Ask 411 Wrestling 09.01.10: Triple Title Holders, Miracle Violence Connection and Me, Me, Me!

Posted by Mathew Sforcina on 09.01.2010

Was the Miz a Triple Champion? What can be done to make the Secondary Titles meaningful? Who uses other people's music? Why isn't AJ Styles mentioned as a ROH Pure Champion? All this and more, in Ask 411 Wrestling!

Hello all, this is Ask 411 Wrestling. I am Mathew Sforcina, and you're you. I assume. I mean, you could be an evil clone or an alien replicant, but the odds of that being true are somewhat slim.

Everyone knows clones and replicants only read that other site.

As we all know, I'm going to hell. But I've certainly sped up that path on this week's Tom Tom Club, as I take part in some very funny, albeit totally wrong jokes about some things. But they are good jokes. At around 70 minutes in.

Well, I think so at least. And anyway, everyone knows that if you want publicity, create controversy. Cash may or may not follow, depending on who you believe.

Enough stalling, BANNER!



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Backtalking

My Name's Pronunciation: Cena as in how WWE says it, the anglicised version of it. I assume it's the same with Cena's name/family background.

Videos: Well… I give up, I'll just use them whenever.

Online Books: I do have a credit card (and a paypal I think), but at this point in time I don't trust/like/whatever buying pdfs.

Your Turn, Smart Guy…

Who am I? I've wrestled the guy Massive Q is gonna wrestle on Saturday (Australian Time). My legit birthplace (which is my announced home town despite not living there any more) is fitting. I'm the 4th guy to hold a certain title, although only the 3rd that fed acknowledges. My sole major tag team title was with a guy currently in WWE Developmental. Who am I?

The man of 1000 impressions (well, ok, maybe only 3), Jay Lethal everybody! Yay.

Who am I? Born in 1961, I debuted in 1985. I was billed as over 300lbs. My ECW title count is 2, my WCW count is 3 and my WWF is 0 (unless you count Slammys). My last WWF match was against Goldust, my last WCW against Shawn Stasiak. Who am I?

Questions, Questions, Who's Got The Questions?

OK, so this week, I have a few questions all about me. And since some people don't like me talking about me (when it's relevant…), if you don't want to read about me, skip ahead to the picture of the 6 foot 9 inch woman WWE is thinking of hiring.

Comment Board Poster starts us off.

Since you're the champ, is there any chance you can take a good close-up pic of the AWF Championship belt and show us in a column (or a pic of any and all belts used by AWF)? I'm one of those that used to make cardboard belts as a kid and was always more interested in the belts than the wrestlers/wrestling.

Well, I would happily do that, but on Friday night, ‘Iron Jay' Coles cheated outrageously, with help from 4 12 168 1738 21,367 people helping him to beat me and take my precious AWF Australasian Heavyweight Championship title away from me.

But I still have some shots taken back when I had the belt, and I can give you as best a shot as I have.



So yeah, it looks a bit like the old school 90's IC title. Heavy as heck though.

James wants to know how the Sonjay Dutt match went. It went very very well, probably the best match from a Workrate perspective I've ever had. Just an awesome, awesome match. Hopefully I can share it with you soonish.

Richard asks if I'm scared.

As AWF Champion are you worried that you might be sued by the African Wildlife Foundation?

This is the page he linked me too.

So, am I scared? Not really, in that the WWF issue was due to them making a deal and then Vince pissing all over it. We in the AWF have never heard nor been contacted by the African Widelife Foundation, and it's unlikely that the two will be in a position of being confusable in the fans eyes. But I guess stranger things have happened. Regardless, I'm not losing sleep over it.

Darren asks if I was at a certain place at a certain time.

Hey Sforcina, did you wrestle a match at Penrith Stadium on Friday night???

Yes I did. Myself, Toxin and Mr. Mortis wrestled Iron Jay, TNT and Sir Loin prior to the Penrith V South Sydney football game a couple weeks ago. Here's Iron Jay clearly cheating, since he pinned me off this move. Still have the jersey to prove it (it was a 6 man Pin the Captain tag match).

