writing, Shane McMahon has wrestled 40 pay per view matches over the course of his career, and he’s won 16 of them, meaning that he has won 40% of the time.

Stephanie McMahon has only had five PPV bouts in total – significantly fewer than I would have guessed – and she has won two of those five matches. Thus, her winning percentage is also 40%.

Finally, Vincent Kennedy McMahon has wrestled on premium live events on 19 different occasions, and he has won seven times, giving him a winning percentage of 36.8.

Thus, Shane and Stephanie are your winningest McMahons on PPV, but Papa Vince is not that far behind them. In fact, if he wrestles and wins one more pay per view bout during his career, he’ll be tied up with his children.

Now that I’ve written this, I halfway expect that he’ll be back in the ring within the next thirty days so he can make this happen. Get ready to lay down, Austin Theory.

Brad didn’t know, but fortunately his ass called somebody:

Many people have wrestled against two generations of a family. The easiest way into that club is to face Rey and Dominik Mysterio in a tag match. But can you think of anyone who has wrestled against three generations? That would be interesting.

The answer is:

Absolutely.

I won’t be doing a comprehensive list here of every wrestler who has ever wrestled three generations of the same family, but there are multiple examples. The guy who sprang to my mind most quickly as an answer is none other than . . .

“The One” Billy Gunn

As many of you know, Billy’s first national exposure came as part of the Smoking Gunns tag team with his “brother” Bart in the WWF in the early 1990s. In 1993, the Gunns were involved in a feud with the Headshrinkers, Fatu and Samu. In June 1993, there were two six man tag team matches, one in Baltimore, Maryland and one in Madison Square Garden, in which the Gunns teamed up with Kamala to face the Headshrinkers and their manager Afa, who was also the the father of Samu. Afa and Samu would also team up to face Billy and Bart in two-on-two action on shows in July 1993 and March 1994 when Fatu was unavailable.

Fast forward twenty-one years to 2014, and Billy Gunn and the Road Dogg were doing a bit of a nostalgia run as the New Age Outlaws. During that time, they regularly wrestled Jimmy and Jey Uso, who are of course Fatu’s sons. Perhaps the most noteworthy match in this series occurred on the June 3, 2014 episode of Monday Night Raw, in which the Usos defeated the Outlaws for the WWE Tag Team Titles.

Of course, Billy also wrestled Fatu many more times when he was later rechristened as Rikishi, and he also had his fair share of matches against Fatu and Samu’s cousin Yokozuna in the 1990s, including dropping the WWF Tag Team Titles to Owen Hart and Yoko at Wrestlemania XI.

So, there you have it. Billy Gunn has wrestled first (Afa), second (Fatu/Samu/Yokozuna), and third (The Usos) generation members of the Anoa’i family.

Also, though this is quite a bit more obscure, it’s worth noting that, on at least one occasion, the Anoa’i family has had three of is generations wrestling in the same match. This happened on March 1, 2014, in Allentown, Pennsylvania for WXW, an indy promotion that the family runs and ties into its wrestling school. In that match, the patriarch of the family, Afa, teamed with all three of his sons – Samu, Afa Jr. (a.k.a. Manu in WWE), and L.A. Smooth – as well as Samu’s son, Lance Anoa’i.

Their opponents in that match were four relatively unknown indy wrestlers – AC Anderson, Eric Cobain, Havoc, and Mustafa Aziz, as well as one gun whose name you will definitely recognize: Homicide. So, by virtue of just one match, Homicide, Anderson, Cobain, Havoc, and Aziz have all technically wrestled three generations of the same family and are answers to this question.

There is one more example that I will give, but it’s a little bit of a stretch. This one involves “Rowdy” Roddy Piper. In the mid-1970s in the southern California territory, Piper had quite the feud with the Guerrero family. His main foil was Chavo Guerrero, Sr. (later known as Chavo Classic), but there were several tag matches involving Piper and Chavo in which Chavo’s partner was his father, Gory Guerrero. Then, over 30 years later, Piper showed up as an entrant in the 2008 WWE Royal Rumble match. Also in that match? Chavo Guerrero, Jr. Again, it’s a bit of a stretch because I don’t like to include battles royale in answers like this, but it is a correct answer in the broadest possible sense.

It’s time. It’s time. It’s Bryan time:

With Vader being inducted into the Hall of Fame, I was wondering: Do you know if he ever had to fight LucasFilm for the right to use the name “Vader”? I know his character has nothing to do with Darth Vader, but George does seem like the kind of guy to take a pro wrestler to court for intellectual property.

