Petty Annoyances

[simonworden]

2 hours ago, air_raid said:

The whole Final Four deal was the match over it. Austin in there with the three guys he illegally eliminated to determine who deserved the Mania title shot. Originally scheduled for Sid winning the belt in Lowell and Taker winning Final Four (potentially Shawn costing Bret, IIRC) leading to Sid vs Taker and Bret vs Shawn at Mania. Hastily rejigged to Bret winning the match and the belt then dropping it the next night to Sid.

Three points of interest - it’s unbelievably weird watching back the Rumble and Raw the next night re : Bret and Austin while reminding yourself that in the plan, this isn’t being blown off at Mania, and that Austin will work Smithers instead. Secondly, I think it’s crazy that if HBK wasn’t injured regardless, Final Four would have been the 3rd PPV in 5 that they ran without him, despite positioning him as the top guy (all three In Your Houses).

Finally…. I always thought “Final Four” was a misnomer, as after Austin winning and Bret being last out, the second to last guy eliminated was Glen Diesel, by Hart. I guess “Four From The Final Five” isn’t much of a name.

……….. if you say so.

Ah I forgot that detail quite honestly. Never watched the TV between rumble and mania in 97 but Final Four is a great little ppv and an easy watch at two hours long. 

[air_raid]

6 minutes ago, simonworden said:

Ah I forgot that detail quite honestly. Never watched the TV between rumble and mania in 97 but Final Four is a great little ppv and an easy watch at two hours long. 

You should, it’s great. It’s completely mental between the Rumble and Mania with so many moving parts and things being shuffled, some successfully, some not. Bret vs Vader and Sid vs Austin on Thursday Raw Thursday, Chyna coming in and completely changing the Hunter proposition, ECW and LOD coming back at the Manhattan Centre, Bulldog vs Owen in Berlin and will they/won’t they split up, the complete change of aesthetic to the first Raw Is War set, the chaotic Sid & Taker vs Vader & Mankind match, Bret throwing his wobbler.

Undertaker vs Marc Mero on Superstars is an interesting throwaway too for “Where was this going?” if Mero hadn’t got injured. More I won’t say, in case anyone decides to watch it.

[BomberPat]

2 hours ago, WyattSheepMask said:

But it did give us Schiavone saying “And he’s kicked out at 4. What the hell am I saying!?”, so every cloud and all that

I've probably told this story before, but when I was reffing for Channel Islands World Wrestling in Jersey, we pretty regularly used Ophidian as one of our go-to imports. One time when he was over, he insisted that we all watch New Blood Rising together, and when it came to booking the next show, we tried to steal as much as possible from that show.

We did a "Guernsey Rules" match between Ophidian and one of our top heels, GST, who was billed from Guernsey and already had a heel ref as his manager. We did all the usual spots - "in a Guernsey Rules match, the champion has to be pinned for a count of five", no disqualifications, and so on. Reffing it felt really weird, just completely unnatural to continue a count past three, but it was also one of the most fun matches I've ever worked. The crowd - mostly kids - were just getting more and more riled up the longer it went one, we must have done four or five false finishes, where the heel ref would blow a whistle after the fact and berate me for "obviously not having familiarised himself with the rules", and then announcing another rule change that benefited his guy.

Thing is, he actually went to the effort of writing and printing a few copies of a rulebook to use as a prop, complete with laminated front and back covers - that way, whenever we did the gimmick, a babyface could get their heat back by tearing pages out of it and throwing them to the crowd, and they would actually have some convoluted description of the rules on each page. In this match, as he'd exhausted every possibility, Ophidian put a submission hold on GST, and the heel ref pulled out a pen and started writing new rules in the book, before announcing that, specifically, "Ophidian The Cobra doing a Cobra Clutch is illegal in Guernsey Rules matches". I have never worked a match that got as much heat as that ref pulling out a pen and scribbling in his book - every kid in the audience was screaming at me to look at what he was doing. 

[Chris B]

15 minutes ago, air_raid said:

Undertaker vs Marc Mero on Superstars is an interesting throwaway too for “Where was this going?” if Mero hadn’t got injured. More I won’t say, in case anyone decides to watch it.

