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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You think you know Night Wolf the Wise:
1. I was rewatching Unforgiven 2006 match between John Cena and Edge. After John Cena FU’s Edge through the tables, he looked disappointed. Did they ever give a reason why he was upset? Apologies in advance if this was already answered.
2. Was this match the same match where Cena legitimately choked Edge unconscious with the STFU?
Both of these subjects were covered in the Edge/Cena episode of the WWE Rivals program that airs on A&E.
On the first point, though I don’t think this was ever mentioned on commentary or in any follow-up promos, Cena says in the A&E show that through his facial expressions and body language he was trying to sell the notion that superhero babyface John Cena was not happy about the fact that he had to go to such violent extremes to put away Edge, but he was given no choice.
And, yes, per Edge he was legitimately choked out, albeit accidentally, during the spot in which John Cena put him in the STF while he was sandwiched in between two sides of a ladder. Fortunately, he was able to come to and finish the match.
Donny from Allentown, PA is gonna rock and roll all night and part of every day:
In your opinion, which tag-team was the more talented between the Rock’n’ Roll Express (Ricky Morton & Robert Gibson) or The Rockers (Marty Jannetty and Shawn Michaels)?
During the times that the two teams were actually teaming together, I would pick the Express over the Rockers because they were more seasoned and I still have yet to see anybody selling a two-on-one beating nearly as well as Ricky Morton used to before making that big hot tag.
However, after the Rockers broke up, Shawn Michaels went on to become the best individual wrestler of the four men by leaps and bounds.
Speaking of Shawn Michaels, let’s go to this question from Jonfw2:
At the outset of the Attitude Era, let’s say throughout 1997, it was considered gospel that almost everyone backstage hated Shawn Michaels.
I know the backstage stuff with the Harts was legitimate, but aside from them, is some of the hatred exaggerated?
He had incredible chemistry with most of the top guys at this point and had several all time best matches. It’s hard to imagine the chemistry he had with Austin, Taker, Foley, etc being possible if he was really that disliked.
So how much of the narrative do you think is real and how much is more legend than reality?
I think that it’s 100% real. We’re in an era where almost everybody who was involved in this – and several who were backstage but not directly involved – have done podcasts and shoot interviews ad nauseam. Not once have I heard a single one of them suggest that Shawn Michaels was anything other than a massive pain in the ass in the 1990s. We’re at a point where many if not all of those individuals would no longer have any incentive to trump up the story, so I’m inclined to believe that things were as we have been told.
John M.
First time, long time. I have been reading 411 since probably 2000.
Anyway, here’s a thought… suppose Roddy Piper does NOT jump to WCW in 1996.
How do you suppose Bischoff reveals himself to be the mastermind of the nWo as he did on Nitro?
Who faces Hulk Hogan at Starrcade? Do they hotshot Paul Wight/Giant after winning World War 3? It’s naturally too early for Sting.
Another Randy Savage rematch maybe?
Speaking of Sting, do they bump up the match maybe to Halloween Havoc 1997 or perhaps do a set of matches earlier?
Without Piper, I think that the most likely candidate for Hogan at Starrcade ’96 would have been Savage again. According to the November 4, 1996 Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Piper was actually being brought into the company as a bit of a replacement for the Macho Man, whose contract with the promotion was close to expiring, even though they eventually did re-sign him. The newsletter also notes that Savage losing to Hollywood at Halloween Havoc that year was done in such a way that it either could have written off Savage if he really was done with the company or could have continued the storyline down the road. Thus, yet another rematch from Wrestlemania V likely would have been on the docket.
Though that’s the most likely answer, I think one of the most interesting possibilities would have been WCW bringing in the Ultimate Warrior earlier than they ultimately did in 1998. It’s not out of the realm of possibility, as he was done with the WWF in the summer of that year, and obviously WCW’s business plan at the time revolved around recycling Hulk Hogan’s greatest matches from earlier in his career.
