Mike Reviews “Big Daddy Cool” Diesel

Happy Friday Everyone!

This is another review I penned whilst WWE Network was still a thing; as I spied this Diesel tape in the Home Video Classics section. Seeing as it’s been 30 years since Kevin Nash tanked the WWF as the World Champ, I thought I’d have a look at the Diesel tape to see what the Home Video department to could slap together in an effort to make their new #1 guy look like the top guy he was supposed to be.

In all fairness to Big Daddy Cool; anyone would have had a tough gig carrying the WWF in 1995 due to the promotion just being the absolute pits. However, maybe someone like Bret Hart or even Undertaker might have been better at steadying the ship than Diesel, especially as poor Diesel had his cool persona torpedoed the minute the big lug was given the belt.

Anyway, this tape is only 55 minutes and 38 seconds long, so let’s see what the folks at Silver Vision/Coliseum Video can deliver to us in hopes of getting us all excited about Diesel and his Powerbombing ways.

We open up with a cool video package showing Diesel wrecking folk.

Stan Lane is our host for this one, as I often forget that he was an announcer in the WWF around this time. Lane certainly looks the part and his smooth voice suits the role.

Royal Rumble 1995
WWF Title
Champ: “Big Daddy Cool” Diesel Vs Bret “Hitman” Hart

Bret had been the Champion but he’d been screwed out of the belt at Survivor Series 1994 due to a combination of Bob Backlund and Owen Hart conspiring against him. Diesel had then promptly turned babyface and crushed Backlund in a match at a Madison Square Garden House Show in just 8 seconds. This denied Bret the chance to get a rematch at Backlund, but it was decided that he’d get a shot against Diesel at Royal Rumble 1995 instead. So Diesel had just turned Face and now this is his first pay per view Title defence was against an already established babyface that fans really liked. I know that Kevin Nash is often made fun of for being a poorly drawing Champion, but the WWF hardly helped him out when it came to his booking, especially when they changed him from a cool bad ass into a generic smiling babyface.

Diesel makes sure to say hello to Lawrence Taylor in the front row prior to the match in order to establish them as friends for something that would come up during WrestleMania season. This one gets pretty intense from the early going, with the two trading strikes and Diesel eventually giving Bret a clothesline to the floor. I think from watching the early exchanges it looks like they’re setting Diesel up to be the babyface in this one, as he’s doing all of the typical babyface shine stuff by bumping Bret around, whilst Bret does the aggressive more underhanded stuff like tripping Diesel by pulling his leg from outside of the ring and then slamming the leg into the post and ring apron. Bret slips quite easily into something more akin to his Heel character from the 80’s, as he quite viciously targets Diesel’s leg now that he has the big man down, showing little to no mercy and not being especially Face-like in his behaviour.

This doesn’t really draw any boos though, even though it looks to be them trying to establish that Bret is going to be Heel for the night whilst Diesel plays the babyface role. I think the fans like and respect Bret too much to boo him here, especially as Diesel had only recently just turned Face whilst Bret had been a babyface since 1988. In many ways Bret was the beloved figure and Diesel was the replacement, and it would have probably been prudent to keep them apart until Diesel had been more established as a babyface, but the WWF didn’t have much roster depth at the time and with the Rumble match taking place, Bret Hart was probably the best genuine contender they had who was available, so the match had to be booked. Bret manages to bust out a TOPE SUICIDA at one stage, but then Diesel starts upping his own intensity by sending Bret into the steps at ringside and then delivering his trademark elbows in the corner back inside the ring before following up with his Side Slam for two. If this were a Dino Bravo bout then we’d have a new Champion right now!

