Opinion
The Underrated Files: WWE Hall Of Fame Candidates
With WrestleMania and the biggest weekend of the wrestling year upon us, the debate over the WWE’s “opening pitch” of WrestleMania weekend programming is the annual Hall Of Fame ceremony. Every year brings much debate and discussion among the fans on who should be in, who should be out, who should have gone in before this guy, so on and so forth. You always get the common names like Owen Hart, British Bulldog, Chyna and I’ve even seen a lot of push recently for Brutus Beefcake.
I started pondering who else is deserving of getting “the call”, but might be forgotten about when it comes to the conversation. Superstars who could be getting passed over for one reason or another by both the company, as well as fans in debates and conversations alike. I was able to come up with four names that I feel had broken ground in the business, left a legacy or just plain deserve it.
Let’s be honest here, we know the WWE Hall Of Fame is seen as a joke by most, so I see no reason why my choices couldn’t get in some day. Are they headliners of a Hall Of Fame ceremony? Certainly not, but their contributions to wrestling speak for themselves and at the end of the day, you always need more than just a headliner to fill any given class. Anybody can come up with an argument against someone, so here are my arguments FOR these stars.
‘The Loose Cannon’ Brian Pillman
Following a one year stint in the NFL with the Cincinnati Bengals, Brian Pillman stepped into the wrestling business by way of the famed Hart Family Dungeon, opening his career in Calgary with Stampede Wrestling. After two years and a small run in New Japan Pro Wresting, Pillman moved on to World Championship Wrestling and became ‘Flyin’ Brian due to his aerial assault on opponents. It was a style that was seldom seen in the USA, especially in WCW as Brian led the way for the company in its earliest incarnation of a Cruiserweight Division, becoming a two-time Light-Heavyweight Champion.
From there, Pillman would join forces with and become one of the earliest tandems to be known as “cool heels”, The Hollywood Blonds, alongside ‘Stunning’ Steve Austin. The Blonds became one of the most over teams in the business in only a five month pairing. Think about that. Only FIVE MONTHS! Pillman would again seemingly stay ahead of his time as he would begin to change his character, adopting the “Loose Cannon” moniker (By the way, this was after he was a member of The Four Horsemen, so he’s also got that notch in his belt).
He seemed to be living his life as a work, whether it was the fans or even the boys in the back, at a time in 1995 when people just didn’t go so over the top. Again, just think about that now. Two years before ‘Stone Cold’ became ‘Stone Cold’. Pillman’s departure from WCW in 1996 would see him arrive in ECW, continuing to work the world before a devastating car crash left him in a coma for a week. He would also need major ankle surgery, having his left foot fused back together and taking a devastating toll on his psyche.
His days as ‘Flyin’ Brian would be over as he would no longer be able to employ his in-ring style from WCW, but it didn’t stop the WWF from signing him. Unfortunately, Pillman’s ankle would continually cause him issues, Brian being forced to undergo a second surgery in the midst of a feud with his former partner, Austin. This would give us arguably the most controversial moment in WWE history, as ‘Stone Cold’ would break into Pillman’s house while he was laid-up, only to find Brian waiting for him with a gun. The angle got everybody talking, for better or worse, during a period when the WWF was getting their backsides handed to them by WCW. Brian would go on to join The Hart Foundation as the only member who was not related to the family, but would pass away abruptly at the age of 35 from a heart attack caused by a previously undetected heart condition.
‘The Iceman’ Dean Malenko
I have to admit that I was totally unaware, but as a kid how many of you realized that Dean Malenko was actually as old as he was? The son of the legendary Boris Malenko, Dean began performing in 1979 as a referee in Florida, spending the entirety of his career traveling around the world to places like Mexico and Japan before ever making major noise in America. It wasn’t until 1994 when ‘The Shooter’ began making a big name for himself when he joined up with Extreme Championship Wrestling, which is where an appreciation for his technical skill blossomed.
