[1991-02-24-WCW-Wrestle War '91] Missy Hyatt and Stan Hansen

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

So begins WCW's pay-per-view running gag of 1991. Missy Hyatt tries to conduct an interview and accidentally runs into Stan Hansen, who screams at her and chases her away. Hilarious!

[shoe]

I love using Missy in this way.

[PeteF3]

Missy is eager to see what babe she's going to interview--Stan Hansen. That ends well.

 

Per the Observer, this running joke about Missy being the first woman in a wrestling locker room was directly lifted from the Lisa Olson/New England Patriots scandal, which was a relatively major mainstream story at the time. "Mind rape" as wrestling gag fodder, in light of how Missy was often treated by WCW in real life...eh, this is still funny.

[Kevin Ridge]

Missy is making history by going into the men’s locker room for an interview. Stan Hansen spanks her with his hat. Missy is going to call someone. Tony thinks this is all one big fun job. He enjoys women getting theirs.

[soup23]

This was funny. I couldn't tell who was in the background but Missy has had a rough day.

[garretta]

I'm not sure what was more disgusting: the fact that Missy was humiliated like she was (scripted or not) or the fact that Stan's back to using forty-eight pounds of chew in his mouth. I hope Stan gives up on the U.S. soon, because I literally cannot stand to look at him in WCW anymore.

 

I can't believe that Turner would allow a skit like this when the whole Lisa Olson thing was such a hot-button issue. I don't care if there isn't one freakin' wrestling fan in the whole damn company from Ted and Jane on down, someone in upper management has to keep an eye on the product to determine what's suitable to go out on their airwaves and what isn't. This isn't GCW circa 1980 anymore; it's a national company owned by a corporate entity with a positive image to uphold, and crap like this doesn't do a very good job of it. All of that said, though, Missy got what laughs she could out of this, which is a point in her favor.

[soup23]

Kind of miffed Garretta at your defense of the gulf war angle with Vince green lighting that and your disgust to something like this. What is the difference between the two and your acceptance as a viewer plowing through the year overall?

[garretta]

Could you show me where I defended Vince for allowing the Gulf War angle, Soup? The only thing I remember defending was some of the Hogan stuff, and that's only because he really had no choice after how Vince had laid out the angle beforehand. I thought (and still think) that the rest of it is crap. I've been pretty clear on that.

 

My disgust for this angle came after I read Pete's post where he quoted Meltzer as saying that this was a direct response to the whole Lisa Olson sexual harassment story that had happened a few months earlier. I thought that it was as distasteful to use this story as part of an angle, just as I did the Gulf War. The fact that it was Missy who they used made it worse; she's been portrayed as nothing but a brainless airhead ever since she got into the business, and to position her as a crusader for female journalists in wrestling is utterly ridiculous, even more so if it was done as deliberately insulting satire, which it undoubtedly was.

[soup23]

I guess it is more the notion that Hogan is playing a character well in spite of the angle presented to him but Hansen is disgusting in your eyes for doing the same thing. I just see it as a double standard. I don't know if it is a regional thing with the chewing tobacco but for a wild, crazy Texan like Hansen, it does fit his character narrative to me.

[garretta]

Okay, I understand now.

 

It's not the chewing that's gotten me so much as the fact that he's always slobbering all over himself with so much of it in his mouth at one time. You can see it spilling over, and he's drooling on himself so that tobacco juice is on his chest and all over anything he touches. I don't think it's possible that he has that much trouble controlling his chew, so he's being told to do this by the bookers, and I'll be damned if I can figure out why. It makes his interviews impossible to watch or listen to, especially on a full stomach or while I'm eating, and it makes his character look like a total backwoods hick, not a badass. Even if it's actually licorice he's chewing and not tobacco, as I suspect, it's still gross and disgusting.

 

Hogan may be exploiting the troops and the war, but at least he's spreading a positive message, even if it's for his own (and Vince's) financial gain. He's providing aid and comfort to the people in the USO camps who probably wouldn't care even if they knew he was making money, directly or indirectly, off of his visit, and he's also no doubt inspiring some of their children to keep believing in the American cause through him. There's nothing even remotely positive about whatever Hansen's doing in WCW, either socially or in a wrestling sense (since he isn't U.S. champion anymore).