Ask 411 Wrestling: Is HHH’s Career Better Than Sting’s?

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Ask 411 Wrestling!

My name is Ryan Byers, and I am once again filling in for Mathew Sforcina, who is busy vacuuming Cheeto dusty out of his wrestling gear. Don’t worry, though, the Mat will come back next week, and he’ll no doubt show me how this column is really supposed to be done. If you’ve got questions for Maffew (no, not that one), then feel free to send them to him at the normal address for the column.

I’ll look forward to addressing all of this week’s question in just a few drags of the scroll bar but, in the meantime, enjoy a banner:

Zeldas!

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Michael L. Warren II (electric boogaloo) took some issue with my statement that Eric Bischoff did the heel authority figure gimmick on a major stage before Vince McMahon, point to Vince’s turn as a heel on the television of the Memphis-based USWA prior to the Monday Night War as part of a feud with Jerry Lawler. Though that is the first instance of McMahon playing heel, I don’t believe that he was really in an “authority figure” role there and he certainly wasn’t in the modern GM role. McMahon was more of a heel manager in the traditional sense, bringing in his “outside” WWF guys to take down the USWA’s babyfaces and not really controlling the on-camera booking. Regardless, be sure to check out the McMahon USWA run on YouTube. It’s really good stuff, and some of the performances rival Mr. McMahon from the Steve Austin feud.

I mentioned Yukes purchasing New Japan Pro Wrestling and Scott thought it odd that NJPW was owned by the company that used to produce WWE video games. I wanted to just point out for the record that NJPW is no longer owned by Yukes but rather by a company called Bushiroad, which produces collectable card games as its primary source of revenue.

Mark Satrang wanted more information on wrestling styles when I mentioned in an aside some of the differences between King’s Road and Strong Style. I actually answered a very similar question in Ask 411 several years ago. Here’s the link. It focuses more on WWE main event style and isn’t the best breakdown of the Japanese styles in retrospect, but it’s what I’ve got for the time being, given that I unfortunately don’t have the time to write a whole new answer to the question.

The Trivia Crown

There was no question last week. Let’s see if Mat can answer the one that I’ve put together for this week.

Who am I? I come from a large professional wrestling family, with a father, brothers, daughters and sons who are all in professional wrestling. I have wrestled in WWE and held a title in the NWA, but don’t mistake me for somebody who was around the Jim Crockett Promotions era. I also held the heavyweight title in my home promotion for a time, beating a wrestler who in other companies developed a reputation as a coward. Though it is not my primary gimmick, for a time I did adopt a persona based on a famous singer, while one of my sons has a gimmick that sees him act rather light in the loafers. Who am I?

With my question asked, let’s answer yours . . .

Getting Down To All The Business

Michael Klein is here to talk current events:

Sting finally debuting in WWE and confronting HHH at Survivor Series followed up by the rumor that those two will be squaring off at the Rumble got me thinking.
I know Sting is called the “icon” and is generally loved by most wrestling fans (even those that don’t want him to ever wrestle again still respect him it seems) whereas HHH is generally hated and can do no right, but, if you looked at the totality of their careers, wouldn’t it be fair to say that HHH has had the better career? I’m not going by who has held more titles but just based on their body of work. Honestly, I think HHH has had the better career and really, it might not be that close.
I know Sting was the Face of WCW and he gets brownie points for not jumping to WWF/E until now, but honestly, how many good matches has Sting really had since he went to the Crow persona? His big return match against Hogan was epically bad and I can’t recall any impact matches he had at the end of WCW. Also, he didn’t really tear down the house during his lengthy TNA run despite being in the world title hunt non stop.
Whereas HHH started building steam during his IC title feud with the Rock, and had many great(not just good, but great) matches after with Jericho, Austin, HBK, Batista, Taker, Hardy, among others. His match against Bryan at this past Mania is being discussed as the potential MOTY and he held his own in the Evolution/Shield matches.
This is not a knock on Sting. I know he’s a legend and had great matches against Flair, Rude, Vader and was in the greatest War Games match ever, but I’m looking at this objectively. It’s been a long time since someone used Sting and “great match” in a sentence.
So, strip away all the bias and perception and negativity, and judge them objectively based on their careers and I think it’s HHH who has had the better career based on ring work. Agree?

I think that you’re probably right but that, in setting up your argument, you overstate your case a bit. In other words, Triple H probably has had a better in-ring career than Sting, but I don’t think it’s by nearly as wide of a margin as you attempt to claim.

First of all, you say that Sting hasn’t had any great matches “since he went to the Crow persona” and, at the end of the question, say in an almost dismissive manner that Sting did have great matches against guys like Rude, Flair, and Vader. You’re almost completely dismissing the Sting that existed prior to the formation of the nWo as though it were some brief, fleeting portion of the guy’s career. It wasn’t, though. The blond, surfer version of Sting was a main event performer in WCW for EIGHT YEARS before the conversion to the Crow gimmick and, even though he wasn’t the most technically sound wrestler in the world and was often carried by more experienced opponents, the fact of the matter is that he was pretty damn great for the entirety of that eight year run, even if things did slow down once he adopted his black and white color scheme.

If you look at Triple H’s run in which he was a top guy and consistently having great matches, it began, arguably, in 1998 with his feud against the Rock. Where it ended is more subject to debate, but my personal opinion is that the last feud that he had which matched his peak was the Batista program in 2005, though he would obviously return for isolated great matches in shorter runs like his work with the Undertaker at Wrestlemania. If you accept that timeframe, you’re looking at seven peak in-ring years for Triple H compared to eight peak in-ring years for Sting.

