Ask 411 Wrestling 11.20.13: Five Counts, Twin Refs, Studio 54, More!

You know, given the reception I got last week, I was expecting slave girls and rose petals and stuff. And yet, nothing.

Reality sucks.

Anyway, welcome to Ask 411 Wrestling. I’m disappointed in real life, but I’m also Mathew Sforcina. Survivor Series is right around the corner, and matches will happen there and stuff. I dunno, this isn’t really a news column, that’s everyone else’s thing. I just answer questions and what have you.

Speaking of, if you do have a question, you can email it to [email protected] and I’ll answer it. Eventually.

But before that, BANNER!

Zeldas!

Check out my Drabble blog, 1/10 of a Picture! It’s easy on the eyes, hard on the waist. Wait…

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Feedback Loop

Reception: Despite my jokes above, I really am humbled by the feedback. Really. I often crack about how I suck and stuff, but knowing that so many people enjoy my work, it really does boost my spirits and all that, thank you all. Although I still gotta work out how to make something outta that… Maybe get one of those Amazon wish pages I see porn stars and some female wrestlers having.

…

Well there’s a sentence that’s gonna get me in trouble with some of my female wrestling friends.

Other HBK losses: I’m not saying that HBK losing to Vader was the sole one. When someone asks “did X ever job…” I find the first instance I can and then stop. I don’t find every loss/win/whatever unless that’s part of the question.

Massive Q on WWE2K14: I’ve actually yet to crack open my copy, I’ve been playing GTAV and ACIV:BF and Diablo 3 and B:AO and stuff. So no ‘official’ one is up yet, but there may well be one up already. If/when I do finally log on and have a look, should I find a good one I’ll let you all know, believe me.

On The Radio: Matt sent this in.

Hello Matt,

Welcome back. I read the question/answer about wrestling being broadcast on the radio, and thought you’d be interested to know that they have some stuff at the Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame (in Waterloo) that talks about pre television wrestling broadcasts and how they solved the “visualizing” problem. I have attached a pic I took of an info card that some promoters mailed out to radio listeners so they could follow along with the action. I think the card dates from the 40s, so maybe these had been in use for some time. I do not know how widespread these were, but I know my Grandfather (from PA) had a few of these lying around when I was a kid. Hope this helps clarify.

You can see the poster here. It’s really cool. Although I kinda think we may need to stick one on the announce table at every WWE show… But thanks Matt, appreciate the knowledge!

(And by all means dear reader, if you have photos/videos/whatever that is relevant to a question, do send it in. I’m all for good info, regardless of source.)

Bulldog in HOF: I worded that slightly badly. I meant that given how Bulldog died, I would expect him to be put in in a year where pretty much every other entrant is alive and happy, so that the notion that wrestling is dangerous is not reinforced. You don’t want a HOF class where half of them were dead young due to drugs or something. Of course, inducting the Hart Foundation as a job lot would be an acceptable alternative…

Maffew: Sigh. I AM NOT MAFFEW. This is Maffew. He’s British, smallish, younger than me, and looks sorta like that guy who made out with his ‘twin sister’ Michelle Trachtenberg while drunk on absinthe in that movie EuroTrip.

Although I suppose Michelle Trachtenberg would have to be drunk as hell to make out with me…

But anyway, he’s not me. I don’t make Botchamania. Never have, never will. Please stop confusing us. Thank you.

Trivia: Fair enough, this stays. And speaking of…

The Trivia Crown

For this, I am again opening up submissions to you, the reader. If you have a great trivia question/s for this section, send them in and I’ll use them. But I’ll get the ball rolling this week.

What am I? I’m a PPV, taking place sometime within the last 20 years that came to my mind for some reason this week. In me, one title changed hands. My opening match saw a finish with a move off the ropes that isn’t usually performed from that position. The main event was for a world title, although it wasn’t the last match of the night for the people there live. Out of the three matches where one side had managers/seconds, only one out of the three saw the client side win, and in one of them, the manager/second directly led to the loss! Every match was either one on one or two on two, although one match had special stips that allowed for more participants. A PPV that saw the Fink do ring announcing, two backstage interviewers and an Erik Watts appearance, I am what?

