Ask 411 Wrestling: Why Did Sid Turn On Shawn Michaels in 1995?

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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Xavier gonna give it to ya:

Was Sid turning on Shawn Michaels the Raw after WrestleMania XI a change of plans? It always felt like a last minute audible to me.

It was not completely last minute, but it wasn’t a particularly long-term plan, either.

According to the April 17, 1995 Wrestling Observer Newsletter, which covered the fallout from Wrestlemania XI, the Sid turn was done to make Shawn Michaels a babyface, and Shawn Michaels was made into a babyface because in house shows leading up to Mania and at Mania itself, heel HBK was getting cheered over his face opponent, Diesel.

In other words, the fans were treating Michaels as a face, so the company just decided to go with it.

However, it was somewhat odd that the WWF put Michaels up against Sid in this role, given that Sid also had a history of getting cheered as a heel in prior runs.

Jonfw2 is going back to the well:

Ryan, why not?

– an animal trainer?
– someone seriously presented as an alien?
– a commercial pilot?
– an elected or former elected…wait…Jesse actually is that. Are there any that were just kayfabe?
– a stuntman/woman?
– a train conductor?
– a veterinarian?

Jon is referencing another question he sent in a few weeks back in which he asked me if there had ever been wrestlers that had particular outlandish gimmicks and asking to go for a round two, so here we go . . .

Starting with the animal trainer, I don’t know that there’s anything fitting in squarely, but there are several that I would say are close. You could argue that most wrestlers who had exotic animal mascots qualify, whether that’s Koko B. Ware, Jake Roberts, or even Mr. Iguana to a lesser extent. Another option that I ran across is the Mane Event, an indy tag team trained by the Amazing Red and consisting of Jay Lyon and Midas Black. Lyon is a guy who wears a lion mask, and Black is a guy who dresses as a ringmaster, though you could also maybe, kinda, sorta call him a lion tamer if you wanted to, which would make him an animal trainer. You can check them out in promotions like House of Glory and GCW.

A few minutes after Jon sent me this question, he wrote back saying he realized that Kris Statlander answered his question about a pro wrestling alien. Also, in the early days of ECW on the SciFi Network, there were rumors that the station was pushing for science fiction content on the show to match up with their brand, including advocating for an alien gimmick on the show. However, WWE didn’t want to do it, though they did a bit of a compromise by having the Sandman cane the heck out of a an infamous character know simply as the Zombie.

We will turn to lucha libre for wrestling pilots. There have been multiple luchadors over the years who have adopted the gimmick of Piloto Suicida or “Suicide Pilot.” Probably the most prolific is the one who debuted in Guadalajara in 1985 and still wrestles occasionally to this day. In addition to working for AAA, he also got a few shots in with WCW when they were experimenting with their own all-lucha shows in the late 1990s. He was also a gaijin for Michinoku Pro Wrestling for a time.

The kayfabe elected official immediately brought one name to mind. In 2008, Governor of the U.S. State of Alaska, Sarah Palin, rose to national prominence when she was selected to be the running mate of Republican nominee John McCain in that year’s presidential election. This caused Impact Wrestling to bring in Daffney Unger to do a Palin impression and wrestle under the name of “The Governor.” (Not to be confused with the heel from The Walking Dead.) It was never outright said she was Palin, but for the first few weeks nobody ever said she wasn’t Palin either. Eventually, it was revealed that the Governor was all a ruse perpetrated by the babyfaces of the women’s roster to make top heels the Beautiful People look foolish, as the BPs bought the gimmick hook, line, and sinker.

It should also be noted that both Bob Backlund and Mustafa Ali did gimmicks in which they either were or acted like political candidates, but Jon’s question asked about a gimmick of holding elected office, so I don’t know that they quite count.

Oh, and let’s not forget about Mike Haggar from Final Fight.

There’s absolutely been a stuntman gimmick, and I suspect Jon may be kicking himself for not thinking of this one: Damien Sandow. During his affiliation with Mike the Miz, he would dress, speak, and act like Mike, all under the guise of being the Miz’s stunt double. In fact, during this run in 2014 and 2015, he was even known as Damien Mizdow.

