Welcome guys, gals, and gender non-binary pals, to Ask 411 . . . the last surviving weekly column on 411 Wrestling.
I am your party host, Ryan Byers, and I am here to answer some of your burning inquiries about professional wrestling. If you have one of those queries searing a hole in your brain, feel free to send it along to me at [email protected]. Don’t be shy about shooting those over – the more, the merrier.
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Errol is back and badder than ever:
It always bugged my that Vince McMahon was the higher power. But what if Eric Bischoff was the higher power and secretly left WCW?
How do you think this would all play out?
I don’t see this working out particularly well. Vince McMahon was the company’s hottest heel at that point, and he was also in a position where it did not seem like he was going to be willing to step down anytime soon. As a result, Bischoff could have debuted as a big surprise, but, after his initial appearance and the massive pop it would have generated, I don’t see him having much staying power as an evil authority figure (the role he was always best in) because he would have to take a backseat to Vince.
As a result, a move like that actually might have resulted in Bischoff slipping from relevance much more quickly than he actually did.
Scott is lining up for a clash of the titans:
Not here to debate whether or not the Undertaker was the right choice to attack the Rock at Wrestlemania, but I was just curious, how many times did those two have a one on one match? When I googled it the answer I got was five matches, two were one in one and the other three were tag matches.
On the December 11, 1997 episode of Monday Night Raw, the two men had their first singles match. Rocky was the Intercontinental Champion at the time, and his belt was on the line, but the match ended in a no contest.
On December 14 and 15, 1997 in in Memphis, Tennessee and Little Rock, Arkansas, respectively, the Undertaker beat the Rock in casket matches held on WWF house shows.
On September 29, 1998, the Undertaker defeated the Rock in East Lansing, Michigan as part of an episode of Monday Night Raw.
In perhaps their most significant match to date, the Rock snuck out a win over the Undertaker via disqualification at the 1998 Survivor Series pay per view in the “Deadly Game” tournament. Of course, Rocky eventually went on to win that entire tournament and thus the WWF Championship.
On January 17, 1999, the Undertaker got another house show victory over the Rock, besting him in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
Eight days later, Taker beat the Rock by DQ in a dark match following the conclusion of a Raw taping in Phoenix, Arizona.
Going back to the casket match, UT beat the Rock in another one of those on May 11, 1999 in Sunrise, Florida on an episode of Raw.
Returning to pay per view, WWF Champion the Undertaker defeated the Rock to retain his title at the 1999 King of the Ring show in Greensboro, North Carolina.
A few days later, the two men rematched, with Rock going over via disqualification, this time in Ottawa, Ontario for a house show on July 1, 1999.
Fast forwarding to May 29, 2000, Rock and Taker wrestled to a no contest in a lumberjack match on an episode of Monday Night Raw emanating from the General Motors Palace in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Later the same year, the Undertaker beat the Rock on Raw from Rosemont, Illinois on September 18.
Closing out the year, the Rock beat Taker via disqualification on the episode of Raw taped in Chattanooga, Tennessee on December 22, 2000.
And that brings us to the last one-on-one encounter between the Dead Man and the Brahma Bull, taking place on February 17, 2002 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin at that year’s No Way Out pay per view, where the Rock managed to pin the Undertaker in eighteen minutes.
That’s fourteen singles matches in total with the Undertaker winning 8, the Rock winning 4, and two ending in a no contest.
Let’s dig in with Doug:
The “WeeLC” match between Hornswoggle and El Torito at Extreme Rules 2014 was one of those matches that was better than it had any right to be (in my opinion) and would have done fine even without the requisite injection of comedy. That said, do you foresee any future venue or outlet for a little persons’ wrestling organization based solely on athleticism and not comic relief? Or would it be too hard to shed the preconceived notions of what these competitors would be expected to do?
If we’re talking about the U.S., there actually are several outlets to see serious wrestling matches between little people, including Extreme Dwarfanators, Midget Wrestling Warriors, Extreme Midget Wrestling, Midget Mayhem Wrestling, and, perhaps most notably, the Micro Wrestling Federation.
Most of those promotions seem to be running shows on a somewhat regular basis, and the Micro Wrestling Federation even has a dedicated facility in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee where they run multiple shows per week in addition to traveling shows that they take throughout the country, mostly in the Midwest and the South.
