Lex Luger Buried by the Roundtable

[Kronos]

Last night, I was watching the HEATSEEKERS roundtable, and they really buried Luger. It was seriously harsh, with none of them having anything nice to say besides that he could sometimes have a good match if he had the right opponent. They even say that his USFL teammates didn't like him, either (despite their only reference being his coach in the USFL whose comment had to do with Lex's on-field play and not his attitude).

 

One of them -- possibly Bischoff -- even said that even though he drew in the late 80's against Flair, really anyone who had been in the Horsemen would have probably drawn in the same circumstances. Bischoff also called him a cancer. (Funny, EB thinking someone was unhealthy for the locker room, especially since they then went on to bad mouth Hall.)

 

I just thought it was interesting when compared to Luger's shoots recorded since his career ended. Lex makes a real effort to try to salvage his reputation as a jerk. He comes across as very humble.

 

He might have changed -- many people do -- but one has to wonder what's the real truth? All of these guys on the roundtable seemed to have an axe to grind, and I wonder if at least some of them (maybe Hayes and Lawler, if not Foley) remember resenting the fame and push Luger got in the day? They do make a big issue of his not being respectful of the business since he wasn't "one of them" who had come up the usual ways.

 

I am not the biggest fan of Lex, really, though I like him at times (especially since I have gotten to listen to some of his interviews). But this squash was pretty brutal.

[goodhelmet]

Loss and I always end up talking about Luger in our discussions in one way or another. I know we have made the assertion that Luger at his peak is better than Sting at his peak. To defend him, I think someone brought in with as much fanfare as Luger could never possibly meet expectations.

[Kronos]

Loss and I always end up talking about Luger in our discussions in one way or another. I know we have made the assertion that Luger at his peak is better than Sting at his peak. To defend him, I think someone brought in with as much fanfare as Luger could never possibly meet expectations.

Truthfully, I have decided I have never really like Sting all that much. His character is fun, and he was certainly over with the kiddies. But I would choose Luger almost every time, given the choice of who to watch.

[Bix]

I think this Meltzer quote from WC should be reposted here...

 

Regarding Luger and Steamboat, I talked to Steamboat regularly in 1989 when they had their great matches and Steamboat told me in specific that Lex called the Philadelphia and Baltimore matches, which were the two best ones of the series. He said Lex didn't want to call them because Steamboat was the veteran, but Steamboat told him that the heel calls.

[Guest onlxn]

I can see an argument that Luger at his best was better than Sting at his best... peak Luger was a blast. But he was pretty unwatchably bad by 1993, with almost zero decent matches to his name after that (the Bret matches were pretty good). Sting was a solidly good worker through Fall Brawl '96... he wasn't quite as good when he came back, but he was a damn sight better than Luger, and he could still bust out some very good matches from time to time. Career-wise, I'd have to take Sting.

[Kronos]

These comments are all true about Lex's ring ability.

 

I was really wondering about what the truth might be for the talk about him having a terrible attitude. That Steamboat story is telling, because I would think an experienced guy like Steam would not be willing to let him call matches is he was such a loser. But I could be wrong.

 

Lex describes that story as Ricky wanting to help him develop his skills.

[shoe]

In Steamboat's shoot Steamer mentions at 1st Steamer called the matches. Then he would have Luger call the heat. Then when Luger had this down, he had Luger call the match. This is how he worked with the inexperienced talent.

[kjh]

There's definitely a lot of truth to Luger being a jerk, particularly towards the end of his career when he was prone to throwing hissy fits whenever he was asked to job to younger talent. The most infamous example of this was when he and Buff Bagwell went into business for themselves and laid down for Chuck Palumbo and Sean O'Haire in the opening seconds of a match scheduled to go much longer.

 

That said, I agree with Will, that because he was so easy to hate, that he doesn't get his just due from people within the business and they never acknowledge that he was once a capable worker who for a short while deserved the mega push he was getting.

[rovert]

Consensus seems to be Lex is very good at giving a first impression/reformed character spiel but after that he is everything you’ve ever heard.

[Loss]

It's funny that Bischoff has jumped on the anti-Lex bandwagon, and tried to rewrite history as not ever being all that interested in him and not paying him that much money. He actually made pretty big money from what I recall during the late 90s, and Bischoff obviously went out of his way to get him prior to the first Nitro, and he was featured pretty heavily for a guy they supposedly had no use for that everyone hated working with who couldn't draw. If I recall correctly, when Russo sent Luger and Liz home in 2000, Bischoff actually sided with Luger in the dispute, and it had something to do with Luger not wanting to do a job. Bischoff also never really reprimanded Luger for some of the headaches he supposedly gave him in '95, like refusing to join the reuniting Four Horsemen with Flair, Arn, and Pillman, or no-showing a scheduled run-in at the end of a Nitro because he didn't like the direction of his character. '97 also saw him get pushed very hard all year long, including a heavily-hyped title win over Hogan on Nitro.

 

So I think you can distribute that to everyone else on the panel as well. While many of the things they say about Luger are probably true, the Roundtable is a work, and everyone bashing Luger fits a nice, tidy narrative.

