Hi Scott,
I know from long experience of reading your rants that you don't rate battle royals or midget matches and that there was a spell when you refused to rate (or possibly even watch) Sheepherder/Bushwhacker matches, but I was curious...
Given that you don't rate them, what do you consider to be the gold standard for these types of matches? The sort of match where, if you were to review them (and I understand that you might have to apply different standards), you give them ****+? A lot is made of the midget match from the When Worlds Collide AAA/WCW PPV, for instance and I'm personally a fan of the Sheepherders vs. Nikita and Dr. Death from one of the early Clashes.
I'd be interested in your thoughts.
All the best,
Kev
That was quite the attention-grabbing e-mail title.
I don't know that I ever said I wouldn't rate Bushwacker matches. They were uniformly terrible as a comedy act, but I have no issues just giving them a DUD and moving on with my life. But I used to be a big fan of the Sheepherders right up until they jumped to the WWF. Had they not gone that route, Paul Heyman probably could have resurrected their career in ECW, in fact.
Midget matches are different, because they're existing in a different universe than the rest of wrestling, with different rules of conduct and different referees who get much more involved. It's like trying to handicap a Globetrotters game.
Didn't the Sheepherder's once have a 5 star match? Seems impossible to me. I need to go find some of their pre-WWF stuff, apparently.
ReplyDeleteSheepherders = goooood.
ReplyDeleteBushwackers = baaaaaad.
As a kid, I hated the Sheepherders for what they did to The Fantastics. I remember that being a pretty good feud and the Sheepherders were some dastardly heels.
Hey Scott, any way we can get a re-post of the AAA rant? Or at least a link? I can't find it anywhere.
ReplyDeleteThe Bushwackers were menacing, brawling foreign heels before coming to the WWF. Their feud with the Fantastics was awesome. They also have a match on the Hart Foundation dvd, a 1979 Stampede match against the Harts.
ReplyDeleteI have a soft spot for the Bushwackers though. Butch and Luke hit fame late in their careers. Both were in their 40s when they entered the WWF. The Bushwacker gimmick was something they could take on the indy circuit for an easy payday, which is a fair bit better than slicing open your forehead every night. I don't begrudge them that.
Any person that grew up watching wrestling and hates the Bushwhackers is a miserable person.
ReplyDeleteThey were good, harmless fun.
I am almost 100% certain that I've never done that show before, but I'll check around for it.
ReplyDeleteTo follow up, I'm pretty sure that I did the Eddie Guerrero ***** tag match for an unrelated rant at one point, but I've never done the full show as far as I can remember.
ReplyDeleteGuess I'm miserable then. Hated them. That Jameson angle made me embarrassed to be a wrestling fan. The only similar times I can think of would be Rick Steiner/Chucky, Paul Ellering and Rocco, and Katie Vick. Actually there were several things in the late 90s WWF that I found embarrassing, but it was so popular that I guess others weren't. I'm referring to almost anything with Mark Henry post-NOD, choppy my pee-pee, Meat, and almost anything with Mae Young to name a few.
ReplyDeleteThat said, on Bushwhackers I was already 16 in 89 (I think that's when they joined the WWF, if it wasn't adjust my age accordingly), so I was beyond their target audience. That was a period where although I wasn't a smark per se (didn't subscribe to newsletters or know words like push, booker, or angle, but i had a sense of who the office believe in and started to understand protecting big stars with lame finishes) I was smartening up to the business. I always knew it was staged, and frankly never have understood how anyone couldn't, but previously I cheered the faces and booed the heels (except for cheering heel Savage in 86/87 and the heel Hart foundation). I loved guys who were terrible like Ted Arcidi, Corporal Kirschner, SD Jones, etc. I had little concept of workrate. By 89 though I started to understand it, even if I didn't have words for it. It is at this point that guys like Duggan, Ultimate Warrior, and the Bushwhackers just annoyed me to no end. The Warrior was a big stupid goof who couldn't do three moves. The Bushwhackers were just dumb and of course they sucked. And Duggan? Over the top jingoistic patriotism had lost it's a appeal to me at that point.
