Ask 411 02.07.07: WSX Details, Greatest Female Wrestlers, Shane Douglas Barfs, and More!

Those of you who have read my material for the first time in Ask 411 and fallen in love with me are probably asking where you can get more. Don’t worry . . . just because I’m leaving this column, it doesn’t mean that I’m leaving 411 as a whole. I’ll still be here every Thursday with the TNA Impact Crater, and it looks like I’ll also be taking on the recapping duties for the new WSXtra webcast. You can also check my full archive for everything else that I’ve written, and I’ve recently opened up one of those newfangled MySpace things, which will theoretically have wrestling content on it at some point.

Anyway, that’s enough self-plugging. Let’s move on to the questions.

NY Groover has a question based on the column that I wrote a couple of weeks ago. However, I think it’s more of a new question than it is feedback, so I’m sticking it here.

I just read the part of your column where you said that there are many women wrestlers better than Trish and Lita. I can’t really think of any who are better than Trish when it comes to athletics. I am sure Alundra blaze can compare. but who else? Moolah? Mae Young? those two or even Wendi Richter couldn’t keep up with Trish in the ring. I really doubt Moolah could do a Lita swanton bomb so i would like to know your answer, mr know it all wrestling man…. WHO IS THE GREATEST WOMAN EVER?

Well, since you’re just asking about the athletic aspect of wrestling, I’ll go ahead and answer accordingly and point out women who are better in-ring performers than Lita or Trish. Further, I’m only going to talk about wrestlers who have competed in the United States, because I’m sure that, if I don’t, I’ll get a bunch of e-mails from ignorant people attempting to argue that Mexican and Japanese wrestling don’t count.

First of all, I don’t think Wendi Richter, Moolah, or Mae Young were any better than Trish or Lita. (Though, to be fair, I’ve not seen footage of Young and Moolah from early on in their careers.) However, even when eliminating these names that Mr. Groover mentioned, there are several fine candidates for the position of best female in-ring performer in the United States.

The first two women who I’m going to mention are ladies who worked right alongside Trish and Lita during the same period of time in the WWF/E. I’m talking about Jazz and Nora Molly Holly Greenwald. When watching Trish and Lita wrestle, I don’t think that I ever saw them take a wrestler who wasn’t good and carry that person to the watchable match. In fact, these matches tended to fall apart completely. (Trish’s encounters with Christy Hemme and Jackie Gayda come to mind.) However, both Jazz and Molly had the ability to take less experienced women and make them look much better than they actually were. For example, take a look at the feud that Molly had with Stacy Keibler just prior to the first Taboo Tuesday pay per view. All of those matches were far better than a Stacy Keibler match had any right to be. Plus, before Trish went through her dramatic improvement as a professional wrestler, Jazz was the one that carried her to her first truly entertaining in-ring feud.

And there are many more women who were also better in-ring performers. Though I don’t think that Alundra Blaze (or Madusa as I prefer to call her) was that much better than Trish or Lita, some of her opponents certainly were. Luna Vachon, a second generation athlete who was tough as nails, competed with Madusa in the WWF and outclassed her in the majority of those encounters. Also, though a lot of WWF fans might not think so, Rhonda Singh (who played the role of Bertha Faye) was a great professional wrestler in her younger days. Bull Nakano and Aja Kong, who also challenged for Blaze’s title in the WWF, aren’t just two of my favorite female wrestlers of all time. They’re two of my favorite WRESTLERS of all time, regardless of gender. Both came out of Japan in a time period in which the wrestling in that scene was considered just as good as, if not better than, the best men’s wrestling in the world. It’s a hard hitting, smash mouth style that I certainly find to be more entertaining than Booker T. versus Batista matches. Also, Akira Hokuto, who feuded with Madusa in WCW and became the company’s first and only Women’s Champion, was also an excellent competitor. Last but certainly not least, check out the great series of matches from the Jumping Bomb Angels and the Glamour Girls from the WWF in the 1980’s, which absolutely demolish any women’s tag team wrestling that has taken place in the US since that time.

