This is WWE superstar Drew McIntyre, and you're listening to the WWE podcast show,
the one that everybody wants met for sixteen sex. Your ass is my
art. You can acknowledge me? All right, everybody, welcome back to
another episode of Wrestling Magic. Tonight, the gardener Michael Gross and I maintenance
Maverick. We'll just be having some midnight ramblings, just talking about nineties wrestling
and just how it was the best and sometimes the worst in some ways.
So, without further ado, Michael, how are you doing tonight? Man,
I'm doing fantastic. We're having a great day here in Louisville. Our
weather is fantastic. Today. I had an early day. I've been working
a lot because I'm going to see my love Jennifer hopefully your future ant and
I'm just really excited to go see her in Phoenix in a few days.
But I really wanted to get some content created and some stuff to talk about,
and so mav I got to ask you what year were you born?
Nineteen ninety eight? My friend nineteen ninety eight. So I was driving across
the country, folks, and everybody knows that Maverick is my nephew. I
was driving from Cleveland to San Diego. I lived in San Diego, but
I had to come home because my roommate was in the Marine Corps and so
he was deployed overseas for well over a year. So I went back home
to Ohio. When he came back, it was time to move everything back.
It's a long drive, guys. If you go from Cleveland, Ohio
to San Diego, it's three days without turning off your engine. So it's
a lot more than that when you have to actually use the bathroom, eat
some food, and get off the road for some storms. But we would
always we would always stop one place. Where was that mav one pause?
Your mother's house. So I came in one day. I got to your
mother's house with my friend Michael Elwood and Marie and your older sister. She
was very little, she was maybe two, and you were a baby.
And so this is the first time I met you. I went into the
house and you had a broken leg as a child. It was really weird.
But my sister, your mother, was like, you want to see
your nephew? Said yeah, and so she took me to her bedroom and
opened the door and you were laying in a crib. You were so small,
so teeny, and I just remember looking at you and I was like,
oh, that's my nephew. And she told me that your leg somehow
broken as an infant, and and folks, this is an abuse story.
Like seriously, I don't know what happens. I don't even know if you
remember that. So legend has it from the stories that I've been told that
I was, I guess trying to learn how to walk. I guess I
like stomped too hard and just something snapped. You were so small, You're
so small, So, folks, the next day we all went to sleep.
I mean, we were just tired. We'd come through actually tornadic weather,
severere thunderstorms. And when we got to my sisters, to your mother's,
we were just beat up when we were tired, and so myself and
my roommate we all just like everybody crashed. Your dad and I had a
couple of beers and that was it. The next day was breakfast, and
so she brought you out and put you in a high chair, and when
your mother wouldn't look, I was feeding you jelly from jelly donuts. And
she didn't want me to do that. I just kept like, yes,
I kept feeding you jelly. And she's like, why is Maverick Maverick licking
his lips? And what was the old story? Oh, I was feeding
him from my man teat. So now you know the whole story behind the
man teat. And so my sister thought I was trying to nurse you,
and so then I would threaten her when she was across the room. She
was tired. I mean, she knew, you know, second child,
and I would just be like, oh, I've got the child and to
feed him for my man teat and I'm like, oh, look, I'm
getting him closer, and she would run across the room and I felt so
bad. So that was a long story, a long, a long traveled
rib that we've had for many, many years. So now you know the
story behind the whole man teat thing. And but I just kept get this
for the longest time. Little Gabby used to always call you man teat guy
instead of Uncle Mike or anything. Well, but I just kept feeding you
jelly from the jelly donuts because I knew it was eventually going to give your
stomach problems and you're gonna just flush it out and she'd have to deal with
it. So that was my way of rubbing your sister quite a bit.
But uh, let's le's talk about the nineties a little bit, because you
were born in nineteen ninety nine, okay, and so I was yeah ninety
eight. Sorry, I I'm the worst uncle in the world, guys,
So that was bad as your uncle bugs. So when it comes down to
what's important in wrestling, nineties changed wrestling. So we're gonna give you a
brief synopsis of what happened in the nineties and why it spun the whole wrestling
world on it's ere because that's what you want to hear. You want to
hear about wrestling. You don't want to hear about the man tea. So
hey, I want to know for some people that might want to talk about
it, but you know, I believe that for something else, I really
don't want to talk to them. So so let's let's let's dive into this
a little bit. Okay. So the Golden Era, as everybody called it,
which was the eighties, that was the WrestleMania era when the dawn of
WrestleMania came about. But by WrestleMania four and five, the Hogan era had
become stale. They tried the belt with Savage, they didn't know what to
do, so they turned them to heel. Of course, how do you
have a two hundred and fifty six foot one guy go against a six foot
seven, three hundred pound baby face. It does not matter. They didn't
know what to do. And there was many, many trials which we're finding
out today that were covered up with a lot of hush hush money. But
I saw a lot of these on you know, your Heraldo Rivera shows,
your Oprah Winfreeze, whatever, your talk show du jour wash, these these
shows that were just terrible, and they were talking about allegations of sexual abuse.
They were talking about allegations of drug abuse and allegations of steroids, right
right, I mean back then that was kind of the big thing was all
the top stars. They were larger than life, so to speak. So
you had pretty much everybody just shooting up with Royd's, you know, Hogan
and all those guys. Really they looked so massive, and I guess the
steroids were really just a big thing. Right. Absolutely everybody was on me.
And if you look at like every superstar wrestler, excuse me, wrestler,
whether it be NWA or it be WWF at the time before it was
WWE, or you know when it became ww the Road Warriors. I mean,
all these people have put in their books. Rick Layers put in his
book that he did steroids for many years. Haul Cogan has he came out
on the Armed Sineo Hall Show and said he did steroids, then testified against
Vince McMahon. Okay, this was the changing of the guard. So the
nineties became a mess for wrestling. It became a hot dumpster fire. So
they didn't know what to do. Now. The NWA was purchased from Jim
Crockett, I Ted Turner who made it, you know, from NWA to
ws W, but they still used n w A titles until the NWA succeeded.
That's a whole story for our territories. But right right, I mean,
so as the steroid era kind of comes to an end and everything I've
read that mitzwick Man had some trouble of finding who was going to be his
next star, because I mean, who are you going to find some way
that's naturally that big, So he turned eventually to Lex Luger. I believe
correct, Well, he actually turned his eye to two other people. First.
