The Netcop Retro Rant for WCW Slamboree 1993
(2012 Scott sez: This was actually the first PPV I had ordered after getting “smartened up to the business” by RSPW once and for all. By that time, the PWI Weekly newsletter was all but breaking kayfabe anyway because it was getting ridiculously difficult to spin stuff like the Freebirds’ negative title reign any way but basically coming out and saying “wrestling is fake”. And this show sure cemented that.)
Live from the Omni in Atlanta, GA, wherever the hell that is.
Your hosts are Tony and Larry, both of whom are remarkably on-topic and coherent (cf. today)
Maxx Payne mangles the Star Spangled Banner on his guitar. This was odd at the time because Maxx was a heel.
Opening match: Bobby Eaton & Chris Benoit v. 2 Cold Scorpio & Marcus Alexander Bagwell. Now, before you go getting all excited here, there's some caveats:
Caveat #1: Benoit was a glorified jobber back in 1993
Caveat #2: Bagwell & Scorpio were the ones getting the push
Caveat #3: Eaton did most of the wrestling
Caveat #4: The match was built around making Bagwell look good, and this was waaaaaaaaay pre-Buff.
With all that in mind, it was a standard, Mickey Mouse opening tag match. This was before the era of Johnny B Badd having to be in every opening match on WCW's PPV shows, as well. Benoit & Eaton play the typical cowardly heel team, with Benoit getting a chance to show absolutely nothing but his penchant for selling anything for anyone. (Benoit and Eaton actually would have been a HELL of a modern Midnight Express as far as in-ring goes. Chris could pull off the flashy tights and everything.) It should be noted that at this time, Raven was a light heavyweight contender named Scotty Flamingo. I shit you not. (What? Shut up! You’re LYING! Stop lying!) Most of the match is Eaton v. Bagwell. Ugh. Bagwell sucked shit more than just about anyone else outside of Van Hammer at this time, and we get to see him later, too. (Eh, he was green and overpushed, but not bad as such.) Semi-hot ending as a big brouhaha erupts and a bunch of near-falls before Scorpio hits the Tumbleweed (one guess who jobs) for the pin. (Well, Benoit wasn’t even a regular guy at that point, why wouldn’t he job? The goal was to get Bagwell and Scorpio over anyway.) Bagwell and Scorpio would go on to win the World tag team titles in October. Yes, it's 1993 WCW, where our motto is "We'll push anybody!" (Especially if you’re black and suing us.) **
Van Hammer v. Col. Parker's Mystery Man.
Col. Rob Parker had made his debut a couple of weeks beforehand and was pissing on Van Hammer's leg (figuratively speaking, of course) because he wouldn't join his stable. Hammer slapped him around a bit, and Parker promised a big payback for Hammer because of it. And who should Parker bring out but Sid Vicious! This was a huge shock at the time and the crowd pops big for it. (So big that Vicious nearly rode this push all the way to the World title.) And the rout is on, as Sid dismantles and powerbombs ol' Van in 30 seconds, legitimately injuring him and humiliating him so badly that he has no choice but to become a transvestite and join a creepy band of quasi-homosexuals after sitting out of wrestling for 4 years. *Sniff*, I still get weepy when I think about what a service Sid did for wrestling here... but the match is a DUD (Kind of a funny storyline progression if you think about it, as Hammer was the one who got wronged by the heels and was standing up for himself, and got DESTROYED as a result. BE A STAR, Sid Vicious!)
Don Muraco & Jimmy Snuka & Dick Murdoch v. Wahoo MacDaniel & Blackjack Mulligan & Jim Brunzell.
Yes, it's as bad as it sounds. Tony spouts history like Mike Tenay and Jim Ross on speedballs. The sole high spots come from Capt. Redneck of all people. Respect for the legends is one thing, but you're out of your fucking mind if you give these geezers 10 or 12 minutes to shuffle around the ring and only 7 or 8 to the opening tag match. A big brawl erupts and it's declared a no-contest because of oxygen deprivation. 1/2* for the flying headscissors Dick does. (Given it was only 93 I’m not sure this was as bad as 98 Scott is making it out to be. Murdoch was still pretty OK at that point, and Snuka was only 2 years removed from the WWF run, and Wahoo didn’t age until the day he died, so it might have been decent. Probably was way too long, though.)
Baron Von Rashke & Ivan Koloff v. Thunderbolt Patterson & Brad Armstrong.
