Pretty simple concept: I'm going to watch one match from every notable feud Dibiase had in the WWF to see how good Ted could be on any given night. It should be noted that I'm more favourable towards positive three star matches as opposed to disappointing three star matches, i.e. matches I felt earned three stars rather than only being three stars.

 

Here are a list of the feuds. Please chime in if I've overlooked anything.

 

vs. Hulk Hogan

vs. Randy Savage

vs. Hercules

vs. Jake Roberts

vs. Bret Hart

vs. Big Bossman

vs. Dusty Rhodes

vs. Virgil

vs. Legion of Doom

vs. The Natural Disasters

vs. The Nasty Boys

vs. The Steiners

vs. 1-2-3 Kid

vs. Razor Ramon

I would suggest throwing 1-2-3 Kid in there right before Razor Ramon. I'd also add Bret Hart. They never feuded, but they had three available matches between 1989 and 1991 (that I'm aware of).

I'd include for the sake of completeness:

 

The JYD match from 87 - curiosity's sake, and this is his first big match I think

 

The Shawn Michaels match - just because it is one of his more pimped efforts that often gets ****+, though I'm aware of HBK-inflation.

 

The Warrior match - from Tokyo, because it's an example of Ted the broomstick worker, in front of a Japanese crowd.

 

The Dustin Rhodes match - because I don't recall a singles match with Dusty, and Dustin is quite green here and they go 10 minutes on TV

 

The Owen Hart (Blue Blazer) match - this is from 89 and an example of Ted as a top heel being very generous to a lower card face while still looking like a top heel

 

Also:

 

He had a feud with Texas Tornado when he screwed him out of the IC belt (Perfect won it), I've never seen it, but pretty sure there's a match with Kerry in 91.

 

As part of the Virgil feud, Ted was also feuding with Roddy Piper, and again, there's a match or even two from 91 that I've never seen.

 

He had a semi-feud with Tito Santana just before the Money Inc. team formed. They had a whole bunch of house shows late 91 and early 92 (Repo Man was involved too). I seem to recall one of the Colesium tapes had a match with Tito, either a Supertape or something like Invasion 92 or whatever. *possibly* this is the one with Sherri cam.

 

The Hogan match from the old Hulkamania VHS I remember being really very good. Hulk always sold for DiBiase.

 

There's also a 15-minute draw with Steamboat on handheld from one of the King of the Rings.

 

I may well join you in this, as well as doing all the Savage matches jdw mentioned.

If we're counting Money Inc, past the Steiners feud, they had some real good matches with the Nasty Boys in late 92, but IRS did the lion share of the interesting stuff, surprisingly enough.

I don't think the Warrior match from Japan is going to help Dibiase's case as a broomstick worker . I haven't seen it in years but I thought Ted had a better match with Warrior from SNME.

That Warrior/Ted match from Japan is awful and in my bottom ten matches of 1990.

It had been YEARS since I watched that, but in the context of watching dozens of Coliseum tapes hosted by Sean Mooney and Lord Alfred Hayes, it stood out as being good. Then again, the competition was stuff like Jim Neidhart vs. The Warlord.

 

You're watching it back to back with matches from All Japan and WCW.

Ted is not actively bad in the match but not great either. Warrior is a complete disaster and essentially gets laughed at by the Japanese fans. Will be interested to see what you think when you get to it in the yearbook.

I'm with Soup on this one. Ted doesn't do anything bad in it, but he doesn't save the match by any stretch of the imagination. He was mediocre at best. He knew the crowd was shitting on the bout so he just bid his time till the match was over.

Is there actually a Neidhart/Warlord match?

 

I kind of want to see that. Just for the sake of science.

He had a semi-feud with Tito Santana just before the Money Inc. team formed. They had a whole bunch of house shows late 91 and early 92 (Repo Man was involved too). I seem to recall one of the Colesium tapes had a match with Tito, either a Supertape or something like Invasion 92 or whatever. *possibly* this is the one with Sherri cam.

If you're going to include Tito, there's a Tito/Dibiase a match from a 1988 Primetime episode. It's probably closer to each guy's prime than the 92 match.

.

There are 2 parts. Amazing.

Am I crazy or is the crowd popping for Neidhart's headlock more than anything Randy Orton has done in ages?

Don't forget LOD

All right, let's get started. Depending on how long this holds my attention I'll get to some of the other matches Jerry mentioned.

 

vs. Hulk Hogan

 

Ted Dibiase vs. Hulk Hogan, Boston Garden 9/10/88

 

Ted drew good heat from the Boston crowd with people throwing paper into the ring ala the NWO Nitro days. Hogan came to the ring wearing his "war bonnet," which made him look like a penis (literally), and his Hulkster license plate. I've heard stories that he also carried around a gas tank at the time, but I've never seen any visual confirmation. I do remember that Apter magazine cover with the "Ban the Helmet or Ban Hogan" headline. Classic.

 

On to the match -- the beginning of the bout was the most exciting part with Hogan dishing it out to Dibiase and Ted bumping in a Ric Flair fashion. It always seemed to me that Ted went to the Ric Flair school of theatrical bumping at least in this WWF run. They kept this up for a few minutes while Superstar Billy Graham gave Hogan the usual fellatio on commentary. Ted then took over with a really poor control segment where he blew off the effects of all that bumping and went into a resthold armbar sequence. The commentators put over how he did so well to weather the storm, but I thought it gave the match a soft belly considering it was supposed to be the mid-point. After taking a breather, Hogan went back onto offence. His second run was cut short by Virgil interfering, which in a better match would have been Dibiase's first transition onto offence and allowed Ted to sell more. After that, the match was mostly Ted beating Hogan up before Hogan went through his Hulk up routine, put on the war bonnet and quickly wrapped things up. I thought the match was notable in not having a long enough heel control segment.