When I said grew up I meant more 6-12, so yes I get why you hated the Bushwhackers.
ReplyDeleteYeah, we're about the same age and context is important on whether you liked the Sheepherders in the WWF.
ReplyDeleteThe problem for me was that I actually had seen them for some time ain the NWA and seen them destroy the Fantastics (much to my chagrin). So, seeing them turned into a comedy act and being 15 at that point, just rubbed me the wrong way. I thought they just had much more potential, but hey, they had a good run and made decent money, so huzzah.
It doesn't make you a miserable person, it just means you were out of the target demo at that point.
That must be what I was thinking of. Any chance we can get a re-post of that?
ReplyDeleteF4DG is spot on. The Sheepherders were a bloody, brawling, brutal team - basically two Kiwi versions of Buzz Sawyer. They were great and a team that, ten years later, would have been internet darlings if/when they popped up in ECW. That said, Vince paid them more money than they had ever seen to stop cutting themselves to ribbons and lick each other's heads - I think we'd all have taken that deal.
ReplyDeleteI was about that age. Hated them.
ReplyDeleteWhat I never understood, is why Scott doesn't rate battle royals, but will rate the Royal Rumble. I mean, it's basically the same thing, no?
ReplyDeletecheap plug: The only difference between me and Barbra Walters, is my interviews usually end with me forcing the interviewie to act out scenes from the original Karate Kid with me. Just posted the interview with Maffew from Botchamania. I know you're all dying to read it, as you should be, so head on over.
http://scrublife.wordpress.com/2012/05/14/an-interview-with-matt-of-botchamania/
Agreed.
ReplyDeleteExhibit A - Whoooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaa
Exhibit B - Yeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
... I rest my case.
The only good midget match i have ever seen, was the Royal Family Vs Doinks at Survivor Series 1994, but that was almost entirely due to the actual talent of Lawler 7 Doink who put togtehr a great comedy match.
ReplyDeleteYou did it as a match on the first Eddie DVD i do believe.
ReplyDeleteAs much as I hated the Bushwackers, it's not a bad thing to have a comedy team you can stick out there to get people feeling good at the start of the show. And, other than boring matches and that horrible skit where Mean Gene went Down Under to where they "lived", they weren't really treated as a serious threat or put in any real storylines that mattered. Their no worse than the original Dudley clan in ECW...horrible wrestlers just out there to get the crowd reacting one way or the other, and to lose to whoever was getting a push up at that moment.
ReplyDeleteI would think battle royals are pointless to really review since 98% of the match follows the same formula, with a few that have had more creative endings. The Rumble at least is slower paced with several stories intertwined that can be followed over the match, plus there's the suspense over who enters when.
ReplyDeleteWe've known you were miserable for a while now.
ReplyDeleteI liked the way announcers called them Butch Miller and Luke Williams instead of simply Butch and Luke during house show broadcasts.
ReplyDeleteThat entire storyline is a huge guilty pleasure of mine.
ReplyDeleteThe Eddie DVD? Sure, no problem.
ReplyDeleteYeah, but the problem there is that the Bushwackers won a LOT. Like, they'd get put over the Rougeaus and Honky/Valentine and Beverlies and a few other heel teams, which killed their credibility and did nothing for the Wackers because they were never going to get a tag title shot anyway. If they did their wacky act against jobbers and then lost to the actual contenders it'd be no problem, but it actually did a lot of damage to teams who deserved better.
ReplyDeleteYeah, battle royales very rarely have a storyline, it's basically just a bunch of guys laying around on the ropes and telling jokes. Every time I try to recap one it ends like "List the participants, and here's the order of elimination, and here's who won" because there's nothing to talk about in between.