Fun.



Isis The Amazon is her name, she's 6 foot 9. And she's on the left there, obviously. If she was the one on the right then the one on the left would be physically impossible. (No idea who the one on the right is, sorry.)

It seems to me there's 3 possible reasons for hiring this lady.

A) They want to bring her in after WrestleMania and do a year long angle building to Andrea The Giant V Beth Phoenix in a rehash of the Andre/Hogan match, except this time with boobs.

B) This is the next step in a WWE Enforced Breeding program, where they'll pair her off with Triple to create waves of tall, muscular, good looking wrestlers with fantastic hair.

C) They want to bring her in to run an angle where she's Khali's love interest/long lost sister and after 6 months they'll release her because Creative get tired of the joke Creative have nothing for her.

Regardless, I'd probably hit it. If she let me.

Kurt answered the Smart Guy question and had a question involved.

That gut is definitely Jay Lethal. He has wrestled Sonjay Dutt, has been a tag team champ with Xavier Woods, and he was the third Pure champion because AJ Styles... actually, why doesn't ROH acknowledge AJ Styles as the first Pure champ?

Thanks

Official reason: Technically, he isn't. February 14, 2004, AJ Styles defeated CM Punk in the finals of a one night, 8 man tournament, having defeated Jimmy Rave in the first round and Matt Stryker in the second, to become the first Pure Wrestling Championship title holder. He managed one title defence in ROH, beating CM Punk again at ‘At Our Best', March 13th that year, with Ricky Steamboat as the guest ref.

Then the title was vacated when TNA pulled all it's contracted talent from ROH shows, and it was never brought back. The ROH Pure Championship, on the other hand, was crowned at ROH Reborn: Completion, when Alex Shelley and Doug Williams won Four Corner Survival Matches to advance, and then Williams beat Shelley to win the title.

They aren't the same title, hence ROH sees no reason to mention AJ's title.

Real reason: AJ Styles and the rest of the TNA talent was pulled due to the Rob Feinstein/ Perverted Justice incident, and thus to avoid having to mention/discuss this somewhat dark point in ROH history, they sweep it under the rug, and pretend it didn't happen outside of rare cases when they have to mention it.

Leonard disputes WWE's counting.

The 800th episode of Raw aired on September 22nd 2008. Unless WWE took a week off wouldn't that make this past Monday's Raw the 900th episode and not the upcoming one? Maybe they didn't count the tribute to the troops show? This one is driving me nutso.

Thanks. Great Column.

Lenny counted out, and indeed, the 900th episode should have been last week. So, what could justify this miscount?

Well, they could argue that this was the 900th like how Wrestlemania XXV was the 25th Anniversary, i.e. they can count however they damm well like. They could say that the Donald Trump episode wasn't a WWE Raw episode and thus doesn't count.

But the real reason is that WWE miscounted last time as well. See, Lenny began with that episode as the 800th and counted forward. But WWE doesn't count the September 22nd episode as the 800th. They count it as the November 3rd, 2008, despite that being the 806th episode. From that show, there were 8 more Raw's in 2008, 51 in 09 and 27 in 10, so…

WWE doesn't care about the numbers, they just want to designate episodes that are roughly right however they bloody well want.

Jesus asks about attendance.

How many "attendance records" does WWE currently hold at the various arenas they have performed at throughout the USA over the years?

This list is certainly incomplete, but then it'd never be fully accurate. But, some places where WWE holds the record are (it's surprisingly how many times WWE loses out on a record to a religious meeting):

The Citrus Bowl (74,635)
Reliant Astrodome (67,925)
Safeco Field (54,097)
Ford Field (80,103)
The Stockton Arena (unknown)
Staples Center (20,193)

I know it's probably more, but that's all I could find. Anyone else?

Joshua asks about a WCW tournament.

