Surely this was the absolute drizzling shits, you had little Kevin running around forests in no pants, somehow John Tenta turned into a shark, Andres long lost son burst out of a rock, a bloated Ed Leslie became the Zodiac why? because Cocaine

Nobody will forget the YETTAY! attempting to gently rape the Hulkster or how about Loch Ness! who by the time he arrived at WCW had the agilty of a giant statue and teeth like decaying tombstones

They set out to destroy Hulkmania and as irony had it his feud with them killed his face run dead in its tracks. Remember the faux heel turn when they shaved Hogans mustache and he started wearing black and waving around swords? wtf was that?

Anyway what your memories of this group and its shenanigans? was Vader an official member?

 

Vader was not a member. Prior to Nitro my viewing of WCW was sporadic at best. Usually I was busy early Saturday nights with friends or something from when we got cable (July of 93) and could have watched them. So I caught a couple of the segments in King Curtis' cave or whatever that was. Then followed the end of the storyline against Hogan on Nitro, which evolved into them and the Horsemen against Hogan and Savage before Hogan left in April.

 

I've heard Sullivan say the cheesiness of this angle was deliberate, that he had to give Hogan something he totally liked and was comfortable with in order to convince Hogan to trust him for a later heel turn. Sometimes he claims it was to convince him to join the NWO, but the timing of that makes no sense as no one would have thought Hall and Nash would jump in July of 95 when this story started. I think the basic truth of "give Hogan something he likes so he'll work with me later" is valid. I wonder also if Sullivan wasn't so cooperative just to show Hogan how totally out of touch he was, and how the only result of pushing his unstoppable Superman act (which reached heights in 96 undreamed of in the WWF) would be more and more boos.

Even as a kid I though the DOD was complete shit. An obese guy in blue pant acts as The Godfather as Sullivan (who is like 5'6) plays the lead henchman. No one in DOD looked like a threat or were good workers. Just no buys for me and then the stuff from the cave was the worse because I kept thinking 'why does everyone keep finding this cave'.

Whenever I hear Sullivan rant about how business exposing the Young Bucks, Joey Ryan, or any indy talent are, I think to myself about the DoD. Nothing is more business exposing than that.

Even as a kid I though the DOD was complete shit. An obese guy in blue pant acts as The Godfather as Sullivan (who is like 5'6) plays the lead henchman. No one in DOD looked like a threat or were good workers. Just no buys for me and then the stuff from the cave was the worse because I kept thinking 'why does everyone keep finding this cave'.

TENTA IS A GOOD WORKER.

The Dungeon was obviously Hogan's influence affecting the company. Clearly a G rated group of super villians who were never really allowed to build heat or do anything really dastardly. I think it could have worked as a Monster Society of Evil type stable where the ghosts of Hogan's past came back for vengeance. But there were too many heel stables at the time (with the Horsemen deluding the mix) and the Giant was too green to really pull off being the Final Boss of the faction.

 

Tenta, Meng and Sullivan were all good (not great) and could have carried some of the action. The Giant showed a lot as a rookie at the time and could have been used better.

I never cared for the Dungeon much back then (although I'm a fan of almost every member of the original group individually), but I've grown to really enjoy the stuff. The week by week introductions of the characters with Sullivan and King Curtis were actually kind of cool in retrospect. And it all served as a vehicle to push the Giant anyway, which worked incredibly well. The colorful guys were just garnish and they really didn't last long in the main events, really just the Wargames and even that was all about Giant destroying Hogan to set up his debut and also kickstarting the Luger-Savage feud. And I liked Luger's role in the Dungeon once he turned heel but stay allied with Sting. Probably gets a plus grade from me now in hindsight. It was still good enough to beat the WWF in those early MNW battles. And the image of the crazy misfits charging to the ring in the middle of the Mall of America will be an image that I'll never forget!

 

Even as a kid I though the DOD was complete shit. An obese guy in blue pant acts as The Godfather as Sullivan (who is like 5'6) plays the lead henchman. No one in DOD looked like a threat or were good workers. Just no buys for me and then the stuff from the cave was the worse because I kept thinking 'why does everyone keep finding this cave'.

TENTA IS A GOOD WORKER.

 

not at that point in time

The Dungeon is pretty bad but at the same time I don't want to be a fan of pro wrestling in a world where stuff like it doesn't exist

Couldn't agree more with the post above.

