Too Hot For TV
A podcast dedicated to the expanded universe of your favourite franchises.
Too Hot For TV
S01 E13 - Destrucity
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In this episode Dylan is joined by Cam from The Conquistabores to look at the expanded universe of WWE/F. First up they look at the very first WWF home video 'Bloopers, Bleeps And Bodyslams', then it's an episode of the cartoon series 'Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling' and finally the first 2 issues of the Ultimate Warriors comic 'Warrior'.
Welcome back to To Hot for TV. We are the podcast that looks at all things expanded universe. Today, I'm jumping into the expanded universe of WWE, or WWF as it was at the time. And I can't do this alone, obviously. So I'm here with Cam from the Polish box. Hi Cam. Or actually, Cam from the Conquistaboros.
SPEAKER_14Yes, we're probably more apt of my uh for this one, of my two sort of podcast ventures. Yeah, I I am on the Polish box for my Doctor Whoisms and my Conquistabores for my wrestling side of things. So yes, it's it's the two bands, the two podcast families.
SPEAKER_03We said we were going to try and get through this without mentioning Doctor Who, and we've already failed. But that's the little I've just clicked in the back of my head, and I've just gone, oh no, I've just failed at the first hurdle. Never mind. Never mind. So look, Cam, you're here as an expert on wrestling, I would say. You have a wrestling podcast. We're in a WhatsApp talking about wrestling. You love wrestling. Yes. What is your sort of history and relationship with wrestling in general, particularly WWE?
SPEAKER_14My first exposure ever to any kind of wrestling, really, would have been when one of my dad's business colleagues, my dad was a hotel manager, so he always had these meetings with different people involved in the business. And one guy decided to cut one of the meetings once at the hotel and produce a VHS tape from his briefcase and hand it to me. This sounds dodgy than it actually was, right? But he said, and he said, Oh, this is that WWF thing, this is what all the kids are these days. You might like it. There you go, Cam. So off I went with this VHS tape, and what he'd recorded for me off his new fangled Sky Dish was the 1992 Royal Rumble. Which I was lucky in the fact that that's probably one of the it's it still remains the best rumble for me, to be honest with you. The serious star powers in it. I worked out within probably 30 seconds that I hated Ric Flair because the man was like a walking peacock. And I I'd I really, really liked it. It was big, it was brash, it was essentially like this comic books thing come to life. I absolutely adored it. And then he this business colleague of my dad's proceeded to then record pretty much every pay-per-view of 1992 for me and then hand it to me later. Nice. So WrestleMania 8, SummerSlam 92 in the UK from Wembley, that was about how I saw that. Yeah. And Survivor Series 92. And then about just before the 93 rumble, my dad decided to jump in and get us Sky in the house. So we had, and obviously in the UK at the time, you got the pay-per-views for nothing, because hey, we were British.
SPEAKER_03Oh really? I didn't realise that.
SPEAKER_14Yeah, yeah, we we didn't get any kind of like charge for watching pay-per-views until oh god, I can't remember now. I think it might have been even as late as like 2004-2005 when Satanta Sport were doing it.
SPEAKER_03Oh wow. So it was just free in the Sky Sports package.
SPEAKER_14Yeah, yeah, it was just in it was only Sky One and you know uh and Sky Sports, just normal Sky Sports. So obviously you were paying for access to Sky, but it wasn't as if you had to pay an extra 20 quid just to watch WrestleMania that year or anything like that. So I kind of did that thing, that stupid thing you do when you're a teenager. So about four years after that, '96, I was like, you know, when you get I was 15 and you were like, well, I don't really want to watch wrestling anymore because it's like pretend and that, innit? So uh yeah, and I'm into like girls now or attempting to be. And then um, so I kind of like I the Iron Man match at WrestleMania 12 between Brett Hart and Shawn Michaels balled the absolute tits off me. Uh so then I quit for four years. I missed the entirety of the Attitude Era.
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_14Yeah. And then there's a McFoley promo just before the WF started on Channel 4 in 2000. Uh, before the 2000 Royal Rumble, there's a Mick Foley promo where he turns from Mankind into Cactus Jack.
SPEAKER_03I know the one.
SPEAKER_14And has the whole thing the whole thing against Triple H with the kind of thing, you know, my f you know, my name is Cactus Jack, and the first point of order is to kick your teeth all over Chicago. And that was the that was me. And the 2000 Royal Rumble was back on Channel 4 for free. So I ended up watching that, and that's how I got back in, and I've been back into it ever since. Expanding out to I will watch WF, I will watch Old WCW, I will watch Lucha Libre, I will watch New Japan, Old Japan, Joshi Wrestling, I will watch the anything German, you know, like the 16 carrot tournaments they have each year in uh it's in Germany, in Uberhausen. I basically if there's a ring involved, I'll watch it. And it's absolutely it for me, for me, it's the the highest form of physical theatrical entertainment you can possibly get. And that's where I think people people approach it wrong. People look at it as a sport. Which you uh if you go into that, you're looking at it as some kind of competitive thing. Yeah. And that's not that. If you go into it as this is theatre, this is a story, this is a performance being told to me live, then it makes far much more sense.
SPEAKER_03I see it as like a soap opera almost, with a mix, as you say, there's re the storylines, there's different story threads that go for weeks in, weeks out. I mean, the bloodline storyline ran for about five years, something like that. It was yeah, it it changed here and there, but yeah, it was about four or five years. So you've got huge storylines and smaller storylines somewhere that sometimes they don't go anywhere, but that's the beauty of it, seeing the ones that stick and the ones that don't and the could have been. I once heard it described as being like alpha male drag, which I think is, you know, this big theatrical performance that these people put on with their entrances and their their their music. And then, as you say, once they get in the ring, you're just watching these incredible athletes do these things. And I know the old for the benefit of the listeners who may not be fans, it's not that it's fake, it's that it's predetermined. Everybody knows who's going to win. There are things that are rehearsed, there are things that are not rehearsed, and it's just a bunch of guys and girls doing these amazing performances that push their bodies to the limit and are at the worst a bit dull, and at their best, some of the most entertaining television or live shows you've ever watched it's absolutely fantastic, absolutely amazing.
SPEAKER_14And I mean it's it's as you say, it is this it's far more athletic than people give it credit for sometimes. Yeah. And I think a lot of a lot of people in Britain have this attitude that it's gonna be like world of sport, like giant haystacks and Big Daddy, which all respect to them, but you know, that was essentially two very large men shuffling around with us. And there's in comparison to what you can have now, there's this fantastic, you know, it it it's you know, there's flippy stuff, there's technical wrestling, there's out and out brawling that goes on, there's hardcore stuff, it's it there's there's d things for everyone in a wrestling show.
SPEAKER_03There's things for everyone. Absolutely. So my history with wrestling is a little bit more potted. I liked wrestling as a kid. I couldn't tell you when I first started watching it, but the big SummerSlam 92, I I was that era. But then a lot of the things I would get would be from the mid to late 80s, you know, because you get I'd only I didn't have Sky, so it was very much VHS that I got and my friends got, and inevitably they were the first seven, eight, nine WrestleManias. I know the first video I ever owned was WrestleMania 4, and I watched that to death. Not considered a great one, but you know, I know that I know that mania inside out. Like was that the double tape one? The double tape one, yeah.
SPEAKER_14Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it was the it was the it was the tournament, yeah, it was the 14-man tournament.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it had the big Battle Royal and some unknown or reasonably unknown guys it felt at the time, called Bret Hart, before he'd been given the push, essentially. But I'm because I remember seeing that and going, why isn't everybody going crazy for Bret Hart? And he was still like a bit of a a heel at that point. And I liked wrestling for a few years as a kid, and then I just walked away from it some point in the mid-90s and never thought about it again. And then about three years ago, my girlfriend said, Let's watch Glow, which is a fantastic drama based on a true story about the gorgeous ladies of wrestling. Girlworth Watch, whether you're into wrestling or not. It's a fantastic series. And I I was watching it going, God, I used to love wrestling as a kid. I'd love to see a bit of old wrestling. And one night I came in after a few sherries and put on the Royal Rumble 1992, as you mentioned earlier. Oh, yes. See, it's the best one. Which I I had seen before as a kid, and I just had a whale of a time. And I just started watching a few more matches, and then I think I messaged you and sort of said, Oh, I'm getting into wrestling a bit. What is there somewhere where I can watch the old wrestling? And at the time there was the WWE.
SPEAKER_14I remember this.
SPEAKER_03Yes. That had everything on, it's now gone, and now we've got a paler comparison on Netflix, but it's available to a wider audience. Yes, I can see what I'm doing. And I got back in in a massive way. I have in the last three years, I have watched thousands and thousands of hours of wrestling. I have a hard drive that is full of basically WWE from the mid-70s to now. I've got loads of WCW, TNA, ECW. I keep a spreadsheet of everything I've watched because it's there's so much of it. And it has consumed my not my every waking hour, but I watch, I reckon per week I watch somewhere between, especially if I'm working from home, somewhere between 10 and 20 hours worth of wrestling because I just have it on while I'm working from home. And then that's the old stuff, and then the newer stuff. I s you know, I don't watch it all. I mainly watch for WWE, I watch NXT. I'll sit down and watch that and give it my full attention and the pay-per-view. So this has suddenly taken over my life in a way that I was not expecting to. And as we record this, I've just come back from a wrestling convention for the love of wrestling, meeting wrestlers. So it's not just a passing interest, I don't think.
SPEAKER_14No, no, no, no, no. See, once it got once it gets you, it's got you. That's what I mean, you see. It's it's you know, it always stays there.
SPEAKER_03Being a fans of other things, you sort of follow the developments of it year by year by year, and when people pass away and things like that, and newcomers. And this has been like a s a system shock where I found out pretty much everybody I used to like is dead. They also had massive careers beyond the bit where they left WWE, and I just went, okay, that that's them done in wrestling now, I guess. And that there's all this all this new stuff, and there's so much of it. I mean, it's impossible to consume it all.
SPEAKER_14Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_03I I dip in and out of various eras, various things. I've watched all the WrestleManias, all the Royal Rumbles. I'm just working my way through most of the WWE pay-per-views and most of the WCW ones as well. I'm having a great time. Good. Good. See? Well, you should. Well, I'd be a fool if I wasn't when I was still going.
SPEAKER_14Yes, if you were if you were sitting there suffering it and gonna go to Jesus this again.
SPEAKER_03So today we're going to talk about extended media. So it's really anything that's not the matches. Whether you say the original format is them in an arena or them on TV or then on a pay-per-view, we're not looking at wrestling matches. We're looking at things that have been inspired by the the people involved. And the first thing we're going to do is a thing called Wrestling's Bloopers, Bleeps and Body Slams. Nah. The exact release date of this is unknown. But it came out at some point in 1985. It was the first WWF, as it was known then, video. Its catalogue number is WF001. But there was also a video called Best of WWF and Hulkemania released at the same time. So, what's happening in the world of wrestling at the time? Pay-per-view-wise, we've got WWF's own The War to Settle the Score. Bill Watts' Mid-South Wrestling debuts on TBS. Saturday night's main event debuts on MBC. The Wrestling Classic, as sort of tournament event, happened and was won by Junkyard Dog. And then on the 1st of March that year was the first ever WrestleMania, where Hulk Hogan and Mr. T defeated Paul Orndorff and Rowdy Roddy Piper. Notable WWF debuts that year. Terry Funk and Macho Man Randy Savage. Notable debuts in other leagues, but making their first appearances. Virgil. We all love Virgil. Oh, don't all of a bit of Virgil. Big Val Vader, Lex Luger, Chris Benoit, Sting, and the Ultimate Warrior. More on him later. More on him later, yeah. And the pilot episode for Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling program is taped at the Riviera Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. Which, you know, ties nicely back to why I'm here now.
