*Disclaimer*

With NinetyforChill.com evolving into more than the rough draft blog for my primary blog, MainEventoftheDead.com needs a new place to test out the formatting of recent blogs. "Main Event of the Dead" is my screenplay about pro-wrestling and zombies. I have a movie website, so may as well have a wrestling site.

Friday, October 30, 2020

Queen of Wednesday, the 1998's Interim King, and the Screwjob Was a Work

 *Blog post started on October 28, 2020.

Oh the things you will write about when time crawls. And a stimulus will not occur till January at the earliest if ever. I just need the traffic. Too bad my station has a tablet and desktop at it. It would definitely look like I am not doing my job to have a laptop out on top of that.

On top of coming up with stuff when time is crawling, I have gotten myself into a situation where I need freshish wrestling takes. My "Ring Draft - Monday Night Raw 2020 - I Can Book with That" post held up pretty well (Just one more episode will prove I am a soothsayer.) from the time it was posted to when I started tweeting that out, but when I do not engage with the WWE product directly (Tony Khan needs those numbers.), I am starting to question my expertise on the business as a whole. My failure to use my remaining vacation days to catch indie shows does not help, but NJPW World still needs my time.

For my readers who solely follow MainEventoftheDead.com (I may need to spread out my promotional tweets over all for of my Twitter handles (@russthebus, @catbusruss, @ninetyforchill...I suppose this one should get a third of them for the accompanying website NinetyForChill.com, but my primary website needs @maineventzombie.), I do need to provide a decent amount of content per post to warrant the forwarding on to a sister site (like Russ's Remnants of Anime or Disgruntled Real Championship Wrestling). Fortunately, there has been a wrestling title change that needs to be addressed before I tell you why Bret Hart was not screwed in 1997, at least in terms of his WWF departure.

The 47th Current Disgruntled's Real World Women's Champion:

AEW World Women's Champion Hikaru Shida (Reign began on 10/25/2020):

After the lengthiness of the Bayley versus Sasha Banks storyline and a near five-star match to conclude Bayley's reign, I understand if you think this is the wrong decision. Especially after acknowledging that I am a devotee of AEW. Obviously, I must ask you to hear me out.

Banks has never defended her championship successfully since NXT five years prior. Hikaru Shida's defeated the best big woman, Nyla Rose, to earn the championship and proved to be superior than NWA's champion, Thunder Rosa. The word on the street is Thunder Rosa has signed with WWE, so they cannot trade wins, so AEW has themselves a more legitimate champion than a past Real Women's Championship. Banks can blame WWE talent relations for me not choosing her.

Time is definitely going to tell when it comes to who is the better champion, but I think Bank's reign cannot end before Shida's to take this title.

Now, I would like to suggest that Io Shirai may have a better claim than Banks. When then NXT champion Shayna Baszler won the triple-threat match between the past two champions, Becky Lynch and Bayley, it showed that the NXT title should be on the same level as Raw's or Smackdowns. But, she failed to hold the title longer than the other title holders and falling to Lynch at WrestleMania. With no title being on the line at the past Survivor Series, what were the real stakes?

You can refer to my "The OCHO or the Disgruntled's Real Secondary Championship" and say that I made Roderick Strong a part of that history because of his success at the 2019 Survivor Series over WWE's US and IC champs. But, the champions he beat lost their titles before he lost his. He proved that his reign as North American Champion was not a fluke. Hence, Baszler did not elevate her championship, so Io Shirai cannot qualify yet.

When it comes to the other gender's Disgruntled's Real Champion, it all depends on what you believe in terms of kayfabe. Did Bret screw Bret? I think his pay days say otherwise.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/85/bb/e7/85bbe7357c75a26edef0b9778067cc74.jpg

"Wrestling with Shadows" Is a Docudrama at Best.

I was doing my damnedest to cheer on WCW through out the rest of the Monday Night War. It was difficult come the Russo Era of that company, but I was also spending my late teens and early 20's at home on Friday nights to watch "ECW on TNN". That was the promotion I dedicated myself to, so hoping for the fall of WWF while enduring two awful hours of television on Mondays was bearable as I looked forward to Friday to wash it all away.

This all also shows I am a bit odd for choosing not to party with my friends in the name of the lead in to "Roller Jam". If only "American Pie" did a better job emphasizing the importance of getting laid.

I guess I never transitioned back to normal immature stuff. By the start of my sophomore year, wrestling was what I wanted to do with my life. There was no point getting hooked on Peoria tail when the action was in Philadelphia. Also, being a Sega Dreamcast mark made things easier along side the awful FMW tapes. And when you are watching tapes multiple times, you start to see things you are meant to.

