BONUS The Friday Show - What the World Was Watching
Guest:did they toss to a wrestling match no they didn't did they toss to a promo no they did not do you remember what they tossed to right out of the get-go you're not even five minutes into the most watched show in the history of wrestling what did they toss to a very erotic video yes
Guest:It's wrestling time, and it's Friday here on The Full Marin.
Guest:I'm Brendan, and Chris, how are you, sir?
Guest:What's up, BMAC?
Guest:I'm good.
Guest:How you doing?
Guest:We could shorten our names, right?
Guest:BMAC and K-Lo.
Guest:That's true.
Guest:That's been a thing.
Guest:It's very weird to call myself that.
Guest:I have no problem with you calling me BMAC, but I would never call myself that.
Guest:Same thing with me calling myself K-Lo.
Guest:That would be a strange occurrence.
Guest:And it's so weird because, like, on the radio, you were K-Lo.
Guest:Like, that was your role.
Guest:That was it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, we are two guys who talk about wrestling and movies, and we're doing it here for you Fridays on the Full Marin.
Guest:Now, a lot of you listened last week, so thank you for doing that.
Guest:I definitely know better than to ever base anything on a premiere episode.
Guest:Like...
Guest:The first time something happens, people listen or watch or whatever, like and then the, you know, falls off the cliff the next week.
Guest:Go check out the XFL for your proof on that.
Guest:But thank you anyway for joining.
Guest:And so, so far, we're still here.
Guest:We have achieved my benchmark of a third of the full Marin subscribers.
Guest:So for one week, at least, we have not canceled the show.
Guest:And if you weren't listening last week and you're listening now, the deal is Chris and I decided to do this because we brought in a whole bunch of new subscribers because of our Wrestling with Mark series on the Full Marin.
Guest:And we want you to know that, hey, this is a happy place for you.
Guest:We're wrestling fans.
Guest:We want to talk about some of the same things you like.
Guest:And I know some of you are new.
Guest:Maybe you don't realize this.
Guest:The Full Marin...
Guest:gets you access to the full ad free archives of WTF.
Guest:And we have had, uh, a few wrestlers on in the past in, in episodes that are like 10, nine, eight years ago.
Guest:So you might not know that you can, uh, go to your feed that you have the full Marin in and you can scroll all the way back to episode three 34.
Guest:And that was Colt Cabana.
Guest:Uh,
Guest:Episode 444 was CM Punk.
Guest:Interestingly, those were the first two wrestlers we ever had on this show.
Guest:They also then went on to be on Mark's television show, Marin on IFC.
Guest:Episode 581 is Mick Foley.
Guest:Episode 812 is AJ Mendez Brooks, also known as AJ Lee, also known as CM Punk's wife.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And 825 was Kia Stevens and Chavo Guerrero, who are both wrestlers and both cast members of GLOW with Mark.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:That was why they were on.
Guest:He had gotten to know them on set and wanted to have a longer conversation with both of them.
Guest:So those are all there in addition to all the recent AEW guests we've had and the Wrestling with Mark series.
Guest:So if you want to go check those out, they're there for you without any ads.
Guest:And if you want to reach out to us, there is a form in the episode description.
Guest:You can just slide on over to that, click the link, and just leave us a message, leave us questions.
Guest:A lot of you did, and I'll get to those at the end of the show.
Guest:And really, that's why we're here.
Guest:We're just here to kind of talk and have fun.
Guest:And one of the things I want to know about you, Chris, is did you have any fun over the past week since we last talked on here?
Marc:I sure did.
Marc:I had my nephew here.
Marc:He's Liam.
Marc:He's like seven, I want to say.
Marc:He is into wrestling, right?
Marc:He is into wrestling.
Marc:We didn't watch any wrestling, though.
Marc:I took him to the American Mall in Jersey.
Marc:And then I went over to his place to babysit his two siblings.
Marc:So I had three kids that I was babysitting.
Marc:And I got to say...
Marc:Sleeping over at someone else's house is such a weird experience when I'm an older person.
Marc:Do you ever sleep over at your in-laws and it's just weird and different?
Marc:You like your coffee the exact same way?
Marc:I have a pour-over that I like to do.
Marc:They have an espresso, which is fine, but it's just different.
Marc:For me, you know me.
Marc:Everyone else doesn't know me, but...
Marc:I have a very nice setup in my bathroom.
Marc:You know, when I drink my coffee, it's like what Mark would say, like, pow, shit your pants.
Marc:And can I tell you, my wife's brother has the smallest bathrooms.
Marc:Like, has this ever happened to you, Brendan, where the toilet bowl is the smallest?
Marc:They swap out a toilet bowl with a smaller... It's got a joke hole just for farts?
Marc:Yes.
Yes.
Marc:Bernie, I swear to you, I woke up, had coffee, two cups of coffee, because one didn't get me there, two cups of coffee, and I had to be with a plunger.
Marc:It was like 10 minutes later because they have a joke hole.
Guest:So it was not the best way to- I think people should know, though, that you might-
Guest:People need a little perspective on where you're coming from with this, because you just kind of casually glossed over this idea that you, oh, you know, I have my bathroom here.
Guest:That's it's the way I like it.
Guest:You have a bathroom that has like Starship Enterprise style devices on the toilets that, you know, scrub you, clean you, air dry you.
Guest:I mean, it is like if you ever go to the bathroom in Chris's house, which I have, I have found myself stuck.
Guest:on the toilet not knowing how to turn the things off that are firing on all cylinders.
Guest:I'm sitting there texting to people downstairs.
Guest:Does anyone know how to turn this thing off?
Guest:I just wound up unplugging it eventually.
Marc:Yes, I have a Japanese bidet, and it is awesome.
Marc:I highly recommend it.
Marc:You can also get a tushy or whatever, you know, a nice seat bidet.
Marc:But I have a Japanese bidet, heated seat.
Marc:It has, of course, the water, heated water,
Marc:And it also air dries.
Marc:It has like a little dryer.
Marc:And it is the best thing in the world.
Marc:So anyway, I had a nice weekend with my brother-in-law and his family.
Marc:And I came home.
Guest:Except for the bathrooms, apparently.
Marc:Yeah, no, no.
Marc:The bathroom was a nightmare.
Marc:Like an actual nightmare.
Marc:But besides that, I came home and finished up Paul T. Goldman.
Marc:And holy shit.
Guest:I told you that it would be the thing to do for you this week.
Guest:And what was your feeling?
Marc:I felt like I kind of had to watch.
Marc:I wanted to watch it right over again.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I can't believe the director had the wherewithal.
Marc:To see like, oh, this guy is so full of shit that I have to actually edit my original edit or even I don't even know.
Marc:I can't even comprehend what the original edit is because this guy's a lunatic.
Guest:Well, I'm not sure he had the wherewithal to do it.
Guest:I think he had to like to take a lot of time and pause.
Guest:I mean, he took he shot it over 10 years.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I will tell everyone, if you're interested in the fact that we keep bringing the show up, we'll kind of leave it non-spoilery for the moment.
Guest:But Jason Wallner, the director, will be on WTF on March 16th.
Guest:So you've got a little while if you want to watch it.
Guest:And that will be, we'll let all the audience know in advance, that will be a kind of like spoiler special.
Guest:Mark and Jason are not going to hold back on talking about the show and all its kind of
Guest:ethical quandaries and uh what's interesting about it so yeah if you're interested that's on peacock which if you're a wrestling fan you probably already have because it's got the wwe network on it and uh yeah go watch it it's like six episodes and chris finished it all in one day i guess and uh yeah you were texting me while you were watching it you were like i almost don't want to put the last episode on yeah
Marc:I kind of didn't want it to end.
Marc:It was so fascinating.
Marc:Thank you so much for the recommendation.
Marc:I can't wait to listen to that episode.
Guest:There are a lot of elements of wrestling, I feel like, in that show.
Guest:Just the fakery and the kayfabe that they had to maintain.
Guest:And there's also elements of QAnon.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It touches so many bases.
Guest:Yes, totally.
Guest:But yes, we won't get into the details of the spoilers on Paul T. Goldman.
Guest:In fact, let's instead talk about something that's old enough that we can't spoil it.
Guest:In fact, it's 35 years old this month.
Guest:I thought it being the 35th anniversary of what is essentially the most watched wrestling match show, whatever you want to call it, in U.S.
Guest:history.
Guest:And really probably the peak of wrestling in pop culture here in America, despite everything that came after all the Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock and, you know, whatever WrestleMania currently is where they fill up stadiums and arenas and that.
Guest:It would be very easy to argue that this show that we're going to talk about that took place 35 years ago in February is the actual peak of wrestling.
