Hey Scott, I was rewatching the WCCW DVD and a question occurred to me. Did Vince have bigger plans for Kerry than what ended up panning out? I was a strictly WWF kid growing up so I had no idea who the Texas Tornado even was in 1990; but I'm curious now, did they sign him with plans to use him as a top guy, or was it just more of Vince gobbling up territorial stars like he'd done throughout the 80's?
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No, if anything they had smaller plans for him due to the missing foot and "demons". He was just a guy with a good look by that point and lucked into the IC title push.
I'm more interested in the urban legend that he was the second or third choice to be given the Hogan push assuming they couldn't get Hogan. While he looked great and was a good worker in the early 80s his mic skills just weren't up to par, plus there's that whole thing with him being on drugs ALL THE TIME.
ReplyDeleteHogan's mic skills were actually pretty terrible. But he made up for it with a shit ton of charisma.
ReplyDeleteIt's true! I just watched the Hogan Heel turn from '96, midway through he started calling them the new world organization instead of new world order. Terrible and hardly the only example of Hogan tripping over his lines...Yapapie
ReplyDeleteOnce Beefcake got injured (and out of the IC title program with Mr. Perfect), they should have had Santana win the title at the SNME in July, then have Santana drop it back in a rubber match at Summerslam 90 to Perfect. Von Erich did nothing for the IC belt or Hennig or anyone.
ReplyDeleteHoly shit no, how can you guys say Hogan had bad mic skills? Yeah his promos were pretty cheesy but I still consider him in the top ten of promo guys.
ReplyDeleteThere is a difference between charisma and mic skills. Hogan stuttered and stumbled and didn't make sense in a ton of promos over the years.
ReplyDeleteThey can say it because it's their opinion.
ReplyDeleteYes, Hogan had a lot of memorable promos, but so did Scott Steiner, I wouldn't call Big Poppa Pump a good mic worker.
While I will respectfully disagree with Hogan being bad on the mic, one person who gets praise but i thought he was *ok* was Piper...
ReplyDeleteFlair just fellates him all the time, and i sit back and go "thats it?"
Never heard of the Kerry in Hogans spot rumor. I always assumed it was either Snuka or JYD.
Steiner has tons of charisma, like Hogan. But both were rambling messes trying to cut a promo.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6Osf81dKSM
ReplyDeletePerfect example of Piper being bat shit insane(Which Hogan also tended to be) but also making sense(which Hogan never did). That's the difference between why Piper was great and Hogan was meh.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzHjt6SQf2M
ReplyDeleteSkip to the 5 minute mark. Just terrible without all the vitamins, prayers, Mean Genes, and Hulkamania.
Arriba!
ReplyDeleteThat foot thing still boggles my mind, especially since I didn't read about it till probably a couple of years ago.
ReplyDeleteYeah, personally I thought Hogan was always really good on the mic, although I agree, he did blow some lines on some pretty high profile interviews. I think it's a little unfair though, he always had the "John Cena" role where he had to spend most of his time hyping up the WWF and the Hulkamania brand that there was little time for other content.
ReplyDeleteWhat are Hogan's "best" WWF interviews anyway? I always liked his interview after he won the title at MSG, the ridiculously epic WrestleMania III and IV interviews about Andre, and the one he gave at SNME in the ring in the leadup to Summer Slam 1990 which might be his best one. I really liked the one he did in the WrestleMania VIII PTW special as a contrast to the others -- very effective, serious and soft-spoken.
Yeah, my impression was that KVE was someone Vince wanted REALLY badly about five years earlier. By 1990 I'm pretty sure he was just an emergency replacement for Brutus Beefcake -- although you have to think Vince took a look at him and saw dollar signs in his eyes based on his look alone.
ReplyDeleteMost of my Hogan promo criticism comes from his WCW days. Even though him and nWo invented the modern opening 15 minute promo, nobody has done it worse than him since. No sense of timing or direction, just endless aimless boring rants.
ReplyDeleteI always wondered with Beefcakes career if he never got hurt.
ReplyDeleteWell that I would agree with. His Hollywood Hogan interviews hit their marks in terms of promotion-- but that's about all they did.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise it was 15 minutes of "I LOVE... THIS MAN!" and "I am the god of wrestling" ad-nauseam. He portrayed the character well, but the interviews were definitely pretty weak on content.
