Survivor Series 1992
Date: November 25, 1992
Location: Richfield Coliseum, Richfield, Ohio
Attendance: 17,500
Commentators: Vince McMahon, Bobby Heenan

Ok so for once we really do have a ton of changes here. For one thing, this is far closer to a standard PPV. There’s one Survivor Series match which is kind of one I guess, but it’s two tag teams and if one member is eliminated both members are gone so it’s kind of a Survivor Series match but not really. The other huge difference here is that there’s no Hogan or Warrior. Warrior is on the box of the tape, but he wasn’t on the show.

He was supposed to be in half of the double main event, a tag match with Savage against Razor Ramon and Flair. However, he bailed a week before the show and the WWF had to use Mr. Perfect in what I thought was a great angle that I’ll get to later. Other than that, your main event is Bret vs. Shawn. This was a real gamble for Vince as we had never tried having two standard wrestlers go at it in a major show’s main event.

There’s no big muscle head to go out and have a match, but Vince put his faith in what he had left and to me, it worked. Other than that, this isn’t going to look like the Survivor Series. With what’s been happening lately at this show, it can’t be worse, so let’s see how this is.

We open with the Reverend Slick saying…ummm…I have no idea what he’s talking about. I think it was something about spreading light. Yeah this was a strange character but he was very energetic so I can’t complain. Vince and Bobby go over the double main event and we’re ready to go.

Headshrinkers vs. High Energy

High Energy is Koko B. Ware and Owen Hart in really bright and baggy neon pants and suspenders. Headshrinkers are two Samoans that are monsters. Guess what this is. Yep, it’s a squash, however, oddly enough the Headshrinkers are in the ring before High Energy is introduced so they look like the jobbers. That’s just odd. I’ve always been a mark for the Headshrinkers so if nothing else I’ll probably like this match.

Fatu is more commonly known as Rikishi. Vince is needling Bobby about Perfect’s face turn which is just great. How in the world is Koko a Hall of Fame member? That just boggles my mind every time I think about it. Vince says that High Energy has been very successful so far. That’s nonsense but oh well. Heenan asks Vince if the Headshrinkers will be at his house for Thanksgiving. That’s an amusing thought and oddly enough I think Vince would have fun with it.

After Koko gets the tar beaten out of him for a good while, he makes the hot tag to the most talented guy in the match, Owen. Owen comes in and beats up the Headshrinkers for a bit, but the overall mass of the fat one is too much for Owen and he’s pinned after a big splash from the top.

This was fairly long at about seven and a half minutes but it was really just an extended squash. Post match Heenan uses his Brain Scan, a telestrator, the white pen thing on the screen, to show how Owen is a turkey. In other words, he draws pictures with it.

Rating: C+. It wasn’t bad, but it was a nice breath of air compared to most Survivor Series matches. It was a standard tag team squash, which isn’t something that you see very often anymore, mainly because the tag team division sucks. Anyway, this was at least ok. It’s not great but it’s not bad. It’s certainly acceptable and a fine choice to open the show.

Alfred Hayes is with Boss Man who says he’s going to beat Nailz.

Sean Mooney says that viewer discretion is advised for the following match. Now there’s something you don’t see every day. Nailz implies Boss Man was abusive and that he’s been waiting for this. He says he’s a good climber, so does that mean he’s an escaped convict? Yeah that’s just kind of stupid.

Boss Man cuts a promo…again. He says the exact same thing. I think only one was shown on the live broadcast, but I really don’t get why they did two in a row like this. The second is better.

Nightstick on a Pole: Big Boss Man vs. Nailz

During that second promo, Boss Man runs off mid sentence to catch Nailz who is trying to get the stick early. That at least makes sense. Yep it’s a big brawl. That’s all this was supposed to be. Boss Man was more or less worthless at this point, but Nailz was going to be given the Undertaker of all people next, as he had several house show matches followed by being on the cover of the WWF Magazine. However, after nearly murdering Vince McMahon (literally) he was fired.

As you would expect, both guys go for the post but neither can get it. The pole is too short though and all you have to do is stand on the top rope. Of course since this is a pole match and all they have to do is standard climbing, it takes 20 seconds to get up there. Nailz at least has the psychology of it right as he uses mainly chokes and punches. He’s not supposed to be a polished wrestler and he’s not wrestling like one.

He’s a street fighter and he’s acting like one. At least he’s smart enough to do that. This is just a sloppy match all around. They’re worn out after about three minutes with no big bumps yet. The way Bobby and Vince are talking about it you would think this was a Hell in a Cell match or something. See, if I were in this match, I’d let the other guy get the stick and then jump him on the way down, but then again I’m not a professional.

Boss Man gets the stick and beats Nailz with it, but a shot to the head isn’t enough to keep him down apparently. Nailz gets it and hits Boss Man in the side with it. He then waits for him to get up, misses a shot, gets punched twice, whipped in and the Boss Man Slam ends it. Yep that’s it. This was a waste of time.

Rating: D+. This was just awful. There was no point at all to it and it should have been a standard match instead of this mess. The nightstick served next to no purpose but of course it looked like it was awesome. It just wasn’t entertaining at all and ended without the stick being a factor. Just make it a one on one next time people.

Nailz, while choking Mooney, says that was more injustice.

Tatanka is in the back with Alfred Hayes. He says that tonight he’ll get back his eagle feathers and honor his people. Well at least it’s borderline original.

Gene is with Flair and Razor. Gene talks about how there was a big swerve going on and how Perfect is the new partner. We go to the tape of Prime Time Wrestling where Perfect turned. This was just after Warrior had left and Savage was on satellite from Florida. He says that his partner could be perfect for him.

The design of the show was a round table with Vince, Hillbilly Jim, Jim Duggan, Heenan and Perfect there discussing various things in the company and talking about matches that were shown. That’s actually a pretty cool idea when you think about it. Anyway, Vince says do you mean Mr. Perfect and Savage says he does. Heenan speaks for Perfect, saying that they both take orders from Flair and that Perfect isn’t wrestling anywhere.

Perfect takes offense to this and says that he’s tired of being ordered around before accepting. Heenan slaps him which causes Perfect to grab him by the tie and pour water over him, saying that Flair is afraid of him. We cut back to Flair, who is TICKED over this. He talks to Perfect, saying that he had it all and is throwing it away.

There’s a hint of fear in his voice which is just great as this is a heck of a promo. Ramon says that his team will win. He really wasn’t that good yet and it showed in his promos. He would get a lot better. The partnership here was always kind of a weird one as it was never really explained.

Tatanka vs. Rick Martel

This is happening because Martel stole some feathers from Tatanka which were important. Well it’s better than nothing I guess. This is a bit of a departure from the Survivor Series idea wouldn’t you say? Heenan goes on a huge rant about life in general, mainly focused on Perfect. Martel chokes and Heenan shouts out that HE HAS TIL FIVE!

Sgt. Slaughter is now an enforcer of rules or something like that. A front facelock by Martel gets him nowhere. Scratch that as it gets him suplexed. Ok so it failed him once so now we go right back to it. Doink is here now as he has only been here for about five weeks now. Amazingly enough the facelock leads to ANOTHER suplex. That’s just appropriate.

Doink makes a balloon animal for a kid and steals it. That’s straight up awesome. Martel uses the hold AGAIN. Dude three times with the same hold in 3 minutes? Seriously? Are you that bored? A cop shows up in the front row and takes a sign as we cut away. It probably said WCW or something like that, making that person EVIL!

Martel hits the post with his shoulder so the stereotype goes after it, showing some intelligence. Backslide gets two which of course Vince swears is a pin. Doink continues to be a big focus here but I don’t think anything ever came of his involvement here. How weird is it to think that Vince has been WWF Champion but neither of these guys were?

Martel works on the back now as Tatanka is in trouble. Decent little match so far if nothing else. Double axe off the middle rope eats fist though and here comes the warpath thing. Top rope chop hits Martel and he’s in big trouble. Samoan drop ends it and Tatanka gets the feathers back. Doink pops the kids’ balloons just to be evil.

Rating: C-. This was fine for what it was: a midcard match that nothing ever really came of. It was the end to this mini-feud and nothing else ever came of it. Both guys were at least ok in the ring and it went fine I guess. Nothing ever came of the Doink thing though, which means it was indeed, completely pointless, for him to be out there at the end.

We go to Mooney who is with Savage and Perfect, who say that they’re a strange team but they respect each other. In some weird way, this match actually looks decent enough I guess. Perfect gives a WOO at the end which ticks Bobby off during the intros.

Razor Ramon/Ric Flair vs. Mr. Perfect/Randy Savage

The faces get a HUGE pop, especially Savage. How in the world did Vince not push him as top face once Hulk left? I’ll never get that for the life of me. He had everything: the look, the ability, the resume, yet for no apparent reason he was put behind the announce desk. That just doesn’t make sense to me. Heenan is so angry about this match that it’s hilarious. We start with Perfect against Ramon which gets yet another pop.

This AWA reunion begins with Perfect being all over the place and outmaneuvering Razor. The forgotten aspect is that these two are former AWA World Tag Team Champions. Perfect nails Flair and we get the big showdown. Savage and Flair is one of the best feuds ever. Both guys can go in the ring and it offered proof that the company could work without the big orange man to help them out. The heels take over now as Ramon puts on an abdominal stretch.

Vince has apparently been hanging out with Monsoon too much as he criticizes it for a lack of the hook of the toe. Has anyone ever done that hold properly? The heels are dominating Savage now, which makes sense as Perfect hasn’t been around for about a year now so it makes sense that he’s on the apron for a lot of the match. As Savage is being beaten on, Perfect turns to walk away. This makes limited sense as there’s no point to it really.

The heels do the smart thing and point Savage’s face at Perfect leaving, which would I guess work to break his spirit a bit. See, that’s why Flair is better than most wrestlers: he had the mental aspect of wrestling down. That’s a critical key to a wrestler that most people don’t have. Heenan ranting about Perfect is flat out awesome. This has been a pretty good match so far. It’s not great, but it’s what you would expect from a main event level tag match I suppose.

Razor hits a chokeslam which doesn’t have a name yet. Heenan says that he’s seen Ramon do that to the people on the streets of Miami. What area of Miami is Ramon from? I’ve never been there but apparently 6’6 men chokeslam you on the cement there. That’s fairly cool. Also, as Ramon goes for the cover and Perfect looks for the save, Bobby yells “GET OUT OF THE RING YOU LOWLIFE!”

That’s just an awesome line if there ever was one. He sounds so ticked off which is all you can ask for here. Flair goes to the top, and I’ll give you two guesses as to what happens. Actually you would be wrong because Savage does something different here. He climbs to the middle rope before going back to the bottom rope to slam him. That wouldn’t really add anything to the move I don’t think, but whatever, it looked cool.

This lets Savage get the hot tag to Perfect who proceeds to clean house. It’s chair time as Savage gets taken out by a shot from Flair. The referee gets bumped and apparently the other one was just behind the curtain because he’s out there in like 4 seconds. Perfect and Ramon are going at it and Razor sets for the Edge. Perfect gets a sweet counter by kicking off the top rope and backdropping Ramon.

He hits the Perfectplex but only gets two because of Flair. He hits another on Flair but no pin again with Razor making the save. Since both guys are in the ring forever, we get the DQ in a cheap ending. Flair puts him in the figure four and eventually Savage makes the save with a chair as the faces win. The face celebration takes way too long as they’re channeling Hogan I guess.

Rating: B. The ending hurts it a bit, but this was solid. It was a good tag match and while it didn’t have a definitive ending, it might be better that it didn’t here. Perfect looked good while Ramon looked pretty good as well. This was what you would expect from these four in this kind of a match. It went fine though, and I can’t really complain about anything other than the ending I guess. Bobby’s rants are great here.

Flair and Ramon are angry of course and they vow revenge.

Yokozuna vs. Virgil

This was the not incredibly fat Yoko, as he’s only 505 at this point and the monster that we know him as. He’s billed from Polynesia here which is just odd in all respects. We get a segment from earlier in the day where Hayes goes to Yoko’s room for an interview but Yoko is getting a massage. Fuji offers to let Alfred get a massage. He’s liking it as Fuji throws him out. Vince tries to make this match sound good. That’s just funny.

Despite being Polynesian apparently, Fuji has the Japanese flag. Vince says he hasn’t been tested yet. Apparently that’s going to be the case after this match too. Naturally, Virgil really can’t do much here. It’s basic jobber offense with punches and dropkicks that fail more and more every time. Yoko hits a sweet kick to the face that knocks him down with ease. He crushes him with a sweet spinning rock bottom suplex.

The squashing continues as Virgil tries to out move him. Vince says he’s trying to stay away from him as he’s running right at him. I love that classic Vince commentary. In a spot I’ve always wanted to see, Virgil goes for a school boy and Yoko just sits on him. That’s as simple as you could get and it worked perfectly. Within a few seconds the Banzai ends this one.

Rating: C. It’s a squash so I guess we’ll call it average. Virgil of course stood no chance here and it was nothing more than a way to get Yoko over and there’s nothing at all wrong with doing that here. It gave him a win over a somewhat big name and Virgil gets to eat tonight, so things are fine here. It was short, under four minutes that is, so what can I really complain about?

We go to the back with Savage and Perfect who say that was great. They say Ramon and Flair are the turkeys.

Nasty Boys/Natural Disasters vs. Money Inc./Beverly Brothers

This is the elimination tag I was talking about earlier. Money Inc. are the tag champions here and are in the middle of a feud with the Nastys that I don’t remember in the slightest. DiBiase is wearing the stupid white attire again which if you’ve read my thoughts on Summerslam 92, you know my take on. The other two teams had fought at Summerslam so I guess that constitutes a feud, despite it being a squash. Yeah that makes sense.

The Nastys are WAY over. That’s quite surprising to me. Again, this is a very boring match indeed. I don’t get the point in having these kinds of things, although I guess in this case only having one works fine. This is even a switch from the normal stuff and it’s still rather pointless. Vince asks if Heenan will be on an upcoming European tour. Heenan says he might but it’s really none of Vince’s business.

I love lines like that where given what we know now the meanings are far different. Yep, this match sucks as well. Why can’t there just be interesting matches on a show? I don’t get how hard that is to accomplish. Anyway, after about five minutes of people just beating on each other with the freaking Nasty Boys being the most over out there (I will never get wrestling fans at times), we get to what we knew was coming: the wild brawl.

Out of this, the Beverlies go down to the Earthquake from Earthquake. He really needed a better name for that move. My goodness Typhoon was worthless. Actually that’s not true. He was good for comedy, as he’s more commonly known as the legendary Shockmaster. Good grief this will just not end.

The heels dominate for a few minutes until Typhoon comes in to clean house a bit. This works for awhile until IRS rolls him up to eliminate the Disasters. Within five seconds, Knobbs rolls him up for the win. I kind of like that ending I think.

Rating: D. Oy this was another horrible match. There’s just no point to this match other than to further Nasties vs. Money Inc., which begs the question of why not just have them go at it by themselves? Wouldn’t that make things a lot easier? I’d certainly think so. Either way, this was nothing special and for the most part was just flat out boring. That seems to be a trend here.

We recap Taker vs. Kamala with the main thing being Kamala is scared of caskets. Why does that not surprise me? We see Taker building a massive casket before we go to the arena for the match.

Undertaker vs. Kamala

This is different than the traditional casket match with the rules here being that you have to get the pinfall and THEN put them in the box. Yeah that’s just redundant. The intros here are long but not modern day Taker long as it only takes about five minutes for both guys to come out. Taker and Bearer have the massive coffin with them which is always cool looking, but this one is way too bright for my liking.

Immediately we see the two major issues in this match. First of all, Kamala sucks, badly. Even for a monster he sucks. Second, the coffin aspect is just stupid since it’s pinfall first. Due to that, there’s really no point to the box aspect. They should have made it one or the other, but granted this was a first so they were really in the dark at this point. So far this is your standard monster vs. monster match. Taker beats on both managers but gets chopped by Kamala. This was a very odd time in Taker’s career.

They knew that he was a huge asset and talent, but they had absolutely no clue what to do with him. Since they didn’t know all they did was throw him against monster after monster whom Taker would usually beat after losing an initial encounter. This feud in particular since after this at the Rumble, Whippleman would bring in Giant Gonzalez who would destroy Taker for a bit before Taker put him away at Summerslam.

About 12 years later, the feud was completely recycled but with Muhammad Hassan and Mark Henry combining to play the role of Kamala and Great Khali being Gonzalez. The IWC HATED this feud because we were literally calling every single thing that was going to happen and we were right. Now to be fair, they waited over 10 years so I guess it’s ok, but still it was a very boring 8 months as far as we were concerned when it came to Taker.

Kamala starts taking over and hits some of the worst splashes ever. Like I’ve said, unless it’s from the top rope, for the most part if you use a splash for a finisher, odds are you’re not a very good wrestler. With Taker down, Kim Chee and Kamala literally play hot potato with the urn. Taker sits up and nails Kamala with it for the pin. See, after that they ring the bell, which shows how stupid this is. They roll Kamala into the coffin and literally nail it shut. Yep that’s it.

Rating: C+. Eh, given what they had this was about as good as it was going to get I suppose. Taker winning was never in doubt at all, but it was ok. It certainly could have been worse but they kept it short and that was a big plus for these guys. There’s really not a lot that they’ll be able to do, so I’m happy with this overall. The gimmick was a bit stupid, but they didn’t know what they were doing, so this is slightly above average.

Shawn cuts a pretty bad promo, talking about how he beat Bulldog for the IC belt, who beat Hart for the belt at Summerslam. Apparently Bret has defended the title the most times in history, which is impressive since I think he won it about 6 weeks before this. He was brand new to the big time and you could see he was very nervous.

We get a pointless bit about Kim Chee and Harvey opening the casket and Kamala not being able to move. And that’s about it.

WWF Title: Bret Hart vs. Shawn Michaels

After Shawn’s intro, we go to the back for an interview with Bret. Since winning the belt he’s defended against Mountie, Berzerker, Rick Martel, Papa Shango and Virgil. And people have the nerve to ask why his first reign wasn’t taken seriously. Bret talks about how thankful he is for what he’s done and how he’s gotten this far. This had the potential to be a great promo, but Bret just wasn’t that good on the mic yet, which is understandable.

It fit his character really well as he was supposed to be the best pure wrestler in the world and while he couldn’t talk he could go in the ring. That’s what he did, and it worked very well. Like I said, this was a huge gamble for the company as they had no clue how to do a big show without Hogan or Warrior. This could have sunk the company for Vince, but thankfully he stuck to his guns and put two of his best young guys out there.

Bret gets a solid pop but not huge. Vince of course tries to make it sound bigger than Hogan ever got. Heenan gets in a great line. Vince says that Bret is likely the most scientific champion of all time. Heenan in his most condescending and annoyed voice says wrong. Vince asks who. Heenan: Flair. He sounds so snobby and annoyed here that it’s perfect. They start with a lengthy feeling out period, which makes sense here and works well since both of these guys can do just about anything.

Also, at this time Shawn doesn’t use the kick as his finisher, but rather a weird suplex move. The kick is in his arsenal but it’s just a run of the mill move. He’s kind of like a rookie MMA Brock Lesnar. He had everything else but he couldn’t finish people. Bret gets a hammerlock and Shawn actually taps but since it’s 1992 no one gets that. Dang maybe he’s more like Lesnar than I thought. Heenan mentions he gets paid a lot of money to do his job.

Vince’s “I’m sure you do” response is full of sarcasm which again is funnier now given that we know he signs Heenan’s checks. Given that this is a pretty long opening part of the match, the fans are staying into it which is a very good thing. Shawn uses that same rolling counter for a hip toss that he’s used before and it’s still completely awesome. Vince really likes talking about how Bret won the title.

How they evolved into what they became just five years later amazes me. We pick up the pace a bit which makes the match more interesting. Granted it was fine before but now it’s a bit better. Bret takes the standard momentum turning bump of having his shoulder hit the post at full speed.

Shawn shifts into a standard heel offense and this is working pretty well. These two have a natural chemistry between them and it’s never once failed to deliver at least a very good match. Even the Montreal match was at least good before the ending.

They continue the debate over who is stronger which never was answered I don’t think. Heenan, talking about Shawn, says this man is hot. Where’s Becca when I need her? I love how Vince orders the referees around. I wonder if he criticizes them about it later on. They kind of mention that Bret has won the Triple Crown but they don’t call it that. Pedro Morales had already done it so they can’t really say much about Bret.

Bobby goes to some classic insults about Bret’s family, which are likely what he was best at. We’ve been in this chinlock far too long now as Shawn just doesn’t have the variety in his offense to be able to pull off a nearly half hour match like this is. Given another year or two though he easily could, but he just wasn’t there yet. It seems that all he knows are rest holds, which I guess he’s using to just stall for time.

That’s fine I guess, but he needs to do some standard stuff in between them to prevent it from becoming boring. Heenan’s random talk of Razor and Flair is amusing. He played the role perfectly. You can tell Vince just can’t keep up with Heenan on the mic and it’s great to hear. Of course, Vince believed he was ten times the commentator that Gordon Solie was so who cares apparently.

Now that we’re out of the rest holds we’re turning it up a bit and now we’re getting good. Shawn of course gets hit with a sling shot which is one of his standard bumps that always works. Vince mentions that Bret has what a champion is made of. Vince, they’re both champions. Of course that’s not mentioned, so I guess even back then the IC Title was being buried. Dang I love that Russian Leg Sweep that Bret does.

For some reason Vince says what is going on. Well Vinny, it’s called a wrestling match. You might have seen one before but apparently not. The referee gets bumped in the corner but is up about 3 seconds later. I think that was unintentional. There’s just something missing from this match and I can’t put my finger on it. What I guess it is would be that neither of these guys are really huge stars yet.

Yes Bret is world champion, but he’s held it for such a short time that he’s still kind of viewed as a midcard guy. That’s what happened to Eddie during his run with the belt and it’s a hard thing to shake off. It’s a good match, but still there’s just an x factor that isn’t there. I think it’s a combination of Bret not going for the legs and Shawn having no finisher to end things with.

Today he would have the kick that he could hit from nowhere. He it looks like both guys are hoping to hit a rollup or something, and that’s what I think is missing. Shawn gets tied up in the ropes but is out in time for Bret to miss some big move and kind of get crotched. Apparently Bret is running himself too thin and whoever fights him next will beat him.

In the exact same ending to regulation time in the iron man match, Shawn misses a top rope dropkick and Bret gets the Sharpshooter to end this. That’s interesting that they would use the exact same ending sequence for regulation in the Iron Man match. And here comes…Santa Claus? What the heck? Yes, Santa is coming down the aisle, the night before Thanksgiving. What in the world? He puts a Santa hat on Bret’s head as it starts snowing in the arena.

I think I’m in one of X’s trips as this makes zero sense. Maybe it’s not snowing. Vince says it is but I don’t see any of it. Oh there it is. Vince says ho ho ho as we end it. After it ends, Bret is with Santa and he says he wants big and bad opponents for Christmas. That’s kind of cool I guess, but still, WHAT THE HECK?

Rating: A-. The lack of a Shawn finishing move here really hurt things. There was never a moment where you really felt that Shawn could pull it off because even though he sets for the suplex at one point, it’s a freaking belly to back suplex. Why should that be considered special?

It wasn’t and thankfully he changed to the kick…a few years later. Other than that, this was a good match. It’s not great, but it’s certainly worth seeing. These guys would go on to have classic after classic, but this one is really forgotten I think.

Overall Rating: C+. Well it’s better than anything that this show has done since the first one, so it gets a passing grade but not by much. This just flat out wasn’t that great. There’s two very good matches in the double main event, but the rest of the show is just above average at best. It was a gamble and it worked, but it didn’t feel like the Survivor Series at all. It worked, but not great like I said. It’s recommended though, but not very strongly at all.

 

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Survivor Series 2001
Date: November 18, 2001
Location; Greensboro Coliseum, Greensboro, North Carolina
Attendance: 10,142
Commentators: Jim Ross, Paul Heyman

And we have arrived. It’s the end of the Invasion tonight as the main event is Alliance vs. WWF, winner takes all. Naturally the WWF is going to win, but the point was how do we get to that point? It’s a Survivor Series match which at least fits the name of the show and the theme of it. I’ll save my thoughts on the angle as a whole for the end of the review because it’s certainly something that’s historic enough for it’s own thoughts.

Also on the card we have a series of unification matches between the WCW titles and the WWF Titles, but there’s no world title unification match as that would come at Vengeance, in the famous night where Jericho beat Austin and Rock. Oh I almost forgot. HHH is out with injury at this point so he’s not here.

He’ll be back in about two months though to the absolute loudest pop I’ve ever heard. This certainly has the chance to be a good show, but there are several flaws in it that just on paper I can see holding it back from doing so, but maybe I’m wrong. Let’s find out.

For some reason that I don’t get, the poster is Torrie and Lita standing back to back. They look sexy, but what’s the point here?

We open with a very nicely done video package talking about the greatest moments in company history. This does a very good job of showing some of the highlights of the company and tying it in to the current storyline. This was well done.

The theme song for this show is Control by Puddle of Mudd, so that’s all we’ll be hearing all night. That’s a good thing though because it’s a good song. JR and Heyman (Lawler had left the company in February because his wife had been released and he left in protest. The witch left him and he was rehired and would be back next to JR the following night) talk about how this is the biggest PPV of all time. I thought this was 2001, not 1987.

European Title: Christian vs. Al Snow

Christian is in the Alliance at this point, but due to this song and video, he is AWESOME.

Dang that’s awesome. He’s still more or less a comedic guy here, but he’s coming around. I have no idea why he’s with WCW and ECW here, but whatever. Apparently this match was made on Heat, so take that for what it’s worth. Christian cuts a promo before the match, being a basic heel. He says he’s in South Carolina and various things like that. Snow comes out to the Tough Enough music which I always thought was a great song.

Ross gets a great line in about Christian: I’d like to buy him for what he’s worth and sell him for what he thinks he’s worth. That’s not bad at all. More or less this is designed to just give us a good opener as Snow is certainly solid enough to put on a good match. Christian is just ok, so Snow is one of the best choices there was to put in there with him. Naturally all the commentators can talk about is the main event.

For once, I’m ok with that as it really was a big match from a storyline perspective. Snow throws some of the weakest looking punches I’ve ever seen. It’s the most basic move there is and Snow’s are horrible. I’ve never liked that headbutt move that Snow does. I mean the one where he grabs the other guy’s arms and does a series of headbutts. It just looks odd indeed. Ross apparently thinks the back of the head is pretty, as he calls a reverse DDT the Unprettier.

It doesn’t really matter because it didn’t hit but whatever. Actually it does matter because he messes it up again when it hits. Snow hits a quick rollup for two so at least he’s awake. Snow hits the Snow Plow but Christian gets his foot on the rope. Snow looks at the foot but celebrates anyway, setting a fine example for his young wrestlers. The Unprettier ends this a few seconds later.

Rating: C+. Eh, it was there and it didn’t suck. Since it was made an hour ago, how much can they really put together out there? I’m fine with this though as it’s certainly not bad. It’s kind of a weird choice for an opener, but I can see what the point of having it on the show was. Not bad, but certainly nothing great at all here.

Austin is here and the rest of his team is thinking he’ll turn back to the WWF tonight. Vince said that was going to happen tonight, which has everyone in the Alliance panicking. I really hate that name. It doesn’t roll off the tongue at all. Angle and Austin nearly get into it again.

Vince and Linda debate about whether or not they should be worried about tonight. Cole interrupts them in a short sleeved shirt that is just odd looking on him. Speaking of odd, seeing Vince and Linda as a married couple and talking is something I can never remember seeing other than this. It kind of works. Vince more or less says that tonight it’s not a gamble because he has a 6th team member, implying Austin. Regal pops up and says nothing of importance.

William Regal vs. Tajiri

They used to be friends (a long time ago) and then Regal turned heel and beat up Torrie, who was Tajiri’s girlfriend at the time, leading to this. I absolutely love Tajiri’s music. This was supposed to be him vs. X-Pac in a unification match as they were Cruiserweight and Light Heavyweight champions respectively, but Pac was injured. Yeah I was stunned to hear that too.

Regal is freshly heel here, having screwed Angle out of the WWF Title against Austin and becoming Alliance commissioner. There’s just not a lot to talk about in this match as it’s just an intense fight. These guys are hammering the heck out of each other which is nice to see for a change. We get the always cool looking spot of Tajiri (or anyone) getting their head caught between the top and middle ropes.

That’s just sweet every time you see it for some reason. After getting out, Tajiri hits a heck of a kick on the head of Regal. This is a brawl to say the least. And Regal hits a butterfly powerbomb out of nowhere for the pin. Well that was abrupt. Post match Regal beats on him some more and Torrie, rocking some skin tight leather pants, runs out to check on him. Regal beats her up too.

Rating: C. It’s about three minutes long and the finish came out of left field. This should likely be N/A, but the three minutes were rather good with some very hard shots in there. It was good, but that ending was just out of nowhere. Not bad for what they had to work with though so I’ll say it’s ok.

We get a recap of Test vs. Edge, which more or less consists of Test stealing the IC Title from Edge and the Edge winning the US Title. Foley then made a unification match for tonight. It’s very simple, but at least with Test stealing it there’s some history here which is more than you’ll get for most matches in today’s product.

Test is in front of a mirror when Stacy comes up. She implies she’ll sleep with him if he wins after he hits on her. She is so ridiculously hot here it’s not fair.

Edge says that Test is going to lose. He’s ridiculously over at this point as he was on the brink of cracking into the main event and was having the best matches of his career. Unfortunately an injury would put him out for a year in February.

Unification Match: Edge vs. Test

Edge is rocking the Rob Zombie music here, so it’s completely awesome. Edge is over here, but not to the level he would reach once he went to Smackdown exclusively. Hey, did you know that Pat Patterson won the IC Belt in a tournament. Ross advises Edge to use his heart. We’ll ignore the fact that it’s an involuntary muscle and if Edge didn’t use it he would be dead and say that’s good advice as Test really was freakishly strong.

They’re doing that ignore thing, yet Heyman of all people brings the focus back to the title match at hand. Or is it titles match? I’m not sure. Edge really needs to go back to face. It just works better for him. As great as he is as a heel, him as a face is just awesome. This is somewhat back and forth but Test is mainly in control. Ross is once again ticking me off as he’s just running down Heyman while Paul is trying to talk about the match.

Ross actually takes the hint from Paul and talks about Test for a bit. That’s something you don’t see every day. There’s just no drama here at all for some reason. The main reason for that is the match is a lot of punching and kicking so it’s only so interesting. Now we’re getting better here with some nice fast paced kickouts. Test even hits a spear and not a bad one at all. Man he can do more than four moves. Test over Cena apparently.

Anyway, Edge of course kicks out as Heyman talks over and over again about how that’s Edge’s move and Test stole it. The pace speeds up pretty well which gets the crowd into it a lot more. See what happens when you stop just laying around and doing nothing at all? You get a crowd reaction, which is a good thing. Do it more often and you get bigger reactions. That’s basic wrestling psychology, yet sadly enough so many wrestlers don’t get it.

Edge hits the spear and Test kicks out of it as well, and it gets the crowd up and moving even more. I can’t believe it. They’re having more action and it’s getting a better reaction. I’m blown away. Anyway, enough of this sarcastic nonsense, as Test goes for a pumphandle slam and gets rolled up to unify Edge.

Rating: B-. This is a tale of two matches for sure as the beginning was putting me to sleep but it had a strong finish, which is good as it’s the most stuck in the minds of the fans. This was ok, but not much beyond it. I liked it, but I’m a mark for both guys, so therefore it’s unlikely a lot of people would like it. It wasn’t bad, but not great.

Stephanie is worried as Kurt tries to calm her. Stephanie is a bad actress. Like, really bad.

Lita and the Hardys are worried about their match and apparently something is wrong with Matt. This led to a long heel turn for Matt which took nearly a year to pull off. It led to Mattitude though, so it was completely worth it. Lita…yes, in all senses of the word. She runs into Trish coming out of Matt’s locker room. This is before their epic rivalry had really kicked into high gear. Trish in a tight white t-shirt and leather pants is an even bigger yes, if that’s possible. My goodness those are some hot women.

Unification Tag Titles: Hardys vs. Dudleys

This is in a cage by the way. Stacy is managing the Dudleys here and is perhaps the second sexiest she’s ever looked after this same look with glasses. There’s obviously history here but the latest one is from Smackdown where Lita knocked Stacy off the apron and Matt caught her, upsetting Lita. What in the world? What sense does that make? Lita knocks the other chick off and sees Matt beneath her which ticks her off? That is just freaking stupid.

There’s no Lita with the Hardys for no apparent reason, and apparently Matt and Jeff’s dad is a postman. That’s the kind of little trivia we should hear more of. Because this match and era is stupid, you have to tag in and out. Yep, that makes GREAT sense. Jeff is wrestling in a hat because he lives in the moment, whatever that means. Hearing Heyman talk about characters he created is very fun as you can just tell how much he loved ECW. That never gets old.

Excellent shot of Stacy’s camouflaged shorts. In another thing that the announcers (read as Heyman) does well here is point out that Matt and Jeff are the hometown boys. I didn’t catch that and that’s the commentator’s job: point out the little things like that which we might forget. Anyone that ever says that the Divas aren’t beautiful is a freaking idiot. Sorry they just keep showing Stacy and this tagging in and out thing is freaking stupid.

After five or six minutes we FINALLY do something with the cage. To be fair the wrestling is pretty good, but it just makes me wonder what the point of the cage is. Heyman saying WHAT A RUSH makes me chuckle. Jeff tries to escape but it fails as the heels are completely dominating. This is a rather long stretch of the heels dominating which is common in tag team cage matches.

I’m just waiting on the slam of one of those Dudleys into the cage to swing the momentum into the home town boys’ favor. For some reason I think of the Dukes of Hazard when I think of the Hardys. That just popped into my head and I have no idea why. And there’s our stupid heel moment to change the match. Jeff is down in the middle of the ring and both Dudleys go to a top rope. The tagging aspect has been forgotten at this point as it should be.

D-Von misses the headbutt because Jeff rolls out of the way. That’s fine as it’s pretty much the only counter there is to that move. Bubba, ever the genius though, jumps anyway because he’s so much faster than D-Von and he crashes too. Matt takes them both down with a double clothesline and we’re reversed with the faces now in control. Eventually Bubba calls out for a table, which Stacy pulls out.

She shows part of her shapely figure to the referee and picks his pocket to get the table in. That was at least simplistic. Matt gets out and it’s 2-1. D-Von gets thrown into the cage, and Ross says it doesn’t taste like chocolate. Allow me to ask again; WHERE DOES HE COME UP WITH THIS STUFF? And I don’t ask that because it’s funny or witty. I ask that because it MAKES NO FREAKING SENSE! Anyway, Matt is out and D-Von is on the table while Jeff is alone on the top of the cage.

You know what’s coming next. Instead of climbing down, the future 3 time world champion misses the Swanton off the cage and crashes to allow the Dudleys to get the easy pin. Matt isn’t happy, and he’s right. That was SO STUPID. Ross saying Jeff couldn’t resist the temptation is much more ironic than it should be.

Rating: B+. This would be an A if they hadn’t had the tagging thing, but I think it’s getting upgraded because of it. I had this as a B but the more I think about it the more I think that the tagging part at the beginning helped it a lot.

It made me think that in the middle where they just stopped doing it that the thought process was this is too important so screw tagging, let’s just get it all out there. That’s the beauty of a slow build: it makes the payoff much sweeter. Considering how many times these teams have fought, to still be able to have a good match is impressive.

Foley is at WWF New York where he isn’t happy about not being at the show. He points out that as Commissioner he should be there but Vince told him not to, so the Commissionership is a joke. This was part of an angle where Foley pretty much hated his job which he got back after Vince fired him.

He would be gone very soon, with this possibly being his last night in the role. After a little research, I’m right, as other than I think being on Raw the next night in a pretaped segment, he wouldn’t be back until June of 2003 as a guest referee.

Scotty is heading to the ring when he runs into Test. Scotty is actually a freaking jerk to him and gets the beating he deserves. Not because of being a jerk, but because Test wants his spot in the battle royal. My goodness Test and Stephanie need some acting lessons.

Immunity Battle Royal

Simple concept here: since the losing company goes out of business, the winner of this match can’t be fired for a year. First of all, how sweet of a rule would that be? You have a year where you can do whatever the heck you want and no one can say a word about it. The winner of this tries to do that, but it didn’t work out that well. I’ll do what I can to list the participants as they all come out in clusters according to their company affiliation.

Note: the Alliance comes out to Bodies by Drowning Pool. If you’re a fan of that kind of music and have a chance to go see them, go out of your way to do so. The live performance I saw of that song is without a doubt the greatest live song I have ever heard. The girl I was with at the show looked at each other and said in unison: that freaking rocked. They were just an awesome live band and second to only 3 Doors Down (who had light years better production values to be fair) as best I’ve ever seen.

