Ask 411 Wrestling 01.12.12: Del Rio’s Cars, Ric Flair vs. Ricky Morton, Straight Edge Wrestlers, and More!

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Ask 411 Wrestling. I am Ryan Byers, and, if you read the column last week, you know that I am filling in for usual author Mathew Sforcina for a brief run. This is the second of three weeks for me, so, if you’re familiar with my work and have any questions that you would like for me specifically to answer, make sure that you get them in within the next seven days. Otherwise, treat the column as you would normally, because young Mat will be back for the last Ask of January.

Battle Kat! The WWF gave him the “over the top” Battle Kat gimmick, which he had to alter to Fire Cat when the Fed let him go. In addition to appear in the WWF, he appeared in both WCW and New Japan, the latter under the Fire Cat hood and the former under his unmasked persona Brady Boone. However, during his WCW run, he got a lot more exposure as a referee during the Monday Night War era. He passed away in 1998 at the age of 40 as a result of an automobile accident.

Here’s this week’s question, which people will hopefully have a little bit better luck with:

I am a performer currently under contract with WWE, though I first held gold with a regional promotion. Over the years, I have become known for my controversial promos and am heralded as one of the best mick workers in the business. When I’m on WWE television, I am portrayed as being very proud of where I come from. I spend a lot of my time hanging out with a non-WWE contracted fighter who I like to call Colton. Who am I?

Get to guessin’ in the comments.

Questions, Questions, Who’s Got the Questions?

Everybody get in line behind Michael Klein:

1) Counting only WWE/F and NWA/WCW, who are the three shortest world heavyweight champs ever? I imagine Rey Mysterio Jr. is the shortest but who’s next? I would think Benoit and Eddie Guerrero might be the other two.

This was actually a difficult question to do complete research for, because, when you’re looking for information on wrestlers’ heights and weights, some places will try to list legitimate stats, some places will list what they’re billed at, and some places will have an odd jumble of the two with no attempt made to distinguish which is which. Ultimately, the only comprehensive and somewhat consistent resource I could find was Wikipedia, which lists “billed” heights. So, their numbers aren’t legitimate, but, because promotions can only exaggerate a wrestler’s height so much, it still gives us a rough order of who falls where.

Wiki lists the five shortest world heavyweight champions (using only the promotions specified by Michael) as a group of people who were billed at 5’8″: Rey Misterio, Jr., Eddie Guerrero, Ronnie Garvin, Blue Demon Jr. (a recent NWA Champion), and Chris Candido (who was the NWA Champ immediately after Shane Douglas threw down the belt). This immediately highlights the problem with using billed heights, as Eddie and Rey were regularly on television together and one of them was clearly much shorter than the other.

In any event, next is a grouping of five men who were billed at 5’10” tall, namely: Ricky Steamboat, Ivan Koloff, Daniel Bryan, Pedro Morales, and the Sheik (the version who held the NWA Title last year).

Finally, there were four world champions billed at 5’11”: AJ Styles, Chris Benoit, Bruno Sammartino, and Shinya Hashimoto (an NWA Champion between the WCW and TNA eras).

Again, those are billed heights, so they’re not entirely accurate. However, it gives you a rough idea of who was among the shortest champions.

And, just because I had to spend my time looking it up to answer this question, here is the complete list of WWE/WCW/NWA World Heavyweight Champions organized by billed height, as listed on Wikipedia:

Great Khali (7’1″), The Big Show (7′), Kane (7′), Giant Baba (6’10”), Kevin Nash (6’10”), The Undertaker (6’10”), Sid Vicious (6’9″), Abyss (6’8″), Barry Windham (6’7″), Jack Swagger (6’7″), Hulk Hogan (6’7″), Dave Batista (6’6″), JBL (6’6″), Vader (6’5″), Diamond Dallas Page (6’5″), Stan Stasiak (6’5″), Alberto Del Rio (6’5″), Edge (6’5″), The Rock (6’5″), Gene Kiniski (6’4″), Billy Graham (6’4″), Yokozuna (6’4″), Nayoa Ogawa (6’4″), Mark Henry (6’4″), Mike Rapada (6’4″), Lex Luger (6’4″), Randy Orton (6’4″), Sheamus (6’4″), HHH (6’4″), Dory Funk Jr. (6’3″), Kerry Von Erich (6’3″), Booker T. (6’3″), Tommy Rich (6’3″), Gary Steele (6’3″), Steve Corino (6’3″), Sgt. Slaughter (6’3″), Bill Goldberg (6’3″), Brock Lesnar (6’3″), Lou Thesz (6’2″), Buddy Rogers (6’2″), Great Muta (6’2″), Dan Severn (6’2″), Steve Austin (6’2″), Mick Foley (6’2″), CM Punk (6’2″), Adam Pearce (6’2″), Rhyno (6’2″), John Cena (6’2″), Jeff Hardy (6’2″), Ron Simmons (6’2″), Christian Cage (6’2″), Ron Killings (6’2″), Sting (6’2″), Randy Savage (6’2″), Ultimate Warrior (6’2″), Shawn Michaels (6’1″), Harley Race (6’1″), Terry Funk (6’1″), Scott Steiner (6’1″), Bob Backlund (6’1″), Bret Hart (6’1″), Dusty Rhodes (6’1″), Masahiro Chono (6’1″), Ric Flair (6’1″), Jeff Jarrett (6’1″), Raven (6’1″), Colt Cabana (6’1″), Mike the Miz (6’1″), Jack Brisco (6′), Shane Douglas (6′), Sabu (6′), Rob Van Dam (6′), Brent Albright (6′), Tatsumi Fujinami (6′), Ken Shamrock (6′), Pat O’ Connor (6′), Iron Sheik (6′), Kurt Angle (6′), Chris Jericho (6′), Shinya Hashimoto (5’11”), Chris Benoit (5’11”), AJ Styles (5’11”), Bruno Sammartino (5’11”), Ricky Steamboat (5’10”), Ivan Koloff (5’10”), Pedro Morales (5’10”), The Sheik/Joey Machete (5’10”), Daniel Bryan (5’10”), Ronnie Garvin (5’8″), Chris Candido (5’8″), Blue Demon Jr. (5’8″), Rey Misterio (5’8″), Eddie Guerrero (5’8″), Billy Watson (?), Dick Hutton (?)

