Verne Gagne passes on Hulkamania

Travel back with us to 1983. Verne Gagne's AWA is home to the hottest act in wrestling maybe ever -- Hulk Hogan. Hogan had gotten national fame for his appearance in Rocky III the year before, and was drawing huge, rabid crowds wherever he went. Hogan was chasing Nick Bockwinkel for the AWA World title, with several near misses culminating in a supercard on April 24 known as Super Sunday.



Hogan was introduced to "Eye of the Tiger", with the now-familiar ripping of the muscle shirt reading "Now or Never" on the back (Hogan had been promising the fans that this would be the night he'd finally win the belt in promos leading up to this match). After nearly 18 minutes of back and forth action, and a ref bump, Hogan nailed Bockwinkel with the leg drop to claim the title he swore he'd finally win, and the crowd went completely ape****. Hogan had finally ascended the throne and would lead the AWA into the future as the dominant wrestling company in America...right?

Wrong.

You see, Hogan had thrown Bockwinkel over the top rope while the ref was out, which was illegal. AWA President Stanley Blackburn interrupted the celebration to retroactively DQ Hogan as a result. A Dusty Finish.

To say the crowd was not pleased would be a wild understatement. They very nearly rioted, with Hogan needing to beat up Bockwinkel some more, as well as manager Bobby Heenan, to avert it. Hogan would cut a promo basically saying he was so disappointed in himself that he needed to leave the AWA, and he would do just that weeks later.

In reality, Hogan was frustrated that Verne Gagne wouldn't put the title on him. Verne was as old school as they came, and to him, while big, musclebound guys like Hogan were fine for special attractions, the champion had to be an established guy, and a solid wrestler to boot -- someone in his own mold (he'd held the title in his own company nine times, even retiring with it a couple of years earlier).

Hogan, of course, bolted for New York, where Vince McMahon, Jr. could scarcely believe his good fortune and strapped him with the WWF World title just seven months after Super Sunday, a title he would hold for the next four years. It was the WWF, not the AWA, that would rocket to the top of the wrestling world behind Hogan's incredible charisma.

And, to add further insult to injury, they would do it with most of the AWA's top stars -- among the many notables to make the jump from Minneapolis to New York over the next few years were Jesse Ventura, Bobby Heenan, Gene Okerlund, The Rockers, Curt Hennig, Ken Patera, Sherri Martel, Sgt. Slaughter and Rick Martel.

The losses ended up being too much for the AWA to survive, and they folded in 1991, a victim of Verne Gagne's outdated thinking.

I know that some of you are trying to figure out why this is my selection. Well let me tell you why. Flair wasn't exactly fired for no showing a Thunder taping, he was actually sued by Bischoff and co. for breach of contract for missing dates, but he claimed he had given plenty of notice that he wasn't going to be around that day because of his son's wrestling tournament. He claimed that he was told to be at Thunder just a day or two before the taping and told them no sonce he had been cleared previously for the time off. This is what prompted the legal action. He did not return to television until Sept. when they had the highly emotional Four Horsemen reunion in Greenville S.C. From there, with Flair back they Bischoff decided that all of this was going to culminate at Starrcade '98 in a match against Flair.

The build up was typical WCW, until two weeks before the show when Flair was told right before Nitro that he was to take a heart attack during an interview segment with Mean Gene. Bischoff had instructed Flair not to tell anyone about this. Not the other wrestlers, and not even his wife and children. Flair obviously thought better of it and told his wife beforehand so she would be prepared.

They did the heart attack spot and the following week they had Flair off TV recuperating from his heart attack, but had his wife and children in the ring to "apologize", but of course it didn't go that way, and had Barry Windham and Kevin Nash attack Flair's children. He also thought it was a good idea to sexually assault Beth, Ric's wife by planting an unwanted kiss on her.

Now you would think with Starrcade coming up 6 days later, that it was an obvious spot where Ric would triumph over his arch nemesis. Well apparently this was the plan until everyone arrived to the arena that night. This was when Ric says Bischoff came up with the idea of having him go over instead. He also asked Ric if he would do the blade job as well. Of course Bischoff not being a total ******* did tell Ric he could go over the following night on Nitro. What a guy!

James Storm tries to come onto Mickie James
She declines his advances
So he pushes her off a train platform

Author's note: I have no expectation that I can roast this as well as the Lapsed Fan guys did, and their podcast on this event did inspire a lot of this.

The scene was the inaugural (should have been only) World War 3. The WCW Title is vacant, because of course Hulk Hogan has found a way to not job it away - to be disqualified as a result of the actions of his traitorous manager, and for a hidden contract clause to cause him to lose the belt as a result. The powers that be at WCW decided to hold it up for the winner of this battle royal. Obviously, like with WrestleMania IV, this setup means that Hogan isn't coming away with the belt, but he's going to make sure to get through it as unscathed as humanly possible, playing the creative card to the hilt.

The event starts, and before the opening match, they throw it to an interview segment with Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, and Sting. Hulk Hogan, in that "dark side" babyface phase I mentioned in the earlier Hogan/Giant clip (which again means black clothing and no character changes, unless you count trying to legit murder dudes by throwing them off buildings I guess), has decided to dial this segment up as an opportunity to get one over on Dave ****ing Meltzer, who in 2017 parlance was apparently publishing fake news about him or something. Also like in 2017, the so-called fake news was real and accompanied by incontrovertible evidence. Don't Sting and Savage look excited to be doing this segment?



