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Dolfan Watches Every Wrestlemania On Lockdown


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4 hours ago, Robert s said:

Ehm... Bret Hart won that match against Austin (and it was a Cobra Clutch in that match, though obviously still the same spot).

Oh right.  Eh.  Whatever.

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Yeah. They did a bunch of vignettes with Sarge at various patriotic landmarks begging to be forgiven and get his country back. I don't think there was ever an angle or turn to lead to it.

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He ended up appealing to Duggan, then saved Duggan from a 2 on 1 from Adnan and Sheik.  After the save, Sarge knelt and cried looking at the flag, and Hacksaw forgave him on behalf of the USA, accepting Sarge back.  This also led to them teaming for a bit, then they went solo as Sarge transitioned to backstage.

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DAY 24

Flair and Savage for the WWF Championship at WrestleMania. That sentence should give you an erection, regardless of your gender.  

The "sliding doors" of what could have been says that the original plan for this show was Flair vs. Hogan, but fate and a steroid trial would intervene, and Hogan was about to go away for a while. As a kid, I'll admit, I didn't appreciate the visceral hatred Savage had for Flair, as Ric had been baiting him for weeks and weeks. The angle of "She was mine before she was yours" would be enough to drive any man insane, much less a psychopath like Randy Savage.

Savage attacks Flair within the first nanosecond of getting inside the ring, and we're off to the races. I honestly, don't remember why Mr. Perfect is Flair's manager in this match, though I'm guessing it's injury related?  Anyway, he does his job very well, and he's a legitimate threat on the outside the way that a Heenan/Hart/Sherri could never be.  The first half of the match is a solid back and forth with neither man really taking full control of the match. Flair's rammed into the railing and does a very obvious blade job on camera.  (For which he got fined and almost fired by Vince.) 

Randy's taken over now, and has Flair beat, when Hennig pulls out the ref.  Savage wants to have a word with Curt over this, and in the confusion, Flair gets tossed 'brass knuckles' by Curt.  I put that in quotes, because the thing is so wrapped in tape, that it seems pretty obvious that they just couldn't find actual knux and had to make something that looked good.  Anyway, Flair is absolutely murdering Savage now, and this finally draws out Elizabeth, with basically every WWF Official in tow. 

O HAI SHANE!  

Finish comes as Flair is going in for the kill, takes a little too long to hit on Elizabeth, and Savage rolls him up (WITH a handful of tights!) for his second WWF Championship.   Fuck that was a great finish. 

After the match, Flair doesn't seem to be accepting he lost, and screams at Elizabeth, "What about me?"  And plants one on her, he slaps the fuck out him, and Randy has a god damned conniption. All those WWF Officials seem a lot more concerned in holding down Savage than stopping Flair.  Shane in particular has wrapped himself around Savage on the floor like his a fucking snake.  They finally separate, and Savage finally celebrates his win.

This whole thing took about 35-40 minutes and absolutely positively should have been the final match of the night.  No questions asked.  

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Quote

The "sliding doors" of what could have been says that the original plan for this show was Flair vs. Hogan, but fate and a steroid trial would intervene, and Hogan was about to go away for a while.

Also ...

the lukewarm reaction of the flair v Hogan matches

vince allegedly promised Sid the Mania main event to jump companies 

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It's interesting that they repeated the mistake at WM13, putting Sid vs Taker as the ME over Bret vs Austin. You think they would have learned their lesson here.

Also, I am not sure if "she's damaged goods!" would really have worked to enrage any man. I think at least some men realise and accept that their significant other has had some experience elsewhere. It sure works for an overly possessive lunatic like Savage, though. Just the two perfect characters to play out this particular angle.

Edited by gordi
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12 hours ago, Raziel said:

He ended up appealing to Duggan, then saved Duggan from a 2 on 1 from Adnan and Sheik.  After the save, Sarge knelt and cried looking at the flag, and Hacksaw forgave him on behalf of the USA, accepting Sarge back.  This also led to them teaming for a bit, then they went solo as Sarge transitioned to backstage.

