(9/11/05) - Mr. America, Hart/Hennig, Cheryl Roberts, Ken Patera, Sabu
On Sunday, September 11, 2005 at 11:41 AM EST Send all ASK WV related questions to:
askwv@Wrestleview.com
The following questions were answered by Paul Nemer:
A couple of years ago Hollywood Hulk Hogan was playing a character where he was a masked "All American" wrestler (everyone knew it was him despite his mask). After portraying this character on WWE Smackdown for a brief time period, he pretty much vanished. What was the reason that Hulk Hogan left?
Two words, "creative direction." Hogan didn't like the way things were escalating with his character and came to disagreements with the WWE and left. Storyline wise, since Hogan was in somewhat of a feud with Vince McMahon, Vince said that he had fired Mr. America.
Jake Roberts was in a feud with Ravishing Rick Rude, mostly due to Rude flirting with Robert's wife, Cheryl. Was Cheryl Roberts really Jake Robert's wife, or was that just an actress for storyline purposes?
It was Jake's real wife at that time. They later divorced.
If I'm not mistaken, Bret Hart claimed that he never injured anyone seriously in his career. My question is what about the injury he inflicted on Curt Hennig at SummerSlam '91? I know Curt's back was bad, but I thought that the Sharpshooter aggravated it to such a degree that he had to quit wrestling for the amount of time that he did? Or was it a giant work?
Curt Hennig had a bad back before SummerSlam 91'. Going into the match, Curt knew he was at risk of injuring himself even more... and obviously the match didn't help Hennig's back at all and probably did hurt himself a bit more, but it was from the bumps he took in the match, a simple bodyslam, clothesline, any move will pretty much hurt. To answer your question, Bret didn't injure him that night. Bret Hart takes great pride in knowing that he has never injured anyone. As for Curt Hennig, things were skeptical on whether Curt was even going to show up that night because he was legitimately hurt. He could have decided not to show up at the event and pretty much forfeit the title (Like Shawn Michaels has done more than once in the past). But being the team player that he was, Hennig showed up at SummerSlam and dropped the title. After Bret's retirement in 2000, many would ask him if he had one last match, who would he wrestle and he flat out said "Mr. Perfect, Curt Hennig."
They always promote Kurt Angle as the only Gold Medal winner in WWE history. But wasn't Ken Patera also a Gold Medal winner and a former WWE tag team champion?
Yes, Ken Patera won more than one Gold Medal, but it wasn't in the Olympics, it was in the Pan American Games. Listen carefully to when the WWE hypes up Kurt Angle, they say "The only Olympic Gold Medalist in WWE history." Keyword here is "Olympic." Now, even though the Pan American Games serves as an Olympic-qualifying event for some of the sports and pretty much consists of all Summer Olympic sports and non-Olympic sports, it's still considered to be a step below the actual Olympics.
Besides TNA, Is Sabu wrestling elsewhere?
Sabu is also in the indy scene. Last I saw him, he wrestled for UWA (Universal Wrestling Alliance) here in Ontario.