From: hekunze@jeeves.uwaterloo.ca (Herb Kunze) Subject: Wrestling TidBits - 08/17 Date: 1995/08/18 Message-ID: X-Deja-AN: 108411802 sender: news@watdragon.uwaterloo.ca (USENET News System) organization: University of Waterloo newsgroups: rec.sport.pro-wrestling - While in Montreal this past week, I had the opportunity to attend the Jacques Rougeau show in Verdun a couple of nights ago. I thought I'd present a short summary herein. Years ago during the mid-80s WWF heyday, the Rougeaus ran la Lutte Internationale in Montreal and surrounding area. This featured guys like Raymond, Jacques, and Armand Rougeau, Dan Kroffat, Rick Martel, Tom Zenk, Dino Bravo, Samu, Abdullah the Butcher, the Road Warriors, the Long Riders (Bill & Scott Irwin), Rocky & Bob Dellaserra, Gino Brito Sr. and Jr., Richard Charland, and later Steve Strong (DiSalvo), and David Shults. There was some good talent in there from a work/ workrate perspective, but the promotion predominantly featured a slower, lumbering style. Still, somebody like Kroffat is always a gem to watch. The promotion ended up folding and Montreal became a WWF town, with some of the above names even going to the WWF. Somewhat recently, Jacques Rougeau left the WWF, purportedly to get on the pro-golf circuit. Well, things change and we now find Jacques running in opposition to the WWF in Montreal, with no television, and reportedly seeking to establish a tie with WCW to set up a hybrid TV show in the market. What's he got to offer so far? The Verdun auditorium is a small arena in a slightly dilapidated neighbourhood that apparently features more than its fair share of drug deals and the like. It's a 15 minute drive from the nice suburban neighbourhood in which my girlfriend's parents live and it didn't look rough at all to me. With no TV, Rougeau had to rely on newspaper ads. The ad features such names as "Ming" (sic) King Tonga, Kamala, Big Bubba, Abdulah (sic) the Butcher, and Dan Kroffat. Tickets are advertised at $11 and $13. What the heck? At 7:30pm, a half hour before match time, the place is already hopping. I get a ringside seat and a French program. The weirdness starts right off the bat. I can understand French reasonably well, but I have trouble with the sound that comes out of the house speakers. The ring announcer welcomes us and introduces the national anthem. A small guy enters the ring and starts: "Oh say can you see..." Huh? The US anthem? Some people remain standing. This is followed by a mixed-language performance of the Canadian anthem. On to the matches; match times are rough. 1. Sunny War Cloud pinned Mike "Pretty Boy" Anthony in 10:30. Prehistoric booking in this one with Sunny playing the Hulk Hogan babyface, complete with the poor work. Mike Lozansky (Anthony) does his best Eddie Gilbert imitation and looks very good, even though he doesn't get to show all that much here. His shtick is polished though and the crowd gets hot at him. When Sunny "hulks up" and punches Anthony, Mike reaches out for a tag in his dazed state. Mike did a wonderful spin kick on Sunny when Sunny was coming off the ropes; this was the same flavour as the spin kick that Toshiyo Yamada always does. Finally, Mike goes for a pin, posing while kneeling on Sunny. Sunny hooks Mike's arms and pulls him down for the pin. Sigh. Mike was crippled in this match, working with Sunny, but he showed glimmers of greatness. * 2. Eric Shelley "Sans Limite" & Serge Jodoin & Martin "Slugger" Roy beat Nelson "Le Trappeur" Veilleux & Les Prisonniers: Serge & Martin Rolland in 14:30. The Prisoners are two big, fat blobs with mohawk haircuts. They wear white and black striped outfits into the ring and are billed as being from "Le Vieux Penintencier de Laval." ;-) The faces are all local boys and don't impress at all. The majority of the match was a long heat segment with Shelley getting pounded by the heels. The work is old-style and the crowd gets into it. When the Prisoners deliver a leg drop, the crowd groans in pain. Veilleux is the best of the six and again shows promise of being able to work well. He worked a few good spots and was damn stiff. The program says he's a tag partner with Mike Anthony, which would be a pretty good team in my book. The Prisoners set up Shelley for a a double team leg drop, where one guy lifts his partner up in the air (a la an atomic drop) and then drops him across the opponent (the Heavenly Bodies do this move). Unfortunately, they are just too big for this spot and the net result was a fat guy being dropped accidentally across Shelley's head. Probably at the fourteen minute mark, Shelley makes the hot tag and the faces clean house, with Roy getting a schoolboy on one of the Prisoners for the pin in the ensuing melee. * I should mention at some point that Dan Kroffat is not on the revised card for the night. It's a bit of disappointment. He was scheduled to face Big Bubba and that could actually have been a pretty good match. 