Toxie, Bret “Hitman” Hart, and Alice Cooper All Walk Into A Bar In New Jersey…

Photobucket

The chances of the title of this post happening is higher than it would usually be. You can catch all 3 of these iconic gentlemen in Jersey real soon. Oh, I forgot to mention that when they get to the bar they also run into Debbie Downer from SNL!

SNL alumni Rachel Dratch will be signing her book Girl Walks Into A Bar on April 2nd at Bookends in Ridgewood, NJ.

Photobucket 

Next, coming up on April 7th at the Count Basie Theater in Red Bank, NJ there will be a FREE showing of The Toxic Avenger! The Sexy Armpit will be there to root on Jersey’s first super hero as well. Visit the Count Basie Theatre website for more information.

Also coming soon is the Chiller Theatre pop culture convention at the Hilton in Parsippany, NJ happening April 27th through the 29th. Here you will be able to hob knob with the likes of Alice Cooper, Cathy Moriarty, Robert Loggia, Dean Cain, and perhaps the coolest guest, Dirk Benedict a.k.a Face from the A-Team amongst many others. Tickets are on sale now at the Chiller Theatre site.

And merely a few months away, Minor League Baseball team The Lakewood BlueClaws take on The Hickory Crawdads on June 16th and they’ll be getting some guidance from their special guest in their corner, WWE Hall of Famer Bret “Hitman” Hart. The Hitman will be signing autographs for fans at FirstEnergy Park in Lakewood, NJ. Go to the BlueClaws website to see their schedule and purchase tickets.

Classic WWF/WWE Event Cards from New Jersey #6

wwf,wwe,wrestling,new jersey,meadowlands

Following Royal Rumble ’94, Undertaker went bye bye. After losing his casket match at the Rumble to Yokozuna, he (or someone made up to look like him) literally floated up to the rafters of the arena. When Undertaker returned by Summerslam ’94, he faced an Undertaker impostor who The “Million Dollar Man” Ted DiBiase claimed was the real phenom. The real Undertaker defeated his doppleganger and all was well in the WWE Universe, or so we thought.

Back in the ’80s and ’90s, the WWF was a much different place than it is now. Pay Per View events only took place a handful of times throughout the year, which left several months of anticipation and live house shows to build up the excitement for the next huge event. The pay per view events were filled with drama and action, and none of it was spoiled by the modern day method of blowing their load on Raw and Smackdown. House shows back in the day were even more interesting because if you attended one, you almost felt as if you were in on something that only the people in the specific arena were privy to. Most of the time nothing groundbreaking happened, but once in a while something very cool or spur of the moment occurred. For instance, Diesel won his first WWF championship at a house show shortly after Survivor Series ’94, but the event we’ll be discussing today, The WWF Hart Attack Tour, was pretty routine. It all went down at The Meadowlands Arena in East Rutherford, NJ on Thursday, October 27th, 1994.

As a build up for Survivor Series 1994, The Hart Attack Tour featured a double main event. In what technically should have been the main event since it was for the WWF Championship, (before there were two main title belts) Bret “Hitman” Hart took on his former Hart Foundation tag team partner Jim “The Anvil” Neidhart. The other main event pitted The Undertaker vs. Yokozuna, which gave Taker a chance to exact some revenge on Yokozuna for beating him in the casket match several months prior at the Rumble. It also served as a nice build up for their rematch casket match at the upcoming Survivor Series.

The amazing thing about this card is that the two main events feature 2 WWE Superstars who are main attractions at Wrestlemania 26 which will take place later today in Phoenix, Arizona. It’s wild to think that with all the talented mofos in WWE like John Morrison, R-Truth, Christian, and others, that the WWE opts to feature Superstars who were headlining events back in 1994. Way to keep the new talent down Vince, you basterd! As for the rest of the card, not many of them compete on a scale as grand as the WWE anymore. If anything, you’ll be able to see guys like Doink the Clown, Tatanka, and Billy Gunn on the indy circuit, and chances are you’ll see one of them get inducted to the WWF Hall of Fame somewhere down the line. Jerry “The King” Lawler, I.R.S aka Mike Rotunda, and Abe “Knuckleball” Schwartz aka Steve Lombardi are still employed by WWE in various capacities.