2) What was the rationale behind having both members of the Road Warriors and the Rock and Roll Express getting world title shots against Ric Flair during the 80’s? Granted both teams were very popular with fans, but was the singles scene so dire that they had to resort to this? Would anyone possibly believe that Animal or Robert Gibson would be a World Champ?

As a tie-in, of the four aforementioned men, it seemed that Ricky Morton got the biggest singles push. Was there any real talk of him upending Flair?

I don’t know if you’re somebody who was a fan of wrestling at the time these matches was occurring, but, based on the fact that you’re asking the question, I’m guessing that you were not. (And I don’t mean that as a knock on you . . . that’s just the vibe I get.) Wrestling was different in that era. You can’t compare, for example, Roadwarrior Animal getting a World Title match against Ric Flair to Jimmy Uso getting a World Title match against John Cena. Morton, Gibson, Animal, and Hawk during this era weren’t just “tag team guys” in the sense that tag teams were significantly less important than singles wrestlers during the 1980s. The Roadwarriors and the RnR Express tag teams were legitimately as popular as any singles babyfaces acts in professional wrestling at the time, so putting them in singles title matches wasn’t a sign of the singles division being “dire” or anything else of that nature, particularly because Flair and the Four Horsemen had established feuds with the two teams. They were people who could legitimately draw in main events against Ric Flair at house shows (which is where these title matches were mainly taking place). Plus, at that point in his career, Flair took pride in being able to put on good main events with a variety of different opponents, so he was trying to wrestle as many different top guys as he could. Morton in particular, because of his reputation as one of the best babyface wrestlers of the era, was somebody who Flair just enjoyed having matches with.

Flair lays into Ricky Morton

However, despite all of the above, to my knowledge there was never any significant push to have Ricky Morton actually win the World Heavyweight Title.

3) Also, during most of his days as a heel champ (especially during his Horseman days), it seemed like every Flair title match ended with him either a) getting DQ’ed or b) winning by illegal means. But back then everyone praised him for his terrific work as champ and being one of the all-time greats. Since he only seemed to win illegally doesn’t this sound unusual for someone to be so highly praised?

I don’t think that it’s unusual. He’s praised as one of the greatest of all time because he was an awesome in-ring performer, not because of his win-loss record in a fake sport.

What people saw (and didn’t necessarily understand) when they saw Ric Flair on national television rarely if ever getting clean victories in big matches was that he was following his old formula that worked somewhat better in a different era. As we discussed in some detail in last week’s edition of the column, the NWA World Heavyweight Champion used to be a touring champ, moving from regional company to regional company for a handful of dates and a title match or two against the top regional star. He wasn’t wrestling a big match against a top-flight competitor every week on free TV like we see now. Because the travelling champion was leaving the territory pretty quickly and the top regional guy was staying, you didn’t want the champion to win clean, so there were a lot of finishes booked to make the local star look strong without him winning the championship. The champ showed up in a territory so infrequently that nobody really caught on to the pattern and got disillusioned with what would likely become a predictable formula if you were somehow able to follow every territory in the country simultaneously.

When it came time for Flair to become a champion on national television as opposed to being seen primarily on a local basis, he and the people booking him just sort of kept that formula. It’s not the sort of thing that would get somebody over if you did it today (which is why virtually all of WWE’s heels outside of Mark Henry right now are really flat . . . they never win in any meaningful way), but Flair was already established by the time that people were seeing him cheating or getting DQ’ed on a weekly basis, so it didn’t really hurt him.

4) Why did the AWA make Jumbo Tsuruta champ? Was this always planned or was it spur of the moment? I ask especially since Rick Martel defeated Tsuruta for the belt. Why not just have him beat Nick Bockwinkle instead?