He later ended up receiving a full presidential pardon from the first President Bush who cited his pivotal role in saving the world from COBRA as his reason for granting it. 

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On 4/25/2020 at 9:25 PM, Dolfan in NYC said:

Alright, here comes a big match.  Intercontinental title, Bret vs. Roddy.  I'm not sure why they hotshotted the title from Bret to the Mountie to Piper, but they did, and this match was the result.  We start out with an interview that looks friendly at first with Piper patronizing the shit out of Bret, and Bret basically telling him to go fuck himself. 

So the match itself is fascinating. The crowd is pretty solidly pro-Bret, but Piper is a face, so he has to work against his normal style. They're doing some tie up spots, respect spots, and some test of strength spots.  All the while never really crossing the lines both are more than capable of.  Then Bret spits on Piper.  And it is on.  

They start REALLY going stiff. A double clothesline spot jumps out prominently as sounding a lot harder than it maybe should have been.  Regardless, this match is fucking great.  Bret is out-sneaking Roddy and Piper is clearly at his wits end trying to stay within the rules, but dealing with this kid.  The finish comes after a ref bump, which leads to a Bret eating stairs on the outside, and Piper taking the bell and ALMOST turning heel by crushing Bret with it. He doesn't, and that proves to be his downfall.  His sleeper gets flipped over into a 3 count and a new IC Champ.  (The spot should be familiar since Bret fell victim to the exact same thing about 4 years later by some bald guy.)  

Piper SNATCHES the belt from Hebner, and really looks like he's about to clobber Bret with it.  But again, he doesn't and the crowd is relieved.  Bret's got his IC title back, and Piper congratulates him.  Awesome match.  

After reading Piper's book and the discussion of this match I had to re-watch it.  Hot damn does this hold up so incredibly well.  The crowd begging him to not use the bell followed by the cheers when he tossed it aside was one of my favorite parts of the match.  It almost seemed like a moral victory for him as even though tossing the bell aside did him in Piper seemed gracious in defeat.  I liked that.

And going back to the book the match was one of their favorites and they had a ball planning this match out over dinner.  It started with Roddy taking 20 minutes to go over how he liked to do the match and Bret told him that was exactly how he wanted it too.  When Piper laid out the finish Bret appreciated the gesture as it meant he was going to pin Roddy and be the champ.  But there were two things they wanted to add to make the intensity stand out.  One was the blade job by Bret where Roddy's uppercut was their way of claiming it was hardway.  So while Roddy's with the ref Bret was able to blade without being caught.

What helped to further establish the hardway claims was when they got to the back Bret shoved Roddy saying he was too reckless and was angry over the uppercut causing the blood.  So they argue for a bit with the wrestlers intervening to calm them down.  So to officials there was no doubt it was hardway even though Bret did blade.  They got away with it and Flair was the one that got in trouble.  After they settle down they go into a room together.  With nobody around they smile and are laughing for the longest time because everything they planned worked perfectly.  It's one of those stories that made me enjoy the match a lot more.

Edited by NikoBaltimore
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11 hours ago, Dolfan in NYC said:

DAY 24

Flair and Savage for the WWF Championship at WrestleMania. That sentence should give you an erection, regardless of your gender.  

The "sliding doors" of what could have been says that the original plan for this show was Flair vs. Hogan, but fate and a steroid trial would intervene, and Hogan was about to go away for a while. As a kid, I'll admit, I didn't appreciate the visceral hatred Savage had for Flair, as Ric had been baiting him for weeks and weeks. The angle of "She was mine before she was yours" would be enough to drive any man insane, much less a psychopath like Randy Savage.

Savage attacks Flair within the first nanosecond of getting inside the ring, and we're off to the races. I honestly, don't remember why Mr. Perfect is Flair's manager in this match, though I'm guessing it's injury related?  Anyway, he does his job very well, and he's a legitimate threat on the outside the way that a Heenan/Hart/Sherri could never be.  The first half of the match is a solid back and forth with neither man really taking full control of the match. Flair's rammed into the railing and does a very obvious blade job on camera.  (For which he got fined and almost fired by Vince.) 