Anyway, while this awesome song plays, we have Justin Credible, Lance Storm (who come out next to each other which is awesome looking for any true ECW fans), Shawn Stasiak, DDP, Raven, Dreamer, some guy I don’t recognize that might be Stevie Richards, Billy Kidman, Hurricane and Test for the Alliance. For the WWF, APA, Crash, Funaki, Saturn, Chuck Palumbo, Hardcore Holly, Albert, Billy Gunn and Spike. My eyesight isn’t that good.

I found a list online about halfway through. For some reason in case you’re wondering, the WWF comes out to Control, the show’s theme song. Stasiak is gone in about two seconds after charging at Bradshaw and being thrown out. Test drops to the floor and fights Albert who never got in for some reason. Something tells me this is going to be hard to call, which is partially why I’m terrified of the Rumbles.

Tazz comes out, ticking off Heyman. Tazz had left the Alliance because he hated Austin and his leadership. So far it’s your standard battle royal formula of people throwing punches, kicks and knees while trying to throw a single person over for about five minutes to look like they’re really doing something while not doing anything at all.

Grego….Hurricane I mean, gets knocked the heck out by Bradshaw and the clothesline. Albert launches Saturn out. For the life of me I’ll never understand why in such a civilized country as ours there’s still so much bald on bald violence. And they’re both from Boston. What are the odds? I’ll also never get why Albert never got a harder push. The guy had all the tools to be a solid heel, so why didn’t it work? Give him a manager and it would have gone fine.

He’s not someone that needs a lot of story behind him. He’s just a big scary looking dude. What more could you ask for? People are going out rather fast now as it’s mainly just dead weight in there that no one cares about. For the life of me I will never get why Billy Gunn got so many freaking pushes. They never ended and they never worked. The Outlaws got over, but Road Dogg was the more important part.

When you think of that team, what’s the first thing in your head? Road Dogg and the catchphrase. Billy’s line was made popular by DX, not him. I think there’s seven left at this point. As best I can tell it’s Richards, Kidman, Billy, Tazz, Bradshaw,, Test and Albert. There goes Richards so we’re down to six. Lance Storm is in there as well. Tazz yells at Heyman and he’s thrown out. In a cool spot, Bradshaw gets rid of Kidman with a fallaway slam over the top rope. That was sweet looking.

The final four are Test, Gunn, Storm and Bradshaw. Bradshaw misses a boot to Storm’s head by about six inches and hurts his leg which I think is legit. He actually hits a neckbreaker that was good though. For some reason the announcers are arguing about Stephanie. The final two are Test and Billy, with Test kicking the tar out of him to win it.

The only problem was that it was obvious given the Scotty segment earlier, but that’s what was expected. Heyman does a very funny bit where he explains what the repercussions of the match are like this: “So no matter what happens, *whispers* the Alliance will win, Test will not be fired no matter what (the Alliance will win!). It’s much funnier than it sounds.

Rating: N/A. I’m going with no rating because it’s a battle royal. How do you grade that? The ending was obvious, but it’s a battle royal. Other than the Rumble, they’re more or less the same, so what do you want me to say?

Now we have a completely random video package of clips of mainly the ten guys in the main event. This is totally out of context and the song has no words or build up to it. It’s just a three minute video of the feud with no words or anything. It’s also the video….OH! This is the WWF Desire videos that they used to run. The original song was My Sacrifice by Creed, but I’m guessing they were way too expensive.

At the time Creed was the hottest thing in the world so that makes sense. The Desire videos were a series of videos that they made attempting to show how important wrestling was. They sound clichéd but they really were freaking sweet at the time and still are. Check them out as they’re worth it. The song fits really well too.

Shane and Booker speculate about whether they can trust Austin or not as we have another few minutes to fill. My only guess is that this is an intermission or something. It’s been about 6-7 minutes since the last match ended. Is there a point to this?

Women’s Title: Trish vs. Jackie vs. Lita vs. Ivory vs. Molly vs. Jazz

Trish’s legs are possibly better than Stacy’s. That’s saying a freaking ton. And now we get to look at Jackie. I can’t stand her. Lita gets a HUGE pop. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it here now: Trish vs. Lita is one of the best feuds I’ve ever seen regardless of gender. It’s the best natural rivalry I’ve seen other than Bret vs. Shawn, which is saying a lot. Molly’s theme music can introduce herself as the song says “Holy sidekicks Hurricane! It’s Mighty Molly”, just as she’s being introduced.

Jazz is debuting here and might as well be the black Chyna. The problem: no one had a clue who she was and she got zero reaction. The rules here are that there are four on the apron and two in the ring so there you go. Ivory and Jackie try to do a nice technical sequence and it just fails in every sense of the word. Trish’s shorts…my goodness that’s not right. More or less it’s a bikini bottom but skin tight.

Other than Lita these women pretty much sucked in the ring. They’re the stereotypical “good” divas that can’t do jack in the ring but we’re told they can and somehow they’re considered good which shows just how weak the division is. We get a Lita chant as naturally everything falls apart and it’s just a wild finisher fest. Trish and the heavenly form send Jazz to the floor and it’s Ivory vs. Trish, who hits the bulldog for the title.

This was her first reign and the first champion after Ivory. She was a complete underdog at this point so this was shocking. Obviously she would improve massively, but this was a big shock. As we transition to the main event, Ross gets a gay joke in about Heyman that surprises me. He says he wouldn’t mind Trish coming into him from behind. I listened to it twice to make sure I didn’t understand it and that’s what he actually said.

Rating: D+. This was a mess, but the looks of Trish and Lita make it pass. It was there for the T & A anyway so who cares. The ending was about as low a level of being historic as you can get while still being historic, so this is technically important, but yeah, it’s about the looks, plain and simple.

After Ross and Heyman bicker like two year olds, Vince addresses his team. We have Big Show, Kane, Taker, Jericho and Rock, with Taker getting a good pop and Rock getting a bit one as he jumps around looking like an idiot. He talks about how if they lose tonight, they will be an embarrassment to everyone and no one will forgive them.

He goes on to list off some names in company history that they would be letting down, including Buddy Rogers (no reaction), Gorilla Monsoon (BIG pop), Andre the Giant (Big pop as he’s looking straight at Taker, bringing about more symbolism than should be allowed), and High Chief Peter Maivia to no reaction at all as I don’t think most people knew who he was. He says forget about Austin tonight.

Jericho just looks out of place there next to Rock and the big three. Also, how appropriate it is to have three super heavyweights given Vince’s affinity for big power guys. Vince was supposed to be on this team but he gave his spot to Big Show, which I like. Vince isn’t a wrestler and for once he makes it about the wrestlers and not him. That’s a good thing. This was a really good speech actually.

Team Alliance (Austin, Booker, RVD, Angle, Shane) come down the hall. Austin is WWF champion and Rock is WCW champion at this point. Let’s hit the recap button for this as the teams might need some explaining, but not a ton. Vince said he had enough of the Invasion and threw out the challenge for this match, which Stephanie and Shane (the owners of ECW and WCW respectively) agreed to.

There’s three main points to this match. First, Angle turned on Vince and the WWF to join the Alliance. Second, Rock and Jericho hate each other, which is a nice touch. Finally, the Alliance doesn’t trust Austin. As for Austin joining the team, it made little sense when he jumped because he said the Alliance guaranteed him the best matches that he could get. By joining them, wouldn’t he be fighting the same guys he had been fighting for years?

Isn’t that saying that the WWF guys are better than the Alliance guys? Or am I reading too much into this? We get a very good video package showing all of the ten people fighting each other, which sounds simple but it’s better than it sounds. It ends with a shot of Austin and Rock, which is the feud in a nutshell.

Team Alliance vs. Team WWF

After literally ten minutes of introductions, we’re ready to go. Stephanie dancing to Booker’s music was either funny, hot, or just plain sad. I can’t decide. Immediately it’s Rock vs. Austin, which makes sense I suppose as they’re the real core of this feud. Before you get any other ideas, this isn’t WWF vs. Alliance. It’s a WWF angle, plain and simple. Both guys hit the Thesz Press and the F you elbow with Shane saving Austin despite him not particularly needing it.

Booker vs. Rock follows as we redo Summerslam from this year. Booker was the WCW Rock, complete with the catchphrase to open his song, the People’s Champion mantra, and the finishing move. And that is reason 384 why WCW failed. I need to make a list of that someday. Shane saves Booker this time, so at least that makes sense. WCW violence erupts as Jericho beats up Booker for a bit.

Ross and Heyman argue over who put ECW out of business which is amusing, mainly because according to storyline purposes it’s still in business but whatever. RVD gets a pop and a half. Jericho and Van Dam have a good little match here, as Jericho is wrestling his light weight style which is where I always thought he was best. Today he tends to use the heavyweight style which just doesn’t work that well for me. Jericho hooks the Walls on a counter and Heyman is PANICKING.

Shane of course makes the save though. After a double tag it’s Kane vs. Angle which is an interesting match to say the least. Angle was in between stages in his career here as he’s somewhere between All American good boy and rampaging psycho that knows more ways to hurt people that should be legal. He had recently made Kane tap and Angle Slammed Big Show, so obviously he was on a role at the moment.

Also, this was just after he and Austin had finished an awesome feud with Angle hitting levels of intensity in promo cutting that I didn’t know existed. Those two beat the living tar out of each other, throwing each other all over the place with suplex after suplex in something that was just plain awesome. And because this is pro wrestling they’re friends a month later. Just as I say this, Angle gets a sweet German on Kane. Shane saves Angle as that’s number four.

Now we’re up to Taker and Angle, which is nothing short of a classic most of the time except for when it’s not. Taker hits a sweet kick to Booker’s head to take him down, and of course Shane makes the save again. It makes sense if nothing else though, as he’s the guy with everything to lose. Taker goes for Old School as evidenced by shouting OLD SCHOOL! I really don’t get the point of him doing that. It’s not like he used a wristlock that often.

After Shane makes another save to save us from Booker and Taker’s slow period, Austin comes in. The fans are still way into him, which goes to show how popular he was. Austin vs. Taker really was an epic rivalry. It’s kind of reminiscent of Hogan and Andre when you think about it. You have the big vocal face of the company vs. the guy that’s great but stays in the background most of the time. It’s a simple story but it goes in depth once you look into it a bit.

After the second Old School in about three minutes, Shane…oh screw it you know what he does by now. Taker just starts punching the tar out of Angle which never gets old. Heyman finally does what everyone has wanted to do for years and asks JR what the deal is with his obsession with taking men to the woodshed. Ross has nothing to say as Big Show comes in for the first time, rocking that one piece swimsuit he used to wear.

Naturally he lasts about a minute as an Angle Slam, axe kick, 5 Star and a Shane elbow drop end him to make it 5-4. Can the forces of evil really overcome the forces of good? Heck if I know as there’s at least half an hour left in this match. In a funny moment after the pin, Shane is dancing around celebrating as Rock is waiting on him. The Alliance guys point it out to him and he slowly stops dancing before turning around and looking scared. That was great.

Rock’s punches seem to miss by about a mile to me, but maybe I’m missing something. After a Kane chokeslem, a Taker tombstone and a Lionsault, we’re tied up. Heyman as usual is priceless during this. Angle comes in now as we need a spatula for Shane. I love how Heyman is freaking despite the fact that Shane got the same treatment that Show got earlier. Also I love how he complains about how stupid Show is, despite him taking Show in as the ECW Champion in about five years.

It’s Angle vs. Jericho now in another match that has a natural rivalry that I’ll never get tired of watching. I’ve come to the conclusion that Booker is just flat out boring. He’s been in there about three times now and he’s just killed the momentum every single time. He’s slow and boring, which is a bad combination to consist of.

Ross points out the same thing I noticed earlier about how the WWF is mainly power, which makes sense as most of the Alliance guys are finesse or technical guys, which is either a very subtle and nice touch, or a complete coincidence. The WWF team beats up RVD, prompting Heyman to say he believes they’re trying to isolate him. Well thank you very much for that. I never would have noticed.

Booker and RVD are in at the same time with Kane, who naturally gets no help from his partners because, you know, that would be helpful. Van Dam had pinned Kane and Taker this past week, so he’s hot right now which is kind of a joke considering Kane is in there, but it wasn’t that funny. I need to work on my comedy more I think.

The Five Star (which is still the most amazing live move I’ve ever seen) hits but Kane grabs Van Dam by the throat, leading to Booker running in, which leads to the massive brawl that you knew was coming. During the fracas, Van Dam hits a kick from the top to eliminate Kane. In a cool moment, Taker has one member of the Alliance in each of the corners and keeps them there by running back and forth, clotheslining them all in order.

He does about eight clotheslines in a row before knocking Booker to the floor. Angle takes a Last Ride but Booker comes in with a chair. Taker knocks him down but walks into the Stunner. Angle is dragged over and despite not being legal, gets the pin. That takes us down to Rock and Jericho vs. Austin, Booker, RVD and Angle. Dang that’s a lot of gold between six guys. Booker kicks/knees the tar out of Rock.

Rock hits a DDT and covers Booker but it doesn’t work, which it shouldn’t have any way as Booker’s shoulder was about right inches off the mat. Booker is thrown into Angle, allowing him to be rolled up to make it 3-2. I like that actually, as it’s not something stupid and it actually makes sense for Booker to go out that way.

Rock hooks a cool move on Van Dam as RVD’s back was to the Great One and Rock more or less powerbombs him down, but does it with one arm so it’s like a roll up from the top which gets two. Jericho is finally back in and they nearly botch a spot, but Jericho makes a last second save to turn it into a swinging neckbreaker. That was nice. In a sequence that’s just flat out awesome due to what it means now.

Jericho avoids a split legged moonsault and hits the Breakdown for the pin on Van Dam, which looked awful because Van Dam dropped to a knee so the move got ZERO reaction. The reason it’s cool is Van Dam missed what is now Morrison’s finisher to get caught in Miz’s finisher. That’s awesome and one of the biggest reasons I love watching old wrestling. You get to see stuff like that which wouldn’t have meant a thing eight years ago but now is kind of cool, or at least it is to me.

Who would have guessed it would come down to the four guys that have been fighting on both sides? We have two fights going on at once, with Austin hitting a slingshot on Rock, who of course oversells by more or less throwing a flying headbutt into the post. Heyman says they can find a spot for Rock if nothing else for his t-shirt sales.

We move to Austin vs. Jericho which is a feud that could have been great but never happened, I guess due to a generation gap. I think I might see why now as they badly botch a spot and the bad attempt at a save just fails miserably.

Jericho and Angle are in there now and Jericho hooks the ankle lock as we continue to shame the history of Ken Shamrock, who would win the TNA World Title in about nine months. Actually it was the NWA World Title at the time, but it was exclusive to TNA so whatever. The heels take their time beating on Jericho which at least makes sense. It’s fairly slow and boring, but it’s working to an extent I suppose.

We get a double hot tag to give us Rock vs. Angle. Rock hits the awful belly to belly to set up the even worse Sharpshooter to which Angle shockingly taps. More on that later. Since Rock is a jackass, he won’t let go until Austin knocks him off. Heyman’s panicking is just great here. Jericho can’t get the Walls, but Austin does of all things, but they last about a second. Austin is bleeding, and of course it’s profusely since it’s PPV.

Since it hasn’t been mentioned all match, we suddenly remember that Austin might be jumping, despite Vince saying it was nonsense. Austin counters Jericho’s roll up into one of his own, and wouldn’t you know it, the final two are Rock and Austin. For the life of me, I NEVER would have seen this as the final two. Ok that’s a lie but whatever. As Austin and Rock are getting going, Jericho hits Rock with the Breakdown, which technically should be a DQ.

Actually it shouldn’t be since it’s his own team so never mind. Rock naturally kicks out. Jericho heads back to the ring but Taker comes out for the save. That’s a feud that sadly never happened. They just had their first match in September of this year. That’s saying a lot. If Rock ever sold any big spot properly I think I’d have a heart attack. I get the point in doing it, but it’s just way too much most of the time, at least in my eyes.

They fight to the floor and land in the most famous of all places. Rock lands some punches square in the shoulder of Austin which for some reason keep him down. Ross and Heyman are just laying into each other on commentary and it’s great. I have no issue with the announcers being biased in circumstances like this. Austin hooks a bad Sharpshooter because we have to have a Montreal reference at every major show in history.

Austin isn’t even leaning back on it so it just looks like Rock has his legs up. There’s no heat on the move at all from the crowd because it looks so awful and no one buys that Rock is in a lot of pain at all. A belt shot from Austin misses and it’s the third bad Sharpshooter of the night. Dang is this some golden edition of the Montreal reference package or something? It’s a sad thing when Rock’s Sharpshooter is better than someone else’s but that’s the case here.

In a cool scene, Austin has the WWF belt and is holding onto it as he tries to get to the ropes. For once, Ross points something out and says being champion is Austin’s life and is the reason he won’t tap. That’s ridiculous because it’s been made clear that champions won’t get fired, but at least Ross is trying. In a stupid thing, Austin gets the ropes but Rock pulls him away, so Hebner keeps checking for the submission. Yeah that makes a lot of sense.

On the second time though Earl makes him break it. What’s the point of that? Y am I wasting my time trying to figure this out? Since it’s Rock vs. Austin, Rock hits a Stunner, allegedly on the inventor of it, but I don’t see Mikey Whipwreck anywhere. Nick Patrick runs out to pull Hebner out to prevent the three as Heyman says he’s a licensed official.

For some reason the idea of taking the test for your refereeing license amuses me. What’s the test like? If you mess up more than three counts you don’t pass? Do you have to learn how many taps there are in a proper tap out? Ok it’s not as funny as I thought it was. Austin hits a Rock Bottom of his own but of course he kicks out. Austin beats up Patrick, because that’s just what he does.

Since it’s a major PPV, Hebner goes down. Rock takes another Stunner and amazingly only oversells a bit. There’s no referee though as I wonder why Vince doesn’t just call for the bell on his own. It’s his show, so it’s not like it would be mind blowing. Angle runs out and screws the Alliance by hitting Austin with the belt straight into the Rock Bottom for the perfectly timed conscious Hebner to end the Alliance. The crowd was electric over this.

Heyman is at a loss for words, which shows how huge of a moment this is. Ross screams that Heyman is out of work AGAIN, which is great. Fink’s announcement of the winning organization is absolutely perfect. Stephanie is crying badly as the WWF guys are celebrating. What I meant earlier was that Angle was apparently sent into the Alliance by Vince, and it turned out that Angle, not Austin, was the one that would turn all along.

This wound up ticking off Taker, setting up his heel turn and massive haircut. Oh look, it’s Vince to take credit for something that he played absolutely zero part in. It’s good to know that some things never change. The sight of Vince holding up his arms in triumph in a WCW town no less takes us out.

Rating: B. The two problems here are very obvious. First of all, there was zero chance that the WWF would lose. Second, it was beyond obvious that it would come down to Austin vs. Rock in their I guess 23rd PPV ending fight. The match itself is good if not very good, but there’s just no drama whatsoever, which they clearly tried to put in by having Jericho and Rock against four guys and then Jericho screwing Rock.

Even still though, the ending was never once in doubt. I get that it had to be that way, but they booked themselves into a huge corner here and it showed badly. I don’t think this could have been a classic, but it was about as good as it could have been.

As for what happens after this, the next PPV, Vengeance, would be the famous night where Jericho beat Rock and Austin in one night for the first ever Undisputed Title. Allegedly that was supposed to go to HHH but he wasn’t completely healed yet. He would take the belt from Jericho at Mania. Also, tomorrow night Flair would show up as the person that bought up Shane and Stephanie’s stock and became co-owner in a shocker.

That would eventually lead to the Brand Split which still defines the company to this day. As for the rest of them, nothing of note happened at all. Naturally the major stars of the Alliance stayed while a lot of the weaker guys became jobbers. The Brand Split really did help a lot of issues as it saved a lot of jobs. Who cares that the fans hated it? Since when have we cared what they think? Oh and on a final random note, Lawler would be back tomorrow on Raw.

Overall Rating: C+. The problem with this show as a hole is simple: other than the main event, not a thing mattered. No one cared about anything but the Survivor Series match. While the other stuff is technically important, no one cared and that’s all there was to it. The show is good enough, but the lack of drama just kills it. If it were me, I would have waited at least another six months for this, but granted I wasn’t around for it and there could have been outside factors.

I can’t imagine what they could have been, but they might have existed. The show is worth checking out for the historic aspect, but I’d say just check out the cage match and the main event, because other than that the show is completely forgettable. I barely remembered anything about the card at all when I watched it if that tells you anything. Not really recommended, but it’s not bad enough to recommend to avoid.

Ok, so now that the show is over, my thoughts on the Invasion as a whole. Clearly it wasn’t what it could have been had they been patient and waited about another year to have Hogan, Nash, Flair, Goldberg and I guess RVD out there. Flair showed up on Raw the next night, Hall, Nash and Hogan in February, so it’s not like these guys were an eternity away. But that’s not the biggest issue I see in why it failed. Take a look at Team Alliance for this show.

We have Austin, Angle, Booker, RVD and Shane. In other words, three WWF guys and one each from ECW and WCW. That’s where this show and plan falls apart on all levels. This never was about WWF vs. ECW or WCW. It was about putting down the other two companies to stroke Vince’s ego even more which is evidenced at the end of the show. Vince celebrating is the last thing you see, as it’s his moment again rather than the company’s or the wrestlers’.

That’s why the company is in the shape it’s in now: it’s all about Vince. Think about all the bad comedy angles that go on, especially with the guest hosts. It’s because Vince has no idea what’s funny anymore. He’s mainly on Raw and that’s where the stupid stuff happens. Smackdown and ECW are well written, action-oriented shows, which is what they’re supposed to be.

On paper this looks awesome, but with so few people that actually make sense in this, there was just no way it could work. It could have worked had it been given more time and effort, but there’s just no way to pull off what should have been the biggest storyline of all time in six months, plain and simple.

 

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Survivor Series 2000
Date: November 19, 2000
Location: Ice Palace, Tampa, Florida
Attendance: 18,602
Commentators: Jim Ross, Jerry Lawler

It’s a most interesting time for professional wrestling as WCW is on the absolute brink of going out of business and ECW was either off TV or almost off TV. The WWF had won the war and they knew it. Austin is back, having returned about a month or two ago to go after the driver from last year, who I’ve already explained to be Rikishi. Kish has also revealed that he was working for HHH the whole time, leading to the main event of Austin vs. HHH tonight.

Also we have Kurt Angle, who won the world title the previous month, defending against the Undertaker who is the American at this point. Other than that, there’s not a lot here. The Radicalz are here, which more or less completes the roster up until the Invasion of the following summer. With that being said, let’s get to it.

The opening video is a cool looking one of HHH saying how he controls everything and how tonight it’s Game Over for Austin. This doesn’t sound like much but it was really cool.

I miss WWF New York. That has to be one of the coolest ideas of all time.

Trish Stratus/T&A vs. Steve Blackman/Crash/Molly Holly

Whoever can find the point to this match first gets a present. T&A had taken over the APA’s office and turned it into T&APA. Yeah it’s dumber than it sounds. This was mainly to get Trish on TV I suppose, but the problem was that she just flat out sucked at this point. I know she became the best in the company eventually, but at this point she was just terrible.

As Lawler stares at her (with good reason), Ross points out a cool stat: the last six Survivor Series have had the WWF Title change hands. That’s not something I would have picked up on and it’s what commentators are supposed to do: throw out something that we wouldn’t catch. For some reason, Crash is WAY over. Molly is a newcomer at this point, and she is completely underrated as far as looks go. She really was very attractive.

Blackman is still desperately in search for a personality. I never realized how long he was in the company for. He’s the Hardcore champion here, because that’s what he did. Blackman and Albert start as Ross mentions that Crash was left in charge of the APA, because that makes sense in some weird logic. Trish, more or less in a one piece swimsuit, kicks Albert low. T&A is Test and Albert in case you didn’t know.

Crash allegedly looks like Elroy Jetson. I’ve never seen it. He does hit a cool move where he flips over the top rope head first and catches Test in a hurricanrana. Teddy Long is the referee which amuses me to no end. We’re about a year away from the brand split, where Long would find a completely new career. Test takes Crash’s head off with a boot. That was awesome. There’s this weird smoke going through the arena. It looks really odd.

We get Molly vs. Trish, leading to Molly carrying her through this as she should. Trish hits her bulldog from the middle rope that gets two. Almost immediately after that though, Molly hits a sunset flip from the middle rope for the pin. She almost came out of her top here, which isn’t a bad thing.

Rating: D+. Uh, yeah. Can someone tell me why this was on Pay Per View, or better yet why it opened the show? The women were hot, and that’s about it. Oh and that Crash rana was cool. Other than that, this was a waste of 5 minutes. At least they kept it short.

Edge and Christian won’t help Kurt against Taker, due to Christian eating some bad chili and having mono. It sounds dumb but odd comedy was what they were best at so this was fine. Angle says he’s not worried.

Tiger Ali Singh (picture Daivari mixed with the Million Dollar Man) and Low Down (Mosh and D’Lo Brown) can’t get into the arena. That’s somewhat amusing.

Radicalz vs. K-Kwik/Road Dogg/Chyna/Billy Gunn

Kwik is more commonly known as R-Truth. He and Dogg are doing a rap gimmick that wasn’t half bad actually. This is likely because it got Dogg doing ANYTHING else. Since that was likely the point of the character change, he was put into a team here with his old friends Chyna and Billy, because that’s not a DX reunion at all is it? The Radicalz had shown up in January and had been around the midcard ever since, which was fine I guess as they had no resumes to speak of in this company.

Chyna’s Playboy would be coming out soon after this, causing me to be very happy as I had a big thing for her. Chyna had been with Eddie over the Summer but at this point they were estranged due to him screwing two hos, one of which being known as Victoria. Billy is now known as The One. Yeah it’s worse than it sounds. At the moment Malenko is the Light Heavyweight Champion and Guerrero is the Intercontinental Champion and Terri is Saturn’s manager.

Billy and Saturn start off here which makes my head hurt. Why start with the least talented guys on each team? Chyna comes in soon and my heart goes all aflutter. She beats the living tar out of Saturn, which is pretty impressive. After a DDT (is there anything not perfect about this woman?), we get a big brawl and Eddie nails Chyna with the IC belt, allowing Saturn to pin her. Well that kinds of sucks. Now it’s Road Dogg vs. Saturn.

The Radicalz were an interesting team. When they were awesome they were very awesome but when they sucked they REALLY sucked. The Radicalz beat down the Dogg with relative ease, which makes sense. Eddie and Malenko come in for awhile to beat on him which is at least watchable. Lawler makes a great and true point when he says Dean doesn’t get the credit that he deserves.

Eddie takes too long on the top rope and Dogg makes his bad comeback. Ross says that there’s always something to remember in November. There has to be a bad lawsuit for ECW in there somewhere. Billy comes in and gets beaten down by the Radicalz as well, so at least some things never change. However, since he’s likely filled with cocaine, Billy pops up and beats on Eddie before using a sleeper drop to pin him. It’s not a great move but at least I see what they’re going for with it.

Kwik comes in and everything goes fast all of a sudden, but it ends just as fast due to a great Benoit German suplex to make it 3-2. What a shock: the Outlaws are the last two against the other team. I never once would have seen that coming. There’s a lot of brawling in the corner here, which isn’t really a good thing with this much of it. Despite being on the same team, the former Outlaws have gone their separate ways. Only in JR’s mind does that even begin to make sense.

A decent Northern Lights suplex takes out Roadie making it 3-1. This part is rather academic as they just beat on him over and over again. Eventually they hit the floor and Saturn messes up by superkicking Benoit square in the shoulder, which of course knocks him out. Billy gets in and hits a Fameasser on Malenko to make it 2-1.

Why does Billy against Benoit just sound like it’s a bad sign for the former cowboy? Billy actually kicks out of the headbutt which is kind of impressive. He goes for a suplex over the top but just like Warrior vs. Rude in 1989, Saturn hooks his foot to play the part of Heenan for the pin.

Rating; B-. Eh, it’s not terrible I guess. Actually at times it was even pretty good. There’s a lot of fast paced stuff in here which makes things go a lot better. Billy was the kind of guy that they tried so hard to push so many times and it just kept failing time after time. It’s not awful, but it could have been a bit better. I’m just not sure how.

Rock is just getting here and ignores Lillian’s questions.

Jericho says he was ready for a sanka on a poll match, but instead it’s just a regular match which is fine with him. He’s fighting Kane tonight in a feud that started over Jericho spilling coffee on Kane and then making bad jokes about Kane being burned, leading to this match.

As I’m watching this video where Jericho is still in the midcard and not a big deal yet at all, great talker, but he doesn’t have the resume yet. That’s a great sign for Miz. Anyway, Kane has spent about a month beating on Jericho, so there we are.

Chris Jericho vs. Kane

The pop is just ridiculous for Jericho. But hey he wasn’t important so he couldn’t get a serious push for over a year right? He’s in way over his head here as Kane is still a monster and Jericho is at the point where he’s too big for the IC Title for the most part but he’s not ready for the main event yet.

Jericho pounds away which gets him nowhere. It’s so odd seeing him being all aggressive etc compared to what he usually does anymore. Jericho uses basic speed to get Kane to the floor but goes for a dive over the top but hooks his foot on the top rope and faceplants badly. Basically this is a lot of hitting and running by the blonde until he gets caught in a powerslam off a cross body.

The idea here is that Kane doesn’t like Jericho because he’s handsome and Kane is all disfigured. It’s so weird to think that this is in the same year as Wrestlemania 2000. I’m not sure why but that blows my mind. Kane hooks Jericho in a Hangman which the idea is that Jericho and Kane are back to back and Kane reaches over his head, grabs Jericho under the chin and lifts him onto his back. It looks insane.

Kane gets the turnbuckle pad off but can’t ram Jericho in. Jericho blocks the clothesline with a dropkick which for once is realistic looking with Kane having a reason to come off the top in that position. He sits up anyway and we’re right back to even. Kane goes for a Snake Eyes on the exposed buckle but gets rammed into it instead.

Jericho hooks the Walls and Kane is in trouble. After being in them for about a minute he finally gets the rope. They scare the heck out of me with one thing they do but Kane saves it. Jericho sets for the Lionsault and Kane literally has to scoot over three feet so it’ll hit. THANKFULLY he grabs the choke as Jericho lands so that’s all fine. Chokeslam ends it.

Rating: B-. It’s what you would expect from these guys but minus just a bit. The problem here is that Jericho just isn’t ready to fight a guy the size of Kane. Jericho’s big push would come soon, but he just wasn’t ready here. He made it look good though, which is the point in fighting big monsters that are higher up on the food chain than you, so I can hardly complain I guess.

Terri tells the Radicals that HHH is here. Something is funny apparently.

European Title: William Regal vs. Hardcore Holly

This is happening because of some argument they had or other. They more or less say we just threw this together. He makes fun of the country for not being able to elect a new President, which is exactly true. He does more insults about basic things, which isn’t really that impressive. Holly has just come back from having his arm broken by a botched Angle moonsault, which was barely touched on in I think a run in and a bad match on TV.

Since he’s intelligent, Regal goes after the arm that was injured. So we’re about three minutes into this and it’s been literally ALL Regal. What’s the point of this match again? Oh yeah we need to fill in time. Holly starts his comeback, but after three punches and a crossbody, Regal is back on offense again.

Oh wait he got a fourth punch! He gets three more and two clotheslines before they go to the floor. Holly has finally taken control, so he goes and gets the belt and blasts Regal with it for the DQ. Mounted punching follows. Well thank you for that.

Rating: D-. This was just stupid. Why was this on PPV anyway? It was about 6 minutes long and was about 95% Regal, before a stupid DQ. This looked like the start of an angle rather than a PPV match, but of course nothing ever came of it. I don’t get this one.

Trish hits on Angle. He doesn’t get it.

We get a recap of Rock vs. Rikishi. The fat man claims that Rock asked him to take out Austin, which turns out to be a lie. Rock says he wants nothing to do with Rikishi, other than having this match of course and making a PPV paycheck from it. Anyway, Rikishi is in a Lincoln, the same kind of car that ran over Austin and slams Rock’s chest with a sledgehammer. The car was driven by HHH which reveals him to be the accomplice and mastermind behind the whole thing. That leads us here.

Rikishi vs. The Rock

Ok number one way to get Rikishi over as a heel, change his freaking ring attire. The thong thing just looks ridiculous. Rock sprints to the ring and beats the tar out of him. He even gets a decent Samoan Drop on him. I’ve never seen him punch that fast. Anyway, Rock goes for a chair but it doesn’t work as the referee grabs it and Rock takes a superkick to the chest, which makes more sense than the jaw in this case. The psychology is here if nothing else.

A lot of guys would have completely ignored the chest thing and just done generic offense, but if nothing else Rikishi is working on the chest almost entirely. He punches it in three out of the four corners because for some reason Rock’s reaction to pain is so stumble to the right every time. The story of the match is basically this: Rikishi hits Rock in the chest a bunch, Rock holds his chest, Rock fights back, repeat. Rock continues to act as a bra by holding his chest as they go to the floor.

The referee goes down on the floor because there hasn’t been enough ridiculous brawling so far of course. The fat guy becomes HHH as he pulls out a sledgehammer. I love Rock’s ridiculous overselling. He hits the Rock Bottom but there’s no referee, which doesn’t matter because Rock can’t cover. Back on their feet, Rikishi keeps stopping the comebacks with the racially charged heabutts, because all Samoans have hard heads right?

The deadly fat drop looks like it has finished the Rock and is going to allow the evil of thongs to reign supreme forever, but it only gets two. Rikishi hits the Stinkface, which has got to be the most ridiculous move of all time. I hate moves…no wait it’s not a move. I hate things like that where it’s supposed to be psychologically devastating. Rock comes back with a big clothesline and Rikishi does a big flip that he tended to do.

The elbow hits and after a long wait before covering and barely a cover, that’s it? Oh come on now. Post match, Rikishi gets up because he got hit by A FREAKING ELBOW DROP. I love the way Rock is holding his chest as it looks like he’s covering his nipples. Four Banzai Drops later, Rock is hurt apparently.

I love when announcers say people will never be the same. Of course they won’t be. They’re going to age, they’re going to have worked out more, they’re going to be more experienced etc. You’re never the same as you were before people.

Rating: B. This was actually good. Having Rock injured coming into it was required because it made it seem like he was in danger of losing. I also like how he won the battle but ultimately lost the war, as it makes Rikishi look like a bigger deal without weakening Rock. It’s not great, but it certainly carries itself well if that makes sense.

Raven is at WWF New York. Dang they screwed up that character.

Over an hour into the show and Austin is just getting here. That’s just great.

HHH is with the Radicalz and Foley, with a creepy looking short haircut, comes in and says the Radicalz can’t be in the match tonight. Also it’s no DQ, which makes it stupid because if it’s no DQ, what can Foley do if the Radicalz interfere?

Women’s Title: Ivory vs. Lita

Ivory is in the Right To Censor at this point. She doesn’t like Lita because of the clothes. Due to that, Lita gets a title shot? What sense does that make? Lita of course looks great. I think they botch a spot as Lita ducks underneath about four moves off the ropes. I think they got that backwards somewhere. Ross says they’re live in Rwanda as well which is odd. Lita is busted open and I’d say it’s legit too.

There’s no reason she would have bladed this early or at all for that matter. Ivory is actually wearing a long skirt in this. Lawler implies that Ivory is bad in bed. Oddly enough she was brought in as a sex toy for Mark Henry. Lita hits some decent stuff but her eye is bothering her. She takes out Ivory and Stevie with a sweet plancha though. Ivory is pulled out of the way of the moonsault by Steven to get Ivory back on the offense.

This is a very fast moving match. I don’t mean in the sense of high flying, but it’s just going really quickly, which isn’t good. Ivory misses a shot with the belt and Lita takes her down and takes her top off, http://onhealthy.net/product-category/hair-loss/ which I’m hardly complaining about. The moonsault doesn’t work again as Ivory as the belt ready, and she get the pin.

I’ve checked this more than once and I can’t actually see where Ivory covers her. Maybe I’m just missing it but I don’t see it at all. Ok the replay shows the arm over Lita so that works. For some reason Lita “never quitting” is impressive? OH DANG she’s bleeding badly. I didn’t realize it was that much.

Rating: D+. This is passing because of Lita’s looks. There’s just nothing at all of note here as it’s WAY too short and Lita looked bad in it. It might be because of the blood, but dang man. There’s just nothing appealing about this match at all other than looks, so yeah it’s pretty bad. Ivory would go on to feud with Chyna who would destroy her at Mania for the belt before killing its credibility by just leaving while still champion.

Coach says Rock is hurt.

Jericho beats up Kane despite having lost clean to him earlier.

We get a recap of the build to Taker vs. Angle. Angle has done more in a year than a lot of people do in a career, and Taker is Taker. That sums up just about everything. Taker says Angle will take his last ride.

