WWF New Generation Thread III

[BruiserBrody]

I don't buy any of this for one second as it just doesn't make sense...

DX WERE THE HEELS so how the hell does the Hart Foundation turning on Bret help DX? It just puts over Davey Boy, Jim Neidhart, and Owen and doesn't further any real future angles.

#1: It takes away the whole motivation of OWEN vs. SHAWN... Shawn was gloating he ran Bret out of the WWF and broke up the Hart Foundation. Owen came back to seek revenge on Shawn for what he did and how he/the WWF screwed Bret Hart out of the WWF Title. Simple.
#2: Are DBS/Neidhart/Owen now faces? Heels? As a WWF fan, who cares that they turned on Bret when Bret's now in WCW and can't get revenge on any of them? It's not like DBS/Neidhart can run into a WCW event and beat up Bret either if they're still on WWF TV. It's also zero chance that Shawn or DX would "defend" Bret's honor and have Owen feud with Shawn over that to keep Owen a heel in this scenario while trying to make Shawn/DX into faces.
#3: What do DBS and Neidhart do now? They ran Bret out of the WWF. Do they try to go with an angle where they run other wrestlers out of the WWF? Do they just become heels who gloat how they ran Bret out of the WWF?... okay. Like a Steve Austin or Undertaker or Mankind gives a shit in-character wise. Hell, Austin would be so pissed he wasn't the one that ran Bret out of the WWF.
#4: I can't emphasize this enough, Bret is in WCW. At best, you've now given your audience a legitimate reason to tune into WCW (your mortal enemy) to see what Bret says/how he reacts to his family turning on him and sending him to WCW. I don't buy the WWF fans suddenly cheering the rest of the Hart Foundation and making them faces to then continue the Owen/Shawn, etc. stuff that followed.

1-2> Bret vs Shawn at SSeries was already heel vs heel at SSeries. My thought process was an indignant Owen can now hold it over Shawn that the Hart Foundation are the reason that Shawn is champ. They can continue the faction warfare for a month or so until 1998 when Tyson/Austin kicks off the Austin/Shawn program.
3 - I put my HHH/Bulldog idea in the earlier post. Neidhart is not really a draw or needed other than for the numbers game, so you could do a double cross where Neidhart fucks Owen and joins DX at the Dec PPV, only for DX to beat him down and send him off like what happened IRL on RAW. That gives Owen an excuse to get a rematch at the Feb IYH and he can use his recent past issues with Austin to play up his credibility in the Austin/Tyson Mania build.
4- Bret went to WCW IRL in a major way that caused them to build the next several weeks around Bret anyway (the Neidhart stuff, the Bret midget, Vince's promos) so the audience had a reason to see Bret respond once he got to WCW anyway.

 

[HarleyQuinn]

Good points. I think part of my issue is that while Bret/Shawn was a "heel vs. heel" match on paper, as a fan at the time I didn't really view it as a heel/heel match. It took place in Montreal and Bret was the face of that match. Again, DX doing the Anvil/Midget stuff was precisely built around Shawn gloating that he "ran Bret Hart out of the WWF," which vanishes if the HF turn on Bret (I'd assume during the match. If done post-match, it could work but feels weird if we're still using the whole screwjob scenario.... urgh.)

Owen seeking revenge on Shawn for Bret (then Neidhart) was an easy, simple, natural story. If Owen tries to hold the HF being the reason Shawn is champion, is the aim to make Shawn & DX the babyfaces? Is Owen the heel in that feud? I can't really buy Owen being able to continue to carry Canada vs. USA torch especially if he/DBS/Anvil just turned on Bret Hart of all people. If you have the HF turn on Bret just because he's jumping to WCW, that kind of sullies the Canada support IMO. A simpler story reason could be HF turning on Bret by saying he's abandoning his fans in Canada to go to the South in WCW and that could keep Owen/DBS/Anvil as faces in Canada at least but I don't know how much Canadian fans would care about that. Remember the mega heel heat when Shawn teased Bret's return on that one Raw from like 2007?

I do like the Bulldog/Triple H concept though.

I just feel like even in that period, Vince is still very much a Face vs. Heel match style head figure. My big issue is whether Owen/DBS/Anvil come out of that as faces or heels on paper because a lot of their "face" reaction is explicitly tied with Canada vs. USA situation. I mean, Owen eventually becomes part of the Nation and gets thrown into the Nation/DX stuff post-WM 14.