I have to say that both wrestlers are really bringing their A Game when it comes to selling here, with both making it look like the other is almost draining them of their very life force when it comes to delivering big moves and attacks. I say this a lot when I review Kevin Nash matches but I feel it bears repeating that he’s an excellent seller for a guy his size, especially when you compare him to goofs like Sid and Giant Gonzalez who were of similar height but couldn’t sell to save their lives. Big guys are so rarely getting worked over that their selling is usually always sub-par in comparison to smaller wrestlers who have to sell a lot more, but Nash managed to bridge the gap and was a very good and very believable seller. Bret continues to target Diesel’s leg, going as far as to tape Diesel’s legs together around the ring post so that he can stomp and punch away whilst Diesel is unable to get away. The referee eventually unties Diesel, but Bret was able to get some good shots in first before that happened, and he fires off a lovely looking bulldog headlock for two straight after.

Bret actually manages to muscle Diesel up for his trademark pendulum back breaker at one stage, and then comes off his own rope with an elbow for two. Bret tries following up with a plancha following that, but Diesel catches Bret and rams him into the ring post, which leads to Lawler shifting his pick to the Champ after previously saying that Bret would win. That also shows that Diesel isn’t afraid to get nasty either. Diesel looks to have it won following that with his Jack Knife Powerbomb, but Shawn Michaels runs in to break it up. This isn’t a DQ for whatever reason, as a second referee (Dangerous Danny Davis) makes Shawn leave whilst Earl Hebner declares that the bout will continue, because apparently he can just do that if he wants. Shawn made sure to attack Diesel’s leg whilst he was out there, which leads to Bret targeting the appendage again in order to weaken his bigger foe further.

Bret actually clobbers Diesel’s leg with a chair at one stage, which Vince explains away by saying that Bret actually missed which is why the match is going on, but Diesel sure sells like the chair made contact. Bret applies the Sharpshooter and looks to have things won, but now Owen Hart runs in and puts a beat down on Bret in order to prevent his brother from winning. The ref once again decides that we’ll keep going, which is probably fair after not DQ’ing Bret earlier on. Bret manages to kick out of Diesel’s resulting pin attempt, which leads to Bret managing to actually put Diesel down with a series of punches, only for Diesel to lurch back up to his feet and reply in kind to his opponent before heading out to get a chair. Seeing as Bret used the chair first, this kind off keeps Diesel as the ostensible babyface due to him just giving back what he’d already suffered. Bret flees the chair and then plays possum back inside before getting an Inside Cradle for two in a great near fall that they’d call back to in a future match between the two.

The ref ends up taking a bump, and that leads to Shawn Michaels, Owen Hart, Bob Backlund, Jeff Jarrett and Roadie all running in to attack both wrestlers. This is finally the point where the refs just can’t allow this to go on anymore, leading to the match being declared a No Contest. To be honest, if they were going to ignore the previous run-in’s then they needed to REALLY up the ante to finally justify stopping it, and this mostly did the trick.

NO CONTEST
RATING: ****

Thoughts: This was an excellent match with an all-time terrible finish. They did eventually pay it off by having the two wrestle a No DQ match in November 1995, but it took a while to get there. There’s no way to do that finish and not have it be an absolute momentum killer, but they didn’t want Bret to lose and they didn’t want Diesel to drop the belt yet, so that was the finish we got. Ideally they wouldn’t have booked the match at all if they were worried about that sort of thing, but I guess they thought that needs must. In all honesty, Diesel winning after Owen or Backlund cost Bret the match wouldn’t have made him look any better than fighting to a No Contest, as any result other than him winning clean was going to make him look lesser as a Champion by not being able to defeat the previous babyface Champ and they weren’t going to have Bret eat a clean pin after only just dropping the belt to Backlund. The work was fantastic, with both competitors selling consistently throughout and both of them also showing off their more aggressive sides in order to get across the intensity of the battle. Finish aside, this match is brilliant and well worth seeking out if you’ve never seen it before

This is omitted from the tape; but Following the match, Diesel rallies to send the Heels packing and then helps Bret up so that we can have a mutual showing of respect that the crowd appreciates.

