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[1992-05-02-WWF-Superstars] Rick Martel and Tatanka


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  • 1 month later...

One of Tatanka's earliest matches on TV. We join the match in progress where Martel is doing an insert promo discussing how bad Tatanka smells. Tatanka ends up pushing him off the apron. He ends up getting sprayed in the eyes with Arrogance for being so rude. While leaving the ring, he takes Tatanka's eagle feathers and makes them quite fashionable.

 

I missed Rick Martel's YES, I AM A MODEL button. I'm glad to have it back in my life for a little while.

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Serious question for those who were attending live events back in these days: Did Martel's arrogance actually emit any sort of scent, or just water? This was amusing thanks to Martel, between his comments about the smell and his being such a dick to spray Tatanka while he's blinded.

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  • 2 months later...

Martel, due up next, has to disinfect the ring of Tatanka's smell first. Tatanka shoves him off the apron and Perfect accuses him of sneaking up from behind, "just like a typical Indian!" Tatanka attempts a chop off the apron but eats Arrogance into the eyes. Tatanka sells it big but somehow I don't recall weeks of blindness, so maybe Martel was ordered by Jack Tunney to water the cologne down. Martel makes off with some eagle feathers that he makes look fashionable.

 

Kind of dopey, but Martel is so committed to his role that you have to respect him.

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  • 2 years later...

This was so, so much better when Jake was the victim that it isn't funny. I get wanting to do something with a character like Martel's, and I know that most of the more established faces are either gone or busy in other feuds, but I don't care enough about Tatanka yet to give a crap about his eagle feather (which looked really good next to Martel's ear, by the way). Couldn't he have done this with someone like Duggan, who wasn't doing anything of note and hadn't for what seemed like years by now? (And while I'm thinking of it, how does stealing a feather, even a ceremonial one with deep meaning, become a bigger crime than trying to blind a man? Even for wrestling, that's extremely hard to swallow.)

 

Vince not milking the blindness like he did with Jake was a mistake as well. That's how you build sympathy, especially for someone who isn't established yet. In fact, it would probably have made more sense for the longer angle to come in this case rather than in Jake's; we already knew what Jake was about and had for years. Of course, it's hard to complain since Jake's performance was so masterful and Tatanka hadn't even been thought of yet.

 

Nothing says hatred like two guys cutting scripted promos at each other where even the ringsiders can't hear them. Does anyone in a real-life situation, or even a decent movie, yell at a guy he's arguing with "How dare you disrespect the great Indian nations!" Just call the guy a no-good jerk and have done with it, Tatanka. I won't even get into Martel and Curt both insinuating that Tatanka stinks just because he's a Native American, which was bad when Albano or Ernie Roth said it about Strongbow in 1972 and is even worse in 1992.

 

Gaffe of the segment: Vince saying that Tatanka's chop came from the top rope when it was obvious to everyone watching that it only came from the second rope. Making a mistake like that completely live is one thing; making it when you're calling the match off of a studio monitor in Connecticut and can see what you're calling ahead of time and can go back and do it again if you screw up is something completely different. Why did nobody even try to correct this man? Were they that afraid for their jobs?

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  • GSR changed the title to [1992-05-02-WWF-Superstars] Rick Martel and Tatanka
  • 1 year later...

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