Random Thoughts III.

[SaitoRyo]

As well as the music, Billy also had the fact that he was the best pure athlete in WWE going for him. Don't forget that. 

[AshC]

And he had a rodeo scholarship.

[Tommy!]

33 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

even the Gunn-Show sort of got over in the brief period they were together. 

Show-gunns wasn't it, pronounced like shoguns?

 

[Carbomb]

3 minutes ago, Tommy! said:

Show-gunns wasn't it, pronounced like shoguns?

 

See, I thought it was that originally, but I think someone on here mentioned that, as they never had an official name, the nearest they ever got was "The Gunn-Show" on one of the SD games.

[Chris B]

Some of it is probably a rare case of where the whole 'brass ring' thing actually has some validity. He was given the King of the Ring and a feud with The Rock, and he just didn't step up. He was totally out of his depth, and it was clear that The Rock was doing all the work and getting frustrated. There's an argument to be made about whether The Rock should have been able to make him, but it didn't seem like he had any bones to pick with Gunn either.

Add in the asthma, making it easier for Gunn to be in tag matches where he can take breathers, and it's not really a surprise. While you look at him now and it's easy to wish he had all the pieces in place at some point in his prime, it's not like any of us are salivating over the feuds and matches he didn't have.

One thing that is notable about him these days though is how much Vince's big-man fetish has damaged the scale in WWE. You don't think of Gunn as being as huge a guy as he is, because he was surrounded constantly by guys either bigger than him or not that much smaller than him. Seeing him in AEW, he feels like more of an attraction as a result.

[BomberPat]

9 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

See, I thought it was that originally, but I think someone on here mentioned that, as they never had an official name, the nearest they ever got was "The Gunn-Show" on one of the SD games.

It's a little of both; there was a backstage segment in which they were arguing over whether they should be the Gunn Show or the Show-Gunn, and someone (probably The Rock) interrupted and berated them with a list of stupid tag team names. 

8 minutes ago, Chris B said:

Some of it is probably a rare case of where the whole 'brass ring' thing actually has some validity. He was given the King of the Ring and a feud with The Rock, and he just didn't step up. He was totally out of his depth, and it was clear that The Rock was doing all the work and getting frustrated. There's an argument to be made about whether The Rock should have been able to make him, but it didn't seem like he had any bones to pick with Gunn either.

The thing with "the brass ring", or any conversation about why so-and-so did or didn't get over is that, unless there's a very real counterpoint (i.e., they became a star elsewhere), you never really know. In this case, I had no idea Billy suffered from asthma. Sometimes they might be a bit flaky, or a nightmare backstage, or not fun to work with. There's so many things that, as fans, we don't see, but that can all impact on someone's ability to make it big just as much as their wrestling ability or charisma (or lack thereof). 

[Chris B]

2 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

The thing with "the brass ring", or any conversation about why so-and-so did or didn't get over is that, unless there's a very real counterpoint (i.e., they became a star elsewhere), you never really know. In this case, I had no idea Billy suffered from asthma. Sometimes they might be a bit flaky, or a nightmare backstage, or not fun to work with. There's so many things that, as fans, we don't see, but that can all impact on someone's ability to make it big just as much as their wrestling ability or charisma (or lack thereof). 

As I said, a rare case. I mean more, if you're given a serious opportunity and you don't make anything of it, there's a problem there. It's not like any of us are looking back at the King of the Ring or Rock feud and feeling like he was really showing some promise if it wasn't for x, y or z. Sure, it wasn't a great feud and the whole 'kiss my ass' thing was crap, but it seemed like a genuine attempt to make him. 

With, say, Ambrose in WWE, he was clearly showing stuff, even if the booking was shit. It was easy to look at the Lesnar feud and come to the conclusion that it failed, but it wasn't down to Ambrose. Or the same with Miro, where he was clearly over and treated as if he wasn't. They were clearly giving Gunn a genuine chance, but there just wasn't anything there to work with at that level.

Prichard talked about the asthma, and I seem to remember it's been discussed elsewhere - Meltzer, maybe. But it's one of the reasons Gunn's been a tag-teamer throughout his career.

[Joe Blog]

Billy mentioned he had asthma in one of the shoots be did with road dogg when they were both pilled up. He claimed it was HHH that used to make a big deal of the asthma and that after a match they had HHH told everyone Billy was too blown up because of it.

Funnily enough I remember watching KOTR 99 and they did an interview with Billy after his match against X-Pac and he was wheezing and struggling to speak all they way through it. At the time I thought he was just selling having had a match but the poor bastard was probably desperate for a few puffs on his inhaler.  

[simonworden]

30 minutes ago, Joe Blog said:

Billy mentioned he had asthma in one of the shoots be did with road dogg when they were both pilled up. He claimed it was HHH that used to make a big deal of the asthma and that after a match they had HHH told everyone Billy was too blown up because of it.

