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Ask 411 Wrestling: Who is the Best Wrestler to Never Work for Vince McMahon?

May 25, 2018 | Posted by Ryan Byers
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Welcome, guys, gals, and gender non-binary pals to the latest edition of Ask 411 Wrestling. This is column number four of my current run, which equates to about a month’s worth of content. I think that’s as good a time as any to check in with you about how the column has been under its new direction, so feel free to check in with me regarding any feedback that you may have.

You can send that feedback via [email protected], which, coincidentally enough, is the same place that you can send questions to. They’ve been a bit light lately, so keep those coming as well.

Also, BANNER.

Errata, Et Cetera

Long-time wrestling fan and all around good guy Frank Pozen checked in with me after my column a couple of weeks ago, in which I mentioned Serena Deeb as a wrestler who might have been better in WWE had she waited a couple more years to debut. Frank wanted to provide a bit more background about Serena’s career:

Hey Ryan

Long time no talk. Just wanted to add a couple of things about Serena’s post WWE days in Japan. As you know, that is my area of expertise.

First, it should be said that when she was at OVW, she was used as a wrestler. But when she was brought up, that’s not how she was used. No wonder she was frustrated and acted out. I guess some things never change.

After Serena left the WWE, she had a good main event program in Japan with Kana for Smash in 2011. She was actually brought into the company to replace Mickie James who pulled out probably jittery about the Mar. 2011 earthquake. I’m not sure if you are familiar with Smash but I’m sure your readers are not. The company was owned by former Hustle owner Mazakasu Sakai who now owns the MMA company Pancrase. His intention was for Smash to be a wrestling and MMA. There were supposed to be two separate companies. He hired Tajiri to run the wrestling company and Fit Finlay was there too. But the MMA company never took off. Sakai wanted Tajiri to put MMA on his wrestling shows. When he refused to do that, Sakai closed Smash in Mar. 2012. The Kana vs Serena program was so well received that Serena retired on a 2015 Reina show, another company that is now closed. IIRC, her wrestling career was curtailed by concussion problems. And I think Kana would agree that much of her Asuka persona was formed in Smash. So Tajiri helped both of them a lot. That controversial manifesto Kana wrote at the time was Tajiri’s idea. Anyway, I didn’t know if you were aware of any of this but I thought it was worth mentioning about Serena.

Oh, I know about Smash. In fact, back when the promotion was running, I reviewed several Smash shows right here on 411 (here’s one example). I didn’t review any shows from the Kana/Serena era, but I did check out a couple that included Kana wrestling Syuri, who was originally meant to be the company’s home-grown female star and has now gone on to fight in UFC.

Smash was an adorably random promotion that had its own trainees but also brought in quite a few former WWE stars who were friends with Tajiri from his run in that company as well as some international talents you weren’t seeing booked anywhere else, like Canadian luchador Mentallo and Finland’s greatest wrestler, Starbuck.

Frank is 100% correct, though, that giving some direction to Kana (now Asuka in WWE) is probably the greatest lasting legacy of the company at this point.

If you want to hear more from Frank, feel free to check out his blog or his podcast.

What You All Came For

Shane P. wants to separate the has beens from the never wases:

Who is the best talent to never have worked for Vince McMahon (male and female)?

Okay, let’s start off with some definitions. Shane didn’t provide any clarification as to what he meant by “worked for,” but because he used those words as opposed to “was under contract to,” I am going to use the broadest possible definition of the phrase “worked for” that I can, meaning that if you’ve appeared for a Vince McMahon-affiliated promotion in any capacity, you’re out of contention. Yes, that eliminates everybody who worked as a job guy on a b-show, even if it was just a one-off appearance. Yes, that eliminates everybody who worked in a WWF/WWE developmental program, even if they never made it up to the main roster. Also, since the question says “worked for” and not “wrestled for,” I’m even going to throw out those who have done work for the company in non-wrestling capacities.

Oh, and I’m also going to assume “Vince McMahon” means both Vincent Kennedy McMahon and his father, Vince J. McMahon.

Another qualifier: The easiest and some might say the cheapest way to answer this question would be to throw out names of legendary Japanese or stars who never came to the United States or were only in the Americas for occasional appearances, in which case I would probably hold up Hiroshi Tanahashi and Manami Toyota as near-definitive answers.

(For what it’s worth, my initial plan was to put Kenta Kobashi, Mitsuharu Misawa, or Toshiaki Kawada in the male slot in the paragraph above, but they, along with many other Japanese greats of the 80s and 90s all worked on an AJPW/NJPW/WWF co-branded show on April 13, 1990, which disqualifies them under the broad definition that I am using.)

So, to make things a bit more interesting, I think that we should modify the question and ask who the most talented wrestlers who never worked for Vince McMahon are, despite the fact that they regularly worked in the United States for at least part of their careers.

