Ask 411 Wrestling 08.09.12: Longest Running Tag Teams, Tony Shciavone, Wrestlers Sneezing, and more!

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Ask 411 Wrestling. I am Ryan Byers, filling in for your usual answer-man, Mathew Sforcina, who remains laid up with some back problems. Were he here, he would thank Gavin Napier, the regular Ask 411 columnist form wayyyy back in the day, for filling in last week. This week, though, we’re done with Gavin, and you’re stuck with me.

The Roadwarriors actually formed the same year as the RnR, though they lasted a bit longer in their initial incarnation. They were together through the end of their WWF run in 1992, giving them a year on Morton and Gibson. Part of the reason they split, though, was an injury to Animal, so even that breakup might not fit into the question’s criteria. (However, there were personal reasons for the breakup too.) If you don’t count their split in 1992, then their first breakup could either considered to be in 1998, during the “drunk Hawk” angle in the WWF or at Hawk’s death in 2003, given that they were doing at least sporadic appearances together right up until the very end. So, depending on what you want to count as a breakup, the Roadies were together for either nine, fifteen, or twenty years.

The Steiners, meanwhile, first teamed in 1989, after Rick had spent several years as a singles wrestler. As noted by Michael, WCW started to build Scott as a singles wrestler, but, before there could be an “official” split, the brothers had a falling out with management and jumped to the WWF, which prolonged their time as a team. As a result, they didn’t split until 1998, when Scotty turned heel and joined the nWo. That’s another nine year run as a team.

Aside from those three units, longstanding tag teams in the modern era are fairly few and far between. One of the best examples that many people do not think of would be Harlem Heat, who first teamed up on Texas independents in 1989 and didn’t formally go their separate ways until 1998, when Stevie Ray joined the nWo after returning from an injury. That’s another nine year run. And, really, given that Booker and Stevie didn’t directly feud with one another when Stevie joined the black and white express, you can make an argument that they didn’t truly “break up” until 2000, when Stevie Ray turned heel on Booker T after their post-nWo Harlem Heat reunion. That would be eleven years as a team altogether.

Another contender that many might not immediately come to mind is the team of Ron and Don Harris, also known as the Bruise Brothers, the Grimm Twins, the Blu Twins, the DOA, Creative Control, and whatever else you’re willing to pay them $20.00 to be called. Obviously their “twin” gimmick would make a breakup and feud highly unlikely. They started on the independent circuit in 1988 and continued full-time in pro wrestling until 2003 with sporadic appearances through 2005, for a total of either fifteen or seventeen years together depending on what you want to count.

Perhaps the reigning champions of long-reigning tag teams, though, would be the Bushwackers, also known as the Kiwis, the Sheepherders, and the Kiwi Sheepherders. Cousins Luke Williams and Butch Miller first started teaming together in NINETEEN-SIXTY-FOUR. No, seriously. They teamed consistently through 1981, for a total of seventeen years. At that point, they didn’t even actively turn on each other. It just so happened that Miller made the personal decision to return to their native New Zealand for a period of time as opposed to continuing to wrestle in the United States. They reunited in 1983 and stayed together until 1996 (when they finally left the World Wrestling Federation after a lengthy run) for an additional thirteen years. After the fed, they consistently – but not quite on a full-time basis – did appearances together through the year 2000. So, almost regardless of how you want to count their time together, the run is impressive. It could be seventeen years based just on their first run, or it could be as long as thirty-six years if you lump everything together.

For some reason, I don’t see any tag team breaking that record anytime soon.

Chad G. has a series of solid inquiries:

Hey, this is Chad. Good column and the usual. I was watching WWE On Demand, and they had an old school MSG card from April of ’89. One of the matches was Hennig vs. Hart. My questions:

1. When and why did Schiavone leave NWA/WCW and when/why did he return?

I’ve been filling in for Ask 411 on and off for several years now, and this question gets asked surprisingly frequently. The short version is that Tony Schiavone was employed by Jim Crockett Promotions (a member of the NWA) throughout most of the 1980s and jumped to the WWF in early 1989. The reason for the jump varies depending on the person who is telling the story, and, as near as I can tell, Schiavone has not officially given his own account. However, some combination of the following factors came into play: Shortly before Tony jumped ship, Jim Crockett Promotions sold its wrestling operations to Turner Broadcasting. Turner was looking to cut costs, and, as a result, they decided they only needed one lead play-by-play man. Jim Ross was given the nod while Schiavone was bumped down into a secondary position. Tony got an offer from the WWF and took it, and, depending on who you ask, it was either because he was upset that Ross got the top spot for Turner over him or because he was afraid there was a big salary cut coming and he could make more with the Fed.

