There’s a great line from a Raw in 1998: Vince McMahon had just stolen Steve Austin’s championship belt and says “the only place this belt belongs is above my mantle in one of my homes.” That single hilariously brilliant line perfectly encapsulated the evil rich bastard character that was heel Vince McMahon. And yet in early 1999 the unthinkable was happening and Vince McMahon was transitioning from heel (bad guy) to face (good guy).

Now I will admit this turn was expertly done. It was impossible for anyone to empathize with McMahon himself (a spoiled rich asshole who had victimized ever face in the WWF), so instead he garnered sympathy by proxy by having his innocent daughter Stephanie get attacked by the Undertaker. This led to him seeking help from Steve Austin and while the crowd still hated him his contrition and humility made him at least somewhat understandable if not likable. Next, his son Shane started attacking him and victimizing face wrestlers, overtly taking the spot that Vince had once occupied as the spoiled rich asshole of the WWF. This implicitly moved Vince away from being a heel as he was no longer doing the victimizing and was in fact being victimized himself. Finally, after Undertaker and Shane announced they had been working together the whole time, Vince came out and attacked Shane for the benefit of Steve Austin during a match Austin had with the Undertaker. By siding with the WWF’s biggest face, and attacking its two biggest heels, Vince had now fully turned from heel to face.

And yet… it was kind of crap. Making Undertaker be a “Greater Evil” over an above Vince was definitely cool, but trying to make Vince sympathetic on his own merits was just kind of boring. There was a novelty to having two sworn enemies (Austin and McMahon) have to work together, but the novelty wore off quickly when Vince came out and tried to cut a face promo saying how he knew he had been an asshole and would try to change as a human being. And you could tell the crowd wasn’t having it, they continued to chant “asshole” at him no matter what he said. Now, knowing as I do the future of the WWF, I know exactly where this storyline is going: Vince eventually reveals that he was secretly behind everything and was working with Undertaker the whole time as a heel. But I have to wonder why they ever tried to portray him as a face in the first place. Was it all for the unexpected twist that he was working with the Undertaker? Shocking though it was, it was also really really stupid to have him sobbing about the victimization of his daughter only to a few weeks later be revealed as the architect of that same victimization. Had they actually wanted him to be a face? I can’t imagine anyone thought that was a good idea, the crowd still hated him for everything he had done and a spoiled rich company owner just doesn’t make for a natural “good guy” character in any way shape or form. Maybe Vince personally wanted to be portrayed as a good guy just for his ego, but then someone should have told him it just wasn’t going to happen.

Despite a few moments of humor during Vince’s aborted face run, like giving a terrible Stone Cold Stunner to his son Shane, the whole thing kind of felt boring and subpar as I was watching it. I would have preferred Vince to have still explicitly been a bad guy throughout, just a bad guy who loved his own daughter. Then he could have had humorous promos demeaning the crowd and complaining about his situation, instead of boring promos where he tried to act sympathetic while complaining about his situation. But regardless, face Vince McMahon doesn’t detract from the stellar performance that Raw has done after Wrestlemania 1999.

This post is about Rock vs Mankind for the WWF title at the 1999 Royal Rumble. As I’ve been doing this past week, I’m still watching WWF Raws from the 1990s through Peacock. I wanted to make this it’s own post because it didn’t really “fit” with the other feelings I had about the 1999 Royal Rumble

So I finally watched this match (or I watched all of it except for the chairshots to the head).  Mankind aka Mick Foley was apparently planning this match for a month, telling people it was going to be his magnum opus, and in a way it was but not for the reasons he may have intended.

So this Mankind vs the Rock feud was incredibly hot. Mankind, the deformed now good guy with a heart of gold was against the Rock, the self-proclaimed “people’s champion” that the people loved to hate. The WWF title was on the line with the stipulation was that either Mankind or the Rock had to say “I quit” for the match to end.  No pinfalls, no passing out due to blood loss, the match will not stop until someone verbally submits.  I’ve seen versions of this match type that kind of sucked (Roddy Piper murdered the Bret Hart vs Backlund version of this match), but Rock and Mankind did a very smart job in putting together this one.  There’s a microphone in the match at all times because they have to say “I quit” into the microphone, and Rock and Mankind would frequently grab the mic to taunt each other, which worked really well because they are both great talkers and storytellers. 

