Matt Farmer Posted November 17, 2015 Report Share Posted November 17, 2015 The Honkey Tonk man was one of the worst imo, how did anyone expect a gimmick 6 years stale on a wrestler of HTM abilities to get over in 1994? and then the ego maniac wouldnt put over younger talent WTF Gotta disagree with this one. I went to one of the rare WCW house shows during this time when HTM was working there, and he had a really great match with Brian Pillman. And he was super over with the crowd. He worked the undercard of the first Hogan/Flair WCW house shows and he was the most over wrestler right under Hogan/Flair on the card. As for being an ego maniac, he refused to put over Johnny B. Badd at Starrcade (he had put him over on house shows and a Clash by DQ) because they wanted him to do a clean lose. And he was not under contract, he had a per date deal. And had been pushing to be put under contract. Doing a job on a PPV with out a contract and only making the same per deal amount was not what he agreed to. There is nothing wrong with that, it's smart business. If you do business (doing a job) you deserve to be properly compensated for it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
funkdoc Posted November 17, 2015 Report Share Posted November 17, 2015 diamond & tanaka actually did team up for a minute in WCW! there was a little angle in 94, i think just after hogan arrived, where they were basically the orient express under different names. that was also when they brought in the mongolian mauler for a nathan jones-level run. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mad Dog Posted November 17, 2015 Report Share Posted November 17, 2015 We also got Hennig giving the Perfect Plex to the Giant which was pretty fucking awesome. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happ Hazzard Posted November 18, 2015 Report Share Posted November 18, 2015 Anyone remember Jim Neidhart being in WCW in 1993? He did a submission move called the "Anvilizer" as a finisher. I only remember him winning a couple of squash matches and that was it. If I had to guess I'd say Watts brought him in and then after Watts left, he soon left as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mad Dog Posted November 18, 2015 Report Share Posted November 18, 2015 How about the Iron Sheik? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hawkeye12 Posted November 18, 2015 Report Share Posted November 18, 2015 diamond & tanaka actually did team up for a minute in WCW! there was a little angle in 94, i think just after hogan arrived, where they were basically the orient express under different names. that was also when they brought in the mongolian mauler for a nathan jones-level run. It was before Hogan arrived, around March '94. They did have a tag match vs. Arn and Steamboat that's on youtube. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anders Posted November 18, 2015 Report Share Posted November 18, 2015 Marty Jannetty felt really out of a place being in WCW. He was treated as such a jobber with no personality. Barry Horowitz might as well have died in WCW. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C.S. Posted November 19, 2015 Report Share Posted November 19, 2015 Since we're now including jobbers in this, what about Jim Powers? He seemingly roided up for WCW, years after doing that would've mattered or had any impact on his career, and yet he still remained a jobber. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goc Posted November 20, 2015 Report Share Posted November 20, 2015 Since we're now including jobbers in this, what about Jim Powers? He seemingly roided up for WCW, years after doing that would've mattered or had any impact on his career, and yet he still remained a jobber. I don't think that's really true I remember him being the same size during the end of his WWF days. EDIT: For some reason I remember him as jacked at the end of his WWF run but youtube is disproving that so maybe you're right. I could have swore I saw a Jim Powers jacked up pony tail era competitive squash match from WWF that inspired me to repackage my Roddy Piper Hasbro figure into Jim Powers but maybe it was from WCW. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flyonthewall2983 Posted November 20, 2015 Report Share Posted November 20, 2015 Anyone remember Jim Neidhart being in WCW in 1993? He did a submission move called the "Anvilizer" as a finisher. I only remember him winning a couple of squash matches and that was it. If I had to guess I'd say Watts brought him in and then after Watts left, he soon left as well. I have vague memories of him on Saturday Night, and actually remember seeing a T-shirt in their magazine's catalog with him on it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
