WWE Network World Tour: WrestleMania VIII

After the 1992 Royal Rumble, the pieces were set into place for the wrestling nerd dream match of the century. Hell, for a hot second, the WWF looked like they'd even pull it off, too, as they aired a fake "press conference" where fake WWF President Jack Tunney named Hulk Hogan as the #1 contender to Ric Flair's newly-won WWF World Championship. For once, Hogan's incessant need to headline every goddamn show he was ever on was working to my advantage, as i wanted to see Hogan/Flair as much as anyone. WrestleMania VIII was going to be MINT.

Hey, wait.

So....about that. If you venture out into Internetlandia, you can find myriad reasons for why the WWF quickly reshuffled their WrestleMania VIII plans. Hogan and Flair had been wrestling at house shows and the reactions were tepid (not that they were built up as anything more special than "Hogan's fighting this guy this month"). Vince McMahon decided the match was "five years too late" (well, whose fault was that, Mr. Drain-The-Territories-of-all-Their-Talent?). Vince didn't want to push Flair as a champion on Hogan's level (which is a ridiculous assertion, as they built him up as a "real world's champion" with an acknowledged pre-WWF career). Whatever the reason, what we eventually got was a "double main event" of Hulk Hogan vs. Sid Justice (who thought that, as the last man eliminated in the Rumble, he should have been #1 contender, and thus took his frustration out on Mr. I-Headline-Every-'Mania Hogan, which...understandable), and Flair ended up defending his title against Randy "Macho Man" Savage, which was sure to be a better match than Hogan/Flair anyway. I mean, if you're going to pair these four dudes off, let the two real workers put on a clinic while the two muscleheads punch each other for 12 minutes elsewhere on the show. This makes sense. So yes, let's make up an angle where Flair produces doctored photos of himself hanging out with Miss Elizabeth and have him claim that "she was mine before she was yours, Savage!" Because, let's be honest--that's pretty fucking funny. Flair's ladies' man character going full heel, unable to handle the fact that for once his opponent is the one with the stunningly hot lady at his side, and not him! His ego cannot process this, for he is Space Mountain and there is not a female alive that does not want to strap in for the ride! He will refer to said lady as property and exhibit questionable sorta-misogynist behavior, for he is a dastardly heel champion (and knows that Savage has a famously jealous streak when it comes to Liz to boot, so it's a brilliant psychological strategy as well)! Honestly, it's hard to argue with the WWF here; this really probably was the right call. Throw in an Intercontinental title match with Roddy Piper defending against Bret "Hitman" Hart, and we have at least two potentially stupidawesome matches to watch here. So let's get on with it! 

WWE Network World Tour: Royal Rumble 1992

BONUS COVERAGE!

In August 1991, the WWF, Bobby Heenan, and Ric Flair made wrestling history after Flair was fired from WCW due to creative "differences" with its president, Jim Herd (can you imagine Ric Flair disagreeing with the idea of completely redesigning his character and renaming him "Spartacus?" That would have made millions!). Throughout the Hulkamania era of the WWF, hardcore wrestling fans who followed every wrestling promotion and marked out for technical wrestling contended that Hulk Hogan only kept a stranglehold on the WWF Title because he'd never wrestled Ric Flair. Whether you were a complete mark or someone who actually realized that, ya know, it was completely logical that Ric Flair in the WWF would have been booked as just another heel that would lose to the big boot and legdrop, what with Hogan being the companies golden egg-laying goose and all, it was still fun to daydream about what would happen if, someday, the two men who held the two most prestigious championships in pro wrestling in the 1980s were to collide. And in 1991, after Flair's ignoble dismissal from the company that was once Jim Crockett Promotions--the company he ruled for ten years--it was finally possible.

Not that any of us teenagers really knew the behind the scenes politics in the NWA at the time, so when this aired on WWF Wrestling Challenge, there was almost no advance warning and jaws hit the floor across North America on one Saturday morning in August:



I love how Gorilla Monsoon and Jim Neidhart act like they've never seen the Big Gold Belt in their lives, and have never heard of Ric Flair. Buncha company man babyfaces treating their employer like it's the only game in town, while the diabolical heel manager has his finger on the pulse of the wrestling underground. And yes, that is the original Big Gold NWA World Championship Belt that Heenan is holding in this video. When Flair was fired from WCW, he was the world champ, and when Jim Herd and WCW demanded it back, Flair said, "ok, fine, as long as you return the $25,000 deposit i paid when i first won the belt way back in 1981." (This was a thing that NWA champions did back in the day, apparently.) WCW didn't have the money (because it was paid to the NWA, not them), and thus Flair kept the belt to use on WWF television as the "Real World's Champion."

