The Boss, Man is he Big

[Matt D]

Big Boss Man vs. Jake Roberts, Tokyo 4/13/90

 

Hadn't seen this before. I really liked the opening stuff. Both guys were doing great little things to keep the advantage: Boss Man's gut punch, Jake's rushing Arm Hanger while Boss Man was jawing with the crowd. I like how he reacted to the early DDT attempt by going to town on Jake's hair, pissed off, and also the bump he took out of the ropes. I actually thought it was a fun character based way to do that sort of an opening segment without making it just chain wrestling or shtick. It ends on a big move and then Boss Man takes over with some really intense back work, ref and fan interaction, and a lot of gritty offense in general. Little things like how he'd grind the knee into the back after the backbreaker while whipping jake about like a ragdoll. Likewise with the bearhug. It's one of the only times I've ever seen a bearhug that was used mainly to damage the opponent and not wear him down or go for a submission.

 

I'm not sure the chinlock was the right thing to do for this match, but it was relatively brief and both guys really worked it. I think it was mainly for calling spots anyway as Bossman came right back with the beautiful running sledge to the back, the slam, and then right into the huge transition bump. I like how for the first ten minutes of the match Jake's two big moves were ambush yanks upon the arm and how the second one sort of set up the short arm clothesline. It makes sense he didn't go right for the DDT after that like usual since it's basically the entirety of the offense he hit in the match. Pretty fun back and forth finishing sequence for the match.

 

I would have liked to see the back work pay off a bit more, maybe as a final transition tease instead of the reversal on the knee lift. I think your initial feelings were more accurate though. This was very good. I also thought it was full of a lot of character work between Jake doing sneak attacks and slithering around the ring in his selling post-bearhug and Boss Man basically being Boss Man, even if there was no program.

[ohtani's jacket]

Big Boss Man vs. Koko B Ware, MSG 10/24/88 and Los Angeles 10/16/88

 

The MSG match was a neat big man/little match that I was just getting into when Boss Man won with his sidewalk slam. Instead of those couple of extra minutes that would've made it memorable, the time was devoted to Boss Man cuffing Koko to the ring rope and abusing him the nightstick. Didn't they do that finish at SummerSlam? The LA match can't recapture the magic and Boss Man/Koko becomes a lost cause.

 

Big Boss Man vs. Sam Houston, Boston 7/9/88 and Philly 7/23/88

 

These are matches I would point to to show Boss Man as a worker. They're competitive squashes that had no real reason to be as good as they were other than the fact that Boss Man was new to the company (and didn't know better?) and was trying to get over. The best thing about Boss Man in the WWF is that he would continually bust out offence you hadn't seen from him before even well into his face run. So many of the other guys had their set in stone movesets, but Boss Man was always pulling out a surprise. I loved the finish to the Philly match where Boss Man catches Houston coming off the top rope and turns it into a powerslam. Unfortunately, I can't find a Dibiase/Houston match to compare.

[ohtani's jacket]

I would have liked to see the back work pay off a bit more, maybe as a final transition tease instead of the reversal on the knee lift. I think your initial feelings were more accurate though. This was very good. I also thought it was full of a lot of character work between Jake doing sneak attacks and slithering around the ring in his selling post-bearhug and Boss Man basically being Boss Man, even if there was no program.

Cheers, I will re-watch it after I've gone through the other Boss Man stuff.

 

Does anybody know why these guys were booked against each other when Boss Man had turned face during the Dibiase/Roberts feud?

[goc]

The Boss vs. Vader - Spring Stampede 1994

 

I just watched this in honor of this thread. I'd never seen it before and holy crap is it good. Probably the best non-Sting match I've seen from Vader in WCW. Bossman is definitely not afraid to punch Vader right in his face and ends up busting Vader's eye open. This is pretty much everything you could want in two big dudes throwing bombs at each other, with both guys taking big bumps and eating a bunch of nasty looking strikes. Vader catches Bossman coming off the top and turns it into a powerslam before finishing him off with a moonsault. Definitely the best match I've ever seen Ray Traylor in.

[S.L.L.]

