Ask 411 Wrestling 11.26.08: Bumper Edition I - Evil Goldberg, The Smackdown Six and More

Posted by Chris Lansdell on 11.26.2008

The Smackdown Six, workout regimens, finishers, Evil Goldberg, Hogan lying down, people who have been everywhere and Vince's problem with Randy! All this and more in the latest Ask 411 Wrestling!

Greetings, humanity! Welcome back to Ask 411 Wrestling with me, Chris Lansdell. As I said on Sunday, it's good to be back. Many thanks to Ryan Byers for filling in last week, and for doing a bang-up job in the process. I'm short on time this week, so after telling you that this week we're listening to Hedonism by Skunk Anansie, we'll go straight for the...

BANNER!


Banner compliments of Benjamin Colon. See more of his work at soulexodus.com.

Cleaning Up

Byers left the house in good order, so I have no cleaning up to do. I'm sure that will change next week.

In Soviet Russia, 411 Ask You!

Mr Byers left you a real head-scratcher last week, the answer to which was none other than MEN'S Teioh. Teioh spent his early days in Japan wrestling under the name "Terry Boy," which he adopted because he was a huge fan of Terry Funk growing up. Someone had to be. He was such a big fan, in fact, that he adopted Funk's spinning toe hold in addition to his name. Teioh made a handful of appearances in ECW but got his most exposure as part of the WWE roster outside of his home country of Japan. On a match taped for Shotgun Saturday Night in late 1998, Teioh's stable-mates TAKA Michinoku and Funaki battled one another for TAKA'S Light Heavyweight Title. With that out of the way, let's move on to this week's puzzler:

I am the former holder of a major singles title in WWE, but at the beginning of my career, I was almost put in a division which would have prevented me from ever winning it. In the 90's, I was rumoured to be romantically linked to a high-powered second-generation star who ultimately moved on to somebody who could do more for their career. I was trained by one of my relatives.

Everyone ready for the questions? Then Let's Get DANGEROUS~!

Question Time!

Regular reader and commenter APinOz has 3 questions to get us going:

This time I've got some questions:

Who were the "Smackdown Six"? SD was off the air in Australia during this reputedly hot period.

The Smackdown Six were actually 3 tag teams that could be counted on to provide a great tag match every week. The three teams were Edge and Rey Misterio, Los Guerreros and Kurt Angle and Chris Benoit. The matches were awesome, and the No Mercy 2002 match between Angle/Benoit and Edge/Rey won the Observer's 2002 Match of the Year. It's scary to think that the Smackdown roster in 2002 also had Brock Lesnar, early John Cena, and Undertaker. Australia missed out.

Was there ever a discernible "original" plan for the failed Invasion angle when McMahon bought WCW? I've heard various versions of stories where Vince was denied a Saturday night timeslot by Spike to run a WCW show. Then there was supposed to be WCW Raw and WWF Smackdown, but was there a plan for the two shows to feud with each other? And was it always the plan to kill the whole thing stone dead inside of 6 months?

You've got some of the facts right. Vince initially wanted to run a WCW show somewhere on the Viacom network, not necessarily Spike. Initially he wanted to go with a Saturday slot (WCW Saturday Night was pretty popular in its time) but he was flexible on that point. Viacom said no. When that didn't work he tried to change one of his existing shows (reports vary as to whether it was Raw or SmackDown, but it's hard to believe that Vince would "give" his flagship show to WCW), but again Viacom resisted out of fear that associating a successful product with the proven failure of the WCW name and talent would hurt them ratings-wise. This stands as a perfect example of network execs not understanding the way wrestling works. In the end Vince was left with enough talent to fill 3 or 4 weekly shows, two groups of titles, and 2 shows to put them on. At this point he had very little choice but to run the angle in the way he did and release the superfluous WCW talent once their contracts expired or once the angle was over. From what I understand the shows would not have feuded with each other had he been able to get the Saturday slot, and there would have been minimal movement between them. The idea to convert an existing show to WCW would have worked much like the brand split does now; that is only when they felt like it. As for the plans to end it when they did...this would have been decided only when every other option fell through.

What North American tape libraries is Vince still to acquire? Who owns whatever is left?

