JerryvonKramer

1987 Supervillains: Heenan, Andre Villains of the month: Kamala, Hercules, Race, Savage, Khan, One Man Gang, DiBiase*, Bundy One-shots: Sika, Reed Chumps: none! * "supervillain" angle starts 12/19/87

1986 Supervillains: Piper*, Orndorff, Heenan, Bundy Villains of the month: Terry Funk, Savage, Adonis, Muraco, Studd, Hercules, Orton, Kamala One-shots: Iron Sheik Chumps: none! * January only

1985 Supervillains: Muraco, Piper, Orndorff, Heenan Villains of the month: Ventura, Patera, Beefcake, Studd, Orton, Valentine, Bundy, Terry Funk, Savage One-shots: Iron Sheik, Volkoff, The Moondogs Chumps: Lee, Gibbs, Rodz etc.

Ok, remember that all I said was that Vince's style of booking Hogan as champ was taking on "villain of the month" challengers while being needled by perrennial "super villains". I'm using this site here for match listings: http://hulkhoganhistory.weebly.com/match-history.html I'm going to try to categorize every challenger. Supervillain: perrennial threat, a live and present force of evil in the company, a top heel who will keep coming back for more Villain of the month: someone with a bit of build to face the champ over a series of matches over a brief period, then they might leave or go on to do something lower down the card One-shot: someone, usually with some name value, brought in for a one or two matches against the champ -- can be someone already on the roster, or some from outside brought from outside Chump: just a nothing challenger to give the champ someone to beat *NOTE: I can't make the post I wanted to because of the IPS error. I've tried for 30 minutes now to remove offending characters but still getting it, so I give up. Will have to just give abbreviated version without the listings. It was more effective when you could see it date-by-date so you'll have to look at that yourself* 1984 Supervillains: Studd, Sheik, Orndorff, Schultz, Piper, Heenan Villains of the month: Masked Superstar, Valentine, Steele, Beefcake One-shots: Afa, Sika, Orton Chumps: Lee, Fuji, Jerry Valiant, Rodz, Gibbs 85 to come.

More later but I want to say the Ted 87 stuff was before he debuted on tv. I'm on my phone so can't look it up but suspect they took place in Texas or Watts country.

I agree that they aren't malicious. Johnny is right that the company doesn't want to say no to free money. I'm not sure if "misguided" is the word I'd go for because it gives them almost too much credit. It just seems like bad work to me, plain and simple. You could look at the writers, but I can imagine this exact angle with a more competent promo and it working better. Swap out HHH for Vince, Hogan, Flair, Regal, shit Angle even, take your pick and it would have been better because those guys know how to play heels. It's not just the words coming out of his mouth, it's everything: body language, facial expressions, everything.

In the few times I watched RAW, and this was back after Summerslam, what I saw were promos burying Bryan with the heels all in the ring and him just standing on the outside taking it all while breathing heavily. I don't know if things have progressed from there, but that's just ass-backwards in terms of wrestling logic. The problem is that HHH and Steph don't really show much vulnerability. Heels are meant to be shit-scared of faces. Think back to Austin vs. McMahon. There McMhaon had ALL of the power, all of the backup, he was built up as the big boss. Yet, McMahon always always gave you the impression that Austin was a total badass who would kick his ass. He was scared of Austin. On promos he'd never run Austin DOWN, he'd actually be talking him up but a la wrestling 101 talking up the extent of his retribution even more. That's why Vince McMahon is one of the greatest heels of all time. McMahon would be a dick, but Austin would get his payback spots. Always. Again, HHH was there, and he seems to have learned nothing at all from it. They can't leave Bryan fuming on the side of the ring after he's just been verbally buried. Visually, it makes him look weak and ineffectual. If the ACTIONS are reaffirming what the heels are saying week after week, then they are in effect burying the face.

Everything Loss has said in this thread about promos is true. Doesn't matter how "smart" the fanbase, you don't bury people on promos. That's true if you're face or heel and regardless of the era. If HHH is such a student of the game he should know that. It's amazing how someone who professes to have worshipped Flair learned so little from him.

Yeah I think it's easy to see that, part of it of course is that a lot of them had *nowhere to go*. Or at least nowhere viable beyond Crockett -- which a lot of the guys you mention had just come from. I also want to say that 84-85 is a transitional period and that Vince didn't get into his own groove of booking the challengers until at least 86. The list of Hogan challenges from 84 is more than anything just a bit random. Just a bunch of guys who happened to be around. I think if you kept tracking the challengers into 85, 86, 87, 88 you'd see that gradually Vince fell into the sort of pattern I was describing. 84-85 seems like a weird time in general for the company to me.

