While I would normally honor the new WWE World Heavyweight champ (for more than 24 hours this time), Daniel Bryan for his glorious victory over not one but three former champions last night, I have decided to give the debut of the day to Brock Lesnar... the beast who conquered the Undertaker's Wrestlemania undefeated streak.
I'm not going to say if I enjoyed last night's match or not, but the streak ending was the last thing I thought would happen at Wrestlemania. But it is what it is, "The Next Big Thing" Brock Lesnar is now the 1 in 21-1 among all those other accomplishments he has over the years from Amateur Wrestling to Pro Wrestling to Foot-- to MMA.
Anyways, here's Brock Lesnar's first official WWF/E televised match at Backlash 2002 against Jeff Hardy - winner gets Lita's thongs. Excuse me, I mean the "2014 Hall of Famer" Amy Dumas's thongs.
Razor Ramon vs. Paul Van Dow - WWF Superstars (1992)
In honor of Scott Hall getting clean thanks to DDP and his yoga system and can now be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame. Looks like they'll be renaming it the Scott Hall of Fame... or, more accurately, the Thank You DDP for Saving Jake Roberts and Scott Hall of Fame.
Anyways, here he is as "the Bad Guy" Razor Ramon, oozing machismo for the first time ever on WWF TV.
Nelson Frazier, Jr., known by countless different names and gimmicks throughout his career, has passed away. Some of his most memorable gimmicks include: Mabel, Viscera, Big Daddy V, or "The World's Largest Love Machine" Big Vis.
Here's a match that depicts the mastodon just prier to his giant pajama run in WWE squashing the fitness guru and seducing Lilian Garcia the ring announcer. It also includes quite the .gif material:
For some, Nelson Frazier, Jr. will forever be remembered as that big guy on a mission that won the King of the Ring and kept hurting people, other people will remember him as that big guy dressed in all black and a white mohawk from the Undertaker's ministry, others will remember him as that big guy who really needed to put a shirt on in WWE's ECW, and others, like me, will forever remember the World's Largest Love Machine with the World's largest pajamas.
Bill Goldberg vs. Glacier - WCW Monday Nitro (1997)
Damn, it's cold out!
Here's the first of a few Golderg versus the coldest man in the world, Glacier squash matches. The Sub-Zero-like Glacier's snowy entrance takes just about as long if not more than the match itself.
Bret and Owen Hart vs. Well Dunn - WWF Wrestling Challenge (1993)
This week I was looking to see if there were any matches that took place on my birthday. This match between the Hart Brothers and Well Dunn (Timothy Well & Steven Dunn) was the closest match I could find that was at least aired around by birthday (dated November 14th). This match was probably one of the first times that Bret and Owen Hart teamed together on WWF television in a build up for the Hart Family vs. Jerry Lawler match at Survivor Series. You know, the Hart/Lawler match at Survivor Series that never happened. You know, that match that turned into the Hart Family vs. Shawn Michaels and a bunch of jobbers dressed as knights.
Anyways, he's a nice little piece of history from the first day of my life.
Battle Kat vs. Bob Bradley - WWF Wrestling Challenge (1990)
I guess you could say that Battle Kat's TV debut against jobber, Bob Bradley was less than purrfect, as Mr. Kat (played by Dean peters) never made if much further than this match and one more on Wrestling Challenge defeating Paul Diamond.
Still, I always wonder what could have been of the almighty Battle Kat.
Fun(ish) fact: Dean Peters previously played Brady Boone, a character that was originally the cousin of Billy Jack Haynes in kayfabe.
Dean Malenko vs. Chip Minton - WCW Worldwide (1996)
Dean Malenko takes on the "downhill scooter runner" Chip Minton in a Saturday morning squash.
Highlights of this short match include Bobby "The Brain" Heenan commentary and the solid ring work of Malenko.
Minton would later place fifth in the four-man bobsled race at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan and return to WCW much larger than before. Guess he was really ready to jerk the curtain some more.
The Blackhearts vs. Dave Hart & Mike Winner - WCW Saturday Night (1993)
The Blackhearts were a mysterious team to say the least. You may notice that these guys look a lot like another forgettable character that only appeared maybe once or twice in the 90's - The Black Phantom. If you did notice this, I'm really impressed and as it turns out, you would be correct - at least with one of them. See, The Blackhearts were a team made up of Tom Nash and David Heath AKA The Black Phantom AKA Gangrel. I have no idea who's who, but apparently Heath was called Apocalypse and Nash was Destruction. Of course, Jesse Ventura had no idea what their names were here during their debut on WCW television, so they were just referred to as Blackheart #1 and #2.
