Ask 411 Wrestling: Who Was The Most Important Person to ECW?

Hello there, welcome to Ask 411 Wrestling! I am your regular host, Mathew Sforcina! YAY!

*awaits mass cheering*

*not a sausage*

Well anyway, before we get into it, I’d like to thank Ryan Byers for doing his usual bang up job coving for me while I was off being boring in RL and everything. Thanks man, appreciate it.

That said, this is the first edition of Ask 411 Wrestling on my new computer, fancy fancy! Although this is because my old one finally blew up.

It’s not that bad, but it does mean the main question list is off the grid for a bit, until I yank the hard drive out of it. But I’ve got all the questions Ryan didn’t answer, plus a bunch sent in during the break, so we’re good for now. Although a new keyboard and a new word processing program (going from 03 to 17 is a bit of a jump) may lead to formatting… wonderfulness, so do bear that in mind, thank you.

If you want to stick your question into the big ol’pile, send it on over to [email protected].

And now, the true star of the show… BANNER!!!

Zeldas!

Check out my Drabble blog, 1/10 of a Picture! That kept going.

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I didn’t write last week’s, so yeah

The Trivia Crown

Who are we? We are a professional wrestling tag team, who only ever competed in one major promotion, and, despite being fairly prominently featured in that company, we never held its tag team championships while we were together. Even though we never held tag belts together, we are both fairly prolific tag team champions when you look at us separately, as one of us has held six different major promotion tag team titles with three different partners and the other has held four different major promotion tag team titles with three different partners. Interestingly, for all of those tag team championships, neither one of us has ever held a tag team title that the other one has held.

Are those hints not good enough? Let’s try these . . . one of us has had a finishing move that was copied by a luchador, while the other one of us has had a finishing move that was named after a sex act. Oh, we’re also from different countries . . . except for the period where we weren’t . . .and our gimmick is an old favorite of 411mania’s “Living Legend” Larry Csonka. Who are we?

Hmm.

I genuinely don’t know this one, Ryan didn’t give me the answer, and no-one in the comments was able to nut it out.

Hmm…

Not the Cam Am Connection… Not Twin Towers… Real Americans should fit, but Swagger never held tag gold…

Nah, I got nothing. Ryan? Help a brother out below, would you?

Who am I? I’m a seven time major leagues tag team gold holder, although my (arguably) greatest achievement involving titles was with singles gold. My first last match’ was against an ECW guy, while my second ‘last match’ was also ECW themed. I was once stripped of a title but then was immediately handed it back. I have a special rule book, a win over The Rock, and an impact, as it were, on both brands (when they show up). A guy with a special body part, canonically, I am who?

Getting Down To All The Business

Let’s start nice and simple with Big Daddy shall we?

Why does the “in-ring” New Day combo usually consist of Big E and Kofi? Is it because they have less faith in Woods’ skills or do they think he is more entertaining on the outside during the match?

Moving quickly away from thinking about that penname and the question at hand, it’s not so much that they have less faith in Woods’ skill as it is that he’s better in that role. After all, neither Kofi nor Big E can play the trombone.

*1/8th of a Chandler*

Woods is better as the manager on the outside, playing interference and being entertaining in his own way, which isn’t a knock on his in ring work, but just that Kofi and Big E are better inside the ring and him on the outside. At house shows they often mix it up and have Woods in there while Kofi or E play up on the outside, but the roles as is work best.

But really, you don’t put the bard front and center. Barbarian up front, the spellcaster in the middle, bard providing buffs at the rear.

Brian is up next, and he wants to know just who is the most extreme?!?

I rewatched the rise and fall of ECW, and I had a thought. Who was the most important person to ECW? Excluding Paul Heyman, who do you think was the most important person to the company? I would say either Dreamer or Joey Stiles, but welcome your thoughts. Thank you as always.

You pre-empted me there, but yes, Paul Heyman is obviously the most important person to ECW. He’s the guy who WAS ECW, in terms of the company over all, for pretty much all of the important period, starting in Eastern Championship Wrestling through to his appearing on Raw being the death knell for the company.