Of the two men’s peaks, which was better? I think you’re probably looking at HHH there, because he was more often the leader in his matches compared to Sting who was more often the follower. However, you also have to keep in mind the fact that Trips can also be perceived as having had more great matches than Sting just because the nature of the product during their peak years was different. HHH was working in a time period where he had marquee matches on television virtually every week on Raw and Smackdown plus a pay per view once per month. Big shows and big show performances were fewer and further between for the Stinger, though he likely would’ve put a lot more effort into non-televised house show matches in the late 1980s and early 1990s than Hunter would have in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Of course, there is also the question of whether you compare only the men’s peak years against each other or whether you allow their earlier and later careers to drag down their peaks. If you do that, I believe the gap widens for Triple H, because he was consistently better in his post-peak comebacks than Sting was, and he has had many fewer years of performing below his peak level than Sting has.

I’m sure that others have their own opinions on matter, and they can feel free to weigh in down in the comment section.

DJ Poladian may be the first person in history to tweet a question at me. It goes a little something like this:

Given the heritage of masks in Mexico, do wrestlers have to earn the right to wear one?

Generally speaking, no, wrestlers do not have to earn the ability to wear a mask. However, one of the things that you do see fairly often is that, when a new luchador graduates from wrestling school, he is given a mask and a gimmick that are intentionally meant to be short-lived, with the idea being that you have him do a few years under his first hood to allow him to iron out the weak points in his game. Then, when the young wrestler has a few years of experience under his belt and is ready for the next step in his career, he can have a more “permanent” gimmick bestowed upon him.

One of the best examples of this is actually Rey Misterio, Jr. Rey was the nephew of popular wrestler Rey Misterio, and it was widely assumed that he would take over his uncle’s persona at some point in time. However, you didn’t want to risk sullying the gimmick by putting it on a green wrestler before he was ready to perform up to the level of the name. Thus, Rey Jr. actually spent some time under a different mask and the name Colibri (translation: hummingbird) until it was decided that he was ready to take on his famous uncle’s legacy.

Red wants to play some ping pong:

I’m sure this topic has been discussed before, but has a wrestler ever ranted about 1985-1989 booking and specifically how it could have not only made more money but given more guys legit runs at the top?

Have any wrestlers ever laid anything like that out except for just the general booking complaints? Obviously Hogan’s and Piper’s and everyone’s egos were in play.

No, I have never heard anybody complain about that, mainly because the mentality of pro wrestling booking at the time was not that every top guy necessarily got a run with the championship, which is a concept that has really only come into the minds of fans and pro wrestlers since the late 1990s.

Instead, the mentality was that you did what made you the most money, and a Hogan-centric WWF was making the company hand over fist, with just about everybody understanding that and profiting from it. Nobody really has any room or reason to complain. I’m not sure why you think that the title changing hands more times would have lead to the company generating more money, because there’s really no empirical evidence to back that up.

Mr. Rajani wants to double team us:

What matches have occurred in both TNA and the WWE, Mick Foley and Ric Flair for example on iMPACT in 2010 and at vengeance and summerslam 2006, and what matches have taken place in two different companies, example being RVD vs Rhyno in TNA and ECW ?

This is the sort of large, open-ended question that could have me researching and writing for months and months, so I’m going to impose some of my own limitations. I’m going to answer the question only as it relates to pay per views from the WWF, Jim Crockett Promotions/WCW, ECW, and TNA and try to give as comprehensive of an answer as I can within those guidelines.

. . . and, even applying those limits, the amount of research here and the answer I came up with are both still HUGE. Apologies in advance to anybody this winds up boring.

One of the first things that longer-term fans probably thought of when they read this question was the fact that most of the WWF’s top main eventers from the 1980s jumped ship to WCW and became that company’s main eventers during the mid-to-late 1990s. That means many of the answers to this question are going to be feuds from the early Wrestlemania era of WWF that were replayed during the Monday Night War in WCW.

The feud that essentially launched the Wrestlemania era of the WWF was Hulk Hogan versus “Rowdy” Roddy Piper. The fist PPV encounter between the two men came in November 1985 at the Wrestling Classic, which was the promotion’s first real foray in to pay per view. (The inaugural Wrestlemania, which occurred earlier the same year, was almost exclusively a closed circuit television event.) On the Wrestling Classic, Hogan defended the WWF Title against Piper and retained it when Piper got himself disqualified. The two went on to have a more extensive series of PPV matches in World Championship Wrestling, with Piper defeating Hogan via sleeperhold at Starrcade 1996 in a match that many people though was a World Heavyweight Title match even though it was made clear after the fact that the title was never on the line. Piper would face Hogan again at Superbrawl in 1997, this time with the Hulkster retaining his title. A third WCW match between the two men saw Piper put Hogan to sleep again, this time in a steel cage at Halloween Havoc 1997. The two men were not done there, though, as they had one last PPV encounter in 2003 in WWE, when they were in the midst of comebacks. Hogan, at the time under a mask as Juan Cena The Yellow Dog The Midnight Rider Mr. America, pinned Piper at that year’s Judgement Day event in about five minutes.