Like Julie Hart trying to become eligible for an Oscar as she berates Hunter Hearst Helmsley after the screwjob occurs. Or the sound quality of the hidden microphone. Every overly prepared interaction when the camera was rollingbrvm. I can go on and on, but it all comes back to the first lesson Danny Daniels taught me about pro wrestling.

Everything is a lie. You lie about everything. Do not put yourself in a position to hurt yourself. You lie to the crowd. You lie about the money you make.

It is interesting looking back on this. These paraphrased teaching came from a lesson about taking the buckles. Primarily, do not actually connect with them. He did not have an answer to our obvious question, "How else did Bret make it look so good?"

The Interim Disgruntled's Real World Championship

By saying that the Montreal Screwjob was a work, the title had changed hands in a legitimate match. It was a bullshit finish, but that does not disqualify Shawn Michaels from having a claim to the DRCW World Championship. I think Shane Douglas is more deserving of the title when Hogan lost it at Starrcade 1997, but his reign having so few defenses  in spite of the length means another DRCW belt needs to be created.

The 1st Interim Disgruntled's Real World Champion:
WWF Champion Shawn Michaels (12/28/1997 to 3/29/1998)
 
The 2nd Interim Disgruntled's Real World Champion:
WWF Champion Stone Cold Steve Austin (3/29/98 to 6/28/98)

The 3rd Interim Disgruntled's Real World Champion:
WCW/nWo Champion Hollywood Hulk Hogan (6/28/98 to 7/6/98)
Kane's first title reign was a hiccup that ruined Steve Austin's momentum. That was a risky move since the Monday Night Wars were far from over, and in terms of ratings, the next move kept WCW in the fight.

The 4th Interim Disgruntled's Real World Champion:
WCW/nWo Champion Goldberg (7/6/98 to 12/27/98)
 
The 5th Interim Disgruntled's Real World Champion:
WWF Champion The Rock (12/27/98 to 12/29/98)
Do we really want a lineage that includes the finger poke of doom?

The 6th Interim Disgruntled's Real World Champion:
WWF Champion Mankind (12/29/1998 to 1/24/1999)
 
We could leave this lineage here. There is no question that Taz was the Undisputed Real World Champion at this point (I refer back to how he would make Austin tap in a New York minute at Living Dangerously 1999 which sold me on their product.). But I think we can unify the titles, so lets keep rolling.

The 7th Interim Disgruntled's Real World Champion:
WWF Champion The Rock (2) (1/24/99 to 1/26/99)
His loss did not air till Halftime Heat, but this was now the time of spoilers. Or did WCW end that after the fiasco that was January 4th. I do not like to recognize really short reigns, but WCW was still based around the finger poke.
 
The 8th Interim Disgruntled's Real World Champion:
WWF Champion Mankind (2) (1/26/99 to 2/22/99)
 
The 9th Interim Disgruntled's Real World Champion:
WWF Champion The Rock (3) (2/22/99 to 3/28/99)
 
The 10th Interim Disgruntled's Real World Champion:
WWF Champion Stone Cold Steve Austin (2) (3/28/99 to 5/23/99)
 
The 11th Interim Disgruntled's Real World Champion:
WCW Champion Kevin Nash (5/23/99 to 7/11/99)
Nash at least won his championship. Austin lost his title to The Undertaker with the McMahon family serving as referees.

The 12th Interim Disgruntled's Real World Champion:
WWF Champion Stone Cold Steve Austin (3) (7/11/99 to 8/22/99)
Randy Savage would lose his recently won title 24 hours later.

The 13th Interim Disgruntled's Real World Champion:
WCW Champion Hulk Hogan (2) (8/22/99 to 9/12/99)
Mankind was the victim of a 24-hour title reign.

The 14th Interim Disgruntled's Real World Champion:
WCW Champion Sting (9/12/99 to 10/25/99)

The 15th Interim Disgruntled's Real World Champion:
WWF Champion Triple H (10/25/99 to 11/14/99)
Sting was stripped to set up for Vince Russo's first attempted reboot of WCW. This should be noted as the beginning of the end of WCW's relevance which is awful since it gave us Bret Hart vs. Chris Benoit to fulfill the vacancy.

The 16th Interim Disgruntled's Real World Champion:
WWF Champion The Big Show (11/14/1999 to 1/3/2000)

The 17th Interim Disgruntled's Real World Champion:
WWF Champion Triple H (1/3/2000 to 4/13/2000)

If you are a fan of my blogs, you know I love exercises in futility. With Money in the Bank cash ins threatening the legitimacy of championships, perhaps there are more interim champs to come.

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