#david arquette wwf

[wrestlingatthemovies]

Eight Legged Freaks

Former WCW Champion David Arquette stars as a man who returns to his hometown to try and save his family's failing mine only to find out that the town is being invaded by giant Spiders.

In another wrestling reference when a town meeting starts getting out of hand someone can be heard yelling "this is a town meeting not the WWF" to try and gain order.

Featured Wrestler:

David Arquette as Chris McCormick

Wrestle Rating:

3.5 out of 5 Stun guns

An absolutely ridiculous and completely over the top action comedy that pays homage to the sci-fi creature flicks of the 50s. The 3rd generation actor is well suited to the movies campy style.

[joearlikelikeswrestling]

[ncwlwrestling]

NCWL Monday Mayhem [8/28/2017]

[darkarfs]

the worst movie tie-ins in the history of wrestling

Wrestling is stupid, and will show its ass at the mere mention of cross-promotion, especially when it comes to movies, which is it's cooler older brother that can get away with a lot more. Hell, the 2nd ever SummerSlam's main event, in 1989, was Hulk Hogan facing the main villain, Tiny Lister as Zeus (RIP), from the film they were both in, No Holds Barred. So wrestling's always wanted a piece of that. So... - Army of the Dead Let's just get this one out of the way. Here's the thing; I thought the WrestleMania Backlash's card was fucking perfect...except for this weird business. WMB MIGHT've been the best show of the pandemic (hot take) were it not for making sure we sell Big Dave's big zombie heist movie. If they had just kept some of the guys in zombie makeup on the Thunderdome's webcam footage, that would have been borderline charming. But instead, the Miz (who was WWE champion 3 months ago, don't forget) and Damien Priest (who they're making WWE's pop-culture liaison so far on the main roster, for some reason) had to sell for zombies in a lumberjack match. If this was the first ever wrestling show you watched with a loved one who had never watched wrestling or hadn't since like, the end of the Attitude Era, would you for a second want them to stick around after Miz and Morrison get, for all intents and purposes, kayfabe killed and eaten, and then watch Damien Priest shoot the logo at the ceiling? My money's on "no." - Shaft Speaking of the Attitude Era, anytime someone tells you that wrestling was cooler in that 3-year time frame, point them to the June 15th of 2000 episode of SmackDown, where a storyline that ran throughout the show followed Patterson and Briscoe through New York City to find Crash Holly and his Hardcore Title. Now, I admit parts of this are kinda funny, like Briscoe just wanting to give up and find a "gen-yoo-WINE New York hot dawg!" That's fun! And who does Crash Holly run into but none other than Shaft, and his woman, the only one who understands this complicated man, John Shaft. So, we have real Samuel L. Jackson, playing fake John Shaft, talking to real/fictional Crash Holly, and man is it weird. Anyway, Shaft agrees to be Crash's bodyguard for the night, and he slaps around Patterson and Briscoe in a nightclub. After all, what better way to get across how cool and badass a character is than having him knock around the fucking Stooges? - The Wrestler Well, this is complicated. The Wrestler, starring ancient wooden lion Mickey Rourke, is a somber tale about an industry that, in its heyday, left people physically spent, washed-up and addicted to adrenaline at best, and dead at worst. It famously moved Roddy Piper to tears because he recognized what destruction and brokenness the industry once left in its wake. Which is why it's super-weird that WWE jumped at the chance to promote maybe the bleakest possible look at their world in 2009, and did so by having Chris Jericho smack the shit out of three old wrestlers at WrestleMania 25, including Roddy Piper. And then have Rourke jump into the ring, wearing his "do you want to take peyote in the desert?" starter kit and bring out his amateur boxing chops. Tonally, it's just really bleak. Like if the creator of Super Size Me screened the premiere at the world's biggest McDonald's. - Bride of Chucky Poor Rick Steiner. You didn't deserve this. You're the sane Steiner. They shouldn't have made you talk to the puppet. So, WCW was heading into Halloween Havoc 1998, and after years of stomping all over the WWF in the ratings, the wheels had come off, and dramatically. Like, all at once. Like the car in the Blues Brothers. To boost PPV buys, they spent a fortune bringing in the Ultimate Warrior to rekindle a feud with Hulk Hogan, mostly by hiding in his fucking mirror. And the Steiner Brothers, one of the best teams of the early 90s, had been feuding with one another since Scott turned on his at SuperBrawl. What was the best way to build hype around this match at Halloween Havoc? Why, to have Rick get into a war of words - and lose - to Chucky. Yes.