Nope.

There were some legal wranglings that involved Vader’s ring name, but they did not involve an infringement claim by LucasFilm. According to the September 13, 1993 Wrestling Observer Newsletter, New Japan Pro Wrestling sued Leon White for breach of contract when he suddenly stopped wrestling for them and switched over to a rival promotion by the name of UWFi. As part of that suit, NJPW attempted to block White from using the ring name that they had given him, Big Van Vader. According to the courts, “Big Van Vader” was owned by New Japan, but they could not block use of the “Vader” name standing on its own due to the established popularity of the Darth Vader character. That’s why, after a certain point, Big Van Vader became “Super Vader” in UWFi and why you no longer heard “Big Van” used in the United States.

It’s also worth noting that at least two different luchadors straight up used the name “Darth Vader” when wrestling in Mexico. The first and most popular Darth Vader in lucha libre was portrayed by the wrestler perhaps best known as Huracan Sevilla, and the mantle was later taken up by the wrestler who would be later known as El Hijo del Hurican Ramirez. Oddly, El Hijo del Huracan Ramirez was not actually the son of Huracan Ramirez.

I can only assume that lucha libre’s Darth Vaders were never bothered by Lucas because Mexican professional wrestling was way under the radar in most of the U.S. in the 1970s and 1980s. Had it been attempted in the internet era, results may have differed.

Davros made sure to wear a white shirt to write this question:

Has Hulk Hogan ever done an interview explaining what the was the point of his high profile angle with Jeff Jarrett and Masahiro Chono in 2003?

It seemed for all intents and purposes that the plan was Hogan vs. Jarrett at the inaugural BFG, but it was constantly delayed and finally cannoned by Hogan.

What’s the story?

I don’t know that Hogan has ever given an interview explaining what was going through his head, but the good news for Davros and his question is that this was all fairly well documented at the time it was going down.

For those of you who may not know the backstory, Hulk Hogan had left the WWF in 2003, and his first match after exiting the Fed against on October 13 of that year, scoring a victory over Masahiro Chono on a New Japan Pro Wrestling show at the Tokyo Dome. During a post-show press conference at the Dome, Jeff Jarrett appeared and attacked Hogan, hitting him with a guitar shot and busting him wide open.

A lot of fans believe this to be the one and only angle that was ever shot to lead to an eventual Hogan/Jarrett match, but those fans don’t realize that there were actually several more weeks’ worth of angles on TNA’s weekly pay per views that continued moving things towards that bout, even though Hogan wasn’t there for any of them and he was largely sending Jimmy Hart to the shows as an emissary. The angle was built around the infamous series of events that occurred at WCW Bash at the Beach 2000, which saw Jeff Jarrett lay down for the Hulkster in a WCW Title match, leading to Hogan’s exit from the company.

According to the October 20, 2003 Wrestling Observer Newsletter, the original idea was for Hogan/Jarrett to occur on a TNA special pay per view on Sunday, November 30. The November 3 Observer reports that Hulk was scheduled to do a telephone interview on the October 22 TNA weekly PPV and then make a live appearance on the October 29 show as part of the buildup for the match, but he pulled out of doing both. This is because he opted to have arthroscopic knee surgery due to some swelling that had developed following the Chono match.

Hogan’s recovery from surgery meant that the November 30 date was taken off the books. The November 10 Observer states that February 8 and 15, 2004 were both considered as new dates once the original fell through, and the November 24 Observer goes on to say that Jimmy Hart was working on using the U.S. Army installation at Fort Campbell, Kentucky as the venue for the event, due in part to the fact that his son, a veteran of the second Iraq war, was soon to be stationed there.

However, in the coming weeks, communication between Hogan and TNA dropped off significantly. It got to the point that, on the December 3 TNA weekly show, Jarrett appeared and, during a promo, put up a graphic that said Hulk’s career had ended in 2003 thanks to Double J’s attack on him. According to the December 8 Observer, because the company was unsure of the future relationship with the Hulkster, this was meant to be an angle that could be played off in one of either two ways. If Hogan truly was done with them, it could be a blowoff. If the match was going to happen, though, it could be just another interview along the way.

Ultimately, that interview was the blowoff, and it appears to be because Hulk was much more focused on launching the singing career of his daughter Brooke. The December 15 Observer states that was Hogan’s primary project at the time, and he had apparently been advised by contacts he was making in the music industry that his being actively involved in professional wrestling promotion was not going to be in his daughter’s best interests.

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.