Another one of those feuds was “Macho Man” Randy Savage against Hulk Hogan. Of course, the two headlined Wrestlemania V against each other after the explosion of the Megapowers. They never rematched on pay per view in the WWF and were originally allies in WCW, but, when the nWo rolled into town, they did battle once more. Their first encounter was shortly after Hogan dropped the leg on Savage to kickstart his famous heel turn, as the Hulkster pinned the Macho Man to retain the WCW Heavyweight Title in the main event of Halloween Havoc 1996 (sponsored by Slim Jim, oohhhhhh yeaaaaahhh). There was one last pay per view confrontation between the two, as they fought to a no contest in a steel cage match at WCW Uncensored 1998 in one of WCW’s patented moronic finishes.

The Ultimate Warrior popped up in WCW, with rumor having it that one of the main reasons for his appearance was Hulk Hogan’s desire to “get his win back” from the WWF Title vs. Intercontinental Title main event of Wrestlemania VI in Toronto. Hogan did in fact avenge his loss, beating Warrior (no longer legally allowed to be called “Ultimate”) in the top match of Halloween Havoc 1998 in an all-time terrible pay per view main event.

Not all of the WWF feuds revived in WCW involved Hulk Hogan, though. Randy Savage and “Nature Boy” Ric Flair were in the WWF Championship match at Wrestlemania VIII (“She was yours before she was mine!”) and they were also rivals in WCW in a feud that initially centered around Flair punching out Savage’s elderly father, former wrestler Angelo Poffo. There was a Great American Bash match between the wrestlers in 1995 and a rematch the next month at Bash at the Beach, which was a “lifeguard lumberjack match,” essentially a regular lumberjack match with some women in Baywatch-esque outfits thrown into the mix. Flair also took the WCW Championship off of Savage not once but twice, the first time at Starrcade 1995 and then again in a steel cage match at Superbrawl VI in 1996.

From the biggest stars of the Hulkamania era we turn to the biggest stars of the Attitude era, one of whom was “Stone Cold” Steve Austin. Many people know that Austin had a run in WCW before he came to the World Wrestling Federation, so it’s not much of a surprise to see him on this list. At Slamboree 1994, Austin was the WCW United States Champion, and he retained the title over a game challenger in the form of Johnny B. Badd. Two years later in the WWF, Badd (now going under the name Marc Mero) was the first man who Austin defeated on the 1996 King of the Ring pay per view en route to delivering his infamous “Austin 3:16” promo. Austin also triumphed over Mero at the 1996 International Incident pay per view from British Columbia.

D-Generation X was another prominent act in the Attitude Era, and a feud between its members also spanned multiple promotions. After the New Age Outlaws of Billy Gunn and the Road Dogg broke up in the WWF, they had a match at Over the Edge 1999 with Gunn pinning the Dogg. Somewhat interestingly, there was no return bout or extended feud, as the Fed had bigger and brighter plans for Gunn, though those ultimately didn’t pan out. The Outlaws reunited for a time in TNA, but there was a split there as well, resulting in a steel cage match at Lockdown 2008, though this time it was the Road Dogg (now known as BG James) who was victorious over his “brother” Billy Gunn (now known as Kip James). The two also had a match on WWF pay per view before the New Age Outlaws even existed, with the Dogg under his “Real Double J” Jesse Jammes persona pinning Rockabilly at a 1997 show entitled Taker’s Revenge.

Another well-known Monday Night War era faction was Raven’s Flock in WCW, which splintered when long-time enforcer of the group Perry Saturn wanted to break away from his master. That occurred in 1998. Raven originally defeated Saturn in a match at the Bash at the Beach, but the former Eliminator came back and won a rematch at Fall Brawl of the same year, the stipulation of which was that the Flock would have to disband if Raven was defeated. Raven and Saturn were never partners on camera in the WWF, but they did wind up in a feud as part of the Invasion angle, focused on Raven targeting Saturn’s inanimate companion Moppy. As part of that angle, Saturn pinned Raven at Unforgiven 2001.

One of the keystone feuds of the Monday Night War was, of course, Hulk Hogan versus Sting. The two of them wrestled each other on WCW pay per view multiple times. Their most famous match was the Starrcade 1997 main event, in which Sting defeated Hogan for the WCW Title after many shenanigans. The return bout from that match occurred at Superbrawl 1998. By that point in time the championship had been vacated, and the Stinger beat Hulk one more time to again claim what was, at the time, wrestling’s top prize. Over a year later, the feud was renewed, as Sting beat Hogan for the championship again at Fall Brawl 1999. He would retain the title over Hogan the next month at Halloween Havoc, though it was more of an angle than a match, as Hulk laid down and immediately let Sting take the pinfall. Then, almost fourteen years after their most famous match, the franchise player of WCW and the franchise player of the WWF went at it once more, this time in TNA Wrestling. Sting also won this round, by submission, making him perhaps the only person to have such a stellar win-loss record over the Immortal One on pay per view.

Jeff Jarrett and Scott Hall have faced each other in both the WWF and TNA. The two had a lengthy Intercontinental Title feud in the Fed, including Jarrett going over Hall for the belt at the 1995 Royal Rumble and a rematch at that year’s Wrestlemania resulting in a DQ victory for the Bad Guy. Hall got a measure of revenge against Jarrett in TNA, pinning him on the company’s second ever weekly pay per view, in a match where Hall was managed by Toby Keith, who years later would put out feelers about the possibility of buying the company. They faced each other again on TNA weekly PPV number seven, this time with Jarrett winning. Hall won the next instalment of the feud on TNA weekly PPV number seventeen.

