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Rick Martel vs. The 1-2-3 Kid (and other Dream Matches!)

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The Model of Success: Rick Martel's WWF Heel Turn | Ring the Damn Bell

Rick Martel didn’t have the best matches during his WWF career, but is often a fountain of surprisingly-good midcard bouts!

Welcome back to more Dream Matches! This week I have an assortment of WWF & WCW stuff, headlined by Rick “The Model” Martel returning to the WWF to face rookie sensation the 1-2-3 Kid! Rick’s well-known renaissance in WCW a few years later actually has some precedent here, given Martel’s showing.

Also featured is the Rock ‘n’ Roll Express showing up in early nWo-era WCW to take on Fire & Ice! It’s Jimmy Wang Yang’s debut in WCW, as Yun Yang faces off against the KISS Demon! A trios match from hell sees “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan & The Bushwhackers take on The Repo Man & The Beverly Brothers! And finally I find two matches featuring a name that’s intrigued me since I saw him like 30 years ago- The Intruder! Who is a masked jobber in a pair of squash tag matches four years apart, as he’s annihilated by both Demolition and the Nasty Boys!

RICK “THE MODEL” MARTEL vs. THE 1-2-3 KID:
(All-American Wrestling, Oct. 3rd 1993)
* Rick is freshly back in the company at this point “after modeling in Europe”, while the Kid is still a newbie in his blue singlet. Martel’s run at this point is seemingly just to put over some of the newer generation guys, but you gotta beat some dudes to regain credibility before you can do that, so this will be interesting!

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WWF Survivor Series Showdown 1991 (Virgil vs. DiBiase- The Final Match!)

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Survivor Series (1991) Review - YouTube

WWF SURVIVOR SERIES SHOWDOWN 1991:
-Hey look! I finally found another one of these shows! Though… this got uploaded in 2018, so I should have been able to find it then! Oh well. We’ve got a big batch of Dream Matches here, with Boss Man vs. Earthquake (same as last year), Roddy Piper vs. Hercules, and even the Million Dollar Title rematch between Ted DiBiase & Virgil- the actual end of their feud that nobody remembers or talks about! And somehow this company was insane enough to give away BLAKE BEVERLY vs. BUSHWHACKER LUKE on free TV! No wonder business bit the dust in 1992!

So this is the go-home show for the Hogan/Taker Survivor Series: “The Gravest Challenge”, which is also the first one with Ric Flair in it, but turned out to be an advertisement for “This Tuesday in Texas”, a failed experiment to put a PPV on a different date.

Your hosts: Vince McMahon & Bobby Heenan

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What the World Was Watching: WWF Superstars – January 12, 1991

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Vince McMahon, Roddy Piper, and the Honky Tonk Man are on commentary and they still in Tampa, Florida.

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What the World Was Watching: WWF Superstars – January 5, 1991 (Start of a New Series!)

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In 1990 the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) decided to pivot from the formula that made it a global brand.  Hulk Hogan, the company’s longtime champion, wanted to get into Hollywood and spent much of the year offscreen.  At WrestleMania VI, Intercontinental Champion the Ultimate Warrior defeated Hogan for the WWF Championship.  The match was supposed to make the Warrior the new face of the company, and the WWF hoped that the Warrior could continue Hogan’s profitable run into the new decade.  However, the Warrior quickly proved to be a flop, drawing poorly on house shows against Rick Rude, having an awful television title defense on Haku on Saturday Night’s Main Event a month after WrestleMania, and ending up as the third wheel in the Legion of Doom’s feud with Demolition.  His run was also hurt by the WWF not fully committing to his run, giving Hogan the prime feud of the summer against Earthquake.

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Bret Hart & British Bullog vs. Owen Hart & Bob Backlund (and other Dream Matches!)

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Pin on WWE WrestleMania XXX Pin it to Win it Contest

Bret was in the Crossface Chicken wing for like eight minutes at the Survivor Series and lost the World Title thanks to Owen, and he’s been seeking revenge every since!

Welcome back to more Dream Matches! This time I get to another request, as it’s a good TV match between Bret & Bulldog and Owen & Bob Backlund during their months-long feud! Better yet, we get the Tugboat match where he teams with the Bushwhackers against Earthquake & The Nasty Boys! The New Blackjacks EXPLODE as Bradshaw fights Barry Windham during the awful “NWA Invasion” angle! Then it’s a look at weird WCW jobbers as Maxx Muscle & The Gambler get set up against Fire & Ice on a D-show! And finally, a bizarre pair of Shotgun matches featuring Val Venis vs. Tiger Ali Singh in the latter’s JTTS heel era! These are some of the only Singh matches I can find online!

BRET “HITMAN” HART & “THE BRITISH BULLDOG” DAVEY-BOY SMITH vs. OWEN HART & MR. BOB BACKLUND:
(WWF Action Zone, Feb. 26th 1995)
* The ongoing Bret/Backlund feud continues on past Bob being completely destroyed credibility-wise by Diesel. Shockingly they’ve all been fighting since before Survivor Series. Davey’s in the short shorts and wild hair at this point, but everyone else is in the usual.

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Fwd: New message from Luke Matheis

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Hey Scott,
Longtime fan, writing to you to see if you could give me a plug on the blog for a play I’ve been cast in for all your readers in the Los Angeles area. I am participating in the Next Stage Theater production of Darkside of the Moon, done entirely to the Pink Floyd album. It goes up Sunday November 18 and will be doing an 8 week run on Sundays at 8pm. The address of the theater is 1523 N. La Brea Ave.2nd FLoor, Los Angeles, CA, 90028. Tickets are $20 a piece. Also if they mention they are there to see Luke, I get $5 for each ticket sold in my name.
Please and Thank you,