That’s a look at the past . . . but I also think that there are several women who are currently better wrestlers than Trish and Lita that will be future stars in this business. One needs to look no further than independent wrestling promotion SHIMMER to see some of those names in action. I don’t want to come off as some sort of indy elitist who thinks everything non-WWE is automatically better than McMahon’s product, so I will admit that some members of the SHIMMER roster are not as good as Lita or Trish. However, many of them are. My personal favorite is Beth Phoenix, who had a cup of tea on Raw and is currently back in WWE developmental waiting for her next call up. She can execute a wide variety of moves, and, more importantly, she has a great ability to put those moves together in to a story that makes sense and is entertaining. Take a look at her encounter with MsChif on SHIMMER Volume 2 for a perfect example. Other individuals to look out for include Sara Del Ray, Cheerleader Melissa, Lacey, and Amazing Kong.

So is my list long enough yet? I think it is. Let’s move on.

Since we’re all still rocking from the aftershocks of the Royal Rumble, let’s have Sean ask a few questions about the big match itself . . .

1. How is it determined who eliminates who? And when? being that theres 30 men you would imagine there could be some timing issues if it were all predetermined.

From what I understand, the Rumbles started out being pretty much improvised with just the winner and a key spot or two being planned out. However, over the course of history, they’ve gotten more and more choreographed. Though the potential for timing issues may exist, there are also measures that the company takes to make sure that things are kept straight. The ring is surrounded by referees, who, as in all WWE matches, are wearing wireless headsets through which they receive messages from agents in the locker room. That allows for a certain level of communication and booking on the file if a predetermined order of elimination is botched.

2. Have their ever been any ‘accidental’ eliminations that you know of…ie..a wrestler that was supposed to be NEARLY being eliminated slipping or accidentally falling and warranting an ACTUAL elimination…hope that wasnt too confusing

I am not aware of any accidental eliminations. However, unless the individual scheduled to win the match was eliminated, it would be very difficult to find out about something like this.

nMo Lithuania has another question about the Rumble. Don’t worry, this isn’t turning in to another theme column.

I have a rather stupid question regarding the Royal Rumble match, that’s been bothering me for quite some time. Imagine a situation, where a wrestler is thrown over the top rope, but he manages to grab the ropes before his feet touch the ground. Then he lies down on the ring and rolls himself in beneath the bottom rope, but while doing so, another wrestler performs a baseball slide ant kicks him out of the ring on the floor. So my question would be… *drums* In this scenario, will the wrestler be eliminated or not?

Well, the real answer to the question is that it depends on what the bookers want him to be eliminated or not. Really, the rules on battle royale eliminations change over time and to fit the story that needs to be told in the specific match. For example, think about situations in which a wrestler is thrown out of the ring and injured. Sometimes he’s allowed to get up and compete again when he’s ready. Sometimes he’s carted out and considered officially eliminated from the match. It all depends on the story that needs to be told in the particular match.

Of course, that may be the realistic answer to your question, but it’s not the fun one. The fun way to answer it is based on my own personal observation of battle royales over the years. There have been a lot of spots in which a man is thrown over the top rope, lands on the apron, gets knocked off the apron, and is then considered to be eliminated. As a result of spots like those, I would guess that you’re not safe until you get back within the confines of the ring ropes. So, in your situation, the wrestler probably wouldn’t have been eliminated. However, he would have been if the kick knocked him off the apron before he could roll in under the bottom rope.

Shane C. has a question about an obscure wrestler that leads to a question about an obscure magazine . . .

A co-worker of mine used to wrestle under the name T-Rex, and while talking one night, he showed me a PWI 500 issue where he was listed. Unfortunately, there were no pics of him in the magazine, which kind of bummed him out. He said the only magazine he knew of that had pics of him in it was this Japanese magazine titled Baseball. Do you know of any way to obtain back-issues or a way to contact their company? All of my searches were dead ends. I appreciate any help you can give.