Any chance of the spoiler version?

[air_raid]

2 minutes ago, Chris B said:

Any chance of the spoiler version?

 

[boshealecta]

Rules made the heels look better as nobody would touch an official through fear of fine or suspension. Then when some heel did do it, like Vader to Monsoon, it was shocking. Heels were great as they were cowards, even Mene Gean would tell them off. If Mene Gene was interviewing now he would be scared of everyone and F5’d every other week 

[air_raid]

29 minutes ago, boshealecta said:

If Mene Gene was interviewing now he would be scared of everyone and F5’d every other week 

Yeah. What aided the cause of the ultimate renegade Steve Austin becoming such a popular antihero was that he would hit the Stunner on anyone that was previously untouchable - JR, Commissioner Laughter, even Vince - because he didn’t give a shit about the consequences. But there were consequences - he had two titles stripped from him, he was suspended, he was carted off by coppers. But he didn’t give a shit.

Today everyone who takes a GM role expects to get beaten up, half the rosters had a pop at Vince, Ortons beaten up Stephanie, even Linda got tombstoned by Kane. You keep nothing sacred and eventually you’ve got nowhere to go.

[simonworden]

1 hour ago, air_raid said:

Yeah. What aided the cause of the ultimate renegade Steve Austin becoming such a popular antihero was that he would hit the Stunner on anyone that was previously untouchable - JR, Commissioner Laughter, even Vince - because he didn’t give a shit about the consequences. But there were consequences - he had two titles stripped from him, he was suspended, he was carted off by coppers. But he didn’t give a shit.

Today everyone who takes a GM role expects to get beaten up, half the rosters had a pop at Vince, Ortons beaten up Stephanie, even Linda got tombstoned by Kane. You keep nothing sacred and eventually you’ve got nowhere to go.

But then we also get the worst of the opposite where everyone is terrified of Stephanie McMahon for the most minor of infringements.

[wandshogun09]

9 hours ago, air_raid said:

You should, it’s great. It’s completely mental between the Rumble and Mania with so many moving parts and things being shuffled, some successfully, some not. Bret vs Vader and Sid vs Austin on Thursday Raw Thursday, Chyna coming in and completely changing the Hunter proposition, ECW and LOD coming back at the Manhattan Centre, Bulldog vs Owen in Berlin and will they/won’t they split up, the complete change of aesthetic to the first Raw Is War set, the chaotic Sid & Taker vs Vader & Mankind match, Bret throwing his wobbler.

Not to mention that mad Bret vs Sid cage match with the weird but totally logical dynamic of Austin trying to help Bret win because it’ll mean his match with Bret at Mania would be for the title etc. Isn’t that the episode where Shawn Michaels randomly walks out at the end of the show as well, while Bret, Austin, Sid, Taker are all brawling? That main event scene was so hot back then. 

[bAzTNM#1]

Hogan calling DiBiase the "Multi-Trillion Dollar Man" every chance he got made the whole gimmick seem even more cartoonish.

[bAzTNM#1]

18 hours ago, air_raid said:

Undertaker vs Marc Mero on Superstars is an interesting throwaway too for “Where was this going?” if Mero hadn’t got injured. More I won’t say, in case anyone decides to watch it.

I always read that they were going for Mero vs Rocky Maivia at Wrestlemania 13 for the IC belt.

[air_raid]

11 hours ago, wandshogun09 said:

Isn’t that the episode where Shawn Michaels randomly walks out at the end of the show as well, while Bret, Austin, Sid, Taker are all brawling? 

Yes, with Vince on comms begging Shawn not to do anything in case he further hurts his knee.

This interview and ensuing brawl was probably the moment, after Survivor Series, that I realised it was getting really good again. Sets the table nicely for Bret vs Shawn and Sid vs Taker ;

Also, Pattersons jumper.

And here you have another deal which starts with Shawn (as WWF Champion) and Bret, then Taker comes out and finally Austin.