Train conductor? Obscure, yes, but it happened. In late 1995, journeyman wrestler Black Bart was looking to make a return to WCW. According to an interview Bart did with the Two Man Power Trip podcast, he was told he could come into the promotion but that he couldn’t do his old Black Bart gimmick because there were already too many other wrestlers in the promotion being portrayed as cowboys. So, he was redubbed “Big Train Bart,” wearing bib overalls, gloves, and a conductor’s cap to the ring. He mostly wrestled on the company’s c-shows but did pull into the station for the 60-man, three-ring battle royale on the 1995 World War III pay per view.

And, believe it or not, I can even give you a veterinarian. “Big” Bill Miller, who wrestled from the early 1950s through the mid-1970s and is a former AWA World Heavyweight Champion and Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Famer, was a shoot veterinarian. He received his training in vet med around the same time that he received his training in pro wrestling. In some territories, he was billed as Dr. Bill Miller because of his status as a legitimate vet. Admittedly, he didn’t do a goofy veterinarian gimmick where he came to the ring in surgical scrubs and cut promos about deworming his opponents and putting them to sleep. However, his status as a veterinarian was just as much a part of his wrestling persona as Britt Baker’s status as a dentist currently is to hers, so I would count it.

Tyler from Winnipeg scores a perfect ten:

Just for fun who did Goldberg get his 10th win against?

As with several questions lately, this answer was a bit more complicated than what I originally would have though.

Let’s start with the easiest answer. If you begin with the first match of Goldberg’s historic “streak” when he pinned Hugh Morrus on the September 22, 1997 episode of Monday Nitro, his tenth win came on November 2 of the same year when he defeated Bobby Eaton on a WCW house show in Norfolk, Virginia.

However, as we’ve discussed in this column before, Goldberg actually had five dark matches for WCW before he made his television debut (one of which was actually a loss to Chad Fortune). If you start with his actual WCW in-ring debut on June 23, 1997 against Buddy Lee Parker, then win number ten is on October 14, 1997 in Fort Myers, Florida on a WCW Saturday Night taping against enhancement talent Mike Anthony, who worked elsewhere as Mike Lozansky.

But wait . . . THERE’S ONE MORE TWIST!

In the answers I gave above, I went on the date that the matches actually took place. However, we’re talking about an era where TV was taped in advance and sometimes matches would be held for a few months before airing. What would Goldberg’s tenth win be for a fan who was following his career on television?

If you look solely at televised matches and put them in air date order as opposed to the order in which they actually happened, Goldberg’s tenth win is against the Renegade, which aired on WCW Saturday Night on December 27, 1997 despite being taped on October 28 of that year in San Bernardino, California.

Sim takes us back to Montreal one more time:

So about the Montreal Screwjob (I know), recently Triple H shared Vince’s view that after what happened with Madusa, they could NOT take a risk of having bret showing up in WCW “with our championship,” and we know obviously Bret wasn’t willing to drop the title to prick ’97 Shawn.

Both sides have a point.

But at the end, couldn’t something be done that was risk free to both sides without having to go to extreme lengths like a screwjob? for example, what if Bret won at SS, but was prevented from physically taking the belt with him?

Bottom line, knowing what we know now, do you think this was realistically preventable considering who was involved?

No, both sides don’t have a point.

Bret Hart was 100% in the right in this situation, and Vince McMahon was 100% in the wrong.

The thing that everybody who supports McMahon’s view on this seemingly forgets is:

THE 1997 SURVIVOR SERIES WAS NOT NECESSARILY BRET HART’S LAST NIGHT IN THE WWF.

Seriously. Bret’s WCW contract didn’t actually kick in until December 1. Survivor Series was on November 9. Bret Hart repeatedly suggested that he would be glad to drop the title to anybody other than Shawn Michaels after the WWF’s Canadian tour ended on November 13 and the company was running shows in the United States again. In fact, the finish that Bret agreed to before he got screwed over involved him winning the Survivor Series match by DQ and then dropping the championship to another contender at a later date.

Anybody who believes that they had to get the belt off of Bret that night in Montreal either has rocks in their head or is lying to protect the McMahon position.