I’ve dug around and not been able to find anything either. You might want to try a wrestling site that’s more geared to the Japanese scene, perhaps the forums over at Strong Style Spirit.

I thought that Honest Abe would have to be a zombie to send me a question in 2007, but apparently he’s really a vampire . . .

What are some of the bloodiest matches that you have ever seen? Name a few. Also name where they happened. At what event.

First of all, I’ll qualify this answer by saying that I’m excluding deathmatches, since a.) it would make this list entirely too long and b.) I don’t like encouraging people to watch a lot of deathmatch wrestling. However, here are a few examples of ultra-bloody wrestling matches that didn’t involve five thousand light tubes, barbed wire boards, and flaming baseball bats.

~ First of all, you can’t go wrong with Bradshaw vs. Eddy Guerrero from Judgment Day in 2004. Eddy lost so much blood that the company had to give him a couple of weeks off the road in order to recuperate. That’s a ton of blood loss.

~ Though it’s not one of the all-time great bladejobs, the most blood that I’ve seen live came when Ace Steele took on Chad Collyer at Ring of Honor’s Punk: The Final Chapter.

~ Also from the WWF comes Brock Lesnar vs. The Undertaker from No Mercy 2002. It was a Hell in the Cell match, and it featured the sick visual of Taker’s blood flowing in to Brock’s open mouth as UT stood over the fallen Lesnar.

~ TNA’s sickest entry probably comes from the September 17, 2003 hair vs. hair match between Raven and Shane Douglas. The blood in the match was bad enough, but things went to a whole different level when James Mitchell attempted to cut Raven’s hair and wound up repeatedly digging the clippers in to the man’s scalp.

~ The grandfather of them all is the Great Muta vs. Hiroshi Hase from New Japan Pro Wrestling on December 14, 1992. This match was so bloody that it lead to internet fans creating the “Muta Scale” by which all other bladejobs are judged. If something is 1.0 Muta, it’s as bloody as humanly possible, with smaller numbers indicating smaller amounts of blood loss.

Brian asks whatever happened toooooo . . .

What ever happened to the ring announcer from the old wwwf – and my name is Jooooooooe McCue

There’s not a lot of information out there about Joe McCue. However, I do know that he passed away several years back.

Richard M. knows to “keep ‘em separated” . . .

I was watching the Hair vs Hair match between Raven and Shane Douglas, the one which ended with Raven being scalped. I know this was mentioned in your column a few weeks back but my question is slightly different.

So was he sick or what was the story there? Its pretty gross if he was because then Raven starts rolling about in it later on in the match

Huh, what are the odds of the same match coming up twice in the same column? Anyway, that was vomit. Actual, legitimate, puke. Douglas was notoriously out of shape in the later stages of his wrestling career. He wasn’t able to handle the physical exertion involved in this match and lost his lunch.

Eddie G. (no, not the famous one) wants to know about a star’s less popular brother.

today at school a speaker named Mike Kolic came in to teach kids about the dangers of drugs. he was showing pictures, and one of them was apparently him and his real life brother, buzz sawyer with the WCW/NWA Tag team Titles that they had one from the road warriors.. He told us a story about how him, Ric Flair, and Mick Foley found Buzz Sawyer dead in his room. now i know in the picture he showed us was of buzz sawyer and brett sawyer holding the tag tiles. and the speaker claimed to be Brett Sawyer.. so i looked up brett sawyer, and found NOTHING about him being Mike Kolic. It said Brett Sawyer’s real name is Brett Woyan, and he currently lives in Largo, Florida. But I live in Ohio. So I dont know if this guy is a fraud, or if he changed his name. Can you help me out?

