Wrestling stuff you took forever to notice for whatever reason...

[Bix]

Exactly what the topic says.

 

- It wasn't until last year that I realized that Ernie Roth, after going to the WWWF with basically the same gimmick that he was using as Abdullah Farouk, was probably given the Grand Wizard name as a rib, since it's a high KKK ranking and he was both gay and Jewish.

 

- It took me awhile (though before he died) to realize that Curt Hennig was more grossly steroid-inflated than most of the more cut up guys. I had seen pictures of him when he was super-skinny when younger and knew he used steroids. But then it happen; I forget what the trigger was, but I think there was a moment during his WCW run where I just thought "Jesus H. Christ, he looks really scarily unhealthy" similar to the later instances where I'd be glad that Angle, Rey, and Batista were on pre-taped Smackdown so I didn't have to worry about seeing them have massive heart attacks and die on live TV.

[Ronnie]

Bearing in mind that we only ever saw Vince on commentary and opening the shows for years, one of my friends spent the late eighties and early nineties thinking that Ventura, Heenan, Perfect, and the rest were addressing him as "mic-man", with reference to a microphone being the tool of his trade.

[Kronos]

I remember that for the longest time, I thought the name was "Hoobatoo" Guerrera. . .

 

I just figured I didn't understand Mexican names.

[Guest jmkc52]

Up until recently I never understood that Billy Gunn's fame-asser was a pun for "famous". This is coming from someone who got a 35 on the english portion of their ACT.

[Jingus]

Don't feel bad. I got a 36, and while I get it's supposed to be a pun, I'm still puzzled as to what exactly it's supposed to mean. "Famous-er"? That's not even a word. Not even slang, at least none that I've ever heard. (I've also been confused for the past three years about what the hell Cena meant when he called Jericho "Y-2-Cheap".)

 

 

I only started watching wrestling about nine years ago, and it took me a while to catch on to the fact that Goldberg couldn't work his way out of a paper bag. The first match I saw with him was the miracle that DDP somehow magically conjured at Halloween Havoc '98, and most of the others I saw with him were just squashes, and it took me a little while to stop reacting like a mark to how the announcers hyped up certain guys. So it wasn't until he kicked Bret into early retirement that I noticed something was terribly wrong here. Kinda similar thing with Ultimate Warrior, too; for a while the only matches I saw with him were from Wrestlemanias, where he usually didn't do too bad, so it took a while for the truth to sink in.

[MikeCampbell]

It took me about a year or so to realize that Orton's finisher wasn't called the RKO just because of it's similarity to Marc Mero's TKO, or just to play off of the acronym of TKO, but that RKO was also his initials.

[Guest jmkc52]

I only started watching wrestling about nine years ago, and it took me a while to catch on to the fact that Goldberg couldn't work his way out of a paper bag. The first match I saw with him was the miracle that DDP somehow magically conjured at Halloween Havoc '98, and most of the others I saw with him were just squashes, and it took me a little while to stop reacting like a mark to how the announcers hyped up certain guys. So it wasn't until he kicked Bret into early retirement that I noticed something was terribly wrong here. Kinda similar thing with Ultimate Warrior, too; for a while the only matches I saw with him were from Wrestlemanias, where he usually didn't do too bad, so it took a while for the truth to sink in.

This may not be the thread for it so I apologize if it's not, but what was WCW's motivation for pushing Goldberg to the moon? The guy is just your typical average sized football player with little to no talent as far as wrestling goes, so what exactly made them decide to turn him into an undefeated monster straight out of the gate?

[Bob Morris]

Goldberg was one of those guys who just caught on at some point with the fans because he looked so dominant. When he added the spear to his repertoire, it only reinforced that image.

 

As far as what prompted WCW to keep pushing him, I would suspect a lot of it has to do with the fact that they could truly claim him as a "home-grown" talent, so when his popularity took off, the push increased.

[Loss]

He wasn't really pushed all that hard right out of the gate. He was in a weird feud with Steve McMichael over a Superbowl ring, and ended up getting really over to a point where they had to respond by pushing him. But there was a brief, two-month period when he first came in where they didn't really know what to do with him.

[BruiserBrody]

Rumor was Bischoff wanted to show Vince how to push a "shootfighter" since he felt the WWF botched Shamrock

[Bix]

Yeah, keep in mind that Goldberg started by doing a semi-shooter gimmick with rolling kneebars.