Oh no, no, no, no, before them, he was
still looking for the bodybuilders. So first he tried Tom McGee. Tom McGee
was a gymnast. This guy was chiseled, jacked, racked, stacked.
I mean, I wouldn't fight the guy. And he had a try out
match with Brett Hart. Of course, Brett could make anybody look good in
the ring. However, when he went in against your Steve Lombardes or your
you know, Barry Horowitz, he looked like the DS's And anybody who works
in the company or in wrestling knows what the dss are, the drizzling SSEs,
and I figure you guys can put together the dots on that one.
So this guy was not it. But then all of a sudden they found
this guy who came out of the Dallas territory when Dallas closed. He was
the Dingle Warrior. Then said shave your mustache and we're gonna make you look
like Hawk from the Road Warriors. We're gonna call you the Ultimate Warrior.
And of course that wasn't working really well. But they were all part of
the steroid era. Now, Tom McGee not as much because he just they
said his matches were so bad that they were banned from any wrestler being able
to get those tapes, but they could ask for any tape in the actual
WWE headquarters. Isn't that crazy? I think Chris Jericho actually said he asked,
every week, I want the Tom McGee versus this guy match, and
they were like, no, we won't give that to you. Jeez.
That's insane that they would just withhold that little bit of history. But I
guess it makes sense if it's that much of a blemesh. I'm sure there's
other hidden footage that WWE wouldn't show anybody, like, you know, some
fatal incidents and whatnot. I could completely understand, like, you know,
any kind of fatal accidents that could happen. I can understand not wanting to
let that out either. Oh absolutely, but this wasn't It was just fatal
on your eyes to watch a wrestling match. It wasn't fatal to be actually
real trauma. I mean it was. I have seen some of this footage
and I've had to dive deep. I've had to go on the sister of
YouTube is what do you call it? Oh? Shoot, the one overseas.
I can't think of the name of it, but it's basically like YouTube,
and it's like I've found some of the footage and it's just garbage,
like the guy couldn't wrestle, like Tom Ge couldn't wrestle. And of course,
if you look at if you look at like Ultimate Warriors first matches,
he debuted actually as Diding a Warrior. So now all of a sudden,
Vince has bought up every territory and this is more stuff that you and this
Marke and I are going to cover as far as where the territories went except
for USWA and Puerto Rico so and I think at that point Dallas was still
part of USWA, so they had a little bit of a dying theme going
on. And so daily Motion, by the way, that's the name of
the YouTube cousin daily Motion. They have a lot of stuff that YouTube gets
banned. But it's like overseas. Okay, So getting back to it,
the steroid trial happens. Vince McMahon is showing up all the time in a
neck brace. Now did you know the whole thing about the Samoans when they
were in the courtroom watching the whole jury for the steroid trial. I don't
know anything about that. The things that I've seen about the steroid trial was
a dark side of the Ring special mainly, and the lawyers and everybody had
talked about like, yeah, Vince was wearing a neck brace. It was
for a legitimate injury, but it just made it seem like he was playing
off the old sympathy thing and it just was kind of funny to see it.
I haven't really seen anything about the Samoans in the room though, so
yes, this is very interesting. First of all, Vince called Jerry Jarrett,
Jeff's dad, to come up and work with Bruce Pritchard because he believed
that Jerry would run it the way he wanted to be run, because Jerry
was this psychologist of creating these characters. But we were tired of characters.
We were tired of Christmas creatures and Freddy Krueger's and everything else. But that's
what Vince still wanted. But then he realized while he's having this trial that
he has to go in a different direction. Now, while he's in this
trial, the jury looks at the Samoans, and the legend goes and even
the number one podcaster in Louisville. Who I'm slightly behind this number two.
Jim Cornette will tell you they said you must have quit this guy. And
the Samoans nodded and they said you can't him guilty And they shook their heads
and stared at the jury. Now, who's always been pushed in Vince's territory?
Who's always always the Simons? So that's that's a little side sidebar.
No one, I wasn't there in the room. That's the way the legend
goes. I mean, if Cornett says it, I go with him.
Bruce Pritchard I think has said it. I go with him. I think
Jr. Said it. So this I'm not going to put those words I
say. Think I'm not speaking for them. So getting back on track,
all of a sudden, Vince has acquitted the neck brace mysteriously just fell off.
But now he has to figure out a new direction to go. So
you look at your workers. Now we got to get away from the big,
huge guys. But you had a guy like Yokazuna, right, okay,
you you couldn't believe that Shawn Michaels was going to beat him. Then
you brought in you brought in larger guys, but they had no chemistry.
You couldn't work Kevin Nash against Yokazuna. You couldn't work Scott Hall against Yokazuna,
but you could work Kevin Nash versus Scott Hall because they've known each other
forever, so they had chemistry. So Brett Hart becomes that conduit. He's
now anointed as the person that is going to change this. The problem was
the undercard. So let's talk about the WWE and WCW undercard. What would
you like to know about that, mynd nephew? All right, So first
I just wanted to go back just a little bit here with stuff that you
mentioned. So you had guys like Yokazuna. Eventually they bring in I believe
it's Lex Luger to uh be kind of the face of the company because you
need somebody to replace Hogan, and eventually they kind of realized this just isn't
working out. It isn't gonna go anywhere. You have got like Viscera,
you know, big Daddy V And none of these guys were really a big
name talent that anybody really wanted to see. It was just at a time
where it's like, okay, they're big, but their characters and what they
are nobody cares. And you know that's moving into that nineteen ninety five era.