SPEAKER_14The list you've given there is kind of testament to this period of time in American wrestling. Because, you know, that we had the territory system. For anyone that doesn't know wrestling in America anyway, they used to have what was called the territory system, which is basically like a collection, you know, each company would operate in like one or two, maybe three states, and that would be their territory. And, you know, it no other companies would broadcast in that area. It was all ruled by uh an organization called the NWA, the National Wrestling Alliance, who would decide effectively on whoever was going to be the champion of the entirety of America. And they would then be like loaned out to different companies. If one company was struggling, they would go, oh well, here's the world champion to visit, you know, your your league for like a month, and you can get the ticket sales off the world champion being in your territory. Vince McMahon was in the process of absolutely crushing that to bits, having bought the WWF from his dad. So they were based in New York, hence the first WrestleMania's at Madison Square Garden. Yeah. He was essentially stealing talent from other territories.
SPEAKER_03Which was a no-no before that, right?
SPEAKER_14Yes. It was a big no-no. It was a big kind of thing. You don't go behind the backs. And he'd promised, his dad had promised, Vince Sr. had promised the rest of the NWA that he would not be competing against them and would never try and take over them. And there was always this kind of like quiet, kind of gentlemanly agreement that existed between everyone that they were all just going to operate in their own pockets, help each other out when they need it, but not trample on each other's tour. Vince comes along, says, Fuck that, and essentially starts slowly crushing companies around him, buying them out when they were desperate, and then appearing on that week's television show, you know, when someone was expecting, like, you know, uh mid-south wrestling, suddenly they had Vince McMahon from New York on their screen, and it was like in a gone, oh god, what's this arsehole doing? And then that is how the WF came to be. They essentially trampled over everyone else.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And it becomes this massive organization from what we know now, but even like we talk about SummerSlam 92, which happened in the UK. Like it was everywhere at that point when I was a kid. Like you couldn't move for it. That Christmas, the shops were full of wrestling toys. And then, you know, later in the Attitude era, and it's hard to sort of say that like there isn't quite a comparison to like film or television of like just how huge this organization became globally, which was essentially like at one point a regional, a regional thing.
SPEAKER_14Yeah. It was a it was a regional backwater thing, because you know, uh wrestling was used to being in like dusty halls and sports auditoriums in front of probably an older audience, and as we'll I'll talk about later when we do other parts of this podcast. That was changing. And Vince, I think, was trying to make it into much more of a family thing, and was also trying to make it much more of a kind of like pop culture thing. Yeah. Which is why at WrestleMania 1 you get Cindy Lauper involved. Yeah. You know, because she was on MTV at the time. MTV was a relatively new idea as well. And that's what they wanted. They wanted wrestling to break away from that kind of like dark gym hall thing into this sort of, you know, multimedia entertainment product, which has worked its way to where it is today.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And they were the first ones really to do like big spectacle, weren't they? Like their shows had amazing lighting rigs and things like that, but and pyrotechnics and stuff. That so even if it was a dingy dark event space somewhere, they made it look amazing and bright and exciting, and made it look like Saturday night television, which is why you get Saturday night's main event and you get the the big pay-per-views like WrestleMania.
SPEAKER_14I mean, I see on Conquista Boards we did to do the review of the AWE Wrestle Rock in 1986, which I think was AWE's kind of dying breath attempt at doing their version of WrestleMania. But you can absolutely see where they it's night and day the comparison between the two, because they have nothing of the outside of wrestling, they have nothing of the pop culture. It's just basically all the people they have left. Now Hulk Hogan's gone.
SPEAKER_03Is that the one where it's in a bright stadium? Yeah. Does the cameras never really get near the ring and people come down to know music and so there's no aisle, they enter through the crowd. Yeah.
SPEAKER_14There's no only like two people get music. Yeah. They enter the ring. It's so it's still like kind of like the presentation hasn't really advanced. Yeah. They've just tried to put it in a much bigger arena. Yeah. And it it really just didn't work in comparison to like a WrestleMania 1, which was like this blockbuster event and present it as such.
SPEAKER_00This is Gorilla Monsoon, speaking to you from WWF Video Control. You know, when you have such extraordinary athletes as we do here in the world of professional wrestling, superstars that can literally fly in and out of that squared circle, and then take these same individuals and place them in a television studio along with their colorful managers, the result is not only action and excitement, sometimes it's absolutely outrageous. Here in the official WWF Home Video Series, which we've named Wrestling's Bloopers, Bleeps, and Body Slams, you'll be treated to a collection of hilarious surprises. Surprises that can only come to you from the stars of the World Wrestling Federation.
SPEAKER_03So this first thing, this wrestling bloopers, bleeps, and body slams. Now, I suggested this because I had I had seen this on Daily Motion, I think. I was just looking at the old Coliseum Video, or Silvervision, I think it was in the UK, released basically these compilations of WWF wrestling. And they would be a lot of them would be they'd essentially be clip shows apart from the big pay-per-views, but with, you know, there'd be new material by like one of the hosts or maybe even a wrestler or something like that, that sort of linked it all together. So this first video, and it is the first, what would you say it is more than like what what's the concept behind it? I know it says bloopers, body slams, etc., but it's not quite that, is it?
SPEAKER_14I think it's generally, to be honest, having watched the hour and is it an hour, 20 minutes, hour and a half minutes?
SPEAKER_02Something like that, yeah.
SPEAKER_14Something like that. I think it's genuinely an hour and twenty minutes of the continual examples of Vince McMahon's sense of humour. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Which is a very boisterous, some might say bully-ish, sense of humour, but he's been given a platform to share with an audience. I think a lot of the stuff's pulled from a show they had called Tuesday Night Titans.
SPEAKER_14Yes, it's on Tuesday Night Titans. Yeah. Or TNT as it got shortened to.
SPEAKER_03Which essentially was like a chat show with skits.
SPEAKER_14Yeah, it was kind of like Vince has a whole career of not wanting to be known as just the wrestling guy. Which is why you get this early doors. So it's like Vince trying to do this like chat show thing and you know, alongside Lord Alfred Hayes and do little segments of, you know, try to be like funny and ripping the mick out of various things and all this kind of stuff. They desperately tried to get it to be sort of something different because wrestling had at the time and still kind of does, have this stigma of being just for like, you know, Yeehaw rednecks. Yeah. Which, as far as American advertisers go, don't spend any money.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_14So this is Vince desperately trying to basically convince advertisers and sponsors that look look, this has got this massive audience. And if it requires them drawing them in with some kind of weird late-night chat show effort, then that's probably what he was gonna do.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. It's like the Today Show or Jimmy Kemmel or something like that, but with nowhere near the budget. So is it public? It's not quite public access television though, is it? It's it's it's like a step up from that. But yeah, production values-wise, it might as well not be. Yeah. Is it representative of what the WWF was at the time?
SPEAKER_14In the sense that well not for the matches, obviously, but for the for the characters. I mean, I what I was thinking when I watched this was it's a strange halfway house between I mean Vince buys the WF in 1982. This, as we say, is 1985, so he's had three years, but he's still got a lot of the people that feature in this, you know, your Paul Orndorffs, your Tony Atlas's, your Wilde Samoans, are wrestlers who were still involved in the territory system, still involved in the NWA. They are someone else's gimmick. Vince has not quite got the creative cogs going yet. We are five years away from Vince having a man wrestle who's supposed to be dead because you can't harm him. You know, we are two years away from Ultimate Warrior running down the ring, face paint tassels, shaking the ropes, and I say we'll talk about him more later. But what I'm saying is a lot of the guys that feature in this as wrestlers are essentially just like bloking trunks.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_14I mean, I'm not there's no disrespect at all to Paul Lorndorff, no disrespect at all to Tony Atlas, people like that. But that's essentially what they're presented as. It's like going, here's a wrestler, here's a guy, here's a guy in his trunks. That's it. You know, we're we're miles away from here's a wrestling clown.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. No, this is kind of stuff. There's two types of wrestler in this, isn't there? There is the guys in trunks and the people with some sort of ethnicity that's used as a gimmick. That's what it feels like. Yes. Racially a bit dodgy. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's a lot of dodginess in this. And I think it's quite interesting culturally where wrestling's at, where society's at as well, because this is being broadcast on on television. So someone somewhere is going, yeah, that's fine. So let's jump into some of the clips of the things that work.
SPEAKER_14Early Doors, we have the the romantic advice from classy Freddie Blassie.
SPEAKER_12Dear TNT, my husband and I enjoy TNT very much. However, it presents a problem. On the nights it's shown, my husband enjoys your show so much that he won't pay any attention at all to me after the show is over. Do you have any suggestions?
SPEAKER_13Yeah. He doesn't pay any attention to her, huh? Apparently not, no. Has a woman tried taking a bath? Using on your arm deodorant. Mr. Blassie, at least. Shaving under the armpits? Shaving her legs? You goofy bra, that's what you gotta do.
SPEAKER_12It doesn't say anything at all about that in here.
SPEAKER_13Well, he's not paying attention to her, so that's the reason why.
SPEAKER_12Obviously, the problem is TNT. That's the problem. He enjoys the show so much that apparently that's all he can do.
SPEAKER_13Well, he should enjoy TNT. But she's sitting there too. You ought to enjoy a little bit of her, too. Maybe his sheets are dirty.
SPEAKER_14Which, yeah. There's a kind of joke somewhere about how the people have to write in to, and it happens not just with Freddie Blassie. There's a few other segments for this kind of idea that go on later on with different people, like Lou Albano and things like that. And uh so it's like, you know, the first one with Freddie Blassie is my husband practices wrestling moves on me in the bedroom, and there's a lot of like kind of schoolboy snickering going on in the background. You know, and then you get Freddie Blassie, who just straight face kind of goes, Well, maybe the prod just needs hit. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And it's like, oh god. And then he's he's like telling them to take a bath and shave their legs and things like that, you know, to be a good wife. Somebody somewhere thinks it's funny. And I mean, it's amusing in a very sort of cringe way now. But yeah, bizarre.
SPEAKER_14It's very, very odd. And I what I noticed as well is the fact it was still in that age of wrestling where managers were a thing, you know. Yeah. Freddie Blassie, a manager, Lou Albano were, you know, a manager as well. And it's very much because, you know, wrestlers themselves, again, perhaps just came from the territory system, weren't used to television, yeah. So weren't used to staying in front of a you know TV camera and talking. So you would get like one person that could do that, and then they would look after, you know, five or six different wrestlers. And there's a lot of that goes on here, you know. Freddie Blassi will just talk with his distinctive voice, which fact fans from the later WF may remember from all the promo videos on the Attitude era at the start of the pay-per-views. That was Freddie Blassie's voice on that.
SPEAKER_03That was it, really.
SPEAKER_14Yeah, if you get any sort of pay-per-view from 97 about 99, when you get the opening video package, you get a deep voiced guy, you gotta go, you know, you know, who will stone call sweep. That's Freddie Blassie. Wow, it's the same guy.
SPEAKER_03You're right, because a lot of the wrestlers in this are really uncharismatic. They could not cut a promo in the way that we know it now to save their lives. Even someone like Hogan, who appears on this, isn't quite I know he's huge at this time, like they were in the full swings of Holcomania, but he he hasn't quite got the charisma that I I've known him from the promos for various pay-per-views over the year. Yeah. The set that they're giving this romantic advice from, though, is horrendous. It's like this weird grey wall, and it's like someone's just staple bits of like fabric to it, but it's like it's all scrunched up, and it's like there's to a lot of this, there's a real this all do attitude. Oh it's then bizarre that they've gone, this is the best we've got to show on our first ever video compilation.
