Always comical and a little baffling to see a wrestling bury its own talent, but it happens far more often than you’d think. Even older school WWF would do that from time to time, with announcers dropping in little nuggets about a guy not being as jacked as Vince would want or some other such nonsense. As we’re about to learn the Official WWF Magazine was no different in that regard. In fact, it may have been worse!
Tough Talk was a column where they’d do just that on a monthly basis. For instance, in the August 1993 issue, we learned that Virgil bought his own magazine cover. “Virgil bought it as an advertisement,” we are told. “He can have it trimmed and hang it on his wall.” I would bet you one million dollars he legitimately does have it on a wall in his house somewhere. Has to, right? And piling on with a graphic reading “A little insecure, Virg?” is just unnecessary. Even for this petty company.
Then we have Billy and Bart Gunn who are shooting blanks. That was a very popular slang term back in the day for…well…some type of bedroom inadequacies, shall we say. Do the hip kids still say that? Heck, Crush got off easy here with the only thing being what had to be a blatant lie about he and Lex Luger having, and I quote, “a super match.” I saw way too many Crush matches, and I can’t think of a single one I could describe that way. Except maybe the one where Doink hit him in the head with a plaster arm.
But the worst may have been poor Razor Ramon, who is skewered over having BAD CREDIT. “You think Razor Ramon has got big bucks? He’s a superstar. He’s got to be paid mucho money….We checked around. Razor Ramon has a lousy credit rating. He doesn’t pay off loans. Bank accounts? No way!” Legit question: why on earth would this magazine be calling around to check on his credit rating?
Finally, Bret Hart is taken to task about giving Hulk Hogan the thumbs up to battle Yokozuna right after he lost the belt at WrestleMania IX. Yeah, that was really stupid. They should have called him a big dummy for that (and props to anyone who gets that reference). Gotta love the blurb at the very bottom of the page asking “Bret Hart takes on Hulk Hogan – Reality or Fantasy.” Oh oh oh, we all know how that one turned out, don’t we?