But you wanted to talk a little bit about the undercards. So what
was going on with the mid card titles at that point, Like who were
those kind of champions because those were the workhorse titles at the time, I
believe, especially the Intercontinental title. Correct, yes, but it became a
mess. So you had like Davy boy in there. I mean like your
tag titles were switched between like Bob Holly, the one two three kid to
other people smoking guns, which the only person who came out of that unscathed
was a Billy Gunn. You had a plethora of just hodgepodge. They did
not know what to do, so it brought in Duke, the Dump,
Surgery, the Hot the Godwins, Hog and Pig. I mean, it
was just silly stuff. People forget when when Helmsley first came in, when
Triple H first came in, he was hunter Hurst, Helmsey, he was
the blue blood. He was supposed to be this British man that Oh yeah,
it was it was silly. I think he actually talked to an accent
for about like six months before they can that saw Vince saw so much more
in him, which he was right, but I digress. WSW wasn't doing
any better, so so Eric Bischoff decides to launch Nitro, and while the
first Nacho was a success, the few that followed after that for a while
were just utter trash. It was just so much garbage that you couldn't digest
because it was recycled WWF stuff that we'd already let go. We didn't want
the steroids, we didn't want we didn't want Hogan and Savage. So was
floundering in mediocrity, and it was it was very difficult time for a long
time in the early to mid nineties to watch wrestling. Now. In w
W, before Hogan and his cronies showed up, you had Rick Rude,
Ricky Steamboat, Rick Flair, Arn Anderson, you had workers in ww Terry
Funk, the Great Mooda, the person I covered on my first podcast here
with Rocky. You had so much talent, and then they brought in Hogan
and the Goofballs and it was just garbage. At dugg In. I mean,
Duggan might be a legit tough guy, but in the ring he's the
DS's he's the drizzling not wrong. However, wasn't like, was it Mortison
Glacier? When did they end up as part of the company, because I
had heard something about, uh, somebody got brought into the company and immediately
Glacier Moore just kind of just looked at each other and he was like,
Yeah, we're screwed, We're done. I've got that, so we're gonna
get there. Okay, okay. So Rick Rude gets injured by sting and
he can't wrestle anymore. He never wrestled another match. He showed up to
NISW a couple of times WWE WSW, then had a heart attack and died.
Rick Rud was one of the greatest heat gathering heels of all time.
He was amazing. People ask me if you could pick one heel, and
I love Rick Flair, but they're like, if you could pick somebody else
to build a company around, it's Rick Rude. Rick Rud was it?
Lex Luger was the guy that Rick Rud wished he was. So did I
say that right? I believe so Lex Luger wishes he was Rick Rude.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Sometimes I reversed that and Lex if you're listening,
sorry, man, you had the body, you did not have the
skill in the ring, and you did not have the heat. But you
had so many talented people in WSW and then Hogan's whole crew Nasty Boys came
in and while they I'll give nasty boys something, they can always garner heat.
No matter where they go, they're gonna grab heat and they're gonna make
the crowd hate them. But always putting titles on them. Yes, you
do it once just to have a mega babyface tag team go over them,
but they out they outlived their welcome at some point. So here we are
in the nineties. Now wrestling's floundering. WWF can't figure out what to do
because they did the Hogan Brett Hart debacle as far as what we're going to
do with the title. So Brett loses to Yokozuna just for hul Cogin to
get it. No one wants it. Hul Cogan's out of the company a
couple months later. Yoka Zuna, I love you, baby, you sleep
well in heaven because you be Paul Cogan and he is one of the worst
worst in ring competitors of all time. So Hogan's gone. Now we have
to build a company around Hogan and Brett in WWF, while WCW is using
these old stars that no one cares about. This is starting to rub the
Monday Night Wars. So the kickoff of the Monday Night Wars is Luger jumping
back from the US or Lex Express, which was a failed experiments. It's
great if you have a look, but if you have I would say Lex
Luger's in ring is about on par with Hogan. There's nothing that will allow
you. It's the same six or seven moves and that's it. Getting back
to brass tacks and baseball bats. My friend, So Luger shows up on
the first nightro when he was booked for a bunch of raws wwe didn't know
because they forgot that they let his contract lapse. So he's booked for like
five or six show was and all of a sudden they're turning on TV and
they see him coming out of the Mall of America. I think out of
a gap or something like that, which is not that clothes. But I'm
a more Banana Republic iyeed, same company, but higher threads. So what
it comes down to is that was the first shot. So all of a
sudden we start getting a little bit of competition, but it wasn't great still.
All you had in WW was Brett Owen, Bulldog, Sean Diesel.
He couldn't work. He was just an attraction and raised a ramone. Scott
Hall could work, but was he working that day, we don't know.
And so then there were some very talented undercard guys. Bob Holly. I
was not a fan of him when I was young. You know what I'll
say about Bob solid worker, one hundred percent. I look back at his
matches. The guy never missed a que never missed a damn thing. Bob
Holly was great. He just wasn't a marquee. That's not his fault.
They didn't market him right, They didn't know what to do with him,
and he was Southern, so they didn't. Vin's already had it out for
when he got in there. The thing is, Bob could beat the heck
out of guys whenever he wanted to, because he was a legit tough guy.
So Vince kept him on to kind of take care of things when Vince
didn't like somebody. Now, getting back to WW, they're floundering. They're
just using old WWF, WWE, whatever you want to call it, main
events over and over again. People aren't buying into it. People don't want
to see Dougan. Do you know Steve Austin's last match, he lost the
US title to Duggan in a thirty second roll up really absolutely was disgusting,
and the people, like some clapped, but most of them sat on their
hands. They didn't want to see this anymore. Steve Austin gets injured,
he goes away. Mark Merrow decides he wants to go someplace else. Now,
you guys might know him as Johnny Dadd, which was his most entertaining
point of his career. He was great as Johnny be bad as Mark Merrow
as himself. Oh oh god, yeah, I know what you mean.
I mean, I remember when I got the WW network and I started going
back and forth watching between Nitro and Monday Night Raw from back in that era,
and I was actually asking you, like, Hey, who's this Johnny
B bad guy? He's actually pretty good, and then you immediately just said
it's Mark Merrow. I still can never forget just thinking like it's that guy.
How do you make such a drastic flip. I don't get it,
and yeah, I guess it leads us to here. Well, because Vince
wanted that character so bad, then he realized he couldn't own the character because
it was owned by w CW. That's one of the things w CW screwed
Vince on. And so he didn't know what to do. Sick well,
just make him the wild man Mark Merrow and before he got in he did
some amazing stuff. He was supposed to be a main eventor he like their
new breed. This is the new breed now version of WWE, w w
F, whatever you want to call it. I'm still going to call it
w WF at the time. Okay, So there are people Brett and Seawan
were made uh, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall jumped. So they thought the
next people who were going to be the main eventors Triple H who got punished
for the whole curtain call. So he was screwed. So he got put
down to the to the mid card, but they're their main eventors. I
met Johnson, Mark Merrow. Oh there's somebody else in there that was just
like heinous that. You're just like, what were you thinking? Was it
a Sid Vicious or I know he was around in that era. Sid Sid
hopped back and for I told you about the time I prink called Sid.
