> Hey Scott,
>
> Loyal Blog of Doom reader and occasional poster. Love the site, of course.
>
> I was thinking about past Wrestlemanias and examples of when WWE used the event to create new stars. One of the first matches to come to mind was Rick Rude beating The Ultimate Warrior for the I-C belt at WM IV. At the time Warrior was red hot, still basking in the glow of the HTM squash the previous summer. Although he held the belt for a healthy 7 months, others (Savage, Santana, Honky himself) held it much longer previously. Warrior was clearly an up-and-coming star snd feeding him to Rude risked killing his momentum dead. And although you could argue giving Rude the belt was creating a new star, the plan was simply for Rude to drop the belt back at Summerslam. So, bam, instead of having two up and coming stars, you have the dreaded 50-50 booking of two guys with major PPV losses (to each other) on their records.
>
> Yet somehow both guys emerged from this feud stronger than ever despite the mutual jobs. It definitely helped when WWF began putting Warrior over Andte in 90-second squash matches on the house shows and pairing Rude with Piper on the opposite house circuit, but still, you had two guys survive big losses and move up the card. It was perfect, almost the complete po site result you see these days when two guys trade non-decisive wins and wind up no better than where they started from. Any idea how this worked, other than the sheets talent and/or charisma of the two guys involved?
>
> Yeah, actually it used to be the rule. Basically you'd have Killer Khan come in and destroy his way up the food chain from Pedro Morales to Koko B Ware to Brutus Beefcake and then finally the program with Hogan around the horn. He'd make money and get the rub (especially if there was a big SNME blowoff) and then he would go back down the ladder in reverse on the way out. Job to Beefcake, job to Koko, finally job to Pedro and leave. You've just spread the Hogan rub over four guys, and everyone ends up a bigger star. Somewhere along the way that got perverted into skipping the vital middle steps and just trading wins right away.