SPEAKER_14It's just for the set, you're talking about the the cardboard love heart. Yes. That looks like that looks like something like, you know, it would be on a Valentine's card sent to you by someone you really did not want a relationship with.
SPEAKER_03The stuff I do like, I'm a sucker for a bit of Lord Alfred Hayes, who's this British commentator and interviewer, and he's genuinely dreadful, but in the most endearing possible way. There's various things where he's got to try. Hulk Hogan's new protein shake, the Samoans are making him some eat some raw fish or a fish's head. There's there's pizza making, and at one point he gets flour on his face, and Vince goes, Oh, you got some white powder on your nose. It's not the first time I've seen that, and everybody sort of sniggers because it's Yeah, I noticed that. It's like bloody hell. I d I don't know why, but I think of lots of those people doing Coke, but I've never thought of Lord Alfred Hayes as No.
SPEAKER_14But you I often think when you see Lord Alfred Hayes in these older videos, I often kind of wonder. It's like he's such a a kind of like upper class, British sort of like almost nobility about him, you know, as the name would imply, you know, that's his character. But it's a you kind of think, how the hell did he end up here? Yeah. At what point did he decide? It's just like, you know, oh, we just got this British guy in, you know, just yeah, we'll do occasional commentary, because he was on everything at that point in time.
SPEAKER_03I I'd love to know his life before wrestling, but I feel like sometimes Vince just sees someone and goes, That's the guy I need. There's those early episodes of Raw where they have that comedian hosting whose name escapes me, and he knows nothing about wrestling. And it feels like Vince just saw this guy like in the comedy club somewhere and went, You're the guy we need to take this, you know, to new levels, and he just doesn't get it. And I feel like there was a bit of that with Lord Alfred Hayes. Was he maybe he was a commentator on other sports or something and ended up in the world of sports entertainment, but God love Lord Alfred Hayes.
SPEAKER_14Oh yes. I also think in this he's he he plays. Vince needs a fall guy for his humour to work. Hmm. That's uh you said earlier on it was bullying, and it is. Yeah. Because every five minutes there's like, you know, he's the Vince egging Lord Alfred on to try the fish guts that the Wild Samoans have served up in this coconut shell. Or it's uh, you know, him, you know, talking about the white powder, him try to get to uh Lord Alfred to sample Hulk Hogan's python powder, which is an interesting way of putting it. When Lord Alfred Hayes was gone, Vince would go on and probably replace Lord Alfred Hayes with JR, Jim Ross, in this estimate. Because how the hell Jim Ross didn't leave long before he did, I will never know. Because this is a man who Jim Ross once had suspected bowel cancer, and while he was away getting this checked out, Vince had a whole angle on Raw where he had a like a plastic arse that he was then performing a colonoscopy on. Jesus.
SPEAKER_03I mean he he is smile, like Jake the Snape was dealing with alcoholism, and so they write it into the plot of his wrestling and somebody from who's it, Jerry the King Lola forcing booze down his neck and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_14Jake had agreed to do that segment on the provisor that the bottle contained cold tea.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, because he's a recovering alcoholic.
SPEAKER_14As he's a recovering alcoholic. They didn't bother getting the tea and they just gave it whiskey instead.
SPEAKER_03It's absolutely like like pro I mean, there are many stories about Vince, and there's a whole documentary series on Netflix that only sort of touches the sides, but well worth watching whether you're into wrestling or not. Indeed. That's kind of the good stuff on What about the bad stuff? I mean, perhaps the worst thing for me is there's a wrestler called Kamala who is supposed to be like an African tribesperson and he eats off-screen, but essentially eats a live chicken on air because that's what African tribes people do, according to the WWF.
SPEAKER_14Yes. It's bizarre to think that Kamala would still be in the WF in 1982. But anyway, when you look at the character of Kamala, he's actually at the AWA Wrestle Rock, like I said before, he's got a match at that as well. I think it's against Sergeant Slaughter, if I remember rightly. But it's like you look at that gimmick at the AWA, and it's literally just him with the Dino dressed in the sort of tiger skin, like cloth and this kind of stuff, with the spear and the shield. Yeah. And you think to yourself, wow, that's really racist. And then you get Vince going, no, wait, how can we make it more racist? Which in when he was in the WF you had him led by a white guy, Harvey Whippleman. And then you also had his handler, who was a guy called Kim Chi, who had uh a white mask on and a pith helmet, likely just got him out of the jungle. So yeah, this is probably it's it's really bad and it's so culturally insensitive, but it's it gets worse.
SPEAKER_03So Kamala, he's from the south, right? If I if I remember correctly, like in terms of his heritage. So it's also not a thing of like this guy reclaiming his roots or something like that, or his African heritage and using it as a powerful character piece. This does feel like culturally inappropriate, even though it's a black guy doing it, because he Yeah, it's it's not even anything to do with Africa. And ultimately the white guy in charge is calling the shots and going, let's do this, because this is what the you know African tribes people are like. Exactly. Exactly.
SPEAKER_14It's just cringe at best, downright offensive for worst. Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_03What else do we get in here? We get Lou Albano giving health advice. Lou, big dude, looks like a dirty, dirty man.
SPEAKER_14Yeah, Captain Lou. I mean, he's a man who's trying to make rubber bands in his beard a fashion choice.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, bizarre.
SPEAKER_14You know. And he was also riding on certain fame of being friends with Cindy Lauper, so he's in the Girls Just Wanna Have Fun video. Yeah. Plays her father.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, because that's the whole time of I mean, this is the rock and wrestling era, isn't it? And as you say, they were trying to get into MTV and things like that. And so the the there's a big cross over there. We get an interview with Andre the Giant where he says he's going to do the fish song and then just does an impression of a fish, which everybody finds hilarious.
SPEAKER_14Everyone finds absolutely hilarious and fools about laughing, which Okay, if you've got like a guy who's legitimately like seven foot and two doing like, you know, and has hands that could probably literally crush your head. Then you probably will laugh out of politeness if nothing else.
SPEAKER_03It's one of the least offensive jokes on there, so you know. Oh yes, this is true. This is true. I mean, we were talking about a lack of charisma. Andre imposing in the ring and has had a great career, but he's starting to wind down at this point because his sort of physical health isn't w isn't where it was. But he is not a charming man on the microphone at all.
SPEAKER_14No, not not particularly. He's very much to the point is Andre. I do feel kind of sorry for Andre the Giant because the the kind of touring from his career in wrestling absolutely did him in physically. It wasn't just the in-ring stuff that did Andre in, it was the travel as well, because airlines were not designed to facilitate a seven foot-two man who weighed north of about four hundred pounds. Yeah. You know, who just had giantism that was you know, he suffered from he he had you know, his body produced too much growth hormone. And you know, so that there was stuff like I mean there's always the story when Andre the Giant did the Princess Bride, which I'm assuming you've seen.
SPEAKER_02Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_14Yeah. You know, the bit of the end where he has to cat the princess, played by Robin Wright. And Robin Wright always tells a story that at that stage in his life, even though she is like a feather in comparison to him, he still needed a back support, he needed the back brace for the impact.
SPEAKER_03Wow. Then that's just bizarre. There is a real thing when you watch those sort of mid to late 80s and early 90s matches, you're very aware that this man is not doing an awful lot. They're trying to because he's a big star and he's he's their big he's their big bad guy in the company by WrestleMania 2, is it? I think when when's the first one?
SPEAKER_14Three is when he turns he turns heel at three. Yeah. Because he's it's he's got Hogan in the main event and he's WrestleMania four against Hogan as well in the first round. But I think from five onwards, I can't remember what he did at five. Is that the one where he's with Haku in the tag team and he doesn't really do much because Haku does all the work? Yeah. And I think by six he's pretty much done. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And those early Survivor series as well, like he is barely in the ring, and when he shows up in the rumbles as well, you just like his body is just screwed. And, you know, a lot of the people within this video and beyond the 80s and 90s wrestlers, they didn't fare too well, health-wise.
SPEAKER_14No.
SPEAKER_03But there we go. So we have got Mean Jean Oakland on the streets of New York. Who's he with?
SPEAKER_14Adrian Adonis and Dick Murdoch.
SPEAKER_11Hi, I don't know, Dick Murdoch. What do you make of it all? This is the big apple. Well, I'll tell you what, Gene, I don't know. My house, when I was born, we lived on 1,700 sprawling acres of land. I can't believe it. Is this is this Aunt Sophie? Hi, how are you today?
SPEAKER_06Very good.
SPEAKER_11Do you know Adrian Adonis, world tag team champion? No. Well, he grew up in this neighborhood. Have you lived here long?
SPEAKER_08All my life. I never saw him.
SPEAKER_11Wait a minute, Adrian Adonis. Do you know this lady? I thought this was Aunt Sophie, or maybe a case, maybe a case of mistaken identity. That's excuse me, that's quite obvious. Hold it. There's somebody up there. All right, get back in the house. Get back in the house. Get back in the house. Is is this somebody is that somebody you know?
SPEAKER_07Shh shh shh shh shh.
SPEAKER_11Hey, what is this? Just a second, sir. Hey.
SPEAKER_07Uncle Joe, is this Uncle Joe?
SPEAKER_11Is this for you? Uncle Joe, how are you doing today?
SPEAKER_07Terrific. Terrific. You look good. Be Vice President chase Manhattan in the morning, but I forgot which brand. Oh, he's quick in the morning. Oh, he's quick in the morning. It's good. He doesn't have to look for 53, does it? 53? Yeah.
SPEAKER_03That's quite a bizarre segment.
SPEAKER_14Yeah, it it's kind of like they seem to just walk around the place, try and order hot dogs, which they then ask if they are American hot dogs or have they been imported. They look fucking rank anyway. Yeah. It is not a sort of thing you go, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll buy that for a dollar. No. No, I will not. And it's it's they seem to just like try and pretend that they've come from this tough New York neighborhood. Yeah. At least I think it's uh Adrian Adonis is pretending that he's from this New York neighbourhood. I think Dick Murdoch's very much, you know, ah, country boy. Yeah. Throughout the whole thing. I don't know why they're together. But then you've got Gene Oakland once again playing this straight guy, just kind of going, Oh yeah, well, this is very strange. Look, there's people leaning out of windows claiming that they know you, and you know, it's obviously some crack den somewhere that it happened upon in some back street somewhere, and they're trying to sort of like make out that it was oh it's my family home. It's just so strange.
SPEAKER_03It's very odd. Especially when you see it all collected together here. I can imagine on a weekly basis, if you've got three minutes of this, you go, Oh, that was a bit weird, but then you've got a decent interview, a couple of clips from matches and stuff, and everybody gets their feel. But condensed here into one volume, it is bizarre. It's a real insight into how Vince saw the industry and what he thought was funny and his bizarre sense of humour. And that obviously it climaxes with a wedding. Yes.
SPEAKER_14Well, a wedding in inverted commas.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so it's not a real wedding. I did look just because it's not unlike the WWF, WWE, to bring people's real life partners in and get them involved in storylines, and it should be said, give them paid work, you know.
SPEAKER_14Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, the the the biggest wedding, as far as the WF goes, around about this time, maybe a little bit later on, was SummerSlam 91, which was Randy Savage and Miss Elizabeth, who were actually genuinely married years beforehand, but just kind of like renewed their vow, was it SummerSlam?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Because it was a good story.
SPEAKER_14Yeah, and that was it. That was the match made in heaven, and obviously the match made in hell was the main event uh Hogan and Warrior team up. But this wedding it's the wedding, if I remember rightly, of Mad Dog Vashorn.
SPEAKER_03It descends into like a food fight and then a sort of wrestle, like a as a bit of a fight, and it's in a studio that gets pulled apart, and people throw cakes around, and it's just a really shit bit of television.
