WWF New Generation Thread III

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

Del Ray's behavior outside the ring ruins him for me but yeah he made the team. It's too bad the Prichard-Lane version didn't get the WWF gig instead.

Finding out he was a rapist was jarring at first but then one of those “I should have known it all along.” Kind of like Louis CK being outed for wanking in front of unwilling women after years of talking about how he was a creep.

Gigolo Jimmy Del Ray and Louis CK: my two disgraced, poorly facial haired ginger icons

 

[Valeyard]

Gigolo's legacy to me is the match with Shawn that led to Shawn showin' off the pube line and pissing Bret off.

 

[Sex Machine Gun]

Goddammit, I gotta stop becoming a mark for... well, everyone seemingly.

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

Hope you’re not a big Tatanka fan!

 

[Sex Machine Gun]

I was when I was a kid maybe, but not as a snarky adult.

 

[BruiserBrody]

I was when I was a kid maybe, but not as a snarky adult.

Tatanka got renewed love for his SD! run in the early 2000s

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https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1704475359423451347

A little odd. His whole run here was a MSG show (vs Brian Christopher of all people (in 93!) and a RAW squash match, followed by the IC battle royal.

Vince also plugs it as "One night only" despite Snuka being on for 2 shows. Maybe they did something to set up Snuka getting a battle royal spot?

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

Lumberjack match with Cactus Jack aside, Snuka never seemed averse to doing jobs after ‘89 but I bet he made some sort of deal with Vince for those appearances. “I’ll be in your battle royal, Vinnie but put me over before, brudda.” Plus that Snuka squash aired before the IC Title battle royal so it gave him a smidge more cred for the 1993 fan.

It was just one TV taping and one MSG show so you can’t really say it was that much more than one night only.

 

[Valeyard]

For some reason I always assumed ECW Snuka was a pain in the ass, too.

Snuka getting a win to be a reasonably credible warm body for that battle royal when the roster was so thin is fine. He was one of the most recognizable names available. Should've gotten Snuka/Gonzalez though.

 

[SuperMachine#1]

Fun fact: the Quebecers winning the tag belts was the very first TV title change I ever saw and since they won by DQ, I wondered why all title matches after that ended in DQ didn't change the titleholder. I guess I chose to ignore that their match had special rules.

Del Ray's behavior outside the ring ruins him for me but yeah he made the team. It's too bad the Prichard-Lane version didn't get the WWF gig instead.

Prichard bores me to tears but man the Bodies and Bodydonnas were fun for what they were. I despised the Bodies as a kid and the Bodydonnas had no business being good in that division.

Del Ray's behavior outside the ring ruins him for me but yeah he made the team. It's too bad the Prichard-Lane version didn't get the WWF gig instead.

Prichard bores me to tears but man the Bodies and Bodydonnas were fun for what they were. I despised the Bodies as a kid and the Bodydonnas had no business being good in that division.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1699512799389704194

With Superstars leaving syndication in September, this became perhaps my favorite angle that I never actually saw unfold in real time (disregarding historical stuff). I was desperately trying to keep up by reading the Apters, WWF and RAW magazines, but it would be Wrestlemania season before I actually saw the Sultan wrestle. So I was probably the last (only?) Sultan mark. (And with limited internet at the time I didn't know it was Fatu).

I loved all the Psycho Bob stuff and teaming him with Sheik to train a super athlete seemed great in my head, given their history.

Originally The Sultan gimmick was made for Sabu,but he turned it down and they stuck Fatu in the gimmick.

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

For some reason I always assumed ECW Snuka was a pain in the ass, too.

Tod Gordon says he was incredibly easy to work with in his book but I guess Snuka would have a positive relationship with the guy signing his checks and smoking him up.

Portrayal of Snuka is way way too positive and silly for a book released in 2023. I don’t think Nancy Argentino is brought up at all. It’d be annoying but fine except later in the book, Tod goes on an impassioned rant about how Chris Benoit is scum and WWE was right to erase him from its history.

Maybe I am expecting too much morality wise though for people that ran ECW though.

 

[Valeyard]

I mean, I tend to doubt Tod or anyone brought up the whole murder thing in conversation in 1993. It doesn't seem relevant to matches with Tony Stetson.

 

[BruiserBrody]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1706315402643439804

I don't think I realized they were this far along. Anything past early Sept 96 is virgin soil for me as they stopped syndication,

Time to waste time watching WWF now that Hospice AWA is done

 

[Valeyard]

I think the last first run Superstars I watched had a Taker/HOG main event. When it went to USA I didn't want another show to watch, since I was that idiot who watched all the recap shows too because you never knew when exclusive content would happen.

 

[BUTT]

At least we can finally relive the Honky Tonk Man’s inexplicable return to WWF via backstage inset promo. Also Stone Cold losing to Joey Abs.

 

[Valeyard]

That sweet run between Ringmaster and Dibiase leaving where he just said lame sadistic things to show how stone cold he was is why he became the star he did.