Excluding him, then you do get into interesting territory. Do you go with RVD, the biggest name they ever produced? Take Raven and Dreamer as a double act, the feud that is most synonymous with ECW? Shane Douglas for being the guy who set the ball rolling? Styles for being the voice?

I feel like technically you should give it to Tod Gordon, given that while Heyman was the man who made ECW into ECW, without Gordon there isn’t an Eastern Championship Wrestling for Heyman to take over. The company wouldn’t have existed without him. Not the sexiest answer, but it’s true.

We have Pedro looking over the seas for a moment.

In your opinion, who’s been the best import from Japan (Mutoh, Fuji, Tanaka, Saito, et al)..??

Yokozuna.

As always with this sort of question, you’re not arguing who is actually the best, but rather what criteria you should base it on. But that’s an old argument, so binstead I give you three options, pick which one you prefer.

In terms of their own career and ability, Great Muta.

In terms of impact on American wrestling overall, Hiro Matsuda, given that he trained Hulk Hogan and all.

In terms of me personally liking their work, Askua.

Phillis wonders about Undertaker and appearances.

What’s the least amount of Undertaker appearances from one Wrestlemania to the following Wrestlemania?

Zero, between any Wrestlemania between 1 and VI.

I think in terms of WMs where he was actually at both shows, the gap between 27 and 28, the second HHH match to End of an Era, with four in ring appearances and three video package appearances, for a total of 7. The only other year would be between 30 and 31, and that was… Oh. Zero in ring appearances, one voice over. That’s it.

That would win then.

Evil Jeff wants to talk about the other Broken ones.

While I can totally see that The Broken are not everyone’s cup of tea, I must admit that they have become something of a guilty pleasure of mine. With all the talk of their contracts coming up soon, I’m just thinking about how they would work in WWE. So my two-part question is:

(a) If WWE were to sign them, do you envision them embracing the ‘Broken’ gimmick or rebooting the ‘Team Xtreme’ Attitude Era characters

Both, sort of, but neither as well. We often talk about WWE signing people as if the people involved have no free will, that if WWE wants to sign someone, they will. Sure, there’s a finite amount of money that will get anything to happen, aka Pulling A Gail Kim, where at a certain point you have to take the money on offer. But recently, and becoming more and more valid every day, is the notion that you don’t need WWE to be successful.

So looking at the Hardys/WWE situation, ignoring the legal issues currently at play, I don’t see a way, at least any time soon, where it would happen, because WWE would want to just slide them back into the Money Making Hardy Boyz that worked once in WWE. These guys.

Whereas it’s fairly obvious that the Hardys would be happier if they could come back and do this sort of thing more.

Who would break first? I’d hope it was WWE, but I suspect the Hardys will just have to rule the indy scene for a while instead… At least until WWE was desperate, and after a point where people were a little over the gimmick, since WWE tends to refuse to strike while the iron is hot. They’re far too busy hammering away again and again at the tinfoil that is Roman Reigns: Super Babyface.

(b) How would you book their WWE return? I’m thinking a brief ‘Team Xtreme’ return before re-imagining ‘Total Deletion’

I’d go to the Hardys and ask them what they want to do and go from there.

…

But put a gun to my head…

Bray Wyatt wins back the WWE World title from Orton thanks to Erick Rowan and Luke Harper, who had reunited as an independent tag team shortly prior, costing Orton the match. Bray thinks he’s on top of the world, his family is back, he’s the champ, it’s beers and skittles all around. Orton seems to not be too worried though, once he comes back after a week or two, and challenges Bray to a six man tag at the next PPV, Family V Orton and his two allies, where if Orton’s team wins he gets the belt, and it Wyatt wins, Orton goes to Raw or Sister Abigail gets to take over the actress currently playing Orton’s wife or something. This is one of the two main events, as there’s a big grudge match blow off with AJ and Nakamura or something as the other main event.

At the PPV, Wyatt Family comes out, in ring, and then…

Orton and the Broken Hardys come out to Reby’s piano playing, Matt cutting a big promo as they walk down to ring about how he’s come to the land of the Younger
Meekmahan to delete the obsolete and so on, somewhat generic, right up until Harper and Rowan attack Wyatt.