 

2 hours ago, bAzTNM#1 said:

I always read that they were going for Mero vs Rocky Maivia at Wrestlemania 13 for the IC belt.

Ah, Mania 13. My favourite Mania to discuss in terms of what was planned vs what happened. What we DO know about what was discussed, from Mick Foley, is he was offered a Mero match with likely reintroduction of the idea he thought Sable was “mommy.” He hated it, and started campaigning to work with Vader instead. It wouldn’t get changed to a tag title match until after Thursday Raw Thursday because Bulldog is still scheduled to wrestle Austin until then.

As for the Superstars taping with Undertaker vs Mero, recorded 2 days after the Rumble… what can we learn? Well, Mankind interrupts a Vader interview asking about Final Four, why he doesn’t have a title shot and if it can be Final Five instead, pleading with Uncle Paul, so even if they haven’t committed to or announced Mankind vs Vader, they’ve sewn seeds of dissent. They also continue the build for the planned Hunter vs Ahmed match for the Intercontinental title at Final Four with them having a non title match which Goldust gets involved in because HIS feud with Hunter has to keep simmering until Mania.

If they were planning on reinserting Mero into the Intercontinental picture at the time of filming the Undertaker match is impossible for me to answer. Ultimately Final Four and the next night on Raw are the last two matches he wrestled before getting his knee surgery so nothing ever emerged on TV for the plan for him, although there is a really tenuous link to Maivia - Mero’s last TV match is with Savio which ends in a Nation beat down until he’s saved by Ahmed, and it was wrestling Rocky that Savio had turned and joined the Nation. It’s not implausible that they’d have squeezed a “partnership gone sour” storyline involving Rocky and the Wildman fighting the Nation into those weeks between Nashville Raw and Mania. Also, less tenuous, the two had come to blows on a Shotgun in January over Rocky trying to rescue/console Sable after a convoluted mess involving Fake Razor & Diesel and the Honky Tonk Man, who seemed to always be involving himself in Rockys business, before hitching his wagon to Rockabilly instead.

We do know, however, that at the Superstars taping where Mero is against Undertaker, there’s no plans to get the Intercontinental title onto Rocky. In the Rocks book he reveals that Vince & co only decided to put the title on him when they learned Shawn was vacating the WWF title, because they wanted to do something to try and pop the crowd who were no longer getting a heavily hyped WWF title match.

EDIT - with Bulldog scheduled to wrestle Austin…. what would Owen have done? That’s a question seemingly never answered.

With Mania being in Chicago, as soon as Shawn got hurt and with the knowledge Davey wasn’t going to fight Austin and would stay a heel, I’d have left Mankind vs Vader, left Ahmed and Farooq by themselves and gone balls out with Owen & Smithers vs LOD, for the tag team titles, at WrestleMania, in Chicago. THATS a match.

Edited February 10, 2022 by air_raid

[andrew "the ref" coyne]

22 hours ago, WyattSheepMask said:

But it did give us Schiavone saying “And he’s kicked out at 4. What the hell am I saying!?”, so every cloud and all that.

In kayfabe it works to Storm’s benefit. Under “normal” rules he has to kick out by 2, whereas if he’s got till 5 under “Canadian” rules, that gives him an extra 2 seconds recovery time on every pinfall that Awesome attempted. Had they done it anywhere else other than Canada it would’ve gotten great heel heat

You are right. You can look at any situation and see the pro and con of it. 

[Jazzy G]

After that Texas Death Match, and reminding me if that Edge Orton last man standing match the other year can i discuss how annoying it is that nobody ever gets up before 9 in these matches nowadays? 

[HarmonicGenerator]

53 minutes ago, jazzygeofferz said:

After that Texas Death Match, and reminding me if that Edge Orton last man standing match the other year can i discuss how annoying it is that nobody ever gets up before 9 in these matches nowadays? 

I suppose if you know you've got until 10, you may as well take as much time as you can to rest and recover - it's the only time in the match when you know your opponent's not going to try and get you. Wrestling's equivalent of the snooze button making you get out of bad at the last possible moment

Edited February 11, 2022 by HarmonicGenerator