Just in case nobody sees the title above the Web page proper, as I didn't for many of these to begin with, this list is of the 15 lamest robot masters from the NES Mega Man games, and the 15 best wrestling managers. I got halfway through picking each list before I decided to screw it and do both.
Most people would probably think Skull Man was made by either a really depressed gothy scientist to hang out with Black Candle Man and Crow Facepaint Man, or by a thirteen-year-old scientist who thought skulls were really cool. But there's a third, somewhat more sinister explanation that I think has merit: Skull Man is not a robot master at all, but an attempt by the Mexican government to cover up the fact that the Borg landed in their country a few years ago and assimilated La Parka. They tried to cover up early sightings by confusing people with a La Parka/LA Park shell game, but it later became obvious there was some kind of robotic dude dressed up like a skeleton to be dealt with. And thus, the lie that is Skull Man was born.
He suffers from a similar, but slightly different, problem than most semi-lame Mega Man characters from the later games: The designers had an idea for a weapon they wanted to use again, in this case a bunch of stuff floating around you as a shield, but they couldn't just completely rehash Wood Man to do it. Apparently, they also wanted to reuse the idea of making the shield, as well as much of the robot, something that's not as tough as the metal you would think you'd use to make a fighting robot.
Also somewhat flimsier than you would think his environment would require, my pick for fifteenth best manager of all time is Harvey Whippleman. See, 'cause he's really skinny. That's all I've got as far as a segue here.
Harvey has an awesome manager voice, and an awesome manager build. But you wouldn't expect the two together. He has a gravelly voice that you'd expect to hear coming from the grizzled ring vet managers who're almost as big as the wrestlers themselves. But he has the body of one of those pipsqueaky managers that always hides behind their wrestler and stirs the shit and fans just want to see get beaten up by the face. This appearance is magnified when you consider he managed El Gigante/Giant Gonzales/whatever they called hairy bodysuit man when Harvey managed him. He also managed Kamala; and to this day whenever I hear about Kamala, whether he's being verbally seduced by diva search contestants or rapping about anal sex and Chris Benoit killing himself and his family, I think of Harvey Whippleman telling us all to stand up and show respect for the lord of the jungle. I think his announcement should be part of the Kamala theme itself.
*****************
14
Number Fourteen: Needle Man and Harley Race
Needle Man is an odd duck. You can see where needles could theoretically be scary to a human being, but they're not the kind of thing you would think would really worry or harm a robot at all. But it is the intimidation factor of needles that makes Needle Man the robot master voted "Most Likely to Defeat Goku Somehow."
His weapon really is shooting needles at you, though there's no word on that the needles contain. I'm not sure exactly what type of substance it would take to cause Mega Man to trip out, anyway. Touch Mega-fuzzy get Mega-dizzy. Also, his stage appeared to have a nautical theme for no reason. You looked to be on the deck of a ship, there's rigging in the background and there were cannons shooting cannonballs at you. While I'm sure needles have a place on naval vessels (sailor suits don't mend themselves, y'know), why wouldn't Needle Man choose to hang out around haystacks? He could attack Mega Man and then pull up his hood and put his hands together in faux prayer and wander in among the haystacks, and Mega Man would have no clue where he went. Then Needle Man could either attack him some more or go save some women from guards who are accusing her of stealing their presents.
You'd think that Needle Man learned his stealth assassination techniques in the Midwest, I mean, duhh, where else do you train to become an assassin? But actually, he learned the trade from his long-time association with Garak. Garak taught him the secrets of killing and Needle Man taught Garak the secrets of tailoring fine clothing.
Speaking of fine tailored clothing, the fourteenth-best manager on this list is Harley Race. Yes, yes, I know, if I'd paired Needle Man with any number of other wrestling personalities I could have made an "OH NO YOU DINNAT" joke at the expense of their vice, but I'm at least trying to keep both lists roughly in order of how lame I really think the robot master is and how good I really think the manager is.
Anyhow, Harley Race wore fine tailored clothing both as a manager and as a wrestler. As you can see from the banner image, he really tried to own the king gimmick, though no one can match King Booker in that respect. As a manager, he tended to wear a nice suit regardless of whether Vader was also in a suit, but also in face straps, or whether the Awesome Kongs (not the TNA Knockouts champ and her genetic clone) were out in nasty-lookin' ring garb.
He also has a gravelly voice like Mr. No. 15, Harvey Whippleman, but he looks the part, too. You get the feeling when he told Vader to go all the way off the top, he was speaking from experience. Experience from an era when people performed soo-plays instead of suplexes. He's also in the hall of fame, at least the WCW one but probably the WWE one too, and Vader is really excited about this.