Orton is clearly surprised by this, but pleased, right up until he eats a Twist of Hate from Brother Nero. The Broken Family take over Smackdown, win all the belts, destroy all in their way until the blow off at WM in Wargames as close to the Final Deletion we can get live in-ring.

Not really related, but I’m tacking it on anyway – do you ever see a time when WWE might consider bringing in the old Starrcade ‘Lethal Lottery’ format? With the avalanche of PPVs with no discernible character, this would be a unique way to give a PPV a unique character, and when booked correctly you can advance several stories the same night. Your thoughts, sir?

I don’t think WWE would do it as a PPV, just because WWE is convinced that tournaments don’t draw, that they need to be able to promote and announce the card ahead of time. But as a stand alone Network special, or even just an episode of Raw or Smackdown… Sure, I can see them, maybe, doing that. Or rather, I can see StepHunter doing that. Vince taking an idea he didn’t come up with, we’re still not quite there yet, Goldberg notwihstanding.

Speaking of Vince and learning, sort of, Brendan wants to discuss Hogan leaving.

What were the long term plans for Hulk Hogan after WM 6? We know the plan was for Ultimate Warrior to become Hulk Hogan 2.0 which didn’t work out, so they put the title back on Hogan. But assuming the Ultimate Warrior took off, was Hogan going to just make part time sporadic appearances? Turn Heel? Retire?

There’s a couple of stories out there, depending on who you ask. The Hogan camp has, at various points, said that despite the statement at the time that there was to be no rematch…

That a rematch was going to happen at VII, and presumably Hogan would get the win back and then maybe you go to a tiebreaker at VIII because you always go in threes.

However, the plan at the time seems to be that Warrior would become the heroic babyface champion and Hogan would become a special attraction, once every few months at big shows type of deal. Like how when Backlund was champ, but Bruno would do the occasional show. Hogan wouldn’t retire, as such, but by this point his movie career would clearly be going gangbusters and he’d be in line for Oscars and could only make a few shows a year and so on.

NotTheMountie asks about Matt Striker making stuff up.

I am in the process of getting caught up on Lucha Underground, and recently saw a bullrope match in Season 2, Episode 8 between Chavo Guerrero Jr. and Texano. Partway through the match, Chavo ends up with the bullrope between his legs, and Texano takes advantage in the way that you’d expect…and Matt Striker says “Chavo is riding the Sandpaper Pony” (which is an amazing description). This leads me to the following questions:

How often does a Sandpaper Pony happen in a bullrope match?

I cannot answer that question with anything resembling authority, as there’s been a fair few bullrope matches in history. However, that spot is a little… comedic, and most old school matches with bullropes tended to be a lot more down to earth.

Although once you get into the touching corners phase, all bets are off because then people are just being clever for clever’s sake. But I have no idea how often it is. But I don’t normally see it in a match.

Did Matt Striker coin the term Sandpaper Pony? If no, when was it first so wonderfully labelled as such?

*Googles term*

*hastily turns safe search back on*

I couldn’t find any other usage of the term, at least in wrestling, so unless a dear reader can correct me, I guess I gotta give it to Striker. I’m sure he’s very proud.

Garry wants to know about the heat between Cena and Mr. Rage.

I have a question regarding John Cena and Alex Riley. With all the publicity that has been created recently with JR and Rybacks podcasts, what’s the deal between them? (I don’t play too much attention to ryback as he seems to have a massive chip on his shoulder for not getting to be “the guy”, however it also makes his podcast entertaining). I looked back at the 2011 Royal Rumble and clearly Riley falls out when he wasn’t meant to, what was mean to happen? What did Cena shout at Michael Cole when he was eventually eliminated? Iv saw a few clips where Cena appears quite “heavy handed” towards Riley as well, can’t remember the date but it was when he was attacking the nexus. Are there any other incidents between them?

The 2011 Rumble was a bit of a stuff up, yes, when Riley got eliminated when he shouldn’t, although they covered it well with him coming back out at the right time so they could do the Miz elimination, it wasn’t that much of a stuff up, he wasn’t going to win or anything.

Skip ahead to 2:30.