Brad is taking the place of father Bob, who is supposedly injured here. Since when do commies and Nazis team up? (The lost Depression-era season of 24?) Another shit match in a series of them tonight, as Koloff and the Baron are older than dirt. Hey, the legends' reunion might look like a good idea on paper, but it's no fun actually sitting through the matches. Thunderbolt uses a LAME double-chop for the pin. -**
A Flair For The Gold: Flair introduces one of the single STUPIDEST FUCKING IDEAS in the history of stupid ideas, namely promising the original Horsemen reuniting and then delivering PAUL FUCKING ROMA. This was SUCH a brainfart on somebody's part and almost totally ruined the Horsemen name. I mean, NOBODY bought this former jobber as a member of the "most elite team in wrestling" for 2 seconds. It's stuff like this that frankly leaves me shocked that WCW even survived 1993, let alone went on to become as big as they did. (Yeah, blatant false advertising on their part, as they were literally promising the original Horsemen lineup for weeks and then couldn’t get Tully Blanchard, so instead we got Paul Roma.)
Johnny Valentine joins us for commentary.
Dory Funk Jr. (w/ Nick Kiniski) v. Nick Bockwinkle (w/ Verne Gagne).
Speaking of brainfarts, here's Verne Gagne, who didn't think putting the World title on Hulk Hogan was such a great idea. Hey, Verne, where's the AWA now? Man, talk about the stupidest move ever...I mean, how hard is it to note that the guy was OVER? Did it never occur to him that maybe when you fake putting the title on the guy and the crowd nearly RIOTS that maybe you should actually give him a run as World champion? Do you think he can draw, Verne? I mean, hindsight is 20/20 and all, but you'd have to be seriously retarded not to notice that there's a seriously huge fanbase worshipping this guy. Ask Vince McMahon...Verne let him go and like 4 seconds later Vince puts the belt on him and lets him do his thing for *4 years*. How do you NOT see that kind of star potential? How do you miss that kind of glaring, golden, supermodel-lying-on-your-futon-naked kind of opportunity and NOT go out of business 5 years later? Okay, I'm ranting again now. (I’m thinking maybe Verne should have put the World title on Hogan, then?) Back to the match. Larry manages to work in the "I retired Bockwinkle" comment a record 4 seconds into the match. Way to go, Larry. Decent, solid, mat wrestling match which bored the shit out of me, but I can recognize good wrestling when I see it. 15 minute draw. **1/2 I just don't want to watch it, that's all. And I hate Dory Funk Jr. for other reasons. (No I don’t, that was just a very long running joke.)
US champ Rick Rude & TV champ Paul Orndorff v. Dustin Rhodes & Kensuke Sasaki.
Worthless time-filling arm-dragging crowd-playing fucking boring horseshit featuring my least favorite Japanese wrestler at the time, if only because I didn't yet know who Gedo was. At least he jobbed to Rude in this one. DUD (Wow, calm down, cranky-pants.)
Sting v. "The Prisoner".
The parade o' crap continues. This was supposed to be Sting v. Scott Norton in a bounty match, but Norton bailed out of WCW so we get Sting v. The Man They Can't Call Nailz for Legal Reasons. Here's the match: Choke, choke, choke, choke, choke, choke with a cable, kick, punch, Sting comes back, clothesline, pin. One of the worst pre-Crow Sting matches you will EVER see, I guarantee. -***, which is saying something because I don't usually bother with negative stars. (Since when?) And you know what...it was STILL BETTER than Sting v. Hogan from Starrcade. Go fig. (Oh come on now.)
The Hollywood Blonds v. Los Dos Hombres (WCW/NWA World tag title match).