That was really funny. Oh yeah, that was That was one of my
funniest things I ever did. My friend Tom and I, okay, guys,
we'll sidebar real quick. So so Sid lives in West Memphis, Arkansas.
I used to live in Memphis. My friend Tom and his now wife,
but when they were dating, they broke up for a hot second,
and so she was sitting in a bar someplace and Sid started hitting on her.
Tom called her because he was like, you know, we need to
be together, you know, And Sid gets on the phone and like cuts
a promo on him. About three or four years later, after they're married,
Tom calls me. He's like, are you at the French Riviera Spa,
which is a place I used to work out at. Yes, guys,
the skinny guy used to work out. I was like no, He's
like, I'm across the street from your place. You're not going to believe
this, but Sid Vishes is working out with Scott Hall. I was like,
well, we got to take care of this. So he came over.
He called the French riviera on Union Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee, and
we asked for his real name, Sid Udy, and he answered the phone,
and we cut a promo on him and called him everything but a man,
and he started breathing and huffing and puffing like he was gonna cut a
promo back, and we made fun of him and called him everything but a
man. And I kind of feel bad about it, but I don't.
He shouldn't have messed with Tom's wife because Meredith, his wife, is absolutely
gorgeous. My girlfriend, Jennifer, and you can attest this is absolutely gorgeous.
Meredith is absolutely gorgeous. And he shouldn't have done that. He shouldn't
have been trying to get on even though they're broken up. I mean,
he was married. Don't be a dumb mess. Okay, So let's get
back. So Sid's coming in and out of both companies. Vader leaves w
CW for WWE. He was supposed to be a main inventor. However,
he has the Kuwait thing and then he can't get along with Sean. Now,
Sean was Vince's favorite to watch shower, so Vince really liked Sean and
he was getting tired of Brett because Brett would always beat up Sean, which
I think is hilarious. So now we get into this limbo. So the
nWo is forming. The biggest thing was Hogan turning heel. People never believe
they would see it. When I heard it, God rest his soul.
Scott Blair calls me and he says, Michael, you're not going to believe
what happened. I said, what he is? I watched I don't know,
dashed the beach. He's like, Hogan turned heel. I was like,
are you serious. It's the first time I wanted to see Hogan in
fifteen years to see if it was actually real. And I was like,
it's an angle, it's and he's like, no, I do. He
was also getting you know, Meltzer's you know observer and stuff like that,
so he knew a bit more than me. And this is also the birth
of the internet, folks, So this is a revolution in wrestling. So
now you have wrestling hotlines there online. You have all kinds of different wrestling
stories and things like that that you can buy into online. And so we're
all learning stuff and you you weren't even born yet. So yeah, fortunately
this is how it goes. All of a sudden, the guy that they
embarrassed bringing into WWF, Steve Austin as the ring master, Ted Dibiasse's understudy,
gets hurt. Instead of being fired, he comes back as stone Cold
Steve Austin, his own idea. And when he told people he wanted this
idea and this way to do it, they thought they would give them names
like Chili mcpfreeze and ice Dagger because yes, because yeah, I read up
on this one. Actually. So he had been watching a documentary of out
uh some sort of a cold killer, and he really wanted to work with
just the word cold somehow to get into it, and they gave him Baron
von Frost and stuff like that. He eventually was just getting tired of it,
and his legend has it his wife at the time came over because he
was sick at the time, or maybe just having a cup of tea or
whatever, and she handed him it was either a hot drink or hot soup
something like that, and she said, uh, make sure you finish that
stone or before it gets stone cold Steve Austin, and he just stopped and
looked at it and was like, that's it. That's the name we're going
with it, and that it's very interesting because I believe that might have still
been Genie, which was Chris Adams's ex wife, who yeah, yeah,
Chris the guy from the wcc W. Yeah, yeah, Chris Adams trained
Steve Boston. But anyway, we're not going to get go there. We
can we can cover that some other time. So Steve Austin starts to get
hot. They start to do the angle with Tyson. Now off lies through
his teeth, he says. When they knew that they were working with Mike
Tyson, heene it was done. No, WCW was not done at that
point. They were not done. They were hot, they were still red
hot, and they were red hot for another year. There's eighty three weeks.
And it didn't end with that. That was part of it, but
it didn't end with that. What killed them is they started doing really stupid
storylines and everybody thought that w SY all of a sudden, was like this
really serious thing. Now, mind you, folks. You had to go
through an era where you had the dungeon of Doom, which used to mean
something in Florida or the NWA in the eighties, but in the nineties,
you had the Yetay, which yeah, YETI by the way, if you
guys don't know, is a sasquatch that lives in the Arctic. But they
made it a mummy. Yeah, and I still don't understand how they made
that. I don't know if I want to call it the mistake or what
they were trying to rebrand this creature has I'm still lost. I don't know
what they're thinking. I really don't think they just knew what to do.
They didn't know what to call it. They couldn't call the mummy because I
think that's probably trademarked by Universal, and they were working in Universal Studios a
lot too, for the Saturday nights. Don't want to step on those toes.
So that's my speculativeness. But I don't know. Now getting back to
it, they they only created in WSW at this point for the latter part
of the nineties, when you were about to be born a few stars.
So I'm going to talk about WSW stars and WWE stars that had blossomed at
the time. Are you ready? Absolutely? Because I know a couple,
but this is something that I've wanted to hear more about. Okay, So
the first thing they want to do in these weren't stars. Rik Bshoff thought
in nineteen ninety six that video games were going to get big as they are
today, so he thought that he would create stars that would be big for
their video games, which everybody says their video games sucked back then, by
the way, So this is where it gets interesting. He created Mortis and
Glacier. First, Glacier, this guy had the talent of a toothpick.