3. Loup Garou pinned Andy Ellison at 7:00 with a powerlam off the ropes. Loup has a stupid wolf cape that he wears to the ring. Andy was either really green or really bad or (most likely) both. Loup worked really stiff with him. There was not much noteworthy in this match. 1/2* First Intermission. They were selling beer in the arena, something that doesn't happen in Ontario and they actually had waitresses running around in the ringside area. I went out to the foyer to see if they were selling any gimmicks. All they had at this stage was a few 8x10s of the names Rougeau presumably plans to build around. Other notes: - attendance guestimate is between 1600 and 1700. This shows how hot Montreal is. With no TV, the promotion has pulled in more people than most North American promotions can draw these days. It's a shame that this show drew more people than all but the most successful SMW shows and completely outdrew ECW. - a local radio station seems to have been running a promo in conjunction with the show. The station van was outside the arena and a special portion of 80-or-so ringside seats is cordoned off - station give-aways? - the fans get into their local guys in every match. - there are a pair of English-speaking teenagers in the row in front of me who call all the moves by name and seem a little "smarter" than most fans here. Intermission finally ends and Jacques Rougeau comes out and gives a short speech which receives a lot of cheers. He introduces two big guys (both step over the top rope to get in the ring) who tower over him, but I lost what he said amidst the chatter in my section and the tinny reverberations of the speakers. 4. Big Bubba beat Gino Brito Jr. in 8:00 with the Bubba Slam. Years back, Gino Brito was a star in Montreal; his son was up-and-coming and not too bad. When la Lutte toured Ontario and held a show in Scarborough, Brito Jr. took on Abdullah the Butcher in a steel cage as the headline event of the card. Now it seems he's come and gone. Brito was crappy in this match; he did absolutely nothing and Bubba seemed pretty pissed about it. At one point, Brito came off the ropes and Bubba went for a sidewalk slam but Brito didn't assist or didn't want to go over so Bubba just powered him up and around. They fell so hard th Brito was dazed or pissed and didn't even move when the ref counted two. The ref tried to work around it and counted two a few times, stopping for no apparent reason. Bubba got up and yelled at him to count three. Shortly thereafter, they did the finish anyhow. 3/4* 5. Les Doormen: Ron Trottier & Michel Payette beat the Powers of Pain: Barbarian & Warlord in 14:00 with a reversal of a superplex. The world has anxiously been awaiting the reunion of the Powers of Pain, who came out with matching face paint and matching outfits. The Road Warriors got over huge in Montreal ten years ago, so these guys were over pretty quick just because of the look. When the Barbarian is the least juiced of the four guys in the ring, that's really saying something. The match is billed as a "Semi-finale Combat des monstre." ;-) The Doormen are bodybuilder pretty-boy types; they sold larger posters of them during the intermission and I guess they are supposed to appeal to female fans. Once again, the match was a long heat segment on one of the Doormen. This was the best match of the night IMO, but that's not saying all that much. Eventually, Barbarian went for a superplex on a Doorman who managed to land on top and get a quick pin. *1/2 6. King Tonga and Kamala went to a DCOR in 10:00. Absolutely nothing happened. Kamala is so terrible and his gimmick has never worked for me. It was strangely interesting to see the evil "Meng" work as a babyface. Although I didn't mention it above, Tonga was another star in Montreal years back. Kamala might just have been disoriented - the program listed him as being from Zimbabwe not Uganda. ;-) Kamala was very vocal during the match and the crowd kind of got into it. DUD Second Intermission. While strolling around, I pass a young guy with a stack full papers big enough to need both arms to carry. Turns out they are newsletters of every shape and form and he's soliciting for new subscribers in attempt to get some add-ons to his subscriptions. He tells me his name is Steve (last name forgotten) and does a double take when I say my name. Yep, he reads the newsgroup. Maybe he'll see this and give Dave, Rick, and gang a good description of my clipboard, match score cards, and stop watch. Or maybe not. Time for the main event. 