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That may have been how it was pitched to Nash but the Fingerpoke couldn't have made him look worse if they'd tried (which knowing Hogan he may well have been). Just losing a match would be far better for Nash than looking like a subservient bitch in a way he never came across in 1996-97.

It's kind of a California thing, to be fair. Anything under a 4.0 is barely worth acknowledging.

How would Warrior think he was a similar sucker to three things that hadn't happened yet? Luger has always said that from the beginning, Vince told him that *if* he won the title, it'd be at Mania 10. I doubt the PoP would have cared about the tag titles. They were happy to not have to take a scaffold bump every night. Crockett going into bankruptcy would have only further validated their decision to leave when they did. Sid didn't even want to be a babyface, so he probably welcomed it when/if Vince "gave up" on it. The bottom line is, the only sources for this story is one wrestler of dubious trustworthiness and wishful thinking of people wanting to believe it since it makes Warrior look whiny and egomaniacal. Why didn't Bruce Prichard ever tell this story? He hates the Warrior so he's certainly not going to go into his company-man act to protect him. Honky Tonk Man, a man who actually did force a power play on Vince over the title, has done a million interviews and I've never seen any indication that he's said anything besides Warrior always being the plan (or second plan, after Savage). You'd think Warrior himself would have said something about it at one point, while making sure to portray himself as the wronged party forcing the WWF to bow to him, but I don't think he ever has. There's enough actual bad shit the Warrior said and did that I don't really care to make up other bad shit to go with it.

Vince was pretty notorious for not offering promises. "I don't offer guarantees--I offer opportunities." A lot of "I could see you working with [x] and becoming [y champion]" got interpreted by talent over the years as "Vince promised me the title."

I'm cool with accepting that at face value so long as we give equal weight to Bruti's claims that he taught Dynamite Kid how to work. If there was any accuracy to his claims, you'd think it would be all over WWE's Self-Destruction of the Ultimate Warrior piece.

This is the first I'm hearing of Warrior making any kinds of "demands" for Vince pre-summer-of-1991-letter (when he demanded equal pay/schedule to Hogan among other things).

He was also intensely uncomfortable with Daryl Van Horn telling the viewing audience to "stop believing that book of fairytales every Sunday," among other things.

And it's not entirely correct. Luger was let out of his contract early--it wouldn't expire for another year. That's why he was a WBF Superstar for 1992 and absolutely positively not a wrestler. Luger's contract called for a specific number of dates per year and WCW, as they would do with Sting himself in 1996, overshot it, mainly because they of course lost Flair. So they had to keep Luger inactive.

The Disasters' title win was at a TV taping and eventually released on Coliseum Video (with the oddity of Jim Ross doing play-by-play of a match that took place almost 9 months before he was with the company). The Steiners' first title win was also at a TV taping but for whatever reason never got a release, even on the WWE Unreleased DVD set which showed the show-closing dark match of that taping. The Midnights' title win was basically an emergency switch because Arn & Tully gave their notice. I would imagine the plan was to run that program until Starrcade, or at least the December Clash.

It's not inconceivable at all. They'd just wrestled for the titles at Mania 10. The tag division was pretty much a wreck so it's not like there were other viable challengers to the Quebecers (they had to turn a heel team babyface for that to happen). There had been other quickie overseas title switches before and a number of house show title changes in the WWF the previous year. Plus the switches were acknowledged on television and in the magazine. Edit: Also, there was a card in-between the two title switches in Peterborough where MOM defeated the Quebecers to retain the belts. If it was an accident, why book a successful title defense before undoing it?

Yes, the idea that it was an accidental title change has been pretty definitively debunked by all involved parties. I don't know where the story originated but I'm not sure even Maffew has it right without looking at the original book, but it doesn't seem like the type of story that Will & Duncan would have included.

I seriously doubt either of those guys are Mexican. That's a bog-standard U.S. wrasslin' minis match with most of the usual comedy spots like the referee catching one of them on a kickout. Mexican minis pretty much work the same style as the bigger guys and I don't see a trace of the tumbling lucha style in there. (And no, that monkey flip/arm drag thing that one of them does is not a lucha spot.) We know Cowboy Lang worked France at this time. These were either guys in the troupe he brought with him or even guys he had a hand in training.

I just asked what other luchador could have accomplished what Mil did in America (and Japan). Not sure what lucha movies in Spain and France have to do with any of that.

Name them. They not only needed his skill and charisma and his physique, but also his size which is what was going to trip up most of them. Santo was a draw in parts of Texas but was never going to be able to be in-demand nationally as Mascaras was. I suppose Canek might have gone places (and he did, to some degree)--tall for a luchador, could fly and do power moves--but while he was a major star I don't think he had the same it-factor that Mil did. The "thousand masks" hook had more cache to an international audience than Jacinto Canek.

Who gives a fuck? As suggested earlier, maybe they prefer the gender-neutral version. Maybe they think it rolls off the tongue better. Maybe they do it in a concerted effort to annoy you, the (sometimes) viewer. (I actually don't ever remember Tenay using the term in WCW, though I never watched much TNA.) We can hammer those guys for using the term "tornado tag team match" or the misuse of the term "one fall to a finish." The use of "trios" as a descriptive term is so far down the list of things even within the specific topic of wrestling commentary that I give a shit about that it can't be measured.