Month: January 2016

The Spotlight on The History of The Royal Rumble 1992-1995

Tom Lynch Spotlight On The WWE Network, Wrestling , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I’ll tell you Royal Rumble Season is the one time when everyone who I know who used to follow wrestling gets in touch with me to see what I’m doing for the show.  It’s just a fun show as it’s unpredictable and a great time to start watching if you haven’t in a long while.  Let’s continue with our look back at Royal Rumbles Past

1992- This was the first event I remember actually writing down all of my favorites to win it.  Looking back, this was probably the best Royal Rumble and as a fan today I can really appreciate it.  The amount of talent involved in the match from Undertaker to Ric Flair to Hulk Hogan to Roddy Piper, this rumble match is beyond stacked and it makes sense as this was the only rumble (until this year) that was for the WWE title.  I was actually really shocked when Flair won the title as back in the day heels rarely won to finish a WWF pay per view.  When Flair came out, we were so sure he’d be quickly tossed as he was the third entrant and back then Rumble marathon performances wouldn’t go all the way.  Being a straight up WWF fan (I was raised on WWF, we ordered one WCW show in 1991 and my family hated it), we all hated Flair and so him winning was just so out of left field as we didn’t take him seriously as a main eventer.  As a final aside, To this day, Bobby Heenan and Gorilla Monsoon’s commentary in this match is the best I’ve heard. 

1993- Royal Rumble 1993 was the first time that the classic Wrestlemania stipulation was added on for the Rumble winner.  Rumble 93 featured my favorite, non Rumble, Royal Rumble pay per view match as Shawn Michaels took on Marty Jannetty.  I was always a huge Jannetty fan and thought those two had great in ring chemistry.  In a case of when hokey 90’s stuff works for nostalgia purposes, I actually thought Caeser and Cleopatra arriving to read the scroll was great.  That was very “theme” Wrestlemania with all of the togas and it was WWF’s unofficial kickoff of WrestleMania.
Funny personal story here, I remember as a six year old being absolutely petrified when the Giant Gonzalez debuted in this match to attack the Undertaker.  I thought Taker was the guy in this match and would have won so it was shocking to me that he was beat down by the legitimate Giant.  My fear ran so far, mind you, that I actually ran upstairs and had my parents call me down when Gonzalez was gone.  On the tape, my dad even wrote “Royal Rumble 1993- Yoko Wins, Big Scary Guy, DO NOT WATCH” due to how afraid of Giant Gonzalez I was.  Looking back he looked a lot more silly then scary.

1994- This was the year in which both Lex and Bret won the match and I remember as a kid being so happy because they were my two favorite wrestlers.  I also remember my father being pretty upset that they didn’t restart the match as he paid for a pay per view to see one winner.  Looking back though, the two winners really set wrestlemania 10 up nicely.  This was also the Rumble that you could call a 900 hotline and find out who was going to be next.  I remember we called and it was Diesel saying he was ready to make his mark.  That cost us $1.49 and was the last call we made.

This was also the second straight Rumble in which I have a personal “scaredy cat” story and it occurred right before the Royal Rumble match itself, during the Casket match between the Undertaker and Yokozuna for the World title.  The idea of a casket match always made me a little uncomfortable as a kid but I was now seven and feeling a little better.  I was finally understanding that the person put in the casket would be back just a few weeks later.  but then Rumble 1994 and I was scarred for months!  See in this match undertaker was put in the casket and then suddenly a casket cam lit up and display live footage of the undertaker in the casket, looking eerily similar to any person you’ve seen at any wake.  I mean jeez look at him in that picture above and tell me you’re not a little spooked even today, 22 years later! But it got worse, Undertaker then turned completely holographic on the titan tron and began to raise to the heavens and literally fly around the arena.  That’s it I was done!  At seven years old, it was the scariest thing I had ever seen!  As an interesting footnote, it wasn’t actually the Undertaker flying around, but one Marty Jannetty!

