11/21/92 Superstars, Heenan raging about Perfect joining Macho for Survivor Series: "I'm saying we've prepared ourselves to wrestle other opponents. Not somebody close to you! What if your brother stabbed you in the back?!" Vince: "I don't have a brother." I'm guessing Vince and Rod weren't sharing a Thanksgiving table in 1992.

I remember that (surely botched?) Bonzai Drop

Man the guy Yoko splatted is lucky he didnt explode that looked brutal

Lol@Mcmahon

First I've heard he had a brother

He was kayfabe a whole different person

You know how, at the beginning of PPVs, the face announcer and heel color guy would traditionally stand there and hype matches, and the heel color guy would always give a pithy sentence or two as to why the heel would go over?

At the start of Survivor Series '92, Vince hypes the coffin match (odd that they started with that term and reworded to "casket" going forward since either term is correct) between Undertaker and Kamala, and Heenan says, "I think Kamala is in trouble. I think he's out of his element in a match like this." I really don't think I've ever been aware of a heel commentator throwing the heel under the bus like that during the opening PPV hype. Hard to imagine that anyone watching could hear that and believe that Kamala had a prayer.

Counterpoint- fans have never heard Heenan be right about his opening guesses though, so why would it start now.

To me, it still comes back to a reaction of "Jesus, even Heenan isn't willing to throw in with this guy." It's not that he's credible as an accurate predictor, it's that he's a true believer and even a true believer isn't going to buy in on this one. It's pretty much a burial before the match ever happens IMO.

Despite knowing that wrestling was a work almost immediately because my parents spoiled me on that the second I took an interest, I know that the commentators' treatment of wrestlers still affected how I viewed them. This isn't the same type of situation as Heenan bussing Kamala, but I still remember during the run-up to SummerSlam '89 when Vince tried to hype Mr. Perfect vs. Red Rooster on Superstars, and Jesse - who, even if he was spreading hate about a face, would extend some token respect - kept saying "LOL shut up, Rooster isn't in Perfect's league." Finally, closer to the event itself, Jesse tried to backtrack and say that maybe it could be a good match now because Rooster had improved, but even my young self saw that as a phony reversal where he was just pretending that it would be a good match.

Jayzus he landed right on his ****ing neck

Hey, at least he got up off the jobber as quickly as he could to mitigate the damage:



Like, seriously?

You can see the jobber pleading at the end too probably saying something like "get the **** off me you arsehole, I'm hurt"

True monster heel move there

I love that Fuji comes over and is like. Ok dude, tap tap, get up.

Then once he realized the guy was dead, started waving the flag to block as many kids as possible from having to see it.

Already mentioned earlier that Bret giving Virgil too much offense on the Superstars prior to Survivor Series really undercut him as WWF Champion for me.

On the 11/28/92 Superstars, Virgil has a pre-taped promo where he vows to work his way to the top of the WWF, saying, "If Bret Hart can do it, why not Virgil do it too?"

I don't think that sent the message they were aiming for.

Funny though.

Just to close this for myself. I listened to the 1992 Rampage episode today while pokering and within the first few minutes Jack mentioned that Sid was the first one fired with a new steroid policy saying and I quote, "taking steroids is my constitutional right".

That reminds me of a shoot interview I once saw with Perry Saturn where he kept getting heat in WCW for failing drug tests, and, paraphrasing, he said, "I told them I would stop failing the tests if they would just stop testing me...and after that, they never tested me again."

Anyway, I polished off all of the Superstars episodes they uploaded (from April 1992 to December 1992). Could definitely see the product getting worse as the year went on and they transitioned more and more away from Golden Era guys. Still enjoyed watching in general, and I look forward to them putting up pre-1992 Superstars whenever that happens.

Those early Superstars shows did such an effective job of building up and putting people over

Case in point, this match is so memorable to me for some reason lol, nice job random you tuber who uploaded it

https://youtu.be/XRGd9NT1eHY

The bad banzai by Yoko I posted above brought about another memory of an Undertaker jobber squash early in his career where he tombstoned a guy in a way that looked like it had a pretty bad landing. I remember them freeze-framing during the replay afterward and showing how the dude's neck had been stacked up pretty terribly a la Austin/Owen in '97, and the commentators putting it over by saying, "Man, the human neck is not meant to move like that." At the time it really did make Taker come across that much fiercer to me as a viewer, but in hindsight I look back and wonder if they were really just putting over a botch as a good thing. I'll be on the lookout for it when they post earlier Superstars eps.

Pretty legit HOF class this year. Hart Foundation, Honky Tonk Man, and just announced today Brutus The Barber Beefcake.

If Brutus and Hogan still aren't getting along, I wonder who inducts him. Maybe Valentine?

Hogan is inducting him.

Speaking of effective jobber squashes:

During the weekend I was doing spring cleaning and I put the first two Manias on as background. I do think there's something poetic and cool about King Kong Bundy getting the most dominant squash at the first WM and being Hogan's challenger at the second Mania.

Also, Jake's squash match against basically a jobber at WM 2 was hugely effective. George Wells taking the snake around the neck and then frothing at the mouth was gross and highly effective in establishing Jake as a big deal right away, as he had just started with the company.

While there were numerous quick squashes at future Manias, those first two were the only ones that ever featured what basically amounted to true jobber squashes.

At the ‘85 Wrestling Classic, is there any reason they don’t have turnbuckles? I never noticed that before.

The Animal had eaten them all.

Ultimate Warrior on the Arsenio Hall Show 1990

https://youtu.be/pbjNNrO8CeM