THE MOTHERSHIP IS CALLING ME HOME! My gods, my lords, my saviors, Steve Austin & Brian Pillman in the waning weeks of their greatness before WCW fucked them over. I relish each opportunity I can get to watch them tower over every other pathetic team WCW put together to try and deny that these guys were legitimately over. (I don’t think WCW was actually denying that they were over. They just didn’t have the right political connections.) This one included. The storyline here is that after Rick Steamboat and Shane Douglas lost the tag team titles to Steve & Brian, they pulled a fast one by wearing masks and masquerading as an up-and-coming pair of luchadors. They of course got the upset win in a non-title match and earned this cage match for the titles. The joke of course is that Shane Douglas was fired/quit/got injured/whatever before the whole angle even started, and it was Brad Armstrong under the other mask. (When you need a guy to work a **** match under a mask, call Brad Armstrong!) And for this match, it's Tom Zenk. (When you need a guy to say stupid shit and get himself sued, call Tom Zenk!) Yet the announcers act like it's Shane the whole time. No wonder he's so pissed at WCW. (Not so pissed that he didn’t take the big fat payday when they came calling.) Not a great Blonds match, but Austin/Pillman was such a better team than everyone else in existence at the time that there just wasn't anyone who could work up to the level they were at. I mean, these guys were in SUCH a serious groove at this time. Cage doesn't really factor into this one, as the Blonds use their tag team stuff to work over Zenk most of the match. Super hot ending as Steamboat tags in and nails a cross-body...off the top of the cage...onto both guys! Yow! Ref counts two but the bell rings and the crowd goes nuts. Just a flub on the timekeeper's part, however. They exchange a ton of near falls, then Austin catches Zenk with the Stun-gun out of nowhere and gets the pin to retain the titles. *** (I think I did a more legitimate review on one of the millions of DVDs where this match is featured.)
NWA "World" title match: Barry Windham v. Arn Anderson.
Last hurrah at the OK Corral for Barry, as this is basically his last good match before he becomes...that thing that's in the WWF today. The storyline is simple: Barry turned down the Horsemen, so it's ass-kicking time. (That’s two different people with the same storyline on this show, I should note.) And Windham bleeds like a stuck pig as Anderson just pounds the shit out of him. However, Anderson gets frustrated and shoves the ref around, and that gives Barry a chance to just wallop Arn with the title belt and pin him to retain. ***1/4 and the best match on the card. Barry would lose the title to Ric Flair at the next PPV, but by then it was meaningless anyway. (This was a HELL of a match, actually, and 98 Scott is really doing it a disservice with the short review.)
Main Event: WCW World champion Big Van Vader v. Davey Boy Smith.
This was the peak of the "brainless spending" era in WCW, in this case millions of dollars on Davey Boy, who hadn't main evented a card in his life, and then shoving him in a World title match on PPV. I won't even bring up the midget. Smith took extra steroids for this one, it seems. Still, can't blame both guys for effort here, as they give it the old college try, even though there's MAYBE 6000 people there (I'd bet 2000 paid at most) who don't give a shit anymore. But Davey Boy does some nice power stuff that Vader is nice enough to sell like a champion and the crowd is totally into it. Not as good a match as their Clash of Champions rematch a few weeks later, but still a good power v. power primer. Bill Goldberg, watch this match and take notes. Match spills outside and Vader bops Smith with a chair for the disappointing DQ that sets up...the MINI-MOVIE! NYAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! **1/2 (I don’t remember this match at all.)
The various announcers wrap things up.
The Bottom Line:
1993 was without a doubt rock bottom for WCW. They signed all the wrong people, pushed all the wrong talent, did everything possible that one company could do to self-destruct, and fucked that up too by actually surviving. If it wasn't for Ric Flair at Starrcade 93, Turner's accountants may have actually pulled the plug on the bottomless pit that was WCW because they lost something like 23 million dollars in that year before rebounding with the Hogan signing. I don't know WHAT they were thinking with this show, which didn't have a marketable main event or a particularly strong undercard to back it up. Good ideas on paper rarely translate well to real life. Still, the last three matches on the tape are certainly worth a look, even if everything before is utter tripe. Later. (This actually sounds like a decent show and may be worthy of a re-rant one day to view it through non-drunken eyes.)
I thought the story on Tully was that they could have had him if they wanted but they offered him some ridiculously low number because of his failing a drug test in the WWF and he declined because he was insulted by the offer?
ReplyDeleteOne thing I liked about WCW was that almost everyone competed for any title. Sometimes Sting would go for the US Title, sometimes two established singles guys would go for the tag team championship. They always did a good job of making the titles important because everyone in the company would figure for them. The "tag partners who hate each other" really killed those particular titles, as the belts were always seen as more of a pain in the ass for the guys who held them, this little annoyance that was keeping these two guys from being rid of one another.
ReplyDeleteWhy didn't they just put Windham in the Horseman rather then go with Roma? Or 3 guys? Call me crazy, but I didn't think Roma was that bad. He just wasn't a great choice for a face version of the Horsemen, he has heel written all over him. Maybe if they'd debuted him a few months prior and given him some wins to establish him as more than the WWE jobber he was last seen as.
