King of the Ring: The Early Years

[DrVenkman PhD 0]

Ray Combs?

[TheSSNintendo 0]

Yeah, that guy. Art Donovan sounds like a broken record. Other than Art's commentary, this show is pretty good.

[kirk angel 0]

I don't think I've ever hated anyone as much as I did Owen during his whole feud with Bret

[Danville_Wrestling 0]

Watching this show made me think about the WWF in 1995 with Diesel on top. I think the biggest problem they had by far was that everyone who was a top star was a face with no decent heels to feud with. From WM until roughly Sept./Oct. of 1995 they had Nash, Michaels, Bret, UT, Bulldog, Luger....all faces. This was a major problem since they couldn't put Diesel against hardly any of those guys since they were more over than he was, so we got the dreary Sid and Mabel feuds. Hell late in his run they had Bulldog do a heatless heel turn and I think he was even more over with the fans than Diesel.

 

Coming to this thread a bit late, but I agree with this 100%. I've been watching the 1994 season of RAW so I've been following the storylines up to and after the KOTR tournament (so I'm right at the point the Million Dollar Corporation starts forming...joy). It seems to me the best way to go with Diesel if you assumed he still beat Backlund was to have Luger turn heel instead of Tatanka at SummerSlam 1994. The heel turn would've worked better for Luger (since heel Tatanka sucked) and this would have provided Diesel a much better feud against the Corporation than Sid. Hell, Luger could've won the belt off of Diesel at the first In Your House thereby giving him the World title he wanted and that may have prevented Luger from jumping ship to WCW in mid-1995.

 

I liked the 1993 show the best, but 1994 wasn't a bad effort. At least in the 1994 version you had no byes in the tournament. Looking at the bracket, though, the top part appeared stacked to me with IRS, Razor Ramon, and Bam Bam Bigelow as opposed to the lower half of which I only saw Tatanka and Owen as threats to make a deep run. I always thought Mabel being in the tournament as a waste of time and they should have just put the newly arrived Bob Holly (then known as Thurman Plugg) in that spot and then had Mabel job to Bigelow in the qualifying match instead.

[cabbageboy 0]

I'd never considered this, but I think you're right about Luger. By mid 1994 his whole All American face run was dead in the water anyway, while I still think Tatanka had something left as a face (certainly more than as a heel). Luger should have sold out to Dibiase and cut a promo saying he was sick of being screwed over by refs, the WWF, fans, etc. It actually would have made total sense given his frustrating inability to win the WWF title.

[Darth Pipes 0]

I really wish Backlund had gotten a longer run. I enjoyed his heel run but it was over before it really got going.

[10 Pounds 0]

Finally had the chance to watch KOTR 1994 over the weekend. I think the 1993 is overall better than 1994. You can't do a better 5 minutes match than Owen/Kid but it's still way too short. Owen Hart as the heel little brother is one of my favorite character of all time, so it was nice to see the coronation speech once again. Of course, Art Donovan is completely awful as a color commentator. He's not the worst of all time but he's at the bottom of the barrel. Why would he be calling the entire show instead of just a match when he clearly had no knowledge of wrestling ?

 

- Doesn't know any of the wrestlers. Picks Razor as the winner only to predict his defeat in the finals.

- "How much does this fellow weighs ?" ....that would be okay for Yokozuna, not for Owen Hart.

- "How do you call that ?" "A chinlock."

- The best was when Neidhart just did his big turn, Macho and Gorilla were selling the drama and Donovan said "I just have one thing to say....did you guys acted like that when you were wrestling ?"' They totally ignored him to the point the cameras didn't even bother to show him on screen.

 

 

[DrVenkman PhD 0]

Yeah, the stuff with Art during the Neidhart angle was tremendous. Like, you think MAYBE someone's clued him in and he's going to say something relevant, then he just asks a dumb question.