Ask 411 Wrestling 12.03.08: Mostly Old School Edition

Greetings, humanity! Welcome back to Ask 411 Wrestling with me, Chris Lansdell. Are we all having fun this week? I wonder how many of my American readers are having a good chuckle at the ridiculous state of Canadian politics right now. Probably not many, since it might have received 5 minutes total coverage on each news channel. Do some searching, it’s really rather funny. That aside, I will take a moment from surfing failblog to let you know that our musical accompaniment this week is Pressed by Mercy Drive. Which is one of only 3 songs of theirs that does not make me violently ill.

Question Time!

Nicholas has an Iron Sheik question, but sadly it will not allow me to post that shoot vid again.

I read somewhere that Iron Sheik had a very brief face run. Could not find any info on Wikipedia on this. Would you know when he had his face run?

I could have sworn he had one in the WWF, but nothing I could not find anything to back up that belief. Based on what I could find, Sheik only became a face when he started working the indy circuit after the shoot interview. He works occasionally even now, sometimes as a heel and sometimes as a face. I don’t think you can call it a “run”, since he only does scattered appearances, but that’s the only thing I could find.

Adam has questions about the best play-by-play commentator in WWF history. Anyone who said “Jim Ross?” loses.

Just wanted to say great job with the column, you’ve really stepped into the position and filled it well. That said, my two questions are about my favourite announcer ever in wrestling history, the late Gorilla Monsoon. I just watched Royal Rumble 1992 and the commentary there (between Monsoon and Bobby Heenan) sold me on the team forever. I know about most things (his relationship with Heenan, his son being a referee, etc), however I was hoping you could clear some things up for me.

1. I remember hearing (and reading) that when Vince McMahon took over the WWF from his father, there was some type of “hostile takeover” with Vince, Monsoon, and Arnold Skaaland (Bob Backlund’s old manager) doing something with the stocks in the company. Can you possibly shed some insight for me?

Not exactly. Monsoon and Skaaland did indeed own stocks in WWF, as did Vince Sr and his friend and business partner Phil Zacko. Vince Sr maintained a 50% share while the remaining 50% was split between the other 3. In 1982, Vince Sr. was not in the best of health, so when an already-successful Vince Jr offered to buy all the shares of WWF’s parent company, there was little resistance. There was a takeover, Skaaland and Monsoon were involved, but it wasn’t hostile. At the time, Vince Sr had no idea that his son was going to buck tradition and start invading the territory of other promoters, of course.

2. In 1996, Jack Tunney stepped down and Monsoon became “president” of the WWF. I recall hearing rumours that Monsoon actually did have some legitimate power backstage (I guess as a booker or something). I was wondering if you could let me know if this true or if his role was strictly kayfabe.

Oh sure, he had a lot of pull. Having been promised a job for life with WWF after the aforementioned takeover, Monsoon left the commentary booth in 1994 and replaced Tunney in 1995. He was also the backstage manager, had a say in the booking, and would occupy what came to be known as the “Gorilla Position”. This is just behind the curtain, right before the wrestlers become visible to the crowd, making the person sitting there the last contact the wrestler would have with the backstage crew before hitting the ring. This was an invaluable role as this person was responsible for cues, last-minute changes based on in-ring injuries or any change of heart backstage, and also was responsible for communicating with the referees and announcers.

Dion wants to know if Bam Bam Bigelow’s former main squeeze engaged in some cuckolding…

I was recently watching an old UWF on ESPN Classic, and saw a team called the Blackhearts. I did research on the pairing and found that the masked duo was that of David Heath (of Gangrel fame) and Tom Nash accompanied by Luna Vachon. I read that Luna was once married to Tom Nash, but later divorced and married David Heath. I’m not aware of the years that this occurred so do you know if Luna had a Lita-like experience and cheated on Nash with Heath?