Double J also crossed over with second generation star Dustin Rhodes, also known as Goldust. The two first encountered each other in the WWF in December 1998 at Rock Bottom, when Goldust won a match in which Jarrett’s valet Debra McMichael would be required to strip if the former country music sensation lost. Of course, the striptease was thwarted by the Blue Blazer. The next year, both men had jumped to WCW, where Jarrett beat Dustin, stripped of his Goldust persona, in a bunkhouse match at Starrcade 1999. Years later, Rhodes was a challenger for Jarrett’s NWA World Heavyweight Title on TNA Wrestling’s seventy-ninth weekly pay per view event. Double J, who had previously been feuding with Rhodes’ legendary father Dusty, was able to retain his championship. This gives the two men the rare distinction of having faced each other on pay per view in not two but THREE separate promotions.

I’m not going to lie, Jeff Jarrett is going to be involved in a lot of these. He’s one of those guys who was around in pro wrestling for a long time at a relatively high level, but people tend to forget that, perhaps because nothing he did was really all that spectacular. Now we’re set to talk about his interactions with Diamond Dallas Page. DDP and Double J were main eventers in the dying days of WCW, and, in 2000, Jarrett pinned page at Spring Stampede to win the vacant WCW Title. The two wrestled again at the company’s final Superbrawl event in 2001, where Page got the victory with no championships on the line. When Jarrett founded TNA, he brought in Page to be one of his rivals, and this resulted in Jeff defeating DDP in the main event of the 2005 Destination X show to retain the NWA World Heavyweight Title.

MORE JEFF JARRETT! Double J as a midcarder in the WWF was often steamrolled (although never a PPV singles match) by Kevin “Diesel” Nash. Later in their careers, though, Jarrett became the more prominent of the two men. During his run as WCW World Heavyweight Champion, Jarrett successfully retained the title over Kevin Nash at the 2000 Great American Bash, while, in TNA, Nash did el jobski to titleholder Jarrett in an NWA World Heavyweight Championship match.

Perhaps Jarrett’s most prolific rival in TNA was the man called Sting. However, before they wrestled each other in that company, Double J actually got a victory over Sting in WCW, pinning him at Halloween Havoc 2000 in a match with no championships on the line. Sting and Jarrett’s TNA feud began during the weekly PPV era, when the man in black beat the Chosen One by disqualification in an NWA Title match on weekly PPV number sixty-eight. They rematched on pay per view number seventy-four, where Sting pinned Double J clean in the middle, though Jarrett was not the NWA Champion by that point. The feud was resumed during the Spike TV/monthly pay per view era when Sting was finally able to beat Jarrett for a title, upending him at Bound for Glory 2006 in a match that saw Kurt Angle act as guest referee in what was Angle’s PPV debut for the company.

One of the longest gaps between matches on this list involves Sting and Mick Foley. In 1992, the two wrestled each other at WCW Beach Blast in a falls count anywhere match. They didn’t have another PPV singles match until seventeen years later in TNA, when Foley pinned Sting at the 2009 Lockdown event to become the TNA World Heavyweight Champion.

Chris Benoit and Chris Jericho have careers with a fair amount of overlap, as both men started on Canadian indies with some ties to the Hart family before moving on to New Japan Pro Wrestling, ECW, WCW, and ultimately the WWF/WWE. The Canadian Chrises first went at it on American pay per view in WCW, with Benoit beating Jericho on the 1996 edition of Fall Brawl. The feud resumed in the WWF, with Benoit earning a disqualification victory over Jericho at Backlash in 2000, another win in a submission match at Judgement Day, and then besting him at Summerslam in 2000 in a two-out-of-three falls match. Y2J was FINALLY able to snag a pay per view victory over Benoit at the 2001 Royal Rumble, when he defeated the Crippler for the Intercontinental Title in a well-remembered ladder match.

Eddy Guerrero and nephew Chavo Guerrero, Jr. have had intertwining careers ever since Chavo made his debut in the mid-1990s. They first met on pay per view at the 1998 Great American Bash, at the time a WCW event. Eddy defeated Chavo the next month at the Bash at the Beach in a traditional lucha libre hair vs. hair match. The two met again in WWE after the breakup of their championship tag team, with Eddy getting the duke at the 2004 Royal Rumble when he was en route to a WWE Title victory the next month.

In a bit of a generational clash, Eddy Guerrero and Ric Flair have gone head-to-head in both WWE and WCW. The Nature Boy first defeated Guerrero to retain his United States Title at WCW Hogg Wild in 1996, and he was also successful in their WWE rematch, which occurred at the 2002 King of the Ring show.

Another blond heel also made life difficult for Eddy for a period of time, and that man’s name was Chris Jericho. The first pay per view encounter of the two was at WCW Superbrawl VII in February 1997, where Guerrero defeated Jericho to retain the United States Title. Later in the same year at Fall Brawl, Guerrero pinned Jericho again, this time to take the Cruiserweight Title off of the Ayatollah of Rock and Rollah. The two would cross paths again in the WWF in 2000, though it was before a more limited audience. For the third time, Guerrero beat Jericho in a championship match, retaining the WWF European Title at the 2000 instalment of the UK exclusive pay per view Insurrexion.

A wrestling feud that actually exploded on to MTV’s Total Request Live of all places, Diamond Dallas Page vs. Raven, is one of the really good forgotten rivalries of the 1990s. Page and Raven had their big blow off in a bowery death match at Slamboree 1998, but that wouldn’t be the last time that they wrestled on pay per view. When both men landed in TNA, they locked it up again, with Page beating Raven again at Turning Point in 2004.