Serial killer doll voiced by Brad Dourif, and it's so sad. Chucky cusses Rick out while Rick challenges the fucking doll to a fight, which is promptly ignored (Chucky's video segment is pre-recorded, and you can tell because he starts talking about 3 times in 3 minutes while Rick's mid-promo and missing his cues to stop) and then is made fun of. And all the while, people were probably wondering "what's going on on Vince's show?" and the answer is...that was the episode of Raw where Austin fills Vince's Corvette with cement, which is slightly more badass than being teased by a puppet. - The Goods Here's the thing: Raw is, right now, a bad show. It is bad TV. It's been bad for a while now. And as bad as it is right now, it's still not as fuck-awful as it was in 2009, aka the Age of the Guest Hosts (which, in kayfabe, was given to us by Donald J. Trump, so blame that ambulatory Nazi scrotum for one more thing, he's certainly earned it). For those of you fortunate enough to not be watching what was objectively unwatchable at the time - and hell, I sure as shit wasn't checking in very often - from mid-2009 to around mid-2010, a celebrity would be the special guest host of Monday Night Raw, often to promote a TV show or movie, and it was nearly all horribly-written, cheesy wank. Imagine if every week was the week of the zombie attack at Backlash. That's what it was like. Bob Barker was funny. The Muppets were good. And THAT'S the end of the list. MacGruber coming out to blow up R-Truth made me want to fall on a knife. The A-Team coming out to beat up Virgil was fucking awful. Go straight to fucking HELL, the Three Stooges, Dennis Miller, the reverend Al Sharpton, the 2010 Pittsburgh Steelers, Don Johnson and Jon Heder, the poor entire cast of Hot Tub Time Machine...and then there's Piven. Jeremy Piven. He showed up with Ken Jeong to promote a movie no one remembers...called the Goods. He stunk up several segments, infamously called SummerSlam "the Summer Fest" and then got roughed up by John Cena. Wrestling's the worst. Stop watching. And many did. For a looooooong time. - Robocop 2 This one's infamous, so I'll keep it brief. Robocop 2 came out in 1990, and goddamn, I don't know how much money the producers threw at WCW, but it was enough for them to rebrand an entire PPV "Capitol Combat: the Return of Robocop" and marketed the entire thing around the fancy metallic gentleman. The branding really made it seem like Robert Cop was old friends with the promotion, and indeed, old friends with Sting. Makes sense; two big, heroic idiots running on BASIC. He had been feuding with the Four Horsemen, who locked him in a cage at ringside. Out comes Robocop, called completely straight by Jim Ross, who rips the cage door off his hinges, and then leaves. An accumulated 85 seconds of screen time. Totally worth being the centerpiece of this PPV! But a little context as to why WCW fans hated it so much: 1989, the year before, was regarded by WCW fans as one of the best in company history. The era that gave us stuff like Chi-Town Rumble and the still-very-much-lauded peak of the Steamboat/Flair feud. To go from that to Robocop was seen as a bit of a slap in the face, because WCW was always seen as the more traditional "wrasslin'" company and was never into cheesy pop-culture crossovers, which is why the last one...is all the funnier.

- Ready To Rumble First of all, those dumbasses at Turner had to give Michael Buffer - who they still had on retainer - around $350,000 just to use that title, because he owns the trademark to that phrase. Strike 127 million, capitalism, that a guy gets to own a phrase and gets paid an obscene amount when he or anyone else uses it. Secondly, I initially wasn't going to do movies where the promotion itself is producing the movie, or oh holy HELL would See No Evil and the infamous May 19 shit be on here. But unlike See No Evil, this had a hand in killing a decades-old wrestling promotion, so it feels weird to not include it. On April 7th, 2000, bad movie Ready To Rumble was released, a film about two hapless dorks trying to help Oilver Platt, aka the lawyer from the West Wing, become WCW World Heavyweight Champion. Two weeks later, to promote the movie, they made David Arquette, the lead actor in the movie, the WCW World Heavyweight Champion. He pinned Eric Bischoff, who wasn't the champion, of course, in a match where he was teamed with Diamond Dallas Page, his best pal and the company's top babyface at the time, but who is also one of the villains in the film to make it extra confusing for the mainstream casual audience the movie was made to attract. And, to be fair, Arquette didn't want to do it, NO ONE really wanted to do it, and it tanked viewership for WCW once and for all. At the very least, David took his payday from the wrestling appearances and the film and gave it to the families of Owen Hart, Brian Pillman and to Darren Drozdov, who had been paralyzed from the neck down in a wrestling match the previous year.