Does Vince appear on air any more? If not, as I think he doesn't, I kind of feel like he could be their Deus Ex Machine / get out of jail free card that they might use at any time. Vince McMahon: I have held the reigns of this company since 1982. Wrestlemania, Summerslam, Survivor Series. And yes, ROYAL RUMBLE. Each and every major event in wrestling has been down to me. Hogan. Austin. The Rock. Each and every major star in wrestling has been down TO ME. I am, and I don't want to brag, a wrestling genius. I built this company from the ground up. My father and Bruno Sammartino can take some credit. But it was ME, I made this company great. I made it resonate with .... 500 million people around the world! And do you know how I did it? I did it by listening .... to the fans God dammit. To the fans! And what I saw the other week at the Royal Rumble, at MY event, in MY arena, was one of the lowest things I've seen as a wrestling promoter in all my ... FORTY YEARS in this business. Enough of this "The Authority" crap. What authority. I'm Vince McMahon dammit and this has gone far enough. It's going to Randy Orton vs. Daniel Bryan for the Unified World Championship TONIGHT. Tonight. YES YES YES And if I see so much as one other person at ringside, they will be firrrrrrrrrreeeeeedd_--aaacchhrfghfhafhhfhfhhf_--ddDDDDDD Punk is the one that comes during the match out and is fired. Bryan goes over and the fans can stop moaning. Done.

Ironically, all of this shit has made me a little bit curious and I'm thinking of watching Raw into Mania.

Johnny - what happened to "the crowd can never be wrong"? Ha ha ha

As well as Kamala and Funk they brought in guys like Afa and Sika for "one-shots". Bundy was sort of a "villain of the month". The little run with Race. Patera in 85. They'd also use "chump" challengers -- like midcard guys who were on the roster given a little 1-2 match run. Nikolai Volkoff comes to mind. Then you've got the "one-shots" who just kinda hung around for a while with nothing at all to do. One Man Gang in 87 comes to mind.

Bumping this as hype for the HHH show Wrestling with the Past have just done.

When else have they built someone else up to the main event level with this slow a build? I thought it was clear live that they probably knew going in they would be some Bryan chants but hoped the elevation of Wyatt, superman push of Reigns breaking the Rumble record (which I don't think many people got live), and fresh returns of Sheamus and Batista in ring after 4 years would counteract any Bryan supporters, that clearly wasn't the case and I think they had no idea that Big E would get silence and Sheamus and Rey would be boo'd out of the building along with Batista's eventual win. Yeah, I can accept that "something went wrong" and they weren't banking on such an overwhelming / card-defining reaction for Bryan but .... Well look at this. Call me cynical, but look at where Bryan is positioned there. It's clear that the 3 most prominently placed stars on this are Cena, Bryan and Punk. Do you think the WWE don't know what they've got in him? I imagine they have some Alec Baldwin-figure there with a breakdown of demographics of who Bryan is over with and why and how many t-shirts he's going to sell and to whom. I'm not saying they haven't fucked up here, it seems like they have -- or at least they've misjudged the situation quite a bit. But at least some part of the Bryan deal is a work. I mean in terms of tweets, mentions elsewhere on social media, message boards, articles and articles and articles, how many people are talking about Bryan right now? Is anyone believing that Bryan's OWN tweets and things saying "it's me vs. the system" aren't just a massive work? I don't know, maybe wrestling has got to the point where I don't understand it anymore, but watching this whole thing build from afar and it looks like they know what they are doing with it. I just don't think they banked on it taking over the whole Rumble.

While I agree with much of what jdw said here, my take is a little different -- or rather, I have an elaboration / nuance to mention. I've talked about this before somewhere (Rick Martel thread), but let me do this again without the Batman analogy for people not to get hung up on the specifics of that analogy, which are not important. I think the WWF had 2 different types of challenger for the champ. 1. Super villain who is going to stick around as a lingering threat, whether to the champ or to the company in general. 2. "Villain of the week" who is in and then out allied with one of said super villains or not. I don't actually think this changed that much between Backlund and Hogan. The second category of guy is much easier to deal with. This is your Kamala -- standard big heel come in, 3 matches against the champ, couple of jobs on the way out and done deal. Both Backlund and Hogan had a conveyor belt of these to face at MSG / Philly / and later on SNME. In comic book terms these are more like your "one shots". They may even come back around eventually but in the meantime they won't be there. jdw has identified most of these. Your "super villains" also include managers. Backlund had the three wise men. Hogan had Heenan, Piper and DiBiase. What the WWF did that was the SAME in both cases is that when a top heel was going to be sticking around for a while (Patera, Valentine,DiBiase -- let's keep Patteron, Piper, Savage and Bossman to one side since they all turned face, which was another way to stick around), they used the main event feud to establish them in the company. I've said before, it's pointless thinking in terms of a "number 1 heel", the company never worked like that. It's more like a rotating rogues gallery. Once they've had the main event feud, the top heel is useful in other ways, primarily: - Angles and feuds to get over other babyfaces - Hatching schemes that have wider impact -- this is more your managers, but with DiBiase it's stuff like purchasing the 30 ticket at Rumble 89 (tied in to Hogan going 2 vs 1 against Bossman and Akeem), or turning Bossman face, or bringing in Undertaker, or any number of other things he did over the years; Piper has his own catalogue of crimes. - Another match on the card to care about (see Valentine vs. Strongbow, Patera vs. Patterson / Atlas, DiBiase vs. Jake / Dusty / Virgil) - "Filler" matches / angles in between programs for the champ -- think DiBiase plugging in with Zeus at SNME / Survivor Series or plugging vs. Hogan or Warrior when he was needed. - Possible IC title run -- Patera had this, DiBiase had the Million Dollar Belt, you can think of your own other examples In a sense, I don't see it in terms of "decline" or getting de-pushed down the card, but rather becoming part of the fabric of the company. In TV-land they talk about a "family of faces". WWF had a "family of super villains" who'd be a reasonbly persistent thorn in the sides of the faces. In the 70s and up until 83 this was chiefly the 3-wise men. In 84-93 it was Heenan and Piper, then Heenan and DiBiase.

