Note from RD Reynolds: Before reading this interview, let it be known that we here at WrestleCrap.com love Missy Hyatt. Blade and I both had that old WCW calendar with her all over it as kids, and therefore, could not say a foul word again’ her. Triple Kelly, too, has a lot of respect for her, as you will discover in this induction.
Again, it’s one of those cases where we don’t blame the performer, but look at something and wonder just what the hell someone higher up in the company was thinking.
Oh, and before you ask…no, we don’t have this footage for sale, so don’t ask. We do encourage you to head over and check out Missy’s site if you’re a fan of hers.
Without further adieu…
For Wrestlecrap’s special “Women of Wrestling Week”, I thought now would be as good a time as any to write about the lost and unaired chapter of Missy Hyatt’s career in wrestling: when for a brief time she actually worked in the World Wrestling Federation.
And yes, we do realize that we are “breaking the rules” by inducting something that never aired. It IS RD’s site, after all, so what he says goes ’round these parts and if you have a problem with this, you can take it up with him.
(Note from RD: Please don’t take it up with me. Or Kelly. Or Blade. Or Jed. Just read the rest of the induction and realize the buffonery involved with what the WWF had and how they blew it.)
So yes – Missy Hyatt had already made a name for herself as the beautiful, spoiled and charismatic valet/manager in the World Class territory and Bill Watts’s Universal Wrestling Federation, where she met her future husband Eddie Gilbert and formed a stable of wrestlers called “Hot Stuff International” that included such talents as Sting and Rick Steiner.
In early 1987, Missy was offered a job by Vince McMahon in the WWF to replace the retiring Roddy Piper’s (retirement #1 for Hot Rod) famous “Piper’s Pit” talk segment with her own talk segment called “Missy’s Manor”. Now let me be clear, Missy was a great heel character and personality in those early territories but when I think of Roddy Piper and his talk show, I don’t immediately think of Missy Hyatt’s interviews. It’s kinda like Conan O’Brien being replaced by Jimmy Fallon. But hey, Vince is the head of a multi-million dollar company and he creates superstars so let’s check out Missy’s Manor, shall we?
Missy comes out to almost total silence and introduces herself by saying, “Welcome to Missy’s Manor, and I feel just about as good as I look.”
That’s right – that was her whole intro.
No introductory vignettes building her up for weeks, just her, a couch, and a microphone.
To those of you who followed wrestling back then, this is obvioulsy no surprise: A formal introduction to who she is won’t when you came to the WWF from another territory, your past history was wiped clean and Vince acted like you just showed up out of nowhere.
Her first guests are Bobby Heenan and “King” Harley Race. Missy catches Bobby staring at her exposed leg and is quite annoyed (don’t ya hate when women do that?) and asks him why they call him “The Brain”, instead of “The Brawn”.
Amazingly (or not, I suppose), this would be the most complex question to ever be poised on Missy’s Manor.
Even Bobby can’t salvage the interview as Harley looks bored and wonders why he’s here in the first place. I mean, King Harley never looked real thrilled at any point during his WWF tenure, but he looks downright catatonic here.
The interview ends with Bobby asking Missy when he could come back on her show again. Her cruel and biting retort: “Have you heard the old saying, ‘don’t call us, we’ll call you?'”
OW!
SNAP, SISTER!
Apparently, someone high up didn’t like the way that interview turned out because they went and did it again with a wardrobe change and the same lines but with slightly different delivery and inflection. The “don’t call us, we’ll call you” line went over much better with the live crowd. Seriously, this got a pop like Flo just told Mel to kiss her grits!
Oh, and just in case you haven’t figured it out (and believe me, I watched it like 10 times before I got it), Missy’s character in the WWF is that she’s a stuck up babyface.
(Note from RD: that’s an…uh…original concept, I will say that.)
Yes, she is self-absorbed and vain but you are supposed to cheer her on when she zings the heels.
In the 1980s, no less.
Missy’s next guests are The Honky Tonk Man and Jimmy Hart. Honky says he knows Missy wants to run her fingers through his hair but Missy says she isn’t into “greasy kids stuff” and that if his singing is as good as his wrestling, and I’m quoting her, “Ewwwwwwww”.
Yes, she said “Ewwwwwwww” like a fat kid picked his nose and ate it like finger food in front of her.