[bargainmatinee]

50 Years of Movies: 2000

I thought for sure when I was looking at the list of films released in 2000 that "X-Men" would land at the top of the heap as my favorite of the year. I grew up a huge comics nerd, and "Uncanny X-Men" was my favorite title for many, many years. And while it was amazing to finally see the team come to life, the film does suffer a bit from trying to do too much with too many characters in too short a time. Still a great movie, but I'd have to go with "Best in Show" as #1. Out of the pack of improv comedies directed by Christopher Guest that came out within a few years of each other ("Waiting For Guffman," "A Mighty Wind," "For Your Consideration"), "Best in Show" is....well, best.

Other movies I loved this year were "High Fidelity," starring John Cusack in a terrific adaptation of the equally terrific Nick Hornby novel; "Snatch," Guy Ritchie's amazing follow-up to last year's "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels"; and "Unbreakable," one of M. Night Shyamalan's finest hours, as far as I'm concerned.

Finally, not one but TWO movies centered around professional wrestling hit this year, and they could not be more different from each other. "Beyond the Mat" is a riveting documentary that was granted unprecedented access into the world behind the scenes of Vince McMahon's WWF (this was before they got the F out and became WWE). Then there's "Ready to Rumble," an absolutely ridiculous comedy about two guys with the combined IQ of a signpost who set out to help a disgraced former world champion regain his crown. I'm still not sure who's closest to a cartoon character: Vince McMahon in his office while he's foaming at the mouth trying to make a guy vomit on command, or David Arquette with this finger up his own ass? I'd say it's a tie. Either way, these are both great watches.

[amplesalty]

Halloween 2020 - Day 6 - The Pool (2018)

How unlucky can one guy be...

Welp, it’s the sixth day and everything up to this point has been American for the most part, sure Pandorum might have had some German production behind it and The Innocents was very much a British affair but other than those? American. We always like to broaden our horizons around these parts so lets open ourselves up to a little diversity with today’s offering all the way from Thailand. Pretty certain that would be a first so that’s always neat to check one off the list.

Or, as they apparently say in Ireland, ‘Thigh-land’. At least that’s what I’ve come to learn from Mr Jay Hunter from OSW as he highlighted this film in a semi-recent edition of the ‘OSW Playlist’ series which has been available more publicly during the pandemic. Some real good guys over there, making more of their content free to watch until the world is right again. Can of Coke to you, lads. For the uninitiated out there, they chronologically critique wrestling storylines pay-per-view by pay-per-view. They’re currently romping their way through the WWF New Generation era but have covered stuff in the past like the Road to Wrestlemania 17, the David Arquette WCW saga and the ascension of Black Reign in TNA. My recommendation though is the life and times of Ed Leslie during the Dungeon of Doom period of WCW.

You know who else says Thigh-land? Donald Trump. Maybe he’s not Scottish/German afterall, maybe he’s Irish.

Anyway, The Pool centers around Day, working on some sort of advert shoot in the eponymous pool but sticks around even when most of the crew clear out once production is wrapped. His buddy lets him know that he’s started to drain the pool before taking off to visit Nepal for 3 months. Unluckily for Day, he falls asleep on a lilo in the pool only to awaken some time later when the pool has all but drained, leaving him stranded and with no one nearby to help.

I can only assume at some point in his life Day destroyed a mirror factory, walked under a whole bunch of ladders or had several black cats cross his path because I don’t think this guy could be anymore unlucky if he tried. Granted being stuck in the pool is his own fault for falling asleep in there, that aside he also has the ticking time bomb of the fact he’s diabetic and his only shot of insulin is up on a table by poolside. But he also has his phone fall into the pool just when he thinks he’s going to be able to catch it and call for help. Plus in his efforts to block the plug hole and save himself from left in an entirely dry pool, he matches to snag himself on the grate and nearly drowns.

This does also come at a point when a pizza delivery boy arrives and doesn’t notice the figure struggling at the bottom of the pool. Check out the Pizza Hut uniform front and center. Their logo is in the opening graphics along with the production companies and what not, did they partially finance this or something?

he worst part in all this is when he’s attempting to climb out and manages to partially rip his own finger nail off. So far I’ve seen vampire attacks, cannibalistic feasting and faces ripped apart by hooks and chains but this is the one that made me wince. Just looking at this still frame again is making me a little queasy...