Also, I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the fact that I’m not the first person on the internet to try to answer this question. There have been many other articles, videos, and message board threads devoted to this topic. If you read those, there are some common answers that come up, though a few of those oft-mentioned wrestlers actually HAVE worked for a McMahon-backed company if you look hard enough.

Those names include:

Abdullah the Butcher: Even WWE has included Abby on a list of greatest wrestlers to never be in WWE, but they apparently didn’t go back into their archives far enough. The Butcher actually DID wrestle on a WWWF card on September 29, 1972 in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Civic Arena, losing by disqualification to a wrestler named Lil Abner Osborne. He was also on two cards in Quebec co-promoted by the WWF and the Rougeaus’ International Wrestling promotion in October 1985.

Art Barr: Barr, who died before he turned 30 years old, was an excellent heel wrestler in AAA and had worlds of potential. He worked in the dying days of the Portland Wrestling territory and also in WCW. Prior to writing this column, I thought he had never been on a WWF show, but it turns out that he lost to Konnan (who at the time worked under the name “Latin Fury”) in a dark match on a WWF Challenge taping on January 8, 1992 in Fort Myers, Florida.

Stan Lane: The former Midnight Express member has never wrestled a WWE/WWF match to my knowledge, but he did have a run as a color commentator in the mid-1990s, so he definitely collected a WWF paycheck.

Scott Norton: I thought about including Scott Norton as a personal favorite of mine and a guy whose look would have seemingly fit in well in the WWF, but it turns out he did appear on a WWF house show on October 9, 1994 in Sunrise, Florida, where he lost of Bob Holly.

With those out of the way, let’s go to the actual best talents to never work for Vince McMahon . . .

THE GREAT MUTA

Some might cry foul on this one, because I said up top that I would be limiting my focus on international wrestlers, but, even though he is a native of Japan and has spent the majority of his career there, Muta did have some significant runs in the United States with Championship Wrestling from Florida and Jim Crockett Promotions before going on to become a regular guest star with WCW, TNA, and ROH. Yet, despite being perhaps the most recognizable Japanese wrestler in the USA (at least up until Shinsuke Nakamura’s debut), the man also known as Keiji Mutoh has never made his mark in a WWF/WWE ring.

It’s a shame, too, because the Great Muta against Randy Savage in the late 1980s is nothing shy of a dream match.

MAGNUM TA & NIKITA KOLOFF

I have to admit that I’m cheating a little bit by combining these two into one entry because I’ve got a high quality video of them wrestling each other. However, they’re also connected because they had the best parts of the careers in the same company at around the same time. The reason that these two never made it to the WWF is likely that they had relatively short professional wrestling careers, Magnum’s being tragically clipped due to a car accident and Nikita’s ending after some in-ring injuries started to mount.

For what it’s worth, there are some Koloff interviews in which he’s said the WWF was interested in him as an opponent for Hulk Hogan (which is the most logical feud for him), but he never jumped ship because of a sense of loyalty to Jim Crockett, who started him off in the wrestling business.

THE MIDNIGHT EXPRESS – BOBBY EATON & DENNIS CONDREY

Stan Lane, the Rock n’ Roll Express, and James E. Cornette all signed on the dotted line with the WWF at various points in their careers, but the Midnight Express duo of Bobby Eaton and Dennis Condrey never did, whether it be as a unit or as singles competitors. Granted, you can argue that neither man had the “look” to be a success in the northeastern territory, but they were one of the most skilled tag teams of an era and probably could have made something work out.

Condrey and Eaton vs. The British Bulldogs? Yes, please.

(As an aside, Bobby Eaton did work some Ohio Valley Wrestling shows where he was a tag team partner of Randy Orton early in Orton’s career, but OVW was never owned by the WWF and Eaton certainly wasn’t under a developmental deal, so I don’t feel those disqualify him from consideration.)

JAY LETHAL

You’ll probably notice that everybody who I’ve mentioned up to this point is of a certain, ahem, generation, but if we’re talking about current stars who have never been up to the bright lights and big city of “New York,” Jay Lethal is probably the best American wrestler to hold that distinction. While many stars of the independent scene who are similar in stature or talent have done at least a dark match or a c-show squash for the E, Lethal has kept out of it, most likely because he’s spent many years locked up by exclusive contracts with TNA and ROH. Perhaps Lethal doesn’t want to make the transition, but, if he does, he’s the most logical candidate for next independent pickup in my book.

Just imagine what Jay Lethal and Daniel Bryan or AJ Styles could do with wrestling’s largest promotional machine behind them.

Now we move on to the women. You’ll notice that this list is quite a bit different than the men’s list. While the competitors we’ve covered so far primarily made their bones in the 1980s, there weren’t that many super-talented female wrestlers in the United States during the same time period, particularly when you start weeding out those who worked for the McMahons at some point in their careers. Thus, our collection of talented lady athletes who have never been in WWE is much more recent than then men.

