Back on Monday with more World Championship Wrestling on Monday, but I thought today I’d have a look at wrestlers on talk shows and chat shows and the like.
Kurt Angle on the Big Breakfast
The Big Breakfast was a weekday morning show that was pretty funny but eventually ran out of steam like most things do. The host interviewing Kurt is Johnny Vaughan, who was a bit of a loudmouth and was known for having been in prison for dealing drugs earlier in life but was very funny and never at a loss for words, plus it helps that he was knowledgeable about wrestling. Kurt’s on to talk about the Insurrextion show and initially doesn’t know how to play along with gags about stuff like Mankind being in the nuthouse, but quickly loosens up. He gets asked about getting booed and puts it down to jealousy and the inability to live by the Three Is. Johnny questions his oddly specific Three Is for this UK tour: inclement weather (“Proud of it!”), inane sense of humour and intensely bad food. Kurt smiles through it and can’t get a defense out for the mock boos, then stands up to mock challenge anyone who wants to take it up with him.
Johnny turns it back on him by saying he’d just lost to the Big Show/the Showster. Kurt puts it down to being thrown off and can’t get an answer about if he’ll have a rematch with him, so Johnny does an impression of a chicken to wind him up. Kurt again gets up and mock goes for him, so Johnny does a runner and shouts from off set “Hey, calm down – show a little integrity!”. They then finish with some multiple choice questions about scenarios like the Rock having BO and Mankind trying to romance Mae Young and picks all the answers that involve beating them up. Once he got comfortable he was great on this, playing along with Johnny’s games and gags.
Brock Lesnar on Jimmy Fallon
This starts with a UFC training vignette, which was what his focus was at the time, and Jimmy holding up a copy of his book. Brock, who’s normally quite grumpy, seems upbeat here. He tells a little bit of his life story quickly, with WWE brushed off as “It wasn’t for me” – that would obviously change. Jimmy hold up a pic of him with his penis sword chest tattoo, which he talks about like he regrets. Jimmy has a picture of himself with the same “tattoo” as a follow-up gag.
They then switch to a bit of promotion for The Ultimate Fighter, which Brock is the coach for. Jimmy asks Brock to show him some moves, which he plays along with. Brock tries to explain that you have to get behind someone in that sport to get the advantage, but tries to avoid saying it in a certain way so it can’t be twisted. That said, the name rear naked choke is dropped and laughed at. After quick coaching, Brock goes to let Jimmy put it on him, but slips behind and applies it himself and puts Jimmy to “sleep” while getting his last plug in. All very quick but very professional, with Brock just hitting his key points rapidly and with enthusiasm.
Bad News Brown on Arsenio Hall
A quick recap clip of the issues between Bad News and Jake Roberts, with Brown running off from the python. Bad News comes out immediately griping about the “rabbit food” they were serving backstage. He hasn’t worn wrestling gear but does have on a waistcoat with no shirt and his black glove on. He complains about how Los Angeles is like Granola: “It’s full of fruits, nuts and flakes!”. Then we get a conspiracy theory about how Jack Tunney sent that unflattering-looking clip to make him look back and the real story was his car was double-parked and they told him he was going to get a ticket.
Eventually they sit down and Bad News talks about how Arsenio’s hair is so flat he could put a sheet on it and eat a picnic off it. Arsenio’s rebuttal is that it looks like they should turn Brown’s head upside down so he looks like he has hair. Bad News actually has to put his hand on his chest to stop himself laughing, which Arsenio picks up on and accuses him of holding back a belch, further antagonizing him and bringing out a threat to knock his toad eyes out. “You’ve got beautiful eyes!”, retorts Arsenio to further wind him up. “See, that’s the problem with you being out here so long, you’re getting funny!”, says Bad News.
Arsenio then says all the “funny” people that he knows where the same vest as Brown. “Yeah, and you were holding his hand, weren’t you?”, says Brown. Allen actually talked in his RF Video shoot interview about how Pat Patterson made a big deal of defensively revealing that he was gay to him in the seventies, with Allen totally nonplussed by it because he was from New York and already a very progressive person who wasn’t bothered by all sorts of people he had around himself. Arsenio puts the cherry on top of the cake by dropping a snake on the sofa, running Brown off swearing. Bad News was great here, hardly breaking character except for wanting to laugh and showing great chemistry with Hall.
