Compliment Sandwich: i-Generation Superstars of Wrestling (aka Rodman Down Under)

Rodman Down Under (better known as i-Generation Wrestling Superstars of Wrestling, referred to here on as iGW) took place at the Sydney Superdome in Sydney, Australia on July 30, 2000. This was the only filmed event on iGW's tour of Australia, bringing together some wrestling legends. But at the time, getting competent legends was a tough task, as North America had a fully functioning WWF, a fully functioning (though slowly dying) WCW, and a fully functioning (though also slowly dying) ECW. Though the name i-Generation Wrestling suggested something new and innovative, the youngest male performer on the roster was Johnny Grunge at age 34. i-Generation? Try Baby Boom Generation.

The show is considered among wrestling pundits and fans as among the worst in wrestling history. And to think, people paid $24.95 for this back in 2000. Though the show took place on July 30, it didn't air in the United States until December. In fact, the weekend it aired, two of the three championships changed hands again.

So can i-Possibly say anything nice about this bargain bin PPV? Well, I found video of it, but the commentary is in German. Looks like I'll be watching this one on mute, which may not be a bad thing.

• Opening video package is mid-1990s WCW awful. But it at least establishes Dennis Rodman as the heel. So there’s that.
• The matchup screen looks like it could have been for a 16-bit fighting game.
• Vince Mancini and Ted DiBiase (yes, THAT Ted DiBiase) are doing commentary…for the American audience. But I’m watching the German version. And the announcers refer to themselves as Vince and Ted. Oh, and they’re in a studio. Green screen. What is this, 1986?
• Hey Worm! You’re Ugly! At least the creativity bar is low. BTW: many of the signs from the show were handed out.
• iGW champion Curt Hennig (aka the late Mr. Perfect) calls out Dennis Rodman to start. Set by the way is a weird hybrid of Nitro’s 1997 and 2000 sets.
• Why we’re starting the show with a promo? Time is money. Shut up and fight.
• Rodzilla killer in the front row, by the way. Nice.
• Public Enemy versus the Road Warriors for the iGW tag team titles. Public Enemy apparently are the tag champs heading in. Match was set up by PE jumping said Road Warriors in a press conference. This is a tables match.
• Way to finish that roll, Johnny Grunge. Grunge, if you missed the last post, is the youngest male performer on the show at age 34.
• Road Warriors (or Legion of Doom if you prefer). It saddens me that they’re coming out to some dance pop type music. It makes their 1998 theme tolerable.
• Grunge is hungry. Or something.
• Louie Anderson look-alike does not seem amused.
• I believe the hard camera shot is similar to that of No Mercy, WWF Attitude, and the recently released (at the time) WWF Smackdown. BTW: the game play difference between Smackdown and Attitude are night and day. But No Mercy blew them both away. I’d still take Smackdown over Attitude though.
• Ok, this is a tables match. Why do the teams have to tag in and out?
• Things I don’t miss about the Attitude Era: the crotch chop.
• Is Hawk going for a pin in a tables match?
• Hawk and Rock are the first two out. So it’s just Animal and Grunge for the belts. Rock with a chair, not that there are rules or anything.
• Animal battering rams Public Enemy into the table, and that’ll do it. Well, Grunge walks toward the table, but whateves. Road Warriors win the tag titles.
• Get used to those belts, by the way. They appear again on this show.
• Seriously. Road Warriors with techno music: no. Just… no.
• The i-Generettes appear for the first time. The Generettes are iGW’s answer to WCW’s Nitro Girls. I know a lot of smarks hate these little dance numbers, but they’re a harmless diversion if nothing else. The Nitro Girls are way better though. Just saying.
• Barbarian out first for this hardcore match. Barbarian was of course, one half (or one third) of the Faces of Fear in WCW.
• His opponent: Brute Force, aka Ed Leslie. You may know him as Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake, or The Butcher, or Zodiac, or The Booty Man, or The Man with No Name, or the Man with No Face.
• That bell is unnatural sounding. I meant to point that out in the first match. Sounds like the bell from Jerry Springer.
• For those thinking there’s no such thing as a bad hardcore match, I present Barbarian versus Brute Force as the contrary.
• Swing and a miss on the steps that couldn’t weigh more than like six pounds.
• Crowd is super dead for this one, and I can’t blame them.
• And there’s your obligatory low blow. (The first match had quite a few. This is a recurring theme in this show.)
• Worst. Diamond Cutter. Ever.
• An awful diamond cutter, DDT, and piledriver don’t finish the match, but a boot to a trash can lid does. Okay.
• And would it kill you to sell the effects of the match on the way back, Bruti? Fuck.
• Wild Generettes appear.
• Women’s match next. Brandi Wine with Sugar Daddy (real name: Fred Ottman, best known as Tugboat, Typhoon, and…The Shockmaster). Sweet Destiny with Aussie Joe Bugner. Bugner, by the way, was born in Hungary. A side nugget about Aussie Joe: Bugner was the last man to defeat Britsh boxing legend Henry Cooper in 1971. The decision was quite controversial. Bugner also had a small role in the movie Street Fighter.
• And yes, it did sound like one of the German guys called Sweet Destiny Philadelphia Cunt.
• People seem to love Sweet Destiny and not Brandi Wine. This is probably the most alive this crowd has been since the show started. To quote KB’s Wrestling Reviews, in terms of looks, nothing to see here, especially with Trish Stratus at the peak of her hotness around this time.
• Hungarian…err…Aussie Joe puts the Shockmaster on his ass.
• Wait, the match is still going on?
• Yikes. Superplex looked bad.
• But it ends things, as Sweet Destiny, the “Philadelphia Cunt”, wins. Crowd approves.
• Once again, the Generettes.
• There’s still 45 minutes left in this video and only two matches left.
• One Man Gang vs. Tatanka for the iGW Australasian Championship. I guess that’s their term for Eurocontinental. Or something. In the video, it’s referred to as the International Heavyweight Championship. The belt looks suspiciously like the tag title belts from earlier in the show. Note how quick they cut away from said belt.
• At around 68 minutes, fans looks like are turning on the show. Trash is being thrown on the ramp in the direction of One Man Gang.
• And now they’re showering the ring with garbage. Yeah. They’re checking out.
• The match goes another 13 minutes (and a ref bump) before One Man Gang wins with an international object. That’s two out of two champions to lose tonight so far.
• Again, they quick cut from the championship belt.
• One last appearance by the golden-clad Generettes before we head into the main event, Mr. Perfect versus The Worm.
• How did two future Hall of Famers end up in Australia fighting for a title no one cared about? Hennig’s deal with WCW expired earlier that summer, and Dennis Rodman retired following a brief stint with the Dallas Mavericks, one that saw him get ejected twice in just 12 games. That takes some real talent.
• For those saying Curt Hennig was never a world champion, there ya go. Hennig was the iGW world champion. Hennig was also world champion in the dying days of the AWA, holding the title from May 1987-May 1988.
• Australian Outback rules by the way. Whatever that means.
• Rodman throws the referee out the ring, and somehow, that ends the match. The main event ends on a disqualification. Of course. Pull-apart brawl between the two post-match.
• There’s a post-match interview with Hennig and a highlight package to end, and that’s that.