Tony Schiavone in the WWF didn’t last for too long, though. He had only ever signed a one year contract with the company, and he returned to Turner as soon as it expired. The reason most frequently given for Tony not re-signing with McMahon was that he simply did not care for life in the northeast, where he had to reside as a result of his WWF announcing duties. He preferred living in Georgia, particularly in light of the fact that he had never moved his family up north when he jumped to the Fed.

2. What was your opinion on Alfred Hayes? He annoyed me at times but was far from their worst announcer. He definitely stuck to kayfabe but he seemed to always find a way to get on my nerves.

I’m assuming that, based on the timeframe of the rest of your questions, you’re asking about Hayes as a WWF announcer in the 1980s and not in his capacities as a heel manager in the AWA or his even earlier stint as a professional wrestler.

As far as Hayes the commentator is concerned, I consider him solidly middle of the road. He never called anything particularly important or serious, which is what I consider the true measure of an announcer to be, so I can’t necessarily evaluate him against the likes of Jim Ross (awesome) or Michael Cole (awful). He was mostly doing b-level matches on major television shows or was commentating b-level shows. In that role, he didn’t do anything that was actively awful, but I also wouldn’t say that he consistently did much to make matches sound particularly important.

The one thing that I remember most vividly about Hayes’ commentary is that he had this odd tendency to go off on tangents that weren’t related to the matches. I remember one match in particular in which he and Sean Mooney spent most of the bout debating what happens to the “winner’s purse” of money in the event that a match ends in a double disqualification, even though, in this particular match that they were announcing there was no imminent threat of a double DQ occurring. (For those of you who are curious, the answer Alfred ultimately came up with was that Jack Tunney donates the purse to a worthy charity.) I also remember a High Energy match in which Hayes and Mooney spent an inordinately long amount of time talking about British slang terms, kicked off by Hayes referring to High Energy’s suspenders as “braces.”

The practice would have been quite annoying if the matches were in any way meaningful, but they weren’t.

3. When did Mr. Perfect finally start using entrance music? I’ve watched a lot of these old shows from the late 80’s and he has not had music on any of them.

The look and persona of Mr. Perfect that we all know and love actually developed over several months. When he first came to the WWF under this gimmick in 1988, Curt Hennig was referred to primarily by his real name, and “Mr. Perfect” was a nickname. Also, he would typically wear shorts to the ring as opposed to his trademark singlet. And, most notably, he had no entrance music whatsoever. However, by 1989, things had progressed to the point that Perfect was exactly what we envision him being today, including the music. So, really, he was without an entrance theme for less than a year.

4. When did the Bushwackers finally leave WWF? Was it just a case of Vince wanting to go with younger, fresh guys?

I actually covered this one a little bit earlier in the column, by sheer coincidence. Though they didn’t make too many televised appearances in the last couple of years of their run, the Bushwackers were technically under WWF contract until 1996. At that time, Luke was 49 and Butch was 52, so I would say that Vince wanting to focus on younger talent was a pretty safe bet.

5. Finally, what is your take on chemistry? I mean, Hart and Hennig had great chemistry. Obviously, Hart and HBK had great chemistry. Yet, Hennig and HBK, in their only match I remember against each other, was a major letdown. Is it just that they didn’t have enough matches to work together, timing, injuries, style mismatch, etc? Is chemistry unpredictable until wrestlers actually go out there and perform?

I don’t know that I would necessarily say that chemistry is unpredictable. More often than not, if two wrestlers have great matches against almost all of their opponents, they will wind up having a great match against each other. There is the occasional example in which two great wresters meet up in the ring and seemingly can’t have a match up to their standards to save their lives (Bret Hart and Sting never clicked as well as I thought they would) and there is the occasional example in which two wrestlers who are mediocre consistently pull off great things against one another (Albert vs. Kane comes to mind).