We instead get more clips of Diesel beating people up. That’s cool and all, but can we at least get some exclusive interviews with him so he can try and get his personality over a bit?

Monday Night Raw – 20th February 1995
Jeff Jarrett w/ The Roadie Vs “Big Daddy Cool” Diesel

Jarrett was actually the IC Champ at the time, so this is Champion Vs Champion in a Non-Title match. Jarrett was usually a good opponent for someone like Diesel as he was happy to bump around in order to make the bigger man look good and he was a solid worker who could help guide less talented people through a match. In all honesty, Diesel probably needed more opponents like Jarrett as it allowed Diesel to work a style that worked better for him when it came to making the WWF Champ look good. The WWF was of course more interested in making Diesel wrestle the likes of Sycho Sid, Mabel and British Bulldog though, who were either big sluggers or power guys, neither of which were going to help make Diesel look good or have enjoyable matches with him.

Jarrett’s selling and bumping is great here, with even Roadie taking some bumps as well when the call comes. Both Jarrett and Roadie are tremendous buffoons, and that makes them perfect when it comes to making your big monster babyface look good. Eventually the combined forces of Jarrett and Roadie are enough to actually cut Diesel off for a bit, giving us our heat segment. Diesel’s surprisingly good selling and Jarrett’s smooth work combine to make the heat segment a watchable one, with Jarrett making sure to both hit and move, as well as cheating when the opportunity allows, such as when Jarrett starts choking Diesel on the ropes at one stage.

The crowd sticks with Diesel and eventually they are rewarded for their support when Diesel starts fighting back, with his trademark Side Slam and Snake Eyes moves of course making an appearance. At this point I expect Roadie to get involved somehow in order to give Jarrett some kind of a near fall before Diesel prevails, but that doesn’t happen. Instead Diesel just hits the Jack-knife Powerbomb and that’s enough for the three count. I can’t say I’m especially thrilled with the WWF Champ defeating the IC Champ so decisively like that, but at the same time they needed to give Diesel some big wins in order to let him keep pace with the rise of Shawn Michaels on the way to WrestleMania, and this helped with that at least.

WINNER: DIESEL
RATING: **3/4

Thoughts: Decent TV Main Event there, with Jarrett being a great bumping Heel and Diesel looking like a strong Champion. It’s just a shame that they had to feed the IC Champ to the WWF Champ like this, but aside from that this was a solid outing that fulfilled it’s brief of making Diesel look like a big tough wrestler that you should consider to be the top guy in the promotion

Roadie takes a Powerbomb post match as well, just so Diesel can thoroughly destroy the Heels. Jarrett and Roadie had only recently got the better of Razor Ramon, so Diesel dispatching them here was a useful example of what the pecking order on the babyface side was at the time.

We head back to Stan Lane, who lets us know that we’ve got a match specially taped for this release up next when Diesel puts the strap on the line against King Kong Bundy.

Home Video Exclusive
WWF Title
Champ: “Big Daddy Cool” Diesel Vs “The Walking Condominium” King Kong Bundy

Opponents like this, combined with having his rough edges sanded down in order to conform to the template that Vince McMahon thought every top babyface had to fit into, were probably the two biggest reasons that Diesel’s reign didn’t go too well. There is a very nice video up on YouTube of King Kong Bundy congratulating Diesel after he wins the belt though which warmed my heart to see. This match does NOT warm my heart though, as Bundy is completely the wrong opponent when it comes to making the new Champ look good. Firstly, Bundy can’t really take any of the Champ’s big moves, so Big Daddy is limited in what he can do and all the cool special moves he does to get over are removed.

Secondly, Bundy isn’t really able to bump around for the Champ, which in-turn means the match can’t ever really get out of 1st gear. Thus the majority of this one sees Bundy putting Big Daddy Cool in rest holds whilst the Champ has to just sit/lie around until he’s finally able to do a few things, none of which are that impressive. For instance, the finish is just a running clothesline and comes basically out of nowhere because they can’t do a fast-paced exciting comeback sequence like in the previous Jarrett match, so instead the Champ just has to hit a move that wouldn’t normally end a match because it’s the only move Bundy is willing/able to take.