That's an excellent question. The answer is "hardly any that matter". Vince owns WWF/E, WCW, ECW, AWA, WCCW, a vast quantity of 70s to 90s NWA and a whole host of smaller stuff (SMW, OVW, FCW, GCW). That leaves Global Wrestling Federation, Herb Abrams' UWF and current promotions like TNA and RoH.

Matthew is clearly not your average IWC member:

Young man. I have one question, and one question only. I'm a keen gym-go-err and was wondering if there are any sites or wrestlers personal sites which they show there workout routine. i remember a while ago seeing RVD's one, but cant find it for the life of me now!

It's been a while since someone called me "young man". Well, without being paid to do so. I am not aware of any websites containing the workout regimens of wrestlers. I know HHH put out a book a few years ago that detailed his plan (surprisingly lacking in advice regarding cycling down, best injection sites and (b)acne medication), and as you said RVD has some info out there. Charlie Haas and his wife have a website that sells fitness supplements but as yet they have no workout information up.

Josh has some questions about a topic close to my heart – Reese Witherspoon sex tapes! No, actually it's finishers:

Hey, I have some questions about wrestlers finishing moves.
When did using finishing moves become the norm?

That's a hard one to lock down. George Hackenschmidt, Frank and Karl Gotch and Lou Thesz all had signature moves which they used to finish their (often shoot) matches. In the 60s and 70s you had the Funk spinning toe hold, the Monsoon Giant Swing, the von Erich Claw and the Polish Hammer. However, it wasn't until the early 90s when every wrestler needed a finisher. This was when people like Ted DiBiase and Roddy Piper were given finishing moves so the fans could tell when a match was in danger of ending.

-Are there any famous wrestlers go thru their career not using a set finishing move?

Well if we exclude the jobbers and semi-active valets/managers, who might well have had a finisher that we just never saw, we're left with a pretty small list. Andre the Giant never had a clearly-defined finisher, he just put his weight on you and beat you. I also don't recall either of the Bolsheviks having a set finisher.

-Which wrestler has had the most finishing moves?

My answer to this question has always been Edge (Downward Spiral, Edge-cution, Edge-o-Matic, Edge-cator, Spear) but recently Undertaker (Tombstone, top rope clothesline, chokeslam, Dragon Sleeper, That Nameless Choke), Gregory Sugar Shane Hurricane Helms (Nightmare on Helms Street, Vertebreaker, Sugar Smack, Shining Wizard, chokeslam), and Chris Jericho (Lionsault, Liontamer/Walls of Jericho, Breakdown, step-up enziguiri, Codebreaker) have caught him. If you want to include Japan, the list gets ridiculous. For example, Mitsuharu Misawa has 3 versions of the Tiger Driver alone, without starting on the various Emerald Flowsions.

-Any wrestlers use the same finisher from the beginning of their career to end?

This is a hard one to track down for a number of reasons. First, finishers were often changed with gimmicks and/or promotions. Second, new guys starting out often did not have a finisher, simply because they were in no danger of needing one any time soon. Also, even people with iconic finishers (the leg drop, the Stunner, the Figure Four) did not use them for their whole career. Jake the Snake Roberts comes to mind, as does Fritz von Erich. There are probably quite a few wrestlers that were well before my time who kept the same finisher, which hopefully someone can point out.

Tanya and/or Ali has/have a short question:

My question is very short:

See?

In multi-person matches, why do black guys seem to always take the pinfall, flat on their back, 1, 2, 3? Am I crazy or is this a phenomenon?

Well I am not qualified to pass judgement on your sanity or lack thereof, but the idea that Vince is somewhat less than friendly to minorities is not a new one. However, I can't say as I've noticed this trend. MVP has been taking a lot of falls recently, but that's due to being in the doghouse and not the colour of his skin. Booker T hasn't been taking many falls at all, Consequences Creed and Jay Lethal have only been in elimination-style multi-man matches and Shelton and R-Truth haven't really been in any. So no, it's not a phenomenon.

Edward is back with a question about a moment that will OMG SHOCK THE WRESTLING WORLD OMGZLOLWTFBBQ FAIL!!1!~one!!!11!~eleventy!!shift1!!!!

Hey chris, thanks for answering my previous questions. I only have one question this time

Why was goldberg's heel turn in WCW a failure? I've read on some sites that it was even botched so I was hoping you could shed more light on this.