This is apparently something that people have been asking about for a couple of years now. I know that Brett and Buzz Sawyer were brothers in real life in addition to the storylines, and both of them had the last name Woyan, not Kolic. They did win a tag team championship form the Roadwarriors at one point. However, I have seen nothing that definitively links this Kolic fellow to Brett Woyan.

On April 15, 2005, Dave Meltzer mentioned one of Kolic’s anti-drug speeches on his website and mentioned the story Kolic told about being Brett Sawyer. In the next day’s news update, Meltzer printed e-mails from a couple of his readers who had known Brett Woyan personally and did not think that Kolic was the same man. Based on that and the fact that there is no other clear link between the two, I would be surprised if they were the same person. However, there’s another part of me that wonders why the hell anybody would bother lying about being Brett Sawyer of all people.

Then again, it was a man who lied about being Corporal Kirschner that lead to WWE.com erroneously reporting the Corporal’s death last year . . . so who knows.

Earl M. wants a lesson on wrestling ninjas . . .

Hey, i remember some masked wrestler for the early 90’s in the wwf, and he used to spit green liquid. I was just wondering who this was.

That was Kwang the Ninja, who was managed by Harvey Whippleman. Under the Kwang mask was a Puerto Rican wrestler named TNT. He would eventually get repackaged by the WWF as Carribean legend Savio Vega.

And it should probably be noted that the spitting of green liquid was not something unique to Kwang. Japanese (or, as in this case, Japanese ) wrestlers competing in the United States have used the green mist gimmick for decades. I believe it was initially popularized by The Great Kabuki and then passed on to his kayfabe son, The Great Muta.

Brandon F. wants to know about not-so-friendly competition.

I was wondering if there have ever been two larger PPV’s put on, on the same day as each other. If so, when and which two PPV’s?

Yes. In 1987, both NWA Starrcade and the WWF Survivor Series took place on November 26. This was a calculated move by the WWF to undercut the NWA’s pay per view market. WWF, which was more popular on a national level at the time, scheduled the event for the same day and then forced pay per view carriers to chose which show they would offer to their audiences. Most pay per view providers, fearful that the WWF would refuse to let them air Wrestlemania if they didn’t also show the Survivor Series, opted to go with the WWF product. The next year, Starrcade moved from November to December.

Though there haven’t been other major instances of pay per views being scheduled on the same night, wrestling companies have taken other steps to undercut each other’s pay per view buyrates. For example, the WWF created the Royal Rumble in 1988 and aired it for free on the USA Network. This show ran up against the “Bunkhouse Stampede” pay per view from the NWA. Further, WCW used to hold television specials called the “Clash of the Champions” on TBS. Though not all of these shows ran opposite of WWF pay per views, a few of them did . . . and it was no coincidence.

Shawn M. digs it.

Does Randy Savage talk like his character in real life? Like is that his real voice and how he talks all the time?

Yes, he talks like that all the time. Whether that’s been his voice since birth or whether he adopted it for wrestling and just never stopped is anybody’s guess. He’s certainly been doing it for his entire pro career.

Scott H. wants to know about a match that should be significant historically but is actually pretty obscure.

I consider myself a fairly knowledgeable fan but I just saw a video on Google that has me totally confused. It’s a match from Memorial Hall in KC, MO between the Bulldogs and the RnR Express. Pat O’Connor is the ref. Johnny Valiant is an announcer. The ring, I swear, has an AWA logo in it. I live right by KC, and I don’t remember these two teams ever wrestling here for the AWA When could this have taken place? Valiant refers to Matilda and the problems that the Dream Team had with the ‘Dogs. Both were announced as former champs for the WWF & NWA, respectively. Both looked fairly young. By the way, Dynamite in full-on dick mode against Ricky playing Ricky is a thing of beauty. You should check it out. ANY info on this would help settle an old man’s mind. Also, how come I never heard of this match before? I know this is very obscure, but I am at a loss of how I was unaware of this match.