And as if to tempt the Gods themselves, Day utters something along the lines of ‘At least this can’t get any worse’, at which point an escaped crocidle springs forth from the darkness, slinks around the pool for a while before slipping and falling in with him. I guess this bad luck is contagious.

The obvious comparison for me would be Frozen (no not that one) which had a similar premise of people being stuck on a ski lift when the slope is shutdown for the weekend, albeit here it’s the other extreme of the weather that’s a risk, all that heat rather than freezing temperatures. Even then, at least those guys didn’t have giant birds bothering them whilst they were stuck up there.

The crocodile is kinda funny in a way, it’s not really too aggressive for the most part, it just seems to loiter in the pool and Day isn’t outwardly afraid of it, just really apprehensive that it might finally decide to wander over and take a bite. It’s like they have this stand off, like the croc is some annoying roommate that Day has to tolerate.

Considering the croc has a pretty big role to play throughout the movie, the potential is there for it to be a lacklustre effect that drag everything down but I think it’s actually pretty good. There are definitely some iffy moments but for the most part it’s fairly convincing.

Like Frozen, it’s compelling to see what happens next and all of the different things Day does to try and escape the situation. Though, I wasn’t a fan of the way they front loaded the movie with a scene of the croc attacking him before transitioning back to the chronological start of the movie during the filming. It feels like they can’t trust their audience to keep interested without saying “We promise you, this really exciting crocodile stuff is gonna happen if you sit through all this other boring stuff first!”.

They should have just started with whatever it is Day’s crew is filming. I don’t know if this is some weird avant garde movie or if they’re selling something but it has a clown lady swimming under water around a fancy sofa. You could have shown that, had people thinking “Wait, WTF is this?” and then you have the director shout “Cut!”, you reveal it’s all a movie shoot and then you move on from there.

I don’t remember Frozen having nearly as many instances of ‘near misses’ that this does, if any actually. It feels like An American Tail where Fievel and his family are constantly like 2 feet from each other if only one of them would turn around and notice.

For a foreign film, there’s nothing to really worry about in terms of having to keep up with all the subtitles as there’s not really a massive amount of dialogue. The whole thing is pretty limited in terms of scope of locations, cast etc, set in pretty much just once location and with only a handful of characters. Definitely a departure from the grand visions of The Stand and Dracula.

[nicefilmsiteimages]

Can you post more of David Arquette?

i think i got some more in the bank to go, honestly i could blog for years just about his title reign

edit: there’s supposed to be a real dumb pic of him with the belt here but my internet sucks atm so i WILL be back soon

[fossadeileonixv]

Now we’re here

The second best worst option, I suppose.

As some of you may know or have concluded, TR is and was a professional wrestling fan. I’m not going to sit here and give you all excuses for being a man in his mid-thirties that has an impressive (or depressing) amount of vintage t-shirts, subscribes to New Japan Pro Wrestling’s streaming service, or who (successfully, albeit briefly) incorporated Virgil into one of my WhatsApp message groups. Pro wrestling was a significant part of my upbringing and something that for whatever reason, empowered me in epochs of my life when I felt powerless. It is dumb and stupid, but at the same time beautiful and entertaining and I own every bit of that hill.

I bring this up because the situation Milan is in right now reminds me a lot of a wrestling federation known as WCW. WCW was a rival wrestling company to the WWE for a little more than a decade, challenging and then eclipsing the WWE (then known as the WWF) in popularity during the 1990s. After the WWF was hit with a steroid scandal in the early 90s, WCW, backed by billionaire Ted Turner, swooped in a signed their competition’s biggest stars. Wrestlers like Macho Man Randy Savage, Curt Hennig, Lex Luger, ‘Outsiders’ Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, along with the industry’s biggest superstar of the day in Hulk Hogan, all defected to WCW, leading the company to directly challenge the WWF’s premier cable television show ‘Raw’ head-on with their own cable show, ‘Nitro’. 

Spoiled with riches, WCW ‘Nitro’ would overtake ‘Raw’ in the ratings, bolstered by a very creative takeover faction called the New World Order which produced possibly the most captivating story-line in all of wrestling history with lifelong WCW wrestler Sting haunting a heel Hulk Hogan for over a year and a half, culminating in a match at WCW’s biggest Pay-Per View event. Even beyond the main Sting-Hogan feud, WCW provided an in-ring product that WWF simply couldn’t match, signing foreign talent that absolutely tore the house down for the first hour of the program as Nitro’s undercard. WCW had a winning formula and began handily beating WWF in the Monday night ratings war.

