Reading your latest post, the rant on the Main Event has me wondering some things I'm sure you answered a bunch of times: Say Honky does his job and lays down to Savage, the screw job takes place, and now Dibiase is Champ 6 weeks before Wrestlemania.
So a) was the title tourney always in the cards? Or was Dibiase gonna face Hogan? All I've ever read was Dibiase loses to Savage at Summerslam was the plan. And b) what becomes of the IC title? Does Savage face Honky at Mania and then job to Bad News Brown to get read for Dibiase? What was in the cards for WM 4 if no tournament?
I knew this would come up again.
The plan was for the Hogan-Andre match to go off as planned, the title would be stripped, and Dibiase would win the tournament before losing it at Summerslam. The tournament was always planned. No idea if there was any concrete plans for Savage as IC champion, unless it was a rematch with Honky.
They even filmed events with Dibiase as champ:
ReplyDeletehttp://sportsandwrestling.mywowbb.com/forum1/284.html
Forget that question we have all known that one for years. Whats the Shane McMahon story?
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of Dibiase as champ, but if he was just going to carry it from Mania to SummerSlam, it doesn't really change anything.
ReplyDeleteIt works better with Macho as champ, with Hogan helping him win it, and holding it for an entire WrestleMania year before losing it to Hogan
ReplyDeleteA long term heel champ doesn't change anything? From the beginning of the wwwf to Yokozuna, only 1 world champ was a heel longer than a month.
ReplyDeleteAlso it would have made many wrestlemania main events more believable because the heel could have won. No heel left wm until 16 as champ. I could have believed that hbk could have won at 11 or 14 or Sid at 8 or flair at 8.
Scott got comped into a show and somehow ended up sitting with Shane, Scott had a guy with him that was about .7 Adam and being a jackass, so Shane offered him $100 to go away or at least shut up. Scott's friend took the money and proceeded to get even more obnoxious. At least it's something along those lines.
ReplyDeleteDibiase winning the title at Wrestlemania 4 and dropping it to Savage in order to set up Wrestlemania 5 changes little.
ReplyDeleteIf we're saying Dibiase carries the belt from Wrestlemania 4 to 5, then yes, that's a very NWA thing to do and I would have loved it
I headed down to Calgary on Monday afternoon, to be honest more pumped about the hockey game later that night than the wrestling I was attending, and ended up in quite the adventure.
ReplyDeleteWe picked up the tickets from the Will Call about half an hour before RAW went on the air, and immediately braced for disappointment when they were in the 201 section this time. However, a guy who was (supposedly) comped by Val Venis the night before was sitting in the grass outside the Saddledome and offered to trade ours for his in section 109, because he had to get rid of them to fill seats. So right off the bat, good stuff.
So it turns out that the seats were in basically the same place as the PPV -- right beside the hard camera, in the "comp section", this time to the left and behind the lighting control guy.
Sidenote: You get all sorts of interesting views when sitting behind the tech guys, like the SCRIPT, for instance. Over the course of the two evenings I was able to check out actual WWE scripts, complete with fancy cover page and everything, and yes, it's all written down there. You can also see the lighting guy using a layout of the Saddledome to check which buttons to push to blacken which parts of the arena. Very neat stuff for tech-heads like myself.
Okay, so back to the main story, and I should set this up a little bit. Rather than the usual crew, I went to this one with Zen and his friend Dave Burton. If you've ever seen Fubar, you've seen Dave. He wore a trucker hat and an Iron Maiden shirt to the show, and he was primarily concerned with seeing the "rasslin" aspect of the show, which was something of a warning sign right off the bat for us because it's a
TV taping.
So as noted, we're in the comp section, and once again we're sitting right by who else but Shane McMahon again. This time his date is Nidia instead of Palumbo, which is a step up in the looks department if nothing else. Zen thinks it's a good time to get a picture with him after the show as a keepsake, so we decide to ask him after the show is over.
Now, the Saddledome was mostly blocked off because of the hockey game last night -- there was maybe 6,000 people there and all of the upper deck was taped off -- and the crowd was pretty distracted by the impending game, although I don't know how that came off on TV. So there was kind of an anxious mood all night. Dave, in particular, was anxious because he was promised fireworks, and they immediately raise his ire by skipping them and going right to the show. He complains loudly.
The night progresses with a lot of talk and commercial breaks, because it's TV and that's what you're getting into, and Dave gets drunker and more restless. The show might have come off really good on TV, but I was pretty distracted by the tech guys and Dave, so I could never get into it live. So by the millionth commercial break, Dave gets really loud, proclaiming that the show sucks and he's tired of sitting through commercial breaks and there's only been a few minutes of wrestling -- so Shane McMahon turns around and GIVES HIM $100 (US) TO SHUT UP AND GO HOME. We took a picture of the bill and Shane just to make sure it was documented. So ladies and gentlemen, you now have your new rating scale for bad shows, as I will begin implementing the Shane McMahon Refund System to determine how much money Shane will bribe people with to shut up about it. Needless to say, we didn't ask for the picture after all9
I dunno, I thought WM8 was a surprise because Savage won...I'd been sure that Flair was going to retain via DQ since it seemed too soon to take the belt off him following his epic Royal Rumble win. Especially when the match took place in the middle of the show, I was sure Flair would cheaply retain and then Hogan's last match would be the traditional happy ending for the fans.