Randy's taken over now, and has Flair beat, when Hennig pulls out the ref.  Savage wants to have a word with Curt over this, and in the confusion, Flair gets tossed 'brass knuckles' by Curt.  I put that in quotes, because the thing is so wrapped in tape, that it seems pretty obvious that they just couldn't find actual knux and had to make something that looked good.  Anyway, Flair is absolutely murdering Savage now, and this finally draws out Elizabeth, with basically every WWF Official in tow. 

O HAI SHANE!  

Finish comes as Flair is going in for the kill, takes a little too long to hit on Elizabeth, and Savage rolls him up (WITH a handful of tights!) for his second WWF Championship.   Fuck that was a great finish. 

After the match, Flair doesn't seem to be accepting he lost, and screams at Elizabeth, "What about me?"  And plants one on her, he slaps the fuck out him, and Randy has a god damned conniption. All those WWF Officials seem a lot more concerned in holding down Savage than stopping Flair.  Shane in particular has wrapped himself around Savage on the floor like his a fucking snake.  They finally separate, and Savage finally celebrates his win.

This whole thing took about 35-40 minutes and absolutely positively should have been the final match of the night.  No questions asked.  

Heenan tapped out on managing Flair after being on the road with him for a few weeks, that's how hard Flair was rolling back then. When I saw Flair vs. Hogan in Pittsburgh, Jimmy Hart filled in for a "sick" Bobby Heenan.

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The finish of the ride was The Model vs. Tatanka.  No one will ever convince me that Chris Chavis got his name change because Vince got tricked into seeing Dances With Wolves and he laughed inappropriately long at this scene.  Like 3 days or some shit.

Bobby's making Cleveland Indians jokes and I'm giggling because Gorilla plays such a good straight man, and he's so incredulous that Cleveland would need to improve it's pitching in order to be better.  Hey man, pitching wins titles.  

Tatanka wins on a cross body.  I win because this match, and my ride for the day 24 are done. 

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On 4/21/2020 at 11:44 AM, Dolfan in NYC said:

DAY 21

So it's clearly intermission time, because they run some longish interviews.  And I'd forgotten this was the debut of Crush as we're getting shitty Demolition 2.0 here.  Tenryu and Kitao are "interviewed" by Regis and the only words they say in English are "Kathy Lee?"  It is unclear if they meant Gifford or Crosby.  We go back for another comedy promo with Alex Trebek interviewing Jake & Damien.   The pay off is Heenan laughing his head off at the announce tables saying he'd set everything up and was trolling the directors and interviewers (and 28 years later, me).  

Oy.  That was a slog.  

Demos vs. Tenryu & Kitao are on now. As good as heel Demolition was back in the first run, was as bad as they are here.  And Kitao is somehow worse.  It looked like they were going for power vs. power, and we just got K no selling Demo-fucking-lition...  Ugh. Tenryu is trying his goddamned hardest in here, but no one aside from Smash is remotely able to vibe with him. I did giggle at Monsoon not knowing what an enziguri was and calling it a "reverse crescent kick".  Followed by a power bomb that looked like Smash had roughly .001 seconds to get himself set for, because his head *barely* cleared.  

Thank god that was over.  

 

On 4/21/2020 at 11:48 AM, Dolfan in NYC said:

And to Tenryu's terrifyingly close powerbomb... Was that his thing?  I admit to being mostly familiar with just American graps, but in googling, I ran across this Tenryu/Brooklyn Brawler match.

Lombardi's lucky he's not dead. Jeez. 

Interestingly, the announcer for the Brawler match didn't call it an enziguri either, because you can clearly hear him shout "GHETTO BLASTA" after he hits it here.

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16 minutes ago, caley said:

Interestingly, the announcer for the Brawler match didn't call it an enziguri either, because you can clearly hear him shout "GHETTO BLASTA" after he hits it here.

