Wednesdaymania 226: Tuesday Night Titans

The WWE Network is a vast wilderness of bizarre and unbelievable variety, and in amongst the shoddy reality TV like Total Bellas or Legends House, you wind up with some really, really weird stuff Vince McMahon seems to have forgotten. Like Tuesday Night Titans.

Which is a shame, because this show was marvelous.

Tuesday Night Titans was, in essence, Vince's answer to late night TV Talk shows. This was his Tonight. He played his own Dave Letterman. The show was, essentially, a vehicle to introduce us to the wrestlers, new angles and feuds, and it even showed us the human sides of some of the guests. Admittedly, most of the segments seem to have been Vince finding ways of tormenting his jovial co-host, Lord Alfred Hayes, but occasionally, you'll get something real and marvelous, like the interview with Hillbilly Jim on his farm while his leg heals. You get to see Jim's personality, which is rare. Also, it taught me that Hillbilly Jim, a man who I once jokingly referred to as a charisma black hole, is actually funny and nice and can really, really play guitar!

So TNT was a fantastic show.

The set was always great, it was always fun to see Hayes playing off of Vince and the guests,
and the guests were almost always lots of fun, too! Here we see Macho Man and Miss Elizabeth
and a ring with what appears to be Macho and Hogan toys in it.

 Vince got to pretend he was more refined than he was, often wearing wild suits (though I can't find the one that was pumpkin pie colored online, that was my favorite so far), and using big words and his "listen to daddy" tone. Lord Alfred Hayes always wore his fanciest suits, even tuxedos, with awful frilly shirts, and he always, always played the fall guy. He did it really well, too.

His relatively diminutive height of 5'6" (167.64cm) was a wonderful foil to other wrestlers
since they were usually a good six to twelve inches taller than him, and much broader besides!

 TNT was a show where you never knew who was going to show up or what they were going to do. Is it going to be Salvatore Bellomo and his model ship? Is it going to be the Iron Sheik and his camel and ladies? Is it going to be Hillbilly Jim and his granny? What if it's Paul Vachon's wedding? Or Fuji Vice? Or Dr. D accidentally firing an actual gun into the actual studio ceiling?!

Anything could happen.

Anyone could be there.

Like Captain Lou Albano, possibly best known outside of wrestling for being the live action Mario
in the Super Mario Bros Super Show!

 And whoever showed up, you knew you were about to learn about some hidden talent they had!

Like Tony Atlas's phenomenal artwork.
Seriously. He made that. He's fantastic.

 The show was apparently popular enough in the 1980s to have even spawned an SNL takeoff on it, though it may have been a little obscure to non-wrestling fans. Also, it was apparently a very bad episode and it did contain Billy Crystal in blackface playing Prince.

That set is almost cheap enough to belong to Vince.
That suit is almost ugly enough to be Vince's.
I think they did an okay job, here!

But alas, TNT has not been revived in the modern day. Honestly, I think Vince would find that talk-show pace to be more up his alley than daily TV, so if he were in charge of a TNT revival and Hunter took over the WWE, things might improve. Maybe.

Mostly, I just kinda want to see what modern Vince would do with this format. Would he have another live band that played music that was already a decade out of date? Who would he have as guests? Would they still talk about real-life talents that the wrestlers have?

These are the big questions, guys!

Go Enjoy Something!
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