• Old School Wrestling Manager Would Have Celebrated His Birthday
Today would have been the 84th birthday of Old School Wrestling Manager Skandor Akbar (Real name: Jimmy Wehba).
Akbar made a name for himself as a Wrestler and later on as a manager in Fritz Von Erich’s World Class Championship Wrestling territory.
After the demise of the promotion, he then followed most of the WCCW roster to the Global Wrestling Federation, which also had its home in Dallas, Texas, and is considered the unofficial successor.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY & REST IN PEACE!
• OLD SCHOOL HISTORY (September 29, 1997) – WWF RAW IS WAR
On this day in 1997, the World Wrestling Federation aired another episode of their weekly TV show ‘WWF RAW IS WAR’.
It was broadcasted from the Pepsi Arena in Albany, New York and featured matches, interviews & storyline segments on the road to the ‘WWF In Your House 18: Badd Blood’ PPV.
Here’s the card:
1. Vader vs. Davey Boy Smith
2. Faarooq vs. Ahmed Johnson
3. Goldust vs. The Sultan
4. Los Boricuas vs. The Headbangers
5. The Undertaker vs. Triple H
• WCW Legend Recalls Ultimate Warrior’s WCW Run Turning Out To Be “Really Bad”
During a recent edition of 83 Weeks podcast, former WCW President Eric Bischoff talked about late WWE Hall of Famer The Ultimate Warrior’s debut in WCW and how it went.
Below is what Bischoff said:
“There was a lot of anticipation. Look, Warrior had a lot of equity built up with the WWE audience. He was a known commodity. Nobody would have ever expected-with all of the heat between him and Hulk Hogan-nobody would have expected him there.
There was this built-in, natural, promotional effort without having to expand any promotional effort on our part. It was automatic.
The wrestling audience wanted to see what the hell is going to happen when these two come together because there was so much natural heat and story in the WWF.
On his first Nitro appearance was when I knew I was in trouble. Everything else that happened after that was a decree of how bad it was going to be ultimately. When he first showed up and we walked through it and blocked it, everybody had a good idea of what the first promo was going to be.
We knew that we had 8-10 minutes. Again, we had flexibility. We worked for the television company that owned us so there was a little room for margin of error when you are on live.
But that first promo going back to his first appearance on Nitro, it was scheduled to only be 8-10 minutes, and somewhere along the 20-22 minute mark when Hulk Hogan and I were staring at each other in the middle of the ring and asking what the f*ck he is talking about.
We were completely lost, and so was the audience, and director, Craig Leathers is screaming in my ears, we were going so far over that even the margin for error that we had built in that the first promo that Warrior had shot went beyond 20 minutes.
For a promo, I don’t care who it is, that is a long promo. Everything that happened after that was confirmation that it was going to be really bad.”
You can watch the finish to the Hogan-Warrior match at WCW Halloween Havoc 1998 below:
ALSO READ: Hulk Hogan’s Possible Role At WWE Crown Jewel PPV.
