On Brand Segunda Caida: Hotstuff Hernandez in WWF

Hotstuff Hernandez has always felt like one of the notable guys over the past couple decades to have never worked WWE, but he's also not a guy who gets talked about much as someone who could have been in WWE. He feels like a guy they would have wanted at some point, and a guy who could have been a pretty big name in certain WWE eras. He's worked nearly everywhere else in his 20+ year run, has been a visible TV presence, but has never worked for WWE. However, he worked two matches for WWF, in the year before they became WWE. How many guys work a couple matches early in their career, and then go on to make good paydays everywhere else for 20 years? It's an interesting case. Here are those two matches:


Shawn Hernandez vs. Crash WWF Jakked 11/11/2000

ER: Little did they know that they had the spitting image of future shaved head Kurt Angle right here, in a match where they talked several times about Kurt Angle, yet never made the connection. And part of that was our cursed announce team of Michael Hayes and Jonathan Coachman mentioned the name Shawn Hernandez early, but not again once the match was rolling. What Michael Hayes *does* do, is make several non-jokes about women he would like to have sex with. You now, the kind of non-jokes where suddenly any kind of verb is flipped around and made to sound dirty. "So, Molly Holly got a big win this week." "Ohhhhhh, I'll let Molly Holly get a big win over me heh heh." "Well we're still running those XFL cheerleader tryouts..." "Ohhhhh, I'd like to tryout for those XFL cheerleaders heh heh." It's great stuff and obviously they are great jokes that you cannot NOT tell. And Hernandez gets a lot of play here, most notably throwing a great high arc powerslam early. Crash makes up the size difference by hitting nice and hard, nice punches to Hernandez's eye, flies into him with a couple of nice short elbows (one of which slumps Hernandez back into the corner), knocks him down with a big bolo lariat, then hits a good enough missile dropkick. Now Crash probably needed a better, flashier comeback, as Hernandez was more in control the first couple minutes, and with the size difference Crash should have gone for some more explosives. But the bulldog finish plays with this crowd, and the match itself is good enough.

Shawn Hernandez vs. Haku WWF Jakked 4/7/01

ER: This was cool, as Hernandez gets to be a hulking Kurt Angle, bigger than Haku, and Haku is enough of a man that he basically lets Hernandez run this thing. Haku can let some hulk in a singlet look strong, because he's Haku and he knows he can always just rip his eyeball out at any point. The whole match is remarkably simple and effective, with few moves and none really needed. Haku is in his early 40s here and gets to show how spry he still was, working some face rope running/dropdown/leapfrog sequences with Hernandez in a way that Haku really wasn't doing with anyone else at the time, and the match peaked with something as easy as Hernandez chopping the hell out of Haku. Seriously, it's so great. These guys have gotten by this whole time by just running into each other and being two guys butting heads, and we finally get Hernandez whipping Haku into the turnbuckles...and then he just starts beating him down. Hernandez throws heavy clubbing forearm shots to Haku's chest, then starts throwing big hard chops. And not super fast Kobashi chops, he's laying them in Ric Flair style, and Haku just yells louder every time another one lands. Hernandez is standing and chopping Haku as hard as possible, and the fans are getting into it, and Hernandez keeps chopping, and the fans are into this big man slugfest. Hernandez tosses Haku into the opposite buckles, Haku angrily headbutts the buckle, Hernandez gives chase...and Haku catches him dead to rights in the Tongan Death Grip. I had no clue these two ever crossed paths, had no memory of this match (even though Metal/Jakked was my favorite show during this era), but this was what you would want from 3 minutes of two hosses.