[Guest Rob Naylor]

When I saw Tony Atlas redebut at a Hershey WWF taping in 1990, I thought the announcer called him "See Snee Snooper" instead of "Saba Simba...."

 

I also was totally fooled by WCW in 1991... as I was a huuuge fan of both Billy Jack Haynes and Scott Hall in and had no clue they were BlackBlood and Diamond Studd respectively. I still kinda can't believe how different Big Scott Hall looked as the Diamond Studd and later Razor.

 

When I was 6 years old, I got a magazine with Butch Reed in it and I for whatever reason, always read it as "Brutch Reed" and I called him "Brutch Reed" for at least two years till he showed up on tv in my area as the "Natural".

 

I also was always perplexed why all the Russians were bald.

 

And why wrestlers put on paint in the 80's.... and started winning matches.

[blueminister]

Goldberg was a DDP buddy, DDP had Bischoff's ear.

[Strummer]

Upon his debut in the company in 1995 I swore Vince McMahon and the rest of the announcers were calling Mark Canterbury Henry Godvin. I actually thought that was his ring name for weeks until seeing it in print.

[sek69]

Don't feel bad. I got a 36, and while I get it's supposed to be a pun, I'm still puzzled as to what exactly it's supposed to mean. "Famous-er"? That's not even a word. Not even slang, at least none that I've ever heard. (I've also been confused for the past three years about what the hell Cena meant when he called Jericho "Y-2-Cheap".)

 

I believe he did a promo at one point about making somebody famous (by beating them), and dubbed his finisher the Fame-ass-er, which later became the "Famous-er" when they realized they couldn't use the original version in games and whatnot.

[Ronnie]

Oh, another one of my friends who watches only sporadically but is not dumb to the sport had to be told by me that Hunter's finisher is the Pedigree. He had spent years thinking it was the Canterbury.

 

I've also noticed that irrespective of the amount of exposure people have to the name, be it via commentary and promos, captions on screen and merchandise, and printed media such as message boards, there's a core of people that have yet to realise that the wrestler isn't called Samoan Joe.

[MikeCampbell]

I believe he did a promo at one point about making somebody famous (by beating them), and dubbed his finisher the Fame-ass-er, which later became the "Famous-er" when they realized they couldn't use the original version in games and whatnot.

I think you've got it backwards there. All the WWF games that I can recall from that time (WWF Attitude, WWF WrestleMania 2000, WWF Smackdown!) called the move the "Fame-Asser" while it was always pronounced "Famouser" on TV. Although I've never seen the promo you speak of, I first head it called by that name during WrestleMania 15.

[Matt D]

If we're talking about things that we had completely wrong as a kid, I was very confused about why Razor Ramon's initial promos seemed to be talking about Jesse Ventura's pet name for Tito Santana.

[S.L.L.]

When you're nine years old and you've never seen "Scarface", it's easy to miss that Razor Ramon was originally supposed to be a drug dealer. When you're 21, and you still need someone on the internet to point it out to you, you feel kinda silly for missing the obvious. The age at which you're supposed to realize that the razor-shaped object in his logo is not, in fact, a movie ticket is a matter of some debate.

[tigerpride]

You know, I never realised that. That makes a lot of sense

[Indikator]

The Giant was not Andres son. Ugh

 

....I was ten years old dammit

[Guest Hack]

I was pretty young when ECW was still around, so this may not be as bad as it sounds, but I used to believe, until an outdoors shot on a ECW on TNN proved otherwise, that the ECW Arena was an actual sports arena in downtown Philadelphia.

 

I too also thought The Giant was Andre's son, probably because they really tried to make him look as much like Andre as possible.

[Beast]

Until fairly recently (past 5-8 years or so), I never realized Yokozuna wasn't Japanese or even oriental. He doesn't even look Asian really, but I guess the WWF's power of suggestion was so vast that they fooled me for so long.

[Guest secondcoming]

The Giant was not Andres son. Ugh

 

....I was ten years old dammit

 

Don't worry...I am STILL convinced that Ric Flair's in ring "heart attack" was a shoot gone wrong that they turned into a "Bischoff poisoning" work

[JHawk]

It took me years to realize that the first person to go for a pin when the referee is knocked down loses 99% of the time.