Old School Observations/Questions Thread 2020-21

[King Kamala]

Slowly making my way through September '89 Prime Times on the Network. Man, I forgot what a hot feud Roddy Piper Vs Rick Rude & Bobby Heenan was. They really did a great job of making it seem like they hated each other's guts. Kind of wish they had strung it along till WrestleMania VI.

 

[Valeyard]

Yeah. You can swap Rude and Bad News at the Rumble, do a dumb finish at WM where Rude looks like a threat to Warrior and Piper doesn't job. It almost makes too much sense.

Bad News beating the fuck outta Snuka would've been better, anyway. They missed the boat HARD on him.

 

[Gert]

I do wonder how much of it was Bad News being difficult to deal with booking wise. Did he ever take a pinfall or submission loss on TV?

I do agree they did miss the boat on him, but I also wonder once he found out he wasn't going over Hogan or Savage in programs that he just wasn't interested in putting guys over and would be OK in lower feuds where he goes over or more non-finishes.

 

[BruiserBrody]

I do wonder how much of it was Bad News being difficult to deal with booking wise. Did he ever take a pinfall or submission loss on TV?

I do agree they did miss the boat on him, but I also wonder once he found out he wasn't going over Hogan or Savage in programs that he just wasn't interested in putting guys over and would be OK in lower feuds where he goes over or more non-finishes.

Hogan pinned him on SNME. The tease before the ad break was BNB going to get a snow shovel to use as a weapon. As a 7 year old, I was absolutely mortified.

You can imagine I am still in therapy over the end of the Genius SNME match.

---

Honestly, Bad News was older by the time he signed on in 1988, and he had a belly, which makes him being pushed/signed at all a bit of a surprise, since he was just chubby and not money drawing obese monster size.

JCP was already a clusterfuck in late 87, so signing there probably was not a hot option for BNB. However, had he waited a few weeks into Jan for Big Bubba to quit over Starrcade money, News could have been a solid choice to be Corny new bodyguard. Jim could have easily played up the legit judo background, and News would just have to stare menacingly in a suit.

 

[Valeyard]

Bad News just had the aura. He was a legit badass and didn't care who it was, he just hated everyone. Getting the IC title, dropping it to Kerry (who drops it to Perfect), then leaving would be my favorite potential scenario.

I don't know that he'd fit with JCP, although a program with Dusty would've been great. He'd have fit in Mid South perfectly, if things were different.

 

[snuffbox]

Booking a finish for Bad News-Duggan at WM 5 must've caused some headaches.

 

[LaParkaYourCar]

https://classicwrestlingreview.com/2020/09/13/summerslam-96/

Here's my review of WWF SummerSlam '96.

 

[alkeiper]

Bad News was 45 when he fought Hogan on SNME.

 

[King Kamala]

In another edition of TSM rebuking smark consensus of the late '90s/early '00s...Dusty Rhodes '89-'91 WWF run was actually good. Being #3 or #4 babyface in WWF was probably the best usage of Dusty at that stage in his career. I even enjoy the "Hey! Aren't you...?" vignettes of Dusty working crappy jobs now. It established Dusty's character in the cartoon-y world of Hulkamania era WWF.

 

[Valeyard]

Being 45 doesn't seem like as much of an old age at the time. Now him doing shoot-style in Japan, that was...a thing I watched.

Vince not letting Dusty be a Hulkamaniac pissed some money away. Fucking Hogan not even recognizing the common man.

 

[King Kamala]

I assume Hogan wanted Dusty to stay in his own lane so he wouldn't be outshone by someone with more charisma and who was a better promo.

 

[Valeyard]

Vince really didn't like Dusty, if I remember right. Hence the vignettes and polkadots and all that. But holy shit red and yellow polkadots.

 

[Dandy]

Virgil was called Virgil as a knock on Dusty. Yeah, Vince didn’t like him.

 

[King Kamala]

I don't doubt that maybe it was an attempt to shit on Dusty but Dusty selling the hell out of it made it work dammit!

 

[snuffbox]

He certainly had a strange way of showing his dislike for Dusty. 2 1/2 years making good money. Put over at Summerslam and Survivor Series 89. Had a good run in the 90 Rumble and was part of an angle on the undercard. Won at WM 6. Had a ton of onscreen time as part of two feuds at Summerslam 90. Captain of a losing team at the 90 Series but it was one of the most important matches ever. And lost at the 91 Rumble but was still on ppv right up to the end. And then was allowed on WCW ppv the next month.

 

[alkeiper]

Being 45 doesn't seem like as much of an old age at the time. Now him doing shoot-style in Japan, that was...a thing I watched.

Vince not letting Dusty be a Hulkamaniac pissed some money away. Fucking Hogan not even recognizing the common man.

Coage (Bad News) had a judo background, he was an Olympic medalist. Inoki in the late '70s was all in about getting real martial artists to do wrestling (where they would lose to Inoki, "King of Sports"). He's working guys like Yoshiaki Fujiwara and Seiji Sakaguchi a ton, so the shoot style is quite in his wheelhouse. It's to Coage's credit that he branched beyond that and became really a tremendous American style wrestler as well.