Trying out new short "substance only / no play-by-play" type reviews now. Time to crack on with New Japan New Japan 2.1 Chavo Guerrero vs. Kengo Kimura (9/30/80) Pretty dreary match for the first 10 mins or so, which felt both aimless and disjointed. Chavo and Kimura looked cool exchanging the high spots in the final stretch; Chavo's backbreaker is especially sweet. Finish was rubbish. **1/2 New Japan 2.2 Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Ron Starr (9/30/80) Ron Starr looks like he'd hang out with Bob Roob -- or at least they have the same tailor. He looked a bit lost here: wrong country, wrong decade. Neat little story of Fujinami repeatedly trying to pick up the pace and Starr slowing it down. This was almost Fujinami as Flair, making an okay wrestler look very good. That said, I think Starr might have some potential to be good in his own right in another context -- he wasn't offensive in any way and was effective on top for a long stretch of this. He had good intensity, it's just his timing seemed off: possibly hesitancy caused by communication issues? Fujinmai made this match though and it was pretty good. *** New Japan 2.3 Bob Backlund vs. Stan Hansen (9/30/80) Here we go. Remember, I'm trying to be positive about Backlund for the next two months at least and here is a good chance for him to prove that it's simply Vince Sr and WWF booking that is at fault for all my typical criticisms. Here he is in Japan taking on Hansen. So going in, I'm certainly expecting more vulnerability from him in general. After all, it stands to reason: he's not in New York and no one in New York will see this. That was similar to the line I had to buy as justification when he dominated Race. Let's see what happens. A lot of this was "typical Bob": controlling with headlocks and armwork, cutting off Hansen's attempts at taking that control, reversing attempts at highspots, thinking more about fighting back than selling when in holds himself, killing Hansen with a piledriver, etc. etc. We're also a long way from New York here, and he's working in exactly the same way. However, Stan Hansen is a great worker and he's able to make all of this work while not making himself appear too weak despite eating 80%+ of all of the offense. Hansen is able to get enough in to make this seem like a proper fight and retain his heat, but Backlund is in a typically ungenerous mood in terms the extent to which he'd let anyone see that Hansen's offense was phasing him. It's hard to outwrestle Superman. I did say I was going to try to remain positive though ... The work itself was all very good though. Bob had some great moments elbowing Hansen in the head during a portion of struggle on the mat. The match built well and at least felt back and forth even if you count up who got what in, it was nowhere near evens. Crowd were also really into it. I think these two have probably got a better match in them though. ***3/4 New Japan 2.4 Chavo Guerrero vs. Kengo Kimura (11/3/80) This was a really enteraining match and Kimura brought it here. They ramped up the excitement levels and brought some big bombs. Finish was disappointing, but nevertheless a very enjoyable match. ***1/2

Can someone PLEASE explain to me how this isn't WWE just working its fans? Yet again, from my perspective from the outside looking in, it just looks like a work.

Until people stop paying for this stuff and stop talking about it and stop caring, does anyone really think Vince is going to give a shit?

See Johnny has mentioned this before

Just watching 1982's Creepshow and during the second story Stephen King himself is playing the most ridiculously stereotypical cross-eyed country hick ever. He's in a pair of dirty dungarees. He sits down to watch TV and its WWF: Bob Backlund vs. Sika with Vince very audibly calling the action. "Backlund working the arm of Samoan Number 1" Most unexpected!

^ I agree with just about everything in the above post. Also, I'm getting sick of debating Backlund so I'm going to try to be positive about him for two whole months and try to keep that going until we reach 1982.

A little piece of me dies every time this thread is rezzed.

I happen to know Johnny recorded this before Titans even existed! So he didn't even know who Super 8 was at the time.