It took four years after its launch but finally, FINALLY, Coliseum Videos are starting to show up on the WWE Network. Old geezers like me know all about these tapes, and yes, I said TAPES – these were originally released on video cassettes, and they were staples on the shelves of video stores such as Blockbuster and Hollywood Video.
You know, that gives you the wrong impression. That makes it sound like these things only showed up in major rental establishments, and that was definitely not the case. I remember renting these from all kinds of goofy places, be it Mom & Pop video stores or inside food marts that dedicated a few square feet to movie rentals. It may have been labeled “special interest”, but to me it was always the home for Coliseum videos.
There were tons of them. They started off simple, basic ones labeled “Best of the WWF. Vol 1”, 60 minutes or so of matches that no one could ever possibly consider to be the greatest stuff the company had to offer, as well as the original WrestleMania and the first ever Hulk Hogan video tape, simply entitled Hulkamania. VHS or Beta, Coliseum had you covered. Heck, I think I still have an old WrestleMania Beta laying around, which has to be one of the last ones in the entire world!
What do you mean there are three on eBay right now?
Who on earth would possibly still have them other than me?
I don’t know either, dude. And welcome back. Been a while.
Fast forward, and yes, we’re finally getting them online. A lot of the earlier ones are missing, but there are some diamonds in the rough surfacing…including the one we are going to be discussing today. Get this: it features Ric Flair versus Bret Hart prior to either of them wining the WWF title, and if that’s not enough, Flair versus Shawn Michaels as well! With that pedigree, it begs the question: why on earth would it be showing up on WrestleCrap.com?
What if I told you between those classic encounters we got Sean Mooney and Lord Alfred Hayes live action role playing Star Trek?
What, you think I’d make that up?
Captain Mooney starts the proceedings by promising us that we are about to see some of the best action from the World Wrestling Federation in the galaxy as we continue to explore strange new worlds. That there’s a run-on sentence the likes of which I never thought I’d type. We learn that not only will we be getting wrestling matches, but also the Nasty Boys will go to a video store!
Will it be a Movie Gallery or are they going to ransack an A&P? Let’s dive in and find out!
“Torg” explains to his commander that they are receiving a signal…from ENGLAND! And apparently they have a request. Hopefully it’s that they’re asking the camera crew remove that melted Almond Joy bar from that poor guy’s head. Looks totally rancid.
Nope! Instead we’re getting Hulk Hogan vs. Typhoon, which was set up by the former Tugboat turning heel…and has been rumored online as being considered as a WrestleMania MAIN EVENT at some point. I wonder if it will be good enough to make us all wonder if the company missed the boat on it?
See what I did there? Boat?
Anyway, unless Hulk running backwards after the world’s lightest shove is your idea of a good time, the answer would be we dodged a bullet.
Seriously, that is the level of high impact action we are getting here. I love Fred Ottman – great guy, hilarious dude (he was on WrestleCrap Radio a few years ago, check it out here)…but wow, sometimes you gotta call a spade a spade. This match is pretty daggum horrible. Still, I suppose I can’t blame him, I’m sure the Hulkster didn’t tell him to lay it in or anything. And this would be every Hogan vs. monster match you ever saw, big boot, leg drop, 1-2-3 and hit the showers.
Back to Starship Eagle we go (and if ANYONE gets that reference, you too are older than dirt) as we are getting a strange signal from zone 3. That would be Ric Flair and Curt Hennig, who cut a promo on Mooney and his crew. One really hasn’t lived until they’ve experienced The Nature Boy and Mr. Perfect laying down some STAR TREK REFERENCES.
We get some Royal Rumble ’92 clips where the crowd magically boos Sid Justice for dumping out Hulk Hogan, which sure didn’t happen on when that match was transpiring live – the fans cheered the act to a level reminiscent of when Hogan himself pinned the Iron Sheik back in 1983. What a difference nine years makes.
This all leads us to our next match, which would be Bret versus Flair. Or as a geek in the crowd asks…
That sign makes zero sense grammatically. Or any other way I can think of now that I ponder it.