Probably the best in-ring feud on the entirety of this list is the one between Eddy Guerrero and Rey Misterio, Jr. The first pay per view encounter between the two men was at Halloween Havoc 1997 in a match pitting Eddy’s WCW Cruiserweight Title against Misterio’s mask. Rey was victorious, but Eddy regained the championship quickly thereafter and successfully defended it against Rey in a rematch at World War 3 the same year. Many years later, the two feuded again in WWE, culminating in a ladder match for custody of Rey’s son Dominic (no, really, that happened) at Summerslam 2005. Building up to Summerslam that year, the duo also faced each other at the 2005 versions of Wrestlemania, The Great American Bash, and Judgement Day.

Rey also feuded with Eddy’s nephew Chavo in both WWE and WCW, starting on pay per view with a match against Chavito at the final Superbrawl event in February 2001, where the younger Guerrero retained the Cruiserweight Title. Three years later, Chavo was the Cruiserweight Champion once again, with the title having been carried over to WWE from WCW. He kept the belt over Misterio again at the 2004 No Way Out pay per view, despite Misterio being seconded by Mexican boxing star Jorge Paez. Misterio succeeded in taking the title away from Chavo a few months later at the Great American Bash 2004, a pay per view which, much like the Cruiserweight Title, was carried over from WCW to WWE. After a two year hiatus, the two men feuded once more in 2006, with matches at Summerslam and No Mercy, the latter being a falls count anywhere match. Then, just because the Summerslam 2006 match was so fun, they wrestled each other again at Summerslam 2007. Chavo was victorious at Summerslam ’06, with Misterio winning the later two matches.

Misterio also had a WCW feud with one Chris Jericho, with Jericho beating Misterio fro the Cruiserweight Title at Souled Out 1998. Rey appeared to get a measure of revenge in July of that year when he beat Jericho for the championship at the Bash at the Beach, but the win was overturned and the belt returned to Jericho on WCW Nitro because the suspended Dean Malenko interfered in the match. Over a decade later, in 2009, the Canadian and the luchador butted heads again, this time over the Intercontinental Title. Misterio retained that championship against Jericho at Judgment Day 2009, though Y2J took the belt off of Rey the next month in a no holds barred match at Extreme Rules. Just a few weeks later, Misterio put his mask on the line in an effort to regain the championship and, in fact, he was successful in his effort, beating Jericho in a mask vs. title match at “The Bash,” which used to be both Great and American.

One of Rey’s biggest career rivals who almost never gets recognised as such is Psicosis, who trained with Misterio and was one of his greatest opponents in Mexico, Japan, and ECW before the two men broke into the American mainstream. Thus, it makes sense that they wrestled here as well. Rey vs. Psicosis was a show stealer of a match on the 1996 WCW Bash at the Beach (the same show with the nWo formation). The duo rematched for WCW in 1998 at Road Wild, and the two old rivals locked it up again under the WWE banner when the company promoted “ECW” One Night Stand in 2005. Always pushed as the bigger star of the two, Misterio was the victor in all three of those encounters.

We’ve talked about Chris Benoit . . . we’ve talked about Eddy Guerrero . . . but there are probably some fans of the Radicalz out there thinking, “Hey, what about some more Perry Saturn?” Well, we’re not forgetting about Saturn. At WCW Halloween Havoc 1999, Saturn faced Eddy Guerrero in a losing effort, albeit by disqualification. The pair would wrestle a year later in the WWF, where Saturn beat Guerrero at Fully Loaded 2000 to capture the European Championship, the only title run of Saturn’s WWE career aside from a couple of quickie Hardcore Title wins during the 24/7 rules period.

The United Kingdom feud of Fit Finlay and William Regal also spilled across multiple American promotions. In 2006 in WWE, Finaly was the United States Champion, and he retained his title against Regal at the Great American Bash. However, that wasn’t the first pay per view meeting between the two men. They were also paired up ten years earlier at WCW Uncensored 1996, when Finlay was known exclusively as “The Belfast Bruiser.” On that show, he beat Regal by disqualification, which essentially undermined the whole purpose of running an “Uncensored” show.

Bret Hart and Curt Hennig also faced each other in both the WWF and WCW. The two initially went at it at Summerslam 1991, with Hart winning the Intercontinental Title off of the man then known as Mr. Perfect. Perfect was also Hart’s opponent in the second round of the 1993 King of the Ring tournament, which, of course, the Hitman won. They would face each other for a third time at WCW Uncensored in 1998, with Hart again getting the duke by submission.

Most people think of Scott Hall and Kevin Nash as partners, but the fact of the matter is that they’ve been opponents on numerous occasions as well, and they’ve been opponents in multiple promotions. At Summerslam 1994, Hall and Nash, as Razor Ramon and Diesel, wrestled for the Intercontinental Title. Ramon, who was seconded by Walter Peyton for some reason, defeated Diesel to become the new champion. Hall also beat Nash at WCW Halloween Havoc in 1998, this time by count out.

Another early member of the nWo was Sean Waltman, dubbed Syxx because, in fact, he brought the group’s ranks to a half dozen. Syxx defeated the happy, smiley babyface version of Chris Jericho at Halloween Havoc 1996. The two would meet again under the WWF banner in 1999 and 2000. Waltman, now known as X-Pac, beat a heel Jericho by disqualification at Unforgiven 1999. After about a year’s hiatus, the feud came back in 2000, with Jericho pinning X-Pac at the 2000 version of Unforgiven, which set up a steel cage match the next month at Unforgiven, which Jericho also won.