It depends who you believe. Some reports will tell you that Vachon and Heath were dating before she split from Nash. Most others say that this is not true, and that Luna dated Dirty Dick Slater (that name must be a hit with the ladies…) before hooking up with the pointy-toothed one. Vachon and Heath married on October 31, 1994 (somehow fitting…), but I could not find any record of the Nash-Vachon divorce. Bear in mind that most jurisdictions impose a mandatory separation period before you can file for a divorce, so even if their divorce was not final until 1995, there is still plenty of time for the latter version to be true. For what it’s worth, I believe the latter.

Have there been many instances where partners were involved with the same woman? Oh by the way, I just jumped straight to the question and forgot the whole great column and stuff..

Meh, don’t worry about it. I reckon at least half the people who say that stuff are just being polite. There have been a few cases of people in wrestling leaving their spouses who were also in wrestling, to be with other people in wrestling. There’s Lita, as you mentioned, and of course Nancy “Woman” Benoit. Missy Hyatt probably did it at least 3 or 4 times (a month), and I guess you could include Tommy Dreamer, who left Francine and married Beulah McGillicutty. As far as actual tag team partners are concerned, there are plenty of kayfabe occurrences, but nothing real.

texans9nfl may have his dates a little mixed up:

What were the original plans for Chris Benoit at WrestleMania 24 before he committed suicide?

Bear in mind that Benoit died in June, and with WrestleMania normally in early April it is highly unlikely that any plans had been formalised for Benoit. However, the two rumours that I heard were a spot in Money in the Bank and an ECW title match, either a triple threat with Morrison and Punk or just against Morrison.

Rob has quite the eclectic list of inquiries:

OK so I’ve thought of a few more questions to add to your ever growing list!

1 Firstly something I’ve been curious about for quite some time. Doing some backyard and indy stuff in my past and dealing with chair shots, does the WWE and even TNA for that matter have rigged chairs? Because seeing as they’re getting more and more careful of wrestler injuries you’d think it’d be in they’re best interest to not use real ones. The real ones do hurt and could cause serious harm. If they are rigged do you know anything about them, are they aluminium? Do you know if there is a company that specially makes them? Help me here!

Short and simple answer: No, they’re just normal metal folding chairs. To go into more detail, the reason they are not gimmicked is that you rarely see anyone in WWE (and even TNA, though it’s more common there) take an unprotected chair shot to the head. If you watch most chair shots, they are either to the gut or back, or they are to the head and the victim has his arms in place to absorb the impact. Not many people these days will take a chair flush to the noggin (Mick Foley being a notable exception, and he’s off his head anyway), for the very reason you mentioned: that shit hurts.

2 And secondly, what is the history behind Wrestling Society X? How did this start and fail so fast and do you know if they had any intention of being legit competition?

Wrestling Society X was a the brainchild of the gang at Big Vision Entertainment, who put out a ton of Indy DVDs each year. The series formerly aired on MTV in the US and the UK, and about a dozen other MTV outlets worldwide. MTV had previously been home to Sunday Night eat, which was initially conceived as a fusion of music and wrestling, which is what Big Vision wanted to do with WSX. Indeed several episodes of WSX started with or contained a musical performance, with some band members joining the commentary team after performing.

WSX was presented as a clandestine society of wrestling (think Fight Club) that took place in a venue referred to as the WSX Bunker, complete with a ring that looked older than Ric Flair and a grainy look similar to the old ECW shows. If I recall correctly, all matches were Falls Count Anywhere and most were hardcore. The presentation was a touch eccentric to say the least: it was not unusual to see plants in the audience to make it look like people cared and to rouse the crowd, piped-in crowd noise, all sorts of special effects, and even the camera shaking during high-impact beatings or the use of weaponry. The roster was made up largely of old WCW and ECW guys, a few Mexican/Puerto Rican guys and a whole bunch of RoH talent. And Teddy Hart.

