• ON THIS DAY IN WWF HISTORY (May 21, 1988) – WWF Superstars of Wrestling
On this day in 1988, the World Wrestling Federation aired an episode of their weekly TV show ‘WWF Superstars of Wrestling’.
This episode was pre-taped in Duluth, Minnesota and featured matches, promos & storyline segments on the road to the ‘WWF SummerSlam 1988’ PPV.
The card can be found right here:
1. WWF World Heavyweight Title: Randy Savage vs. Virgil
2. Greg Valentine vs. Jim Evans
3. Bret Hart vs. Steve Lombardi
4. Don Muraco vs. Billy Anderson
5. Rick Rude vs. Scott Casey
6. Demolition vs. Buck Zumhofe & Warren Bianchi
7. Koko B. Ware vs. Terry Gibbs
• Hall Of Famer Explains Why He Couldn’t Use Another Gimmick In WWE
WWE Hall Of Famer Bubba Ray Dudley wanted to use his Bully Ray gimmick in his last run with the WWE, but he couldn’t convince Vince McMahon, as the character went against WWE’s anti-bullying campaign.
He talked about it while speaking to Chris Van Vliet:
“I had three meetings with Vince and not just Vince giving me the obligatory five minutes. These were real talks. I remember sitting in front of him and telling him, ‘I’m not doing the Dudley thing again. I’m done. Your version of the Dudleys doesn’t work for me anymore. You told us what you wanted on day one. You paid us very handsomely. We did what you wanted us to do. Bubba we wanted you to work with The New Day, with The Usos, with The Wyatts, we want you to work with any team that we ask you to make them look good.’
But after a year, I didn’t like how the Dudleys were kind of being stepped on. Vince owns the right to do whatever he wants with the Dudleys. I wasn’t into it anymore. I was done with the Dudleys. If we’re going to keep doing the Dudleys, I’d like to split, but I did have something I would like to pitch to Vince. He looked at me and said, ‘I know all about Bully Ray’.
For the first time in a long time, I got stopped in my tracks because you don’t expect Vince to acknowledge something that happened in another company. That kind of told me that whatever I did back then got back to him and that’s a good thing.
So we had the Bully discussions, he couldn’t get around the word Bully because of the ‘Be A Star’ program. I told Vince, ‘Here is how we’re going to work around it. Let’s do the Bully Ray thing for a year and at the end of the Bully Ray thing, story or run, that one babyface makes Bully understand the error of his ways and why you shouldn’t be a bully and now Bully Ray can do all the ‘Be A Star’ stuff with the younger kids, saying I mended my ways.
It was an in-the-ring and out-of-the-ring concept.’ He goes, ‘My god, I love it! It’s great. But in that year, I’m going to get killed by the media because how can you have an anti-bullying program but call somebody Bully Ray?’
Now they can have characters that act like bullies, but calling someone Bully something. That was 50 percent of it. The other 50 percent of it, I’ll save for another day. The back-up name was the Intimidator Bubba. He loved it [but it never happened].”