Booker T. and Chris Benoit had a feud in WCW (later a three-way feud with Fit Finlay interjected) which is credited in many ways with launching both men into superstardom in the United States. The main portion of the feud consisted of a best of seven series over the World Television Title. On pay per view, they wrestled each other twice, once on Spring Stampede 1998 and once on the Great American Bash 1998, with Booker winning both matches. In WWE, they feuded in late 2005 and that bled over into early 2006, with matches on the 2005 Survivor Series, Armageddon 2005, and No Way Out 2006. Benoit fared better here, winning the last two matches, though Booker was victorious at the Survivor Series.

As noted above, the Booker/Benoit feud in WCW also came to involve Fit Finlay. Finlay retained the WCW TV Title over Benoit at Slamboree 1998, though he lost it to Booker the next month at the Great American Bash. Benoit and Finaly would do battle again at the WWE Great American Bash in 2006, with Benoit forcing Finlay to submit to the Crippler Crossface. Finlay and Booker T. would not have a WWE pay per view matchup, though the two were briefly allies when Finlay joined King Booker’s “court” along with William Regal.

Another rival of Booker T. was Christian Cage. In 2003 at WWE Bad Blood, those two men had an Intercontinental Title match which saw Booker defeat Christian (who was the champion) by disqualification. At the 2003 Insurrextion pay per view, a United Kingdom exclusive show, Cage retained the IC strap over Booker via pinfall. Years later, Booker was finally able to beat Christian on a WWE pay per view, pinning Captain Charisma at the 2005 Great American Bash. Booker also got a victory over Christian in TNA at Turning Point 2008, retaining his TNA Legends Title, which apparently was a real title that actually existed at some point. (Seriously, what was that all about?)

Christian Cage also faced Kurt Angle on pay per view in both the WWF and TNA. The WWF encounter between the two men took place at the 2001 King of the Ring, where Angle went over in a tournament match. Christian retained the NWA World Heavyweight Title over Angle in 2007 at Against All Odds, though our Olympic Hero retained his TNA World Heavyweight Title (technically a different championship) over Cage a year later at the 2008 Final Resolution event and again the very next month at Against All Odds.

Here’s a cross-promotional feud that you probably haven’t thought of: Jeff Jarrett versus D-Lo Brown. Brown simultaneously held the WWF Intercontinental and European Titles in 1999, until Jarrett beat him for both belts at Summerslam, due to Mark Henry turning on D-Lo to destroy the last vestiges of the Nation of Domination. Jarrett also retained the IC Title (after gifting the European Title to Henry) against D-Lo on the WWF Rebellion pay perview, a UK exclusive show that happened in October 1999. When Double J started up TNA, the recently-released-from-WWE D-Lo Brown was an early signee, and the two wrestled on the company’s thirty-eighth weekly pay per view, with Jarrett retaining the NWA World Heavyweight Title over his old foe.

Another more obscure rivalry that jumped promotions is that between Raven and Rhyno (or, if you prefer, Rhino). At the 2001 WWF Backlash event, the Manbeast defeated Raven to retain the WWF Hardcore Championship. The two also clashed at TNA’s only Unbreakable pay per view in history, which was held in 2005. There, Raven was the NWA World Heavyweight Champion, and he was able to successfully fend off a challenge from Rhyno.

In another WWE and TNA crossover, Jeff Hardy and Montel Vontavious Porter have wrestled each other on pay per view in both promotions, with Jeff winning at Judgment Day 2008, MVP pinning Jeff at Summerslam 2008, and Hardy reversing the result at TNA’s 2014 Turning Point event.

The Charismatic Enigma also had a cross-promotional feud with a wrestler whose career trajectory has some eerie parallel’s to MVP’s, namely one Ken Kennedy (. . . Kennedy). Kennedy and Jeff Hardy were opponents at WWE’s 2007 Cyber Sunday show, a match booked because they were the two individuals not voted into the evening’s championship match against Randy Orton. Kennedy was able to score a bit of an upset victory that evening, though Hardy would gain a measure of revenge in TNA, beating Kennedy at the 2010 Sacrifice event. Kennedy was, however, successful when the stakes were raised, winning TNA’s version of the World Heavyweight Title from Jeff at Genesis in 2011, only to have Hardy regain the championship the next month at Against All Odds in his trademark ladder match. That was not the end of the feud, however, as Kennedy got one more win over Jeff Hardy in 2012 at the Sacrifice PPV.

Probably the feud on this list that produced the most pay per view matches is Rob Van Dam vs. Jerry Lynn. Of course, that rivalry stepped off in ECW. They had four PPV encounters there, at Living Dangerously 1999, Hardcore Heaven 1999, Hardcore Heaven 2000, and the final ECW pay per view, Guilty as Charged 2001. After a several year layoff, they took their feud over to TNA and had three more matches, at Bound for Glory 2011, Destination X 2011, and X-Travaganza 2013. That’s seven PPV bouts in total across two different promotions, an unusually high amount.