Of course, that’s all wrestling on what would best be described as the independent level, and I suspect that Doug’s question was about a product that would be a bit more broadly available.
If we are talking about national television exposure, there never really has been a standalone little person wrestling organization in the country. In the early 2010s, there was an odd fascination with little person wrestling in the reality TV sector, as Spike TV aired Half-Pint Brawlers in 2010 and Tru TV aired Hulk Hogan’s Micro Championship Wrestling in 2011. However, those were definitely presented as reality shows as opposed to traditional wrestling products.
(As an aside, I watched the first episode of the Tru TV show as part of my “research” for answering this question, and I popped big when the troupe was putting on a show at the frat house and the president of the fraternity was played by Roderick Strong – in case anyone out there had any lingering questions about just how real reality TV is.)
Thus, I have a hard time believing that there will be a dedicated little persons’ wrestling organization on a national stage, simply because it hasn’t happened before. Thus, I think the real question is whether a traditional national wrestling promotion will, at some point in the future, decide to highlight these performers as part of their overall product.
The answer to that one is . . . it’s probably a hard sell.
I say that for a couple of different reasons. First off, to really do this in the way Doug is describing, you would have to hire an entire division of eight to ten wrestlers, and at this point all of the major wrestling companies have loaded rosters with more performers than they can actually get on the television time they have available. (And even then it feels like there is way too much wrestling on TV these days.) If we were in an era where rosters were thin and something novel was needed to fill out TV time, I could see a promotion trying a minis division, but at a point where companies can barely utilize all the talent they have, it’s hard to envision.
The second issue is that little people wrestling is seen as highly problematic in some circles. The Little People of America, the country’s largest not-for-profit advocacy group for little people, actually publishes a toolkit that individuals can use to write letters and create social media posts to encourage venues to cancel wrestling events that they’ve booked, taking the position that little person wrestling promotes harmful stereotypes about those individuals and generally dehumanizes them. In fact, the toolkit specifically calls out the Micro Wrestling Federation. Though the LPA also took this position back in 2010-2011 when shows like Half-Pint Brawlers were on national television, we are living in a different world now, and I have a hard time believing that a WWE or an AEW would want to wade into that sort of controversy.
That being said, the above focuses only on the United States. If we go south of the border to Mexico, little people or mini-estrellas (or even smaller micro-estrellas) have long been a fixture in mainstream lucha libre. Both major companies, CMLL and AAA, have mini-estrella rosters and championships to this very day. Of course, this is the tradition that the previously mentioned El Tortio comes from, being known in his home country as Mascarita Dorado. Though there are occasional comedy spots in those matches, they are largely worked as serious encounters with a high flying style, which some American fans have seen due to mini-estrellas having come to the U.S. to be featured in promotions like WWE, WCW, and Impact Wrestling over the years. If you want to see series matches with little person talent in a big league environment, that is your best shot.
. . . and that is more than I thought I would write on that subject.
Tyler from Winnipeg wants to speak with your manager:
Is Paul Heyman running things?
Not really. Triple H is in charge of WWE creative, though it has been reported that Heyman does have quite a bit of influence on the direction of storylines or talent that he is directly connected to, which includes the Bloodline and included Ronda Rousey when she was still with the company.
Donny from Allentown, PA wants us to know that the balcony is closed:
Just finished watching The Iron Claw movie which told the story of the Von Erich wrestling family. One thing that confused me and I’m sure a lot of people was Kevin Von Erich being disqualified against NWA champion Ric Flair. Was that supposed to be the finish or did Kevin call and audible and change the finish? It confuses me cuz in the locker room Fritz & Kerry question Kevin as well “What happened out there?”
No, that would have been the planned finish. At the time, Ric Flair was a touring NWA World Heavyweight Champion, regularly popping into and out of territories to have matches with local babyface challengers. It was a common finish in those NWA Title matches all across the country for the challenger to get overexcited and do something that caused him to be disqualified. That way, your babyface still looked dominant but your champion got to hold on to the belt.
Herman from Deepest, Darkest Yorkshire recently switched from Twitter to Threads:
In your opinion, who are the top 5 “best dressed” wrestlers of all time. And if you can… Which match do you think they wore their absolute best gear??!!