WWF Title: Kurt Angle vs. Undertaker

Remember this is still good boy Kurt, not crazy psycho Kurt. Taker has been here for ten years, so he’s still a veteran, but not the long term veteran like he is now. That’s just amazing on a lot of levels. Angle asks for a moment of reflection on your favorite Kurt Angle moment from the past year. He would conduct a poll, but Florida would screw it up. He lists off his accomplishments and the way he does this is just hilarious. He had this character down from the day he debuted.

Naturally Taker cuts him off with a bad Kid Rock song. That man is the evil of wrestling, plain and simple. Taker’s pants are just a shade under white. That’s just making it difficult to take him seriously as a tough guy. Angle stalls the start of the match so Taker gets fed up with it and gets a chair which he throws to Angle. That’s kind of cool actually. Angle nails him with it and we finally get a bell. After Angle punches him a bit, Taker channels his inner Hulk Hogan by hitting a boot and legdrop.

Since he surely would have had the pin because that’s just the most awesome combination of moves in history, he pulls him up because he doesn’t want a minute long match. I think Taker is going for Old School. I base this on the theory that Taker shouts out OLD SCHOOL! I just can’t get over those pants. They’re like beige or something like that. This turns into a fistfight and I’ll give you three guesses as to who wins that. Both guys have scary strength.

Angle gets a belly to back suplex with ease and Taker catches Angle jumping at him from the apron without backing up a step. That’s just scary power. Angle starts working on the leg for the ankle lock. That makes sense. Taker works on the back which makes sense I guess, but the Last Ride isn’t exactly a move that needs a lot of buildup when you think about it.

I love the basic story here of Angle tries to use all these suplexes and psychology of the legs etc. and Taker just punches the tar out of him. Just as I say this, Taker hits an armbar. Edge and Christian run out and distract the referee while Angle is tapping.

Chokeslam doesn’t hit, because since Taker is a face that has a submission, he lets it go instead of just cranking on it until the referee is paying attention. I’ll never get the thought processes of wrestlers. Taker beats up Edge and Christian so at least some things never change. That’s good to know.

Angle takes a chokeslam which prompts Ross to shout about how it’s over, so naturally it’s not. The Olympian gets a bad figure four, but for the first time ever more than likely it’s on the proper leg. Flair is the master of the move, but he tends to put it on the wrong leg. Angle doesn’t have it on right but I guess that’s the tradeoff that’s made. Taker reverses it and Lawler assures us that Angle is NOT crying from the pain.

Taker is barely selling the leg, which bothers me. Is he Shawn Michaels or something? Since it’s Survivor Series, Angle puts the figure four on the pole. We have to have Bret Hart references left and right so why not? Taker STILL doesn’t sell the knee. Despite having his leg worked on for about ten minutes, Taker has the strength to pick up Angle for the Tombstone and walk around with him as Angle tries to fight it off. Are you kidding me?

I would understand this to an extent if it was Deadman Taker, but this is ridiculous. We go to the floor again and Angle hides under the ring. Taker pulls him out, takes him into the ring and hits the Last Ride for the pin? What the heck was that? It was nothing actually, because we only have two. The referee sees Angle’s face and realizes it’s a different person (Kurt’s brother Eric, also a pro wrestler but not a very good one at all.

They did the EXACT same storyline in 2003 with Lesnar instead of Taker.). The real Kurt comes in and rolls up Taker for the pin. Well that was different and at least it wasn’t a Montreal reference. We see Kurt running to a car that’s waiting for him unlocked and with the keys in the ignition in the parking lot where he speeds off.

DAng you would think that the defending world champion would have a better car waiting for him. That thing has to be at least four or five years old and it’s not even a pretty color.

Rating: B-. Well, I hate the ending, and I really hate Taker’s refusal to sell the stupid knee, but this was good other than that. It worked fine for what it was, but Angle just wasn’t ready to hang with Taker yet. If you want the real main event level match from these two, check out No Way Out 2006. Now THAT is how it’s done. As for this, it’s good but not a classic. I liked it for the psychology, but some may not.

The XFL is coming. Let the jokes begin.

Edge/Christian/Right To Censor vs. Dudleys/Hardys

The RTC here is Buchanan and Goodfather and somehow they’re the tag champions here. That would last almost another month, which blows my mind. Ross points out how just about everyone has switched sides since last year which is amusing to me as it’s quite true that everyone can change from face to heel in such a relatively short amount of time. We start with Bubba and Buchanan if that tells you where this match is going.

D-Von makes things better with a jumping reverse elbow, which is one of the coolest moves of all time. This is broing for about a minute and a half or so until we get the big brawl that we knew was coming. Jeff is of course rocking a way too big purple sweatshirt and we get a quadruple DDT, which is somehow dumber than it sounds. Why is it dumb you ask? Are you telling me that in that whole time they were setting for it, no one that was getting dropped could throw a punch to the ribs to break it up?

That’s why it’s stupid. The Hardy’s shirts come off to reveal…more shirts. Well that was pointless. Oh ok they match the shirts the Dudleyz are wearing. That makes a bit of sense then. Immediately after that, Matt rips his off. Thanks for wasting our time. Jeff does the same, so our time is doubly wasted. T

hankfully just after that, Edge takes out Matt with the Edge-O-Matic, which is just an awesome name for a move, period. About a minute later after nothing of all of interest or importance, Christian hits the Unprettier on D-Von to make it 4-2.

This just isn’t that interesting. WWE needs to learn that just because a tag team is good together they’re not that interesting apart most of the time. Take the Dudleys for example. Does anyone care about either of them on their own? That might be a bad example as most people don’t care about them as a team anymore, but to be fair again they haven’t really been the Dudleys or anything close to them in about ten years now so whatever.

Bubba comes in and cleans house. Edge accidentally spears Buchanan and Bubba eliminates him. About thirty seconds later Bubba hits the full nelson bomb on Edge. Christian goes for a splash from the top rope for the save but misses and Edge is gone just after that. That leaves Christian and the Goodfather vs. Jeff and Bubba. Goodfather takes Bubba out with a really bad Death Valley Driver, which gets the very original name Goodfather Driver.

Christian hits the post and then in a very weird looking move, Jeff picks up Christian for a slam and literally just drops him. It looked odd to say the least. A very high and fast Swanton ends Christian and we’re at one on one. Hmm, a young and popular guy against a generic midcarder that found one gimmick that worked out of about 5 he was given. I’ll set the over/under at a minute. Who wants some?

After a misses splash with theatrics that certainly isn’t the Ho Train, Val Venis misses a clothesline that hits Goodfather for the pin. Well that was such a phenomenal ending that I don’t think there’s anything left for me to say about this match. The Right to Censor all beat on Jeff until Matt and the Dudleys come in for the save. You can figure out what happens by yourselves here.

Rating: C-. This started well, but it felt like it was clipped at the end. I mean there’s zero story or anything like that to get rid of the last about 5 guys in this. It’s just finishing move, thirty seconds of whatever, finishing move, repeat. I know they didn’t have a lot of time, but they could have done more than this.

Also, how in the world are the Dudleys in a match and they don’t get to do the freaking 3D? They’re known for three things: the 3D, tables, and the 3D through tables, and they don’t get to do it? Come on now. This could have been cut from the show or turned into a quick tag title match instead and it would have been much better.

HHH talks to the Radicalz about nothing at all.

We recap Austin vs. HHH, which really was a huge feud. Once Austin got back, the manhunt was on for the guy that Rikishi was working with. How they knew he had an accomplice was never flat out explained, but whatever. I guess it might be that Rikishi was just too stupid to be able to pull this off himself but that’s neither here nor there. There were more attempts on Austin, such as dropping an anvil case being dropped near him and a guy hitting him in the head with a wrench.

HHH had apparently been a bit of a face around this time, but turned on Austin on Raw, revealing himself. JR was stunned by this for some reason. He wants to know why HHH would do this. In the words of Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer: “When are you going to get this through your pretty little head? I’M EVIL!”

Why can’t Ross get that? HHH did it because he’s a HEEL. It’s his nature to do stuff like this. Anyway, HHH’s reasoning makes a lot of sense as he says that in Austin’s absence he took over the company and became the top guy, which is true.

HHH vs. Steve Austin

HHH gets booed out of the building and Austin gets the roof blown off the freaking place. The buildup for this was perfect, as the fans hated HHH for taking their hero from them for nearly a full year. That’s the best way to get heat, and HHH was somewhere in the range of the devil himself. He’s using the Disturbed theme music here which is good also. Two middle fingers go up and we’re on. As happened with a match yesterday, there’s just nothing to say here.

The problem with this match is simple: HHH has tried to murder Austin twice now, and they’re going to have a wrestling match over it. See how there’s just something missing there? This is just a big brawl. Now who saw that one coming? If you did, give yourself five points. Anyway, this is just ok at best. It’s just a fight all over the arena with HHH working on Austin’s neck and Austin working on HHH”s back and both guys punching and kicking each other a lot.

This is a match that would have benefited greatly from a gimmick not known as No DQ. This needed to be the Cell or Last Man Standing or something where you could have had a lot of violence that made sense. This is just mindless fighting with no direction at all.

Now before someone says to me “but KB it’s a fight. It’s supposed to not have direction”, I’d advise you to shut your idiotic mouth because you don’t know what you’re talking about. Take a look at something like Summerslam 2002 with Shawn and HHH and then take a look at a run of the mill hardcore match from say 2000. You can clearly see the difference. Now, yes the talent of the wrestlers makes a big difference, but that’s the point isn’t it?

Most of the time, the match should be about the wrestlers in the match, not the weapons or gimmick that’s going on. The wrestlers carry the match and not their surroundings and these two certainly are capable of doing just that. However, we just get a No DQ match, which means it’s more or less a failure. The heat is there, but it’s too long and too generic. This should have been about 10-12 minutes long and have been Austin being as violent as possible.

That’s where a Last Man Standing rule would have worked really well, because a pin here just seems completely stupid. Instead of that, what about a match where it’s just Austin beating the living tar out of HHH to try to keep him down, resulting in something absurd to keep him down. He comes close to that by using the chair around the neck of HHH but it doesn’t happen so that’s whatever.

After nearly 20 minutes of the exact same stuff time after time, they go to the back where the Radicalz are waiting. Austin fights them off as HHH tries to run him down again. Because HHH apparently can’t get out of the car in the minute and a half he has, Austin gets him up in a fork lift. After the time off screan for HHH to get out and get a mic on him, he is dropped about 15 feet to the ground with the last thing we hear being him shouting HOLY CRAP!

Do I even need to break down why this is stupid? Number one, he would die. Number two, he could have gotten out of the car about a dozen times. Number three, how in the heck are we supposed to hear him when he’s in a car, outside, and on a forklift? Finally, HE WOULD BE DEAD. Naturally he was on Raw the next night. This ends the show as I can’t believe how bad that was.

Rating: D-. This was just bad on nearly every level. Like I said, there’s just no way to make a match work with the storyline that they built up to this with. I get what they were shooting for here, but it was just a complete and total failure. They just didn’t have enough for them to work with here and they had too much time on their hands out there. The Cell really would have worked perfectly here, but I can understand they didn’t want to use it twice in nine months.

The ending was just flat out stupid, plain and simple. Again, I get what they were going for here, but it just didn’t work at all for them. This was more or less the end of the feud for awhile as the main event of Armageddon 2000 was a 6 way HIAC match, which also explains why it’s not being used here.

Austin and HHH would both go for the title soon after this, resulting in a GREAT 2/3 falls match at No Way Out where HHH won twice in a row. That would be more or less the last time they went at it as far as I can remember, which is good because this was awful and that was great. Anyway, this was just a horrible way to end the show and it left a bad taste in my mouth.

Overall Rating: D+. OH MAN did this show suck. It took me forever to get through it because I just didn’t want to see what was next. There’s some at best ok stuff here, but overall I just didn’t care. It’s practically a transitional show, with Rock/Rikishi, Angle/Taker and Austin/HHH not having legit endings to the feuds. And wouldn’t you know it, the main event for Armageddon was just all six of them in the Cell for the title (Angle retains).

That’s just lazy booking to me, as even then the feuds didn’t have actual endings. The whole show just doesn’t feel like there’s any thought to it, and I can’t help but wonder if the XFL had something to do with that. Vince needs to stick to wrestling and not other random things, because it hurts his primary product. This could have been decent, but it’s a complete failure to me and I’d recommend staying away from it.

 

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Survivor Series 1990
Date: November 22, 1990
Location: Hartford Civic Center, Hartford, Connecticut
Attendance: 16,249
Commentators: Gorilla Monsoon, Roddy Piper

Well, we’re in the 90s now and that’s about it. Warrior is world champion, but other than that just about everything is exactly the same. It’s been a pretty bland year actually as nothing of note has happened. Your main feuds are Warrior against no one in particular and Hogan vs. Earthquake. Hogan of course wants the title back but that’s nothing new. The big thing here of course though is the debut of the Undertaker who is Ted DiBiase’s mystery partner.  Let’s get to it.

The other two big things here is the infamous giant egg which I’ll get to, and the Match of Survival, which is all of the winners being grouped into one final match at the end to determine the Grand Survivors. Yeah, it’s dumber than it sounds. Let’s do this. Oh and Jesse is gone.

First off, you should buy Supertape 3. Mean Gene says so.

Jesse says you should buy WWF toys. I did.

Jesse says you should but the WWF ring. I did that too.

Mooney plugs the Grand Finale thing and the egg.

A Vince voiceover sets up the lineup. Demolition’s pictures make them look like they’re in a bondage session.

Piper goes on a big rant about the military, which I’m not huge on. Don’t do that on PPV Roddy.

Perfect Team vs. Warriors

Perfect Team: Mr. Perfect, Demolition
Warriors: Ultimate Warrior, Texas Tornado, LOD

Warrior is the world champion here, Tornado is IC champion, and the LOD cost Demolition the tag titles at Summerslam. There’s no reason at all for Warrior to be in this. This match screams train wreck to me. Gene is with the Warriors who say everything you would expect them to say. Warrior might be less coherent than Hawk. After the faces enter, it takes forever to actually get anything going. Is it that hard to figure out who is going to start?

Animal spears Crush to start this out which I like. Roddy can’t tell Demolition apart. Seriously, it’s not that difficult people. The heels beat up on Animal for a decent amount of time which isn’t surprising as he’s likely worn out after being in the ring over a minute. The wildness ensues as Perfect is in and being beaten up by all of the faces at once, which is of course, perfectly legal. So I guess Warrior and Perfect was supposed to be the main feud but that simply wasn’t the case at all.

They never had a feud that I remember unless it was a short one. Warrior would go on to face Slaughter at the Rumble while Perfect would just kind of do nothing as Boss Man feuded with the entire Heenan Family. I really don’t get the point of him being in here. I’m assuming that he had a short feud over the last few months with Warrior that this is the blow off for.

That would make sense as Warrior had a more or less one off match with Rude at Summerslam but Rude was now gone, so maybe they threw Perfect in because he was part of the Family as well. That’s the best I can come up with. Warrior gets beaten on by Demolition which amuses me as I just didn’t like Warrior that much. Wait, he’s already out and Tornado is in. I always was a mark for him. Wait now Warrior is back in.

He knocks out Axe with the splash as the ending to this match is already becoming fairly obvious, which I’m never a fan of. Crush, the most successful of Demolition arguably, comes in and beats on Warrior which I enjoy. For some reason Crush’s face push, which was supposed to result in the WWF Title was aborted for no reason at all. I never got that. Hawk and Perfect are in now, and Hawk is just freaking SCARY looking. He just looks awesome on all levels.

Somehow they botch a whip in as Perfect slips I think and goes almost into the opposite turnbuckle on his knees. It just looked odd to say the least. Hawk hits one of the hardest shoulders I’ve ever seen into the post, which is almost word for word what Piper says so at least I have someone agreeing with me. Crowd is very hot to say the least. He makes his comeback but of course he refuses to tag.

At least he’s been paying attention to old Survivor Series tapes. Crush and Animal come in and we have four guys disqualified. Yeah, that’s as dumb as it sounds, and it’s 2-1 with Tornado and Warrior, the two singles champions, against Perfect. What a great match this should be. Piper constantly saying he’s writing it down makes me chuckle. Warrior presses him and Piper says he’s up and down more than a toilet seat. And we’re moving on.

Tornado hits the exposed turnbuckle and gets Perfectplexed for the pin despite having his shoulder up. Warrior breaks the suplex with relative ease as Heenan is losing it. Perfect is beating on him with relative ease so the ending is getting clearer and clearer. Ref gets a bit bumped as Warrior kicks Perfect out onto him. I love how there’s instances where that would take the referee out for five minutes and other times where it does nothing.

The announcers say that the heat in here could hatch the egg as I’m getting those headaches I used to get. Traditional Warrior comeback ensues and the splash ends this. Gorilla says that the Warrior is the surviving team. Why do so many commentators make zero sense? Surprisingly the celebration takes very little time. Warrior is on to the grand finale.

Rating: C-. This was pretty bland. It really made little sense and just felt thrown together. Perfect was trying to get the IC title back, LOD was feuding with Demolition after costing them the tag belts, and Warrior….yeah you get the point. There was just no need to have him in there and it made the match lopsided.

I get that they didn’t really have another major option, but this was a classic example of where two regular matches would have been better suited here and the WWF Champion doesn’t really have a lot of need on a show like this. That would change next year.

The Million Dollar Team (can you please get a new name Ted?) says that they’ll win. There’s still no mystery partner though.

Million Dollar Team vs. Dream Team

Million Dollar Team: Ted DiBiase, Honky Tonk Man, Greg Valentine, Mystery Partner
Dream Team: Dusty Rhodes, Koko B. Ware, Jim Neidhart, Bret Hart

Ok, a few things. Number one, why would you have Koko on your team? Two, Dusty gets a great pop. Three, the Mystery Partner was assigned to Koko, since the captains cancel each other out and then you have the two tag teams? Wow he really started on the bottom of the ladder didn’t he? Dusty has also finally dropped the polka dots.

He would be gone very soon, heading back to the NWA where he belongs. Rhythm and Blues theme song, Honky Love, is either going to start a riot or is the best song I’ve ever heard. Shockingly, he’s offered bonus money if his team wins. Yeah he’s done that every year now. Of course, the mystery partner is the debuting Undertaker.

I would say this warrants a bit of a section of its own. Now this is by far and away the most important thing to happen at this PPV to this point and likely is the most important thing to happen at Survivor Series ever. Taker, as IC (I think) said, wasn’t designed to be the next major star like Hogan or Warrior, but rather the next phenom, ala Andre the Giant. I’d say that it’s been a success as he’s still around and in big storylines nearly 20 years later.

This is being written the night before Summerslam, so I’m going to go out on a short limb and say that Taker has returned by this point. This Taker was different than the traditional one. To begin with, he’s managed by Brother Love, not Paul Bearer. Also, he’s more of a western mortician kind of guy rather than what you all know and love. Either way, he’s completely intimidating and this was his first televised match.

He had actually been around at house shows, going by the name of Kane the Undertaker. I’d think it’s safe to say that the name of his brother wasn’t that big of a coincidence. Also, it’s good that they shortened the name I’d say. Anyway, let’s get to the match itself.

Koko is wearing bright pink. Do I need to make fun of him anymore? Now for all you trivia people, Taker’s first opponent in the WWF: Bret Hart, as he beats on him with relative ease. Another interesting fact: to the best of my knowledge, Taker has never beaten Bret clean. He hits the first chokeslam which doesn’t have a name yet, but it’s really more of Bret running at him and more of a clothesline with Taker’s hand on Bret’s throat.

Neidhart can’t do anything, so he tags in the offensive genius known as Koko. This is great as Taker no sells the dropkick and picks him up for the first ever tombstone, which is one of the best I’ve ever seen. Koko is clearly gone, as the announcers actually try to convince us that it’s a big deal that he beat Koko. That just amuses me. We get more Bret vs. Taker which there’s nothing at all wrong with.

Taker gets hit with some good shots and just stares at Bret before reaching over and tagging out. That’s just awesome as it looks like even Bret can do nothing against him. Dusty comes in now that the real threat is gone. Piper insists that the faces can figure Taker out. Well not many people have in 19 years so I think the Scot is wrong here. Honky comes in rocking red tights which just don’t look right on him. They say Heartbreak Hotel.

It’s good to see Shawn’s interview segment getting free advertising like that. The Harts do a quick tag and Honky walks into a powerslam from Anvil to tie us up at 3-3. DiBiase runs in immediately and pounds away on him. It’s nice to see the captain leading his team like this. Gorilla has forgotten about trying to be fair here. Rhodes is in as the main feud is going at it. You know, considering it was over Sapphire, I have to wonder, WHERE IS SHE?

She left immediately after Summerslam, which always made me scratch my head. I get that she was the catalyst for the feud, but did DiBiase just release her back into the wild? Virgil interferes to eliminate Neidhart. It’s Bret and Rhodes against Valentine, DiBiase and Taker. That’s….not that bad of a match actually.

Roddy calling Love Blubber Love amuses me. We get a Blow Away diet reference that makes me smile. I’m going to step away from this for a second to put this up, as it’s a fairly infamous video that went absolutely nowhere at all.

Nothing ever came of this as I think Rose was little more than a jobber at this point. However, he was in the first ever Wrestlemania match, albeit under a mask. Seriously, what was the point of this? Anyway, that’s what Roddy references, which brought it to my head. It was one promo, this one, and then it was never mentioned again. It’s one of the great WTF moments in wrestling history.

Anyway, the faces beat on DiBiase as Piper implies Dusty isn’t too smart. Again, I don’t have to make fun of this one. Taker eliminates him with a fairly generic double axe from the top rope. Now we get to something that I just don’t get at all. Bret comes in to beat on Taker as he’s the last face remaining. They go back to the corner and we cut to Brother Love beating on Dusty who is still down on the floor. That all makes sense.

We cut back to the ring and Valentine is in with Hart and Taker is on the apron. The referee is fine with this and it’s business as usual. Naturally, I’d assume that while Taker was in the corner, Taker tagged out and made Valentine legal. That makes perfect sense. Taker though goes to the floor and fights Dusty up the aisle, and the bell rings. Taker has been counted out as he was the legal man? That makes no sense at all.

I completely understand that they didn’t want Taker to survive and they certainly didn’t want him to get pinned and I have no problem with him beating Dusty to the back to have him get counted out. That makes perfect sense and is perfectly acceptable to have him eliminated. What I don’t get at all is having the weird I guess non-tag. Taker threw Rhodes to the floor.

Why didn’t he just follow him out and then we get the count out? It would make sense at least. Anyway, within 45 seconds Valentine gets rolled up and it’s 1-1 with DiBiase vs. Hart in what should be a good match. I have yet to see someone that can go over the rope or do a flip like DiBiase. It’s just so crisp every single time and I love it. Bret just goes off on DiBiase, beating the living crud out of him.

That’s a big deal as Bret has only been given small pushes here and there but is still known as a tag guy. Very soon though, his singles push would begin and the rest is history. Ted takes over though as would be expected. Bret wasn’t going to win here, but Ted was the perfect choice to make Bret look awesome in a losing effort. They really got it right with Bret as they built him up ever so slowly and once the push happened, everyone was ready for it and it went perfectly.

DiBiase accidentally nails Virgil. Their feud was right around the corner as Virgil would turn on him at the Rumble, leading to the feel good moment of the year (save for Macho/Liz) at Mania 7 with Virgil beating him. DiBiase reverses a cross body for the win, which works well as it was his experience that beat Bret. Both guys look good, but the bigger star comes out with the win as he should have.

Rating: C+. Clearly, this is more important for Taker than who won. Looking back, this might trump Jericho for best debut of all time. The people were legit stunned and had no clue what to think of Taker and a lot of people still don’t to this day. Taker is a character that just works, plain and simple. It’s a lot like Stone Cold in that way. They knew they had something with both guys, but no one could predict just how big they would become.

They hit this one so far out of the park though that it’s amazing. The interesting thing is that earlier in the year, Taker was Mean Mark Callaway and jobbing to Luger for the US Title. He was just a generic big man that was a heel, and then they turn him into one of the most famous gimmicks of all time. To me, it’s no longer about is he the best big man ever.

It’s how far up do you rank him on the best of all time list, because he’s certainly on it. As for the rest of the match, it’s just there. Bret and DiBiase is good, but the rest is just ok. Certainly not bad, but nothing to go out of your way to watch. Taker’s debut and time in the match certainly is worth seeing though, just from an historical perspective.

We go to the back with the Vipers, meeting with Gene in the shower. This is just odd. This is another infamous team, but we’ll get to that later on. Jake talks about how they’re all survivors. Jimmy Snuka has a mustache. It looks weird. Jake still has the messed up eye, which is the point of this feud. One day on the Brother Love show, Martel tried to spray his cologne on Damien and Jake went after him, getting sprayed in the eye. This led to him being “blinded”, which was just a bad feud. It inspired the blowoff match, the infamous blindfold match at Wrestlemania which was just bad. It also explains the team name for the heels: the Visionaries.

Vipers vs. Visionaries

Vipers: Jake Roberts, Marty Jannetty, Shawn Michaels, Jimmy Snuka
Visionaries: Rick Martel, Hercules, Paul Roma, Warlord

Apparently Jake is wrestling against doctor’s orders. You have to love how much Vince loves his wrestlers as he’d rather have the money they could produce than their health. Rockers had been feuding with Power and Glory, as Shawn had an injured knee, costing them the match at Summerslam. Jake picked them for his team because they had “survived” the injury. Yeah they’re really stretching a lot of these.

Warlord and Superfly…yeah there’s no real point other than they’re both in the midcard. The announcers try to put over how great the card has been and how Jake is half blind here. Amazingly this was considered cool back in the day. Piper gets a facepalm by saying the team is called the Plymouth Rockers. This isn’t much in the way of talent/title success. We start with Warlord (who Piper calls walrus and makes I Am the Walrus references which I love) against Marty.

Snuka, Robers, Warlord, Hercules and Roma never won anything in the company. Jannetty has two forgotten reigns and Martel won as a tag guy. There’s just not much on either team with Shawn being not much yet either. Piper says the Rockers are going to be the team of the 90s. That amuses me. Shawn with an AWESOME counter to a hiptoss as he more or less does a rotating flip without touching the ground off a hiptoss. It’s hard to describe but it looked sweet.

How in the world was Roma a Horsemen? Seriously, what were they thinking? Hercules needs to pull his tights down a bit as he’s approaching thong territory. Warlord takes out Marty off a powerslam that he got in a very cool looking counter to a cross body. It’s nothing that you haven’t seen before but it’s one of the best executions of it I can ever remember.

On to Jake vs. Warlord, which could have been a decent mini-feud. Jake knocks him down and then tags Shawn who goes for the cover. Um, ok? I’ve always loved Gorilla’s highly intellectual terms about parts of the body. They make him sound almost cocky without being completely so though. At least Martel dropped a knee after getting tagged in before covering. Piper surprises me and says that Martel has some brains. That came from nowhere.

I like Shawn’s look around this time. The black and yellow was a cool looking combination on the team I thought. Snuka comes in wearing tights and boots, which looks completely wrong. He belongs in no shoes and trunks. What kind of a respectful savage wears shoes? First person to make a Macho Man joke here gets red rep. Snuka is gone after a reversed cross body as he makes his standard jobbing appearance.

We finally get Jake vs. Martel for all of 8 seconds but they never make contact as Martel runs. That’s even more building for the eventual showdown, which works. Piper calls Hercules a cheap skate. That’s odd indeed. Roma, of course, screws up and costs his team the advantage. Good to see he hasn’t forgotten his place. Shawn hits a move that you don’t see often: an elbow off the second rope. I’m not talking about a Bret Hart style one.

I’m talking about the kind Savage uses, but from the middle rope. It looked different but in a good way. Shawn gets knocked out by the Power-Plex, so we’re down to 4-1. Yeah this has been very bad so far. The fans try to give Jake the big comeback cheers but it’s just not going to work. Piper says the fans are standing up for what Jake is doing. Right now he’s getting his face kicked in. That’s 1990 WWF fans: fighting for your right to get a beating.

Jake gets an AWESOME DDT on Warlord but Martel goes for the cologne to the face so Jake chases him with the snake for the count out. That’s a sneaky way to leave without looking like a coward. The Visionaries win in a clean sweep, which I think has happened 3 times ever?

Rating: D+. This was really boring. Nothing of interest happened, the main feud never had anything happen, and the faces got beat into the ground. This is one of the least interesting matches of all time in the series, and it took me an hour to get through a 17 minute match. That’s how uninterested I was here. One last thing here.

Ok, I get it: Jake is the only star there and without him, the team sucks. But seriously, he can’t either knock out one or two of the four or just get pinned? It’s not like there’s any shame in losing to four guys.

Ad for the Rumble, which is on a Saturday for some reason.

Sean is with the Hulkamaniacs. Hogan and his latest team of glorified jobbers say they’ll survive. Ok Boss Man wasn’t a jobber. Duggan has yellow ribbons on his board. Why is that? Hogan is going to tell you. It’s for the soldiers in the Persian Gulf. Cool. Hogan volunteers his team to go fight in the war. Yeah, that’s a bit much.

Hulkamaniacs vs. Natural Disasters

Hulkamaniacs: Hogan, Boss Man, Duggan, Tugboat
Natural Disasters: Earthquake, Haku, Dino Bravo, Barbarian

Before the match starts, the announcers point out that it’s Warrior against 5 guys at the moment. I love how they don’t even try to imply that it’ll be anything other than faces vs. heels. It makes sense for the heel team that survived together to be together though, and DiBiase would side with whoever had the better odds. Warrior of course would go into a 5-1 contest thinking he’s the favorite too, so this somehow makes sense.

All four faces get their own entrances, and it amuses me to think that without Hogan, this team is little more than glorified jobbers. Boss Man would be getting a huge singles push soon, but for reasons that I flat out never got, he didn’t get the IC belt from Perfect at Summerslam. He just annihilated every member of the Heenan Family to get that match and then he won by DQ, never getting another major shot. He slowly became a jobber after that and then went to WCW.

It really was odd indeed. Tugboat would be leaving for WCW in a few years, becoming the legendary Shockmaster. Hogan of course gets a massive pop. Piper can’t understand the Hogan chant. Gorilla points it out to him and you can tell Piper is legit embarrassed. We start with Duggan and Haku. Haku is jumping off the ropes. Not bad since he weighs almost 300.

Over to Dino Bravo, who has to be the biggest waste of a wrestler of all time. He’s just pointless. What did this guy ever do other than having a fake championship? Dang Jimmy Hart had some sweet jackets. Boss Man comes in and Haku hits a SWEET dropkick. He nails him right in the head with it. Of course it barely hurts him and Boss Man takes him out with the Boss Man Slam. He then runs over at the heel corner to beat up all three other guys. That’s either brilliant or very, very stupid.

It’s Barbarian next and Boss Man is beating the heck out of him too. DAng why did he never win the IC belt? That just makes no sense. That move that I mentioned Shawn doing earlier apparently isn’t so rare as Barbarian tries it as well. Now Duggan is back in. Seriously, we’re 6 minutes in and it’s been Duggan and Boss Man for the faces the whole time. Duggan tries to knock down Earthquake but just can’t do it.

Eventually he gets the top rope pulled down by Jimmy Hart and picks up the board. Then, because he’s a genius, he whacks Earthquake with it to be eliminated. Dude, you’re an IDIOT! Seriously, he just ran in and hit him with it. Where is the thought process from either him or the booker here? It’s just random attacking that makes no sense. After that, Hogan immediately runs in for the showdown. Unlike the previous match, this actually happens.

Hogan had already won at Summerslam, but it was just by count out. He easily slams him as the crowd is wild. The fans were just WAY into Hogan in a way that’s insane. Hogan hits the classic 10 punches in the corner which needs to be done more often. It’s one of the easiest ways possible to get cheered. Of course it has no effect and Hogan is in trouble. I’ve always loved Earthquake’s powerslam.

He does that little thing where he hooks in the guy’s head right before he slams the guy and it just always works. Quake running on his knees to the corner is kind of funny looking. See, that worked. It was about a minute and a half long but it was at least solid contact. Hogan takes Bravo out with a small package. Piper curses again as Tugboat still hasn’t been in. Piper has a great line: Boy that Hulk Hogan is almost as smart as Roddy Piper. Is that true? I’m not sure.

Anyway, in one of the maybe 10 moves ever that have made my jaw drop, Boss Man, weighing well over 300lbs, goes to the top and comes off with a cross body. EARTHQUAKE CATCHES HIM WITH EASE. He doesn’t stumble, he doesn’t almost drop him, he catches him clean. That was absolutely amazing. Earthquake takes him out with a pair of elbows.

AGAIN Hogan is in. Gorilla literally forgets about Tugboat. That’s just funny. He has to be injured or something like that. They imply he’s been in but if he was I blinked and missed it. The fans are either chanting TOOT or booing him out of the building. I’m not sure which. Oh he’s finally in by the way. He and Quake “brawl” to the floor and both are out. He was legal less than 45 seconds. Yeah, definitely thinking injury there.

Oh well, at least it lasted longer than the helmet stayed on. Ok, so for no apparent reason, we’re down to Hogan and Barbarian. Uh, why? Why is this not Hogan and Earthquake? That’s your main feud, Hogan has already beaten him once and it wasn’t clean and you could argue that a one on one win here wouldn’t be clean either. I don’t get the point of it not being Hogan and Quake. Barbarian tries a piledriver but it wasn’t that good at all.

We get the WAY too common Hogan double clothesline spot that I’m hating more and more every time. Barbarian gets a great big boot to the face. I’m liking him more and more every match he has. He hits the top rope clothesline that was his de facto finisher and Gorilla is surprised that Hogan kicks out. Again, do I need to make fun of that? The Hulk Up begins and you know what’s coming next. Piper talks about how real men wear kilts. That’s why I don’t wear one.

Some annoying fan is screaming really high pitched and it’s annoying me. Hogan immediately beats up Heenan to no commentary. That was random and over the top violence. Some role model eh? Posing goes on for way too long as Piper again talks about how pro-American he is. It’s ok I suppose though.

Rating: C+. This wasn’t awful but it wasn’t great. The ending was a bit odd but we knew Hogan would win it. The Boss Man looked dominant as it took a kick from Barbarian who was on the apron to slow him down. Tugboat I guess was hurt? Either way he would become Typhoon soon enough I guess and then on to being the Shockmaster. Can we get this guy a good gimmick? Anyway, the match was just ok, but I’m not sure why it was booked like it was. Same result though so that’s fine.

Ad for the Royal Rumble. I can’t wait for that.

Fans talk about who they’re here to see. Um, ok? There’s an 8 or so year old on there that is FIRED UP! A very cool thing, we have a guy signing who he wants to win. Anyone that can speak sign language is awesome to me.

Randy Savage comes out and talks about wanting the title back from Warrior. This is setting the stage for the eventual epic showdown at Mania 7, as well as the reunion with Liz which is one of it not the most emotional moments in wrestling history. This is completely over the top and likely very cocaine induced.

Mercenaries vs. Alliance

Mercenaries: Sgt. Slaughter, Boris Zhukov, Orient Express
Alliance: Nikolai Volkoff, Tito Santana, Bushwackers

So yeah Nikolai is the captain of a team. That’s just amusing. Piper says the last egg he saw that was that big was the one Milli Vanilli laid, which has Gorilla about to completely lose it on air. This is the jobber match of the evening, although Slaughter would be about to get the world title in January. This was the patriotic match if you can’t tell. I guess it’s the everyone but American team vs. the team with only one American who hates America team.

They keep talking about the egg. I’ll save the surprise for you though. Slaughter is an Iraqi sympathizer here and has some old dude from the AWA with him. Eventually he’d pick up the Iron Sheik and they would be the least feared stable of all time. Gene catches up with Slaughter in the aisle (like that was a hard thing to do) and Slaughter says that he and his men had a good turkey dinner while the soldiers in the Middle East had a bad holiday.

This took three minutes somehow. Slaughter was going really far with this gimmick and it was actually very controversial and to this day it’s still a bit rough. This is the original Orient Express, meaning the far worse one. It wouldn’t be until the masked Kato came in that the team got very exciting and started tearing the house down with the Rockers on a regular basis. Boris is gone in less than a minute to the forearm of Tito.

Good to see that in 4 years Boris has risen so high above jobber status. It makes me wonder why he keeps getting spots on people’s teams. Sato of the Orient Express comes in and beats the tar out of Tito, but Butch of all people beats him up. The other Orient Express guy is tagged in, but the Bushwackers hit the Battering Ram on the non legal guy and pin him so it’s 4-2. Holy crap Tito is tagged in and after two and a half minutes it’s 4-1. Geez.

Anyway, it’s now the only guy that could actually do anything in this match, Sgt. Slaughter, vs. all four guys. It’s captain vs. captain to start with Slaughter vs. Volkoff. The Russian/American/Lithuanian is on offense for all of 10 seconds and now Slaughter is killing him. I’ve never gotten why he was considered any good. I guess it’s his gimmick that carried him. That makes sense. In a fairly unique move, Slaughter gets a side headlock and runs his head into the turnbuckle. I like that.