13
Number Thirteen: Centaur Man & Paul Heyman
So, here's the thing: A centaur is half-horse, half-man. Or I guess half-horse, half-woman. So Centaur Man is half-man, half-horse, half-man again ... and also a robot somehow. I would think the cold, calculating machine in him would be unable to reconsile how he himself was an improper fraction.
Centaur Man. So does he hurl centaurs at you? That might be fun, but no. So what kind of weapon would he use? Considering the time period in which centaurs were popular in mythology, you'd think that we'd be dealing with swords, or clubs, or bows and arrows. Or, considering they're half-horse, they could just trample people. But our friend Centaur Man has THE ABILITY TO BEND SPACE AND TIME. Ehh, why not? So in a sense, this is Flash Man again, except we're several games on and he's half-horse for some reason. Sorry this diss isn't as funny as some, I just plain don't find him in much of a sense-making way.
He does have a little tail, that looks much like Paul Heyman's ridiculous ponytail.
Heyman did a good job of being the pipsqueak sort of manager, despite not being too skinny. He spent most of his managerial career hiding behind the biggest of the big dudes, guys like Brock Lesnar and Heidenreich. Now in the case of both of those guys, he did benefit to some extent from the actual wrestlers. Brock was legitimately frightening to watch in the ring, and I think a lot of folks have a soft spot in their Cole-raping hearts for Heidenreich.
But Heyman had a good spin on the typical "weakling managing the crazy overmuscled guy" routine. He had the supreme cockiness down pat. He was good at being cowardly. But while other managers like James Mitchell or the like always acted totally in control of their "monsters," unless their guy is getting ready to turn. Heyman only did that sometimes. My favorite memory of his is from the Smackdown in Richmond JG and I attended, the time Lesnar got the blood of Hulkamania in his hands. The match went through, and Brock and Heyman walked off, and Brock stopped. Heyman kept going, until he noticed Brock had turned around. He saw the trance Brock was going into, getting ready for some ultra-violence, and Heyman started calling out to him. "Brock? BROCK?!" But of course, he couldn't stop Brock, but he was trying to. And failing. I think it really helped to put over Brock early on when Heyman would basically bring him to the ring, and then not be able to control him, despite wanting him to throttle back at times. Between that and his time managing 911 in ECW, he made a good transition from egging 911 on to give "Jungle" Jim Steele more chokeslams, to yelling at Brock that he was going to kill whatever guy he was facing that week if he gave him any more F5s.
12
Number Twelve: Yamato Man & The Rev. Slick
You may notice as this list goes on, there's a fair amount of hate given out for the robot master of Mega Man 6. It's only natural -- the farther on they go, the fewer new and sensible ideas they have. They run out of new weapons to give the bosses, and they run out of names.
So they name them after former provinces in Japan or, perhaps, a Japanese battleship. Maybe this is really round-eyed of me, but why are you making a character for an international-release game whose name means any number of random things in one language and nothing in any other? How about Aloha Man, or Shalom Man?
So, OK, Yamato Man. Hey, if he really is named after the battleship, maybe he'll have heavy artillery! Or maybe he'll have a spear. Congrats, Mega Man, you beat the robot who has a pointy stick.
I do like that apparently the images for the robot masters I got here also came with little profiles in whatever games they come on, and Yamato Man's pro is "Full of virility" and his con is "Shy." Sounds like a real recipe for sexual frustration, there.
I bet The Rev. Slick isn't sexually frustrated. Yeah, I still got it.
The Rev. Slick is everything Teddy Long ever wishes he was as a manager. He could talk the talk and strut the strut. He was good at avoiding face interviewers' questions. And he managed the most friggin' ridiculous tag team of all time, the Twin Towers.
Actually, that may be The Rev. Slick's finest moment:
The opening clip that Arsenio shows is classic: Akeem the African Dream and Slick dance in such a way that the ref can't see Boss Man delivering a beating. Also, he manages to keep his cool and help defuse the situation when Boss Man doesn't see any problem in repeatedly calling Arsenio "boy."
11
Number Eleven: Plant Man & Bill Alfonso
So I guess they decided to make a tradition and have shield-based guys in every even-numbered Mega Man game, and to make them all relatively non-terrifying. We've already covered Mega Man 4's sheild guy, Skull Man. For Mega Man 6, we get Plant Man. His powers include knowing that the plants will grow. Plant Maaaaan *drum fill*
So yeah, his deadly attack is him throwing a sheild of flower petals at you. FLOWER PETALS. Perhaps the wimpiest member of Team Sheild.
From the wimpiest member of Team Sheils we shift over to the wimpiest member of Team Tazz.