ReplyDeleteEven at that young age, I figured Hogan wasn't *really* retiring and we'd see him back at Wrestlemania 9 to face Flair for the title. That's right, I had Flair pegged for a reign from Rumble '92 to WM9. I think that would've made it longer than Punk's 434 days.
At 14? Really? With AustinMania about to run wild? I agree on 11 and 8 though
ReplyDeleteDx was running very well on top to me at least and i didn't know about hbk's back injury severity
ReplyDelete"Does Savage face Honky at Mania and then job to Bad News Brown to get read for Dibiase?"
ReplyDeleteLOL, I laughed when I read this. If the entire E-mail was intended to get this joke across I applaud you.
Thst's all I've ever heard too, but I've always wondered if they wouldn't have changed their minds beforehand. A heel cheats to buy the belt on their biggest tv show ever. He's stripped of it, only to go and win it for real at their (I'm sure they thought to be) biggest ppv ever. And this is how they appeal to the kid demographic they were marketing to? Savage, as a "Megapower," maintains his spot as a midcarder? Who does Dibiase beat in the
ReplyDeletefinals? Was it scheduled to be Bam Bam? Since I'm assuming they were having some "attitude problems" with him by Main Event, would the back up plan be a second high profile loss in a row for their biggest hero? (Keep in mind they this is WWF, not NWA. In WWF, even DQ losses mattered, and would signal your move down the card.) Would they expect fans to still be as into Hogan as their hero after he failed to come through twice? Etc. Etc. Honky threatens to jump to the NWA as champion rather than lose the belt, but the happily agrees to a 45 second job to drop it within a few months of that? (Apparently they told Honky several months out of the plan to take it and he was on board, per Honky I think). A company that had to that point, with one exception ("Superstar" Billy Graham) always been a babyface was going to follow the lead of the far less successful NWA and put a heel on top during the hottest period in wrestling history?
Obviously I'm not saying that everyone (or anyone) who was involved is lying, but when I come across it, I always wonder if Vince was somehow puppet mastering some pieces, and Savage as champ by WM 4 was the plan as far back as the SNME where the Mega Powers formed.
Would he have dropped to Savage though? If so, when do the Megapowers actually team in a significant "good times" moment before problems begin? I don't think SNME would have done the trick. On record, I think Hogan & Savage only teamed 3 times: Summerslam, Survivor Series & Main Event. It's just so weird to think of things with Dibiase as champion.
ReplyDeleteTo follow up, how does his reign pan out? Does he win SNME title defenses? Seems dangerous for baby faces. (Again, televised losses meant a lot in late 80s WWF.) Does he lose by DQ or count out? They were already doing that with Honky just a few short months beforehand. Does Andre stay as his muscle? If so, does that mean that the Hogan-Andre feud continues even longer, despite 3 tv matches already?
ReplyDeleteWell you were right in the sense that one had a finish and one was a DQ. You just mixed up which ones. (And who would've called a DQ Hogan main event? That's another one if those things, despite him leaving, I would have said they "Just wouldn't have done. Not in a Wrestlemania main event. That's NWA/WCW junk." But then they did it, so maybe the whole Dibiase thing I've been sharing doubts about was the real plan after all. Every so often, the left turn occurs.
ReplyDeleteDailymotion has the 2 matches that were recorded. They are Mega Bucks vs. Hogan - Bigelow. This comes up all the time.
ReplyDeleteYeah no way. DX was wrestling big. Austin was pop culture big.
ReplyDeleteI've always maintained that that may have been the plan at some point, but there is no way a heel actually wins the title in the main event at wrestlemania in 1988.
ReplyDeleteI've always maintained that Andre the Giant never actually surrendered the title.
ReplyDeleteespecially since Vince is known for this. best example is how many workers claim they have been told they are being though of as the next champion in 1992.
ReplyDeleteWatching the Main Event at work now. Was that Jake Roberts' music they used for the Hogan workout promo video? What an odd choice.
ReplyDeleteI thought someone was working on a faq to cover all this?
ReplyDeleteA FAQ about the pro wreslting would be a brilliant idea.
ReplyDeleteYes it was.
ReplyDeleteI would think IC Champ Randy Savage would be a natural #1 seed in a tournament (or I guess maybe #3 seed behind Hogan and Andre), so Randy would probably still have been in the tournament as IC Champion, losing to DiBiase in the finals.
ReplyDeleteAnd I can see Vince putting the belt on DiBiase to ensure a huge buyrate for Summerslam when Hogan returns to regain his belt. I mean, WORLD CHAMPION TED DIBAISE v. RETURNING HERO HULK HOGAN has a better ring as a main event than Mega-Powers v. Mega-Bucks, doesn't it?
DiBiase probably wins title defenses against Hacksaw Duggan and Don Muraco on TV while getting chased by Randy Savage on the house show tour.
ReplyDeleteHogan probably wins a big return match against Andre to become the #1 contender at the Wrestefest show to set up Hogan/DiBiase for the title at Summerslam.
Transition champions were a lot different in 1988, and I think DiBiase holding the belt from WrestleMania to Summerslam wouldn't have been that big a deal.
ReplyDeleteI swore someone talked about creating one. all the montreal, dibiase as champion, invasion, cena heel turn stuff would go there. Also, so would all the mental breakdowns of former writers
ReplyDeletePetuka.
ReplyDelete