I also noticed that although Mankind took a lot of the punishment, Rock didn’t get away scot free.  At the beginning of the match Rock wouldn’t quit so Mankind beat him over the head with the microphone and kept asking him after each beating.  It was especially vicious because you could hear the impact of the microphone hitting Rock’s head from the microphone’s audio, and I’m sure it hurt Rock to take those shots. 

They also knew that Mankind had a reputation for taking devastating punishment and they worked that reputation into the match in a *safe* way prior to the chairshots.  They were fighting on scaffolding and Rock threw Mankind off of the scaffolding and onto some wiring, and when Mankind landed a bunch of sparks were lit up and the announcers said Mankind had been electrocuted.  Now in reality this was probably an easy, safe spot where Mankind jumped into some non-electrical wires and padding that broke his fall. The sparks were just pyrotechnics, and so a little smoke and mirrors made something safe look like something dangerous, and it worked in really well for the match.

But then of course the ending, which I just couldn’t watch it so I skipped it.  Rock handcuffs Mankind and then hits him multiple times in the head with a chair.  Now as everyone knows wrestling is scripted and the two performers work together to put on a good match and the backstage story is that Mankind was supposed to tell Rock when to stop hitting and end the match. Because of this, Mankind was supposed to be in total control over how many chair shots to the head he took, but of course chair shots to the head concussed his brain and it seems he forgot or didn’t tell Rock the right time to stop. After many many many chair shots to the head, the ending finally happens with Mankind lying unconscious on the mat (looking back you pray he wasn’t unconscious for real) and the Rock plays an audio recording of Mankind saying “I quit” in order to get the illegal victory. This ending was I guess the only way they could end the match, but it is another amazing example of the writers not all being on the same page because prior to the match several announcers had claimed Mankind was refusing to ever say the words “I quit” so as not to jinx himself in the match or allow Rock to pull this kind of shenanigan. Then right before the PPV Mankind screams “I quit” into the TV a bunch of times on the pre-show, so I guess everything the announcers told us was a lie.  The match ended with the Rock winning, and due to the concussion Mick Foley suffered so much that he doesn’t even remember that Dwayne Johnson (Rock out of character) spoke to him after the match and apologized for going over board with the chair shots. In his book he claims that the Rock never spoke to him after the match, but backstage video (including the documentary “Behind the Mat” shows that not to be the case).

The match will live on in infamy as many many Mick Foley matches do.  He was a brilliant wrestler and many people said he had the greatest mind for putting together matches out of anyone in history.  I hope he still has a mind at all after all these years.

I just finished watching Royal Rumble 1999 and I can’t get it out of my mind.

So in wrestling there’s this thing called “heat”, which is when someone doesn’t like someone else. Heels (bad guys) are SUPPOSED to have heat with the crowd, the crowd is supposed to hate them and want them to lose. A good heel knows how to build heat, they know how to say and do things that make the crowd hate them and most importantly MAKE THE CROWD WANT THEM TO LOSE A WRESTLING MATCH. That part is important, wrestling is about fake fighting in a ring, so If you don’t make the fans want to see you wrestle and lose then your heat is worthless.

Different from heat is fire. A Babyface (good guy) has “fire” when the crowd loves them, wants them to win, and lives vicariously through them. Fire is important because without fire the crowd doesn’t care about you, and why should they cheer you if you’re just some guy? Babyface fire makes sure the whole crowd is cheering and chanting for the babyface even when they’re getting their ass kicked. This is fake fighting remember, it’s not a test of skill, so crowd involvement is paramount and crowd disinterest is death.

So heels have heat and babyfaces have fire and that’s the fundamental dynamic to wrestling. Heels will do and say things to make themselves hated and faces will do and say things to make themselves loved. The important thing is that these qualities wear off after a while. If the heel always loses then he can lose his heat because the audience won’t be invested in his matches, “everyone knows that guy always loses”. The Babyface can lose their fire in the same way, but there is a twist: people love an underdog. Sometimes losing a few matches can make a Babyface even more beloved especially if they are cheated out of their rightful victories

So how basically every wrestling storyline goes is that a Babyface and heel will have a confrontation. The crowd will side with the Babyface and the feud will begin. In the first match or two the heel may cheat his ass off to defeat the Babyface, but eventually good triumphs over evil and the Babyface will win a massive victory. The audience goes home happy and everyone buys tickets to the next wrestling show.