THAT'S RIGHT, DADDY! BILL ALPHONSO YELLED A LOT, DADDY! AND HE BLEW HIS WHISTLE! LOOK WHO I'M HANGING WITH NOW, BABY!! *TWEEEEET TWEEET*
Bill Alfonso got much of his record as a hated, hated referee in ECW, by virtue of enforcing the rules. He disqualified dudes, which earned him the wrath of guys like Paul Heyman. But he also managed people. He has one of the most annoying voices in sports entertainment, real nails-on-a-chalkboard stuff. With the possible exception of Luna Vachon, there aren't many managers out there who make you cringe more. And he could PROJECT. Even without the whistle, which probably made front-row fans want to beat the shit out of him, you could always hear him shrieking advice to Tazz, Sabu or Rob Van Dam.
Also, he had the twig-like build that made you think he had no place being anywhere near a wrestling ring. But since he had the ref shirt, there was no touching him allowed. That actually made for some fun ECW angles, where Bill would ban the face's finisher and, since he was a ref, the face wasn't allowed to touch him.
In short, Bill Alfonso is one of the easiest managers to hate ever.
10
Number Ten: Bright Man & The Genius
Another weapon they felt compelled to stick in even-numbered games was that of time freezing. While Flash Man's name maybe sounded the least appropriate, and Centaur Man's the least robotic, Bright Man managed to find a happy medium where he didn't do much of anything right. He had a cool electricity-themed stage, with appropriate enemies that made the lights turn off and on depening on what order you killed them, so that all worked out. But Bright Man himself, well ...
So he's a big light bulb. I guess that's OK, I mean Spark Man was a giant spark plug and Heat Man was a giant Zippo. Though something that's mostly glass seems unwise for a fighting robot. So basically Bright Man jumps around and shoots at you. Not very unique. And then occasionally, occasionally, he illuminates. Big flash of light. So, that should mean you're blinded, and maybe you can fumble around while the screen is black but will probably just end up getting hit. But no, it means he freezes time. And then bumps into you.
Ha, according to his bio profile it says he dislikes "immoral districts." I know they're trying making a red light joke there, but it does make me think of him trying to figure out a way to gracefully bow out while the other robot master are apparently all getting together to go to strip clubs and get hookers.
In truth, as far as bosses go he's not that stupid. It's a neat, albeit rehashed, weapon. I guess the thing that makes him lame is purely his name. Bright Man strikes fear in the hearts of robots, because there's nothing they fear more than illumination.
He probably could have been farther down on this list, except he REALLY made sense to partner with the Genius.
The Genius is, of course, the brightest manager to ever come down the pike. He's got the graduation robes and mortarboard to prove it!
A fair amount has been said over the years at WV about "Leapin'" Lanny Poffo, ranging from his legit homosexuality to his enthusiasm for the Gazelle elliptical machine. But really, as a manager he brought two things to the table that nobody else has before in wrestling: a metal scroll, an interesting personal weapon of choice, and poetry.
MUTHAFUCKIN' POETRY, SON.
By setting a precedent for in-ring poetry, the Genius as a manager did more to put over Heidenreich than Paul Heyman, his actual manager (and a good one too, you know from reading this list), did.
9
Number Nine: Bubble Man & Konnan
By now you may have noticed that a lot of the lamest Mega Man robot masters on this list seem to be from the later games. And that makes sense: By the time the first few games were made, you'd used up a lot of the best concepts. Fire, electricity, ice, metal blades, explosives -- the best stuff had been used (and sometimes already reused) before the second half of the NES Mega Man saga began. But that's not to say the earliest games didn't have some silly-assed ideas of their own: number nine is a shining example of that.
Bubble Man is just what you're thinking: a robot whose deadly attack is to blow bubbles at you.
Just let that sink in.
The one activity in the world that most exemplifies harmless, childlike innocence. In only the first Mega Man sequel, they're already reaching for ideas. They could have gone with Water Man or something, and maybe given him some kind of crazy riot hose, and only people from bay communities would snicker and think his job was harvesting oysters. But nope, he's Bubble Man, and in case you were thinking that maybe the water from the bubbles might mess with Mega Man's circuits or something, bear in mind that Bubble Man's stage is mostly underwater. So that really means that Bubble Man's attacks are air bubbles. Somebody gave the bass some Beano!
Though not a reason he's lame, but just a reason to be more frustrated about Bubble Man in general, is that his weapons is the only one that hurts the game's final boss, which is a kind of crazy holographic projection of Dr. Wily mutated into an alien monster. The projection is flying around above you, and if you hit its body you take crazy amounts of damage, but Bubble Man's bubbles only go straight down. So you have to jump up at the guy who will kill you in just a few hits when he swoops down at you, and blow bubbles at him.
This ... relates to Konnan, somehow.
If you'd told me ten years ago I would be putting Konnan in the WV-15, I'd have asked who the Hell you were. Unless you were JG, than I'd probably ask what the West Virginia 15 was. And considering I'd have been a teenager living in Virginia, I might have made a joke about how people in West Virginia were inbred LOL.