 

Big Bubba Rogers vs. Bart Sawyer (WCW, July/August? 1995)

 

AWESOME competitive squash. Bubba pushes Sawyer around early, but Sawyer fires back with some swank punches to send Bubba reeling. He hits a dropkick, but Bubba swats a second one right out of the air and then plants him with a nasty jumping spinebuster. Funny moment as Bubba puts Sawyer in an abdominal stretch, and then lets out a primal scream as he grabs the top rope for leverage. The ref makes him let go, so he does the awesome thing of just punching Sawyer in the ribs while he still has him in the stretch. Seriously, Bubba is just on fire here, beating the tar out of Sawyer, shit-talking him, intimidating the ref, and giving Bart plenty of opportunities to sneak in some offense of his own, which also looks really good. Bubba is really good at timing Sawyer's comebacks. Always knows when to let him get one over on him to keep things interesting, sells him as a credible threat if he lets up too much, but also knows when to cut him off before it crosses the line from "competitive squash" to "competitive match". Bubba polishes him off with whatever they called the Boss Man Slam at this point, and I just love that move. Bubba pins Sawyer with one finger on his chest, and you totally buy it. Need to watch more Traylor squash matches, because he strikes me as a guy who may have been a great squash match worker.

[S.L.L.]

 

The Big Boss Man vs. Col. Mustafa (WWF, 10/28/91)

 

I had forgotten that Boss Man was feuding with IRS at this point. Irwin comes out to talk shit at Boss Man, allowing Mustafa to get an early advantage before Boss Man levels him with a clothesline and chases IRS to the back. This was a pretty fun short match. Sheiky Baby doesn't have much left in the tank at this point, though he does break out what I can only describe as a primitive Exploder suplex that made me stand up and take notice. Boss Man does a good job of making the rest of his offense not look totally feeble, and his own offense is killer, including a deadlift vertical suplex and the jumping spinebuster that he uses to win the match. Not a great match, but I doubt there were too many Col. Mustafa matches better than this.

[Grimmas]

I just watched every taped Vader-Angel/Boss match and damn those are great. I remember the Stampede and Fall Brawl matches, but the Bash/Havoc and Main Event matches are pretty great too.

 

I dare say Bossman is a better opponent for Vader than Sting was.

[WingedEagle]

You could say it but you'd be wrong.

[ohtani's jacket]

Big Boss Man/Virgil vs. The Beverly Brothers, 2/18/92

 

I guess it was an ongoing joke between Sean Mooney and Lord Alfred Hayes to not know what the grudge was between the workers on a WWF grudge match tape. This was a perfectly useless bit of WWF tag wrestling. Sometimes I wonder why I bother watching these matches when the front office cared so little about having good matches and sometimes I wonder why the workers didn't try harder to have a smart 8-9 min match.

 

Big Boss Man/Virgil vs. Money Inc, 10/22/91

 

I believe this may be the original Money Inc match. Historians should note that Money Inc very nearly broke up at the outset, but that Dibiase's money was able to sooth everything over. This had a FIP segment with Virgil, but it was pretty weak.

 

Big Boss Man vs. Shawn Michaels, 10/13/92

Big Boss Man vs. Skinner, 7/20/92

Big Boss Man vs. Bam Bam Bigelow, Royal Rumble '93

Big Boss Man vs. Kato, 12/3/91

Big Boss Man vs. Papa Shango, 9/22/92

Big Boss Man vs. The Warlord, 11/11/91 and 2/17/92

 

These at least show Boss Man trying to do something with the amount of time he was given, but a cool spot here and there doesn't make for a match. In a lot of cases, the matches exist simply to fill in time before Nailz is rolled out. I have a hard time holding it against the workers that they couldn't produce anything compelling in such rubbish circumstances, but the better guys like Michaels and Skinners at least tried. I can't really give points for any of that, though, so through no fault of his own these have to go down as disappointing matches for the Boss Man.

[Matt D]

Alright, you've watched a lot of stuff from Dibiase and from Boss Man.

 

Can we have some comparing, contrasting?

[ohtani's jacket]

I'm getting there. I will wrap up Boss Man tomorrow, watch a bit more Dibiase and formulate my opinions all before lunch.