Guest:It got the highest it ever got and came down after that.
Guest:And what we're talking about is...
Guest:The Main Event that was broadcast primetime on NBC.
Guest:And that's what it was called, The Main Event, with Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant on free television.
Guest:They also had the second biggest feud in the company, Macho Man Randy Savage and Honky Tonk Man.
Guest:Also advertised a tag title match, which you wouldn't know if you were just
Guest:turning on the show right then and there.
Guest:They didn't mention it at all until the last about 30 seconds of the show.
Guest:But that was the show.
Guest:And it was using the Saturday Night's Main Event template in prime time, which was amazing.
Guest:Saturday Night's Main Event was probably, maybe for other people listening, was definitely the way that I got into wrestling.
Guest:I don't know about you, Chris.
Guest:Did you watch it when it was on Saturday Night's Main Event?
Guest:Yes, I did.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I watched it because my parents would watch Saturday Night Live.
Guest:And then Saturday Night's main event, to go over the brief history of it, was put on in the weeks when SNL was on break.
Guest:And this was during the period when Lorne Michaels had left SNL.
Guest:You know, he had left after the first five years, went off to do other things.
Guest:Dick Ebersole.
Guest:took over after a one year of Gene Dumanian, Dick Ebersole at NBC, took over the production of Saturday Night Live.
Guest:And it is actually David Letterman who is really responsible for basically changing the course of wrestling history in the United States.
Guest:The Letterman got a hold of Dick Ebersole at NBC when Letterman was doing Late Night, you know, coming on after Carson.
Guest:And he said, have you watched these guys on wrestling?
Guest:they're doing a thing over on the USA network and it's hilarious.
Guest:And what he was talking about was, uh, at the time Vince was doing something called TNT Tuesday night Titans.
Guest:And it was basically like the tonight show or Letterman show late night.
Guest:They were, Vince would sit at the desk and he'd have mean gene as his, uh,
Guest:you know, sidekick and they'd bring the wrestlers out and they'd sit and they'd interview them in like comfy seats next to them.
Guest:And they'd have wacky skits and they'd be tossing to the matches.
Guest:And Letterman thought it was hilarious.
Guest:And he was like, you really got to watch this.
Guest:And this was also around the time where Hulk Hogan was brought into WWF.
Guest:They're starting to really grow nationally.
Guest:And Ebersole thinks this would be a good thing to put in place of SNL on the weeks when SNL is off.
Guest:And what they had previously been doing was just showing Tonight Show reruns.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So, okay, instead of reruns, let's do this.
Guest:This is Cliff Notes version of this.
Guest:But he gets into business with Vince McMahon.
Guest:They decide to make this show, Saturday Night's Main Event.
Guest:And it really was the NBC production crew, led by Ebersole, and then all the people at NBC Sports, working on the production of this show that gave it the visual look
Guest:That you are familiar with.
Guest:And really it's just the natural evolution of wrestling from then till now to today.
Guest:If it wasn't for that, you know, I don't know that they ever would have gotten a kind of change from how they were shooting things in the MSG era.
Guest:Like if you go back and watch.
Guest:stuff from like pre 1985, WWF stuff, it looks bad.
Guest:Like, I don't mean like it doesn't, it's not a good product, but it doesn't, it's not shot well.
Guest:It's, it's very, it's very much like what anything was like live sports at an, in an arena where you just had a stationary camera and a couple of people wandering around.
Guest:It didn't look like anything special.
Guest:The NBC production crew really put a lot of bells and whistles onto the show and a lot of
Guest:A lot of stuff that just innovated how you could show wrestling on TV.
Guest:And that was the template for Saturday Night's Main Event.
Guest:Dick Ebersole was very heavily involved.
Guest:And that led them to this opportunity to put the show on in prime time on a Friday night in February, NBC, 8 p.m.
Guest:And the way this started out was it started out the way all Saturday Night's Main Event episodes started out with...
Guest:the characters who you were going to see on that show doing promos about the wrestlers they were fighting that night and they would do it with this kind of sinister but propulsive music that was just playing underneath and it would just kind of come up with you know
Guest:Macho Man Randy Savage standing there, and he'd have his logo behind him and this music playing underneath, and he'd be cutting a promo on whoever he was fighting, and in this case, it was the Honky Tonk Man.
Guest:And then that would just flow right into the opening theme, which on this night was the first night they ever used the theme that became famous as the Saturday Night's Main Event theme song.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:They were using an actual pop song, which was Obsession by Animotion.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:And that was dope.
Guest:Arguably cooler than this song, but this theme is great.
Guest:And these guys would be cutting their promos, cutting their promos, and obviously you'd have Hogan would be the last guy.
Guest:And he'd just be like, you know, and I'm going to get you, Andre, I'm going to destroy you with Hulkamania's
Guest:power or whatever it was and then just boom right into the right into the opening theme right into the credits and it was just like you're watching if you turn this on and you were like my age at the time there was no way you were turning this off because it was just like who are these guys what are they talking about oh my god action
Guest:So with that, we're welcome to the main event airing from Market Square Arena in Indianapolis, Indiana at 8 p.m.
Guest:Eastern on NBC, February 5th, 1988.
Guest:We just passed the 35th anniversary.
Guest:And we come up on the crowd with Vince McMahon and Jesse the Body Ventura in the crowd doing the commentary for this.
Guest:I do want to say something before we go any further with this, okay?
Guest:There is a caveat.
Guest:about Vince McMahon, and really about Hulk Hogan, and Macho Man Randy Savage, and Ted DiBiase.
Guest:We are going to talk about this show.
Guest:This show is great.
Guest:It really is a great show.
Guest:You could put it on today, and it's fantastic.
Guest:And those guys...
Guest:are not good guys.
Guest:No.
Guest:In real life.
Guest:Like, we have learned quite a bit about all of them.
Guest:Too much.
Guest:These are not... Yes, right.
Guest:And like Vince McMahon, we still learn more and more each day that this is a bad guy.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:That being said...
Guest:I am talking about this show that they put on.
Guest:We are going to talk about how they were performing.
Guest:I'm sure you could do this with lots of Hollywood films, a lot of television shows, a lot of novels, that the people who made them were not great people.
Guest:And I am responding to the thing that they put on the screen or on the page.
Guest:I am not praising them from their human characters, okay?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:But I will say several times in this how awesome all of them are.
Guest:They were the best.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like top notch, like at the pinnacle of their careers.
Marc:This is Apex.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay, I just wanted to get that out of the way.
Guest:That being said, this show is really the child of WrestleMania III.
Guest:The reason you're watching this thing in 1988 is because almost a full year earlier, there was WrestleMania III at the Pontiac Silverdome in Michigan, which was the biggest live wrestling crowd in U.S.
Guest:history at that point.
Marc:They showed clips of it, and I gotta say, I don't think I've ever seen WrestleMania that big.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Even now, when it's bigger, it doesn't look that big.
Guest:It looks ginormous on those clips.
Guest:It looks like this little speck in the middle of a sea of humanity.
Guest:It's insane.
Guest:So that was a huge hit.
Guest:And it was headlined, of course, by Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant.
Guest:And that feud and everything else that surrounded that feud and surrounded...
Guest:The resulting aftermath of WrestleMania III meant in 1987, everything Vince McMahon touched turned to gold.
Guest:And he was killing his competition, quite literally, like the Crockett promotion, which was his main competitor in the NWA.
Guest:They were losing.
Guest:They were barely keeping by.
Guest:And so with all this momentum...
Guest:It was officially announced in January of 88 that there would be this primetime special, parlaying the relationship that Vince had with Dick Ebersole and the rest of NBC.
Guest:They were going to have this primetime special, and it would be headlined by the rematch of Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant.
Guest:This was unheard of at the time on television.
Guest:I remember my father telling me, you know, Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant are going to be on TV having a rematch.
Guest:I did not believe him.
Marc:I thought he was making it up.
Marc:So you and your family were watching wrestling at the time.
Marc:Like that was a thing that was happening in your household.
Guest:I wouldn't say me and my whole family, but definitely me and my brother and my dad would dip in and out.
Guest:And like I mentioned, you know, my parents would watch a Saturday night live.
Guest:And when Saturday night's main event would preempt Saturday night live, my dad would check it out and then tell me about it.
Guest:That was how I started to learn about wrestling.
Guest:He'd be like, yeah, I watched this thing last night with Hulk Hogan.
Guest:And, you know, he was in a steel cage and there's this guy, King Kong Bundy.
Guest:And I would be like, tell me everything that you get.
Guest:Like, wow.