For the first two years after their mass exodus, WWF struggled mightily both as a professional wrestling product and financially. Arenas were rarely filled to capacity, television viewers dropped, and the shows themselves relied on talent that outside of The Undertaker, weren’t draws for fans. However, the competition with WCW also forced WWF to evolve. Unable to match their counterparts with name recognition or in-ring product, they opted to develop more raunchy, violent, and boundary-pushing characters and storylines. Wrestlers like The Rock, ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin, Kane, and Degeneration X, pushed the walls of traditional wrestling down, drawing millions (and millions) of fans across the world into the WWF Attitude Era.

For about two years, the competition brought the best out of both companies, with fans switching between ‘Raw’ and ‘Nitro’ on Monday nights (Not me, I was white trash and didn’t have cable). However, the cracks in my beloved WCW’s foundation began to appear as the WWF’s stock rose. The older, less talented, wrestlers hogged the spotlight and suppressed younger stars, while at the same time fattening their own pockets with bloated salaries. WCW brass allowed a number of the stars the privileged of booking matches, leading to a focus on their feuds at the expense of the midcard storylines. WCW itself blew millions of dollars on bizarre celebrity matches (Jay Leno and David Arquette featured in Pay-Per-View main events), ridiculous wrestler gimmicks (A KISS Demon who had a $450,000 coffin, Master P’s No Limit Soldiers having wrestlers), flying the entire roster to every show, and short ‘ratings war’ reactionary matches that should have been Pay-Per View events. When WWF finally regained the ratings title, the writing was on the wall: WCW was in a death spiral.     

For you non-wrestling fans, this may all be very boring and you may be asking yourself ‘What the hell are you wasting my time for’? And believe it or not, the main dot I’m trying to connect here isn’t the ‘Milan-was-run-foolishly-and-the-rest-of-the-league-caught-up’ angle, though that is applicable. No, instead, this is more to underline how jaded I am as a Milan fan after enduring 10 years of steady and predictable decline from my beloved club. You see, when WCW began their descent into bankruptcy I was the only one of my friends that was insisting it was a better wrestling program. In the final two years of their existence they “rebooted” four times, bringing in new creative writers and claiming that this time would be the time they would turn it around. I naively kept watching every Saturday (and then Monday as we finally got cable in 1999), an absolutely atrocious, nonsensical, nonlinear product hoping that it would get better, knowing in the back of my mind that it never would. And it never did. WWE bought WCW in 2000, absorbing all the remaining wrestlers and shuttering the company forever.

I feel like for the past 10 years I’ve held out the same sort of optimism for Milan. The writing was on the wall in 2007. A little earlier in fact. I’ve watched this slow death for more than a decade knowing that the competition is outpacing us, knowing that the team isn’t running sustainability, knowing that the people running it have and are unqualified, knowing that morale is low in the organization, and knowing that in order to become a big club once again --because outside of history and fans, prove to me we are-- drastic, fundamental changes are needed top to bottom. Much like how the new writing teams in WCW would get my hopes up, the Elliot takeover provided me the same type of optimism, and the Chinese contingent before that. And while financially with Singer & Co. I don’t have the same anxieties I had with the Li’s or Berlusconi, we’ve sorely missed a coherent vision and continuity and that my friends is the strongest foundation in any type of entity.

Giampaolo was a mistake. I don’t think even his skeptics could have predicted how bad this start could have been. Pioli is a decent replacement. The team will probably play better under Pioli than Giampaolo. But I can’t even muster the most superficial excitement about this. It is the latest in a growing number of punchlines the club has become a part of over the banter era. Even if we manage a dramatic uptick in play, it will be more fortuitous than anything that I could attach to competence or vision. The problems go much higher than the touch and this gross overestimation of Giampaolo shines a very light spotlight on that if anyone cares to look.

Milan won’t go under like WCW. They won’t get bought out by their competitors and absorbed. But a return to the top? Getting off the mat is looking less likely with every passing mistake.

[takenews-blog1]

Five terrible #WCW match concepts that #WWE probably shouldn't steal

New Post has been published on https://takenews.net/five-terrible-wcw-match-concepts-that-wwe-probably-shouldnt-steal/

Five terrible #WCW match concepts that #WWE probably shouldn't steal

Due to the rising affect of Paul “Triple H” Levesque because the artistic drive behind NXT, nostalgia seems to be a robust drive in WWE.

This month, NXT offered their WarGames particular the evening earlier than Survivor Sequence, resurrecting the all-time basic WCW cage match (with a little bit of a twist) and blowing away the Survivor Sequence PPV that needed to comply with them the following evening. Beforehand, elements of the WarGames idea (massive cage, timed entrances) had been imported through the Elimination Chamber, however followers had been calling for WWE to deliver again the complete match for years.

