The SmarK Rant for Coliseum Video presents The Life and Times of Captain Lou Albano

The SmarK Rant for Coliseum Video presents The Life and Times of Captain Lou Albano

I can’t imagine this can possibly anything be approaching any semblance of good, but it’s one of the OG Coliseum tapes and one of the few that I haven’t seen yet, along with the Best of George Steele one that’s also on my list. So…let ‘er rip, I guess.

Your host is Gorilla Monsoon

Captain Lou Albano, Hillbilly Jim & Andre the Giant v. Bobby Heenan, Big John Studd & King Kong Bundy

Off to MSG in 86 to start, although we literally cut away as soon as the bell rings. Well then.

Captain Lou Albano v. Tony Angelo

Back to Philly in the 70s, as Angelo looks like a thinner King Kong Bundy, but this only goes about 1:00 here before Tony misses a blind charge and gets pinned. 0 for 1.

Lou Albano v. Rick Martel

Back to Philly again, June of 1981 this time. I’m assuming this was tied up in the various tag team feuds that Martel & Garea had with Lou’s teams at the time. Lou immediately pokes Rick in the eye and tosses him, and then runs him into the post while he’s trying to get back into the ring. Back in the ring, Lou rakes the back while Gorilla declares that the match took place “some 10 years ago”, although it was actually only 5 years ago at the time. Lou uses various cheapshots on Rick, but Martel fights back and pulls his hair in the corner while Lou begs for mercy and then runs away to the dressing room at 3:45. That was a preferred finish for him. This was pretty awful. 0 for 2.

WWF tag team title: Mr. Fuji & Mr. Saito v. Jules & Jay Strongbow

Fuji immediately throws a wad of salt in Jules’ face behind the idiot ref’s back and pins him to win the first fall, and then Fuji puts the boots to him outside for good measure and runs him into the post. There was so much salt that it actually hit the ref. And we don’t get the rest of the match, as they leave it there. 0 for 3.

Captain Lou Albano, Mr. Fuji & Mr. Saito v. Rick Martel, Tony Garea & Tony Atlas

Off to Philly again in 1981 and the heels beat on Garea outside with various shenanigans and tomfoolery, but he fights back in and makes the hot tag to Tony Atlas. Tony runs wild and gets a press slam on Saito for two, but Albano rakes the face and the heels go to work on Tony in the corner. Fuji cuts off the ring with some martial arts, but Martel gets a hot tag and we’re clipped to later in the match. The heels work Martel over in the corner as Albano uses his clubbing forearms and slugs away in the corner. Back to Garea for more dropkicks on Fuji, but Saito clobbers him from behind and Fuji falls on top for the pin at 5:14 shown. Apparently this was a much longer 2/3 falls match but we didn’t see much of it. 0 for 4.

WWF tag team title: The Wild Samoans v. Rocky Johnson & Tony Atlas

This is the famous title change from Championship Wrestling, as we get the famous finish of Albano trying to hit Atlas with a balsa wood chair and smashing it over Afa’s head by mistake, and the crowd celebrates like the Acclaimed just won the belts or something. Just the same clip of the finish we’ve seen a million times already. 0 for 5.

From Tuesday Night Titans, Lou and the Samoans stop by for a chat with Vince to discuss the title loss we just saw. Vince asks some bad faith “gotcha” questions, really showing some yellow journalism there to set up Albano, and the Samoans walk out on him during the break. Once they’re gone, Albano takes no responsibility for the loss and throws his team under the bus, saying they should have been tough enough to take a chair to the head and not cry about it like crybabies. Also he took them from the trees and pulled them out of savagery and made them champions, so now they’re dead to him. Also he’s a very stable genius.

From Tuesday Night Titans, Lou is back and talks about his new guy, the Spoiler, and the rubber ball he now carries around to work on his grip strength. He can now snap CARBON STEEL pliers with his bare hands, so just think what he can do with the claw? Vince: “Some skulls are softer than others.” And then Albano goes on another rant about Greg Valentine, barely taking a breath. Clearly the good drugs were getting passed around backstage that night.

Meanwhile, Lou and Fabulous Moolah have words for Cyndi Lauper before the Brawl to End It All. They can’t decide if Moolah has been champion for 12 years or 27, but it’s been a long time, on that they can agree!