One other factor is we're assuming Shawn still injures his back at Royal Rumble and can't go at the February IYH so that would also nullify the Shawn/Owen "re-match" idea unless you do Shawn/Owen at the Rumble instead but you're still trying to book towards Shawn/Austin at WM 14 so if Bulldog/Triple H is in the plans, where is Owen by WM 14? If Anvil turns on him, you can't do an Owen/Anvil tag team vs. New Age Outlaws match.

 

[King Kamala]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1556409859855319040

 

[King Kamala]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1556651982647074817

 

[Valeyard]

I love Monsoon keeping it real.

 

[King Kamala]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1556705850521255938

 

[Valeyard]

I won't lie though: he also said once that he was into Nickelback before everyone else was and I never quite saw him the same.

 

[King Kamala]

A few months back, Brody was criticizing WCW for promoting Burt Reynolds movies on Nitro but WWF was airing random ass clips of Burt Reynolds signing copies of his book a few years earlier.

(not to mention him drunkenly ring announcing the main event for WMX)

 

[BruiserBrody]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1557118367923933184

Given the era, women weren't going to draw. Bret was having a hard enough time getting fans to the arenas and the business was sliding downward.
We recognized that Bull vs Blayze was a good match at Summerslam and the night after WM, but that doesn't mean they were going to move any tickets.
I'm not sure a woman moved any PPV buys pre 2015 or whatever other than Sable promising her bounty would be spilled over in her T and A matches with Luna and Jackie. And that was just a bonus to whatever Steve Austin was doing on top.

 

[alkeiper]

Thinking through it, that Bull Nakano got as far as she did is absolutely remarkable.

 

[King Kamala]

Yeah, considering women's wrestling had been an afterthought if not entirely non-existent in WWF since Wendi Richter got shoved out of the company almost a decade earlier, it really is a minor miracle that the Alundra Blayze-Bull Nakano feud happened. It's really too bad there was no consistent followup on it for the next 20 years.

 

[alkeiper]

The company tried to find a replacement for Richter. TNT had promos for women like Lisa Sliwa. Sherri Martel got a run with the belt. They used the Jumping Bomb Angels. Then Rockin' Robin. But it feels like the philosophy was only to push womens wrestling if a suitable talent existed. TBH, I don't necessarily disagree with that strategy. I'll forever note that WWF still pushed women harder than virtually any old school territory or promoter. The pity is after Alundra WWF let the division go to pot.

 

[King Kamala]

Yeah. JCP/WCW never pushed women with any regularity. Even when they had access to a lot of the best women's wrestlers in the world in '96-'97, they barely used them.

I think what isn't brought up enough RE: Madusa throwing the WWF Women's title in the trash on Nitro was that WCW didn't really do much of anything with their own Women's division after that. Madusa's most memorable feud during her 2nd WCW run was probably against Col. Robert Parker!

 

[Epic Springs]

I mentioned in another thread but it's hilarious how quickly WCW bailed on their woman's division. From the inceptual champion to the final champion's last defense, the entire division lasted a whopping 6 months.

That's another question for our boardmates - which championship had the shortest tenure?

 

[King Kamala]

WCW Light Heavyweight Championship lasted less than a year before Bill Watts retired it.

No, wait. It'd kind of have to be WCW Cruiserweight Tag Team Titles, right? They crowned the first champions on the last PPV then the company was bought by WWE a few days later. I get why WWE didn't pick up the titles but it'd have been fun to see Kaientai as title contenders!

 

[HarleyQuinn]

I mentioned in another thread but it's hilarious how quickly WCW bailed on their woman's division. From the inceptual champion to the final champion's last defense, the entire division lasted a whopping 6 months.

That's another question for our boardmates - which championship had the shortest tenure?

I remember initially being excited due to WCW's relationship with Japan in that era no less but, much like WWF, it just never did anything.

In retrospect, I feel like WWF was kind of caught in-between eras. They had moved on from the hair pulling/hair toss style and Joshi was in its golden age in Japan (imagine the Joshi stars in WWF at the time!) but Vince was never really going to pull for that style of women's wrestling or push them in the WWF either. A lot of the potential women's roster at the time was very limited American worker-wise outside of older vets like Sherri Martel/Luna Vachon or possibly unknowns like Jacqueline but I feel like Vince would've kept it at a core 3-4 wrestlers maybe if that.

It still took until 2000/2001 for a real division to start being built and even then you still had Mud Bath matches, Bra & Panties matches, etc. intertwined with the legitimate matches.

 

[King Kamala]

I remember initially being excited due to WCW's relationship with Japan in that era no less but, much like WWF, it just never did anything.