A tribute to Jumbo Tsuruta

It was a business deal. At the time, Tsuruta was a member of All Japan Pro Wrestling, which had a working relationship with the AWA. Giant Baba, the man in control of AJPW at the time, approached AWA head Vern Gange with a financial offer to get Tsuruta a championship reign, as being seen as an international star holding an American championship and defending it in the United States would make Jumbo a bigger deal in the eyes of Japanese fans. Plus, in addition to getting a payoff to allow his title to go around the waist of a foreign wrestler for about a month and a half, Gagne and the AWA got to proclaim that their championship was more of a true “world” title then other belts in wrestling, as it was being fought for and occasionally held by men from all over the world.

Virtually the same thing had happened with the AWA Title two years earlier when Austrian wrestler Otto Wanz was given the championship in exchange to a financial payout to Verne which is rumored to be around $50,000.00.

Ed Gattie is livin’ on the edge:

Other than C.M.Punk what wrestlers are known to live a straight edge lifestyle? Are there any divas/knockouts who are known straight edge?

I suppose it depends on what you mean by “straight edge,” because there are a lot of people out there who may not drink, smoke, or do drugs but wouldn’t necessarily refer to themselves as straight edge because they don’t ascribe to other aspects of the SE lifestyle, e.g. the tattoos and the music. (I would actually be one of those people.)

Vincent Nothing in action

As far as people in wrestling who actually refer to themselves as being straight edge, there are only two that I am aware of aside from Punk. The first is “M-Dogg 20” Matt Cross, who most fans will remember from his brief run on WWE Tough Enough, though he’s also spent time in Ring of Honor and on Hulk Hogan’s ill-fated pro wrestling tour of Australia. The other is indy wrestler Vincent Nothing, who competes for groups like Beyond Wrestling and Jersey All Pro, mostly with his partner Christian Faith as the tag team “Faith in Nothing.” (Get it?)

Also, though they wouldn’t necessarily call themselves straight edge in the same way that Punk, Cross, and Nothing would, WWE employees Jerry “The King” Lawler and referee Charles Robinson have reputations for never drinking alcohol.

Tony Jaffer will Rock you:

My buddy and I have a disagreement over the Rock’s return earlier this year. I contend that the Rock never intended to have one more match but during the build to Mania he got the itch to come back and they hammered out a plan. My buddy believes that they had it planned the way it’s gone down from the get go. Can you get to the bottom of this?

Unless there was a super-secret plan that was kept from the public, you sir, are correct and your friend owes you a Coke or whatever it is people do when they lose bets nowadays. About a week before he made his return on WWE Raw last year, Rock posted a note on his Facebook page which laid out his relationship with professional wrestling. This was almost certainly after he had put pen to paper to appear at the 2011 version of Wrestlemania, but, in that note, he made it very clear that he was planning on doing some more work with WWE but that he had no intention of setting foot in the ring again. Granted, he’s a pro wrestler, so it wouldn’t be unheard of for him to make a public statement that was less-than-honest so that the announcement of his in-ring return was even bigger. However, that’s the closest thing we have to a direct indication of where Rock’s head was immediately before he popped up on WWE television again.

However, outside sources also seemed to be under the impression that Rocky was not planning on returning to the ring until very shortly before his matchup against John Cena was announced. For example, in the February 28, 2011 edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer discussed the Rock’s return to Raw and appearance at this year’s Wrestlemania. In speculating on what might happen if Rock were to have another match, Meltzer made sure to declare that “there is no indication at this point” that an in-ring return would occur.

It’s Jake. Trust him:

My question revolves around the Bob Backlund- Bret Hart title match at Survivor Series 1994. I am not too familiar with the storylines for this year, but McMahon on commentary mentioned that George Foreman turned 45 and won the heavyweight title recently, was Bob Backlund supposed to be a similar story to that? He had just turned 45 and was going for the title after a long absence . . . any correlation?

By that point, it was really just a coincidence. It is true that, when the WWF brought Backlund back as a babyface in 1992, they did make a lot of the fact that a then-43 year old former champion was making a return and marveled over the shape that he had to be in to come back to active competition at that age. (Given that we regularly see guys in their 60s wrestling nowadays, it almost seems funny to see the announcers reacting to a 40 year old wrestler like it’s incredible.) You can see some of that attitude in this Vince McMahon-narrated package hyping Backlund’s return:

However, that was a good two years before Foreman had his major championship win, so the 1992 comeback was most likely unconnected to Big George’s real resurgence in boxing. (Foreman was competing at the time of the ’92 Backlund comeback, but his high level title win that really made him into a phenomenon in the 1990’s was in ’94.) By the time that Backlund was wrestling Bret Hart at the 1994 Survivor Series for the WWF Title, he had turned heel and was actually fighting Bret has a psychopath obsessed with his former glory as opposed to an old favorite that the fans were supposed to get behind.

