August 10, 2005   A few weeks ago, I let you in on my favorite guilty pleasure, wrestling.  Let me remind you, I watch it at least twice a week.  I even watch the Luche Libre stuff on the Hispanic channels if I can.  I’ve even watched old movies like No Holds Barred and The Wrestler recently just to satisfy my fix.  I cut the list short last time and promised to return with more of my favorite wrestlers of all time, or at least notable ones.  Here they are: Shawn Michaels -  Known as the Heartbreak considered to be what launched him into the main event scene.  The next year, he had a match for the WWE Championship with Bret Hart in an Ironman Match.  After 60 minutes, nobody had scored a pinfall or submission.  Sudden Death Overtime was called for and HBK hit Sweet Chin Music (a superkick) on the Hitman for his first WWE title.  Michaels would go on to feud with Hart and Undertaker mainly.  He got hurt and had to vacate the belt.  When he returned, he came back cockier than ever and eventually formed a group called Degeneration X.  The group consisted of Triple H, Chyna, Billy Gunn, and Road Dogg Jesse James.  HBK, as noted before, was the recipient of the belt on the Bret Hart Screw Job in Montreal.  His bad guy status was reaching new heights.  His back, however, was steadily getting worse, and at Wrestlemania 14 Stone Cold defeated him for the belt.   HBK wasn’t seen as a wrestler for about 4 years.  Occasionally, he’d return as Commisioner, but fans were looking for more.  He returned to the ring at SummerSlam 2002 to face an old friend who had become his most bitter rival - Triple H.  That rivalry lasted for almost 2 years.  HBK has an incredible story and he’s one of the best performers in and outside the ring.  He’s also the first to win the Grand Slam (Tag Titles, European Title, Intercontinental Title, and WWE Title).  There’s a reason he's the Showstopper, the Main Event, the Icon. onto the belt and annihilated everyone in the locker room as he did in WCW.  He’s not one of my favorites, but he’s notable.   Terry Funk -  The Funker.  I remember Terry from This was pre-WCW in the precursor to that promotion called the NWA.   Other than the branding iron, Funk was best known for his Spinning Toe Hold.  A ludicrous looking move but one that was supposed to inflict pain to the…uh…toe.  Funk was already up in age, yet he outwrestled just about everyone he faced.  He toured Japan with Mick Foley and competed in Japanese Death Matches.  He was one of the first ECW superstars.  He’s appeared in WCW and WWE over the past decade.  The legend of the Funker is timeless and he is the quintessential hardcore wrestler. Randy Savage -  Whether he’s the was one of the premier big men that would take the risk off the top rope.  His finishing maneuver was the top rope elbow drop.  His more infamous feuds were with Hulk Hogan (now he hates him in real life), Ricky the Dragon Steamboat, Ultimate Warrior, and Ric Flair.  Ignore his rap album where he sings to Hulk Hogan to “Be a Man”.  Ignore the fact that he may have slipped into the Tom Cruise realm of becoming a lunatic.  Realize that this man could wrestle in his day and his matches were fun to watch. Great Muta - I mentioned him earlier because Owen Hart -  The Hitman’s younger brother was trained in the same way, yet he took on a higher flying style.  Yes, he copied some of the same moves, but Owen seemed lighter on his feet and quicker while his brother used more power.  Owen was one of my favorites, especially as a heel, because you could laugh at his character.  When he told people that he wasn’t a “nugget” for no reason at all, fans started to chant “NUGGET” and he’d become irate.  Every bit of heat he got from the crowd he worked for.  I won’t delve too much into Owen’s career, but at Over the Edge 1999, Owen Demolition -  I mentioned Legion of Doom in the Million Dollar Man Ted DiBiase -  Best heel These guys made the list.  Be sure to check back soon because this is just a bonus column because I got bored and I wanted to follow up on the first edition.  Who was your favorite?  Who did I leave off?  Let me know. Throw up a “T” for… T-BONE!

My Guilty Pleasure 2 - Wrestling Favorites

The Bone Pile

Kid (HBK), he started off as a tag team
specialist alongside Marty Jannetty.  They
were known as the Midnight Rockers.  They
became just The Rockers in the WWE and
had a nice run as a tag team.  Years later, as
they began to lose steam, HBK grew cocky
and wanted to split as a team so he could
reach farther heights as an individual
superstar.  How did he do it?  He threw
Jannetty through a window.  HBK made his
way through the ranks and became
Intercontinental Champion.  At Wrestlemania
X, he had the first ever ladder match with
Razor Ramon.  Although he lost, this match is