funkdoc Posted November 20, 2015 Report Share Posted November 20, 2015 i talked about this before but neidhart & JYD were brought in as a tag team. i swear that was like the last thing watts did before leaving WCW, had his fingerprints all over it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C.S. Posted November 20, 2015 Report Share Posted November 20, 2015 I don't think that's really true I remember him being the same size during the end of his WWF days. EDIT: For some reason I remember him as jacked at the end of his WWF run but youtube is disproving that so maybe you're right. I could have swore I saw a Jim Powers jacked up pony tail era competitive squash match from WWF that inspired me to repackage my Roddy Piper Hasbro figure into Jim Powers but maybe it was from WCW. I definitely never saw him anywhere near that bulky when he was in the WWF. That doesn't mean he wasn't - just that I never personally witnessed it. It wasn't until WCW that I saw him look like a jacked up juice monster. What was the point? He wasn't pushed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
funkdoc Posted November 20, 2015 Report Share Posted November 20, 2015 yea, powers actually looked like he went off the juice during the early days of raw. i recall there being one match on there where he actually got a full ring entrance to Crank It Up, just out of the blue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C.S. Posted November 21, 2015 Report Share Posted November 21, 2015 I know Tanaka was around for a bit in the mid-90s and looked on Wikipedia and learned that Paul Diamond was on the WCW roster for a cup of coffee around the same time. Considering how repetitive and stale the WCW tag scene was in 95'/96' (I mean, how many Harlem Heat/Nasties or Harlem Heat/Stud Stable matches does one need to see in life?), it would've been sort of cool to see Tanaka and Diamond re-team. Matches against Stars & Stripes or Luger & Sting or Faces of Fear or, later, the Outsiders, would've been neat. This is the kind of revisionist thinking that sounds good today but would've had everyone scratching their heads back in 1995. Kato (Diamond) and Tanaka were jobbers by the end of their WWF runs. Not "name guys who lost to bigger names" but jobber-jobbers. Like Jim Brunzell, Blake Beverly, Damien Demento, and a few others, they were downgraded to true blue jabroni roles. They teamed with other jobbers (for example, I remember Demento and Brooklyn Brawler as partners in one match, and Brunzell and Glenn Ruth [before his push as a Headbanger] as partners in another match), never won, and didn't matter a lick. For WCW to bring these guys in and have them go over their established teams would've been a terrible idea, no matter how talented and/or underutilized they were in the WWF. That's probably the same reason Mike Enos (Blake Beverly) was also used as a pure job boy in WCW. (Of course, WCW being WCW, Enos somehow got a PPV match with Benoit at, I think, Souled Out. But make no mistake, he was still used as a jobber who didn't matter one iota to the product.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Judy Bagwell Posted November 21, 2015 Author Report Share Posted November 21, 2015 was Roma getting jobbed out before he left for WCW? they pushed him to the moon in comparison to the WWF. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C.S. Posted November 21, 2015 Report Share Posted November 21, 2015 was Roma getting jobbed out before he left for WCW? they pushed him to the moon in comparison to the WWF. He lost matches in the WWF, but he was still treated as a "name" of sorts. Big difference from a Damien Demento or Jim Brunzell type who was teaming with legitimate jobbers and was a jobber themselves. Roma got a far bigger push in WCW, which I'm sure was criticized at the time, but it didn't seem as out of place as it would if Kato and Tanaka had jumped to WCW and suddenly become a top team (which, in fairness, didn't happen). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jingus Posted November 21, 2015 Report Share Posted November 21, 2015 How about Lanny Poffo? He was under contract for at least four or five years, and worked a grand total of one match for that entire time. If not for his couple months of relevance in late '99, I'd say Bret easily wins this one. WCW took the hottest act in the entire business, fresh off the legendary Montreal Screwjob, and cooled him right off with shocking quickness. I understand what they were trying to do by debuting him as the troubleshooting referee at Starrcade, but having him take part of what ended up being a debacle with Hogan squashing Sting and the not-so-fast-count certainly didn't do Hart any favors. Whose bright idea was it to then immediately stick him into a program with Ric Flair of all people? Bret was pretty outspoken about his dislike for wrestling Flair, and Ric had been a solid babyface before suddenly being turned heel for no apparent reason for this program (which was further watered down by