I rarely answer questions from breakfast food, but here’s Toast n’ Grape Jelly:

I got a question for ya pertaining to Alberto Del Rio. Given that the WWE is trying to turn as much profit as possible like any publicly traded company, I could only assume they do not own Del Rio’s cars. Do they rent these cars on Monday nights only, or do these automobile companies offer their vehicles for free because they are getting a free 10 second spot with their vehicle in front of 3 million viewers every Monday night and a few hundred thousand one Sunday night a month?

I’ve not heard anything specific about Del Rio’s cars, but the standard operating procedure in pro wrestling over the years for things like this has been to find somebody who has a vehicle in the area that you’re running the show and work out a deal to use it for one night only. It’s not necessarily a rental company that they get the vehicles from, but often a dealership or just somebody with a private collection.

Perhaps the most infamous example of this was Diamond Dallas Page, who was not involved in pro wrestling at the time, getting a cameo on Wrestlemania VI because he owned a pink Cadillac that the company wanted to use for the Honky Tonk Man’s entrance. Page made one of the conditions for the rental being his acting as the driver on the show and the rest, they say, is history.

I would be amazed if there were any sort of formal sponsorship deal with the carmakers and WWE, mainly because we would probably see a lot more advertising for the vehicles on the show if that were the case and also because the vast majority of the people who watch professional wrestling are not going to be the people who have the level of disposable income necessary to buy a car the likes of the ones that ADR is driving.

He’s Andy, he’s dandy, and he’s got a question:

I was wondering if you know of any backstage interviews (either in WCW or WWE) in which the wrestler accidently breaks character or ends the interview prematurely by thinking the interview is over. For some reason, I think I remember an episode of Nitro in which you hear a director say cut while the cameras are rolling and then you see Lugar and Elizabeth laughing and drinking some water afterward while still on the air. Do you remember any interviews like this?

Yes, yes I do. Take a look at this video from a WWF In Your House pay per view, during which Sid stumbles on his first few words during a promo with Jim Ross, asks for a retake, and is informed by Good Ole’ JR that they’re on live. The look of shame on Sid’s face afterwards says it all:

That’s probably the best and most notable example of a wrestler just flat-out forgetting that they’re not on live television. If you’re looking for examples of guys inadvertently breaking character for other reasons during interviews, there are tons of those out there, and I suggest starting your YouTube searches with “Mean Gene says ‘fuck it'” and “Booker T calls Hogan the ‘n’ word.” You can find plenty of related videos from there.

From Andy we move to El Diablo Fire Engine Tomahawk, which is quite the contrast of names:

1. Why there was there nearly a year and a half build up between Hogan and Sting (July 96-Dec 07) before they finally met. I understand long builds are a strong sell, but couldn’t they have done it a bit sooner?

Actually, there was a period of time during which they *couldn’t* have done it. The entire angle of Sting walking out on WCW and moping around in the rafters started because the guy had a contract which specified that he was only going to wrestle a limited number of dates in a certain period of time and, if he went over that number of dates, he would have to be paid a hefty bonus. The folks behind the scenes at WCW were never the greatest at managing that sort of thing so, of course, they booked Sting to wrestle too many matches and he had a sizeable period of time during which they could put him on TV but he couldn’t get into the ring without asking for a ridiculous payoff. The “crow” character was developed as a way of keeping Sting on television without him having to do anything that would cost the company a ton of money.

When a man’s heart is full of deceit . . .

WCW could have brought back Sting earlier, because the period under which he only worked a limited number of dates ended while he was hanging out in the rafters. However, because the whole gimmick was incredibly over and the match with Hogan was looking to be a huge draw for the company, they put it off to milk the Stinger’s popularity and the TV ratings he brought in for and so that the match could occur at Starrcade, which was WCW’s biggest show of the year during the period.

2. Any idea what Sonny Onoo is up to nowadays? After having read Eric Bischoff’s book, I learned that he and Onoo knew each other pre-WCW. Any clue if he is still involved in pro wrestling?

To the best of my knowledge, Onoo is in no way, shape, or form currently involved in pro wrestling aside from popping up at a convention every so often. He wasn’t involved in pro wrestling before WCW brought him in (he was a karate practitioner who met Eric Bischoff through that sport), so it makes sense that he wasn’t really gung ho about remaining in the sport after he was released by WCW in 1999. These days, he is probably best known for being one of the handful of former WCW employees who sued the company for racial discrimination in 2000, gaining what is said to be a fairly decent settlement. As far as what Onoo is actually doing these days, the best information that I could find was a recap of a 2008 interview in which he indicated that he owned a car dealership in Ohio. Whether it is still in business four years later or whether he has an additional line of work I really don’t know.

Nick V. said this question was inspired by “Hell in a Cell coming up this weekend.” That should give you an idea of how big the backlog of Ask 411 questions is:

I decided to watch the WWE’s release of the greatest cage matches ever. One of the matches included was Ric Flair vs. Lex Luger for the title in 1990. In that match, the cage was fully enclosed and actually encircled ringside. If you included a door and flattened the ceiling of the cage, it would look similar to a Hell in a Cell cage. However, it wasn’t called anything special. There was no name for the match gimmick except for the obvious – “Steel Cage Match”. The rules were similar to Hell in a Cell, except that disqualifications could happen. This led me to thinking – given that a cage match like that didn’t have a gimmick name, giving cage matches special titles must be a development that’s only happened in the past fifteen years or so. Here’s my question – what’s the first instance in wrestling where a match involving a cage was called anything other than a (Steel) Cage Match?