He was gone awful, terrible. I actually met him once when he was
hungover leaving a show in Ohio. Smelled like a crock pot of booze,
and I was like, all right, Glacier. He like burped and I
was like, holy god, you're Glacier and he's like yeah, and I
was like yeah, a friend of mine's a fan of yours. I'm not.
And I just walked away and he was barely able to walk to his
car. Now, if I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but I believe it
was him. The other one was an incredibly talented human being named Chris Kanyon,
and they made him Mortis. The idea was they thought it was gonna
be like the next version of Mortal Kombat, because Mortal kombatvideo game was so
big at the time. Heck, you know, I hate video games,
but I played Mortal Kombat in an actual arcade kids, in an actual arcade.
So the second they saw the nWo come out, Chris Kanyon said that
he was sitting with Glacier in their bedroom and they did all these vignettes for
them, by the way, tons of vignettes, tons, Glaciers coming more,
this, Glaciers coming more, This, Glacier's coming. And they said
the second they saw the nWo form that Canyon looked at Glacier and said,
we're done. Were screwed, like our pushes over and they were right.
They were right, and they still tried to push it. It didn't work.
And actually, at the end of one Nitro, I can't remember what
nitro was, but this is awesome. At the end of one Nitro they
had like WCW good guys like you know, DDP and stuff like that,
which we'll get to in a second, and Lex Luger and stuff like that,
and the nWo in the ring. It's like a big like face off,
right, and then the Blood Grund and cold guys come in like Glacier,
Mortis Wrath, who turned out to be Brian Clark Ernest Miller, and
they kept zooming in on them like they were gonna be something, and that's
when people turned the channel to WWE. They're like, these guys are idiots.
So that was a failed experiment obviously, right right, So that was
like this whole storyline they built up for like six or seven months for one
guy in Canyon who could wrestle really well, one guy who's good for a
big man in Brian Clark, a guy who was absolutely terrible in the ring
and glacier, and then Ernest Miller who could gain heat because people wanted to
change the channel on him. So that's what we had. That's what we
had. So WSW is circling circling now the people that they actually created DDP.
Even though I believe I saw him in Dallas before he was in ww
it wasn't the fact that he was there before, and people forget that he
was actually the guy driving the car I think for the honky talk man in
WrestleMania three. Did you know that I had no idea? Is the first
time I'm ever hearing of that. You might want to look that one up.
Uh. DDP was a perennial jobber, just a career put over guys.
He started out as a manager. He was goofy, he was out
of shape. Not out of shape. Okay, everybody's better looking than I
am, but he just he didn't look like a wrestler. And he was
a guy who put people over it. And they built him. They actually
made him a star. The problem is they didn't know when to stop pushing
him until Goldberg came in. That's their second person. Third person is Sting.
But Sting wasn't actually created by WCW. He was created by the UWF.
He was part of a merger. He came in with Hot Stuff International
being managed and ran by Eddie Gilbert. But he was a career WCW guy.
Those are the three people. Buff Bagwell was actually the last guy besides
Sting to never jump ship. But DDP never jumped ship. He just appeared
as the car driver for that WrestleMania three instance. He wasn't actually part of
anything at that point, so that's why he could do that. So I
believe that he's a WSW homegrown star. And of course Goldberg was Goldberg.
So now we have this momentum. But everybody said, it's sting, it's
sting, it's sting. So now we start the eighteen month odyssey of the
storyline that had the worst payoff in history. Now, if you turn your
channel from w back then WTBS to USA, we were seeing two different products.
And the version of the products you had was because that you had so
many super religious people working at WTBS and there was an underground promotion out of
Philadelphia and they created a buzz that's called ECW. Now that buzz started actually
in nineteen ninety four. Now I'm gonna rewind a little bit, because the
stars of there were stars of yesteryear like Terry Funk, Don Morocco, Jimmy
Snook and stars of tomorrow and maybe some who never got their chance Saboo Rob
banned him. These were people TAZ that had a future and people who could
make these people who had a future to actually have a past. That's a
sexy thing. You had a mad scientist and Paul Hayman in charge of it.
And what also happened in the nineties is that there was another last territory
that closed up, and that was Jim Cornett's best podcaster in Louisville, Smoky
Mountain Wrestling. Now, Jim Cornett has always been obsessed with tag team wrestling,
so there was a lot of tag team matches. But do you know
the stars that came out of Smoking Mountain. I'll be honest, I actually
don't. I know like a couple that have been a part of it,
but I don't know who, like, are the biggest stars out of it,
because I know that Johnny Canine was involved with it, But honestly,
that's one of the only people that I really know for sure came through it.
Hm Alstowe, Cain, Uh, the Rock and Roll Express, but
they've wrestled everywhere. I mean the Express, they have been everywhere. Yes,
Chris Candido Fall's mahoney, but he was known as a Buddha Singh and
Boo Bradley shoot man. They they almost everybody who came into the second half
of BCW came out of Smoking the gangstas gangstas they were pulling their gangster stick.
I watched my language there they were pulling their gangster stick in Knoxville in
the most racist crowd and knew. Jack has been on an interview saying I
loved it. I had a pistol packing for him. There's a lot of
people who came out of Smoking Mountain Tracy Smothers, Dirty White Boy, but
a lot lot of people who were being used in the nineties from Smoking Mountain,
which was also in a working relationship with WW. We're getting renamed and
given stupid gimmicks. So if you ever watched Tony Anthony the Dirty White Boy
have a match, he was like Tommy Dreamer and Raven. He was amazing.
He was just the dirty White Boy. And when people ask, what's
that mean, the dirty White Boy, it's because it's a Tennessee thing.
You just just look it up, guys. I'm not gonna explain it to
you. But he was like a lot of people said, Tommy Dreamer versus
Tony Anthony the Dirty White Boy would be an awesome match. Just anything goes.