Me too, although you have to wonder if he'd have to have changed up his gimmick at some point as the 'occupation' gimmicks seemed to have a limited shelf life, although him and the Big Bossman definitely pushed the envelope as far as how over one could get.
ReplyDeleteYeah, they were able to keep that a secret for a long time. I read somewhere (I think it was one of the old rspw faqs) that he did a match in Vegas in 87 or so and his boot came off and there was nothing but a stump there. Nowadays that would be on Youtube 20 minutes later, but back in the 80's it was a lot easier to keep that sort of thing in-house. Between all his secrets getting exposed and the fact that you can watch just about any match (and PPV) for free online, Vince McMahon probably hates the internet.
ReplyDeleteI'll take a Hogan promo over a lot of the ROH guys. At least Hogan had some energy to his promos, a lot of guys (not just ROH, but also in the big 2) just seem to be reading their lines or something.
ReplyDeleteAt least all of the fans online have nothing but positive things to say about him and his product!
ReplyDeleteDoes anybody know, was Kerry's foot missing all the way up to the ankle? I've never heard one way or the other but I'd imagine it'd be really noticeable if he was using some kind of prosthetic for the whole foot. I thought maybe it was just part of his foot, like his heel was still intact and the rest was a prosthetic. I'm not an expert on the state of prosthetics technology in the late 80s/early 90s, but I have to imagine it wasn't quite to the point where it wouldn't be obvious.
ReplyDeletePiper gave the absolute worst face promos ever. All cheap heat.
ReplyDeletePiper got really bad duing his WCW era, since he was making the same pop culture references that he did during the Rock n' Wrestling Connection. However, I think his recent Piper's Pits in the last couple of years have actually been worthwhile, such as the Cena one and the recent Bryan/AJ version. He now seems to have enough respect and authority to make something seem serious for once.
ReplyDeleteI am an amputee. Can't speak to the state of prosthetics in the early 90s (had my leg removed in 2001) but I've never seen or heard of anything where they'd keep part of a foot like that. It just seems impractical and unusable. So I would assume he had his whole foot removed, but with his ankle joint intact it wouldn't be terrible hard to move around. It would limit him yes, but I've gotten solid motion out of prosthetic feet that were essentially a block of wood. Kerry was an elite athlete at one point, so I assume he'd have been fine on a prosthetic foot.
ReplyDeleteWas it Kerry that Flair had to wrestle while he zonked out of his mind (Kerry, not Flair)? I remember a page out of his book where he said Kerry did a sunset flip and rolled up an invisible man in the course of the match, before Flair got in the proper position.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure Hogan blew some lines BEFORE a good portion of those interviews.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the insight. I've encountered amputees in my line of work before, and I guess thinking back I've only ever seen either individual toes removed or a whole foot up to the ankle bone.
ReplyDeleteEither way, if Zack Gowen can work ROH-style matches in the 3 star range with one leg, I'd have thought that Kerry could have made it work with a prosthetic. I'm guessing he gets too much of a bad rap for the amputated foot, it was probably more the drugs and the lack of motivation that made him such a slug.
Early on in Vince's run with the WWF, before he got Hogan, he would actually feature updates on some other territories on his own show (crazy, right?). There's a clip of it on WWE's World Class DVD. The dude apparently didn't just want Kerry, he wanted the entire family. Because, why not? Why settle for one Hogan when you can have three of them? David was the surly, shit-kicking badass that the guys could get behind, Kevin was the pin-up high-flyer who the girls could lust over, and Kerry was a combination of the two. The fact that the Von Erichs didn't become house hold names and World Class didn't end up becoming the number one company in the world
ReplyDeletehow is that terrible?! its a lil stilted but not terrible, plus he had like 5 years before he perfected the promo going to the awa.
ReplyDeletethats like watching a rock promo from 96 and comparing it to to 2001.
come on.
^^^^ THIS Hogan had charisma, but it seemed like in order to work himself into that charismatic frenzy he has to stop thinking about the words coming out of his mouth. He Asked Mean Gene if he knew what turned him on at the first wrestle mania!!!
ReplyDeleteI love Piper!
ReplyDeleteI'd also take a Hogan Promo over a lot of ROH guys, but those ROH guys can, you know, wrestle. I'm more inclined to forgive a shitty promo following a ****+ match than a big boot/Leg drop, but to each there own lol
ReplyDelete