The steel cage match – which according to most sources dates back to the 1930s – didn’t used to be as standardized as it is today. If you look at footage from different periods and different wrestling promotions/territories, cages looked really different. Some of them only enclosed the ring. Some of them enclosed the ring and the ringside area. Some had roofs. Some didn’t. Some had doors. Some didn’t. Some had rules in which DQs could happen. Some didn’t. Some had “escape the cage to win rules.” Some didn’t. In fact, some “cages,” particularly the early ones, weren’t the now-familiar steel bars or chain link at all and were instead constructed of lumber and chicken wire. It wasn’t really until the WWF became the dominant national wrestling promotion that the look and rules of the cage match became somewhat standardized, with no DQs and escape rules becoming the norm, as well as a roofless, doored structure that only encircled the ring itself. (Though WWF did make a few changes of its own, going from chain link cages in its original cage matches to the blue bars of the Hogan era and back to the mesh around the turn of the century.)

As far as giving different names to different designs of cage are concerned, you could actually argue that it goes all the way back to the beginning, as some of the matches which took place in the old wire-and-wood structures were actually called “Chicken Wire Matches” or “Chicken Coop Matches” as opposed to cage matches. However, if you want to talk specifically about something that happened in a more-modern looking cage, you probably have to flash forward to the late 1980s and early 1990s when a few different cage match variants started to pop up.

The most popular of the group had to be the NWA’s WarGames, which first showed up in 1987 and is still remembered fondly by fans to this day. This match featured two rings encompassed by one mega-cage, complete with roof. Two teams of five (later four) men competed, with the wrestlers entering at timed intervals and the match only ending by submission.

A year later in 1988, the NWA attempted to introduce us to the TOWER OF DOOM~! match, again pitting two teams of five men against each other. However, this time around, the teams started brawling at the top of a three-tiered cage with the winning team being the first one to make it from the top all the way down to the bottom. This flopped and flopped pretty hard, though triple cages would show up again in the 1990s and even the 2000s.

Then, in 1989, we were introduced to the ThunderDome Cage (later called just the ThunderCage, I’m assuming for legal reasons) by the NWA, which is actually the cage that the Luger/Flair match referred to in the question occurred in. It consisted of bars with wide openings between them as opposed to the then-traditional mesh, enclosed the ringside area in addition to the ring itself, had a sloped roof, and, in at least in its early uses, was supposedly electrified.

If anybody is aware of gimmicky names for cage matches prior to these three examples, feel free to let me know . . . but those are the earliest that I’m aware of.

Dan from Canada felt the need to distinguish himself from other Dans before answering this question:

Who do you think has been significantly repackaged the most times over their career? To make it reasonable, only consider “repackages” after they first debuted with a larger promotion? It has to be Charles Wright no?

This question seems to come up every so often, but I think that the undisputed winner still has to be Ed Leslie, who had the following resume after coming to the WWF:

1. Brutus Beefcake
2. The Mariner/Furface
3. The Butcher
4. Zodiac
5. The Bootyman
6. The Disciple

That’s six, and that’s without considering his pre-WWF gimmicks and also without splitting the pre-and-post “Barber” versions of Brutus Beefcake into two characters, as they arguably are in terms of personality, even if they were recognized as being the same guy in kayfabe terms.

Brad Armstrong has a similar number, though he doesn’t get quite as much recognition as Ed Leslie does because many of these gimmicks were short-lived and because a few of them are arguably the same guy from a kayfabe perspective, even if he dressed a little bit differently:

1. Brad Armstrong
2. The Candyman
3. Arachnaman
4. Badstreet/Fantasia
5. B.A.
6. Buzzkill

Charles Wright really only had four incarnations after making it into the WWF:

1. Papa Shango
2. Kama
3. The Godfather
4. The Goodfather

Arguably you get him a fifth by breaking “Supreme Fighting Machine” Kama and “Nation of Domination” Kama into two separate characters, but, if you do that, you can still break down Ed Leslie’s gimmicks further to beat him out.

I could sit here for hours and list different guys who had a multitude of gimmicks, but I don’t think that any of them tops Beefcake. However, I did want to point out one guy who often gets left out of these conversations, namely Chaz Warrington, who was:

1. Mother Smucker of the Flying Nuns
2. Headbanger Mosh
3. Beaver Cleavage
4. Chaz (kid from New Jersey who just wants to have fun)
5. Chaz (turban wearing Lo Down member/Tiger Ali Singh follower)

And that list of five excludes a few other Chaz identities that could arguably make the list, namely Chaz Ware (a name he used when appearing as an enhancement talent) and one of the masked Spiders (the tag team identity of the Headbangers before they became the Headbangers).

