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I knew that Jake Roberts and Warrior had heat but no idea that Jake wanted to knock out him at the Hall of Fame induction

This show also confirms that it was Dana that introduced him to his conservative lunacy and NOT talk radio as Dana claims 

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9 hours ago, hammerva said:

I knew that Jake Roberts and Warrior had heat but no idea that Jake wanted to knock out him at the Hall of Fame induction

This show also confirms that it was Dana that introduced him to his conservative lunacy and NOT talk radio as Dana claims 

You believe Jake? Even the new cuddly "clean and sober" Jake everyone loves is as carny as carny can be.

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Jake's timeline makes zero fucking sense, calling bullshit on that.

Warrior drops the belt to Slaughter in January 1991. Hogan wins the title in April of 1991. Warrior is fired in August of 1991 (and not the champion). How is Jake out a title run here? Now the guy that took it from Hogan was Undertaker in November of 1991. Is it plausible Jake could have been in that spot? Yes. But it's really hard to figure out how Jake would need permission to win the title by asking Warrior, when he would have beaten Hogan. Is it plausible he beats Hogan and goes into a title feud with Warrior right after? Possibly. But just not seeing the math here. Jake is gone in April of 1992 anyways. So yeah man full on bullshit on that story.

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Jake also feuded with Randy Savage instead...so I mean, he still got a big money feud. But yeah, he's totally blowing smoke with the whole "I was gonna win the WWF title" nonsense.

The material with the ex-wife was good and interesting, but the rest was sort of a rehash. Way too much Jim Cornette here. I get that Jim Cornette hates Warrior and everything, but how much contact did Cornette even have with Warrior? When did they ever work together outside of 1996?

I think you combine the stuff with he ex-wife with A&E and you have a pretty more well rounded documentary.

Definitely one of the weaker episodes IMO, just because it didn't feel like it broke much in the way of new ground on the story of Ultimate Warrior, other than hearing from his ex-wife.

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There's every chance that Jake was lead to believe that he would have been getting the title, and that Warrior vetoed it. Vince has a habit of working his workers and pitting them against each other.

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7 minutes ago, AxB said:

There's every chance that Jake was lead to believe that he would have been getting the title, and that Warrior vetoed it. Vince has a habit of working his workers and pitting them against each other.

Even still the only plausible case I can come up with, still paints Jake as a bullshitter telling stories to get a payday.

It's plausible that sometime in 1990 Jake was told he was penciled in for a title feud with Warrior in the summer of 1991. I could see a case where Wrestlemania was originally envisioned as Hogan vs Slaughter in a non-title fight to save 'Merica and Warrior vs Savage in a Title vs Career match. Then once Warrior beat Savage he would move on to a summer of 1991 title feud with Jake that theoretically could have culminated in a title win.

*BUT* Warrior loses the belt at Rumble 1991. So Jake's story of not finding out his feud had been scrapped / seeing Vince fire Warrior / telling Jake he has bad luck is just plain bullshit. He knew his summer of 1991 title feud with Warrior was off in January. Like I get it there could be lots of Vance manipulation, plus all the drugs Jake may have been doing there. But there's honest mistakes, and there's telling tales to get a Vice payday / seem more important to the story than he really was.

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Let’s really look at it. 

Jake’s post-Mania feud was with Earthquake with the big angle the crushing of Damien and the big hook having Andre in his corner. That was even into August. He didn’t wrestle a match on a house show between August 11 or so and September 30. The turn on Warrior was on TV around August 17. Warrior was working Taker (often in Bodybag matches) up until the point he left and then Sid took over (I saw one of those as a kid.) When Jake had matches again, they were against Sid (following the El Diablo angle), until Sid got hurt and Macho (sometimes under the hood) took over.

Whether he lost the title or not (I agree that makes no sense), I’m pretty sure he lost a couple of months of actual A-show main events against Warrior as Taker was the more natural opponent for Sid. 

Remember, he never got actual A-show main events against Hogan because of the incident where the fans cheered him hitting the DDT on him. He had programs as a face against Andre or Dibiase but not at the very top of the card. Hogan was gone between Summerslam and Survivor Series: zero house shows.

So Warrior robbed him of his first real run on top in the WWF.

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So of the two Warrior episodes I only felt it was worth seeing the Dark Side one.  But it sounds like the A&E one is worth checking out so I'll give that a go.

But I actually want to go back a sec to the Nick Gage episode since I don't watch stuff live and end up binging on episodes in an effort to catch up.

The quick and dirty of it is I'll admit to not caring for deathmatch wrestling for the most part.  I get the appeal yet it's just not for me so I never really went out of my way to see stuff from Nick Gage.  Luckily what worked for me about the episode had much more to do with the redemption story being told where it shows Nick as a very flawed yet good human being.  AFAIK it sounds like he admitted his fuck ups and so far is coming out the other side with a solid support system around him.  He's super loyal to his friends and his fans and it was incredibly heartwarming to see how much the MDK crew means to him.