SPEAKER_14It goes on for about 25 minutes as well. Yeah. The the joke is done after five minutes. You know, the once you've got George the Animal Steel trying to make a speech, but the joke is that he's an animal and he can't really talk. Lou Albano literally spends two minutes burping into a microphone.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_14Like the like your literal drunk uncle at a wedding.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. He plays that role well.
SPEAKER_14Yeah, if if if you if it was like a real life wedding, you'd kind of just put your hands delicately around and go, Do you not? Just want to go to bed now, Lou. Just just just get yourself up the stairs, back to your room, it'll be fine. The hotel staff are looking worried. There's a there's a there's actually a I think the politically correct term is small person. Yeah. But they w they would use the term midget during this who doesn't look at the camera ever. Yeah. There's a whole bit where he's got a microphone and he's trying to sing a song, but he's got his back to the camera, so you can't actually see who the fuck he is. Yeah. There's a moment where I can't remember the name of the guy who's the obvious heel in this who tells Vince to get stuffed, basically. Yeah. And he ends up throwing cake in Polvershawn's wife's face. Polver Sean is standing right next to him and doesn't give a fuck. Just literally goes, ah, yeah, no. Ha ha there we are. Wife's covered in cake now on their wedding day. You know, because women are traditionally obviously perfectly fine by having their wedding dress ruined on their wedding day.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. It's it's what they love.
SPEAKER_14It's what they absolutely love. They don't go crazy at all about that one.
SPEAKER_03Especially if you're marrying to the WWF.
SPEAKER_14Yes, yes. Also, as a side note, during the food fight, I noticed no one is throwing any cake at them Samoan boys.
SPEAKER_02No. No.
SPEAKER_14For people who don't know. Aren't in wrestling. Samoan wrestlers are widely regarded as some of the genuinely hardest nuts in the in the business. Like as in we'll take you in a real fight. So you know, the the wild Samoans get away scot-free with having milk thrown their way, because everyone knows if they did that they would be battered.
SPEAKER_03They will pull their eyes out. Yes. So the title is Bloopers, Bleeps and Body Slams. Now, I don't really think there's that many bloopers here. It's just live telly going a bit wrong, but also it's supposed to go wrong. Even like, you know, they bring a camel in the studio for hilarity with the iron chic, and no one seems to know what a camel is. But there's not even like a blooper where the camel shits on the floor or anything. Everyone's just going, God, it really smells. No, not really.
SPEAKER_12Alfred, um now. What what's your opinion of the of this animal? Well, firstly, there is a most peculiar aroma. Yes, I think we know what camel breath is all about. Now we see these rather protruding lips. Now, is this a normal-looking camel camel, or does this camel have uh some sort of growth or extraordinary? I think he's moving. I didn't mean to approve.
SPEAKER_05It's a very gentleman, camel, a lot even gentleman than soldier slaughter. Never a speed, never cheek. He's a very polite, very intelligent, whatever I tell him he'd do it. We go together, Jack, work hard. He kinda stayed three days, four days without water, without anything. That's because he is a tough vlog, the R on Sheik.
SPEAKER_03Bleeps. Yeah, sure. I'm I'm sure there's some swearing or something. Body slams. We get a minute amount of wrestling in this. Is there anything notable?
SPEAKER_14I think there's for like people looking back in the modern day and looking back at this, you do get a match where the Wild Samoans lose the tag team titles to Soul Man Rocky Johnson and Tony Atlas. Right. And the names might not mean anything to people I don't know much about wrestling, but Soul Man Rocky Johnson is Dwayne Johnson's dad. That's your kind of only real major connection to like modern wrestling in this in any great way, apart from Vince, obviously. Yeah. And a little bit of Hogan. It would have been nice to see the whole match, but no. Because we've got we've got camels to look at.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And there's the hilarious moment from a match where someone runs into Andre the Giant's bum and the crowd lose their shit over it. It's the funniest thing they've ever seen.
SPEAKER_14Yep. And it's a 10-man tag with no name, so you've no idea who the hell's in it. I believe they say It's like being hit by an 18-wheeler. It's like he's just literally ran into his backside.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_14That's all he's done.
SPEAKER_03I know what I would rather run into with if I'm going to choose a truck or a large man's ass, one that is going to be a lot more comfortable than the other. Yes. Is there anything else you want to say on this one?
SPEAKER_14I've I just wrote down here on my notes as like going, who exactly is this for? Because fans don't get anything out of it. The matches are only ever in highlights, so it's not as if you'll tune in for any wrestling action. It just feels like a lot of private backstage stuff that probably should have just stayed there.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, like the only thing I can think of is it for the dads. The kids enjoy the wrestling and the big characters, and these are the bits, the naughty bits that the dads like from Tuesday Night Titans. I don't know, but even so. Maybe.
SPEAKER_14Well, obviously now we have the whole thing that, you know, every single wrestler's got a an X account or a or or TikTok or whatever on Instagram, and that's how they kind of communicate to a wider fan base. Whereas this is in a time when K-fabe was still very much in vogue. You know, you you know, Kfabe is the name given to the art of keeping wrestling appear real to an outside audience. It's part of the deception. And you know, you would have had it still upheld at this point in time because these wrestlers would have seen, you know, the moment that an audience clicked on that it wasn't real, the worry was that the entire industry would fall down overnight and they wouldn't be making any money anymore. Which was a legitimate fear at the time.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_14Now obviously it's a you know, Kay Fab's kind of dead now. You know, it's it's seen as much more of a, you know, you're acting a role, and that's perfectly fine. It's like any other TV show or film. That this was probably your first example of actually seeing anything beyond them being in a wrestling ring?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_14Maybe. And that's maybe a kind of s sort of slightly special part about it.
SPEAKER_03I've seen a fair amount of the weekly shows from the era, and there are storylines. They're not quite at the point they'll be by the end of the 80s, but that you know, people are cutting promos and having feuds and falling out. But it's it's almost like this is the beginning of them bringing more, as you said, not just his gimmicks, but more personality to the the stars of the show to make them stars beyond just the the the athletes that they are. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So we must rate this as we must rate all things. Is it a clanger, a banger, or an average meander?
SPEAKER_14Gonna have to say a clanger.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it clangs very hard, but the reason that I wanted to do it is just because I think it is bizarre, but it's also showing the beginnings of like a company trying to become narrative focused in a way, and trying to find their place within the market that isn't just the sports entertainment and going more into the entertainment. And fundamentally, it doesn't work. It's a bizarre choice for a first video. I'm glad it came out with the best moments and a video on Hulker Mania.
SPEAKER_14Like, because they make far more sense, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03But there we go. The next thing we are going to look at is a cartoon called Hulk Hogan's Rock'n'Roll Wrestling, and a little episode that there's two episodes, there's two stories per episode, and these ones are called The Duke of Piperton and Robin Hulk and his Merry Wrestlers. This was first broadcast on CBS on October 12th, 1985, so same year as the previous ones. Have you seen the show before at any point in your life?
SPEAKER_14I had a bizarre memory of seeing this at one point. I think, and I this was on the WWE network. Yes, it was. So I seem to remember of sheer morbid curiosity. It wasn't this episode, but just watching an episode of Hoban's Rock'n'Wrestling, because it was there, and I was like, oh, you know, w when you had that moment of the WWE Network first coming out in like 2014, and you were a bit like, I've paid £10 a month, and this has got loads of stuff on it, and you watch everything. And uh this was one of my everything moments of just sitting there with a cup of coffee watching and kind of going, yeah, I'll watch a shonky 1980s animated cartoon about Hulk Hogan, why not?
SPEAKER_03So I can't say for sure when this first came to the UK, but it was definitely broadcast in the early 90s because I remember seeing some of it and being very excited that there was a wrestling cartoon, but also not knowing who half the characters were, because by say it was 92, the only person really still in the promotion is Hulk and maybe Piper at that point. I think Piper's still about.
SPEAKER_14Piper was hanging around in '92, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And even the videos I'm getting of like earlier WrestleManias only feature some of these people peripheral, like Junkyard Dog still about, but then then they don't feel like headline wrestlers at that point that they probably would have been when you were doing lots of house shows and weekly shows and things like that. So that they're all people towards the end of their WWF career in the 90s if they haven't already left. So I remember thinking it being a bit bizarre. And I mean, one of the criticisms of it at the time, and even more so in the in the 90s, is because of how long it takes to do animation, it doesn't keep up with the who are the good guys, who are the bad guys, you know? Not at all. We haven't said this, but we should say the good guys are called babyfaces and the bad guys are called heels. So and quite often a babyface does a heel turn, or vice versa. So this cartoon basically pitches Hulk Hogan's group of people together, and then Roddy Piper's group of wrestlers, and each week they have crazy adventures and get into all sorts of japes. Oh yes, oh yes. There was a couple of seasons of it. I'm almost certain I didn't see more than a handful of the episodes, and I imagine it disappeared pretty quickly and forgot and I forgot all about it. Is this a good cartoon?
SPEAKER_14I think you're trying to like measure it up alongside other stuff that would have been around at the time, or you know, before that. I mean, it it ain't no flintstones. That's all I'm saying. It ain't no it ain't no Jetsons, and it ain't as funny as anything Bugs Bunny's done. So Yeah Probably not.
SPEAKER_03No. It's cheap, tie-in, short. I can imagine kids loved it, but again forgot all about it. So the first story, The Duke of Piperton. Now, listeners may detect a slight Scottish twang to your accent. So Yes, slightly. This deals with your cultural heritage. It does, it does.
SPEAKER_14It could be seen as offensive. It's like we eat raw chickens or something.
SPEAKER_03So so what happens in this one?
SPEAKER_14Well, Roddy Piper, who let's face it, in real life was Canadian. Bless him. I mean, I'll we'll take him as a representation of Scotland, but he was he was Canadian. He ends up being told that he has the birthright to a dukedom in Scotland, and he gets a castle and the whole grounds as a result. And so the him and his heel bunch all Mosey on out to Scotland to claim this castle, including getting squished by the drawbridge at one point. And uh he then has to fight a knight in a jousting contest, which is later revealed to in a kind of weird example of 1980s misogyny when Roddy Piper loses, that he lost to a woman.
SPEAKER_08Besides, there's nothing to be ashamed about losing to a tough guy like you. Right now, Ruddy old boy.
SPEAKER_10Incredible! Roddy Piper has just lost to a girl. What do you have to say about that, Mr. Piper?
SPEAKER_03Shocking, absolutely shocking.
SPEAKER_14I know how dare he. What an insult is masculinity.
SPEAKER_03I know, such such a fantastic plot twist there. It's a bizarre little thing. It doesn't do much for Scottish accents, though, does it?
SPEAKER_14No, not at all. I was gonna say, Roddy Piper is voiced by Charlie Adler. Right. Who's also the voice of Buster Bunny in Tiny Tin Adventures. And he's also, weirdly, more recently, Starscream in the Michael Bay Transformers movies. Wow.
SPEAKER_03Well, look at that. That's a great career as a voice actor, to be honest.
SPEAKER_14Oh yeah, yeah. There's talent in this. There is absolutely talent in this to spare.
SPEAKER_03As far as the voices go. His particular voice, though, he doesn't even attempt to do a Scottish accent, it feels like, Piper. No, I he he doesn't even attempt to do a Roddy Piper accent. Yeah, which is even weirder. Because Roddy Piper's accent sounds like someone who has heard somebody do an impression of an Irish person and thought that's what a Scottish person sounds like. It doesn't really work, but at least he's trying to do something. I it's that Scotty in Star Trek thing of it's kind of endearing, but also someone coming new to it would find it offensive. But then the rest of the Scottish accents in this are shocking.
SPEAKER_14Oh yeah, they're absolutely terrible.