"This was the peak of the "brainless spending" era in WCW, in this case
ReplyDeletemillions of dollars on Davey Boy, who hadn't main evented a card in his
life, and then shoving him in a World title match on PPV."
He *did* main event Summerslam 92.
I think that was in 1990, when Arn first jumped back to NWA/WCW. Tully was supposed to come with but he failed his WWF drug test so WCW pulled their original offer. He turned down the new offer...I'm not sure why he didn't come back this time.
ReplyDelete"Davey Boy, who hadn't main evented a card in his life"
ReplyDeleteDamn 98 Scott, did you forget Summerslam 92? 98 Scott was more cranky and forgetful than Pierce Hawthorne after sunset.
Sometimes I think people go overboard over the Paul Roma thing. It definitely didn't work out, but WCW took the kind of risk we are just begging the WWE to take today and I think they deserve a little bit of credit for doing so.
ReplyDeleteI was actually a Paul Roma fan back in the day. I thought he stood out as a jobber to the stars who clearly deserved more, and I was stoked when he actually did a push (of sorts) with the heel turn and the Power and Glory gimmick. I was disappointed that Roma didn't get a chance to break out in his new role, so you can imagine my surprise when I turned on a Clash of Champions one night (after a long break from WCW) and found out that Roma was now a Horseman. It was a bold move, but it showed that the company was willing to role the dice on potential and I think, given a slightly different set of circumstances, it might have been a great move.
The problem laid as much in the incarnation of the Horsemen as Roma himself. It was a face Horsemen, which is never as good; there were only three of them (overlooking Ole's brief appearance), which is just semantically incorrect; and they were feuding with a team that was far more over at the time in the Hollywood Blondes. Call me crazy, but I think Roma could have worked if they'd brought him in to join a heel incarnation of the Horsemen and allowed him to use the conceited weasel gimmick that had rejuvenated his WWF career (they could have even referred to him as The Glory-Horse). He could have played the Tully role from the original group perfectly, and if they'd had a good 4th guy to mark this era (how about Orndorff--who wound up having decent chemistry with Roma later on), I think Pretty Paul's addition might have wound up looking like a brilliant move in hindsight.
The way it went however--with Roma walking out with that big cheesy smile on his face and Ric and Arn pretending that he had this huge list of accolades to his name (while the fans were expecting him to actually be Tully), it was bound to fail. If nothing else, we needed a logical explanation for why Roma was there, and they never gave one to us. Maybe they should have had Roma start working the under-card, then had the Blonds assault him after a tag match and had him rescue Ric and Arn from a beat down later as payback, sowing the seeds of their bond. It might have worked. I still say, though, that they deserve all the credit in the world for trying to make something out of an overlooked talent (even if those points were all lost in the execution).
Ha, I started writing something very similar while you posted this. Glad to know I'm not alone on the whole "Roma had potential" thing.
ReplyDeleteAccording to his shoot interview the offered him some ridiculously low amount of money (like $500), and Tully was so offended (rightfully so) that he didn't even call them back.
ReplyDelete2 Cold Scorpio sued WCW? Why?
ReplyDeleteHey, he's no Michael Buffer. He's just Tully Blanchard. ;)
ReplyDeleteTo refresh 2012 Scott's memory, DBS vs. Vader was kind of a methodical power match which lacked flow but was mostly impressive for the ways in which Bulldog kept picking up the moster Vader and slamming him. I remember it in the **1/2 to *** range too.
ReplyDeleteI don't think at that time that most people bought Bulldog beating Vader so that may have killed a bit of the heat, his momentum Summerslam 1992 and initial WCW push notwithstanding.
I'll never understand why they just didn't put Sid in Roma's place. Sid destroying everyone left and right as a member of the Horsemen until they can't even control him leading to Flair vs Sid at Starrcade 93 could have been pretty cool.
ReplyDeleteYeah, but still, $500? He probably got more than that for Heroes of Wrestling. Shit, after travel expenses he probably would have lost money on the deal.
ReplyDeleteGood thing Buffer never introduced him, otherwise he would have been billed as "Tommy Blanchard".
ReplyDeleteEspecially considering just a few years later, they had a huge cavalcade of TV jobbers that were making five times that amount to work roughly 35% of the year. Talk about backwards thinking.
