Big Boss Man

The Man, The Myth, The Legend- The Berzerker returns to my column! In a match that doesn’t suck!

Welcome back to more Dream Matches! This week, we have some surprisingly hard-fought, bludgeoning midcard matches to start us off, as the Big Boss Man faces The Berzerker on WWF Prime Time, and Sgt. Craig Pittman faces Kurasawa (Manabu Nakanishi) on WCW Nitro!

Also, I have Fire & Ice vs. The State Patrol, as the undersized veterans oddly control most of the match against their huge opponents Scott Norton & Ice Train. Then it’s more of Mortis & Wrath on the WCW midcard, as they take on Harlem Heat on Saturday Night, back when Jacequelyn was their manager! Then I watch Salvatore Sincere fall into the bottom-tier heel dead zone of “teaming up with a jobber” as he ends up wrestling the now-serious Godwinns on Shotgun… and we cap things off with one of Nitro’s most infamously bad matches, as Juventud Guerrera has to face the huge, way too green JOE GOMEZ!

THE BIG BOSS MAN vs. THE BERZERKER (w/ Mr. Fuji):
(WWF Prime Time Feb 17th, 1992)
* The greatest of all un-over failed midcard heel gimmicks, The Berzerker, actually gets another featured match in mid-1992 against the Boss Man! I don’t recall too many competitive Berzerker matches during this early part of my fandom, so this is fun.

KING OF THE RING (Qualifying Matches) 2000:
* So I finally remembered to do another one of these, though we’re past the point where I can recall most of the angles. The name of the game this tournament is the same as last one- Make A New Star. Hopefully this “Kurt Angle” guy will prove more successful than Billy Gunn. This will be a MONSTER set, so I’ll split it up for today and tomorrow.

This tournament is unusual due to the MASSIVE roster of guys- the jam-packed company and no Russo at the time (therefore his attention span couldn’t wreck it) made for a 32-man tournament! We’ve got a huge assortment, though, as all four Radicalz (then newly-hired by the company), Chyna, Jericho & Rikishi provide serious competition, while the company’s vast tag ranks fill out slots left & right for “easy wins” or upsets- Too Cool, APA, T&A, the Hollies, Dudleys & Edge/Christian. This is a verrrrrrrrry interesting time for the company, as they put the final nail in WCW by hiring away four of their top workers, while Jericho & Rikishi had gotten over and Angle was now a completely miraculous rookie find. And what was a company based around having shitty 2-minute brawling matches now had a ton of great wrestlers all over the place, which was kind of shifting the basic style to longer matches with high spots.

Of course, having looked at all these matches… they’re still mostly super-short (as KOTR matches have been since 1994, to be fair), and OH GOD a ton of guys are still stuck in the “Punch & Kick” mode. Bad agenting was all around at this time, with only a handful of guys avoiding it. But it’d be a long, hard road to hit the point of improvement, and a lot of dudes who couldn’t make that transition saw their careers die. You’ll see a very high level of “the guy who loses the match does most of the offense”, probably in a way to look a bit strong or make him feel better about losing- this goes back a ways (you see mid ’90s joshi do this a bunch, too).

I’ll do the first round in one post, then see what I can find for the second round for next week.

RIKISHI vs. SHANE McMAHON:
(May 29th, RAW)
* Okay, I forget the story behind this. Shane is entered in the KOTR, but has to fight Rikishi, who is in the midst of his biggest year ever before everything went horribly wrong. Shane, in a WWF shirt & regular jogging pants, boasts about “beating the Big Show” and how Undertaker couldn’t beat him, marking him as a smart-mouthed wimpy heel.

Hogan & Hansen: Main Event in the making!

WWF/AJPW/NJPW WRESTLING SUMMIT:
(Tokyo Dome, April 13th, 1990)

* This is a pretty wild and wacky card, full of the kind of “Dream Matches” you’ll never see again- I’m really shocked it’s not more famous. I mean, it’s a triple-show with All Japan, New Japan, AND the WWF all at once! In the Tokyo Dome! Apparently highlights were aired on Japanese TV, but complexities with the rights led to the full event never being shown in its entirety (which might be why it’s so obscure). The biggest matches are Hulk Hogan vs. Stan Hansen, Macho Man vs. Genichiro Tenryu, and the Ultimate Warrior vs. Ted DiBiase. The WON awards declared this the “Best Major Wrestling Show” of 1990!