The hook of Rodman Down Under was seeing Dennis Rodman in a wrestling match. I’m not sure why anyone would want to see Dennis Rodman in a wrestling match. But for those that did, well, you got him for ten minutes. Hope it was worth whatever money you spent on it. In my case, none. And it wasn’t. Perhaps the nicest thing I can say about Rodman Down Under: at least it wasn’t Heroes of Wrestling. And the Generettes were alright. I’d still take Kimberly, Stacy and the Nitro Girls crew though. Hell, I’d take the two beauties that walked out with Curt Hennig over the Generettes.

Back In The Saddle

Well, after a weekend of moving and getting kinda sorta settled, I'm back to making nice of the worst wrestling has to offer. Today's gonna be quite the doozy.

Today, I will try to make nice of recent Wrestlecrap Hall of Fame inductee i-Generation Wrestling's Superstars of Wrestling. Know in the United States as Rodman Down Under, the event emanated from the Sydney Superdome in Sydney, Australia on July 30, 2000, but did not air in the United States until December 1, 2000 (ironically, the same weekend, two of their three championships changed hands, but that's a different matter). This was the only filmed event of iGW's brief existence, as the group was a touring bunch that ran through Australia in late July and early August. Many of the same people behind the scenes involved in putting this show together would reunite a year later for World Wrestling All-Stars.

