The Life and Times of Mr. Perfect is one of the oddest WWE DVDs that’s come along in ages. It’s really good to see so much of the footage, but it’s also messed up in a few places. It’s sad because Mr. Perfect was a favorite of mine.

The timeline is the strangest part. The first five years of his career goes by pretty slowly, and then it just flows fast through his years in the AWA, followed by a slightly slower travel through his time in the WWF and then speeding through his years in WCW and then the briefest of mentions of his time in the WWE before he finally died, which they absolutely draw out.

The jerky nature of the timeline in the documentary is awkward, but some of it is understandable because they want to highlight his time with WWF, but they own footage of his time in the WCW, AWA, Memphis and even World Class. It’s odd the way they went with things.

I did like the fact that they had some great interviews that came off so well. Wade Boggs is the star. So seldom do they get big names to do the interviews, and Boggs was a great interview and was really emotional. I guess it helps that they were really good friends, too. The story of how Curt saved Wade’s life by carrying him to the truck and getting him to the hospital was powerful, as was the induction of Curt into the WWE Hall of Fame. I thought that was one of the most emotional moments in the last decade of wrestling, right up there with the Flair retirement and Hall of Fame. Larry the Axe Hennig wasn’t great, but Curt’s son Joe was really strong and he’s training to be a wrestler. He’s got a great look and he did a fine interview.

Actually, the next best interviews were with the producers of the Mr. Perfect vignettes. They were fun bits, and the myth goes that he could just do all those things, like throwing darts, hitting putts from 40 feet, shooting baskets and so on. Well, they had a very funny section where they showed all the fails and that was really cool. The production folks told great stories and had a lot of personality.

A great dip into history...

The thing that really bothered me was the big wrong was the fact that they gave so much importance to his time in the WWWF in the late 1970s and early 80s and not nearly as much at his time in the AWA. I was very happy to see that they included a match from Madison Square Garden between Curt Hennig and my all-time favorite, Eddie Gilbert. It was a decent match, both guys were really young, and I was impressed with the fact that they put that match on. I know I’ll never get my Eddie Gilbert DVD, so it’s nice to see this match. This match was also the debut of Tiger Mask later on the same show.

Some of the things they showed are interesting because they seldom acknowledge those things. They showed the Four Horsemen interview where Arn Anderson offered Curt the role of Enforcer. They showed footage from numerous shows in the WWF years, yet almost no extended clips. The coverage they gave to the 60 minute match with Nick Bockwinkle was decent, but they should have done a montage of moments from the match like they do with a lot of the big important matches.

They also did a fair bit of coverage for the Bret Hart vs. Mr. Perfect matches, but they completely skipped the most important match of his 1992-1993 tenure, his match teaming with Randy Savage against Ric Flair and Razor Ramon, as well as not at all mentioning the matches with Ric Flair and Shawn Michaels. The Flair one was probably a bigger oversight as it was one of the most important matches of the early Raws.

The thing they get over was how fun Curt was, and all the ribs he’d play on the boys in the lockerroom. My man Mean Gene tells a great story about Curt and a training potty that’s just hilarious. The Brooklyn Brawler also has an OK bit.