[S.L.L.]

 

The Big Boss Man vs. Dave Roulette (WWF, 4/29/1992)

 

The squash is solid enough, but of course, the big takeaway from this was Nailz making his debut, jumping out of the crowd and attacking Boss Man. Nailz sucked something fierce, and I guess we'll have to come back later to see how well Boss Man dealt with it in their matches, but for a post-match beatdown angle, he does a great job. His selling is aces, particularly of the nightstick shot to the leg. They put it over on commentary like it broke his leg, and hearing Boss Man scream in agony, you'd believe it. The officials take their sweet time doing something about the guy in the prison jumpsuit assaulting their employee who's been receiving mysterious threats for the past few months, which makes this a little awkward, but otherwise, it was a damn fine angle. It was one of those angles that you saw the WWF dabbling in a lot in the early 90's - stuff that was still accessible to a family audience, but was also darker than what you would usually get from the Rock 'N' Wrestling era. Like most of those angles, this felt far more adult than any of the supposedly "adult" angles of the Attitude and post-Attitude eras, and was a far more rewarding watch.

[S.L.L.]

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3nt0z_bi...rt#.URB9AmfnfTo

 

Big Bubba Rogers vs. John Tenta (WCW, 6/16/1996)

 

So, like I was saying earlier, this is a feud that was loathed back when it happened. The RSP-W crowd hated it with a passion, and I don't it fared much better with the WON readers. Even now, those of us who love Traylor and are starting to reconsider Tenta tend to not have a lot good to say about either of them at this point in their careers. So color me mildly surprised that I totally dug this match. Bubba takes a crazy bump from the top rope to the floor right at the start of the match, and things don't let up from there. Bubba eats a quality beating from Tenta, who is laying it in extra hard tonight. Love him repeatedly jumping ass-first into Bubba while he's slumped in the corner, totally brutal looking. Bubba gets a lucky shot in with what we would later find out were the infamous Carson City silver dollars to turn the tide. He really starts working double time in this match. Great sequence with him snapping off the enzuigiri, and then quickly charging in with the rocking horse when Tenta falls into position, followed by two more. His signature baseball slide to the outside followed by an uppercut didn't go as smoothly as usual, but he spends most of the rest of the match seriously wailing on Tenta, so I'm letting it go. There's a little bit of work on Tenta's leg, which looked good, and a really impressive back suplex to the 500-pounder. Unfortunately, we get a really abrupt finish not long afterwards, as Bubba comes off of the top and Tenta catches him with a powerslam for the pin. Tenta manages to get ahold of the scisssors that Bubba had cut his hair with, and cuts his goatee in response. Bubba's post-match freakout is delightful. "HE CUT IT! HE CUT IT OFF!" Good times. So yeah, not a fraction as bad as you were told. It's pretty short, going about 5-6 minutes. I wouldn't put it on the level of their '91 Royal Albert Hall match, but I'd put it ahead of the Survivor Series Showdown '90 match no problem. It crammed a ton of action into it's short running time, and I came away genuinely curious to see more of this reviled feud.

[tomk]

Is someone going to write up the Bossman v Barbarian series? Remember liking it, although also remember the MSG. boston, whatever other arena were all almost move for move identical which waws dissapointing at time I first watched.

[S.L.L.]

 

The Big Boss Man feeds Pepper to Al Snow (WWF, 9/2/1999)

 

Previously on Traylor of the Day:

 

"It was one of those angles that you saw the WWF dabbling in a lot in the early 90's - stuff that was still accessible to a family audience, but was also darker than what you would usually get from the Rock 'N' Wrestling era. Like most of those angles, this felt far more adult than any of the supposedly "adult" angles of the Attitude and post-Attitude eras, and was a far more rewarding watch."

Yeah...I'm not gonna be the asshole who tells you this was secretly a great angle and that you're all pawns of Dave Meltzer for not getting it. I will, however, be the asshole who tells you that this was at least an entertainingly bad angle, and to the extent that it "works", it's because of how committed Boss Man is to selling it. And to Al Snow inexplicably bumping right on his head when he gets thrown over the bed. And the close-up of Jerry Lawler's reaction to the video when it ends. But mostly to how much Boss Man sells it. "THAT'S WHAT HARDCORE IS ABOUT!"

