OK, I haven't posted here in a long time. I don't want to put this on facebook or tumblr because they get laggy when I type a lot and I might edit this a lot or add pictures or something idk LOL prol not tho bc I just want to ramble.
So I've been watching WWF's 1991 programming (because that was the debut of Irwin R Schyster), or at least watching
Superstars and
Wrestling Challenge, though I try to find episodes of
Prime Time Wrestling when I can (and did find a cute one with IRS) but it's hard to find those. Hopefully WWENetwork will eventually add all the early 90s content to their archives so I can just watch it there, but right now I have to scour the internet for people's old VHS rips.
Either the entire like, 5/6 of 1991 was a drought in the writing/creativity in WWF programming (I haven't seen anything pre-1991) or the last coulpe of months REALLY stepped up to be more like what I'm used to with modern programming. Uh, for more context, I only just got into wrestling like a year ago and have only been watching new stuff and only WWE stuff so I don't know much of other promotions and haven't even seen the supposedly-best eras of WWE yet.
I was going to go into all the stupid little stories of 1991 but basically they were just... really ridiculous, and usually there was only like one at a time and they were drug out so slow that it was nearly impossible to stay invested in them even if you tried.
Near the end of the year, though, there were kind of a lot of little stories and rivalries going on, and they were developed a lot more than previous rivalries in the year (which boiled down to just SCREAMING TRASH TALK).
I guess it really started to pick up a bit before the last couple of months, because in the early summer we had the Macho Man/Miss Elizabeth engagement which led to the whole wedding crasher thing, which set the stage for some even more intense events at the end of the year. We also had Virgil win the Million Dollar Title at
SummerSlam which was really awesome and exciting, and the first time I got really hyped up (and even cried) at 90s rasslin.
Actually I was planning on just talking about the 'recent' things (as in, 'recent' relative to where I'm at now, which is December XD) but I actually do want to talk about that because it was really great.
When I first started watching this stuff I thought I was going to only really get into IRS and no one else would really be interesting. I don't know why I was so dumb about it because I get so easily attached to fictional characters of any type, but...
Anyway, Virgil is the only black wrestler in the WWF in 1991 that I can think of, as well as the only wrestler of color whose in-ring persona isn't some kind of weird cultural stereotype. And as I was watching and mostly skipping anything that wasn't IRS-related a few seconds into a match, I noticed he was appearing a lot and I thought it was pretty cool that in 1991 there was a black guy getting as much screen time as any of the white guys and he seemed pretty popular, too.
For a bit of backstory, before this (which I only learned through the context of commentary myself) Virgil had been a 'servant' to the Million Dollar Man, who treated him poorly making him like literally kiss his boots and stuff. But he eventually broke away and started wrestling on his own, and I guess people really loved him.
Million Dollar Man has this title called the Million Dollar Title that he just... made up himself and awarded to himself, so it didn't really carry too much weight... until finally after a lot of wrestling on his own, Virgil challenged MDM for the Million Dollar Title to close that chapter of his life and prove his strength and independence away from DiBiase.
And this culminated as a major event of Wrestlemania 91. By this point I was already rooting for Virgil in general as he was just a cool guy and a fun wrestler to watch, but now he was the center of the first really meaningful story of 90s wrestling I'd seen. Of cousre, there was no doubt that Virgil wasn't going to claim the Million Dollar Title to the delight of fans, but the execution of the match along with Roddy Piper's ridiculously enthusiastic commentary (I'm pretty sure he even was crying at one point himself LOL) brought me to tears and I had so many feels for Virgil and this victory.
That was pretty much the first meaningful rivalry in 91. Before that we did have the weird Undertaker putting Ultimate Warrior in a casket but like... there really wasn't any reasoning behind that and it didn't make a lot of sense to begin with and drug on forever.
The main event of Summerslam 91 and the main rivalry leading up to that point, however, was Hulk Hogan vs Sgt Slaughter which was basically just "USA is better than all other countries and violence PROVES IT" personified with mustaches stuck on. I did appreciate the mustaches, at least. And then the other highlight of that Summerslam was Macho Man and Elizabeth's wedding (yes, a wedding ceremony headlined a wrestling pay-per-view lol) and the tagline for the event was "A Match Made in Heaven and a Match Made in Hell" referring to these two events. But honestly the Million Dollar Title match was WAY bigger than those other two things and definitely was the most exciting fight and most moving story event of the whole night.
After this I was like "Eugggghhh now I have to watch all the stories because they might actually be cool." Well, they kinda weren't for a while. Even more dragged out than the Ultimate-Warrior-in-a-Box story was the story of Undertaker and Jake The Snake crashing the wedding reception of Macho Man and Elizabeth and "traumatizing" Elizabeth by like, holding a snake near her. This went on for pretty much all of the rest of summer and all of autumn.
