Welcome guys, gals, and gender non-binary friends, to Ask 411 Wrestling. I’m your occasion host, Ryan Byers, and I’m right here to reply a few of your burning inquiries about skilled wrestling.
When you’ve got a kind of queries searing a gap in your mind, be at liberty to ship it alongside to me at [email protected]. Don’t be shy about capturing these over – the extra, the merrier.
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HBK’s Smile is chasing celebs like a paparazzo:
Is Cain Velasquez the one superstar to lose a professional wrestling match with out ever profitable one?
First off, it’s price noting that Cain Velasquez DID win some professional wrestling matches previous to shedding his WWE debut to Brock Lesnar at Crown Jewel 2019. Earlier than he made his debut with the E, he was really wrestling for AAA in Mexico. At Triplemania XXVII on August 3, 2019, he teamed with Psycho Clown and Cody Rhodes to defeat El Texano Jr., Taurus, and Killer Kross (now Karrion Kross). On September 15, he he appeared on an AAA present held in New York Metropolis, teaming with Psycho Clown and Brian Cage in one other profitable effort in opposition to Texano, Taurus, and Rey Escorpion.
So it’s true to say that Cain by no means gained a WWE match earlier than he wrestled in that firm, however he had gained a wrestling match.
Additionally, simply so the document is 100% clear, Velasquez has additionally been victorious in a WWE ring, as on November 30, 2019 (after Crown Jewel), he teamed with Humberto Carrillo on a home present in Mexico Metropolis, defeating Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows.
Nevertheless, we will nonetheless take Cain out of the equation and reply the query of whether or not there are any celebrities who misplaced a match with out first profitable one.
The reply to that query is completely sure.
There have been two names that instantly got here to my thoughts after I learn this query, each of them legit sports activities stars who crossed over into wrestling with WCW. Utah Jazz energy ahead Karl Malone teamed with Diamond Dallas Web page at WCW Bash on the Seaside pay per view in 1998, the place they misplaced to Hulk Hogan and Dennis Rodman. That was the one match of Malone’s professional wrestling profession. Equally, Professional Soccer Corridor of Famer Reggie White misplaced his one and solely skilled wrestling match to to Steve “Mongo” McMichael at Slamboree 1997.
Mike Tyson has additionally technically misplaced his one and solely skilled wrestling match, as Triple H and Shawn Michaels defeated Chris Jericho and Tyson on the January 11, 2010 version of Monday Evening Uncooked, although this was actually extra of an angle with DX and Tyson organising Jericho versus a legit bout.
Additionally, if you wish to rely battles royale for functions of this query, you possibly can rely Drew Carey getting tossed out of the 2001 Royal Rumble match and each NFL participant within the Wrestlemania II battle royale except for Russ Francis, who really wrestled for years throughout soccer off seasons, largely for the AWA.
That is most likely not a complete listing, nevertheless it’s sufficient to determine that there are many celebrities in wrestling who lose earlier than they win.
Tyler from Winnipeg is seeing double:
I’m watching the 1995 Royal Rumble, Rumble match who and the heck are these Jacob and Eli Blue brothers carrying tan vests with loopy hair. They’re large in stature and seem to be succesful execs.
Eli and Jacob, the Blu Twins, had been Ron and Don Harris, who had a wide range of gimmicks and names in a number of promotions from the late Nineteen Eighties by way of the mid-2000s. Early on of their careers, they had been referred to as the Bruise Brothers and, relying on the promotion, alternately glided by their actual names or by Ron and Don Bruise. Notable promotions they labored for because the Bruise Brothers had been the USWA, Smoky Mountain Wrestling, IWA in Puerto Rico, and, even ECW, the place they had been common opponents for the Public Enemy in 1994. In addition they had a one-off WCW look in November 1994 as enhancement abilities, placing over the workforce of Hulk Hogan and Sting on the c-level present WCW Worldwide.
The 1995 Royal Rumble that you just watched was solely the third match of a WWF run that start earlier in the identical month, the place they got Uncle Zebekiah (Dutch Mantel/Zeb Coulter) as a supervisor rechristened because the Blu Twins. They had been pretty nicely protected within the Fed and even opened Wrestlemania XI in opposition to the British Bulldog & Lex Luger however completed up with the corporate by October and returned to ECW, the place they remained till August 1996 after they bounced again to the WWF. Throughout this run, they had been referred to as Jared and Jacob Grimm, regardless that, other than shedding Zeb, their gimmick was not appreciably completely different than what they’d carried out the prior 12 months because the Blu Twins.
The Grimms had been gone earlier than the tip of 1996 rolled round and largely fell off the radar of the skilled wrestling trade till the summer season of 1997, after they made their second return to the WWF to affix the Disciples of Apocalypse, the steady that Crush shaped within the Gang Warz angle that started when he and Savio Vega had been fired by the Nation of Domination. The twins had been referred to as Cranium and 8-Ball whereas in DOA, they usually really wound up being the ultimate two members of the group after Crush and the opposite member, Brian “Chainz” Lee departed.
