WWE Vault Appreciation Thread

[Mr.Showtime]

Slightly off-topic but based on Solomon Grundy - I watched that Yoko match earlier and I couldn't recall seeing Grundy before. I just went on Wikipedia and then clicked on Booger's page to see if he was still alive. I saw this paragraph:

"On December 30, 1988, he [Booger/Mike Shaw] and Vokhan Singh defeated The British Bulldogs for the Stampede Wrestling International Tag Team Championship. They dropped the titles to Chris Benoit and Biff Wellington on April 8, 1989."

I was like ooh, Biff Wellington, what a name! Hadn't heard of him either. Clicked on his page and it said he died on June 24, 2007. I immediately thought, isn't that almost the same day Benoit died, and sure enough, it was! (Technically, his body was found on the same day, he was likely already dead for a few days). There can't be many tag champions that have perished at the same time.

Back on-topic, seeing Yoko when he's not Yoko is bizarre to me! I was 10 years old when he popped up in the WWF and I was terrified of him. But even back then with Grundy, he seemed knackered before he got anywhere near the ring! Why was a monster like him so not up for the fight? 😂

Edited April 29 by Mr.Showtime
More boogers

[davertfnewman]

3 hours ago, Chico Torres said:

Sadly I haven’t had enough Solomon Grundy in my life thus far but I do remember him appearing on those “Best of USWA” tapes you would always see at less reputable video rental shops in the 90s.

Whats better than a Solomon Grundy? The Brothers Grundy! In Mexico (where Solomon was a huge star) he was briefly joined by his brother Aaron Grundy, who is none other than our Norman the Lunatic/Bastion Booger

 

Tyler "Sabretooth" Mane in that match too.

There's a USWA/World Class clip I saw years ago where a fight breaks out and Grundy is so fat that he can't really fight anyone off but he does sit on them to stop them interfering. Probably someone like Terrence Garvin to make him look more of a wuss.

[Devon Malcolm]

On 4/28/2026 at 9:22 AM, Devon Malcolm said:

Started watching Superbrawl II last night.

Obviously starts with a Liger vs. Pillman classic, a match that I can watch at any time and have a great time with it.

Then an incredible drop-off to the Taylor Made Man vs Marcus Alexander Bagwell. The crowd hated Bagwell, so much so that they were cheering quite a bit for TERRY TAYLOR. It's actually not too bad a match but what a bizarre mix of quality you got on WCW PPVs at this time.

Ron Simmons vs Cactus Jack is a nice short fight and lots of fun, as I remembered.

Then you're back down to Tom Zenk and Van Hammer (RIP) vs Vinnie Vegas and Richard Morton. It's mesmerising how shit Nash was at this time. There's a great spot where Van Hammer tries to do a leapfrog on Vegas and the latter just doesn't duck at all and just runs headlong into Hammer's cock and balls. Morton does some quality bumping but this goes 12 minutes and it feels like 12 months.

Watching the rest tonight.

The rest of it is obviously excellent. There can't have been many better four match runs in PPV history than that.

My favourite of the lot was Windham and Rhodes vs Austin and Zbyszko. Four wrestling geniuses in the same match, what a treat. So many good stories told here. As much as Barry Windham is one of my favourites of all time, Zbyszko was fantastic, wasn't he? Everything looked good, his heel crowd work was spot on. He was so good leading this.

The Steiners vs Arn Anderson and Bobby Eaton was as good as you'd expect, too. It does have that thing WCW overdosed on of making its babyfaces look like the dumbest shits imaginable but I don't think there was ever a Steiners match I didn't enjoy.

Rude vs Steamboat also made its babyface look a daft twat but ending aside this was a great fight. Always enjoy listening to Ventura getting infuriated when Steamboat did something not strictly legal. Rude sells his arm in this like it's hanging off. Cracker.

They obviously rushed through Luger vs Sting but what a sprint it is, too. At his peak Luger was one of the best of his generation and I still don't think enough acknowledge that. Some pointed shots at bodybuilding not making any money from JR and Ventura during this. What could they mean!

Might watch Beach Blast 92 next.

[JNLister]

Luger-Sting is one of those weird "even though I didn't know how it worked, I still spotted what was going on, just didn't know what it was" deals. In the same way as I'd watch thinking "Bret Hart and Arn Anderson are obvious really good wrestlers but they keep losing for some reason", I remember thinking "Luger didn't even look like he was making an effort to win."

[HandsomeButchIII]

1 hour ago, JNLister said:

Luger-Sting is one of those weird "even though I didn't know how it worked, I still spotted what was going on, just didn't know what it was" deals. In the same way as I'd watch thinking "Bret Hart and Arn Anderson are obvious really good wrestlers but they keep losing for some reason", I remember thinking "Luger didn't even look like he was making an effort to win."

Luger was the top choker, in hindsight it makes sense that he manages to choke while being top dog. Needed help to beat BW at GAB to finally become the champion after years of bottling, just got past Ron Simmons at Halloween Havoc, and spent time being beaten by Rick Steiner in between. I think it may be controversial, but I don't think he was "made" made until 1997 when he beat Hogan. And all that went to piss and blocked toilets by mid 1998 when he grew a goatee and started wearing jeans. His last hope was Jan 4th 1999 when he came out to save Goldberg, and then turned heel, and was sitting at home about 3 months later.

 

Although, Totally Buff was a great midcard tag team act.

