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Post by héad.casé on Apr 23, 2020 15:30:38 GMT -5
"When I was 18-19, I was training from Japan, and WWF at the time was working in the Florida area. I get a call from Pat Patterson, he was booking at the time, and gave me a couple dates. I was working West Palm Beach, Tampa area. The one that you see me in a still on is the Saturday Night Main Event in Tampa. It was at the Sun Dome, USF. I was refereeing Randy 'Macho Man' Savage with Elizabeth at the time against George 'The Animal' Steele. That was a night time television show on NBC at the time. It was working pretty good for the company. It was my first time being known as a ref. So that's pretty cool. "That was the '80s. A couple of really big guys that didn't listen. It's kind of like my kids but just bigger. I got to referee Hogan's match against Orndorff, Shiek, Putski a bunch of guys." "One good thing about refereeing is I have nothing but total respect for referees after doing that, going forward. I know how hard it is to referee and to be there. You're the third person on the match, and you can make or break a match being there at the right time or the wrong time making the right call making a judgment call." www.wrestlinginc.com/news/2020/04/dean-malenko-on-why-he-left-wwe-669581/I really don't remember Dean being a ref in the WWF in the 80's. Does anyone else? I want to track down these shows now just to see how he did. |
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Post by Joe Neglia on Apr 23, 2020 15:39:27 GMT -5
December 19, 1985 - Dean's phrasing is slightly misleading here. He *was* a ref at those tapings, reffing both a Savage/Steele match and a Volkoff/Kirchner match, but those two matches were taped for the syndicated Championship Wrestling program and not aired as part of the actual SNME TV show. Here's the Volkoff/Kirchner match: www.youtube.com/watch?v=jccFb3sc1qgHere's the Savage/Steele match: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jlyn2Iw7DJ8 |
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Post by floundertime on Apr 23, 2020 16:07:43 GMT -5
December 19, 1985 - Dean's phrasing is slightly misleading here. He *was* a ref at those tapings, reffing both a Savage/Steele match and a Volkoff/Kirchner match, but those two matches were taped for the syndicated Championship Wrestling program and not aired as part of the actual SNME TV show. Here's the Volkoff/Kirchner match: www.youtube.com/watch?v=jccFb3sc1qgHere's the Savage/Steele match: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jlyn2Iw7DJ8I watched the Volkoff/Kirchner match. 2 things about it. 1) WTF is. a peace match? Was Russo booking this? 2) Dean looks now like he did then. He must of got advice from Arn and Greg Valentine |
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Post by Aceorton on Apr 23, 2020 21:00:05 GMT -5
That 's the same Savage-Steele match from the 1/14/86 SNME on the Network. Maybe they re-used it in syndication? |
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Post by Joe Neglia on Apr 23, 2020 21:13:52 GMT -5
That 's the same Savage-Steele match from the 1/14/86 SNME on the Network. Maybe they re-used it in syndication? Without having a copy of the original airing to verify, it's possible, absolutely. I'm using thehistoryofwwe.com on this, and they've got those two matches marked as airing on Championship Wrestling at later dates (Volkoff/Kirchner on the 1/18/86 episode and Savage/Steele on the 1/25/86 episode) with the other four matches from that night airing on the actual SNME broadcast. That said, that site's way of marking the shows for this sort of thing is confusing and lacking, so all six very well could have aired on SNME with those two picked to "headline" a couple of syndicated shows as well. Or, the Network just runs the whole thing the way they originally taped it and aren't worried keeping things "exactly as they aired". I personally can't recall an SNME that had that many matches on it, but we are talking about typical WWF 5-10 minute matches, so...who knows. Sidenote - That SNME aired on 1/4, not 1/14. Taped on 12/19/85. |
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Post by Aceorton on Apr 23, 2020 21:28:58 GMT -5
That 's the same Savage-Steele match from the 1/14/86 SNME on the Network. Maybe they re-used it in syndication? Sidenote - That SNME aired on 1/4, not 1/14. Taped on 12/19/85. Yes, my typo. |
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Post by Joe Neglia on Apr 23, 2020 21:34:18 GMT -5
Sidenote - That SNME aired on 1/4, not 1/14. Taped on 12/19/85. Yes, my typo. Oh, sorry, figured it was WWE not getting their info correct; seems to happen on there a lot. |