From what I understand, the match took place at a 1989 show which was a joint production of the AWA and All Japan Pro Wrestling. Morton and Gibson were representing the AWA, while the Bulldogs were representing AJPW. (They were based out of Stampede and the time but competed for All Japan as well.) The reason that you’d not heard of it before is probably because the AWA was in the middle of dying its slow, painful death in the late eighties.

Matt wants to know about one of the more memorable moments of Brock Lesnar’s career.

In the now infamous match where Brock Lesnar Superplex Big Show, was the ring supposed to break, or was it actually from the amount of weight dropped into the ring? Just from watching it, you can see that it may have not been planned, since the referee wasn’t bracing himself to anything, and Tazz swore. But, then again, you can also see that the ring steps opposite to the corner they were coming off of were moved during the
match, and it was that ring post that first gave out. Either way, it was an awesome thing to see in a match.

Also, if this actually wasn’t planned, do wrestlers not get worried when they have to hide under the ring during a match? What if someone like Li’l Bastard was under the ring and it broke?

The spot was planned. Paul Heyman was booking Smackdown at the time, and he seems to be a big fan of rings being broken. After all, he booked a similar finish to a match between Taz and Bam Bam Bigelow at the 1998 Living Dangerously show. And, though it is true that there are things that make the Lesnar/Show ring break look legitimate, those are just signs of good booking. You WANT things that happen on your show to look legitimate. Heyman did the same thing when he booked the ring break in Taz/Bigelow. If you watch the Living Dangerously show, you’ll notice that the ring broke in their match and then the main event still went on. Yes, the main event had to take place in a broken ring. It’s little touches like that which made Heyman so highly regarded as a booker during ECW’s peak.

Keith asks some rather timely questions about Wrestling Society X.

1. How legitimate is this federation? Do they intend to be simply a half hour show on MTV once a week, or do they intend to grow?

I had read at one point prior to the debut of the television show that the idea was for WSX to eventually start running live events that would bring them additional revenue. However, based on the specifics of what their contract are with MTV, they may not need to grow. If MTV is paying for the programming and paying enough money for the producers of the show to be happy with their profits, why bother expanding?

2. Is MTV doing all of the booking and stuff, or did WSX sort of already exist and MTV picked it up for their lineup?

WSX is the brainchild of a gentleman named Kevin Kleinrock and his company Big Vision Entertainment. In the past, Big Vision has primarily worked on distributing pro wrestling DVDs. They’re the ones who got Hardcore Homecoming/Forever Hardcore and the Ultimate Insiders series of DVDs in to national retailers like Best Buy. From what I understand, Kleinrock came up with the WSX concept and shopped it around to various television networks, including MTV.

MTV was interested in the idea and told Kleinrock to shoot a pilot episode. The pilot, which was the first episode of WSX that aired, was then given to MTV for consideration. They decided to pick up WSX as a regular series, and then nine more episodes were shot over the course of a couple of days.

So WSX wouldn’t have existed if a TV network hadn’t chosen to pick it up. As far as who owns what part of the promotion, those details haven’t really been made available yet. It could be that Big Vision owns the entire promotion and is just supplying programming to MTV. It could be that MTV owns the entire promotion. It could be that MTV and Big Vision have joint ownership of the promotion.

3. If MTV is doing all the booking, will we get the inevitable awful crossovers (like LC from Laguna Beach being a valet or something stupid), or are they trying to launch it to stand on its own sans MTV (a la the XFL)?

Again, a big part of this depends on exactly how the agreement between Big Vision and MTV reads, and we don’t have a ton of information on that yet. However, given that Monday Night Raw regularly has to plug USA projects like Psych, I wouldn’t be surprised if there is some cross promotion on WSX programming. However, I’d be willing to bet that MTV is marketing WSX to the Jackass and Bam Margera demographic, not the same people that are watching Laguna Beach.