WINNER AND STILL CHAMPION: DIESEL
RATING: DUD

Thoughts: Yeah this was NO BUYS as Bryan and Vinny would say. Just totally the wrong opponent for Diesel, and it’s no surprise that the House Show run these two had failed to cause much excitement at the box office

We get more clips of Big Daddy Cool beating people up

The Action Zone – 5th February 1995
WWF Title
Champ: “Big Daddy Cool” Diesel Vs “The King of Harts” Owen Hart

Owen was in his pomp as an arrogant annoying little git during this period, so Diesel beating him up should hopefully provide some entertainment. We’re back to the formula that works a lot better now, with Owen being a smaller Heel who is willing to bump around in order to make the Champ look good, and that’s exactly what happens in the early going, with Owen only really having joy when he’s able to do things like eye gouges etc. Eventually Shawn Michaels wanders down to provide a distraction, which leads to Owen being able to cut off Big Daddy Cool and work a bit of heat.

Diesel sells that well and Owen does a good job of tailoring his offence in order for it to make sense that he could keep the big man on the backfoot, as he cheats when possible, tries attacking the big mans leg in order to slow him down, and Owen also uses his speed when those other tactics don’t work, such as when he comes off the ropes with a Missile Dropkick at one stage. The Champ manages to jam the ropes when Owen tries another high flying move though, and that leads to Diesel making the comeback, with Owen taking great bumps for all of the big mans impressive power moves. The Jack-Knife soon follows and that’s another big clean win for the Champ on TV.

WINNER AND STILL CHAMPION: DIESEL
RATING: ***

Thoughts: Man if they’d just had an endless supply of guys like Jeff Jarrett and Owen Hart who had credibility as WWF Title challengers, then they could have gotten many productive months out of Diesel as the Champ. Sadly you couldn’t really Main Event a pay per view with any of those guys getting a Title shot, so their shots were consigned to TV and we had to live with the Champ taking on stiffs like Sid instead

Next up we get the WWF Title match from WrestleMania XI. It’s joined in progress with the Champ selling his back, but I’ll post the full match recap below seeing as I’ve reviewed it before.

WWF WrestleMania XI
WWF Title
Champ: “Big Daddy Cool” Diesel w/ Pamela Anderson Vs “The Heartbreak Kid” Shawn Michaels w/ Sid and Jenny McCarthy

Diesel had defeated Backlund in just 8 seconds a mere few days after Backlund had won the belt from Bret. Meanwhile, his former partner Michaels went on to win the Royal Rumble, setting up a match between them here. Sid has been brought in as insurance for Shawn, with the idea being that Diesel used to be his bodyguard but has now strode out on his own. Sadly for Diesel, they immediately neutered his cool character the moment he went babyface and then Michaels showed him up in their Mania feud, thus leading to the fans seeing Michaels as the bigger star of the two.

Shawn was supposed to win Pam Anderson as his manager for this match after winning the Royal Rumble, but Pam has decided to manage Diesel instead due to Shawn being a jerk, meaning that Shawn has hired McCarthy as a replacement instead. Despite them supposedly representing rival wrestlers, McCarthy and Anderson sit next to each other during the match and chat like friends, which kind of kills the immersion a bit. You get the sense that Shawn found all of this Pam Anderson stuff to just be a distraction that he was happy to get out of the way so he could work his match.

Diesel gets the big shine to start, with Shawn of course taking a load of big bumps for it all, even taking out a cameraman at one stage. Well, there are a lot of them at ringside so that was always going to be a possibility. Shawn really is the star of this match, as the bout almost seems designed to make him look good at points, something Kevin Nash even accepts today when he’s interviewed. It didn’t help that they neutered the cool Diesel character as badly as they did, but Diesel is almost the guest star on the Shawn Michaels show here in what should really be his first Mania Main Event.