The German announcers used the term Ghetto Blaster still when Owen Hart and Bigelow were doing it, only starting to call it "enzuigiri" maybe in 95 or 96.

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2 hours ago, NikoBaltimore said:

After reading Piper's book and the discussion of this match I had to re-watch it.  Hot damn does this hold up so incredibly well.  The crowd begging him to not use the bell followed by the cheers when he tossed it aside was one of my favorite parts of the match.  It almost seemed like a moral victory for him as even though tossing the bell aside did him in Piper seemed gracious in defeat.  I liked that.

And going back to the book the match was one of their favorites and they had a ball planning this match out over dinner.  It started with Roddy taking 20 minutes to go over how he liked to do the match and Bret told him that was exactly how he wanted it too.  When Piper laid out the finish Bret appreciated the gesture as it meant he was going to pin Roddy and be the champ.  But there were two things they wanted to add to make the intensity stand out.  One was the blade job by Bret where Roddy's uppercut was their way of claiming it was hardway.  So while Roddy's with the ref Bret was able to blade without being caught.

What helped to further establish the hardway claims was when they got to the back Bret shoved Roddy saying he was too reckless and was angry over the uppercut causing the blood.  So they argue for a bit with the wrestlers intervening to calm them down.  So to officials there was no doubt it was hardway even though Bret did blade.  They got away with it and Flair was the one that got in trouble.  After they settle down they go into a room together.  With nobody around they smile and are laughing for the longest time because everything they planned worked perfectly.  It's one of those stories that made me enjoy the match a lot more.

Bret has the story a bit different in his book:

Quote

Now for the real work.

I came through the curtain pretending to be concerned that I was going to need stitches. Chief, Lanza and a bunch of the boys gathered around me to see how bad it was. Chief brushed my hair away. "Maybe a stitch, Bret, but you'll be all right." Roddy was there, concerned, apologizing, and we both knew we'd fooled them all.

 

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Interesting.  Both stories would be an effective way to drive home it was hardway but the end result appears to be the same.  I'm sure between both of them the truth is somewhere in the middle regarding backstage.  But no matter who's right they sure did one helluva job fooling everybody and not getting in trouble.

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DAY 25

In the homestretch now for Mania 8, let's see what's left.  And maybe even start on IX? 

Okay, Money Inc. vs. The Natural Disasters. Typhoon & Quake are faces for some reason or another and Ted has traded in his Million Dollar Belt for the WWF Tag Team Championship.  I'm not exactly sure, but I believe along with Rocky Johnson & The Rock, IRS & Bray are the only father-son combos to win the tag team championships.  Anyway the crowd is still buzzing about Flair/Savage and is very quiet for everything happening here.  Money, Inc. walk out on the match to retain the titles via a COR loss.  And again, I hate that finish at WrestleMania. 

We've got Owen & Skinner up now. Owen's wearing hammer pants that, if he were around today to see, he'd absolutely have HHH making jokes about that only the two of them got or cared about. Or more accurately, that only HHH cared about.  Owen wins the match with literally zero offensive moves in about 60 seconds.

Alright, the main event for WrestleMania VIII.  "HOGAN'S LAST MATCH!"  (lol)  It's very weird looking back at this knowing, even then, that it was complete bullshit and there was no way Hogan was ever going to leave. (Even though he actually DID a little over a year later.) Sid is doing his usual super intense promo that would go over like gangbusters today.  And also, I'd forgotten Bruno/Harvey Wippleman was Sid's manager for this (and that Finkel & Bruno were feuding in Memphis) at the time.  The most notable thing here is that Sid is in control for roughly the entire match.  This is weird in retrospect since Sid left about a month or two later, and Hogan was going away for a while thanks to the steroid trial.  