There were so many people who then migrated to E c W after Smoking
Mountain closed, but they were used so bad. I mean, look at
Chris Candido becoming Skip and Sonny being well, she turned out to be a
whore, Let's be honest, but she was everybody that they've they've reported it
and she's in prison and rightfully, so you killed a person but there was
a lot of talent that Jim Cornett could see, and that that that Paul
Hammon could see. So that was the underground buzz. Eastern Smoky Mountain closes,
Lance Storm, Chris Jericho. They were in Smoky Mountain before they were
in ECW. A lot of these people reported over it was the only Indi
to work and Vince they're not six foot and three hundred pounds. WSW didn't
know who they were, so you know, there was a lot of work
to be put in. So this is how the nineties started getting turned on
its ear because now all the goofiness of only having a few few top stars
of WWF and ww have a way too many top stars or thinking they did,
and nobody wanted to put over anybody. It was cluster. Nobody know
how to book, knew nobody knew how to book anything. So that's when
they said, okay, we're going to start the Attitude era, and that's
when they started getting more violent, taking things more serious, dropping the gimmicks,
getting rid of all the work stuff, and that's how WWF eventually beat
and destroyed WSW in the nineties. Right, I mean, for a long
time they had the occupational gimmicks going on that. Honestly, nobody was really
wanting to watch any of that, Like, how am I supposed to relate
to, you know, a plumber as a wrestler or anything like that.
Shawn Michaels at the time, he actually was just it seemed like just him
and that worked. Wonders enough. Brett Hart best there is, best,
there was, best there would ever be because what occupation is that he's a
wrestler. That's who he wanted to see. We didn't care about, you
know, these people being garbage men or whatever, because okay, cool,
you're representing every occupation. But nobody asked for that. Nobody cared about that.
The New Generation era, it kind of had its flaws for sure.
At the time, the New Generation era, which was right before the Attitude
era, was such a terrible idea. I remember, like I said,
God rest his soul. Scott Blair called me one day, He's like,
well, on commentary, we got a new representative of the new generation.
It's the Honkey top Man, I mean, And that's when the Honkey top
Man brought out Billy Gunn is Rockability. It was the same stuff recycled we
used to call it recycled alpo. You can figure out what that is.
So just one of those deals where it was just yeah, I think it
set in. It's just one of those deals where you know, road Dog
was the roadie and they were also using and borrowing a lot of people from
Memphis. But anybody that borrowed or used for Memphis, they would use,
we mistreat. Of course, a lot of people from Memphis, let's be
honest, were unruly and they weren't very tamed. And I know this for
a fact. A lot of them just did not have manners because they were
used to being big fish in a small pond and now they're in a really
big pond and small fish and they didn't know how to deal with it.
But the Smoky Mountain thing, I mean, you bring it, Chris Candido.
I mean, the guy was talented, so talented, hell, oh
my gosh, and Tom Pritchard and we don't know what to do with Let's
just make him a goofy bodybuilding team. And then let's make because because Shawn
Michaels is such a douchebag because he was getting with Sonny that they buried Chris
Candido, I guarantee you this much. If you put Chris Candido in a
room with Seawan Michaels and told him what was really going on, Sean would
probably be crying on the floor when he was done because his friends couldn't come
in and save his life. And that's that's what happened. Like the nineties
were a crazy place. So as we go to close the nineties, Smoky
Mountains gone, ECW's going to close up. WCW's going to close up in
a couple of years, and all of a sudden we find ourselves saying,
was there really a war? Well, you had to evolve. WCW could
not evolved at that time, and they started going back to childish stuff.
So they're the ones to start with the more adult things with the nWo.
I mean, Bischoff's only idea ever, which he ripped off from Japan,
the Aristas Group, and he had no follow up. And then he gave
everybody so much political power within their contracts that the place was imploding left and
right. And then you had moments like the fingerpol could do. You had
moments like Ernst the Cat and Miller beating the Great Muda because that's injustice.
You had so much Garbae, what's going on? Then you hired people who
couldn't be muzzled, like the strousso and at Ferrara and then at Farrar doing
just the worst ever portrayal of JR. Yeah, the Oklahoma gimmick, which
is very looked down upon in the wrestling world now, just making fun of
even like the health aspects of Jim Ross. Why would you do that?
That is a terrible idea. But another thing that I've actually read up on
a little bit was WCW had some of the worst financial issues possible, Like
they would fly the entire roster to every single show for the entire time that
WCW was around. Can you imagine just bringing every single person, even the
ones that aren't going to be used in the show. They didn't care.
They were bringing everybody. They were making such poor they were making such poor
decisions that I believe they had Landy Poffo. Don't quote me on this,
but I think I read it in sex Lies and Sexalize and headlocks. He
was on the roster for two years, for like one hundred and fifty thousand
dollars a year and never set foot in an arena just because he was Randy
Savage's brother. There's a lot of people like that. A lot of people
will tell you that, Hey, like Iron Chic, I think he was
making one hundred grand and they just forgot to deny his contract, so it
just rolled over and they just kept paying them. They made so many,
so many piss poor decisions as a company. I like, honestly, if
I had that kind of money, I could only imagine if Paul Hayman had
that money with DCW, what he could have done. He could have kept
his talent, not giving him away and had a national product. Or even
Jim Cornett was Smoking Mountain because Smoking Mountain. If you watch some of those
matches, those are great matches. They were entertaining matches, and there were
storylines. Everything was built around a real story. And so that's what all
of a sudden dried up. It became ECW got really mimicked because that's what
people wanted to see. People were staying up. Your uncle Tim and I
would stay up till two in the morning on a Saturday night. Boy,
we really had a life. Girls really wanted to get to know me,
guys, and just so we could watch our forty minutes of ECW on Sports
Channel USA. I talked, thought it was just it was, it was,
it was. It was the first time I saw it. I was
living out the one sixty six house. So, guys, I used to
live at this house at the corner one sixty six and Route five point thirty
four. You don't need to nowhere. And we'd gotten cable and I was
nineteen, it was maybe twenty. I was twenty and this was like ninety
six, okay, and I'm flipping through the channels. We had about forty
channels, guys. That was the luxury back then. And I found ECW
and Sports Channel America at two in the morning, and I was like,
oh my god. The first thing I did. I called my friend,
the late great Scott. I said, Scott, turn on channel twenty right
now. He's like why, I said, just do it. They saw.
He's like, oh my god. That's every week. We would talk
on the phone while we watched it until it eventually Sports Channel went away.
But that's how we got introduced to Stevie Richards Rave and well, I knew
Raven when he was Scotty the Body or even before that, like Scott Anthony.