So, to a degree, there is such a thing as “chemistry” between wrestlers, but I don’t think it typically cancels out or adds to wrestlers’ general levels of talent.

Reza wants to talk about his hero, Bret Hart:

I am a huge Bret Hart mark and while I know he never drew like SCSA, The Rock, or Hogan, who else in that time period was a better champ?

Even if Bret’s run was not amazing, was it not far better than the champions who followed him, namely Diesel and Shawn Michaels? I never seem to hear people talk about how garbage they were at drawing as champ. Also, outside of the title run Shawn had from beating Bret in the Iron Man match, did Shawn ever draw? I can’t recall him ever being the number one guy after SCSA took over.

By and large, nobody was a better drawing champion than Bret Hart during his era. I too have noticed a phenomenon on the internet of some people trying to downplay Bret’s importance to wrestling history by claiming that he was an overrated in-ring performer and by noting that his run as a champion wasn’t exactly the best from a box office perspective, but the fact of the matter is that Bret Hart wasn’t necessarily a box office flop because Bret Hart was wholly incapable of drawing. To the extent that you can call Bret Hart a box office flop (which I don’t think is entirely fair), he was a box office flop because wrestling was not particularly popular during the era that he was on top through no particular fault of any of the performers.

The other champions that I would consider to be of that era were Yokozuna, Shawn Michaels, Diesel, and Sid. None of them drew particularly better than Hart did. I recall hearing that things were slightly up under Michaels, but not significantly so. In fact, prior to JBL winning the champions in the 2000’s, Kevin Nash was widely considered to be the worst drawing WWF Champion in the history of the company, despite the fact that they kept the title on him for almost a year and gave him every opportunity to get over as a Hogan-level babyface.

Gozzo is stuck in the middle with you:

Why does WWE fail to promote midcard matches for PPVs nowadays? They used to run down the whole card on Raw and even as a kid, those midcard matches are what sealed the deal on some shows for me. Is it a lack of faith in their drawing power? Is it time constraints on the TV show? Do they just not give a fuck? Sometimes they don’t announce the matches before the show and other times the matches are scheduled and they just don’t promote them in the PPV run down.

Based on listening to/reading numerous interviews with former members of the WWE creative team, I think that the answer is that the company does not promote midcard PPV matches well because, most the time, they have no idea of what midcard PPV matches are going to be. Long-term booking, where you start planning a program with the end and work backwards from there, appears to have completely fallen by the wayside, and, with that being the case, you virtually never know what midcard PPV matches are taking place until the announce team mentions them on television . . . and even then there is still a little bit of room to raise questions. It’s hard to promote something well and hard when you’re not even certain that it is going to be taking place until the last minute.

Also, for better or for worse, the company has more individuals under contract who may be considered “main eventers” for a given card. With two supposed world titles, you have at least two matches on every PPV that are arguably “main events,” and that only multiplies when you also have the John Cenas, Brock Lesnars, HHHs, and Rocks of the world, who may not necessarily be in the title mix but who will have matches that are considered to be at least as important as the world championship bouts. Because of that, “midcard matches” might seem to have less focus, but the issue is really just that there are fewer midcard matches due to there being more wrestlers on the show who are perceived as being at a main event level.

Steven L. has a question about sneezing and a question about Kevin Thorne. No, seriously:

Full disclosure: This is the stupidest fucking question you’ll ever pretend to care about. Has a wrestler ever sneezed in front of the audience while cutting a promo or wrestling or anything like that? I don’t know, it just seems baffling to me that I’ve never seen any of them do that.

Also, why do you think Kevin Fertig never managed to be successful in the WWE? I always liked his finishers so he was a bit of a guilty pleasure.

If it has happened, it is very, very rare. The closest thing that I can think of is Josh Matthews’ nosebleed while on camera for an episode of Monday Night Raw:

As far as why this never happens is concerned, I can only answer anecdotally. I have done a little bit of stage acting in my day, and there is a phenomenon in which, regardless of what your physical condition is before you perform, when you get out on stage you block out the symptoms of any illness or discomfort. I would imagine the same is true for wrestlers, who are essentially actors. I guess but don’t know that adrenaline somehow plays a role.