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

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The Hart Foundation Explodes matches must have been pretty forgettable for it to never happen as a PPV match or at least on RAW. I know there is one on one of the Unreleased sets that I haven’t watched.

 

[Valeyard]

You'd think that Bret would be determined to give Anvil the best match ever, too.

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

I think that’s a sign of how bad Anvil was as a singles wrestler if 1994 Bret Hart couldn’t get a serviceable match out of him. If it was even passable, it would have been thrown on a Coliseum Video at least.

 

[SuperMachine#1]

You'd think that Bret would be determined to give Anvil the best match ever, too.

Bret always dogged it on house shows was lazy when there wasn't live ppv,cameras,or live tv. He phoned it in.

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

I don’t think having good matches on WWE house shows was a common occurrence until like ‘00/‘01 when Jericho, Angle and Radicalz showed up. A Kurt Angle/Edge main event I saw in ‘02 was first house show match I remember thinking “Wow. That was just as good as something on TV.”

Even now I would never dog on a wrestler for not going balls out for an untelevised event. I don’t expect Sami Zayn to give the same effort for me and 3,000 people in Portland, Maine as he would for a PLE or even a RAW. Modern wrestlers just have a more exciting version of doing more with less than ‘80s-‘90s wrestlers. Sorry @BruiserBrody.

 

[alkeiper]

I think Anvil in ‘94 was just on such a lower level than Bret that fans weren’t buying it. Nothing they did was going to get crowd heat.

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

Yeah, Anvil Vs Bret might have worked in 1991 but they went on separate paths when the Foundation broke up and they made Neidhart a color commentator.

 

[Valeyard]

I mean I never would've bought Anvil winning but that it didn't happen at all is wild. That's such a layup of a TV main event with a built in bullshit finish to build to something much better.

Bret phoning it in when it not mattering is of course fact but I'd have just expected Bret would see giving Anvil a great match as a personal challenge. It seems like a very Bret thing: show how good he is to make people get tears in their eye while giving someone he likes (but looks down on) a classic.

 

[alfdogg]

https://x.com/ovppodcast/status/1708149706315174160

 

[Fall of Epic]

WWE thinking they can do a Millie Vanillie angle in 1996 is hilarious.

 

[Valeyard]

I remember thinking that was so stupid. Why should I like the guy who sang a stupid song that everyone spent months burying for being stupid? Besides dude fucked Razor over a bunch of times, why would I ever back that person.

 

[HarleyQuinn]

I mean I never would've bought Anvil winning but that it didn't happen at all is wild. That's such a layup of a TV main event with a built in bullshit finish to build to something much better.

Bret phoning it in when it not mattering is of course fact but I'd have just expected Bret would see giving Anvil a great match as a personal challenge. It seems like a very Bret thing: show how good he is to make people get tears in their eye while giving someone he likes (but looks down on) a classic.

They did have the tag match on the 11/7/94 Monday Night Raw, which they had been doing for a while at house shows. Presumably with the IYH PPVs starting in May of 1995, there could have been a random Bret/Neidhart main event at some point but IIRC Neidhart was fired at the end of December due to no-showing events.

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

I remember thinking that was so stupid. Why should I like the guy who sang a stupid song that everyone spent months burying for being stupid? Besides dude fucked Razor over a bunch of times, why would I ever back that person.

The only reason they did it was because Jeff Jarrett had just debuted in WCW with a big babyface push and they wanted to make him look like a dumbass.

Little did they know, Jeff Jarrett could do a pretty good job of that on his own.

 

[Valeyard]

But they were intending on doing that anyway, though. Wasn't the plan initially going to be a Jarrett/Road Dogg feud over who sang the shitty song, only for Jarrett to bail and them retooling the whole thing into a "push" for Road Dogg? It just doesn't make sense, especially to a kid who despised both of them (but mostly Jarrett). They spent months playing and burying that fucking song, why would anyone want to take credit for it and still be a face? And they didn't even pull the trigger until Jarrett was officially gone, if I remember, so it was months later when it didn't matter in the slightest.

I wonder what they expected from Road Dogg, too. Did they expect this to get him over and be a star at any point? Like I can see Vince thinking it would make him a big star at the time the same way he thought/thinks Mighty Mouse will make someone a star.

 

[BruiserBrody]

But they were intending on doing that anyway, though. Wasn't the plan initially going to be a Jarrett/Road Dogg feud over who sang the shitty song, only for Jarrett to bail and them retooling the whole thing into a "push" for Road Dogg? It just doesn't make sense, especially to a kid who despised both of them (but mostly Jarrett). They spent months playing and burying that fucking song, why would anyone want to take credit for it and still be a face? And they didn't even pull the trigger until Jarrett was officially gone, if I remember, so it was months later when it didn't matter in the slightest.

I wonder what they expected from Road Dogg, too. Did they expect this to get him over and be a star at any point? Like I can see Vince thinking it would make him a big star at the time the same way he thought/thinks Mighty Mouse will make someone a star.

Jarrett and Roadie vanished July 95..... Road Dog singing reveal vignette is the same night that Fake Razor debuts at the end of JR's rant IIRC.