However, I would pay big money to see Jack Evans do a guest spot on My Super Sweeet 16.

4. Can they PLEASE get some knowledgable announcers? I’m not sure who these guys are but they called 6-Pac aka Sean Waltman an Original DX Member, I wanted to throw my Remote through the TV.

The announcers were Kriss Kloss and Bret Ernst. Kloss’ most notable involvement with wrestling before this was as the lead play-by-play man for Rob Black’s XPW. Ernst is an LA comedian, and your guess is as good as mine when it comes to figuring out who thought he would be good at this job.

5. This guy Teddy Hart is supposedly actually related to the Hart family, he’s Stu’s oldest grandson I believe is what they said? Is this legit or an angle? And if it is legit, why no WWF/E or even TNA interest?

It’s legit. Teddy is the son of B.J. Annis, a former pro wrestler, and Stu’s daughter Georgia Hart. (Which means his name is actually Teddy Annis, but he adopted the Hart moniker for obvious reasons.) This, of course, means that he’s the nephew of all of the various Hart brothers and brothers-in-law. He and recent WWE signee Harry Smith (the British Bulldog’s son) broke in to wrestling in the mid-90’s after growing up around the fake sport.

And there actually has been WWF and TNA interest, though Hart has managed to screw it all up due to the fact that he engages in behavior that leads some to believe that he’s out of his mind. He was briefly under a WWF developmental contract, but his behavior resulted in an early release from that deal. TNA brought him in for one night in 2003 and had him go to the finals of a Super X-Cup tournament, losing to Juventud Guerrera in what was, at the time, a highly praised spotfest. It’s available on TNA’s Ultimate X Collection DVD. They brought him back in 2004 as the captain of Team Canada in the America’s X Cup, though he was ultimately forced out of the promotion due to a fight with CM Punk. The problems with Punk stemmed from an infamous Ring of Honor show in 2003. Hart was part of a scramble cage match, in which several high flying tag teams competed against one another. Teddy managed to piss off a lot of people in the locker room when, instead of selling the effects of the match after the bell, he started climbing up the cage and doing a series of backflips. Since that time, Hart has claimed that he had a concussion and didn’t realize what he was doing, though few to no people buy that one.

6. What are your opinions on this federation? They’ve got a lot of guys that could pull in audiences, not just Credible and Pac, but Vampiro and New (Nu) Jack and this dude who did a 630 ( ) Splash as his signature move. Athletically, they don’t look half bad.

A lot of wrestling fans on the net have been putting down the product because it’s not a traditional wrestling show. However, people who have been following the project from the beginning should have been aware that it wasn’t going to be a traditional wrestling show. I think that being so different will either be WSX’s greatest attribute or its biggest weakness. It will either attract people who do not normally watch wrestling and be successful as a result or it will fail to do that and simultaneously turn off hardcore wrestling fans, winding up as a failure.

Chris B. asks an age-old question about the Hulkster.

Just a comment about hogan and a question. I was on the net with fellow wrestling nerds trying to explain to the younger ones why hogan is such a fan favorite still to this day. I personally could not stand hogan as Savage and Jake the snake (heel Jake) were my favorites. I told them that it was a time in the 80’s ( I am 31 ) that you had to be in to

understand it. Hogan back then was larger than life. He was everywhere, in a rocky movie, his own movie (no holds barred) had a cartoon and it was the beginning of pro wrestling becoming main stream and known. As much as I hate to admit it he was one of the main reasons for wrestling becoming well know. You could ask anyone who he was and anyone could tell you he was a wrestler. Try that with Batista who I am a fan of. I
told them I went to Boston Garden in 88 and 87 and saw hogan and the fans cheered so loud for him you couldnt hear yourself yelling (I was trying to yell bad things at him). I have since been to AA in Dallas (moved in 89) and have seen The Rock, Stone Cold, Taker and Batista and none of them have matched that reaction that hogan got back in the 80’s. My question is do you agree with that or is there something else besides right place right time that made him so popular?

