On Episode 46 of The Wrestling Culture podcast, Dylan Hales and I talk about the career and legacy of Lex Luger. We talk about his under-rated in-ring abilities, his unheralded drawing power and all coulda-beens that shoulda-been in his career if he hadn't been booked by low-functioning monkeys. We love doing career rundowns and had a blast with this one so please give it a listen.

 

Wrestling Culture Episode 46

Awesome! Listening now.

NICE!!! Keep pumping these out like this!!!

 

Love the Lex Luger topic....nice way to look into him....

 

More territory talk like Texas and Montreal as well...you guys KILLED on those two shows. Montreal is the best you've done...maybe due to LaPrade, you can hear how much he loves Montreal Wrestling in his voice...

This was very enjoyable. I do like the shows when it's just the two of you discussing a topic.

 

I feel like I've been harping on Luger constantly for the past year both on our shows and on this board. This is another of those things where Dylan and I are pretty much 100% aligned on all issues to the extent where I feel like I've made the exact same arguments he makes on this show at one time or another, especially 1. the turns hurting his career time and again, 2. in the comparison with Sting, and 3. The greatness of the 95/6 tweener-y stuff with Sting which is some of my favourite subtle stuff in wrestling history, 4. some of the unfair reasons for his rep.

 

The Turner take over is discussed in the WONs for months before it actually took place in November 88. There are stirrings of it as early as 87 and a number of false starts early in 88 during which David Crockett is a constant thorn in the side of the deal.

 

The one tiny thing I'd question is when you said that Luger doesn't have anything on his resume to put against the Sting-Vader matches. I'd put a lot of that 88-89 stuff against it. The Clash tag match, the Flair matches, the Pillman match, Crocket Cup 87 final, the Steamboat match. I think there's enough there to challenge the Vader stuff.

Really looking forward to this. When I first got into the sheets and tape trading I was a *huge* Luger mark. I had someone put together this awesome Luger comp with 4 hours of his best stuff on a single tape and for some reason this kind didn't charge any more than for the standard tapes he had already compiled. Wore that one out pretty quickly.

Just finished listening to this show after listening to the first half last night and really enjoyed it. Dylan is awesome of course, but I always enjoy hearing the voice of Dave Musgrave. This Nation of Islam guy seems really cool too.

 

One addition: When business started tanking in 1992, the WWF apparently really wanted Luger on the road, but he did have a no-compete with WCW through the end of 1992.

You guys mentioned the Blood Sweat and Muscle tape...is that Nikita / Luger match shown in full there?

 

Been trying to find the full match for a while...you can come close with the NWA Pro showing and the Bash 87 tape, but still not 100% full...

I'll watch the tape when I can and let you know

This show was a blast. Great overview on Lugers career and I found myself shaking my head throughout the podcast.

Hey guys really great show. I thought I'd chime in with some background. I think at the Iron Man they had Luger go over Sting to set up a future opponent for Sting when he got the belt off Flair. Though everything blew up in their face with the injury.

 

With the Luger leaving WCW in 92. I think they let him out of his contract early so he could join the WBF. He wasn't allowed to wrestle for the remainder of his contract. He ends up injured via the motorcycle accident re cooperates. His contract expires, and he shows up in the WWF.

 

The Johnny B Badd title change is confusing. Luger ends up with the belt cause Badd leaves for the WWF. Bischoff says something to the effect that Badd couldn't hang where the big boys play, and instead is afraid to face Luger.

 

Now the talking point of him liking to work with the young talent is an interesting one. It's a point I never really thought about because you'd always here what a prick he was. Though you did hear back in the Horseman days that Tully, and Arn worked with him a lot. Windham I believe said he would help Lex a lot in Florida and showed him the ropes. Dylan mentioned how Luger called the match with Steamer at GAB 89. That was built on mutuall trust. 1st Steamer would call the match on the road, then eventually he'd let Lex call the heat. They'd discuss things in the back. The next step would be Luger not just calling the heat, but when to call it. Eventually, we get to the ppv and Lex is ready to call the whole match except the finish that Steamer called. Luger might have been a prick, but I feel he understands that you need to work and help new talent, just like what happened to him.

