Post by Deleted on Jan 6, 2017 11:26:05 GMT -5
I'm an old school WCW fan, but I'm always frustrated with how Bossman and Earthquake were used there. It's just depressing to see how these guys, two of the best big men of any area, were continuously repackaged with skechy gimmicks, and inevitably ended up being jobbers. Both Quake and Bossman were still pretty popular when they left WWF, so it's just inexcusable to me how WCW wasted them.
Best case scenario for Tenta, I think 'Avalanche' should have stuck. It was one of the better examples of "we can't call him Earthquake, but he's really the same guy". In this case, we were calling him Avalanche, but we were still thinking of Earthquake. He was still a giant force to reckon with... but then, for some ridiculous reason, they decided to recast him as some Scooby Doo villain called the Shark and parade him around with the Dungeon of Doom, that looked like a bunch of homeless guys who robbed a costume shop. On Nitro 5/27/96, the Giant squashes Shark like he's nothing. How much more impressive would this victory have been if Giant had been pushed to the limit by Avalanche, a reputable big man who once held his own against Hogan, instead of a poorly costumed fat guy named after a fish?
Bossman is a tougher case, IMO. His initial gimmick, "the Boss" was just a continuation of his WWF gimmick. I think it worked, but it couldn't last thanks to Vince. He lost his momentum when he went to that bad Guardian Angel gimmick, and "Big Bubba" always felt to me like they were just saying "We don't know what to do with this guy, so let's just give him his old gimmick." I would rather have seen them give him a character that was a sequel to Bossman, like an ex-corrections officer who was fired for abusing his authority. He would have made a great centerpiece of the Stud Stable, teaming with Bunkhouse Buck while still cuffing his opponents and beating them with a nightstick post-match.
Best case scenario for Tenta, I think 'Avalanche' should have stuck. It was one of the better examples of "we can't call him Earthquake, but he's really the same guy". In this case, we were calling him Avalanche, but we were still thinking of Earthquake. He was still a giant force to reckon with... but then, for some ridiculous reason, they decided to recast him as some Scooby Doo villain called the Shark and parade him around with the Dungeon of Doom, that looked like a bunch of homeless guys who robbed a costume shop. On Nitro 5/27/96, the Giant squashes Shark like he's nothing. How much more impressive would this victory have been if Giant had been pushed to the limit by Avalanche, a reputable big man who once held his own against Hogan, instead of a poorly costumed fat guy named after a fish?
Bossman is a tougher case, IMO. His initial gimmick, "the Boss" was just a continuation of his WWF gimmick. I think it worked, but it couldn't last thanks to Vince. He lost his momentum when he went to that bad Guardian Angel gimmick, and "Big Bubba" always felt to me like they were just saying "We don't know what to do with this guy, so let's just give him his old gimmick." I would rather have seen them give him a character that was a sequel to Bossman, like an ex-corrections officer who was fired for abusing his authority. He would have made a great centerpiece of the Stud Stable, teaming with Bunkhouse Buck while still cuffing his opponents and beating them with a nightstick post-match.