Rick Rude and Bobby Heenan on Arsenio Hall
Cold reception for the Ravishing One and the Brain. Rude’s in a leopard print tracksuit that only he could get away with wearing. Rude rides Arsenio for letting Madonna dominate him recently and tells him how he would’ve spanked her over the couch like he does. Arsenio says he only does the “good kind of spanking”. Rick gets asked to describe the post-match Rude Awakening, with Bobby talking about how they’ll have fifty or sixty women begging to be kissed. Arsenio then turns on Bobby and his relative lack of success in not managing a world champion. Bobby says that will change the next night on Saturday Night’s Main Event in Rude’s match against the Ultimate Warrior. They then strangely go to a break quickly, with Arsenio seemingly walking off to check something totally separate to their conversation.
Back from the break, they promote Summerslam, with Bobby predicting that Rude will enter as champion and hoping they can get Roseanne Barr to sing the national anthem in a reference to her infamous rendition. Was always strange that they booked that match on SNME with the Summerslam main event already announced. Bobby then presents Arsenio with a pair of Rude’s tights and challenge him to put them on backstage and come back out and wiggle his hips. Arsenio declines as things get tetchy purposely, with Rude talking about him having a done a white guy impression the night before, so he’ll do an impression of Arsenio. His “impression” is taking his top off and dropping his bottoms to show custom tights with Arsenio’s face on the front and back, flexing his glutes to make it look like he’s talking, which Arsenio puts his hand over his actual face in embarrassment about. This was OK, but not as naturally good as the prior bit.
Randy Savage on Entertainment Desk
The Macho Man is on a dull Canadian show promoting the WrestleMania CD and the brightest thing about it, in orange wrestling gear, fringe jacket, stetson and shades with yellow, pink and purple paint patches all over it. He’s asked about if he’ll be going back in the ring now that he’s doing mostly commentary and he says he will and wants to “threepeat” by becoming the WWF champion again (if only, sadly). For now, he’ll wrestle the likes of Doink the Clown “or Hulk Hogan the clown, or whoever” in an unexpected dig. The host asks him if he and Hulk are friends and Randy says not right now. He then brings up his loss to Ricky Steamboat at WrestleMania III as one of his finest matches, which he says a lot people say to him and he might’ve lost but he got back up.
They then switch to showing a snippet of the Slam Jam music video, in which I notice a guy taking a ridiculous bump off a Tatanka dropkick. Not omitted is Davey Boy Smith’s section. About a minute is shown in all to kill time. The host then promotes Macho’s personal appearances and thanks him for coming. Not too embarrassing, with Randy always up to eleven but the host pretty dry although ready to talk about some vaguely interesting stuff like Hogan and that match.
WWF vs. WBF on Family Feud
Just a snippet from the whole show. Bobby Heenan leads his team of Jimmy Hart, Sensational Sherri, the Mountie and Brian Knobbs against Gary Strydom’s team of Danny Padilla, Jim Quinn, Eddie Robinson and Cameo Kneuer. Bobby told a story in his book about how he expected the bodybuilders to be as thick as two short planks, so told his team to take it easy on them. Knobbs ended up giving stupid answers (“Name a pizza topping.” “Paint!”) and Sherri just gave bizarre ones (“Name a place where you would find someone who drives a vehicle with a siren.” “Boston.”) and the bodybuilders played it straight and were far more intelligent and wiped the floor with them.
Ray Combs is the host and was of course a big wrestling fan given his appearances on some PPVs in the early nineties. Bobby was friends with him and in character calls him “Wink”. Over to Strydom, who is browner than Hulk Hogan. He and Bobby get the first round, with Strydom getting the number two answer to “Something you did every night before going to bed as a child”. Bobby says his plan was to hold back and see if he could outdo him on the better answer, and that he does. Sherri, Knobbs and Rougeau then squander their lives before they can even get to Jimmy Hart, baby. Over to the bodybuilders with their suggestions, with Jim Quinn sounding like an overgrown kid when he says “Checked under the bed!”. Strydom gives the unsuggested answer of saying goodnight to mom and dad, which isn’t on there, so the wrestlers win. This was alright, but it’s at the start of the show and very quickfire, so not much chance to show off other than little snippets.
The Meltdown: If there’s interest I’ll post a few more over the weekend before back to the wrestling shows.