 

Eric Bischoff burying Lex Luger is either Bischoff retroactively trying to distance himself, saying what he's told to say, or some combination of both.

[Boondocks Kernoodle]

I think the thing in 2000 where Luger was sent home was because he was supposed to do a run-in during a match and cause a DQ and he thought it made him look stupid. I could be totally wrong about that.

 

Bischoff always claims that when Luger came back in '95, he offered Lex 1/5 of what he was making when he left. I believe Flair was making around $700,000, maybe a little more or a little less, when he left in '91 and there's no way Lex was making more than that. So should we really believe that Lex jumped from WWF to WCW for under $150,000 a year? (Actually, I think Meltzer once said that Luger was making around $400,000 around this time. At least he said that Pillman wanted "Luger money" in his renegotiation in 1996 and he believed that was what Lex was making.) I don't really see why Bischoff has to swear by this "one-fifth" line. If he just said, "I didn't like Lex, but he was a big star so we paid big money for him," would that hurt his reputation so much? It wasn't a dumb signing, and certainly there were a LOT of dumb expenditures during Bischoff's reign. Besides which, it doesn't sound like the sort of thing WWE would have coached him to say, because that goes against the whole "WWF wrestlers left for WCW because they were disloyal and only went for the money." I sure hope Luger didn't go to WCW for the money if he was being paid less than $150,000! But whatever, Lex left WWF without telling Vince so he's a bad person. Now his life is total shit but WWE still has to get their digs in via their expert panel of party-line stooges. Good for them.

[sek69]

It's funny, the only person on those Roundtable shows that ever comes across like someone telling the truth is Lawler, and you know he's probably the best bullshitter of the bunch.

 

Dusty at times seems pretty upfront, it's like he's at the stage of his life where he's like "fuck being political" and just tells it like he saw it. Then again when they talk about NWA during the time he was booking, he always seems to get a line in about how it wasn't his booking that caused something not to succeed but something out of his control (usually Vince). It was probably entirely made up, but the story of why the Shockmaster fell over (Dusty said some production guy put a board by where Ottman made his entrance that wasn't there in rehersals), topped off with young Cody asking "isn't that Uncle Fred?" when the mask fell off, was one of the best Dusty stories so far.

 

Hayes doesn't usually have much to offer, either he chimes in about being drunk during whatever period's being discussed or he's being Vince's sockpuppet.

 

Foley is just there to put himself over as much as possible in that "aw shucks" fake modesty demeanor that he never seems to get called on.

 

Pat Patterson usually is one of the most entertaining people on the panel since he's pretty much the only guy in WWE who can say just about whatever he wants about anything without fear of losing his job. It's also funny in a business filled with homophobia that the guys joke around with Pat as if it's no big deal. I mean, it shouldn't be of course, but it's wrestling. Pat himself had the line of the show in the Worst Gimmicks episode re: the Red Rooster ("What's wrong with having a cock in the ring?").

[Bix]

Dusty at times seems pretty upfront, it's like he's at the stage of his life where he's like "fuck being political" and just tells it like he saw it. Then again when they talk about NWA during the time he was booking, he always seems to get a line in about how it wasn't his booking that caused something not to succeed but something out of his control (usually Vince). It was probably entirely made up, but the story of why the Shockmaster fell over (Dusty said some production guy put a board by where Ottman made his entrance that wasn't there in rehersals), topped off with young Cody asking "isn't that Uncle Fred?" when the mask fell off, was one of the best Dusty stories so far.

Don't forget the whole "Imagine that I'm Thteven Thpielberg" part of the spiel, which may have been even better.

 

I'm actually inclined to believe the story about David Crockett nailing the 2x4 to the wall. Granted, the angle would've been horrible and bombed anyway (which they didn't discuss and often gets ignored) but it makes sense as to why there was a non-gimmicked portion of the wall for Uncle Fred to trip over.

 

Pat Patterson usually is one of the most entertaining people on the panel since he's pretty much the only guy in WWE who can say just about whatever he wants about anything without fear of losing his job. It's also funny in a business filled with homophobia that the guys joke around with Pat as if it's no big deal. I mean, it shouldn't be of course, but it's wrestling. Pat himself had the line of the show in the Worst Gimmicks episode re: the Red Rooster ("What's wrong with having a cock in the ring?").

I liked when during the "Bad-asses" show where somebody brought up Adrian Street, mentioning that some people would be surprised how tough he was because of his gimmick, only for J.R. to get REALLY indignant asking "WHY? WHY? Because he was supposed to be gay? Gay guys can't be tough?" as Pat sits there with an "Umm, I don't think that's what he meant..." look on his face.

 

Also, the cock line + Dusty's telling of the Shockmaster story = a much better episode that people made the gimmicks one out to be.

[sek69]

I think it was Michael Hayes who mentioned Adrian Street, and he obviously meant it in a "his gimmick was supposed to make you think he was a big pansy but he was really a bad ass dude" way and I'd imagine the hilarity Hayes ended up in recently would explain why JR would think he was going to go another direction with it.