The dying of Dusty Rhodes, the mastermind of the match, most likely hastened plans to deliver it into the 21st century, and presumably as a result of it’s been 19 years because the atrocity at Fall Brawl 1998 killed off the gimmick for good and we’ve just about forgotten about it by now. Both method, the resurrected WarGames was an entire success.

Then, per week later, WWE once more dipped into the WCW playbook, operating a home present in North Carolina that was titled “WWE Starrcade 2017,” which was once more paying tribute to Dusty Rhodes and the historical past of the corporate they purchased 16 years in the past and have been burying ever since. The present drew a reported eight,000 folks, a smashing success in at present’s depressed WWE stay occasion market, with even former WCW announcer and producer Tony Schiavone self-producing “Occasion Middle” items to hype the present.

At this level, you’re most likely pondering to your self “Man, this WCW was clearly an infinite nicely of nice concepts and unbridled creativity…what else can they re-purpose from their library?”

So I’m right here with a public service announcement: As surprising because it might sound, not the whole lot that WCW produced was notably good, and even profitable. Even WCW had some gutter balls to go along with all of the strikes that they threw. So I’ve scoured onerous and managed to give you 5 gimmick matches that WWE most likely doesn’t need to steal from WCW.

Halloween Havoc — which is an idea that they need to steal from WCW — was usually a present that had a common Halloween theme to it, like announcers dressing up in foolish costumes or masked jobbers named “The Creatures”.  You realize, innocent enjoyable.

Nevertheless, 1991 was the 12 months they took issues too far, opening the present with the atrocity often known as the Chamber of Horrors match, which might solely finish when one individual was actually strapped into an electrical chair in the course of the ring and executed stay on PPV.  And also you thought the early days of the UFC had been barbaric.

OK, so I’m fairly positive that Abdullah the Butcher wasn’t really killed, since he’s nonetheless round at present, however that was the idea for the match that featured the Steiner brothers teaming with El Gigante and Sting to face Abdullah, Cactus Jack, Vader and the Diamond Studd.  The match was contested inside a cage surrounding the ring, with a small cage in the course of the ring that contained a literal electrical chair, with the article of the match being that you simply needed to strap an opponent into the chair after which pull a lever to electrocute them.

The match was fairly horrible and barely made sense to observe, however on the brilliant facet it hopefully cauterized all the injuries that the Butcher has on his brow.

(Please observe:  The Chamber of Horrors shouldn’t be confused with the Home of Horrors”match from earlier in 2017, which one way or the other managed to be EVEN WORSE.)

Transferring onto the bonanza of silly concepts that was Uncensored ’95, by far essentially the most ridiculous was this so-called grudge match between Dustin Rhodes and the Blacktop Bully (Barry Darsow in one among many lame gimmicks).

Sure, these two males hated one another a lot that the one doable strategy to settle issues was to place them each at the back of a truck and have them battle it out till…nicely, I don’t actually know what it was purported to settle, if we’re being trustworthy right here. Apparently the purpose of the match was to battle to the tip of the truck and blow on a horn, however the level of the match is misplaced within the mind-boggling circumstances surrounding it.

— First, they not solely needed to outfit the again of the truck for the match, but in addition needed to outfit a number of different vans with a number of cameras to movie the primary truck, plus use a helicopter that was additionally outfitted with cameras for aerial views of the truck. All this for a 5 minute match on the undercard of a C-level PPV present.

— Second, each Rhodes and Darsow determined to bleed sooner or later in the course of the match, which was strictly in opposition to WCW coverage at that time, and each males had been terminated consequently.

— Third, all the large spots within the match concerned strolling backwards and forwards, with the large climaxes coming when the truck would go round corners.

— Fourth, the one factor they’d to make use of as a weapon was hay. As Tony Schiavone as soon as mentioned, hay will be very abrasive to the pores and skin, however this was a bit a lot. Fortunately this was solely tried as soon as after which forgotten endlessly, apart from when WWE mocks it on YouTube.

Again to 1988, with Dusty Rhodes on the top of his powers as Jim Crockett’s booker and NWA overlord.  In November 1987, Crockett had tried to interrupt into the PPV market in opposition to Vince McMahon with Starrcade ’87, however Vince did one of the vital spectacularly vile strikes in wrestling historical past by launching his personal PPV custom — the Survivor Sequence — on the identical evening, after which forcing cable corporations to decide on which one would air. They went with the WWF, leaving Crockett to regroup and take a look at a PPV one other day.