Like a lot of things in the latter days of WCW, it was poorly done. Eric Bischoff, in a desperate ploy to boost ratings, announced on a Nitro that he was going to do something that would change the wrestling world forever. It sort of worked, as the internet exploded in speculation about what he was going to do. I remember reading everything from "no ropes on the ring" to "matches taking place backstage as a tie-in with the soon-to-be-released WCW Backstage Assault". God that game sucked. Anyway, Goldberg would turn on then-face Kevin Nash during Nash's title match against Jeff Jarrett, and aligned himself with The New Blood faction. When he came out on Nitro the next night as a heel, the sound of TVs everywhere changing the channel was deafening. The fans still cheered Goldberg, because they had been conditioned to do so when he debuted (there were rumours that WCW would pipe in the "Goldberg" chant at the start of his push) and just having Bischoff introduce him was not enough to override that. Goldberg getting injured right afterwards probably didn't help, and he was face again before the end of the year. WWE had a similar issue when they tried to turn Austin.


Nick brings us the tantalising juxtaposition of a CM Punk question and a Russo-booking question:

1. I was watching a clip from Halloween Havoc where Sting was the current WCW champion and he was supposed to fight Hulk Hogan, but when Hogan came out he was in street clothes and he laid down in the ring and Sting covered him for a three count. Sting looked very confused and the announcers seemed ridiculously confused also...Was this something that wasn't planned or was it planned all along? If it wasn't planned, why did Hogan do what he did?

I like to refer to this whole angle as "Russology in a nutshell". So many of his "worked shoot" angles were so similar that it's sometimes hard to distinguish them. In this case, Sting had just made a heel turn that the fans completely no-sold, continuing to cheer him despite the fact that he obliterated Hogan with the bat when Hogan was a face. To my knowledge it was never properly explained on TV to give a kayfabe motive. (It is not to be confused with a similar occurrence at Bash at the Beach 2000, where Vince Russo made Jeff Jarrett lie down for Hogan, had Hogan pin Jarrett then fired Hogan leading to a promo by Hogan that was rather strong. Hogan simply wanted some time off in this case, along with a way to come back claiming he had never been beaten for the title. It was all work, but was meant to look like something deeper was going on. Like I said, textbook Russology.

2. I was wondering if there was any specific reason for Punk wearing so much tape on his arms and why the tape goes up so far? Also...what do the X's represent on his hands too.

The tape is there for the same reason he interlocks his fingers and rotates his hands before each match: to protect his wrists and forearms when striking. The X's on the tape are part of the straight edge culture (typically there are three) and refer to the things a straight edge person will not do: drugs, alcohol and tobacco.

Somehow I have pulled my normal trick of losing the name of the person who wrote this one:

This is a continuance of your question from a few weeks ago. Looking at members of the two main company's, WWE and TNA, how many active wrestlers have been a part of the 4 main wrestling companies, WWE, WCW, ECW & TNA (and I do not mean the WWE version of ECW, I mean the original ECW)?

Active wrestlers? That's a very short list: Scott Steiner. Sabu, Jerry Lynn and Jake "The Snake" Roberts also did it, but they're only semi-active. Gangrel and Christopher Daniels both have jobber appearances in one of the companies, and I'm fairly sure Don Callis had a cup of coffee in WCW, and of course was active in WWE, TNA and ECW, but not normally as a wrestler.

How many total wrestlers (active and non-active) have been a main part of all 4 of the rosters?

OK let's see…Raven, Kid Kash, Mike Awesome, Mick Foley, Sandman, Rick Steiner. That would be 6. There's not much chance of anyone else doing it: Rob van Dam, Lance Storm and possibly James Mitchell and Stevie Richards are the only ones with an outside shot.

Those questions were a ton of fun to research with my two good buddies, Byers and Cook. RESPACK!

Ray takes my Macho Man cherry (shut up perves) with this question:

Love the column. I've never asked a question of you before, but I've been curious for a long time about one thing - what exactly is the reasoning behind the Vince/Macho Man animosity? I have heard/read various comments suggesting something with Stephanie, but I've never heard the whole situation explained. Thanks.