David O’ Donnell wants to play the name game:

Now that Oleg Prudius (Vladimir Kozlov) is no longer at WWE, I spotted that he just worked an IGF show as Alex Kozlov. As I’m sure you’re aware, there is already an Alex Kozlov, real name Alex Sherman who when not in WWE/FCW as Peter Orlov works the Russian gimmick (despite being Moldovan). I can imagine this causing future ‘La Parka style’ confusion down the line. Question: Does the original Alex Kozlov own any rights to this name and also what’s the general consensus regarding non WWE/TNA wrestlers and their rights to their ring name? Is it generally on a purely individual basis? Could I work a show tomorrow as Roddy Strong/Kevin Steen/Claudio Castagnoli?

As far as the dueling Alex Koslovs are concerned, I somehow doubt that the former CMLL/AAA star who is currently under a WWE developmental contract will care too much about the former WWE star using his name. First, chances are good that it was just a coincidence and the people who decided to call the former Vladimir Kozlov by the name “Alex” probably weren’t even aware of the former luchadore. Second, as he’s under a WWE developmental deal, the original Alex Koslov won’t be working anywhere with that name anytime soon. He’s Peter Orlov now and will be for the foreseeable future, perhaps even the remainder of his career if things really work out well between him and the E.

As to the question of who owns the rights to an independent wrestler’s name or character, the short version of the story is that, generally speaking, if you create some sort of intellectual property in the United States, you own it. So, if I write a play, paint a painting, or develop a stage/screen/pro wrestling character, that’s my intellectual property, regardless of whether I take the time to register it anywhere or take any other steps to “formalize” my ownership. However, if you take something like your wrestling character’s name and formally apply for trademark registration or take your script and formally apply for copyright registration, you have additional rights in the event that you ever have to take action to protect your intellectual property through legal action.

So, whoever came up with the character/name will typically own it, unless they subsequently sold it off to somebody else. This means that, technically speaking, you couldn’t show up on an indy show and compete as Claudio Castagnoli, Kevin Steen, or Roddy Strong, because you’d be infringing on their intellectual property and they could bring a lawsuit against you if they thought it was worth their time and money to do so.

Daniel continues . . .

When WWE brought in and trademarked “The Shane Twins” Michael and Todd, thus banning multiple time TNA X-Division Champion Michael Shane (real name Matt Bentley) from using the name and probably hurting his earning ability somewhat, why didn’t his cousin Shawn Michaels go to bat for him with Vince? Also, despite not owning the rights to the name, wouldn’t he still have some sort of claim to the name since he was using it already for years in the wrestling business? If not, what’s to stop WWE renaming all the FCW wrestlers after indy talents or former talents who don’t happen to have the rights to the name and advertising jobbers as name talent?

If Michael Shane and/or TNA (who he was working for at the time) wanted to stand up to WWE, who had threatened legal action based on their registration of the Shane Twins’ names, he probably could have continued using the Michael Shane name. His preexisting use of the name most likely would have been enough to allow it to continue despite the registration, though even this wasn’t necessarily a slam dunk because the WWE Michael Shane had also used the name for many years on the independent scene. Even if Matt Bentley had the right to use the Michael Shane name despite WWE’s threats, if WWE was in a mood to follow up on the legal letters that were sent and actually file a lawsuit against TNA and/or Matt Bentley, they would have been looking at spending thousands (if not tens of thousands) of dollars in legal fees to bring the matter to a trial, meaning that it was probably more economically feasible for them to cave into WWE’s demands, regardless of who would have been proven correct in the end. Simply put, it’s a business decision.

Matt Bentley in an indy WarGames match

Why didn’t Shawn Michaels get involved? There’s not a good, objective answer out there, so I can really only speculate. My best guess is that it’s because he had little to no clue that it was going on or didn’t care that much. Even though there’s technically a family relationship between Bentley and Michaels and even though Bentley trained at the Texas Wrestling Academy founded by Michaels (though it’s my understanding that Rudy Boy Gonzalez had a much bigger hand in training Bentley than Michaels did), there’s never been any evidence out there that the two are particularly close. If they were, you’d think that Michaels would have worked to get Bentley a developmental deal of some sort with WWE, as he did in 2000 with the TWA graduate foursome of Bryan Kendrick, Bryan Danielson, Shooter Schultz, and Lance Cade.

Squid Vicious is the master and the ruler of the seas:

If I am correct you are the Japan guy, right?

Yes. That was an easy question! Now on to My Damn Opin . . . oh, wait, Squid isn’t done. Go on, my calamari producing friend.

I was watching the DREAM New Year’s special the other night and something came to mind. I remember a couple of years ago when Samoa Joe debuted in TNA there was a lot of talk of him and his style possibly drawing in the MMA crowd. I don’t think this happened. Anyway, I was watching Josh Barnett and Hideki Suzuki and started wondering if that type of match would fly in the US. It didn’t really remind me of much of the puro that I have seen, but more of just an MMA feel. It was kept mostly on the ground, and after a few minutes one of them hit something as simple as a suplex which got a good reaction from the crowd. Would or could it be beneficial to American wrestling to go back to the basics in this sense. The product has become so outlandish and ill-conceived these days. I don’t think WWE could do it and not have it seem like a ready admission that UFC is competition, but what about TNA or ROH?

