General Facts and Questions

All of these come from 411mania.com. the questions from users are bolded and the answers are from a columnist that arent bolded

Is it true Owen Hart will never be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame because his widow will not allow it?

It is true that Owen Hart's widow Martha has not cared to have much of an affiliation with WWE since the time that her husband passed away while performing on one of their shows. Frankly, I don't see how anybody can blame her, no matter how much you believe WWE to be at fault or not at fault for Owen's death. She probably never will participate in any sort of WWE Hall of Fame induction for her husband.

However, with that being said, I do not believe that there is much that she could do to prevent the company from inducting Owen in to its Hall if they really wanted to forge ahead in spite of her wishes. I doubt that they will, though, as making the induction over Martha's objection would lead to much negative publicity. Further weakening Owen's chances of getting in to the Hall of Fame is fact that, in recent years, WWE has intentionally tried to stay away from making too many posthumous inductions because they do not want to draw attention to the unacceptably high number of wrestlers who have passed away at a young age. Between the wishes of Martha Hart and the company's general aversion to inducting those individuals who are not alive to represent themselves, the potential for negative P.R. will probably prevent Owen from being inducted for quite some time.

With that said, I do wish to take a second to point out that, in the ten years since Owen's death, his wife has operated a charitable foundation in his name, the main foci of which are college scholarships for Canadian high school students and providing opportunities for low income individuals to become home owners. I would strongly suggest that everybody reading this article check out the webpage of the Owen Hart Foundation here and consider making a donation if you have some money to spare.

theres your answer to whether or not Owen will be in the HOF, Joey and LL

I recently watched the greatly anticipated, yet completely underwhelming Edge vs. Matt Hardy from Summerslam 2005.

This was the initial match of what was supposed to be a long rivalry between the two, based on the real-life cheating between Edge and Lita.

I found the match completely anticlimactic with just a bunch of punching, both guys getting winded quickly, and then Matt getting knocked out by the ringpost. Edge looked pleasantly surprised at winning the match by knock out.

You'd think anything that makes it on camera is a work, yet the match was crap by pro wrestling standards and made Hardy look so weak I have a hard time believing he'd go for it. I mean Edge takes his woman, arguably his spot, and beats the crap out of him so bad with standard kicks and punches Hardy can't continue? How can you respect/get behind a character like that?

It does look like Hardy takes the bump wrong (does not get his hands up in time) and is unfit to continue (blood's probably a blade job yet his eyes are glassed over and his coordination is off), but the ending just makes him look so weak. If he was legit injured and Edge is supposed to win anyway, you would think Edge would get orders from the back to throw on a submission hold so Matt could retain some of his pride.

So two questions:
1) Are there any legit rumors that at least part of the match was a shoot?

2) If not, why do you think the WWE went out of their way to make Hardy look so weak?

The match was completely, 110% without any doubt in my mind or in the mind of anybody else that I know a complete and utter WORK. No portion of it whatsoever was a legitimate fight between the two men. Granted, the Edge and Hardy were working a different, slightly more realistic style than what you are used to seeing on WWE television, and that was probably because they wanted to try to put some doubt in to people's minds as to whether the match was worked or not.

As far as why the match makes Hardy look so "weak" is concerned, Matt himself actually addressed this issue in some blog entries he posted not long after the match happened. He claimed that the way the bout was done would fit in to the structure of a larger story and that it would all make sense as the story unfolded. I would imagine that he honestly believed that as he was defending the match, but, for whatever reason, the storyline that Hardy was playing out in his head never came to unfold on WWE television.

I recently picked up the Rise and Fall of WCW DVD and there was one incident in particular that I remember vaguely and this DVD brought it back. At Bash at the Beach '00, Hogan was coming back and was supposed to win the belt off of Jarrett. Well, I guess he was supposed to lose, but didn't want to blah blah blah. I'm sure you're familiar with the whole ordeal and Russo ordering Jeff to lie down for Hogan, then Hogan going off on Russo and Russo going off on Hogan. Was this all a work? A shoot? A combination of two? I've looked into this further and couldn't find a definite answer.

It was a combination of the two. The majority of what happened on the screen was planned. Jarrett refusing to work the match, laying down, and getting pinned by Hogan was all planned in advance and every party involved – including Hogan – was fully aware of what was going to happen. It was also planned in advance that Vince Russo would come out afterwards, cut a promo on the Hulkster, and order a match between Jarrett and Booker T. for the "real" WCW Title.

However, things departed from the plan somewhat, at least according to Hogan. He claims that, even though it was understood that Vinny Ru would cut a promo on him, Russo went over the line with his remarks and ridiculed the legendary wrestler in manners that were not agreed upon. This even resulted in Hogan filing a defamation lawsuit against WCW and Russo, though the case was dismissed in 2002 without ever going to trial.

We all know the story about when Vince Sr. broke away from the NWA and formed the WWWF in May 1963 and got Buddy Rodgers to be his Champion. To explain how Rodgers suddenly showed up in the WWWF with a Championship belt (he lost the NWA Championship to Lou Thesz in Toronto in Jan.1964), Vince and the WWWF concocted a story about Rodgers winning a "phantom" tournament in Rio de Janiero.

My question(s) is: Did Pat Patterson REALLY win the first Intercontinental Championship in Rio de Janiero or did the WWWF just make up another "phantom" tournament or match to explain the new Championship? If the tournament REALLY happened, who else was in it? Was it the only match on the card? What arena was it held in?

Basically I want to know, if you say "Yes. There was an Intercontinental Championship Tournament in Rio de Janeiro in 1979" How do you know for sure? Other than checking the listing on WWE.com?

There was absolutely no tournament to crown the first Intercontinental Champion, in Rio de Janeiro or anywhere else, for that matter. Unfortunately, as wrestling fans get younger and younger and most of them rely only on the WWE title histories for their information, the story gets accepted as true more and more frequently despite the fact that it is an utter fabrication. The editors of supposedly "independent" sources of information like Wikipedia's wrestling pages do not help matters, as they often accept WWE's version of WWE history as [color:8ac1=blue! important][color:8ac1=blue! important]the [color:8ac1=blue! important]gospel truth, even when credible non-WWE sources discredit the company's version of events.