As legend has it, The Blackhearts, who started in Stampede Wrestling, were the bastard sons of Stu Hart. As for the screeching and weird hand gestures they would do, well, that's all apart of the mystery that was The Blackhearts.
Despite the constant plugging of Raw's 1000th episode last year, we did get to see Heath Slater, the super jobber of the WWE get squashed for a few by returning legends who actually looked in good shape for their age. Albeit there were some segments of rookie Heath Slater versus veteran superstars from the past that weren't all too great (sorry Lauper), but for the most part this was a relatively good concept.
On this particular Heath Slater squashing, the "One Man Band" would take on the returning big man, the man they call Vader - no stranger to this blog. But not only was this Vader's first match on Raw since 2005, no no no, this was Vader's first time seen on TV since before being in a coma for 30 something days in Japan, causing him to lose 112 pounds and to subsequently turn his life around. And while Vader has had countless surgeries on his knees and the rest of his body, he still could move in the ring with the lightweight rookie of Heath Slater.
Waylon Mercy vs. Bill Weaver - WWF Superstars (1995)
Waylon Mercy, played by a former NWA/WCW and WWF wrestler, Dan Spivey, was a character inspired by Robert De Niro's Max Cady character from Scorsese remake of Cape Fear. The character would be Spivey's last run in WWF as well as wrestling all together due to the built-up injuries that he had sustained through the course of his 20 plus year career. Spivey as Mercy only lasted a few months with one PPV appearance and a few semi high profile matches with Bret Hart, Diesel, and his former American Starship partner, Scott Hall.
The character of Waylon Mercy may be long since gone and went, but the wrestling portrayal of De Niro's Max Cady persona now lives on in Bray Wyatt, who is soon to make his debut in the big leagues with his "family" any day now.
Triple H takes out his raging aggression for Batista, who recently turned his back on Evolution (now just Haitch and Ric Flair), while the 400 pound superhero looks to avenge his fallen ally who had been taken out by the Cerebral Assassin a week before.
Let the burying began.
Minor fun fact: This is the match where Triple H makes that weird noise at the end when he holds up his World Heavyweight title and the sledgehammer - the sledgehammer he lodges into Rosey's gut during the unprovoked attack on the poor superhero after the match.
Justin "Hawk" Bradshaw vs. Bob "Spark Plug" Holly - WWF Superstars (1996)
Before becoming a wealthy Fox News bigwig with a white cowboy hat, John Layfield was a rough and tough cowboy with Yosemite Sam as a manager. The JBL that I'm referring to is Justin "Hawk" Bradshaw, and that Yosemite Sam character I'm referencing would be good ol' Uncle Zeb Cotler.
In Bradshaw's first match in the Fed, the relatively green Texan takes on Bob Holly, who at this point was not called "Sparky" but was no where near "Hardcore". Holly does a good job of getting Bradshaw over while Bradshaw showed that someday, say eight years from this match, he could have a run with the World title.
Bradshaw's time as Justin "Hawk" Bradshaw, while short, had a few high points including his eight second match with Fatu, his gimmick of branding his initials into his opponents bodies after matches, and his strap match against Savio Vega. I guess it's also worth noting that both Bradshaw and Jack Swagger have had Zeb (Dutch Mantel) Colter as managers and both had some sort of anti-immigrant gimmick. See: JBLKicksOutIllegalImmigrants.avi.
Hunter Hearst Helmsley vs. Marty Garner - WWF Superstars (1996)
Everything was going well and dandy in this 1996 Hunter Hearst Helmsley match against a ham & egger named Marty Garner to promote Helmsley's match against Jake Roberts in the opening round for the King of the Ring tournament. That was until the "Conneticut Blueblood" delivered his trademark finisher still used on a part-time wrestling basis, the pedigree to put away poor Marty Garner. Garner being the inexperienced rookie that he was mistook the pedigree as something else (like a double underhook suplex or powerbomb) and therefore jumped as if he was going to be lifted up and flipped over. The result: the deadliest looking pedigree of all time!