I can only assume this is what they wanted to do when McMahon won the royal rumble. McMahon and Austin were feuding and to his credit McMahon had a lot of heat on him: as the evil corporate owner he had screwed over Austin at every turn, taking his title shots, trying to fire him, trying to do everything in his power to make Austin’s life miserable and therefore rob the fans of their favorite hero. He had now declared that Austin would NEVER fight for the WWF title again, and this obviously made the fans mad. But WWF has its own lineage of arcane rules and working that lineage into the plot makes everything much more sensible and dare I say it “real,” so there was a ready-made storyline for how Austin could still pull one over on McMahon and get a big win that would make the whole audience happy.

The important rule here is that whoever wins the Royal Rumble gets a WWF title shot at WrestleMania, so although McMahon hates Austin and want to prevent him from ever winning the WWF title, he can’t actually deny Austin a title shot if Austin wins the rumble. And so the story began, McMahon would do everything in his power to deny Austin his victory at the Royal Rumble, while Austin would do everything in his power to win and spite McMahon which would make the audience happy. McMahon first forced Austin to enter the Royal Rumble at number 1 (the hardest position to start from) and then added that McMahon himself would also enter the Rumble at number 30 (the easiest position to start from) as a final effort to deny Austin victory.

Obviously for McMahon, forcing Austin into number 1 is a good idea, but the entering the Ruble himself even at number 30 is a very stupid idea . In kayfabe and reality Austin is a trained and fit wrestler whereas McMahon is an untrained dad on steroids, McMahon should be no match for Austin if they ever step into the ring together. But this ploy was to show just how much McMahon hates Austin and so it gets McMahon a lot of heat and that’s all well and good. Here’s the thing though, I don’t wanna see McMahon in a match. He is not a good wrestler, his wrestling looks terrible and fake, and for as hateable as he is him being in a match looks dumb and stupid. Austin on the other hand has fire, he is ON FIRE, and he’s the most popular wrestler that ever was and possible every will be so much so that I still see people on the street wearing a Stone Cold Steve Austin t-shirts 25 years later. Austin winning and getting his title shot at the rumble is the perfect story for McMahon to lose (making the audience happy) and Austin to win (making the audience even more happy). Just don’t let McMahon actually try to wrestle (which he is very bad at) and everyone can go home happy with how things played out in the Royal Rumble.

But, heat. McMahon seems to have decided that he needed more heat and so he had to win the Rumble himself even though he is a terrible wrestler and Austin is super duper popular. I guess he thought that if Austin wins too much then he’ll become a boring invincible super hero and no one will buy wrestling tickets anymore, and to some extent Austin was on a downslope at this point with a lot of the brilliance and fire that characterized his run last year having wanted. But still it would have been awesome to have Austin win and I feel Austin SHOULD have won, the whole storyline would have made perfect sense in that McMahon had done literally everything in his power to remove Austin’s title shot but through sheer badassery and determination Austin still won the whole damn thing. But no, McMahon wins the Rumble and the crowd goes home deflated.

Even then, the worst part is that McMahon winning didn’t even change anything.  If Austin wins then Austin gets a title shot at Wrestemania.  If McMahon wins then Austin gets no title shot, instead McMahon does.  Well at the very next Raw after the Royal Rumble, even though McMahon won, the storyline gave Austin the title shot at Wrestlemania and removed it from McMahon, so the Rumble was completely pointless to the long-term storyline. What a waste of what could have been an amazing Rumble. Honestly most of the joy of 1997/1998 WWF is just watching Steven Austin himself, and much of the remaining card isn’t up to his level so Austin losing actually makes me feel worse about the entire show even though it was actually super cool in many respects. But I can’t change the past, so whatever.

Continuing my series where I go back and watch WWF from the 1990s, I assume most of my readers have heard of The Rock?  Dwayne Johnson?  Most paid actor in Hollywood?  Yeah I just saw the moment he began to be something in WWF.