Anyway, if you sat down and patiently explained everything, including how you traveled through time to get my reaction to this, I probably wouldn't have believed you. About the ranking Konnan positively, not the time travel part. Hell, who doesn't time travel these days? SEE U IN THE FUTURE, DOC-TOOOR. But yeah, anyhow, face Konnan was annoying and wrestler Konnan was kind of boring.
But put him in TNA, and ... well, he starts off as a member of 3 Lyv Kruu, and the same basic problems of him wrestling and being a face are still there. But turn him heel, and it's like a light switch. Granted, it helps that LAX is one of the most impressive tag teams out there today. I mean seriously, everyone loves Homicide, but Hernandez is one of those big guys that can put on a match with little guys. TNA seems to do a good job finding those dudes. Anyhow, they could go out and do a bunch of silly spots all the time and with no mouthpiece, no plot progression, they'd essentially be a slightly less bland version of the Naturals.
So Konnan basically propels them into prominence. He does a good job of playing a manipulative, race-card-playing gang leader. I chose that particular banner image of him because, while there were other funnier images of him available with masks and crazy outfits and such on, that shows him in his best environment: Berating Mike Tenay. I don't see any cheese snacks there, though. Perhaps JBL was by earlier and ate them all in terror.
Update: Turns out, apparently, that he's suing TNA. Well, I guess he really was pissed off at TNA management after all!
8
Number Eight: Pharoh Man & Daivari
By Mega Man 4, they had plum run out of sensible ways to make fire-related robot masters that made any sense. They'd done Fire Man and Heat Man. By Mega Man 6, they'd come up with Flame Man, which isn't bad as long as you don't have the sense of humor of John Cena. But for 4, I guess they just decided to come up with a place that was hot, then make a robot based on that theme.
From there, they tried Phoenix Man. He could become either a bird of pure fire or a golf enthusiast from Scottsdale. They tried Hell Man, but found out Dark Horse had already trademarked the name for a flash-forward series about Hellboy. Scrambling for anything left, someone said, "it's hot in Egypt ... what about an Egypt guy?" From there they went with the most familiar Egypt imagery and came up with Pharoh Man.
"Good," the higher-ups said. "This will set a precedent for later on, so we can made characters based on historical cultures that has nothing to do with robots. Maybe stuff like knights, and ... umm ... Yamatos?"
"What's a Yamato, sir?"
"Wait, aren't we Japanese? Shouldn't we, of all people, know?"
Once everybody got regrouped, they put together a fun fire-based character who gave you a good weapon: A fireball you could charge up and, if you wanted, just keep floting above your head, where it would zap anything that tried to drop down on you. Then they put an Egyptian headdress on him and put together a level that looks like you've been teleported through time to fight a robot in an ancient pyramid. So it WAS alien technology that helped them put the pyramids together! "Dianetics" was RIGHT!
Or maybe he was just a fun Middle Eastern stereotype character. Totally unlike Daivari.
Actually, Daivari is more like Flame Man, who actually had a turban-shaped head and upward-pointing feet. But I'm sticking with my guns on Pharoh Man being lamer, because they're equally silly and Pharoh Man came earlier.
Daivari is a VERY GOOD! VERY GOOD MANAGER!! Seriously, any manager who can yell, un-miced, loud enough to be heard over the color commentators gets points.
Though Daivari is roughly as Iranian as JG and I are Irish (Daivari's from Minnesota, I'm from Kentucky and JG is, obviously, from Germany), he goes ahead and owns the dirty furriner gimmick. I guess he does it better than bro or I could, as his Farsi is a lot sharper than either of ours' Celtic. He gets heat enough from that, but on top of that he's a good mic performer and a good wrestler, too.
Also, and I've never got to see him actually doing this outside of that one banner image, I'm told that he will occasionally do something called the magic carpet spash. Which, since it exists, is on the short list of best things ever.
He's not just a great manager, he's a great Pokemon trainer. VERY GOOD! VERY GOOD, BEEDRILL! And of course his water-types are big on the Magikarpet splash. Not a new gag, but one I love. A whole pound of recycled jokes men love.
Anyhow, he, and the promise of a magic carpet splash, were enough to keep me watching Muhammed Hassan. That's gotta be worth something.
7
Number Seven: Ring Man & Jimmy Hart
While as a boss he's actually sort of difficult, and his level is one of those disappearing-platform sorts of places that you're either really good at or you just die because some character keeps jumping out and hitting you right as you're trying to land on the vanishing platform ... Ring Man is a boss whose basis is rings.
He jumps around and throws rings at you. Jewelery, people. This is a robot who apparently wants to get engaged with you, and he keeps offering you rings. Call him Liberace Man. Call him Ismael.
For the most part, he looks like any other robot master, except on his head he has a little ring. Only, it's on a little antenna that makes it look like it should be a bubble blower. He must have taken it from Bubble Man.