Marty Garner "fun" facts: He is good friends with Matt and Jeff Hardy as he got his start with them in their North Carolina wrestling promotion, OMEGA as "Cham Pain". He also wrestled as one of the Dupp Brothers in ECW as Puck Dupp and was The Rock's assistant in Walking Tall according to IMDB.
Oz w/ The Great Wizard vs. Tim Parker - WCW SuperBrawl (1991)
In honor of the new Oz movie coming to theaters near you, I present wrestling's answer to the classic tale of The Wizard of Oz: a young 7 foot tall and very green (both in attire and experience) performer named, yep, Oz.
If you are thinking this is one of those gimmicks where the wrestler behind the old wizard mask and cape was eventually phased out of television and never seen again, you would actually be very, very wrong. Yes, Oz flopped like most of Dusty Rhodes's wildly bad ideas, but the man behind the wizard gimmick actually ended up becoming quite the star in both the WWF and WCW after a few more failed attempts at superstardom. Turns out, Oz is one of Kevin Nash's earliest gimmicks in his first run of WCW.
Kevin Nash, like a lot of other wrestlers around his time, recovered from a lot of bad gimmicks to become big name stars. Nash might be the biggest success story as no one else can say that they had to play the wrestling equivalent of Oz: the Great and Powerful.
Hopefully James Franco will have the same luck as Nash and start getting good roles eventually. And hey, I never said Nash was any better at wrestling after this...
Also, why was Nash's manager Merlin the Wizard? This is a question a see a lot online and something that still baffles me today. Maybe the new movie will explain it...
But probably not.
Kinda fun fact: Timothy (Tim) (Britten) Parker is also the name of a stage actor who played Doctor Dillmond in the Broadway production of Wicked, a musical about The Wicked Witch and other pre-Dorothy Wizard of Oz themes.
Kwang vs. Ray Hudson - WWF Wrestling Challenge (1994)
In yet another attempt to package someone up as something they are not - as the WWF loved doing around this time - management decided to place Savio Vega under a "ninja" mask and send him off as a martial arts specialist, Asian wrestler. And while Vega did the best he could with the gimmick, including the green mist and having Harvey Wippleman in his corner, it just wasn't enough and he was soon phased out.
Phased out to become Savio Vega, Razor Ramon's friend of course.
Also, I'm aware that Savio Vega previously had a sort of "oriental" martial arts gimmick when he was TNT in WWC, but if you look at him there, were he actually got to speak his native language and show his face (just with facepaint on), it's a lot different than just being just dressed up as a ninja warrior with no character of his own.
Anyways, here's Kwang in his first match against a jobber named Ray Hudson according to Jim Ross.
After weeks and weeks of mysterious "Blood Runs Cold" vignettes on WCW, Glacier - a half karate, half pro wrestling Sub-Zero - finally made his over-the-top debut on WCW Pro against the card-playing, bad-better, The Gambler.
Glacier's debut, set back a bit due to the introduction of the nWo, featured blue lights, a circle of light in the middle of the ring for him to pose in, snow, and even an extravagant back story featuring a 400-year-old helmet and many years of "Kung-fu-y". All-in-all, Glacier's real purpose in life was to cross-advertise with the Mortal Kombat TV series, MK: Konquest which aired right after Monday Nitro (a very prestigious honor) on TNT.
Soon after Glacier displayed his amazing martial arts background (the reason "Sugar Ray" Llyod was repackaged by Eric Bischoff) with a few arm-drags and a top rope super-kick, a move we didn't see again until Sid Vicious tried it years later, the cold and calculative Glacier would make his first appearance on Nitro versus Big Bubba Rogers (Big Boss Man) in a feud that began due to Glacier's long-anticipated debut. The feud was scrapped right after Glacier's win on Nitro however and Glacier didn't do too much until the "Blood Runs Cold" angle featuring other Mortal Kombat-looking wrestlers in '98.
Personally, I always thought Glacier came out with his million-dollar entrance, an entrance only rivaled by Goldust's at the time in the Federation, wrestled this one match and never appeared again because there wasn't any room for him when Big Kev and Scott Hall were running the show. Turns out Glacier was around until 1999 and then for one more run in 2001 with Norman Smiley as Ralphus's replacement or something.
Should have named him Iceberg.
I guess Glacier's gimmick was so big it couldn't just be canned right away... Like The Great Khali.