He started as “Rocky Maivia” a very boring good guy who said he would “try his best” to win.  On August 11th 1997, out of nowhere, he runs into the ring and illegally helps Faarooq (Nation of Domination, the black power guys) win his match against Chainz (Disciples of Apocalypse, the bikers).  I guess this is the point where he joins the nation and transitions from “Rocky” to “The Rock.”  It’s so out of nowhere too, and I’d love to know the background on why it happened.  Ahmed Johnson had just been exiled from the Nation, either because he was injured or maybe they wanted him to be a good guy again, and so I guess they wanted The Rock to join as someone with more prestige/skill.  But yeah this is a moment in history for WWE and The Rock.

For the remainder of 1997, The Rock would go on to more fully morph into the character that became known and loved, but it’s quite something to see it all come together in real time. It started when Steve Austin (in another amazing Austin character moment) had to hand over the Intercontinental Title because he was still injured from the Summerslam piledriver. He gifts it to the Rock to become the new champion, which kind of makes the Rock look like a chump because he only became the champ through a gift and not through his own skill and abilities. But after that the Rock starts parading around like he’s actual a cool guy, and claims that he is the greatest so that people will start hating him. The Rock at this point is a “heel” (aka bad guy) so the audience hating him is exactly what the WWF wants. He calls himself “the People’s Champ” and “the Great One,” elements that would eventually morph into part of his repertoire of one-liners, and would continue to make quips whenever it suited him. When he found a quip that worked well he would keep using it again and again; he got a strong reaction with calling his opponents “jabronie” and eventually it morphed into his “Jabronie Drive” quip. Other times he’d use a land that wouldn’t land and he’d never use it again. In the same way it’s interesting to see the rise of the New Age Outlaws and their sing-along catch phrases, the very first time they introduced themselves they said “your ass better page somebody” (kids, ask your parents what a “pager” was). But this quip worked well enough that it morphed into “Oh you didn’t know? Your ass better call somebody” which the crowd would chant along with them every time they walked out.

These sing-along chants eventually start getting a bit exhausting in 1998, as the wrestlers stop adding new material and just fall back on the same old quips they’ve used for a year, but for 1997 the buildup of what are today well-known catchphrases was cool to watch.

Other than that, I’m noticing a few quirks of 90s wrestling I never had before.  Some people do moves simply because they need to get countered for a “spot” to happen.  The Sleeper Hold was a move in the 80s that was very popular, but by the 90s it was considered lame/old fashioned.  However Steve Austin had a move that he could only do by countering a Sleeper Hold.  Naturally, whenever Austin was wrestling, his opponent had to perform a Sleeper so Austin could do his counter-move, even though Sleepers were all but extinct otherwise. There are also a lot more production hiccups on the television side of things than what I would expect.  The show isn’t as tightly scripted as it is today, a lot of times a wrestler will talk to the audience and say how they’re about to fight in a title match, then Vince McMahon (on commentary) will butt in to say it’s a NON-title match.  Just seems the wrestlers and script writers aren’t on the same page.

Still, 1997 is a good year for WWF, if you have Peacock you should check this stuff out.

As stated in my last post, I’m going through the Attitude Era of WWF on Peacock, starting in 1996, to see how the most popular era in wrestling history went down.

It’s getting a bit harder to watch Raw from 1997 due to my own knowledge of the “real life” behind 1997’s WWF.  In early 1997 Bret Hart came back and started doing the best work in his career with his “heel in America, face in Canada” schtick, where he would say bad things about the USA making American fans hate him and Canadian fans love him.  In early 1997 Shawn Michaels was a pilled out rapist junkie, but who was still the company’s top draw and so had a lot of backstage pull.  This would eventually come to a head in the Montreal Screwjob.  There’s way too much to talk about with Montreal so I won’t say anything more here, but the kind of sad thing is that in the history of WWF, the Bad Guys won with respect to Montreal.

Bret Hart should have come out a winner because even though he was screwed out of his title, he went on to work for WCW for a huge load of money.  Unfortunately Goldberg ended Bret’s career with his sickeningly unsafe wrestling, and WCW folded in 2001.  Bret should have had a 10 year career worth about 25 million dollars post 1997, but he only ended up receiving about 6 million of it.

