From: foleye@prism.CS.ORST.EDU (Stilt Man)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.pro-wrestling
Subject: WrestleMania VIII
Date: 6 Apr 92 18:50:04 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Oregon State University, Computer Science Dept.


Okay, I admit it.  I was wrong.  Flair dropped the strap to Savage.  That and
the Warrior coming back are the two things I want to address in this post.

First of all, WRT Flair dropping the strap . . .

Okay, Savage wins the belt and, as of the end of the PPV, has the one-up on
Flair because of it.  On the other hand, by all accounts (I didn't get to
see the PPV because I'm at college), Savage won the title with a great camera
angle of his fist in Flair's tights yanking him over.  Which leaves quite a
few different possibilities.  The one I hope they DON'T opt for is to strip
the Macho Man of the title like they did with Bulk Bogus.  They're stipping
the titles off of people so often these days that if they do it again in so
short a time, then they'll lose prestige from it.  If they do strip him, I
am hoping that they'll put some sort of tournament in which the final match
gets down to the newly-returned Ultimate Warrior and the Nature Boy.  From
there, I really don't much care who wins the belt.

Other possibilities:  Vince could be using this as an opportunity to beef up
the house shows, and will have Flair win the strap back at one of the first
few shows and announce it on TV, thus perhaps boosting attendance at them.
He's had the tag straps change hands (and even forgot to censor the Natural
Disasters' interference report from the WWF Magazine) and the I-C strap all
switch at a house show in the last few months.  Quite possibly, he's going to
have a clean sweep of them and have Flair take it back from Savage at one.

The other possibility, if Flair's going to win the title back, is to put a
rematch on a syndie somewhat soon.  Are the ratings times coming up fairly
soon?  He could quite easily boost the syndie watchings for this particular
epoch by having Savage drop the strap to Flair in one of the Saturday 
Superstars shows (or at least it's on Saturdays here).  Prime Time or SNME
seems more likely to me, however; they can donate more time to a longer match
than Superstars can.  Could be, though, if the ratings samplings are coming up.

I sincerely doubt that Savage is going to keep the belt for very long, though.
With the Warrior back (whom they have admitted in the Spotlight magazine recently
was the very one who put Savage on probation last year) and Hogan possibly
still around, Savage is a very conspicuous #3 in the WWF face ranks.  Both
hold totally clean victories over the man, and the longer they keep the WWF
title with him without giving one of those two a shot, the less prestige it
holds.  Savage, first and last, is a paper champion unless former champs get
a shot.  With Flair holding the belt, Warrior, Savage, and Hogan can all have
shots and Vince is spared the face-face matches.

On the bottom line of all this reasoning is that I don't think that McMahon
is going to throw away the tickets he can sell with Flair as champ that he
can't sell with Savage as champ.  Flair can carry organizations.  He's done
it before; there's no doubt he can do it again.  Perhaps better worded, Flair
AND A WHOLE BUNCH OF FACE CONTENDERS GUNNING FOR HIS TITLE can carry organizations.
If we've got this sudden explosion of face contenders coming up, such as
Savage, Warrior, Undertaker, we can have all sorts of rivalries that people
will want to see.  The "invincible mega-face champion" genre is dead and
buried.  Hogan can't live up to it any more.  Savage never could.  What the
Whiff needs is lots of faces now that they don't mind admitting are not
totally invincible going after a single top heel.  They've got all the
characters for the script, and all they've got to do is start the play.

Taking the bottom line one step lower, perhaps:  what says that Vince had
to promise Flair not one title reign, but TWO of them to get him to jump to
the WWF, especially when WCW was willing to give him all he wanted after they
started hearing "We Want Flair!" chants the whole summer?  If Vince doesn't
keep this man happy, he just might go back to WCW.  Savage hasn't disgraced
Flair one bit, and Vince isn't disgracing WCW, either.  They're getting along
fine without the Nature Boy.  What Vince needs to do is use his best actively-
wrestling draw to its fullest advantage.  That man is not Randy Savage, it's
not the Undertaker, and it's (not yet) the newly-returned Ultimate Warrior.
That man is the "Nature Boy" Ric Flair.  The competition he encourages is
what people are coming to see these days.  They don't want to see an invincible
ultra-face leg dropping everything in sight.  They want to see good, evenly-
paired matches.  With Flair and his image at the top, the WWF can produce that.
If they opt for petty smear campaigns against WCW now, then Kip just might
Frey him.  :-)


The other part of my discussion is the return of the Ultimate Warrior.  This
is a subject with which I have many arguments from people, but . . .

WELCOME BACK!!!

I certainly wouldn't have even bothered paying attention to the Whiff any more
after the Warrior left if Flair hadn't gone there.  He's one of my long-time
favorites, and perhaps now that he's noticeably smaller, they'll let him use
the wrestling talents he does have.  I, for one, think that a Warrior-Flair
feud, no matter which of the two has the strap, would be a great program for
Vince to run, because the Warrior makes a half-decent mega-face, though not
the same level as Hogan, and he's also a guy that they don't have to portray
as invincible.  Against a mega-heel like Flair, the Warrior as a new mega-face
would make a good match.

Basic question . . . is it Slim Jim?

As I said earlier, I didn't see the card itself.  I can't judge.  As for why
he looks smaller, I see lots of people saying it's Hellwig off the juice, or
maybe it's Kerry Von Erich in facepaint.  From what I've heard (I'm going out
on a limb here), I suspect that the former is true.

Von Erich most definitely is smaller than the Warrior, but he still is a
definite roider.  Even recently, he looks as big as ever.  He doesn't look
all that much smaller than Hellwig used to.  From all the descriptions of how
the Warrior's hair color is different (much like Hellwig's darker brown natural
color, if I'm interpreting this right) and the way he looks nontrivially smaller,
I don't think it's Von Erich.  The other half of my argument is that, as it's
been said before, Von Erich has a messed up leg, to the point that some people
are unsure as to whether he even has a foot on one leg.  In all the time I've
seen Kerry Von Erich in the Whiff (which is about the only place I've seen him)
I have never seen him run even remotely as fast as Hellwig has been known to.
From what I've heard, the Warrior at WM8 ran in there at about 130 mph (exag.)
and flew through the ropes to attack Shango and Sid.  That couldn't have been
Von Erich.  Unless it was Del Wilkes (or perhaps even Chris Walker).

And in closing, the Warrior's return puts up one more argument for why the Whiff
should, for business reasons, give the strap back to Ric Flair.  The Warrior is
the only man who's ever pinned Hulk Hogan without a blatant screwjob.  I would
go so far as to say it was clean, but I get arguments on that.  If the WWF wants
to have a new ultra-face, now is their chance.  Why?  Simple.

How many people can claim they won their first World Championship cleanly from
Hulk Hogan, and their second from Ric Flair?

If that don't look impressive on a pro-wrestling resume, nothing does.  The Warrior
has that opportunity.  The Undertaker's the only other who can try, but he beat
Hogan by screwjob.  UW did it clean.  If he beats Flair clean, then having Hogan
and Flair both in your trophy case is one hell of a way to produce a new mega-face
champion that WCW can't ever possibly match.

 __________________________________________________________________________
|The Stilt Man    --Never ask a mortician to go and bring back a cold one. |
|__________________________________________________________________________|
|foleye@prism.cs.orst.edu     | The opinions represented here are not      |
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|foleye@mist.cs.orst.edu      | of its departments.  Thus, the place has   |
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