[goc]

Ahh the infamous Al Snow eats Pepper angle. Call it bad booking, and it was, but man Al and especially Bossman try their best with what they've got to work with. Maybe that's the bigger problem with today's booking is not so much that it sucks, but that guys are content to just go out and do the "god look at this shit they want me to say" delivery instead of trying to make the best of it.

[Johnny Sorrow]

 

The Big Boss Man feeds Pepper to Al Snow (WWF, 9/2/1999)

 

Previously on Traylor of the Day:

 

"It was one of those angles that you saw the WWF dabbling in a lot in the early 90's - stuff that was still accessible to a family audience, but was also darker than what you would usually get from the Rock 'N' Wrestling era. Like most of those angles, this felt far more adult than any of the supposedly "adult" angles of the Attitude and post-Attitude eras, and was a far more rewarding watch."

Yeah...I'm not gonna be the asshole who tells you this was secretly a great angle and that you're all pawns of Dave Meltzer for not getting it. I will, however, be the asshole who tells you that this was at least an entertainingly bad angle, and to the extent that it "works", it's because of how committed Boss Man is to selling it. And to Al Snow inexplicably bumping right on his head when he gets thrown over the bed. And the close-up of Jerry Lawler's reaction to the video when it ends. But mostly to how much Boss Man sells it. "THAT'S WHAT HARDCORE IS ABOUT!"

Beside the fact that I love that bit, here's the WWF doing something, no matter how dopey it is, with a guy like Bossman who WCW really was only interested in for a few months during the initial "Hogan and his Pals" influx and as an NWO body in the background.

[Grimmas]

Beside the fact that I love that bit, here's the WWF doing something, no matter how dopey it is, with a guy like Bossman who WCW really was only interested in for a few months during the initial "Hogan and his Pals" influx and as an NWO body in the background.

 

Bossman was in 6 months before Hogan and challenging for a title on Starrcade.

[anarchistxx]

Speaking of Boss Man angles that came in for abuse, I loved the whole Big Show charade in late 99. You're a nasty bastard, Paul Wight. The towing away of the coffin with Big Show clinging on to it was one of the more hilarious things the WWF ever did.

 

More people should work heel like Traylor did in that angle, it was proper despicable lowlife heel shit, no trying to be cool or subdued victim promos, just vile actions and over the top promos.

 

Promo sums the feud up nicely -

[El-P]

Thanks for reminding me how much I hated Bossman in WWF in 99. Some of the shittiest Attitude era stuff I can think off.

[ohtani's jacket]

I'm getting there. I will wrap up Boss Man tomorrow, watch a bit more Dibiase and formulate my opinions all before lunch.

My daughter was sick and I've been busy at work, so sorry for the delay...

 

I finished off my Boss Man viewing with matches against Duggan, Hercules, Patera and Razor Ramon. Only the 1990 Royal Rumble match against Duggan was anything of note, though the first Hercules match was pretty decent for its length. The Duggan match was shocking good for a Duggan match, though it had its weaknesses. Now onto the comparison:

 

When Matt first dropped the idea that Boss Man was better in the WWF than Dibiase my gut reaction was that Dibiase was the better pure worker and that the only way Boss Man could have been better was if he'd done more with less or put together generic match structures or some other backhanded compliment like that, but the more I watched the more I swayed in Boss Man's favour. I have quite a few caveats, however:

 

* Neither man had a tremendously high number of good matches. That's good matches by my definition, which others have said is stricter than most people, but personally I don't consider "good for what it was" or "smart work" to be enough when judging matches. The fact there weren't a tremendous amount of good matches from either men isn't a surprise since it was the same conclusion I came to with Tito Santana and is indicative of WWF wrestling more than anything else. Overall, I thought both men were equal when it came to high-end matches, memorable angles and feuds, as well as promo ability.

