[1990-05-12-WWF-Superstars] Rick Rude vignette

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Rick Rude debuts the new haircut! It's amazing the difference that made.

[PeteF3]

Rude delivers an intense, deathly serious promo promising not only to beat the Warrior again but to break him. Ultimately (hah) I have to agree with a previous post that these promos and the Warrior promo and character are simply too incongruous. Save the Pure Sports Build stuff for something else or find a way to tone down the Warrior and maybe provide some insight as to how HE'S training (and not by running to Mercury and back or eating St. Paul's Cathedral, whatever his character would do).

[Dooley]

Or maybe even not have Warrior's first title feud be against the guy he spent most of the last year feuding with and already beat. It's a thought.

[soup23]

Rude gets a new haricut and delivers a very good serious promo to keep me invested in these segments.

[Kevin Ridge]

Rude cut his hair! He’s looks more serious now. Nice change.

[Cox]

The 80's are officially over - Rick Rude has cut his hair. I might be in the minority, but I think I preferred long haired Rude, as it made him look sleazier and more conniving. Short haired Rude looks more serious for sure, but nobody thinks a serious Rude can beat Warrior. A sleazy Rude relying on Heenan? That might (and did!) beat Warrior. This might not make any sense, but it's late and it's been a long day.

[garretta]

I broke this down with Matt on another thread, and I came up with The Barbarian as the best alternate challenger for Warrior if they hadn't gone with Rude. He still had Heenan, and he was much more of a muscleman in the Warrior's class.

 

As for what we saw, Rude keeps knocking these into the upper deck, but we've still got two months plus before their first televised title match on SNME and three months before SummerSlam, and no group of promos, no matter how well done, can sustain a feud that long by themselves. He should have put a top babyface in the hospital to cement his new status as a buttkicker, but with the Hogan/Ouake stuff already going on, Vince probably didn't want the get well cards going anywhere else. You couldn't even have Rude put Hogan in the hospital instead of Quake, because if Rude stlll had his shot at the Warrior at SummerSlam, who would Hogan have fought?

[drew wardlaw]

It's totally bizarre to compare these Rude promos to the Warrior ones. I'm led to believe the match itself stinks but I'm pretty interested to see it.

[GSR]

Rick Rude is in the gym skipping and Bobby Heenan says that the Warrior is looking at the greatest physical athlete in the world, and that he now believes what they already know, that it’s all over for the Ultimate Warrior! Rude stops skipping and starts to throw some combinations at the punch bag. He says that training hasn’t been easy and the toughest part, the showdown, is yet to come. They know all men are not created equal and they found that out last time when he took his title. It’s going to happen again, except this time not only is he going to take his title, he’s going to break him like a wild stallion and put out the raging fire that make the Ultimate Warrior the Ultimate Warrior. Bottom line, he’s going to bust him up!

[dawho5]

Awesome promo by Rude. Also, you'll note that Rude was hitting the heavy bag without wraps or wrist support of any kind. That means the guy knew how to throw a damn punch. You throw any kind of hard punch at all with a sloppy wrist at a heavy bag bare-handed and you'll know about it for days if not longer. Also rips the shit out of your knuckles if you drag them at all. So yeah, Rude is a badass and can carry off these promos really well. I will repeat my thought that this kind of shit would have been over like gangbusters in WCW.