Owen Hart (Bret’s brother) was already making waves about his plan to retire young, prior to Montreal.  However less than a year later Owen died due to an in-ring stunt gone wrong.

Davie Boy Smith (Bret’s brother-in-law) was doing the best work of his career with Bret in 1997 but he, like Bret moved to WCW, and within a year his own in-ring accident would cause a spinal infection leading to a painkiller addiction which ended his life.  He was already a crack addict though, and known to be very difficult backstage by taunting and bullying other wrestlers, not exactly an angel.

Then there were the “bad guys” of this story, the people who screwed Bret out of his WWF contract, and the people who covered for WWF’s sins.

Shawn Michaels dropped the title to Steve Austin, then was taken off the air in 1998 because of his addictions.  These were already visible, as he had several spoken promos where he slurred his words and generally sounded pilled out of his mind, but he was kept on the air because he was their biggest draw.  If he had stayed retired in 1998 his career might be looked at with more venom, as a junkie and a bully who was brilliant but short lived.  He converted to Christianity in 2002 though and returned to the ring after finishing his 12-step program, and his second career has sort of washed away all memory of what he did in the 90s.

Vince McMahon managed to drive WCW out of business and become a billionaire.

HHH was Shawn’s backstage ally in WWF politics, and he married Vince’s daughter and became heir apparent of the company.

The only “good” guy who seemed to get anything good out of Montreal was The Rock (fka Rocky Maivia).  In 1996 and 1997 Rocky Maivia was a below-average midcarder, but was a solid wrestler and people realized his potential.  Shawn and HHH wanted to have Bret Hart take the Inter-continental title from Rocky, which would not only push Rocky back down the card, it would also keep Bret away from Shawn’s world title.  Bret refused because the story didn’t make sense, and instead pitched having a DQ finish, which would protect Rocky’s title.  The match ended up being scrapped, but Rocky was grateful that Bret stood up for him, and when Bret and Shawn left the company Rocky (now the Rock) had the opportunity to move into mega-stardom.  Rock never forgave Shawn for Shawn’s backstage dickery and refused to ever put Shawn over.  Now Rock is in movies so at least he got a happy ending.

Other than the backstage drama, 1997 is pretty good, Steve Austin is a joy to watch, and I feel like part of his original draw was how he was one of the first WWF wrestlers with the patented “attitude.” 1996 and was still VERY kiddy friendly, and I don’t believe the Attitude Era will officially begin until the Godwinns Henry O. and Phineas I. are off my screen. But Austin was the first one to for lack of a better term act like an adult instead of a weird PG superhero. Austin was the first I noticed swearing and flipping the bird to other wrestlers, and he always managed to find creative and funny ways to push the limits and yet still get his point across. His anger and his motives felt very “real” for their time, and contrasted sharply with most of the WWF and WCW fair of cackling cartoon villains and pristine but bland heroes Austin was great and it’s no wonder he rose to the top.

I know wrestling isn’t for everyone, but during the pandemic I finally broke down and bought a subscription to Peacock so I could go back in time and watch the WWE (then called WWF) at it’s very height of popularity.  Looking at it through the eyes of today, it’s definitely a trip in both good ways and bad.  On the one, the roar of 20,000+ people for every single Monday Night Raw is something special that we’ll probably never get back.  On the other hand it includes a number of very “90s WWF” segments that are horrible by today’s standards and that I mostly skip.

I started by journey through the Attitude Era with the PPV that supposedly started it all, King of the Ring 1996.  Any good WWF/E fan knows that that was the PPV where Steve Austin uttered the famous Austin 3:16 line, which catapulted him into superstardom.  Except… not because Austin was really just a mid-carded in these early days who was a really cool wrestler but wasn’t yet the character who would be known and loved by everyone.  Much more hullabaloo was made about old legends from the 80s like Ultimate Warrior and Jake the Snake, people way past their prime who the WWF was desperately using in a bid to boost their standing against the soon-to-be white hot WCW’s NWO.  