Marc:How can I know more about this, please?
Marc:Can I tell you, I remember, and this is going to date me, but this is an old show.
Marc:I remember having the TV guide and I, every week I would flip through, was it every week?
Marc:Anyway, I would flip through the TV guide and there was like a Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, Andre versus Hogan, the main event in primetime.
Marc:And I loved it.
Marc:I stared at that for...
Marc:Hours.
Marc:I remember that.
Guest:Yeah, they probably had like a full page in the TV guide.
Marc:Yeah, that was definitely an early memory for me.
Marc:But I actually didn't, I remember watching this, but I remember more watching it later on on tape at my friend's house.
Marc:Like that's how I personally remember it.
Marc:I don't remember it live that day.
Marc:You remember it live?
Yeah.
Guest:Oh, it was appointment television.
Guest:We made sure we were where we needed to be on Friday night at 8 o'clock to sit down and watch it.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:And it was very clear that this was going to set up WrestleMania 4.
Guest:Even if you were like a Mark fan like me as a kid, you knew that there would be something big coming out of this.
Guest:What we didn't know at the time was this was also a test to see if they could swing a weekly primetime TV deal out of this.
Guest:So that's the context for it.
Guest:And with that, on to the actual show, which we we just talked about coming out of that theme music.
Guest:You you hear this crowd just going bananas.
Guest:This crowd is totally jacked and they keep going the whole time.
Guest:They must have told them never stop cheering.
Guest:Like as soon as we give you the signal, just lose your mind and never stop losing it.
Guest:And they didn't.
Guest:this crowd is i kept looking at them to make sure like are they just piping in crowd noise and that's what i was they are out of their minds these people in indianapolis just screaming the whole time and vince and jesse are on the house mics which is rare like usually you know you have the the commentators are talking and you know you as a we've been
Guest:to live wrestling events.
Guest:You stand there and you watch and you don't hear them talking.
Guest:You can see the cameras on them and they're introducing the show or whatever.
Guest:No, this was being piped into the whole arena and the arena's still screaming.
Guest:I would think they would shut up and want to hear what the guys are saying.
Guest:They must have just been told...
Guest:Just don't pay attention to anything else.
Guest:Just scream your heads off.
Guest:You're on live television.
Guest:You're going to be caught on camera.
Guest:Just scream and we'll find you.
Guest:Whatever you got to do to goose a live audience, that's what they did.
Marc:The crowd was so hot.
Marc:I honestly, I don't think a crowd has ever been that hot before.
Guest:No, there's times in like, yeah, I agree with you.
Guest:I don't think I've ever seen a crowd sustained at that level.
Guest:There were times like in the Steve Austin era where like there was a pop that was huge and a moment where they freaked out in a way that like the loudest sound I've ever heard in my life was that time when he comes in and saves Mick Foley and helps him win the title.
Guest:It's just such a huge pop.
Guest:But this was the most sustained heat I've ever seen in a crowd before any action even happened.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And there were times where either honky tonk has, has, has the guitar or Andre is sneaking up or sneaking, but you know, behind Hogan, like I thought it was like Halloween and Michael Myers was, was about to scream.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:They were shrieking.
Marc:They were shrieking.
Marc:Like, Oh my God, turn around.
Marc:It was amazing.
Guest:Well, as they're standing there screaming, Vince is running through the car.
Guest:Jesse looks ridiculous.
Marc:Well, well, well, hang on.
Guest:that's a green screen right because no it's not they are there live that's for real that breaks my brain a little bit because it looks so fake no yeah I know it's just something about the you know live taping at the time or whatever and how the lighting was but there's a shot then later where you know it pulls back over them and you can see them standing there amidst them and he's doing it live I mean you can hear his voice bouncing around that arena Vince looks jacked
Marc:in his uh in his uh jacket and jesse ventura is wearing what i mean how would you describe his hat a fuzzy hershey kiss on his head and a dracula cape you nailed it what a choice well and he's also wearing normal stuff underneath that stuff like he's got his normal bandana and then he's like you can see he's got like a tank top on like he would look like a weirdo
Guest:because wrestlers just look weird when they're wearing their gear, but he would at least be in a wrestling context.
Guest:He would look fine.
Guest:For some reason, he decided on this show where more people than any show in the history of wrestling were going to be watching it or will ever watch it henceforth, he put on a fuzzy Hershey kiss on his head and then was like, I'll be governor someday.
Guest:literally a hat on a hat uh all right well so this was the setup for the show and then one of my favorite things ever on any wrestling show let alone the most watched one in history was they tossed to do they toss to a wrestling match no they didn't did they toss to a promo no they did not
Guest:Do you remember what they tossed you right out of the get go?
Guest:You're not even five minutes into the most watched show in the history of wrestling.
Guest:What did they toss to a very erotic video?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:It was Hulk Hogan sexually working out to Jake the snake's music.
Guest:That's what that is.
Marc:I was like, I know this music.
Marc:I wanted to Shazam it.
Marc:That's Jake the snake's music.
Guest:It, I believe, here's what I believe happened.
Guest:I believe that they turned it into Jake, the snakes music, which they would do all the time in wrestling.
Guest:Uh, you know, they would use some music for a, a promo package or the beginning of a pay-per-view or something.
Guest:And then instead of letting it go to waste, they would give it to a guy.
Guest:Like you'd hear a music at the beginning of like a, uh, a pay-per-view.
Guest:And then all of a sudden, a couple of months later, how,
Guest:So Jim Duggan is using that song or something like that.
Guest:So that's what happened here because they had in-house guys, particularly this guy, Jim Johnson, also Jimmy Hart, the manager.
Guest:He was a musician.
Guest:He made a lot of the songs.
Guest:Oh, cool.
Guest:And so, you know, they said...
Guest:And my favorite thing is that that music was created for this thing first.
Guest:So they said, we're going to have Hulk Hogan pumping iron and we need the right music.
Guest:Like I just picture Vince being like, all right, pal, you got to have some music that's fitting for the Hulkster.
Guest:That's got a 24 inch pythons.
Guest:He's going to be built at pumping iron.
Guest:We need some music for that.
Guest:And this guy makes this like, I mean, it's perfect.
Guest:Jake, the snake music.
Guest:Like it's like slithery slither.
Guest:sexy sound of music.
Guest:And like, it's just Hulk Hogan making muscles and pumping iron.
Guest:Like it's not anything else.
Marc:And so sweaty.
Marc:He's so wet.
Marc:Why are they always so wet?
Guest:baby oil it's all baby oil which is weird when you're working out like aren't when you're working out with weights like you should be using talc you should be dusty like you should not have be slippery like he looks he looks like he looks like the poles in philadelphia at the super bowl like
Guest:Like the cops did not want anyone climbing Hulk Hogan.
Guest:So they just greased him so that he could lift weights in this video.
Marc:Oh, what an error.
Marc:What an error.
Guest:And it goes on.
Guest:It's not like five seconds.
Guest:It's not 10 seconds.
Guest:It's like 90 seconds of Hulk Hogan doing this.
Guest:Another amazing thing is that I was watching this recently on my headphones and you can hear Vince and
Guest:on the house mic saying i wrote it down he says all we need is when i raise my hand i want you to and then they must have caught that his mic was open and then they bring it down so there's him telling the crowd like when you see my hand go up i want you to lose your fucking minds oh that's amazing yeah yeah yeah
Guest:Oh, which they did.
Guest:Then they cut back to the crowd and crowds going nuts again.
Guest:It sounds like they never stopped cheering.
Guest:Right.
Guest:These people in Indiana, I guess they just they go to a live event.
Guest:They just scream the whole time.
Guest:That's what you're meant to believe.
Guest:And then we get a honky tonk man and Jimmy Hart promo.
Guest:Dick Ebersole.
Guest:He used to be all over these promos, which is why it kind of sounds scripted.
Guest:I noticed it watching it this time.
Guest:These guys, you know, who are very used to going on TV and just.
Guest:cutting promos as part of ways to sell house show matches and whatnot.
Guest:This was a very precise scripted thing that had all these Elvis references in it.
Marc:And also there was just a lot of like discussion about Miss Elizabeth and what you're going to do to Miss Elizabeth.
Marc:And, and, and I, and she wants you honky.
Marc:She wants you bad.
Marc:And like different time.
Marc:Different time.
Guest:Oh, the gender politics are the dirt worst.
Guest:Like there's like I mean, it's not even like simple or regressive.
Guest:Like you could you could put all kinds of negative connotations around it.
Guest:They're just bad.