From his bio, his profile says he likes "deck quoit," which I did research on to discover is apparently a really stuffy way of saying ring toss. But he dislikes children, which leads me to believe he must have a hard time finding opponents for ring toss that he didn't find annoying.
He probably also wouldn't want to play ring toss with "The Mouth of the South," Jimmy Hart. Jimmy would stand right next to him yelling into his megaphone, "COME ON, BABY, THROW THAT RING, BABY! YEAH, BABY!" and then Ring Man would throw it and since he was so distracted he'd miss, then Jimmy Hart would say, "BEAUTIFUL, BABY, BEAUTIFUL!"
So while Jimmy Hart didn't have the set of pipes on him that, say, Daivari had; what he did have was the perfect signature personal effect/weapon to make up for it: a gaily-painted megaphone. I mean, the inside of the bell was painted up like an open mouth, and the outside was usually painted to match his outfit. And the guy had some serious outfits, too. He had airbrushed suit jackets personalized for every client he managed. He had murals of the Nasty Boys, the Dungeon of Doom, Money Incorporated, Hulk Hogan, you name it. All done with the same attention to detail as those pictures of Ric Rude's rivals that you'd see unflattering pictures of airbrushed on the parts of his trunks covering his ass and privates.
I can't exactly say I've ever marked out for Jimmy Hart or anything he did, with the exception of the time he was making a speech to a camera, but the sound was off and it only cut on after he'd finished and was starting to laugh like a turkey. But the contribution he made to the world of managing is undeniable. He wore ridicuous airbrushed jackets. TRY TO DENY THAT!
6
Number Six: Wood Man & Jim Cornette
OK, does anybody remember the episode of "Futurama" where Bender goes to the island of misfit robots? And he decides that technology is evil, and to avoid being part of the problem he gets a "downgrade" so he's made out of wood? Then termites eat his legs and he becomes helpless?
That episode is proof positive that someone on the writing staff of that show was a big fan of Mega Man 2.
When making a robot, at least I'm guessing since I've never made one, you'd have to choose what raw material you want to use for the body early on. You could go with steel, strong and heavy; aluminum, lighter but more expensive; carbon fiber, ultra-light and strong but expensive and brittle when it does break; or wood. Wait, what?
OK, so Wood Man is a robot made of wood. Naturally, this means he's vulnerable to fire and saw blades, so at least those are his weak points in the game. But really, I feel like any weapon designed to damage a robot, with the exception of a computer virus or an electromagnetic pulse or something, should also pretty well tear through an animatronic tree.
He's the first of the robot masters to have a shield as a weapon, and his is made of leaves. Not quite as ineffecive as flower petals, since at least if the leaves are really dry the edges can be kind of sharp.
The edges could use something softer ... maybe if they had a feathery cover like Jimmy Cornette's tennis rackets always used to.
Jim Cornette was great. It didn't matter how much or how little he probably actually did care about something, he always sounded hyperactively pissed off. Which, for a heel manager, worked out pretty well most of the time. Fan-friendly general manager orders the Midnight Express to take on the Road Warriors in a scaffold match, Jim Cornette can scream and holler about how unfair it is. If Owen Hart and Yokozuna have to fight, I dunno, the Headbangers, Cornette can scream about how they're not even worth Owen and Yokozuna's time.
He had an incredible endurance for screaming angrily, too. For a while, during the EIW that JG got his previous monicker from, I had Jimmy Cornette as part of the Stud Stable. When I put together interviews including him, the essentially involved him speaking, and the type had no spaces or punctuation. He would keep going until he passed out. But in reality he never did pass out, he could just keep screaming like he was in a furious rage.
That, of course, made him perfect for suspending him in a tiny steel cage, because I mean really, if you were suspended in a tiny steel cage, you would scream bloody murder. And he could keep it up for the duration of a match. And the man that brought us the tiny steel cage, thus leading to the pivotal instrument of Capitol Combat '90: The Return of Robocop. This role in wrestling history cannot be understated.
5
Number Five: Air Man & Kevin Sullivan
I don't know how much needs to be said here. This was a robot master whose weapon was BLOWING ON YOU. His mouth was a big fan, and he blew air at you. Even without getting into jokes about the meaning of the word blow, you've got to admit that's a pretty lame power.
So maybe in reality it's slightly cooler than that. He makes little tornadoes of air and sics those on you. But all he really wants to do is clean Mega Man with the power of oxygen! LONG LIVE YOUR LAUNDRY!
Kevin Sullivan is the best crazy guy in the business. Later on, folks would probably have said it was maybe Mick Foley, but no. It wasn't just him, he had help from King Curtis, but the stuff they put together was batshit insane.
