World Champions Vs Singers, Jesse Ventura Vs Vince McMahon and One Wrestler Vs EVERYBODY.
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00:00I would hazard a guess a lot of people listening to this do not recall the World Wrestling
00:04Federation in the year 1990.
00:06Maybe you didn't even know it was called the WWF.
00:09I am old.
00:10To improve your knowledge though and get you up to speed, hello, I am Simon from WhatCulture,
00:15thank you for stopping by, why not hit that subscribe button, and yeah, this is 10 things
00:20you didn't know about the WWF in 1990.
00:2410.
00:25The Ultimate Warrior wrestled Phil Collins
00:27Man this is gonna take some explaining.
00:29So Phil Collins was indeed the front man of pop band Genesis as well as an individual artist
00:34in his own right.
00:35So one day when he was making a video for a song, he had an idea, why not tap into wrestling?
00:41I mean we've all been there.
00:43This was for Two Hearts which went on to become a huge hit and tied into a network special
00:48known as But Seriously, which told the story of Phil and some TV executives trying to build
00:54to a big event.
00:55This is officially the most 90s thing ever.
00:58The chosen man to help with this was indeed the Ultimate Warrior, and if you're asking
01:01why wasn't it Hulk Hogan, well, he was the first choice, but when he couldn't do it,
01:06the warrior was always number two.
01:08It does start alright as well as the Ultimate One and Collins begin to dance, when it gets
01:13violent.
01:14Warrior grabs Phil and throws him around the place, and even though the singer tries to
01:18fight back, he failed.
01:20Of course he did.
01:21It's actually quite bad when you watch it now, although really, what were our expectations?
01:25This was meant to be silly, and it was.
01:27I'm not sure anybody thought we were getting a five star classic, 6.25 stars on the Tokyo
01:33Dome.
01:349.
01:35Shane Douglas was the Third Rocker
01:36Well, almost anyway.
01:37Now this was five years before Shane Douglas had a very public war of words with one Shawn
01:41Michaels, and given that somebody had to step into HBK's shoes for run of house shows, yeah,
01:46Douglas got the nod.
01:48He was young and blonde after all.
01:50This happened throughout the summer and obviously was off camera, but I'm sure Shane was thinking
01:54But if this goes well, I'll be in the company's good books.
01:57Was being a good soldier after all.
02:00Doing what was asked.
02:01As it turned out, he was wrong.
02:03Once he was done with this, Douglas was kind of anonymous for a year, apart from a very
02:07short appearance in the 1991 Royal Rumble, although guess what he did on his last night
02:11for the company?
02:12He teamed with Martin Jannetty to take on the Oriental Express at a live event.
02:17This kind of feels like a troll.
02:18Now there is a lot more to discuss with Shane's WWF run, but that's another video for another
02:23day.
02:24Just know eventually, he got booked as a teacher.
02:28And no, I'm not kidding.
02:308.
02:31The Wrestlemania Commentary Era
02:32So up till 1990, Jesse The Body Ventura and Gorilla Monsoon were the Wrestlemania commentary
02:37team in some capacity.
02:39It's all we knew.
02:40When the ultimate challenge rolled around though, the WWF decided to head in a different
02:44direction, and Jesse would leave entirely.
02:47He fell out with Vince McMahon over money, and the fact he tried to form a union.
02:51Why did that fail?
02:52Hulk Hogan.
02:54Again, that's a different video.
02:56The reason it's important to talk about however, is because of what they represented.
03:00Monsoon was the straighter than straight announcer, whereas Ventura liked the bad guys and would
03:04find a way to justify their dastardly actions.
03:07This was nothing new, but it's still a dynamic that WWE leans on today.
03:11Obviously Gorilla would also leave a legacy alongside Bobby The Brain Heenan, and you
03:16can hear The Body with Vince behind the desk too.
03:18That was always interesting, mostly because Jesse took every shot he possibly could.
03:247.
03:25The Original Survivor Series Card
03:26The first Survivor Series was planned a long time out.
03:29As pay-per-views acted as these monumental moments as opposed to monthly occurrences,
03:34the powers that be would need to know what the idea was so they could book everything
03:38else leading up to it.
03:39Because wrestling is nuts, there's no way it would hold up though.
03:42Part one here is when Rick Rue did a Jesse Ventura, he fell out with Vince McMahon over
03:47cash and he jumped ship.
03:49You can still see Survivor Series graphics with Rude in them though, and when you research
03:53it today, it sounds like he could have gone after Hulk Hogan.
03:57He would have lost for sure, but still, he's back at the top of the card.
04:00Akeem was also going to be a part of Sgt.
04:02Slaughter's Mercenaries team, but he departed too, and it was the same story for Bad News
04:08Brown.
04:09He was the fourth guy on Team Ted DiBiase, but Exit Id Stage left, although that one
04:13worked out well, and you want to know why?
04:15Because his replacement was none other than The Undertaker.
04:19Talk about sliding door moments.
04:216.
04:22Brutus Beefcake vs. Mr. Perfect
04:24At WrestleMania 6, we chose Brutus the Barber Beefcake to end Mr. Perfect's undefeated
04:29streak.
04:30Close to show.
04:31You didn't think cutting your hair was going to help in wrestling, but you were wrong.
04:35The idea was that Perfect would win the Intercontinental title after this, meaning we could get to
04:39the 1990 SummerSlam and do the big rematch, but sadly, Brutus never made it.