A two-time ECW Television and one-time ECW Tag Champion, Malenko would continually impress the hardcore fans in matches against the likes of Eddie Guerrero and he was even a founding member of the original Triple Threat faction with Chris Benoit and Shane Douglas. WCW would quickly take notice, bringing Dean into the fold and having him lead the way with its new Cruiserweight Division. ‘The Iceman’ was at the forefront of the exciting new venture, earning more monikers like ‘The Man of 1,000 Holds’ and titles alike. Like Pillman, Malenko would also become a member of The Four Horsemen and would win the Cruiserweight Title four times, as well as the United States and Tag Team Championships once each during a near four year span with WCW.
Along with his friends Benoit, Guerrero and Perry Saturn, Dean would make an almost immediate jump to the WWF in January of 2000, quickly making an impact on an already star-studded roster. By this time, Malenko was wearing down physically given that he was already 40 years old when he debuted with The Radicalz. His success in the ring would be limited with two Light-Heavyweight title reigns before retiring in 2001, but his fingerprint on the company has remained ever since with his work as a road agent.
‘The Taskmaster’ Kevin Sullivan
I’m wondering if this man may ever get consideration for the Hall Of Fame just by association, being that he is Nancy Benoit’s ex-husband. I tend to think that shouldn’t affect Kevin Sullivan, but with WWE wanting to be as far away from that as possible, who knows.
Sullivan got his start in the early 1970’s coming from Boston as an amateur that was not professionally trained. Like many wrestlers of the era, he spent a majority of his time hopping from territory-to-territory, including a stint in the WWWF, before settling down a bit with Championship Wrestling From Florida. During this time, Sullivan really started to make noise with his gimmick of being a Satanist, a character that was much darker than anything else that had been tried in the wrestling business (or at least the only one that worked).
His feuds in Florida with the likes of Dusty Rhodes and Barry Windham would catch the eye of Jim Crockett Promotions, signing on with the company and again undergoing a change by forming The Varsity Club upon his arrival. It was a gimmick that fit Sullivan with his amateur wrestling background, garnering success alongside fellow grapplers Mike Rotunda and Rick Steiner. The Varsity Club became the tops of the company’s Tag Team Division through its purchase by Ted Turner and renaming into WCW.
He also became very involved behind-the-scenes with the creative team and booking, two of the most difficult positions to hold in any wrestling organization, especially WCW. After departing and spending some time with Smoky Mountain Wrestling and ECW, Sullivan would return to the company and take back on his demonic character. I know some will pass due to the participants, but if you’d like to see some hard-hitting matches then any encounter between Chris Benoit and Kevin Sullivan before ‘The Taskmaster’ retired in 1997 are must-see. After stepping away from the ring, Sullivan would again focus on a backstage role, trying to keep the company afloat until it was ultimately sold to the WWF in 2001.
‘The Model’ Rick Martel
In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, there was no man I hated more as a child than ‘The Model’ Rick Martel. Going back before he would spray his opponents with “Arrogance” however, Martel had already grabbed loads of success in the wrestling business, coming from a wrestling family and traveling all over the globe before his arrival in the WWF in 1980. He would form a popular tandem with Tony Garea, winning the Tag Team Titles twice over a two year run, then made his way into Verne Gagne’s American Wrestling Association.
Martel would ascend the ranks of the promotion over the next two years, winning the coveted AWA World Heavyweight Championship and holding it for an astounding 19 months. In 1986 he would return to the WWF, forming a team this time with Tom Zenk known as The Can-Am Connection, which only had moderate success and conflicting reports between the partners as to why it failed. His next venture would be highly successful though, pairing up with Tito Santana as the wildly popular Strike Force.
The tandem would earn tag team gold during a two year stint together, ultimately doing what all teams inevitably must and splitting up with Martel turning on Santana. This is where he would adopt his moniker of ‘The Model’, often using an atomizer to spray his opponents with his trademark fragrance, “Arrogance”. Martel became a mainstay in the mid-card for the next 6 years, notably feuding with Jake ‘The Snake’ Roberts and Shawn Michaels while contending for the Intercontinental Championship. He would leave the company in 1995 and take some time off to pursue real estate, but would wind-up returning to the ring in 1997 for WCW, immediately heading into a feud with Booker T over the WCW Television Championship (which he’d win once). Ultimately, injuries would force him out of the ring entirely after a 25-year career.