I don’t think something like the Barnett/Suzuki match that you saw on the DREAM show (which was actually provided by Antonio Inoki’s IGF promotion) would work in the United States. Whether it’s WWE, TNA, or ROH, there are certain conventions that people have come to expect out of professional wrestling in terms of match lengths and highspots that would cause them to not accept the bout if it occurred on a card from an established promotion. What is more likely to occur is that MMA holds and psychology will continue to be integrated into traditional professional wrestling matches that continue to also feature standard pro wrestling maneuvers and match structure. This has already happened quite a bit in Ring of Honor thanks to guys like Bryan Danielson and Davey Richards, while Samoa Joe and Kurt Angle have done it in TNA and Daniel Bryan has done it, to a more limited extent, in some of his longer WWE matches.

The main reason that I suspect it wouldn’t work in the United States is that something similar was tried in Japan once before, and it failed pretty miserably. From 2000 through about 2002, MMA was becoming incredibly popular in that country, and Inoki, who was still in power in the company at the time, thought that it would be beneficial to integrate MMA-style matches and MMA fighters into NJPW. Fans turned on it pretty quickly, in part because, at the same time, Inoki was also booking New Japan wrestlers who had no business in MMA in MMA fights, resulting in several humiliating losses. In fact, Inoki’s MMA hard-on is often cited as one of the reasons that NJPW was pushed to the brink of bankruptcy during the first half of the 2000s, only to recover within the past couple of years.

However, that’s not to say that I don’t think faux MMA matches wouldn’t work in the US at all. I just don’t think that they’d work if they were tacked on to an existing promotion. When it comes to pro wrestling, MMA, or even other sports, it’s really the personalities that make the sport (or fake sport) popular, and, if you can deliver compelling characters who viewers will perceive a superstars – and if a lot of other factors click on the right cylinders – you can have a hot television property almost regardless of the sort of action that you’re getting. So, if a promotion featuring solely faux mixed martial arts fights cropped up in the United States, I have a feeling that it would have just as good of a chance as becoming popular as a new wrestling or MMA league would, so long as they could get compelling “fighters” with a few established guys from other genres.

And, as you might guess based on my prediction regarding established companies doing fake MMA, the other reason that I suspect a worked MMA league might be able to take off in the United States is because it’s worked before in Japan. In the 1990s, a style of wrestling similar to what you saw from the IGF guys on the New Year’s DREAM show was all the rage in the Land of the Rising Sun. Promotions like the UWFi and RINGS did very well with such a concept and, though hardcore MMA fans hate to admit this sort of thing, that’s also how companies like Pancrase and PRIDE gained their early popularity . . . not with legit MMA, but with worked stuff. The IGF is essentially the modern day successor to those companies, though it is not nearly as popular as UWFi/RINGS/PRIDE/Pancrase were at their peaks, largely because both professional wrestling and MMA as a whole have faced significant decline in popularity and significant reductions in television coverage in Japan over the course of the past ten to twelve years.

My Damn Opinion

Matthew (not the guy who normally writes the column) asks:

It is my thinking (and many other members of the IWC) that a wrestler needs three things to become a legend/success. Those three are: 1) Charisma/Look 2) In-ring skills 3) Mic work. The best of all time have all three of these (Flair, HBK, Angle, Savage, Austin…), many other have become legends with only two of them, but my question is this: Can you name the wrestler that has “gotten the farthest” in terms of overall respect by fans, status among the boys, reputation and everything else who only possessed ONE of the three factors?

Andre the Giant. Andre’s look was ALL about his look at the odd charisma that he exuded, though he was a huge draw in his era and is revered by both professional wrestlers and wrestling fans as a legend. Granted, by most accounts Andre was a much better wrestler in the 1970s than what he would become when he was near immobile in the 1980s, but he’s still far from being somebody who gets listed on any critic’s list of the best in-ring performers of all-time. And, as far as “mic work” is concerned, the man was virtually incomprehensible every time he picked up a microphone, which is one of the reason he almost always had a manager or a tag team partner to do his talking for him.

Don’t get me wrong, Andre holds a special place in my heart because of the work that I saw him do when I was a young wrestling fan, but, looking at things from a purely objective standpoint, he is the best answer to this question that I can give.

And, hey, speaking of Andre, here’s a question about the giant from a guy whose name I accidentally deleted:

What do you think would have happened if Andre decided to not go through with letting Hulk win at WM3? How would Vince reacted and what would the booking look like going forward?

I don’t think this question is even worth asking, because the “Andre might not let Hogan win” story is a myth perpetuated by the Hulkster to add to the legacy of the match. By most non-Hogan accounts of what was going on backstage, there was absolutely no threat that the Giant was going to change the planned finish of the match.