Funnily enough I remember watching KOTR 99 and they did an interview with Billy after his match against X-Pac and he was wheezing and struggling to speak all they way through it. At the time I thought he was just selling having had a match but the poor bastard was probably desperate for a few puffs on his inhaler.  

Which he probably had to keep hidden at the hotel. Imagine what Vince would make of someone needing an inhaler. 

[Tommy!]

The best thing Gunn ever did was play an options hot chocolate sachet in an advert. 

Edited November 11, 2020 by Tommy!
He was Ooh La La Vanilla flavour, don't you know.

[HarmonicGenerator]

1 minute ago, Tommy! said:

The best thing Gunn ever did was play an options hot chocolate sachet in an advert. 

His guest appearance on Sabrina The Teenage Witch ranks highly as well.

I've always liked Billy Gunn. Great to play as on the first SmackDown game, and never someone you'd skip the entrance for because his music was so good. I was thrilled to see him back as 'The One' in 2000, with more great music. Liked the Outlaws, liked his Attitude singles stuff, liked Billy & Chuck, liked his SmackDown stuff with Jamie Noble in the early 2000s. All good until 2004ish when they ran out of any ideas and stuck him in a team with Hardcore Holly. Despite being a fan I never had much need to see him as a main eventer or a champion - there's nothing wrong with being a great midcarder or tag specialist. Still, if they'd gone with him on top in '04 instead of Bradshaw I'd have been much happier.

[BomberPat]

18 hours ago, Chris B said:

It's not like any of us are looking back at the King of the Ring or Rock feud and feeling like he was really showing some promise if it wasn't for x, y or z.

Yeah, that's fair enough, I've never thought "just imagine all those Billy Gunn main event programmes and dream matches we missed out on!". The New Age Outlaws was probably the perfect fit for him in allowing him to work the occasional programme with bigger names, but mostly just be a solid hand, and there's nothing wrong with that. His most high profile work was at a time when your card position could be reasonably fluid, not in the Jinder Mahal sense of being a midcarder one week and a main eventer the next, but in terms of having opportunities to step up when needed, but with no real shame/criticism coming of being a "midcarder", because the midcard tended to be busy enough, with enough storylines, that it was no bad thing. 

Edited November 11, 2020 by BomberPat

[Carbomb]

3 hours ago, BomberPat said:

Yeah, that's fair enough, I've never thought "just imagine all those Billy Gunn main event programmes and dream matches we missed out on!". The New Age Outlaws was probably the perfect fit for him in allowing him to work the occasional programme with bigger names, but mostly just be a solid hand, and there's nothing wrong with that. His most high profile work was at a time when your card position could be reasonably fluid, not in the Jinder Mahal sense of being a midcarder one week and a main eventer the next, but in terms of having opportunities to step up when needed, but with no real shame/criticism coming of being a "midcarder", because the midcard tended to be busy enough, with enough storylines, that it was no bad thing. 

That's something I rather liked about booking around that time (I don't know if it's same or different now), that, as a consequence of the entire card getting something to do that would give each name some prominence and development, and therefore history with the crowd, it meant that it was perfectly reasonable for a GM or commissioner to set up matches between midcarders and main-eventers as TV filler, and the midcarder would be perceived as maybe not necessarily having much of a chance of winning, but being enough of a threat that a heel main-eventer would be pissed off at being given a difficult night, and a face would get sympathy from the crowd for the same reason.

Another aspect of that that was also really good was how they often made it clear that tag-team wrestling was a different-enough "discipline" that two main-eventers thrown together could and would get beaten by a dedicated tag-team like the Dudleys or the Hardys or E&C.

[BomberPat]

Yeah - I remember Triple H having a surprisingly competitive match with TAKA Michinoku, and Essa Rios having a title match with Kurt Angle; you never thought the midcarder could win, but there was a sufficient story.

Making sure everyone had a character and something to do meant that stories always had more meat to them than "they've fought every week, and now they'll fight at the PPV too", because there was always a sense of "how would these two characters interact?" that can make any match interesting, and that doesn't happen when everyone is various shades of Arrogant Wrestleman.

It's also a big part of the reason why midcard guys from that era tend to be more memorable than even some of the main event talent of today - when I got back into wrestling in 2000, I never really cared for the main event guys, my favourites were all midcard talent, which I can't imagine really being the case today. Now, the only way to root for a midcard talent is to complain that they're being held down, buried, or under-utilised. I'm sure people can come up with plenty of counterpoints, but back in '98-'00 there weren't many wrestlers I would look at and think they didn't get a fair shake, or deserved better than they got - because everyone had their spot on the card, and most were given opportunities to act up and see how they fared.

[PowerButchi]

One of the highlights of my life was giving Billy Gunn 4 proplus as I normally take 4 instead of 2 so he did as well and watching him shake like a shitting dog. Lovely bloke.