WWF Coliseum Home Video Intro

January 21, 2010

By DailySkew

WWF Coliseum Home Video Intro: this was the original WWF Coliseum Video Intro that was shown on VCR tapes in themid-1980’s. My family and I would love these wrestling videos back then because they showed matches that were not mentioned on the weekly WWF programs anymore. Although looking back the actual wrestling matches compiled on their “Best of…” tapes weren’t really the best WWWF or WWF matches of all time, Vince McMahon, Gorilla Monsoon, and Jesse Ventura paid tribute to the WWF’s history, something that is not really done anymore in the WWE by McMahon himself if it doesn’t fit a current storyline or if it isn’t selling a DVD compilation.

The Coliseum Home Video Intro Music sounds epic, like a “real” sport: a boxing or football theme. It also sounds like it could be a superhero theme song.

A few notes: Vince McMahon and the WWE no longer refer to their athletes as “wrestlers” and they do not trace their roots back to amateur wrestling or from Greek times. In the first steroid trial in the 1990’s Vince McMahon testified that he runs a “sports entertainment”. In Vince’s history, the world was created on January 23, 1984, although in 2010, Vince doesn’t want to say who wrestled in that match.

When I was a kid, I’d read the beginning scrolling words and try to identify all of the wrestlers shown. Here I go in 2010:

Jimmy Snuka leaping on Ray Stevens, Pat Patterson, or a jobber.
Nikolai Volkoff backbreaking a jobber. Iron Sheik is tagging.
A drawing of featuring Greco-Roman wrestlers.
Chief Jay Strongbow knee lifting Afa of the Samoans (maybe Sika).
Tito Santana with a flying forearm to a jobber.
Mike Rotundo and Barry Windham- the U.S. Express.
More ancient roots.
Bob Orton and Roddy Piper bodyslamming Jimmy Snuka, while Junkyard Dog is down.
Ken Patera with an awesome swinging full nelson to Jim Powers. [How is that "fake?"]
Black Tiger vs Cobra
Public domain footage of Lou Thesz vs Rikidozan, one of the greatest technical matches of all time, and one of the most important in Japanese history. McMahon must have been showing his tendency to rewrite history, because that was not a WWWF match.
More Black Tiger vs Cobra, which was a WWF Junior Heavyweight match, featuring two Japanese lightweights.
Bruno Sammartino vs Larry Zbysko
Hulk Hogan vs Greg The Hammer Valentine
S.D. Jones with the best monkeyflip ever, on The Magnificent Muraco
Mike Rotundo with an airplane spin on Iron Sheik. Referee Dick Kroll gets hit with garbage.
Andre the Giant slams Kamala in a cage
Muraco pins S.D. Jones (of course)
Mr. Wonderful Paul Ordorff is close to pinning Tito Santana
The finale is Hulk Hogan winning the WWF Championship from The Iron Sheik