So as I watched the Raw episodes throughout 1996, the one thought that kept going through my head was “man this sucks.”  For supposedly being the start of the Attitude Era, this year mostly has some of the worst New Gen Era crap that I’ve ever seen.  Where to begin?  You have Henry O. Godwinn and Phineas I. Godwinn, two hillbilly pig farmers.  If you didn’t catch it, the subtle pun is that their initials spell Pig and Hog, and they also come to the ring a few times with a god damn petting zoo.  They… are not good wrestlers.  Then there’s people like Farooq walking around looking like Disco Power Rangers, and oh god so many mid carders are just crap crap crap.  Even the top of the card isn’t usually much more than “watchable.”  Shawn Michaels is great once he steps into the ring, but Raw is for character work not wrestling, and his character kind of sucks.  Vince McMahon on commentary keeps pulling out the line that “he’s got more courage than he has brains,” which actually isn’t much of a compliment when you think about it.  And aside from being a stripper, Michaels doesn’t really seem to do much or say much that’s in any way interesting.

In fact the most interesting bits by far from this era are the stories that are compelling for historical reasons rather than on-screen reasons.  Marc Mero wouldn’t be anyone’s favorite wrestler, but while watching 1996 Raw he was a breath of fresh air because he could actually wrestle and he did cool moves that made me go ooh and ahh.  Yet his career in the WWF is pretty short and uneventful, mostly being a vehicle for his wife and future WWF sex symbol Sable.  I think I know the exact moment he killed his WWF career stone dead, when he won the Intercontinental Title and gave an interview that sounded like he was accepting an Oscar.  WWF is a soap opera with fake fighting so the interviews are supposed to tell a story or be funny or compelling or make us cry or feel SOMETHING, they’re not supposed to be a place where Marc Mero thanks God and his family and his parents for bringing him to this moment.  I’m sure that was genuine emotion from Marc Mero, but it didn’t make for good soap opera TV so it just sounded awkward.  Then later Marc Mero gets a knee injury and suddenly the reason I liked him (his high flying offense) is out the window as he had to work gingerly on his injured knee.  What could have been though, he was really cool.  I’ve heard it said that Mick Foley was really upset that Marc Mero came in and got a bit money contract when Foley was still working for peanuts, but that just comes off as crabs in a bucket mentality.  Mero was good, and honestly a better move-doer (not wrestler though) than Foley, and Mero’s big money contract pushed the amount of money wrestlers could demand higher and higher, so in the end it helped Foley.  

The other time capsule from this period besides Marc Mero is Ahmed Johnson.  AJ is a big, super-steroid of a man who WWF seemed intent on pushing as their next top star.  There’s a series of episodes early on where they’re trying to make him Shawn Michaels’ friend so that the fans love him, but then he got injured and had to be taken off TV for a while.  This would be the pattern with Johnson for the rest of 1996 and 1997, they try to put him in a big central storyline but he gets injured and taken off the air for a few months.  I guess he was just unlucky, but I don’t think it was as much of a loss as Marc Mero, I never really saw anything that compelled me except his Pearl River Plunge move.

Aside from that, the best work that WWF actually put on deliberately was Mankind vs the Undertaker, but even here I have a small asterisk.  These two are exactly what WWF is good at, they are CHARACTERS more than they are wrestlers and move-doers.  Mick Foley in particular is a joy to watch as the deranged Mankind, JR talks about how he’s disfigured and has one leg shorter than the other, and you believe it watching him because he deliberately moves so awkwardly and does so much interesting stuff.  Mankind makes you believe that you’re watching someone who escaped from an insane asylum and not a happy-go-lucky weirdo named Mick Foley who loves hardcore matches.  As for the Undertaker, this is some of his best work in large part because he doesn’t have to talk, Paul Bearer talks for him.  Undertaker has never been the best talker in the world but like Mankind he is great at the physical work that makes you believe his character, this unfeeling zombie wizard who is somehow the good guy in this fight.  Every single match between the two of them was a masterclass in two characters even if the actual moves they did were usually kinda lame (outside of the amazing novelty in the boiler room brawl).

So yeah that’s the WWF attitude era, or the start of it at least.  I’ll keep writing some of my thoughts about it for the rest of this week, then get back to stocks or science or whatever it is I write about here next week.