 

At the time, it was cartoonish and silly and eye-rolling stuff...but I almost think it would be pretty over now. Would Stardust not benefit from delivering his backstage promos from some weird B-movie sci-fi setting? Or think of whether The Ascension would be more enjoyable if they had wacky Kevin Sullivan as a mouthpiece and really acted like they were legitimately from a dystopian future, cutting promos from a cheap Mad Max-ian post-nuclear desert wasteland.

 

On my rewatches of WCW PPVs and Clashes from 95', when I rated stuff, I typically gave their segments bonus points for the simple fact that it put a smile on my face as I was watching. The beauty of wrestlecrap means something to me as a fan and the Dungeon of Doom is a great example of it (compared to, again, The Ascension or Stardust, which is just crap because it doesn't even bother to go "all the way" with the ham factor).

It's a bad stable. But I actually agree that when you look back on it... it's 100% pro wrestling, warts and all.

 

Having said that I will say I find Curtis Iaukea completely fucking terrifying no matter what rambling gibberish he spit out. That dude looked like some sort of goddamn movie monster who eats people.

As people have said above, the DoD were a bit shit, but in hindsight were at least cartoonish fun. The other thing I like about them is that at least you know what their mission is and why they've come together: to destroy Hulkamania. I can appreciate that at least there was a purpose to them being put together. Compare that to the League of Nations or the Wyatts. Both stables are better in-ring workers than the DoD, but I've no idea why they exist as a stable. Why were Del Rio and Rusev supporting World Champ Sheamus when they should have been aiming for title matches against him? Somehow makes less sense than the DoD.

 

 

Ed Leslie became the Zodiac why? because Cocaine

 

No, because Hogan sent his good friend Brother Bruti (who had betrayed him the year before, mind you) into the DOD as a secret spy!

You act like it was just early DoD that had those problems. 1996 DoD had Ray Traylor join and then defect to the NWO. And possibly the most memorable failure of the whole DoD weirdness, Bron the Leprechaun. I'd never read that story about appeasing Hogan, but it makes sense. It's even more cartoonish than the WWF when he was really big.

Most inexplicable addition to the DoD was Konnan. I still dont know why they bothered putting him in there, unless they had nothing else to do with him (he actually fit in better with the NWO).

Anyway what your memories of this group and its shenanigans? was Vader an official member?

 

Despite possessing a White Castle of Fear and seemingly being a template for the DOD with his feud with Sting in 92-93, no. In fact, they set up a face turn where Vader would be on Hogan's team at Fall Brawl (even saved Hogan in the "Dungeon" set at the Clash before Fall Brawl) but Vader's fight with Orndorff changed all that.

Yeah I remember that Hogan training his team video shortly before Fall Brawl. He had Vader moonsault a dummy or something. I just remember him saying OK VADER TIME BROTHER and Vader doing a moonsault.

I think that was when they were all in camouflage gear and at the end Vader did a flip off of a tank. I think.

At least you could laugh at the ridiculousness of the DOD so that makes them more entertaining than The Authority.

As a 13-14 yr old budding workrate mark I thought it was cheesy as hell........but I did like Sullivan and the never ending stream of ever more ridiculous monsters. Now I kind of love it as primo wrestling cheese and actually have fond memories of it

 

Sullivan has said it was totally catered to Hogan who still wanted to market to little kids, so he set out to make it as ridiculous as possible. I'd say he'd succeeded. Another reason Sullivan in that 95-97 time period is one of my favorite booking runs

One of my high school buddies made a tribute site to the Dungeon of Doom on a angelfire site years ago with his own mini bios for every DoD member. God, I wish that was still online.

I think Sullivan is full of shit re his intentions

these carnies love rewriting history to make themselves look better

Didnt they pretty much drop the horror/supernatural elements near the end of their run? I remember when Big Bubba joined and was wearing biker clothes, and you also had Konnan in his gang outfit, a far cry from the yetis or sharks or zodiacs and such.

Didnt they pretty much drop the horror/supernatural elements near the end of their run? I remember when Big Bubba joined and was wearing biker clothes, and you also had Konnan in his gang outfit, a far cry from the yetis or sharks or zodiacs and such.

It appears all that silly stuff ended around the time Hogan switched back to yellow & red and they were trying to work with the Horsemen and Luger.