Guest:it's like real bad and yeah anything with miss elizabeth it didn't it never got much better uh so honky tonk man comes out and uh his music anytime it hits is awesome yes uh the greatest and i did notice the audio was very funky when he came out they were having a hard time going back and forth from the whatever was on the pa with the music to what was going on in the in the
Guest:ring with howard finkel being the announcer same thing happened with macho man's uh promo later on uh and i just it was surprising the only reason i bring it up is because it's like yeah i hadn't realized this this was a live broadcast they were way untested with these like now they do live multiple times a week every week they have for 30 years but the the the idea that they you know had only done what
Guest:three pay-per-views by this time.
Guest:Uh, and you know, a couple of hits at, you know, when you're live at MSG and that doesn't matter.
Guest:It's not, it's on basic cable or whatever.
Guest:This is the, this was real like uncharted territory for them.
Guest:Live broadcast on national television, network television.
Guest:Uh, there were probably some jitters, uh,
Guest:Peggy Sue comes out.
Guest:Did you remember Peggy Sue?
Guest:Nope.
Guest:Did you know who Peggy Sue was?
Guest:No.
Guest:Who was that?
Guest:That was Sensational Sherry wearing a blonde wig.
Guest:No.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Wait.
Marc:Sensational Sherry who will later go on to be Queen Sherry.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Macho Man's valet.
Marc:Correct.
Marc:And then turn on Macho Man and Miss Elizabeth who would come back.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:I didn't realize the connection there.
Guest:Yeah, and they never really did anything with Peggy Sue.
Guest:I guess she was just there because they wanted Honky Tonk to have a foil for Elizabeth.
Guest:And because it was Sherry, she could get physical.
Guest:But they didn't really go anywhere with her.
Guest:I think they actually, take that back, I think one of the things that it set up was future rematches where Honky Tonk would have to fight an opponent who he...
Guest:He got through the first match by cheating, and most likely because Jimmy Hart interfered, right?
Guest:So in the rematch, it would be in house shows around the horn, Jimmy Hart would be banned from ringside, right?
Guest:But Peggy Sue would come out.
Guest:Gotcha.
Guest:Gotcha.
Guest:But this would be Peggy Sue would be wearing a veil.
Guest:She'd have like a scarf or something, you know, covering her face.
Guest:And of course it would all lead to, you'd find out it was Jimmy Hart.
Guest:And then, you know, the opponent would strip him.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And tear his shirt off.
Guest:He'd be wearing a bra and pull the falsies out of the bra and everything.
Guest:That might be the only reason they use Peggy Sue, although I would think you could use any person to do that.
Guest:I don't know why they picked Sherry Martell, who was their women's champion at the time, for whatever that was worth, which wasn't much.
Guest:They weren't really featuring her.
Guest:So this match, we're going to kind of, I don't know, unless you have some real specific stuff to talk about in the actual match, we can kind of breeze through this because the story of what was going on behind the scenes for this match is actually much more interesting than the match itself.
Marc:I do want to say the ring seems different than any ring I've seen before.
Marc:in my life watching wrestling.
Marc:It's so springy.
Marc:The ropes are also just, it's just very elastic.
Marc:Is there, is there like a, did they change the rings after this?
Guest:That's interesting.
Guest:I wonder if they did.
Guest:I know that traditionally it was known that WWF had larger rings than the other promotions.
Guest:I think that was a TV thing.
Guest:Vince thought they looked better on TV if they were slightly larger.
Guest:And historically,
Guest:All wrestlers point to the fact that right up through about the late 90s, the WWF ring was as hard as they came.
Guest:Like, taking a bump on the WWF ring sucked.
Guest:They hated it.
Guest:Probably it was responsible for a lot of painkiller usage and short lives with the wrestlers who were, you know, doing 300 dates a year in those rings.
Guest:And also a big reason why you didn't see a ton of high spots or anything.
Guest:You know, guys kept it pretty grounded and close to the mat.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Funny, the reason why those rings changed was in the late 90s.
Guest:Guess who got in the ring as a wrestler?
Guest:Who?
Guest:Vince.
Guest:Oh, no kidding.
Guest:So he starts taking bumps on that hard ass ring and he's like, this shit's like concrete.
Guest:We need a new ring.
Marc:So they completely redesigned the rings after that.
Marc:And what about the stairs?
Marc:The stairs were something that I was like, oh my God, they're not even at the corner.
Marc:Oh, they were wood stairs.
Marc:They were wood stairs.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Did they ever come into play?
Guest:Like maybe in the most minor way, you know, like a guy would maybe walk by him and bang the other guy's head on it.
Guest:But it didn't, you know, like the same way you would do with like the railing around the ring or something.
Guest:But yeah, no, they weren't doing sentons onto them like we saw Jeff Hardy do.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The story behind this match is that Macho Man was supposed to win the title.
Guest:He was.
Guest:And yes.
Guest:And I don't know if it was like the day of, but pretty close to the time the show was going to happen.
Guest:Honky Tonk Man said, I'm not losing the title.
Guest:And if you want me to, I'm walking.
Guest:I'm not staying.
Guest:I will leave with the belt.
Guest:And he, you know, kind of rightfully so made the assessment that...
Guest:this is the biggest audience we've ever had.
Guest:The money will be in a rematch.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, and, and why am I going to give up all that money?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like they're kind of protecting his spot.
Guest:The interesting thing I find about that is usually any guy who pulled that in the history of wrestling got punished.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Hockey did not.
Guest:He kind of, you know, he, he went on to have his reign went through summer slam when he was finally beaten by your, your favorite, the ultimate warrior.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In six seconds.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:And it was like the perfect way.
Guest:He was right when it came time to do he he said that to Vince at the time.
Guest:This is all alleged, like through the Wrestling Observer and other things that have told the story of this from the behind the scenes at the time.
Guest:But allegedly he said to Vince, when it comes time to do the business, I'll do the business.
Guest:But this isn't the place to do the business.
Guest:It's just going to brush me off.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:So.
Guest:Macho Man was supposed to be the Intercontinental Champion and go into WrestleMania as the Intercontinental Champion, which was going to make it okay for him to lose in that tournament because he would walk out with a title anyway.
Guest:So it wasn't going to hurt him to lose as part of that tournament.
Guest:And the guy who was supposed to win that tournament, allegedly at the time, and according to him, was Ted DiBiase.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:Ted DiBiase, the million dollar man, was supposed to be the world champion coming out of that and lead to a rematch at SummerSlam, which was the first SummerSlam was that year, 1988.
Guest:And Honky, refusing to drop the belt, changed the course of everything.
Guest:Because Vince said, okay, it'll be a disqualification.
Guest:You'll keep the title.
Guest:And then changed Randy Savage from going into WrestleMania as the Intercontinental Champion to, well, we'll just give him the belt there.
Guest:And then we can spend the year building to Hogan versus Randy.
Guest:And that all came out of this thing that happened behind the scenes of this match.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:They should look back to that in WWE and think about that with their current endeavors.
Guest:I mean, this is what anybody who's currently following WWE or has for the last 15 years always says this.
Guest:That like there were times in the past where they changed plans and they made chicken salad out of chicken shit.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like they would take the bad and turn it good.
Guest:And now they're just so beholden to their plans.
Guest:They never deviate from them.
Guest:And it's frustrating.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This match, as we just mentioned, ends in a disqualification.
Guest:You get Macho Man, you know, triumphant at the end, holding Miss Elizabeth on his shoulders.
Guest:They go to break from that.
Marc:Well, and also a huge pop for Macho Man holding the ropes open for her.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:I guess.
Marc:And it's...
Marc:It's alluded to.
Marc:We see it.
Marc:Macho Man very purposely is like, no, you, you stay out of the ring, Miss Elizabeth, the entire, you know, right before the match.
Marc:And then after the match, he holds the ropes open and the crowd loves it.
Guest:That was kind of solidifying him as a babyface because for years as a heel, he had treated Elizabeth like shit.
Guest:She would be the one holding the ropes for him.
Guest:He was the arrogant heel.
Guest:He would make her polish his championship.
Guest:It was all the chauvinist gimmick.
Guest:And as he became a babyface through this feud with the Honky Tonk Man, he defended Elizabeth from the Honky Tonk Man.
Guest:Okay, so that's a step in the right direction of not being a scumbag.
Guest:And then...
Guest:And then here you go.
Guest:It's at the end of this match.
Guest:He's triumphant.
Guest:And instead of making her hold the ropes for him, he's going to hold the ropes for her.
Guest:So there's where you got the pop because the crowd recognized, oh, he's a good guy now.
Guest:He's going to be nice to a lady.
Marc:Amazing.
