Nonsensical Rantings

By: The Great White Smark

Bonjour my friends! Welcome to the first posting of Nonsensical Rantings at the newest wrestling site on the web - ! I will be your host, the Great White Smark. As a bit of background on your new favorite internet columnist, I grew up in the Philadelphia area, meaning of course I was and remain to this day a HUGE ECW fan. I’m currently a sophomore at Penn State I’ve followed wrestling since I was six, back in the days where Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels were tag specialists, the internet was unheard of, and this smark was one of the biggest marks around. Currently, my favorite wrestlers are Chris Jericho, Kane, The Rock, Brock Lesnar, Rob Van Dam, and Tommy Dreamer. I want to start things off by sharing with you what I consider to be the ten funniest moments in recent WWF(E) history. By recent I mean from the summer of 1998 until the present day. In the first of this two part series, I’m going to deal with those moments from August of 1998 through the year of 1999. These moments will appear in chronological order, starting with…

1. DX mocks the Nation (August 1998) – I am sad to say I missed most of the DX skits with Shawn, Triple H, and Chyna, but I can say that this is a perfect example of the kind of chicanery Degeneration X was known for. This took place before Summerslam 1998 where Hunter would meet the Rock for the Intercontinental Belt in a ladder match. DX came down to the ring, each representing a member of the Nation: Triple H was the (C)Rock, X Pac represented Mizark Henry, Billy Gunn came down as Kama Mustafa (soon after to be known as the Godfather), Road Dogg was mockingly dressed like D’Lo Brown (complete with oversized chest protector and multicolored beanie), and the role of Owen Hart was played by Jason Sensation. While Xpac gave a decent Fat Albert impression as the obese Henry, it is Triple H, Road Dogg, and Sensation who truly made this hilarious. Hunter carries on about what the Crock cooked up in the backstage area (everyone was smellin’ it) and denounces his fellow Nation members. The funniest example of this is when he asks Mizark “How do you get your pecs to wrap all the way around your back like that?” Dogg works D’Lo perfectly, generally being annoying, repeating everything Hunter says and then going up to the turnbuckle and doing the bizarre head shake D’Lo is known for. Finally, Jason, decked out in police tape, screeches in the most convincing Owen impression I’ve heard to date “I am NOT a NUGGET! I’m an AARDVARK! WOOOOO!” Sadly, I’ve heard reports recently that Jason Sensation is out doing these same acts for spare change now. It’s amazing how far people can fall. Still, this moment is truly a hysterical one, as it shows the full comedic talents of one of wrestling’s all time great stables. DX would do another sketch similar to this involving the Corporation, but, like many sequels, never lived up to the original.

2. Vince McMahon hospitalized; visited by Mick Foley (October 1998): Anyone who has seen this will know that it may just be the funniest moment in WWF (or WWE) television history. To set the scene: Vince is being stalked by Steve Austin after a long and well documented series of run ins with the boss, the latest of which saw Austin dropping his WWF title in controversial fashion to both the Undertaker and Kane. After one of Austin’s attacks, Vince is hospitalized with a broken ankle. Somehow this warrants the full medical treatment, including hospital gown, heart monitors, etc. Mr. McMahon insists that there be guards outside of the door in case Austin should reappear. One of the nurses comes in to inform Vince that there was a man outside to see him who threatened some of the staff if he couldn’t get in. Vince looks horrified as the nurse lets in…Mankind, who had been played up as Vince’s “son.” Now, according to Mick Foley in his book “Have a Nice Day,” he was merely told to come into the room and surprise Vince. He did so with candy (half eaten on the way to the hospital), balloons, and a clown named Yurple. Mick felt like he needed one more throwaway gimmick and so went to his friend Al Snow. Al, who’s head gimmick had been imagined by Foley, paid him back by suggesting a sock puppet. Thus, Socko was born. The scene where Socko attempts to “kiss Vince’s booboo” is the highest of high comedy. Vince throws out Foley for the nonsense, and then is soon thereafter attacked by Austin in what itself is an amusing scene. In it, Austin uses a defibrillator and an enema tube (eeeew) on the helpless McMahon. This may just be the most historically significant of the scenes on the list, as the popularity of Socko carried Foley to new heights, including three world titles and a high profile tag team reign…which will be discussed in detail later.

