WWE Vault Appreciation Thread

[SaitoRyo]

27 minutes ago, The King of Old School said:

Surprised Savage didn't wrestle anywhere in between 2000 & 2004.

Still looks incredible in that match with Steiner.

Would that be the time he was trying to be a rap artist and an actor?

People wanted him - TNA, WWA etc. - but Savage's money and creative demands always got in the way. I think he also realised at this time that he was physically shot and couldn't/didn't want to do it anymore. 

Good video on what he did during that whole 2000-04 period here: 

 

[davertfnewman]

He did have a match between his WCW run and TNA stop - for a brief moment of time, he was doing interviews promoting the Internet Wrestling Federation (I believe) where he'd had a match with Pat Tanaka and had recorded some other matches with unknowns for watching online, but it didn't go anywhere.

[SaitoRyo]

Another mixtape! Looking forward to digging through this one a little later. 

 

[wandshogun09]

Both the WWF and WCW Vault channels have been a bit dead lately for me, bar the odd exception. Last couple of uploads have been a step back in the right direction though.

Hulk Hogan vs Terry Funk from Saturday Night’s Main Event in Jan 1986. Love this match…

Also, I know their story has been told to death but the Bret vs Shawn ‘Greatest Rivalries’ documentary/sitdown that was released on DVD years ago but oddly wasn’t on the Network…

 

[Cousin Jim Bob]

24 minutes ago, wandshogun09 said:

Both the WWF and WCW Vault channels have been a bit dead lately for me, bar the odd exception. Last couple of uploads have been a step back in the right direction though.

Hulk Hogan vs Terry Funk from Saturday Night’s Main Event in Jan 1986. Love this match…

Also, I know their story has been told to death but the Bret vs Shawn ‘Greatest Rivalries’ documentary/sitdown that was released on DVD years ago but oddly wasn’t on the Network…

 

I must have seen that Hogan Vs Funk match for the first time from a trader on here, in a random comp tape 25 years ago.

The bit where Funk does his normal chair throwing meltdown, and Hogan picks it up and sits on the chair mid ring and goes "come on then", always slays me.

[Chico Torres]

Double Funker as our Terry also shows up on one of the latest WCW uploads as part of the Rhodes vs Stud Stable feud, the last remnant of real WCW.

 

[RIDDUM_N_STYLE]

Todays Vault upload, every PPV main event from 1996, including the Iron Man from Mania, HBK’s title run and Sid winning the big one in MSG

 

[Snitsky's back acne]

On 9/4/2026 at 12:33 AM, Chico Torres said:

Double Funker as our Terry also shows up on one of the latest WCW uploads as part of the Rhodes vs Stud Stable feud, the last remnant of real WCW.

 

First twenty seconds of the video are pure pro wrestling.
Funk and Buck looking like two ornery old bastards who will fight you at the drop of a hat, Meng looking like a guy who will eat your eyeballs and bury you in the desert at a moments notice and then Col Parker looking like something straight out a comic book hamming it up in the background.
If I was channel surfing and had never seen pro wrestling, I wouldn't know who the hell these guys are but I would want to see what it is that they are going to do.

[BomberPat]

I don't know what the consensus is on him these days, but Colonel Parker always used to get talked about as if he was a slightly embarrassing Wrestlecrap gimmick, but I think he's absolutely brilliant, probably in my top ten, maybe top five, managers of all-time. He's this absolutely built 6'5" bloke, towering over most of the people he managed, but still manages to make himself look completely ineffectual and panicked so he never comes across as a physical threat, and the few times he's called upon to actually wrestle, he's brilliant at the whole "manage like a wrestler, wrestle like a manager" thing, he never wrestles like he knows what he's doing. I'll always get a kick out of him frantically having to mop his brow with a handkerchief at ringside whenever things aren't going his team's way.

[gmoney]

He's absolutely hilarious to boot. I'm up to my WCW rewatch to the point where he starts managing the Amazing French Canadians and he's grown a pencil moustache, began dressing like a legionnaire and speaking French phrases. It's a dead end role in 97 really, but it's a hoot every time he's on screen. 

[Chili]

No suprise his worst run was in WWF. It's a credit to how bloody great Robert Fuller was at the wrestling that he could pull off the not being able to wrestle schtick, when he was actually proper great. I love him and Bunkhouse sans the gimmick during their SMW stuff. Agreed on how funny he looks managing Jacques & Pierre. Full commitment to the bit.

Edited September 8 by Chili

[tiger_rick]

12 hours ago, RIDDUM_N_STYLE said:

Todays Vault upload, every PPV main event from 1996, including the Iron Man from Mania, HBK’s title run and Sid winning the big one in MSG

 

Retrospectively calling them "PLE" is my new least favourite thing in wrestling. In the bin with that.

[Chico Torres]

Col Parker was awesome with Sid, with Stunning Steve and the Stud Stable. Came from southern wrestling royalty and when he was in WCW he was only in his mid 40s and had just come from a great run in SMW and USWA yet aged himself perfectly as a manager and played him as a full on cartoon, just great pro wrestling bullshit.

His courtship of Sister Sherri was great tv, two of the best to ever do it hamming it up

Im sure he was heavily inspired by the incredible Ron Wright who he was in SMW with before he came to WCW who also played the fast-talking Kentucky fried southern gent with a dodgy ticker who would have to reach for his heart meds if he got caught interfering.

Speaking of whom, this may be the most offensively redneck wrestling ever as Solie (who was likely sozzled) struggles to maintain order while surrounded by a plantation owner, a German stormtrooper, a Moondog, a Mongolian Stomper and a black bodyguard and…well here you go….

 

[Chili]

Early SMW Ron Wright might be one of my favourite finds as an older fan. The whole schtick about donations, his heart medicine, the wheelchair and his woe is me old man delivery is absolutely pitch perfect in that wrestling delivery that you know it's not on the level. He's an absolute joy to watch.

[BomberPat]

yeah, Ron Wright is an incredible gimmick.

For a while now I've been doing a thing on Twitter and then Bluesky where I keep stats on the oldest active wrestlers, and Ron's brother Don was still wrestling as of late this year, maybe as recently as this year, but there's next to nothing about him on the internet. Apparently Don and Ron were as big a name as there ever was in the old East Tennessee territory, and one of the most hated heel acts going, as well as having some really violent blood-soaked brawls.

The genius of so much of Tennessee wrestling (and this bleeds over into talk about how good Bill Dundee was in the RIP thread) is that they were able to maintain audiences for generations, who knew these wrestlers' histories and reputations. So the Ron Wright gimmick in SMW is made so much better by the fact that he's constantly claiming to be this weak old man who never hurt anybody, who was never anything but a polite sportsmanlike wrestler in his prime, and all the while there are dads and grandads telling their families that he's lying, because they remember who he really was.