Dooley

The only issue there is that I'm not sure there is a wildly inappropriate time to offer Harley Race a drink.

I never understood that either. In the spring, they seemed to be hinting at the Harts turning heel as they desperately needed another heel team to even things out. LOD came in, so the Demos went heel instead. But instead of doing a LOD-Demos mega-feud over the titles, they got a house show program out of it and some six-mans but the supposed "dream feud" never happened. Meanwhile the Harts get the titles but have nothing to do with them. 1990's downturn is always looked at as Warrior failing on top. While that's definitely part of it, they really didn't do him any favors in his own booking or the booking choices in the rest of the card. A really peculiar year for the WWF.

Rock does a hell of a job getting "tossed" back into the cage by Bulldog. Doesn't even seem to protect himself flying back down. It's a good one, but the Davey Boy stuff... just went on for every rather than a short thing to add to the match. Felt like them trying to figure out how to book it to make Rock look strong despite losing, then went over the top with it. That, and they wanted Bulldog to have a prominent role in his return to England.

Original plan was Hogan-Warrior 2 at WM7. They did advance sales of WM7 tickets directly after WM6 with that being the implication. Add to that Tunney's post WM announcement of no immediate rematch but leaving the door open in the future, and you could see where they were going. Warrior-Quake was also planned for the fall, but obviously didn't happen. Whether it was Warrior's clunker of a feud with Rude or Quake also losing steam after losing to Hogan, they shifted gears. Slaughter was always brought in as a Hogan foe, but to hear Sarge tell it, initially he was under the impression that they were going to turn Hogan and Sarge was going to be the face.

Don't bother trying to say anything nice about '99 WWF. It will always be viscerally hated by hardcore wrestling fans because of the lack of focus on in-ring action and the infiltration of the casual fan to their playground. It doesn't matter that is was the high-water mark business-wise and they sold out the arena wherever they went, NOTHING GOOD HAPPENED.

1. That's not what a false finish is. A false finish is a near fall.2. So you want Snowden to alienate Dusty and WWE? These can be re-worded to have more appealing language but are still valid questions. Not every interview has to be a list of reasons why the subject is awesome. Snowden knows that as well as anyone.

This may have been Owen's chance to break out of the midcard glut but it wasn't going to happen for a number of reasons, many of them related to Montreal. WWF canon has to portray Bret as the "loser" of what went down and thus you can't have Owen playing the knight successfully avenging his brother, who is headlining for the competition. Similarly, Shawn and HHH have to be portrayed as the "winners" since they were the one who exiled him, so you can't have DX get their comeuppance at the hands of anyone really until the situation has blown over enough and/or a new issue is at stake (aka Austin). Also, Owen was sufficiently neutered as a tough-guy babyface when his act was limited to grabbing Vince by the lapel after Austin had already stunnered him with (in story and real life) less provocation.

I was kind of surprised the LOD didn't jump to WCW in the wake of the Harts, Rude and Crush. They seemed to have no love for Vince (and vice-versa), were established enough names that Bisch might have given them fat paychecks and a jump may have made them fresh again.

I thought it was Bret's idea to call Owen "the real hitman of the Hart Foundation". I'm pretty sure he even said it in promos.

All this time I thought Violent J was the blobby one in ICP. This thread continues to bring new things to my attention.

I think you could look back on this as the definitive night when Austin went from a really hot act to the legit top guy in the company. It's true the Harts were being shifted away as top heels, but at least on this show it seemed like fans were ready to cheer Bret again. Despite still ostensibly an anti-USA heel, the MSG crowd popped hard for the end of Bret's promo when he used the "best there is..." line and added "NYC, you know it!" The obnoxious Shawn heel push seemed like it could be used to turn Bret face again until.....everything else happened.

Looking back on it, how great would it have been if they had run an angle of Alex Wright continually trying to crash the Nitro Girls' routines? They could have even incorporated Disco Inferno during the "Boogie Knights" phase as an answer to the "Night at the Roxbury" skits on SNL.

It shows how much the company changed from christmas '95 with Savio Vega and "Xanta Claus".

This was the first time Raw had won a head-to-head segment in quite some time wasn't it? Due to the nWo nitro changeover happening on the other channel.

Are we talking amateur wrestling or pro wrestling? Because while conventional wisdom has an amateur wrestler beating a boxer, i'll take a pro boxer over a pro wrestler any day of the week.

An actor friend of Bret Hart's apparently. He was much better in that particular role than Don Callis, who they replaced him with.

There's an alternate reality where Windham is in the Zeus role in 89. They were hinting at Windham challenging Hogan on the syndie shows before his run got cut short.

I thought this was hilarious too. Think some people who complain about it are being oversensitive. According to Nash, Arn was fine with the sketch until he went home and his family got him riled up about it. It was also Arn's actual cooler that they used in the sketch.

HHH was the first name that came to mind. Despite eons of promotional push by the biggest wrestling company in the history of time, you ask any regular people on the street to name some wrestlers, you'll never hear "Triple H". Yet, he's a "legend".

It's a great "event" more than a match but just so much fun to watch. It was really cool seeing how much fun Pillman was having during the entire thing.

To me, it just seemed like Bret babyface-ing it up on home soil. And then we had the Harper years This was a fan-fucking-tastic segment. WWF in spring-summer 97 was just firing on all cylinders creatively.

Vader said later that he knew he was going to be asked the "is it fake?" question in advance and that the producer encouraged him to go after the host. Whether the host was in on it, who knows.

And he's not afraid to take stiff shots from foreign objects.

there's a story that's been floating around for a while, and told in different iterations on shoots, about the Nasty Boys beating the shit out of Shamrock. and the story is that they totally cheap shotted him when he wasn't looking, and used some kind of gimmick to KO him before they went to town. every version of the story I've heard makes the Nastys sound like total cowards To be fair, Shamrock went to the Nasties' hotel room looking to fight. Getting into that situation, then getting brained with a hotel phone and clobbered seems like Shammy's own fault.

Because it's easier to get the ECW mutants worked up about big, bad, evil Vince. Easy target for the smart mark rebellion.