Also, Hart had a creative control clause in his contract that should have allowed him to determine how his character was handled in the last 30 days in the promotion. McMahon refused to honor this provision, even though he had agreed to it less than a year earlier. Vince was in the wrong by the express language of the contract that he himself gave to Hart.

It boggles my mind that all these years later people persist in the belief that McMahon had some sort of legitimate position here.

I’m not going to say anything about Kyle‘s mom:

Non-title ladder matches have always felt a little off to me. I guess I understand the punishment they go through for a title or even Money in the Bank but when it’s just for a #1 contender or something it just seems unnecessary, even for wrestling.

So my question is for WWE, WCW, Impact, and AEW (and any other promotions you think are worth covering) when was each company’s first ladder match, when was their first non-title ladder match, what was the prize, and what object did they have to retrieve? Dealer’s choice whether you
count King of the Mountain or other variations as a ladder match.

WWF’s first ladder match was held on July 21, 1992 in Portland, Maine with Bret Hart defeating Shawn Michaels to retain the Intercontinental Championship. The match was not taped for U.S. television but did appear on three different Coliseum Home Videos around the time it took place.

The first non-title ladder match in WWF history that I could find was at the 1999 King of the Ring pay per view, featuring Vince & Shane McMahon against “Stone Cold” Steve Austin. The two sides had to retrieve a briefcase to win the match, and the prize at stake was 100% ownership of the World Wrestling Federation.

Regarding WCW, the answer to the question depends on whether you want to incorporate the history of Jim Crockett Promotions into WCW or whether you want to consider them two totally separate entities. If we are including JCP was part of WCW, then the first ladder match in company history was between Dusty Rhodes and Tully Blanchard as part of the 1987 Great American Bash in Charlotte. This was not just a ladder match but a BARBED WIRE ladder match. The prize was not a championship but rather $100,000.00 which was (allegedly) contained in a bag suspended above the ring. Thus, the first ladder match in the history of the promotion was also the first non-title ladder match in the history of the promotion. (It also means that, yes, Dusty Rhodes had a ladder match years before Shawn Michaels.)

If you don’t want to lump JCP in with WCW, then the first WCW ladder match was U.S. Champion Eddy Guerrero successfully defending his title against Syxx at nWo Souled Out on January 25, 1997 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

The first non-title WCW ladder match after the JCP era was Bill Goldberg versus Scott Hall at Souled Out 1999. In this match, a stun gun was suspended above the ring, and you had to both retrieve the stun gun and use it on your opponent in order to win. This played off the finish of Starrcade 1998 in which Hall used a stun gun on Goldberg to allow Kevin Nash to pin Goldberg and thus end the vaunted streak.

In ECW, the first ladder match was Mikey Whipwreck defeating the Sandman to become the ECW Champion on October 28, 1995 at the ECW Arena in Philadelphia. That being said, though this was billed as a ladder match and a ladder was used liberally as a weapon, this bout could only be finished by pinfall or submission.

November to Remember 1997 played host to ECW’s first non-title ladder match, actually dubbed a “tables and ladders” match (no chairs yet) with Sabu besting the Sandman, Again, though this was a ladder match, it was to be won by pinfall or submission, so there was no object to retrieve.

Moving to my old friends at Impact Wrestling, their first ladder match was also their first non-title ladder match. On the company’s fifth weekly pay per view taped on July 17, 2002, Sabu defeated Malice (formerly the Wall in WCW) in a match to determine the number one contender to the NWA World Heavyweight Championship held by Ken Shamrock. In order to win, a contract on a clipboard had to be pulled down from the rafters.

Finally, let’s close out with AEW. Their first ladder match was at the August 31, 2019 All Out pay per view and saw AAA World Tag Team Champions the Lucha Brothers retain the titles over the Young Bucks. Why the AAA Tag Titles? It’s because this was still in the days before there was an AEW Tag Team Championship.

Their first non-title ladder match was the Casino Ladder Match on Double or Nothing 2020, won by Brian Cage over a field also including Colt Cabana, Darby Allin, Frankie Kazarian, Kip Sabian, Joey Janela, Luchasaurus, Orange Cassidy, and Scorpio Sky. Cage had to pull down a goofy giant poker chip to become number one contender to the AEW Championship.

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.