The twins completed up their DOA run within the WWF in Could 1999 and by November of that 12 months jumped to WCW, which by that time was being booked by Vince Russo, who was enjoying an unseen on-air authority determine that was, relying on how charitable you need to be, both a parody or ripoff of Vince McMahon’s heel persona. To additional that story, the Harrises misplaced their final names and had been referred to as “Patrick” and “Gerald” in allusions to Pat Patterson and Jerry Brisco. Collectively, they had been often known as “Inventive Management.” After tag workforce gold eluded them in ECW and the WWF, they gained the WCW Tag Crew Titles shortly after becoming a member of the corporate.
When Russo’s “Powers that Be” angle fell aside, Ron and Don began wrestling underneath their very own names, they usually had been aligned with the nWo 2000 faction for a time frame.
They remained with WCW till near the tip of the corporate in 2001. After it folded, they labored the TV tapings for the XWF, the Hulk Hogan/Jimmy Hart startup that by no means materialized, they usually did a tour of All Japan Professional Wrestling, competing within the 2001 Actual World Tag League match and making it to the semi-finals. They finally grew to become mainstays within the early days of TNA, wrestling frequently for the corporate after they had been on weekly pay per view and making a handful of appearances after they began taping on the Influence Zone.
Each males completed up their in-ring careers in 2005, although Don labored for TNA in a backstage position for a number of years extra. In an odd twist to their tales, they’ve lately been concerned in Aro Lucha, a lucha libre promotion primarily based in Nashville (no actually) that has run solely a handful of exhibits since its founding in 2017 and has often claimed to be on the point of a serious tv deal that has by no means materialized.
It’s most likely additionally price noting that the Harrises did trigger a bit little bit of controversy within the wrestling world when folks realized that they’d tattoos of a lightning bolt image related to the SS, a paramilitary safety drive based by Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany. The image can also be related to trendy white supremacist teams and, along with being tattooed on their arms, was seen on a t-shirt worn by one of many brothers on a TNA pay per view.
The Harrises denied any connection to white supremacy or Nazism and mentioned that the lightning bolt symbols on their arms and clothes stemmed from the truth that they did a biker gimmick and that the bolts had been common amongst bikers. This place appears to have a minimum of some assist from the Anti-Defamation League, a not-for-profit devoted to combating antisemitism, which states on its web site that “the SS bolts within the context of the outlaw biker subculture [do] not essentially denote precise adherence to white supremacy.” Nevertheless, the group goes on to notice that there are a lot of white supremacists in that subculture, making the true intent of the image troublesome to establish in some situations.
So, there you may have it – the profession of the Harris/Bruise/Blu/Grimm twins.
Jon is writing in to . . . gloat, I assume?
So…did you see the NFL is giving 7,500 free tremendous bowl tickets to vaccinated medical employees?
For these of you lacking the context right here, Jon wrote in with a query that I answered back in December about whether Wrestlemania should have a live audience made up entirely of healthcare workers and first responders. At the time, I told him that I thought it was a bad idea, and . . . frankly, I’m going to stand by that.
Jon’s original idea, as I understood it, was filling an arena with the vaccinated individuals, which I felt was too close for comfort despite the vaccines, particularly given the other workers that would be impacted by the attendees’ travel and presence at the game.
The NFL is negating one of those factors somewhat. They’re not filling a stadium or arena with fans. They’re putting 22,000 people in a venue that normally holds about 66,000, so there will be some distancing. However, hosting the Superbowl will still result in a lot of unnecessary travel at a time when that should still be avoided, so I’m still saying that this is something that would not happen if I were king of the world.
Tyler from Winnipeg lucked out, because I normally don’t answer two of his questions in the same column, but I didn’t realize I’d done it here until I was editing the column:
Do you know anything about Hogan, Savage & Elizabeth reuniting in WCW for another MEGA POWERS run?
I’m a bit confused by this question, because it’s worded as though you’re asking about a Hogan/Savage/Elizabeth reunion that was rumored but never happened. However, the Mega Powers DID actually get back together in WCW, even though it was short-lived.
When Randy Savage first showed up in WCW, it was shortly before Starrcade 1994, and the angle was that he was going to show up at the PPV to either shake Hulk Hogan’s hand or slap him across the face. We were supposed to tune in to see which one of those actions the Macho Man would take, and it turned out to be a handshake after Savage saved Hogan from an attack by the Kevin Sullivan, The Butcher (Ed Leslie/Brutus Beefcake), and the Avalanche (John Tenta/Earthquake).