I mean, I've watched him since like ninety one, but Johnny Polo
and Scotti Filamingo I believe his other names were all those. Yeah, definitely,
I do the whole gam butit, I mean, obviously we know I'm
a huge Raven fan. We should find out how big of a Raven fan
I am. But that's first time I saw Eddie Guerrero, first time I'd
seen Crispin Wadi Malenko. Uh, first time I had seen Raymond Stereo Psychosis.
I mean, all this was brand new, and I'm seeing stuff that
I'm like, Okay, Hogan's doing a lake drop and I'm watching Psychosis do
like a four to fifty splash, and I'm going, what what am I
watching? And then like you know, the Sandman coming out with a cigarette
and just caning the living hell out of somebody, and Tommy Dreamer almost dying
every night, and Raven cutting some of the best promos you've ever seen in
your life, Tommy, excuse me, Terry Funk coming out and almost dying,
also wrapping himself in Bob barbed wire and going on Sabo who. It
was just different. So that underground feeling and how that gave birth to the
Attitude era, and how that became what was the new breed of wrestling.
It was very important because we needed that. If we didn't have that shot
in the arm, that kick in the ass, that new breath in our
throats wrestling, I wouldn't say it would have went under because USA had a
long term contract with WW. But I don't know if we'd all be fans
now. It might be under now because WW wasn't gonna last. That was
the nineties, guys, that's very true. I mean after the nineties.
Well even during the nineties you also had smaller companies. Of course, you
had the indies. You had I want to call them almost clones of ECW,
kind of like XBW and stuff that existed, but just it didn't have
the same feel or anything for when it existed back then. And I guess
it's reemerged now, but I'm not really sure how well they're doing, which
I don't expect them to do that great honestly from how they were before.
And you know, well, I mean, if Rob Black still owns it,
go to hell, Rob Black. I'll tell you that right now.
I mean, any guy who ran his company off of being a porno company
and then asking, like some of the people to start in pornography is That's
all I say about that. That's beyond words, honestly. Now, if
I'm wrong, Rob Black, If I'm wrong, it's at one four or
four Captain on X Twitter, whatever you want to call it. If I'm
wrong, tell me i'm wrong. But everybody I know has told me that.
And you know you had CZW, Combat Zone Wrestling, Comment Zone Wrestling
actually infiltraded ECW. I think it was CZW, but I'm not positive.
Infiltraded ECW for pay per view, and a bunch of ECW guys came out
and beat beat up the wrestlers who are in the front row, and I
think one of them was John Moxley, the guy knocked around Interesting, Yeah,
you can look that one up. I'm not positive it was him.
Guys, Look, I'm almost fifty, so my memory isn't quite what it
used to be, but it's pretty damn sharp for being a wrestling history.
So with that being said, the nineties were a very interesting time. We
started out with garbage, we started out with steroids, We started out with
larger than life characters. We became sharp shooting wrestlers. Then we became great
wrestling then we became hardcore wrestling. Then we became very serious storylines. Then
we became making characters that people wanted to see and people wanted to invest in.
The Undertaker was no longer dead. He was a biker. It made
sense because people were about to flush the toilet on it. And everybody says
they hate that version of the Undertaker. That's my favorite version, and he'll
tell you it's one of his favorite versions because he could actually sell and show
people he could work. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, And
honestly, I feel like, how do I put this? The biker version
is probably much closer than the dead Man was to the Undertaker, Like personality
wise, I feel like that's a little bit closer to him, you know,
being you know, a biker and just being a wrestler at that point.
That's kind of how it was seen. Once again, not really occupational
anymore, but it's just something that somebody like him probably might enjoy or something.
You know, absolutely, it's it's you're amplifying who you are in real
life, and I think he enjoyed that. Now I'm gonna turn this up.
Another notch wrestlers who came about in the nineties the headline chevity. Are
you ready? Absolutely, because I can name a few, obviously being Undertaker,
Kine, Mick Foley, the Rock Stone, Cold Rakishi's kind of around,
but I'm not really sure if i'd want to count him in that category.
Can always go with I mean, big Daddy v was around, But
do we really want to count em as part of that. I'm going to
say no with that guy. Do you remember the day you text me and
you're like, he died? I was like, yeah, I'm talking to
his wife right now. So I'm just saying that because in the book that
you recommended to me, Titan Sinking, it kind of mentions him as one
of the people that Vince tried to push as one of the big men,
but it just didn't really work. It wasn't filling the void of Hogan Andre
all these larger than life characters. So that's kind of why my mind keeps
kind of flushing back to it. But yeah, so obviously you have guys
like Sting. I don't think DDP really lasted too long into the two thousands
or anything like that, but I've noticed that Sting going into TNA and such.
After WWE kind of bought out WCW and everything. It's different. He
really kept a character together and honestly he's been loved wherever he's gone. So
I gotta say sting hats off to you, man. You've had a long
career, just retired. Congratulations on that, man. But those are a
few that I can name that I know lasted from there. So yeah,
a lot of names that I'm overlap with you, Cain. These these are
people that like kind of popped onto the scene in the nineties as opposed to
they might have been working before that. But Cain, El Snow, Chris
Jerico, Land Storm, Oh shoot, man, I mean there's so many.
Yeah, some names I can't say. You know, you know another
another name I want to say, but I can't. Uh De Malenko.
I mean it was a Dawn, Shane, Douglas, Raven, Perry,
Saturn. A lot of people became household names from the nineties that no one
ever gives the credit for. Brian Pillman and ladies and gentlemen. Every time.
If if you are in Florida and you see Lexus King Russell just screamed
Brian Pillman. Just scream Brian Pillman. Because his father was amazing, and
his father reinvented a character that was so amazing that Steve Steve Austin even said
this is gonna rival me Goldberg, I mean Chavalguerrero. There were so many
names that came out in the nineties that people will not give I mean,
honestly, Jeff Jarrett was wrestling in USWA, but no one was seeing it
unless you were watching ESPN. So Jared got bigger than China. Not a
big China fan, but yeah, China. She was still around. The
Hardy's Christian and Edge they were around in the nineties as well. How about
some kid named Helmsley or some kid named the Rock. Austin was around before
that, but eighty nine, eighty eight, eighty nine was like really his
start in Dallas. But I mean nineties is when he really got into wsw
and really blew up. There are so many names that came out of the
nineties, Like the eighties had a lot of names, but the territories were
so big and there's so many older people that were retiring. It wasn't the
same. The nineties made more wrestling and more wrestling fans than any other generation.