Goldberg -  Bill Goldberg was the face of WCW
for about 2 years.  He was undefeated with a win-
loss record of about 160-0, and all of the victories
were what we’d call a squash.  Goldberg had
basically 3 moves:  powerslam, spear,
Jackhammer.  I once saw a sign in the WCW
crowd that said “It’s getting Old-Berg”.  I’ve never
seen a more appropriate sign.  I hear he’s a heck
of a nice guy in real life, but his character bored
me.  He didn’t work out with WWE during his short
run because it’s not what he was expecting.  It
would have been bad for business if he’d held

when I was a small kid, primarily because he’s
been around forever.  He was a Wildman and he
was hardcore before hardcore wrestling was the
new thing.  He would come out with a flaming
branding iron and put the boots to his opponents.  
I remember a match at Halloween Havoc 1989.  It
was a Thunderdome match pitting Sting and Ric
Flair against the Great Muta and Terry Funk.  Oh,
and Bruno Sammartino was the guest referee.  
This match was brutal with blood everywhere.  

Mr. Perfect - Curt Hennig, aka Mr. Perfect,
was as technical as they come in the ring.  His
gimmick held up for a while because he held a
perfect record.  He got help from his friend, the
Genius (Lanny Poffo) and they made the
rounds through the WWE midcard.  Perfect
never got a legit shot at the WWE title, but he
was a major threat to anyone vying for the
Intercontinental title.  He made his way to WCW
and took on a redneck gimmick that failed
miserably.  At Royal Rumble 2002, he returned
for a brief stint and made his mark.  Hennig
died 2 years ago, just after being released by
the WWE after an incident with Brock Lesnar.

Macho Man or Macho King, Randy
Savage is Macho.  With his
unmistakable voice, sunglasses,
hats, and numerous other outfits,
Savage was an entertainer.  But
more than an entertainer, he was
a very good wrestler in his day.  
Macho Man became a staple in
the first few Wrestlemania’s.  He

Brutus the Barber Beefcake - This guy
was all about the gimmick.  He couldn’t wrestle
at all, but somehow I enjoyed watching him for
one small reason.  His finishing maneuver was
the sleeper hold, which by today’s standards,
is the single most boring move in the sport.  
After he’d “knock out” his opponent and get
the win, he’d get his scissors and cut their
hair.  I don’t know what was so fascinating
about it because typically he’d only cut a lock
or two.  But it seemed like he was doing the
ultimate in degradation at the time.  To
Brutus, King of the Wrestling Mullet, I salute
you.

of the Thunderdome match at Halloween
Havoc.  This wasn’t his only shot.  He feuded
on and off with Sting for over a decade.  Muta
brought the Japanese style into the ring and
with it, a mystique and the threat that he
could strike with his moves at anytime.  His
patent was spitting green mist into his
opponent’s eyes when the referee wasn’t
looking, a move Tajiri uses today.  Muta was
another innovator, and he deserves his spot
on this list.

was set to have a match as the Blue Blazer
(and alter ego) versus the Godfather.  That
match never happened.  He was up on the
catwalk above the ring and he was going to
descend from a wire, as he’d done several
times before.  His harness was not strapped
correctly and Owen fell over 80 feet into the
ring breaking his neck.  He died that night.  The
next night, WWE did not script any matches.  
They let the performers, if they so chose, go
out and wrestle whoever as a tribute to Owen.  
The world lost a good wrestler and a great guy
on that day.

precursor to this column.  Demolition has
nothing to do with them except that they may
have crossed paths at some point and they also
wore face paint.  I remember them from when I
was young and they were awesome.  Ax and
Smash were dominant in the ring.  Their music
was cool and so were their costumes.  
Eventually, during a heel run, they brought in
another member named Crush.  This was when I
started to lose interest in them, but they were
truly a memorable team in their day and very
worthy of wearing the Tag Titles.

Andre the Giant -  He’s
a giant and he was
undefeated for 15
years.  How can you
argue about marketing
such a guy?  His best
feuds were against Hulk
Hogan and Big John
Stud.  At Wrestlemania
3, Hogan defeated Andre
with “The Bodyslam
Heard Around the
World”, thus passing the
torch to Hulkamania.

ever, period.  This man had zero tweaking to
his gimmick in decades and he was a mainstay
top heel.  It's not so much his wrestling ability.  
His move, the Million Dollar Dream, was
somewhat cool in the day, but nothing
spectacular.  His belt that he created, the
Million Dollar Belt encrusted in diamonds, was
sweet as well.  Maybe it was his “help” Virgil.  I
think it was all of these things combined.  
“Everyone has a price” says the Million Dollar
Man.