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Mozenrath
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Post by Mozenrath on Apr 23, 2020 21:38:50 GMT -5
Dean Malenko had that "referee or police officer" look to him. No wonder they'd ask him to ref. Helps they tend to prefer their refs to not be very tall. |
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Post by BlackoutCreature on Apr 23, 2020 21:39:20 GMT -5
1) WTF is. a peace match? Was Russo booking this? It was meant to play off some recent summits between Reagan and Gorbachev that went a long way towards easing tensions between the two nations during that period of the Cold War. The idea was that, in celebration of the thawing tensions, the two men representing their nations would have a clean and friendly technical contest showing off both men's skills and let the better man win, instead of the heated, shenanigans-loaded brawl that two arch rivals of their stature would be more noted for. Yeah, it's kinda abstract in concept, but to compare it to Russo-level stupidity I think is rather unfair. |
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Post by cabbageboy on Apr 23, 2020 22:23:06 GMT -5
Malenko said he was 18-19 during all of this stuff? According to his Wiki he was born in 1960, so he would have been 25 or so. That is more of the age that makes sense for a ref, since I can't imagine the WWF throwing an 18 year old out there as a ref.
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Post by Joe Neglia on Apr 23, 2020 22:44:25 GMT -5
Malenko said he was 18-19 during all of this stuff? According to his Wiki he was born in 1960, so he would have been 25 or so. That is more of the age that makes sense for a ref, since I can't imagine the WWF throwing an 18 year old out there as a ref. I imagine it's more of a "it all blurs together after all this time" deal. Malenko got started in the business at 18-19, in 1979 as a referee. Outside of 9 matches he had for UWFi in 1985, he wouldn't actually start as a wrestler until 1988. His referee days are probably a big blob of a memory to him now. As for WWF throwing an 18 year old referee out there, they did just that with this guy, who started in 1988:  |
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Cranjis McBasketball
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Post by Cranjis McBasketball on Apr 23, 2020 23:07:30 GMT -5
Malenko said he was 18-19 during all of this stuff? According to his Wiki he was born in 1960, so he would have been 25 or so. That is more of the age that makes sense for a ref, since I can't imagine the WWF throwing an 18 year old out there as a ref. I imagine it's more of a "it all blurs together after all this time" deal. Malenko got started in the business at 18-19, in 1979 as a referee. Outside of 9 matches he had for UWFi in 1985, he wouldn't actually start as a wrestler until 1988. His referee days are probably a big blob of a memory to him now. As for WWF throwing an 18 year old referee out there, they did just that with this guy, who started in 1988: All time does blur together. Just today I was asking a co-worker, he’d worked under me for a while and then moved jobs, pandemic caused me to be moved, so now I’m under him. I asked him how long it’s been since he switched. I figured maybe 8 months, tops. It’s been two years. I have zero idea where all that time went. |
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Post by GuyOfOwnage on Apr 23, 2020 23:11:35 GMT -5
For anyone curious:  |
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Post by Joe Neglia on Apr 23, 2020 23:13:28 GMT -5
For anyone curious: Dean's internal monologue at that exact moment: "I can take this SOB." |
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Post by Mozenrath on Apr 24, 2020 5:34:37 GMT -5
I am so used to Dean's later hairline that this is kind of jarring.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 24, 2020 7:04:17 GMT -5
For anyone curious: Dean's internal monologue at that exact moment: "I can take this SOB." The first thing I saw in this photo was that he was staring at Elizabeth so your caption freaked me the hell out for a second there.  |
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Post by Clash, Never a Meter Maid on Apr 24, 2020 8:20:19 GMT -5
For anyone curious: Without context it looks like Randy’s yelling “what’re you looking at? Why are you just standing there?” |
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Post by johnnyk9 on Apr 24, 2020 16:29:49 GMT -5
Cool never noticed this
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Yes this is me...
