What if, the WWF went with the original plans for WM4?

[David Mantell]

On 5/31/2017 at 3:19 PM, JRH said:

Savage as IC champ likely means that we dont get Warrior's title win at Summerslam 88 as well, which means that Warrior's push is either stalled or never happens.

Warrior had been earmarked as Hogan's eventual long term replacement in 1987 and was apparently still Hogan's heir apparent until 1991-1992 when a combination of the SS91 contract argument and the steroid scandal while resulted in a loss of size for Warrior and a drop in fashionablity for big physiques) saw him gradually replaced by Bret.

On 5/31/2017 at 3:45 PM, Matt D said:

After Savage's turn in 89, they did a lot of Title vs Title matches with Ultimate Warrior that ended in countout wins for Savage (I think with Rude distracting Warrior). At least one of these isn on youtube because it was at MSG.

These were done because a lot of fans sided with Savage coming out of the Main Event '89 so audiences needed to see Savage behaving a lot more like a heel., both by being cowardly against Warrior and by making pals with Rude at the end.

On 5/31/2017 at 3:57 PM, PeteF3 said:

Bottom line: Honky Tonk Man did the WWF and all of us, the viewers, a gigantic favor in the end.

Bottom line is down to Linda Hogan getting pregnant twice and Hulk being required to take Paternity Leave and go on Diaper Duty twice.

The first time round, paternity cover wad Savage/  Both Times, WM Even Number ended with a face other than Hogan taking the blet home with Hogan's blessing.  Jan or Feb of the next year the belt ended up in the hands of a heel (Savage turned, Warrior jobbed to Slaughter) setting up Heel Champion vs Hogan at WM Odd Number.

On 6/1/2017 at 9:57 PM, Migs said:

They clearly want to push Warrior. Maybe he even squashes Honky at some point.

 Warrior had gone into Vince's office and demanded when this title push he was sold on was coming.  Normally (Bam Bam, The Powers, Sid, Lex, Crush) Vince would just BS charm them out of his office, but  in Warrior's case he really DID wast him as champ some day. so they fobbed him off with two IC reigns and a year as paternity cover World Champion (cut down to 9 months once Vince saw the WM6 PPV figures and started carrying on alarming about how face vs face with Pedro vs Bruno was a flop for his dad in '72 and swearing that for the hand-back to Hogan there would be an interim champion which was Sheik Tugboat Sgt Slaughter.)

On 6/2/2017 at 4:43 AM, JRH said:

I wonder what the Rude/Savage feud would be like. Probably decent matches, but would they go with the obvious angle of Rude hitting on Elizabeth, especially if the Roberts feud still happens?

Heel Savage would usually deal with fellow heels who asked Liz for a kiss by kissing them himself!

It's an old trick., if you are flirting with a girl but her boyfriend/husband is someone you like/respect or who (against expectation/prejudice) turns out to be a decent guy, seduce him also and have yourselves a threesome!

 

[PeteF3]

This is the first I'm hearing of Warrior making any kinds of "demands" for Vince pre-summer-of-1991-letter (when he demanded equal pay/schedule to Hogan among other things). 

[David Mantell]

7 hours ago, PeteF3 said:

This is the first I'm hearing of Warrior making any kinds of "demands" for Vince pre-summer-of-1991-letter (when he demanded equal pay/schedule to Hogan among other things). 

I can't find the exact clip right now but there was a shoot interview clip of Brutus Beefcake getting quite a lot of attention a few months ago where Brutus says he was all ready to win the iC title at Summerslam when Warrior went marching into Vince's office, kvetching about how he hadn't yet been given a title as promised.  Unusually for him, Vince rolled over and gave Warrior Brutus's IC  title reign (which kept him content until Linda Hogan got pregnant a second time and Warrior could be paternity leave cover World champion like Savage in 1988)

There are other clips still up of Brutus saying similar but they lack the impact of that particular one.

[David Mantell]

Just now, David Mantell said:

There are other clips still up of Brutus saying similar but they lack the impact of that particular one.