Honky Tonk Man -  He was the greatest
Intercontinental champion ever.  He looked like
Elvis and sported a guitar to the ring.  He’d
usually pick up the win by bashing his opponent
with the guitar while the ref was distracted.  How
the ref didn’t see the splinters all over the ring, I
have no clue.  But this man had charisma and
he made me laugh.  It’s too bad the Ultimate
Warrior squashed him at SummerSlam to
completely undo all of the credibility he’d
garnered in his long title run.

World Championship Wrestling
or WCW, was a professional
wrestling promotion that was based in
Atlanta and existed from 1988 to
2001. It was owned by Jim Crockett,
Jr., Ted Turner, then AOL Time
Warner. In March 2001, its rights and
assets were purchased by the World
Wrestling Federation, who continued
to use the name as part of a storyline
until November, when the promotion
officially ceased. WCW was also a
former member of the National
Wrestling Alliance.

No matter how technically amazing
and athletic WCW's action could be,
it did not make as much money as
the WWF. The creative product of the
company sank very noticeably in
1992 and 1993 under the presidency
of Jim Herd and, subsequently, Bill
Watts. There were signs of gradual
recovery in late 1993 when former
commentator and American
Wrestling Association (AWA) booker
Eric Bischoff joined WCW. Bischoff,
originally brought in as a secondary
commentator behind Jim Ross after
the AWA became defunct, was
desperate to give WCW a new
direction and impressed Turner's top
brass with his confrontational tactics
and business-savvy.

Bischoff did not disappoint, declaring
open war on McMahon's WWF in the
media and aggressively recruiting
high-profile former WWF superstars
such as Hulk Hogan and "Macho
Man" Randy Savage in 1994. Using
Turner's superior monetary resources,
Bischoff placed his faith in the
established, WWF-made stars with
proven track records. Because of their
high profiles, however, Hogan and
Savage were able to demand and get
several concessions not usually
allowed to wrestlers at the time, such
as multi-year, multimillion dollar
guaranteed contracts and significant
creative control. This problem only
became worse during subsequent
years of competition with the WWF,
as other wrestlers were able to make
similar demands, and contract values
soared out of control. Hogan, in
particular, was able to gain
considerable influence through a
blossoming friendship with Bischoff.
Another problem Bischoff failed to
consider was the fact that many WCW
fans watched it as an alternative to
the cartoony product of the WWF in
the early 90s, and many NWA fans
saw the hiring of former WWF talent
as an attempt to copy its success as
opposed to being a high-quality
alternative product.

However, WCW's first major event
since Hogan's hiring, Bash At The
Beach, saw the former WWF mainstay
cleanly defeat longtime WCW
stalwart Ric Flair for the WCW
Championship in a genuine dream
match. Interestingly enough, the two
had worked for the WWF at the same
time from 1991 to 1992, and a feud
was teased between them, but the
big-money match originally planned
for WrestleMania VIII was changed to
Flair/Savage and Hogan/Sid. When
WCW delivered the match, the PPV
drew a high buy rate by WCW
standards due to mainstream intrigue
and hype if nothing else, but the
hoped-for long-term effects on ratings
and buy rates simply did not
materialize. Hogan was, to an extent,
still a definite draw and celebrity, but
his style was not as suited to the
Southern NWA audience.

This was not lost on Turner
management, however, and
Bischoff's bold, expensive steps didn't
quite meet their expectations when
they came to check up on things in
mid-1995. Thus, Bischoff called
Turner and requested a private
meeting, which he was granted.

Monday Night Wars
Bischoff's largest impact on the North
American professional wrestling
landscape was the launch of the
weekly show WCW Monday Nitro in
September 1995. In the
aforementioned top-level meeting
that summer, Turner asked Bischoff
how WCW could conceivably
compete with McMahon's WWF.
Bischoff, not in his wildest dreams
expecting Turner to comply, said that
the only way would be a primetime
slot on a weekday night, possibly up
against the WWF's flagship show,
Monday Night Raw. Turner,
impressed by Bischoff's candor, gave
him what he asked for: a live hour on
TNT every Monday night, which
specifically overlapped with Raw.
This format quickly expanded to two
live hours in May 1996, and then
later three. Bischoff himself was
initially the host, alongside Bobby
Heenan and ex-NFL star Steve
"Mongo" McMichael.