Now, as Wrestlecrap so astutely points out, when you think of i-Generation, probably the first thing that comes to mind is you're gonna get something new, something fresh, something outside the box. That wasn't the case. In fact, the youngest wrestler on this show at the time is 34, and two others, including main eventer/cover boy Dennis Rodman are closer to 40 than 38. As Wrestlecrap also points out, this is right up there in the false advertising department with the main event of Jerry Lawler vs. Rowdy Roddy Piper in the main event of the 1994 King of the Ring, the first PPV of the WWF "New Generation" era. But let's be honest: pickings were slim, as we were still living in a three major North American promotion world at the time. Also, as this show occurred a couple months before WCW toured the country, this was at the time arguably the biggest wrestling show on their grounds since the WWF toured there in 1986. Yeah, you could see just how starved the Aussies were for pro wrestling.

Originally when I did a list of worst PPVs not named Heroes of Wrestling (which I will do one of these days), I didn't include this show, mainly because I couldn't find any information on it at the time. The little I could find said this show was legendarily bad. Well, let's find out just how bad. 

From ArtODonnell's recent Wrestlecrap induction:

Perhaps the most damning criticism of the event I can offer, however, is that Roddy Piper vs. Lawler, last week’s induction, was far and away better than anything on this pay-per-view.

This is coming from a guy that sits through the WWF New Generation era and reviews the shows from that time. (A side nugget: his blog, "How Much Does This Guy Weigh?" is worth your time and you should check it out. You're welcome.)

KB's Wrestling Reviews:

F. Well that was horrible but I can’t say it’s in Heroes of Wrestling territory. For one thing that show was nearly an hour longer and had some of the most embarrassing “wrestling” you’ll ever see. This was terrible stuff too but it wasn’t dragging the business down to never before seen lows. At the end of the day, this was only an hour and forty minutes with nearly twenty of that being spent on dancing or video packages. It’s terrible but it’s not the worst show of all time by a decent stretch.

An hour and 40 minutes. Honestly, that makes me feel good. The less awful wrestling, the better.

Cewsh of Cewsh's Reviews:

What a wacky show. 

We review a lot of varied stuff here at Cewsh Reviews, so we generally, going in, know basically what to expect (with the notable exception of the Bread Eating Deathmatch). I was sort of expecting this to be like a WCW PPV circa 2000, but that really wasn’t what this was at all. This was an indy promotion who were running a nostalgia show with a main event way out of their depth. The show wasn’t necessarily as bad as the scores will dictate, and may even be enjoyable to someone with a good dose of nostalgia behind them. But the fact that over 50% of this card passed away between then and now, the absolutely awful ending to the main event, and the fact that brute Force is not an esteemed member of the correct 50% just dragged this show down into the doldrums. Which was a shame, because FUCKING TATANKA WOOOO!

Now I'm curious to see what the deal is with the bread eating deathmatch. (Edit: the match is real, alright. I'll watch another time.)

Two Sheds Review, Britian's longest running wrestling and MMA blog:

I think the best way to describe this show is average - and I would have described it as below average if it wasn’t for the final two matches. If someone who hadn’t read this view asked me if I recommended this show, I say no, unless you can get it at bargain basement price, or you can tape it the next time it’s shown on TV. Rodman Down Under will not go down as one of the best shows in the history of professional wrestling, just as one of the most average.

While pretty much all the people above found the show online or bought it in one of those bargain bins, famed wrestling reviewer Scott Keith paid full freight at the time of the show ($24.95 American, which would be about $34 today). He's gonna be pissed, isn't he?

Heroes of Wrestling: The Sequel. I don’t know how Dave Meltzer could give Steve Seiden time on his show the other day without drowning the guy’s incessant hype out with his laughter. Easily the worst PPV of the year, with 5 matches, all bad, and the rest filler. On the bright side, Curt Hennig looked great and I hope the WWF reconsiders their snubbing of him so far, because god knows the main event needs a fresher face right about now. Thumbs down (under) for this mess.

As it turned out, WWF did reconsider and brought Hennig back at the 2002 Royal Rumble. He was a major player for a bit. Then the whole plane ride from hell happened. And then he went to TNA. Then he died. Sad.

Thankfully, I won't have to pay full freight, or any money for that matter. That's the good news. Bad news is, I have to listen to the German commentary. Nothing against German people; I don't know German. Oh well, gonna have to actually pay attention for once.