[1992-06-27-WWF-Superstars] Legion of Doom and Rocco

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[El-P]

How to make the Road Warriors look stupid.

[flyonthewall2983]

I think Ellering had it worse with his horrible ventriloquism.

[Matt D]

"Suuure we'll hire your buddy, Paul, guys, but there's a catch..."

[Frankensteiner]

This is where the Road Warriors jumped the shark.

[jdw]

I was always surprised that the LOD agreed to do this. You do have to give Animal some credit: he took that LOL Money as soon as he could and checked out.

 

John

[Cox]

You do have to give Animal some credit: he took that LOL Money as soon as he could and checked out.

I know you meant "Lloyds of London" here, but given the subject of Rocco the Dummy and how things ended for the Roadies, "LOL money" seems appropriate.

[Loss]

Yeah, not much to add to this, except to ask why the WWF makes everyone wear wrestling gear in places like this where they aren't wrestling. Tatanka was in wrestling gear visiting a reservation, and LOD is in wrestling gear visiting the house where they grew up.

[shoe]

This is TNA bad.

[flyonthewall2983]

This would have made perfect sense in the Attitude era, when guys had fucking plastic heads and mops as mascots.

[Kevin Ridge]

LOD wearing their wrestling gear and shoulder pads. Whole segment is ridiculous.

[WingedEagle]

LOD & Ellering find Rocco. Amazing to see them turned into a comedy act.

[PeteF3]

Tatanka, Razor, LOD...I'm suffering from On Location Vignette Overload here. Did the Roadies grow up in Mogadishu or something? Even the worst soundstages slums in the U.S. haven't gotten this bad. Animal works a WWF merchandise plug in a clumsy exposition of what Rocco meant to them. I can't believe I'm bothering to explain this. Paul: "This is the best thing to ever happen to the Legion of Doom!" High standards from Mr. Ellering. Rocco is a bigger deal than winning the WWF Tag Titles?

 

I wish the LOD could have done a more dignified type of vignette, like crashing to the Earth from a computer-generated spaceship and being taken in by meat tossed to them by a cackling Ellering.

[MikeCampbell]

The WWF finally turns the LOD into cartoon characters.

[ajtroma]

Yeah. This. Papa Shango. Repo Man. Berserker. Neon Crush.

It was about this time that most of my buddies tuned out of wrestling. They were hardcore fans too. They wouldn't come back until the Monday Night era.

[Dooley]

Roadies were never booked quite right in the WWF, but seeing them get the midvard comedy treatment here was just sad.

[garretta]

This was okay until Paul said, "This is the best thing ever to happen to the Legion of Doom!" I could take the idea of Hawk and Animal having a doll to talk to, hard as it may be to believe, and even to find him among the ruins of their childhood home, but to act like finding him is going to revive their careers and to have Paul actually bring him to life through ventriloquism? That's taking an inoffensive idea a bit too far.

 

If they wanted to do something with a mentor from the streets named Rocco, they could have found an old retired wrestler to do it: Ray Stevens, the Crusher, even Arnie Skaaland, since most of the fans in 1992 didn't know who he was. But Vince had to have his merchandising tie-ins, didn't he?

 

This may not have totally ruined the LOD's careers, but what was left of their aura was gone. They were a step above the Bushwhackers on the seriousness scale, but they weren't to be taken on the same level as Money Inc. or the Natural Disasters. What a sad turn of events for one of the greatest teams of all time.

[flyonthewall2983]

I wonder if they would have turned heel if they stuck around. With the Steiners coming in in 1993 and having those two feud around the horn would have been cool. Hell, I wonder how their fortunes would have changed if they came in as heels.

[dawho5]

So the goal of the WWF was to embarrass and bury every act they didn't come up with?  They are doing one Hell of a great job with the LOD.  But they came up with Crush, so what is the deal there?

[xlynwoodx]

LOD visit a destroyed building that Hawk calls a slum.  The sight of Hawk trying to crawl through the rubble with his shoulder pads on is hilarious.  Then they find a ventriloquist dummy and everything goes off the rails.