Agree? Disagree? Have any underrated Hall Of Fame candidates of your own? Hit the comments section below or follow me on Twitter, @E_Ames323!
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Opinion
TheChairshot.com PRESENTS: WWE Bash In Berlin Immediate Reactions
Join DJ and Tunney for their immediate reactions to WWE Bash in Berlin. For the latest, greatest and up to datest, ALWAYS #UseYourHead and visit THECHAIRSHOT.COM
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Launched in 2017, the Chairshot Radio Network presents you with the best in sports, entertainment, and sports entertainment. Wrestling and wrestling crossover podcasts + the most interesting content + the most engaging hosts = the most entertaining podcasts you’ll find!
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Launched in 2017, the Chairshot Radio Network presents you with the best in sports, entertainment, and sports entertainment. Wrestling and wrestling crossover podcasts + the most interesting content + the most engaging hosts = the most entertaining podcasts you’ll find!
MONDAY - Bandwagon Nerds (entertainment & popular culture)
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Opinion
AJ’s Top 3 Favorite SummerSlams
AJ is back with his annual opinion article, and this time the SummerSlam buzz got him wondering about his personal Top 3.
It’s been a while since I have done any form of writing and SummerSlam is this Saturday. Of all the SummerSlams I’ve seen over the years; which ones are my favorites? While it’s not a revolutionary idea, I figured everyone loves to debate favorites of well, anything. Don’t worry though because this isn’t just going to be pure recency bias. I’ve watched the majority of them so with the ones I put on the list, it hit me more in some way shape or form whether it was story, a really good match or it just felt like a solid event.
At least this proves WWE is trending in a good direction for me, when it gets the ol’ brain juices flowing just because a show is around the corner!
#3: 2022 (Ol’ Brock Lesnar Has A Farm)
Starting off the show, we get Bianca looking for a rematch against Becky from last years SummerSlam and it was better than the 21 second affair that everyone claims was a squash. This time Bianca holds her own and beats the Man in a fairly decent match, good way to get the event started. Next up is the heat seeking missile, Logan Paul against the former heat seeking missile because, well he wasn’t cut out for it and wasn’t a guy in everyone’s eyes, The Miz. After they had their blow off at Mania with Logan coming out on top which… isn’t awful, I just don’t like Logan Paul because he has that dude bro aura and swagger to make him more hateable than any other person on the card. Which I suppose is his gimmick…so…kudos?
First Championship match is for the US Championship and it’s as expected that in Theory, he should never beat someone to the caliber of Bobby Lashley which is no surprise. Dominik and Rey still back when Dom wanted the good fight against the Judgement Day before joining them later. The former Colts players, which they hammered it dahn in this match up showed that the canal swimming, trash talkin’, podcastin’, current RAW Color Commentatin’ goofball we all love, Pat McAfee came out on top again Bum Ass Corbin.
Usos putting the Street Profits on lockdown in the penitentiary since I believe this was peak Bloodline with the belt collecting and running all of WWE. Liv beat Ronda Rousey which isn’t astonishing but it’s not something people had on their bingo cards for anything with WWE so it was a nice little shock factor. The most memorable part of the night is obviously the Main Event, Lesnar brings the tractor, Roman catching the Microphone and Brock stands on top of the vehicle. Damn good match that showed off what they do in the ring since Roman caught his stride as the main bad guy and Brock… liked people after all of this? That is still a weird statement in my head. Brock being a good guy people person. If Liv wasn’t on bingo cards for wrestling, that is not on bingo cards in any aspect of life really.