WWF tag team title: Adrian Adonis & Dick Murdoch v. The Wild Samoans

From MSG in August 85, and Lou Albano has somehow managed to be appointed special referee despite managing the tag team champions. The Samoans quickly clean house and Sika chokes Adonis in the corner, but Murdoch returns and beats on him with elbows. The Samoans run wild in response and Adonis takes a crazy bump to the floor off that and then Sika slingshots him back into the ring again while Murdoch hides behind the announcers at ringside. We cut to the champs double-teaming Sika, but the Samoans make the comeback and put Murdoch down with a headbutt. Albano counts two, but then changes his mind and disqualifies the Samoans instead at 5:25 shown. This was fun enough for a point given the low bar of the rest of the tape so far. 1 for 6.

From Tuesday Night Titans, Captain Lou sits down with Vince for Advice For the Lovelorn. I hope one of the pieces of advice he gives Vince is not to syphon off company funds to pay off extramarital affairs. Question #1: What to do if your husband refuses to use deodorant? Lou notes that lots of men are allegoric to modern aerosols, and advises a mixture of rubbing alcohol, olive oil and witch hazel, which he can rub all over himself. Question #2: Does Lou know anything about a “Fat Person’s Guide to Ecstasy”? Lou notes that he has no time for fat people, but he’s ok with the big fat mamas who love him.

Piper’s Pit, with special guest Lou Albano. He’s claiming to be Cyndi Lauper’s manager after appearing in her music video. He took her from a homeless streetwalker to the biggest star in music, you see. Then the next week, Cyndi is the guest on the show, and she denies that Lou is managing her, although she still loves him. So Lou comes out and he’s all offended that Cyndi would ride his reputation, just like no woman could succeed without a man behind her. So then Piper joins in with Albano in harassing her for besmirching Lou’s good name, and Cyndi finally snaps and storms off.

Later, Lou feels bad about the stuff he’s said and apologizes on TNT, leading to the MSG show where Cyndi presents him with a gold record in appreciation for the good work he’s been doing in her name now. This brings out Roddy Piper, who turns on Lou and smashes it on his head, turning Albano babyface for the remainder of his career.

Back on TNT, Albano rants about Roddy Piper beating on a woman and her manager, and Piper’s time will come at the hands of Hulk Hogan.

Later in the show, Roddy Piper joins Vince and accuses Albano of skimming off the MS charity work.

Back at the studio, Albano joins Gorilla to rant about nonsense. This tape is brutal and just going off the rails completely.

From TNT, Lou shows up dressed as The Great Pumpkin and it’s fairly horrifying. Then we cut to Tito Santana at a diner being run by Albano, as Lou takes a bite out of his sandwich before serving it to him. And then we kick things up another notch, as Lou shows Vince and Alfred how to carve pumpkins and that goes about as well as you’d expect.

From TNT as this tape just limps slowly to the finish line, Albano goes over Italian cooking with Roddy Piper and Cowboy Bob Orton. Piper suggests sneaking a little sausage while Lou serves up the spaghetti, which is then revealed to have been laced with hot sauce, and Piper has an overblown reaction to eating it and spits it all over the kitchen. Yeah. I mean, I guess this one at least had a payoff, unlike 90% of the rambling skits on TNT.

And finally we return to the match that started the tape!

Captain Lou Albano, Hillbilly Jim & Andre the Giant v. Bobby Heenan, Big John Studd & King Kong Bundy

From MSG in November of 85. We pick things up with the heels working Andre over in the corner and Bundy goes to a lengthy facelock to cut off the ring. But then Andre slugs back on Studd and brings in Jim, so who chokes out Studd in the corner and slugs away on him. But then Studd just elbows him down again and hauls him into the Heenan corner for some abuse there. Bundy with a chinlock for a while and Bobby comes in, so Jim immediately tags out to Andre and Heenan runs away. So Andre hauls him back in and brings in Albano to get some shots on Bobby. Lou offers Heenan a free shot, so Bobby rakes the eyes, but then Albano whips him into the corner and boots him to the floor. Back in, Bobby tries to tag out and the referee insists that he needs to make contact with Andre before he can. Gorilla rightly calls BULLSHIT on that one, but Bobby goes for a lockup and then tags in Studd anyway. So Andre traps all three heels in the corner and squishes them together, and then Andre hits Bobby with a big boot for a hilarious sell from Heenan, and that finishes at 10:57. Brutally bad. 1 for whatever we were up to.

Yeah this might be the worst Coliseum Video of all time, despite strong competition from the Ken Patera Story. I guess next time I’ll have to review the George Steele tape and see if that can take the crown away from Lou. I suspect it might. This one was just a mess of unrelated match clips and terrible TNT segments and it was all over the place and didn’t tell any kind of coherent “life and times” of Lou Albano.