The answer to this question is the reason Randy Savage's autobiography is the most wanted wrestling autobiography among smart fans. The rumour to which you alluded concerns Randy and an underaged Stephanie engaging in carnal acts, which Vince found out about. Now with what we know about Vincent Kennedy McMahon, can you really see him letting this slide without at the very least pressing charges, or at worst hiring two large gentlemen named Vinny and Tony to fit Mr Savage for cement shoes and take him on a swimming trip? Me neither. Bret Hart in his book states that the Macho Man called Vince while in a drunken stupor and told him over the phone that he (Randy) was going to WCW, which is the cause of the issue. I also can't see this being true, as people have done FAR worse (Bret himself, Nash, Hall) and not been completely disqualified from anything to do with the WWE ever again. Hell even the Ultimate Warrior was not one of the two names that was completely barred from consideration of Legends of Wrestlemania (Savage and Foley were). The chances of getting an answer from Vince are somewhere between slim and none, so until Savage opens up we'll only have conjecture and hearsay to go by. Well, and the Red Light District sex tape coming out…

D B, who may or may not have the last name Cooper, has a question about the money he took. Wait no, it's about an event in Miami:

Awesome column yo, read it every week, and it's more addicting than heroine. Anyways, I remember when I was younger like 8-10ish, must have been early '90's or late 80's in the Miami Arena there was a WWF show that was headlined by Hogan vs. Sgt. Slaughter. I know it was not a house show because it was way too packed to be one so it had to be a PPV. I have been trying to find out for years what show it was, but can't seem to come up with the answers with the relative ease you can. Thanks a lot.

Let's narrow down the timeline first. Slaughter returned to the WWF in 1990, and fought Hogan at WrestleMania VII in 1991. The 1991 Rumble was in Miami, but the main event was Slaughter-Warrior and not Slaughter-Hogan. Slaughter turned face again in late 1991, so the match would have to have been before that. You said it could not be a house show as the building was too packed, and although house shows drew VERY well at that time, there were none in Miami that had that match on the card. The only thing I can think of that comes close is an event at The Omni in Atlanta (not that far away if my geography is correct) which had Slaughter defeat Hogan by disqualification. That event was on May 31. Hope that helps.

All the way from Asgard, Loki The Mad Titan is asking about Saturn:

I just recently read on a blog that his close personal friends and family fear that Saturn may be dead since he did not show up for either Kronus' or Killer Kowalski's funeral. He was one of my favorite guys. I met him with Eddie, Benoit and Malenko when they joined WWE. Use your detective skills and let us know if he is ok? You can do it. Thanks.

You're welcome!

Alas, the whereabouts of Saturn are beyond my skills. I did a write-up on this a few weeks ago in the Sunday Brunch, and it's still a mystery. As you correctly pointed out, he was not at the funeral of his former trainer or his former partner. The friends he has in the business have not heard from him, and the same goes for members of his extended family. I find it very hard to believe that a man with such a distinctive appearance could virtually evaporate from the face of the earth with nobody seeing and recognising him. This bodes ill for the man, but at the same time it's possible he just doesn't want to be found, given the number of friends he's lost recently. I made this appeal in the Brunch, and I will do so now again: if anyone knows of Saturn's whereabouts and can confirm that he is OK, please let us know. We don't need to know where he is or what he's doing, just that he's alive.

Sean starts off with some blatantly untrue flattery and then moves to the challenging questions:

Without being too disrespectful, you've thus far exceeded the prowess of your predecessor. Hence why I've come to you with a few obscure questions...

I appreciate the sentiment, but I have a way to go yet before I surpass Cook. Except when it comes to taste in wrestlers.

First off, I've been watching old episodes of RAW on WWE.com. During one episode, Bobby Heenan hyped the debut of a new announcer, Rio Rogers. This particular episode included a "bonus match" from ALL-AMERICAN WRESTLING over which Rogers did a spot-on Dusty Rhodes impression on colour commentary.
Who is this guy? I searched onlineworldofwrestling.com, wikipedia, etc., and found nothing resembling any sort of bio.

Rio Rogers...not Rip Rogers? Wow, now you're really digging. However, I got your answer RIGHT HERE. Rio Rogers was conceived as a jab at Dusty Rhodes, and was portrayed by the very versatile Bruce Prichard. He ran his own interview segment for about 3 weeks, then disappeared. Even Rob Bartlett outlasted him, and that's bad.

