The Coliseum Video Rant 1A: Into Dorkness
Jesse Baker writes: “please do a review of the first WWE coliseum home video if only for completion sake”
How could I have guessed that he’d be the one with the OCD reaction to me skipping it? So here’s the first ever Coliseum Video in a special single tape edition!
Wrestling’s Bloopers, Bleeps & Bodyslams!
Hosted by Gorilla Monsoon. Did you know that WWF superstars can LITERALLY fly in and out of the squared circle?
This is an 80 minute collection of clips rather than matches.
– Andre the Giant humiliates Don Muraco during a 10-man tag match. 0 for 1.
– Freddie Blassie gives advice to the lovelorn on TNT. Funny for a little bit but runs way too long. 0 for 2.
– Iron Mike Sharpe squashes some dude, who loses his toupee during the match! That’s a funny bit. 1 for 3.
– Tiger Chung Lee tries to break bricks on TNT, without much success. Vince McMahon is nearly cracking up watching him fail. 2 for 4.
– Lou Albano has a soundbite on TNT. 2 for 5.
– Tony Atlas and Paul Orndorff have a posedown at what appears to be the nightclub from the intros of Seinfeld. Atlas wins the popular vote and Orndorff attacks him. Dunno if this went anywhere. 2 for 6.
– Iron Sheik introduces Vince McMahon to his camel. Sheik is actually trying to focus the interview on Sgt. Slaughter and Vince keeps trying to crack him up and throw him off by insulting the camel. 3 for 7.
– Vince interviews Kamala and Fred Blassie on TNT, and Kamala tries to eat a live chicken. 3 for 8.
– MIDGET MADNESS with the Haiti Kid. 3 for 9.
– Ivan Putski teaches Vince how to polka. 3 for 10.
– Hulk Hogan’s PYTHON POWDER. This of course is the greatest segment on any wrestling tape, ever. 4 for 11.
– Lou Albano gives advice to the lovelorn on TNT. Lou complains about people who don’t use deodorant and are fat. Albano improvising and getting more and more worked up is funny stuff. 5 for 12.
– The Samoans give a cooking demonstration on TNT, which Lord Alfred describes as “smelling worse than the bubonic plague.” Oh, that wacky racism. 5 for 13.
– Rocky Johnson & Tony Atlas win the tag titles from the Samoans when Lou Albano accidentally breaks a chair over Afa’s head. Then on TNT, Lou Albano denies all responsibility and throws his team under the bus. Now that’s a heel. 6 for 14.
– Sal Bellomo makes pizza for Vince and Alfred. This gets a point for Vince making a joke about Alfred’s cocaine use. 7 for 15.
– Adrian Adonis and Dick Murdoch take Mean Gene on a tour of the mean streets of New York. Okerlund and Adonis basically just riff and interact with various weirdos they meet along the way. Mean Gene stiffing the hot dog vendor because he’s too cheap is just tremendous. 8 for 16.
– Johnny V gives his advice for the lovelorn on TNT. His gag is that he misses the obvious sexual overtones of the letters, and it’s not that funny. 8 for 17.
– Andre sings the Fish Song on TNT and cracks everyone up. Gotta love him. 9 for 18.
– Cyndi Lauper appears on Piper’s Pit and Lou Albano interrupts. 9 for 19.
– Butcher Vachon gets married on TNT, and we get a wacky array of terrible wedding gifts at the reception. Blassie buys them glasses so his wife can inspect the tiny cheap diamonds on the ring. Ha! George Steele gives a toast while the heel managers egg him on and everyone seems to be legitimately pounding back the sauce. You can see Sika sitting in the background and just losing it every time some crazy thing happens or Lou Albano says something stupid. Even Jesse Ventura breaks up after Albano randomly comes by and burps into Vince’s microphone. Dr. D, drunk and pissed off at Vince, shoves the cake into the bride’s face, triggering a food fight to Vince’s horror. But then he goes ahead and throws a pie at George Steele anyway. It was lacking a snake in the wedding gifts and thus can’t be the greatest wrestling wedding reception in history, but it was damn close. Well worth looking up on YouTube and it basically saved the tape. Anyone know who the girl with the wrestling mask was? Albano and Steele tear her shirt off at the end before she’s hustled off to the side by the producers. 10 for 20.
The Pulse
Pretty middling stuff most of the way, but that wedding reception was one of the craziest things you’ll see from the 80s and ran for about 15 minutes on its own. And with a .500 record, that makes this one a thumbs up.