Hey man, I remember back in, let's say 1992, there was a Clash of the Champions type program put on by WCW. It featured a bunch of tag team matches. I was 12 at the time and I quickly caught on that the only teams winning were the teams made up of wrestlers I knew. They had brought in other tag teams from around the world for this one night tournament, but if I remember correctly they all lost. I didn't quite understand the point of that. One thing I do remember was that Steve Williams and Terry Gordy were the WCW Tag team champions and I believe they ended up winning the tournament, but honestly it's been 18 years so I'm not sure. But what would be the point of putting on a one night tournament, getting all these guys from "around the world" just to put over the Tag Team Champions? Weren't the fact that they were the Tag Team Champions enough to get them over? What ever happened to the team of Gordy and Williams? I don't remember seeing much of them after they dropped the titles, but to be fair I was more into (and still am) the WWF(E).

Can you help clear the fog? Thanks

You are thinking of Clash Of The Champions XIX, and they didn't actually win the tournament that night.

See, in 1992, WCW was being run by Bill Watts, and the NWA, after issues with WCW in 1991, had agreed to coming back, and once again merging WCW and the NWA. So, the NWA began to bring back their titles, and, as part of the deal, created for the first time official, NWA World Tag Team Championships.

Now, since the NWA was world wide and made up of all different groups from all over the world, it made sense that tag teams from all over the world would vie for the gold. And that did happen, with teams ranging from United States to Belarus to Australia, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Canada, Japan, and Dominican Republic.

So, that explains the set up. As for the booking…

Well, first off, at the time, the Steiners were the WCW World Tag Champs, not the Miracle Violence Connection (the name of Gordy and Williams' team in All Japan, were they began teaming). But the fact was, the Watts (and Jim Ross, his assistant), were pushing a solid, hard hitting style of wrestling. And the MVC were the personification of this. About as much charisma as a bag of bricks, maybe, but they were real athletes and hard hitting, so it's no wonder Watts had a big chubby for them. Hence, they got pushed to the moon. On that night at the Clash, they beat the Aussie team (and thus beat the team from the country where, supposedly, tag team wrestling was invented), and then took out the Steiner's opponents, thus speeding up their second round meeting, with the MVC beating, clean, the WCW World Tag Champs that night. Now, why would Watts do this?

Some feel he wanted to push the MVC that bloody hard, while others think it was a mistake by whoever drew up the brackets, that it was meant to be the finals. Either way, their first meeting was on free TV, and that never happened back then.

At The Great American Bash a month later, the finals of the tournament were held, with MVC winning the WCW Tag Titles a week before this off the Steiners, before going on to win the NWA titles as well. And this was because, again, Watts had a big chubby for them.

Certainly unifying the belts isn't a bad idea, but it seems so logical that, given that they faced Dustin Rhodes and Barry Windham in the finals, that you'd have the plucky babyfaces get a fluke win, then set up their destruction at the next show. But instead, the MVC mega push saw them win them both with little effort.

The MVC formed in Japan before they came to WCW (they were officially representing Japan in the tournament), and their feud with the Steiners actually gained a lot of interest in Japan, since back there they worked for rival companies. But in America, MVC just didn't get over as much as everyone hoped, and a few months after unifying both sets of tag belts they lost them to Barry and Dustin in early September. Gordy left the company in October, Williams in December.

After they lost the titles and left WCW, they headed back to Japan, teaming up until in late 1993 Gordy left All Japan, and they never tagged again.

Sometimes, commentary makes you really care about a match.

And sometimes, it just makes you laugh as much as they are.


Corpse-Bukkake asks about Super Calo.

With that sweet Thundermania video, I remembered the great Super Calo. I always hated that ass every time I saw him on my TV and I always remember being extremely happy because he got his ass kicked all the time. I was just wondering If he ever won a singles match in his oh so long and painful WCW tenure. I would think he won on one of those 3 on 3 lucha teams that were always opening Nitro and the such but did he ever score the pinfall in those matches either?

OK then. Calo joined WCW in 1996. So, let's fire up History of WWE yet again…

Well, he did defeat an unknown wrestler at the August 25 1996 WCW Pro taping…

Followed by him beating Billy Kidman right after.

But then, maybe they weren't televised. But in his ‘official' debut, Super Calo did indeed win a match, beating Pat Tanaka, 9/9/1996.



