Comments that don't warrant a thread - Part 4

[Loss]

That was the story I had always heard as well. That environment was so backbiting at the time as it was, and Douglas voluntarily throwing himself in the middle of it was pretty dumb. The match in question:

 

[Superstar Sleeze]

Ok this makes a lot more sense. Douglas does make a quick reference to being made look like a fool with Cornette. I did a quick Google search on just their two names and I thought it had something to do with the NWA Title fiasco but it makes a lot more sense that this has more to do with when he was a Dynamic Dude.

Thanks guys for solving that life long mystery.  

Watched the match, classic WCW match ends with someone not in the match being pinned. Lol. Johnny Ace is definitely a better worker than Shane Douglas.

 

[El-P]

Well, Douglas was also working a character for the ECW audience that looked as WCW as "The Enemy". That was part of the charm of the promotion. The idea is that Flair did not only pushed back guys like Douglas but also Austin, Pillman and such. Either way, in 1995, it was a work already anyway even though Douglas hostility was real.

[Superstar Sleeze]

I became very intrigued by all this and now I am an hour and 45 minutes deep in a Shane Douglas shoot. He comes off well-spoken and calm, not bitter. He earned my respect by sticking up for a student who tried but may have been a little overzealous and was being ridiculed by another student when he was a teacher. He does mention being fed up with the politics for both stints of WCW. First he was pissed because it sounds like Jim Ross jerked him around teasing him with a main event push only for Jody Hamilton to shut the door on that. So he went to WWF the first time. The second time was more to do with money. Bill Watts was stringing him along with an hourly guarantee while Steamboat, Austin and Pillman were on six-figure contracts. Watts tells he will get converted to contract. Watts get fired. Ole is like what are you bitching about thats plenty of money. Then he got injured. He was soured by the money and Dos Hombres mask situation. The only time he brings up Flair is that he tried to get Flair to change the name of the Dynamic Dudes and Flair at that point knew he had to pick his battles and didnt want to fight that one. 

So yes EL-P you are right this more like a work than a shoot. Douglas was pissed at WCW. WCW was public enemy no. 1 in ECW not WWF. But Douglas never really worked with Bischoff and the smarty, savvy ECW fans would have seen through that. Douglas bitching about Herd, Ole, or Watts just would not have the same ring to it as going after a more public figure like Flair. Douglas did end up talking himself into a program with Flair in dying days WCW. He couldnt do that with Herd, Ole or Watts so it wasnt a half-bad strategy.

I am interested to hear what he says about the Kliq because like I said he seems calm and not bitter but I feel like the Kliq jerked him around pretty good but I believe that was also during the time Watts was there and he seems to like Watts from getting his break in the UWF. He is an easy interview too. He is very verbose and has his story pretty chronologically straight. A lot of these shoot interviewers are hacks so it is good that with Douglas you can just carry the interview himself. I had no idea that Shane Douglas of all people was going to be my new obsession, but here we are! 

[El-P]

4 hours ago, Superstar Sleeze said:

A lot of these shoot interviewers are hacks so it is good that with Douglas you can just carry the interview himself. I had no idea that Shane Douglas of all people was going to be my new obsession, but here we are! 

Hey, I've been there before.  He remains one of my all-time favourite wrestler. I wish he would pop up in AEW in some agenting/interviewer role.

I have no idea if they are still available, but back in the days of the Austin podcast (early/mid 2010's I'd say), the two Douglas episode got tons of acclaim and it was indeed a great interview. The part where he talks about kicking out his addiction while he was in TNA is brutal (and brutally honest) I recall. So if you can grab those somewhere, I definitely recommend them.

Also, by all account, Douglas seems like a super friendly guy IRL.

[The Thread Killer]

That whole Jim Cornette/Shane Douglas story has always fascinated me.  @Superstar Sleeze if you haven't Cornette's side of that story you can see a video clip of it here. According to Cornette, they actually ended up shooting that match twice. I've never understood why (assuming Cornette's version of the story is true) Douglas would have gone to Jim Herd to complain about the angle, when the whole point of it was to help promote Shane Douglas and the Dynamic Dudes.  The whole "I'm not selling that Memphis shit" line cracks me up for some reason.

I also agree that Shane Douglas is an excellent interview.  Much like @El-P you can count me in as a Shane Douglas fan. He is obviously highly intelligent and very well spoken.  His Kayfabe Commentary shoot interviews are always excellent and he even has a 3+ hour interview on YouTube with that Hannibal guy (who I generally can't stand) that is also really good.  I think one of the things that always worked against Shane Douglas and kept him from being more successful in Pro Wrestling is that he tended to be his own worst enemy and made some bad political decisions.  IIRC, Mick Foley alluded to that in his first book.  Douglas seemed to have the knack for rubbing important people the wrong way, no matter where he worked...aside from ECW of course.

I tried listening to Shane's "Triple Threat Podcast" for a while, but it's pretty bad.  His co-hosts are the guys from the "Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling" and the show seemed to mostly be them talking and interviewing Shane over the phone.  Last I heard the show, he wasn't even using Skype to record (like everybody else seems to) and as a result the audio quality was awful.