As for me after this and working my way through the CVL interview I honestly hope one day I see him at a show.  I want to have the chance to high five him during an entrance or meet him somehow just so I can tell him how much I dig him.  It helps that in the past year or so I've seen him say things that align with my beliefs which is nice but this episode cemented the good vibes I was getting from him.  I hope he continues to have that support system around him as the thought of him regressing would break my heart.  But even if it's not the darkest of Dark Side episodes (that Grizzly episode next week is going to be brutal) I still liked it a lot.

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Said this in the chat but I caught the Warrior ep and then Dark Side of Football about the Raiders. What struck me is that Warrior seemed less crazy than Raider Bill Romanowski. That guy came off as a legit psychopath. Then again, I suppose there's a difference between extreme narcissism plus a horrible lack of human empathy and someone who legit wanted to hurt people and took enough drugs and a career path that allowed him to legally do it. I honestly know little to nothing about American football so this shit is fascinating to me. They could easily do a Dark Side of any sport, I'm sure.

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Warrior's ex-wife Shari came off really well, I thought. She came off as someone with perspective, a bit protective of Warrior in pointing to his massive insecurities as a catalyst for his shitty behavior, but also willing to point out his shitty behavior. I do wish that the doc makers had pressed on her "Warrior changed after winning the WWF Championship" comments; his cheating was the only thing that really seemed to come across as a "change" based on the way the show was edited. Overall, she was great, though. I also loved that she clearly understood the business. 

Ross and Cornette came off incredibly poorly, on the other hand. These two hate everything. I must say that Warrior is not a bad promo, and in fact this might be a hot take r revisionist history, but I think he's a very good promo. He said a lot of gibberish and loved mixing metaphors, but he said with such belief, such conviction, that his promos worked in the moment just as they should have even if they're nonsense once you think about them for a few seconds. 

I'm straight sick of Jim Ross. There's a guy who has pissed away all the good will that I had for him from his Mid-South, WCW, and WWF work. His unending grumpiness is tiresome. Cornette has been a clown, of course, no need to belabor the point with him, but Ross sucks to listen to at this point, too. Retire and do something that you enjoy with your remaining time, dude.

One final note: Gary Hart calling Warrior THE KING OF DINGO, BABY in some archival footage had me rolling. Holy shit, Gary Hart is the best. Speaking of nonsense that sounds amazing in the moment because of the delivery that falls apart once you think about it for a few seconds...

Edited by SirSmellingtonofCascadia
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1 hour ago, SirSmellingtonofCascadia said:

 

I must say that Warrior is not a bad promo, and in fact this might be a hot take r revisionist history, but I think he's a very good promo. He said a lot of gibberish and loved mixing metaphors, but he said with such belief, such conviction, that his promos worked in the moment just as they should have even if they're nonsense once you think about them for a few seconds. 

 

Lance Storm said something similar in his commentary of "The Self Destruction  of the Ultimate Warrior"  yhea his promos where so much gibberish but the fact that Edge and Christian could recite them word for word decades after the fact showed that they worked

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I get Discovery+ for a year because I bought a new iPhone a few months ago, and I realized earlier tonight that Dark Side of the Ring is on there (but nothing else VICE related - weird). So I watched Part 2 of the Benoit episode, and oh man, it still hurts. I feel so bad for David and the rest of the family affected by that. On the one hand, you can understand why WWE just erased him from history, but they apparently washed their hands of his family, and of Nancy's family. That's shitty and cold-blooded. David and Sandra saying nobody from the roster reached out to them afterwards is horrible too, but the talent probably felt like they were backed into a corner (and scared) with WWE's stance on Benoit.

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I saw someone mention given there was so much about his first marriage and that time, they were surprised they didnt  include Melanie Pillman, who dated the Warrior, since the obv interviewed her for the Brian episode.

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8 hours ago, SirSmellingtonofCascadia said:

Warrior's ex-wife Shari came off really well, I thought. She came off as someone with perspective, a bit protective of Warrior in pointing to his massive insecurities as a catalyst for his shitty behavior, but also willing to point out his shitty behavior. I do wish that the doc makers had pressed on her "Warrior changed after winning the WWF Championship" comments; his cheating was the only thing that really seemed to come across as a "change" based on the way the show was edited. Overall, she was great, though. I also loved that she clearly understood the business. 

Ross and Cornette came off incredibly poorly, on the other hand. These two hate everything. I must say that Warrior is not a bad promo, and in fact this might be a hot take r revisionist history, but I think he's a very good promo. He said a lot of gibberish and loved mixing metaphors, but he said with such belief, such conviction, that his promos worked in the moment just as they should have even if they're nonsense once you think about them for a few seconds. 