He did, very occasionally, get a win over Mr. JT, or The Renegade, or Juvi, or be in 4/6 man tags and get the win but not the fall, but yes, he rarely got his hand raised.

But hey, he did get a super entrance at Slamboree 1998.

My Damm Opinion

Corpse-Bukkake had another one.

.....and how bout top 5 mullets in wrestling history.

… No.

Oh, fine.

1) Mike Awesome
2) Brutus Beefcake
3) Bobby Eaton
4) Rick Rude
5) Jake Roberts/Eddie Guerrero (tie)

Virgil asks a question that's… Well…

How many superstars have used their entrance themes in multiple federations? Limiting things to the big 4 (WCW, WWF/E, TNA, ECW – pre merger for WCW and ECW), I've thought of a few:

1. Ric Flair (Also Sprach Zarathustra; NWA/WCW, WWE Post-Invasion, TNA )
2. Randy Savage (Pomp And Circumstance; WWF/E, WCW, TNA)
3. Ron "The Truth" Killings (What's Up; TNA then WWE)
4. the nWo theme, as it has been heard in some form in WCW, WWE and TNA
5. the Wolfpac theme (WCW, TNA - albeit without words now)
6. Hulk Hogan's American Made has also reared its ugly head in multiple federations (WCW, for Abyss in TNA)
7. Goldberg's theme (though during his WWE run, the WWE eventually switched him to a remixed in-house version)
8. Booker T (used his Harlem Heat/Can You Dig It, Sucka theme pretty much everywhere except his run as King Booker)
9. Scott Steiner (variations of his Holler if Ya Hear Me theme were used in WCW, WWE, and TNA)
10. Tommy Dreamer (Man in The Box was used for his ECW run as well as at least once in WWE during the first One Night Stand PPV)
11. The Sandman (Enter Sandman in ECW, and once for the first One Night Stand PPV)

That's all I've got. Can you think of any more?

Well, let's see. The InVasion would be the best place to look…

Kronik, Buff Bagwell, and Kanyon all used the same theme they had in WCW in the WWF. Beyond them, I can't think of any more really. Readers?

For that matter, can you think of any superstars that have used another wrestler's theme song as their own (not counting the NXT rookies or Tag Teams that broke up and one guy kept the original theme like Marty Janetty)? I can only think of a couple…

1. Abyss – Using "American Made" after Hulk Hogan

2. C.M. Punk – Using "This Fire Burns" after Randy Orton

3. Jay Lethal – Using "Pomp and Circumstance" after Randy Savage

4. Ezekiel Jackson – His "Domination" theme adds Lyrics to the Bart Gunn/Brawl For All Theme.

Well, if you count that last one, then you open up a whole can of worms. You can range from the safe and easy (Kurt Angle's theme was originally The Patriot's) through to the complicated (practically every short term Japanese wrestler in WWF history has used the same theme, the Orient Express music).



And do you count situations like this, with PMS and Meat sharing a theme, does that count?



Not that I'm trying to discourage discussion, far from it, but while the first one's fairly cut and dried… This one's really open to interpretation. But off the top of my head, Stevie Richards took Kronik's music, I believe Luke Gallows music was used by Big Show for a few weeks, and Santina was Billy and Chuck's old theme.

Any others you guys know?

Mizzou wants to talk secondary titles.

We all know the WWE treats it's secondary titles as an afterthought, and I wish this weren't the case. I remember marking out at Summerslam 91 when Bret Hart beat Mr Perfect for the IC strap and legendary NWA/WCW feuds over the US Title. While the secondary champ used to be one rung below the World Title, now it's a prop. What do you think could be done to build the prestige? I have a few ideas.

1 - Enforce the 30-day defense rule. Before ShowMiz lost the belts, there could have been an angle where Miz was working two separate programs every week, exhausting him and creating tension with his partner. A heel champ could avoid challengers by not wrestling until the last possible moment, and there's always an injury angle, seeing if a face champ can compete before being stripped of the title.