According to the scuttlebutt, that wasn’t the incident though. Supposedly at some point Cena was ‘ribbing’ Riley in front of people, making fun of him for something. Riley got upset/angry, and that broke the precious wrestler code that we all must live by, and certainly he has indicated he believes that altered his career trajectory somewhat.

Which if true, if Cena did have it out for him or what have you, that would indeed be a pretty high mountain to climb. On the other hand though, Riley basically ran into a problem in that right around the time he should have been getting groomed and set for a big push as he was good looking and well built and an athlete and basically everything WWE seems to want in their young guys… Suddenly Daniel Bryan was there. And Kaval. And slowly but surely WWE started hiring all these guys from the indies who weren’t good looking all American types, but instead were really great wrestlers, which Riley never really seemed to show a knack for, it seems.

Which is not to downplay the negatives if he was indeed punished for not meekly accepting jokes or whatever it was that happened, if it did, but let’s just say I’m not sure he’d be a multi-time world champ even without that moment.

Joseph has a few different questions for us.

1) There’s obviously some pretty serious support for Roman Reigns from the home office of the WWE. My question is who is actually supporting Roman Reigns? Most of the stuff I’ve read says it’s Vince, but I’ve heard some say it’s Triple H. Who is behind the Reigns push, and to what extent (if any) will that push/build change if Vince dies? Has Stephanie ever had any specific backing of the Reigns push?

Vince, obviously. He’s the guy in charge, he’s the buck stopper, he’s the final arbiter etcetc. There was one piece of news once that said that Vince and HHH were at some point at loggerheads about who to push, with HHH backing Reigns and Vince backing Big E (!!!) but that seems to have been a one off, at best.

But although Vince is the main driving force, it’s not like anyone is putting up a concerted effort against him. If someone in power was fighting against Roman, they’d need to have another guy to be the one they could point to as being a better choice to be the next Cena because that’s what they’re all looking for, the next Cena, because that’s totally what worked last time, Cena was just like Austin who was just like Hogan who was just like Bruno…

I’ve not heard anything about Steph being overly pro or anti Roman, but everyone seems pretty locked in, especially as he’s actually kind of working, not to Cena’s level, nor to a level that justifies the push, but enough that they can cover their ears and pretend it’s all fine, shut up.

I read somewhere that Survivor Series 1992 was originally supposed to be Bret Hart against Jake The Snake. Jake was gone after Wrestlemania VIII as I’ve always heard the story. So . . . this is nonsense, yes?

You’d think so, and then Bret goes and says it was going to happen. But the thing about Bret’s first title run was that everyone seems to have been told a different story, or at least people are running in different levels of the Yes Minister scale. I think in this case Bret was told Roberts was the plan, with Vince thinking that when he refused to give Jake Roberts Pat Patterson’s spot in creative that he could keep Jake around, or get him back at least, although he ended up in WCW a month prior to Survivor Series anyway…

So not nonsense, but at best it was a tentative plan that was unlikely to happen.

Could you rebook Survivor Series 1992 for us?

I could, yes.

Next…

Oh, sorry.

I’ll just run down the card, I won’t bother with the booking, because the PPV was thrown into disarray so much that it’d always be a choppy lead in.

The Banzuke (Yokozuna/Headhunters/Repo Man) beat Tropical Energy (Crush/Virgil/High Energy) SurSer match (Yokozuna pins everyone)
Taker over Kamala in a casket match
Tatanka over Martel
Big Boss Man over Nailz, then totally murders Nailz with the nightstick after match
Diamonds And Gold (Flair/Razor/Perfect/DiBiase/IRS) over Team Backlund (Natural Disasters/Backlund/Max Moon/Bam Bam) Bam Bam surprise partner/face turn, Backlund last eliminated, Razor and Flair survive.
Shawn Michaels over Marty Jannetty for IC title when Bossman turns heel to become HBK’s bodyguard
Bret Hart over Randy Savage for WWF title, handshakes all round.

Who are three at-the-time-unsigned talents you would put into a program with Bret Hart for a main event match for Survivor Series 1992?

