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Topic Started: Oct 25 2011, 05:12 PM (68,333 Views)
Infinite Devil Machine
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Scrooge McSuck,Feb 28 2015
04:09 AM
It was around this time where the seeds of "WWE development" were officially planted. WWE signed Olympic hopeful Powerlifter Mark Henry to a lucrative 10-year, 250k per year contract, and bodybuilder Achim Albrecht, possibly better known as Brakus, or even more as "who?". Also signed around this time, with very little experience, was some guy named Dwayne Johnson, son of Rocky Johnson and grandson of Peter Maivia. All three were given training at the hands of Tom Prichard, among others, and were all expected to debut in the ring by years end. Mark Henry was constantly set back by injuries (and an attitude of not wanting to learn), and Brakus never picked up enough to be put on WWF TV, but that Dwayne Johnson... he became a smiling goofball babyface.

They actually ran some promotional videos for Brakkus around this time too. He was yet another, in a very long line of guys who were supposed to come in and be groomed for a run with The Undertaker. He can join Nailz, Mordecai, Hade Vensen, (remember him? Hype video and then he never debuted or was mentioned on TV again), The Wall (during the InVasion- Never debuted, wound up in TNA), Umaga (signed to Smackdown with the intention of feuding with 'Taker, but wound up getting fired shortly thereafter), and Big Daddy V in a very, very long line.

Also, there's a match I reviewed in one of my old threads of a solid, 3-minute sprint of a match between Brakkus and Taz in ECW. Its a fun one. Brakkus had the "WWF look". Its a shame he couldn't put enough together to make it to the big time.
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Infinite Devil Machine
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Also, here's my review of Taz/Brakkus.

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ECW Cyberslam 1998- TV Title- Taz © vs. Brakkus

Don't even begin to ask me the story behind this one. Brakkus is a WWF contracted wrestler (or was at the time, at least) and Taz is ECW's TV champion.

So yeah, lets get to it?......

To start Brakkus walks to the center of the ring and draws a line in "the sand" with his boot. Taz charges, and shoots into an armbar position. Taz pulls Brakkus up and sqaures away with some sick looking crossfaces. Back up, Brakkus reverses a whip and gets a nice looking powerbomb. Now, Droz of all people, brings a table into the ring and sets it up in the corner. Brakkus gets another powerbomb and muscles Taz into an over the shoulder powerslam. Taz slips out and T-bones Brakkus through the table.

Taz gets some stomps, a whip is reveresed and Brakkus gets a military press. Taz slips behind and nails a German suplex and locks in the Tazzmission for the submission win.

Winner: Taz

Rating: *- I can't beleive I'm saying this but, I actually would've liked that to be a little longer. I'm a Taz mark, but even having said that, these two just kind of "clicked" for five minutes. I dug it.
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Scrooge McSuck
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After the bit of hype I saw of him throughout 1997, I FINALLY see him on Raw... getting his ass handed to him by Savio Vega in the Brawl For all.
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Scrooge McSuck
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We're rolling into October '96...


And is there anything other than the "Razor Ramon" and "Diesel" that should be mentioned first? Honestly, what the fuck was this? I'm trying to rationalize everything, and I don't see how this was supposed to help Raw compete with Nitro. If it's WWF trying to prove a point by showing off that Razor and Diesel could be played by anyone because they're characters, then it's going over the heads of their young audience, and smart fans look at it as pointless nonsense. If there was genuine belief this would get over, then whoever came up with it should be smacked on the back of the head. Doing such a lame bait-and-switch does nothing but put distrust in loyal viewers and turn off people on the fence.


The Smoking Gunns are on the verge of breaking up... and it got me thinking: why were they heels? Because they were suddenly managed by Sunny? What about the Godwinns? For a week, they adopted her as their Manager, and remained faces, but as soon as the Gunns won the titles, they were instantly heels. No other reasoning behind it. By the time they split, they tried getting across that Bart was reverting to face and Billy was continuing working as a heel, but did anyone really care? Especially when working against Bulldog and Owen?


Someone has the bright idea of letting Jake Roberts work without his vest. He looks even more out of shape than Windham. NEW GENERATION, FOLKS!