As to Sting, even without Piper there as a foil to Hogan, I think that you still don’t see him wrestling until Starrcade in ’97. One thing people forget is that there was a practical reason that Sting sat out and didn’t have any matches for so long. He had a contract with a limited number of dates in it, and WCW blew through those dates, so he wasn’t going to wrestle unless the company forked out a ton of additional money. Then, while he was sitting out that contract, the character sitting in the rafters got mega-over, so they kept him up there even longer than necessary. I think that likely happens even without Rowdy Roddy on the roster, since the impetus was Sting’s contract situation.
Another Ryan asks another question about Hulk Hogan:
Three quick questions all revolving around the same topic/match: Watching old SNME tag match featuring Hogan/Sid vs Flair/Taker, the announcers were hyping up Hogan vs Flair for WM8. Obviously, the match was Savage vs. Flair. Was Hogan being the “#1 contender” just for storyline or was he really supposed to wrestle Ric Flair at mania and they changed it?
Second, why didn’t Hogan and Flair ever wrestle on PPV in WWF?
Third, Brutus “the Barber” Beefcake made his return during that tag match from his “boating accident.” Was that accident a work or a shoot?
I covered the reason for the Wrestlemania VIII matches being switched back in 2022. The short version is that Savage/Flair and Hogan/Sid were always the planned matches. The long version is at this link.
As to Hogan/Flair not wrestling each other on pay per view, you have to keep in mind that this was a period where live event attendance was still a significant chunk of the company’s revenue. They needed big matches for those shows just as much as they needed them for PPV, if not moreso. Just because it didn’t happen on PPV in that era doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a big feud for the company.
Finally, yes, Brutus Beefcake’s “boating accident” – actually a parasailing accident – was 100% a shoot. Beefcake’s episode of Dark Side of the Ring goes into this one in great detail.
Dragon Sleepah wins the award for coolest username, and his prize is getting to ask a question:
Other than The Shield, has there ever been a faction where every member won the world title in the same company post group break up? I couldn’t think of another one. I’d say Evolution, but Flair won the WWE title in 92, a decade before Evolution was created.
I dug around and couldn’t find another one. That’s probably because very few factions in history have had the purpose of simultaneously launching the careers of three future main event wrestlers. Most stables over history have included at least one older, veteran wrestler who is not going to be in world title contention or have included one or two members that are lower on the card and basically exist to take beatings for the members who are intended to be stars.
Can anybody else beat me to this and come up with an example?
Tyler from Winnipeg asks if I prefer apples or oranges:
Do you prefer CM Punk’s debut in AEW or HHH’s return from him torn quad?
Triple H’s return from the torn quad. I almost always prefer big wrestling moments that are built up as opposed to those that are “surprises,” because I feel you get bigger emotional high when you can anticipate something. Yes, most people knew about Punk’s debut a bit in advance, but it wasn’t announced or promoted in the same way.
Plus, those music videos set to U2’s “Beautiful Day” were among the best produced packages any wrestling company has ever done, even if you weren’t a huge fan of Triple H as a performer during his heyday.
Will misses his homies:
I have a question about 80s WWF. Everyone like to make fun of current AEW for signing big names and ‘wasting’ them, but it seems to me that 80s-early 90s WWF was even worse at doing this. They would bring in guys that were stars and even main events elsewhere, and barely use them or job them out. We all know some of the stories such as Dusty Rhodes, Kerry Von Erich, Terry Taylor and JYD, but there were far more than that. I’m thinking about Buzz Sawyer, Ronnie Garvin, The Freebirds, Blackjack Mulligan, Dick Slater, Barry Windham, Terry Funk, Ron Bass, Butch Reed, Tully Blanchard, Rick Martel, The Briscos, even the Road Warriors. It seems like most of these names would be good for an IC title level feud or run, or even main event level/tag team title run. Were the territories just better at booking these guys, or was it a case of now being a smaller fish in a bigger pond?