 

* Boss Man had the advantage of having strong heel and face runs. It's to his credit that he was an even better face than he was a heel, but Dibiase didn't have the opportunity to show off the same range of skills.

 

* From my point of view, a good big man is more interesting than a good hand. That's just a personal bias.

 

* Dibiase was always saddled with a body guard or manager. I got really sick of seeing the same spots with Virgil and Sherri. Boss Man had a bit of schtick with Slick during his initial heel run, but his original gimmick with the cuffs and nightstick was often so surprising in its brutality that Slick was quickly forgotten and of course as a face he went it alone.

 

* Dibiase vs. Savage is *probably* a higher high point than anything Boss Man did. I say "probably" because I didn't want to revisit those Boss Man/Hogan matches, which did very little for me when I watched every single one of them during my recent Hogan phase.

 

What swayed me in Boss Man's favour was the fact that despite the limitations of the WWF format, I thought he gave better performances than Dibiase. Early on in his run, I felt he tried harder to adapt to each match situation, whether it was against a jobber, a JTTS, a mid card worker, a tag match or his program against Hogan. You got the feeling that he tried to make each match unique or as memorable as possible given the various constraints. Dibiase was more about getting his gimmick over, which was okay but there was a lot of repeated pre-match mic work, stooging, bumping and selling and schtick. Boss Man tended to sell in a more realistic way than Dibiase, though again he had the advantage of working face, and there wasn't the same problems with the lack of a middle to his matches. Dibiase had the better execution and sometimes Boss Man looked a bit ungainly, but Boss Man wrestled "in character" better both as a heel and face. It helped that he was a big man with big man offence and the odd surprise move, but Dibiase didn't bust out his offence enough despite having a sweet moveset. On the other hand, slow Boss Man matches with too much selling tended to be worse than bad Dibiase matches with too much stooging, nevertheless I would still take Boss Man over Dibiase at this point for general output.

[S.L.L.]

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6eadt_bi...rt#.URRwRmfyDTo

 

Big Bubba Rogers vs. Sting (WCW, 3/19/1995)

 

If you haven't seen this match, I highly recommend it. That said, it feels more like a match you would use to illustrate Sting's greatness than Bubba's. Bubba seems to slip up a few times here (literally at one point where he falls off of the top rope), and he's not as dynamic on offense as he can be. All the same, he does still bring a lot of really good stuff to the match. The whole opening comedy sequence was a bunch of fun, and Bubba was great as the big blowhard getting humiliated. I loved him begging off of Sting threatening his hat. Also, the smug look on his face after Sting hurt his knee when Bubba didn't duck enough during a leapfrog. Without knowing better, I'm assuming that was a botched spot, and that these guys were just savvy enough to build the rest of the match around it rather than let it derail the match. But either way, Bubba's look of pride at how smooth he was for taking down Sting when it was clearly an accident was delightful. Bubba didn't have a lot of ways to work the knee here, but I did appreciate how much he wrenched in what he had. Also, he takes a ridiculous bump off of a German suplex for a guy his size down the stretch. So yeah, not the most dynamic Traylor performance I've looked at, but a very good one in a strong match.

[Johnny Sorrow]

Beside the fact that I love that bit, here's the WWF doing something, no matter how dopey it is, with a guy like Bossman who WCW really was only interested in for a few months during the initial "Hogan and his Pals" influx and as an NWO body in the background.

 

Bossman was in 6 months before Hogan and challenging for a title on Starrcade.

 

Wow, I totally forgot that.

[Hollinger.]

the baseball slide uppercut and the rocking horse > everything

[flyonthewall2983]

Beside the fact that I love that bit, here's the WWF doing something, no matter how dopey it is, with a guy like Bossman who WCW really was only interested in for a few months during the initial "Hogan and his Pals" influx and as an NWO body in the background.

 

Bossman was in 6 months before Hogan and challenging for a title on Starrcade.

 

I don't mean to off-track this, but WCW had been wooing Hogan for most of '93. It's been said many times it was one of Bischoff's first objectives once he took over. By the time Traylor had come back, it was close to becoming a foregone conclusion that Hulk was eventually going to sign.

 

On a personal note, I kind of saw it coming once I saw this.