So Flair immediately started making life difficult for his old friend/nemesis, Roddy Piper, and eventually got onto Hogan's radar by interfering in Hulk's title defense against the young Undertaker at the 1991 Survivor Series. After tombstone piledriving Hogan onto a chair that Flair slid into the ring, 'Taker had won his first title and was headed to a WWF "President" Jack Tunney-mandated rematch at a 1st time (and only) PPV the following Tuesday, creatively called This Tuesday in Texas. There, Hogan regained his title after throwing ashes from 'Taker's urn into his face (which, EW). Because Tunney was at ringside and witnessed the flagrant cheating from the WWF's resident superhero, justice prevailed (the concept, not Sid Justice) and Hogan was stripped of the championship, which would be filled by the winner of the 1992 Royal Rumble match.

Now, let's be clear here--titles being won in battle royals is some serious lame sauce, and as a young mark i initially rolled my eyes at this announcement. You win a title via pinfall or submission (or grabbing a belt hanging above the ring by using a ladder, i suppose), not simply by tossing dudes over the top rope. The idea of The Barbarian or "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan fluking their way to the title was a serious concern of mine. What i forgot was that this shit is scripted so the title win would be booked in a way that made damn sure the winner deserved it. And hoooo boy, did the winner deserve it.

Since the events here are so critical in setting up the matches for WrestleMania VIII, let's go through the card. BONUS COVERAGE!

WWE Network World Tour: WrestleMania VI

It was the pinfall that rocked a million grade schoolers.

In professional wrestling, there are countless ways to win a match, depending on the gimmick involved. You can escape a cage, drag your opponent to all four corners, toss 'em in a casket, even light 'em on fire. But a lot of these finishes are copouts--ways to give a victory to one wrestler while not making the opponent look too weak in defeat. Even in 2014, the way to really assert dominance over an opponent--to show them that you are truly better, to really defeat them--is through pinfall or submission.

And as of April 1, 1990, Hulk Hogan had not been cleanly pinned in nine years. The internet tells me that the last man to pin Hulk Hogan's shoulders to the mat without cheating before the advent of Hulkamania was Tony Atlas sometime in 1981. For an entire generation of kids who started watching the WWF in 1985 or so, Hogan was unpinnable. Seeing Earl Hebner count a bogus three in '88 with Hogan's shoulder off the mat looked surreal, as did the sight of the WWF title on Andre the Giant's shoulder for all of 40 seconds. These days, champions get pinned in non-title matches all the time to advance storylines--heck, Randy Orton got pinned cleanly more often during his last title run than The Honky Tonk Man may have been in his entire career. But in the '80s, the WWF protected its champions. You did not see a champ get pinned, even in a non-title situation, because it made the champ look weak.

And that's why the finish to WrestleMania VI made history.

The WWF for a time must have been convinced that The Ultimate Warrior was the future of their company. Like Hogan before him, he was huge, ripped, and charismatic...in his way...and incredibly over with the fans. Unless you were a wrestling purist or an NWA fan, it was hard not to get swept up in the energy and the hype of the Warrior...even if nothing he ever said made any sense.




I mean, come on--who wouldn't have wanted this guy as the face of the company?

In 1989, this dude was so goddamn popular that he was on a nonstop collision course with the--until now--unquestioned king of the WWF, the man who had held the title since beating Randy Savage at WrestleMania V, Hulk Hogan. And for the first time since WrestleMania III, there was legitimate doubt as to whether Hogan would actually win, even though conventional wisdom reminded us that he hadn't been pinned in nine years, and did anyone even remember seeing that match, anyway? Hulk Hogan vs. The Ultimate Warrior was the match that had to happen, even though neither guy could actually wrestle worth half a goddamn. And still, it was a main event that ended up being greater than the sum of its parts. Like Andre/Hogan at WMIII, the hype told more story than the in-ring performance. And Intercontinental Title vs. World Title was the cherry on top.

But first, it was apparently critical that "Rowdy" Roddy Piper wrestle in blackface.

