What do you suppose would have been the payoff for the “Rick Rude insults Boss Man's mother” angle had Rude not been fired? Would it have just built to a Boss Man/Rude blowoff and that would have been that? Or was Boss Man always intended to move up to Mr.
Perfect as the end of the Heenan Family gauntlet?
Perfect as the end of the Heenan Family gauntlet?
Related question: why not have Boss Man win the IC title at WM7? Would have been a nice payoff and you can have him do a house show loop as champ with plenty of time to get the belt back on Perfect for the Bret push (apropos of nothing: while that WM7 match
surely didn't originate the “whipped into to the STEEL steps” spot, it had a particularly nasty example of one).
Given how long they stretched out Jake v. Martel, for example, I think we were definitely getting Rude v. Bossman at Wrestlemania. I also want to push a secondary crackpot theory and say that since the Hart Foundation was originally supposed to drop the tag titles to the Rockers in October, I bet the original plan was also Bret Hart getting the IC title from Perfect at Wrestlemania instead of the delayed Summerslam win. And really Bossman didn't need the title, so having him win it from Perfect wouldn't have served any real purpose.