There were a ton of factors that combined to make Hulk Hogan as popular as he was. The exposure in Rocky III was probably what put him on the map the most, though he was definitely gaining momentum prior to that. What got him in to Rocky III? The majority of that was probably his look combined with his charisma. Based on the Rocky III deal, he wound up becoming so hot that Vince McMahon grabbed him and decided to place him at the forefront of a media blitz the likes of which had never been seen before in professional wrestling. Hogan is a great performer and did more than just about anybody else could have in order to capitalize on the increased exposure that he received from the WWF’s national syndication and forays in to the pay per view market. Just about anybody would have become a major star as a result of McMahon’s revolutionary business plan, but only somebody with Hogan’s business savvy and ability to perform could become as big as Hogan did during that period.

Just compare Hogan’s story to Tommy Rich. Like Hogan, Rich was in a wrestling promotion that made a huge media breakthrough and, as a result, got coverage that no other wrestling company had received before. Like Hogan, Rich was in the right place at the right time to benefit from this increased exposure. Like Hogan, Rich became a major star in wrestling. However, Rich wasn’t as good of a performer as Hogan. Though he connected with the crowd to a certain extent, he couldn’t form that same bond that the Hulkster did. Plus he didn’t have anything that made him stand out from the general populous of wrestlers like Hulk did with his body. What happened to Tommy Rich? His star fizzled out relatively quickly after it rose, and he spent the rest of his career in relative mediocrity.

So, would anybody in Hogan’s position have become a star? Sure. Would anybody in Hogan’s position have become a Hulk Hogan-level star? I seriously doubt it.

Jamie N. only wants to watch the best.

Hey, I was wondering if you could list the last 10 WWE matches that were generally regarded as ***** matches.

The only 2 that I can think of are HHH/HBK/Benoit and HBK/Angle at Wrestlemanias a few years back.

I should preface this by saying that star ratings are incredibly subjective. What is five stars to one man could be three stars to another and vice versa. So, whenever you ask about star ratings, the first question to pop in to my head is, Whose ratings are you talking about?

Dave Meltzer, perhaps professional wrestling’s most prolific journalist, has only given ***** to four matches in the entire history of the WWF, namely:

~ Shawn Michaels vs. Razor Ramon (Wrestlemania X, Ladder Match)
~ Bret Hart vs. Owen Hart (Summerslam 1994, Cage Match)
~ Steve Austin vs. Bret Hart (Wrestlemania XIII, Submission Match)
~ Shawn Michaels vs. The Undertaker (In Your House: Badd Blood, Hell in a Cell)

I’ll let Greg W. ask me the final questions of my brief run as the Ask 411 guy.

1) Why does the referee count when a wrestler is on the top turnbuckle? (Like Benoit’s headbutt, the ref counts when he’s up there)

Being in or on the ropes is illegal, whether you’re standing on them or grabbing them while in a submission hold. The referee is applying a five count as he would during almost any illegal activity.

2) Is WWE better with some mid-card guys who are heels or is TNA better with the mid-card heels? (WWE: The Miz, Kennedy, Khail TNA: Storm, Roode, AJ?)

WWE does a much better job of building up its midcard heels than TNA does. Though, to be fair, WWE does a much better job of building up ALL of its characters than TNA does. Some people will argue that’s only the case because TNA doesn’t have a second hour of TV, but they actually could do it if they used the one hour that they have effectively.