his immediate re-turn back face again afterwards). After that, Bret must've pissed somebody off to be stuck in a feud with a debuting Brian fucking Adams in 1998. And then Bret was nonsensically turned heel for no damn reason, supposedly joined the nWo but then never really acted like he was part of the group. They never pulled the trigger on an endlessly-teased feud between him and Hogan, and Bret never even got a single title shot at the world belt until Russo took over. And then when he finally did get booked to win the belt, KICK WHAM CONCUSSION and the office's idea of "going easy on him" afterwards was putting him in ludicrous stunts with cars and hardcore matches with the likes of Terry Funk. That's an astonishing misuse of the guy who was arguably the top performer of the mid-90s in all of North American wrestling. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slasher Posted November 22, 2015 Report Share Posted November 22, 2015 I think it seemed pretty clear that cooling off Bret Hart upon his entry in WCW was intentional, or at least strongly guided by the other guys like Hogan. WCW was just never the right place for him to be in the late 90s. He would have fit comfortably in JCP or late 80s/early 90s WCW but not the nWo era WCW. You have to remember that Hogan was the biggest power broker of all the wrestlers in WCW at the time and he never saw anything special in Bret, or admit to it if he did. Sting was already tied in to the nWo thing, who else could they have put across the ring from Bret? I can see the logic in Flair being the choice but alas like you said, they did not want to work each other and so they didn't really put as much in it as they could have. The only two other viable options were Nash and Giant, and they already had their feud going at the time. Maybe if they held off Bret for a few months until the Hogan/Sting feud cooled down but there is something to be said of striking when the iron was hot, so that was never an option. Just bad timing and Hogan's ego buried Bret quickly as just another dude on the bloated roster. A shame too because I think Bret was one of the more entertaining US championship level guys at the time and definitely could have contributed as a babyface in that division. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shakla Posted November 22, 2015 Report Share Posted November 22, 2015 I just can't call whatever Lanny Poffo did in WCW as a "horrible run". Unless you're a big wrestling fan, you probably never knew he was under contract. He's more of an anomaly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goc Posted November 22, 2015 Report Share Posted November 22, 2015 Hell of a gig for Lanny too, get paid over 6 figures to sit at home. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bierschwale Posted November 22, 2015 Report Share Posted November 22, 2015 Ahmed Johnson as Big T with the Harlem Heat 2000 angle was pretty pointless. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Judy Bagwell Posted November 23, 2015 Author Report Share Posted November 23, 2015 and by that point the T in Big T stood for tits which was a pity because a couple years earlier with his look and push he was ascending to main event status I still think when he was all oiled up and roided out he looked like Vince mcMahon when he wrestled Hogan at WM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goc Posted November 23, 2015 Report Share Posted November 23, 2015 Ahmed Johnson really feels like one of the biggest "what ifs?" from the 90s. At the same time though, if Ahmed had never gotten injured and stayed on the trajectory he was on around the time period of Summerslam 96 I'm not sure that Vince would have ever really gotten behind pushing Austin as the next big babyface star if he had a healthy and popular Ahmed right there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Judy Bagwell Posted November 23, 2015 Author Report Share Posted November 23, 2015 pity the guy was a liability in the ring and had a reputation for being sloppy and legitimately hurting opponents. He was dead in the water when he inexplicably joined the Nation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bierschwale Posted November 23, 2015 Report Share Posted November 23, 2015 Ahmed Johnson really feels like one of the biggest "what ifs?" from the 90s. At the same time though, if Ahmed had never gotten injured and stayed on the trajectory he was on around the time period of Summerslam 96 I'm not sure that Vince would have ever really gotten behind pushing Austin as the next big babyface star if he had a healthy and popular Ahmed right there. Running it in my head, I'm imagining Ahmed-Austin for the title at WM XIV. '97 is such a weird year that it can be rearranged in a lot of ways. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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