He hits a bad dropkick and then after spitting on him, an elbow pins him. Well that was pretty freaking weak. The Bushwackers run in and double team him but it lasts about 20 seconds and a stomach breaker ends Luke. Yeah it’s one of those kinds of matches. Butch is gone about 30 seconds after that so we get down to 1-1, with the two most talented guys in the match, in less than 7 minutes.

Tito hits the forearm from the top but of course that doesn’t end it, nor is it even acknowledged as a huge move. More or less, this came down to a one on one match, which is what it likely should have been the whole time, even though there’s no heat between these two. Piper makes some racial stereotypes about Latinos as Tito gets beaten on even more.

After about two minutes of Slaughter beating on him, he hits the forearm to bring us right back to where we started. The referee gets bumped and Sheik runs in and hits Tito for the DQ to make Tito the winner. Ok I guess, but this was just a weird match overall.

Rating: F. This had no business being 4-4. It had a talented guy on both teams and it wound up being 1-1 as it likely should have been all along. The other 6 were just window dressing and they meant nothing at all. This was a horrible Survivor Series match, but a decent little three and a half minute one on one match. However, that’s not how it was billed, so this was a failure.

The heel team for the Grand Finale says exactly what you would expect them to say. Actually just Martel and DiBiase talk but that’s likely the best choice.

And now it’s time for the white elephant in the room: the egg. For weeks if not months now, this thing has been around. The idea was the more lively the crowd gets, the faster it will hatch. As stupid and contrived of a concept as that is, we can go with that. Gene gets to be the master of ceremonies here for lack of a better term. All over what would evolve into the IWC back then, the speculation was on. Could it be Undertaker debuting? What about Ric Flair?

That was actually a very real possibility, even though he wouldn’t be there for about a year. Maybe a manager or a celebrity? No one knew. There was a rumor that it was the returning Jesse Ventura. Seriously, this was a secret that Vince actually kept very well for a change. That would turn out to be a good thing. The idea of who laid the egg was never touched on, but this egg was about 8 feet long so there had to be a person inside of it.

Gene speculates that it could be a dinosaur, a rabbit, or balloons. WHAT THE HECK? Number one, A FREAKING DINOSAUR? Come on Gene. Second, rabbits are mammals, and therefore don’t hatch. Balloons? Why would inanimate objects be in an egg? He also speculates it could be this month’s Playboy playmate. Yeah that’s even dumber. Gene’s acting here is flat out awful but he’s trying his best given what he’s working with.

The egg hatches and there he is: the Gobbledygooker. Yes, after over 6 weeks of buildup, it’s a guy in a turkey suit. WOW. After all that, it’s a stupid Thanksgiving mascot. Needless to say, this is booed out of the freaking building. Monsoon and Piper have the very fun job of trying to care at all. They apparently weren’t told what it was going to be. Gene makes bad jokes to try to pass the time.

It takes two minutes to get out of the eggs and now he’s making turkey sounds. Somehow Gene knows its name. Gene understands him too. Now, to make this even dumber, we get a rock version of Turkey in the Straw, and they go to the ring. It’s never explained if the turkey is male or female. Amazingly, the turkey can jump the top rope. Piper tries to imply that the kids like this guy as I feel so sorry for him.

As if that’s not enough, Gooker and Gene commence to dance in the middle of the ring. I kid you not, they begin to square dance. Gene rolls around after Gooker does some tumbling. Okerlund hitting the ropes and falling is the funniest part of this. The booing is off the charts here as Gorilla tries his hardest to make this passable. This goes on for EIGHT MINUTES. I kid you not, this segment almost went into double digits on the clock.

They leave, and the Gooker is crowned the worst gimmick of all time. Seriously, what in the heck was the point of this thing? They built it up for months so it’s not like they couldn’t have changed it at the last minute. They had all kinds of time to make this into something at least interesting. Given that it’s a massive egg, there’s only so much that they could do with it, but dang man seriously? This was the best they could come up with?

There’s a reason he made like two house show appearances and then wasn’t seen again for 11 years. Hector Guerrero deserves a medal for doing this. And Vince wonders why he was in serious financial trouble at this time.

The face team for the final match says they’ll survive. This takes about two and a half minutes as you can tell they’re stalling for time.

Grand Finale Match of Survival

Heels: DiBiase, Martel, Power and Glory, Warlord
Faces: Hogan, Warrior, Santana

Seriously, that’s the best name they could come up with? The ending here is fairly obvious and I’m not sure what the point of this was. DiBiase was a midcard guy by this point and he’s easily the biggest star on the team. The intros of course take forever so since the end of the gimmick segment, we’ve killed almost 8 minutes with intros and interviews. That’s not half bad. This might have been done by Vince to keep the fans from realizing that this is, say it with me, COMPLETELY POINTLESS!

Piper gets some sneaky lines in saying that he could care less about this and that the show is horrible. Warlord is out in less than 30 seconds to a forearm. Tito goes for it again on DiBiase but he crashes and burns. Gorilla saying missed it made me laugh. A stun gun takes out Santana about 8 seconds after that. Now it’s Hogan vs. DiBiase and if this was two years ago this could main event Wrestlemania. Instead, no one is interested.

Power and Glory really was a solid idea for a team. It might have worked had they both not sucked so much. What follows is about five minutes of jobber offense with the occasional elimination here and there. You know the faces are both going to survive and the fans know it too. Hogan was just not what he used to be at this point as the act was old.

He had been doing the same thing for over 6 years now, so of course Vince would keep using it for another year before the best idea he ever had next year, which we’ll get to tomorrow. After Hogan no sells the Power Plex, Roma is out to a clothesline. Yes I said a clothesline. HOW IN THE WORLD WAS HE A HORSEMAN??? Martel gets annihilated by Warrior after a hot tag but he bails after Hogan and Warrior beat on him forever.

So let me get this straight. We have a guy that was at his peak two years ago, and a guy that used to hate him because DiBiase called him his slave. Of course, that’s not mentioned here. DiBiase goes out to the big boot and legdrop and Hercules takes the splash of death to end him and end this horrid show. Hercules walked in, got powerslammed, clotheslined twice, shoulder block, splash. It took about 20 seconds. Massive roided up posing takes us out.

Rating: D-. Seriously, WHAT WAS THE POINT TO THIS? It’s just the big faces beating up on jobbers for 9 minutes. The fans aren’t interested, clearly, but Vince refused to do anything different and that’s why it sucked.

Overall Rating: F. This show was AWFUL. The first match made no sense from a booking perspective, the second is only important for historical aspects and not the wrestling involved, the third is a freaking squash match that made NO SENSE, the fourth is Hogan doing his old routine, and the fifth is a one on one match billed as a Survivor Series match.

The Gooker was SO STUPID and the finale was a waste of 9 minutes because Vince didn’t want to think. That’s how I would summarize this show: uninspired. It’s just there and NOTHING HAPPENS ON IT. Taker debuts, but no one knew that he would become what he is today. This whole thing was just a waste of time and the concept was a failure to this point, and that was the case for one clear reason: other than the first show, no heel team ever won a major match.

The first Survivor Series worked because the ending was a big surprise. Hogan…lost…on PPV…that just did not happen in big matches back then, period. Since then though, the faces have dominated every time. This could have been a huge show every year but instead, Vince decided to just push his top faces even harder which ultimately hurt business badly.

The buyrate for this show was horrid and Vince FINALLY woke up and did a more traditional show the next year with Hogan vs. Taker, which was interesting to say the least, but we’ll save that for tomorrow. Even I, the old school enthusiast that I am, say SCREW THIS SHOW. It’s just awful all around and not worth your time. Check out Taker’s match for the historical aspect and a passable match, but other than that go watch an old Thunder.

 

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Survivor Series 1999
Date: November 14, 1999
Location: Joe Louis Arena, Detroit, Michigan
Attendance: 18,375
Commentators: Jim Ross, Jerry Lawler

Now this is a show where a year really does make a difference. There’s two major issues with this show. Number one, Kurt Angle is debuting here. He’s been talked about for months and tonight he’s fighting Shawn Stasiak. If we had vbookie back then, that match might set a record for biggest amount of money ever won on a single match. Also, this is the last PPV Austin was on for nearly a year, as he FINALLY took time off to have his neck fixed.

The problem simply was that his neck was destroyed by then and the surgery only helped to a certain extent. Had he had this done two years ago when he should have, he might still be wrestling today. Granted it likely would have been for WCW as Vince would have been out of business without Austin, but that’s whatever. The main event here was supposed to be the showdown we all had been waiting for with HHH vs. Rock vs. Austin for the title, but obviously that couldn’t happen.

HHH is champion here, having won it the night after Summerslam from Foley. A lot of the now familiar faces are here now, such as Angle, the Dudleyz, Chris Jericho and Chyna. The Radicalz would debut in January, more or less crippling WCW once and for all (for those that don’t know, the Radicalz were Perry Saturn, Chris Benoit, Dean Malenko and Eddie Guerrero, four of the young studs in WCW that were fed up with never being given a chance in WCW and finally saying screw this and leaving as a unit). Anyway, the card looks fairly good, so let’s do it.

Naturally the intro is about the triple threat that would never come. I’m not sure if I like Vince doing this big of a buildup when he knew that Austin wouldn’t be in it. That’s not quite as bad as Jake and Savage from 91 because 2/3 were in the match, but it’s something you would kind of give a look at. Vince was guest referee for it also. After a very short discussion from Lawler and Ross, we’re ready to go.

Godfather/D’lo/Headbangers vs. Dudleyz/Acolytes

Dang that’s a heck of a heel team. This was when the Dudleyz had just debuted and therefore they were the biggest tag team in the world because the 3D was unlike any move that anyone had seen in forever. At this point Godfather for some reason is one of the most over guys on the roster, which no one will ever get. He has the hos with him and makes his weed references which would NEVER be safe today. Brown is dressed like him too. Oh my stars and garter belts.

Of course the Headbangers are dressed the same way. Oh just take me now. They get ZERO reaction, thank goodness. This was still when Bubba was a stutterer with a big southern accent and D-Von wore overalls, so it’s the best they’ve ever been. Bubba is incredibly funny asking the Godfather for the hoes instead of a match. Godfather is incredibly stupid sounding telling him no. I don’t remember that Acolytes music.

The APA gimmick was coming soon, but not quite here yet. We start with Mosh against Bubba, which spells the whole match in a nutshell. Apparently Mosh has an amateur background. Did that blow anyone else’s mind but me? You can clearly see fans leaving the arena to get popcorn or beer or something, so you can tell how good this match is. After a Clothesline From JBL, Thrasher is gone and it’s 4-3.

Who would have thought that in five years Bradshaw would be world champion? Immediately after Bradshaw turns around Mosh hits a top rope cross body which gets a two. What, did you actually think that was going to work? Teddy Long is a referee here. That’s just humorous. If nothing else, Mosh is trying. He’s not very good, but he’s trying at least. I’ll give him credit for that.

Not everyone can have a 5 star classic, but I’ll give big credit to people that are working hard out there trying to do something, and that’s what Mosh was doing. I say was doing because the 3D makes it 4-2. That leaves us with D’lo and Godfather against four guys. Brown does something very simple but also very smart. He hits that legdrop he does and covers Bubba, but he looks straight at his opponents’ corner. That’s very intelligent when you think about it.

If you’re trying to sell this match, then you want to cover the intelligence factors of it. By making sure that he’s not going to get jumped, D’lo is doing that. It’s a tiny thing but it makes a big difference. Now let’s get to the stupid stuff because you know it’s coming. Bradshaw pops Brown and Bubba with some SICK chair shots to be DQed. Farrooq and D-Von now fight over who should get the pin.

In the stupidest part of this, D-Von covers him and Farrooq drops a leg on him. He looks at D-Von who is up and then covers as well. Yeah that’s going to go well. They brawl to the back and are apparently counted out, which just like in 1994, DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE. Neither guy is legal, so it’s exactly the same thing as standing on the apron. That’s just stupid, but anyway it’s 2-1 now. I’ve always loved Bubba’s side slam. It just looks sweet all around.

Bubba is completely destroying him here, but Brown escapes long enough to tag in…and I hate having to say this…the former Intercontinental Champion, who dominates for a bit before hitting the crappy splash in the corner to set up the Low Down for the pin. I really hate these guys. Make that I hate Godfather. At least Brown had some cool moves. Only here in this time frame would this be the intelligent booking to go with. The ho dance takes us to the next segment.

Rating: B-. The booking makes ZERO sense from modern perspective, and there really was no point to the Headbangers being there. They split up soon enough anyway. Godfather was for some reason considered a somewhat big deal for reasons that mere mortals like myself can’t comprehend. The Dudleyz would soon be where they belonged, but here they were rookies to the company. It was an ok match with everyone working hard, so I’ll take it I guess as a decent opener.

We get a video package on Kurt Angle. This is pure greatness as he is this arrogant jerk but he acts like the all American boy. It’s just awesome. His resume really is awesome when you think about it. I’m so used to seeing him bald that it’s weird seeing him with a full head of hair. Also, this was back when Angle had that pleasant little thing called sanity.

Shawn Stasiak vs. Kurt Angle

Let the jobbing begin. I have never heard more generic music in my life. Apparently his big claim to fame is being the son of a transitional world champion. Oh dear. Angle’s introduction is all impressive and a listing of his accomplishments which is just comical. He’s so clean cut that it’s great considering what he was going to become. Angle had a great advantage to him just as all other “real” wrestlers have.

They need less seasoning and training because they have the amateur background to fall back on. He can learn as he goes but can just go out there and do basic suplexes and holds etc. while not really having learned a lot. It can be called adjusting to the new style, which is actually true. They describe Stasiak as no slouch, and you know what that means. They go onto the mat, and in something that shocks me, Stasiak keeps up with him. That’s very surprising.

Angle hits a textbook overhead belly to belly and gets NOTHING. The fans are chanting for the Redwings because they’re idiots. This is proof of everything that’s wrong with the Attitude Era. Angle and Stasiak just did a very fast paced and crisp mat sequence and then went into a standard wrestling sequence with Angle playing to the crowd very well. However because no referee got bumped and no cursing was done and no weapons were used, the fans hate it. That to me is hogwash.

I was impressed by what I just saw, but apparently it’s boring. And that my friends is why the Attitude Era sucked. It was about drama and not wrestling. That’s just awful all around. Angle and Benoit and Jericho saved the sport more than anyone else because they got in there and just put on classic after classic after classic and it got the fans more interested in the athleticism they were seeing.

Angle has a great look to him with the red white and blue being the most basic outfit you can have and it simply doesn’t fail. Oh he also came out to what used to be Patriot’s music that is now known as his. The fans are DEAD other than a boring chant. In the middle of the match, Angle hits the floor and cuts a promo about how you don’t boo an Olympic gold medalist because he’s the best in the world.

That’s simple but effective. JR brings up a point that’s been argued many times over on these forums: the fans paid their money and can cheer or boo for whomever they want. At the risk of starting a page long debate, I’ll go with I agree with him. People love and cheer for Darth Vader. That doesn’t mean he’s a horrible character. Anyway, Stasiak whispers spots to Angle while in a chinlock.

Angle has a SWEET counter to what I think was a scoop slam from when he came off the ropes as he spins around completely and lands on his feet. It’s hard to describe but it looked awesome. Stasiak could have been decent if pushed right. That’s the big issue: he was just boring. He hits what we would call a slightly modified F5 with the only difference being he throws his body backwards and lands on his stomach instead of next to next to Angle on his back.

It worked fairly well for him though. This is his PPV debut as well apparently. He hits the rotating belly to back suplex for the pin. He gets booed and just doesn’t understand it which is a great character to say the least.

Rating: C+. For a future superstar making his debut, this was ok, but it needed to be maybe a minute shorter. Stasiak being on offense for the most part makes sense here, as he’s more experienced so it makes sense that Angle takes a bit to adjust to him. Also, it makes sense that he carries the match since Angle is a rookie. This was fine, but the fans disappoint me with how jaded they are.

We get a clip from Heat where HHH tried to get Austin and Rock beaten up which failed completely.

Val Venis/Gangrel/Mark Henry/Steve Blackman vs. British Bulldog/Mean Street Posse

The Posse was a group of Shane’s friends that won I think a combined four matches in the company. Venis is the embodiment of everything that was wrong with the Attitude Era, and he’s one of the most remembered stars of it.  Despite how over the top his character was, he really was a solid wrestler and there are rumors he was the official test run for new wrestlers. Allegedly, Vince would have Venis wrestle new guys to see if they had anything. A lot of jobs could have been won or lost based on his recommendations. Granted that’s just a rumor so it very well could be false, but it makes sense when you think about it. I have no clue what the point of this match is, but whatever.

My best guess would be to get Val more over. Ross says that they have nothing in common, so at least it’s not something I’m missing. Henry is the Hershey Bar of Love at this point. Gangrel, despite being completely and utterly awful at anything wrestling related, does have one of the sweetest entrances of all time. I’m still not sure if I like Blackman or not. I used to hate him but the more I see of him the more I think I like him.

For no apparent reason after the faces come out we see a graphic for the match which JR sums up quite well: “There’s your match.” Bulldog was gone in about 6 months after this. He’s European Champion at this point. The Posse is comprised of Pete Gas, Joey Abs and Rodney. They’re as generic as their names imply. We start with the two most talented guys in the match, Bulldog and Venis. Actually they might be the only two talented guys in the match.

Since it’s the Survivor Series, we get a Montreal reference. Lawler of course asks for details. That delayed suplex is just a thing of beauty. That’s real strength. Pete comes in and naturally gets his head handed to him. He gets some decent stuff in to be fair, but the gimmick was just never going to work in the end. Blackman comes in and ends Pete with a bicycle kick. That was short and sweet I guess.

Ross simply does not like the Posse. “He looks like he went to a barber college and went to the guys with bad grades.” Where in the world does he come up with these things? Oh dear it’s Rodney vs. Gangrel. This could set wrestling back 100 years. It only sets it back 50 or so as Joey misses a shot to Rodney and Gangrel hits the Impaler to end him. Edge really needs to go back to that. It just looks awesome on so many levels.

It’s 4-2 for those of you that are wondering. Joey is in now, and he’s by far the most talented of these guys as he had some wrestling experience before coming to the WWF. Joey actually picks up Mark Henry to drape him over the top rope. That wasn’t bad. Joey is gone soon after though due to a massive splash. As I’ve said on so many occasions: if you use a splash that’s not from the top rope as a finisher, you likely suck.

Henry catches Bulldog coming off the ropes in a press slam, but doesn’t get him all the way up and kind of throws him. Not only did that look bad, but it was fairly dangerous. Henry probably expected a raise for it. Bulldog is up holding his shoulder so apparently I might be right. He catches the incredibly agile Gangrel on the top and suplexes him down for the pin. We get a Cleveland Indians reference, which Lawler quickly corrects.

In one of the DUMBEST refereeing moves I’ve ever seen, Bulldog hits a PerfectPlex on Blackman for the pin. That’s fine on paper, but Blackman’s arm is AT LEAST 6 inches off the mat and right in front of the referee. Ok, I can understand missing something minor but that was just horrendous. My mouth actually opened at the sight of that. After that horribleness, we’re back to Val and Bulldog. The faces double team him as Lawler asks what they’re doing.

Ross’ response: it looks like Val and Mark Henry are double teaming the Bulldog. Just a guess.” That was funny. Dang I just thought JR was funny. I need more sleep. Val hooks a small package, which there has to be a joke about somewhere. Naturally JR becomes a jerk a few seconds later so I knew it wasn’t going to last. Both guys hit splashes on him to end this. The sex jokes start up as I wince at them.

Rating: D+. This was a big step down from the earlier match. It just seemed pointless as even Ross said there was nothing in common between the faces. I fail to see the point in this match, but it’s the late 90s so that’s likely the point. Val and Bulldog were the only decent wrestlers out there, so yep, we have an Attitude Era match. This just wasn’t really needed.

Michael Cole more or less barges into the Divas (not called that yet) locker room where Ivory throws herself at him. Naturally, Cole leaves. This was pointless.

Mae/Moolah/Debra/Tori vs. Ivory/Luna/Jackie/Terri

This isn’t Torrie Wilson mind you, but the original psycho fan Tori that was rather hot at times, but set a new record for how bad a women’s wrestler could be. This is one fall, thank goodness. This was two months before the legendarily creepy moment where Mae was topless on PPV somewhere in her 80s. Naturally, Wrestlezone had a link up where you could see the pics. Ok I only looked twice. It’s not that big of a deal.

Yep, Tori looks insanely hot. She’s Kane’s girlfriend at this point. Debra gets a MASSIVE pop. We cut to a shot of Lawler which is cracking me up with how big his eyes are. Lawler’s jokes about Moolah and Mae are quite funny. Ross says Moolah used to have a figure like Miss America. According to Lawler she’s lost a lot of Canada and gained a lot of Mexico. Think about that one for a minute and you’ll get it. I’ve never liked Jackie. She’s just annoying.

Luna is apparently a few sandwiches short of a picnic. All of these girls’ music sounds exactly the same. Ivory is Women’s Champion at this point, having both amazingly and pathetically beaten Moolah for the belt a few weeks before this. Moolah and Mae would both be 76 at this point. Yeah it’s pathetic. Why would Vince allow them to wrestle? That’s just stupid. Sadly, they’re the 2nd and 3rd best workers out there regardless of age, and they’re just behind Luna.

Jackie might be better but I hate her so she’s out. Terri is managing the Hardys right now, as they won the Terri Invitational Tournament. It was just them vs. Edge and Christian in a best of seven series culminating in a ladder match, but it did what it was supposed to do. This is a pure T&A match here. Good grief they’re STILL on the introductions. Even money says they’ll go longer than the match. We get the standard warning from JR that this might not be pretty. Please just make it short.

They actually throw Mae through the ropes to the floor. This is just ridiculous. I don’t care if they say they can do this or not. They’re in their 70s and don’t belong anywhere NEAR a freaking ring. Thankfully we move on to Tori vs. Jackie. Reread that and let it sink in. That’s something you may never read again, period. The level of sloppiness in this match hasn’t been invented yet.

Jackie and Luna botch a tag. You read that correctly. They missed a FREAKING TAG. How is that possible? You slap the other person’s hand. It’s really not that complicated. I’ve seen monkeys that can do it. I’ve seen infants that can do it. I’ve even seen mods that can do it, yet they botched it. Tori slows down to duck a double clothesline, and now Moolah (accidentally called Lillian) is back in.

After slamming Ivory (rather impressive actually), they hit what was supposed to be a double clothesline to pin her. They put their hands together and dropped to their knees for it. It’s worse than it sounds. No one gets that it’s over which I think was because they just ended it while it was only embarrassing. Terri gets her top ripped off to end this idiocy. Apparently not as we have a brawl. Just end it, please.

Rating: N/A. To allow two women in their late 70s into a wrestling ring and have them try to compete is completely and utterly appalling. It’s irresponsible and ridiculous to say the least and Vince should be ashamed of himself for it. I’m disgusted by this.

We get an ad for WWF.com. It’s a blind guy walking around and another guy shifts him so that he gets hit by a bus. That…was stupid.

Lillian Garcia, who looks a heck of a lot hotter here if that’s possible, talks to the now heel X-Pac. He says he carried Kane. He sounds drunk.

X-Pac vs. Kane

I’ve always loved X-Pac’s music. We get a quick interview from earlier in the night where Tori talks for Kane. Naturally, Tori references something that X-Pac wouldn’t talk about for about two hours so there we go. Kane is rocking the alternate costume tonight with mostly black and a bit of red. I’ve always liked that one better. The basic story here is X-Pac and Kane were tag champions, they lost two matches and Pac split.

X-Pac had been mainly wrestling giants and it was around this time that he became completely hated. I wonder if there’s a connection there. By jove I think there is! Naturally Kane starts off by dominating but Pac lands a kick to the face to slow him down. Shockingly enough, Tori is blamed for this. Pac hits a sweet kick as they debate Kane’s alleged impotence. Who feeds them these lines?

He goes for the Bronco Buster and gets choked into a backbreaker. When Kane hits that top rope clothesline right, it is an absolute thing of beauty and one of my favorite moves ever. Kane hits the chokeslam and assumes the position to be pulled out and there’s Road Dogg to do so. To do so is fun type. X-Pac hits the X-Factor and Kane uses the power kickout because that move is just garbage of the highest quality. Or would it be lowest quality? Eh whatever.

Kane sets for a tombstone but HHH runs out and hits him with the belt for the DQ. Now that’s the kind of heel stable leader that children can be proud of: one that runs in and nails a guy with a belt to save his teammates. Learn something Orton (assuming Legacy is still together in two months’ time). Lawler says that Kane has always wanted to be the WWF Champion.

I know it was short Jerry, but can you at least remember who has been World Champion and who hasn’t? DX sets him up for the dreaded Bronco Buster because you know, it’s deadly and painful, but Tori runs, or bounces I guess, to the ring. X-Pac kicks the heck out of her, allegedly by accident.

This awakens Kane to kill Pac but he bails. Naturally Tori would leave Kane soon enough to become X-Pac’s girlfriend in about a week despite him kicking her in the face. JR says that DX is scattering like quail. WHAT IN THE WORLD IS JR ON?

Rating: C+. This was barely over four minutes so it’s hard to grade. Kane beat on Pac, so that’s a good sign I suppose. It was a brawl (in the Attitude Era? YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS!) for the most part with Kane just beating the living tar out of him for the most part. The run in was pretty stupid, but I guess it was required to keep the feud going. I hate it, but it had to be done I suppose.

They show a replay of the kick, and it’s so far off that Lawler slips up and can’t finish his line of how solid that kick was without a pause. It’s that bad. This is why they need to screen those replays. That was abysmal.

Cole is with Rock as we cue the big pop. Before he can talk though, HHH shows up and the brawl is on.

Send in your cable bill and get a free Rock pendent. Again, this is a good idea that they should bring back. It’s not going to kill them to throw out some Cena wristbands or something like that.

Big Show vs. Prince Albert/Mideon/Viscera/Bossman

Mideon has his face painted which looks very odd. Boss Man and Show were in the middle of an angle where Boss Man was tormenting Show because Show’s father passed away. It would lead to a match on PPV which was horrible. It eventually led to the great line of “Big Show, you’re a bastard and your mama said so!” That’s a great line, period. We see Boss Man reading a sympathy card for Show’s dad and with the deadpan delivery, it’s awesome.

We get another great scene where Boss Man interrupts Show’s father’s funeral (for those that don’t remember, Show was said to be the son of Andre the Giant, so in other words it’s taken 6 and a half years to bury Andre. I love the redoing of storylines.) and tying the casket to a car. Show gave chase and is dragged off on top of the casket. It’s out of a bad comedy movie and cracks me up every time. Boss Man is hardcore champion at this point.

Also, Show was supposed to have Kai En Tai and Blue Meanie as partners, but he beat them up so this would be a handicap match. At least they didn’t really let them do that match as it would have made less sense than the Val/Bulldog team. Naturally, we have a replay of it. Heat used to be awesome. Stuff actually happened on it which never happens anymore. The people pop for Show fairly well, which turns out to be a good thing.

Show also has long hair here, which takes a bit of getting used to. Show knocks down Albert (A-Train) and then spins around looking for someone else to hit in a funny spot. After that, Show hits three chokeslams and the best big man bodyslam I’ve ever seen on Viscera inside of 30 seconds to eliminate three guys not named Big Boss Man, who runs for the count out.

Rating: N/A. I can’t grade a minute and a half match, but Show was AWESOME here. This is how Show should have been booked his entire career as he just ran through three good sized men with absolute ease. He picked up Viscera and slammed him with absolute ease. I mean he looked like he was slamming X-Pac or something. The booking was there, the pops were there, and this was the time to do something with Big Show. Alas, nothing would come of it.

Buy Armageddon. Steve Austin will be there.

Kevin Kelly is with Austin, but before he can talk HHH jumps him. In a funny looking spot he punches Austin and takes a sip of water. That just looked odd. Austin chases him while putting his hat on. Road Dogg and X-Pac are running as well, and Austin is in the parking garage. He looks up, and THAT CAR JUST RAN OVER AUSTIN!

Yes, this is the infamous car angle where Austin was hit by a speeding car in a hit and run that put him on the shelf for nearly a year, paving the way for Rock and HHH to rise up to the top of the company. Note: Rock only got as big as Austin when there was no Austin there. This became the top angle in the company next summer as the hunt was on for who ran him down. This was the height of the Attitude Era and their true life angles.

Vince is seen sprinting to the garage to check on Austin, as do Stephanie, her boyfriend/fiancé Test and eventually HHH. Vince sees HHH and immediately accuses him of being the driver which he denies. Ross has gone to the back as well, so Lawler asks the question that would become the million dollar question for the next year or so: who was driving the car? Like I said, this was the excuse used for Austin to go off and have neck surgery that he desperately needed, albeit back in 1997.

HHH and DX keep saying they had nothing to do with this. This angle was fairly well hidden from the IWC, but they knew that Austin would not be wrestling in the main event that night. Now that brings up another question that I’ll get to when we get to the main event.

Anyway, the main thing here is the angle of who was driving. We would find out in the fall of 2000. I can’t remember who it was, but someone mentions that the driver had blonde hair. Commissioner Mick Foley plays detective and eventually deduces who it was based on something Scotty 2 Hotty says. Scotty said something along the lines of he and Grand Master were with Rikishi partying that night.

Mick uses this information to deduce that it was Rikishi that was driving, based on the fact that Rikishi hadn’t debuted yet. This was an issue for two reasons. Number one, so what if he hadn’t debuted yet? Too Cool can’t have non-wrestling friends? Number two, Rikishi already had debuted on Jakked, which aired the night before Survivor Series. The second one I can excuse, because the show came on at 2am and it wasn’t something everyone got.

Also, it was a year ago and not a lot of people are going to remember a specific Saturday night at 2am a year ago, so that’s ok. The explanation of how Foley knew it was Rikishi never made sense to me, but whatever. He claimed that he did it for the Rock, his cousin, because Rock was being held down by the white man. Yes, that’s what they went with. Austin came back and Rikishi was the number two heel in the company. The story BOMBED.

This happened for about a million reasons. First of all, it made zero sense. Just reread the storyline and tell me how it’s a good idea. Second, all signs pointed to HHH. It made sense for it to be HHH. It should have freaking been HHH. Finally, IT’S FREAKING RIKISHI! What in the heck can Austin do with someone like Rikishi? That became the problem. He was just too fat to do anything with.

After about eight seconds the company figured this out and switched it up so that Rikishi was just working on HHH’s orders. That at least made sense. It led to a short HHH vs. Austin feud, but in the end it was really a short length feud, which I guess was ok as those two have always hated each other. Either way, this blew the doors off the hinges for awhile as it was the hottest story in the sport. I think the main reason it failed was because of Rikishi.

It just made zero sense as he went from being a fat midcard guy that was a comedy character to a criminal mastermind helping his cousin because of race overnight. That just doesn’t work. HHH would have been perfect for the master villain, because it’s totally something he would have done.

It was still ok, but it could have been light years better. They at least tried though and I’ll give them credit for that. I can’t imagine they had Rikishi planned the whole time, as they had about 10 months before they had to explain it.

They really handled this part of the show well as this looked very real. You have to factor in that this was the first time that something like this had been done, so it blew our minds. It wasn’t something like Vince having the set fall on him or something stupid like that. This was a huge deal at the time and it came off perfectly.

And with no transition, let’s keep going.

Intercontinental Title: Chyna vs. Chris Jericho

Chyna is the first ever female IC Champion. Now at the time, this was a HUGE deal. This was one of the biggest angles of the year as I think it even got some mainstream coverage. It really is a big deal when you think of it. Can you imagine today say Mickie James feuding with John Morrison and having a legit chance of beating him?

That’s absurd sounding right? This worked, and was a big deal on so many levels. On top of that, the matches were good. And on top of that, Chyna and Miss Kitty looked hotter than any two humans should be allowed to be. Oh yeah the match.

Jericho is getting bigger and bigger pops every time he comes through the curtain. JR is back and clearly is a good bit shaken up. They go at it immediately and Jericho shoves Kitty down. Jericho was more or less replacing Jarrett in this feud. I think that’s a major upgrade for them. Loud Jericho chant starts up.

Chyna winds up on the floor as this is starting kind of slowly. Jericho hits a dive to take her out as Ross talks about Austin more. I can accept it this time though as it’s a major deal. Lawler tells him to be a professional. That’s rather unfunny. Jericho sends her into the table and the announcers get chivalrous all of a sudden.

Missile dropkick gets two. More Austin talk from Ross as Jericho is dominating. Jericho does the foot on chest cover for two. The fans boo Chyna a bit and pop big for Jericho and they actually reference it on commentary. Lawler says they booed the gold medalists here for Christ’s sake. It’s weird hearing that on commentary in WWE no matter what era.

Clothesline puts Chyna on the floor as impressively this isn’t getting boring. He kisses Kitty which ticks off Jerry a bit. Chyna finally wakes up a bit and takes down Jericho to even more booing. Jericho gets a powerbomb for only two. We reference a boxing match from last night as Vince couldn’t be happier than to be bigger than boxing.

Apparently Jericho has said he’ll get a sex change if he loses. Handspring elbow and DDT get two. Down goes the referee and Jericho pops her with the title which was in the corner ala a WCW belt. Never been a fan of that. That only gets two though as Jericho is stunned.

Pedigree gets two. It’s not everyday he can kick out of that so he better use the opportunity while he has it. The Walls go on and the title is in trouble. She gets close to the ropes but is dragged back into the middle before crawling back and getting them the second time. They fight to the corner and Chyna gets a Pedigree off the middle rope for the pin. Dude, did Punk copy Chyna?

Rating: B. Now that’s more like it! That right there is the biggest reason why the feud worked: the matches were good. You could see very clearly though that Jericho would have to turn face soon though as his pops were just off the charts. It makes me feel better to know that at the end of the day, no matter how many stupid angles or whatever is going on, the crowd will react best to solid wrestling, and that’s what they got here.

At no time during this match did Chyna’s gender make it seem like she was weaker, not once. That’s a big vote of confidence in Chyna as well. Not only was she given the Intercontinental Title, but she had a decent run with it. I think she held it three times, and she defended it on PPV. That’s saying a lot when you think about it. Vince has a huge midcard and he picked her to be the champion of it. That’s saying a lot. Solid match.

Test, Shane and Stephanie are in the locker room and DX comes in. Once again they deny doing anything. I think everyone knew that HHH had something to do with it, but we weren’t sure what. HHH asks if it’s a triple threat still and gets thrown out.

Hardy Boys/Edge and Christian vs. Hollies/Too Cool

Holy one sided match Batman! Or at least it should be, but since it’s four wrestlers against four gimmick guys, I’d be willing to bet on how this is going to go. Everyone knew that the more famous teams here were going to be something very special, but no one knew what was coming. Edge and Christian come through the crowd which is just always cool looking. Scotty just looks flat out stupid. Edge of course looks cool.

Ross says he can’t get his mind into the match. That makes sense. Lawler saying that it’s not a big deal is a lot funnier than it sounds. I certainly wouldn’t believe that three of the four would become world champions within ten years, and arguably all four have. That’s impressive. It’s so strange to see these guys being the young studs that steal the show instead of being the names put on the signs that sell tickets to the shows.

Ross keeps talking about Austin, which for once doesn’t bother me. When Schiavone and Heenan would talk about everything but the match all of the time it would drive me insane. Here, it’s at least mainly about the match and then a few moments about Austin. I will never forget a Nitro where the TV Title changed hands and literally, the first mention of the 8 minute match was to say there was a new champion.

Other than that, it was ALL about the main event. That’s just disrespectful. I can understand it when a major thing happens like this, but not for a TV main event. Lawler is just flat out mean here and I’m loving it. He’s talking about Grand Master the whole time, and this is before it’s revealed that it was his son. I think it’s more like the worst kept secret in wrestling at this point, as Lawler is making little jokes here and there about it.

For the second time tonight we lose a cameraman. Edge spears all three heels other than Scotty. I think Too Cool are heels, but I’m not sure. It’s not a heel gimmick if nothing else but whatever. I think the more famous team are supposed to be tweeners at this point.

Edge misses a spear and hits Matt with it instead, leading to him being rammed into by Jeff, which leads to Edge getting rolled up and pinned. Scotty hits a move that I’ve always thought would be cool. He gets on the top rope and dives forward like a front dropkick, but catches Matt’s head on the way down to pull him into a DDT to eliminate him, making it 4-2 all of a sudden. The Worm gets ZERO reaction, as Too Cool are indeed heels here. I thought so.

Yeah the famous guys are faces indeed here. I guess having Terri made me think they were heels. What am I saying? She was good looking so she must have been popular back then since that’s all that mattered. Ross doesn’t know what a hippie is. Oh come on now JR. It’s Oklahoma not Iceland. Ross threatens to give Lawler one finger which causes an audible chuckle from the King.

