Hidden Highlights 06.29.09: Issue #200

Hidden Highlights
By JP Prag

Issue #200

Commentator: Previously, on Hidden Highlights…

Commentator: Some people were not as intimately familiar with the entire history of Hidden Highlights than others.

icon zeke: Gotta love Miz, They showed a close-up on RAW during a faceoff with Cena. The gloves he wears are “mizuno” brand. A Japanese sport equipment company. That just happens to begin with MIZ. Awesome.

Stenographer: Back in Issue #117 Chris Finch said:

Its so hard to look for them in the middle of the night, and all I could find was The Miz wearing “Mizuno” gloves or something around his hands. I really can’t imagine he “just” chose them because he liked them-it had to be because of the name.

Commentator: Of course, icon zeke was not the only one lost in the past.

Phil: Cody Rhodes said Great American Bash when referring to The Bash.

Commentator: What other history will come up this week in the historic 200TH ISSUE NOT-SO-SPECTACULAR OF HIDDEN HIGHLIGHTS?

Commentator: And now, 411wrestling.com proudly presents…

JP: Hello everyone who is more distressed about Billy Mays than any other pop star dying this week, and welcome back to Hidden Highlights! If you’ve never been here before, let me tell you what we are doing in these pages.

Hidden Highlights are about the little things that make the product great. They are about showing the positive motions all those involved in wrestling do to make a better show. The Miz may hold his opponents hands down to make a pin attempt better. Charles Robinson may let a little tear shed from his eye every time someone mentions Ric Flair. Mike Tenay may tell you about the 17 year history of a visiting wrestler and make them sound huge in one sentence. These are all examples of little things that make the product far better.

Every week this article spotlights up to the Top 15 Hidden Highlights of the week, whether the be from television (RAW, ECW of SciFi, iMPACT, SmackDown!, and a PPV or television special if there is one), the past, small shows, tapes, or the indy scene.

This article may have an author, but it is also dependent upon the readers and true fans of professional wrestling—those who love what they watch and want to tell the world what they have found. The Top 15 are chosen from what I see and what readers write-in. Whatever is the best is what you’ll see!

And who am I? Well, I am JP Prag, and I bring you Hidden Highlights with one goal in mind: to appreciate all those little things that make a huge difference.

Now let’s get on with the Hidden Highlights!

Classic Hidden Highlight

JP: We’ll kick it off this week in the way back machine (because it’s a special issue, not because we do that every week).

Fixxer315: I’ve been watching the Saturday Night’s Main Event DVD set, and I caught a pretty interesting Hidden Highlight in the Orndorff/Hogan steel cage match from January of 1987.

Since it was the classic WWF steel cage match, the cage had the blue bars, and it was escape rules (over the top or through the door). There were two referees at ringside—Joey Marella and Danny Davis—the latter of whom was doing a gradual heel turn.

At one point in the match, Hogan made his way to the door, but Marella had trouble opening the latch. Orndorff cut Hogan off by the time the door was open and in the moment Hogan’s momentum was halted Davis closed and latched the door again.

This Hidden Highlight works on a couple of different levels. First, it can be seen as Davis taking over when Marella was proving to be incompetent. On the other hand, it can also be seen as a heel move from Davis, who didn’t even wait for Orndorff to pull Hogan away from the door to cut off Hogan’s chances to win the match.

JP: Oh those evil heels, always plotting against Hulk Hogan!

Classic Hidden Highlight

JP: Those plots against Hogan continued much later into the year and into the next.

AlexXx: I turn your attention to a recent article, right here on 411 reviewing WWF Challenge from March 1987.

In the contract signing for WM3, Bobby Heenan demanded a new title belt be created because the one in use at the time was made “for him” (Hogan). Of course, we know that the belt in Wrestlemania III was in fact the old 80’s Hogan belt.

Heenan’s statement would come back to haunt us all and we should have seen it coming 11 months away. In the rematch from The Main Event in February 1988, Hogan would do his prematch interview with his 80s belt. BUT!!!!!! When he comes out for the match—what’s he carrying? The new Winged Eagle belt! A NEW BELT!!! FOR THE NEW CHAMPION!!!!!

JP: While I’m not as excited about it as you are with all of your exclamation points (and believe me, I cut out quite a few), it’s still a pretty nice catch.

Classic Hidden Highlight

JP: Getting pretty close to the present, we get another oddity from Jasper that gave me a good chuckle.

Jasper Gerretsen: CHIKARA King of Trios 2009, Night 3: As part of the filler matches, The Colony teamed up with The North Star Express in an eight man tag match. Before the match there was a promo for this team, with The North Star Express doing the talking with The Colony goofing off in the background; with Soldier Ant putting the newest recruit Green Ant through some drills and Fire Ant listening to his iPod. The Hidden Highlight here was that Fire Ant’s earbuds were stuck to the antennae of his mask in stead of where his ears would be, thus furthering the whole ‘ant’ gimmick.