MONDAY NIGHT WRONG: In remembrance of the Gobbledy Gooker

That day proved to be in January 1988, and the PPV was the Bunkhouse Stampede finals, a month-long celebration of all issues Dusty Rhodes and the way nice Dusty Rhodes was. Additionally, Rhodes was the man writing all of the reveals, which I don’t know if I discussed earlier than, however he would most likely need me to say it once more, so I’ll level it out once more in case you had already forgotten about Dusty Rhodes.

Now, the cable corporations weren’t going to place up with McMahon operating a PPV in direct opposition for a second time (however that positive didn’t cease McMahon from attempting!) however regardless, he had two different methods to screw Crockett over. First, he compelled cable corporations to signal a non-compete settlement together with his WWF, which acknowledged that no different wrestling firm might air a present inside 60 days earlier than or after a WWF PPV.  This meant that the primary ever Crockett PPV, the Bunkhouse Stampede, was delayed till January. At which level Vince pulled out his SECOND gun, the Royal Rumble present.  Though cable corporations weren’t notably all in favour of Vince utilizing them to run opposition, the USA Community was more than pleased to make life tough for Ted Turner and his partnership with Jim Crockett.  So the Royal Rumble was placed on free TV reverse the Stampede, fully killing the PPV enterprise that evening.

Now, with all of the background, you’d suppose that the Bunkhouse Stampede was a hidden gem crushed by the larger wrestling firm unjustly, however fortunately for us it was one of many worst wrestling reveals of the period, capped off by the nonsensical most important occasion: The battle royal cage match. The thought was that Crockett home reveals had been headlined for the previous month or two by “something goes” battle royals, principally gained by Rhodes, and the individuals who gained essentially the most of them (moreover Rhodes) would all meet in a single winner-take-all cage match to determine who was the champion of the Bunkhouse. Spoiler: It was Dusty Rhodes.

Now, the article of a battle royal is to throw your opponent excessive rope to eradicate him, and the article of a cage match is to place a giant cage across the ring to maintain folks from leaving, so that you may see already the place the contradiction lies therein. Yeah, it was a complete catastrophe, with ridiculous spots that noticed guys discovering contrived methods to one way or the other hurl themselves over high of a cage or out the door of a cage, till solely Dusty Rhodes remained, triumphant, for America.

We after all mentioned David Arquette earlier than, and all the ill-advised try and make him World champion and one way or the other springboard that into folks going to see “Able to Rumble”, however the match that the film was primarily based round was equally ludicrous.

WCW had tried to make a triple-stacked cage into one thing on a number of events, with outcomes starting from “considerably horrible” to “holy cow that is horrible.” Essentially the most infamous was the primary occasion of Uncensored 1996, which noticed Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage one way or the other beating eight guys in a single match, with guidelines that had been unclear however you knew definitely that Ric Aptitude was getting pinned sooner or later. The opposite famously unhealthy model, at Slamboree 2000, featured Arquette in a wrestling capability and Jeff Jarrett successful a world title, plus Chris Kanyon falling off the highest of the cage in the identical enviornment the place Owen Hart died a 12 months earlier, however one way or the other couldn’t high the Hogan match for sheer horribleness even with these aces up its sleeves.

MONDAY NIGHT WRONG: Remembering that point David Arquette gained the Massive Gold Belt

The foundations of the triple cage match typically have all the time been considerably onerous to comply with and nebulous, though in all equity all the idea was lifted from the Von Erichs in Texas and so they had been all on medication on the time. There’s one massive cage on the backside masking the ring, like a Hell in a Cell, after which one other cage on high of that, after which a THIRD cage on the very high of that, and the combatants begin on the high and one way or the other battle down via the cages one after the other and the primary individual to flee or pin or wave the flag or no matter wins the match. It was by no means 100 p.c clear what the situations of victory ever had been.

To not point out that the mechanics of how or why you moved from one cage to the following the place equally imprecise and often amounted to “Properly, we’ve executed all our stuff up right here, let’s transfer down.”  Actually, it simply appeared to quantity to “One cage is cool, so let’s stack three on high of one another and fear about it later.”

And at last, one other Hulk Hogan particular, as his rivalry with the Large was simply too massive to be contained to the wrestling ring.