As an example, here's the introduction of Purple Haze that so inspired a young Stevie Richards:
And while, granted, this was a promo from his wrestling days, I think it does a good job of showing Sullivan at his craziest. Plus, it has "Bullet" Bob Armstrong. And Sullivan indirectly makes reference to the Road Dogg.
I've been trying to wrack my brain to figure out what it is that I can say to get across how awesome Kevin Sullivan is, but really there's only two classes of people in the world: People who think that the Taskmaster is awesome, and people who were not paying attention during the heyday of the Dungeon of Doom.
Wrestlers who painted up their faces? That's commonplace. But managers who painted up their faces? And like a bug, no less? Now that's something special.
4
Number Four: Toad Man & Raven
if I looking for frog
him name is toad man green frog
I lost my frog
329-3228
Love, Terry
P.S. I'll find my frog
Who took my frog
Who found my frog
2012 15th Ave. S
Nothing is scarier to robots than small amphibians. Dr. Cossack knew this, and to create the ultimate weapon with which to defeat Mega Man, he spent tireless hours researching toads. He, of course, never saw one himself, living in Neo-Russia with Argol Golsky and the bad guy from "Robot Jox." They probably figured out some way to bionically preserve Ivan Drago, too.
So Toad Man looks vaguely like a bionic version of Mario in his Frog Suit. And it is possible to get Toad Man to hop on your head, though he's pretty easily avoided. He wouldn't ever get Kuribo's shoe and squash you using that, but what he would do is summon rain. Not really hard, pounding rain, just a slight sideways drizzle. And this hurt you.
Though perhaps the best part of this, was that he summoned the rain by doing a sexay dance. He swiveled his hips, Rick Rude style, and rain would lazily drop down everywhere on the screen. That was actually a pain in the ass part of it: If he managed to successfully perform his sexay dance, the falling rain was unavoidable damage. And that's essentially what happens when Mega Man uses the weapon after beating Toad Man, but sadly Mega Man does not swivel his hips to summon the rain. He would probably get halfway through and wince in pain.
Okay, so Raven actually is not a great manager. I mean, in the sense that he doesn't provide a whole lot of motivation to anybody he manages. He certainly never motivated anyone to get near a shower. Granted, that turned out to be Kidman's greatest powar of all, but I feel like Raven got that out of him purely by accident.
Raven was the driving force behind the Flock, arguably one of the best stables out there. I think most people reading this would probably put the Flock in their top five, anyway. Lesse ... Horsemen, Dungeon of Doom, Stud Stable, Nation of Domination ... ehh, sure. That is, if you can call Raven a "driving force." In reality, he was more of a "sitting down in the corner when he wants to, which is most of the time" force.
While he wasn't exactly driven to stand up the whole duration of his matches, he was driven to recruit members, and usually good ones. OK, so there was Reese and Van Hammer and Scotty Riggs. But seeing what crappy guys he had, he also went out and recruited Mortis just by telling him his mask looked retarded!
What he was good at was team-building. I'm not talking about the recruitment sense, we just covered that. I mean the fact that he would go ahead and get everyone together to go out and watch the show, as a big happy family. A family that he would occasionally sic on some random dude, or on Perry Saturn, provided he wasn't in the Flock that week.
Then he went to TNA and formed a stable where he made his dudes get on all fours while he beat them. I may get some heat for this around here, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it was cooler when he did it than when Shaniqua did.
3
Number Three: Top Man & Scott D'Amore
Inspiration for Mega Man robot masters obviously can come from just about anywhere. Pothole Man, High Curb Man, Rickety Ladder Man, all these characters could be seen as potentially dangerous. But instead we get a Mega Man villain based on a child's toy. Not even one with small parts, that could break off and choke you. I guess it's possible it could be coated in toxic paint. But honestly, there's very little about Top Man that could (or should) be terrifying.
In every Mega Man game there's a robot master you take on first, just because his pattern or his weapon makes it easy for you to beat him with the plain ol' mega buster. In Mega Man 2 it was Crash/Clash Man. If you beat Clash Man you got gummy attack. In Mega Man 3 it was Top Man. Although now I'm looking at Web walkthroughs and they don't agree. Eff them. Maybe I could see starting 2 against Flash Man. Anyway.
In addition to being a pretty easy boss, he also has the hardest-to-use weapon of any Mega Man weapon. At least with the Bubble Man weapon the shot would move away from you, even if it was in a direction that wasn't always useful. To successfully use Top Spin, you have to throw yourself at the enemy and spin at just the right time. If not, you take damage like you always would. If you get it right, there's maybe a 50/50 chance the particular enemy you're trying to attack will be damaged by it. If not, it'll just make those metal pinging noises and when you stop spinning, you'll take damage.
Damage. A'Amage.
No, in all honesty there's not that much Top Man and Scott D'Amore have in common. Top Man, for example, never jumps in his pattern. But Scott D'Amore is a big fatty manager who will moonsault on your sorry ass.