Honestly, the Mankind/Undertaker program is the only saving grace right now. Shawn Michaels' run at the top seems threatened (he's practically playing second fiddle at this point, and isn't even used on the upcoming Buried Alive PPV), and there's very little underneath.
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Erick Von Erich
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I was just getting into the online "smark" community around this time (Fall 1996). The Diesel and Razor "returning" thing got people talking about the WWF for about two weeks... but the follow-up and actual reveal was just SO terrible. It made them look like a laughingstock.

Then, here comes smark favorite Too Cold Scorpio... as "Flash Funk". The handling of Furnas and LaFon wasn't too bad, but it was apparent they had no real plan for them. A lot of stuff at this time was just: "throw crap against the wall and see what sticks".

I'll give the WWF credit, though, since they were channeling some promotion through their AOL presence, starting mid-1996. One of the first companies I can recall doing this (with a concerted effort). This was before everything had a website. I forget if these were called "channels" or "sites", but it was basically exclusive content to AOL's service. They really promoted the crap out of Sunny, this way. You'd go to their channel and the first thing that would happen is you'd have to wait 3 minutes while your 14.4 modem downloaded a soundclip... of Vince McMahon screaming "Welcome to the WWF!! On America Online!".

Their message boards would tease a lot of "Hotline" crap. Like: "Three former champions are returning to the WWF ....and they're NOT Barry Windham". I think this turned out to be Crush, Mr. Perfect and (maybe) Who/Jim Neidhart?

They would even do what, nowadays, we'd call "live Tweeting" in their chat rooms--- you'd get little line-by-line recaps of their PPV's, live, as it was happening (of course, with all the fan BS thrown in). I tried it once, for "Beware of Dog" and laughed because it was the event that got canceled, midway though. Thing was, AOL was still charging something like $9.99 an hour as soon as you went over your "free" monthly hours. So I realized I had spent over 20 bucks to find out about something I really didn't give a shit about.
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Scrooge McSuck
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Dial-up modem and AOL... that takes me back. If you somehow couldn't get an AOL disc in the mail (just like redplum coupons, they were in there every week) or at a random store to get 769350404 free hours, I'm pretty sure my WWF Magazine subscription from mid/late 96 came with them. I can't confirm this as 100% truth, but it feels right.

Watching older episodes of Raw and PPV, and Vince constantly hypes Sunny as the most "downloaded" woman online. Considering the time, I have no idea how they could measure that with accuracy (maybe someone kept hitting download/view page over and over and over to spike the number), and I'm pretty sure Vince has no idea what a "download" is to begin with.
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Erick Von Erich
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AOL tracked and recorded EVERYTHING you did while logged-on. Think of the way you organize a computer with "folders" and specific files. With this, they could see that the folders "/wwf/sunny1/filenamexyz.GIF" or "/wwf/sunny2/filenameXYZ.GIF", etc, were getting a LOT of views or "downloads".

Yes, this was probably before "views" were not necessarily tracked differently from a "visit". Everything and anything being transmitted could be called a "download"; at least back then.

Sunny as "most downloaded woman" was kind of a big deal (and probably legitimate). Teri Hatcher created a huge buzz in 1995 when she was the "most downloaded". Sunny was nowhere near the hotness that was Teri Hatcher in the mid-90's, but I digress.
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Infinite Devil Machine
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Erick Von Erich,Mar 2 2015
02:31 PM
AOL tracked and recorded EVERYTHING you did while logged-on. Think of the way you organize a computer with "folders" and specific files. With this, they could see that the folders "/wwf/sunny1/filenamexyz.GIF" or "/wwf/sunny2/filenameXYZ.GIF", etc, were getting a LOT of views or "downloads".

Yes, this was probably before "views" were not necessarily tracked differently from a "visit". Everything and anything being transmitted could be called a "download"; at least back then.

Sunny as "most downloaded woman" was kind of a big deal (and probably legitimate). Teri Hatcher created a huge buzz in 1995 when she was the "most downloaded". Sunny was nowhere near the hotness that was Teri Hatcher in the mid-90's, but I digress.

Sunny might have been the "most downloaded" woman on the internet during the 90's, but I know for sure that Cindy Margolis wound up being the most downloaded woman of the year 2000. There's a Guinness Book of World Records entry about her. So, at least someone was tracking that sort of thing in an official capacity.