“TL;DR” Version: So come see Bret Hart vs. Mitsuharu Misawa in the most disappointing Dream Match of all time! Hogan with his “Japan working boots” (where he’s more “Unstoppable Monster” than the Technically-Gifted Powerhouse I was led to believe he was) on against Stan Hansen in one of his greatest matches ever! Macho King & Queen Sherri doing their schtick against a stoic top-tier Japanese legend in a befuddled Tenryu! Grumpy ol’ Jumbo Tsuruta dealing with hard-working heels in Martel & Perfect!

The show had two dark matches- Dan Kroffat, Doug Furnas & Joe Malenko beat Samson Fuyuki, Tatsumi Kitahara & Toshiaki Kawada in (11:56), and Jushin Liger beat Akira Nogami in (8:37). An extremely shaky fancam of the latter exists- it’s mostly hold-trading. They trade corner moves and Liger hits a surfboard and a rock-the-cradle. They trade flash-pins and Nogami hits a very good plancha and German Suplex for two, but Liger dropkicks him coming off the top and hits a Tope Con Hilo to the floor! He misses a roundhouse kick but gets a powerslam and finishes with a Moonsault Press. Looks **1/2-ish but holy god am I not gonna go move-for-move with such a shaky vid.

It’s a shock and a tragedy that I can’t find any solo matches between these two.

And we’re back with more of wrestling’s wildest Dream Matches! Can you withstand the power of Yoko & Booger working the world’s softest match with Mo & Mabel? More Booger, as he wrestles Rick Martel in a battle of opposites! Also watch the Dungeon of Doom’s B-Team crush High Voltage, Joe Gomez & The Renegade! Speaking of “Plain Old Rick”, watch his last match as he fights Wrath during his “Goldberg” Run! And did you know that Terry Taylor had the world’s most forgettable run in the WWF during 1992-93? True story! He takes on Jim Powers!

As always, these are all readily available on YouTube.

YOKOZUNA & BASTIAN BOOGER (w/ Mr. Fuji) vs. MEN ON A MISSION (Mabel & Mo, w/ Oscar):
* An Oakland, California house show gets this AMAZING Dream Match, featuring four huge fat guys (when Mo is the Cruiserweight, you know a match will be good). Yoko was actually WWF Champion at this time, apparently. He tosses his salt right on a ring attendant and shoves the announcer after announcing the faces, then he & Mabel won’t get out of each other’s faces, practically squashing Hebner between them- dude has gotta be ribbing these guys. The terrible video and sound transfer has robbed us of Oscar’s famous diction, sadly.

WWF SURVIVOR SERIES SHOWDOWN 1989:
(Nov. 12, 1989)
* So this is largely a card of JUST Dream Matches, and I Bayless already covered this ages ago, but whatever- these cards fascinate me. I guess they were on the USA Network and were used as hype shows for the Survivor Series, mixing up the guys in the matches against each other. So we’re in the post-WrestleMania V era, with “Macho King” being slid down to an “Upper Midcard” position, Hogan as Champion again with Zeus as an arch-enemy, and more. And this YouTube video includes the COMMERCIALS, complete with advertising. Hm, Dyanetics or video games made by Acclaim- which is more evil to advertise to children?

Gorilla Monsoon, Bobby Heenan & Roddy Piper are our hosts, and Monsoon actually lays it out- every team member would put their names into a hat, drawing names out until one one guy remained- those guys would fight each other. This is why it looks so “random” (ie. big stars are fighting tag team wrestlers so that they can win while not hurting anyone’s push).

Tenta as Yukon lumberjack “Earthquake Evans” in a 1989 tryout match, with Slick as his manager!

I’ve long felt that John “Earthquake” Tenta is a tragically underrated “Big Man” worker, but, much like Haku, he’s had a bit of a renaissance as former Workrate Snobs like me have learned to appreciate what a hard-working big guy can bring to the table. I was gonna make a more varied list for a column, but I had enough for a full one of JUST Tenta, so here’s a random selection of fun or weird Earthquake matches! Watch him take on such luminaries as Paul Roma (back when he was trying out in a Lumberjack gimmick!), The Big Boss Man (with one hell of a power feat), Tugboat & Bastian Booger!