1995-  This was the first show in which someone came over to watch other than my immediate family as my Uncle joined us. My Uncle wasn’t a fan at all but he was into it and got a kick out of the Rumble concept. I remember being really annoyed at the time between entrants in the rumble being cut down to one minute as it made the match fly by.  As an 8 year old, I also remember Pamela Anderson being my first crush and I thought for years that she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.  This was also the match that made me a huge Shawn Michaels fan as he put on quite a show nearly being eliminated throughout the match but finding a way to get back in the ring.  The finish here is still one of my favorites with only one of Shawn’s feet touching the floor and him getting the win, such an iconic image in Royal Rumble history!

 Alright another side story and I have to come clean about something.  I’m petrified of mice.  I know this is quite the segue way but I hate everything about mice, they are the worse and I believe the reason for that was because of a scarring experience following the Royal Rumble 1995.  I went to bed that night and suddenly I nice a mouse come scampering across my bedroom floor and run under my bed.  I screamed as loud as my 8 year old self would allow me.  What was that?  How could it get in here?  My parents came running in to see what was wrong and my father convinced me that it was likely a dream.  We looked under my bed and saw nothing.  Still my mom agreed to run and buy mouse traps.  We set one under my bed and I went to sleep on the couch to get the heck out of my room. Well the next morning my dad call me up to my room and there it was fighting for its life stuck to the mouse trap!  Awful stuff!
Well that’s going to do it for now but I’ll be back later tonight as we finish off the 1990’s. We’ll look at the rise of Stone cold Steve Austin and the WWF in general!

The Spotlight On The History of The Royal Rumble- 1989-1991

Tom Lynch Spotlight On The WWE Network, Wrestling , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Hello everyone we’re continuing our trip down memory lane looking at te different Royal Rumbles from years past as we get you set for the big show this Sunday night!  In this edition, we’re going to pick up where we left off and take a look at the Royal Rumble from 1989-1991

1989– Andre The Giant! The Immortal Hulk Hogan! WWF World Champion, The Macho Man Randy Savage! The list of the 1989 Royal Rumble is a literal who’s who of Wrestlemania main eventers.  If you’re a casual fan you probably assumed that Hulk Hogan won the first Royal Rumble match on pay per view, but you’d be wrong…it was actually Big John Studd.  Don’t get me wrong, Studd is a WWE Hall Of Famer and had an accomplished career in his own right.  That said, this was pretty random to me as Studd had just returned to the company as a babyface after being retired for two years and wasn’t really being pushed as a big star.  I’m not sure if it was for injuries or what but he was actually relegated to a referee for the Andre- Jake Roberts match in that year’s Wrestlemania so this was clearly before the winner of the Rumble won the shot at the champion.

As for the rest of that Royal Rumble, I remember renting this tape a million times from Blockbuster and actually enjoying the Rumble a lot.  I’ve always been a fan of the backstage vignettes showing the superstars choosing their numbers or even talking about how they were going to win the Rumble.  This show had a lot of that as it followed a story that the Million Dollar Man Ted Dibiase was buying number 30 from Slick.  From there, Ax and Smash being 1 and 2, the mega powers exploding prior to their Wrestlemania showdown and Marty Jannetty hanging on by his toes made this rumble match a lot of fun. Aside from the Rumble, I can’t mention this show without mentioning the posedown between Rick Rude and the Ultimate Warrior.  Although it was a little hokey, this was 1980’s WWF and I remember that fondly.  I also liked that all signs led to Wrestlemania and this show was designed as this showdown was designed to do and the two would be held off until Wrestlemania 5.