That is more of the event that had solid matches and story going for it. No weird double count out, multiple people involved, 5 tag matches on the card. Things made sense and weren’t convoluted, had shocking moments that were great to see like Liv actually getting a title defense and there were the results we all expected at the time like Theory losing in 4 minutes to Bobby Lashley.
#2: 2009 (Are You Ready for The Return?)
This event wasn’t that strong. It was strong with the star power involved in 2009 with guys like Rey Mysterio as Intercontinental Champion, Orton and Cena for the WWE Championship as it was becoming as stale as month old chips and CM Punk was facing Jeff Hardy before he ultimately returned to TNA at the beginning of 2010 after this PPV. For me, it’s not so much of the show itself, it was more of the memories because the Balai as our friends Chris Platt and Rey Cash like to call my brother and I, we were just coming back into wrestling and we were TNA Fans. We didn’t watch WWE that much really, it was just what came on after another channel had old ROH shows before they moved to three hours and swallowed the 8pm Eastern Slot. No, the reason why this has so many memories for me is three main reasons. First, Orton and Cena. They have had their rivalry since the beginning it seems, being each others foils like Hogan and Piper before them and there had to be a stipulation where if Randy was Counted Out or DQ’d, he’d lose the championship regardless. This was prime Viper Randy and the obvious joke we had of Super Cena where he very rarely lost, unless it was SummerSlam surprisingly enough.
Number two reason was CM Punk and Jeff Hardy. Hardys known for the Ladder and TLC matches in the past and this being the penultimate match for this feud and it was a banger of a match. If you didn’t know Punk before, it was a great introduction to his wrestling. I used to like Punk a lot because of this match because he could talk, wrestle… and not insanely personal with things in wrestling. In all seriousness, this was a great match. Ultimate risks, high reward for Punk grabbing the World Heavyweight Championship and he was given his next feud because of the final boss of SmackDown at that time. Thanks, Teddy Long.
The main and final reason though why this match gave me the memories flowing back is more of the fact that one of my closest and longest termed friends of 23 years, also loves wrestling. Back when we were younger, he’d do MoCap videos on YouTube with his figures. We’d have friends come over for parties at his house and we’d do the one thing WWE always told us not to do and that was try it at home. He was always stronger than me, I was always more charismatic. He had the power aspect and did things with brute force, I could talk my way out of trouble with parents if we did something wrong. There was always one thing that our respective mother’s always called us though… it’s on the tip of my tongue… oh right, ‘Degenerates’.
As soon as we were called that, we kind of parodied the DX line. I was limber enough to do the HBK pose and do a Superkick before it became the new DDT and he would just Spinebuster people and knew how to do the water spit. So what do you think was the main reason we even ordered this PPV for his 13th Birthday? I think the two guys we were pretending to be were set to return on a tank and toss out some glow sticks. The return of DX, Shawn Michaels coming back after Mania with Triple H to deal with the Legacy problem was an amazing return for them and made everything so much fun.
So we have the solid card and this one has a personal story… what’s my number one SummerSlam? Is it personal? Well yes but not going into that. Is it a good card? To me, it was a phenomenal card! Is it memorable? Seeing how wrestling fans still mention at least three matches to this day.
#1: 2005 (Octopus in the Washer, Lover’s Quarrel and Where the F%#$ is Vickie?)
Quite possibly some of the best matches I’ve seen and one that was just the most hilarious moments of overselling in wrestling history, I know why I love this SummerSlam but it’s also a really good card at the same time. Redacted beats Orlando Jordan in 25 seconds for the US Title and they made jokes about it like, he can make a coffee faster than he beat Orlando and stuff like that, it’s pretty funny. Angle getting sick of Eugene’s antics for his Gold Medal was also a great bit they had play up, the Year long feud of Randy Orton and Undertaker was still going on where Orton comes out on top this time around to get the win back from Mania, Jericho returning for the match with Cena in a whole promotional thing for each other’s groups, Fozzy for Jericho and the Chain Gang doing Bad, Bad Man for Cena leading up to a match for the WWE Championship. JBL won a 20 man battle royal on SmackDown to win the Championship…… Opportunity to face the newest member of SmackDown, Batista but the three main matches that a lot of people talk about to this day; Edge vs Matt Hardy, Rey vs Eddie for Dominik and Hogan vs HBK in the Main Event.