That set up a Hogan/Savage vs. Sullivan/Butcher match at Clash of the Champions XXX on January 25, 1995. The good guys won that match, and they also defeated the team of Ric Flair & Vader at Slamboree 1995 in addition to doing some less important television matches.
Headed in to Clash of the Champions XXXII in January 1996, the Mega Powers were set to take on Ric Flair & The Giant, where Miss Elizabeth made her debut in WCW to counter the heels’ manager, Jimmy Hart.
However, the full-fledged reunion was short-lived. At the SuperBrawl pay per view on February 11, 1996, Elizabeth turned on Savage and cost him the WCW World Heavyweight Title in a singles match against Ric Flair. Liz actually became Flair’s second valet at that time, as Woman was already in his corner on a regular basis. They’d eventually be joined by a third woman, Debra McMichael, when her husband Steve joined the Four Horsemen.
Though they no longer had Elizabeth, Hogan and Savage continued to team together throughout 1996, with the most memorable of those matches – for all the wrong reasons – being the Doomsday Cage match at Uncensored, when they defeated the eight-man team dubbed the Alliance to End Hulkamania.
Richard U. swoops in with another one of his high-quality questions that the folks in the comment section love:
It’s been talked about for twenty years since Bobby Henning’s comment during the Gimmick Battle Royal at Wrestlemania 17. Doesn’t an Iron Sheik appearance at Wrestlemania 37 need to be a highlight this year?
When Wrestlemania happens in early April of this year, we are still going to be in the grips of the COVID-19 pandemic, as I’ve pointed out to Jon. Though hopefully vaccination efforts will have significantly ramped up by that point, I suspect things will still be dodgy enough that I would not want to see the Iron Sheik, who by the point will be 79 years old, take any unnecessary risk of infection by traveling to a pro wrestling event, even if it is the grandest stage of them all.
Lee‘s email address tells me he’s from this U.K., but this question briefly made me think he was from Philadelphia:
Which pair of real life siblings is the greatest in wrestling history?
Normally when I get a question about “who is the greatest ________,” I can think of three to five answers that you could make a case for.
However, I think there’s one cut and dry answer here:
It’s Dory Funk, Jr. and Terry Funk.
They are the only brothers to ever both hold the NWA World Heavyweight Title, both of them were major stars in both the United States and Japan, both of them had careers that spanned multiple decades, and both of them – particularly Dory – helped train numerous other high level professional wrestlers. I cannot think of another set of siblings that even comes close to them.
Some people might try to make an argument for Bret and Owen Hart, but I think the Funks get the nod over the Harts because Terry and Dory were singles stars of equal importance whereas Bret was always a couple of notches above Owen. You could say the same for Jack and Jerry Brisco who are probably also contenders.
If you expand internationally, I could maybe make an argument for Los Villanos given their importance in Mexico, but again that’s a situation where one brother (in this case Villano III) outshines the others. Plus, they were only major players in one country while the Funks were major players in two.
If you think I’ve completely missed somebody, feel free to drop it in the comments, but I’m pretty confident on this one.
Brian dislikes your local sports team:
WWE can pump the modern narrative that we are beyond the point of having heels and faces, but there is at least one element they seem to have forgotten that continues to brand most of the talent in one camp or the other. Teasing/ criticizing the members of the live crowd is still an element of many wrestlers’ promos. While perhaps all heels don’t engage in it, I don’t know of any faces that do. Do you have any examples, save for when someone was in the process of transitioning, OR when someone plays face in a certain city/country but elsewhere is not?
Can I think of a time when a babyface directly insulted the audience?
Not too often.
The only example that I was able to come up with – and even this is borderline – was from the September 10, 2012 episode of Monday Night Raw, when the show was emanating from Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Around that time, Montreal had developed a reputation for drawing fans who would almost universally give wrestlers the opposite reaction to what WWE was hoping for. This lead to the city being referred to as “Bizarro World” backstage, and eventually that backstage nickname crept on to camera.
Though most of the on-camera references were made by the announce team, on that 9/10/12 show it was spoken by a wrestler in a promo, and that wrestler was . . . John Cena.
Of course, Cena was the company’s top babyface at the time, even though there were several cities (beyond Montreal) in which he was vociferously booed. The “Bizarro World” comment by Cena could be seen as a slight against that audience, as I don’t know that comparing an arena full of people to the infamously stupid doppelganger of Superman could be taken in a positive light.
Granted, this isn’t quite as severe as Cena directly coming out and telling the audience that they suck, but that’s why I said it was a borderline case. However, it’s still the one that I can think of which comes closest to matching what Brian was looking for.
If anybody else can come up with a more clear cut example, I would be glad to entertain it down in the comments section.
That will do it for this week’s installment of the column. We’ll return in seven-ish days, and, as always, you can contribute your questions by emailing [email protected].