SPEAKER_09Good afternoon. You must be Ronnie Piper. Duke Piper, if you please. You must be my butler. Hardly. I'm the lawyer for your great uncle's estate. I'm sorry to say it, but you're not a Duke as yet. Your distant cousin, Ronnie Piper, has made a claim on the estate. In accordance with the ancient Piperton tradition. Ronnie has challenged you to do a jump. You mean the kind with horses and suits of armor? Exactly.
SPEAKER_08Winner gets the castle. No sweat. I'll cream him. And you guys can help me make sure of it.
SPEAKER_14Yes, they are that kind of weird, kind of almost like pre-Shrek Scottish accents. So just like that every single American actor seems to try and attempt at. Yeah. And you know, they really overload it and just kind of keep going.
SPEAKER_03I like that's laddie.
SPEAKER_14And it's oh no.
SPEAKER_03The problem is because you're actually Scottish, you make that sound too good.
SPEAKER_14Yeah, yeah, well, you know.
SPEAKER_03It's it's just gotta lean into it. It's offensively bad, and I'm not even Scottish, and I'm offended for the Scottish people. Well, this is yes, I'm saying well, you should be.
SPEAKER_14Independence now.
SPEAKER_03You were gonna say about the other voices in this, because there are some some good voices, aren't there?
SPEAKER_14There are some yeah, there's a there's a lot of going James Avery is the voice of Junkyard Dog in this as well, and people might wonder who's James Avery? He was the voice of Shredder in the 1989 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, but he's also Uncle Phil in Fresh Principelia. Iconic. Exactly. Hulk Hogan is voiced by Brad Garrett, who also voiced Eeyore in the live-action Christopher Robin movie with Ewan McGregor.
SPEAKER_02Oh, wow, fuck a bat.
SPEAKER_14Yeah. And he's also in weird kind of Ninja Turtles thing again. He's also cranged in the Michael B. Teenage Bit Ninja Turtles movies. So they I was just looking at it's weird how Ninja Turtles and Michael B.
SPEAKER_03seem to come into this a lot. Maybe Michael Bay was a young kid watching this and was just noting like what a great voice got.
SPEAKER_14And also going, why aren't more things exploding?
SPEAKER_03Now look, for a lot of people here, they're used to us doing sci-fi on this podcast, and this is not sci-fi. But the second story in this episode, which is called Robin Hulk and his Merry Wrestlers, involves time travel and going into the past where Robin Hulk, you can see what they've done there as Robin Hood and his Merry Men. Hulk Hogan goes to see Lou Albano's uncle or something like that.
SPEAKER_14Uncle's who's an inventor, and he and Lou Albano and Wendy Richter, who by the time this cartoon came out, by the way, had already left. The DF talking about it being out of date when it came out. They go and end up in his time machine.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_14Which is this big massive like metal tent thing in the corner of the room. And Hulk being the klutz he is, uh, ends up whacking one of the levers and ends up travelling back in time to Nottingham Forest and ends up doing Prince of Thieves long before Kevin Coster ever thought of it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, with an accent as about as convincing as Kevin Cosner's. Yes. So, you know, I'll go I'll go with it. This one's a bit more fun. I can imagine seven-year-old me being quite excited by it. Oh yeah. It turns out in the end that actually it wasn't a time machine, it was just an like an extravagant machine for telling the time. And like Hulk had just hit his head or something and had a dream.
SPEAKER_14It's the or or it's another one of those Hulk Hogan stories that he seemed to be, you know, true in his own head, but you have to kind of let any kind of like scrutiny it falls down on. It's maybe the same machine that made when he made that claim that he wrestled 400 nights a year one year, because he was going back and forth in America and Japan and he lost time. Yeah. And was sometimes wrestling three times in one day as a result of the flights and the time difference. So it's maybe the same thing. It's maybe Lou Albano's uncle's time machine that got in there.
SPEAKER_03While we're here, let's talk about Hulk Hogan and Hulker Mania, because he's the the lead face of this, he's the lead name, and he's he was everywhere in the 80s and up to sort of the mid-90s. He was like he has he has a good decade run, I think, as the face of wrestling, even when he's gone to other promotions and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_14I think it's fair to say from an outside point of view, yes, Hulk Hogan was from 84 through to probably 91-92 at the height of his Hulkomania popularity.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_14Wrestling fans themselves were kinda sick of his shtick. To go back to the 92 Rumble, it was the first example when you look back on it, of WWE sweetening the sand. Because when Sid Vicious pulls Hogan over the top rope and Flair eliminates him live, the crowd absolutely go mental and celebrate.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_14Whereas obviously that's not what the WWF wanted to put across, they would thought, you know, hero Hulk Hogan. So they had to dull the sound down for all the cheering that was going on when Flair went. People were ecstatic that Flair won, even though it was supposed to be the heel. Hogan would then leave the WWF in '93. His last match in the WF was at King of the Ring in 93 against Yokozuna, where he couldn't really be bothered doing any live promo promos to hype the match because he was too busy filming Thunder in Paradise.
SPEAKER_03Great. That and Suburban Commando, top two.
SPEAKER_14Yep, yep, yep, yeah, yep. A big massive boat. You know, him and his mates in a big boat with guns on. And then he leaves famously for WCW in '94, which was a big coup for WCW at the time. WCW then spent effectively two years trying to just do the usual Hulk Hogan formula of we will sign Big Badman and Hogan will then be brutalised by Big Badman, but will then come back a few months later and beat him in a match straight and clean, and so who cares? Yeah. Rinse and repeat. It does lead to a triple decker cage match with him and Randy Savage.
SPEAKER_03One of the worst matches all time.
SPEAKER_14Yeah, it's awful. It's oh god, what show is it? Is it Falball 95?
SPEAKER_03Uh WCW uncensored in 1996. 96, right, okay, Christ.
SPEAKER_14Only a few months after that, at Bash at the Beach 96, Hulk Hogan turns heel and ends up leg dropping Randy Savage and becoming the third band alongside Scott Hall and Kevin Ash in the new world order in WCW. Which, looking back, I don't think people will realise how much of a big deal that was in wrestling at the time.
SPEAKER_03I'm going to I'm going to disagree with you slightly there, in that so my view of Hulk Hogan was the outsiders' point of view. Not the outsiders, but you know. Yeah. So coming back to it a few years ago and actually seeing his decline, which I hadn't noticed as a 10-year-old, and then finding out his career continued into WCW and going, oh, this is alright, but not as good. When I watch that heel turn, it remains, I think, one of the moments that really grabbed me and made me go, I need to know all about. So I I think it still stands the test of time as like a shocking moment. And for the like, there are ups and downs of the NWO that's formed out of that from there, and it goes on far too long. But there's there's key points in that timeline, and it's a great reinvigoration of Hogan's career as a heel because it's just him as a person, you would think he'd never actually want to do it.
SPEAKER_14No, he didn't. He didn't. That's that's the story. He would they they had to have Sting ready on standby to do it. Yeah. Just in case Hogan packed out. He was so Hogan was so paranoid about if he turned heel, he would lose merchandise money from his from his t-shirts and uh sales and things like that, and any other merchandise he was doing, which was a lot, then he would probably, you know, he he was worried that all that would disappear overnight because he'd be the bad guy, and who the hell would want to buy a t-shirt for the bad guys. Yeah. But as it was with the NWO, it it was believable as well from the point of view that Kevin Nash and Scott Hull had recently come across in the WF. Yeah. So they when they were talking about they'd brought a third guy with them, it made absolute sense for it to be another guy who came across in the WF just before they did. And that's what and it it it meant that Hogan had this massive boost to his career of being you know, he turned heel for the first the mainly the first time. I think he dabbled in it beforehand before he was famous. And it was this it was a moment of absolute shock that you know he'd he walked at the ring, looked like he was gonna save you know WCW guys from a beatdown, Randy Savage on the deck, Scott Hall and Kevin Nash vac vacate the ring, and then Hogan just leg drops Savage, and then Hall and Nash come back in the ring, high-five him, and then that's the end of your Bash at the Beach 96.
SPEAKER_03And it's just the last five, ten minutes is just people throwing rubbish and bowling this this cascade of garbage. It's like the the audience want to hurt him, they are so shocked and so disappointed. It wouldn't be the last time that audiences are disappointed with Hulk Hogan, though. Oh no, no. Because from from there, like WCW carries on and on and then until it's eventually brought up by WWF, WWE by that point, Hogan goes back to. WWE has another run that isn't that exciting, but there's some there's some moments, and it's very much trading off the nostalgia, so it's him versus some of the big stars of the Attitude era. And then he I think he heads off to TNA, and that's where his career sort of ends. But in in that time, the internet happens and interviews happen and leaks of various things happen, and it just becomes apparent that Hulk Hogan is a massive prick. Oh yeah, without a doubt.
SPEAKER_14Even when you watch like Hogan Knows Best, the sort of weird Osborne's riff they tried to do for sort of like, you know, behind the scenes of the family. There's incredibly weird and creepy moments, you know, getting very, very, very overprotective about his daughter. Yeah. And who she happens to be going at with at the time. And I mean you'd love to think that that was played up for the cameras for a sort of flying the wall document with the family, but no, I think that was genuinely the problem. You know, it's it's you know, applying Suntan Lotion to his daughter's legs. Yeah. Which is a bit I I'm sorry, I beg your pardon. You know, you know, and he was also over, you know, taped when Brooke Hogan was going out with an American basketball player who was black. Hogan was rather famously picked up on a microphone, giving it the N-word. Yeah. And when he was found out and asked about this, he essentially tried to excuse it by saying, Oh, but that's what everyone in the wrestling business called them when I was coming through. So as if it's like kind of gone, oh well everyone else did it 20 years ago, so it must be okay.
SPEAKER_03It's just like, no, mate, it's really not. And from there you get a sort of spiral down of he comes back to host some WrestleMania's and is again they have to mess with the audio because he's getting active booze. Obviously, he's a big Trump supporter, and then he passes away last year with a legacy sort of in tatters, and his last appearance was on the first Netflix on RAW, where he's promoting his beer. And you know, it's a good idea for the Netflix generation of this new Netflix launch to go, remember this guy from this era and this guy from this era, which is what they do. But Holt is booed to fuck on it, you know.
SPEAKER_14He is out of the building, absolutely booed out of the building. And Jimmy Hart, bless him, has to stay he's stand there and try and take the bar off.
SPEAKER_03And you know, we get other people from the past show up, The Rock shows up and is loved. We get Undertaker show up and you know, he gets a big pop. Ticker's a massive Republican as well, he's a massive margahead and all.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_14But he doesn't turn up to Trump rallies. He's kind of he's smart enough to know that that might damage his his his career somewhat. So he just kind of quietly becomes a bit of a prick. Whereas Hogan was outright a prick.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. It's not just his politics, because we can all agree to disagree on politics and what we support and this, that, and the other, but he's a he's a liar and a bigot, ultimately. And he has screwed over so many people throughout his career. And that was my biggest shock coming back to it, is going, because when I was 10 years old, Hulk Hogan was my hero. And I thought he was amazing, and I still I still love Pete Era Hulk, and I still love hearing his theme tune, and I I love the WCW stuff he does. But when you learn about the man, you're like, oh, for fuck's sake. That was the biggest shock.
SPEAKER_14I often think that Hogan. I mean, wrestling as a as a business, more than anything else, is such a blend of reality and fantasy. You know, the the line of the two is very, very wavy and thin sometimes. And Hogan, I think, was this the one of the biggest examples of his character overtaking his actual persona.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_14You know, how much I think Hulk Hogan was a much, much bigger entity in his head than Terry Bolea was.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_14And they, you know, he much, much preferred being Hulk Hogan. And if that meant telling some outlandishly stupid story that is no way real and can easily be sort of, you know, you know, crumbled under any kind of scrutiny, then so be it.