[C.S.]

I remember Shane saying many years ago that he used to idolize Flair. Shane would ask Flair for advice about how his match went and get generic praise in return. Then Shane eventually found out that Flair never actually watched his matches and was only giving him lip service.

[Blehschmidt]

5 hours ago, El-P said:

Also, by all account, Douglas seems like a super friendly guy IRL.

I will back this up 100%

When I was ring announcing shows and we brought in "name" guys most of them would give you a "hey" and a limp hand shake, let you get a picture and that was the extent of their interest in you unless you were the guy paying them or a hot girl. I worked a dozen or more shows with Douglas, and he realized pretty quickly that I was a big Franchise fan, but I never fanboyed him, and he was always super cool with me, would give me pointers on my announcing, and would sit and bullshit for hours about politics, working for schools (which I previously did as well), tell me about his sons, and stuff like that. I burned him a copy of GBBrutals Douglas set so that he could show some of his early non-ECW run to his boys, and he was super thankful for it, and he even gave me his phone number and told me I could call him if some promoter was trying to fuck me, or if we needed him for a show or something.

Hell, one night when a show was running super later, he and I sat and listened to Ricky Morton tell Rat stories from the 80's that even had Shane shaking his head and going "Jesus Fucking Christ, Ricky."

So yeah, they say never to meet your heroes, bullshit....Douglas was my favorite ECW guy for it's whole run, and he is amazing.

[C.S.]

I've always really liked Shane Douglas. I thought his white meat babyface run with Steamboat was super underrated. Unlike Tom Zenk, Johnny Gunn, Marcus Alexander Bagwell, Scotty Riggs, and even Pillman at times, Douglas could actually pull off the role.

His ECW run was fantastic, especially his blistering anti-NWA angle and promo throwing down the belt.

His WWF and WCW returns were wastes, but that's because he wasn't allowed to be The Franchise.

[El-P]

20 minutes ago, C.S. said:

His WWF and WCW returns were wastes, but that's because he wasn't allowed to be The Franchise.

Actually, although he was already very banged up physically, Douglas made the most out of the least in 2000 in the pits of hell of then-WCW. By the time TNA was around, he was completely shot though.

[DMJ]

I did not enjoy his later WCW run at all. I think if you want to talk about guys who "made the most out of the least" in WCW in 2000, there are other guys that spring to mind. Off the top of my head: 3 Count, Lance Storm, "Above Average" Mike Sanders and some of the other Natural Born Thrillers, Chavo Guerrero, and Booker T. The booking and storylines were god awful, but l felt like they generally worked hard to wrestle good matches and get themselves over.

Douglas might've been shackled creatively, but, at the time and on re-watch a couple years back, he struck me as a guy who - like Konnan, for example - wasn't putting forth much effort. I'd almost call it "hangover wrestling": doing the bare minimum, same ol' shit, going through the motions at 75% speed. I'm guessing he knew that he'd not be welcomed back to the WWE so, unlike Chavo or the Natural Born Thrillers, he wasn't auditioning for a job when WCW went down. Still, if you're looking at the few highlights from WCW 2000, I'd look elsewhere personally.

[MoS]

His obscenely long promos irritate the crap out of me. No one needs to speak for that long. Not even people like Dusty and Rock, whose promos were about delivery far more than content. 

[El-P]

57 minutes ago, DMJ said:

I did not enjoy his later WCW run at all. I think if you want to talk about guys who "made the most out of the least" in WCW in 2000, there are other guys that spring to mind. Off the top of my head: 3 Count, Lance Storm, "Above Average" Mike Sanders and some of the other Natural Born Thrillers, Chavo Guerrero, and Booker T.

Agreed about those. Booker T, yikes, the guy is one of the most overrated guys of that time period. I would call him barely good and it took really super solid worker to get something decent out of it goofy ass then. He surely got better in WWE. Yung Dragons were fun too. 3 Count, only two of them were worth anything though.

As far as Douglas goes, he was super banged up but he was a detail worker. He made that completely ridiculous scafold match watchable. Hell, he had a watchable match with Konnan, whom I consider one of the worst in-ring worker I've seen. He also worked his magic with that piece of trash Hugh Morrus who, despite the popular feeling at the time, was overrated as fuck, was completely shot already and really was not a guy who deserved to be pushed ahead of his JTTS status. And he managed to try to make Torrie Wilson, who by her own account was completely clueless, to do *something* during his matches. It's not like he was a young guy in shape anymore, he was a banged up veteran and worked like one. But hey, I've been there in details years ago in the greatest thread of the history of this sport, so what am I doing pimping circa-2000 Shane Douglas in 2020 again ?! Don't make me talk about that period ever again ! 

[cad]

On 5/8/2020 at 6:36 PM, Superstar Sleeze said:

I do think HHH's redeeming quality is that he at least has a sense of humor. Douglas is so self-serious

I'd say he is or was just as self serious as Douglas. He has a sense of humor, but it's usually directed at others rather than at himself. And remember that video game ad or something, where the only rule was that they could not show HHH on the receiving end of a move? I doubt that even Douglas would have been that petty.