This match is interesting because it’s for the belt – not the WWF title, nor Flair’s pixelated championship, but rather Bret’s Intercontinental trophy. It’s a really, really good bout, with Flair winning by count out. I’d go into greater details, but WrestleCrap ain’t about the best, but rather the WORST of wrestling. Rest assured, we have more of it in the form of…
…Lord Alfred doing a SCOTTY impersonation from what appears to be the Titan Tower phone closet. He explains that the last Flair match blew the mainframe. I have no idea what that means either. I can tell you, however, that upon a second listen, Alfred sounds more like Shrek than Scotty.
If he threatens Mooney with a smack bottom, I’m outta here.
And that would be a shame, as next up is Flair vs. Shawn Michaels, not only a full sixteen years before their famous WrestleMania match, but prior to Shawn even turning heel for the first time! This here is Flair vs. ROCKER Shawn Michaels.
A couple of other items of interest prior to the lockup:
- Flair’s WWF pseudo 2001 ripoff music was absolutely dreadful. I hated it 27 years ago, and I may hate it even more now. Awful. It’s like 2001 as if performed by a completely tanked high school orchestra.
- The pixelization of Flair’s pseudo-championship was clever for like a week, then got totally out of control (in large part to them using a WWF tag belt after being threatened by WCW’s legal team). Eventually they didn’t distort only the belt, but like half the screen as well. Case in point, the image below:
Not only does it make it appear that Flair is propositioning Mike McGuirk here, but is doing so with his junk exposed.
That’s just gross.
The bout here is, as you’d expect, very good. Sadly, it only goes about 10 minutes before Shawn misses a dive outside the ring. Mary Jannetty, Shawn’s Rocker partner, comes to ringside, puts him on his shoulders, and throws him back into the ring like a pile of garbage. No idea why he did that, but you’d think it would lead to a valiant comeback.
Instead, poor Shawn remains motionless as Flair pins him. With his feet on the ropes, you know, because he’s a jerk. He obviously didn’t need to, as Shawn was sprawled out, flat on his back, for a good 90 seconds afterwards, never moving a muscle. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought he was dead.
Still, I suppose I can’t complain too much. We just got a couple of really good Flair in his prime matches. Maybe this tape ain’t so bad.
Oh, who am I kidding, here comes the Beverly Brothers, and we are back in full WrestleCrap mode. Sweet Christmas, those dudes were horrible. And here I’d almost forgotten about them. Tonight we get ’em against the Legion of Doom, whose WWF run is probably best forgotten.
Have I ever mentioned how much I HATED their red and black spike shoulder pads? Those were so horrendous.
And not just because it led to “art” such as this.
What’s the deal with all the stink lines?
Why does Animal have two extra ribs that Hawk is lacking?
And why do the LOD have no hands?
The end result is exactly what you’d expect: Doomsday Device leading to the pin. What you may not have expected in ten minutes of back and forth action. Seriously, the legendary Road Warriors were in there selling for Mike Enos and Wayne Bloom. Should have destroyed them in 30 seconds like they were the Mulkey Brothers. Like I said, best forgotten.
Back to the bridge, Lord Alfred has repaired the engines and we are full space steam ahead. Mooney tells his minions to set course for the Andromeda Galaxy, as that is apparently the stellar home of Sensational Sherri.
Yup, what you said.
Regardless, we get a special exclusive feature, the MANAGER CAM. This would basically be what we now call being “mic’ed up”, with running commentary from Sherri, who is leading Ted DiBiase into battle against EL MATADOR, Tito Santana. For the first time ever, we learn that Sherri repeatedly calls DiBiase “Teddy Bear.” And when I say “repeatedly”, I mean the woman says it at least 10 times a minute.
Despite hearing it approximately 137 times in the span of ten minutes (not an exaggeration, I counted!), I find it kinda adorable.
She also refers to Tito as “Taco Bell”, which I find equally adorable.
No wait, I mean I find that incredibly racist. Sorry about that.
It’s an entire match with commentary only from Sherri and no one else. She goes on to call the referee an idiot about 47 different ways, while at the same time pleading for her man’s life every second he is in trouble. I was never the world’s biggest Sherri fan, but I gotta say if it’s this or Mooney and Alfred doing play by play, I’d take Sherri screaming every time.
For the record, the men go to a double count out, then Sherri attempts to clock Tito with a shoe, which of course misses as she waylays Teddy Bear instead.
