[1993-01-09-WCW-Saturday Night] Up Close w/ Vader

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Tony Schiavone has a ridiculous plaid shirt/red tie combo.

 

Vader does a really good promo talking about his football background, but that that's in the past and now, the top prize is the WCW World title. He also has words for Sting and Simmons.

 

I really like the format of interviewing a guy in a serious setting in an empty arena.

[benj]

Vader was my favorite wrestler during this time period and the up close segment was nice. Hey a world title that actually means something, weird.

[shoe]

I dug these profile pieces that would help get the workers and their current feuds over. Simple yet effective.

[Matt Franklin]

This is such a good way to get people and feuds over. By presenting the wrestlers in a low-key and serious manner, you tend to take what they say more seriously. Vader talking about the Superbowl ring and how his World title is the highest achievement really puts over the belt as something special and worth fighting for. He puts both Sting and Simmons over as legitimate contenders, while also stating how he is better than both. One of the better Vader promos I have seen.

[El-P]

I liked how Vader was put over as an athlete as opposed to a freak show like he would have in WWF during the Hogan era. Even low-key, Vader is intimidating. Good stuff, and glad the title went back to him after the failed Simmons experiment. Good way to re-establish a hierarchy for the new year.

[Kevin Ridge]

Tony looks like a school kid sitting next to Vader. New champ showing off the belt. Still feel like there should have been some planned photo/video clips of him winning the belt.

[PeteF3]

Vader flashes a "Super Bowl ring"--even if it was a counterproductive thing to say about the #1 heel, I can't help but think of Jesse's comment, "Wait a minute, the Rams have never won a Super Bowl! What did he get, a loser's ring?!"

 

That's just a sidenote, because the football talk is effective at making Vader seem like a human being while he still comes off as a monster even in this setting. Hey, wait, there's footage of the title change! No one ever talks about Vader's mic skills but he's really one of the most underrated talkers ever. This is the best promo of his that I've seen, putting over Sting and Simmons while still establishing himself as the Man.

[WingedEagle]

Talks about Vader's football history, then focuses on Sting as top contender. Says Simmons is great, but only stole the belt because he was prepared for Sting on that night. Little strange to see Vader in this setting, but he delivers here as he almost always does.

[soup23]

Up close is becoming one of my favorite WCW segments. Vader gives a good background on how he has been a winner all his life both on the gridiron and now in the ring.

[garretta]

I've watched Super Bowl XIV numerous times, and if Leon White played in it, he was never mentioned by Pat Summerall and Tom Brookshier. If he got in, it was on special teams. Also, the ring he showed off was most likely the Rams' 1979 NFC Championship ring.

 

I don't know why they felt the need to lie about something that was so easily researchable even in the days before the Internet, and why both WCW and Vader himself weren't ridiculed all over the place for spreading the lie. (Incidentally, he was a third-round pick of the Rams in '78, not a first-round pick.) I'm sorry, but I can't just let stuff like that go; it's too big of an insult to my intelligence as a football fan. (For the record, my love of football runs a hell of a lot deeper than my love of wrestling ever will.)

 

The interview itself was very, very good. I expected Race to do the talking as he normally did, but Vader didn't even need him, which surprised me. I compared him to Bundy over on the '92 board, and this was another way they were alike: they didn't really need their managers as mouthpieces. Race and Heenan respectively added credibility to them as title challengers (or, in Vader's case, successful champions), but the time-honored notion that having a manager means that a guy needs help on the mic is ridiculous, and these are just two cases in point.

 

I liked what little we saw of the title change, and I wish we had more of it on film.

 

I'm pretty sure Tony dressed how he did deliberately in order to look more like a geek next to the monster Vader. Whether it was his idea or whether he was told to do it I don't know, but it certainly did the trick.