Guest:Well, back from break, they set up the storyline of the main event, Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant.
Guest:This goes back to the WrestleMania three match where they had hit on a point.
Guest:This was where you were seeing the footage that you mentioned from WrestleMania three.
Guest:They had hit on a moment in that match that was kind of a botch.
Guest:It wasn't a planned moment.
Guest:Oh, the one, two, three.
Guest:That there was a two count that looked close to a three count, mostly just because of how the camera was angled and Andre's big dumb body.
Guest:And they couldn't really, you know, communicate that it was only a two count in the moment.
Guest:And just so the ref had to say, it's a two.
Guest:And Andre was like, no, that's three.
Guest:And so they turned that into a big angle after the fact of like, this is why Andre should have a rematch.
Guest:And he spent most of the year saying, I should have a rematch because of this three count that I should have had.
Marc:Jim.
Marc:Messi Ventura sold that so well.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:I mean, the best, just great color man, great adversarial announcer.
Guest:He also always seemed right, even when you didn't want him to be.
Guest:He was using reason and logic to make his points.
Guest:He wasn't just being a jerk.
Guest:So this storyline leads to the entry into the WWF of Ted DiBiase, who was given one of the, I would say one of the two greatest gimmicks of all time, which is the million dollar man.
Guest:The gimmick being he can buy whatever he wants and he comes to the WWF and he's going to buy the world championship.
Guest:His way of doing this after basically presenting Hulk Hogan with lots of money and Hogan saying no was, okay, well then I'm going to buy Andre the Giant.
Guest:And he will beat you for the championship and give it to me.
Guest:Like he tells Hulk Hogan straight up what the plan is.
Guest:Like it's a great, it's a great like James Bond villain thing where it actually then winds up happening.
Guest:Like he says, the deal is I'm, you wouldn't sell your title to me.
Guest:Okay, jerk.
Guest:I'm going to buy your biggest rival.
Guest:who he buys from Bobby Heenan for a million dollars.
Guest:And I am going to have him kill you.
Guest:And when he wins the title, he will hand it over to me.
Guest:Just one of the greatest characters and a guy who probably should have had a world title reign and never did.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He also, then you get a promo with DiBiase and Andre, and he arguably had the most to gain from this night, right?
Guest:As a persona.
Guest:You know, most people, if they're just tuning in, they know who Hulk Hogan is.
Guest:They have a notion of who Andre the Giant is.
Guest:They maybe have a vague notion of Macho Man and maybe the Honky Tonk Man, but...
Guest:Ted DiBiase was probably new to almost any casual observer of this.
Guest:And so he's immediately I'm noticing this in his promo.
Guest:He said, I'm the million dollar man about like 15 times.
Guest:It's like, you know, nobody can buy anything from the million dollar man.
Guest:Just making sure to hammer hammer.
Guest:This is who I am, folks.
Guest:And Virgil is there counting his money.
Guest:Virgil is his bodyguard.
Guest:And Virgil was a rib on Dusty Rhodes.
Guest:Oh, how so?
Guest:Well, that's his name.
Guest:His name is Virgil Runnels.
Guest:And so WWF guys hated the guys from the South.
Guest:And Dusty Rhodes was the booker of the Crockett promotions at the time and booked himself to win championships and stuff.
Guest:And they hated him.
Guest:They thought he was a joke.
Guest:And also, you know...
Guest:They didn't like that this was some fat white guy who talked like a black guy.
Guest:And so they made a black manservant character who would never said one word.
Guest:And his name was Virgil as a nod to that's Dusty Rhodes.
Guest:Fascinating.
Guest:So they, yes, those are the bad guys and they're doing the promo and then they make their way out to the ring.
Guest:Andre was completely broken down at this point.
Guest:Probably shouldn't have been in the ring, but that is just a testament to how amazing he was as a performer that...
Guest:I don't, I didn't know that as a kid.
Guest:I thought this guy's going to kill Hulk Hogan.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like he is totally, he is a giant.
Guest:He is intimidating.
Guest:He will choke him to death and the, he can easily win the championship just by being Andre the giant.
Guest:And it's also why Vince has always been obsessed with giants because Andre was the best.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And unique.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so he has chased giants every time he sees some guy comes through the prospect pipeline who's over seven feet tall.
Guest:Vince is like, oh, my new Andre.
Guest:And it never works because there is no new Andre.
Guest:Andre was Andre.
Guest:Just like Steve Austin was Steve Austin.
Guest:And The Rock was The Rock.
Guest:Like, you can't keep making those guys.
Guest:They're unique.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So Andre is the heel.
Marc:So you're telling me.
Marc:So when you were talking to Mark and explaining wrestling and how they call the matches.
Marc:So you're telling me that Andre called this match with Hogan?
Guest:Well, he definitely calls the heat spot and which we will get into.
Guest:But I think what probably was the case with this match and probably the honky tonk one as well was that.
Guest:Both of these matches were uncharacteristically scripted to within an inch of their lives before the fact, right?
Guest:Like these guys went out into the ring and knew almost minute to minute what was going to happen.
Guest:Because they weren't going to leave anything to chance on live TV, right?
Guest:And I think maybe the most flexibility you have about things being called during the match would have been Andre's heat segment where he's just kind of kicking the shit out of Hogan, who's like writhing on the ground.
Guest:Really, all you're relying on there is Hogan selling the beating.
Guest:right so andre can kind of do whatever he wants me to step on his back he can chop him he can you know throw him into the corner and squish his butt on him and that stuff is i'm sure stuff he's just you know kind of guiding hogan through grab his wrist that means hogan knows okay i'll get up i'll get i'll go against the rope so that you can chop me down or whatever but i do think that the the very specific details of this match were all agreed to ahead of time okay
Guest:Gotcha.
Marc:So there wasn't any like, all right, all right, you're going to try to pick me up here and fail.
Marc:No, you're not going to see Andre and Hulk in the clinch with Andre whispering into his ear.
Guest:Fair enough.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Well, so then we get the Hogan interview.
Guest:It's kind of classic, you know, every Hogan interview similar to this.
Guest:It's notable.
Guest:I bring it up because this interview was the last time you will ever see the old WWF title.
Guest:uh in fact it's a well it's a production error they must have pre-taped this promo which you can tell because he's also got wet hair in the promo and then he comes out and his hair is totally straw dry it's like a doll's hair right i noticed that with macho man as well actually yes yeah totally
Guest:And his shirt is different.
Guest:He's got like, you know, now it's wet in different spots.
Guest:So it's pre-taping.
Guest:But he walks out from the curtain with the winged eagle title.
Guest:The famous WWF title that we kind of grew up with.
Guest:The best title, frankly.
Guest:Like that one is just the bomb.
Guest:There's no beating that title ever.
Guest:You'll never have a better title than that title.
Guest:But for some reason, they didn't have it yet when he did the pre-tape.
Guest:which they were passing off as though it was a live interview.
Guest:And so he's backstage there, and he's doing it with the old belt.
Guest:Then through the magic of television, walks through the curtain like the Wizard of Oz, and it's the Winged Eagle.
Guest:Oh, I have to check that out again.
Guest:Cool.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So the Hulkster, he comes running in right from the start.
Guest:Andre's standing on the apron.
Guest:They make a point to mention several times this referee is Dave Hebner.
Guest:Dave Hebner is refereeing this match.
Guest:He is going to do a better job than the guy who refereed WrestleMania III, Joey Marella.
Guest:He's presenting the belt to the crowd.
Guest:Oh, there's Dave Hebner with the title belt.
Guest:And I do remember at the time you kind of knew these refs.
Guest:It didn't seem weird that they were mentioning this guy, Dave Hebner.
Guest:You knew him from the shows.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So the match is ready to start.
Guest:I wrote this down because Vince says this place is electric.
Guest:And for once, he is not lying.
Guest:It totally is.
Guest:There was no hyperbole, no wrestler promoter exaggeration needed.
Guest:This place was just unglued for this match.
Marc:The entire time.
Marc:The entire match.
Marc:I mean, it kept ratcheting up.
Marc:Well, let's just say it's like an eight minute match.
Marc:It's it's not a very long.
Marc:It's exactly what it needed to be.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So the match starts with Hogan just jumping these guys because he's had enough.
Guest:They're standing over on the apron.
Guest:DiBiase is on the apron.
Guest:So is Virgil.
Guest:Andre is still talking to them and doing strategy.
Guest:So Hogan just runs over, just knocks all their heads.
Guest:And the place is nuclear just from.