04:45The real-life Ed Leslie was involved in a horrific parasailing accident that almost
04:49killed him and absolutely took him out of wrestling for a while.
04:52Instead, Vince McMahon shuttled in Kerry Von Erich as the Texas Tornado, and just to really
04:57surprise the fans, Kerry won.
04:59He would only hold the title for a couple of months before Perfect won it back, but
05:03still, it made the title pretty interesting as we went throughout the year.
05:07As an added note too, Beefcake was also pencilled in to win IC Gold at SummerSlam 1998, and
05:13that didn't happen either.
05:14Instead, the Ultimate Warrior was going to return, so the hairdresser got storyline hurt.
05:19Let's just face it, this basically wasn't his lane.
05:225.
05:23The Texas Tornado pretends to hold the IC title
05:26So as we have just brought this one up, let me give you some more info.
05:29So we've already talked about the fact that his championship reign was relatively short,
05:33and it all did get a little bit weird at the Survivor Series.
05:36Kerry Kerry teamed with the Ultimate Warrior and the Legion of Doom to face Mr. Perfect
05:40and all three members of Demolition, meaning not only did we have the World and Intercontinental
05:44Champion together, but yeah, Tornado and Perfect were at odds again.
05:49Given how the taping scheduled work back in the 90s though, on November 19th the WWE had
05:54filmed Von Erich losing his title to Mr. Perfect, with this PPV airing on the 22nd.
05:59As it wasn't going to be shown to the TV viewer until the 15th of December, we had to keep
06:03going forward, but you know there was at least one fan with a massive eyebrow raised.
06:09They knew the deal, but 30 years ago you could have told somebody this and they wouldn't
06:14have believed you anyway.
06:154.
06:16Mr. Perfect, the workhorse
06:17We shall continue on with this theme, and remember this, in the 90s all wrestlers worked
06:22a hell of a lot.
06:23I mean it's crazy now, but back then it was borderline nuts.
06:27Nobody could match what Kurt Hennig did in 1990 though, because as well as bouncing around
06:31with the Intercontinental title, he basically fought every single top babyface in the company.
06:36He was tussling with Hulk Hogan on house shows at the start of the year, then did his program
06:40with Beefcake, moved on to The Ultimate Warrior after he won the big belt, faced Jake Roberts,
06:45Tito Santana, Jim Duggan, The Big Boss Man, Hercules, The Illusion of Doom, Roddy Piper
06:49and so many others I've just gotta stop here.
06:52It kinda makes sense why his back stopped working in 1991, but in this 12 month period
06:57he worked 194 times, and there's likely more we don't know about too.
07:02This was just perfect though, back in 1989 he had smashed through 173.
07:083.
07:10There is a lot of the gobbledygooker
07:12So the narrative today is that the WWF revealed the gobbledygooker at the Survivor Series
07:17as their new mascot, realised this was a stupid idea, and he was gone again.
07:21It's not exactly true.
07:23Even after the horrendous reaction at the pay-per-view, Vince McMahon wouldn't let
07:26it go, so he kept trying.
07:29It meant we saw the giant turkey with Tugboat and the Bushwhackers, and before every single
07:35live show, the gooker was sent out in front of the crowd to see if he could get some cheers
07:40the WWF were hoping for.
07:43Surprise surprise, it never clicked, I wonder why.
07:46Their last big plan was to have gobbledy twirl Howard Finkel, and I mean that literally.
07:51He stood there and spun Howard around like this was meant to help.
07:56Soon after he was finally kicked out the door and into the history books as one of the worst
08:00ideas ever.
08:012.
08:02Jacques Rougeau goes back to back
08:04If you do bring up Jacques Rougeau to any harder wrestling fan, they will likely remember
08:08the tag team of the Fabulous Rougeaus and the Mountie.
08:12These were his calling cards.
08:13The year didn't start well for the team as they lost to the Bushwhackers and the Rockers,
08:17which was mainly because the WWE had decided to move on, they wanted to do something different.
08:23It meant Jacques vanished from TV, when from nowhere we started to get these vignettes
08:27for none other than the Mountie.
08:30It saw him harassing Canadians because he took his job way too seriously, and we weren't
08:35trying to pull the wool over anybody's eyes here, Vince McMahon on commentary would just
08:39tell us this was the same guy, what the flub is he doing?
08:42There was a story too because apparently Jacques wanted to reclaim some law and order in his
08:46own life, and I can't lie, I absolutely loved it.
08:50I mean do you remember that jailhouse match with the big boss man?
08:53I watched it over and over again as a kid, and even today, it makes absolutely no sense.
08:591.
09:00Vince McMahon says no to The Undertaker
09:02It almost changed the course of history and the process.
09:05Now that Mark Calloway has retired though, he's thrown the baby out with the bath water,
09:09and is happy to talk about anything, including how his life almost went a different way,
09:14and that he almost never had the iconic run that he did.
09:17We've already talked about how he debuted at the Survivor Series, but on his 6 Feet
09:20Under podcast, the dead man revealed that yep, while right hand man Bruce Pritchard
09:25put him over huge to the boss, McMahon didn't see it, even after a meeting.
09:30Telling Mark Wright to his face that the company didn't have anything for him, it all changed
09:33down the line when the concept of a traditional mordition was brought to the table.
09:38Turned out Vince did think that Calloway had something to him as a person, and the rest
09:42we know.
09:44Those guys have been best of buds for years now, they were even hanging out in Saudi Arabia
09:48the other day.
09:49What the flub is happening?