Team Canada coach Scott D'Amore a.k.a the Big Sexy manager was one of the few guys who actually spoke in the early days of TNA iMPACT!. This meant that he was automatically the most over person there. Well, him and Glen Gilberti, but they seemed to have fired him maybe the week after I started watching. Anyhow, Team Canada weren't even the top heel stable (that would have been Jeff Jarrett and the Elite Guard, at least in theory), but they got more heat than any other heels but Jarrett himself.
Now sure, in theory, a lot of that can be attributed to them having the gimmick of being from Canada and therefore being evil furriners, and admittedly in the early iMPACT! days having any kind of gimmick at all was more than a lot of people had. But D'Amore is what really gave the stable a vibrance, an energy. He may not have been as loud as Daivari, or as angry as Jim Cornette, he had an insanely over-the-top enthusiasm that made him awesome.
For all that, for his constant berating of Eric Young and for looking so awesome in the official Team Canada dick robe, D'Amore gets a little sugar with this number three ranking. He needs it.
2
Number Two: Dust Man & Bobby Heenan
You'd have to think long and hard to come up with something less threatening as a weapon than dust. Unless you know you're facing someone with a severe allergy, something a robot is not likely to have. At least in the case of Air Man you could think, well, air can be a devastating force if moved around with great ferocity. But dust ... no, it's never really more than a nuisance and maybe kind of icky.
The greatest weapon this robot master may actually have is that he kind of makes you want to kill yourself. The music for his level has this kind of depressing tone to it, and the whole stage's background is images of garbage and burning refuse. Such a waste. If you'll excuse me, I might try and go back and find Black Candle Man and Crow Facepaint Man and write poetry with them.
His actual weapon is that he shoots big wads of junk at you. You might think this should mean he's called Junk Man, but they actually have a Junk Man later on in the post-NES Mega Man games, and the robot actually appears to be made of junk parts. Not to say they were thinking that far ahead, but hey, I'll grant the benefit of the doubt. So maybe the best thing would have been to call him Garbage Man. But then, in Japan they probably would have thought that meant a robot master who used barbed-wire baseball bats and stop signs and stuff. Actually, that would be a pretty sweet robot monster. Maybe there could be a scene in his stage where he bursts out of the wall like the Kool-Aid Man, then gets on a golf cart and drives off, only to have you get on another golf cart and make chase.
Man, Dust Man could have been an awesome robot monster if only he were only tangentially related to the robot monster he actually is. Instead, he's a robot that's all about dust. What good is that? Actually, Dust Man's weapon is pretty effective against Felix Unger Man and Rico Man. RICO I AM SO SORRY YOU DID NOT MAKE MY WV-15, I JUST THINK OF YOU AS A WRESTLER FIRST AND A MANAGER SECOND. I STILL LOVE YOU!
I also still love Bobby "The Brain" Heenan. OK, in this case my lame segue didn't even relate to the prior robot monster, but I get the feeling I'm going to be the only one who cares either way.
Bobby Heenan, like Rico, was a wrestler first and a manager second. Now I've never actually seen Heenan in action, but I've seen enough shots of him in tights to be convinced that it happened. Maybe it was this insight into what actually goes on inside the ring that made him a pretty good bet to be at or near number 1 if I had decided to do a WV-15 of best commentators.
The Heenan Family, the umbrella term for people managed by Heenan in the '80s, had a pretty distinguished membership in its day. Chief among the members was Andre the Giant. Now Andre didn't need a manager to build him up and make him any more terrifying, I mean, he was Andre the fucking Giant. But like many workers of his day, Andre really did need someone to do the talking for him. Remember his role in "The Princess Bride?" Remember how hard it was to understand what the heck he was saying? Now remember that they would have had as many takes as they needed, as much time to engineer the sound as they needed, and no screaming fans to worry about. Andre needed Heenan.
I mentioned that Bobby had a distinguished career as a color commentator, and it's true. It does bear mentioning that, yes, later on in his career he seemed to care a lot less and drink a lot more. His WCW ran saw him be pretty dismissive of some of the new stuff they were trying. But if you take his whole career as a color man into consideration, there's few if any heel commentators who could give Heenan a run for his money. Plus, Heenan could work with just about anybody. Some individual pairings, like Gorilla Monsoon and Jesse Ventura, or more recently Josh Mathews and Tazz, stick out as really great; Heenan could be good with Monsoon, Vince McMahon, Tony Schiavonte (and that's no small feat), even "Mean" Gene Okerlund. The "gimmick battle royale" as called by Okerlund and Heenan, produced one of my favorite throw-away lines in all of wrestling commentary:
Okerlund: And here comes Doink! Now, you've gotta love Doink.
Heenan: Why?