To say the promotion started fast is not accurate, as it was in the works for a good long while before actually taping and hitting the air. Once all the wrinkles were smoothed over and tapings started, problems arose. A major problem was the contract that the talent were required to sign (essentially they had to sign for the whole season, regardless of whether or not the show stayed on the air), which cost them a couple of wrestlers. The hokey, contrived setting with the sound effects and over-the-top Japanese-style stipulations (exploding coffins, countdown timer exploding barbed wire cages…) turned off a lot off casual and technical fans, leaving a small group of wrestling addicts as the viewer base. This led to ratings that started off in Impact territory (1.0 the first week and 0.9 the second) and ended up in Hogan’s CCW territory (0.3 and 0.4 most weeks). It should be noted that the time slot (10:30pm EST) was not exactly a jumping slot for MTV before WSX (averaging a 0.1 rating). The commentary team was the worst I have ever heard, possibly even worse than a Michael Cole/Coach pairing. Combine this with Big Vision and MTV’s desire to run the show against the second half of ECW on a Tuesday and the fact that network execs were not really behind the project, and you can see why the whole promotion was destined for failure. After an incident where Ricky Banderas through a fireball at Vampiro, an incident deemed unfit to air by MTV, the death knell was sounded.

It certainly seems that, at least initially, WSX wanted to compete with ECW. If they had been successful then they may well have expanded to compete on more levels, but that’s something I guess we’ll never know.

From DCMxyzptlk, the supervillain whose name would win any game of Scrabble (if you could use proper nouns in Scrabble), comes a question about that money, money, yeah yeah:

With guaranteed downsides, merchandise revenues, and more contributing to wrestlers’ pay, does position on the cards/shows mean anything? For example, if Kane appears in the first match at Wrestlemania, will he get paid less than if he was in the fifth match (assuming it was the same exact match, no titles, gimmicks, etc)? If so, why aren’t more guys upset when they open the show, and why are some HUGE matches held at the start of Raw/Smackdown? If not, then wouldn’t more guys want to stay in the undercard where there’s less pressure and fewer high risk moves?

Your question has two answers. Position on the card for one TV taping is not going to change your pay, but it may change your PPV bonus. For example, if HHH curtain-jerks on SmackDown, he gets the same cash.
Although we are not generally privy to the contracts of the workers, I have heard tell of main event bonuses in some contracts, but in general they are not significant. This answers your question about having huge matches at the start of Raw or SmackDown. However, a performer who is constantly in the midcard or lower card will earn much less than a top guy. If a wrestler is to be pushed to the main event, it will often come with a new contract or a raise to reflect their increased importance to the company and the increased pressure of being the face of the brand. Quite often you will hear about guys who are dissatisfied with their role in the company, and it’s often because they feel they are underpaid. I don’t agree that being higher up the card means less high-risk moves, and neither does Jeff Hardy.

Darrel returns, and this time it’s…not personal at all actually. Some darn good questions nonetheless:

What’s good, peoples.  Love the site.  As a long time fan but someone that’s fell off a bit lately, it’s good to come in here to finally get long lost questioned answered.  If you don’t mind, I just have a few things to throw out there for you to tackle.

No, I don’t mind. It’s what they pay me for, after all. And by “pay me for”, I mean “make me do to ensure the survival of my first born”.
 
1)Thanks for answering my last set of questions.  One of them, however, I think i phrased wrong.  I asked your opinion on, if there was a single person who’s memorabilia was left behind to symbolize what wrestling was, who that person would be.  What i meant by that, though, was if there was one person who’s legacy would define wrestling, who would that person be?  I’ve had debates with friends over if it would be Hogan, Flair, Austin, HHH, etc.  Personally, I think it would be The Rock due to his many roles within the company (face, heel, tweener), the way he interacted with the crowd, and how he flipped that into a budding Hollywood career. What is your take?

As huge as The Rock was, he didn’t hold a candle to Hulk Hogan in terms of being a huge marketing machine, with everything from a Saturday morning cartoon to lunch boxes to a music video to feather boas. He’s normally the first name that gets mentioned in relation to pro wrestling, and nothing defined the hype and glitz better than his career. He was, and to an extent still is, the definition of showman. He was the superhero face, he was the evil chicken shit heel, he was the crowd-popping legend.
 
2)Again, thanks for putting me onto YouTube as a source to finding ole’ skool matches I totally forgot about.  With that said, has there been a time in the WWF/WWE where a heavyweight title has changed hands that wasn’t reshown on television?  The reason I ask is because, I have NEVER seen the Flair/Hart match in which he won the title for the first time.  WHY?  I can only imagine that this was a classic match that people were robbed of seeing.  Why and how did this happen?
 
