I can never fully get my mind around Demolition’s 1990 heel turn. Like, it seems like it was effective, but it also seems so half-baked. They win the titles as babyfaces to one of the biggest pops of WrestleMania VI (I feel like their win and then the Andre/Heenan post-match had the crowd going more than anything prior to the main event), and then weeks later the turn begins.
“We’re turning you heel.”
“Oh. Weird; okay. How?”
“You’ll add a third member.”
“Oh…uhh, what does the third member do?”
“Wrestles. I mean, he’s just there, same as you guys.”
“Is there more to it than that?”
“No, but the babyface announcers will talk shit about you on commentary. It will be fine.”
Again, it felt like the crowd quickly accepted - in part probably a testament to how over The Hart Foundation were as babyfaces - but it’s just a difficult turn to even explain.
Debuting Dustin Rhodes in WWF by giving him a match with Ted DiBiase where the goal was to simply still be alive after 10 minutes always seemed like a really ill-conceived idea. Like, the mission is put him over as “not a complete joke”?
I wouldn’t have been a fan of this result either exactly, but once you’ve booked yourself into that match, you need to swerve the audience by actually having Dustin pull a flash pin out of nowhere during the 10th minute.
I appreciate the viciousness of “The Self-Destruction of the Ultimate Warrior” doc, but I’m forever annoyed by the part where Vince talks about Warrior holding him up for more money before SummerSlam '91, then mentions (paraphrasing), “I paid him that extra money afterward, by the way. I had absolutely no obligation to follow through on that, but that’s me. I gave him my word.”
Yeah, that’s not how that works. If you entered into an oral contract in which you agreed that you would pay X amount to get Warrior to perform at that event, you do owe it. If you wish to withhold the money, you will be liable for breach of contract. Could he claim that the contract was invalid by reason of duress? Maybe. For that matter, maybe he could even countersue to recover damages. But he would put himself on the hook to litigate all of that, which would also invariably cost him a bunch of money. The notion that he sets forth that he paid out as agreed because he just has so much integrity was always nauseating. Seemed like it came out of the same self-unaware playbook that caused him to sit down for a semi-shoot interview after the Montreal Screwjob to explain how he was actually the good guy in that scenario.
It did always used to seem like dirty pool by the wrestlers who you would hear of using leverage to hold shows hostage to get additional payouts, but the more I learn over the years of Vince’s ridiculously scammy “independent contractors who he had exclusive control over” business model, the more benefit of the doubt I extend to wrestlers who played hardball with him.
Watching the Big Boss Man cut promos about how he’s just so furious that Bobby Heenan would insult his mother - which was the entire basis for a feud that went on for months - is an underrated source of secondhand embarrassment. Once in a while, they would just go with something as bad as that or maybe “I’m so mad that the pirate stole my jacket. Grrr.”
I’m a big AEW fan but man I could really go for a PPV with like 5 fewer matches. I know 4 of these are pre-show but still, not every PPV needs to be a 4.5 hour slog.
Right. And that was with the Run DMC segment and the interminable, awful Brother Love/Roddy Piper/Morton Downey Jr. thing.
The key was not running overlong matches with overlong entrances where everyone had to get all of their shit in. The number of matches never really felt like a burden.
I looked at WMV earlier today as part of another Forbidden Door discussion. Every match except Savage/Hogan was 10 minutes or less. But because every match Tony puts on has to be a competitive “banger”, I’m going to wake up tomorrow morning and Forbidden Door will still be going.
Big names like Jay White come in and have a bunch of near 50/50 matches with duds and they already look weak as fuck a month in and I’ve completely lost interest.
AEW does have an insane amount of talent, but as long as TK is the booker they will never reach half of their potential. They usually have 2-3 excellent PPVs a year, so I’ll keep watching those, but it’d take some big changes to get me back to watching the weekly product.
re: Forbidden Door, it was slightly above average imo. Swerve match was great and a few others were pretty good. Mercedes Moné looked off, but Vaquer looks amazing and would love to see more of her.
Jericho extends his streak of having the worst match on the show to 10 PPVs.
I always think it’s a wonderful time capsule that WM VIII opened with (pretty new heel and singles wrestler) Shawn Michaels over Tito Santana in Santana’s final WrestleMania singles match. If just watching the WrestleManias, it would be a cool checkpoint in the Shawn Michaels story. A few years of tag matches, then he’s turned heel and wrestling solo in the opener, then the following two years he’s in the IC title matches followed by consecutive world title matches.
Of course, Tito might have beaten him if his sister Arriba McEntire had just stayed at ringside to support him.