Getting Down To Business

Confused Carl has a nice simple one to begin with.

Here’s one for you–why do people keep acting like they don’t run traditional Survivor Series matches at the PPV anymore? When’s the last time they didn’t have one?

I’ll answer these in reverse order.

*fires up Wikipedia*

Well, 07’s sole one was 4 on 5, but it still counts…

Huh… 02 didn’t have one, unless you count the 6 man table elimination match with Bubba and Spike Dudley teaming with Jeff Hardy to beat 3 Minute Warning and Rico.

But if you want a cut and dried, No Elimination Matches one, then as I suspected going in, it’s 1998 you want. The sole one, other than 2002 as we discussed, without a Survivor Series match. Instead, it had the Deadly Games tournament to crown a new WWF Champion as part of the giant Master Plan to keep the belt off Austin via letting him get it.

And it also had the Deadly Games theme song, a.k.a one of the best songs WWE ever made that wasn’t about Ends which may or may not be Here.

But as for the first part, the issue, at least the most common issue, this is the IWC after all, a group with 1,000 voices and 1,000,000 opinions. The most common issue is not that they don’t have a Survivor Series match. It’s just that the matches are normally just thrown together and random and don’t mean anything. Considering that the company is so desperate to craft a unique identity for every PPV and have each PPV be a gimmick PPV, the fact that they treat their second oldest PPV concept with such distain is the problem. Like how when it looked like we might get Shield/Wyatts V Punk/Bryan/Rhodes/Usos, everyone was like “YES. DO THIS NOW PLEASE.” And WWE just went “Eh.” and made a tag match and a Survivor Series match out of it where it didn’t need to be.

Now, is this nostalgia? Partly. Certainly I think that part of the goodwill for the gimmick is not just that WWE has messed it up but because the old shows are remembered fondly by many people from when they were kids. Like any gimmick, Survivor Series can be done badly. But on the other hand, it’s kinda hard to screw up badly. But overall, the problem is that the match type isn’t used to the full, not that there aren’t any.

Unless you’re one of the poor sad deluded fools still wanting Wargames. Yes, it would be thematically appropriate. Yes, the talent is there to put on a hell of a match. No, it’s not going to happen.

HBK’s Smile crosses boundaries.

Welcome back, Mathew. You were definitely missed.

1) I knew that WWE banned the piledriver years ago (but for Undertaker tombstones) but it recently occurred to me that I haven’t seen a DDT there in a long time. Is the DDT similarly banned? And are there other moves that are banned as well?

… There was one on Raw just now. I mean, I’m all for making big moves mean something, and a DDT being a deathbringer I’m cool with if we wanted to go there, but they get used, just not very often.

The ‘Banned’ list is something that people have backwards, it crops up a lot and people have got the wrong end of the stick. See, it’s not so much that WWE has said “You can’t do this, this and this”, it’s the reverse. Basically EVERY move is banned unless you can prove you can do is safely and consistently, regardless of circumstances. WWE would be fine with someone using the Vertebreaker as a finisher (hell, they’d get a major push with their One Shot deadly finisher…) provided that person could prove to their satisfaction that they could nail it safely every single time to anyone, anywhere, no matter how tired.

Now, sure, no-one is going to be able to do that, so the move is effectively banned. But it’s not a “they’ve banned all neck moves”, otherwise YOUR US champion would be finisherless right now. But since he has proven he can nail that safely, he’s allowed to. Same as how Taker and Lawler can bust out piledrivers, since they have proven they can do it safely.