Lynn actually has a second feud that produced a rather large number of PPV matches, and it’s against Justin Credible. Again, they started off in ECW, with two matches at Heat Wave 1998 and Anarchy Rulz 2000. They then had an insane series of gimmick matches on TNA’s weekly PPVs, starting with a regular bout on PPV #49, a lights out match on #50, a chain match on #50, and a last man standing match on #53. That’s six matches, so they’re just one bout shy of the RVD/Jerry Lynn feud.

Not to be outdone, Lynn’s rival Van Dam also had several more ECW/TNA crossover feuds. At November to Remember 1997, RVD wrestled to a no contest with Tommy Dreamer . . . and just think about how difficult it was to get a no contest in ECW of all places. Van Dam would avenge the not-loss by beating Dreamer in a no disqualification match at TNA’s 2010 Turning Point pay per view. RVD and Rhyno also faced each other in both ECW and TNA (as alluded to in the original question), with Rhyno keeping the TV Title over Van Dam at Anarchy Rulz 2000 and RVD getting his win back in 2010 at TNA Final Resolution.

We haven’t seen many tag team matches on this list, but that’s getting ready to change. In 2000, the WWF ran a feud between the New Age Outlaws and the Dudley Boys, which saw those damn Dudleys win the WWF Tag Team Titles from the Outlaws at Now Way Out in 2000. The two teams rematched in TNA under different names, where they split two pay per view matches. The Outlaws got the first victory when they beat the Dudleys at Sacrifice in May 2006, but the Dudleys returned the favor in June by winning a hardcore match that was dubbed a “Bingo Hall Brawl” to play off of the Duds’ roots in ECW.

The Dudleys were also involved in another tag team match that crossed over, with their opponents this time being the seemingly makeshift team of Tommy Dreamer and the Sandman. The four “ECW Originals” locked it up at ECW Wrestlepalooza in 1998 and came back with the same match for WWE’s One Night Stand in 2005. Dreamer and Sandman won the ECW version of the match, while the Dudleys won the WWE version.

Another type of match that we haven’t seen too often on the list is the triple threat, mainly because it’s rare to get three people all carrying out the same feud with each other in different promotions. However, it has happened at least once thanks to a healthy amount of ECW nostalgia. Towards the end of the promotion, Tajiri, Super Crazy, and Little Guido did a three-way at ECW Anarchy Rulz 1999, which Tajiri won by pinning Crazy. At the WWE-promoted nostalgia show One Night Stand in 2005, Crazy was victorious when he again took on Tajiri and Guido. A variation on this match also crossed over thanks to One Night Stand. At ECW November to Remember 2000, Little Guido and his partner Tony Mamaluke retained their ECW Tag Team Titles against a team consisting of Tajiri and Super Crazy, with Crazy being a mid-match replacmenet for Tajiri’s regular tag team partner at the time, Mikey Whipwreck. The same result was reached in WWE/ECW One Night Stand in 2006, though without Whipwreck starting the match.

There were also a handful of women’s feuds that occurred between promotions. In the WWF, Alunda Blayze and Bull Nakano feuded over the company’s Women’s Championship, with Blayze retaining over Nakano at Summerslam 1994. Two years later, they squared off again on pay per view, this time for WCW at Hogg Wild in a “bash the bike” match, in which the stipulation was that the winner would be able to trash the loser’s motorcycle with a sledgehammer. Blayze was victorious there as well.

Mickie James and Katrina Waters (also known as Katie Lea Burchill and Winter) locked horns over championships in both WWE and TNA. James retained the WWE Women’s Title over Waters at WWE’s 2008 Night of Champions event, while Waters as Winter beat James twice to win the TNA Women’s Title, first at the Hard Justice pay per view in August 2011 and then again at the No Surrender show in September of the same year.

Mickie has herself another crossover feud with the dangerous “diva” Victoria, also known as Tara in TNA. At WWE New Year’s Revolution 2007, James went over Victoria to retain the WWE Women’s Title, and the two fought to a no contest at TNA Turning Point 2010, though Victoria picked up a victory in a falls count anywhere match the same year at Final Resolution. The feud was renewed in 2012, when Victoria/Tara retained her TNA Women’s Title over James at that year’s Final Resolution.

Finally, there is one promotion-to-promotion crossover that doesn’t quite meet the criteria that I’ve been using here but is still interesting enough that I’ve decided to mention it anyway. Smoky Mountain Wrestling, the independent promotion run by Jim Cornette in the early and mid 1990s, managed to get its tag team titles booked on both WCW and WWF pay per views in the same year. At WCW Superbrawl III in February 1993, the Rock n’ Roll Express defeated the Heavenly Bodies to win the SMW Tag Team Titles and, at the 1993 WWF Survivor Series, the Bodies defeated the Express to win the championships. The only difference between the two matches – and the reason that I said this doesn’t quite meet the same qualifications as the other matches I’ve listed – is that, in the WCW match, the Heavenly Bodies consisted of Tom Prichard and Stan Lane, while in the WWF match, the Bodies were Prichard and Jimmy Del Ray.

And, at long last, that is the end of the answer.

APinOZ is here, because we can’t do this column without at least one Aussie. He’s got two unrelated questions:

Just what was the point of the staging collapsing on Vince McMahon at the end of the million dollar giveaway on Raw some years back? It was an angle that went absolutely nowhere, just some random stuff that had no sense or build up. Was there meant to be a storyline that got scrapped?

If there was a planned storyline, it has never been revealed to my knowledge. The “McMahon’s Millions” segments, in which Vince turned Monday Night Raw into some weird hybrid of professional wrestling and Deal Or No Deal were a critical and commercial failure, and my understanding is that the collapsing set was thought of as a quick means of writing Vince off of television and thereby bringing an end to the gimmick.