3. Owen Hart and The Blue Blazer (August 1998-May 1999): Owen Hart (God rest his soul) was always one of the true talents in every aspect of sports entertainment. At no time was this more apparent than during this angle (except maybe his feud with his brother in 1993-1994). When Owen first broke into the WWF, he was a masked superhero (sort of like our own SuperManion) by the name of the Blue Blazer. This was his break in the business. Cut to ten years later. Owen was a King of the Ring, Tag Team, European, and Intercontinental Champion. After an angle where Owen “disappeared” from television, the Blue Blazer started appearing again. The joke was, of course, everyone knew it was Owen. No matter how hard he tried in his promos to convince people he was not Owen, everyone knew it was him. He employed the services of his friend and Tag Team partner Jeff Jarrett at various points during this angle to don the hood and cape when Owen and the Blazer needed to be in the same place at once. However, when Owen AND Jarrett had to be with the Blazer, the part of the Blazer was played by none other than KOKO B. WARE! That’s right! An over the hill African American was playing the role of Owen Hart! As ludicrous as it sounds, that’s how ludicrous it was in practice. While that normally detracts from an angle, in this case it added new dimensions to the humor involved. The promos themselves were also hilarious, as Owen came off as genuinely offended at the accusation that he was the Blazer, and vice-versa. Owen was careful, in both instances, to put his other form over as much as possible while cutting his promos. That shameless self promotion only added to the comedy in this bit. Sadly, after the last of one of these interviews, Owen fell to his death, before a match where he was supposedly going to win the Intercontinental title. Though he died during this angle, Owen brought great joy and laughter to any who watched his wonderful performances. This truly ranks among the greatest comedic performances in WWF history.

4.Rock’s Promo on Billy Gunn (August 1999) - This incident goes to show you that a great moment can occur at any moment during any program. This particular comedic scene happened during an episode of Sunday Night HeAT. Billy Gunn had just won the King of the Ring (my opinion on this atrocity will take up an entire article, so it would best be saved for another time). The Rock had just lost a number one contenders match to HHH at Fully Loaded 1999 and with the reigning King needing a high profile match for Summerslam, The Rock was pegged to take on Billy Gunn. The set up is simple enough, as it is merely the Rock addressing his fans in the middle of the ring. It even starts out as a typical Rock promo, with the Great One asking who Billy Gunn is to be challenging him (though, then again, this time he might have a point…). Then he makes a comment to the effect that Gunn was praying to be in the same league as the Rock. In the whiniest voice he could muster, Rocky mockingly prays to god as Gunn, asking why after all he’s accomplished everyone still thinks he sucks. God, who apparently sounds amazingly like the Rock, gets Billy’s name wrong and promptly tells him that it doesn’t matter what his name is (which I believe is the first time that line was used in a Rock promo). He then goes on to further mock Gunn and his obvious lack of talent. This was the lone bright spot in this feud that ended in an atrocious “Kiss My Ass” match at Summerslam. After that, the WWF realized Kip Sopp had no talent, and put him back with the Road Dogg. However, this nugget of gold stands as one of my two favorite Rock promos of all time, and one of the best of all from the best promo man in the business.

5. Rock: This is Your Life (November 1999) – As for the Rock after that feud, he went on to create the Rock and Sock Connection with Mick Foley, which produced some great tag team action and awesome comedy bits. None of these, however, match up to what was far and away the funniest sketch I had seen to that point: the This Is Your Life bit. Mankind was still trying to sell himself as a viable best friend and ally to the Rock. Anyway, Mick brought Rock down to the ring to have a conversation with him and surprises him with the “This is Your Life” homage. Balloons and confetti fly all around the arena and cheesy music plays. Again, Yurple is out as part of the festivities. The real comedy starts when Foley introduces Rock’s former “teacher,” “coach” and “girlfriend” “respectively” (crap…one too many quotes). Foley of course did this as a gesture of good will, but the Rock simply dismissed each one in turn, yelling at his former teacher, threatening to shove the whistle up his coach’s ass, and berating his former flame for “cutting the Rock off at second base.” This of course is the most grievous of the offenses, since we all know how Rocky loves that poontang pie. When this plan fails, Foley gets out his gifts: a personalized Socko (dubbed Rocko for its likeness to the Rock) and a set of leather jackets with “Rock and Sock Connection” written on the back. This was by far the highlight of the Rock/Sock angle, and one of the highest rated segments in Raw history. Easily the funniest of these five, as it shows two of the best promo men in the business at that time doing exactly what they did best…everything in that angle was well done, but “This is Your Life” will always remain a favorite to whomever was lucky enough to watch it.

That’s it for this week, folks! Tune in next week as we delve into the other half of this list. The next segment will contain moments from January 1, 2000 through the summer of 2002. I’d just like to finish up by clarifying that, though some people refuse to accept the name change, I will use it where it makes sense. For example, Shawn Michaels was a WWF Champion. Brock Lesnar is the current WWE champion. I refuse to call the Hart Foundation WWE Tag Team Champions, but at the same time the Unamericans were never tag champions in the WWF. That’ll do it for this time folks. Until next week…this is the Great White Smark.

“Show me the way to go home…I’m tired and I wanna go to bed…”