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[1993-03-22-WWF-Raw] Michael Landon Awards / Andre the Giant tribute


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  • 1 month later...

This is an AMAZING video with "A Whole New World" playing in the background the whole time as they show random celebrities being honored.

 

Hulk Hogan does a speech in full wrestling promo mode complaining about the lack of food at his table, which is funny.

 

Then we get a video about how wonderful and charitable the WWF is, of random wrestlers posing with children. Tatanka wants you to stay away from drugs. The Nasty Boys hate smoking. Randy Savage wants you to stay in school and off drugs. To close things off of that section of this, we get Vince's smiling face while soft piano music plays.

 

Hogan then does a speech extolling the virtues of Vince McMahon, calling him "the true champion of children". Then Vince does a speech.

 

You don't think the WWF is trying to rebuild their public image, do you?

 

Then we switch to a nice Andre video tribute that's very well done.

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  • 3 months later...
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  • 7 months later...

I wish they weren't so self-congratulatory about it because by all accounts they really do a whole of work with kids. I was reading something totally non-wrestling related a few years ago about celebrities working with charities and it cited the WWF as a huge contributor and that they almost never turn down Make-A-Wish and other similar stuff.

 

But it's impossible to not roll your eyes at packages like this. I don't remember seeing as many of these type of packages when the WWF/E is doing well and not getting much bad press. They did it a few months back when GLAAD was coming down hard on them too. The cynical side of you thinks they do it just have it ready to say "No, really...we ARE good people."

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  • 1 year later...

I almost confused Linda Hogan with Debra McMichael. Would have preferred Savage introducing instead of Hogan. A year before, Vince was getting grilled on Donahue. Now he is receiving an award. The video of the wrestlers telling the kids what to do comes off so hokey. I think the kids would rather smoke and do drugs than work out six days a week.

 

No official ceremony but Andre becomes the first entrant of the WWF Hall of Fame.

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  • 3 months later...

Cindy Crawford! Leslie Neilsen! Susan Lucci! Eli Wallach! Sean Mooney!

 

"When it comes to helping kids, no superstar has a bigger appetite than Hulk Hogan!" Hulk then CUTS A PROMO on children's leukemia. His biggest body part is his HEART. Which is just as big in every other WWF superstar. Yeah, on some level this is a nice effort but on another level this is pretty blatant pandering and ego-stroking. Brian Knobbs informs us that despite being as Nasty as they wanna be, smoking makes you not cool and a jerk. Some more incredibly generic "just say no" messages follow. A still shot of Vince has a caption acknowledging him as the WWF's CEO, which is probably a first for actual WWF television. SMILES ON FACES.

 

I'm completely serious when I say that if I'd been a terminally ill child, my "Make-a-Wish" would have been to make a TV appearance with a babyface and have it used as a set-up for a dastardly heel act. Actually it would have been less like a "wish" and more like a demand. There had to be other young wrestling fans who felt the same way.

 

The Andre video is a million times better. Lots of familiar images--blocking out Alfred Hayes' entire face with his hand, holding four women up, pouring champagne over Hogan, and of course choking Bob Uecker. Was the WWF Hall of Fame something initially cooked up to pay tribute to Andre or was it something in the works already?

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  • 1 year later...

Clips of Cindy Crawford, Leslie Neilsen, Hogan, Savage at Landon Awards. More stuff on WWF superstars telling kids not to smoke, do drugs, etc. Closes with a shot of Vince which identifies him as CEO. Then more of Hogan speaking, introducing McMahon for an award from the charity. Extended time for Hogan should've been a sign he was coming back for more than just Mania. Solid speech from Vince. Then we cut to a video announcing Andre for the WWF HOF. Great footage of him with Hogan celebrating title win, on Carson, with Vince, other classic shots. Nice video.

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  • 2 months later...

The Vince speech is something else with him calling it the most proud moment of his life. As self-congratulatory as this whole sequence was, I did get a sense that Vince at least believed himself that some of this was true and we got a slightly more genuine view of him than we are used to.

The Andre video was awesome and complete class all the way. One of the more touching moments of 1993.

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  • 1 year later...

The Andre tribute was beautiful. This was so much better than the stuff I've heard that they do today, with the long, drawn-out tributes, the entire roster in the ring, and (in some cases) angles being made out of a guy's death.

 

One thing I noticed is that there was just as much footage of heel Andre as there was of face Andre. I understand that his heel run had come more recently and thus was more remembered by the current fans, but it was shocking at the time to see a dead wrestler's heeldom celebrated. In the pictures we see of him as a heel here, he looks like he's having the time of his life, which is wonderful for him. I still would have turned him face and retired him after he lost to Hogan at Mania III, though. If JCP/WCW or another American promotion could have found a use for him, good for everybody.

 

As for the Landon Awards, I honestly had no problem with the segment, even if it was done with good publicity in mind. But why take ten minutes out of a sixty-minute program (minus commercials) to do this? Couldn't they have cut it in half, deep-sixed the "just say no to drugs" stuff and Hogan complaining about the lack of food at the wrestlers' table (which was tacky even as a joke at a function like this) and just shown him introducing Vince and Vince accepting? We also didn't need all the celebrity shots at the start, which were just a way of saying, "See, we are too big-time entertainers. REALLY! We hang out with Susan Lucci and Leslie Nielsen and Sara Lee Kessler and all the beautiful people!"

 

(At the time, Ms. Kessler was a news anchor for WWOR, which either had been or still was the WWF's main station in New York, depending on when they switched to the Fox station, WNYW. WWOR was also a superstation which carried all three WWF syndicated shows to a nationwide audience. Within months, it would hire Sean Mooney as a news anchor when he was let go by the WWF.)

 

I don't doubt for a moment the sincerity of all involved, even if the piece comes on several degrees too strongly. I just wish we hadn't had to sit through ten minutes of it.

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  • GSR changed the title to [1993-03-22-WWF-Raw] Michael Landon Awards / Andre the Giant tribute

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