I’m guessing by “shown on television” you’re including pay per view? Although I misinterpreted your last question, I think I have it right this time because pay per view main events RARELY get reshown on TV, even as clips. With that in mind, you’ve pretty much named the only occurrence. According to Both Bret and Ric, the title change in Saskatoon was NOT a good match and was done because Vince wanted to change the direction of the company to go with younger guys, and Ric exercised a clause in his contract that said that he could talk to WCW if he ever became unhappy with his spot in WWF. They decided to do the change right away rather than wait (Flair was hurt at this point too) and thus the rushed house show change. It wasn’t shown on TV because it wasn’t good, and because Vince didn’t want to give Ric Flair any more exposure on TV. Diesel also won the WWF title from Bob Backlund at a house show (in 8 seconds), but this was shown on TV shortly after (because it’s not hard to find room for 8 seconds).

3)I was amazed that Hot Rod never had the big boy’s belt around his waist in the WWE.  For some reason, I just assumed that he had the belt at least once.  So, I was definitely surprised when I found out her only had the IC title (and still think the match he had with Hart was a dam good match).  Question is, why was he never given the rock to run with?  I know Hogan basically held that era down, but, with the Yokozunas and various people to slip in there, wasn’t there at least one opportunity to have Hot Rod be the lead guy?  I know he was extremely over, had the Piper’s Pit, was into movies (although not that good).  So, I don’t get it.  Can you shed some light, please?

Sure! Piper suffered from the same problem as DiBiase, Rude and Jake: being over when Hogan was on top. Piper had everything needed to hold a major title, except for one thing – the physique of the Hulkster. Although a lot of people tout this as a fault of Vince McMahon, I would say in his defence that Hogan was 10 times the money machine that John Cena is, and to take the title off him and put it on someone who just didn’t appear to be a credible threat would have been sheer folly. McMahon was perfectly aware that Piper was over without the belt, so he never saw a reason to give it to him. By the time Hulkamania was dying down, Vince had the Ultimate Warrior to fall back on, and after him we were back to Hogan again. People like Yokozuna got a run because they were monsters, and having Hogan beat them made him look all the stronger for overcoming the immense odds against him.

A-Ron, who is not related to L. Ron but is the cousin of A-Rod, is looking for a logical explanation about something in the WWE. Make your own joke.

Hey Chris, your column is muy fantastica! Anyway, was it ever explained why CM Punk stopped using the Anaconda Vise shortly after he debuted on ECW?
 
It never was, and likely never will be. Submission finishers in general are on the outs in WWE right now, mainly because it makes the loser look worse if he has to give up due to excessive pain rather than get pinned for a three count. A pin can be considered lucky a lot easier than a tapout can. I will never understand this logic, since watching someone struggle and fight a submission hold that has put away countless people, only to finally succumb and tap, can do wonders for a person’s career. Right Stone Cold? Anyway, Punk just stopped using the Vise and started using the GTS, and we’re just supposed to accept it because we’re good boys and girls.

Adam has questions about Jericho controversy:

I remember shortly after Jericho’s release from WWE his website had a image of him in front of the TNA logo.  My question is has Jericho ever addressed this? Was it his idea to conjure up controversy?  Or was it just an unofficial fan site trying to stir something up? Thanks

As part of the new 411Mania Youth Initiative, I passed this question to my disciple, the ever-sober Michael O, who had this to say:

I distinctly recall Jericho talking about this during an interview sometime after it was confirmed that he would not be showing up in TNA any time soon. Y2J said something to the effect of wanting to mess with the online crowd that sweat his every move, though I’d say keeping his name on the lips and minds of fans was motivation as well. Mission accomplished on all fronts! Oh, look!  I do have proof:

According to an interview with Between the Ropes, Jericho said about the first time with the TNA logo, “When asked about the picture that appeared on his website displaying the TNA logo, Chris Jericho explained it to be a practical joke on his behalf. Jericho stated that while looking at message boards, he saw a lot of fans speaking as though they knew everything about him. Jericho put over the dedication and support of internet fans, but stated that he called his webmaster and told him to put the photo up as a joke so that he could watch the “shitstorm” unfold. Jericho stated that within hours, he was receiving calls from high ranking officials within both TNA and WWE.”

