The Powers of Pain: Did WWF miss the boat

[JakeRobertsParoleOfficer]

 

watching the late 80s stuff id forgotten how good they were & im surprised that WWF never made them champions:

 

SS 88: one of my fave tag matches ever: Barbarian was a beast here

 

SS 89: they brutalise Hogan (spike piledriver looked like it killed him back then)

 

after that with Demolition on the decline thet could have done business against LOD but were split and then used as high profile jobbers.

 

i think Barbarian could have been so much more. Huge, agile as hell (watch ss87) and powerful (slung a 300lb Bossman like a ragdoll) he could have been built as a credible threat to Hogan or Warrior! those 2 against LOD at WM7 would have done good business if theyd have been kept strong.

 

what do you reckon??

 

hell even now they look like they could smash 1/2 the WWE roster!

[IANdrewDiceClay]

When you do a thread like this, its best to actually write what you reckon they could have done that they didnt already do during their tenure. Were they better options than Demolition, the Brain Busters, the Hart Foundation and the Legion of Doom? No. Were they more over than Akeem and the Boss Man? No. What else could they have done? They pretty much did as much as they were ever going to do. This was an era when a tag team featuring Shawn Michaels wasn't getting wins on PPV. Out of all the names on TV at the time, they certainly didnt miss the boat on the Powers of Pain.

 

In terms of singles wrestlers, they were pretty much midcard big heels. People you feed to Davey Boy and the Boss Man. They werent anything special. They didnt have the hook like the Undertaker, where you can put fear into the fanbase that he could actually beat Hogan or Warrior.

[air_raid]

Bottom line - Vince took the opportunity to sign the AWA Road Warrior rip offs to feud with his own Road Warrior rip offs. They got built up decent but they were built to make Demolition look better, and once they'd done that, they were going to have a hard time being built back up. Sure, they were allowed to look strong again up against Ax and Smash in the Hulkamaniacs/Million $ Team match at Survivors 89, but that was strictly so the story of the match could be told that was. At the time they were split up, they'd done the big run with Demolition, and they'd worked all the other babyface teams - the Harts, the Rockers, the Bushwhackers. They got split up when there was nothing left for them to do. Were they good? Yes. But they had run their course. Did the WWF know they were going to get a chance later in the year to sign the actual Road Warriors at last? Who knows. But the best option for a feud with said Road Warriors was always going to be Demolition. Had the Powers stayed together, as soon as Demolition turned and became the top heel tag team, the best that Warload and Barbar could have hoped for would have been another run with teams like the Harts and the Rockers that they had already wrestled, which would have likely meant a load of jobs.

[JNLister]

As a team, they were always doomed to be seen as knockoffs, which isn't much good when the main team are better knockoffs of the same people.

 

Barbarian was probably underrated and his singles matches hold up surprisingly well in hindsight. Warlord was bloody awful, Davey Boy matches aside. He had a run with Hogan in 91 and the crowd response was just 'Nah'.

[Ladiesman345]

I do remember a match Barbarian had when tagging with everybody's favourite hardman, Meng, in 1997 versus Glacier and Ernest Miller. The thing that stood out was The Faces of Fear's double team move where Meng back body drops Ernest Miller into a Barbarian powerbomb. It's a thing of absolute beauty. I've searched youtube for a clip of it, but to no avail. Not strictly on topic, I know!

[tiger_rick]

POP looked awesome but the reason they hit their limit has been covered.

 

I think the Barbarian & Haku tag-team is a bigger miss. They could have been a real asset to the tag team scene in 1991/92. They could have helped establish LOD as champs. They'd have made them look great.

[Liam O'Rourke]

I see a lot of Barbarian love of late on message boards and often hear people talking about how, in a dank 1990, they should have given Warlord or Barbarian a big angle to feud with Hogan or Warrior, but I really just don't see it. As a little bugger they were the two guys on the roster that I couldn't possibly care about at all. As covered above, as a tag team they were used about as well as they should have been during that time, but I'm not as gung-ho as some seem to be that Barbarian was this undiscovered great worker, he was one of those I just felt had negative charisma.

[Sergio Mendacious]

I do remember a match Barbarian had when tagging with everybody's favourite hardman, Meng, in 1997 versus Glacier and Ernest Miller. The thing that stood out was The Faces of Fear's double team move where Meng back body drops Ernest Miller into a Barbarian powerbomb. It's a thing of absolute beauty. I've searched youtube for a clip of it, but to no avail. Not strictly on topic, I know!

 

I remember that... I've also always sung the praises of this move as a finisher used by short-lived Truth Commission offshoot Armageddon (Recon and Sniper). I've been going on about that finisher for about 20 years now.

 

The Barbarian was decent enough, but yeah, Warlord was horrible. That includes his singles look, too — he had a solid general look, but then the pound shop Warlord mask, plastic manzier, and W-sceptre were weird.

[air_raid]

I see a lot of Barbarian love of late on message boards and often hear people talking about how, in a dank 1990, they should have given Warlord or Barbarian a big angle to feud with Hogan or Warrior, but I really just don't see it.

 

I think it's because looking back through today's eyes, your average workrate pervert like myself sees Barbar as a big muscular guy who could hold up his end in a "good match" match more than a lot of his 300lb+ contemporaries, whereas at the time, like you say, he was seen as just a bland "just there" heel who was big and scary but neither big enough or scary enough to be a true monster like your Andre, Earthquake or later on Undertaker or Sid. He could move around better than Warload or Hercules and in the spirit of "it takes two to tango" you could have a good match with the Barbarian but I don't think he could have gone any further. You never heard him talk much either, which suggests he couldn't really.

 

Of course, it's also possible that through pink-tinted glasses a lot of us just remember him having an ACE match with Bret Hart on the Mega Matches tape although when we first saw it, it was always going to be ACE because it was against Hitman and he was ACE. Although watching it back, "short and inoffensive" is more accurate.

[IANdrewDiceClay]

The Mega Matches bout had a 90 year old referee in it, if I recall. Always remember the finish where Bret sunset flips Barbarian and the referee looks at the move for ages before realising it was a pinning combination.

[air_raid]

If I remember correctly, Barbar drops to his knees, does his muscle pose, and actually has to point to the canvas to tell the referee to count. I'm going to have to watch it next time I'm at the family home, just for a laugh.

[Liam O'Rourke]

Holy shit, you just took me right back to my first Christmas as a wrestling fan when I got that tape. I'm having visions of Davey Boy/Haku, Quake/Tito, Savage on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, and Hulk Hogan scraping Dino Bravo's eyes with his boot and me saying "well that wasn't very sportsmanlike"....

[IANdrewDiceClay]

They also had this odd storyline at the end where Sean Mooney was shrinking.

[air_raid]

They also had this odd storyline at the end where Sean Mooney was shrinking.

 

Giant comb? Wasn't Mega Matches also the one where in his links between matches his clothes were changing colour, becoming gradually more garish?

 

They did some goofy bollocks. Like on Hottest Matches where Sean was drenched in sweat by the end. That's how hot the matches were.

[Doctor Whos Next]

I'm not sure if they had the charisma to go much further as a tag team.  Granted I didn't watch much WWF at the time, but I remember Demolition Promos (we're gonna kick their stinkin teeth down their throats), I remember LOD promos (... tell em Hawk' Well, etc), can't say much about POP ones. 

 

In a business where its important to stand out, I think they were better served by singles pushes.