The Viceland Wrestling Documentaries

[odessasteps]

The palace intrigue of just what exactly Missy did/said to Hogan will be wrestlings lingering mystery now.

[Kuetsar]

11 hours ago, zendragon said:

Ad Harley to the list of people Vince thought he could take

Maybe if VInce was armed and Harley wasn't. MAYBE. .  .

[Curt McGirt]

Positing Harley not being armed is also funny

[Curt McGirt]

Really really really good episode... but I mean, it's Harley. Of course. 

And of course you should never meet your heroes. Harley was a cheating, wife-beating son of a bitch that covered up illegitimate children and never supported them. You have to reconcile that with being King Shit of All Time in professional wrestling. 

If this were a movie they would spend a lot of time on that car wreck when he was 17. It clearly changed him in ways they could only explain by documenting his behavior. He became fearless, and probably had some kind of switch that flipped in his brain regarding love and women considering his first wife and child died in the wreck. He had to have compartmentalized both his emotions and response to physical pain and made an iron wall between them and his ability to react to them. When his last wife died he couldn't cry, and he knew something was wrong. That's probably the most telling thing in the whole show.

Edited April 3 by Curt McGirt

[hammerva]

The thing with Harley Race created two of the newest and maybe best What-Ifs in wrestling history:

1.  What if Harley Race actually took Vince option to screw over Ric Flair at Starcade?

2.  What if Harley Race actually did break Vince's neck after he foolishly fucked around and found out in said meeting?

 

[Curt McGirt]

Harley, FWIW, said he never set the ring on fire. They never talked about him wielding a gun in the locker room when he finally did find Hogan though. I don't remember the machine gun thing from his book, but yeah... he probably tried to kill or did kill that guy. They also missed the story about shooting on the fake Star Wars robots wrestling in Mexico. Funny but I don't remember whether he shot ON them or just SHOT them haha.

[hammerva]

Oh man next week Chris Colt.  Business is definitely going to pick up on that one

[zendragon]

I see where CM “what would Harley Race do?” punk got the idea to just choke Perry a bit

[Curt McGirt]

It amuses me that Harley thought Foley was crazy. My dude have you ever watched yourself wrestle? It's like the old "I learned it from watching you" anti-drug commercial.

[Cobra Commander]

Harley taking one nastea plunge and hungering the simplicity of taking backdrops on the floor instead 

[Elsalvajeloco]

3 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

It amuses me that Harley thought Foley was crazy. My dude have you ever watched yourself wrestle? It's like the old "I learned it from watching you" anti-drug commercial.

I think part of it though is when Foley started doing it, he wasn't making much money, wasn't a notable name, and in the eyes of many of the key decision makers at the time, wasn't tracking to ever become one. Race's whole credo in this episode is money and it being about the money. Foley wasn't making money doing that stuff. 

Damn near every episode of Foley is Pod, Foley retells that story of traveling with Robert Fuller earlier in his career, learning from Fuller, and how he was always saving that one crazy bump on the advice of Robert. Unfortunately, as he would enter WCW, that would kinda multiply because he was so desperate for that attention. There were some guys like Cornette and Sullivan (and later, Dusty) who saw money in the novelty, but I think everyone else saw him as a maniac. 

And by the time Harley and Cactus would have really interacted, it would have been Mick's second WCW run where he was legit trying to kill himself. So I don't think it's that far out that even Harley would question his actions.

[Elsalvajeloco]

On 4/3/2024 at 11:09 AM, hammerva said:

The thing with Harley Race created two of the newest and maybe best What-Ifs in wrestling history:

1.  What if Harley Race actually took Vince option to screw over Ric Flair at Starcade?

2.  What if Harley Race actually did break Vince's neck after he foolishly fucked around and found out in said meeting?

 

Regarding the first what if, if someone is offering you that much money, what it is basically implying is that is how much your career is worth cause you're about to be persona non grata in a lot of places. On that alone, Harley couldn't take Vince up on the offer. That and it would have been a big blow to his reputation. If he would have left, all JCP would have did is replace him with the next best option to lose to Flair. The Flair train was leaving the station whether Race was there or not. I highly doubt it would have been the end of the world like it was hinted at in this episode. He would have also probably been buried on TV for being scared of Flair. Either way, that option would have been a hard one to live down.