The finish is also odd as Sid gets DQ'ed.  Apparently for Harvey getting onto the ropes and arguing?  In reality, the crowd is super confused as the bell sounds after a clean kickout from Sid after a Leg Drop and it looks like the only DQ'able action was Hulk shoving the ref out of the way to get to arguing.  The Google would have me believe that Papa Shango was supposed to interfere, but he totally missed his cue.  Well whatever.  Also, this match was nowhere near as bad as I remember it being.   

And then the big moment was the big return of The Ultimate Warrior.  Warrior and Hogan clean house, the crowd is going berserk and the PPV ends.  

Flair/Savage should have been last.  

All in all, there were two fucking incredible matches here, and there wasn't anything actively offensive in the rest.  Okay, about 20 minutes left here since I'm doing a long ride, let's go on to the next one. 

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2 minutes ago, Dolfan in NYC said:

Okay, Money Inc. vs. The Natural Disasters. Typhoon & Quake are faces for some reason or another and Ted has traded in his Million Dollar Belt for the WWF Tag Team Championship.  I'm not exactly sure, but I believe along with Rocky Johnson & The Rock, IRS & Bray are the only father-son combos to win the tag team championships.  Anyway the crowd is still buzzing about Flair/Savage and is very quiet for everything happening here.  Money, Inc. walk out on the match to retain the titles via a COR loss.  And again, I hate that finish at WrestleMania. 

So, story was that they wanted a face team to replace LOD since LOD's status was questionable after Hawk's suspension, so they turned the Disasters using Ye Olde Atlanta/Mid-South trope of "The Disaster's car was held up and Hart replaced them with DiBiase/IRS in a title match who beat LOD for the belts (so Hawk could serve a suspension)."  The COR was I guess keeping the Disasters strong while saving Money Inc vs. LOD for SummerSlam and a Title rematch, but LOD were leaving there so they swapped the belts beforehand.

 

Far as the Main goes,  yeah, The story was Wright missed his cue by a ton and they just went with the DQ citing Harvey (after Sid had to kick out to protect himself).  

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21 minutes ago, Dolfan in NYC said:

I'm not exactly sure, but I believe along with Rocky Johnson & The Rock, IRS & Bray are the only father-son combos to win the tag team championships

Sika and Roman? Or did Roman win the other tag belt? Same question with Rosey. 

Edited by odessasteps
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11 minutes ago, odessasteps said:

Sika and Roman? Or did Roman win the other tag belt? Same question with Rosey. 

Techinally, Rosey had the right belts, Roman didn't (The old classic Championships were "retired" when Hart Dynasty were awarded the Nickel belts)

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10 minutes ago, odessasteps said:

Also Rikishi and the Usos. Again, not sure who had which tag belts. I presume the Usos have probably had both of them by now.

 

Depends on what you mean by which tag belts.  The "Classic" WWF/WWE tag belts became the "World" tag belts during Brand Split 1.0.  Then after they were Unified, during DBS Jr/Tyson Kidd's reign, the "Classic" lineage was retired and the WWE (The Smackdown Belts from Brand Split 1.0) continued on to what now became the SmackDown Tag Belts.  So while the DiBiase's and Johnson's have held the same belts, the only other A'noai tandems would be Sika/Rosey and Afa/Samu.  

 

EDIT: That's going by WWE's own recognized lineages.

Edited by Raziel
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I meant I dont know (or particularly care) which tag belts now have which histories associated with them. To me, being a tag champ in 2020 is functionally the same as 1980, even without direct lineage. 

(Another reason to hate the company. ?

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I've never seen Savage/Flair (unless I rented it once) and am kicking myself. It would have be fun to know how THAT match got worked out, considering how opposite the two were in planning. I'm sure Flair wrote about it in his book but I can't remember what he said aside from getting fined. 

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7 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

I've never seen Savage/Flair (unless I rented it once) and am kicking myself. It would have be fun to know how THAT match got worked out, considering how opposite the two were in planning. I'm sure Flair wrote about it in his book but I can't remember what he said aside from getting fined. 

In his book, Flair says that he and Perfect had to go to Savage's house to practice the match. He says that because of that he doesn't consider Savage to be a great worker, although he respects him.

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