McMahon later admitted to being
hugely bitter about Turner's decision
to air Nitro live on Monday nights,
saying that Turner and Bischoff's only
reason for doing this could be to hurt
and damage the WWF. Turner and
McMahon certainly had something of
a personal history: in the early 1980s,
when McMahon began buying up
local organizations in order to create
a nationwide wrestling system, he
took over Georgia Championship
Wrestling, thus he was in the position
of providing a Saturday night show for
Turner's TBS station. When viewers
tuned to WTBS on July 14, 1984 (a
date known as "Black Saturday" in the
wrestling community) and saw WWF
programming instead of the wrestlers
they were used to seeing, many
called the station and demanded the
NWA's return; two weeks later,
Championship Wrestling from
Georgia returned, albeit on Saturday
mornings. Turner quickly grew tired of
the personality-driven glitz of
McMahon's product and was upset at
the fact that McMahon had gone
back on his earlier promise not to
dump second-rate stars and matches
onto TBS. Turner therefore axed
McMahon's show and turned to Jim
Crockett to fill the Saturday night pro
wrestling slot. Furthermore, on the
very same day that Turner later
acquired Crockett's territories, he
famously called McMahon personally
to say "Vince, I'm in the rasslin'
business!"

By 1995, Turner, as sole head and
owner of both TBS and TNT, could
air Nitro whenever he wanted. The
WWF on the other hand was restricted
by having to deal with the USA
Network, whose executives were
pleased about the viewers Raw
brought to their network, but weary of
the stigma associated with being the
"wrestling channel." WCW Monday
Nitro made its debut in September
1995 live from the Mall of America in
Minnesota, and featured the surprise
appearance of then-WWF wrestler Lex
Luger, who had been working on a
handshake deal with WWF after his
most recent contract expired, on a
week when Raw was pre-empted for
another event.

In the head-to-head ratings the
following week, Nitro managed to
convincingly defeat Raw, seeing
WCW beat the WWF for the first time
ever. For most of Nitro's first year, the
ratings battle between the two
promotions were close. In the end,
Nitro ended up beating Raw in the
Nielsen ratings for 84 straight weeks
between 1996 and 1998.

Raw and the WWF in general was at a
creative nadir from 1995 to 1997,
thus helping WCW's meteoric rise.
The WWF tried in vain to fight back in
early 1996 with the infamous
"Billionaire Ted" sketches, which
occasionally starred an unbilled
Vince Russo and viciously parodied
Turner, Hogan ("The Huckster") and
Savage ("Nacho Man") in particular.
Only when stars such as ex-WCW
wrestler Stone Cold Steve Austin
began to emerge, and when
McMahon swallowed his pride and
turned to Russo, a New York DJ and
WWF magazine writer, did the WWF
begin to pick up steam.

WCW vs. nWo
Everything changed in 1996, when
WCW became the hottest promotion
in North America. It did this with the
groundbreaking WCW vs. nWo
storyline that was masterminded by
Bischoff. It was based on an idea of
two warring promotions that he had
seen in Japan. The storyline kicked
off with Scott Hall, who was recently
seen on WWF TV as Razor Ramon,
walking into the ring unexpectedly
during the middle of a match,
'declaring war' on WCW. At the end of
a Nitro episode a few weeks later, he
was joined by Kevin Nash, another
former WWF wrestler who was recently
seen on WWF TV as Diesel. The two
wrestlers named themselves "The
Outsiders" and sent out a challenge
to any three wrestlers on the WCW
roster, against them, and their mystery
partner. Many wrestling fans were
confused, thinking that Hall and Nash
were still WWF wrestlers. McMahon
himself took notice and said during a
Raw telecast that they were no longer
WWF wrestlers. Hall and Nash's
attitude and similarities to their WWF
characters also sparked a copyright
infringement lawsuit against WCW by
the WWF.

At Bash At The Beach '96, Sting, Lex
Luger, and "Macho Man" Randy
Savage took on The Outsiders but the
third man never showed up for the
Outsider team. When Hall and Nash
began to get the upper hand, Hulk
Hogan ran in to seemingly make the
save for Team WCW. Hogan
threatened The Outsiders but turned
around and dropped his patented
legdrop finishing move on Savage
instead. The fans and the announcers
went crazy wondering what was going
on. Hogan had shockingly "defected"
from WCW to The Outsiders. In his
post-match speech, Hogan revealed
that he, Hall and Nash were the "New
World Order of professional wrestling."
The crowd was so incensed by
Hogan's turn that many of them threw
garbage at the ring, and within
minutes it was literally covered with
refuse. Bischoff was ecstatic, knowing
that this meant the crowd was truly
shocked by Hogan finally turning heel
after years as a babyface.

Hogan, as a bad guy, leading the
(fictional) nWo (or New World Order)
faction in their attempt to "take over"
WCW and run the WWF out of
business was a compelling and
original storyline. Fueled by this new
scenario, WCW Monday Nitro
managed a string of wins against
WWF Raw that lasted from mid '96 to
early 1998, and included a popular
feud between nWo leader Hulk Hogan
and WCW leader Sting.

In late 1997, Bischoff even went as
far as attempting to rebrand Nitro as
nWo Nitro one week before their
flagship PPV StarrCade.