In retrospect, I feel like WWF was kind of caught in-between eras. They had moved on from the hair pulling/hair toss style and Joshi was in its golden age in Japan (imagine the Joshi stars in WWF at the time!) but Vince was never really going to pull for that style of women's wrestling or push them in the WWF either.

See thing is they did bring in some Joshi stars in the Fall of '95 but then Alundra Blayze left and they gave up completely entirely on the division until the late '90s.

 

[BruiserBrody]

IIRC Bull appeared in tag matches on Prime Time Wrestling in 1986ish when they did a random WWF loop.
--
In addition to Blayze bailing out before her Rumble match with Aja Kong, isn't the story that Vince freaked out when Kong smashed open the nose of her RAW opponent after Survivor Series?
Which reminds me that WCW brought in Japan women for their Nov PPV too, just to make sure Vince didn't stay unique.
The Apters pushed the Jumping Bomb Angels hard in late 87-early 88 when WWF used them. They were doing MOVEZ before that was a real draw here.
--

Regarding shortest titles, Corny says Nick Gulus would just make up a bunch of champions for a big "Night of Champions" event to pop a house.
IIRC SuperClash 1 in Chicago in 85 had the Baba, Jumbo and Tenryu trio listed as some Asia 6 man champions that didn't exist (and IIRC no titles to boot).

 

[alkeiper]

Did Blayze leave or did WWF let her deal expire?

 

[King Kamala]

Wikipedia says WWE released her as part of financial cutbacks in December of ‘95.


If the true, why the H would they not ask for the title back?

 

[BruiserBrody]

Based on Conrad and others collections, it seems a lot of promotions let guys just have the belts. (Schiavone randomly has/had a WCW six man title in his attic for instance). Conrad has most of the mid 80s JCP titles and Macho Man's IC belt, among others. They were on display at Starrcast.

Vince or whatever stooge did the axing probably didn't give a fuck about a piece of leather until Easy E had it on Nitro. A big oops on WWF's part.
"GAWD DAMN IT JR! WHY DIDN'T YOU GET THE BELT FROM THAT BROAD!?!?"

Wikipedia says WWE released her as part of financial cutbacks in December of ‘95.


If the true, why the H would they not ask for the title back?

,

 

[Valeyard]

Just wanna shame ppl for not correcting the "ching chong chinamen music" as being used exclusively by Japanese wrestlers and how dare you all.

 

[Valeyard]

But for real I think they didn't ask Madusa for the belt back because it had never been an issue before. Inoki didn't do them dirty with the Martial Arts title or anything.

 

[King Kamala]

Just wanna shame ppl for not correcting the "ching chong chinamen music" as being used exclusively by Japanese wrestlers and how dare you all.

The Orient Express music was clearly based on the Oriental Riff, which was just generically all Asian (and used in Hollywood for East Asians of all ethnicities)

Oriental riff - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

The writer of the tweet kind of told on themselves with the Ching Chong Chinamen part. Not to say that the Orient Express theme wasn't racist just that it's not specifically Chinese!

Remember when someone used classic WWF themes for the bridal party entrance of their wedding like 10 years ago and they used the Orient Express theme for the Asian couple?

 

[King Kamala]

Interesting timing on this Alundra Blayze, I just saw on Facebook that she asked some hack comedian I kind of know secondhand to open up her stand up/spoken word tour she's doing this fall.

 

[Valeyard]

Oriental...which was just generically all Asian

 

[King Kamala]

WWF House Show « Events Database « CAGEMATCH - The Internet Wrestling Database

Internet Wrestling Database

www.cagematch.net

I found the most NewGen match ever (or at least a solid #2...heh behind the Good Housekeeping match between TL Hopper and Duke The Dumpster Droese). A six man tag between Isaac Yankem DDS, Kama, and Skip Vs Hakushi, Barry Horowitz, and Doink The Clown.

Also kind of amazed Doink almost made it to '96! Cagematch said it was the Steve Lombardi version so I'm guessing there was a last minute dropout since Doink hadn't been on TV since October.

Also somehow until the past year or so, I never realized how much face Doink reminds me of Binky The Clown. cc @The Franchise

 

[Valeyard]

A sleepwalking Bret/Taker match in 1995 could be pretty bad. I'd risk it though.

 

[King Kamala]

Well if you were wondering if their match at Royal Rumble '96 could get more boring then I have the match for you!

 

[Valeyard]

That's such a weird match. Sometimes I watch it and really like it, other times I hate it. I think if it didn't close the show it would be better recieved.

Even though I knew better, I worried as a kid that Bret's awesome quickfast legdrop would crush Taker's face even more.