WWE Network World Tour: WrestleMania V

Not too long ago, a tattooed, straight-edge, rebellious outsider named CM Punk held the WWE Championship for a staggering (by today's standards) 434 days, winning the belt at Survivor Series 2011 and holding it uninterrupted all the way to 2013's Royal Rumble. During this title run he had some thrilling title defenses against the likes of Dolph Ziggler, Chris Jericho, and Daniel Bryan, matches that were more than worthy to close any WWE PPV on which they were broadcast. Unfortunately for Punk and his historic title reign--the longest by any WWE Champ in roughly 25 years--his title defenses were routinely relegated to the undercard in lieu of whatever John Cena--eternal champ in the eyes of Make-A-Wish kids everywhere--was up to that month. Punk may have held the belt, but the clean-cut walking cartoon character superhero (who, in the eyes of many fans, is nowhere near CM Punk's level in terms of overall in-ring ability) was still The Man in the eyes of WWE and their merchandise sale statistics. It's no wonder that in August of 2012, Punk finally turned heel and began venting his frustrations on the mic and in the ring.

It's probably not coincidence that Punk started using Randy "Macho Man" Savage's trademark flying elbow drop in tribute not long after Savage died in May 2011. Punk has long cited Savage as a favorite and an influence, which makes Punk's mid-reign heel turn all the more interesting when paralleled with Savage's run after WrestleMania IV in 1988. Like Punk, Savage won the title at a time when another wholesome, clean-cut superhero, Hulk Hogan (who also was generally accepted by "smart marks" as being less skilled in the ring than the new champ), was the top dog in the yard. Sure, Hogan took time off in the Spring and early Summer after WMIV in order to film his debut as a lead "actor" in No Holds Barred while Savage got some time to establish himself as champ, but by late Summer he was back and ready to join up with Savage and Elizabeth (now the manager of both men) at the inaugural SummerSlam in a tag team match against Ted DiBiase and Andre the Giant. From then on, the subtle digs started in the WWF's positioning of the two men--Savage may be holding the strap, but Hulk's still our guy. And it was only a matter of time before the storyline began to reflect what was depicted as Macho Man's long-simmering resentment over the situation.

Whether Savage's frustration was as real-life as Punk's isn't known to me, although stories have been told for years about Hogan's backstage politicking (not that Vince and the WWF were likely in any way interested in moving on from Hogan until the well was beyond dry). But Savage was channeling something during the February 3 edition of The Main Event where, after a tag team match against the Twin Towers (Akeem--more on him below--and The Big Bossman) (never forget), Savage turned on Hogan and delivered the beatdown. See, during the match, Elizabeth got knocked out during an inadvertent collision with Savage, leading Hogan to carry her toward the medical facilities in the back, sobbing and flipping his shit the whole time. He eventually comes back to the ring, but the damage is done--Savage's old jealous streak is reignited and he not only bails on Hogan at the end of the match (which Hulk still wins because, come on, it's Hulk Hogan), but he jumps Hogan in the first aid room, basically accuses him of wanting to bone Liz, and goes on with the rampant ass-kickery. It was almost disturbing as a kid to see Savage so wild-eyed, insane, and rage-filled, although today, hindsight shows me that i've seen a lot worse since.

So the stage was set for WrestleMania V: Hogan would challenge Randy Savage for the title that he only lost a year before so he could go make a movie, looking to make a casualty of Randy Savage's 371-day title reign--a reign that wasn't very long in the context of Hogan's four-year reign that preceded it, but nonetheless, a reign whose length wouldn't be sniffed at for nearly 20 years, only surpassed by John Cena in 2006-2007, and by CM Punk (who would eventually drop the title to another guy who left the company to make movies, The Rock, who would then drop the title at the next 'Mania...to John Cena. Parallels!).

OK, should we get on with this already?

WWE Network World Tour: WrestleMania IV

If you want to see how radically storytelling in professional wrestling has evolved in the Internet age, compare WrestleMania XXX and its "Daniel Bryan and the Internet Smart Fans vs. Triple H and the Glass Ceiling" meta-storyline with 1988's WrestleMania IV. Back in '88, there was no widespread Internet filled with rumor mills, dirt sheets and message boards full of "insiders" with backstage storyline gossip. The WWF was still maintaining kayfabe in public appearances, and all the dirt sheets were underground newsletters that you had to subscribe to in order to hear the latest gossip. As a soon-to-be 14-year-old fully willing to suspend his disbelief, i had no idea who would win the main event at WrestleMania IV, and hell--i had no idea who would be in the final.

