Jump to content
DVDVR Message Board

The Old School Questions thread

Mr Harms

By Mr Harms
in The PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING

 Share

Recommended Posts

J.H.

J.H.

Posted
Posted

The Mero = Savage analogy is fascinating because while the Mero/Sable dynamic was a talented worker with  hot wife got crowd reactions, Mero was never as an intense a personality as Savage was. Mero had the look but not the intangible crazy factor Savage had. Even as a face Savage felt like he could snap at any moment. He was dynamic and exciting... Mero never felt 1/10000th as exciting as Savage was no matter how hard he was pushed pre-injury

James

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Peck

Peck

Posted
Posted
24 minutes ago, J.H. said:

The Mero = Savage analogy is fascinating because while the Mero/Sable dynamic was a talented worker with  hot wife got crowd reactions, Mero was never as an intense a personality as Savage was. Mero had the look but not the intangible crazy factor Savage had. Even as a face Savage felt like he could snap at any moment. He was dynamic and exciting... Mero never felt 1/10000th as exciting as Savage was no matter how hard he was pushed pre-injury

James

Was going to say Savage had the benefit of cocaine but then I realized I think Mero did too.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
J.H.

J.H.

Posted
Posted

But by all accounts, cocaine or not, everything I've read says that WAS Savage in and out of the ring. His intensity and force of personality was legit and not a character. If that wasn't the case and Savage just worked the entire world into believing that then he would be, hands down, the greatest professional wrestler of all time (and an argument can already be made for that)

James

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
MADCAP

MADCAP

Posted
Posted

Does anyone know if there's a backstory to Moolah squashing Velvet McIntyre at Wrestlemania 2? That just seemed...unnecessary. It's not like Moolah was wrestling Donna Christianello or anything. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
zev

zev

Posted
Posted
39 minutes ago, MADCAP said:

Does anyone know if there's a backstory to Moolah squashing Velvet McIntyre at Wrestlemania 2? That just seemed...unnecessary.

Good question. I've read and heard everything from "needed more time for the battle royal" to "Velvet had a wardrobe malfunction so they went home early." Personally, I think Moolah just wanted a squash to make up for not being in the match against Richter at Mania 1. Shame really, could've had Velvet win the title, establish a new babyface, and then a year and a half later have her in a series of matches against Sherri Martel.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
PetrolCB

PetrolCB

Posted
Posted
10 hours ago, MADCAP said:

Does anyone know if there's a backstory to Moolah squashing Velvet McIntyre at Wrestlemania 2? That just seemed...unnecessary. It's not like Moolah was wrestling Donna Christianello or anything. 

Moolah was a terrible person, yet got her way because of her "fame".

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Matt D

Matt D

Posted
Posted
8 hours ago, PetrolCB said:

Moolah was a terrible person, yet got her way because of her "fame".

Fame = "knowing where the bodies were hidden, serving as a surrogate mother figure for Vince, and/or supplying "girls" for the male wrestlers?" (allegedly)

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Swift

Swift

Posted
Posted

Dusty and the polka dots...

My understanding is that it was some kind of belittling of Rhodes, but that may just have been something I heard once and ended up taking as the truth. So what was the deal there? Why did Dusty go to WWF? Why did Vince dress him in polka dots? Did Vince sign him solely to embarrass him? Didn't Dusty have enough pull in the business to nix the idea?

Or was there no animosity and it was all mutually agreed upon?

Link to comment
Share on other sites
cwoy2j

cwoy2j

Posted
Posted
16 minutes ago, Cameron Swift said:

Dusty and the polka dots...

My understanding is that it was some kind of belittling of Rhodes, but that may just have been something I heard once and ended up taking as the truth. So what was the deal there? Why did Dusty go to WWF? Why did Vince dress him in polka dots? Did Vince sign him solely to embarrass him? Didn't Dusty have enough pull in the business to nix the idea?

Or was there no animosity and it was all mutually agreed upon?

Dusty was pushed out as a booker in late 88 and he didn't do himself any favors when he did a giant bladejob on tv right after the Turner people issued a no blood edict on tv. THe angle where the Road Warriors stuck a spike in his eye.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Kuetsar

Kuetsar

Posted
Posted
4 hours ago, Matt D said:

Fame = "knowing where the bodies were hidden, serving as a surrogate mother figure for Vince, and/or supplying "girls" for the male wrestlers?" (allegedly)

Included with that is making Hogan in prime look cooperative. . .  

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Spritenaut 32

Spritenaut 32

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Cameron Swift said:

Dusty and the polka dots...

My understanding is that it was some kind of belittling of Rhodes, but that may just have been something I heard once and ended up taking as the truth. So what was the deal there? Why did Dusty go to WWF? Why did Vince dress him in polka dots? Did Vince sign him solely to embarrass him? Didn't Dusty have enough pull in the business to nix the idea?

Or was there no animosity and it was all mutually agreed upon?