Jerry Lawler is the first one that comes to mind. Obviously you wouldn’t expect him to be a long term heel main eventer, but Lawler and Hart did have chemistry later on, and he was going to come in a month or so later anyway, why not intro him in the ring and then move him into commentary?

Or, if you don’t like Lawler as being front and center, how about his tag partner, Jeff Jarrett? Young kid, second generation, Lawler at his side, looking to make a big splash right away, gets a flash pin on Bret on Raw, earns a title shot…

But that said, give me an unlimited checkbook, then we get Bret Hart V The Great Muta. I don’t care about it making sense, I’d just book that match, give them a half hour or so and let them go.

I always looked at Survivor Series 1992 as a “big House Show”. No titles change hands, the Survivor Series gimmick itself is reduced to one ag-team match with two teams per side, and there’s not really a lot of advancement in terms of angles. There’s some, but it doesn’t feel like a “big event” and a lot of that probably has to do with the title being hotshotted onto Hart on Oct. 12.

Earlier, you answered a question of mine with regard to what has to happen on a show. Like if you are planning a show, small or large, Indy or WWE, you compared it to a pizza. There are some basic notions you need to adhere to, but the final outcome is pretty much open. Correct me if I’m wrong.

How important is it that “something happens” on a show? Now maybe I’m being too harsh on this event, but it seems like not much happens. I know it was a different time with a different audience, but it seems like with most of the other events that came before this, there was something, a title change, or a really cool gimmick match that was the centerpiece of the spectacle. How much has changes to the idea that something does/doesn’t need to happen on a show since 1992?

That’s a somewhat fair assessment, not a lot happens on the show, I can see that being an issue. But while the is the fact that this card got moved about a lot due to people being fired and injuries and what have you, so you have to cut it some slack, the notion that something has to happen on a big show is not quite the right tack, instead you need the possibility of something happening.

you can read the pizza analogy here if you want. My basic point was that putting together a wrestling show depends on a lot of factors, there’s no one solid right way to do it, just a few things you should never do (booking two green rookies in an iron man match is putting pineapple on, in this case). You need to take into account your audience, what the build has been, where you are going, what stories you need to tell, what stories you want to tell, what’s the best balance between giving the fans what they want and bringing them back again.

Now having something occur is nice, but it’s not essential, and actually can be a problem if you find yourself trapped in a cycle of always having to have a surprise or a major shocking event. Eventually you run out, or burn out the audience, or both.

You can have nothing happen on a show, but for that to work, people have to come in invested in the notion that something could happen. Bret Hart retaining his title is fine, if people care about his reign, and/or think he might lose it. The absence of change does not mean the story isn’t moving forward, it’s part of the story, the challenger failed. Does he request another shot and be turned away by an increasingly arrogant champion? Does he go mad and start plumbing depths to force a rematch? Does someone make fun of him for losing and drag him into a new conflict? Does someone who beat him previously use this as proof they also deserve a shot? You can go places.

If the event doesn’t happen in a vacuum, if events leading in and out are influenced by the lack of something happening here, then you don’t need anything to happen.

But if it’s just a house show, wrestling for the sake of wrestling, then you better hope it’s damn good wrestling…

Is any of Jim Cornette’s public persona an act? I know the “yes prime minister” chart is a good guide to deciphering wrestlers and their “shoot” stories, but is he really that angry, old-school, stubborn, and generally miserable as he seems or is some of this an act?

I obviously can’t answer that, given that his shoot interviews tend to be indistinguishable from his podcast and his columns and such.

That said… Cornette clearly has a very clear view on what wrestling needs to do to be successful, because that’s what worked in the past. Like most wrestling gimmicks, I would guess that his ranting is an act, at least it’s him turned up to 11. I don’t think he’s miserable in of himself, I’m sure his day to day life is fine. But if you pay him to talk about wrestling, he’ll talk about wrestling, and he genuinely doesn’t like a lot about the modern era, and he draws a certain type of fan by expressing this colourfully.

I don’t think he actively lies, or pretends to hate stuff he doesn’t hate, but while it’s him turned up to 11, there’s still basically his true opinion. I think.

But by all means people, if you disagree, say so below, and we can discuss it all next week. Until then, thanks for reading, see you next week!