For instance:

 

[PeteF3]

16 hours ago, David Mantell said:

I can't find the exact clip right now but there was a shoot interview clip of Brutus Beefcake getting quite a lot of attention a few months ago where Brutus says he was all ready to win the iC title at Summerslam when Warrior went marching into Vince's office, kvetching about how he hadn't yet been given a title as promised.  Unusually for him, Vince rolled over and gave Warrior Brutus's IC  title reign (which kept him content until Linda Hogan got pregnant a second time and Warrior could be paternity leave cover World champion like Savage in 1988)

There are other clips still up of Brutus saying similar but they lack the impact of that particular one.

I'm cool with accepting that at face value so long as we give equal weight to Bruti's claims that he taught Dynamite Kid how to work.

If there was any accuracy to his claims, you'd think it would be all over WWE's Self-Destruction of the Ultimate Warrior piece.

[David Mantell]

48 minutes ago, PeteF3 said:

I'm cool with accepting that at face value so long as we give equal weight to Bruti's claims that he taught Dynamite Kid how to work.

If there was any accuracy to his claims, you'd think it would be all over WWE's Self-Destruction of the Ultimate Warrior piece.

He probably did try to lecture Dynamite who just ignored him or smiled mock-benignly while contemplating turning the guy into pulled pork in a cage in a few dates' time. 

The "Warrior Threw A Stroppy" story smacks of the truth taken and stretched through a very selfish and slanted lens.   Bear in mind Brutus was largely getting his own  IC pushes in both 1988 and 1990 as a favour wangled by Hogan.

Vince made title promises to a lot of people, many of whom he shafted in the end. Some he came clean to, others he hypnotically BS'd and sent them on their way feeling great about themselves but gaining nothing.  What stands out as different here is that McMahon actually took action to keep the aggrieved wrestler onside - clearly Warrior was VERY import to 1988 Vince.

[PeteF3]

Vince was pretty notorious for not offering promises. "I don't offer guarantees--I offer opportunities." A lot of "I could see you working with [x] and becoming [y champion]" got interpreted by talent over the years as "Vince promised me the title."

[David Mantell]

5 hours ago, PeteF3 said:

Vince was pretty notorious for not offering promises. "I don't offer guarantees--I offer opportunities." A lot of "I could see you working with [x] and becoming [y champion]" got interpreted by talent over the years as "Vince promised me the title."

Yes he did seem to have these get out clauses. If the Warrior story is true - or at least based on a slightly more reasonable version of the truth than "It's not fair, he threw a stroppy and went whinging to Vince". - then it shows Vince saw Warrior as some sort of special case that he wanted kept nice and fresh in the fridge ready for the post Hogan era.

Vince did not want 1988 Warrior to get talking to other guys momentarily promised the world and come to the conclusion that he'd just been another sucker for Vinnie. It's easy to forget how many other short lived fads he was momentarily obsessed with, before getting cold feet in double quick time:

To avoid Warrior thinking he was a similar sucker to these - and if there is truth in Brutus's story it shows you that the Warrior did have such concerns - he was fed juicy morsels during his years sat in the fridge waiting for the Hulk to disappear over the Tinseltown horizon.  A couple of IC title runs. A chase of a cowardly thief champion. A year's run (cut to 10 months) as paternity cover World champion.  PPV main events, open goals to upstage the main events and a main event run with Undertaker that outdrew the Hogan-Slaughter return series.

It took massive cultural shifts for him to finally get cold feet on Warrior in about '91/'92 and go - if reluctantly - with Bret instead.  Even then Warrior still had a possible use in a spot holding the belt - something I'll go onto on another thread. ...

 

[PeteF3]

How would Warrior think he was a similar sucker to three things that hadn't happened yet?

Luger has always said that from the beginning, Vince told him that *if* he won the title, it'd be at Mania 10.

I doubt the PoP would have cared about the tag titles. They were happy to not have to take a scaffold bump every night. Crockett going into bankruptcy would have only further validated their decision to leave when they did.

Sid didn't even want to be a babyface, so he probably welcomed it when/if Vince "gave up" on it.