And then your uncle Tim, he and I would get magazines, Yeah,
because every girl wanted to get to know me back then, and we
find out about like Kenna Kobayashi and Shinya Hashimoto and everybody oversees Super Delphin.
I didn't he have a tag team partner, Super Delphine. Didn't he have
like a tag team partner that was like themed after a crab or something.
I can't remember his name. I can't remember his name. Oh, you
put me on the spot on that one. But yeah, yeah, it
was. It was just a different time. It was just a different time,
and it was it was romantic with wrestling back then because it became hot
and that was the dawn of the tape trading era and so like URF video
got really hot, and it was before DVD or the birth of DVD at
the end of it, like ninety seven ninety eight something like that is when
DVD started to blow up. But before that RAF video, everybody you just
get on the internet, the birth and the baby of the Internet, and
you'd be like, you have this match of this wall, I'll trade you
this match to that. So you've got Hogan versus Muda Muda when he actually
worked versus you know, having Super Delphin and Grand Suske Versus, you know,
Raymysterio and Psychosis. I mean the stuff that we had to tape trade
back then in the abilities and the hunger for it. The hunger was that
it's epitome nineteen nineties. It's a good way to put it. I mean,
so growing up, I was obviously a little bit after the tape trading
era, but I remember my friends and I we had the DVD box sets
of certain wrestlers and their matches because for a while, WWE was releasing like,
oh yeah, here's the history of DX, Here's the history of you
know, Jeff Hardy's career. They called it my life, my Rules,
Okay, here's you know, it didn't matter who it was, really,
if they were going to be leaving the company or ww just felt like,
hey, this guy, you know, he's gotten big enough we could probably
make some money off of if we were to release just a set of his
matches. That's what me and my friends used to do in a way,
because we used to either go to each other's houses just watch together, or
we would just trade for a week and then trade back after. So yeah,
I kind of hear you on that. I mean, it definitely kind
of lasted as well before streaming took over. I remember in two thousand and
four, you know, my best friend Miguel, he got me the Following
Ones DVD. Yeah, and I threw it out after the whole incident,
But yeah, I had Ben Law's DVD and just watching his whole story and
everything else, it was just amazing, and so I just look at like
it was. It was really big, and like the last wrestling DVD I
bought was Ladies and Gentlemen. My name is Paul Hayman. Interesting, yes,
that was the last one I ever bought. And then you know,
of course it's the network and everything else after that. You know, the
network was first rumored in like ninety seven, ninety eight, the nineties,
So I don't know about that necessarily, but I do remember that. So
I had a few DVDs that were called just Legends of Wrestling, and it
went over a few different guys Careers Junkyard, Dog, Sergeant Slaughter, Rick
Flair, I believe, and just those guys's names, and it had a
little commentary table where all these guys like Mike Hayes and Jim Ross just were
talking about them now. I remember one of the previews before it actually got
to the menu and everything, which I'm not sure why they included, you
know, previews, but I guess you gotta give commercials somehow when it's not
fully on cable. But something that I really remember distinctly was they were trying
to push WWE on demand, which is going to be like a cable channel
that you could watch any you know, event that has ever happened or anything
like that. Yes, yes, that was the original idea for the for
the network. And if you listen to old Bruce Pritchard podcast, he'll tell
you yeah, like Vince wanted a physical network. So it's the nineties were
a very strange air like like they always parody, like, oh well,
Sean Michaels is on Aol dot com that used to be a big thing.
Yeah, it doesn't exist at all. It is funny how much technology and
everything else. WSW actually did a streaming listen perview on the Internet. There
was no camera. It was just you had to listen to it for five
dollars, just a different time. Man. Interesting, that's not how I
would want to spend my money. I can see why that didn't work.
Out the people did it? People did it? Yeah, so why don't
we wrap this up? The nineties are over, we're in the twenty twenties.
I'm almost fifty. You were a little baby. Now I'm twenty five.
Yeah you almost the man teeth oh man. But all right, so
we'll wrapping it up, guys. I will recommend if you guys want to
know more about this kind of stuff, definitely read the Titan trilogy, so
Titan Sinking, Titan Shattered, Titan Screwed. These books really have a good
insight on everything that was going on backstage, and there's some things that are
pretty gritty in here, especially about guys like Randy Savage and stuff. So
if you want to learn more about this kind of stuff, either talk to
us or start reading the book. Either way you can learn a lot.
Michael, you have any recommendations for everybody? Absolutely, Like I always say,
Death of the Territories is a great book and sexualized in Headlocks great book
too, of course, I mean, like big fan of Rick Flair's book,
but I'm a big fan of Rick Flair. Sorry stuttering a little bit,
But aside from that, you know, the one book I can't find
is there obviously not an autobiography, but a biography on Andre the Giant.
I want to read more about him because everybody has stories about it. But
well, also, Bruce of Brodie's book is probably one of the best books
I've ever written in my life, and it's it's made very, very digestible,
so when you read it, it's done by quotes of people instead of
reading in the format of paragraphs. It's very cool, so I highly recommend
that one. Aside from that, if you want to reach me, it's
at one four to four Captain on X and how about you, You guys
can always reach me at maintenance MeV. We can talk about wrestling, we
can talk about whatever. I don't really care. You know, hit on
my DMS. I really don't care. We can talk about whatever from wrestling.
If you have any episodes suggestions as well, guys, go ahead and
hit up either of us. We'd be happy to potentially give a response or
maybe just do it on the show and give you a shout out after speaking,
which Michael, do you have any shout outs for anybody? I don't
have anybody for this episode. There's always one shout out you know who it
is potential future answer. I love each Jetnifer. I love you with my
whole heart. So that's just Look, guys, I don't care if you
want to hear it or not. I love her and if you saw her,
you'd love her too. All right, guys, as always do something
nice for somebody you never know who needs it. And with that, in
the words of Memphis Mark, I'm out. Thanks for listening to the WWE
podcast. Don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast app so you don't miss
a show, or head to WWE podcast dot com and for all of these
shows add free head over to Patreon dot com slash WWE podcast. Until then,
we'll see you next time.