7. Richard "Big Rick" Charland beat Abdulah "The Butcher" in 10:30. Charland is from Verdun and the crowd goes nuts for him. He's gotten older over the years, but still has that barrel chest like Adrian Adonis had in his prime. Charland attacks Abdulah before the bell and gopes nuts on him until Abdulah pulls object #29 out of his tights to gain control. Meanwhile, Abdulah's manager, the evil Frenchy Martin is being kept in line by Jacques Rougeau (a match stipulation). Abby dumps Richard out of the ring and whacks him with a chair and a ringside table. This madness continues for a while until both guys are finally back in the ring. There was some leg-tripping interference from the outside and Jacques gets in Martin's face. The crowd loves it. Finally, out of nowhere Charland hits a cross body block off off the ropes and gets the quick pin. He'd had no other offence outside of the first minute. Abdulah goes nuts and beats Charland crazy. The prelim faces run in and get demolished. Then, and if you didn't have this figured out yet do not pass GO and don't collect any money, Jacques Rougeau makes the big save, decking Frenchy and squaring off with Abby. The pull-apart comes before any action can take place and they tease a brawl long and hard, with Jacques getting free just long enough to rip his shirt off before the prelim faces "hold him back" again. The crowd is chanting "Rougeau!" like crazy during all of this. I have a memory from at least 10 years back of Rougeau wrestling Abdullah the Butcher in la Lutte - Jacques was at his best back then and could really work, but the strongest memory of this match is Abby going up for a suplex from the much smaller Rougeau. Tonight's match was just some inane brawling with no real substance for me. 1/2* Overall, there was very little worthwhile from a workrate perspective on this whole show. Still, it was sort of entertaining to be out and see a reasonably big crowd by today's standards in North America cheering their local guys. - The WWF has SummerSlam on 08/27/95. The tentative line-up has - Diesel vs. Mabel for the WWF Title - Shawn Michaels vs. Razor Ramon for the IC Title in a ladder match - Alundra Blayze vs. Bertha Faye for the Women's Title - Bret Hart vs. Dr. Isaac Yankem - Undertaker vs. Kama - Skip Bodydonna vs. Barry Horowitz - Hakushi vs. 1-2-3 Kid - Hunter Hearst Helmsley vs. Bob Holly - Smoking Gunns vs. the Brothers Blu The line-up for this show has improved a fair bit since the original announced/tentative line-up from a few weeks back. The dropping of Sid in the IC match gave the show a big boost; replacing him with Razor Ramon gave it a major boost. Now, replacing the tag title of Yokozuna & Owen Hart vs. Lex Luger & Davey Boy Smith with the bottom three matches above seems like an improvement. Certainly, adding Hakushi vs. 1-2-3 Kid was a good move. By my count, on paper the show now has two definite greats, three definite dogs, and four matches that will probably be mediocre. - Dustin Rhodes' WWF Goldust character sees him paint his face gold. - Jim Neidhart suffered a heart attack in a match against Cactus Jack last week. - The retired Mike "I.R.S." Rotunda will apparently return to the ring with WCW. I had thought that Rotunda was working as a WWF road agent, so I guess WCW made him a good offer. - Hakushi is still with the WWF after all. He was scheduled to leave and was soundly thrashed by Bret Hart on RAW in what would have been his final TV appearance, but now it appears he'll be slowly rebuilt. On this past weekend's WWF Superstars show, he was put over Aldo Montoya. Just to summarize the current standing of WWF wrestling talent cuts, here's the list as I know it: - The Heavenly Bodies: Jimmy Del Ray & Tom Prichard (returned to SMW) - Doink (& Dink) - Headshrinker Sionne (apparently returning to his Barbarian character) - Duke Droese - Tekno Team 2000: Troy & Travis - Mantaur - King Kong Bundy - Tatanka It's reported that Owen Hart even came close to getting axed. Of course, Jeff Jarrett & The Roadie are also on the above list, although they are still being talked to by the WWF. The spin on all of this in the local press is that despite his figurehead TV role as WWF president, Jack Tunney actually had a reasonably valued opinion with Vince McMahon. The recent chops of talent and staff at Titan Sports combined with the loss of the frequently supportive Tunney has left the WWF talent quite nervous about their futures. Take it for what it's worth. - WCW has Fall Brawl on 09/17/95. The tentative line-up has: - Hulk Hogan & Randy Savage & Sting & Vader vs. Shark & Zodiac & Kevin Sullivan & Meng in a Wargames match - Ric Flair vs. Arn Anderson - Bunkhouse Buck & Dick Slater vs. Harlem Heat for the WCW Tag Titles - Diamond Dallas Page vs. Renegade - Johnny B. Badd vs. Brian Pillman - Craig Pittman vs. Cobra (formerly Thunder of Thunder & Lightning) Renegade is reportedly set to drop the title here before heading off to the Power Plant training school. Diamond Dallas Page will move into a title feud with Johnny B. Badd. - There will be a "UFC-style" PPV on 10/07/95. - Booking Prediction Tourney: The next tourney card is SummerSlam. I'll post a ballot on Monday or Tuesday. - WWW: My home page is at http://barrow.uwaterloo.ca/~hekunze. The wrestling portion includes this post, tape lists, and other stuff, including a reworked version of my SMW Fanweek review from last year. - Videos: I have posted something about the availability of videos. If you missed it, I'll send it to you in e-mail upon request. The VideoMarinepiad III home video is now available. Herb...