SPEAKER_03And there's there's little white lies you can tell to sort of propagate your character. Like when he says things like, Oh, Elvis was a fan, it's a load of bullshit, but I don't mind it. But it's when you stack that up with other things that that uh especially sort of affected other people's careers, then you go, oh no, it's just in in a long list of lies. Because actually, like a Hulk Hogan saying Elvis was a fan is quite funny, you know, I'll take that. Elvis died three years before Hulk Hogan made his wrestling debut. Exactly. But at this time, back in 1985, he was a huge star and he led those first few WrestleManias, and the crowd would offer him. And when I've watched loads of old wrestling as Saturday night main events and things like that, even though it's a smaller crowd, there's almost a bigger pop for him because just everybody goes nuts for him, and he is a star and he capitalises on that sort of all-American feeling, that wholesome patriotism that America loves so much to this day. And it it's a huge energy, and it felt like such a great Hulkamania was such a big thing in America and and across the world, you know. Like I went to see wrestling in like '92, '93 in Birmingham. He wasn't there, but it was full of those foam fingers that said Hulkamania on there, and that's what I walked away with. And the cartoon was just a symptom of it. Like as the rock and wrestling era and Hulkermania entered the mainstream, they took these bizarre characters and turned them into a cartoon, which was a bit of fun for the kids. I don't have a huge amount to say on the cartoon, which is why we've mainly talked about Hulk. Have you got anything else in your notes?
SPEAKER_14I think again we we go back to the idea that this was Vince trying to essentially make wrestling acceptable for, you know, maybe like, you know, for families, basically. You know, they wanted to get the kids, the young kids, involved, which is why sometimes his brand of wrestling became quite cartoony in a way. You know, it wasn't like you know the blood and guts of the NWA and you know the you know the series competitions, you know. Roddy Piper never had a dog colour match with Greg Valentine that ended up with both of them bleeding like stuck pigs in the middle of a canvas ring in the WF. That was in the NWA. Yeah. You know what I mean? So that wasn't, you know. So there was that, and I think this like, you know, this cartoon is kind of like it's that. It's trying to get the kids to like go, oh, you know, this the wrestling thing looks really, really cool. Let's go watch it when they're next in town, and then they all go as families.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_14There's been a lot of criticism recently about ticket prices in the WWE, and it is horrendously expensive now. You know, in the last 10 years, I think WrestleMania tickets have been in are now like five times what they were initially ten years ago. And a lot of people have kind of whispered that, you know, as m as as shite as a human as Vince is, as we know, there's an element of Vince wouldn't have done that and put the prices up that much pre-the-TKO takeover because Vince knew that families were kind of the lifeblood of it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_14And if you can't afford to take your family to like Monday Night Raw or SmackDown or WrestleMania when it's in town, then who's wrestling for? Yeah. So from the point of view of being a promoter, Vince kind of got that part. Yeah. And this I think is an early part of that. It's Vince trying to again expand those boundaries of wrestling and get it away from maybe sort of like, you know, crusty old fans that were still sticking in, you know, the beer-stained walls of the Dallas Auditorium or whatever. And actually, you know, making it this vibrant thing that, you know, kids want to take their families, you know, parents want to take their kids to because the kids have knacked them about it.
SPEAKER_03And it still is, like, even if it isn't affordable, like at that wrestling convention at the weekend, there was, I would say, 30% of the audience were under 16 quite easily. And there was loads of kids in like cosplay and stuff like that. So and they were there with their mums and dads who had wrestling t-shirts on. So it was the whole family. Yeah. There, it wasn't just a bunch of guys who liked it as a kid and still like it. Like it is a a family activity, and I think, as you say, this is sort of where it starts. Exactly. So we must rate this cartoon. Is it a clanger or a banger or an average meander?
SPEAKER_14I mean, it's not it's fun for what it is. It's not like, you know, anything outrightly offensive. I had a bit I I had fun watching it, and it was alright. So I would say, you know, an average meander.
SPEAKER_03I think it's an average meander too, because even if I was a kid, as much as I would have enjoyed it, I wouldn't have thought, oh my god, this is up there with my favourite He-Man and Thundercats cartoons.
SPEAKER_14It's no way is it like even it's not a ninja turtle level. Yeah. It's nothing to do with that. It's not even samurai pizza cats. Do you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_01It's just, it's it is what it is. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So the final thing we're going to look at today is a comic book called Warrior, written by the Ultimate Warrior. We're doing the first two issues, which were published. The first one in January of 1996. The second one, maybe February. I can't quite find a definitive release date, but then there were some sales figures that said the next month, so I'm assuming that is February. It's from Ultimate Creations, which presumably was Warrior's Company. As I said, we're in 1996, so at the time, the Royal Rumble happened with Shawn Michaels winning. WrestleMania 12 then had Michaels beating Bret Hart. The aforementioned WCW uncensored where Hogan and Savage defeated a fuck ton of wrestlers in a doomsday cage match, with which is dreadful. And ECW are riding high with their monthly pay-per-views. And the big debut of the year was the rock. We're in a whole different era now. We're 11 years later, and a lot's happened. Rock and wrestling is dead. Hulkemania is basically dead. It's the time of the NWO. We're in the new generation, is it?
SPEAKER_14Yes. You've you've also the the one big thing about 96, I don't know if you mentioned it there, was the King of the Ring that year was won by uh a certain guy called Stone Cold Steve Austin. Of course, yes. When he wasn't supposed to win it, but he he he got it, he got the nod to win it because the original person was going to win it was Triple H, and he was the only person left who they could punish for breaking K Fab in Madison Square Garden because Shawn Michaels was it's when Shawn Michaels and Triple H Scott Hall and Kevin Nash hugged in the middle of the ring in front of a live crowd. Yeah. Which doesn't sound like a crime, but when they've been portraying like uh you know bad guys, uh, you know, and good guys equally, you know, it's uh they're not supposed to be friends, suddenly they start hugging. Because if Hall and Nash have gone to WCW, Shawn Michaels was world champion and was basically having fits and of like little toys out the prowl moments every single five minutes. So they had to punish Triple H. And it meant he didn't win the King of the Ring, Stone Cold did, and it was the infamous Austin 316 said, I just whooped your ass.
SPEAKER_03Yes, which sort of signals the beginning of the Attitude era. Not quite, but we're sort of we're sort of on on the on the eve. But what has happened in that time previously is there's been another big star to come and go from WWE and also make a return in 1996, and that is the ultimate warrior.
SPEAKER_11All right, ultimate warrior, ultimate warrior, you've heard from Andre the Time and Bobby the Brain Heenan. They believe, they believe, warrior, that they had the advantage of this intercumbent. They believe that you hear the junk.
SPEAKER_06The colour's breed. The warrior only breeze! The air of the brave and the warrior, only feast on the front of victory!
SPEAKER_03Nah, as a kid, I thought Ultimate Warrior was amazing. Like, yep, he looked cool, he was vicious, he did amazing promos, he was a warrior, and again, coming back to wrestling and suddenly going, A, you're not very good at this, and then B, finding out he was a total prick. Yes. So I mean, yeah, what was he like as a wrestler and indeed a person?
SPEAKER_14I mean wrestling has this whole thing of being very much a combination of athletic ability, as we said at the start, and an ability to tell a story, but also charisma and a defined grip of the portrayal of the character that you're doing. And sometimes people fall more on one side than the other, or do two of those without being so much on the other one. You know, whereas like I'd say Bret Hart is a fantastic technical wrestler, but sometimes Bret Hart's promos were a bit nervous. He didn't see he didn't come across as very, you know, uh, you know, as a kind of guy who, you know, much charisma in him. Warrior, I would say, Almore Warrior would I say would be the exact opposite. Promos, actual character, my god, the guy was amazing and absolutely leapt out of the screen at you. Actual wrestling ability, not so hot. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Not great. And dangerous to a point, like other wrestlers didn't like wrestling with him, right?
SPEAKER_14No, because he was To use the wrestling vernacular, he worked snug. Which basically means he wasn't within anything. He would legit occasionally accidentally punch you in the face square on. And that's why a lot of res Bobby Heenan, to his dying day, still said that Warrior, James Helwig, to give him his real name, it was the root cause of his neck problems that Bobby Heenan had consistently. Him and Warrior and Bobby Heenan had a lot of which sounds weird because Bobby Heenan's not really a wrestler either. Warrior and Bobby Heenan has a lot of matches, like comedy matches almost in like the late 80s. Yeah. Where uh if if Bobby Heenan lost, he had to dress up as a weasel and all this kind of stuff, which he was nicknamed the Weasel, so that's what happened.
SPEAKER_03It made it onto a pay-per-view, I think, but it's a bunch of house shows and some of the more sort of weekly shows, it's it makes it onto those as well, doesn't it? Like it's something I've seen a few times sort of going through it, and it is bizarre.
SPEAKER_14Yeah, and there's one occasion where Warrior lifts up Heenan for a gorilla press, which is literally just picking someone up and pushing them above your head and then just dropping them. And apparently he just always did that. Heenan was apparently always telling him, Don't do it too high, just just above your head and drop me. Don't like launch me. And every night Warrior would apparently just launch him into the air. And Heenan had to kind of like like bump face first, which he maintains screwed up his neck, something wrong. So he always blamed Warrior for messing up his neck. So yeah, he he was occasionally a liability.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And ultimately he's fired from the the WWF, right? Or the WWE. The first or the second time?
SPEAKER_02Well, both.
SPEAKER_14Both. Well, uh yeah, it's i if mmm yeah. If you want a potted history, shall I give a potted history with all the potted history, yeah. Okay. Uh he debuts in June 1987 in the WF as the Dingo Warrior, which is the same name he used in in the territories. Uh he spends three years wrestling with Rick Rude, Honky Tonk Man, and Bobby Heenan. There's a moment where he's then charged up into the echelons of the uppercard, and I think it's mainly he wins the Interconnetal title against Honky Tonk Man at SummerSlam in like a record 22 seconds or something like that, ending Honky Tonks near 400-day reign as IC champion. And then that's when he starts, you know, he has the main event of WrestleMania 6 against Hogan, which is Interconnectal Champion versus World Champion. There's occasional moments where he has he he then has like a lot of feuds with like the bigger guys, like your undertakers and things like that. Yeah. There's one fantastic quote I found here from uh Percy Pringle, wrestling fans might remember as Paul Bearer in the WF, uh, the manager of The Undertaker. There was an angle that they filmed when they locked Warrior in an airtight casket on the funeral parlour. Percy Pringle says, We had to drill holes in the casket he was locked in as we didn't want him getting any more brain damage. He'd had enough of that as it was. So he has a bit of a rep, to be fair to him. Famously, before SummerSlam 91, he becomes one of only two wrestlers in history to hold Vince McMahon up on the same night for money. He demanded a contract of $550,000 a year, travel expenses paid, accommodation paid, and a larger percentage of merchandise takings. Now, to give anyone the context, WWF wrestlers to this day have to pay for their own travel and their own accommodation. And their own health insurance.
SPEAKER_03Wild.