Who knows if Vince was getting any actual information from anyone or if he was just bullshitting because it sounded good, though.
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Erick Von Erich
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Probably safe to say that Sunny was "#1 most downloaded broad" for 1996. I remember looking through the WWF/AOL site's their images section and thinking: "holy crap, there's a shit-ton of pictures of that Sunny chick". Probably several hundred, whereas most of their wrestlers had maybe 10, tops. I really wasn't into her, though. Honest. At the time, I was probably wasting my "hours" looking for pictures of Liz Phair.

I was trying to remember Cindy Margolis' name and wanted to throw her in as a comparison. I could only think of "that blonde chick who was on Howard Stern a bunch".
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Scrooge McSuck
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WWE really hits a lull period in October... hmm... Terry Gordy debuted as the masked Executioner. No, at the time, I didn't know that. Honestly, I probably didn't even know the name "Terry Gordy" in 1996. My Freebirds knowledge was of the Michael Hayes and Jimmy Garvin version from 1990-1991 WCW.


In one of the cheapest bait-and-switch tactics since... probably two weeks earlier, they tease and hype the in-ring return of Mr. Perfect, but swerve us with him pretending to be hurt, talking Marc Mero into defending the IC Title, and helping Helmsley win it. Years later, of course, I found out the fallout to all of this: Hennig was collecting on an insurance policy and was about to settle for a huge lump sum for "permanent disability", but at the same time, Vince is trying to convince him into a return to add much needed depth to the top of the card. Before Hennig could agree, I guess Vince or someone in the know that handles contracts alerted his insurance company of this. The settlement never happened, and as revenge, Perfect no-showed several shows (notably a TV taping and the Survivor Series PPV) and quit to sign with WCW.
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Scrooge McSuck,Mar 2 2015
11:08 PM
In one of the cheapest bait-and-switch tactics since... probably two weeks earlier, they tease and hype the in-ring return of Mr. Perfect, but swerve us with him pretending to be hurt, talking Marc Mero into defending the IC Title, and helping Helmsley win it. Years later, of course, I found out the fallout to all of this: Hennig was collecting on an insurance policy and was about to settle for a huge lump sum for "permanent disability", but at the same time, Vince is trying to convince him into a return to add much needed depth to the top of the card. Before Hennig could agree, I guess Vince or someone in the know that handles contracts alerted his insurance company of this. The settlement never happened, and as revenge, Perfect no-showed several shows (notably a TV taping and the Survivor Series PPV) and quit to sign with WCW.

I think Hennig had some sort of 6 month "no compete" clause; or some legal snafu; because he didn't show up until June, 1997 in WCW. When he did, it was widely expected, so I'm guessing he signed much earlier, but had to sit out for a spell.
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Scrooge McSuck
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From the Nov. 25, 1996 WON...

Quote:
 


Another change of plans regards the situation with Curt Hennig. Hennig met and agreed to terms with Eric Bischoff late the previous week and then no-showed his scheduled WWF television appearances on Live Wire and Superstars along with his booking for house shows in Buffalo and Cleveland as Hunter Hearst Helmsley's second.

With the no-shows, WWF probably figured Hennig was WCW-bound and had Jerry McDevitt send out the basic legal threats regarding tampering since Hennig was still under contract. The WWF was under the impression that Hennig was going to debut on the 11/11 Nitro in a Lex Luger type deal, although those in WCW insist that was never the plan because they were aware of Hennig still having a WWF contract, and that his debut wouldn't be until February, after his contract expires.

As the week went on, Hennig and McMahon had at least one phone conversation in which everything apparently was settled, or at least that's what those in the WWF were of the impression of. By late in the week the belief was that not only would Hennig return for Superstars and the PPV, but that he would sign a new big money contract with the WWF as a wrestler. However, when Hennig no-showed a personal appearance on 11/16 and the PPV on 11/17, the WWF realized Hennig is all but gone.