Ted Dibiase's Undertaker vs. Mike Bell - Raw (1994)
Not too soon after Undertaker's demise at the hands of Yokozuna (with the help of Mr. Fuji's men of course) in the casket match at the 1994 Royal Rumble, The Undertaker would again resurface by his new manager, "The Million Dollar Man" Ted Dibiase. This Underatker was a little different than the last time we saw him however as he was now being controlled by money rather than the power of The Urn.
Eventually Paul Bearer would bring back the real Undertaker, now donning a sweet purple and black look, to destroy this impostor 'Taker and once again be WWF's only dead man.
Before The fake Undertaker or "Underfaker" took on The real Undertaker at Summerslam, he beat up a few jobbers on Raw to prove that he was definitely not the real Undertaker.
Mike Bell is the victim in this early sighting of The Underfaker played by Brian Lee who later wrestled as Chainz in the Disciples of Apocalypse (with a biker look before The real Undertaker did that too) and also as that guy who was pushed off a scaffold onto a dozen tables in ECW.
Mike Bell also wrestled in ECW under the nickname "Mad Dog". Bell can be seen in the film, Bigger, Faster, Stronger a documentary about drug and steroid abuse - a problem Bell had that led to his death at age 37.
For Lee, the whole Undertaker deal didn't work out after Summerslam, but he did get to play The Undertaker in a Bollywood film called Khiladiyon Ka Khiladi where he "kills" Crush (Brian Adams) in a wrestling match on top of a building(?).
I've also heard that Brian Lee is Mark "The Undertaker" Calaway's real life cousin and that he once had an affair with Calaway's first wife. Whether or not the latter is true, Lee is a real life cousin to the Harris Brothers (who also wrestled in DOA along with Crush no less).
Xanta Klaus vs. Scott Taylor - WWF Superstars (1995)
I couldn't think of a better match than "The Million Dollar Man" Ted Dibiase's desecration of Santa, Xanta Klaus (Balls Mahoney) taking on Scott Taylor - later known as Scotty 2 Hotty!
If you have yet to witness Xanta Klaus in action, I highly recommend you check out this match! I also posted it on my regular blog, Nostalgia For Tomorrow for my 12 days of NFT Christmas special!
This is proof that Balls Mahoney could actually do more than bash people over the head with steel chairs at some point in his career along with playing Santa's evil brother from the South Pole!
Another fun fact is that my swim coach back in high school also coached and was Scott Garland's (Scott Taylor/Scotty 2 Hotty) gym teacher back in the day. Garland was born and raised in Westbrook, Maine - not too far from where I live.
The Christmas Creature vs. Trey Keller - USWA (1992)
Before Glenn Jacobs found the perfect role for himself as "The Big Red Machine" Kane, this 7 ft tall individual had many unsuccessful and forgettable gimmicks including: Isaac Yankem D.D.S. (yes, the evil dentist) in WWF, "fake" Diesel (as WWF owned the rights to Kevin Nash's 'Diesel' character in the early 90's and could do whatever they wanted with it), and Bruiser Mastino (a WCW jobber). Jacobs even began his career as "Angus King", the name of my home state of Maine's senator-elect... But none of these personas can possibly hold up to the bad taste that was "The Christmas Creature".
The Christmas Creature was a gimmick given to Jacobs while he was with Jerry Jarrett's Memphis-based rasslin promotion, United States Wrestling Association (later owned by Jerry Lawler). And while Jacobs would eventually hold the companies' Heavyweight title in 1997 as the masked Doomsday, this first little stint as the red, white, and green tinseled-monster, was not as successful. I mean, he wins his match shown above against Trey Keller, but overall this whole evil-looking wrestling Christmas present has to be one of Jacobs' worst gimmicks to date.
Overall reaction to whatever this was: USWA was a development company that experimented with a lot of bad gimmicks. Gimmicks such as Ninja Turtles, Freddy Kruger, The Spider, The Candyman, and even Spellbinder (better known as that magician named Phantasio who only appeared once in WWF - he actually did fairly well in USWA). With that being said, it's no wonder that this creature from Christmas past was thought up and thrown together like so. For the other stuff that goes on before the Trey Keller squash - including Brian Christopher (AKA Grandmaster Sexy AKA Jerry Lawler's son) yelling about who-knows-what this week and Bert Prentice kicking Santa's fanny, well, this was USWA remember; there wasn't a whole lot of time or room for explanations.