Plus, even if Andre wanted to “shoot” on Hogan and get the victory at the Silverdome, chances are good that, at this point in his life, it would have been physically impossible for him to do so. Wrestlemania III took place in 1987, which is the same year that the motion picture The Princess Bride was released. Interviews with cast members of that movie have revealed that, at the time it was shot, Andre was so physically weak and broken down that he couldn’t even lift 100 pound actress Robin Wright when the script required him to do so. Instead, Wright had to be suspended by wires for the shot in which Andre was supposedly holding her.

If the Eighth Wonder of the World didn’t have the ability to hold up a 100 pound woman in 1987, there’s almost no way that he was going to do anything to block Hulk Hogan from retaining the WWF Title as scheduled. I don’t say this to demean Andre or to in any way diminish his legacy, but it’s the truth and Hogan’s assertions to the contrary are just a yarn being spun by one of the greatest yarn spinners in the history of the business.

We’ll let Chris wrap it up:

Who in your mind are the five biggest names ever in the history of professional wrestling, all the way from 1900 until now? What five names can you mention and people know who you’re talking about? Don’t base your judgment on ability in the ring but rather name notoriety, answer can be from wrestlers to announces to promoters, anyone who has had something to do with pro wrestling, and your reasons why you have ranked them in that order.

That’s a difficult question to answer, because people’s names tend to fade over time, and, if you’re going all the way back to the 1900s, wrestlers who were practically household names in their era aren’t remembered at all today, even though they may have been bigger in their era than wrestlers who are well-remembered now. So, what I’m going to do is list the five guys who I think were the biggest mainstream wrestling stars of all time in their respective eras, though they may not necessarily be the biggest names today if you asked a non-fan to name a professional wrestler. Here goes:

5. The Rock: Some people might claim that there’s a bit of recency bias here, because the Rock is a current star. However, I think that, even if you try to remove any bias, he still belongs on this list. Rocky was the second biggest (arguably the biggest) star in professional wrestling during the late 1990s in the United States, when wrestling was at absolute the height of its popularity in the country. Perhaps even more important to his notoriety than his in-ring career, though, is the fact that he successfully parlayed it into a motion picture career better than just about any other wrestler in history. His status as an a-list movie star after his wrestling career has largely come to a close makes the Rock one of the first guys that people think of in the modern era when they hear the phrase “professional wrestler,” even if that’s not necessarily where his bread is buttered in 2012.

4. Hulk Hogan: If you ask virtually anybody in the United States to name a professional wrestler, Hogan will probably be the first name that rolls off of their lips. He was a major star in three different decades, with Hulkamania running wild in the 1980s, the NWO dominating Monday night ratings in the 1990s, and Hogan Knows Best being one of the most popular reality television programs of the 2000s. Though he’s fallen on some hard times lately with his divorce and WWE wanting nothing to do with him, the Hulkster remains an icon in most fans’ minds and the archetype of what a pro wrestler is for many who have only seen the “sport” in passing.

3. Rikidozan: Rikidozan was a cultural phenomenon in 1950s post-war Japan. He essentially created Japanese-owned-and-operated professional wrestling and served as a symbol of hope to his countrymen as he would regularly defeat American wrestlers, showing the Japanese that they could be strong despite U.S. occupation. Rikidozan’s matches with the likes of Lou Thesz, The Destroyer, and Freddie Blassie, which occurred in the late 1950s and early 1960s, were the highest rated television programs in the history of Japan when they occurred, and several of those matches still remain among the highest rated television programs in the history of Japan to this very day. He was about as mainstream as a professional wrestler could get, and he is still spoken highly of in current day conversations about the sport.

2. El Santo: In many ways, El Santo was the Mexican version of Rikidozan. He wasn’t the founder of lucha libre in the same way that Rikidozan was the founder of puroresu, but he was a cultural icon who transcended his genre and became a significant mainstream star. Santo’s popularity translated into a series of motion pictures which were built around his famous name, he was so popular as a wrestler that he was buried in his trademark silver wrestling mask, his son was able to become one of the most popular wrestlers in the country by trading off of his father’s name, and the anniversary of his death is still treated as a minor holiday by a cadre of lucha libre fans. He was bigger in Mexico than Hulk Hogan ever was in the United States, and it’s going to be difficult if not impossible for anybody in any country or any era to replicate his popularity.

1. Lou Thesz: One of the very first “unified” World Heavyweight Champions in professional wrestling, Lou Thesz travelled across the United States and defended his championship against all comers, making him not just a regional star as many wrestlers were at the time but also a national star. In fact, he was one of the first true international stars of professional wrestling. I noted earlier that Thesz locked it up with Rikidozan to produce some of the highest rated television (wrestling or otherwise) in the history of Japan, he had numerous championship defenses in Canada, and he even had a run late in his career in Mexico where he feuded with the legendary El Canek. The guys lower on this list were mega-stars in their home countries and may have gotten some degree of popularity in foreign lands, but Thesz was probably the biggest global star of the lot and will always hold a special place in professional wrestling history books.

Well, there’s a list that should make for some fairly spirited conversation in the comment section. That’s a good place to end it for this week, and I’ll be back in just seven days for the last shot of my current guest host run!