See, WrestleMania IV is the year of the tournament--a one-night single-elimination 14-person tournament to fill the vacant WWF World Heavyweight Championship. On February 5, 1988, NBC aired The Main Event on prime time TV, featuring a title rematch of the WrestleMania III clash between Hogan and Andre. This time, the match ended in controversial fashion when Andre covered Hogan for what should have been a one-count, but was counted three by referee Earl Hebner, evil twin of the scheduled official Dave Hebner, trapped in a locker somewhere backstage after "The Million Dollar Man," Ted DiBiase (Andre's new manager, having bought his contract from Bobby Heenan), bribed Earl to count a bogus three and award the title to Andre, who would then surrender the belt to DiBiase. (Follow all that?) However! President Jack Tunney invalidated the transaction, claiming "no sale" as the title can only change hands by pinfall or submission (someone tell that to Vince McMahon in 2007 when he awards the title to Randy Orton before he even wrestles a match that night). Thus, we have the first-ever WWF championship vacancy, and the aforementioned tourney.

In 1988, there was no Internet speculating about which hot babyface would be given a chance to run with the gold. Not many people knew that Ricky Steamboat was slowly being jobbed out of the company by bitter management, nor did anyone know that Hogan was about to take a sabbatical to film a movie (the classic No Holds Barred, featuring Tiny Lister as Zeus, an unstoppable monster heel nowhere near as lazy as his eye!). All we had at Hilbert Junior High was speculation, and most of us thought that the winner of the tournament would emerge from the Hogan/Andre second-round bout. So obviously we had no idea what was going to happen.

If only the actual wrestling were as dramatic as the storyline...

WWE Network World Tour: WrestleMania III

OK, y'all. Shit's about to get real. With WrestleMania III, we officially enter the era of the World Wrestling Federation where i started following the goings-on. It was a few months before WMIII that my little brother Kris, all of 3 years old at the time, started expressing a desire to watch the work of one Hulk Hogan. Probably caught an episode of Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling or something, i dunno. At first, the idea of watching grown men beat each other into a pulp was repellant to this good young 13-year-old Catholic boy. But when my dad told me it was all "fake," that made it acceptable (not realizing that they still beat each other into a pulp--it's just in service of a narrative), and one night my brother and i, along with our babysitter (look, they weren't trusting a 13-year-old kid to handle three other rugrats, and i'm grateful they didn't), stayed up late for the Saturday Night's Main Event episode where Hulk Hogan defeated Paul Orndorff in a steel cage match that was restarted after both men hit the floor outside the cage at the exact same time. My brother was hooked, but i still wasn't paying a ton of attention until that November, when "Macho Man" Randy Savage, fresh off a babyface turn that was building his character into a red-hot commodity, beat Bret "Hitman" Hart on another SNME, a win that exacted revenge for the Hart Foundation and Intercontinental Champion Honky Tonk Man's attempted assault on Miss Elizabeth one month prior. Man, that was it. 13-year-old me was marking out for the good guys like a 13-year-old John Cena mark does now.

WrestleMania III was the centerpiece of this period in the WWF/E's growth, as it attracted a ton of new fans like myself and set the benchmark for how a 'Mania should be executed for several years to come. The myth-makers spun some great yarns at the Pontiac Silverdome, then-home of the once-hated, then pitied, now hated again Detroit Lions. The indoor attendance record! A superstar's revenge on the man who sidelined him for months! The World Champ vs. his former friend and (literally) larger-than-life special attraction who was "undefeated for 15 years (*cough*bullshit*cough*)!" To this day, the phrase "irresistible force meets immovable object" brings memories of the main event of WrestleMania III into my brain. And then of course, there's the David vs. Goliath drama...

...Of King Kong Bundy elbowdropping a midget wrestler named Little Beaver. Ok, now you're interested, aren't you? Oh yeah you are. Let's do this.

WWE Network World Tour: WrestleMania 2

What needs to be understood about Vince McMahon is that he's one of the great risk-takers in all of show business. While a lot of people, including me, thought of the WWE Network as a slam-dunk no-brainer, there were a lot of questions surrounding it. How would cable companies react to PPVs included at $9.99/month? How would the Network affect the roster's PPV bonuses? Would wrestling fans be able to grasp the concept of a network not available on traditional cable?

It's not the first insane risk McMahon has taken, and it's not the first that he's struck gold on (at least, based on the WWE's stock hitting an all-time high not long after the Network's debut). The first WrestleMania, at the time, was a tremendous risk, as was his decision to up the production stakes the following year, holding WrestleMania 2 in three different cities: New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Sure, the lack of subsequent WrestleManias being held in multiple locations is evidence that this gamble went the way of the World Bodybuilding Federation and the XFL, but no one can ever say Vince McMahon's scared to roll the dice. Now, maybe the main issue with this show wasn't the ridiculous production, but the near-complete lack of quality wrestling. Who knows? But here's what happened in 1986, regardless.