1. Please check to see that your question(s) have not been answered on any other sections of the page. Take great note of the FAQ Part I and FAQ Part II as well as the mailbag archives at the bottom of the page. .
2. Send a legibly written question or comment to mailbag@rajah.com. Please limit yourself to only one question per person per email. This allows us to update the mailbag more frequently.
3. ALL email sent there may potentially be included in the Mailbag. If you do not want your response posted, do NOT send it there!
4. If a name is included, I will post it along with the email. If you do not want your name published, do NOT write it!
5. Remember, it is impossible that every email I receive get posted on this page. Only the best and most popular questions/comments will likely make it on.
6. Also remember, that questions will be answered by either MTR, Pete or Rajah, so any personal remarks should be addressed accordingly. The following color scheme will be used:

Rajah - GREEN
Pete - YELLOW
MTR - PURPLE

From: Deltondo
hey whats up guys how you all doin. well awesome site as usual. onto my short and sweet question. do you happen to know the relationship of the hit TV show in the mid 90's called "Boy Meets World" and the WWF. There have been a couple episodes involving WWF wrestlers including Vader, Mick Foley and Jake the Snake. I was just wondering if you knew anything about the relationship between the two. Your help is appreciated and thanks a lot guys!

I don't know that there's an actual relationship to speak of there, but I'm sure the WWF was all for the publicity. I remember Vader being on the show, but I never remember anything about Foley or Jake.

From: Burke!
Sup rajah.com Crew? In Mailbag #44 a question about Flair was asked. The reader asked if you guys thought Flair had a WWF Title guarantee in his contract. Rajah stated that such a contract doesn't exist... but wasn't Luger guaranteed the WWF Title in 18 months in his contract back when he signed in January of 93? I thought this was to be true and the fact that he didn't become champ was because he shot off his mouth at a bar and lost the right to become champ at WMX. I thought he was supposed to beat Yokozuna for the title and then job to Bret Hart in the main event! Thank you for your time and cooperation.

I don't believe in the whole "guaranteed Title reign" crap that people would have you believe. For months in 1999, people went on and on about how Triple H had a guaranteed WWF Title reign in his contract. I thought it was BS then and I think it's BS now. Luger, or anyone else to my knowledge, never had anything "guaranteed" to him. Yes, he was originally booked to win the Title at Wrestlemania X, but that had nothing to do with any sort of guarantee in his contract.

From: Bonezee
Hey guys, I was just wondering. You know how for The St.Valentines Day Massacre 1999 PPV, and in the main event how Big Show popped out from under the ring. Well, I was wondering, was he under there the whole time, just lying under there, or is there a tunnel underneath and then he can wait in an underground thing and then pop out? I'd really like to know. Thanks.

When the ring crew was constructing the Cage, they rolled a big box down there on a cart and let it rest up against the side of the ring. Show crawled out the side and under the ring with no one the wiser. At least that's the story I remember.

From: Lex
Hey what up, I recently looked for some old WWF video tapes in my closet, and I found many. The most interesting one I found was two royal rumble tapes 1991 and 1995. whoa, I was blown away with the 1991 royal rumble. I mean it was so good, it actually looked like it wasn't planned with everybody trying as hard as they could to get the title shot. Then I put on the 1995 Royal Rumble, I think it was okay but some of the wrestlers were not into it like in 1991. After the 1995 Royal rumble I put on the 2000 Royal Rumble, I think that that one was the worse of all, I mean you can tell who was gonna be eliminated, and they weren't working half as hard as in 91. I think my question is, who planned the Royal Rumble's back then? and Why do you think that some wrestler's aren't giving all they can anymore? thanks P.S. I still haven't seen a better one on one match than Bret "Hitman" Hart vs. Mr. Perfect for the Intercontinental Title (when it actually meant something) at Summer Slam 91.

It could just be that you're interpreting things a certain way that may not necessarily be based on fact, but I agree that in general wrestlers seemed to work harder in the old days. For one thing, the business was more protected, and I'm sure the repercussions were more severe if they did anything obvious to expose the business. Nowadays the business is more open, but wrestlers are also working television more often than ever before, and with that rigorous schedule, there are bound to be screw ups that the viewer will see. In general, it seems that today's crop of wrestler (and I realize this is a pretty wide generalization) isn't as capable (or perhaps simply aren't given the opportunity to) of working longer, better matches, like nearly everyone ten to fifteen years ago was required to be able to do. There seems to be a lack of psychology and ability to tell a story within a match these days. It's just the nature of the business. Now it's catchphrases and t-shirts that sell, and most television matches are ridiculously short. The artform of wrestling is slowly being lost over the years, and I think it hurts the product overall in the long term.

As for the Rumbles, I'm sure Vince McMahon and Pat Patterson have always had key roles in booking them, but I'm sure now a lot of the writers contribute. Part of the reason recent Rumbles haven't been very suspenseful is that only a select handful of wrestlers are portrayed as having a chance leading up to the event and this hurts interest and believablility in such a long match. There should be a ton of upper midcarders with the proper credibility attached to them that a Rumble win could be believable for them, but the WWF seems hesitant to do this and instead only focuses on two or three guys at the top. I think it's a very poor and unnecessary strategy, and there's no reason why there shouldn't be fifteen guys that are built up as having a chance to win the thing, but that's just me.

From: BanNAnasRuS
Hey, guess what? My new favorite word is battery fluid. Yep, that's right, battery fluid. Anyway, i was wondering, do you think Roaddogg will ever get rehired by the wwf. my amigo says that he had a meeting with vince or something like a week aga

I question your source, and doubt such a meeting took place, but believe it or not, I wouldn't be surprised to see the Road Dogg back some time down the road. Vince has given second chances before, so after a little time, I see no reason why he wouldn't consider rehiring the Road Dogg.

