On This Day: February 1, 1991 – The Main Event V: Hulk Hogan Is An American

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Date: February 1, 1991
Location: Macon Coliseum, Macon, Georgia
Attendance: 7,500
Commentators: Vince McMahon, Roddy Piper

This is The Main Event, which is a spinoff from Saturday Night’s Main Event but rather than considering it a continuation, I’ve always considered it to be its own show. This was aired on Fridays and the first three were live. I only have copies of three and five at the moment so there won’t be much to say. This is the last one so I need the other three. Anyway, this is during the build to Mania 7 and the main event will be announced tonight. Hmm, I wonder who will stand up to face the evil foreign sympathizer. Let’s get to it.

It’s only an hour long counting commercials so don’t expect much.

We open with Hogan doing his own USO tour since the real USO wouldn’t let him go. I guess wrestling isn’t considered real Americana?

The theme song is the same as SNME. This is I think twelve days after the Rumble so there might even be some fallout from it. Vince and Piper run down the card and it sounds weak to put it nicely.

Hulk Hogan/Tugboat vs. Dino Bravo/Earthquake

Hogan gets a very solid pop and is the only one of the four to get a reaction at all. According to Vince, Quake and Bravo weigh about 1,300 pounds between them. Think Vince is a bit shaky here for some reason? That’s not rhetorical actually as he’s normally more composed than this. Hogan cleans house on Bravo to start. Bravo and Tugboat are in now and this isn’t going to be pretty.

Bravo actually gets an atomic drop and a very good one all things considered. Hogan vs. Quake now, which is a somewhat big feud still at this point. The slam hits on the first try which is something different for the bald one. Quake gets a nice jump kick that looked pretty good for a man his size. The boating enthusiast gets beaten down as we wait on Hogan to get the tag.

Megaphone to the head ends any momentum he had and we take a break. Warrior is still the symbol on the graphic despite having lost the title and not even being on the card here. The referee misses the tag after the break and Tugboat takes a double slam. Hogan blocks the flying fat drop and we get the hot tag finally. Oddly enough Hogan hits the boot on Bravo and rolls him up for the pin instead of the standard finish.

Rating: D+. Totally standard house show main event here. This wasn’t supposed to be anything epic at all and it definitely wasn’t. These shows were designed to get the top feuds on TV and on occasions like this one, ending the feuds once and for all since Hogan had nothing else to do with any of these guys after this. Nothing great at all but fine for what it was.

Savage says he should be champion.

We get a clip from the Rumble where Sherri tries to seduce a title match out of the Warrior for Savage and then he cost Warrior the title, setting up the classic at Mania 7 and Warrior’s best match ever.

Slaughter talks about playing by new rules, which was this weird thing he talked about for a long while but nothing really ever came from it.

WWF Title: Jim Duggan vs. Sgt. Slaughter

Pretty clear what we’ve got here but the story makes sense at least. Duggan brings Hogan with him which is about as simple of a pairing as you could ever ask for anywhere. Hogan gets thrown out during a break which is kind of odd. Ah apparently he isn’t a legal manager. Standard punch/kick stuff here as we all know Duggan isn’t going to do anything here.

Three Point Clothesline sends Slaughter to the floor. The General gets involved and then gets punched. Iron Sheik in case you didn’t know that. Duggan can’t do much other than punch here but that sums up a lot of his career in WWF. Board to the jaw of Duggan and Slaughter takes over even more. Duggan goes after the Sheik and Slaughter pops him with a chair for the DQ. Hogan runs out for the save and gets beaten down with the chair too.

Rating: D. Again nothing special at all here as Duggan just did nothing but throw punches and kicks. It was all setting up the DQ and the Hogan beatdown afterwards which is fine I guess but I would have liked a more entertaining match. At least the characters match up very well. This wasn’t very good but I’ve seen far worse.

The LOD say they’ll crush the Orient Express, which is very true. They go with the xenophobic angle here which is as basic as you could ask for. The LOD was called American Originals back in the late 90s which never went anywhere.

Legion of Doom vs. Orient Express

Did the Express ever win a major match? If they did I certainly don’t remember it. Animal and Kato start us off. Kato was Paul Diamond from the AWA that was very good in his time. LOD is MOVING out there for once. This is a very fast paced match and a nice change of pace for the usually dominant faces. Fuji throws salt at Animal and takes him down. Hawk comes in and beats everyone up badly and the squash is on. Doomsday Device ENDS Kato for the win.

Rating: B-. VERY energetic match here the whole five minutes which isn’t something you often hear about the LOD. The Express bumped like crazy pinballs on speed for Animal and Hawk and the result was a rather entertaining match. It’s not very good, but it’s one of those matches where it’s about the insanity and that worked well here.

Gene talks to Jack Tunney about who gets the shot at Mania and runs down a bunch of candidates. The nominees for lack of a better term are the main three and Duggan due to earlier. Of course it’s Hogan.

Slaughter doesn’t seem to care and says he’ll keep the title.

Hogan comes out and talks about the USO tour he went on and calls all the military people little Hulkamaniacs. There’s something hilarious about that. Apparently Slaughter shouldn’t be protected by the troops. He pledges to God that he’ll win the title. He leads the crowd in the Pledge of Allegiance which is weird for some reason.

Overall Rating: D+. This was all about the last 8 minutes with nothing else being notable at all. An interesting thing is as I was watching this I found copies of the other three so expect me to blaze through these soon enough, especially the first one which is the Hogan vs. Andre II match that drew a 15 in the ratings. This show isn’t that good though and clearly didn’t mean much at the end of the day. Not bad, but really just setting up Mania’s main event. Not worth watching.

 

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