Earlier this year, I answered a question about who had the best entrance gear, so for this answer I’m focusing exclusively on what wrestlers wore while competing rather than what they wore while walking out to the squared circle.
Also, these are in no particular order.
LA Park: Dressing head-to-toe as a Dia de los Muertos skeleton for a wrestling match? Whoever came up with that idea is a genius. (Actually, we know who came up with it. It’s AAA founder Antonio Pena.) This is a situation where the classic gear may be the best as opposed to any special variation, but I’ll give a shout out to the version that also incorporates some green and red coloring in with the white bones for when Park wants to show some Mexican pride.
Jeff Jarrett: I am probably the only person who feels this way, but I love the early 1990s Double J look featuring the long pants and vertical strips of fabric connecting to a collar around his neck. Why? Because he was supposed to be an obnoxious heel, and the outfit was a perfect representation of something that a clueless putz would think was cool. My favorite version was probably the shimmering holographic variant he wore as Intercontinental Champion.
Kyoko Inoue: Joshi legend Kyoko Inoue has a classic look incorporating face paint, tassels, and bright colors. It’s in some respects similar to the Ultimate Warrior, though you can’t really call one a knockoff of the other because they began doing it around the same time. Plus, Inoue got to do more with her various outfits because she was wearing a bodysuit as opposed to the Warrior’s short trunks. Perhaps my favorite version is the one she busted out on May 7, 1995, when she wrestled Manmi Toyota to an epic 60 minute draw . . . though the fact that the match is so awesome might be biasing me towards the gear.
Rick Rude: Airbrushing was an excellent way to churn out custom looks fairly quickly and fairly inexpensively and, though it would look dated now, in the late 1980s and early 1990s it fit in perfectly. The Ravishing one used these tights to great effect. The best iteration? I think we all know the answer to this. It had to be the one that depicted Cheryl Roberts, because what better way is there to antagonize your rival than painting his wife’s face on your crotch?
Jushin Liger: I mean, come on. This is probably the closest thing that we’ve ever gotten to a real life super hero entering the wrestling ring, which is a concept that could have been lame or campy but worked and continued to work for decades because something about the design just clicked. There were plenty of cool alternates over the years, but the unmasked, face painted entity known as Kishin Liger was just outright terrifying.
Michael M. wrote this question while stapling seventy-five rubber bands to his face:
Why doesn’t Captain Lou Albano get more love? Whenever anyone asks who is the best manager or talker in he business, no one ever mentions him. I remember growing up and he was all over WWF TV.
With that, what are your favorite Lou Albano moments? Two that I remember – him losing the manager of the year one time, got mad and hit ANOUNCER Vince McMahon in the back with the trophy and Vince flew over the top rope…and when he hit one of the Samoans over the head with a chair accidentally causing them to lose the belts to Rocky Johnson and Tony Atlas. Classic stuff!!
Albano was a very effective heel manager for many, many years and probably does deserve more credit for that than what he gets. If I had to guess why he’s not as well remembered as he should be, I think there are two key reasons. The first is that WWE doesn’t invest a lot of time in promoting or merchandising its pre-Hulk Hogan history. Virtually everybody from that era is forgotten, no matter how much they meant to the company.
The second is that, though Albano did much good for the company in the 1970s and early 1980s, he really became a parody of himself after that. He was still in wrestling for another 10 or 15 years, and nothing clicked like it used to. His once sharp promos became rambling and incoherent. He worked with the Herb Abrams UWF, which nobody looked good in. The WWF brought him back as a babyface manager with the Headshrinkers, and that floundered despite his historic connection to the Anoa’i family.
As far as great Albano moments are concerned, I enjoyed everything that he did in the buildup to Jimmy Snuka’s babyface turn, from promos where he talked about losing “a little bit” of Snuka’s money by investing it in a gold mine (?) to participating in the brutal beatdown of the Superfly alongside Ray Stevens which left an absolute puddle of Snuka’s blood on the floor at ringside.
Also, kids, remember . . . Captain Lou says “just say no” to drugs:
We’ll return in seven-ish days, and, as always, you can contribute your questions by emailing [email protected]. You can also leave questions in the comments below, but please note that I do not monitor the comments as closely as I do the email account, so emailing is the better way to get things answered.