Second question: in the early nineties, when I was in elementary school in Spring Lake Park, MN., a show hosted by Mick Karch ran on a local network called "Saturday Night Ringside" that featured WCW PRO, followed by an independent promotion I can't pin down. Here's what I know about it: it at one point featured a young Sean Waltman working as "the Lightning Kid"; Scott Levy working as, I believe, Scotty Anthony; a stable called The Cartel that included a large guy billed from Karachi, Pakistan, whose gimmick included shredding a teddy bear on the way to the ring; and a mobster character called Sweet Daddy Falcone.

Help me out here, PLEASE: what was the name of this promotion? Oh, and why did SNR end, anyway?

Well, the promotion can only be Global Wrestling Federation. Scott "Raven" Levy did indeed wrestle there, using a sick double underhook piledriver as a finisher. The large guy from Karachi was Mukhan Singh, also known as Norman, Friar Ferguson and Bastion Booger (Mike Shaw). He shredded the teddy bear because, as Norman in WCW, he would be given teddy bears by fans as he came to the ring. The Cartel was run by then-GWF Commissioner Max Andrews and also featured Levy and Cactus Jack. Sweet Daddy Falcone, with his partner Vito Mussolini, beat a young Harlem Heat (wrestling as Ebony Experience) for the GWF tag team titles. The GWF also saw The Patriot, Buff Bagwell (as the Handsome Stranger), the Freebirds and the Rotten brothers.

SNR must have been a local thing, as I could find no reference to it on a national level. An educated guess would be that the popularity of wrestling was waning, and the Saturday night slot was better filled with a show that fit the demographic who were home and watching TV at that time.

SinStar asks a question that literally left me shocked:

I was reading where you said that Csonka is not the football guy, so does he get paid to write for 411? I kniow the rest of u don't, right?"

I'm only answering this because it has been asked 3 times now, and even now the answer I'm going to give is "It's really none of my business". All I'm going to tell you is that Larry is co-webmaster of the site, and has far more responsibilities than anyone not named Ashish. People who think I work hard for this site (and I do) should check on Larry's workload sometime.

Mark, which could be his name or a definition (I'm not sure which), has questions about a couple of rarely-seen people:

why is val venis still with wwe? He's like never on tv

Val has a very important role right now. Despite never being on TV, he is on a lot of house shows wrestling new call-ups. Val is a natural teacher and a great evaluator, and Vince is using him to do just that with the younger talent.

is dean malinko still with wwe?

He is, as a road agent. In fact, he came to this city last time WWE was here, and I tried to start a Dean Malenko chant during a Chuck Palumbo match. Because hey, Chuck Palumbo. It's also possible that he's the only one of the Radicalz still alive.

The Way I C It…

This week we go to Yashley for our questions, and they're good ones:

Back when I began watching wrestling, in the early 90s, the DDT was a devastating manoeuvre. It was my favourite move. It meant the match was over.
Now, strangely, it works as a finisher for some people and not for others. I personally feel this lessens the realism of the move, especially when higher card wrestlers perform it and "weaker" opponents kick out: e.g, the Rock performed a brilliant DDT and it never won him a match. The same happened with several other moves: the boston crab, the figure four (no one ever submits to them any more), , the running powerslam, THE PILEDRIVER ...the list goes on... This leads to my questions:
What other moves would you say have been "lessened" in wrestling?

This has been a pet peeve of mine for years. You can add the superplex, the spinebuster, the sleeper and the bulldog to this list. I would put the DDT first and foremost among them, as it has fallen the furthest.

At some point. a move is obviously allowed to stop being a finisher and goes on to being "just another move". Why do you think that is permitted to happen?

There are a couple of reasons. Sometimes it's because a move is associated with a particular wrestler, and when that wrestler leaves there is a desire to lessen that person's achievements without overtly burying them, and making their finisher open to everyone is one way of doing that. Often the older moves are rendered less impressive as newer moves are innovated and are more flashy. Really, does a superplex still look like a legitimate finish when someone just took a Burning Hammer Driver? It's a shame in a way, but it's progress, and it's inevitable.

Well folks that's all I have for you this week. Fact or Fiction is up tomorrow, along with Small, Bayani and Brace for Impact. Happy Thanksgiving to my American readers. Stay Cool, Rock Hard.

Lansdellicious – Out.