1990-  This match to me is really remembered for the great showdown between the Ultimate warrior and Hulk Hogan in the middle of the match.  I remember thinking it was pretty silly that Hogan was in the match considering he was the world champion!  Hogan would go on to win the Rumble and, to me, the Rumble really wasn’t a big deal yet for the company as opposed to just a fun gimmick match and reason to have a pay per view, similar to the old Survivor Series format.  That said, this was the first of two years (that I can remember) where Vince McMahon kicked off the show by reading out the list of all of the competitors.  Vince had so much excitement that could be matched and I just love that old school Rumble music.  I love a good surprise as much as the next guy but something can be said for knowing all 30 participants prior to the Rumble match.

This was still prior to having cable and so I would continue to rent this tape from Blockbuster.  A couple other things about the show that I remember thinking as a child was why the WCW guy was doing commentary for WWF.  For those that don’t know, Tony Schiavone worked very briefly for WWF and this is one of the shows that he called.  Speaking of brief stints in the WWF, Rugged Ronnie Garvin (Of all people) had a singles match on this show against Greg Valentine.

1991-  No matter how many times you see it, how great is the Rumble poster above?  This was the first pay per view in which my family ordered live and it was crazy to see the event as it happened.  Leading up to that year’s Royal Rumble, I was told by my parents that my dad’s friend was going to be ordering the show and was going to record the show for me.  My dad’s friend had been doing this a lot as my family didn’t have cable.  Anyway the day of the rumble there were people in our house the whole day and everytime I asked who they were and what they were doing, my parents told me it was a surprise.  As it turned out they were installing cable and my parents were putting on a full court press to get cable installed so we’d be able to get the rumble.  I was absolutely ecstatic to be able to watch the show live and to stay up late doing so (WWF pay per views would become my one time a month to stay up late on a school night).  To this day I still have the tape that my dad recorded on pay per view for me.

This was the first show that made the Rumble seem really big time.  There was a title change on the show (Slaughter over Warrior), a big angle (Virgil turns on Ted Dibiase) and even though it wasn’t announced prior, the winner of the Rumble (Hulk Hogan) went on to face the champion at Wrestlemania.  As a huge Hulkamaniac (at age 4) Hogan winning to go on to defend the USA against Iraqi sympathizer Sgt. Slaughter was as good as it got.

That’s going to do it for right now but tomorrow we’ll take a look at what some people consider to be the greatest Royal Rumble of all time, the only rumble that ended with 2 winners and my favorite non rumble match to take place at the Royal Rumble, until then, take care!

The Spotlight On The History of The Royal Rumble- 1988

Tom Lynch Spotlight On The WWE Network, Wrestling , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I can’t believe that we are less than one week away from the 2016 Royal Rumble which is actually the 25th anniversary of when I started to watch WWF Pay Per Views live.  The Royal Rumble 1991 was the first pay per view I remembered ordering at the ripe old age of just four years old.  From that moment the Royal Rumble has always been my favorite WWE pay per view and I’ve always enjoyed going back and watching all of the old Rumbles.  For me, a good rumble is the one match that any non wrestling can sit back and watch while being thoroughly entertained.

With us being just a little over one week away from the Royal Rumble, i thought it might be fun to take a look back through time and review a number of the different Royal Rumbles from years past, similar to what we did here on the site with the Survivor Series.  This is going to a unique perspective on the different shows in that I may talk about some moments or some matches but i’m mainly going to review each show as I remember watching them as a fan over time.  A number of these shows I attended live and so those will obviously be longer entries but I’ll try and offer you the best coverage of each Royal Rumble and hopefully get you excited for the big show on January 24th.  Without any further ado let’s kick this off with a look back at the Royal Rumble 1988, the inaugural edition of the show.

When looking back at the first Royal Rumble, it’s important to remember that this was just a television special.  WWF decided to put the rumble up against the NWA Bunkhouse Stampede pay per view with the idea that if people could get a free show on cable, they would prefer to watch that show over a show they had to pay for.  Thus, the Rumble was much less extravagant than it is today.  The television special was actually much more centered around a Hulk Hogan/ Andre The Giant rematch for Saturday Night’s Main Event a few weeks later than it was around the actual Rumble match.  Of course the Hogan/Andre rematch would be the infamous match in Andre won the title and sold it to The Million Dollar Man Ted Dibiase, leading to the tournament for the title at Wrestlemania 4.