The 1-2-3 Kid, aka X-Pac, appeared recently in TNA, but the others seem to have disappeared. Where has the obscenely awesome Adam Bomb been? Full fledged Bomb Squad members such as myself deserve to know! Lex Luger has been in a quadriplegic state for several years. And of course, we know that the Beast from the East, Bam Bam Bigelow left us too soon.

Classic WWF/WWE Event Cards from New Jersey #5

WWF Summer Sizzler Tour

Have you ever seen an interrogation scene? You know that sort of scene where the hard edged, no nonsense detective won’t let up and shines that excessively bright dangling light down at the suspects face? Well, that would be the serious method of finding out whodunit. The other way to find the culprit would be to hire Leslie Nielsen, no, not Frank Drebin, but the actor who starred in Police Squad, and Naked Gun and about 200 other movies and TV shows. What kind of missing person would warrant a Vince McMahon making a phone call to Leslie Nielsen? The Undertaker, of course! (BTW, Nielsen is also available for finding lost astromech droids)

Back in 1994, one the WWF writers thought it would be cute to have various fans and celebrities claim that they spotted The Undertaker. Taker had been out since the Royal Rumble earlier that year when Yokozuna beat him at his own game, a casket match. After getting sealed into a double wide, double deep casket meant for the the 640 lb. Yokozuna, Taker soared up through the rafters to WWF heaven, or, vacation time as it’s commonly known to the nation’s work force. The Undertaker wound up facing The Undertaker at Summerslam 1994, and it wasn’t as bad as it sounds, and it’s nothing compared the shit the WWE regurgitates nowadays.

The Summer Sizzler Tour made a stop at the Meadowlands Arena on August 27, 1994, a couple of days before the biggest Pay Per View of the summer. Considering the climate in the wrestling world right now, it’s definitely interesting to look back on this card.

Bret “Hitman” Hart, who recently made a return to the WWE, tagged up with Razor Ramon, a.k.a Scott Hall, who is in TNA now, and in desperate need of some of that ICOPRO that they were always promoting back then, even on this list of matches! They took on the late Owen Hart and Jim “The Anvil” Neidhart, Bret’s former partner whose daughter Natalya presently manages the Hart Dynasty in WWE. You getting all this so far? This match was set to amp up the interest in the Bret/Owen feud and get the audience to buy the PPV. One of half of the main event at Summerslam 1994 was Bret facing his brother Owen in a steel cage. Hitman won the match and afterward he got beat up by Owen and Anvil.

I missed Two Dudes with Attitudes (Diesel (Kevin Nash) and Shawn Michaels) win the tag titles by one night. The night after this NJ house show they won the tag belts from The Headshrinkers and went into Summerslam with the gold.

Not much has changed in the WWF’s women’s division. It wasn’t as exciting as the Wendi Richter days after they brought it back in 1993. Around this time, WWF pushed the hell out of Alundra Blayze and they threw every female that was willing to compete at her. The freaky and formidable Japanese wrestler Bull Nakano challenged Blayze here. Apparently Nakano is a professional golfer now. It was just a natural progression I suppose.

There’s no question that the WWF pulls some atrocious crap out of their asses and this house show was no exception. Mabel aka Viscera teamed with Doink the Clown to take on Jeff Jarrett and the late great Jersey icon Bam Bam Bigelow. Talk about burying talent! Did they really have to embarrass Jarrett and Bigelow like this? I’ve been trying to erase the memory of Mabel’s purple and gold jumpsuit every since Men on a Mission first debuted in WWF.

As for the other garbage on this card, Bob Holly took on one half of the Quebecers, Pierre, who also wrestled as a pirate named Jean Pierre LaFitte. The only thing that could be said about this match is that The Bushwackers vs. The Heavenly Bodies was more entertaining. The opening match featured Adam Bomb vs. Kwang, the green mist spitting masked ninja or otherwise known as Savio Vega. I’ve said it plenty of times here on The Sexy Armpit, and that is that Adam Bomb was cool. I don’t care. He hailed from Three Mile Island!!! If only I had one of those little bomb squad football missiles he used to throw out to his Bomb Squad Members. That would’ve made The Summer Sizzler Tour a worthwhile outing.