SPEAKER_14America. Vince initially agrees to this purely because he's booked Warrior to team with Hogan against Slaughter and General Ardan and Colonel Mustafa, the batch made in hell at SummerSlam 91, so he has to put him on for the show. He can't have Hogan on his own. He basically says, I won't go on unless you Yeah, he basically says I ain't doing it unless you get all this. So Vince has to agree to it. After s right after SummerSlam 91, Vince suspends Solomon Warrior for essentially holding him up for money. Warrior does not accept the suspension and he resigns. Vince does not accept the resignation because he's still under contract until September 1992. So there's this weird impasse that goes on between the two of them. Hogan makes noises about leaving wrestling and doing movies as of 1992. WrestleMania 8 was actually broadcast at the time as Hogan's last match and his retirement match at WrestleMania 8 against uh Sid Justice. There's a gap at the top as far as baby faces go. So Vince asks Warrior to come back. So Warrior, that's why Warrior is the surprise running at the end of WrestleMania 8. He gets a match against Randy Savage at SummerSlam 92 at Wembley. He's then due to team with Savage to face Ric Flair and Razor Ramon at Survivor Series in 1992. But then the steroid scandal is hanging heavy over Vince at the time. Yeah. And one of the people who is in the main user of human growth hormone in the locker room at the WF at the time is Ultimate Warrior.
SPEAKER_03You would never think it to look at him.
SPEAKER_14Yeah, I know. It's insane, isn't it? It's weird. But yeah, although he did look a lot thinner when he came back in some uh WrestleMania 8, it's he's still a big guy. That's the reason why Vince spends him again. Right. And then Warrior basically says fuck off and then like walks away. You know, doesn't really want to come back after that. The Warrior founds Warrior University in Arizona, which runs from 92 to 995. Now, when we were talking before this, I originally thought this was some kind of weird kind of like course about in life improvement and all this kind of. No, it is down as a legit wrestling school.
SPEAKER_02Right, okay.
SPEAKER_14Which is like nuts to consider that he thought he'd be able to teach wrestling. Yeah, I know.
SPEAKER_03Nobody that qualified from there ever had a career in wrestling.
SPEAKER_14No. I th I just put on the notes here. There's no evidence of anyone graduating from it. In 1999, he had a career as a conservative speaker.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, this is where it gets a little dark, isn't it?
SPEAKER_14Yeah. During one occasion at the University of Connecticut, he announced to a room full of students that queering doesn't make the world go round. Which is a take, I suppose. He is effectively kicked off campus at the time. And I have a quotation here from Flynnfiles.com. It's dated May the 30th, 2008. And this is Ultimate Warrior. Jim Helwick. I define conservatism literally. It's about preserving those things that have worked through time. This begins with a sustaining tradition that people need to think and provide for themselves. People who who think make the world work, not those who feel. Wow. Yeah. Feelings for losers. Feelings for losers.
SPEAKER_03I mean he if he was about today, he'd be like an probably not quite as extreme, but an Andrew Tate sort of figure in terms of it. Oh, absolutely.
SPEAKER_14I mean, you see he has a he had a YouTube channel as well. He's one of the sort of earliest kind of instincts. He does grip on the internet quite quickly. You know, it's in uh he's got his own website in about 97, I think. And he's he does have his own YouTube channel fairly early doors, about 2007-2008.
SPEAKER_03Drops a lot of warrior wisdom on it, doesn't he?
SPEAKER_14Oh yes, yes. There's a very much this what I would describe as like a a 12 year old boy's idea of what masculinity is.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_14And it is that Andrew Tateism, that kind of like, you know, what you should be doing, you should be strong and you should be this and you should be that, and you know, you don't want anyone to tell you what to do, and you You need to basically tell everyone get you know, get out your way and you'll you'll be you better be kicking people in and you know showing off your raw power. That kind of thing. There's a lot of that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03When does he die? What year does he die? He dies in April the 8th, 2014. So he's on RAW the night before, sort of making a comeback. And he does a speech that is just like I don't know what he's saying, but it is along the lines of that power, you know, get out of my way, I'll knock you down. Well, for the Proborn Raw, the last one he did.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_14Now weird. Because I went back to watch it, and bearing in mind, he's been inducted after years of animosity and saying that he would never him and Vince were always arguing over who owned the rights the Warrior name of Ultimate Warrior. James Helwig, by the way, in I think it was 2009, he actually Deed Paul changes his name to Warrior. Yeah. Because American law means you can't copyright your real name. Yeah. It's the it's the reason why you get like wrestlers in NXT that'll, you know, have the real names on the indies but will then start in NXT, like the development league of the WWE and be called, you know, like, you know, Tringlebert Shumplebum or something like that, you know, just to basically because that's what they can copyright and that's what they then have to live with. Yeah. After years of all that, he is invited to be in the WWE Hall of Fame after WrestleMania 30 in 2014. He makes his speech at the actual award ceremony and he accepts it. And then he appears on Raw the Monday after WrestleMania, the day after, and he gives a speech. Uh it's only three and a half minutes long.
SPEAKER_02Oh, I remember it.
SPEAKER_14Which is unusual. Yeah, I did as well. When I went back and watched it, I was like, seriously. Just for the first time. Because he has it Yeah. He has a reputation of rambling somewhat and going on and on and on and on. To the point of when he arrived in WCW in 1998, on the first Nitro, he was allocated six minutes and he took twenty two. Which meant that Eric Bish offered to rewrite an entire episode of Nitro on the fly. And he apparently kiboshed at least one match that night, couldn't go ahead because he talked so much. Anyway, which must have made him very popular. So when I saw that this was three and a half minutes, I was a bit like, oh my god, this is really short. Obviously he's been told to crack on. But I mean, when you start a promo with every man's heart one day beats its final beat, his spirit will be immortalised by those who made him a legend, and the spirit of the Ultimate Warrior will live forever. And you die of a heart attack the next day. I have a theory that he knew he was going.
SPEAKER_03I think that's fair. You know, his heart had undergone a lot during his lifetime. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_14And maybe he'd been told that he'd he'd got heart failure and he didn't have long, and so this was him sort of Or there or he was at he was at more of a risk of heart failure, and it was going to be, you know, a slightest thing would knock him out kind of though. He was walking across a car park out of the hotel when it happened.
SPEAKER_03Fucking hell. I mean, not as bad as natural man who had his heart attack while he was driving his car. But yeah, you know. Yeah, there's that. There's a long history of people who were around in the steroids era and their hearts giving out not too much later in life. Drugs are bad, kids. Drugs are bad. I think that leads us nicely into the comic, because this comic is very much about his ethos and his legacy, from what I can tell, because it's it's not the clearest of comics. But at its core is Distru Distrucity Distrusity. Distrusity, yes. Yes. Now, guys, if you haven't heard of it, that's because it's not a real fucking thing. It's made up by a madman. It's just made up by a crazy man. The the eight points of definitions of distrusity, the name of the galaxy in warrior, wherein the terrain of testament lies. Two, the living of one's life in the way of the warrior according to a warrior's eight disciplines. Those are one physical, two beliefs, three moment of mastery, four attitude, five commitment, six association, seven integrity, and eight wisdom. Then it goes, three, the creating of a truce between one's destiny and one's reality, promising to stay true to what one is destined to be, yet accepting what is the now one's reality. Dreams are the movies that tell one's story, some already told, some not yet written. I mean, what a load of old bollocks.
SPEAKER_14Oh yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_03It's uh nonsense. Because sometimes these alt-right commentators and these sort of, you know, motivational speakers will come up with sort of rules to live your life by and uh their own philosophy. And you can see that it makes sense in their head. This I don't think makes sense in the happy. Yeah.
SPEAKER_14It's it's kind of like the the it's the it's sort of scribblings and random words that you'd probably see on like the serial killer's lair on like a movie when they find it, you know what I mean? Oh, he was talking about toysity, and that's why he's killed nine people. Yeah. It's just like, right, okay. No, I I I read this, I was aware that these existed, and I read this for this this podcast, and all the way through reading this, I was like, none of this making any sense. And I I am I I was like, am I the stupid one for not understanding this? Am I being really thick? And I actually got my son Kyle like over my shoulder to have a little look at it and go, No, because he's he's he's 19, you know, maybe he's you know, I'm just old and I just don't get this. And he looked at him for about five minutes and then he kind of walked away saying, It's weird a samurai for white people, isn't it?
SPEAKER_03Which I thought was just perfect. No, I I love that. That's that's fucking brilliant. It's not a good comic. In fact, I read I read a fair amount of comic strips for this podcast and others, and it's so self-indulgent. It's what happens when you don't have an editor.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03That first issue is about 50 fucking pages and nothing happens in it. It's just these weird images and sort of weird quotes that are sort of self-help and sort of motivational, but also absolute bollocks.
SPEAKER_14Yep, it's it's just the main character is him or representation of him. It's mainly just wandering round what you think is Earth, but then there's like different cosmoses around it and different planets. You're like, okay, we're not on Earth. There's one moment in the first issue where he seems to talk to some sort of ghostly apparition in the sky that's like a big muscled version of him with a big beard and longer hair. Yeah. And then it's like, and he goes, he goes, looks at it and goes, Oh, father? And you're like, oh my god. Is he literally thinking he's the son of God here? Is this what I'm picking up from this? Yeah. Oh jeez, oh. Yeah, and as you say, there's a couple of combat sequences in it and like fight scenes in it, but none of it makes any sense. It's not a comic book to portray a story, it's more a pamphlet for what he thinks is a way of life.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And also how he sees himself. I'm aware that comics will over-emphasise how somebody looks, but nobody looks as hench as Warrior looks in in that comic.
SPEAKER_14For being a man who seemingly was quite homophobic at one point in his life. Although I will point out his last ever match was against Orlando Jordan in Barcelona of all places in 2008. And Orlando Jordan's an openly gay man, he's an openly gay wrestler. So you wouldn't probably want to wrestle an openly gay man if you were homophobic. No. Because obviously there's a lot of, you know holding and things. So there's that. But yeah, for being a at this time, you would imagine, you know, for queering doesn't make the world go around and all that kind of stuff, you would you would think that, you know, there would be less male nudity in your comic book.
SPEAKER_03Well, it's fine when it's just you.
SPEAKER_14Well, yes, yes. Or even a mirror image of you, which is in the second issue, which he's fighting kind of like a a shadow version of himself, like bloody Lincoln Ocarina Time or something.
SPEAKER_03It is bizarre. He's turned himself into this beast, this uh alt-right beast who has his own look on the world, but I've just got no idea what's going on. Somewhere he's in a coma, so maybe it's life on Mars, I don't know. We cut back to the real world a couple of times. His girlfriend takes an overdose or something like that.
SPEAKER_14Something like that. Because she is it not because she misses him and wants to be with him.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, of course.
SPEAKER_14You know, because she she she can handle the dustricity. And uh God help him. I mean, we can talk for you know about and I'm trying to be fair to Webby. This is probably his attempt at creating a brand for himself outside of wrestling, and specifically outside of the WWE WF PR machine. And I mean, he made a good hash of it, as I say, he would sell, you know. Have you have you seen Warrior's Weapons of Wisdom before?
SPEAKER_03No, I've not.
SPEAKER_14Right. Anyone who's listening to this right now, go on Google and type in Ultimate Warrior Weapons of Wisdom, right? And you will be presented with an entire webpage of the Ultimate Warriors artwork. Which was kinda kinda like this. It was him actually scribbling portraits of like authors he liked or musicians he liked, and then writing some weird outright bollocks next to it. And he would put these on a canvas and he would sell them. Wow. And it's just holy moly.
SPEAKER_03Just looking. Where do I get some of these? Can I buy them?
SPEAKER_14I think they may still be available if you wanted to, you know, all proceeds to his family and all that. If you fancied some hateful right-wing rhetoric that's on a canvas uh alongside a picture of uh, you know, Nicholas Tesla or something like that, you know.
SPEAKER_03Well, look, he was he was ahead of his time, you know, like people would laugh his shit up right now.
SPEAKER_14Exactly, and this is it. He had a brand he wanted to portray out there and make a career out of. Because I don't think he particularly loved the wrestling business.
SPEAKER_03No, he was not a fan. He was a bodybuilder, right?