Photo Credit: What Culture

The other part of this Rumble that I always found funny was the weight lifting challenge in which Dino Bravo was attempting to break the bench press record at the time.  The challenge seemed to have gone on forever as they continued to add more weight piece by piece in 5-10 lb intervals.  Aside from that, the Royal Rumble wasn’t even the main event of the show.  Instead, it was placed in the middle of the show and a random 2 out of 3 falls match took place between the Islanders and the Young Stallions in the main event of the evening.  It was a largely forgettable main event as I couldn’t even tell you who won off the top of my head, just that it was much more about how the Islanders had stolen Matilda, the dog of the British Bulldogs, then the match itself.
Photo Credit: WWE Network
As for the Rumble match itself, the Rumble only had 20 participants as opposed to traditional 30.  The match was won by Hacksaw Jim Duggan who won…well, nothing because they hadn’t established the match being for a title shot at Wrestlemania yet.  Looking back and looking at the participants, I was surprised to see that Duggan was the guy chosen to win the match because there were bigger names in there like Jake Roberts and The Ultimate Warrior.  Speaking of Warrior, he would only last a little under 4 minutes in the match so this was very early on in his WWE tenure, perhaps before big plans were even thought of for him.  The iron man of the match, was Bret Hart who would go on to last over 25 minutes after drawing number one.
Image result for royal rumble 1988 hacksaw jim duggan
Photo Credit: Top Rope Press
In the end this was good to go back and watch this show for nostalgic purposes and to see how the Rumble got it’s start. When I was a kid, I was raised on the fact that the 1989 Royal Rumble event was the first one ever so I was actually a bit surprised to see this show on my Royal Rumble DVD Anthology when I purchased that in 2007.  Of course nowadays, the Rumble 1988 can be found in the on demand section of the WWE Network.
That’s going to do it for now but be sure to keep your eyes peeled as we continued to take a look back at Royal Rumbles past.

 

The Spotlight On The Week Ahead For WWE- 1/18-1/24

Tom Lynch Spotlight On Raw, Spotlight On The WWE Network, Wrestling , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

It’s a new week and with that, another packed week for WWE.  Let’s get right into some of the highlights that you can expect to see and look forward to this week in World Wrestling Entertainment.

– Raw Invades Columbus- The week starts later on tonight as WWE Raw emanates live from Columbus, Ohio. This will be the final stop on the road to the 2016 Royal Rumble (other than Smackdown) and so it will likely be a stacked show designed to introduce a number of the competitors in the Rumble match itself, as there are only 13 superstars officially announced for the match according to WWE.com.  It’s been announced that Brock Lesnar and Paul Heyman will appear on Chris Jericho’s Highlight Reel which should be interesting considering that both men are in this year’s Rumble.  I wouldn’t be shocked to see the McMahons further stack the odds against Roman Reigns, maybe make him the number one entrant in the Rumble?  Again only speculation.

–Legends With The Road Dogg- Following Monday Night Raw (the premier spot for new Network programming), the latest episode of Legends with JBL will air on the WWE Network featuring a sit down discussion with The Road Dogg.  If you haven’t seen the first couple episodes of the Legends series, I’ve felt that they were quite enjoyable, featuring discussions with Eric Bischoff about the Monday Night War and about the Undertaker with Triple H, Steve Austin and Shawn Michaels.  Like Austin, JBL does a good job of keeping the discussion light hearted enough to where the subject lets their guard down and so he’s able to ask some tough questions.  If you check out Legends let me know what you think.