ReplyDeleteI absolutely hated the Bushwackers. I was about 12 when they made their WWF debut, and when I saw what had happened to one of the most feared teams I'd been watching in the years prior in Mid-South/UWF and JCP, I was disgusted. I hated seeing so many favorites become ridiculous characters/gimmicks, and the Bushwackers was worse than The Red Rooster, Saba Simba, etc. If it wasn't for guys like Randy Savage, Jake Roberts, and the great tag division (which Luke and Butch could have added a much-needed element of danger to), I couldn't have watched more than a couple of years of WWF in the late 80s - 90s before quitting them.
ReplyDeleteThat's what I hate about them...there's ALWAYS the one big guy who announcers hype can't be thrown over the rope, and then are shocked when everyone gangs up to put them out halfway through, even though it happens in EVERY DAMN ONE!! Really, Andre was the only one you really could believe that for, since he rarely lost that many in his prime.
ReplyDeleteHmmm...since I lived in Gooberville, Louisiana most of my childhood, I didn't get too many house shows. I only remember a few matches that they won against real tag teams on the syndicated shows. Although, their WrestleMania match against the Rougeaus was criminal.
ReplyDeleteI loved their feud with The Fantastics. I remember thinking that Rogers and Fulton would get killed, especially after seeing a Mid-South TV match (maybe in '85) where Buzz Sawyer and Dick Slater had pretty much squashed the pretty boys. After the 'herders beat Dr. Death and DiBiase for the UWF tag titles (and injuring Ted with the New Zealand flag), there was no way The Fantastics could stand up to them. Turned into a pretty great feud.
ReplyDeleteI have a soft spot for the Bushwhackers, they headlined the first wrestling show I ever went to and posed for a picture with me holding my Bushwhacker action figures.
ReplyDeleteBut later on when I read some of those retro-PWI issues that they'd do now & then, I realized they used to be these crazy violent guys. Something about the name Sheepherder and all the sheep-fucking implications made me picture them as like rape-crazy New Zealand outback types. When Wolf Creek came out, that same vibe is what I always pictured the Sheepherders as.
Also IIRC, the Bushwhackers did a handful of ECW house shows in the late 90s as Butch & Luke Dudley, filling in for Bubba & D-Von.
They did that at a lot of house shows back then. For instance, the Orient Express's Tanaka was referred to as 'Pat Tanaka' despite the tv announcers never using his full name, and the Nasty Boys had their first and last names listed as well.
ReplyDeleteMark me down as someone who always hated The Bushwhackers too, even as a young kid. Their entrance was good for some goofy fun, but I just found their matches so boring and usually way too long. The Bushwhackers vs Beverly Brothers match at Royal Rumble 1992 is the first time as a young kid that I remembered thinking 'now that was a terrible match'.
ReplyDeleteHonestly the only one of those three teams that had any real credibility was the Rougeaus; Rhythm and Blues was just a last ditch attempt at keeping Valentine and Honky Tonk Man relevant and the Beverlies just never caught on and were not on the level of the other teams. At least the WWF tag division had enough teams back then where not ev
ReplyDeleteI always like battle royals when they do them at house shows. I guess it's one of those things that's better live, rather than on TV.
ReplyDeleteIt happened, for about 5 minutes, I'm not sure how long they stuck around after this
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDbIgcJX74Y
Wait, are you describing Santino's current gimmick or the Bushwhackers?
ReplyDeletestay classy Dougie
ReplyDeleteYeah, I was 6 in 1990, and was never a fan of The Bushwackers. Demolition, LOD, The Rockers and The Harts were all way above them on my pecking order.
ReplyDeleteIt's a shame about the Beverlys. They were a decent team and they had one of the best double team moves in the Shaker Heights Spike.
ReplyDeleteTHAT is what I miss from the golden age of tag teams - proper double-team finishers.
As long as you stay reasonable and openminded sunshine.
ReplyDeleteI was a smart-ass kid who liked cocky/crazy heels like Flair, Perfect and Savage, so the Bushwackers were definitely not my thing.
ReplyDeleteThey did indeed - I think they were billed as the Dudleys from Down Under.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDbIgcJX74Y
Didn't even realize that was the same one from up above. I should've recognized the ECW ring.
ReplyDelete