So at Halloween Havoc ’95, there was just one strategy to settle the rating: A sumo match with monster vans on the roof of Cobo Corridor in Detroit. Presumably they had been aiming for the very particular crossover viewers that was into each sumo wrestling and monster vans, however had been beforehand unable to search out both one represented strongly sufficient in mainstream American wrestling and had been prepared to pay high greenback for each.

So the storyline right here noticed Hogan signing autographs for kids on his motorbike — you recognize, as he usually did — solely to have the evil Large drive up and attempt to kill him with a monster truck, fortunately solely destroying the bike within the course of. Paradoxically, his bike was named “Black Magnificence.” Very ironic.

MORE: Three matches that had been a much bigger circus than McGregor vs. Mayweather

Anyway, Large sticking his head out of the window and cackling like he was on extra medication than Charlie Sheen is a second of top-notch performing untouched even a long time later into his profession, however the true spotlight got here after they clashed of their monster vans at Halloween Havoc.

The item was to push your opponent out of the “ring”, like in sumo. The epic battle noticed Hogan get his revenge by forcing Large’s truck out of the play space, however then Large attacked him (not with the truck…I imply, he’s not a MONSTER) and Hogan by accident pushed him off the roof the constructing and presumably into the massive physique of water a number of hundred toes under. However don’t fear, Large returned later within the night for his or her wrestling match, and his hair wasn’t even moist.  This was by no means defined or talked about once more, by the best way.

Actually, the autumn was sufficient, but it surely was the dry hair that actually bugged me.

So there you go, 5 matches that hopefully won’t ever be appropriated by WWE in any kind, except they’re making extra YouTube movies to mock them. Contemplate this my public service announcement and good deed for the day if I can warn anybody away from stealing them.

[hurdygurdystories]

WCW 1999-2001

WCW 1999-2001 was a place like no others. Fueled by the bucks of Ted Turner and the egos of wrestling's greatest minds and Vince Russo. Basically there were like five different factions wanting to control the creative direction of the company, and as they were overtaken by WWF(as it was known at the time) in the ratings, they took more and more drastic steps to try and curb it's rise, meanwhile sealing their own end. The people with booking power switched almost monthly and their was absolutely no long term planning of what was going on on TV. The budget was enormous, with unneeded stunts, contract amounts that had risen greatly due to the competition between the two major promotions, and also the fact WCW flew in every single talent to work the tv taping every week despite the fact many went unused. Creative control clauses had by many of the larger talents also dissuaded many plans creative tried to come up with. The year started with a little something called The Finger Poke of Doom. In a championship match on their monday show, Nitro, between Kevin Nash and Hulk Hogan, the leaders between now two warring factions of the NWO, the NWO Wolfpac, and NWO Hollywood respectively, Hogan poked Nash in the chest, who then fell over and in kayfabe let Hogan win, thus reuniting the two factions. This brought the story of the WCW essentially to the same place they were when they were originally dominating WCW in late 1996, meaning 2+ years of storytelling felt largely moot. From here it got worse, they brought in Vince Russo from WWF for creative. The man knew nothing of wrestling, and only of raunchy cheap gimmicks that in no way helped the wrestlers. He was the master of the cheap ratings pop but the show itself would lost millions of viewers who grew sick of his intelligence insulting shit. From there the company fired him, then later rehired him. He and fellow person in management Eric Bischoff decided to address the issue of older talent holding down newer by literally rebooting the creative of the company and creating two factions of younger and older wrestlers. The New Blood and the Millionaire's Club. The Millionaire's Club were the faces. From here everything went to greater shit, and the Championship changed hands every week, and was won by the likes of David Arquette and Vince Russo himself, who couldn't resist making himself an onscreen character. I'm listening to the Safety Dance. Fuck you Ivan. WCW 2000 was an even bigger shitshow than 1999 and they just lost so much audience their parent company, AOL Time Warner, who had just bought Turner Broadcasting, had to cancel that sinking shi(t)p. The company was almost bought by Eric Bischoff, but was instead bought by Vince McMahon for much less than it's assets were even worse, thus squashing the competition and what was known as the Monday Night Wars. Then Vince used half WCW's mid-card and Booker T, who deserved better, for a shitty invasion angle that ended up being lead by Vince's Children and Stone Cold, instead of anyone from WCW. The company was a massive shitshow on and off air, and in some ways it's end was merciful but also sad that such a once great company had to end like that. It was also sad for wrestling because it meant that the biz was basically a huge monopoly now, with ECW also closing in 2001. WCW 1999-2001 was a diarrhea tornado that produced highly unwatchable but highly gifable content that we can look back and laugh at in 2017.