ReplyDeleteTully Blanchard isn't worth $150,000 a year, yet Al Greene, Rick Fuller, Chip Minton and The Gambler are?
Especially considering just a few years later, they had a huge cavalcade of TV jobbers that were making five times that amount to work roughly 35% of the year. Talk about backwards thinking.
ReplyDeleteSo Tully Blanchard isn't worth $150,000 a year, yet Al Greene, Rick Fuller, Chip Minton and The Gambler are?
Well yeah I agree totally. Just referencing WCWs tendency to overpay certain talent (Buffer, Ventura, etc). Im not exactly sure what a Tully return with the Horsemen wouldve been worth but Im guesstimating more than $500.
ReplyDeleteWould have been kinda cool but remember, Sid stabbed Arn and was gone before Starrcade 1993.
ReplyDeleteThe stabbing happened in October, let's say by then Sid has already took out Anderson and turned on the Horsemen. That means Anderson might not have been on the tour to sell the injuries and therefor doesn't get stabbed.
ReplyDeleteI could list a dozen more if I had one of the WCW video games. They had something like 300 guys or so at one point, or at least that's what it felt like, so it's hard to keep track. Of course, with 3 hour Nitros, Thunder, Saturday Night, Worldwide, Pro (with the ring on the sweet spinning platform they need to bring back), Clashes, and a monthly PPV, you need a lot of bodies to fill all that time. Talk about over-saturation...
ReplyDelete2012 Scott is Jeff, then.
ReplyDeletePretty close. According to the Death Of WCW book, they had 234 wrestlers under contract when the roster was at its most bloated.
ReplyDeleteNot even WWE had that many guys under contract when they were 100% committed to the brand extension and keep in mind the giant majority of those guys only worked once every four months or so and that WCW had no developmental territory to speak of, so ultimatly there was no reason for most of those guys to be under contract.
I mean if you needed them for sporadic TV appearences, how freakin' hard would it have been to have those guys on per-night deals instead? It's not like those jobbers were on Vince McMahon's radar.
God I remember actually watching "Worldwide" once or twice, and realizing they had a miniature set, and the program was so bad that they had JOBBERS FIGHTING JOBBERS. I mean, Rick Fuller wasn't even a "Jobber To The Stars"- I don't think he EVER won on Nitro. You had Power Plant grads like Mike Tolbert & Chip Minton (the Olympic Bobsledder!) wrestling each other!
ReplyDeleteTo say nothing of all the excess Cruiserweights kicking around. Was there any real reason to add both Villanos, Ciclope, Super Calo, Damien & Lizmark Jr.? Some were pretty good workers, but they had "Jobber" written all OVER them, and none of them ever got over. WCW's 1996-98 roster was probably the largest in wrestling history, even beating the two-roster WWE of today.
Yeah, but they DIDN'T give him any wins beforehand, they brought him in after conning people into spending money to see Tully Blanchard. That's why people are so bitter about it.
ReplyDeleteYou shut your mouth! Jesse Ventura was worth every dollar they paid him. He at least made PPVs bearable during the lean years of El Gigante and Firebreaker Chip.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Bobby Heanan's book, they actually were going to make Hulk Hogan the AWA Champion, but it was Hogan who declined. The reason being that Hogan was about to go on a lucrative Japan tour and that, if he went over as AWA Champion, Verne would control the booking and receive the lion's share of the payout.
ReplyDeleteDoes that include Chono, Muta, Sasaki, and all the other Japanese guys they brought over? 234 guys? That's fucking insane. Think about it, WWE, TNA, and ROH COMBINED don't have anywhere near that many guys. No wonder they were losing over $50,000,000 a year.
ReplyDeleteHeh , Jesse was good but still probably overpaid for the actual easy work he did, as good as he was at it. I'll expound on my statement
ReplyDeleteI liked Jesse just fine but it doesnt change the fact he made, on commentary, what, two and a half times what Foley made for nearly killing himself?
Alright maybe one could say Foleys priorities were out of whack and he would never get paid what Ventura made in WCW so he shouldnt have been taking crazy bumps in WCW. Who knows.
Jesse was a movie star. And yes, admittedly, he was very good on commentary with Ross so maybe hes not the best example. Bottom line is that other WCW stars had contracts that were out of wack starting from this era and especially in the Monday Night Wars era of 1996 to the companys folding as noted above and below.