From: svm25
I am to let you know you are doing a great job and that your site is awsome. My queation is if Shane and Steph sold each of their 25% of the WWF to Rick Flair, wouldn't that make him the majority owner since Linda owns 25% as does Vince. I may have missed something along the way, so if I am way off forgive me.

Over the last couple of years, the WWF has let a gaping whole in logic develop on that front. You're right to point that out, but whatever they say is whatever they say, so as it stands we have Flair with 50 and Vince with 50, regardless of how it came about.

From: DJWhite25
I think this is a really good question so I'll skip the normal ass kissing and get right to it. I just recently read an article that was written by Bret Hart. He stated that in his contract he had a clause that gave him the right to chose who he wanted to job to on a PPV. (He was referring to the 97 Survivor Series Screw job) Since I have so much time on my hands I have looked through you PPV achieves and I believe that the Undertaker hasn't lost a match on PPV since "Judgment Day" in May of this year. Since he has now been in the federation for ten years does he have the same clause? (I know that he has a lot of pull backstage also which may cause some heat) Also, I thought that the hardcore title was the remains of Austin's skull belt. (look closely at it if we ever see it again) If Rajah or Kayfabe would field this it would be much appreciated.

Bret never had that specific right in his contract. Nobody does. Vince would never give in to something like that, and he shouldn't. Bret had "reasonable creative control", which is pretty dumb in itself because who's to say what is and isn't "reasonable"? Bret felt that it was reasonable for him to refuse to allow his character to job the WWF Title to Shawn in Canada. Vince obviously felt that it was more than reasonable. And therein lies their disagreement. The Undertaker does not have this clause, nor does anyone, though I don't question that he certainly has a tremendous backstage influence about what goes on.

The Hardcore Title has the designed of an old WWF Championship belt.

From: Rob
Hi, my question is conserning something that annoys the hell out of me in the wwf. It is during a no DQ match when one wrestler gets the other in a submission hold and when he get to the ropes the ref breaks the hold, one example of this is cRock v Austin at Wrestlemania X7. Why the hell does this happen?

Carelessness, lack of attention to detail, etc.

From: Wyccanknight425
Hey Guys... I'll spare you what you already know about how great the site is. What I want to know is this: Does it in any way annoy you the way people got behind Owen Hart at his death. When the man was alive most people couldn't care less about the "lesser" Hart. If Owen where alive and well today, I believe he would be a multi time IC champion... Nothing more, and all these people who call him "The Late Great" would be on their way to the bathrooms during his matches.

To an extent. I don't know that they'd be on their way to the bathrooms, but there are certainly a number of people that have jumped on his bandwagon since his death. But that doesn't really bother me. At least they're showing him a certain amount of respect that he deserves, even if it is now, after his death. There's an old saying that sometimes we don't know what we have until it's gone. Maybe some people are learning this with Owen.

I beg to differ with you on the subject of his accomplishments though. I honestly believe that there were exactly three times during his career when Owen would have made a credible WWF Champion. The first was in 1994 during his legendary feud with Bret, my favorite feud of all time. I'm not saying he definitely should have won the Title, I'm just saying that it would have been very believable and he likely would have drawn good money if he did. The second time was in 1996, during his mini-angle with Shawn Michaels. There's no reason that angle shouldn't have been full blown and resulted in a long Owen/Shawn program throughout the middle part of the year, but the British Bulldog, a guy who had proven he couldn't draw in the main event, was given that slot instead. The third instance was in 1998 after Bret Hart was screwed out of the company by Shawn Michaels and Vince McMahon. The perfect angle was set up; it didn't even need to be written. Owen seeks vengeance for his brother and works a program with Shawn for the WWF Championship. Politics intervened because at that point Michaels wanted nothing to do with Owen. Steve Austin was on the rise and ended up winning the Title from Michaels. Even then, an Owen/Austin feud would have been easy to explain following the events of the summer before, but again politics won out because Austin wanted nothing to do with Owen. And yes, I felt that way when Owen was alive.

From: Andrew
Dear guys my question is about 2 of the belts currently being uesd in the WWF namely the World belt and the Intercontential belt. These are not the same belts that were used in the WWF for years and I was wondering why the WWF would have changed them especially considering that they look like rubbish compared to the first 2. I know that the new IC belt was introduced in the middle of the Rock's second reign but I don't know when the World belt was changed, were there some sort of storylines behind the changes? P.S. Anyone else getting tired of hearing Jim Ross say 'GOOD GOD ALMIGHTY' and the Coach saying 'where the sun don't even think about shining,'?

I've gotten used to the WWF Title and don't think it's so bad, but I completely agree about the crappy inferior looking farce of an Intercontinental Title that is currently being carried around by Edge. The WWF simply decided to change the look of their Titles during the Attitude era of 1998. They were giving the entire promotion a new look, and I guess they figured it only made sense to retool the belts as well. The new IC Title was introduced when Austin threw the old Title into a river as part of an angle, and the new WWF Title was introduced by Vince McMahon sometime around King Of The Ring 1998 (before then, but after Wrestlemania XIV). There was no real storyline behind that one.

Great as he is, I'm far more tired of JR trying to pass of "hellacious" as a legitimate word every two minutes. I think that's pretty ridiculous, though he's not as bad with it now as he used to be at times over the past year.

Send ALL Mailbag-related email to mailbag@rajah.com.

The rajah.com Mailbag Archives

FastCounter by LinkExchange