I have reasons to enjoy the Hardy/Edge match but it looked like a real fight, it really made us believe that Matt Hardy was going to kill Edge because real names were dropped during this tirade from Hardy. It wasn’t Edge and Lita, it was Adam and Amy. Matt was so dead set on beating the hell out of Edge that they made a situation into gold and it was a great moment for this match to happen, I believe it was also an Unsanctioned Match too which added the intensity until matt got concussed and knocked senseless that it looked like he couldn’t fight for anything but the build up was what made it seem like a marque match. It made it feel real, it made it feel awesome and it made it feel personal.
Eddie kept tormenting Rey Mysterio about Dominik not being Rey’s but Eddie’s for the summer. That’s all you heard from Eddie being the weasel he was is hanging out with Dominik, making the world believe it’s his son and what not (Let’s not do a fast forward to today where he has the mullet, mustache and everything like Eddie) but they settle this in a Ladder Match where the top of it is a document for the custody of Dominik and my god, this match is better than it should have been. I expect nothing else from Eddie because the man hated having a bad match, Dom got involved and stopped Eddie, Vickie was late and stopped Eddie. The whole match was good it was just very weird with the premise but was a great match. I wonder if Rey regrets his decision to win the match now…
Octopus in a Washing Machine… those five words have resonated with Shawn Michaels’ performance in this match, forever. It was supposed to be an amazing match up between Hogan and Michaels, Icon vs Icon it said and suddenly Hogan’s back gives out, can’t do a trilogy of matches so we can only do the one and then pull out of everything after. This match was set up to be a classic and instead turned into the most unbelievable sell fest ever. A Hogan big boot caused Shawn to tumble 3 or 4 times, getting crotched on the ropes had HBK bouncing higher than he should have, being tossed out of the ring made it look like Shawn never broke his back in 1998 from how much he flopped and flipped around like crazy. It’s bad… or maybe even good that a lot of current wrestlers watched this match that went, “I can sell like that, I want to be a wrestler” and did. So good or bad, I don’t know but for some reason this PPV has always had a place in my heart for how memorable it was.
Those are my top three SummerSlams so far but who knows, 2024 has potential to maybe bump something or at least get me to consider a shift. Should be fun to see how the show plays out! What are some of your favorite SummerSlams?
About Chairshot Radio Network
Launched in 2017, the Chairshot Radio Network presents you with the best in sports, entertainment, and sports entertainment. Wrestling and wrestling crossover podcasts + the most interesting content + the most engaging hosts = the most entertaining podcasts you’ll find!
MONDAY - Bandwagon Nerds (entertainment & popular culture)
TUESDAY - Musical Chairs (music) / Hockey Talk (NHL)
WEDNESDAY - The Greg DeMarco Show (wrestling)
THURSDAY - Keeping the news ridiculous... The Oddity / Chairshot NFL (NFL)
FRIDAY - DWI Podcast (Drunk Wrestling Intellect)
SATURDAY - The Mindless Wrestling Podcast
SUNDAY - The Front and Center Sports Podcast
CHAIRSHOT RADIO NETWORK PODCAST SPECIALS
Attitude Of Aggression Podcast & The Big Five Project (chronologically exploring WWE's PPV/PLE history)
TheChairshot.com PRESENTS...IMMEDIATE POST WWE PLE REACTIONS w/ DJ(Mindless), Tunney(DWI) & Friends
Patrick O'Dowd's 5X5
Classic POD is WAR
Chairshot Radio Network Your home for the hardest hitting podcasts... Sports, Entertainment and Sports Entertainment!
Powered by RedCircle
Let us know what you think on social media @ChairshotMedia and always remember to use the hashtag #UseYourHead!