This. Paul Roma may hold the record for swinging from very underrated to very overrated in eight nanoseconds.
ReplyDeleteThe man had a great body and could move pretty well in the ring. Give him a gimmick like The Model and he may well have gotten over as a singles performer, eventually working up to the point where people might have taken him seriously as an emergency Horseman.
"Wow, calm down, cranky-pants."We need to get Cranky Scott to fill in for 2012 Scott one of these days.
ReplyDeleteYeah that delayed vertical suplex Davey gave Vader impressed the hell out of me.
ReplyDeleteI dont recall that particular spot, just in general thinking "My God Davey Boy is a fuckin animal" after slamming Vader several times, so I dont doubt he did that.
ReplyDeleteYeah, the New Japan guys were under contract to WCW and were getting two paychecks for no apparent reason, not to mention most of the Mexican luchadores were getting two paychecks or more since they would work various independent shows in Mexico on their nights off from WCW.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, that New Japan/WCW talent exchange was so heavily lopsided in WCW's favor I'm amazed New Japan didn't sue them for breach of contract. While New Japan would send over their huge stars like Muta, Chono and Tenzan, WCW would send over such marquee draws as Robbie Rage, Kenny Kaos, Kendall Windham, Jim Powers, and NWO superstar Vincent.
Could you imagine being Mikey Whipwreck or Lanny Poffo during that time? You fly all over the country (presumably, I don't know how many people were actually present at any given show) to hang out in locker rooms and get paid stupidly big money. People probably don't remember him ever even being there but Greg Valentine was employed by WCW for most of the 90s, and the most he ever did was work Saturday Night and fill the ring during World War 3.
ReplyDeleteIt's on the Legacy of Stone Cold DVD, and I think maybe Pillmans? Other people know more.
ReplyDeleteHere's how beyond stupid WCW was when it came to paying guys: The Sting/NotNailz match on this card? They signed NotNailz to a multi-year contract.
ReplyDelete[Kornheiser] Would you like to hear a list of shows he appeared on?
This show.
THAT'S IT, THAT'S THE LIST![/Kornheiser] This no-talent asspounder does one job to Sting and gets paid for it for like 6-7 years. I think *I* got a check for 60 grand from WCW back in 94.
''
ReplyDeleteSid dismantles and powerbombs ol' Van in 30 seconds, legitimately injuring him and humiliating him so badly that he has no choice but to become a transvestite and join a creepy band of quasi-homosexuals after sitting out of wrestling for 4 years. *Sniff''
...what?
*Technically* the Warrior-Savage match was the main event of Summerslam. Bret-Bulldog was what closed the show, but the WWF title match was the main.
ReplyDeleteThe best part is the rant against Vern that is based on completely wrong information. Seriously, if I had a dime for every time meltzer was completely wrong, I could relaunch wcw.
ReplyDeletesome of my favorite jobbers were Barry Darsow, "The Gentleman" Chris Adams, Scott Putski, Silver "dont let the husky appearance fool you" King, Lenny Lane... lets name some more wcw jobbers from the 90's
ReplyDeleteI liked Worldwide. Even though it was jobberville, it was also the best produced, most coherent show that WCW had. The guys were so low on th totem pole that it didn't matter who was jobbing, thus you'd get full matches clean finishes, and a lack of stupid story crap, which you'd never see on Nitro.
ReplyDeletePoor Sting. I mean the prisoner???? Poor poor Sting. He always deserved much better then he got.
ReplyDeletehey you go easy on kendall windham. He was a very important piece of the West Texas Rednecks!
ReplyDeleteI think the best guys they ever sent over were Bagwell and Norton - which actually resulted in Bagwell getting pretty decent right before the neck injury.
ReplyDeleteThe weird thing is that if they'd just gone straight to where everyone wound up shortly thereafter - Roma and Orndorff as a team with Flair and Arn as heels - things probably would've worked out. Flair, Arn, Roma and Orndorff are a pretty good heel Horsemen lineup, and probably about the best you could've done if you didn't put the Blondes in there.
ReplyDeleteThe Power Company Twins!
ReplyDeleteMan, I was born 10 years too late...
ReplyDeleteYeah, there's a chance that death of wcw is wildly inaccurate.
ReplyDeletePretty sure they didn't fly people in if they weren't being used.