Ok, I can almost buy that Ross has never heard of hippies. But to imply that he’s never heard of Roy Rogers? Oh I don’t think so. What kind of man that wears a cowboy hat doesn’t know who Roy Rogers is? The Hollies start fighting which allows Jeff to hit a 450 on Scotty for the pin. He hadn’t started using the Swanton yet so that was his big move. I don’t get why he changed it. It’s not like the 450 was bad or something.

Maybe there was an injury along the way or something. Either way, he should have stuck with the 450. If nothing else it looks better. Just to be amusing, Lawler talks about how Ross has no sympathy for his best friend Austin because he keeps talking about the match. That’s just great stuff. When Lawler is on his game there’s no one better on the mic than him.

Christian and Jeff go for Poetry in Motion but Hardcore is waiting on the top rope to nail a dropkick onto Jeff in midair in a sweet looking spot. That was really cool. Grandmaster hits a legdrop from the top onto Jeff’s body to pin him, which should make him a world title contender I suppose. May the wrestling gods perish the thought. As he dances Christian grabs him and hits the reverse DDT to make it 2-1. That was quick.

Christian still doesn’t belong at the top of the food chain though. It’s the Hollies vs. Christian. JR asks King why he’s such a jerk. I’ve always wondered that myself. Tim White tells Crash to get out which makes me chuckle. After a short mini match, Christian pins Crash with the Unprettier, known to you rookies as the Killswitch Engaged.

I wonder why they named it after the band that does CM Punk’s song. Lawler will just not let up on Ross. Holly stops a victory roll to pin Christian about 30 seconds later in a very surprising win in my eyes. Granted that may be hindsight.

Rating: B. This was the spotfest match of the night and it worked very well. Those four guys were the future of the company, but I don’t think people thought it would take as long as it did for that to happen.

Either way, they were the hottest acts in the world and once they were paired with the Dudleys, they went through the roof. As for the match, it was fast paced and full of big spots, but that’s what these guys were best at and it was on display here in a good but not really deep match if that makes sense.

Shane, Test and Stephanie say that Austin didn’t lose consciousness, despite Ross saying he did when he was with him. Shane says there will still be a triple threat match, but it won’t have Austin in it. There’s a short rant/explanation coming on that later.

Tag Titles: New Age Outlaws vs. Al Snow/Mankind

What a great tag match before we get to the main event. The Outlaws are just past their height of popularity here, but they’re still way up there. The more I see of Road Dogg the more I like him I think. He’s just great on the mic every time you hear him talk and his in ring work wasn’t bad at all. The speculation of who the third man will be begins as Lawler wants to know who was driver. Lawler thinks it was Billy.

It wasn’t, but that would have made more sense than Rikishi. These arguments sound like something out of South Park. Mankind says that Austin is a tough son of a gun and after the match they’ll be going to check on him, but until then all they’ll be thinking about are the New Age Outlaws. This was around the time also that a Snow action figure was banned from Wal-Mart because one of those stupid parent’s groups decided that Head was a severed woman’s head.

You know because there’s so much blood and everything on it. Wal-Mart pulled it because they didn’t want to hear a bunch of whiny old women complaining and moaning about something else. Snow was thrilled by it for some weird reason. Mankind returned Head to him on Smackdown, which Ross of course describes as “Mankind gave Snow Head on Thursday”, because gay jokes are the funniest thing in the world right?

I mean that’s what commentators are for right? To crack stupid jokes. I really hate this era. Foley’s book had just come out too, which really was a good read. Lawler is in top form here with his insults and needling of Ross. Snow hits a pretty sweet looking jumping Downward Spiral as they discuss the Wal-Mart thing. Apparently they even mentioned it on SNL. That’s not bad.

Snow pops Road Dogg with a special Survivor Series chair. Only in professional wrestling is a souvenir steel chair a perfectly reasonable idea. The fans are really bored with this and I can understand that completely. There’s just nothing going on here. Foley was just about done here, with only the big feud with HHH left to end his career. Billy wrestling with a shirt on just looks odd for some reason.

Ross says that the Outlaws might be the best tag team ever. That’s just freaking stupid, but whatever. The tag tournament will be over by the time this is posted, so there we are. They blame Snow’s ineptness on the Wal-Mart thing instead of the fact that he just wasn’t that good at this point in his career. Billy gets the Fameasser which gets two.

Mankind gets up and hits the double arm DDT (called a suplex by JR, continuing his time honored tradition of only the best commentary that has ever been uttered by deities like himself) as Snow hits the Snow Plow, but after hitting both of their finishing moves, there’s no cover because Foley needs to get the sock.

I hate excesses like this. There’s just no point to them at all. To be fair it does get the crowd awake a bit. Billy gets out of it and Snow pops him with Head, but no pin. The Outlaws get a spike piledriver on Foley to end this.

Rating: D+. This was just boring until the end. I mean nothing happened for the most part. It was just random bad offense between four guys that just weren’t into this at all. This certainly shouldn’t have been the second to last match of the night as the fans are just a bit dead. This was nothing of note and the ending was just there.

They tell us the same things we heard earlier about Austin and we see it again. Oh another note that I forgot to mention: allegedly it was Rock’s car that hit him, but Rock said his car was stolen earlier in the night. That makes sense at least.

WWF Title: Rock vs. HHH vs.???

Rock comes out to bring the fans back to life which should be considered a miracle. Vince isn’t here to be guest referee either so this is screaming for Montreal 3. That big belt really looks awesome on a ton of levels. It’s more or less a given here that whoever the mystery guy is will become the new champion. That’s just how wrestling works. Now, as for the who it would be, every, and I mean every, sign on the face of the planet pointed to this being Test.

Think about it. At the time he had been moving higher and higher up the card, he had been feuding with HHH to a certain extent so the story is there, he was Stephanie’s fiancé (the infamous wedding was two weeks after this), and he was seen with Shane when Shane said it would still be a triple threat. Putting the title on Test for a two week run or maybe even a one day run, as ridiculous as it sounds now, would have made a lot of sense at the time actually.

He was one of the hottest young guys in the company, he was having solid matches, it fit with the storylines and he was very popular. Everything on the planet would have made you believe it would be Test. It’s not Test. It’s the Big Show. I remember seeing this and being confused but excited. Show at the time was young, new and awesome because they booked him right.

They rarely let him be in a match very long and it made him look unbelievably dominant. HHH is MAD. Rock isn’t sure what to do. Naturally they jump him early which makes perfect sense. He hits an awesome looking diving double clothesline to take them out. I’m liking this. Show was the big monster at this point and this was working really well. He’s also a lot slimmer at this time so he looks like the monster that they always build him up to be today.

Show is throwing HHH around which is just impressive. Amazingly enough, we hit the floor less than three minutes into the match. At least they gave the in ring stuff a real chance this time. They say Show is the biggest man in WWF history at 7’2 and 500lbs. That’s just completely wrong but whatever.

They get him down and Rock hits the People’s Elbow which apparently would have been a three if HHH hadn’t made the save. Yeah I’ll buy that one. Show and HHH double team the Rock for just a bit. Never mind we’re back to Show vs. HHH on the floor of course. Le sigh we’re going back to the entrance way for more brawling. HHH gets slammed through some random table that was just sitting there for no apparent reason.

My video freezes a bit in the middle of a JR line that I just knew would end in HHH should burn. Yep I’m right. I think I watch too much wrestling. This brawling is ridiculous. Rock is about to be chokeslammed but HHH breaks it up, because of course you need two threats instead of just one right? They cover it by saying HHH needs Rock’s help to beat Big Show.

Based just on the way they’re building up Show, you could pretty much tell he would be taking the title tonight. We brawl a bit more because we haven’t hit our quota yet so we go to the announce tables for awhile. Show takes a bell to the head, leading to both other guys managing to suplex him through the Spanish Announce Table. Oh how I love running jokes. Dang it Rock and HHH are fighting in the crowd now.

I really hate this style. It’s not even a style. It’s just wild fighting with no rhyme or reason to it, but it sold tickets and drove up ratings I guess, so there we are. Since there hasn’t been enough stupid stuff in this match, we lose a referee. Rock hits the Rock Bottom but there’s no referee. Shane apparently just happened to have a referee’s shirt laying around so he sprints to the ring and counts two.

Another Rock Bottom gets two as Show makes the save. Lawler calls him the Giant which really isn’t a copyright issue because he is indeed a giant. Show puts Rock on the table and just beats the holy crap out of him before going back into the ring. Instead of trying to you know, pin HHH he goes back to beating on Rock on the floor. HHH gets the belt because he just felt lonely without it I guess.

HHH pedigrees his future brother in law for no apparent reason other than he’s a heel. Here’s DX because we haven’t had enough of them tonight. This was another big criticism of the Attitude Era as everything ended in a big brawl, much like WCW and the NWO or TNA today. Vince is back though, and business isn’t about to pick up. JR you disappoint me. He pops HHH in the head with the belt and HhH is up before Vince is in a stupid looking moment.

The chokeslam gives us the shocking new champion and a good pop from the crowd. Rock and Show would start a feud soon enough, as this would be the original main event for Mania but Foley was added in for no apparent reason other than letting him main event a Mania. Show dedicates the win to his father which if his father had legitimately died recently would be awesome but it’s not so whatever.

Rating: C+. WAY too much brawling here. I get that they didn’t want to expose Show as a bit limited so they did what they could, but this was over half on the floor in a fifteen minute plus match. It was ok, but the massive amount of run ins and brawling hurt it for me. It’s ok, but it’s nothing special. The surprises at the beginning and the end help it a lot, so we’ll call it just above average.

Overall Rating: B. This was a pretty solid show, but there’s no great match on it anywhere. Jericho and Chyna is easily the best match here, but that’s not saying a lot. This is far more important for Austin of course, but that wouldn’t be touched on for nearly a year.

Show would hold the title for about a month and a half before losing it back to HHH on Raw and then turning heel to join up with Shane, leading to the McMahon in every corner main event at Wrestlemania. This is an ok show, but it’s just ok. I don’t think I’d recommend it, but I wouldn’t recommend to avoid it either, if that makes sense. It’s better than just being there, but not by much.

 

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Survivor Series 1998
Date: November 15, 1998
Location: Kiel Center, St. Louis, Missouri
Attendance: 21,779
Commentators: Jim Ross, Jerry Lawler

Now this is a time when a year can completely change things around. Shawn and Bret are gone due to Montreal and injuries. Austin is the undisputed king of professional wrestling, and the WWF is back on top in the ratings war. The Attitude Era is in full swing as we have no world champion. With Vince hating Austin completely, he booked Austin in a triple threat for the belt at a PPV.

They double pinned Austin, leading to a one on one match at the previous PPV with Austin as the referee. Austin declared himself as the winner, leading to tonight’s 14 man tournament for the belt. It’s the first Survivor Series match to not have any traditional Survivor Series matches, but the tournament can be viewed as surviving so that’s fine and good. Other than the tournament, there’s a tag title match and a women’s title match. It’s a 14 match card, so let’s get to it.

We get a montage of people talking about how they’ll do whatever it takes to get the title. Remember that for later. The tagline for this show was Deadly Game, which came complete with a catchy song for it. Youtube it as it’s not bad at all. I remember watching this show with a buddy of mine and we were freaking about who could win this.

We were both complete marks at the time, but about a year or two later he would discover a place called Wrestlezone and mention it to me. My life changed forever. Ok so it took 6 years for me to click on the forums part and THEN it changed but you get the idea.

Apparently Vince did the brackets for the tournament. The first round matches are maximum ten minutes, so that’s a plus. Here are your brackets.

Undertaker
BYE

Kane
BYE

Rock
HHH

Goldust
Shamrock

Mankind
???

Jeff Jarrett
Al Snow

X-Pac
Regal

Austin
Boss Man

Kane and Taker were technically both champion before, hence the byes. Rock and HHH in the first round? That’s a heck of an opening match.

We open with…Vince. Yep, the first thing we hear is Vince has something to say. He has a broken ankle at the time thanks to Kane and Taker so he’s got a ton of help. This was actually a big show because for once we’re guaranteed a new world champion. That’s a rare thing. Oh he’s doing the announcing tonight.

First Round: Mankind vs. ???

Mankind was just flat out awesome at this point, as he often was. He was being completely suckered in by Vince to do his bidding because he was dumb enough to believe and trust Vince. Naturally, Vince used him to do his dirty work. As a reward, he gave him a joke: the Hardcore title, which became the hottest thing in the world for all of a week. Also, when Vince was in the hospital, Mankind visited him and debuted Mr. Socko.

He comes out in a tux with the mask, the belt and the sock on. That’s just priceless. He still has that classical music theme as well which is just humorous. There was a HUGE rumor going on at this time that the mystery wrestler would be Shawn Michaels, with even the fans chanting HBK. Josh, the guy I was watching the show with, looked at each other and said no way. He was just too hurt from Mania.

Vince puts on his glasses to read a statement about the opponent. He debuted in 1990, he had a win/loss record that couldn’t be compared to anyone else’s. He jumped ship to WCW but a shoulder injury had kept him out for two years. You can tell the audience is really puzzled over who this is going to be. It’s Duane Gill. No one, and I mean NO ONE got this. Gill was a jobber that never won a match on WWF TV.

This would be like bringing Reno Riggins in for a match. The fans are TICKED. His video is him taking a bunch of people’s finishing moves. He pulls an Eric Young and is scared of his pyro. Apparently he coaches an elementary school football team. I wish my elementary school had a football team. Anyway, the match lasts about 30 seconds. Mankind hits a double arm DDT and uses a rolling ¾ nelson, and I’m not making that up, to get the pin.

This was actually significant, in that it seemed as if Vince was hand picking Mankind to win the tournament. Also, JR mentions Mr. and Mrs. Foley’s baby boy, which is kind of sad as Foley’s father passed away yesterday. From what I read in Have a Nice Day, he was a good man. That’s sad.

Rating: N/A. This will be likely for a lot of matches tonight. How can I rate a thirty seconds match? Eight days later, Gill would win the Light Heavyweight Title (beating Christian of all people) and become Gillberg. I’m sure you’re familiar with that.

We see a clip of Sable getting beaten up by Jackie on Heat and then Cole is in her locker room. Sable as always is a whiny witch that can’t act or fight. She really annoys me most of the time.

First Round: Jeff Jarrett vs. Al Snow

The winner here gets Mankind. Jarrett has Debra McMichael with him now. I know you know who that is but that’s what they call her here. There’s a guy with a sign that says Jarrett is the guy you hate to hate. Does that mean he likes Jarrett? Also there’s a sign that says I need Head. When I saw that I forgot about Snow, so I was surprised. For once, Debra actually looks hot. Snow’s pop is MASSIVE.

He really could have been a solid midcard guy. He certainly had the crowd support. Apparently Snow has stolen Socko, so Foley’s was a forgery. Snow is just freaking creepy on a lot of levels. He lands a sweet cartwheel over the top rope to counter an Irish whip. That was awesome. This is actually a pretty good little fast paced match. Obviously they’re not going to get enough time to blow anyone away, but I like what I’m seeing so far.

These are two guys that can go in the ring and if they were given enough time, this would have been a very good match I think. Both guys get the others’ weapons but Snow gets hit with Head in the back which doesn’t even knock him down. He gets Head from Jarrett and gives Head to Jarrett’s head to end this.

I wanted to see more of the match and less Head. Ross points out that the next WWF Champion could be holding a severed head wearing a tube sock. That sums up the Attitude Era. Debra has nice legs.

Rating: B+. This is hard to grade, but I really liked the little bit that I got to see. Both guys were crisp in the time that they had and it’s a match that you don’t get to see that often. I like Snow’s in ring work more than Jarrett’s so I’m happy here.

First Round: Big Boss Man vs. Steve Austin

There’s no transition here at all as we just go from match to match. I’m not a fan of that style. The pop for Austin is just ridiculous. He had been fired by Vince but Shane hired him back for 5 years. Amazingly, he wouldn’t last in the company that long. They brawl in the aisle to start as this is Vince vs. Austin in essence. Oh there’s the bell so that was pre match stuff. This is really just a fast forwarded match.

It’s a brawl as you would expect, but it’s just not that entertaining because they have less than four minutes to do anything. We see a split screen of Vince, Slaughter and Patterson watching this. There’s no Brisco so I’m assuming he and Patterson broke up for awhile. The announcers point out that Bossman might just be here to beat up Austin instead of advancing, so Boss Man is your Andre the Giant and Vince is your Ted DiBiase in this tournament with Austin as Hogan.

At least they waited ten years to recycle the tournament PPV formula. They go to the floor and Boss Man drills him with the night stick in front of the referee to end it while advancing Austin. Wouldn’t it have been smarter to try to beat him now? If nothing else you can beat on him and then also possibly take him out.

The result is the same but it takes more out of Austin and it could potentially eliminate him period. I’m no evil genius though. Austin gets a pop for winning despite having his face beaten in at the moment. The beating goes on way too long as shockingly they’re short on time I guess.

Rating: D. Again, it’s not even four minutes and 40 seconds of it is a rest hold. What do you want me to say here? It was bad for the most part, but it was all storyline here anyway so that’s fine I suppose. You have to love the Russo style here of flash with limited actual wrestling involved. That’s always a good thing to have.

Cole is with Vince and asks him if he’s worried that Austin has advanced. Vince of course isn’t.

First Round: X-Pac vs. Steven Regal

Winner gets Austin and X-Pac is European Champion here. This match is completely made of win because of one reason: we get to hear Regal’s MAN’S MAN SONG!!!  Oh I’m all giddy.

Regal was fired for working VERY stiff against Goldberg and making him look awful in the ring so he came to Vince and this is what he got for his trouble. It’s since become one of the most popular gimmicks ever, based on how absolutely freaking SWEET the song is. Apparently mixing concrete makes you a man. My grandmother is a REAL MAN’S MAN. Ross is on this weird kick of saying how old everyone is tonight.

King starts singing the song. He should stick to Wimpbusters. Pac gets a sweet spin kick early on. He’s against a smaller man so this should be decent. After saying how old Pac is (26), he calls Regal Blackman twice in a row. King points this out to him and of course Ross is offended. He got the idea from Regal being from Blackpool. At least that makes sense. The fans don’t like Regal so he poses for them.

In a cool looking move, Regal uses a slingshot, but instead of the corner X-Pac just lands on his face. That was awesome. Regal puts on a bad looking submission, which prompts Ross to say he’s looking for a submission. Well gee Jim thanks. I thought he was looking for 38 cents he lost in my couch last Thursday. Vince and co. are looking on as apparently Brisco bought Patterson a flower so they’re ok now. Brisco says that Austin will face neither guy.

In another odd looking but cool spot, for some reason X-Pac and Regal are both face down and Regal has his legs wrapped around Pac’s head. Pac flips forward and grabs the legs. So he’s laying next to Regal but is pulling backwards on his crossed legs in the same way you would for a Sharpshooter while lying down. That’s quite freaky looking. For no apparent reason, they argue over who Jesse Ventura would want to win. X-Pac holds his neck and clearly shouts OH SNAP.

As good as this match has been, X-Pac using the Bronco Buster just drains it. I can’t make it clear enough how much I hate that move. It looks completely ridiculous, so it’s become a staple of the product. They go to the floor and fight over a suplex but both guys get counted out to send Austin to the final four. That was good while it lasted. Vince isn’t happy but he wants overtime.

BUT WAIT!

Vince gets his wish, and we have a five minute overtime. The Fink calls it sudden death, but isn’t every match sudden death? X-Pac can’t fight because he’s hurt, so it’s over. Shouldn’t Regal just move on if they’re redoing the match? Apparently not which makes ZERO sense but whatever. Also, if Vince made the brackets why didn’t he give Austin someone harder than Regal or X-Pac in the second round?

Rating: B. This was another match that I wanted to see more of. This is the problem with big one night tournaments: you can’t see everything you want to. These guys got about 8 minutes though so I guess that’s pretty good.

They worked well together and if I’ve said it once I guess I’m now saying it twice: X-Pac needed to only fight average or small guys. His stuff goes through the roof against them because it looks believable that what he’s doing would be effective. For some reason they never got that. Anyway, this was quite good in my eyes.

First Round: Ken Shamrock vs. Goldust

Shamrock is the IC Champion at this point. The in the zone thing was always humorous to me for some reason. You know since he first got to the WWF, Goldust has really had no gimmick. I know that sounds ridiculous but think about it. What does he do that’s odd anymore? He has the stupid random stuttering thing but that’s once in awhile. Other than that, he’s just a guy in face paint and a weird looking costume.

The movie thing is gone, the inhaling is gone, everything is pretty much gone. He’s just Goldust. I guess that comes with being a veteran though. Apparently after leaving his wife and responsibilities last year he’s back with them now and Terri is pregnant again, but he’s leaving her. This would lead to the female stable known as PMS which was just a mess. Shamrock has won two tournaments already this year so he could be a big favorite in this one which makes sense.

Ross says he likes the ten minute time limits and I’m disagreeing with him again. They should have gone with longer matches and just 8 people. Honestly, would anyone have missed Regal and Pac in there? There had to be four others you could drop in there somewhere. As Ross talks about how great an IC Champion Shamrock is, you can hear the referee say “get it back in the middle of the ring and you have three minutes.” Well that’s good to know.

Shocky was right. It completely sucks the life out of a match. Shamrock is just dominating here as there was never any doubt he would move on. Goldust is another guy you could drop from this. He was just a jobber at this point living off of past success. My goodness I popped in the wrong show. I wanted the 98 show not the 09 one. Oh never mind.

It’s just that Goldust hasn’t done anything in 11 years. My mistake. He goes for Shattered Dreams which misses as Shamrock hits a sloppy top rope hurricanrana. That leads to the belly to belly and the ankle lock for the tap. Thankfully JR didn’t say tapping like a drunk man, because THAT MAKES NO SENSE.

Rating: D+. This was just boring. In something that won’t be said often tonight, that went on too long. It was a complete squash and just wasn’t any good. Granted it was supposed to be just an easy win for Shamrock so at least they got that right. Waste of a match though as 14 people is just too many.

After cutting back to see Shamrock leaving for about a second, Cole has an update on Austin. After the update, we know nothing new.

First Round: Rock vs. HHH

Rock’s pop isn’t that special actually. The winner gets Shamrock. Apparently Vince doesn’t like Rock either. I don’t think there was a reason given for that but whatever. HHH gets a good pop as this is a rematch from the epic ladder match from Summerslam which played a big part in Rock turning face. As the DX song and video plays, we get the Stooges. HHH isn’t here tonight apparently due to injury.

They try to play it off as a no show but it’s actually a knee injury. Rock’s sideburns are odd looking. Patterson says that there won’t be a forfeit and the replacement is Boss Man again. Boss Man gets a running start to the ring and it’s over. In the fastest match in company history, Rock wins in four seconds by grabbing Boss Man as he gets in and rolling him up as the bell is ringing.

Rating: A. For are you kidding me? Like I can grade this. So Jericho and Boss Man are eternally linked, as Jericho beat Rock and Austin in one night and Boss Man lost to them both in one night. In something that I really laugh at, the slow motion replay is a full ten seconds long. That’s just great.

Here’s your updated brackets.

Undertaker
Kane

Shamrock
Rock

Mankind
Al Snow

Austin
Bye

Hmm, which of these people don’t fit in with the other six?

Quarter Finals: Kane vs. Undertaker

This is the next chapter in the absolute never ending feud with Taker and Kane. Paul Bearer is with Taker again. The second round matches are 15 minutes. Bearer joined Taker again when he co won the title. This is happening because both guys pinned Austin at Judgement Day. Apparently cursing someone can be forgiven provided storylines need it. Both entrances here are just sweet, but WAY too long.

How ridiculous is it that we’re on the seventh match of the night already? It’s always amused me that Kane is supposed to be this freak that’s been kept away from society all his life, yet he’s a trained wrestler. Also, why is it that no one has ever physically dominated the Undertaker like everyone that faces him? Listen to any feud that Taker has with a big man and I guarantee that Ross will say that about him. It gets old after awhile.

Again, this is a fast paced version of what could be a good match. There’s a natural chemistry here between these two that never fails to at least be watchable. Taker actually sets up for a figure four. That’s just an odd idea. He’s going for the leg. Is that psychology from the master of the psych out?

Kane actually jumps over the top rope to get to the top for the clothesline. He follows it up with a chokeslam as Bearer gets on the apron. Thanks to the distraction, Taker gets the Tombstone to end it, despite Kane’s foot being under the rope.

Rating: C-. This was somewhere between a bad and fast fight and a train wreck. The time limit and lack of emotion here are clear, which is the stupid part of tournaments. Taker could barely beat Kane with three Tombstones in 25 minutes at Mania, yet he beats him here in seven minutes with one. It’s just the fast forwarded version with no time at all to build up stuff.

Quarter Final: Mankind vs. Al Snow

Again, no transition at all and we’re just on the next match. I hate that. It’s a WWF tape and it skips right when they say WWF Title tournament match. That’s just creepy. Vince McMahon has the power to go back in time and change things apparently. You have to love those panda lovers. Since we can’t remember 45 minutes ago, we get a recap of Snow vs. Jarrett.

Apparently Vince stole Socko. After a few minutes of bad and bland offense, Foley gets head from Snow and gets his sock back. He then starts beating Snow’s Head. Yep, it’s getting worse. Snow hits a sit out power bomb/spinebuster that was cool. Socko puts Foley in the final four where he’ll get Steve Austin.

Rating: D. This was just boring. I’m sorry a lot of these are short but there’s just not enough to talk about. My stories/jokes about wrestlers are used earlier in the night and there’s absolutely no story in these matches at all. It’s just two guys filling time in the ring with stupid pointless matches until we get down to the important stuff.

Quarter Final: Ken Shamrock vs. The Rock

Winner gets Taker in the next round. We get a replay of both guys winning, including the whole match against Boss Man. That’s just amusing. This is a rivalry that Rock just flat out lost, yet somehow never lost the belt to him. You have to love WWF logic sometimes. The problem with tournaments is already coming through: it gets tiring seeing the same people every night. The chant is now Shamrock Sucks rather than Rocky Sucks, so there we go.

Shamrock was kind of limited as a character in the same was Benoit was. He was great at submission stuff, but he had little to his character and it hurt things for him. There was really no emotional investment to be made with his character and it was very clear. Ok, he’s a great fighter and submission guy. Why should we care? And that is why Benoit’s title reign failed, along with the fact that the real main events were HHH vs. Shawn during his time with the belt, but whatever.

You can tell they’re a bit tired also. I know they have the endurance to go longer than they’ve gone so far, but for Shamrock at least this is his second match. It must be draining to get yourself up for a match then have to do it again. Rock had a 4 second thing so I can hardly count that as a match. Speaking of the devil, here comes Boss Man. He sucks too according to the people.

I’ll give the crowd this: they’ll let you know what they think of you. Shamrock initiates his ending sequence and hooks the ankle lock, but since Rock is a face now it doesn’t get the tap. Boss Man still hasn’t actually done anything so at least he’s living up to his previous reputation. We get a double clothesline so both can take a quick rest. There’s really not a lot of interesting stuff in this match as the first six minutes or so were nothing more than just uninteresting back and forth offense.

Rock gets a low blow and the People’s Elbow but Shamrock kicks out. STOP EVERYTHING! JR DID NOT LIKE THAT CALL! Well, I guess that means we have to stop the show and redo the whole tournament. JR isn’t happy, and when JR isn’t happy, the world must bow to his wishes or dare we try to face the horrors of a JR disrespect rant.

It’s been at least a month since he last complained and whined so he must need to here soon. Rock Bottom is countered into a belly to belly, but Boss Man throws Shamrock the nightstick but Rock intercepts it and drills Shamrock for the pin. That’s a very un People’s Champion like thing to do isn’t it?

Rating: C-. This was just not that good. It was about eight and a half minutes, but they were just going through the motions to a dangerous degree. The last two minutes of it or so were fine, but other than that this was just dull. The fans didn’t really care that much either since until you get to the final four like will be up next, why should we care really? It’s just random matches that aren’t going to mean anything until later on, so why care? I certainly don’t.

Final Four:

Rock
Undertaker

Mankind
Austin

What are the odds that the four biggest names in the company would be the final four? I never for the life of me would have guessed that.

Paul Bearer says Taker will win.

Women’s Title: Sable vs. Jacquelyn

Oh this is going to SUCK. At this time, Sable was supposed to be the best women’s wrestler of all time, but there was one small problem: SHE SUCKED. Sable was over completely for her looks and nothing more. At Summerslam she had the most disgusting match I had ever seen, as Edge did all of the work for her yet Sable got every single bit of the credit. I hated that to no end.

It was always all about Sable and making sure she was happy when she was just horrid in the ring. She’s the epitome of everything that is wrong with women’s wrestling today. She’s there because she looks good in a swimsuit and she can barely wrestle safely let alone wrestle well. Because she has a massive chest though, she’s getting a lot of TV time. Ross says he watched Lawler every day and learned a lot from him.

There’s something you don’t hear every day. Apparently Sable has been training extra hard for this match. That can’t be a good sign. She uses the TKO, which is a cool move, but of course she does it wrong and lands on her knee, making the move look completely weak. Mero pulls her out though to prevent the three. I knew I hated him for some reason. Shane is the referee here as he’s being punished by Vince for being a bad little boy.

Sable hits her bad powerbomb on Mero on the floor, nearly breaking his neck. Why is that supposed to be impressive anyway? Oh look she can do sloppy moves on men. BIG FREAKING DEAL! Jackie has part of Sable’s hair that she cut off a few weeks ago. That’s just creepy.

At least she can wrestle, and with her on offense, not only is it better, but Sable gets beaten up. And just as I say that Sable counters to take over again. After another bad powerbomb and NO build to it, Sable is the Women’s Champion. Just shoot me now.

Rating: D. It was three minutes long, and most of that was sloppy. Once again, the attractive yet untalented wrestler gets the belt. Ross immediately says she’ll be the first to say she’s not the most polished but she’s worked the hardest. That’s the nice way of saying we know she sucks but she’ll have a photo shoot a week now for all the 12 year olds watching.

Semi Finals: Mankind vs. Steve Austin

We get recaps of both guys’ victories from earlier in the night in case we forgot already. I’ll never get why Vince thinks we’re that stupid. Remember Austin got beaten up earlier by Boss Man who has now been involved in three matches. I’m sick of him already. Vince and the Stooges come out after Austin hits Mankind with a slipper. You read that right and it’s better if you don’t ask. Foley is in the shirt and pants now so he’s looking a bit more like his traditional self.

In a weird sequence, Austin and Foley are fighting, and Foley hits the floor and, well I guess you could call it sprinting, sprints to the entrance. He’s stopped by Patterson and Brisco, but Austin comes and fights more. That was random. Since it’s the Attitude Era there’s a long brawl on the floor. McMahon won’t let the referee count. Why not? If both guys get counted out then they’re both eliminated so Austin wouldn’t be champion. Isn’t that what Vince ultimately wants?

I guess it’s because Mankind is the hand picked champion? Only in the Attitude Era do you need a scorecard to keep track of a match. It’s time for a bad rest hold now as Foley sits on Austin’s back with his hands on his face. Time for the double clothesline spot because we need to kill even more time. I remember back at Mania 4 they talked a lot about how you had to have stamina to get through one of these.

Call me crazy but I think Savage was in better shape back then than Foley is in now. Granted that’s just a hunch. Foley brings in a chair but it gets kicked in his face, which for some reason isn’t a DQ. It’s another instance of Vince making the rules up as he goes. Austin gets the Stunner but Vince jumps out of his wheelchair to break up the count before hitting the referee. Ross is of course livid but Lawler shouts about how it’s a miracle.

Austin counters the Mandible Claw into another Stunner as Shane runs out for the pin. He gets to two and stops so he can flip Austin a double bird, turning heel and joining Vince again. Austin goes after him and the chase is on. Ross’ shouting of WHAT, WHAT, WHAT the heck is going on is rather amusing. Austin whispers a spot to Mankind who clotheslines him down. Slaughter comes in and grabs Austin while Brisco gets a bad chair shot to Austin for the pin.

Foley looks right at him while he’s doing this but Ross says he might not have seen it. I love spots like that where by simply watching the scene you can tell the announcer is wrong. That’s kind of a weak way to get rid of Austin but that’s just me. They begin the references to Montreal as my head begins to hurt.

Rating: C+. This wasn’t bad but it wasn’t great. Again, it’s just hard to get into a match like this when these two had an great match a few months ago that went about 25-30 minutes while this one just breaks 10. I get the tournament and the time issues, but this is one of the big dangers in it and it shows here. It’s an ok match, but by comparison this isn’t great.

On a side note, Mick Foley might have the best win/loss record against Austin of anyone I can remember after Austin won the title (so no Bret Hart). Think about it. They had two world title matches which were split, Foley pinned him at Summerslam 99 to win the title, and now this. Unless I’m missing a match and I likely am, that’s 3-1. For a guy like Austin, that’s very impressive.

We see Vince and co. running as Vince chases. Austin steals a car, throwing the driver out of it which is funny, and drives off. He’s in his gear, so what would it be like if he got pulled over? That would just be amusing.

We recap what we just saw, and wonder why Shane rehired Austin just to turn heel here.

Semi Finals: Undertaker vs. Rock

Lawler gets in a Groucho Marx line so I’m happy with him again. I didn’t know I was unhappy with him but oh well. Let’s recap both guys getting here because we have nothing better to fill the time up with. This is a rivalry that you don’t see a lot of but it’s certainly an interesting one. Since there was only three minutes of it in the previous match, they brawl on the floor for the early part of this match. Don’t you just love late 90s booking?

They’re in the ring now but they’re going very slowly at the moment. That’s likely better for Taker but for Rock I’d prefer him to go a bit faster. After a lot of slow back and forth stuff, Rock gets tied up in the ropes. He gets out, but even with him standing up and his arms clearly not tied anymore, Taker doesn’t notice. And this guy is supposed to be the master of psychology?

They go to the floor (shocking isn’t it?) and JR points out that if there’s a double count out then Mankind is the new champion. Hearing these words, Lawler screams. That was comical. Ross is wondering how Shane can look himself in the mirror again. Dude it’s wrestling. Ross gets in a small line about how he’s never been in Vince’s house because Vince always fired him elsewhere. Dude, LET IT GO!

Without saying it, Ross points out that there was no point in the face turn for Shane if they were going to turn him heel again this fast. And he’s right. Once again it’s all about the McMahons instead of the actual wrestlers. My goodness Boss Man is here AGAIN. That’s FOUR matches he’s been involved in tonight. That’s as many as whoever is going to win the tournament. In a funny spot, Rock hits a Samoan Drop and does the Taker sit up and the screw you sign to Taker.

Naturally, the announcers are talking about Austin and the McMahons because a solid little comedy moment can’t be acknowledged when Vince has things to do on the show. Rock sets for the elbow but Boss Man hooks his foot and Taker sits up. Now Taker hits Boss Man. In a strange way that makes sense.

Taker chokes Rock as Kane comes in and chokeslams Rock. Lawler thinks they’re back together but it makes sense as Kane just cost Taker a spot in the finals. That’s actually very smart booking. It protects both guys and bangs Rock up for the finals. Kane and Taker fight through the audience.

Rating: B-. It was slow but it was solid. The ending was a bit out there but it made great sense in this case. While not great it’s one of the better matches of the night. Rock and Taker is a pairing that I always wanted to see more of and while they had some short feuds, there was never a huge one and that always puzzled me. Either way, this was good enough but you can tell they’re getting a bit tired.

So the finals are Rock vs. Mankind.

Mankind says he can win tonight, if you smell what the sock is cooking. The look on Cole’s face might be the funniest thing in the history of the Survivor Series.

Tag Titles: New Age Outlaws vs. Headbangers vs. D’lo Brown/Mark Henry

I was going to post the match, but I couldn’t find a version online. The Outlaws are the only tag team in the world worth watching at this point as the Dudleyz were in ECW, Edge and Christian and the Hardys had no clue what they were doing yet, and the Outsiders were kind of feuding. As Road Dogg does his thing, there’s a sign that it’s literally taking 12 people to hold. That’s RIDICULOUS.

On Heat all four guys beat up the Outlaws to try to make it seem like there’s a chance here that we could have new champions here. Spoiler alert: there’s no chance that’s happening here. This is the epitome of a filler match. Billy just doesn’t look right in all black. Naturally the Outlaws get the living tar beaten out of them for most of the match. Did you expect anything else? This is just dragging on forever.

Usually I watch a few minutes of a match and comment on it in here, but I’ve gone 7 minutes here and there’s just nothing to say. It’s not good, it’s not bad, it’s just there. I mean there is nothing at all special about this match that would make me interested in it at all. Ross is talking about the next match which I would be doing as well since there’s just nothing at all here of note.