Guest:this hogan going over these guys just totally unglued and uh he just starts banging on their heads he flips the guys in the ring dibiase virgil they get sent to the outside and now it's just hogan and andre and have you ever heard or seen the term as a casual wrestling fan you probably haven't work rate has anybody has that ever come up to you no no
Guest:So that's a thing that people who are like really into wrestling wrestlers themselves would talk about work rate.
Guest:Work rate is supposed to be the way in which you measure a good wrestler, right?
Guest:How do they work, right?
Guest:The work rate is like, are they actually building matches using the moves, right?
Guest:Or like a guy with a poor work rate just like does crowd work and like maybe throws one or two punches, right?
Guest:And so like for work rate people,
Guest:they hate these kinds of matches.
Guest:They like my whole life.
Guest:I've only had to hear people be like, Oh, Hogan and Andre, they had such terrible matches and blah, blah, and Andre could barely move.
Guest:And I watched this thing.
Guest:This is 35 years later.
Guest:You know, I'm a grown ass man.
Guest:I'm watching this thing.
Guest:It is still great.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Great, great, great.
Guest:Every part of this beginning section with Hogan getting his shine on Andre, just these haymakers and throwing these big punches.
Guest:At one point, he literally is karate chopping him with two hands, two hand karate chopping.
Guest:Jesse is selling all of it.
Guest:of it oh he can't knock the giant down it's unbelievable he's trying all these things he can't knock him down it is so every time he hits this guy the crowd loses their minds he's going off the ropes trying to knock him down it's not working Andre is doing this amazing job like looking like he's hurt he's like staggering and holding his head you actually believe these things hurt him but he won't fall down it's so great then we get one of my favorite spots of all time I don't know why
Guest:But there's all this chicanery that keeps happening because DiBiase and Virgil keep seeing that Andre is taking a beating.
Guest:So every now and then they'll jump up on the apron to try to distract Hogan and he knocks him right off.
Guest:At one point he knocks him off and they drop the money all over the place because he's the million dollar man.
Guest:He's just holding money all the time, right?
Guest:Then he gets back up and he's counting the money.
Guest:And he's got...
Guest:He's got one hand on the ring apron and Hulk Hogan comes over and stomps his hand and the money goes flying like it went through a buzzsaw.
Guest:A money fountain on the air.
Guest:It's the greatest.
Marc:I couldn't love him more.
Marc:Was that real money?
Marc:Because I know the gimmick was back then he had to be the million dollar man.
Marc:Was that real money?
Guest:I would wonder if they let him use real money to just throw it all over the floor.
Guest:Maybe they did.
Guest:But I do know you are correct that he was given walking around money so that when he was out in public, he could have $100 bills in his pocket and be the million dollar man.
Guest:That is absolutely true.
Guest:So the shine continues until Hogan goes to the top rope, which is, again, great in this match.
Guest:Hulk Hogan never went up to the top rope, ever.
Guest:Jesse Ventura says that as he's going up to the top rope.
Guest:This is not something Hulk Hogan does.
Guest:And he has to, because he's got no other way to knock this giant down.
Guest:He's tried everything.
Guest:So it makes sense.
Guest:He's going to do something like this.
Guest:So instead, Andre goes over, he grabs him right in the taint, basically sticks his fingers right up Hogan's ass.
Guest:And there's a character right on it.
Guest:It is right in there.
Guest:I noticed that too.
Guest:And he slams him off the top.
Guest:Now you get about a five minute heat segment for Andre to kick Hogan's ass.
Guest:It feels a little long, but that's mostly just because Andre is very slow, very plodding.
Guest:It's methodically.
Guest:I think we could call it.
Guest:Choking, kicking.
Guest:And Hogan does his comeback out of a choke.
Guest:And interestingly, you get no real Hulk up moment in this match.
Guest:He doesn't do the full Hulk Hogan comeback.
Guest:Instead, it just gets out of the choke, pushes Andre around a little bit, then goes up for a second rope clothesline.
Guest:Just go all the way to the top this time, which is also a good little callback to the earlier part of the match.
Guest:He got fucked going up to the top.
Guest:So now he just goes to the second.
Guest:second rope but the clothesline off the second rope it popped me I was good I was good with it I'm like oh I got him with a clothesline off the second rope that was good and now we're in the end game of the match this is a part that I've always hated hated it the second I saw it when I was a kid
Guest:Uh, he goes for the leg drop, right?
Guest:Hulk Hogan's signature move.
Guest:And?
Guest:Andre's facing, uh, let's call it to the, his head is to camera right, right?
Guest:The right side of the ring as you're seeing.
Guest:Oh, I see what you're saying.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Hogan runs toward the camera.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Basically running toward, if he were going to bounce off the ropes, he'd be by Andre's legs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The only reason he's running that way is because Virgil is standing there.
Guest:So he has to run there so Virgil can grab his foot and distract the ref.
Guest:Now the ref is talking to Virgil, telling him, don't do that to the guy.
Guest:And Hogan bounces off the other side of the ring now, the proper way to do this, so that he can run back and drop the leg on Andre's head, which is where it's supposed to go, not his feet.
Guest:So now he's dropped the leg.
Guest:He goes for the pin on Andre.
Guest:There's no ref, but you get what in wrestling is called the visual pin, right?
Guest:This is to communicate to the audience that this guy would have won if there was fairness, right?
Guest:With fairness, the match is over.
Guest:Because there's cheating, the match is still going.
Guest:And again, they mentioned Dave Hebner by name here.
Guest:Oh, Dave Hebner, he's distracted by Virgil.
Guest:Okay, Andre gets up while Hogan goes over to yell at the ref, and he's up pretty fast, frankly, and comes over to Hogan, grabs him by the back of the head, headbutts him twice, which Jesse, with a great call, one headbutt, boom!
Guest:Two headbutts, boom!
Guest:and then andre does his shitty suplex thing that he was doing at the time as a finisher that didn't look good no uh but he gets him down and you've got a one count yeah not a two count just right in the in the in the uh in the actual like if there's an actual referee in this match hogan would have kicked out of andre's finisher at one
Guest:but it's a one count yeah one count shoulder up the referee continues counting right through the up shoulder we get a three count bell rings and uh you got jesse ventura screaming we've got a new champion and vince mcmahon screaming no we don't
Guest:Just perfect.
Guest:Pitch perfect.
Guest:The referee goes out, he gets the belt.
Guest:The crowd is booing, but the boos, I don't know if you noticed this, the boos are muted.
Guest:Yes, they are.
Guest:Because I think the crowd was not 100% sure.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like they're watching this and they're like,
Marc:He didn't really lose, did he?
Marc:Right.
Marc:It seemed incomprehensible that he would lose on a Friday night in Indianapolis to Andre.
Guest:They give the belt to Andre.
Guest:Now it's setting in for the crowd.
Guest:They're booing the hell out of this.
Guest:And then Howard Finkel announces him as the new World Wrestling Federation champion.
Guest:Now it's total boos.
Guest:This also happens to be Andre the Giant's only official world title reign in his career.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:Lasts for 129 seconds.
Guest:And Mean Gene comes up to the apron.
Guest:He's interviewing Andre.
Guest:Andre calls it the World World Tag Team Championship because he must have been a little winded.
Guest:And he surrenders it to Ted DiBiase.
Guest:He says this, but Mean Gene, because he's the pro of all pros, interprets Andre for the entire audience watching because he knows they have no idea what this Frenchman just said.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So Mean Gene's like, Andre the Giant, are you telling me you're surrendering this to Ted DiBiase?
Marc:Great.
Marc:I mean, Mean Gene, you can't say enough.
Marc:I mean, just world class.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's another guy who I don't know enough about him as a person, but in his job, he was the best at what he did.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:yeah um so andre straps the belt to ted dibiase who did what he said he was going to do he was going to buy the championship and i have to say he looked awesome yes with that belt on it's such a missed opportunity that they did not give him a run with the title uh just walking around with that weird looking wrestling suit that he's wearing like
Guest:fake glittery suit a guy who's the million dollar man wearing the cheapest looking dumb gimmick suit like a chippendales yes but he's got uh this winged eagle brand new belt around his waist he looks like he does look like his name a million dollar man
Guest:They leave the ring laughing like villains.
Guest:Fantastic.
Guest:And behind Hogan, as Hogan is pointing to these bad guys, telling him, you'll get yours.
Guest:And he's making the money sign with his hand.
Guest:You bought that belt.
Guest:I know you did it.
Guest:Behind Hulk Hogan are now not one, but two Dave Hebner's.
Guest:There is Dave Hebner, the guy you've been watching in this match, and another guy who looks just like him, wearing the same referee clothes.
Guest:They're looking at each other.
Guest:They're doing the mirror thing, like the Marx Brothers.