 

[alkeiper]

He certainly had a strange way of showing his dislike for Dusty. 2 1/2 years making good money. Put over at Summerslam and Survivor Series 89. Had a good run in the 90 Rumble and was part of an angle on the undercard. Won at WM 6. Had a ton of onscreen time as part of two feuds at Summerslam 90. Captain of a losing team at the 90 Series but it was one of the most important matches ever. And lost at the 91 Rumble but was still on ppv right up to the end. And then was allowed on WCW ppv the next month.

I think Vince liked Dusty. He just didn't see Dust as a main event talent. Ironically maybe we could consider Rhodes in a Jimmy Valiant role.

 

[snuffbox]

I agree, the Mr McMahon didnt like Dusty Rhodes theory doesn't make any sense to me. And I think he was right to not see him as a main eventer at that point. But a colorful upper midcard role in late-boom era WWF was a good way for Dusty to end his regular in ring career

 

[King Kamala]

I think shitting on him was a bad term but I think the polka dots and debut vignettes were gentle ribbing on Vince's part and IIRC have been confirmed as such by Bruce Prichard. Yeah but if Vince truly didn't like Dusty, he wouldn't have hired him in the first place and he definitely wouldn't have had him help run developmental in the early 2010s!

 

[Dandy]

I’ll have to disagree with you all. Vince has signed People he didn’t like before if he thought he could make money with them. I never said he outright hated him. I could never say for certain what he didn’t like about Dusty (physique/look?; his success without WWF?; turned the WWF down in the past?; viewed him as a major face of the competition?), but he clearly placed jabs at Dusty before he had ever worked for WWF. There was the aforementioned naming of the lackey of the gimmick based on Vince McMahon himself. There was also Akeem “The African Dream,” which was also a jab at Dusty, “The American Dream.” There may have been more, but those are two that have been confirmed.

I think Vince had his reasons and wanted to throw some ridicule at Dusty. I don’t think he was held down necessarily, or should have had some main events, but he was saddled with the polka dot gear and wasn’t allowed to work the microphone like he could have been. It seems like he was signed to see what money could be made from him and possibly to keep him from being used by the competition.

 

[King Kamala]

I doubt Big Dust ever made Vince's list of top ten favorite wrestlers but it's obvious he had a lot of respect for him (albeit maybe of the grudging variety). To paraphrase (IIRC) RFK talking about LBJ, Vince'd much rather have Dusty pissing outside of his tent then into it.

 

[snuffbox]

LBJ said that about Edgar Hoover. Robert Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson actually didn't like one another.

 

[King Kamala]

I should have known that but I've been reading all of the Rick Perlstein books leading up to the Reagan one coming out and all of that '60s/'70s US history is blurring together in my head.

 

[Valeyard]

It isn't that Vince didn't respect him, but that Dusty WAS Crockett. Dusty was legitimately running TV under Poochie rules at the time, watching it now. Every promo mentioned him, from Flair (which made sense) to guys like Brad Armstrong. If Flair jumped in '88, I wonder if he makes a play for Dusty anyway and if so how it would've changed the Turner purchase.

Black Saturday started so much, in hindsight. He did say they'd choke on that million dollars.

 

[Valeyard]

Coage (Bad News) had a judo background, he was an Olympic medalist. Inoki in the late '70s was all in about getting real martial artists to do wrestling (where they would lose to Inoki, "King of Sports"). He's working guys like Yoshiaki Fujiwara and Seiji Sakaguchi a ton, so the shoot style is quite in his wheelhouse. It's to Coage's credit that he branched beyond that and became really a tremendous American style wrestler as well.

In theory, it's great, but it's another case of him missing a window. If he'd gone to Japan during the Maeda '80s boom it's one thing, but watching a Bad News in his late fifties getting grapplefucked by guys like Takada was sad to watch. He didn't even look like he wanted to be there, which is understandable.

 

[alkeiper]

In theory, it's great, but it's another case of him missing a window. If he'd gone to Japan during the Maeda '80s boom it's one thing, but watching a Bad News in his late fifties getting grapplefucked by guys like Takada was sad to watch. He didn't even look like he wanted to be there, which is understandable.

Still beats getting shit on by Andre

 

[BruiserBrody]

Virgil was called Virgil as a knock on Dusty. Yeah, Vince didn’t like him.

He disliked him so much that he gave Dusty the chance to earn the highest wage of his career (Rhodes himself admitted the WWF run was his biggest money years in his book IIRC)

Technically, Troy T Tyler, and Mike Davis did Dusty parodies years before Akeem and Virgil were inside jabs. Different but similar in nature.

 

[snuffbox]

Some people show their dislike in strange ways.

 

[BUTT]

I'm sure Vince thought it was funny that Dusty hated wearing the polka dots, but I can also imagine him looking at this 44-year-old obese man in plain black trunks, knowing that he was popular but not understanding why, and thinking "he looks boring. He needs a gimmick!"

Dusty's charisma carried him throughout his WWF run but it was clear the company didn't really understand the character. He was the American Dream because he overcame his working-class background and achieved fame and fortune as a world-class athlete. In WWF he was just a poor person who worked a bunch of odd jobs. Not my idea of the American dream...

 

[Valeyard]

I like Vince hearing the Hard Times promo and just thinking Dusty was a fat common man loser with a plumber for a dad and who can't deal with modern times.