On the Kevin Fertig front, for those who may not know, he got runs in WWE as both Mordecai and Kevin Thorne. I don’t think he caught on because he was nothing special. When he was Mordecai, he was probably called up from developmental tool soon and was rough around the edges in the ring, and it didn’t help that in his first few matches he got paired up against some veterans who didn’t sell for him like they should have. (Bob Holly, I’m looking at you.) When he resurfaced as Kevin Thorne, he was a perfectly acceptable big man wrestler, but he didn’t have much outside of his finisher (Nigel McGuinness’ Tower of London) that made him stand out. His gimmick was a little bit unique and, in my opinion, was what allowed him to build the small cult following that he did, but he wasn’t particularly charismatic in the role, and he was also pretty flat as a worker.

Rahil takes us to a bit of a morbid topic:

Is there a more terrible botch than when Sid broke his leg at the WCW Sin PPV in 2001 and from Japan, the Hayabusa neck break when he falls back and land on his head attempting a moonsault? These are the 2 worst I could find with regards to injury to the wrestler involved, can they be topped?

There are wrestlers who have died as a result of botched spots, so there are absolutely worse results than Sid’s broken leg and Hayabusa’s broken neck. Some examples follow.

On October 26, 1993, a young lucha wrestler named Oro was wrestling for CMLL and decided to take a flip bump off of a clothesline and landed on the top of his head. There was no autopsy performed to provide his exact cause of death, but it is largely believed that the head trauma caused a lethal aneurysm.

There was also a joshi wrestler by the name of Plum Mariko who passed away on August 16, 1997 when she took a powerbomb and landed badly on her head. An autopsy indicated that there may have been a previously undiagnosed preexisting condition which contributed to her passing, but it still almost definitely would have occurred if not for the powerbomb.

That’s not a complete list of people who have died in the ring as a result of botched spots, and it doesn’t include people who have died in the ring when things weren’t botched (e.g. Misawa, Moondog Spot). However, those are just examples that go to show you that some people did have it worse than Hayabusa and Sid as a result of botches . . . and that doesn’t even account for Darren Drozdov who, though he didn’t die, had things at least as bad as Hayabusa as a result of the infamous botched running powerbomb by D-Lo Brown.

Here’s a series of questions from Daz:

1) IMO, the best singles ladder match ever was between Benoit and Jericho at the ’01 Rumble, during which Lawler asked JR if it was Shawn Michaels who invented the ladder match, which JR avoided answering. I find it hard to believe that JR didn’t know that it was Bret’s idea and therefore, didn’t want to mention Bret’s name which would make sense given the bad blood at the time. Do you think this was the reason?

If you want to split hairs, JR was correct to not respond because Bret Hart didn’t even invent the ladder match. By almost all accounts, he was the guy who introduced the concept to the WWF (and Bret and Shawn had a WWF ladder match that was released as a Coliseum Video exclusive that pre-dated the famous Shawn/Razor Ramon ladder match), but he was still most likely not the inventor. The ladder match concept was used in Stampede Wrestling as early as 1979, which was the year after Bret made his debut as a professional wrestler. So, whoever was putting matches together for Stampede at that time is a much more likely “inventor.”

2) Continuing with Bret Hart, I watched a match between him and Triple H, who was then morphing in to the D-X character. It was only a few weeks before Montreal. What was notable about this match was that Lawler brought up WCW started questioning him about whether Vince was pissed at WCW when Bret was making his entrance. While this wasn’t the first time WCW was referenced in WWF/E, was this the first time that the name was actually mentioned? Vinny Mac sounded peed when retorting, albeit it may have been a kayfabe dig at the opposition.

It may have been one of the first – if not the first – times that those specific letters were mentioned on WWF television, but the fact of the matter is that WCW was being discussed on the promotion’s television for quite some time by this point, even if the initials weren’t put out there. One of the biggest examples of this was the “Billionaire Ted” skits, which slammed WCW and Ted Turner and slammed them hard, even if they used parody names as opposed to the genuine article.

(Hey, look, a Vince Russo cameo!)

3) It’s well documented that HBK and the Hitman have reconciled, but what about Triple H and Bret? Is there still bad blood between them that is known of?