Guest:One guy's raising his hand, the other guy's raising his hand.
Marc:And can I say this segment was a real acting showcase.
Marc:Like there was it was a silent movie going on.
Marc:It was the two refs.
Marc:It was Hogan.
Marc:It was everything was was perfectly explained and no words needed to be said.
Marc:It was awesome.
Guest:It's very funny that you mentioned that because I remember going to school and talking with people about this match.
Guest:And we were recounting what was happening in this part where the referees are talking to each other.
Guest:And then Hogan goes and grabs them by the shirts, right?
Guest:And he turns to one and he yells in his face.
Guest:And I remember we were like, and then he looks at one guy and he says, are you Dave Hebner?
Guest:And then he turns to the other guy and says, are you Dave Hebner?
Guest:And...
Guest:Of course, we don't know what he's saying, but like you said, it's all communicated with the most, the broadest physicality.
Guest:So, of course, that's what he's saying to them.
Guest:He's not saying it couldn't be saying anything else.
Guest:He's not asking for a recipe.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He wants to know which one is the real Dave Hebner.
Guest:At this point in life, we now know that one of those was Dave's brother, Earl.
Guest:Earl was also a referee in the NWA.
Guest:So if you had watched NWA wrestling, you probably saw Earl as well.
Guest:Maybe you thought he was Dave Hebner in both promotions.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:But this was how they did that.
Guest:They had the brothers squaring off.
Guest:And at some point here in this ring, Earl punches Dave in the face.
Guest:And that's good enough for Hulk Hogan that that's the bad guy.
Guest:He just jumps right to execution.
Guest:He's going to hang this guy by the throat.
Guest:In fact, he does worse than that.
Guest:He does worse than hang poor Earl.
Guest:He takes Earl and presses him over his head.
Guest:And while Earl is up in the sky...
Guest:Ted DiBiase and Virgil and Andre the Giant come back down the aisle and Hogan starting on one side of the ring with Earl high up in the air, who's a man, a physical, huge, you know, like a real man.
Guest:It's not a kid or a baby, which I hope it wouldn't be a baby.
Guest:Because he torpedoes him out of the ring.
Guest:He runs with all his speed.
Guest:and hurls with all his might this man, a human being, outside the ring, over the ropes, and right over the head of Ted DiBiase and Virgil, and Andre does nothing.
Guest:Like, Andre is like the backstop.
Guest:He doesn't do a thing.
Guest:This dude just literally gets, like, imagine no people were there, and it would be the same thing.
Guest:Totally.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Throw a man as hard as you can out of the ring from like, you know, the top of your extended arms and just let him hit the concrete.
Marc:I honestly thought they killed him.
Marc:That's right.
Guest:I'm like, wait, that guy, he still worked for many years after?
Guest:How was he not dead?
Marc:Especially those days, there was like actual concrete, you know?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:There's no mats.
Marc:There's nothing.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Good Lord.
Guest:So after this execution on live television, we go to break.
Guest:We come back and apparently a tag team title match is starting.
Guest:This is so Vince McMahon.
Guest:He does not give a shit about anything other than the top of the card.
Guest:And it was that that was true in 1987, in 1988.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's true all the way up to 2023.
Guest:Vince McMahon has never cared about anything else going on on the show other than the top draws, right?
Guest:And so these guys are out there ready to have a tag team title match.
Guest:Oh, the bell's going to ring?
Guest:Too bad.
Guest:Hulk Hogan's in the back.
Guest:We're going to cut back to him.
Guest:Hulk Hogan giving an amazing promo where he's literally crying.
Guest:He is crying tears of rage and sadness and a rage of emotions going on.
Marc:How much money did they spend on the plastic surgery?
Marc:Which is amazing because prior to that, I wasn't thinking plastic surgery at all.
Guest:I thought he bought twin referees, right?
Guest:But at that point on, from now on till death, I'm like, oh, that was that time Ted DiBiase paid for a referee to cut his face to look like Dave Hebner.
Marc:That's plausible.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:How much money?
Marc:I mean, just crying.
Guest:Crying.
Guest:How much for the plastic surgery?
Guest:I can't believe it.
Guest:I thought I had everything taken care of.
Guest:I had Hulkamaniacs watching my back.
Guest:And I had Virgil taken care of.
Guest:I had Audrey where I wanted him.
Guest:I never would have thought some two-bit referee, some penny-pinching referee.
Guest:Oh, Mean Gene, I can't believe this.
Guest:And he's crying.
Guest:Mean Gene, because he's a dick, makes Hulk Hogan watch.
Guest:The replay of what happened to him.
Guest:Hulk Hogan's watching the replay and he goes, I wrote this down because it's amazing.
Guest:Look at the $100 bills falling out of his pockets.
Guest:I assure you, that was not happening.
Guest:There were no $100 bills falling out of the referee's pockets.
Guest:But then he just starts screaming one word things.
Guest:And he starts going, identical!
Guest:Identical!
Guest:And then Vince must be in their ear screaming at them.
Guest:We got to go to break.
Guest:We got to go to break.
Guest:And Mean Gene's like rushing out of the segment.
Guest:Okay, Hulk Hogan.
Guest:We'll have to see later.
Guest:Hulk starts walking off into the distance going Hulkamaniacs.
Guest:Hulkamaniacs.
Marc:It is the best.
Marc:Like, the best unintentional comedy.
Marc:I mean, holy shit.
Guest:But, you know, it's like, it gets to a point, and you're watching this, it's like, it does not matter what they intended.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like, intent has nothing to do with it.
Marc:It's like... They crafted such a great story.
Guest:Yes, they can do anything they want right now.
Guest:If Hulk Hogan stood there and was just like, you know, breathing snot rockets into the camera, I'd been fine with it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It was the greatest.
Guest:The kind of the anticlimax of this hour is that they come back from break and have another 30 seconds of the Strikeforce Heart Foundation match.
Guest:And then it goes off the air.
Guest:Peacock, though, actually, for the first time ever in my life, showed the ending.
Guest:They showed the ending?
Guest:yes there was a roll-up they they uh they they you know said we could we leave this match in progress and it went for about another 20 seconds and uh no it was a sunset flip off the ropes and a pin they probably thought they could get it in and they just ran out of time oh wow uh but it did now i had been unseen by me until watching this um uh peacock version which is the wwe network version um
Guest:So that was it.
Guest:That was the match and the one-hour primetime special 35 years ago.
Guest:Interestingly enough, if you were kind of savvy, people did know that Hulk Hogan was dropping the belt if you knew where to look for it because WrestleMania 4 was already being sold to cable companies.
Guest:Like, you should carry WrestleMania 4.
Guest:And the kind of slogan on it was Hulk Hogan tries to regain his WWF title.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:And that was before this ever aired, right?
Marc:So if you were like...
Marc:Isn't that unheard of in wrestling?
Marc:Isn't it like always like a select few people?
Marc:How did cable companies?
Guest:Well, it was just because WWF was trying to sell this to them, right?
Guest:And so that was a selling point.
Guest:And they figured there was no internet or anything like that.
Guest:So they figured, well, it's okay.
Guest:And the only people who find out about it are like people who subscribe to Dave Meltzer, you know, at the time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:um and it was interesting because they did go to big lengths to protect the finish uh you know there were shows that would be taped before this one and then they were meant to air after it right so like if you were watching the weekend wrestling shows right those shows were taped before this and as a way to get around the fact that they weren't going to be able to reveal the ending they said president jack tunney has banned us
Guest:from speaking about what happened on the main event until his investigation is complete.
Marc:That's genius.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And at one point, Jesse Ventura or Bobby Heen and one of the heel announcers was like, I've had it up to here with this.
Guest:I want to talk about it because, and he starts to talk and they bleep him.
Guest:Like a beep.
Guest:And then they put a thing up on the screen that was like, you know, WWF officials have censored Bobby Heenan and his and he has been sanctioned for these unauthorized comments.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So they went to great lengths to make sure they could kind of protect it among the fans.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The final rating for this main event was a 15.1, a 25 share.
Guest:That means one out of every four households that had TV on in America were watching this at the time.
Guest:Granted, there were only three and a half television networks, but that was still around 33 million people.
Guest:And it remains the highest rated wrestling match, wrestling show in history in America.
Guest:There are ones in Japan and elsewhere that are bigger.
Guest:But actually, here's the interesting part.
Guest:It was only 31st for the week.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Looking at the ratings for the week.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:31st, you know, it's a Friday night, so there's that.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:But still...
