Repost: Legends of Wrestling–Worst Characters

The SmarK 24/7 Rant for Legends of Wrestling: The Worst Characters in Wrestling

- Your host is Mean Gene, and we're featuring Mick Foley, Pat Patterson, Michael Hayes and Dusty Rhodes.

- Mick's pick is Mantaur, and all the bad characters at that time pissed him off because he was trying to break into the WWF at that point. He relates a story about getting ribbed by Shane Douglas in 1988 off that.

- Michael's pick (and he can't pick Gobbledygooker or Red Rooster according to Gene) so he goes with Shockmaster. And thankfully we get the clip, because this channel rules the universe. Dusty shoulders the blame for that one, but then notes that David Crockett had nailed a 2x4 to reinforce the wall from earlier in the day, which is what Ottman tripped over on the way out.

- So we move right into Dusty's pick off that story, and he just has to pick Gobbledygooker. Pat blames Vince McMahon 100%. And hey, we get the clip of THAT, too. Gene's disgusted "Who in the HELL came up with the Gobbledygooker?" is great to hear. Pat wonders how Dusty went out and wore polka-dots every night in the WWF. Dusty replies: "Half a million dollars a year is how I went out and wore them, daddy." That leads into a discussion of whether Vince was trying to bury him, but Dusty says that he didn't care because he was going to get it over out of spite if he had to. Funny story about skimming off Ted Dibiase's money ("Three for the fans, two for me.")

- Mick brings the subject back to Mike Shaw and how he managed to get all his stupid characters over until the WWF couldn't figure him out. Michael reveals that Ole Anderson had a personal grudge against Shaw for some reason, which is why he was depushed and fired from WCW at that point.

- Back to the Gobbledygooker, as Mick speculates that they wanted to debut Undertaker in the egg, but then changed their minds at the last minute. Pat thought it would be Ric Flair, as Vince was being so secretive about the surprise that no one actually knew who was going to be in it.

- So now we gotta talk about Red Rooster, and Mick relates the famous story about how both Taylor and Hennig came in on the same day and basically a coin toss dictated that Hennig got Mr. Perfect and Terry got Red Rooster. Pat wonders what's wrong with a cock in the ring, anyway? And on that note, we take a break for some reason and have a commercial for the pay channel we're already watching. Is this show normally on the preview channel or something?

- Mick does his Vince impression while relating the story of how he almost became Mason the Mutilator, and that leads to talking about the stupid names they almost foisted onto Steve Austin. Ice Dagger, indeed.

- Michael rages against Ole Anderson having Harlem Heat come out in chains. Good thing the black community has Michael Hayes fighting for them! Mick launches from there into Ron Simmons initial look as Faarooq.

- Pat thinks that his time as a Stooge was a bad gimmick, although apparently Brisco loves dressing in drag. Unfortunately we get a clip of the drag Hardcore match from King of the Ring 2000.

- Next topic: Bad characters that actually WORKED. Dusty starts with Goldust and how it worked so well that Dustin now feels naked without the facepaint. Hayes notes that Razor Ramon actually refused to work with him because it was so out there. Dusty admits that he didn't like the gimmick at the time and he always kind of resented that they'd do that his son. But it grew on him later.

- They talk about the many failed gimmicks of Scott Hall, and how Diamond Studd morphed into Razor Ramon (complete with a COOL transition of Diamond Studd starting the Razor's Edge and turning into Ramon doing the move), and how it worked because Razor Ramon was in him all along, waiting to get out.

- They talk about George Steele, complete with the awesome bit from Tuesday Night Titans where George gets shock treatment and briefly speaks like a normal person. Sadly, the quack doctor gives him too much juice and fries his brain again.

- Mick talks about how Vince thought pop culture was passing him by in 1997, so he started telling the guys that they'd have to put more of themselves into the characters rather than just interchanging garbagemen and plumbers. This leads to talking about Undertaker and how he's been able to survive with the same gimmick for 18 years because of his passion. Although really the gimmick itself has changed drastically four or five times.

- And this leads us to the worst moments in wrestling history. Dusty talks about the electric chair debacle at Hallowen Havoc 91, and the less said about that the better. Mick brings up throwing a fireball at Paul Bearer in 1997 and doing so badly at it that Undertaker had to take the flash paper and do it himself.

- Michael talks about trying to follow "Badstreet USA" with "I’m a Freebird And What's Your Excuse" and bombing with it, which leads to Mick doing his Dusty impression to explain why Missy Hyatt got dumped into a bucket of water. The whole "New Freebirds" thing was pretty stupid, indeed. Mick is still bitter because he and Van Hammer got the "best match" bonus that night and Abdullah cut himself into it because of his run-in.

- Pat wraps things up with a quick story about running a show in Quebec with arena staff who could barely speak English and mixed all the entrance music up…and we get CLIPS!

A really fun and interesting show, and they should just let them talk for 3 hours because it would be way better than the current product on PPV, I'd bet. I hope these stick around on Sasktel.