Neck moves do have a more stringent criteria for entry, yes, but hey, you can do a Burning Hammer 99.9999% risk free? WWE awaits you…

2) Why was the WM VII main event Slaughter vs Hogan. Was Vince that sure that the Iraq war would bolster Slaughter’s drawing power much more than it actually did? Or was Warrior unwilling to job in a rematch against Hogan (which would have been a MUCH bigger main event)? What am I missing?

You’re missing Warrior flopping as champion (since Hogan stuck around…) and so Vince hitting the reset and going back to Hogan V Big Foreign Heel. Warrior V Hogan 2: Torch Harder wouldn’t have worked since you’d have had to turn one heel (you can do face/face once, twice is pushing it) and that would ruin all the hard work. Warrior may have flopped as champ but he was still over and useful, so you just shunt him back down the card and go back to what worked, which was Hogan V Heel. And hey, the Iraq war is big right now, so why not use it?

Well, I can think of all sorts of reasons not to use it, but I can see Vince’s thinking. Wrong thinking, but thinking was there.

It was stupid.

Anyway, yes, Vince did believe/hope that the idea of Slaughter turning his back on America and going to Iraq along with Hogan being Hogan would draw gangbusters. Hogan/Warrior 2 was never going to happen.

Mark asks about Dick Slater being a badass.

So I was watching the Legends of Wrestling about Terry Funk and Roddy Piper, and Mike Graham mentions the story to Michael Hayes about the night that Dick Slater dunked both Sting and Warriors heads in the toilet back in the UWF. Jim Ross was quick to change the subject. I was wondering if you came across the details of this story anywhere?

There’s two stories floating about involving Slater and Sting. The first, as you say, involves Slater beating up both Sting and Warrior back during their Bladerunner days, and dunked their heads in a toilet. Thing is, Slater was never in the same company as the two of them together, to my (and Jim Ross’) knowledge. So it’s almost certainly false.

However, there is a second story. Several sources claim, or more probably several sources all repeat the same claim, that Slater found out that Sting had a one night stand with Dark Journey, who was at the time his manager and also his shoot girlfriend. After all, he ‘discovered’ her working in a strip club.

Surprised he’s not in charge of WWE Diva recruitment then.

*3/4 Chandler*

Anyway, since Slater was a tough guy and Sting a young rookie, Slater beat him up. However, Sting supposedly didn’t fight back since he knew he was in the wrong, and he was a rookie, AND Slater had powerful friends and he didn’t want to blackball himself. (Which is ironic since doing that with Dark Journey that caused all this, HEYO!

…

Oh, right, I’m not a 90’s Fox sitcom, my bad.)

Anyway, he just took the beating, then went to the bathroom and finished applying his face paint and headed to the ring for his match, the story goes.

So the story may well have been expanded and twisted to become a double swirly, but it probably didn’t happen like that.

William asks about Bam Bam Bigelow’s debut… At Studio 54?

I recently heard that Bam Bam Bigelow’s first career match was booked by Paul Heyman in Studio 54 in August of 1985. I can’t find any other information on this card aside from the fact that Bigelow beat 4 opponents. Do you have any other information on this show? What promotion was Heyman booking for? Who did Bigelow beat? Thanks a lot!

We do have some info on this, from the Rise and Fall of ECW book WWE put out a few years ago. And I quote…

” …(Heyman) created an event called the Wrestling Press International Man of the Year. Running about five magazines at the same time, Heyman made a deal with Jim Crockett Promotions and the NWA that if they could deliver Ric Flair, Dusty Rhodes, and Magnum TA to Studio 54 for the ceremony, he guaranteed he would get coverage in USA Today in addition to the wrestling magazines he was running. So on Friday night, August 23, 1985, the marriage of Studio 54 and pro wrestling, with Paul Heyman presiding, took place. They had Ric Flair get the WPI Man of the Year Award and actually set up a ring in the nightclub for a match featuring a newcomer named Bam Bam Bigelow. It made a number of papers and Heyman got the promotional itch.”