Guest:You know, here's what Meltzer, I was looking back at the old observer for this, and he was saying, you know, this is the kind of proof in the pudding that we've always talked about, we've always wondered about as people covering wrestling, was that this shows wrestling fans are incredibly loyal, like,
Guest:don't I know it right like we did a wrestling series and all these wrestling fans showed up and they're still here and they'll follow a wrestling show wherever it is even if it's at an inconvenient time they will watch it but for all the hoopla around this for all the buzz for all this is the rematch of Hulk Hogan and Andre it's on free TV it did not bring in new fans right it didn't it didn't take it wasn't the top 10 show of the week you know it was 31st right and
Guest:And Meltzer was like, this is also putting Hulk Hogan in perspective, right?
Guest:Like he is by far the biggest star in wrestling, period.
Guest:No question.
Guest:And the biggest star American wrestling probably has ever had.
Guest:But it's still just a very big fish in a very small pond.
Guest:And it doesn't mean anything to mainstream media.
Guest:And Hogan would have done well to...
Guest:to pay attention to that because every attempt he made to be a mainstream star flopped.
Guest:All his movies flopped, his TV shows that were non-wrestling flopped.
Guest:Like he, he was, he was nothing other than the guy all wrestling fans wanted to watch for this period in the late 80s, mid to late 80s.
Guest:Right.
Guest:This also basically killed the idea of them doing a primetime weekly show.
Guest:Imagine that.
Guest:The most watched wrestling show in the history of wrestling.
Guest:And they couldn't parlay that into a primetime weekly show, which did not happen until SmackDown in 2018.
Guest:Join Fox when...
Guest:TV started going in the other direction, right?
Guest:And nobody's watching broadcast TV, not in the numbers that they used to.
Guest:And so broadcast TV is desperate to hang on to this loyal wrestling audience, right?
Guest:They don't care that it's not a mainstream audience.
Guest:They're like, give us that loyal wrestling audience.
Guest:So all very fascinating.
Guest:But beyond being interesting and being historical for that level, I think just the biggest takeaway from this is that this one hour show from 35 years ago was as entertaining to me here today as it was the moment I watched it.
Guest:And that wasn't just nostalgia.
Guest:It was legit.
Guest:I was into it as a fan watching it right now in 2023.
Guest:And I don't know if you feel the same way, but I was like, I could watch if you put this show on TV every week with these type of characters and this type of production and these type of matches, I would watch it.
Marc:Yeah, and what was fascinating to me was this was the DNA of all of wrestling.
Marc:Out of the show, they cribbed all of the production elements that NBC did, and they made it their own, and they made it what WWE has become.
Marc:Absolutely.
Guest:Every iteration of Monday Night Raw stems from this.
Guest:All of it.
Guest:You're absolutely right.
Guest:Well, I would love for us to find something else that's as historic as this.
Guest:I don't think we will, but I think we can find some things that are as fun.
Guest:We'll maybe do that at a later date.
Guest:I guarantee, though, none of them will have a promo as good as Hulk Hogan screaming, identical Hulkamaniacs!
Hulkamaniacs!
Guest:Thank you for tuning in for another edition of the Friday show.
Guest:We we will be back next week with I think we can start dipping into some of the things you sent us because we have this form in our episode description that you go click on and leave us suggestions or questions.
Guest:And we got a lot of stuff from you already.
Guest:We had planned to do this show on the main event before we left the month of February.
Guest:But moving forward, we'll we'll take some of your suggestions on things to talk about.
Guest:Some of the things where you listeners are asking us to smart and mark up on certain things in history, such as the entire Andy Kaufman, Jerry Lawler feud.
Guest:Some people think he should we should get him into some ECW.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:Mankind, Undertaker, Hell in the Cell, which Mark has seen.
Guest:I definitely played that for him when we had Mick on our radio show back in Morning Sedition on Air America.
Guest:And we just watched it so I could say like, this guy, he did that.
Guest:I would be interested if you watched it from a full context of it, especially knowing Mick a little better than he knows him now.
Guest:Someone also suggested that we just do a kind of overview of Shawn Michaels, which I wouldn't be opposed to.
Guest:He is one of the greats.
Guest:And someone also had a great suggestion of us talking about the best tag teams, which I love.
Guest:I love that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, yes, keep sending those things.
Guest:Submit in the Google form.
Guest:That's in the episode description.
Guest:Just click it and we don't need your email or anything like that.
Guest:It's just a place where you can communicate to us.
Guest:And before we go, Chris, why don't you tell me what is the best thing you saw last week when it comes to the world of wrestling?
Marc:Best thing I saw was, for the second week in a row, it's Orange Cassidy's match.
Marc:No kidding.
Marc:I mean, this last Dynamite, I gotta say, they...
Marc:You know, all these wrestling fans, they always talk about story and, you know, oh, you got to build a story.
Marc:You got to have these speaking segments.
Marc:Well, you know what?
Marc:Orange Cassidy and who was the opponent?
Marc:Wheeler Uda.
Marc:Wheeler.
Marc:They had a story and in the match and...
Marc:You didn't even need words.
Marc:It was beautifully told.
Marc:I didn't even realize they were friends before that.
Marc:They happened to show highlights in a little square.
Marc:But it was a wonderful storytelling in a wrestling match.
Marc:And I got to say, I hope they have another one because it was a great, great match.
Marc:Did you check it out?
Guest:I did check it out.
Guest:I watched Dynamite this past Wednesday, and we didn't talk about this ahead of time.
Guest:And I wrote down on my notes here, the best thing I saw last week, Orange Cassidy versus Wheeler Yuta.
Guest:Wasn't it awesome?
Guest:It was great.
Guest:great it was really i mean i am a big fan of orange cassidy in the first place uh for a lot of the reasons you mentioned he's a he's excellent at what he does without really having to uh hone a lot of promo skills the character is down uh and so he brings the elements of the character into the matches he's also just a good worker he's a light worker like i don't think any guy ever gets in the ring with that guy and feels like
Guest:They're going to leave hurt or they're going to have to worry about him doing something risky to them.
Guest:He really looks like he takes care of his opponents, which I love as just someone watching.
Guest:It makes me feel comfortable watching it.
Guest:But I'll tell you, one of the things I really loved, I agree with everything you're saying about how well that story was told in the match.
Guest:I loved that they called attention to the time limit.
Marc:Yes, me too.
Marc:Because I thought it was going to end in a draw.
Marc:Me too.
Marc:I was looking at my watch like, oh my God, is it going to happen?
Guest:It made the last five minutes super exciting.
Guest:Totally.
Guest:You know, that guy, Will Ospreay, who's in New Japan, who is, you know, their kind of version of Kenny Omega.
Guest:He's a big high flyer.
Guest:He's the kind of guy who does five star, six star, seven star matches, like always rated as one of the best in the world.
Guest:He fought Orange Cassidy at the Forbidden Door pay-per-view, and it was the best match of that night.
Guest:I thought that when I watched it.
Guest:Uh, he just was, I saw this quote of his today.
Guest:I don't know if it was in relation to that dynamite match, but it's kind of seems like it's in response to a lot of people who take issue with orange Cassidy as like a comedy wrestler.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that he's in too prominent a position for somebody who's like, you know, shouldn't be taken seriously.
Guest:And Ospreay's quote was,
Guest:Orange Cassidy is phenomenal.
Guest:He understands everything about himself and knows how to play the mind games when it comes to the matches.
Guest:If you're not giving him the credit where it's due, you don't understand what wrestling is anymore.
Guest:And I felt good about that because I feel like it makes me know I understand what wrestling is today.
Guest:I have evolved to a point where I can watch that guy and be like, that is enormously entertaining.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it should be the, you know, part of the flavor.
Guest:It doesn't have to be, not everybody should be Orange Cassidy, but it's a great flavor in the soup of the whole show.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know, there's this show host that I know that I'm not going to mention his name because I don't want to blow up his spot.
Guest:He's trying to do some bookings here.
Guest:And he asked me some advice about getting wrestlers on his show.
Guest:And he said his producers are pushing him for it.
Guest:And this is the text he sent me.
Guest:He said, they want me to have that guy who acts bored and keeps his hands in his pockets, which is hilarious to me.
Guest:My response was like, just you saying that alone tells me you should do it.
Guest:It's going to go great.
Guest:Totally.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Well, you know, we'll watch some more wrestling over the next week.
Guest:There's going to be a big build to a pay-per-view.
Guest:We'll talk about that when we're here next week on the Friday show.
Guest:And we'll take your suggestions for things that we can bring up.
Guest:Just submit there in the episode description.
Guest:I'm Brendan.
Guest:That's Chris.
Guest:Thank you, buddy.
Peace.