There are no comedy spots, there are no cool looking sequences, there are no near falls, there’s nothing really bad at all either. It’s just six guys going through the motions and filling in PPV time. Actually 5 since Billy isn’t in this at all for the most part. We get a mixture of finishing moves that do nothing and the Billy hits a random and bad piledriver to end this mess. Post match the Dog says noting of importance.

Rating: F. This was nothing. I mean it was ten minutes of just filler which is awful in my eyes. Some people might like this and I can get that, but for me it was a complete and utter failure. No one with a brain thought there would be new champions tonight, and why should we have? Look at the opponents. This was a waste of time, but it was filler so what can I say?

Since we’re about to have the WWF Title match between Rock and Mankind, let’s talk about Austin and how he got robbed instead. Seriously, that’s all the recap is.

 

WWF Title: Rock vs. Mankind

Mankind apparently doesn’t get what’s going on. He’s not Eugene people. Rock looks more tired now than he did before he rested, but whatever. I almost forgot: Raw was in Rupp Arena the night after this, which is five minutes from my house. For some reason that I’ll never get, I didn’t want to go. The McMahons are still here too. They start with a lockup as most matches do.

Lawler defends Mankind of all things as JR mentions that WWF people will be on the Home Shopping Network in a bit. That’s even odder. Lawler gets in a little jab about how the people will get to see all of this PPV. What he’s referring to is Halloween Havoc 98. It was a double main event with Hogan vs. Warrior and DDP vs. Goldberg.

However, because we just HAD to have matches such as Saturn vs. Lodi and Wrath vs. Meng, the PPV ran long and the feed cut off at 11, right in the middle of the main event and Goldberg’s best match of his career. WCW aired the main event the next night on Nitro, which is both good and bad at the same time.

It’s good in that they get to have a PPV match for free on television because it’s practically a guaranteed ratings boost, but it’s rude to the fans that paid for it because everyone else is getting to see what the PPV fans paid for. Why should everyone else get to see it for free? The little jokes by Lawler and Ross here are amusing. Given the two people that we have in the ring, the inevitable brawl starts almost immediately.

You can tell that the fans are a bit worn out here. This is the fourth match for both guys so it’s not like these two are fresh faces. Three and a half minutes into the match, Vince and Shane, who is dressed as a referee, comes out to ringside. JR is hurt by Shane being a jerk. In that case, I hope Shane prays for forgiveness, for my God have mercy on he that hurts JR. Naturally Rock and Mankind take it to the floor. This is just getting stupid with how much they do this.

And now they’re deep in the crowd. I love how despite them having no real issues other than being in this match, they’re having this wild brawl. That cheapens things, but that’s what the Attitude Era is all about I suppose. We’re back in the ring now and Rock has a chinlock. It never ceases to amaze me how the Attitude Era is known for being all about excitement and intensity, yet most of the matches are really slow and methodical.

Ross more or less says that both guys are spent. Why? Both more or less had a bye in the first round with the longer of the two matches going 33 seconds. Snow isn’t really that tough of an opponent either, so Mankind more or less had a sparring session, a warm-up, and a real match and now this, yet he’s spent? Rock I can kind of understand as he had two decent length matches, but they shouldn’t be sucking wind or anything. I don’t get that.

We’re on the floor again and Mankind uses a chair. Rock counters and gets the steps on him which he beats with the chair. I get that it would hurt, but I don’t think it would be anywhere near as bad as it’s made out to be. Think about it for a minute. The steps are already on him right? Therefore there’s no major impact between them and his body after the initial shot with them. The chair would really just make them vibrate wouldn’t it?

After another brief stint in the ring, it’s naturally time to go back to the floor. Mankind hits the Cactus elbow from the apron to the floor and puts Rock on the announce table. He pulls a Hogan and legdrops him on it but instead of breaking through it Rock just slides off of it. JR is just flat out annoying here, yelling about all kinds of stuff without ever saying anything at all of importance but having all kinds of people likely praise him for it.

We go back in again and hit another chinlock. That’s the pattern of this match: big violent sequence outside and then a chinlock in the ring. After that, redo it but reverse the roles. That’s just kind of stupid when you think about it. This just isn’t that great of a match. It’s ok, but there’s just nothing excellent about it.

For the fourth time in less than fifteen minutes of this match, we go to the floor. Mankind dives from the middle rope through the Spanish table, because that’s just tradition. Back in the ring, Mankind kicks out of the Elbow. Because that move completely sucks, Mankind is up and hits the double arm DDT and grabs the sock.

The Claw gets two arm drops from the Rock but he counters into the Rock Bottom. However, it looks freaking stupid though because he gets Mankind set for it and then waits seven or eight seconds. Ok wait a minute. Why wouldn’t Foley be able to elbow him or something? Rock had been in trouble for awhile and since it can’t take a ton of energy to use the Claw, are we supposed to believe that Foley is drained of energy?

After not getting a pin with it, Rock gives the eyebrow to Vince and sets up a Sharpshooter. Yes, that’s how this ends: a Montreal reference. Rock goes corporate, turning heel and joining Vince as we reveal that Mankind was just a pawn like everyone knew he was and that Rock was Vince’s man the whole time. Vince gets on the mic and says the people screwed the people, just in case we didn’t get the Montreal reference the first time around.

Rock really looks awesome with that belt to be fair. Mankind is in the corner and looks heartbroken. I love how he went from being this clueless putz to being one of the wittiest guys in the company more or less overnight. Vince says the Rock hates the people. Rock gets on the mic and more or less says screw the people. Foley says he never quit as Rock hits him with the belt. In a moment that wasn’t supposed to be funny, Rock has the belt over his shoulder and Vince takes it to put it around his waist.

This takes forever and once he gets it on, within a second or two Rock takes it back off and puts it on his shoulder again. And cue Austin. He hits the ring and we have a Wrestlemania main event. Austin hits a Stunner that amazingly enough Rock sells correctly. He throws Rock and the belt to the floor and then gives Foley a Stunner for no apparent reason.

After beating on the Rock some more, we’re out. In a bonus we have some extra footage of Rock backstage where he just acts like a heel which is completely pointless footage.

Rating: B-. It was certainly ok, but it’s nothing special. More than anything else this benefits from actually having a decent amount of time. I wouldn’t have gone with Austin running in at the end and beating up Rock but rather have just had the three hold up their hands and end like that, but what they did is ok I suppose. Anyway, this was certainly a decent enough match but there was too much brawling for my taste.

Either way, these two had awesome chemistry together and it showed here, but this isone of their weaker matches, but it was their first time so I’ll let that slide. This would lead to what I felt was an outstanding feud between these two with them trading the title back and forth about 3 times over the next three months before Austin finally got his shot at Mania and took the title back.

Overall Rating: C+. This was one of the hardest ratings I’ve ever had to do. You simply can’t grade it on the strength of the matches alone because it’s just not that kind of a show. It’s a massive gimmick show, and the problem simply is that by the end, you’re bored with it. This show really would have been better making this a standard eight man tournament instead of the 13 (remember Boss Man fought twice).

It’s easy to eliminate five guys from this. Here: Snow, Goldust, Gill, Regal, X-Pac,. That leaves you with Taker, Kane, Rock, Mankind, Austin, Shamrock, Jarrett, and Boss Man. That’s not a bad field at all. Shamrock stays because of the tournament success and he’s IC Champion and Jarrett wins a battle royal or something or other to get in. For one thing, it cuts off a LOT of time that you could use for other non-tournament stuff which this show is dying for.

Also some of the matches could be say two or three minutes longer which makes them better to me as well. Overall, four matches each is just too much for guys, even if two were jokes. That’s four times the crowd has to pop for you and it just drains the people out. You can really tell this in the main event as there’s next to no pop at all, simply because the fans are popped out. Like I said though, this is one that is completely up in the air.

If you like things like one night tournaments then this is your show. If not, then watch the last four matches. I thought it was fine and it set up Mania, but yeah this would have been MUCH better if there was one less round. I’ll recommend it slightly but with a disclaimer.

WWF Title: Rock vs. Mankind

Mankind apparently doesn’t get what’s going on. He’s not Eugene people. Rock looks more tired now than he did before he rested, but whatever. I almost forgot: Raw was in Rupp Arena the night after this, which is five minutes from my house. For some reason that I’ll never get, I didn’t want to go. The McMahons are still here too. They start with a lockup as most matches do.

Lawler defends Mankind of all things as JR mentions that WWF people will be on the Home Shopping Network in a bit. That’s even odder. Lawler gets in a little jab about how the people will get to see all of this PPV. What he’s referring to is Halloween Havoc 98. It was a double main event with Hogan vs. Warrior and DDP vs. Goldberg.

However, because we just HAD to have matches such as Saturn vs. Lodi and Wrath vs. Meng, the PPV ran long and the feed cut off at 11, right in the middle of the main event and Goldberg’s best match of his career. WCW aired the main event the next night on Nitro, which is both good and bad at the same time.

It’s good in that they get to have a PPV match for free on television because it’s practically a guaranteed ratings boost, but it’s rude to the fans that paid for it because everyone else is getting to see what the PPV fans paid for. Why should everyone else get to see it for free? The little jokes by Lawler and Ross here are amusing. Given the two people that we have in the ring, the inevitable brawl starts almost immediately.

You can tell that the fans are a bit worn out here. This is the fourth match for both guys so it’s not like these two are fresh faces. Three and a half minutes into the match, Vince and Shane, who is dressed as a referee, comes out to ringside. JR is hurt by Shane being a jerk. In that case, I hope Shane prays for forgiveness, for my God have mercy on he that hurts JR. Naturally Rock and Mankind take it to the floor. This is just getting stupid with how much they do this.

And now they’re deep in the crowd. I love how despite them having no real issues other than being in this match, they’re having this wild brawl. That cheapens things, but that’s what the Attitude Era is all about I suppose. We’re back in the ring now and Rock has a chinlock. It never ceases to amaze me how the Attitude Era is known for being all about excitement and intensity, yet most of the matches are really slow and methodical.

Ross more or less says that both guys are spent. Why? Both more or less had a bye in the first round with the longer of the two matches going 33 seconds. Snow isn’t really that tough of an opponent either, so Mankind more or less had a sparring session, a warm-up, and a real match and now this, yet he’s spent? Rock I can kind of understand as he had two decent length matches, but they shouldn’t be sucking wind or anything. I don’t get that.

We’re on the floor again and Mankind uses a chair. Rock counters and gets the steps on him which he beats with the chair. I get that it would hurt, but I don’t think it would be anywhere near as bad as it’s made out to be. Think about it for a minute. The steps are already on him right? Therefore there’s no major impact between them and his body after the initial shot with them. The chair would really just make them vibrate wouldn’t it?

After another brief stint in the ring, it’s naturally time to go back to the floor. Mankind hits the Cactus elbow from the apron to the floor and puts Rock on the announce table. He pulls a Hogan and legdrops him on it but instead of breaking through it Rock just slides off of it. JR is just flat out annoying here, yelling about all kinds of stuff without ever saying anything at all of importance but having all kinds of people likely praise him for it.

We go back in again and hit another chinlock. That’s the pattern of this match: big violent sequence outside and then a chinlock in the ring. After that, redo it but reverse the roles. That’s just kind of stupid when you think about it. This just isn’t that great of a match. It’s ok, but there’s just nothing excellent about it.

For the fourth time in less than fifteen minutes of this match, we go to the floor. Mankind dives from the middle rope through the Spanish table, because that’s just tradition. Back in the ring, Mankind kicks out of the Elbow. Because that move completely sucks, Mankind is up and hits the double arm DDT and grabs the sock.

The Claw gets two arm drops from the Rock but he counters into the Rock Bottom. However, it looks freaking stupid though because he gets Mankind set for it and then waits seven or eight seconds. Ok wait a minute. Why wouldn’t Foley be able to elbow him or something? Rock had been in trouble for awhile and since it can’t take a ton of energy to use the Claw, are we supposed to believe that Foley is drained of energy?

After not getting a pin with it, Rock gives the eyebrow to Vince and sets up a Sharpshooter. Yes, that’s how this ends: a Montreal reference. Rock goes corporate, turning heel and joining Vince as we reveal that Mankind was just a pawn like everyone knew he was and that Rock was Vince’s man the whole time. Vince gets on the mic and says the people screwed the people, just in case we didn’t get the Montreal reference the first time around.

Rock really looks awesome with that belt to be fair. Mankind is in the corner and looks heartbroken. I love how he went from being this clueless putz to being one of the wittiest guys in the company more or less overnight. Vince says the Rock hates the people. Rock gets on the mic and more or less says screw the people. Foley says he never quit as Rock hits him with the belt. In a moment that wasn’t supposed to be funny, Rock has the belt over his shoulder and Vince takes it to put it around his waist.

This takes forever and once he gets it on, within a second or two Rock takes it back off and puts it on his shoulder again. And cue Austin. He hits the ring and we have a Wrestlemania main event. Austin hits a Stunner that amazingly enough Rock sells correctly. He throws Rock and the belt to the floor and then gives Foley a Stunner for no apparent reason.

After beating on the Rock some more, we’re out. In a bonus we have some extra footage of Rock backstage where he just acts like a heel which is completely pointless footage.

Rating: B-. It was certainly ok, but it’s nothing special. More than anything else this benefits from actually having a decent amount of time. I wouldn’t have gone with Austin running in at the end and beating up Rock but rather have just had the three hold up their hands and end like that, but what they did is ok I suppose. Anyway, this was certainly a decent enough match but there was too much brawling for my taste.

Either way, these two had awesome chemistry together and it showed here, but this isone of their weaker matches, but it was their first time so I’ll let that slide. This would lead to what I felt was an outstanding feud between these two with them trading the title back and forth about 3 times over the next three months before Austin finally got his shot at Mania and took the title back.

Overall Rating: C+. This was one of the hardest ratings I’ve ever had to do. You simply can’t grade it on the strength of the matches alone because it’s just not that kind of a show. It’s a massive gimmick show, and the problem simply is that by the end, you’re bored with it. This show really would have been better making this a standard eight man tournament instead of the 13 (remember Boss Man fought twice).

It’s easy to eliminate five guys from this. Here: Snow, Goldust, Gill, Regal, X-Pac,. That leaves you with Taker, Kane, Rock, Mankind, Austin, Shamrock, Jarrett, and Boss Man. That’s not a bad field at all. Shamrock stays because of the tournament success and he’s IC Champion and Jarrett wins a battle royal or something or other to get in. For one thing, it cuts off a LOT of time that you could use for other non-tournament stuff which this show is dying for.

Also some of the matches could be say two or three minutes longer which makes them better to me as well. Overall, four matches each is just too much for guys, even if two were jokes. That’s four times the crowd has to pop for you and it just drains the people out. You can really tell this in the main event as there’s next to no pop at all, simply because the fans are popped out. Like I said though, this is one that is completely up in the air.

If you like things like one night tournaments then this is your show. If not, then watch the last four matches. I thought it was fine and it set up Mania, but yeah this would have been MUCH better if there was one less round. I’ll recommend it slightly but with a disclaimer.

 

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Survivor Series 1988
Date: November 24, 1988
Location: Richfield Coliseum, Richfield, Ohio
Attendance: 13,500
Commentators: Gorilla Monsoon, Jesse Ventura

So we’ve arrived at the second annual Survivor Series. Things are a bit different now, with the main difference being that Savage is your world champion, having won the tournament at WM 4. Your main feud here is the Mega Powers vs. the Twin Towers, more commonly known as the Big Boss Man and Akeem, or the One Man Gang. They’re feuding with the Mega Powers because they’re monster heels and the names rhyme.

DiBiase is in the main event because he just doesn’t like Hogan, and Rooster and Haku are in it because they’re members of the Heenan Family who hates Hogan as well. On the other side you have Hercules, who is mad because he was sold like a slave to DiBiase and turned face because of it, Hillbilly Jim because he was Hogan’s best friend of the month, and Koko because we needed another Hall of Fame member in here.

This show as well as the next one are notorious for being slapped by substitutions. For instance, Jim Brunzell is in the opening match as a singles wrestler. He’s replacing Don Muraco, who was fired, more than likely due to a high level of suck. Brunzell’s team, the Killer Bees, had broken up due to being jobbers. Blair was supposed to be the replacement for Junkyard Dog, who left to head back to the NWA right after he and Rude started feuding.

However, Blair quit because he didn’t want to be a jobber so he was replaced by the immortal Scott Casey. This would be about like putting A-1 from the old days of TNA in the main event. People know his name, but that’s about it. He was completely off the wall and from out of absolute left field, so he’s one of the more infamous picks in history.

Also, we have a HUGE tag team survivor match, which is famous for something at the end which I’ll get to later. Anyway, this was a tape I always wanted from Blockbuster but it was stolen so I never got to see it. I think I saw it once about 15 years ago, so this is going to be new for me as well. Let’s do it.

Oddly enough, Gene does the introductions. Jesse and Gorilla are the commentators, but they just do the talking.

Ultimate Warrior’s Team vs. Honky Tonk Man’s Team

Warrior’s Team: Brutus Beefcake, Sam Houston, Blue Blazer, Jim Brunzell
Honky’s Team: Danny Davis, Ron Bass, Greg Valentine, Bad News Brown

Ok so let me get this straight. Honky got annihilated last year so he has 60% of the same team now, including a former referee who somehow got worse in the last year, but he replaces Hercules with Greg Valentine (upgrade) and Harley Race with a guy that is a career loner. …right. Yeah this is going to go bad. However, that’s not much of a face team over there.

Warrior of course is insane as always, Brutus is fine, but Sam Houston never did anything, Brunzell is half of a career jobbing tag team, and Blue Blazer was a comedy character to an extent, although Owen of course was very talented. Dang Beefcake comes out to Warrior’s music. Actually they all do. Oh yeah you might want to know the feuds. Warrior had stolen the IC Title from Honky in about a minute at Summerslam.

Brutus and the other three are just there. Can you imagine Warrior’s recruitment speeches? Brutus is co-captain here for no apparent reason. Maybe because it was supposed to be him facing Honky at Summerslam I guess. For the heels…yeah there’s nothing I guess. I think Houston and Bass were feuding but it went nowhere. For those of you that don’t know, Houston is the half brother of Jake Roberts.

Yeah the talent was clearly in the mother’s side of the family. Brown is already described as a loner. Gorilla once against says that they’re hanging from the rafters. No they’re actually not Monsoon. Just as he was last year, Brutus is your first face in the match. Valentine is rocking the chic yellow and blue. I’m trying to be nice by saying chic.

Holy crud Davis is gone in about a minute. Well at least they didn’t waste time. He’s “asleep”. I never got that. If the sleeper hold is that powerful and can knock someone out in 8 seconds, why aren’t doctors trained in it in medical school? It would eliminate the need for sleeping pills. Oh dear Jim Brunzell. What was the point in putting him on this team? Was there NO ONE else available?

Seriously, this is the best you can find? He’s rocking some silver/gray/red tights which I suppose is better than what the Bees wore. I’ve always liked that old Survivor Series logo, the one that looks like stones. It’s just cool looking, as most 80s wrestling logos were. Brown comes in and just dominates. I guess he would be co-captain by default? Why not I suppose as he’s the biggest star on the heel team other than Honky.

After just beating Brunzell up, the Ghetto Blaster, which has to be the coolest name for a move in history, eliminates the Bee. DAng  we’re down two inside of 6 minutes. Houston comes in now. Good night is he small. He was supposed to be some tough Texas guy but I’m not sure if he weighs more than 215lbs. He tries to beat on Bad News and shockingly, this doesn’t work.

I love seeing tough heels beat on small people. I don’t know why. Maybe I’m a natural heel. Anyway, after more bad offense from the faces, Hammer tags in Bad News and accidentally hits him. Yep, this isn’t going to end well at all. They’re pulled apart and Bad News just walks out for the count out. Why would you pick him anyway?

I get that he’s a tough fighter but dang man, at least pick someone that you can trust. Wait, they’re heels. You’re not supposed to trust them. Either way, Brown was awesome as possible and this was even more proof. When you’re a heel that doesn’t even get involved with other heels, then you know it’s awesome.

For the next two minutes or so, Houston doesn’t tag out. Now I know that doesn’t sound like a long time, but when you consider that there are three other guys on his team to tag, that’s an eternity. Even Gorilla is getting on him about not tagging. This would be fine if it was Bret or Tully or someone with you know, that thing called a lot of talent.

Houston is just flat out boring. He’s like the X-Pac of this match: he’s fine against guys of his own size, but not against monsters. I don’t know if the non tagging thing was planned or not, but if it wasn’t, his career is pretty much over. Oh wait. This is the highlight of his career more than likely though, so ignore that. Gorilla says this is the biggest match he’s ever been in, which is wrong as he was in the opener for Wrestlemania this year, so no he’s been in big matches before.

Like I was saying about not fighting bigger guys, the issue with this is shown as Bass powerslams him and easily beats him. Blue Blazer finally comes in as we haven’t seen Warrior yet. Honky is brought in so at least he can waste his time in there. Yeah he was barely in. Back off to Hammer as I can’t help but think that Blazer looks like he’s wearing a diaper. Seriously, it’s a blue singlet with white/gray tights.

He goes up top and in a very stupid looking sequence, Honky shoves him off. This apparently injures his knees badly enough for the figure four to take him out. That leaves us with Honky, Bass and Valentine against Brutus and Warrior. Something tells me this isn’t going to go well for the heels. When the best thing you’ve got is an over the hill Greg Valentine, that’s a bad place to be. My goodness he might be the best thing in this match since there’s no Brutus music.

Brutus and Honky are in here now, and I smell a double elimination coming. Honky’s tights says Wild Thing. Make your own jokes about that. The sleeper leads to a sleeper on the floor and there it is: the double count out. Ok so I knew that was coming so what? So we have Warrior against two people slightly above jobber status.

I’ll say they last 2 minutes max. Yep, after 2 minutes 10 seconds and a pair of double axe handles to the head (wtf?) and Warrior wins after having a total of about 2 minutes in the ring. This was REALLY bad.

Rating: D. Yeah, this was horrible. It was a bunch of jobbers waiting for Warrior to come in and beat people up. It went almost 20 minutes and I was falling asleep for part of that, and this is coming from someone that’s a huge late 80s WWF fan.

It was just flat out bad all around with no real highlights, no good workers, and just a pointless match all around. Horrible and by far and away the worst SS match to date, and also the only under 20 minutes so far I believe. Actually that’s not true as the first match went 18:50.

Bad News Brown said he showed that he’s a loner and he wants to be the next WWF Champion. There was allegedly a plan to make that happen, but depending on who you ask, Vince was either a racist or just lied. If this tells you anything about Brown, consider this. He was on a tour in Japan with Andre the Giant.

Andre made a racist comment and Brown got off the bus and challenged Andre to a legit fight. Andre backed down. Brown was a legit fighter, having won a bronze medal in Judo in the Olympics, the only American to ever medal in the heavyweight division.

Warrior says that his whole team won. At least that’s what I think he said.

Demolition’s Team vs. Power’s of Pain’s Team

This is the epic tag team match that lasts over 40 minutes. The ending is by far and away the most famous part of it and I’ll explain why when we get there. Here are the lineups.

Demolition’s Team: Brain Busters, The Conquistadors, Bolsheviks, Fabulous Rougeau Brothers.
Powers of Pain’s Team: Rockers, Young Stallions, Hart Foundation, British Bulldogs.

Yes the Powers of Pain are indeed the faces here and have some pretty good music. Rockers are the epitome of rookies here as they’ve only been in the company a few months. Harts are still going strong, the Stallions look somehow more interested in each other than Legacy does, and the Bulldogs are on the verge of leaving, as they would be gone before the night was over, due mainly to them not being needed anymore but also due to a fight between Dynamite and Jacques Rougeau.

There are 20 people in the ring which is a pretty cool visual. The same rules apply as last year as it’s one member of a team being eliminated means his partner is gone too. Jimmy, Bobby, Fuji and Slick meet at ringside. Is anyone missing there from the late 80s managers? We start up with Davey against one of the Conquistadors. They were a pair of jobbers that Edge and Christian imitated in I think 2000 or 2001 in a hilariously funny bit.

Shawn is insanely fast out there. He must be on the good drugs tonight. The camera angle is very odd here as it’s mainly coming from the corner of the ring. It’s not bad but it’s very odd and actually a bit hard to get used to. I think the ring mic is broken as for a bit there’s no sound coming from any of the bumps. My goodness Blanchard and Anderson were awesome. For some reason Jesse still can’t tell the Rougeaus apart, DESPITE THEM LOOKING NOTHING ALIKE!

Good grief Gorilla rambles at times. It’s rare but when it happens it blows away JR’s badness. The crowd pops big for Bret as even back then they knew how big of a star he would be. He gets rid of the Rougeaus to clear the ring out a bit thank goodness.

I love how almost immediately after a pinfall we get a tag every time. It’s a Stallion against a Bolshevik. The tagging here is ridiculously fast as are the changes in control between the teams. The Harts against Demolition is about as awesome of a tag feud as you would ever find. The crowd kind of pops for the Powers of Pain coming in to fight Demolition which was the main feud of this match. This looks like a screwed up lumberjack match.

This is in the middle of Demolition’s epic reign which would last the better part of two years. Blanchard against Hart now, in what can only be described as a technical masterpiece. Before I’m done typing that Shawn and Axe are in. See what I mean about the speed of the tags? Becca’s soul dies a bit as Shawn is gang attacked in the corner. Arn hits a spinebuster. What do we call that?

Since it has to be attributed to someone else because no one but AA ever did it, how do we attribute it to the guy that made it famous? Jesse continues to make fun of Gorilla’s age which never ceased to make me laugh. Why was that spinning kick that Volkoff did considered impressive? It gets all of a foot off the ground and typically hits the upper thigh. Why is that considered impressive? Warlord somehow almost botches a slam. That’s hard to do.

Jesse says that Warlord is beating up Axe as Warlord is being knocked all over the place. I love wrestling announcers. Barbarian hits a….he hit a…what in the heck was that? It looked like a kick to the face but apparently it hit Smash in the ribs? I have no idea what he did but I don’t think it worked that well. We’re at almost 15 minutes here and we’ve had one elimination. I see why this took so long to do. Why is it that powerslams always look awesome?

Boris eliminates the Young Stallions who Jesse was raving about earlier on, talking about how improved they were. Let’s see. Last year they were one of two surviving teams and this year they’re out second. Jesse is usually great but yeah he missed on this one. And they lost to the Bolsheviks. Who in the world loses to the freaking BOLSHEVIKS?

Shawn beats on the fake Russian for a bit. See, that’s a sign of how horrid you are: if Shawn Michaels from the late 80s can beat you up, you really do suck. As they have all night, Demolition whips some Powers of Pain. I think I detect a slight boring chant. Why? This is pretty good stuff.

In a very quick set of moves, the Russians are knocked out but the Rockers. WOW how bad does that make the Young Stallions look? Also, they’ve been around at least a year. How long are they going to be young for? As Jesse says at least we can see a bit better now. For those of you that can’t scroll up and read who was on each team, your lineups are now Demolition, Conquistadors and Brain Busters vs. Rockers, Bulldogs, Powers of Pain and Harts.

Tully is getting into masterful levels of 80s heel work here. He makes it look so easy that it’s scary. Gorilla says we’re getting close to the, as he made famous, nitty gritty. No, not really. Of 9 teams that could be eliminated, we’ve gotten rid of 3. At the most one team is 40% done. How is that getting down to the end? The Conquistadors are just so completely worthless it’s hilarious. I never remember them doing anything at all.

Come to think of it I don’t remember them ever wrestling other than this. The Brain Busters are managed by the Brain. Does that mean they beat up their manager? Is he working for them out of fear? I think this was a Horseman coup that was never followed up on. Yeah that must be it. I need my medicine. Smash uses that really bad hold where he just twists the neck of the other guy to one side.

I get how that could hurt, but is that seriously the best you can do? Is there NOTHING else that you could do to make things at least look painful? Jesse desperately tries to cover up for this by talking about how the wrestlers train their necks but even a politician can’t convince me that he’s trying to hide something. Actually that might be why I don’t believe him.

I officially love this match as we’ve had two jumping reverse elbows. Hart comes in and just about kills Tully. Bret with a German suplex but Tully gets the pin. I love how Bret has to drop his shoulders as he realizes he did the move perfectly and had to make sure he screwed up. The Busters and the Rockers start a big brawl in the ring, complete with Smash yelling to take him out to one of the Busters.

All four are eliminated so we’ve got Demolition and the Conquistadors vs. Powers of Pain and the Bulldogs. The booing for both teams being thrown out is great. They fight up the aisle as I believe this would lead to a great 2/3 falls match on Saturday Night’s Main Event. I believe we have a Pat Patterson sighting as he tries to break this up. That’s just humorous.

After 28 minutes, we’ve arrived at what was the standard Survivor Series match for the 90s. I’ve always wondered how we went from 5 to 4 with no apparent reason. It would change over next year with no explanation as to why. I’d certainly assume that it was time, but at least letting us know would be nice. After half an hour we finally discuss how to tell the Conquistadors apart.

Thanks for the rapid timing of that one guys. Now we’re in some great 80s tag stuff here. Now that’s not to say the rest of this hasn’t been awesome because it has, but this is actually the best it’s been so far. Davey was so freakishly strong it’s scary. The commentators try so hard to keep from calling the Powers of Pain idiots but you can tell they’re about to crack. Jesse says that we’re finally getting to Demolition vs. the Powers of Pain.

It’s not as good as the third time it happened earlier, it’s about equal to the first, but it’s miles ahead of the second. I wonder if Stu taught his people how to do that basic cover. Bret always used it and now Dynamite is. It’s the one where he just kind of lays over the shoulders with his hand on the far wrist and is kind of leaning up. You’d know it if you saw it I’m sure. Jesse continues to rave about the Conquistadors.

Demolition gets it down to 2-1 by eliminating the Bulldogs. Oh dear that means it’s all Powers of Pain from here on out. Someone help me please. I can’t do this on my own. Oh yeah I have to because no one else is stupid enough to review a show that I don’t have to put up until November in mid-August. Fuji gets up on the apron with the heels in control which rightly confuses the announcers. Jesse asks if Gorilla would buy a used car from Fuji.

Oddly enough he asked the same about Slick at WM 4. That’s an odd question to ask. Fuji gets up there again and even Jesse has no idea why. Oddly enough, Fuji pulls the top rope down and causes Smash to fall to the floor, despite him being Fuji’s talent. This causes Demolition to be eliminated. Axe goes after him and Fuji says that he’s the boss so he makes the decisions. Fuji nails Axe with the cane which of course does nothing.

Demolition beats up Fuji to completely turn face to a great pop. I don’t want to see Fuji’s stomach. This leaves the Powers of Pain against the Conquistadors. The “faces” go to the floor and helps Fuji up, turning them heel, AND WE HAVE A DOUBLE TURN!

Yes, in only the second time in history that I can remember it (the other being Hart vs. Austin at WM 13), we have the unbelievably rare double turn. The problem was that Demolition was getting no heat at all as they were so wildly popular, and the Powers of Pain were getting very small face pops but major heat, mainly due to the fact that neither were very good in the ring at all.. They were definitely going to be the big feud in the near future, so this was the solution.

This is why the match is famous as it not only set up the handicap tag title match at Wrestlemania 5 with the Powers of Pain and Fuji against Demolition, but it also gave us the double turn. The turn by the Powers of Pain was almost a huge sigh of relief for the fans as it gave the fans almost exactly what they wanted. Fuji hooks the leg of the Conquistador to allow Barbarian to hit a headbutt for the pin, and a huge pop?

Why? Why after that heel turn would you pop bigger for the heels than you did when they were faces? Where is this show again? Oh yeah it’s outside of Cleveland. Dang I can’t make fun of the city since I’m an Indians fan. Did we just have heel vs. heel for the final two there? Fuji celebrates with the Powers of Pain after the match, which confuses the announcers to no end. Demolition comes back out and beat up the Powers of Pain.

Don’t you just love how a simple heel turn makes the indestructible faces very destructible all of a sudden? The fans aren’t really sure what happened which is understandable I guess. See this is why promos can be so important. In a simple promo which I’m sure is coming, this whole thing can be explained.

It could be confusing here as maybe Fuji turned face and Demolition continued being heels by beating up the now face manager to go with the face team. We hear what happened by the announcers, but no one in the arena can hear that. Like I said, a simple promo clears everything up here, which is the power of the microphone I suppose.

Rating: A. Not just for the double turn, but for how great the match as a whole was. This was just flat out awesome on all levels. It was more or less every great 80s tag team in there at once and even complete with jobbers to fill in the gaps. The tagging speed was off the charts to say the least and everything worked very well. This is far better than last year’s tag one, which is saying a lot as last year’s was great. This is great stuff though and well worth checking out.

Jake Robert’s Team vs. Andre the Giant’s Team

Jake’s Team: Hacksaw Jim Duggan, Scott Casey, Tito Santana, Ken Patera
Andre’s Team: Dino Bravo, Harley Race, Mr. Perfect, Rick Rude

Well, this is a far better list of guys than in the other singles match but that’s really not saying a lot. We have Hacksaw and Jake who are both feuding with Andre as Hacksaw actually knocked him out cold with the 2×4 and Jake was just feuding with him. Jake was also fighting Rude over his wife which I believe actually was an issue in real life. The others, as usual, are just there for the sake of being there which is a problem in these matches.

Often times there’s no point at all for them being there and it can just get annoying and make you try to come up with a reason when there isn’t one. I think most of the heels are just there because they’re members of the Heenan Family. I have a very bad feeling about this match as there’s three big names out there with Andre, Roberts and Duggan, and Andre is hurt at this point.

Perfect isn’t a big deal yet at all, Casey is a no name, Santana is a jobber for the most part and Patera would be gone by the end of the year, mainly due to him just being horrid. On the other side, Race is old and is here because he’s almost broke, Rude is just hitting his stride so we’ll say he’s good too I guess, and Bravo was just there to help other more talented guys for his entire career. And I’m right.

The first at least 5 minutes of this is just horrid with the faces beating on the heels which no one can realistically believe. That of course leads to Patera missing one move and getting eliminated by the Rude Awakening. Wow that was really stupid. The announcers talk about how his skills are diminishing and he should consider retiring. Yeah that’s a nice thing to say about him.

He’d be gone and in the AWA within a few months, so maybe he listened to the commentary. Casey comes in immediately and is immediately crushed. Well that was nice of Rude. At least he didn’t let Casey think he was talented or anything. The announcers amuse me greatly as they try to come up with accolades for Casey but they have to be as vague as possible since they know nothing at all about him.

His looks aren’t helping much either as he’s just short and kind of fat. He looks a bit like Eugene actually.  Race actually hits a decent looking dropkick on him. Then, in one of the weirdest botches I’ve ever seen, Casey sits up to avoid an elbow. Casey sells it like he hit it though. Someone missed their cue here. We have a guy that’s never been seen before or since, or a 7 time world champion and one of the greatest wrestlers of all time.

I don’t even have a snide finish for that one as you get my point. Jesse points out that it’s weird that Race has so many tattoos. That’s actually a good point. He just doesn’t seem like the tattoo type but he’s certainly got a lot of them. Bravo ends him in about 15 seconds. That was long and painful. This match, like the first one, is just boring. Nothing of note is happening here and it’s just all random skirmishes with nothing of note happening.

Usually I’ll watch a segment and then I’ll pause it and write then start it up again. I don’t have to do that here, as I know I’m not going to miss anything. Wait that might be something. Oh never mind. I thought we might have something interesting there for a second but it wasn’t. A near fall is actually getting me somewhat awake here. That can’t be good. We’re talking 5-6 minutes of just random offense with no drama to it at all.

Why? What is the point to any of this? Even Tito Santana who I’m a big mark for is boring me to death out there, and it’s not like these are bad matchups. Santana against Perfect, Rude or Race sounds quite good to me. This match breaks thirty minutes and it’s just horrid. Normally I would say that you could just drop 10 minutes off of two matches and put in different people, but here that’s just not the case.

The problem is simple: again, we have 50 people wrestling tonight. There’s just not enough people to have a 5th match so the 4 you have are forced to go WAY too long. Now in the tag they pulled it off very nicely. In these other two, they’re just complete and utter failures. See, why are people like Bravo in this? They have no connection to anyone out there at all, so why should we care? In short, we don’t.

FINALLY Santana is out of there and it’s Roberts. No wait. Bravo makes the stop and Santana gets beaten up even more. What is the point to this? It’s 5-3 in case you’re bored and want to see numbers instead of letters. From absolutely nowhere Santana hits the forearm to beat Race. I would love to have seen these two 5-6 years ago with about 20 minutes to work with.

That could have been some great stuff to say the least. Andre immediately comes in and just kills him as we’re finally getting something interesting or at least something pretending to be interesting, ala the bar room at the moment. Those punches from Andre are just flat out scary. Tito, like a freaking idiot, tries a sunset flip. You know where this leads and Duggan is the next guy in. To a HUGE pop, a single shot and Andre is tied up in the ropes.