The answer with a lot of the guys you mentioned is that the WWF didn’t sign them with any intention of doing anything high level with them. They signed them in large part just to hurt the territories that they were taking them from. Remember that Vince McMahon’s mission was expanding nationally and making his promotion the only game in town. He wasn’t above raiding talent in order to do that, even if he didn’t truly “need” the talent in question.
It wasn’t just wrestlers, either. It’s not like Ken Resnick, for example, was some great announcer that the WWF absolutely needed. He just got poached to make things all the harder for Verne Gagne.
“Triple T” Ticking Timebomb Taz is blowing up:
Ultimate Warrior vs. Hulk Hogan was a huge match at Wrestlemania VI. Was there ever any serious talk of doing a rematch in WWF to your knowledge?
Nope. I covered this in more detail back in 2021.
A man simply known as R wrote this question in a Nigerian accent:
I want to say around mid 2020 where Roman Reigns just won the Universal Title, there was a backstage segment involving Reigns and Apollo Crews. It seemed like Reigns was coaching him or taking him up under his wing. I think this was when Crews was doing the heritage gimmick. Was wondering if anything was supposed to come of it or it was a one off? I remember being excited as I thought the association with Reigns could’ve elevated Crews.
The segment that you’re referring to was part of the January 15, 2021 episode of Smackdown, and it was actually a few weeks before Crews turned heel and adopted his Nigerian prince gimmick.
It did not directly lead to an association with Roman Reigns and as near as I can tell was not intended to. However, it was part of a larger angle leading up to Crews becoming a bad guy that had been playing out in part on the Talking Smack postgame show that WWE was running for Smackdown on the Network at the time.
Early in the year, Apollo had a babyface/babyface IC Title match with champion Big E Langston, who had been portrayed as his friend on TV. They did a double pin finish and Crews then challenged the champion to an immediate rematch, which Langston won. Heyman and Crews had an encounter on the following episode of Talking Smack in which Heyman ran down Apollo for being too nice a guy and went as far as asking whether Crews would let Big E eat food off his table and fuck his wife. (The last part there was heavily censored for obvious reasons.)
Then, after Crews fully turned heel, Heyman asked him on a follow-up episode of Talking Smack whether Crews’ meeting with the Tribal Chief was what did the trick. In other words, even though they did not become allies, the idea was supposed to be that Apollo’s interactions with Heyman and Reigns were what lead to his change in attitude.
The whole thing was pretty well done and a good way to make the heel turn feel less “out of nowhere,” though it suffered from the fact that very few people actually watched Talking Smack and thus missed out on key components of the story.
Michael is standing on the apron with his hand outstretched:
What do you think is the most underrated tag team feud ever? I’m going with Fantastics-Sheepherders.
Fantastics/Sheepherders is a solid choice.
However, I’m going to head to the world of joshi for this one one and call upon two tag team feuds that defined women’s professional wrestling in that country.
The first goes all the way back to the 1970s, with the Beauty Pair of Jackie Sato and Maki Ueda battling the Black Pair of Shinobu Aso and Yumi Ikeshita. This is the feud that put joshi on the map, drawing thousands of people to arenas in various parts of the country and doing TV ratings with a 20 share, meaning that 20% of the televisions turned on in Japan at the time were watching that show. Plus, though I’m not really a fan of this term, the matches “hold up” almost 50 years later and are better than women’s matches on national television in the United States today. Even if the moves aren’t as flashy and you’re someone who prefers matches with flashy moves, you have to admit that at least the fundamentals are better.
The second feud I wanted to highlight happened ten years after the peak of the Beauty Pair, and it pitted the Crush Gals of Chigusa Nagayo and Lioness Asuka against the Villainous Alliance, sometimes translated as the Evil Alliance, which was actually a stable with several members but most notably sent Bull Nakano and Dump Matsumoto after Nagayo and Asuka. (Also, shout out to Villainous Alliance members Crane Yu and Condor Saito, who along with Dump and Bull make this the stable with the greatest ring names of all time. The Crush Gals became major mainstream stars in large part thanks to this rivalry and, again, the matches are excellent even by today’s standards.
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.