But near the end of the year, rivalries started to have more to their stories than just "I don't like you now for some reason, LETS YELL AT EACH OTHER A LOT AND THEN FIGHT." IRS and Big Boss Man had a rivalry that actually went along with their characters -- IRS accused Boss Man of being a crooked cop, and Boss Man accused IRS of being a crooked government official. And you know, the best way to solve that is with choreographed fighting in front of an audience. Ric Flair joined the WWF, holding the title of World's Champion from WCW, claiming his title was more prestigious and meaningful than Hulk Hogan's title of WWF Heavyweight Champion. Flair and Hogan have a lot of personality so this became a pretty enjoyable rivalry, especially when the Undertaker got involved having a bit of a side-rivalry with Hogan which ended up with him taking the title from him with Ric Flair cheating to help him at Survivor Series.
We also had Macho Man trying to get reinstated alongside having a rivalry with Jake The Snake after the whole wedding-crashing thing. Jake ended up taunting Macho into fighting him before he was reinstated to ruin his chances of making it back in. But then in the fight, Jake tied Randy up and forced a cobra to bite him, which resulted in him wobbling around the ring with 'poison running through his veins,' Elizabeth and Roddy Piper running out and trying to help him, Elizabeth having a panic attack, and kids in the audience crying and probably becoming traumatized from having to watch this. It sounds stupid as all hell, and it was, but somehow they made it SUPER INTENSE. I mean, I was snickering at it the whole time but it was just a different level of storytelling than we saw through the rest of 91.
After that, there was some like new "no reptiles at ringside" rule instated across the Federation which is also super stupid sounding (especially with how OFTEN they repeated it lol) but it's also the first time the organization itself was a part of the story, and just... idk, the stories were still really dumb kiddie programming stories but they were just...
more. Like before, they just had some guys ad-lib trash talk for no reason at each other, but now there's like... actual plots and development and story events, as stupid as they are.
We also had this whole 'redemption arc' thing around the same time revolving around Sgt Slaughter wanting to be 'Americany!' again and traveling around the country and going to monuments and stuff and like... crying into flags and moaning out "I want my country baaaaack." The final 'episode' of this involved him going to an elementary school and saying The Pledge of Allegiance, afterward kissing a flag while children cheered for him and hugged him. It was the most ridiculous thing ever and I was cracking up.
The matches at Survivor Series weren't just fights with winners and losers, either. Slaughter finalized his face turn by bringing a flag into the ring and siding with Hacksaw Jim Duggan. IRS accidentally attacked one of his teammates with a briefcase, causing them to quit the match and leave him against the Legion of Doom on his own. He tried to forfeit, as well, but Boss Man forced him back into the ring to get his punishment. Hulk Hogan almost retained the Heavyweight title, but Ric Flair slipped in and helped Undertaker Tombstone Hogan into a metal chair, giving him the win instead. And in the tag team tag team thing, Shawn Micheals and Marty Janetty got into an argument with each other and broke up their tag team unit The Rockers, which also led to an easy victory for The Nasty Boys and The Beverly Brothers.
And since I've only been talking about "story" stuff, I didn't mention that this year also saw the debut of The Beverly Brothers who I quickly became attached to.
They're a tag team that consist of two brothers -- one with a hot nose and the other with a mustache -- who express their brotherly love similarly to Amara and Michelle expressing their cousinly love. They wear purple tights with with little shooting stars on them, and they come into the ring with these purple superhero capes that have like these weird foam purple spaulders on them.
They're a heel team but instead of just being "grr we're mean and cheat!" they're egotistical, always concerned with their own appearance, and act friendly despite their dirty tactics.
Their in-ring style is a lot of fun to watch and they do a lot of fun tag-team stuff. They also do a hilarious victory thing with one of them posing while the other gets the pinfall.
They also have a manager (and I love love love managers lmao) called The Genius who is this doofy cute beard guy who makes stupid poems. Before him they had The Coach for a while who was super obnoxious but fun as well.
Anyway, I still have to watch the last episode of Superstars for November and then all of the December content and I'll be done with all of 1991. At least as much as I'm able to see -- some random episodes were impossible to find and I of course didn't see much of any of PTW.
But yeah, when I started I was just wanting to see what IRS was like and was going to like, maybe watch a couple episodes or something. But now I'm attached to like all these other characters and I feel like I'm probably going to eventually try to watch all of the main shows' episodes up until like... today. It doesn't help that I'm attached to a bunch of modern characters and getting to know a bunch of characters from the in-between times from playing wrestling games and seeing various flashbacks/specials/whatever in programming.
But yeah, after this next month of programming I might make like a 'hotness ranking' of 91 wrestlers lmao since my reaction to literally anything is to rank its sex appeal.
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