• On This Day In WCW History (September 4, 1995) – WCW MONDAY NITRO (DEBUT EPISODE)
On this day in 1995, Ted Turner’s World Championship Wrestling aired the DEBUT episode of their weekly TV show ‘WCW MONDAY NITRO’.
It was broadcasted LIVE from the Mall of America in Minneapolis, Minnesota and featured matches & segments on the road to the ‘WCW Fall Brawl 1995’ PPV.
The card can be found here:
1. Brian Pillman vs. Jushin “Thunder” Liger
2. Ric Flair vs. Sting
3. Hulk Hogan vs. Big Bubba Rogers
• AEW Wrestler Trained With The Undertaker Before WrestleMania 34 Match
On this week’s AEW Unrestricted, Ricky Starks recalled the time he used to train with The Undertaker, as they shared the same gym.
“So just to give you a back story, I used to go to a gym called Onnit here in Austin, and this is whatever year it was where Taker has to wrestle Shane [McMahon] for that ‘Mania in Dallas. So he was getting ready for that. So, that’s how I initially met Taker, was at that gym.
We would always work out at the same time, and at that time, Taker was getting ready. He had a guy that worked at Onnit who was filming a documentary for him because he was going to slow down, and he was going to eventually retire maybe that following year. So, he wanted something for his kids to see how the process of getting into it was, and so I met him there. I talked to him, and we kind of kept in contact.”
He then brought up the documentary “True Wrestling”, where he and tag team partner Aaron Solow sat down with Undertaker to discuss all things wrestling.
“Then Brandon, who’s doing the documentary, wanted to do a documentary on independents and how things worked. So, he followed us one week through a loop from San Antonio to Laredo, all the way to Mexico, to Monterrey for Riot [Lucha Libre].
And so in this whole documentary, he wanted a segment where we actually sat down with Taker, went to a barbecue joint. I just picked his brain, and I promise you we went to this barbecue joint – BK’s – that Taker frequents quite a bit. And we sat there for like three and a half hours. We just talked to him, I was asking all these different questions. I saw how he trained, where he trained at. I asked him about Don Jardine and walking the ropes, like, I’m a huge nerd when it comes to that.
I remember one time I had the idea of like being ‘Spoiler #5 or #4’ something crazy on the independents, and told him about that, but it’s so bizarre because sitting there with him and talking to him, I gained a lot more insight on how things worked. And him being my favorite wrestler of all time, I couldn’t process; I couldn’t process it at all, and a lot of people don’t realize is that I get a lot of my ideologies in the way that I do things in the ring from Taker.
You would look at me and you’ll be like, oh, I wouldn’t have expected Undertaker to be his favorite. I thought it would be like The Rock or something. But no, Undertaker’s literally my favorite wrestler of all time.”
He then revealed that he ran drills with Taker before his match with John Cena at WrestleMania 34.
“That experience was so cool to have because who else can get that? So, we sat on a couch together and he reviewed my match from one of the local independents. There’s a picture of him just him sitting right here and me sitting right here from behind. Then, a few years later, he needed to get prepared to wrestle Cena, and we went in for like two days straight and I just did nothing but heat drills on him.
Honestly, Taker is really big on story, and the one thing that he reinforced into me is that you can literally make a story out of anything. And that is the God honest truth.
Case in point – we had a tag team match in Laredo. There’s a group of guys who are big fans of Whataburger, and so there wasn’t much of a story to it, but I remember just grabbing the microphone and cutting in a promo and letting people know that I thought In-And-Out Burger was way better than Whataburger. And there are people who are legitimately pissed off about it, and so we just went with it from there. Just the fact that you can make a story out of anything is the best key of advice that I could give to anyone.”
Starks then answered fans’ questions on Twitter, and replied the following to a person who asked if he had received review from Taker on his AEW debut.
“No actually, I haven’t. Taker has been enjoying the retirement life, and he’s pretty much removed, obviously, besides his close circle. I haven’t had much contact with him since that whole documentary series went out. I definitely sent Michelle some messages to say hi, just to keep in touch, but they’ve really just been off living their life. There’s a cabin I think they have where they just go out and fish, and they just hang out all day off the grid.”
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