Whoever scripted her questions and answers hasn’t read any books about witty retorts for hecklers or James Bond villains.
(Note from RD: I’d pay top dollar to see Dr. No battle Wayne Ferris, hopefully in 3-D and at the IMAX.)
Jimmy Hart tells her that 3,000 female fans ripped Honky’s clothes off and left him naked. Missy says she doesn’t want to see that.
Oh come on, Missy, he doesn’t have anything you haven’t seen before…many, many, many, MANY times before.
Next up is a shaved head Adorable Adrian Adonis and Jimmy again. Adrian actually does a decent interview about the Wrestlemania III hair match, and it bugs me that he’s most remembered as a cartoon character created by Vince McMahon to ridicule his ballooning weight and not as the great worker and promo he was.
Missy takes off his hat and asks him how it feels to be bald. Well he’s not quite BALD. He’s got hair on his head, only he’s got the Curly cut there. They should’ve had an angle where Adrian hears “Pop Goes the Weasel” or smells “Wild Hyacinth” perfume and beats the crap out of his opponents in the ring.
Adrian asks Missy if she’s ever been bald. I think the UWF locker room could answer that question for ya, Adrian.
Aaaand it ends with Adrian and Jimmy storming off and Missy using a bad “fruit” pun.
Farewell, Adorable Adrian.
Farewell.
We get the Can-Am Connection next, causing Missy to react like a bitch in heat. You may think I’m exaggerating, but she basically invites them backstage, presumably for a threesome.
Seriously, that’s the whole segment.
Boy am I glad Piper’s Pit never ended that way.
Meanwhile the children of the Reagan Era in the audience think they went backstage to play Super Mario Brothers…only instead of finding the Princess in the castle, it ended with a money shot.
(Note from RD: I remember when you first joined the site, Kelly, and you were such a nice girl. Now look what you’ve become. Completely immoral and filthy. I can only blame Braxton for your fall from grace.)
Next, Missy has Bobby Heenan back on the couch to ask him the question “everyone wants to know.” Sadly, it’s not “Why do they call you the Brain and not the Brawn” again. Instead, it’s “What IS that thing around your neck?”
Missy, really – what do you think it is?
A giant donut?
A half-roll of half-sized paper towels?
An albino snake?
Instead of calling her an idiot, Bobby talks about debating ex-convict Ken Patera and how Ken injured him. Missy has nothing much to add except a few sarcastic “awwwwwww”s and ends the segment with a “ring around the collar” remark.
God bless her, but so far the only thing Missy’s Manor has in common with Piper’s Pit is that they both use microphones on the set.
Without even a costume change, we get Missy interviewing Ken Patera, who explains how Bobby hurt him by not visiting him in prison (oh right, blame the guy who DIDN’T throw a rock thru the window of a fast food chain!)
And then Ken talks about how Bobby hurt the feelings of his wife.
And his kids.
I seriously nodded off during his blathering.
And I wasn’t the only one.
Finally, Missy has on Randy Savage and the lovely Miss Elizabeth. Missy struggles to remember her lines as the Macho Man freaks out when she attempts to question Elizabeth about how she felt when he lost the Inter-Continental title to Ricky Steamboat. He says Elizabeth’s role in Macho Madness is like “a grain of sand in the Sahara Desert, yyyeeeaaah”.
Bet you won’t be saying that in a few years when she drops her skirt to reveal the granny panties at SummerSlam 88!
Missy doesn’t give up and keeps trying to ask Elizabeth her feelings about Randy losing his title and why she hangs out with a meanie such as he, so he gets in Missy’s face and yells, “if you were my wife I’d lock you in a closet and keep you away from the lusting eyes of Hulk Hogan, oooh yyyeeeah”.
Actually I made that up.
But I bet he thought it.
Macho Man insanely storms off (because there is no other way Randy Savage can “storm off”) the set with Elizabeth in tow when Missy calls him a loser and a jerk.
One smiling shot later, Missy Hyatt vanished from WWF television.
Well, actually she didn’t really vanish, because she never really appeared, but you catch my drift.
As you could see, the segments didn’t go over as well as hoped and Missy went back to the UWF after Vince asked her to be a Federette.
Seriously.
And before you mock her, consider this: what would really be worse in life? Going into softcore internet porn or becoming a Federette?
I’m with you, sister – rock on, Missy!