There may be some degree of underlying tension, but, if there was still a large amount of bad blood between Triple H and Bret Hart, Hart would not have returned to the company has many times as he has since 2010 given HHH’s current executive status within the promotion.

4) This is probably a stupid question but having grown up on WWF/E and not really watching many other promotions, I still do not know what is meant by the WWE style. I have watched a few matches from the 80s, mainly NWA (think its JCP but not sure), such as Flair-Steamboat and Tully-Magnum and some of Dynamite Kid in Japan (Bulldogs were another
favourite being across the pond) and what I have gleaned from them is that they look a bit more realistic but then I put it down the awesome talent in the ring. Am I near with the realism thing or is there something more that I am not getting?

I actually answered this question during a prior fill-in that I did for Mat. Click this link to be transported back to April 27, 2011. It’s the very first question in the column, and the answer hasn’t really changed in the past year or so.

5) Finally, having seen what Steamboat could do in the ring from stealing the show in Wrestlemania 3, and during 1989, what was the logic behind basically jobbing him out for a year or two? Vince couldn’t have still been peed with how the Intercontinental title reign was cut short could he?

Believe it or not, that is the only explanation that I have ever heard.

Cole James, independent wrestler, wants to talk to us:

Hey Mat, great job. I gotta read the collum every week. I got a few questions I hope you can answer. By the way, I’m a wrestler too. Check out Cole James out on facebook and youtube.

1. When Undertaker does a promo why is his mic “normal” and dosen’t have the WWE logo box deal on it?

I have never heard the answer to this question from an independent source, but this strikes me as a situation in which the simplest answer is probably the correct one. The Undertaker’s mic probably doesn’t have the box on it because, for some reason, he does not like the look of the box and he is one of the few guys that has a level of political pull sufficient that he can get away with removing it.

Why wouldn’t he like the look? I have no idea, though I would theorize it has something to do with not wanting what is essentially an advertisement (the logo) interjected into the middle of everything that he says.

2. I’ve read that Tracy Smothers played Jason the Terrible in Japan at one point briefly. Do you have any idea when this was and how long it lasted or where to find footage of him in the gimmick?

You are correct, Tracy Smothers was, at one point, Jason the Terrible. The gimmick was essentially taken from Jason Voorhees of the Friday the 13th series of films and was a gimmick that had been performed by a variety of individuals in a variety of promotions over the years, most notable in Canada’s Stampede Wrestler by a journeyman named Karl Moffat.

Tracy’s run with the gimmick was primarily in IWA Japan, a short-lived deathmatch promotion popular from 1994 and 1995. Technically the group still exists, but they run only sporadically and on a very small scale, with the promotion not doing anything meaningful after ’95.

Regarding footage of the gimmick, here is a video of Smothers, as the “new” Jason, squaring off against the original IWA Japan version of Jason.

3. What is the deal with RFVideo and the ECW footage? I know they’ve got a partnership with Highspots now. I know Rob was their camera guy and there video distributer but what happened after Vince bought ECW? Do RF AND Vince own the rights? I know it can’t be bootlegs they’re selling because WWE would sue them in a second. I know RF taped the house shows and other events but what about PPVs?

I do not know a precise answer, but the short version is that who owns what would be governed by whatever agreement or agreements ECW and RF Video entered into at the time that the footage was filmed, which would most likely survive the dissolution of ECW and would most likely have to be honored by whomever purchased ECW. If the agreement was that RF permanently owned the copyright to whatever they shot, Feinstein would be free to distribute these however he might like. If the agreement was that RF did not permanently own the copyright but would have unlimited distribution rights, Feinstein should still be free to distribute these however he might like.

It strikes me as highly unlikely, though, that any halfway-savvy business person in the entertainment industry would create a situation in which both he and another individual jointly owned the copyright to a video production. It just creates the possibility for too many legal problems down the road in terms of squabbling over ownership. It strikes me as a much more likely scenario that either a) RF Video owns the events it taped outright, b) RF Video does not own the events that it taped but is the exclusive distributor, or c) RF doesn’t have the right to own or distribute anything, and they’re a bad piece of publicity away from a WWE cease and desist letter.

That’s it for this week’s Ask 411. If you can’t get enough of Ryan, follow him on Twitter here.