Hogan starts cutting the standard babyface promo. Says he took a walk on the dark side, and that if he had taken that final step, maybe he wouldn't have been here with his two best friends tonight. (Note: his best friends clearly hate him.) He takes this moment to make a big reveal and shed his black bandana and black tanktop. As the camera zooms wider, we also see that he's had the red-and-yellow pants on in plain view of the crowd from the beginning of the segment, so for some reason he spoiled his dumb surprise for them up front anyway.



Sting tosses Hogan's black tanktop in a nearby canister, seemingly dormant, that suddenly shoots out an unexpectedly large burst of flame. After startling, Savage sort of tries to coolly scurry away, and as the fire's level of control is questionable, Sting keeps looking down at it with increasingly obvious nerves.



Savage, in response to Hogan shedding the black, delivers the nauseating line, "When you're wrong you're wrong, and I was wrong, and I just wanted to say I'm sorry. You're the coolest dude in the world." Eventually Mean Gene has had enough of this worrisome fire. He speaks up and says, "Uhh, I think we got a little fire going here, can somebody get this out? Hulk, I get the point!"

Now it's time for Hogan to passive-aggressively swipe at Dave Meltzer without ever naming him. "You know what, Mean Gene? Something that's really funny, that we've been laughing about in the back, is the fact that everybody said that the Macho Man has a legitimate injury, brother! What a joke! The Macho Man's arm is perfect! That was just a plan!" [i]So the actual skinny on this: Savage's injury WAS legitimate. And was being acknowledged in storyline. Hogan decided to give this promo to say "HA HA, this injury is a work, brother!" Mind you, in kayfabe it makes zero sense to just announce that the whole thing was a trap THAT HASN'T ****ING BEEN SPRUNG YET. So in kayfabe Savage is faking an injury, and before he can use it to his advantage, Hogan just blows up his spot in a random promo?

As Hogan is doing this crap, Sting's concern with the fire situation is growing, as he first tries to wave it down and then grabs a nearby water bottle to try to do something to get things under control.



Hogan holds up a piece of paper. "Observe this, brother! This is what we call a rag sheet, brother! They say The Giant is gonna win the match! They said Macho Man was hurt! This is like a dinosaur compared to the Internet, brother! The Internet's got the scoops! We're gonna steal the belt, Stinger, the Macho Man, and Hulk Hogan together. The Macho Man's not hurt! What are you Hulkamaniacs gonna do when the Stinger, the Macho Man, and Hulk Hogan run wild on you guys, brother?!" Gene: "I have no idea what they're gonna do!"

From the unexpectedly uncontrollable fire to Hogan blowing up Savage's legit injury as a work, in a way that makes zero kayfabe sense and now forces Savage to work as if his legit injury is totally fine when he previously had a storyline excuse to favor it, all in the service of firing back at a dirt sheet writer who only reached a niche fanbase back in the mid-90s…I love this segment so much, but its absurdity also earns it a place in this draft.

I have no idea what the hell Verne was thinking when he came up with this ultra ****ty idea. The concept was three teams made up of a mix of heels and faces squared off against each other in a series of matches. Points were earned by teams for victories, and the winners would share the top prize of " 1 million dollars".

The three teams were captained by Larry Zybszko, Sgt Slaughter, and Baron von Raschke. Unfortunately for these captains, they weren't able to draft wrestlers to their teams, because the teams were already selected for them. Awesome. So, starting on Oct. 1, 1989 these three teams starter on a journey that had no determined end. I will say it gave us some great matches such as:



Yep, that's correct. You just saw the ending of a turkey on a pole match. Suck on that for a while. You also may have noticed that this match took place on what looked like someone's poorly finished basement. In actuality it was the worst TV studio ever and was used because they were trying to cut down on "the number of run ins" in the matches. The true reason was that the ticket sales at the Rochester Civic Center where they did their takings were so poor they couldn't show that without being embarrassed.

If that wasn't enough, Sgt. Slaughter, who was the captain of Sarge's Snipers, was announced at going AWOL, but the truth was that he bolted for WWF. Can you blame him. He was replaced by Col. DeBeers, and the team was renamed DeBeers' Diamoncutters. Ahh, blood diamonds.

This **** show finally came to an end on August 11 1992 with a Royal Rumble style battle royal. Of course this also had to be ****ted up, and the announcers had no ideas about the rules or scoring system for the battle royal, and even after the match was over, no one knew who won the Series. Wow. I need a nap after reliving that. Unfortunately, WWE holds the rights to this, so there is very little in YouTube, but if you are interested seeing some of this crap, go watch the WWE documentary they did on AWA. Honestly you should do it anyway just to see how delusional Verne was back then and still is now.

I mean, it's so over-the-top stupid that it seems almost too self-aware to be worthy of this thread...but it only really seemed self-aware once Vince started getting mocked about this on-screen during the Ruthless Aggression era. Still seems that back then it was presented in absolute earnestness.

I select Stand Back.