The bottom line is, the only sources for this story is one wrestler of dubious trustworthiness and wishful thinking of people wanting to believe it since it makes Warrior look whiny and egomaniacal. Why didn't Bruce Prichard ever tell this story? He hates the Warrior so he's certainly not going to go into his company-man act to protect him. Honky Tonk Man, a man who actually did force a power play on Vince over the title, has done a million interviews and I've never seen any indication that he's said anything besides Warrior always being the plan (or second plan, after Savage). You'd think Warrior himself would have said something about it at one point, while making sure to portray himself as the wronged party forcing the WWF to bow to him, but I don't think he ever has.

There's enough actual bad shit the Warrior said and did that I don't really care to make up other bad shit to go with it.

[David Mantell]

17 hours ago, PeteF3 said:

How would Warrior think he was a similar sucker to three things that hadn't happened yet?

One of these things HAD already happened.  The Powers of Pain had been brought in as the new two man Hulk Hogan to STORM the WWF and squash Demolition for the belts and hospitalise both of them as rough justice for both the "theft" of the World tag title and the injury to Martel. 

The Aptermags who had always hated Demolition were WETTING themselves at the prospect of a grisly humiliating comeuppance for Ax and Smash two alleged goofs supposedly manufactured in a vat at Titan Towers to be Road Warrior ripoffs only to win the tag title. "WARLORD AND BARBARIAN - DEMOLITION'S NIGHTMARE!" declared the November 1988 PWI.  It was going to be like Hogan coming in and squashing The Iron Sheik all over again.

There were a bunch of dress rehearsals at house shows and at TV taping dark matches such as the one posted above.  These all ended in either countouts or non-title pinfall losses after about 5 min if the Powers no-selling everything Demolition did.    Then the whole push got retconned. The Powers had a few more matches Vs Demolition without the no selling and with Demolition at least as competitive as at Survivor Series 88 when they and the Powers were tagged in - usually ending with countouts but with one Power just scrabbling back to the ring at 9, not the Demolition fleeing the ring in TERROR finish you see here. Pretty soon the Powers were shunted into a feud with the Bolsheviks and Demolition were put with the British Bulldogs. 

Warrior would have been watching all this,  and he would have had another pertinent example in Bam Bam Bigelow.  At one point regularly tagging with Hulk Hogan against the soon to be Megabucks, performing incredibly well at the Survivor Series '87 gauntlet by beating King Kong Bundy and One Man Gang before falling victim to Andre.  According to some accounts HE -Not Savage nor DiBiase - was originally meant to emerge from WM4 as World champion, do the 10 months as paternity cover babyface champion for Hogan then turn heel in early 89 to set up a Hogan Bigelow WM5.  That never happened and soon Bigelow was doing nightly jobs for Gang.  Bigelow could very easily have poured out his son  story to Warrior before quitting late that summer.

Both these and other examples could have preyed on Warriors mind when he went in to see Vince one time in August 1988 ...

[David Mantell]

22 hours ago, PeteF3 said:

The bottom line is, the only sources for this story is one wrestler of dubious trustworthiness and wishful thinking of people wanting to believe it since it makes Warrior look whiny and egomaniacal. Why didn't Bruce Prichard ever tell this story? He hates the Warrior so he's certainly not going to go into his company-man act to protect him. Honky Tonk Man, a man who actually did force a power play on Vince over the title, has done a million interviews and I've never seen any indication that he's said anything besides Warrior always being the plan (or second plan, after Savage). You'd think Warrior himself would have said something about it at one point, while making sure to portray himself as the wronged party forcing the WWF to bow to him, but I don't think he ever has.

There's enough actual bad shit the Warrior said and did that I don't really care to make up other bad shit to go with it.

My own reading of this (regardless of whether the story is true or not) was that if it was true,  then Warrior acted reasonably (on this occasion)  and no differently from many of his colleagues who (felt they) had received promises that Vince did not fulfil.  It just so happened that he was the chosen one while, unbeknown to him, others (the Powers, Bam Bam) were not. 

So  others looked on jealously and angrily. when Vince came up with the goods ( 2 x IC reigns, a year as paternity leave cover World champion) to feed his prize beast when it screamed "hungry!"