JP: This alone has made me want to watch this show now!

RAW – Retro 2 Weeks

JP: Getting closer yet, RAW from a couple of weeks ago provided an almost missed moment.

Jamal: I forgot to email you guys about this, but the week of Raw two weeks ago when HHH returned, he hit Cody and Ted with the sledgehammer then made his way to the ring to give Orton an extended beating. That’s fine, but I couldn’t pay attention to it, because the entire time in on the ramp, neither Ted Dibiase nor Cody Rhodes moved ONE INCH the entire segment! They didn’t even do the old “ugh.. I’m hurting!” pain writhe! They were completely motionless the entire segment and I got a good laugh out of it.

JP: We’ve caught a few like this before, but it’s always nice to see it happening again. Looks like Cody Rhodes has been getting lots of love in this issue. Will there be any more?

TNA Slammiversary

JP: Now in to this week, this is a totally personal Hidden Highlight. If you read the Hamilton-Ave-For-All Special Report on August 12, 2008, you know I got to interview Kurt Angle before Hard Justice (thanks to Midway Games, even though you don’t really exist anymore). In case you haven’t read it, the conversation went like this:

Then, as JB was trying to pull Kurt away, we hit him with the toughest question of all:

Kurt Angle: I could grow it back, but it’s much better this way!

Being the only interviewer to ever ask Kurt about re-growing his hair, I was particularly tickled to see him giving it a try! Although I doubt Kurt remembers our conversation (I know Jeremy Borash never remembers me, a fact I remind him of every time we meet), I hope I left the impression and idea in Kurt’s mind about growing his hair back and that is why we are seeing his attempt now.

RAW

JP: Over on Trump RAW, I just want to give major kudos to the production crew. I’m sure you picked up on most of these, but the attention to detail that night was amazing. Anywhere that there was a “RAW” logo, there was a “Trump” on top of it. This included some much overlooked places like the opening WWE intro package, the video monitors in the background backstage, on the announce table, and—my personal favorite—on the microphones! Do you know how much time and effort it took to put all of those little “Trump” stickers on the microphones? What a tedious and demoralizing task for just one week of pay off. I just want the production crew to know I appreciated all of those details and hours upon hours of hard work to make that happen.

RAW

JP: The opening match on Trump RAW was a SmackDown match (the ironing is delicious) featuring Jeff Hardy, Rey Mysterio, and the Great Khali taking on Chris Jericho, Edge, and Dolph Ziggler. When Hardy made his entrance, something was either slippery on the ground or on his shoes, but you could just catch him go sliding. Showing amazing balance Hardy stayed upright, looked backwards to see what he slipped on for a moment, but just kept on going through the rest of his entrance. He did not let that literal slip up stop him in any way showing a great amount of professionalism and understanding of the live TV environment.

RAW

JP: Continuing with our general history theme, this one was a year in the making.

Jeremy from Palmdale: On RAW, while Vince was looking for his office, he came across Goldust and Hornswoggle. Goldust then asked Vince if he remembered when he thought when Hornswoggle was his son. The Hidden Highlight is that Vince found out that the episode that Hornswoggle was his son took place in the city of Green Bay. Last Monday’s RAW took place in Green Bay as well.

JP: And that time Mr. Kennedy was supposed to be revealed as Vince’s son if he didn’t get suspended. Geez, did Mr. Kennedy get to actually wrestle in Green Bay at any point in his WWE career?

RAW

JP: A lot of people seemed confused how Donald Trump giving away free tickets and commercial free TV could bankrupt Mr. McMahon. Even our own RAW recappers were quite confused by the predicament. But my Hamilton Ave Journal mind wrapped around it quite quickly.

Remember that each brand of the WWE is a separate entity with managers. Think of it this way: Major League Baseball is made up of various teams that are separate but part of something. Now, RAW is the Boston Red Sox, SmackDown is the New York Yankees, and ECW is the Washington Nationals (.301 record… that’s just sad). Those are all of the teams in MLB. Each team has a separate roster of talent, TV and merchandise deals, and sell their own tickets. But despite this, they are part of MLB and MLB gets a cut of everything they do. So if, saw, the Yankees stopped selling out tickets, MLB as a whole would lose a major source of their funding.

Or here’s a better example. RAW is just a franchise. Many stores like Dunkin’ Donuts are not owned by their parent corporation but are instead franchised out. Dunkin’ Donuts corporate gets a set of general fees from each of their stores, but as gets a cut of their sales. Even though each store can be run any way the franchisee sees fit, they generally take direction from corporate (what products to offer, what price, what promotions and coupons to accept).