There must have been major underlying heat between Hennig and McMahon for Hennig to not only jump, but to also burn McMahon and the WWF on two consecutive weekends on the way out the door. The story going around is that Hennig had no interest in returning to the ring, as he was a very short time away from a lifetime disability settlement in his Lloyd's of London policy which would have paid him a reported $300,000 lump sum. However, something happened, which Hennig blamed McMahon for, which led to Lloyd's not going to pay the lump sum, which, without the lump sum, probably lessened Hennig's reasons for not wanting to return to the ring. Lloyd's, which no longer sells disability insurance to pro wrestlers after having to pay out to such a high percentage of those that purchase policies during the short period they were offered. Rick Rude, Ted DiBiase, Road Warrior Animal, Hennig and Nikita Koloff among others all collected on policies. In the case of all but Animal and Hennig, they collected the big lump sum for permanent disability and have never returned to the ring. When he decided he was going to return, due to the bitterness with McMahon, he decided to contact Bischoff and WCW. If it actually happened in this way, then Bischoff and WCW would be less in jeopardy of a tampering charge if Hennig came to them rather than the other way around.
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Scrooge McSuck
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WWF continues to try and create buzz with the episode-long story played out on the Nov. 4th, 1996 episode of Raw. It's the infamous scenario where Steve Austin, after already attacking and breaking Pillman's ankle, threatened to break into his house and do even worse to him. Pillman, in response, is waiting at the door WITH A GUN, threatening to shoot Austin if he dared break into his home. He also drops some naughty language that the USA censors didn't expect, and throughout the show, they speculated what happened when the satellite feed went out, suggesting "explosions" were heard. I guess showing a gun, threatening someone with a gun, and teasing a fatal gunshot are OK, but actually using the word "gunshot" wasn't allowed? As a kid, this was a pretty holy-s moment, but looking back... it was just OK, and probably not worth the headaches caused by airing such an adult heavy angle when the target audience was still children.
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Infinite Devil Machine
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Scrooge McSuck,Mar 4 2015
03:09 PM
WWF continues to try and create buzz with the episode-long story played out on the Nov. 4th, 1996 episode of Raw. It's the infamous scenario where Steve Austin, after already attacking and breaking Pillman's ankle, threatened to break into his house and do even worse to him. Pillman, in response, is waiting at the door WITH A GUN, threatening to shoot Austin if he dared break into his home. He also drops some naughty language that the USA censors didn't expect, and throughout the show, they speculated what happened when the satellite feed went out, suggesting "explosions" were heard. I guess showing a gun, threatening someone with a gun, and teasing a fatal gunshot are OK, but actually using the word "gunshot" wasn't allowed? As a kid, this was a pretty holy-s moment, but looking back... it was just OK, and probably not worth the headaches caused by airing such an adult heavy angle when the target audience was still children.

I actually really loved that angle. But, in a way, it really exposes the the idea of the wrestling business. Austin and Pillman had known each other since the early- 90's, worked in the same company, tagged together, trained together and were in-character "friends" for years. So yeah, it makes sense for Austin to know where Pillman lives, to track him down, and try to kick his ass. The gun thing, the "OJ Simpson"-style minute-by-minute reporting (which was in vogue at the time, with the rise of 24-hour news networks and the early-90's concept of breaking news stories becoming big business) was really well done. It was exciting, cutting edge, and pretty badass for 1996.

But I'll be damned if it didn't make Triple H and Shawn Michaels look dumb. Again; here's two guys who've been friends for years, trained together, tagged together, etc. And they were involved in a heated blood feud for God knows how long. Yet, they contained their violence to the ring.

In creating a realistic angle, Austin and Pillman exposed the theatrics of the business. These guys hate each other until they go home or hit the hotel bar that night after the show.

That being said, when TNA tried the home invasion angle during the Abyss/Christian run it went over like a fart in church. Remember? Abyss tried to drown Christian in his pool?
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Scrooge McSuck
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Had they done this a year later, I think it would've gotten over better. We were still in the land of cartoon gimmicks and nonsensical angles to prove a point (cough:Fake Razor, Diesel, and the Real Double J), and here we are thrown a very real, very gritty angle that was meant to stir the pot and ended up meaning nothing. If you weren't watching WWF for whatever reason, you weren't going to change the channel to see this and then sit through a "Razor Ramon" match instead of watching Scott Hall doing whatever on Nitro. If you were a WWF fan, you probably were indifferent towards it as it strayed away from what they usually presented.
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