UKFF Questions Thread v3

[Dai]

How did Tiger Ali Singh end up in the WWF? I just checked his Cagematch, and he had a few years of wrestling up until 1995, then looks like he did nothing until wrestling the WWF in April 1997. He was obviously the drizzling shits, and i cant see them hiring him just because of his links to Tiger Jeet Singh. Did they have high hopes for entering the Indian market in 97? Wonder why they didnt get rid when it must have been obvious from day 1 that he was crap. Why did he have such a gap between his last indy match and his wwf match, unless its just a case of Cagematch being incomplete.

All this stems from a passing clip of Lo Down being managed by him in a Vault vid. Hadn't seen or thought about him for 20 years.

[Chili]

24 minutes ago, Dai said:

How did Tiger Ali Singh end up in the WWF? I just checked his Cagematch, and he had a few years of wrestling up until 1995, then looks like he did nothing until wrestling the WWF in April 1997. He was obviously the drizzling shits, and i cant see them hiring him just because of his links to Tiger Jeet Singh. Did they have high hopes for entering the Indian market in 97? Wonder why they didnt get rid when it must have been obvious from day 1 that he was crap. Why did he have such a gap between his last indy match and his wwf match, unless its just a case of Cagematch being incomplete.

All this stems from a passing clip of Lo Down being managed by him in a Vault vid. Hadn't seen or thought about him for 20 years.

Indian market, plus he was Canadian and they were absolutely desperate for anything. They did Raws in South Africa for god's sake. He won a big foreign tournament and did some TV stuff but they realised he needed work. He had a great look so like someone like Brakkus, they weren't just gonna give up in case they missed something. But beyond being somewhat an ok promo (nothing amazing but he wasn't completely awful at it), they just eventually gave up. They really kept trying. He was also apparently a bit of a pain in the arse to deal with at times, as was his dad. Didn't merit the appalling racial abuse he suffered mind. 

Silver lining, we got that lovely Iron Sheik/Sultan theme on TV for a few more years.

I have my own question, because I'm having a Mandela effect with Tiger Ali Singh. During his humiliate Americans skits, he once got a woman in from the crowd to kiss his assistant who had like sardines in his mouth. I SWEAR, this woman then flashed her bristols on camera and this even made Sky TV but it was black barred out. I've actually seen the skit since and there is a bit of a weird cut after she kisses Babu and Singh has a "oh fucking hell" look on his face but I'm unsure. Am I mistaken and thinking about when Triple H got that plant to flash in the crowd? 

 

 

Edited August 18 by Chili

[Chico Torres]

I assume this is overthinking things and there’s a simpler (and more racist) answer, but I was confused by him being called Ali Singh, Singh being a Sikh surname and Ali generally a Muslim (and usually Shia) first name.

[Chili]

Just now, Chico Torres said:

I assume this is overthinking things and there’s a simpler (and more racist) answer, but I was confused by him being called Ali Singh, Singh being a Sikh surname and Ali generally a Muslim (and usually Shia) first name.

Ali was from Muhammad Ali.

[Dai]

2 hours ago, Chili said:

Indian market, plus he was Canadian and they were absolutely desperate for anything. They did Raws in South Africa for god's sake. He won a big foreign tournament and did some TV stuff but they realised he needed work. He had a great look so like someone like Brakkus, they weren't just gonna give up in case they missed something. But beyond being somewhat an ok promo (nothing amazing but he wasn't completely awful at it), they just eventually gave up. They really kept trying. He was also apparently a bit of a pain in the arse to deal with at times, as was his dad. Didn't merit the appalling racial abuse he suffered mind. 

Silver lining, we got that lovely Iron Sheik/Sultan theme on TV for a few more years.

I have my own question, because I'm having a Mandela effect with Tiger Ali Singh. During his humiliate Americans skits, he once got a woman in from the crowd to kiss his assistant who had like sardines in his mouth. I SWEAR, this woman then flashed her bristols on camera and this even made Sky TV but it was black barred out. I've actually seen the skit since and there is a bit of a weird cut after she kisses Babu and Singh has a "oh fucking hell" look on his face but I'm unsure. Am I mistaken and thinking about when Triple H got that plant to flash in the crowd? 

 

 

Did he have a great look? Brakkus was a jacked up 300 pounder, but Tiger was nothing special to look at really? 

Also, any idea why he seemed to have the whole of 96 off, and if he was just away from wrestling, how he ended up signing with the WWF? He must have had an in in the WWF to be signed, and I assume it was JR. Seems strange that he was signed when it seemed like he was out of the business.

[bAzTNM#1]

Hi there. Long time, no see. Couple of questions...

About three hours in to the "WCW All Nighter" on Youtube something is blurred out about three hours in. Any idea what happened there?

And..at the first Survivor Series, what's the deal with the dodgy lighting in the big tag team match?

Thank you!

[bAzTNM#1]

19 hours ago, Dai said:

Did he have a great look? Brakkus was a jacked up 300 pounder, but Tiger was nothing special to look at really? 

Also, any idea why he seemed to have the whole of 96 off, and if he was just away from wrestling, how he ended up signing with the WWF? He must have had an in in the WWF to be signed, and I assume it was JR. Seems strange that he was signed when it seemed like he was out of the business.

Wasn't Bret Hart a big fan? Think he might have helped train him,

[BomberPat]

I don't know if Bret had much to do with it - he probably trained him a little once he got to the WWF, he seemed to do that for most newbies, but Tiger's an odd one. He came up through Ron Hutchison and Sweet Daddy Siki's school in Canada, the same as Edge, Christian, and Joe E. Legend, but used that more as a "finishing school" after Tiger Jeet Singh taught him the basics, is my understanding of it. He also did some work with Inoki in the NJPW dojo, because Inoki loved his dad and thought he could basically revisit their feud through his kid.

I'm not sure why there's no record of him wrestling in 1996, no idea what he was up to then. 

When it became clear that Inoki wanted to make a big deal out of Tiger Ali, both WWF and WCW started sniffing around him. The story was that there was a big Indian TV network looking to buy into some wrestling programming, but they wanted to make sure there was an Indian wrestler featured on whatever show they bought into. As happens every few years, wrestling promotions were looking to India as this enormous untapped market of billions, and hoping they could be the ones to crack it if they had the right Indian name on top. When the Indian TV deal wasn't forthcoming, they pivoted to thinking he could be the key to attracting Indian audiences in Canada and the UK instead.