–Total Divas Season 5- Total Divas returns to the E! Network tomorrow night for the premiere of Season 5.  There are some changes to the cast as Trinity (Naomi) is no longer a permanent cast member on the show and instead has been replaced by Rosa Mendes, who was a full time cast member for Season 3 but took off last season.  Her return to the show is likely due to her new relationship and progressions she’s made with that ( I don’t want to give away any spoilers if you don’t follow Mendes on twitter).  Also this season, former Tough Enough contestant Amanda Saccamano joins the cast of Total Divas as she begins training with WWE.  As always The Bellas, Eva Marie, Paige, Natalya and Alicia Fox will all be returning to the show.  Say what you will about Total Divas, I will always be greatful to the show for turning my girlfriend from a casual fan into someone who follows the business regularly and looks forward to attending WrestleMania each year.  Aside from that Total Divas also does a good job in following the personal lives of some of my favorite superstars such as Daniel Bryan, Tyson Kidd, John Cena and Jimmy Uso (The Usos really benefited for there exposure on the show) so I find that, coupled with the behind the scenes aspects of the show to be quite enjoyable.

– The Royal Rumble- Of course this all leads up to next Sunday night, the 29th annual WWE Royal Rumble will take place live from Orlando, Florida.  I was closer than close to attending this show live but starting a new job and already taking off so much because of my father, I decided against it.  That said, it should be a fun weekend for all of those who are attending and I’d love to hear about your experiences.  The WWE big four events continue to become a vacation destination and an all encompassing experience for all wrestling fans in attendance.  I know there’s an NXT TV Taping in town, a few Evolve shows (featuring NXT talents) and a Jim Ross one man show, to name a few.  As for the Royal Rumble itself, this year seems to be one of the most anticipated Rumbles in quite some time with the Rumble being for the actual World Title and with so many names being rumored to returning or debuting as surprise entrants in the Rumble.  I also expect that there will be a number of title matches on the show.  Already announced is a Last Man Standing Match for the intercontinental title between Kevin Owens and Dean Ambrose.  From there, Becky Lynch has issued a challenge to Charlotte for the Divas Championship and I expect that to be added to the show as well as they continue their great feud.  I also wouldn’t be shocked to see a US Title match between Kalisto and Alberto Del Rio to be added as well as a Tag Title Match with the New Day and the Usos.  The Rumble remains my favorite show of the year.

– Contest Time-  Alright I had mentioned this last week and so I figure I’ll reveal our first ever contest here on the daily spotlight.  Next Sunday, in honor of the Royal Rumble, we’re going to be giving away the brand new Sasha Banks figure as a part of the Mattel Basics Series 59 that won’t be released to stores until March of this year! Here’s what you have to do to enter into the contest.  Subscribe to thedailyspotlight.com which you can easily do to the left on the desktop site and by scrolling down below the posts on the mobile version of the site.  You do not need a wordpress site to subscribe, you can do so with any email address.  From there follow along with the dailyspotlight.com @Daily_Spotlight.  That’s it!  Once you subscribe to the site and follow us on twitter, you’re entered to win the first ever Sasha Banks figure brand new in box!  We’ll be doing the random draw on Sunday afternoon prior to the AFC Championship Game at 2:00 PM EST.  Of course, if you have any questions, feel free to inquire in the comments section below, on twitter or on our official email at dailyspotlight2@gmail.com!  If all goes well, we’ll do more contests and giveaways in the future!

That’s going to do it for now but be sure to subscribe to make sure you’re entered into our contest! Until next time, take care!

The Spotlight On Last Night’s BIG Cameo on The Lip Sync Battle

Tom Lynch Entertainment, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Video Credit: Spike TV

Off the heels of one of the most talked about episodes in its 2 year history, Spike TV’s Lip Sync Battle returned last night featuring a battle between Kevin Hart & Olivia Munn. While it may not have been Beyoncé with Channing Tatum there’s quite the interesting cameo in Munn’s performance of Taylor Swift’s Bad Blood, especially for my fellow wrestling fans. Check out the video and let me know what you think.