Quite frankly, I watch Impact every week (in fact, I review it for this site), and I have absolutely no clue what the motivations of some of their midcard heels are. They’ve never fully explained why AJ turned heel. There was a sitdown interview with Mike Tenay in which Styles rambled about how he had to grow up without a color TV, but it’s not clear why exactly that should make me want to boo him. They’ve never fully explained why Bobby Roode is suddenly Mr. Wallstreet and has a ton of money. They haven’t told us why Serotonin is hanging out with Raven all of a sudden. Compare that to WWE and their midcard heels. MVP is feuding with Teddy Long, and we know exactly why – because MVP wants preferential treatment, Long won’t give it to him, and MVP is pissed off as a result. The Miz is an obnoxious prick, and we know exactly why – because he’s an MTV star who thinks that he’s better than WWE. Kenny Dykstra is a heel, and we know exactly why – because, even though he’s a promising up and comer, he takes shortcuts to move up the card and doesn’t respect those who came before him.

And, yeah, the TNA guys you listed are all better in-ring performers . . . but I don’t think that factors in to the analysis very much when TNA’s midcarders have an average of three minutes a week to actually wrestle.

3) Is there a gimmick that you feel needs to be brought back?

The Red Rooster. Okay, I’m kidding. I’m sure that if I went through my tape library, I could list a ton of old school gimmicks that would be great if tweaked for the modern context. However, I don’t have the time to do that, so I’ll list a couple of that occur to me right off the top of my head.

The first of those is the Fabulous Freebirds. Sure, we saw the “several man tag team in which any combination can defend the belts” gimmick recently with the Spirit Squad, but what I’m actually talking about is a team with the style and composition of the Freebirds. Get a guy who’s a great talker, flank him with a massive powerhouse, and add in a guy who’s a solid technical wrestler. Match them up with a gimmick that has the “cool factor” that the Freebirds did in the 70’s and 80’s, and you’ve got a definite winner. WCW attempted to do this a few years back with the Jersey Triad of Kanyon, DDP, and Bam Bam Bigelow, but the gimmick got axed before it could fully run its course.

The second is Waylon Mercy. This one gets talked up a lot amongst certain groups of wrestling fans, and there’s a reason for that . . . because it was AWESOME. For those of you who missed it, Dan Spivey played the role of a Southern gentleman with a psychotic streak. The whole thing was based on Robert DeNiro’s character in the move Cape Fear. One second Mercy would be smiling and exchanging pleasantries with his opponent, and the next second he’d be brutally pummeling them. My favorite Waylon Mercy memory was when he had a jobber out on the floor and offered him a handshake. The jobber, being a complete idiot, accepted. What happened? BAM! DDT right on the arena floor. Waylon rolled back in to the ring and won the match by count out. A lot of the character’s appeal came from Spivey’s performance, so I don’t know how well it could be replicated today. However, if a wrestler with the acting chops to pull it off was found, the character could still be highly entertaining in 2007.

4) I have no problem with the Undertaker being undefeated at WrestleMania but shouldn’t he be undefeated at Survivor Series as well? (That is when he came in and it makes sense.)

It is interesting to note that the Undertaker has only been pinned twice at the Survivor Series, and both times Kurt Angle was the man that did the deed. (Once in the 2000 title match that featured the infamous Eric Angle switcharoo and then again in the 2001 WWF vs. WCW elimination match.) He’s has suffered other losses on the show – one by DQ, one in a Buried Alive Match, and one in a First Blood Match. He’s also been counted out in a couple of different Survivor Series elimination matches.

As far as the streak question you have is concerned, Taker never really stood a chance of being undefeated at the Survivor Series because he was counted out of the ring in his debut match. Plus, it’s not as though Taker’s Wrestlemania win streak was ever a planned thing. It was just a situation in which, every year for the first few years of his career, it made sense from a booking standpoint to have Taker win his Mania match. Eventually somebody realized that he had never been beaten on the show and decided that they were going to make it in to a way to get him over. That never happened at Survivor Series just because, in the early years of his career, there were a few situations in which it didn’t make sense for UT to win.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, that does it for me. Steve Cook will be back in this position next week, so feel free to send all questions and feedback to him. If you’ve sent a question to me over the last couple of weeks but I haven’t gotten to it yet, I will be passing it along to Cook myself, so you don’t have to worry about that.