[The Reverend]

On 4/28/2026 at 4:33 PM, wandshogun09 said:

Yeah, they did that a couple of times. The Halloween Havoc 91 tape had a brief clip of Missy Hyatt interviewing a sweaty Bobby Eaton with a pumpkin under his arm, which baffled me as a kid because he wasn’t even wrestling on the tape. Wasn’t until years later I learned they cut matches from the video releases and Eaton’s match with Terry Taylor (him again) was one of them in this case. 

This is the one I remember - only because at the time that Halloween Havoc was one of the few tapes I owned and I would watch it regularly (awful bloody PPV - but in my defence I bought it because the WCW programmes running at the time on late night ITV were all around Havoc so I had watched the exciting build-up, Missy and Paul E doing investigative journalism looking for the Chamber of Horrors etc. Fat William from Scouts told me that ITV were going to show Halloween Havoc. Talking out of his arse. I should've known as he also told us he had hacked into the local Police computer with his Spectrum). 

Anyway - does anyone know why WCW edited their tapes so much? Was it just because of cost on having a two hour tape instead of a 3 hour? Or was it they were trimming the crap of which there seemed to be a lot of with WCW PPVs. 

[Chili]

Just now, The Reverend said:

This is the one I remember - only because at the time that Halloween Havoc was one of the few tapes I owned and I would watch it regularly (awful bloody PPV - but in my defence I bought it because the WCW programmes running at the time on late night ITV were all around Havoc so I had watched the exciting build-up, Missy and Paul E doing investigative journalism looking for the Chamber of Horrors etc. Fat William from Scouts told me that ITV were going to show Halloween Havoc. Talking out of his arse. I should've known as he also told us he had hacked into the local Police computer with his Spectrum). 

Anyway - does anyone know why WCW edited their tapes so much? Was it just because of cost on having a two hour tape instead of a 3 hour? Or was it they were trimming the crap of which there seemed to be a lot of with WCW PPVs. 

Cost of the tapes.

[Chico Torres]

Thankfully Starrcade 90: Collision Course was the full event on the tape released here so we can see gems like our lads Chris Adam’s and Norman Smiley take on Rey’s stocky uncle and a still masked Konan, legit Russian shooters, unknown Canadians, South African Flyboy Rocco Rock etc. as well as Sid retuning and reforming the Skyscrapers to kill some cartoon henchmen goons, Stan Hansen beating our Lex with a bullrope, and the shocking reveal of the Black Scorpion in a spaceship. Also a genuinely awesome brawl in Doom vs Arn Anderson and Barry Windham.

[Snitsky's back acne]

I know a lot of people slate the Bill Watts WCW era (and he certainly gave them enough ammunition to do so) I think 1992 was an underrated year for WCW. Beach Blast 1992, GAB 1992 were no-frills, solid pro wrestling. Superbrawl II was stacked with talent and WrestleWar had the best War Games ever alongside the Steiners brutalising Takayuki Iizuka. 

[JNLister]

There's a wonderfully nerdy answer to the edits question. The American NTSC system physically used more tape per one minute of footage than the European PAL system. It meant that when you were buying blank tapes for production, a three-hour tape in Europe wasn't significantly more expensive than a two-hour one. However, in the US, it was a major price point difference.

WWE would put a pay-per-view out on the appropriate tape length (and were helped by the fact that 2 hrs 40 minutes was also a relatively standard blank tape option so some PPVs fit on that easily) and just charge extra. WCW, initially at least, cut costs by editing to two hours. When they rereleased them in the UK they didn't both remastering from the PPV and instead just converted the existing tapes.

[Chili]

Remember when NXT was half decent and some absolute marks bought Triple H a fruit basket... Well I guess the WWE Vault guy does deserve something as he's gone with 'fellas knocking the absolute shit out of each other' as the recent theme on the WCW channel.

 

 

 

[wandshogun09]

Oh gonna enjoy them. Goldberg and Steiner had great chemistry from what I remember of their matches at the time. Felt like that should’ve been a huge feud for WCW at a time when they badly needed something to hit but, unless I’m remembering it wrong, wasn’t this when they went all shooty bollocks and had that three way with Nash that was built as ‘all the other matches on the card are bullshit but this one’s gonna be real’? Rotten stuff. 

[davertfnewman]

4 hours ago, Chico Torres said:

Thankfully Starrcade 90: Collision Course was the full event on the tape released here so we can see gems like our lads Chris Adam’s and Norman Smiley take on Rey’s stocky uncle and a still masked Konan, legit Russian shooters, unknown Canadians, South African Flyboy Rocco Rock etc. as well as Sid retuning and reforming the Skyscrapers to kill some cartoon henchmen goons, Stan Hansen beating our Lex with a bullrope, and the shocking reveal of the Black Scorpion in a spaceship. Also a genuinely awesome brawl in Doom vs Arn Anderson and Barry Windham.

And they STILL chopped some bits like interviews and ceremonies and the like.

[Snitsky's back acne]

7 hours ago, Chili said:

Remember when NXT was half decent and some absolute marks bought Triple H a fruit basket... Well I guess the WWE Vault guy does deserve something as he's gone with 'fellas knocking the absolute shit out of each other' as the recent theme on the WCW channel.

 

 

 

That Finlay/Regal match is a belter. Just two mates battering the granny out of each other like they always did but this time with cars involved. 

[Lion_of_the_Midlands]

7 hours ago, Chili said:

Remember when NXT was half decent and some absolute marks bought Triple H a fruit basket... Well I guess the WWE Vault guy does deserve something as he's gone with 'fellas knocking the absolute shit out of each other' as the recent theme on the WCW channel.

 

 

 

I can't watch Regal v Finlay without hearing "He's kicked him in the belly welly" in my mind.