It wasn’t much of a match, but if you are the perv that wants 85 different angles of Sherri wearing gigantic white granny panties, well, it’s worth seeking out I guess.
It’s another Coliseum exclusive next, as we get the Nasty Boys starring in a VIDEO STORE INVASION. I was thinking I had inducted this one years ago all on its own, but the best I can tell I was having flashbacks to Knobs and Sags invading a SCIENCE CENTER. Really, not joking, here’s the proof.
Here, they barge into the store, yelling, screaming, and acting completely obnoxious. No joke I was legit staying at a hotel once where they were also guests, and they acted exactly the same way in real life. So they grab the owner by the collar, and…wait a minute.
Is that Needles the Tailor?
Holy crap, it is! Apparently being the WWF seamstress in the early 90’s paid so little the poor guy had to moonlight running a video store.
Too bad video stores are basically extinct now, otherwise today’s poverty-line NXT talent could do the same. Maybe they could follow Taylor Wilde’s career path at the local Sunglass Hut.
The guys head over to the special interest section, and begin throwing all the wrestling tapes they aren’t on to the floor. Which means pretty much all of them. Needles and his pal, a dude with a leather jacket and totally boss pony tail, ask them to stop their nefarious antics.
The Nasties respond by spraying him with neon silly string, which causes the man to quiver in fear on the ground. With him completely incapacitated, Knobs and Sags decide to run the video store themselves, ordering thousands of Nasty Boys tapes. As they congratulate themselves on a job well done, a well to do youngster comes in the door, asking if they have any videos of ballet.
They respond by throwing a bunch of Coliseum video cassettes at him. Generally I’d say physically assaulting customers which would unquestionably lead to a lawsuit would be the dumbest thing a retailer could possibly do, but these guy just blew like $100,000 on video tapes starring themselves.
I’d say it’s a toss up.
Big Bossman vs. Power & Glory era Hercules is next as this tape is quickly running out of gas. This one ends with a Bossman slam. I know that’s not much a recap, but let’s face facts – we all only have so many hours left breathing on this earth, let’s not waste that precious time with me writing and you reading about a Bossman-Herc snoozer.
The sounds of Pomp & Circumstance mean things are about to get better, right? Randy Savage always livens things up, but again, before you get your hopes up, we learn that the Macho Man isn’t here as a wrestler, but rather…
…as a referee. As officiating outfits go, that is pretty lame. On the plus side, it’s not like when Shawn Michaels wore Lovin’ Life Michelle McCool shorts. To the flip side, it makes me sad Taryn Terrell isn’t still around reffing matches.
Because honestly, that may be the only way to make this match between Ted DiBiase and Virgil any good at all.
So here Virgil is the defending Million Dollar Champion, with DiBiase looking to bring it back to the fold. He fails to do so by punching Savage in the mouth, then throwing him out of the ring. I’d say that was an idiotic move, but maybe he was as tired of wrestling that match as I was watching it.
In fact, if I ever run into Ted again, I think I will lead by saying, “Remember Invasion 92 when you threw Randy Savage out of the ring and ended that horrible match with Virgil? That was my favorite moment of your career.” Then I’ll do his laugh and walk off as he looks on completely baffled.
Beaming down to “the planet” are Mooney and Alfred, as they discuss the weather and how it was a lot nicer here yesterday. I don’t know, I don’t care. Honestly, I just like to watch Alfred being struck by lightning.
Our main event today features the unlikely duo of Jake Roberts and the Undertaker battling Randy Savage and “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan. I guess the latter have forgiven each other for all that King nonsense, while Roberts & Taker hadn’t yet split up leading to Jake’s exit from the company. Taker is in full Addams Family Lurch mode here, not yet having crafted his act, while Duggan pleads for the crowd to chant USA, presumably to help foil the man from California and his partner from Georgia.
Savage and Duggan lose by DQ when Macho Man goes outside and grabs a chair. Again, not much of a recap, but also not much of a match.
Back to Alfred and Mooney, who attempt to have their crewmen beam them back to the ship. Instead, Torg and his co-hort look at the camera and give a very Wayne’s World “NOT!” and hit the hyper drive. And no, your eyes aren’t deceiving you:
Their ship is in fact a WWF logo!
If I say that’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen, I can still leave this up as an induction, right?
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