LUFISTO

LuFisto is a twenty-plus year veteran who came out of the same Quebec independent scene that produced the likes of Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn. However, as she’s seen many of her contemporaries from Montreal and even many of her contemporaries from elsewhere on the women’s scene receive chances at the big dance, the woman who for a while called herself the “Missionary of Violence” has stuck to the small time. That doesn’t diminish her talent, though, as she’s put on a variety of great bouts, be they deathmatches, puro-inspired encounters, or good, old fashioned pro wrestling brawls.

As she is approaching 40 years of age and just won a battle with cervical cancer, we probably won’t see LuFi in WWE at any point in her career . . . but stranger things have happened.

DAIZEE HAZE

If you trace the origins of the modern day WWE women’s revolution back to their source, you’ll wind up on the Midwest independent scene in the early 2000s, where a group of women like Lacey, Rain, MsChif, and Mickey Knuckles were plying their trade. The most talented of that group, though, may well have been Daizee Haze. Though she had an uncharacteristically small frame for a wrestler of any gender, Haze still managed to establish a believable style in which she used her agility and a little bit of lucha libre influence in order to undo her larger opponents. Though she seemed to be a natural babyface, she was also surprisingly effective when she turned heel later in her career, being just so gosh darn mean that you forgot she probably weighed 98 pounds soaking wet.

Aside from a one-off return in 2015 to celebrate a SHIMMER anniversary, Daizee has been largely absent on camera in the pro wrestling world since 2011, so this one will in all likelihood never happen.

AYAKO HAMADA

As with the Great Muta above, you can debate whether including Ayako Hamada here violates the ground rule I established about not discussing international wrestlers. Hamada, who is the younger daughter of one of my personal favorite male wrestlers, Gran Hamada, has spent most of her career bouncing back and forth between Japan and Mexico. However, she DID have a run with TNA in 2009 and 2010 as well as a series of matches with SHIMMER, so she could arguably be considered a wrestler who had enough time in the United States that it would not be outside of the realm of possibilities for her to wind up with a WWE stint under her belt. If you’re going to consider Ayako eligible for this list, she almost has to be on it, as she combines Japanese and Mexican professional styles in a way that few other wrestlers do, regardless of gender. She is truly unique and a sight to behold in the ring, or at least she was during her prime.

So, there you go . . . several extremely talented men and women who have never worked for Vince McMahon. As always, you can feel free to contribute your own suggestions down in the comment section.

Memphis B-Rad and Frank from Austria have similar questions about pro wrestling rules, so let’s take them up at the same time, starting with B-Rad:

Is there any legit justification for maintaining the rule that says a champ can’t lose the belt on a count out? They never use it in a story line, i.e. the chicken heel always walks out or to work an injury angle. I can’t remember the last time this rule made a difference. Every time the announcer mentions it, I think to myself why would the champ even bother to get back in the ring? Shouldn’t they get rid of this rule?

And here’s Frank (not Pozen):

I recently watched the Wrestlemania 17 No-DQ Match between Austin and The Rock. So, what I´m wondering – Rock puts Austin in the Sharpshooter, Austin makes it to the ropes and the ref tells Rock to let go. Rock does let go – but why? There is no chance of being DQed, so why not just keep the Sharpshooter locked in until Austin just can´t take it any more… it looks kinda comfy for the person applying it, so he could sit there for an hour or two

Regarding championships not changing hands via count out, the non-kayfabe explanation that I’ve always heard for that rule coming into existence relates to gambling.

Yes, that’s right. Gambling. Though sports betting websites currently offer odds for just about every major WWE event, not many modern fans know that quite a bit of the development of what we now know as professional wrestling is wrapped up in gambling. In fact, the predominant reason that wrestling moved from being a legitimate sport to a “work” was so that promoters and others could make money taking bets on the outcomes of events that they had predetermined. There has been quite a bit about this subject written over the years, including one gentleman’s thesis for his masters degree which I recently stumbled across.

If you take a few minutes to think about wrestling’s ties to gambling, you will no doubt figure out why a rule stating that championships cannot change hands on count out would be helpful to the pro wrestling promoters who made as much money off of wagers as they did off of live gates. If a title doesn’t change hands on count out (or DQ), you can book him to lose a match that you need him to lose in order to make money on bets without taking the championship off of him.

Once gambling was no longer the main economic driver behind wrestling, the rule retained some benefit, as you could have a babyface chasing your title pick up wins over the champion without actually winning the belt, thus hopefully building interest in an eventual rematch.