All of a sudden the crowd is alive. Roberts comes in and just beats the heck out of Andre. How many people can say that? You know, Jake and Duggan are probably your 3rd and 4th biggest faces at this point, or are at least in contention for that spot along with Warrior. Warrior was just in the midcard at this point while Duggan and Roberts were in a feud with Andre who was of course still a major star at this point.

Hacksaw would be dropped soon though to feud with Bad News which was just horrid as they were the exact same style. Now we get back to the problem of this match: nothing happens for long stretches of time. Here’s a summary of the next five minutes: face gets pounded on, face makes a short comeback, face gets pounded on, face makes a short comeback, face tags, face gets pounded on, face makes a short comeback. This is just boring me to death.

Duggan is in there now after Roberts was beaten half to death. What’s this? It looks like a short comeback. Like the idiot that he is, Duggan gets the 2×4 and beats on Bravo with it to make this 4-1. For another SEVEN FREAKING MINUTES Jake gets beaten down and makes small comebacks. In other words, in about 14 minutes we had one moment that was close to interesting. Everybody beats on him for about two minutes each.

FINALLY Rude gyrates over him and gets a DDT for his trouble to eliminate him and breathe some life back into him. Andre comes in and beats/chokes Jake half to death to get disqualified. It’s 2-1 but Jake is just dead. He choked him for probably 35-40 seconds straight so Jake should be dead.

Andre headbutts him and Perfect just walks in and covers him to win it. Perfect is called Mr. Perfect Curt Hennig which sounds kind of odd. Jake gets the snake to a big pop but there’s no one in the ring. Jesse says that this was too little too later which is true.

Rating: F. This was AWFUL. There was about 20-25 minutes of dead spots here and no one wanted to see it. It was mainly jobbers that weren’t interesting and it was about getting Jake or Hacksaw against Andre which happened for all of 45 seconds. This was just flat out boring and I was flipping through the channels while this happened. That’s never happened while I was watching a major show before. I HATED this match.

Andre takes offense to Sean suggesting that he’s afraid of snakes and that he’ll beat Jake…whenever they fight that is.

Jake says that he did ok considering it was 4-1 and that he’s not going to cry. He also calls the show survival series.

Mega Powers Team vs. Twin Towers Team

We’re at the main event of the longest PPV of all time, or at least it seems like it. Either way, this is the last of the four matches. The lineups read like this.

Mega Powers: Hogan, Savage, Koko B. Ware, Hillbilly Jim, Hercules
Twin Towers: Akeem, Big Bossman, Red Rooster, Haku, Ted DiBiase

Akeem is the former One Man Gang, and that gives me the right to post this video.

Savage gets a HUGE pop. See what a guy with talent can get out of the crowd? Jesse butchers the name of the world title which is hard to do. Fink sounds like he’s on speed or something. Mark this down: Koko and Terry Taylor are main eventing a major PPV. This will NEVER happen again. How in the world are Savage and DiBiase not in the Hall of Fame but Ware is?

Of the ten people in this match, 4 of them I could see being in the Hall of Fame: Hogan, Savage, DiBiase, Boss Man. Boss Man is by far the biggest stretch but he would at least make a touch of sense. Koko makes less than no sense. Dang even the announcer belongs in there more than he does. Speaking of which, has there ever been a more lackluster induction than Fink? No one ever brings up that he’s in the Hall of Fame, despite him being one of the oldest and more beloved employees in the company.

I’ve already explained the reasons for the feuds so I’ll spare you from a repeat. Hogan’s pop is otherworldly. We start off with a rematch of the main event of Wrestlemania as Savage and DiBiase are going at it once again. If you can find it, and it might be on the Savage DVD, find the cage match that these two have. It’s absolutely great. Gorilla and Jesse praise DiBiase and call him championship material.

Truer words have never been spoken. For those of you that have never read my Wrestlemania 4 review, there’s an interesting story on the original plans for Wrestlemania 4. In case you’ve forgotten, DiBiase had a master plan which involved Andre taking out Hogan or at least wearing him down enough so that DiBiase would win the tournament and therefore the title. Savage would have been facing Honky for the IC Title and wouldn’t be an issue.

In the original booking, that was going to be what happened: DiBiase’s plan worked and he would be champion over the summer with Hogan chasing him for the one on one rematch but never getting the clean win. Savage would take the title at Summerslam which I guess would have also had Hogan-Andre 3 or something. Then the Mega Powers angle would have been 8 months long instead of a year.

Savage would have been IC champion and having a feud with Bigelow and dropping the belt to him before fighting DiBiase, although I’ve heard the Bigelow story from far fewer sources. That’s actually not a horrible idea and I really like it. However, Honky more or less cried about losing the title so we got what we got now.

ANYWAY, they’re fighting here and now in a non title match at the beginning of the main event of the longest feeling show of all time. See, even the descriptions have to be overly long. Actually they’re not as Hercules is in now. Rooster goes for some hold that would later be called the sharpshooter. The idea behind Rooster at this point was more or less Heenan saying he could manage anyone to success, even a no talent guy like chicken boy over here.

Oh yay it’s Koko vs. Rooster in a real cock fight. What? Haku, the second most successful member of his team and the current King of the WWF is in now. The announcers question tagging in Hercules again when he’s already been in. Is he tired after all of a minute in the ring and a minute rest? I know he’s not the best wrestler in the world but give him some credit. Hogan beats on Haku for awhile before Jim gets in.

Hogan gave Jim his first pair of boots which was actually a fairly sweet moment. The Red Rooster is wrestling Hillbilly Jim. My goodness this is weird to write for the main event of a PPV. Jim is the epitome of a guy that found something that worked and RAN with it. The key to Jim was simple: give him to the fans in small doses and they simply won’t get tired of him.

I can almost guarantee you that if Jim came out for a one night appearance in his traditional stuff and clapped to his song on Raw, he would get one of the biggest pops you could imagine. The fans just bought into it and it worked. Another key: he was never really a serious character and that was another key. WWE needs to understand something: not every character can reach the main event. Eugene is the best example.

As a comedy character that did random things he was INSANELY over. They put him in a big storyline and he was booed out of the building. Jim never really went past the midcard, but he’s a beloved legend that has a job to this day. See what being a goofy character and accepting that can get you? On a random note, how many times will you have a pair of Kentucky boys (Savage and Jim) in the same main event? Hogan and Rooster. KILL HIM HULK!

It’s no surprise that Taylor kept a job for so long since Vince loves cocks. Elbow kills Taylor to make it 5-4. All five have this massive party in the ring over it. The world champion pinned a jobber after everyone beat on him. Is this worth a celebration? Time for Haku and Savage. Ok make that Hulk. Yeah these fast tags are getting annoying. Haku gets a dropkick and almost misses Hogan because he’s so high in the air. That’s freaking impressive.

Jim and Akeem hammer on each other for awhile but Air Africa ends the country boy. Oh look it’s Koko again. He’s in for about 20 seconds so life is good again as Hogan replaces him. He actually uses a full nelson to hold Savage in place. Hogan used a decent submission. You’ll probably never see that again. After about 3 shots by Akeem, Koko gets Bossman Slammed and is gone thank goodness.

It’s time for Hogan against Boss Man which is the major showdown of this match. Amazingly, they would be best friends in two years. However to be fair, the storyline actually made a lot of sense when Boss Man turned face as he said he was upset that DiBiase lied about a crime being committed, which fit the character really well so at least it made sense. Hogan signals for the slam which looks like he’s raising the roof which is a stupid video waiting to happen.

Akeem comes in and the big men beat on Hogan for awhile. Hercules and Savage just watch this happen. Maybe they’re talking about how they’ve patched up their differences since last year. DiBiase FINALLY is back in as he hasn’t been in for about 15 minutes now. I’ve always loved that falling punch. Gorilla infringes on a gimmick as he says that DiBiase has excellence of execution. That’s not fair!

Hercules beats the heck out of DiBiase for awhile. Virgil trips Hercules and DiBiase pins him, making it 4-2. DiBiase is yelling at Hercules as he’s leaving and Savage makes a brilliant move and sneaks up on him for a fast rollup to eliminate him which was perfectly legal. Hercules was eliminated and Savage legally came in as the next man and pinned him. What follows is three boring minutes of the heels beating on Hogan. I

t’s much shorter than the other beatdowns so I guess it’s better. It’s also Hogan being beaten on so at least it’s someone people care about. Anyway, he makes the tag and Savage holds off all three at once. That’s pretty impressive but the way they do it is believable which is appreciated. Slick goes after Liz once Boss Man catches Savage. Hogan goes for the save and all three beat on him and handcuff him to the bottom rope.

In doing so, Bossman is counted out so it’s 2-2 but Hogan is cuffed. He beats on Hogan with the nightstick for awhile to really bust him up. Akeem is disqualified in a rather lame method to make it the Mega Powers against Haku. It just looked stupid to say the least. After Haku hits some basic offense on Savage, he misses a kick to Savage which hits Slick, knocking the key out of his hand. Hogan picks it up to escape. Savage tags him in and you know the rest.

Rating: D+. This needed to be 3-3 instead of 5-5. The ending was fine but the beginning was just a waste of time. Rooster, Koko, Jim and Haku were completely worthless here. At least the Twin Towers vs. the Mega Powers and Hercules vs. DiBiase were established feuds that had been built up.

This is the problem with the Survivor Series concept: it prevents matches like DiBiase and Hercules from happening and we need guys like the previously mentioned four to fill in the rest of the team spots and they’re just wastes. The ending was fine once we got rid of the nonsense, but the rest was just bad.

Jesse is with Savage and he eggs him on, saying that Savage is ticked off at Hogan. Savage says that it was just being glad that they won. Jesse keeps egging him on. Savage says the same thing and leaves. Of course, Savage would turn heel soon enough. Gene says good night…and that’s it?

Overall Rating: D+. This show is awful. There is one good match of the four but it goes on first and by the end it’s forgotten. This was just filler to get to the Main Event on February 3 where Savage would cut the promo of a lifetime and turn heel, going insane on Hogan and setting up the BIGGEST match possible with Hogan vs. Savage at WM 5.

That actually had the potential to match Hogan vs. Andre as far as huge and while I still thing Savage should have won that to set up Hogan vs. Savage 2 at Summerslam, it was fine. That’s a rant for a different time though, so we have this instead. That all being said, this was terrible. It was filled with all kinds of jobbers and of course the injuries hurt things a lot as well, with guys like Brunzell and Casey being on the card.

Watch the tag match and otherwise skip this. It is in DESPERATE need of 2-4 regular matches to take away about ten minutes from each match. If you factor out about 15 from each, they instantly go way up in value. It just killed the whole show dead. I really don’t want to see a 30 minute match with guys like Patera against Bravo and Santana being beaten on.

It just went on WAY too long. Other than the tag team match, the time just went on way too long. Check out the opener, which at 42 minutes has to be the longest in history, and other than that, ignore this like the plague.

 

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Survivor Series 1997
Date: November 9, 1997
Location: Molson Centere, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Attendance: 20,593
Commentators: Jerry Lawler, Jim Ross

Well, here we are. Perhaps the most infamous show in the history of professional wrestling, we have arrived at Montreal. I’ll save my thoughts on the Screwjob for the end of the review and for once, actually focus on the show as a whole. This is the culmination of the entire Border War storyline with Austin and Michaels unofficially teaming up to fight Canada and the Hart Foundation who were one of the best heel stables I can remember, despite them only being around for a bit.

Shawn got this title shot for winning the first ever Hell in a Cell match against Taker a month prior to this. That also leads into another match on the show as we have Kane’s PPV debut (he would soon debut on Raw in a handicap match, squashing two jobbers named Matt and Jeff Hardy). Other than that we have Austin vs. Owen in a rematch from Summerslam for Owen’s newly won IC Title.

The other four matches are all Survivor Series matches. We’re in the Attitude Era now, with tonight being considered by some to be the official start. I could see that, but the Attitude Era roster was already here with guys like the Outlaws, the Nation and Ken Shamrock here now, so I’d certainly say that this is the Era, but for the sake of argument we’ll say it begins tonight. Anyway, with the ending being the important part that I’d think most of you are interested in, let’s get closer to that.

The NWO is absolutely dominating at this point with the WWF on the brink. However, they would manage to blow the biggest chance in the history of professional wrestling to end Vince with the absolute disaster that was Starrcade 97. This is the show that got people talking about the WWF again though, and ultimately caused the downfall of WCW in the end which you would know about if you’ve seen the match.

We open with the video hyping this as the rematch of Wrestlemania 12. Bret talks about how he got screwed in Anaheim and he doesn’t like the way Shawn acts. Shawn says get over it. The interesting thing here is that this could almost be classified as heel vs. heel. Bret was top heel, and Shawn was certainly acting like a heel, yet Bret will easily be the crowd favorite, with Shawn being the face by default I guess. That’s certainly an interesting issue to have.

We have to introduce both other announce teams for no good reason.

Headbangers/New Blackjacks vs. New Age Outlaws/Godwins

Bradshaw and Barry Windham are the Blackjacks. This started over Billy breaking a boom box over the head of Thrasher. The other teams were feuding…maybe. The announcer speaks French, which I guess makes sense. Road Dogg does the talking intro to the Godwins slow banjo music, and actually calls the Headbangers queers. I’m very surprised that made it onto the video release. He slips in some more gay slurs, which is very surprising as well.

The Outlaws at this point are a brand new team that is more about talking than what they did in the ring. In other words, they got right into what they were known for. The hog farmers are heels now, and somehow still validate a paycheck each which defies any and all logic to me. Phineas tries to leave but it turns out he’s coming back. Dang it I was hoping we could get this done early. I’ll give Russo this: he had different tag teams. That’s more than we get today.

According to Lawler, no one wants to lose one of these matches. Well I’m glad people like winning. I was afraid I was in a Disney movie where giving away wins was the important thing as long as you don’t cheat. The styles between Henry and Bradshaw are clashing badly here and it’s not working.

Bradshaw gets an abdominal stretch on and drops backwards to roll up Henry for the pin. That was kind of cool actually. Who in their right mind would believe that of these 8, he would have the most successful career? Actually you might because none of them looked like much at this point.

Phineas is in now and brawls with Bradshaw as we hear more about Granny Godwin. Windham just doesn’t look right with black hair and a mustache. I don’t have to look at it anymore because he just got pinned. Mosh is actually quite over. That’s just odd. Billy gets a good solid booing, so apparently he’s doing his job correctly. They make a Sadaam Hussein reference which is just out of place. Billy just looks weird in long tights.

This isn’t much of a match as most of the people just don’t fit in it at all. Billy hits a weird looking move to end Mosh. Mosh is going for a bulldog out of the corner but Billy slams him forward face first into the mat for the pin. That was different at least. It’s 3-2 if you’re counting. How sad is it that I know all 8 men’s real names? We’re on to Thrasher and Phineas now as the greatness of this match is just getting better and better.

Ross says Vince is busy as I’m analyzing every single thing about this show now looking for clues about it. I think we’re having audio difficulties here as we have no talking for a few seconds. Apparently Road Dogg was yelling at them and they lost focus? That’s great stuff there guys. Ross isn’t a character anymore and it’s the standard commentating formula that you know and love/hate/tolerate/cut yourself to.

Thrasher pins Phineas after a Stage Dive (seated senton like Mysterio uses) to make it 2-2. Road Dogg comes in for the first time in the whole match and he gets Bradshaw. The Outlaws were an interesting story as they had this epically bad feud for months and months. They were fighting again on Shotgun Saturday Night (which needs a review of its own sometime) when they actually said that their careers were going nowhere fighting each other so they should team up.

This is the result. Anyway, Road Dogg rolls Bradshaw up and hooks the tights for the pin which didn’t actually hit but whatever. He goes nuts and beats up the Outlaws before he leaves it 2-1 with the Outlaws vs. Thrasher. He’s the one that got hit with the boom box, so Thrasher is actually the point of a feud. Oh my goodness indeed. OH GOOD GRIEF WHAT WAS THAT? Ok, so Road Dogg goes for the pump handle but Thrasher reverses into a cover.

Billy goes up for a guillotine leg drop, AND MISSES BY TWO FREAKING FEET! I mean when he lands, you can see the mat between his leg and the two bodies, but THRASHER SELLS IT. That’s how it ends. I literally do not know how to respond to that. It was the absolute worst miss and sell that I’ve ever seen. I mean literally there were two feet between them. I’m stunned.

Rating: D+. This is partially for that ending, but other than that, the match just bombed overall. There was just nothing of interest here and it was just four teams beating on each other for 15 minutes. The Outlaws were clearly going to be either a big deal or something close to one and they certainly were. Other than that, there’s nothing here so it’s a traditional Attitude Era opener: all flash and very little substance.

Truth Commission vs. Disciples of Apocalypse

Dang I forgot about the gang wars period. Ah the Truth Commission. Now if there has ever been a stable that I would have liked to see go further, this was it. We’re not incredibly sure what it was, but that was kind of the point. They were led by the Jackyl, who would become known as Cyrus in ECW. He was kind of a cult leader with this weird brainwashing/mind control thing going on. The Truth Commission was based on South African military units that investigated Apartheid acts after it was outlawed.

One of them would later become known as Bull Buchanan and the big one would become known as Kurrgan. They were very interesting and different, so naturally they were split up and Kurrgan was turned into a comedy character. Allegedly Jackyl was going to be a big deal in the Ministry, but that never came through as he left. This was the era in the company where most of the midcard guys were in gangs.

You had the DOA, the Truth Commission, Los Boricuas, the Hart Foundation and the Nation. It was rather annoying as it turned into a ton of eight man tags that weren’t any good. The Truth Commission here is comprised of Jackyl, Kurrgan, Sniper and Recon. Recon is Bull Buchanan, so we’ll refer to them as Jackyl, Kurrgan, Buchanan and Turnip, because that’s about as much as he’s worth.

The DOA, who don’t have motorcycles yet, are comprised of Skull and 8-Ball (the tall bald twins that are in every wrestling company ever yet never win anything), Chainz (Underfaker/Brian Lee from ECW) and Crush. Lee was good at times, but this is going to be a mess. We start with a massive brawl so I’m likely right. Chainz and Kurrgan start, This lasts about a minute as Chainz takes a sidewalk slam to end him.

Jackyl isn’t on the apron most of the time. Buchanan comes in against one of the twins. JR isn’t sure which it is either. Jackyl comes in off the top with a knee that’s not sold. Three punches and sidewalk slam later we’re tied up. Wait, did two guys just use the same generic finishing move to get rid of people? Was Skull watching the match? You just don’t do that.

You’re a big power guy. There’s about a dozen moves there you could use to get rid of him: boot, spinebuster, powerslam etc., but you use the SAME FREAKING THING. And you wonder why no one cares about you. Turnip comes in next to waste more time. Jackyl is doing commentary now and washes a few brains as we go. I hope he waxes them too. The crowd is just dead here.

The twins switch and a clothesline gets rid of Buchanan. Ok so we’ve had three eliminations: two by sidewalk slams and one by clothesline. A nap sounds good now. After a boring exchange, Turnip hits a bulldog, which is somehow the best elimination move of the match by leaps and bounds, to get rid of a twin, leaving us at a twin and Crush vs. Kurrgan and Turnip. Since the boring pace and repetitive moves have worked so well and gotten such great reactions, we continue with it.

None of this is worth talking about at all as it’s just boring power moves by not incredibly talented big men. Kurrgan gets a blind tag and after the other twin puts Turnip down, he walks into a, get ready, SIDEWALK SLAM for the pin. My goodness was that a reaction? Yes I believe it was.

I have no idea what for so I’m assuming a sale on popcorn. Actually it’s for Crush. Crush is popular? Why? I don’t get it, but ok I guess. He puts Turnip out with a powerslam but as he gets up, I kid you not, he becomes the fourth out of 7 men in the match to be eliminated with a sidewalk slam.

Rating: F. There is no way to validate using the same finishing move FOUR times. On top of that, one of them was from another guy. Now I can get a wrestler being limited to a few moves. I could see if this was Orton hitting three RKOs for three pins, but if say Ted DiBiase used it as well, then it’s just stupid. This was a bad match as the moves and wrestlers were boring, there was ZERO plot, and the crowd hated it. This was a complete waste of ten minutes.

A bunch of fans say who they think will win. Surprisingly, Shawn seems to be the favorite, but not by much. I’d call it 50/50 actually but it’s very close.

As we talk about being in Montreal, King gets in a funny line about not knowing it was Halloween because no city could have faces like this. It’s corny but I laughed. Lawler has a great delivery.

Austin is dictating messages to a person posting them on AOL. That’s perfect for him actually.

For the third year in a row, Karate Fighters is sponsoring this. That might be a record of some kind.

We get a recap of how Blackman is in this upcoming match. He jumped the railing and beat up Bulldog but Anvil just tackled him. Apparently he was able to get a job, trained and onto a PPV in 6 days. That’s not bad.

Team USA vs. Team Canada

USA: Goldust, Vader, Marc Mero, Steve Blackman
Canada: Furnas, Lafon, Jim Neidhart, British Bulldog

That’s a great American team isn’t it? Oh yes it is. On the Canadian side, Lafon is French, Bulldog is British, Furnas is from Oklahoma and Neidhart was always billed as from Nevada. In a quick interview, Vader says they have nothing in common other than they don’t like Canadian meanies. It’s not Vader Time. It’s America Time. Yes he really said that. Team America comes out to a familiar song. For some reason I want to start chanting YOU SUCK to the beat of this song.

The Americans get a decent pop but nothing great. Goldust has paint on his face saying F U, which stands for Forever Unchained. Well ok then. Bulldog says Canada will win. They come out to Bret’s music to a huge pop. Ross says this is like game 7 between the Canadiens and the Rangers. The Rangers won the cup in 94, so does that make any sense to anyone? I guess it’s because New York might as well be the national capital?

JR points out all of the un Canadian things I mentioned, but apparently Lafon is French-Canadian, so that’s somehow better. Lawler points out how truly awful this face team is. Mero, who recently turned heel, starts with Bulldog. This isn’t going to be pretty is it? Team Canada is ridiculously over. Bulldog mocking karate poses is just funny. The fans chant for Sable which was Mero’s main and pretty much only storyline for the rest of his time in the company.

Vader, the only somewhat likable member of his time, comes in to beat on Bulldog for awhile. Goldust has just started going freaky as he has just left Marlena. I never got the appeal of her. She’s just not sexy looking. Bulldog has the crowd going insane as he hits his vertical delay suplex ON VADER. Yes, he actually held him there for a bit. I don’t care if you like Bulldog or not, but that’s just freaking scary power.

Lafon and Mero are in now, and for some reason, Mero is on long term offense. What was the appeal of this guy? The boxing thing I think was what killed him as it was just far too one dimensional. Blackman comes in and clearly knows what he’s doing as JR tries to convince us he’s not a trained wrestler. It’s so painfully obvious that he is as he is clearly experienced at least in something beyond the basics as he’s crisp and is going on instinct as you can tell.

He beats up all four heels, or maybe they’re faces as I’m not sure anymore (Russo’s vision begins to come true). Anyway they hit the floor and Blackman is counted out as he doesn’t know the rules that well yet. Well at least that makes sense storyline wise. For some reason this takes a minute or so to explain to him. Ross contradicts himself again by saying Blackman knows and then later that he doesn’t know catch as catch can style.

Neidhart against Mero now, so the level of talent is somehow going up. Neidhart majored in psychology at UCLA. That’s actually kind of impressive. I didn’t know that one. Vader apparently likes USC because he kills Neidhart with power moves and a splash. How many times is Anvil overpowered?

Lafon knocks Vader to the floor with nothing but kicks, which is kind of impressive as well. They hit the floor and Vader is getting beaten up. How did he fall so far in a single year? At Summerslam 96 he was the top heel in the company and now he’s in the midcard at best. He KILLS Lafon with a belly to belly that looked amazingly painful to set up a huge splash from the middle rope, and we’re down to 3-2.

Furnas hits the weakest looking dropkick that I can ever remember which of course drops Vader. It was worse than the springboard version that Tyler Reks uses. In a BADLY botched spot, Mero goes for his moonsault from the top, but Furnas I think was trying to turn it into a powerslam where he would slam Mero forward. Somehow, and I don’t actually know how this happened, Mero wound up on top.

Mero was coming down with a good looking moonsault to a standing Furnas, and Furnas hit the mat head first. This defied anything resembling a law of physics. The announcers are even confused on who got hit with what. He gets the tag to Bulldog, who gets one of the absolute loudest roars I’ve ever heard. That was beyond a pop. The fans were so loud there you almost couldn’t hear a slam on the mat.

It’s a shame he would leave over what happens in the main event. Furnas pins Mero with tights being held. Thank goodness one of them is gone at least. They were both just annoying. Mero had no character at all. I know he was a boxer, but come on now. There’s just no substance there at all. Goldust still hasn’t been in the match at all. Even the announcers point out that Vader has carried his team here and that’s certainly true.

He’s the only one that hasn’t gotten embarrassed out there. Goldust refuses to tag in, blaming a hand injury. This would be the start of a bad feud between the two with Goldust becoming the Artist Formerly Known As Goldust. Apparently he’s rejecting his responsibilities by divorcing his wife and giving up as a father. I hate angles that get that in depth. It’s just complete overkill. My eyes just bugged out. Furnas hit an overhead belly to belly on Vader and got air underneath it.

I mean Vader was airborne for that. That’s two times in this match that he’s been put in power moves. I don’t ever recall that, and it’s not like he’s dropped weight or something at this point. That was impressive. He follows that up with a Frankensteiner. Good grief this guy isn’t half bad. He’s trying if nothing else. Furnas isn’t a big guy or anything. According to Wikipedia he’s 5’11 and under 250lbs.

That’s below average actually, but he made it look awesome. I’m impressed if nothing else. I’m also legit surprised that these two never got over at all. Vader has finally had enough and nails Goldust who walks out. Ross says he’s walking about on his team and country, just like he did on his family. Vader hits the Vader Bomb to end Furnas and in about 20 seconds Bulldog smacks him (kind of) with the bell to win it with a HUGE pop.

Rating: B+. This was just a sweet match. This is the closest Vader ever got to being the dominant force he should have been after Summerslam 96. He just looked awesome on all levels out there, hitting everything perfectly and looking like a guy that should have been the captain of his team.

For the life of me I don’t get why he didn’t get pushed. I also don’t get why Smith is so over here. I mean he’s getting a pop that should be reserved for Bret in Canada. This was just a fun match overall and the ending worked perfectly. It doesn’t make up for the first two, but I’m interested now at least.

Buy this Steve Austin shirt.

We get a recap of Kane’s arrival, which I’ve always thought was one of the best done feuds in wrestling history. It worked for a number of reasons, but the big one was he was talked about for months but you never saw him. You kept hearing the name Kane and you saw Taker’s reactions to it. That’s a brilliant strategy for debuting a character.

You keep hearing about someone over and over again and eventually you don’t care what he looks like and you’re going to think he’s awesome no matter what you see. That’s exactly what happened here, and the debut went great too. It brought Taker to a level he doesn’t go to that often, but when he does it’s EPIC. Anyway, this is happening because Kane was beating up random people and one of them was Dude Love. Foley became Mankind again to fight Kane, leading us to this.

Kane vs. Mankind

This is Kane’s major debut for all intents and purposes. He beat up some jobbers (the Hardy Boys actually) but hasn’t had any official match against legit competition yet. Mankind says he’ll throw himself against a brick wall as many times as he has to until he knocks it down. Foley meets him in the aisle and it’s on immediately.

Kane throws him into the steps and he’s in trouble. Everything in covered in that red light here too which is always annoying. There’s the fire out of the corner and hey we get a bell too. Cactus Clothesline as we more or less say screw the ring. Kane throws the steps at Foley’s head as this is one sided so far. Back inside now.

Domination here by Kane. On the floor though Kane takes a hot shot into the steps and for the first time ever Kane is in trouble. Foley caves his head in with a chair and Kane kind of shakes it off. Piledriver by Foley but Mankind goes after Paul Bearer instead. Kane pops up and launches Mankind from the apron through the announce table. Nice one.

Tito Santana is hurt somehow. It would be nice to see this but with that red light everywhere you can’t really see anything. Ross wrote that off as a power. I love little things like that. Mankind gets a DDT on the floor as he won’t die. He hits the elbow from the apron which he blames most of his hip injuries on. Kane lays him out on the floor as momentum shifts again. Tombstone ends this clean.

Rating: C+. I don’t get the point of the red light but whatever. This was sloppy, but I think that was the point. It’s Kane’s first time in a ring allegedly, and Foley is sloppy to begin with so that makes sense. For a debut, it did exactly what it was supposed to do: it made Kane look like an absolute monster that could kill whomever he faced.

The choice of Mankind was perfect considering what he had done to Taker in the past. You knew the showdown was coming, but the only question was when. When it finally happened at Mania 14, the drama could not have been better, and the whole thing delivered perfectly.

Send in your cable bill and get a free dog tag. They should do more stuff like this. It’s a good customer relations thing. Maybe throw out a t-shirt or something like that.

We go to the back where Vince and Slaughter (the Commissioner at the time and in Vince’s pocket) is with Cole. Slaughter guarantees the match will happen tonight. Oddly that has nothing to do with the Screwjob. Part of the problem leading up this was that the match had been scheduled before but it kept getting canceled due to injuries.

That’s why a lot of people thought the ending was another work because it had happened so many times, with the people thinking the REAL rematch would be at Mania 14. Obviously they were wrong. Vince says he doesn’t know who will win, but he just ever so slightly chuckles before he says it.

It’s so tiny that you wouldn’t notice it the first time watching the show. Granted, it easily could have been classified as just Vince being unsure for kayfabe’s sake. This was destined to be huge, but unfortunately it’s for the wrong reasons.

Nation of Domination vs. Ken Shamrock/Ahmed Johnson/LOD

The Nation is Farrooq, Kama (Godfather), D’Lo Brown and Rock, who was absolutely hated at this point. Like I said yesterday, he was so happy all the time and the people got flat out sick of it. He got hurt and came back as the heel Rock, joining the Nation which was what he needed to do all along. The company knew that they had struck gold with him so the next night, the angle that made his career began as he called out Steve Austin for the first time.

They met the next month at DX In Your House in the infamous truck match where the Austin style match was firmly cemented. The next night, Austin said he was going for the world title, and the rest is history. Those two had such a great chemistry together that it’s hard to come up with a pair that also had it. This feud gave us the absolutely amazing pager sequence, which ranks among my favorite wrestling moments ever.

It was just done perfectly and they had the crowd in the palms of their hands. Anyway, tangent over and let’s get to this. Ahmed is still in his eternal feud with the Nation, having actually turned heel for about a week before getting hurt AGAIN. He would be gone soon though. Shamrock was about to start feuding with Rock around the time of the Rumble, and the LOD are just faces fighting heels. We go to the back for an interview with the faces.

Shamrock has to talk loudly to be heard over the Rocky Sucks chants. He’s on a microphone and the crowd is drowning him out. That’s a hot crowd. LOD are the tag champions here as well. Shamrock is clearly reading off a script. Hawk gets about as close to a Warrior promo as you can while still making sense. Animal and Ahmed don’t talk. I get Ahmed but Animal was decent at talking.

It seems like whenever someone comes out they get no reaction but the fans pop after the name is said. I guess that’s the custom up there. I keep thinking that it’s odd that someone that was pushed pretty well is getting nothing from the crowd, but then it comes and my mind is calmed. A fan has a Stone Cold for President sign. I’ve been to Canada before, and I don’t remember them having a president.

Shamrock is apparently the future of the company. That’s just odd. He gets a very good pop though. Ahmed gets a good one as well. He’s just a freak, plain and simple. Ahmed actually looks more intimidating than Lesnar did. Now if he had any single pit of skill, he’s have been in the Hall of Fame 10 years ago. They both got good pops, but the one for LOD is epic. The fans blow the roof off for them to say the least. They’re a gimmick that just flat out works.

Both of them just look like they could beat the living heck out of anyone you put in the ring with them, and that often times is all you need. They don’t have their spikes though, which is odd to see. The belts just look perfect on them though. Screw Demolition, this is the coolest team ever. Ok that’s nonsense because I really like both teams but I don’t see them at the moment so my allegiance lies with the Road Warriors at the moment.

Hawk and D’Lo start and Brown is beaten up pretty badly here. He tags Rock in and Hawk slaps him a few times. He hits the ropes and someone hits him off camera, sending him into a somewhat odd looking Rock Bottom. He didn’t have the move down yet and it’s obvious that he didn’t. That took about a minute after the action started, so they’re clearly pushing Rocky hard here as they should.

Apparently this shocks JR, which means it was likely pretty average. Ahmed’s right leg looks like it’s covered in armor. Replays show that it was Kama that hit Hawk. How exactly do you knock someone down with authority? I’ve never gotten that term. Brown gets a leather strap from somewhere and whips Ahmed with it in the corner.

Farrooq beats on him for awhile but as he goes for the Dominator, Johnson rolls over, spins Farrooq around and hits the Pearl River Plunge for the pin to tie us up at three. Well that was quick. Brown comes in and hits the Low Down in about four seconds but doesn’t cover. It doesn’t have a name yet at Brown isn’t even the small deal that he would become. He’s about as low as you can get at this point.

Anyway, Ahmed gets up as Brown punches him. There is literally no reaction from Ahmed. It’s like that Bruiser Brody vs. Luger cage match where Brody stopped selling, but in this case it’s just Ahmed coming back. Dude at least let your head go back a bit to make it look like you’re trying. I get what you’re going for here but it’s just not working.

Ahmed hits a front falling suplex which for some reason the announcers have no idea how to describe. They call it everything from a reverse Michinoku Driver to a reverse Pearl River Plunge. Guys, it’s a front falling suplex. It’s been done many times before. Now we get to the stupid part of the match as Brown is on the mat and Ahmed hits the ropes. Farrooq has stayed at ringside and trips Ahmed and holds his foot down so Rock can just climb on him and pin him.

The other referee tries to get Rock to stop, but doesn’t do anything about it like perhaps yell about how there’s ANOTHER GUY HOLDING HIS FOOT to the in ring referee. He also doesn’t even tell the referee after the pin. So wait, what’s the point of the outside referee? Is his job to just get the wrestlers to the back? If that’s the case why not just have Dog the Bounty Hunter out there? Or maybe Cartman? Is Grannie from the Beverly Hillbillies still alive? Maybe she could referee. A

lso, let’s take a look at the referee in the ring. Number one, he sees Farrooq at ringside. He has to. He was there almost two minutes after he was pinned so I’m assuming the referee looked in that area at least once. If not he should be fired. Even still, let’s assume he was distracted by some cotton candy in the 14th row. Doesn’t it seem odd that a man randomly falling down with no one even in the area?

Actually wait, Farroq was near there. Hmm, the other referee is clearly trying to yell at someone in that area. Eh must be autograph hounds. You know how popular we referees are among Croatian youths age 8-12. Finally, what the heck? Ahmed was literally not even moving a few seconds ago when a grown man was punching him in the jaw, and now being tripped prevents him from raising his shoulder?

The guy is a freaking tank and he can’t raise his arm because someone has a grip on his foot? Tell me in any way shape or form how that even begins to make sense. I mean seriously, that’s the best he can do? He can’t even throw up his shoulder? I get that he was supposed to get beaten, but freaking move blast it. It’s not even realistic at all. Once Rocky gets off, Ahmed pops up and chases Farrooq to the back and they brawl on the way. Does Rock weigh as much as an actual rock or something? That was just ridiculously stupid. Getting rid of Ahmed by cheating make sense, but for the love of turnips is it that hard to do it with some intelligence?

ANYWAY, Rocky sucks apparently. He’s not the only thing. We have Rock vs. Shamrock now which would become one of the big feuds in a few months, yet Shamrock wouldn’t really ever do much because of one simple reason: he never took the title from Rock. He beat him about 5 times but he never got the title. That was kind of pointless but whatever. Somehow we’re not even halfway through with this match and I’ve said this much already.

This was during a weird time in the Nation as Rock was usurping Farroq’s leadership as he was clearly the bigger star. Somehow there was never a big match between the two. I never got why it didn’t happen. Kama and Animal go at it for awhile and I literally have never heard a quieter crowd. Rocky Sucks apparently though. Some weird sound effect goes off which the announcers clearly didn’t know was coming.

I think the sound guy (Kevin Dunn according to Lawler) fell asleep from how boring that segment was. Animal rolls up Kama to make it 2-2. It’s Brown and Rock against Animal and Shamrock. JR says it’s back down to 2-2. When was it 2-2 before Jimbo? Shamrock wearing black doesn’t work because his opponents are all wearing it. It just isn’t working that well from a looks perspective.

Brown low blows him to stop the momentum. Due to this, Rocky is gay. Lawler knows what lackadaisical, or however you spell that, means. Hey, since D’lo and Shamrock are fighting, let’s talk about Austin vs. Owen. Is this WCW all of a sudden? Jennifer Aniston is on the Tonight Show so I’m officially distracted. Granted it didn’t take much at this point as this match is going on a bit too long, but at least there’s a point to this one unlike the first two of them.

