Kayfabe! – Timeline The History of the WWE 1985 as told by Greg Valentine

KAYFABE!
Timeline The History of the WWE 1985 as told by Greg Valentine

The year is 1985: The first WrestleMania took place. The Rock and Wrestling Connection was in full swing, with WWF wrestlers being everywhere from wrestling on TV, to MTV music videos, to lunch boxes in every store. Vince McMahon’s national expansion made the WWF the clear cut #1 wrestling promotion in the U.S. And one of wrestling’s legendary tough guys, Greg “The Hammer” Valentine takes those of us who weren’t born yet, or who were too young to remember, back to relive it. The first thing you’ll notice when you pop this bad boy into your DVD player is that Valentine has looked better. He’s still got the flowing blond locks, but he’d definitely aged. My wife saw him just on the cover and asked if that was a man or woman. When I was trying to tell her that he was actually quite the bad ass, she wasn’t buying it.

One thing that’s made clear right off the bat is Greg’s memory for details. We start in January of 1985 with the debut of Prime Time Wrestling, hosted by Jesse Ventura and Jack Reynolds. Sean: Where did Jack Reynolds come from? Greg: Cleveland. Greg gets more specific in that Jack had a broadcasting background in legit sports and in wrestling. He was a big fan of Jesse’s color because Jesse always said nice things about him and always stuck up for the heels. Hilbilly Jim also debuts around this time, and Greg’s sumary of him is that he’s a lucky guy. He wasn’t very talented, but has kept a job with the WWE for years. He makes it clear that he’s not knocking Jim or anything, but he was very limited in talent, and when he hurt his leg, Vince took care of him, rather then sweeping him to the side like Vince did with so many others. He always hated when he and Brutus would be booked against them, except for the night when he was told that they’d be going over them clean in MSG. Uncle Elmer used to sell fake Rolex watches, resulting in one of the Bulldogs buying one and then going nuts when it fell apart.

Being 1985, they of course touch on WrestleMania. Greg doesn’t really have much to say about the even itself. Tito Santana was pushing George Scott to book Tito vs. Greg for the IC Title, but he wanted to hold off until later. He feels his match with JYD was fine, because he could work around other guy’s limitations. There was a huge party afterward at the Ramada in NYC, but he wasn’t invited.

Greg touches a bit on Mr. T and David Schultz. Nobody especially cared for Mr. T because he was perceived as being disrespectful, and Shultz didn’t like anyone anyway. Greg thinks that Schultz didn’t understand that after a heels gets his run with Hogan he does something else for a bit. Schultz seemed to think that he was getting screwed over by the office. Schultz had the idea to create his own angle by attacking T, and Jay Strongbow got wind of it and had the LAPD (working security) take him down and cuff him as he made his way through the crowd to attack him. He already had heat for the 20/20 incident, and that was enough to get him let go. A bit later the topic turns of the 20/20 bit which was taped in late ’84 but aired in early ’85. Greg doesn’t know for sure if Vince really told Schultz to slap him, but he does know that Vince did want Schultz to let Stossel have it. Eddie Mansfield had a ton of heat for his part in the expose, and Greg was really surprised he never got his ass kicked over it.

The really funny part of this is when they start talking about Mel Phillips. Greg says Mel’s foot fetish was well-known in the WWF but nobody really cared about it “If he wants to suck toes, let him.” He really didn’t see why everyone got so up at arms about it when it become public, until Sean reminds him that the allegations were that Mel was doing it with underage boys. They also talk about Rita Marie Chatterton, who was the first female referee, which Greg hated. Nothing against her personally, but he felt that the only time a female referee would be appropriate would be in women’s matches. She actually told Greg her life story on a smoke break, and year later when he heard her on TV talking about it his reaction was “Hey that’s what she told me a few years ago.”

One of the really interesting things that he brings up is managers in the WWF. The wrestlers got very little say in who managed them. He knew he’d be losing Captain Lou because of the Cyndi Lauper thing, but they just put him with Jimmy Hart. He could have bitched and complained about it, but that didn’t mean anything would change. He thinks managers were assigned to help get new guys over and/or to be mouthpieces for guys who really couldn’t talk. There’s also an amusing story about the office not always being on top of things, sending Hercules Hernandez tickets to fly to Seattle, when he was booked against Hogan in Detroit. They actually did the same thing to him, which got him heat for not showing up.

Greg delves into his title runs in ’85. He knew he’d be dropping the IC Title soon, because he was going on ten months as champion, with Tito chasing him the whole time. They wanted a unique finish, not a pinfall, and Gorilla Monsoon came up with the idea of Tito kicking the door in his head (which has since been stolen several times). He destroyed the title belt afterwards, and wished he’d kept it because it’d be worth a fortune now. What happened to the belt? Tito threw it in the garbage can in the arena in Baltimore. About a month later, he and Brutus won the tag titles from Windham and Rotundo. He wasn’t pleased with the finish of putting the cigar in Windham’s eye, but it worked out because Windham and Rotundo blew up and quit a few weeks later. This led to the WWF giving the Bulldogs a big push on TV, which got them over huge.

The Dream Team was put together so he could teach Brutus to work, and they wound up becoming good friends. Greg was pissed when he found out they were being broken up, and then putting him with Dino Bravo. He liked Bravo a lot, but he had a bad temper. Towards the end, he tells a nice story about him and Brutus actually drawing money as heels, when they headlined a show against Sheik and Volkoff. He thinks the plan was the titles to be part of a big feud between the Dream Team, Bulldogs, Harts, and Sheik/Volkoff, with Sheik/Volkoff getting them back (Note from Mike: Pure Dynamite states that Vince wanted Sheik and Volkoff to takes the titles from the Bulldogs, but after Dynamite got hurt, he said they’d only lose them to the Harts).

There’s a lot of discussion about Randy Savage, because he and Greg were good friends, and Elizabeth was good friends with Greg’s wife. He says Savage was very nice guy, but protective of Elizabeth, and he can understand why, with wrestlers being how they are. He doesn’t know what exactly happened between him and Vince, but figured that they’d patched things up when the Macho Man DVD came out last year. Even more interesting though is the talk about Lanny Poffo, he was apparenly a very weird guy, but Greg won’t give details. He thinks bringing in Lanny was something Savage had asked about when he came in. But Lanny was a talented enough guy, that he deserved to be hired anyway.

The 411: This is one of the better timeline DVDs from KC. Greg's memory is very good, which is surprising given the nature of the business in the '80's, and he tells some rather interesting stories.
Final Score:  8.0   [ Very Good ]