On 5/8/2020 at 7:58 PM, Superstar Sleeze said:

Douglas does make a quick reference to being made look like a fool with Cornette. I did a quick Google search on just their two names and I thought it had something to do with the NWA Title fiasco but it makes a lot more sense that this has more to do with when he was a Dynamic Dude.

Thanks guys for solving that life long mystery.

Yeah, it was nice to learn that Cornette wanting wrestlers to sell too much for him was not something that originated in SMW.

[brockobama]

11 hours ago, El-P said:

He also worked his magic with that piece of trash Hugh Morrus who, despite the popular feeling at the time, was overrated as fuck

lol was he really an internet darling at the time? That seems absurd.

[El-P]

7 minutes ago, brockobama said:

lol was he really an internet darling at the time? That seems absurd.

The feeling was that he was a guy who had been underpushed and deserved better than his spot. Because he was a fat guy who could do a moonsault, basically. So yeah, he was pretty much shot when the push (because there was no one else anymore, really) came, but to me he was totally exposed as a guy who was a bad promo (the gimmick sucked, ok, but still, he sucked on the mic, shouting like an angry Duggan clone) and a mediocre worker at best. Lance Storm (and to a lesser degree Douglas) totally carried his ass to a bunch of decent matches and of course we got stuff like "Oh, Hugh Morrus is so good" because people thought Douglas as a washed-up guy and Lance Storm as a boring dude who did not kick hard enough (yeah, absurd, thoughtless opinions are nothing new). The fact he was exposed later as an abusive piece of trash only complete the picture... But hey, he did a good looking moonsault for a fat guy on Nitro for years.

[El-P]

So since we got in confinement (last days for us in France BTW, after 55 days), there's a sports TV channel which has been showing a Mania every Sunday on prime-time. SO I watched bits and pieces every week. Tonight is WM 28. Holy shit. Daniel Bryan infamous 20 sc loss. Randy Orton vs Kane followed by Big Show defeating Cody Rhodes in about 5 minutes. An awful women's match and then there will be that atrocious HHH vs Taker neverending HITC with more Shawn Micheals' stupid dramaqueen acting (I won't rewatch that, ever). Wow, that card was completely wack. I think Punk vs Jericho stole the show, and of course you had Cena vs Rock I on top, but still... 

[Coffey]

18 hours ago, El-P said:

He also worked his magic with that piece of trash Hugh Morrus who, despite the popular feeling at the time, was overrated as fuck, was completely shot already and really was not a guy who deserved to be pushed ahead of his JTTS status.

Fun little tidbit: Chris Jericho blocked me on Twitter. His reasoning was because he said something & I replied with his defending of Hugh Morrus. After all the shit went down with the students at NXT where Morrus was abusing them & what not, Jericho was like "he's my friend, he'd never do that!" or some shit. I guess he didn't like that.

[Dav'oh]

"Choshu appeared in a tag match for the urgent cicada...A single match with Inoki was realized with an unconvincing appeal of Choshu, but Choshu had already digested one game and Inoki thoroughly attacked Choshu's injured face and it was indigestion. It ends."

(How Google's page translation rendered Asahi-net's account of the build to Inoki-Vader).

[gordi]

On 5/9/2020 at 10:18 PM, The Thread Killer said:

He is obviously highly intelligent and very well spoken. 

Well, I mean, he was a college dean.

[Al]

I'll echo the Shane Douglas appreciation. Met him at a show a few months back. Super nice guy.

[WingedEagle]

How did Johnny Ace go from Dynamic Dude to top tier gaijin for Giant Baba to a reasonably high level exec in WWE?  What was the connection in Stamford that got him in the door?

[El-P]

41 minutes ago, WingedEagle said:

How did Johnny Ace go from Dynamic Dude to top tier gaijin for Giant Baba to a reasonably high level exec in WWE?  What was the connection in Stamford that got him in the door?

I believe he got booked in Japan because he was Animal's brother, basically. Then he's probably a political weasel (as showed by his years as a yes man in WWE) and Miss Baba liked him, and I guess he was friends with Steve Williams, so this explains that (because really in term of gaijin, even though at some point you can't work with the Four Pillars and Hansen/williams without being involved in great macthes, he never was that special). Then got to WCW as an agent and replicated some of the finish he learned in All Japan and got everyone go "wow this guy is so smooth" and I believe got more responsibilities in the dying days. And then when WWF bought in he had a good reputation as a backstage guy in WCW so he got brought in. More or less. Don't quote me on that.

[sek69]

Plus there were always rumors back in the day about just how much Mrs Baba liked him, if you get what I mean, although that was probably more from other gaijin jealous of his Hall of Fame level political abilities. 

To be fair, he was pretty good in the ring in his own right. Yes, he had the luxury of working with some of the best wrestlers of all time, but it's not like he was an anchor out there. 

[Laz]

Johnny Ace pretty much ran the show in the dying days of WCW and showed a surprisingly great booking prowess. It all dissipated once he was under Vince's thumb, of course, but I'll never forget that he gave us the Cruiserweight Tag tournament and the better-than-expected "Magnificent Seven runs over the competition" stuff.