I bring up his career as a commentator because it was one night while he was doing commentary that he played the role of manager better than anyone ever has or possibly will in all of wrestling. I'm talking, of course, about the 1992 Royal Rumble. That year's rumble would determine who the world heavyweight champion was, as the title has been previously held up. Heenan's big client at the time, the relatively new-to-WWF Ric Flair, was going to be one of the men competing in the battle royale. Now Coliseum Home Video fans found out in a pre-match interview when it was that Ric Flair would have to enter, but Heenan was out at the broadcast table and didn't see this. Instead, he would periodically ask during the undercard matches what number Ric Flair had drawn. As the night went on, he was getting increasingly nervous, wondering whether Ric would get a late draw like 29 or 30 and stand a good chance.
The the battle royale itself started, and Flair came out as number 3. As the buzzer sounded and Ric stepped out from behind the dark backstage curtain, Heenan screamed, "NO! NOO! DAMN IT!!" I think it might have been the first time I ever heard a commentator using anything approaching foul language. Now Bobby Heenan never had a reputation as a fair and unbiased commentator, I mean, he was a heel, he was supposed to say the heels cheating was okay or deny that the heels had cheated. But he threw what little impartiality he had out the window. Normally you might expect a heel commentator to root for all the heels in general, but it didn't matter who was in there, if they went after Flair, Heenan cried bloody murder. Whenever Flair seemed to be safe, Heenan would breathe a sigh of relief. He kept this emotional roller coaster up for the entire hour's duration of the rumble, to see Flair win from practially the beginning of it all.
That night alone would probably have gotten him to the top of the list had people other than me been voting and ranking this list, but it was just me. It's not fair. It's not fair to Flair. Erm, Heenan.
1
Number One: Hard Man & Col. Robert Parker
You don't have to say much. The lamest Mega Man boss of all time is a walking boner joke. Cena would have a field day with this particular robot monster.
Hard Man is a robot master who, is, well, hard. Not even in the erection sense, I just mean that the material that makes up his body is really strong and solid. So it means that when he hits the ground after jumping, it shakes a la Guts Man. He also throws his fists at you. Really, between the boner jokes and the limited moveset, he really IS John Cena. He should arrive to battle in a sidecar driven by a Met, or Metool, or Metaurr, or whatever you wanna call 'em. The hard hat guys.
To be honest, Hard Man isn't that bad an idea for a robot master. It's just the absolute worst possible name they could have given him. A big, tough robot who doesn't need lasers or elemental powers to kill you. He doesn't need a weapon, his hands are his weapons, weapons, weapons ... He could have been called Tazz Man. Add three more letters and you're really in business. And that business is StevieCorp, the possessors of the Tazmaniac's jewel.
Speaking of jewels, I should take some time here to mention some of the honorable mentions that didn't make the list, as there are other lame robot masters that are worthy of distinction. Crystal Man, the closest thing to connecting back to jewels that I have. He basically had a bounce shot, and they couldn't think of anything to connect it with. Really, the weird thing about my list is that almost all the characters from Mega Man 5 were on the verge of making the list, but in the end none did. We've got Star Man, another shield guy who, sadly, does not do the Star Man chop. There's Charge Man, the robot designed to look like an 1800s locomotive. Then there's the wealth of presumably lame bosses from non-NES Mega Man games, like Junk Man, Burst Man, Turbo Man (whom Arnold Scharzenegger and Sinbad must fight to the death to get for their kids for Christmas), Tengu Man (?!), Clown Man, Pirate Man, Dynamo Man, Magic Man (try to understand) and Aqua Man.
Robert Fuller's just the man. There's no getting around it. His name alluded to the man who was probably the best-known manager in music, Col. Tom Parker. His look seemed inspired by the best-known manager in the fried chicken business, Col. Harland Sanders. Though in theory, the wrestling Col. Parker was probably supposed to have an honorary colonel title from Tennessee and not Louisiana or Kentucky.
He had a pretty good tag career before any of us were watching with his cousin, Jimmy Golden, a.k.a. Bunkhouse Buck. Of course the only times I got to see him wrestle was against women, but, and call me Mike Tenay if you must, watching him do power spots on women was a real joy.
Through his career, he managed Buck, Mick Foley, Sid Vicious, Arn Anderson, Dutch Mantel, Mike Enos, "Dirty" Dick Slater, Meng, Kurosawa, The Amazing French Canadians, Harlem Heat (along with Sensational Sherri), and the Hollywood Blondes, which, lest we forget was the team of muthafuckin' Brian Pillman and muthafuckin' Steve Austin.
And he worked in all those situations. He could make an uncharismatic and, frankly, insane guy like Sid look good, he could take guys who didn't talk like Meng or Kurosawa and make them look good, and he could complement already good mic workers like Harlem Heat and the Blondes.
So he's probably not on the top of many people's lists of best managers ever, but I was the first to get around to making the lest here. So, there.