At what point in time did the WWF make their cage match rules “escape the cage” to win? The NWA and all their territories used cage matches to keep the wrestlers in and outsiders out – it was the ultimate feud settler and the match was still settled by pinfall.. Having said that, the famous Kerry Von Erich-Ric Flair match with the Freebirds turn was escape rules too, now I think of it? So when did the escape rule become the norm?

Perhaps somebody could point me to a transition that I’m unaware of, but the oldest WWF cage matches that I’ve seen (actually WWWF cage matches), which featured Bruno Sammartino and Bob Backlund defending their titles in the steel structure, were all escape the cage rules. Those matches would have gone back to the 1970s. So, I don’t think there’s a shift in time where pinfall only rules gave way to escape rules as much as there was a cultural difference with divergent rules being the norm in opposing territories. Of course, escape the cage rules became the national norm once the WWF swallowed up all of its territorial competition.

Jessica in the UK wants to inquire about promos:

Love the column – as an aspiring actress – I often wonder how difficult it is for wrestlers to learn their script – I know some improvise but . . .

a) How long do you think WWE Raw stars get to learn their lines for promos?

The backstage reports that I have heard indicate that the Raw script is frequently rewritten on the day of the show, sometimes as little as a couple of hours before the shows go on air. So, in those cases, they would not have time to learn their lines at all, though you have to remember that only three or four guys on the roster at any given time are going to be doing extended promos in which they have ten or fifteen minutes worth of lines to keep straight. Everybody else’s promos tend to be shorter, and the backstage interviews are almost entirely pre-taped.

b) Are there many instances where they’ve just forgotten and needed prompting?

People have absolutely blown their lines before, though it is rare that it gets to the point that another wrestler, an announcer, or some other intermediary has to get the wrestler back on track. Often times if things are forgotten, such as a match stipulation, it isn’t so blatantly obvious that the crowd picks up on it, and generally the show’s announce team will be able to fill in the missing information later on in the evening.

c) Do any wear earpieces like the commentators do with fed lines?

I do not recall ever seeing an earpiece on a wrestler during a promo. Referees wear earpieces during matches to receive time cues and other hints from backstage, but obviously that is a completely different scenario than a promo.

d) How encouraged is it for wrestlers to react to what the crowd are saying e.g. “What” chants – do they get told to ignore it or can they respond in some way in line with their character?

Watching over the years, I think it’s fairly clear that wrestlers are given a decent amount of latitude in how to react, particularly the top stars. Obviously if there was an individual who was constantly thrown off of his game by an audience response to a promo, that man would not be given much more microphone time. However, if you are quick on your feet and can react in a way that will either garner more heat or, better yet, diffuse the distracting chant, nobody is going to come down on you . . . in fact, if the wrestler’s response to the crowd works, it more often than not improves the segment.

The great white Ty Hope has a trio of inquiries:

1. In the 80s as a kid, Jake Roberts’ DDT blew my mind. Nowadays, it is used as a transition move by just about everyone. When did this start and who is to blame?
I blame ECW in the 1990s. It seemed like everybody on the damned roster (Raven, Tommy Dreamer, Sandman, even Terry Funk to a lesser degree) would use a DDT or some variation of the move as a finisher, and ECW matches were so full of over the top bumps and false finishes that you saw a lot of DDTs being kicked out of. That’s particularly true when you consider the fact that a lot of the company’s “extreme” matches couldn’t end with a normal wrestling hold like the DDT if they were going to be exciting.

2. Who is the oldest wrestler (at the time of the match) to put on a “five star” match?

That’s a difficult question to answer because a five star match rating is completely and utterly subjective. Because of that, in order to answer the question, I will be using Dave Meltzer’s five star match list. That’s not because I consider Meltzer’s ratings to be the be all and end all of wrestling (and he wouldn’t consider them to be that either) but rather because his ratings are the only ones that online fans almost universally talk about and record, even if it is only to deride them.

Based on Meltzer’s ratings, I believe that the answer to the question is Terry Funk, who was 45 years old on November 15, 1989 when he wrestled Ric Flair in an “I Quit” match at Clash of the Champions IX: New York Knockout. Minoru Suzuki of New Japan Pro Wrestling was also in his 40s (though not quite 45) when his 2012 match with Hiroshi Tanahashi was given the full compliment of stars by Mr. Meltzer.

3. What are some examples of matches that everyone expected to be “duds” but ended up being 4+ star bouts?

Again, star ratings are completely and utterly subjective, but one of the biggest examples of an over-achieving match that immediately springs to my mind is Batista vs. The Undertaker at Wrestlemania XXIII. It probably was not considered a DUD on paper going in, but nobody expected it to deliver anything noteworthy and it turned into one of the best-remember Mania matches of the last ten years.

Another pairing that worked out surprisingly well was John Cena and the Great Khali. There were some bad matches between the two men, but, when they worked together in the main event of the 2007 WWE One Night Stand show, they had a falls count anywhere match that I think legitimately cracked the *** mark when most people probably would’ve expected it to be well into negative star territory. (Negative stars are, of course, below a DUD, which is essentially zero stars.)

And thus ends my latest fill-in run for Ask 411. Thank you all for humouring me, and I’ll look forward to seeing you again in the not too distant future, because . . .

. . . sigh . . .

Total Divas is coming back next month.