 

Three stars would be awfully generous with this, but I ought to point out that by this stage Hogan was firmly entrenched in doing sweet eff all. I like his brawling sprints from '85-87, but apart from the hot start this didn't compare. I don't think that's a reflection on Ted, who was decent in this match aside from the weak resthold sequence and just got fed to the lions like every other Hogan opponent. Still, no pass on the OJ scale.

Watched the Dibiase vs. Hogan match from Boston Garden as well. It was alright and sort of entertaining but a lot of things pissed me off. It was certainly a Hogan schtick match with him looking completely ridiculous with the war bonnet, cheating endlessly, and thwarting any attack from Virgil. His opening punches looked really good and Dibiase did take some Flair esque bumps and essentially did a Flair flop. I thought Dibiase's control segment was really poor and mainly consisted of a chinlock and armbar. Even though this was a Hogan match, it did go 15+ minutes and it would have been nice for Dibiase to at least convey a strategy of how he is going to defeat Hogan. Honestly, the best thing beside the bumps I could say for Dibiase in this match is at least he did so little on offense that it didn't look completely ridiculous for Hulk to blow through it and Hulk up for the win.

 

Dibiase's performance reconfirmed the notion I have going in. Dibiase is a solid performer in the WWF and doesn't make too many matches atrocious, but he also wasn't willing to make chicken salad out of chicken shit and raise the overall quality of the match to the next level.

What was the deal with Hogan's war bonnet anyway? At the time it seemed like something he randomly did for a couple months that the mags reported, but I don't remember it ever being on any of the TV.

vs. Randy Savage

 

Ted Dibiase vs. Randy Savage, Spectrum 7/23/88

 

This starts off with the same basic structure as the Hogan match w/ Savage kicking Dibiase's ass for the better part of three or four minutes. Savage concludes the opening stanza of the match by getting on the house mic and giving an "Oh yeah" in inimitable fashion. Dibiase's transition onto offence was much smarter here and allowed Ted the opportunity to sell the effects of Savage's hot start while still taking control of the match. There were a number of good cut off spots here preventing Savage from making a comeback. I'm not sure that Ted was the most compelling wrestler at working from the top, but everything he did was well paced and there was enough breathing room for both guys to sell the toll the match was taking. Then, just as the match was starting to build into something better than usual, they went for a cheap countout finish. I kind of liked that Savage evaded Virgil's initial interefence (being an experienced heel himself) and that he couldn't control himself when Virgil went after Elizabeth, but the post-match shenanigans went on for so long that it really felt like they'd robbed us of the final five minutes of the match. If it were a lucha match it would be as though the final fall was missing. So while it may have been a three star match, it should have been higher. Whether that should be pinned on the workers or the road agent I'm not sure. It was highly annoying either way.

What was the deal with Hogan's war bonnet anyway? At the time it seemed like something he randomly did for a couple months that the mags reported, but I don't remember it ever being on any of the TV.

Someone probably has an Observer with the exact details, but it seems like they were going to market it as Hulk merchandise. I think the kayfabe reason had something to do with Bad News Brown, as though Hogan needed protecting from a heel.

vs. Hercules

 

Ted Dibiase vs. Hercules, MSG 1/23/89

 

This was slightly clipped, but basically Virgil was barred from ringside for the duration of the contest and the match started off with Dibiase getting his ass kicked. Sense a pattern emerging here? Ted's selling was pretty good considering how poor Hercule's offence was in comparison to Hogan and Savage, but again the portion where Ted was on top was too short and not particularly interesting. (Not that Hercules could have made it interesting, but they the middle portion of Ted's WWF matches seem to be cut right out.) Once Hercules was back on top, Ted did some nice overselling but it didn't really make for a hot contest like short, fast paced matches sometimes are. The finish was screwy with Ted winning with his feet on the ropes and then the ref overruling the decision when Virgil attacked Hercules before the original decision was announced. Not much of a match, but I wasn't expecting much from Hercules.

Dibiase's performance reconfirmed the notion I have going in. Dibiase is a solid performer in the WWF and doesn't make too many matches atrocious, but he also wasn't willing to make chicken salad out of chicken shit and raise the overall quality of the match to the next level.

 

This is my feeling on it too. Soup you summed it up in one sentence. Plus as a guy who grew up in St. Louis and Houston I am a fan of Teddy.

Kinda surprised to see offense being the thing letting Ted down in these matches. Is he doing his signature high spots? The suplex, the piledriver, the fist drop, the powerslam? Are these things 1. Missing from these control segments? And 2. "not interesting"?

 

95% of WWF matches from this era go shine - control / heat - comeback - finish so the getting his ass kicked to start (presumably followed by a bail) is expected in the first 4-5 minutes. But it sounds like his control segments are cut short in these matches.

In Hogan match he did none of those things and I would say of the fifteen minutes he was in control or about 6-7 minutes between his two control segments.

That really is a surprise. Also shows that my memory has become defective, part of the experience of getting into your 30s I guess. I distinctly recall him doing at least a suplex and a piledriver against Hogan. Is this the match from the Hulk's Greatest Matches (or Hulkamania) VHS?