 

On a sidenote I love how Musgrave waits in the bushes to ambush Dylan with a pun.

Another great show. It's been interesting following the backlash to the backlash on Luger recently.

 

On an unrelated note, here's a cool Luger story from a buddy of mine: http://tundravision.blogspot.com/2011/07/g...ights-with.html

Great information Shoe

To be clear I'm not even saying that Luger was on record liking to work with young guys - he may have hated it. But he seemed comfortable doing it at a point when most of the upper tier WCW guys absolutely did not.

 

Also - and I should have mentioned this on the show - but him taking a massive pay cut to come in to WCW probably merited some discussion as Luger was on the front end of guaranteed contracts/agents in wrestling, and then ended up being a rare guy in WCW during the MNW's who didn't clean up with Eric on a massive deal.

Talking point: Luger may have done more "damage" to the business than anyone else by bringing agents into the WCW environment.

To be clear I'm not even saying that Luger was on record liking to work with young guys - he may have hated it. But he seemed comfortable doing it at a point when most of the upper tier WCW guys absolutely did not.

 

Also - and I should have mentioned this on the show - but him taking a massive pay cut to come in to WCW probably merited some discussion as Luger was on the front end of guaranteed contracts/agents in wrestling, and then ended up being a rare guy in WCW during the MNW's who didn't clean up with Eric on a massive deal.

 

I should have worded the talking point that Luger seemed comfortable working with the younger talent. Still it's an interesting idea to look at.

Talking point: Luger may have done more "damage" to the business than anyone else by bringing agents into the WCW environment.

I'd say including creative control in contracts was a bigger factor. I know there's not a lot of Alvarez fans on here but his Death of WCW book does make a strong case that it was bad booking and not the amount of money being paid to people that killed WCW and said that based on the money coming in when things were hot some of those guys were underpaid.

 

Also, just because a contract is guaranteed does not mean it has to be a crazy amount of money.

I also don't think the wrestlers were overpaid. If anything, wrestlers are usually underpaid and should probably still make a lot more than they do. Yes, the salaries were a drain when they started collapsing, but I think more than the amount of the contracts, what hurt them was Bischoff not really having a long-term view. He assumed that anyone who was ever a star would always be a star of equal value, and most of WCW's top wrestlers saw their worth plummet by 1999 or so.

There's a hip hop producer that got his name from Lex Luger is actually produced Rick Ross's BMF song that Rocky Romero & Davey Richards used in New Japan.

I really enjoyed this episode (my first) guys. Nice job.

 

Is there a master crib sheet of what the topic is for the other 45 episodes? The labels on Talkshoe and iTunes just show EPISODE # Wrestling Culture.

 

Thanks.

1-42 are just Dylan talking about Confederate Railroad, whatever the heck that is.

I really enjoyed this episode (my first) guys. Nice job.

 

Is there a master crib sheet of what the topic is for the other 45 episodes? The labels on Talkshoe and iTunes just show EPISODE # Wrestling Culture.

 

Thanks.

If you click on the "listen" icon a description of the show comes up.

I really enjoyed this episode (my first) guys. Nice job.

 

Is there a master crib sheet of what the topic is for the other 45 episodes? The labels on Talkshoe and iTunes just show EPISODE # Wrestling Culture.

 

Thanks.

If you click on the "listen" icon a description of the show comes up.

 

Good looking out - thanks.

I really enjoyed this episode (my first) guys. Nice job.

 

Is there a master crib sheet of what the topic is for the other 45 episodes? The labels on Talkshoe and iTunes just show EPISODE # Wrestling Culture.

 

Thanks.

If you click on the "listen" icon a description of the show comes up.

 

Good looking out - thanks.

 

There isn't a list, but I will make it a point to do one, after I get through some G1.

 

And thanks for listening.

So the magical lost episode 47 popped up on my phone and I downloaded it last night for a good listen on my commute in today. Were you guys able to re-record then?

Sadly it looks like talkshoe ate the the episode it claimed was recording and did record the "episode" it said it wasn't recording.