On a shoot interview (Kayfave Memories, irrc), Dusty said the polka dot gimmick wasn't intended to humiliate him, but was a test.  At some point, Dusty told Vince he could get any gimmick over and Vince came up with the polka dots.  Dusty was also angling/campaigning to get Pat Patterson's job after he retired from the ring, and thought the gimmick was also part of that test too, too see what he was made of (ability to tolerate humiliation is probably a must for any Vince toadie).

I don't like the polka dot gimmick, personally, but I don't know that it was that bad for Dusty.  At his age and not being a Vince creation, he wasn't going to get a serious push, and the dots got over immediately.  Granted, Dusty probably really could have gotten any gimmick over, so....  An awful lot of people still remember Dusty's run in the WWF, so I don't know that he was harmed by it, especially since Turner was off-limits for the time being.

I'm just grateful Vince talked Dusty out of his original idea for a valet (black hooker; it was Vince's idea to go with a more family-friendly figure).

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
zev

zev

Posted
Posted

For Vancouver's Velvet McIntyre, wrestling Fabulous Moolah at WrestleMania II was a major letdown. She didn't want to be in Chicago. She wanted to be in the Middle East.

"The biggest thing that stands out about that is I wanted to go to Kuwait, but I got WrestleMania II instead," McIntyre said with a laugh. "There was a trip for the girls to Kuwait, and I always liked to go where I hadn't been. But I was told, 'Nope, you get to stay here and do Wrestlemania', so I was pretty bummed out about that. I didn't really care for my opponent."

 

(Copy/paste from a Greg Oliver article over at Canoe: http://slam.canoe.com/Slam/Wrestling/2003/03/26/51393.html )

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Spritenaut 32

Spritenaut 32

Posted
Posted
6 hours ago, clintthecrippler said:

I always heard the Dusty's valet story was that it was Vince that wanted a more "hot hooker" look for Dusty' s valet but it was Dusty's idea to have a more "common" looking woman to accompany him and remembered Sapphire as a super fan/locker room gopher from the Kansas City territory.

I rewatched the shoot last night (it was Kayfabe Memories), and, yeah, I remembered it right.  Dusty said Vince wanted a more "family friendly" image for the valet and Dusty wanted a.... hooker.

I'm trying to imagine a prostitute gimmick in 1990 WWF.  

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Technico Support

Technico Support

Posted
Posted

Listening to Prichard's podcast, he mentions that there was always an argument of who made who and who was bigger, between Piper and Hogan.  I don't get it and I think Piper played up his importance a bit too much.  Piper did play a major part in the War to Settle the Score and the ramp up to Mania 1, but it looks like that was the limit to his involvement with Hogan.  Just looking at MSG matches from before and after Mania, it looks like Piper was programmed against mid and upper mid carders before and after that angle and doesn't even seem to have had a singles run with Hogan, probably due to Piper's refusal to do jobs.

So did Piper contribute to a hit angle?  Yes.  Did he "make" Hogan?  I don't think so.  It's not like they had some drawn out feud between arch-rivals that boosted Hogan's career.  Piper helped one hot angle but I feel like Hogan would have been huge no matter what.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
clintthecrippler

clintthecrippler

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, Horton Hears a Wooo!!! said:

I rewatched the shoot last night (it was Kayfabe Memories), and, yeah, I remembered it right.  Dusty said Vince wanted a more "family friendly" image for the valet and Dusty wanted a.... hooker.

I'm trying to imagine a prostitute gimmick in 1990 WWF.  

I figure she probably would have been referred to with more coded terms like "street lady" along the same lines as early Slick promos where they reference that "he managed some girls in Detroit" before coming to the WWF.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Happ Hazzard

Happ Hazzard

Posted
Posted

Dusty got a good push in the WWF, he feuded with Honky, Bossman, Savage and DiBiase who were all top guys, albeit ones who had already jobbed around the circuit to Hogan. I always figured the polka-dots were way to make sure he remained a somewhat comedic upper mid-card guy, and not a threat to Hogan and Warrior's positioning as #1 and #2 top faces.

Dusty was booked more appropriately in the WWF than he was in JCP from 1986 onwards. There was never a backlash against him in the WWF. If he'd been positioned more in that vein in the NWA, kind of like a slightly higher on the card Jimmy Valiant, I don't think there would have been a backlash against him there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
GuerrillaMonsoon

GuerrillaMonsoon

Posted
Posted
9 hours ago, clintthecrippler said:

I figure she probably would have been referred to with more coded terms like "street lady" along the same lines as early Slick promos where they reference that "he managed some girls in Detroit" before coming to the WWF.

Possibly leading to Sex Addict Dusty doing the World's Largest Love Machine gimmick that Viscera had about 15 years earlier?

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites
zev

zev

Posted
Posted
8 minutes ago, RolandTHTG said:

Possibly leading to Sex Addict Dusty doing the World's Largest Love Machine gimmick that Viscera had about 15 years earlier?

I don't think that's what the "Hard Times" promo was about.

 

  • Like 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share
Go to topic listing
×
×
  • Create New...