SPEAKER_14Yeah, he was a bodybuilder to begin with, and he kind of just got into the wrestling business because it paid more than bodybuilding.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_14And that's really why. That's why he never really bothered to learn how to wrestle properly, quote unquote. But he would he any chance he got, he was off. Yeah. And he would only really come back to the business when a it would seem finance dictates that he probably should.
SPEAKER_03He he said that about this comic in an interview, the comic book is more important to me, referring to wrestling. One of the disciplines of living your life the way of the warrior, and I caught destrucity. It's about making a truth between your destiny and your reality. I believe in what I'm doing, I'm going to go for it, and I don't care if I never make a dime. Which I don't think he did. No, probably not.
SPEAKER_14I think that's quite safe. Yes, quite safe. I mean, but the the e I I can't remember the I actually wish I could find it. I spent ages trying to find it over the weekend. When the video game WWE 2K14 came out, round about the time he was in the Hall, we were going to get an Induction Hall of Fame, he was the pre-order DLC for it. You could play as Elmo Warrior. It was the first time you could play as the warrior in in a video game, a WF video game for years. Yeah. And they during the promotional tour for it, someone actually asked him and said, Well, why do it now? Because you've spent years, you know, not wanting to do anything with the WF and W well WE, you know, you for the animosity of the years and you and Vince, blah, blah, blah. And he gave an answer that was something on the lines, it was interesting, because it was something on the lines of he wanted people to remember the Ultimate Warrior as he was at the time in his prime. And that's why he, you know, if that meant, you know, a portrayal in a video game, people could remember the Ultimate Warrior as a video, you know, in this character that was on screen strong and mighty and fine. And these comics are the same thing, and you know, they portray as strong, mighty, you know, in the pick picture form. I suppose there is some credit to be given to him that he's not gone down the route that some other wrestlers, like a Rick Flair, who has to wrestle because he's got four ex-wives to pay aloe money to, yeah, and therefore has to legitimately get a doctor to turn his pacemaker off so he can have one final match. Yeah. Which is god-awful.
SPEAKER_03That is one of the worst things I've ever seen. He has a ha two heart attacks in that in the ring during that.
SPEAKER_14Yeah, yeah, he's he nearly dies on the uh on the April. So to be fair, if we can give Ultimate Warrior a little bit of credit, at least he understood that. That people want to see the character of the Ultimate Warrior, and if that means it's in comic book or video game form, then so be it, because that's probably the best way of remembering him by.
SPEAKER_03I mean, you've but you also have to wonder that if he hadn't passed away, would finances or whatever have meant that he would have had some shitty return? And you know, some people wrestle well into later in life and are able to do it. Sting, for instance, you know, he he had a pretty solid career. Oh yeah. All the way through, as you say, Ric Flair on the other hand. Not so much. Yeah.
SPEAKER_14But Keith Sting being having the retirement he was, I mean, Sting won the AEW World Tag Team title with Darby Allen in his last match and then vKed it straight afterwards, and had, for all intents and purposes, a fantastic send-off. Yeah. And really respectful, and you know, was allowed to come down the ring with his two sons dressed in his previous gear and all this kind of stuff, which looked amazing. But I mean, Sting gets to do that because he followed the Steamboat rule, which I don't know if you know what that is. No. Okay. Ricky Steamboat, the wrestler, who also didn't have to come back, and when he did, well, he did once for WrestleMania against Chris Jericho and could still go at like 55.
SPEAKER_03He was the only one, and it was like three.
SPEAKER_14Yeah, the only one in that legends match, yeah, that could still go. But he he could. Steamboat had a rule in his wrestling where he would every pay packet, he would split it into thirds.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_14One third was pay your bills, one third was save, and the other third was have fun. Right. And so that's what Ricky Steamboat followed, and Sting took him up on it as well. Sting followed what he called the Steamboat rule. Nice. And that's why Sting is a loaded now and doesn't have to wrestle for any financial pressure at all whatsoever. He can just do what the fuck he likes. Steamboat's the same. It was Flair that was like spending loads and loads of money on Rolex watches and limousines and Learjets, trying to live up to his gimmick, and then, you know, essentially marrying women and divorcing them six months later. Yeah. And then having to pay them all the the money and the child support. So that's where you get that.
SPEAKER_03It's a wild, wild industry. And for you know, for the Warrior story, like there's obviously lots of things in there that are problematic and I don't like. But he was a fairly committed husband, you know. And he seemed sensible in the extent of sort of being business focused and stuff like that, not necessarily in the ways he made his money. But that's me disagreeing with his weird alt-right politics. So I mean, yeah, who knows, maybe he wouldn't have returned and his legacy, at least the image of the warrior, would be safe. But the comic book is an interesting format. Do you think this could have worked, perhaps being given to another writer? Do you think there's an adventure of the ultimate warrior to to be told?
SPEAKER_14I think if you listen to any I mean, people will say the Warriors' promos were terrible because he just made them up and they're all essentially just claptrap. But they are memorable claptrap, to be fair. Yeah. So, you know, the the the WrestleMania 6, you know, put the plane into a nose-dive honk honk is still to this day, you can just repeat the whole thing. To be honest, he had the imagination there. The guy was, you know, uh for all, you know, if you look at wrestling characters that could have had a comic book made out of them, Warrior's pretty high on the list. If it was just him being sort of this John Constantine kind of like guy wrestling all these demons, literally wrestling demons, and you know, in those different dimensions and realm. Fantastic, brilliant. But what it is, because no one's told him this is bollocks, yeah, as you see, it doesn't have an editor. What it ends up being is this weird, bloody proto-masculine pamphlet trying to essentially just convert you to some weird religion.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think like what what we're talking about earlier with the rock and wrestling cartoon was that was that era of those old school wrestlers who didn't really had have gimmicks. Whereas people like the Ultimate Warrior, Undertaker, Papashango, like you you could put them all in comics and do interesting things that were outside of the ring, and you have your own sort of WWE X-Men essentially, or something like that. And it'd work really well because there's a mythology to their characters, even if it is quite base level.
SPEAKER_14I mean, you can imagine, like, you know, the you know, warrior is on this desert landscape, and you know, there's everything's dry, and it's his gulch, and he's really finds these people he can't possibly face on his own. So he calls in the Legion of Doom, and they arrive on their motorcycles, and they're like, that'd be brilliant! Yeah, that'd be absolutely mind-blowingly awesome. But no, it's all about him.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_03It has to be about him and him alone. And so it's this bizarre story that you can't really get a handle on. The art is done by an artist called Jim Callahan who went on to work for Marvel and Dark Horse and has a really good career. I couldn't find anything, but I'd love to hear an interview with him about what he found it like working with him. Because I suspect that this was an early job that he took for a paycheck, and he was like, You want me to illustrate five issues of a comic book? Abso fucking. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And I can imagine working with this guy who's written it, but who is also, I guess, funding it. And that's why it just goes on and it's bizarre. He must like no no comic book writers write doing fucking 50 odd pages an issue back then on DC or Marvel, let alone for s somebody's vanity project.
SPEAKER_14No, I mean it it's not the I was trying to think as well, I was like, kind of go, is there any wrestling-based comic book that has worked? And I can think of one. What's that? I can think of one and I have it on my shelf. It's um you know Tony Shavone? Yeah. He's got a book about him getting at the wrestling business. Uh-huh and it's and his time in WCW and it's called Butts in Seats.
SPEAKER_03Right. But so that's a true story. Brilliant.
SPEAKER_14Yeah, that's a true story, and it's and he, you know, Tony Chiavone's obviously had as someone there going, Oh well, you know, what almost kind of ghostwriting it and then getting the story together and him, you know, and then they they illustrate it. But it's him basically as a kid getting into wrestling and then getting into like the commentary and then getting into WCW, and you know him in the final days of WCW and then you know getting back into AEW. But yeah, Butts in Seats by Tony Shavone is a fucking awesome comic book.
SPEAKER_03Excellent. I'll check that out. Like, because there are quite a few. And you know what? At some point I'd like to dip into a couple and see just how badly the others do or don't work. Yeah. Because in theory, it's something somebody should have got right more times than they have Beyond a Wild Vanity project. So it seems like a a no-brainer in in many ways, but for whatever reason it just it just hasn't worked. Do you have much more you want to say on this comic?
SPEAKER_14Not really. I think I've pretty much exhausted all my notes by the fact I've thrown them over my shoulder other than the couch behind me.
SPEAKER_03Excellent. So, is it a clanger, a banger, or an average meander?
SPEAKER_14I think it's average propaganda, is what it is. Uh it's a clanger. No, sorry. It's an absolute clanger. As a comic book, it fails because it's got no story in it at all. And it is an absolute definition of a vanity project.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Like I will give slight props to Jim Callahan for having to deal with what were obviously some unusual requests and creating this beast of a character that is the warrior. Because the art is not bad, but I can imagine it was given some unusual directions that perhaps he wasn't used to taking.
SPEAKER_14I think a lot of it would have probably involved ripping his shirt off in front of Jim Callahan and going, this, the bigger.
SPEAKER_03But yeah, it's a clanger for me too. It's a vanity project of the worst kind. But I'm glad we've had a little dip into it, because this is what this podcast is all about. Right, Cam. If people want to find you on the internet, where can they find you?
SPEAKER_14I I have this really annoying habit of using different social media sites for different things that I do. So uh if you want generally on Blue Sky, there is Criple H with one being, because it's a play on Triple H. And I've had it for years, so you can search for me on there if you want to follow me. I am one third of the We said we weren't going to mention it, but Doctor Who podcast. YouTube show now of uh the police box, that's P-O-L-I-S, because we're Scottish. And I am also on Instagram as the Quivering Brush. If you're into Warhammer and you're like, you know, painting Warhammer, then I put all that on my Instagram. And I have a website which I really should update with more stuff, with uh Cameron Phillipswriter.co.uk. That's Phillips with two L's, which is my story writing, which occasionally I get published and have fun at book launches and things like that. So yeah, that's that's really me. Oh, and uh wrestling podcast. Yes, yeah, yeah. Ideally forgot my wrestling podcast having spent two hours talking about wrestling. Conquistaboars.com. Google will probably try to get you to search for the Mexican Aztec conquistadors, but no, you want conquistadors. All the episodes are on YouTube. Uh we've been doing that on and off for about 10 years. So uh we try and decide there's me, Phil Doyle, Ewan Taylor, and Jordi Allen Millburn, hot sauce Geordi Allen Milburn. And we look back at wrestling pay-per-views of the past and see if they still stand up now. And we are on a mission to try and determine what is the best pay-per-view of all time. Uh so yeah, if you search for Conquistabores on YouTube, you should be able to have the whole list of episodes on there.
SPEAKER_03Brilliant, and it's well worth a listen to. I've dipped I've dipped my toe into many in it. I will get through the lot eventually, I'm sure. I I the only ones I haven't listened to are things I haven't seen the pay-per-view of, because I'm trying to clock them up in that respect. I've done about 50% of them, I think. Excellent. Well, as I said, thank you so much for joining me. This has been an absolute hoot. It has been a pleasure.
SPEAKER_14I have loved doing this. Give me a chance to talk about wrestling for two hours and I will come running.
SPEAKER_03Well, when when we do the next series, I'm sure we can find some other things in the treasure trove of the expanded universe of wrestling to chat about too. It would be fantastic. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as it helps people to find the pod. Look for Too Hot for TV on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube at TooHotTheNumber4 Pod. That's Too Hot the number four pod for the latest updates and additional content. Next time I'll be joined by Ian Winterton and we'll be looking at the expanded universe of the Terminator. But until then, I've been Dylan. And this has been Too Hot for TV. I think this might be I think this might be our challenge actually to be the first episode that doesn't mention Doctor Who at all.