So this is long before ECW, this is Paul when he’s a 20 year old kid who did radio both in front of and behind the microphone (… wait, does that work?) and who was a promoter for Studio 54, as well as doing some work for wrestling magazines on the side, WWF bought some of his photos and what have you, Heyman was always hustling, even back then. After Studio 54 closed down, Heyman moved into wrestling full time.

I was able to find a photo of Bam Bam at the ‘show’, being sold on eBay. Even then he had the tattoos…

Now, funny thing is, Flair’s attendance at the show was filmed, and the promo was supposed to air on World Championship Wrestling, 8/31/85. But the Atlanta Braves match went long and the show was joined in progress 15 minutes in, and so the promo seemed lost… Until it turned up as an Easter Egg on the Ultimate Flair DVD set, a.k.a the thing that made WWE all the money they paid for WCW and then some. So if you want to see the night in question, get Disc 1, and go to Chapters. Go to the Dusty Rhodes chapter section. Left click on the sub-chapter titled: “Flair Cuts a Promo.” Or press left a bunch of times on your remote. And voila, the ‘lost’ Flair promo from that night.

But this is stalling as I was unable to find out who Bam Bam fought, if it was 1, 2 or 5 men. I presume none of them were names you’d know, as if he fought Ray Traylor or someone he’d mention it in his shoots or something. Instead it’s just “I debuted in Studio 54”. So there you go.

Steve takes us to Japan and reminds us why we will never be this good.

Hi Mathew,

Thanks,

Well there’s two main issues here, Dragon specifically, and the J-Crown in general. Let’s start with Dragon since that’s easy.

Yes, when Dragon held the J-Crown, he also held the NWA World Middleweight Title and the WCW Cruiserweight Championship, which means that from December 29, 1996 through January 27, 1997 he was actively holding and defending ten separate titles, which is almost certainly a record, although I’m sure eventually a US Indy guy will top it. And yes, he is thus the only man, outside of the InVasion/Unifications therein, to hold a WWF and WCW title simultaneously. And certainly the only man to hold a WWF, WCW and NWA belt at the same time.

Now, the J-Crown in general… Slightly more complicated. See, as you say, it was created to be defended in Mexico and Japan, but it was still a ‘real’ WWF title. At the time it was created in 1981, WWF had a working agreement with UWA in Mexico, and as part of that agreement, the WWF Light Heavyweight title was created. The title was defended in Mexico for over a decade, until in 1995 when UWA folded. And at that point, the WWF then lent the title to New Japan Pro Wrestling, another company they had a working relationship with. The Great Sasuke won the title and then things get complicated.

See, it was a WWF title, but New Japan had the right to book the thing. If they wanted El Samurai to win it, they just did it. Sasuke get is back? Fine, no need to call the WWF. Unify it with 7 other titles from 7 other companies? That apparently counted as being under their jurisdiction. So when Dragon won it, WWF wasn’t able to say anything, apparently.

See, the idea that WWF pulled it once they ‘realised’ it doesn’t quite ring true, since the title was stripped from Shinjiro Otani in 1997, not because they just noticed WCW had had it for several months, but because that was the point when WWF and NJPW ended their working relationship finally. And so they asked for the belt back, and began to use it for their attempt at fighting the Cruiserweights.

As for when the belt was on WCW TV… WCW didn’t mention it because this was a complicated legal situation. NJPW had an agreement with both companies, and while WCW could technically claim they could use the title, WWF would almost certainly find a reason to sue over it. So instead of taking a risk of a costly lawsuit, they just didn’t mention the names of the belts.

Maybe.

See, the thing is, the stories you here about WWF not knowing where their title is and WCW not realising that they had the title don’t ring true to my ears, but they get repeated so often that a lot of people do believe them and so I can’t state for certain my version of events above is accurate. I think it is, but I can’t prove it. But then, you can’t prove WWF forgot they had a belt made either, so it’s a wash. Perhaps a reader has something definitive.