Another cameraman gets in the way at one stage, which almost ruins a spot where Diesel has to go into the ring post, although they mostly cover for it. That leads to Shawn working some heat for a bit, even getting a splash off the apron onto Diesel at one stage. Diesel does sell the heat well, which has always been something Kevin Nash has been good at actually and he probably doesn’t get enough credit for it, possibly because sometimes he couldn’t be bothered to do it properly and those are the occasions that people remember.

We do get some Diesel chants at one stage when Shawn locks in a sleeper hold and Diesel fights out of it, leading to Diesel making a comeback with some clotheslines in the corner and the Snake Eyes. Shawn bumps and feeds for that well and Diesel looks decent on offence, although he’s a bit ungainly at certain points. Really a 7 foot dude with bad legs running wild is rarely going to look all that graceful in all honesty, but Diesel tried his best there and Shawn was where he needed he be in order to make it work as much as possible at least.

Shawn catches Diesel with the Sweet Chin Music not-too-soon-after that flurry from Diesel, but the ref had previously turned his ankle and is slow to make the cover, thus suggesting that Shawn would be the Champion now were it not for that. Considering that Shawn would have essentially beaten Diesel close to clean in that scenario, it doesn’t help with the perception that Shawn is the bigger star of the two.

Sid undoes the top turnbuckle pad on one of the turnbuckles whilst the referee isn’t looking in order to set up Shawn getting catapulted into it when Diesel thwarts his evil scheme, but Shawn doesn’t make it to the top turnbuckle and ends up landing on the second one instead. However, that was supposed to be the finish, so Diesel just Powerbombs Shawn anyway, which does at least mean that he gets a cleaner win. The fact he originally wasn’t supposed to win that clean, after already doing a clean visual pin for Shawn, is pretty ridiculous considering that he’s supposed to be the next Hogan-level top babyface.

WINNER AND STILL CHAMPION: DIESEL
RATING: ***

Thoughts: This was a good match and an impressive performance from Shawn, but he essentially screwed his best mate over in the process as he came out of this looking like the far bigger star of the two and Diesel was fighting a losing battle as Champion from that point onwards. The finishing Powerbomb looked pretty bad and they botched the catapult into the turnbuckle spot as well, so it kind of fell apart in the closing stages. I know quite a few people really enjoy this match, but it’s always topped out at just “good” for me. Their 1996 match a year later is much better in my opinion, mainly because they invert the Face/Heel dynamic and the match works much better as a result

Diesel celebrates with the celebrities in the ring as they try and give him as much of a rub as possible, but after that performance from Shawn he was essentially the #2 babyface in the promotion and arguably #3 once they started heating Bret Hart up again.

Stan Lane wishes us well and that’s the tape.

In Conclusion

The Bundy match aside, pretty much everything on this tape was either decent, good or excellent, so for a sub 60 minute release there’s more than enough good stuff here in order to give it a thumbs up based purely on match quality alone. I would say that the tape didn’t do an especially good job as a showcase for Diesel as a character though, as the focus was solely on the matches with only a few quick collections of video clips to go alongside it and a few quick links from Stan Lane. I think an interview with the Champ and maybe a couple of personality pieces in place of the Bundy match would have not only improved the quality of the tape overall but it would have also worked better as a method to getting Diesel over.

Kevin Nash can be a perfectly fine wrestler in the right setting with the right opponent, but his in-ring work was never the thing that people were excited about when it came to him, it was his promos, his Heel beat downs and his cool persona. You get basically none of that here. It’d be like having a Sandman DVD where you never get to see his full beer chugging and ciggy smoking entrance. As it is though, Big Daddy Cool is a solid effort and shows that Kevin Nash actually could have good matches when he wasn’t hamstrung by bad booking and/or poor match making

Recommended Tape!