Nowadays, it doesn’t quite work like that. For whatever reason, there has been a shift in pro wrestling fans, and, even when they are suspending their disbelief, they’ve come to view a count out victory as a cheap win orchestrated by the booker, something that takes them out the story presented instead of heightening their investment in it. Thus, the count out finish has become fairly rare . . . though the rule that the title can’t change on a count out technically remains, even if it is almost never invoked.

Is there a reason for keeping it around?

I would argue that there are acutally two good ones:

1. First, even if you’re not doing a lot of count out finishes, you can still, under the right circumstances, TEASE a count out in a high profile match, either as a result of a competitor being badly beaten on the outside or a heel teasing that he will take a powder. This can be an effective way to heighten the drama in a match and do a false finish without having to rely on yet another nearfall and kickout. It’s an extra tool in the wrestlers’ toolbelts to get fans invested in the action, and there’s no real reason to take it away.

2. If you allow titles to change hands via count out, some booker somewhere is going to be tempted to someday pull the trigger and put a belt on a wrestler that way. If you want proof, look to TNA, who for a period early in their existence actually DID allow titles to change hands on DQ and count out. Originally the company did this as a way to endear themselves to fans by essentially saying, “Hey, you won’t see cheap, non-decisive finishes in our title matches,” but then one day somebody actually did get the wise idea to put the NWA Title on Abyss as a result of a disqualification win, and, well, it was universally shat on. It’s a lousy way to change a title, because your new champ immediately comes off as cheap in a fashion that no champion should. Some might argue that a heel could get heat by winning a championship in this manner, but there is such a thing as “bad heat,” and I would be incredibly surprised if there were any “good heat” generated out of this booking setup.

As far as the “rope breaks in a no DQ match” thing is concerned, that’s been a consistent problem for years and there is absolutely no reason that I’m aware of, from a kayfabe or non-kayfabe standpoint, that it exists, aside from people just being used to working matches with rope breaks and not thinking to work around it when really they shouldn’t be a factor under the rules of the encounter.

A questioner whose name I forgot to record (whoops) is hunting down some logos:

I’ve tried finding other clips that use this logo with zero luck and no one seems to have brought this up anywhere. As you can tell this version of the WWF scratch showcases what would become the WWE logo in the stacked W’s and it is separated with the F. Maybe this had something to do with the UK lawsuit from the Wildlife Fund.

For those unable to watch the video, it is a promo for the UK-exclusive edition of WWF No Mercy held in 1999 which uses a logo that looks a lot like the classic WWF “scratch” logo with the exception of the fact that the “F” is separated from the two stacked “Ws.” In other words, it resembles the WWE “scratch” logo that was used from 2002 through 2014 with a separate scratch “F” floating next to it.

After some extensive searching, I have been able to find absolutely no other use and no other information about this particular version of the WWF logo.
I suppose it is technically possible, as the questioner posits, that the use of this logo for a UK-exclusive event had something to do with the legal situation between the World Wrestling Federation and the World Wildlife Fund, under which the Wrestling Federation had entered into an agreement with the Wildlife Fund to not use the “WWF” initials or scratch logo when promoting itself in the United Kingdom. (Ultimately, the Wrestling Federation chose to completely ignore this agreement, which is what lead to the legal action that forced it to rebrand as WWE.)

However, if the use of this unique scratch logo had something to do with the World Wildlife Fund situation, the decision to use it was very limited in scope, because if you look at the actual 1999 UK No Mercy show, the standard WWF scratch logo we’re all used to seeing is everywhere on the card, just as it was on prior UK exclusive shows such as 1998’s Capital Carnage.

You can’t even blame the aberrant logo in the No Mercy promo on the WWF still trying to find its footing with the scratch mark, because by 1999 the scratch logo had been in use for over a year, making its debut at the infamous 1997 Survivor Series in the first WWF “Attitude” video package.

So, though it is technically possible that the apparent one-off use of this alternate logo might have been a result of the company’s intellectual property disputes with the World Wildlife Fund, it seems more likely that this was either a test run of a variant logo or simply a mistake by whomever was responsible for the promo, be it the WWF’s in-house marketing department or perhaps even a local promoter.

Connor W. thinks he knows him . . . or does he?

We all know that Edge attended Wrestlemania VI as a youngster but is it possible to spot him in the crowd if you know where to look?

Yup, it sure is. In fact, in 2011, WWE released a straight to DVD documentary called “The True Story of Wrestlemania,” and they scanned the crowd of ‘Mania VI to see if they could find the future Rated R Superstar. They were successful, and this screenshot from the documentary (which I cannot take credit for capturing) shows young Edge hanging out in his mullet and “Hulk Rules” tank top.

On that note, let’s close up our mailbag for the week. I’ll see you again in roughly seven days, and questions, as always, can be sent to [email protected].

article topics :

Ask 411, Vince McMahon, WWE, Ryan Byers