And they say smoking pot everyday messes with your memory. Now, back to Cook…

Good work, Grasshopper. Now I let the Michael O out of the hole. It puts the lotion on its skin!

Rommel has some…interesting questions:

Who is the oldest person to ever wrestle in WWE? What about the youngest?

The oldest is an easy one: Mae Young (85 years, 8 months) by a landslide. The oldest person to ACTIVELY compete in WWE is Ric Flair (59 years, 1 month). The oldest male to compete at all is Vince McMahon (62 years, 5 months), although Dusty Rhodes (61 years, 9 months at the Great American Bash 2007) and Terry Funk (19 days short of 62) come close. If you want to stretch the definition of “wrestled”, Iron Sheik came within a Jillian Hall “song” of owning the record when he and Nikolai Volkoff came out to wrestle the US Express on Raw this year and were interrupted by the songbird. What? Vultures are birds too!

The youngest is a very close race between Rene Dupree (19 years, 5 months) and Kelly Kelly (19 years, 5 months). However, Kelly Kelly was on TV for 2 or 3 months before actually wrestling.

Do wrestlers get in trouble for dating one another? What about dating people from other companies?

No, generally speaking both are fine. Companies tend to avoid getting involved in their employees’ private lives, and there are plenty of examples of both scenarios. Hurricane Helms is dating Velvet Sky (I know, I hate him too), Charlie Haas is married to Jackie Gayda (who was last seen in TNA), Mickie James was dating Kenny Dykstra, and of course there’s the whole Stephanie-HHH thing. Now I dare say that if Cena started tagging Dixie Carter or Stephanie had an affair with Jeff Jarrett there would be questions asked, and quite stiffly at that.

The Way I C It…

This week we go to Charles who seems to be something of a Trish Stratus fan:

1) In a hammerlock, when one guy grabs the arms and stands behind them, the guy who is in the move will often times slap his own shoulder. What is the purpose of this? Is it supposed to be some sort of signal to the other guy or is it supposed to relieve some pressure?

Kayfabe, it’s supposed to relieve pressure. In reality, it serves no purpose whatsoever except to sell the mild discomfort.

2) In this video, how often did this spot happen in Trish’s matches where the opponent would sort of delay her headscissors in the corner spot and pull up her pants? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSVjdrUN54k (2:21- 2:31) Was Victoria the only one who did that?

That’s the only time I’ve seen it, but it’s important to remember that it happened because that was a bra and panties match. There would be no reason to do it otherwise. By the way, I heartily endorse this product, service and/or perversion.

3) Also, how do you think Trish felt about what happened at how Mickie won the title from her? (counter to the Stratusfaction) She never mentioned it on TV, so are we supposed to think she was OK with it?

I would imagine she was fine with it, what with it being written into the script and her being close to retirement and all. Mickie was being groomed to be the new face of the women’s division, so Trish putting her over was a no-brainer and the correct way for her to do business. Besides, it couldn’t have been any worse than her stripping to her underwear and crawling around the ring barking like a dog.

Excuse me, I need a cold shower.

4) They probably couldn’t have done it since she was retiring soon later that year, but do ya think that would have been a good heel turn catalyst? Trish could’ve come out and said how violated she felt and how appalled she was the fans were cheering when she did that blah blah blah etc etc.

I think you’re overthinking it. Sure it COULD have led to a heel turn, and had it done so I would not have been offended in the slightest. All things considered, Trish got an unprecedented goodbye, winning the women’s title in her final match and retiring at the very top of her game. Don’t rule out a return at Mania 25, either.

OK folks that will do it for this week. I’ll be in tomorrow with Brace for Impact (guaranteed AJ Grey free), and you can also find Small, Bayani and Fact or Fiction. Coming next Tuesday is the return of The Way I C It! Until then, Stay Cool, Rock Hard.

Lansdellicious – Out.