2 - Play up the perks. WWE would mention the lifestyle change that comes with holding gold...riding in limos, private dressing rooms, personal chefs, performance bonuses. If athletes in every other sport get performance bonuses, why shouldn't WWE superstars? This is also known as the Horsemen Effect. Add emphasis by showing the other wrestlers crowded into communal locker rooms, standing in buffet lines, getting off the bus at arenas, etc.

3 - Rankings. Each week votes would be cast by WWE Legends and members of the media (if the BCS can lie about this, so can Vince.) Viewers love rankings. Look at how much people argue about college football every year, so let's give the people rankings. WWE already pays someone to come up with a Power 25, mention it on TV so it drives angles, instead of commenting on them. Lets put each brand's champ on top, and his top 3 challengers. Follow that up with the US/IC champs, and his challengers, on down to the jobby-jobs. A caveat to this...there's no reason the secondary champ couldn't be in contention for the top belts, either.

4 - Rematch clause. My thought is a bit controversial, but can extend programs if used properly. If the champ loses, he is automatically the No. 1 contender and entitled to a rematch. The rematch, however, is non-title. This is to keep feuds going and prevent hotshotting the title. Now we have a Championship Series, and the 3rd and Final match can take place at the next PPV, next week, immediately, whenever. I never understood why people love rematches in boxing, football, etc but crap all over them in wrestling.

What do you think?

I'll discuss the main point, then each of your ideas.

As to your main thrust, that the Secondary titles need work, I can see the point. However, I think the solution is not nearly as complicated or as hard work as you make it. Simply put, to make the belts mean more, you just have a few very talented wrestlers who are over all declare a desire to hold them, and have several excellent wrestling matches to try and obtain the title.

I'm not trying to show you up, but it's really that simple. Look at the IC title, it got a major boost when Jericho and Mysterio feuded over it last year. That's all you need, great wrestlers treating it like it means something, and volia, it does!

As to your specific points:

30 Day Rule: I got no problems with this. Although I'd had no problems if they dropped it. As long as it was consistent.

Perks: Whoa. I got nothing against playing up the fact that holding the title is a good thing, and that it opens doors and such. But I really don't think you should be showing other wrestlers in a negative light like that. Wrestlers have to be larger than life, have to be seen as being superstars in their own right. By all means, have the US champ get a limo and his own private locker room stocked with fine fruit and cheese, well stocked wine seller and hot and cold running bimbos, but you shouldn't then show the contenders huddled around a fire, cooking beans,

Rankings: … OK, this one I can't comment on objectively, on the basis that I HATE ranking systems. I just really, really do not like them. I find them far too constricting and limiting. I understand the logic and can see that they do provide angles, but I just… It's almost inbuilt, since in my mind (shaped by Attitude, which is what I came in on) anyone should be able to win anything at any given point. And rankings prevent this. Look at ROH right now, and the bind that they are in with Black, they only have 6 guys they can give the title to.

Rematch Clause: Well, it's different, I'll give it that. But I do like the system as it stands now, and it's a bit of a jump. But I can maybe support it more than I can rankings.

My question is, when current US Champ Miz won the Unified titles with Big Show, wasn't he considered a Triple Champion? Neither tag title has been retired. Who are some other Triple Champs? I can think of Lance Storm in WCW (US, Cruiser, Hardcore) and Kurt Angle in TNA (actual quad-champ...X, World, Tag, IWGP). Any others?

Well, yes and no, in that WWE treated the Unified Tag Titles as one title, just one title represented by two belts, like the Undisputed Championship Jericho had and then HHH won, the two belts = the one new one. But he certainly was the first man in WWE history to be holding three belts.

As for people holding three titles, I think we may have covered this in the past, but The Kings of Wrestling (Chris Hero and Claudio Castagnoli) held the CZW World Tag Team Championship, Chikara Campeones de Parejas, and ROH World Tag Team Championship at the same time. Technically Samoa Joe held the X and both Tag Titles at the same time, leading into Angle's 4 titles. Beyond them… None spring to mind. But I'm sure it does to those below me…