ReplyDeleteWell, Chris Jericho and several ex-WCW wrestlers have confirmed this to be true and regardless of your opinion about Meltzer, Jim Cornette, quite possibly the most honest person to ever exist in the wrestling business, has mentioned in several interviews WCW doing even stupider money-wasting tactics.
ReplyDeleteConsidering WCW once fired The Iron Sheik then lost $100,000 because they forgot to terminate his contract, it's pretty clear they were dumb enough to keep hiring guys without even bothering to keep track of how many guys they had on the roster.
And considering that Eric Bischoff is now getting outsmarted by Scott Steiner of all people, it's pretty clear that he was dumb enough to let it happen.
And Jericho also confirmed they were flying in almost everyone on the roster to every show but only using 30 of those guys at most; that practice didn't stop until February 2000, at which point it was far too late to save the company by then.
Ron Powers, Big Al, Roadblock, Joe Gomez, Renegade, Barry Horowitz, Mike Enos, Adrian Byrd, Danny Faquir, The Barbarian, Norman Smiley, Van Hammer, Mike Rotunda, Hardbody Harrison, Mark Starr, Ricky Banderas, Fidel Sierra, Dave Taylor, Erik Watts, Chad Fortune.
ReplyDeleteI was doing some searching on this and discovered one great example of WCW incompetence: Bunkhouse Buck was under contract to WCW until 2000 even though they quit using him in 1997!
I loved it when Chris Cruise would always called WCW Pro "the Pro".
ReplyDeleteSimple yet cool name.
As a sidenote, Chris Cruise definitely left the business too early. The quality of announcing is so bad nowadays that Cruise would be considered the best announcer in the business today by default if he had bothered to stay.
Yeah, Larry Zbyszko was making $300,000 a year to "work" (if you call burying young guys and bragging about your golfing prowess while sounding half-asleep on commentary "work") a whopping one day a week.
ReplyDeleteI remember kinda liking this show, but I think it was just for the novel idea of having Bulldog main eventing against Vader, just seemed like a good pairing.
ReplyDeleteA full version of this show seems hard to come across, likely due to the low buyrate I suppose. I purchased the commercial version at Suncoast Video in the late 1990s-- it was one from the short lived run of EP tapes they ran off (along with Spring Stampede 94, Slamboree 94, Starrcade 93 and maybe another one) so it is about three hours long and doesn't have the normal THV match clipping, but I think they released all of them after the Sid incident and so I think they removed his match.
Lanny has said specifically that he never was flown anywhere.
ReplyDeleteLink or GTFO.
ReplyDeleteYou think they knew far enough ahead of time who they were going to use that they could arrange flights for everyone?
ReplyDeleteLololol. You guys take everything that meltzer says as gospel, meanwhile he has never listed a source on anything. But I need to provide a link. Lolololol.
ReplyDeleteGuys that weren't jobbers. After not using him for three years, pretty sure they weren't going to spur of the moment start jobbing Lanny to Silver King.
ReplyDeleteWhat, no 2012 Scott reference to Jimmy Snuka's daughter?
ReplyDeleteWell, they did start using Ice Train again in 2000 after not using him for two and a half years, that was very spur of the moment.
ReplyDeleteAnd I should point out that most but not all of the roster was flown to every show. So to solve this little argument, Lanny indeed was only flown in once as Jericho mentioned in his first book even though he was under contract the entire time and making nearly the same amount of money as Jericho even though Jericho worked almost every show.
Why Dougie mentioned Lanny, I have no idea because that had nothing to do with my point. Just because Lanny Poffo wasn't flown to every show doesn't mean at least 85% of the 234 wrestlers they had weren't flown to every show just to sit around backstage and play PlayStation while making far more money than WCW was willing to pay Tully Blanchard.
I know I am WAY in the minority on this, but as far as late 1990s WCW commentators, I actually enjoy Larry quite a bit and I don't really get the criticisms of him at all, especially the 'he buries young guys' thing. I'd say he was definitely more enjoyable than Heenan from 1997 on.
ReplyDeleteHe often came off as a crotchety dude on commentary, but that certainly wasn't reserved to young guys. The bragging or 'getting his kudos' thing wasn't really any different than Jessie Ventura doing the same thing, but for some reason it seems to really rub people the wrong way.
Did he give a shoot interview or something that fueled all the negative feelings towards his commentary?