Even if you’re a new wrestling fan, you’ve probably at least heard of the Rock & Wrestling Connection. In 1985, the WWF and MTV joined forces to push both company’s products. MTV aired WWF matches and videos, and the WWF brought in Cyndi Lauper to manage Wendi Richter in her famous match against Leilani Kai at the first WrestleMania. Around this time, the WWF released its first album, titled imaginatively enough, The Wrestling Album.
Let’s get this out of the way. The thing absolutely sucked. It was terrible beyond belief; of course, when you’ve got Capt. Lou Albano and Nikolai Volkoff crooning, what the heck do you expect? The highlight of the album, if you can call it that, was the opening track, a remake of Land of a Thousand Dances. The track featured most of the WWF roster taking turns bellowing off key.
Since the album was so terrible, even Vince McMahon knew that it would never win any awards. So he created his own – The Slammy Awards.
Before the show started, roving reporter Jesse Ventura interviewed Roddy Piper who was taking a Slammy, err, I mean dump. It’s experience like this that must make the people of Minnesota proud to have Jesse as Governor.
The actual show proper started off on a low note as Vince introduced Gorilla Monsoon who apparently forgot to “close his barn doors”. Vince told him to “XYZ (examine your zipper)”, and Monsoon uttered what everyone watching probably felt.
Next up, Vince announced the winner of the Slammy for “Most Ignominious”, Nikolai Volkoff. The big Russki came out in his horrible suit (apparently the only one he owns), and was very pleased until Vince explained to him that it was an insult. Volkoff then cut a killer heel promo…well, actually he just kinda screamed incomprehensibly. As was the case with our Steve McMichael audio clip, feel free to email us a translation.
Finally, Roddy Piper won the biggie – the award for best performance in the Land of a Thousand Dances video. The award broke as soon as Piper picked it up, leading him to go off on a rant about how MTV stood for “Music to Vomit By”. Wouldn’t that make it MTVB?
The biggest shocker of the whole thing is that on the video I have of this fiasco, Mean Gene Okerlund is asking people who they voted for, and comes upon a guy who won’t say. Gene then completely shoots with the guy, talking in carny! Keep in mind this is in 1986…
Mean Gene and the winner of a Koko B. Ware lookalike contest share a tender moment.
Amazingly enough, the WWF would bring the Slammys back several times. Of course, we’ll cover more of them in due time.
And if you think they all suck as bad as this, well…you’d probably be right.