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| Big Daddy V Photo Credit: WWE.com |
Oddsmakers is a segment on the popular sports opinion show Pardon the Interruption. The co-hosts discuss a particular event and the probability of it happening. It sounded like a good enough topic to transplant onto TWB, so me and TWB superfan, Ohio's favorite Pastafarian son Cody Bezik, to play along with me re: WWE Hall of Fame inductees. With the nominations coming out now, we'll take a look at several candidates over the coming weeks and let you know what we think of them getting in. This week's subject: Big Daddy V.
TH: If Big Daddy V, aka Mable, aka Big Vis, had a Major League equivalent, he'd be Matt Stairs. He's not a superstar by any stretch of the imagination, but he's had staying power. He's a bit player, but one who has always seemed to find his way back to the company. They felt like he was a big piece, and they tried to fit him into the mold of superstar. It just never took. They made him King of the Ring. They aligned him with Undertaker. They contended him for the ECW Championship. None of those scenarios really took the way they wanted to. Still, he remained a visible name and a loyal hand for Vince McMahon.
Bob
To me, McMahon sounds like a guy who rewards loyalty. Of course, he doesn't strike me as a guy whose street runs both ways with the way he's treated some of his former employees, but if you show that you're a WWE man, he'll reward you. Whether that reward is with a job as an agent or a plum Legends deal or even a Hall of Fame berth is up to him. So why might Big Vis' fate be in the Hall of Fame? Well, I don't know if that's the case. However, he's the kind of special attraction that might garner him favor as a fringe candidate.
I know the name Koko B. Ware gets invoked around here a lot, and it works in a roundabout way here. However, what we're forgetting is that Ware was more of a draw in the regional days and even as a parachute-pants wearing midcard attraction in the WWF, he was way more over than Vis ever was. Basically, Ware was important and he was worthy of being in the Hall, much in the same way that old WWF midcarders or even Bob Armstrong, who's going to be announced for induction tonight, is worthy.
Still, Vis has that modicum of "deserving" to be in, if the WWE Hall of Fame needs deserving. He was King of the Ring and has main evented PPVs. He definitely wouldn't be a primary inductee (duh), and he might end up being a fringe inductee, a guy to fill out a class. However, with a guy who's been associated with WWE for as long as he has? Well, never say never, even if the type of player he translates to will never get in a real sports HoF.
Odds: 15 to 1
CB: Nelson Frazier, Jr. - the man of a thousand names. Well, a bit more like half a dozen, but nevertheless. Whether you call him Mabel, Viscera, King V, or Big Daddy V, the enormous man currently known as Big Daddy Voodoo has had a fairly extensive career in World Wrestling Entertainment. Adding up his three separate runs in the WWE from 1993 to 2008, he spent about a combined ten years in the WWE.
His first run in the WWF was his most successful, as it was marked by moderate championship success. As Mabel, he held the World Tag Team Championship as part of Men on a Mission, and would later flirt with the main event as he won the King of the Ring tournament in 1995, defeating the Undertaker en route to doing so. He would main event SummerSlam 1995 against Diesel in a losing effort for the WWF Championship and go on to feud with Undertaker before leaving the company.
He came back a few years later as part of the Undertaker's Ministry, becoming Viscera and hanging around the midcard for a few years. He was released in 2000, and came back in 2004 and would go on to be part of a storyline where he chased after Lillian Garcia for a few months before teaming with Val Venis and eventually finding himself on the ECW brand where he'd finish out his WWE tenure. He'd work for Matt Striker here, challenging for the ECW title and feuding with Kane. He was unceremoniously released after being drafted to Smackdown and never appearing.
So, how does one evaluate the career of Big Daddy V? Well, in terms of in ring quality, it was pretty awful. V was just too damn big to even be an effective superheavyweight like, for example, Big Show. He was almost a special attraction type of guy hearkening back to the days of Haystacks Calhoun, only decades too late. But, one's inductance into the WWE Hall of Fame has practically nothing to do with how good the wrestler was in the ring, and everything to do with that wrestler's WWE tenure in terms of entertainment and kayfabe accomplishments, as well as the current WWE management perception of them. Did Big Daddy V get over? As much as any other decent midcarder, sure. His main event run was unimpressive, but so were most things in the early to mid 90s WWF. For most of his career, V can be adequately summed up as a respectably over midcarder and a superheavyweight attraction, both of which are positive contributors to his likelihood of being in the Hall of Fame. A quick look at the WWE's website shows that he's still listed as an alumni and was ranked in their top 25 superheavyweights of all time (although, really, there can't have been too many anyway), so it definitely seems like there are no outstanding issues between V and the WWE management.
So, all in all. Do I think Big Daddy V deserves in? Not really – even putting aside his in-ring performances, he was never more than a midcarder with a brief appearance in the main event and as superheavyweights go, he wasn't even that good at the role. Will he find his way in? Maybe. Random midcarders in the WWE Hall of Fame are pretty rare – we all look at Koko B. Ware, of course, but he's the exception, not the rule. To my mind, when the WWE evaluates a guy like V, they'll think – well, there's nothing really wrong with him, but there's nothing really good about him either. He's probably unlikely to pop the crowd significantly at the induction ceremony, driving his odds even lower. All in all, not impossible, just not very likely either.
Odds: 80 to 1
Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!