I'm straight sick of Jim Ross. There's a guy who has pissed away all the good will that I had for him from his Mid-South, WCW, and WWF work. His unending grumpiness is tiresome. Cornette has been a clown, of course, no need to belabor the point with him, but Ross sucks to listen to at this point, too. Retire and do something that you enjoy with your remaining time, dude.

One final note: Gary Hart calling Warrior THE KING OF DINGO, BABY in some archival footage had me rolling. Holy shit, Gary Hart is the best. Speaking of nonsense that sounds amazing in the moment because of the delivery that falls apart once you think about it for a few seconds...

I haven't watched it all the way through yet but did they go into how he got The Dingo Warrior name? Gary Hart told the story in his book. He had some crazy idea to get two guys and give them a gimmick of being street gang guys from New York named "Socko" and "Dingo". I can't remember exactly but IIRC, the whole thing fell through (shocker) but he had the name in his back pocket. Helwig came into the territory and he (Hart) wanted to call him Dingo and then they decided on The Dingo Warrior as kind of a counterpoint to Kerry being The Modern Day Warrior.

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5 minutes ago, cwoy2j said:

I haven't watched it all the way through yet but did they go into how he got The Dingo Warrior name? Gary Hart told the story in his book. He had some crazy idea to get two guys and give them a gimmick of being street gang guys from New York named "Socko" and "Dingo". I can't remember exactly but IIRC, the whole thing fell through (shocker) but he had the name in his back pocket. Helwig came into the territory and he (Hart) wanted to call him Dingo and then they decided on The Dingo Warrior as kind of a counterpoint to Kerry being The Modern Day Warrior.

Both Warrior docs went into how Hellwig got the "Dingo Warrior" monicker, but neither show told the story that way.  Basically, people were in the locker room spitballing names for Hellwig's new character, and someone suggested "Warrior" because Hellwig had a warrior's mentality and then they moved on to trying to find a word that went well with "Warrior" and someone yelled out "Dingo."  Supposedly, everyone liked it because it made no sense but sounded good. So far as I can remember, neither account mentioned Hart, Socko, Kerry.

I mean, the idea that Hellwig" picked up the Warrior name purely by coincidence and no one realized that it was a riff on Kerry Von Erich's nickname is somewhat hard to believe.

Second the opinion that Hellwig's first wife came off really well.  LOl, I almost did a spit take when she offhandedly said that "they had him working with the job guys like Barry Horowitz"

I thought Cornette came off fine.  Maybe Ross not so much, but Grumpy Ross shitting on people plays better here than it does when he's just doing the "well, back in my day..." routine.  I don't agree that Warrior was a bad promo, but it depends on your criteria.  With a gimmick like Warrior's, shouting incoherent lines is probably more effective that cutting a "good" promo.  My definition of a goof promo is "fans watch it, fans remember it, fans tune back in later to watch the guy wrestle and cut more promos."  It's not Shakespeare.  

As I said about the Macho Man doc, if you don't want your biography to paint you as some sort of cartoonish paranoid nutball with relationship issues, substance abuse issues, money problems, etc., then maybe consider not living your life like you're some sort of cartoonish paranoid nutball with relationship issues, substance abuse issues, money problems, etc.  Not really that hard.

For much as people crap on Shawn Michaels for his behavior in the 90's, I've never heard born-again Shawn deny that that was him.  His general attitude towards his younger self seems to be "Yep, I did all that and more."  He really doesn't strike me as someone interested in whitewashing his image.

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After catching the Warrior Biography, I agree with whoever said the best version of both would be a combination of the two. The Biography was really good but it was hurting to totally be absent of Shari's POV. The Dark Side ignored some stuff like the DVD (which you'd think they'd have glommed onto) and Dana's POV. And btw, I thought it was real telling that they asked Dana where he got those ideas and she just freezes like a deer in the headlights, and they do a cut to her blaming talk radio. 

As far as Jake and Cornette go, the Dark Side guys work with who they can, and they're both familiar. We should be happy Jim isn't on every episode with the fingers he's had in various pies and the information he has on various topics.

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I thought the Dingo name came from the Meryl Streep movie where she kept saying Dingos ate my baby?

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4 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

And btw, I thought it was real telling that they asked Dana where he got those ideas and she just freezes like a deer in the headlights, and they do a cut to her blaming talk radio.

He also probably was an asshole, but whatever. 

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3 minutes ago, AxB said:

I thought the Dingo name came from the Meryl Streep movie where she kept saying Dingos ate my baby?

They mentioned this on Vice, how he was like this rabid dog or something and that's how they got Dingo out of it.

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6 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

I hate to stereotype but you can just look at her and think she's probably got those political views. 

Well, maybe. For her to marry somebody who had his (maybe hers too, who knows or cares) views, and when he's dead, to paint her face to do the whole LGTBQ thingy is silly.

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