RAW as Trump’s franchise is free to be run any way that Trump saw fit. However, the deal was set up that it was still part of WWE’s corporate structure through rights fees, licensing agreements, and profit sharing. Given that, since RAW makes up roughly 10-15% of the WWE’s top line, not getting any revenues from it would severely hurt the WWE. Bankrupt in 6 months may be a stretch, but the point was true, nonetheless.

RAW

JP: After buying back his show, Vince let the match featuring Mickie James teaming up with the Bella Twins against Beth Phoenix, Rosa Mendez, and Maryse go on. As the match got underway, Mickie and Rosa were in the ring, but Mickie was completely distracted by Beth Phoenix. That is when Rosa yelled at Mickie, “Look at me, Mickie!”

It was quite a nice little thing to be reacting in the moment. Instead of just going in for a move, Rosa took it personally and wanted Mickie to pay attention to what was going on with her.

ECW

JP: In the land of extreme, Jack Swagger and Mark Henry teamed up to take on Christian and Tommy Dreamer. Swagger was managing to dominate, but tagged in Mark Henry. At that moment, could just make out Tony Atlas saying, “Here come the pain. Oh yes, here comes the pain!”

Tony Atlas is doing an excellent job in the managerial role. He works with the crowd around ringside, pays attention to the action and reacts to it, but stays out the way and does not just draw heat to himself. Even at that moment he was off to the side near the announce table side, not the camera side being directly in view or blocking view. The guy knows it is about the workers in the ring and not himself, and that is a major asset in a manager.

iMPACT

JP: On iMPACT, Kevin Nash took on Abyss in a match that had me perplexed. Even though Abyss is not near the main event right now, I couldn’t figure out why Kevin Nash, a member of the Main Event Mafia, would be taking him on in a random, throw away match. It just didn’t seem like a match that I would be giving away for no reason.

Then I got my answer at the end of the match when Dr. Stevie came in and tazered Abyss, giving Nash the win. When else did Nash get a win over a big man using a tazer? Why none other than Starrcade 1998. Check it out at 4:36:

Nash winning a match via tazer was a direct homage to this match from even years ago. I hate to say it, but nice reference there by the writers. They actually showed some imagination by putting Nash into this match.

SmackDown

JP: The opening match on SmackDown this week saw Shelton Benjamin taking on R-Truth… once again. Looking for something new between these two is tough, but I caught something. Benjamin was going in to lay some forearm shots to R-Truth’s head, but R-Truth put his hands up in a protective manner. Instead of just laying in to him and allowing R-Truth the protective cover, Benjamin actually moved R-Truth’s arm out of the way before laying in the forearm shot. This was a smart move by Benjamin to make the shot look more realistic and painful. Excellent work there, Mr. Benjamin.

SmackDown

JP: Speaking of matches I’ve seen a bunch of times, CM Punk and John Morrison fought in non-title match. Half way through their contest, CM Punk was going for the Go To Sleep for the second time. When he did so, Morrison grabbed on to the ropes and then started to elbow Punk to make the escape. But did you happen to catch what Morrison did? He actually continued to hold on to the top rope while he was hitting the elbows to Punk’s head! Kudos to Morrison to not be dependent on one escape but to be working on two at once. That showed a real amount of smarts that deserves to be pointed out.

SmackDown

JP: Wrapping up this historic issue, after defeating Rey Mysterio and Jeff Hardy, Edge and Chris Jericho slowed made their way up the ramp in victory. But did you happen to catch the body language between the two? Despite working successfully as a team, both men kept their distance from each other and would not raise the other one’s hand. As a matter of fact, the only interaction they had was a slight nod by Jericho. I always like when heels are not immediately friends, and these two continued that in this brief moment. Both think they are the franchise of SmackDown and, as such, would never put over the other guy. Excellent work by the Hidden Highlights Hall of Famer and future inductee.

Well everyone, that wraps up this week’s show. No, seriously, that’s it! I already told you not to expect anything huge for Issue #200. It’s issue #201 you have to look out for!

Ghost of JT: I can’t believe I didn’t make one guest appearance in this episode. I mean, even the Stenographer got a line in!

JP: Would you like to take us home?

Ghost of JT: No.

JP: Oh… well… in that case…

Thank you for reading the 200th ISSUE of Hidden Highlights!

Do you have a Hidden Highlight from this or any week in history that you would like to share? Please e-mail this article at [email protected] with your thoughts! Send them by Saturday afternoon to be considered! And remember, they can be from any show, live or taped, or any house show, or anything you saw. The best of the best will be featured among the top 15 next week.

In the meantime, be sure to catch my very own Thursday morning news report The Hamilton Ave Journal: the only wrestling news report focused on the business of wrestling.

And don’t forget to bookmark 411wrestling.com and perhaps even make it your home page. You can do that by clicking here!

Until then, you have just experienced the most positive article in all of the IWC: Hidden Highlights!