[Curt McGirt]

He was never gonna bend over for the buck. No way. 

And yeah I forgot that Foley was so miserable he was ready to cash in on the Lloyd's of London policy by having Vader powerbomb him through the concrete on PPV. 

[odessasteps]

See, you give wrestlers insurance and look what happens. They want to work the system.

[GuerrillaMonsoon]

I don't want to be alive anymore 

[WebConn89]

This comes from stories I heard Ric Flair tell so take it with as many grains of salt as needed but Harley had taken a shine to Flair when Flair was starting in the AWA and had too much respect for him not to put him over at Starrcade.

But I also think Harley had too much respect for the NWA and what that championship represented to him personally to walk out on the big show. 

Flair tells the story that word had gotten out that Vince offered Harley big money to know show so everyone was nervous Harley might not show up plus he was late which from what I’ve gathered from the Harley stories I’ve heard wasn’t too unusual for Harley. But Ric went up to Harley and said something along the lines of “I thought you weren’t going to show” and Harley looked at him and said in all seriousness “I said I was going to put you over didn’t I kid”.

[Cobra Commander]

missed the first airing of the Chris Colt episode aside from the last 4 minutes or so (Baseball was on)

but I made due to actually record the replay in case I forget to watch it later

[Greggulator]

I have never hear of Chris Colt. Dude is completely off the chain. Calling himself “The Chris Colt Experience” and coming out to an Alice Cooper song in like 1975 is so far ahead of the game. The part where he’s nearly intentionally run over is about the 18th craziest thing in this thing. Man, I love Chris Colt now.

 

[zendragon]

I need an Iron Sheik episode to hear B Brian Blair’s side of things

[odessasteps]

 

Edited April 10 by odessasteps

[Cobra Commander]

For some reason, there's a crackling sound that I'm only hearing watching Vice TV. It goes away for some commercials.

meanwhile.. the Chris Colt episde, with reenactments of spiders climbing a steel cage, journal entry narrations of meeting Janis Joplin, and a long interview with his porn director (not sure what's the right descriptive word for the clips they were able to show on VICE)

it kinda felt like how Tales from the Tour Bus followed up all their episodes on known outlaw country stars by getting to do an episode on Blaze Foley

[Cobra Commander]

watching the Harley episode a little more closely and hey, archival footage of Barbara Clary

meanwhile, this episode sorta has a narrative swing from.. "Harley's career was pretty much ended by the table spot at SNME" to "Harley spent more time at home and there was domestic violence and a drunken boat accident" to "yeah, Harley got back into WCW and needed some money"

but we did get footage of Harley introducing his wife's workout video.. which was... a thing.

Edited April 10 by Cobra Commander

[Curt McGirt]

8 hours ago, Cobra Commander said:

it kinda felt like how Tales from the Tour Bus followed up all their episodes on known outlaw country stars by getting to do an episode on Blaze Foley

That is a great comparison! Think about it: barely anybody on here has probably ever heard of Chris Colt.

The Joplin part got me. Also, man was the porn guy a weirdo. I doubt many would agree with his opinion of pro wrestling as softcore porn for gay men. Clearly it was to him at least. 

Given that he robbed trap houses I'm wondering if this didn't coincide with his wrestling bookings as he transitioned away from them, given that he jumped so frequently from town to town. Like, he would obviously not be able to stick around, so maybe he drops into a place to work a show, sticks around for a week to work an angle on some dealers, does the deed and skips out. The thought of roaming Chris Colt, professional wrestler and professional dope fiend/dope thief, is something.

[odessasteps]

That fits into the whole thing of wretler being a great cover occupation for either a spy or hitman. 

[madl]

Watching the Chris Colt episode now and I’m mostly just bored. Colt just seems like an unpleasant weirdo and not an interesting one.  Wrestling is full of weirdos and drug addicts who are either more or interesting or at least mildly sympathetic. I’m 45 min in so I’ll probably finish the ep, but I could probably go the rest of my life without hearing any more about Colt.

Dark Side is fairly depressing once you realize even the people no one has anything bad to say about were rotten, absentee fathers.  There should be a drinking game built around someone saying “_______ was a good father” then telling a story that makes it clear he wasn’t a good father.