Eventually Animal and Rock get tagged in and as Animal is cleaning house, the Outlaws come out. Road Dogg has Animal’s spikes and Gunn is wearing Road Warrior face paint. It amuses me how they stole the spikes and the LOD didn’t just perhaps go to their locker room and take them back. Wouldn’t that have solved a lot of issues?

Billy throws powder in Animal’s eyes and he gets counted out. Billy Gunn with white powder. The cocaine jokes write themselves. Animal gives chase, since apparently Hawk was busy playing dominos or something.

It’s Shamrock against Brown and Rock. Apparently Shamrock made both Bret and Shawn tap within the last two weeks. I remember Shawn tapping but not Bret. Wait yes I do remember Bret’s tapping. King says that this is wrestling and you don’t win by tapping out. Ross says like heck you don’t. Ok wait a minute. Lawler was trying to say that tapping out means nothing in wrestling, but in reality he said the right thing: if you tap, you don’t win.

Ross says apparently that you do. So let me make sure I’ve got this straight. Lawler messed up a line but was incorrect in the first place so his mistake made him correct, and Ross corrected Lawler’s mistake but in reality Lawler was right so Ross’ correction was incorrect? X, I think I might have to get you to teach me how to do drugs. This is absurd on so many levels anymore. Rock won’t tag Brown.

Oh wait yeah he did, making him saying no completely pointless. Shamrock hits that sweet belly to belly that he would do and gets the ankle for the tap out on Brown. It’s not a suplex but more of a throw so there we are. Rock nails him with a chair as the ref is getting Brown out but he kicks out. Rock hits that spinning DDT he would do that I don’t think ever had a name. I think on Wrestlemania 2000 it was called the Maivia Hurricane.

Ross says Shamrock was shot with a shotgun. What in the world does that even mean? Ok I get what it means but why did he say it? I’m chalking that up to just another randomly stupid JR line. Rock hits the People’s Elbow, which wasn’t named or a big deal yet so he just looks like a complete moron pointing like that. Ok so he looked like a moron when it was a big deal too, but shockingly he doesn’t get the pin.

Could that have anything to do with the fact THAT IT’S A STANDARD ELBOW DROP? The ropes don’t add any momentum because the big leg kick slows him down. It’s a dumb move and I’ve never been able to stand it. Here’s the comeback from Kenny as it amazes me that when this was taking place, South Park was three months old. DANG that show has been around forever. Rock taps to the ankle lock in a pretty easy ending for Shamrock.

Rating: B. There are very slow parts here but also some very good parts. The ending was very solid with Shamrock looking great as he gets the clean tap out win over Rock. That would be enough to get him a world title match next month. Other than that, there’s some ok stuff here. For a twenty minute match, this was fine. It has some parts that drag and would have been better at about 3 minutes shorter, but overall I’m fine with this. Good match.

There’s a new attendance record for this building. JR calls the WWF the leader in pro wrestling. I can’t make a joke here. That’s just such a flat out lie that it’s beyond jokes. The company was so close to being dead at this point that words don’t describe it. Ok so maybe they do, but WCW was completely dominant at this point.

The change was coming, but it was nothing Vince did. WCW just screwed up so completely and then Vince capitalized on it, but dang man the idea of Vince saving anything. WCW screwed up and WWF took the opening, plain and simple.

Order DX In Your House next month. All the cool kids are doing it.

We get a recap of Austin and all his injuries and how he’d never quit. We also see him getting dropped on his head at Summerslam, which changed his entire life and career. Owen doesn’t like him either. Austin had to forfeit the title which Owen won in a tournament thanks to Austin, who wanted to beat Owen for it.

Intercontinental Title: Owen Hart vs. Steve Austin

Austin gets a solid pop, but it’s nothing major. He flips off the crowd so we know how this is going to go. He got hurt two months ago and he’s wrestling here? Owen has the siren music here which is rather annoying. You can tell Austin is loving getting to be the jerk heel again. He was on the verge of shattering the glass ceiling and it was just a matter of time before he would. Owen comes out with Bulldog, Neidhart and Furnas and Lafon.

Apparently that name is spelled Lafond. I’m not going back and changing them so get over it. Owen’s Owen 3:16 says I just broke your neck shirt is either awesome or tasteless. I’m not sure which one. We get the big stall from Owen to start which is classic heel stuff, but he’s clearly the face here. It’s just hard to book shows in Canada because you need to keep the heels and faces acting accordingly, but that’s very rarely going to fly up there so what can you do?

Neidhart tries to sneak in and gets a Stunner and we’re off and running. The Break His Neck chant starts up as well. The vest is still on. Owen sets for a piledriver and the fans LOVE it. Owen and Team Canada leave, which Lawler says is Owen opening a can of haul off. I’m not sure if that’s funny or not but I think it is. The announce table that Mankind went through is still down, which is funny because they’re just sitting there in chairs, so Owen rams him into the table as it’s on the floor.

Owen is trying to lose via DQ and tries to ring his own bell. In a weird ending, Austin reverses Owen in the corner, stomps the mudhole, tries the same piledriver that injured him, flips Owen off and stuns his way to the title. Team Canada takes them as well and that’s it? That was barely four minutes long, but ok I guess. The goal was accomplished.

My guess is that was all Austin could do as a lot of this was choking and really basic stuff. Austin winning gets a HUGE face pop, which is surprising. Actually it’s not. Austin was the undisputed top face in the company everywhere else, so that actually does make sense. It’s saying something when someone is more popular than a Hart in Canada.

Rating: C. I’m calling it average because there just isn’t enough here to really go on. It’s fine I guess, but in four minutes with a lot of stalling and stuff on the floor there’s only so much I can grade. Austin was still banged up and you could see that he was wrestling a very different style over the next few months and even years due to the injury.

The car angle in two years was when he took the time off for surgery. By then his neck was just a complete mess and it didn’t do all it should have, but he did it for the company. That’s why I have issues with people saying Austin owes Vince something. That may be true, but Vince owes Austin a new neck, or half the company, one or the other.

And now, we have arrived. This is going to be different indeed as this is just such a famous moment that it’s hard to write about. I’m not sure how many jokes are going to be here as it’s not really something that’s easy to poke fun at but here we go.

We get the recap of Bret vs. Shawn from Mania 12, which I’m sure you’ve all known. There’s a review of it in Old School if you don’t know. Bret doesn’t like Shawn, period. He claims that he keeps getting screwed. The rematch was supposed to have happened at Mania 13, but Shawn was “injured”, which is still questioned to this day. Bret got Austin in the submission match, so he did ok as well.

Shawn accidentally caused Bret to win the WWF Title at Summerslam by swinging a chair at Bret but hitting Taker. That led to Shawn vs. Taker which ended in the first ever Cell match, which Shawn won to become number one contender. This is his title shot, and the first rematch in over a year and a half between these two.

This was always going to be epic. There’s some great arguments in here with Shawn saying he does this because he loves it and that Bret does this because he feels he has to. There’s a lot in that line.

WWF Title: Bret Hart vs. Shawn Michaels

We see DX, which in this case is Shawn, HHH, Chyna and Rick Rude coming down to the ring from backstage. Shawn is European Champion here as well since the belt meant very little. He would drop it to HHH soon, literally just laying down for him in a rather funny moment. There’s more to it than that but that’s the gist of it. Shawn is booed out of the building of course, which means he’s doing a fine job.

He tells the Canadian flag to suck it and then humps it, which followed by a cut to a sign that says Shawn = Fag is a rather funny moment. We can infer from this that the flag is male. Bret and company are shown coming to the ring and the cheers start already. The announcer can barely be heard over the ovation he gets. Word hadn’t gotten out that this was likely his last night, so that’s a legit pop. My goodness that’s insane.

Bret waving the Canadian flag looks perfect. We’re underway and Shawn is getting his face kicked in. Maybe it hasn’t started yet. Either way, Bret is just owning everyoone here. In essence this is just a big pre match fight and since Bret is getting to beat on Shawn, I doubt he’s complaining about working more than he’s required to. For the first time ever that I can remember, Bret hits the headbutt and hurts his own head.

Vince and the Stooges come out to try to stop the brawl, and you can see the pieces falling into play already. Shawn takes over and they go into the crowd again. Ross mentions that there are rumors that if Bret loses he’s done. I don’t think that had been previously mentioned, so this was clearly a huge deal on many levels despite what else was coming. Slaughter is there too as they fight up the aisle.

Some of the referees get taken out as we’re five minutes into this and they were in the ring all of 8 seconds of it. The rest of it has just been a wild brawl. Bret knocks out another referee and they’re at the entry way so this part is going to go on for awhile. Vince gets in his face as I’m impressed with Vince being able to stay in character knowing what’s coming soon. After seven minutes we’re in the ring and Bret is choking Shawn with a Fleur De Lis flag.

Less than a minute after we actually start Shawn hits the forearm and the nip up and now he’s in control. Shawn chokes him with the flag and Bret is lightly bleeding. It really is hard to not just do commentary here. They go back to the floor again because we haven’t had enough of that yet in this match/fight. The announcers debate who has better cardio which they say Shawn does. If they knew anything was coming, they didn’t let on at all.

A piledriver on the stairs doesn’t work but Shawn keeps control. He breaks the flag and hits Bret in the chest with the pole. Fighting on the floor follows. This has been about 80% on the floor. Naturally, they’re back in there now. Even in the most infamous matches ever my timing is great. Bret does a weird sell as he gets hit by a top rope axe handle but pauses for a second before selling. Maybe it was just a reaction thing.

Shawn is apparently using some of Stu’s old moves. That’s either brilliant or stupid. If Stu used them a lot, wouldn’t Bret know the counters to them? Just as I say that, Bret counters. Bret goes for the knee but Shawn stops him again. Bret reverses a top rope cross body and gets a long two. I wonder what would have happened if he had gotten a fluke pin like that. Figure four on the pole, which I’m still trying to get how the pole actually helps here. I’ve never gotten hat one.

It’s standard (I will not say vintage…blast it) Bret here as he goes for the figure four. The fans chant Bret Sold Out, so apparently they knew he was gone. After a good amount of time in it, Shawn reverses and Bret breaks it with ropes. So it was Bret in the ring with the rope? Yeah I’ve got nothing for this. The match itself is solid actually so it’s even harder to do. Bret initiates his ending sequence, but for some reason he goes to the top for the elbow.

The extra time allows Shawn to pull the referee in the way so we know what’s coming. And there it is. Shawn goes for the Sharpshooter, which he does wrong at first. Earl Hebner doesn’t even get down to check with Bret and calls for the bell. He’s out of the ring as fast as humanly possible. In one of the most famous scenes in wrestling history, Bret spits on Vince as he automatically knew what was going on.

The camera on Bret’s face a second before this tells the whole story. He knew he got screwed over. Shawn plays innocent before walking by Vince and then grabbing the belt and jetting out of the arena. I think Vince might have said something. Since this is the home video release, we go straight to bonus footage after the show went off the air. Bret’s music plays as Bulldog tries to talk to him. You can tell Bret isn’t hearing a word he’s saying as he’s in his own world right now.

His face is a mixture of anger and being upset, but he really doesn’t look surprised. Anvil comes in and gets the same treatment. It’s clear that the fans don’t grasp what just happened and there’s no reason they should. He high fives a few fans and then goes nuts on the equipment from the announce tables, slamming monitors on the floor as we really go off the air. It’s probably better that they didn’t show what else happened backstage after the show.

Shawn played innocent, the Harris Brothers (Skull and 8-Ball of the DOA) went to Shawn and HHH and Vince and said they were on their side no matter what, and Bret took a shower. Vince was locked in his office in fear for his life. Undertaker literally kicked the door in and dragged Vince out to face Bret like a man. Bret had just gotten out of the shower when this happened, so during the confrontation, Bret was just out of the shower, sans towel.

He punched Vince in the jaw and Vince staggered backwards. He stepped on Brisco’s foot and broke his ankle. That’s just great. Taker and Foley were on the verge of quitting and heading to WCW that night actually. Bulldog, Owen and Neidhart did quit, but Owen came back a month later. Bret debuted in WCW soon, and at Starrcade 97’s main event of Hogan vs. Sting, WCW in a way parodied/referenced the Screwjob, which ultimately resulted in their downfall as I’ve mentioned many times before.

Rating: B+. All historic aspects aside, this was a very intense match that worked very well. Both guys were gods in the ring so it’s not like they couldn’t put on a good match. It’s the polar opposite of the Iron Man match, but that’s good I think. This is more of a fight than a match, but that’s fine by me. The match itself is overlooked I think, as no one even remembers anything but the finish.

Overall Rating: B+. Again, this is with all historic aspects of the main event aside. The show starts off really bad but it picks up very well afterwards. The crowd is white hot as most Canadian crowds tend to be which helps a lot. Everyone looks like they’re working hard and having a lot of fun, which is what makes a card great as well. The stories were advanced or ended here, which is what PPV is for.

Even the first match is ok I guess, meaning that this is a very recommended show. It’s well done and a great peak into what’s coming in the months and years to come while still having that taste of old school in it. It’s a great blend, which is an excellent and difficult component to have. Check the whole thing out as it’s very well worth your time.

And now, for the white elephant in the room. Obviously, this is one of the most famous and influential moments in wrestling history as nearly twelve years later at Breaking Point they redid it with Punk vs. Taker. For those of you that aren’t familiar with the story, here’s the basics of it. Note: there is likely FAR more to it than this, but there have been full books written about this night so I’ll have to go with the shorter version.

After Wrestlemania 12, Bret began negotiating a new contract with Vince while at the same time, WCW was offering him a ton of money. Bret was loyal to Vince and signed a mind blowing 20 year contract. The idea was that Bret would wrestle three more years then move into a management job with occasional TV appearances, similar to what someone like Foley was doing a few years ago.

In short, Vince ran out of money and couldn’t pay huge amounts to Bret after the first year and Vince told Bret that for his own financial security, he should go to WCW where the money would be guaranteed. Note: Bret had Vince’s blessing. Anyway, Shawn and Bret had NEVER gotten along, period. Bret was worried about the Clique’s booking powers growing rapidly and the rise of the Attitude Era, so he decided that he should go.

He had been working with Shawn on house shows, and at one of them Shawn called him out for sleeping with Sunny. That didn’t help things obviously. Then at a show in I think San Jose, Bret said he would lose to Shawn if asked to. Shawn said he would NEVER lose to Hart. Granted, this comes from Bret’s book and I’m always skeptical about anything any wrestler says. Shawn would later say this was a lie and that Shawn would have no problem losing to Bret as he had before. I lean towards Bret here, as Shawn had lost to him when Shawn was just a blip on the radar and never when they were both the top dogs in the company. Shawn’s ego went through the roof by that time and it seems very plausible for him to say he wouldn’t lose to Bret. Anyway, due to Shawn saying this, Bret changed his mind and said he wouldn’t lose to Shawn at Survivor Series.

Now we get to the hard part. Bret’s contract expires Sunday night, but he’s still champion. He says he’ll lose to anyone that Vince asks him to other than Shawn with zero complaints. Names like Austin, Shamrock, Taker, Mankind and Ahmed were thrown around for this, but in no way shape or form would he lose to Shawn in Canada.

So they struck a deal where Bret would keep the belt in Canada and the next night on Raw he would either surrender it or lose in a title match to someone Vince would decide on between the time the deal was made and Raw. So we get to Canada, and Vince is terrified that Bret is going to pull out on the deal. Now depending on who you want to listen to, anywhere from three to about 10 guys were in on the Screwjob.

There are so many theories out there from Bret was in on the whole thing (which isn’t that unplausible actually. The idea would have been Bret leaves for two to three years and then comes back in a shocker to face Vince and Shawn at Mania. Shawn would get hurt two months after this though and would be out for four and a half years. Bret would get hurt just over two years after Montreal, so neither of those things happened.

It’s still I guess a possible theory though. The basic theory that I believe is that Vince, HHH, Shawn, Brisco and Hebner were the only ones that knew. Vince secretly changed the ending of the match from Shawn getting the Sharpshooter and Bret countering into one of his own for the tap out into what actually happened.

You can see Bret going for the pre planned counter when the bell rings. Bret went to WCW and has been seen on WWE programming twice since: at his Hall of Fame induction and in a taped segment for Vince Appreciation Night. Anyway, that’s the main idea of it. Obviously there’s a lot more, but that would go on for days.

The more I’ve read about it, the more I side with Vince. Think about this for a minute. The common comparison that is made is that Vince was afraid that Bret would show up on Nitro with the belt etc. and do what Alundra Blayze did with the Women’s Title. That’s far from the truth. If you think about it, Vince, as a wrestling historian and fan, would have been worried about what he had done six years earlier with Ric Flair and the NWA Title.

Due to Flair taking that title to the WWF, the WCW Champion was looked at as a complete joke. Why should anyone care about their champion when they’re nothing more than a paper title holder? The NWA hasn’t recovered from that yet and never will recover from that. Vince had his back to the wall to put it mildly with WCW’s foot on his throat so he had to do what he had to do. I know that what he did wasn’t right, but dang man how much can you ask him to put up with?

Ok, I get that Bret didn’t want to lose to Shawn, but come on now Bret. It’s one match at the end of a 14 year Hall of Fame career. Lose to cheating or something like that. Bret’s pride got in the way here. There is no reason to not drop a title on your way out the door. I would say it’s unprofessional, but Vince wasn’t exactly a saint here either so that’s not fair to put on Bret.

Like I said though, how much can you ask Vince to have to deal with though? I think that’s overlooked a lot in this: the position Vince was in at the time. We all know that Bret was in an awkward spot, but what about Vince? His company was on the brink of bankruptcy, his talent was leaving left and right for WCW, he was getting killed in the ratings, and now he has to worry about his belt being disgraced on WCW.

Actually wait. I need to clarify that. Bret couldn’t show up with the belt, but even if he didn’t, it would have been disastrous for Vince. Like with Flair, if Bret is never beaten for the title and he leaves, why should we believe anyone that gets the belt next is a realistic champion? They never beat Bret. Bret is the WWF champion, not say Shamrock or whomever gets it next.

With the position that Vince was in, he was completely stuck and had to do something. While I don’t think it was the best choice, I honestly don’t know of anything else he could have done. As for Shawn, he’s the most innocent of all in this I think. He shot his mouth off yes, but he was just a pawn in this whole thing. He’s the guy that’s standing next to a fight but not doing anything in it.

Anyone that was in his place would have gotten the same looks, but honestly what is he guilty of? Nothing at all. He did what his boss told him to do. Shawn is innocent. As a whole, I think Bret doesn’t get enough of the blame and Vince gets too much. Vince should get more than Bret, but not as much as he gets.

It was a horrible situation, but I think Bret pushed it too far. I understand where he was coming from, but I think his pride went too far and he became selfish. I know this is going to get some replies and arguments, so bring them on.

 

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We’re all familiar with the Monday Night Wars. Everyone knows the story about how Vince went head to head with Bischoff to square off with WCW for the final supremacy in professional wrestling. Now what a lot of you might not be familiar with is the original war between the NWA and the WWF. These two went to war in the 80s and this is probably the biggest shot that was fired.

For those of you that have watched the Starrcade documentary, you know about how it was the biggest show of the year for the NWA. Now, Wrestlemania was bigger, but it wasn’t as old as Starrcade which came two years earlier. Wrestlemania 3 occurred on March 29, 1987 and smashed every record on the planet. No one, not even Vince, thought it would do as well as it did.

So, based on the strength of this, Vince decided to make a second major show which would be based around Hogan and Andre again. However, he wanted to save the actual rematch for a later date, so instead the WWF came up with this team concept that we now know as the Survivor Series. It would be headlined by Andre’s team against Hogan’s team. Now what does this have to do with the NWA you ask?

The answer to that is simple. Vince decided that he could kill two birds with one stone here, so he booked Survivor Series to go head to head with Starrcade. Then he got really ruthless. He told the PPV providers that if they didn’t air Survivor Series, he wouldn’t allow them to air Wrestlemania. Now this was a HUGE gamble.

If the companies stick to their verbal agreements with the NWA and air Starrcade, then Vince has no one to air Wrestlemania, and if he went back on his word he and the WWF as a whole look like they’re caving in and are therefore weak. However, if the PPV companies fold to his pressure and air Survivor Series, then the NWA is hit badly as they won’t make as much money and the WWF gets a huge advantage.

Based on the fact that the NWA is now on some satellite channel and hasn’t meant anything in nearly 20 years, I think you know what happened. Vince won, and we got Survivor Series instead of Starrcade. The NWA would fire back though on Wrestlemania night by debuting Clash of the Champions on FREE TV, headlined by a 45 minute classic between Flair and Sting which was Sting’s coming out party on the national level.

The ratings for Mania 4 are proof that the show was hurt by CotC, as Mania 4 was far less viewed, especially during the time that the NWA was on. Anyway, that’s the history of how it started, so now let’s get to the history of how it happened. As usual, I’ll be posting a single review a day every day, with the 2008 review being put up on the day before this year’s show. All comments, criticisms and questions are welcome, so I hope you have fun with this as I will.

Survivor Series 1987
Date: November 26, 1987
Location: Richfield Coliseum, Richfield, Ohio (suburb of Cleveland)
Attendance: 21,300
Commentators: Gorilla Monsoon, Jesse Ventura

I think the first show of these series is my favorite. You have little expectation because it’s never been done before. This is especially true in this case as this kind of match had never been seen on a wide level before. Like I’ve said, this was the sequel to Wrestlemania 3, so a lot of the feuds spawned either at that show or between then and now. Summerslam doesn’t even exist at this point.

We have a total of four matches on this card, so for the first few shows, you won’t be getting any matches as it’s kind of pointless to post a fourth or a fifth of the whole care. In this case, we have a mid card match, a women’s match, a tag match and the main event. That’s a grand total of 50 people wrestling tonight. That is a TON. I don’t even know if the rumbles have that many people at them.

Back in the early days this was 5 on 5 instead of the traditional four on four. For those of you that actually don’t know how this works, it’s elimination tag matches. The tag line was two teams of 5 strive to survive. A person can be eliminated by pin, submission, count out or DQ. The team that survives wins.

You can have any combination of people on a team at any point in the match. You could go from 5 vs. 5 to 5 vs. 1 to 1 vs. 1, making a lot of interesting scenarios possible. With all that being said, let’s get to the first ever Survivor Series.

The old school Coliseum Video intro was always sweet beyond belief to me. It’s so retro and so perfect that it’s all you could ask for in a generic intro. We open with a brief shot of the stare down between Andre and Hogan. The announcers talk to us for a good while as they explain a completely new concept to us which is always fun.

We’re in the back with Honky Tonk Man and his team. This match came about from Honky hitting Savage with the guitar and shoving down Liz. He threatens to hit the Shake Rattle and Roll on Liz.

Savage says that he’s coming for Honky.

Honky Tonk Man’s Team vs. Randy Savage’s Team

For simplicity’s sake, I’ll just be listing the captains in the titles and the wrestlers here.

Honky’s Team: Ron Bass, Hercules, Harley Race, Danny Davis.

Savage’s Team: Ricky Steamboat, Jim Duggan, Jake Roberts, Brutus Beefcake.

On my tape the intros are cut and we just get very short clips of most people coming out which is a good way to save a LOT of time. I have the original two hour version of what was about a three hour show. See, it can cut a lot of time out of things. Bear with me on this one as I really have no idea how I’m going to do this. We start with Beefcake against Hercules, so there’s a trivia question that likely no one will ever ask.

One thing that’s certainly better back in the old days is the commentary. You don’t get a bunch of nonsense that no one cares about and that no one understands. Jesse and Gorilla are absolutely great at what they do. There’s very little reason here as to why most of the faces or heels are on their respective teams. The captains are obvious, but for the most part it’s just people that don’t like Honky.

He took the title from Steamboat, he was feuding with Roberts before he got the title, Beefcake would be next in line to feud with him as he had a title shot at WM 4, and Duggan is I guess just someone that needed something to do. On the heel side, there’s really no connection anywhere. Bass and Beefcake would feud in about a year but it was very short. Race didn’t feud with anyone other than some random world title shots.

Davis was just a twerp that cheated when he refereed and was a complete jobber, and Hercules was just the muscle of the Heenan Family. This is really just a midcard match with little rhyme or reason, which is one of the fun parts of this show. It offers a lot of chances for new feuds to start up and for matches that you wouldn’t usually see, which is always a fun thing.

The faces take turns beating on Davis as Ventura continues to say that Savage is the best wrestler in the world. See, that’s a great thing about Jesse. He had no problem admitting that a face was better than any of the heels. We have Harley Race against Ricky Steamboat in a complete and utter wet dream for 80s fans. You have a career heel against a career face and two of the best of all time.

Their careers just kind of missed each other though as Race was just about done when Steamboat got to the NWA again. Race had one of the best belly to belly suplexes of all time. The REAL best there is, best there was and best there ever will be comes in. (it’s the night after Slaughter hosted Raw for those of you that have no clue what I’m talking about). Duggan and Race both get counted out. That’s something that I like about these matches.

You have to do that quite a bit to clear out some of the dead weight in there and in this case it actually makes sense for something like that to happen. I like it. It’s 4-4 now for those of you keeping score at home. It’s now Bass against Roberts. Bass is the epitome of a generic heel. He’s just a mean guy from Texas that was kind of a cowboy. It’s one of those things you had back in the day that a bit more of wouldn’t hurt. Savage keeps trying to get at Honky which eventually gets him caught.

In one of the fastest sequences I can remember, he makes a very fast tag to Beefcake who hits a high knee to make it 4-3. You now have Davis, Hercules and Honky. That’s….not very good. We finally get the captain in there as Beefcake appears intoxicated. I will never get tired of seeing Honky sell an atomic drop. Gorilla says that Brutus has a lot of fight left in him so I’ll put the over under on his elimination time inside of 60 seconds. Yep, he’s gone in 18 as Honky hits the neckbreaker to tie us up at 3.

Here’s the problem though. The three heels I’ve already mentioned are up against Randy Savage, Ricky Steamboat and Jake Roberts. Who do you think is going to win here? Yeah it’s pretty obvious which is what it was the whole match. The only more one sided match that I’ve ever seen was War Games 95 with Haku, Beefcake, Kamala and Earthquake against Savage, Sting, Luger and Hogan.

That’s a dream team for faces against a bunch of bad heels with maybe Haku I guess being the most successful? Yeah I think that one was worse but not by much at all. The story of this match is that Savage wants to kill Honky and nothing more. Apparently losing your captain is the end of your life which isn’t the case but Gorilla would like you to believe it. Since I believe in Gorilla Monsoon, I’ll believe that. What amuses me the most though is that once Savage is finally in there with Honky he tags out.

The DDT is teased but Honky gets out. That was a revolutionary move back then as there was nothing that was anywhere near as fast as that move. It changed a lot of moves in later times such as the Stunner or Rock Bottom which are moves that can be hit in the blink of an eye. That can be credited to the DDT and therefore Jake Roberts for making it happen.

Until then you had moves like the leg drop or the figure four that took a lot of time to set up and were easy to see coming. With the DDT it’s in the blink of an eye so you have to pay very close attention to Roberts, and also whenever he’s in trouble he’s not far enough out of it that a single DDT can’t save him. That adds a completely different dimension to Roberts’ character. There it is. Even Jesse knows Davis is done.

Hercules just kills Roberts with a clothesline after Davis is gone though. The heels do various nefarious things to Jake since Macho keeps going after Honky. Herc is called Hercules Hernandez which I thought had had long since stopped being called. Time for the Orton Special here as we need time to stall. They beat on Jake for a LONG time here and we go back to the chinlock. Roberts breaks it with what I guess would be called a head drag.

He shakes his head to send Hercules flying in the same movement that you would use in an arm drag. It’s right back on him though so the move was completely pointless, although cool looking. He gets the tag to Steamboat who amazingly would be performing on PPV TWENTY TWO FREAKING YEARS AFTER THIS. Think about that. How many of you are under 22? This is in the middle of his career and he had a longer time between that and Mania/Backlash this year when he wrestled again. That’s scary.

Big elbow ends Hercules to get us down to the real thing we want to see: Honky get his face kicked in. What follows is about two and a half minutes of Honky just being destroyed. Everything he tries is stopped dead. It’s more or less target practice at this point until an atomic drop sends him over the ropes and he runs away to end this via countout, which in this case makes sense.

Rating: B+. This was a very fun way to start the series. It had all kinds of guys out there and the faces got a bit of revenge. Honky shows that he’s smart by leaving in a match that really means nothing as the title isn’t on the line. It did a good job of showing what these matches can turn into with the 3-1 finish, as well as it progressed the Honky feuds with the midcard angle.

Savage was supposed to beat him for the title at Mania 4, but due to a lot of other backstage stuff, he got the world title instead and this feud was kind of left without a finish. This was a great old school 80s match though which was a great way to get us into the match type, so definitely a good opener.

We have a transition period here as the Women are introduced which few people either know or care about, with the announcers talking about whether Honky was right to bail or not.

Sensational Sherri’s Team vs. Fabulous Moolah’s Team

This would have been a 6 man tag any other time as it was only about the tag titles and the women’s title. Yes, there were Women’s Tag Titles back in the day. The champions there are the Glamour Girls and they’re feuding with the Jumping Bomb Angels. The Angels were more or less a cruiserweight style in women’s wrestling and they were very fun to watch.

They were very crisp out there and knew what they were doing. The other feud is Sherri vs. Moolah, as Sherri had taken the title from her recently. Compared to the 28 year (allegedly) reign of the Fabulous one, this was FAR shorter. Here’s the lineups:

Sherri’s Team: Glamour Girls (Judy Martin/Lelani Kai), Donna Christianello, Dawn Marie (no not THAT Dawn Marie).

Moolah’s Team: Jumping Bomb Angels (I can’t spell their names), Velvet McIntyre, Rockin Robin.

Yeah, women’s wrestling back in the 80s was a mix of awesome and worse than today’s product depending on when you were watching it. Wendi Richter for example was headlining some house shows in 85, but then you’d have some matches where they would make Alicia Fox look like Trish and Lita combined. Moolah is listed at 160lbs, which is amusing. She argues about it as do the commentators. This is really fast paced especially when the Bomb Angels are in there.

One of them jumps over the top rope and comes in with a dropkick before she hits the mat. That’s just cool looking. Chrisitanello is gone in about 2 minutes as McIntyre hits a great rollup move to pin her. Velvet was a great wrestler that never really got the credit she deserved. She hit a lot of moves you would see a guy like Rey hit, so that’s a compliment if there ever was one. She used a lot of one footed dropkicks which is effective and different at the same time. Kai comes in.

She would actually be at WM 10 fighting for the women’s title. It came from left field and was a one off appearance. She was destroyed and it made little sense. It would be like having Bart Gunn show up and fight Rey in a random IC Title match. Robin botches hitting the ropes which isn’t something you see that often.

Robin eliminates Dawn Marie with a bad looking cross body. That makes it 5-3 and more or less makes this what matters. It was about the tag feud and the three single faces against Sherri. One of the Angels is in now and uses what we would call a Matrix move to get out of a pin. Considering she was on the mat and did that to get out, that’s impressive.

She is all over the place and tags in her partner who starts by coming in with what we would call Old School but instead of a chop or walking the ropes, she rolls over in a perfect arm drag. This is one of the fastest tag teams I’ve ever seen, regardless of gender. Sherri is getting beaten on now by just about everyone which is always fun to see. This is kind of similar to what happened to Honky earlier but Sherri is the tougher of the two.

They botch (kind of) a monkey flip which to be fair is a hard move to hit. Also the Glamour Girls aren’t exactly tiny ladies. Robin gets pinned with a suplex. Yeah in the 80s that was a big move actually, and not just for the women. Flair won his first WWF match in the 70s with that move. EGADS one of the Angels gets throw 360 by the hair. Velvet hits a cross body where she rotates around the body of the Glamour Girl.

As in she makes contact and her feet go into the air and then she lands the other way than the way she jumps if that makes sense. Moolah hits a bolo punch and I can’t believe I actually knew that. The tags are WAY too fast for me to keep up with here. Jesse goes on a short tangent about how one of the women should go bald to avoid hair pulling.

That’s actually not a bad idea. Back then it wasn’t about the looks so why not? Moolah gets knocked out by a clothesline, which is likely good as she was 6-freaking-4 years old at this point and had been women’s champion earlier in the year. What does that tell you about the women’s division at this time? That makes it 3-3.

Sherri thinks she’s Hulk Hogan with a leg drop and then a….what was that? It was a combination gutwrench suplex and DDT. I think it was supposed to be a suplex and was a botch. Yeah the women weren’t always perfect. We have a messed up bell ringing as one of the Angels bridges out of a pin and the bell rings anyway. The referee waves it off so it was a mistake I guess. We get a VERY old school giant swing which is always cool. Yeah Velvet is hurt and I think it’s legit.

She does get a victory roll to eliminate Sherri but Sherri’s shoulder was up. I really think the injury is legit. Either that or she’s the best seller I’ve ever seen. The Angels can’t slam the Glamour Girls, if that tells you how big these girls are. It’s the most basic hold there is and it can’t be done. It’s not the Angels’ fault though. We get a body scissors of all things which I guess could hurt a bit. We get REALLY old school as we have a sling shot.

A match with a slingshot and a giant swing makes this the best match EVER. Velvet is pinned in what we would call an electric chair to make this an elimination tag team match. These four would have a bunch of matches, including a fictitious title change in Cairo. They would actually have a title match at the first Royal Rumble where the Angels would take the titles before the belts were just dropped. Kai is eliminated by a cross body as this is really close to being over.

We get a move that I’ve always liked the idea of as they go for an atomic drop and instead just drop Judy Martin down. Jimmy Hart gets dropkicked to the floor and a top rope clothesline ends it. This was fast paced and very fun, but sloppy as HECK.

Rating: C+. The Bomb Angels were fun to watch as they could possibly out move Lita. It was a decent length match and they got rid of the dead weight very fast which was fine and then we got down to some better stuff. There were certainly some horrid spots, but there was enough good to make it passable.

Amazingly, we’re halfway done.

The announcers praise the Angels as they certainly should. Jesse’s line of the Glamour Girls are in trouble is very true. You can tell he was really impressed.

The Hart Foundation, the heel captains, are with most of their team as I don’t think you can fit 10 guys and two managers into a single shot. Heenan says that they’re ready.

Strike Force say their team will win. You can hear Demolition’s theme playing in the background during this.

Strike Force’s Team vs. Hart Foundation’s Team

Hart Foundation’s Team: Demolition, Dream Team (Dino Bravo/Greg Valentine), Islanders, Bolsheviks.

Strike Force’s Team: Killer Bees, Young Stallions, British Bulldogs, Rougeau Brothers.

Nikolai Volkoff and Rick Martel start. The rules here are that if any person is eliminated, his partner is too which is a nice little twist. You have 20 guys in this match so this is a crowded apron. I’ve always liked Strike Force for some reason. I have no idea why but I’ve always loved their stuff. Zhukoff tagged someone but it’s ignored. Have to love that kind of thing. The apron is about 80% full. Bolsheviks are gone in about a minute after the forearm.

Oh yeah this is happening because Strike Force won the titles from the Harts and the Harts want revenge. Demolition was just freaking awesome all the time. For some reason Jesse can’t tell the Rougeaus apart. One is blonde and the other has facial hair. They don’t even look related. We get a real power match here with Smash against Davey.

The sad case that is Dynamite Kid comes in and gets beaten on. Dynamite was the man that Benoit based his entire style off of. This is just hard to call as the tags are even faster than the last match. Paul “I was a Horseman blast it!” Roma comes in. Monsoon says you have to pay attention in this one. Truer words have never been spoken. Jesse’s line of the Young Stallions look like geldings right now made me laugh.

The Rougeaus are gone off a missed cross body so at least it’s down to four to four or eight to eight depending on how you look at it. This is a great case of power vs. speed all around. Neidhart and Haku, which is a strange pairing if there ever was one, hit a cool looking double team move with Neidhart having him over the shoulder and Haku hitting a double axe.

Valentine comes in, amazingly looking the same 22 years later. Has there ever been a guy more stuck in the 80s? That’s not fair though as he still looks pretty good for his age. Bravo would have a short angle about his strength coming up.

Everyone beats up Dynamite and Smash shoves the referee to eliminate Demolition to a very loud pop. The most successful guy in the match comes in: Bret Hart. Good grief how many titles are there between these twenty guys? Actually not as many as you would think. Unless I’m missing something, only Bret is a future world champion and of all people Martel was a former world champion at this point, having held the AWA title for over a year.

Actually, after this, other than hardcore titles, the only people to win singles titles after this were Bret, Bulldog and Martel, who had a completely forgotten and unimportant WCW TV Title reign of about a week. Oh and Santana would win the ancestor of the ECW title, which meant nothing at the time. Jesse and Gorilla argue over how to pronounce Tama’s name. Strike Force is WAY over. In case you’re wondering, the score at this point is 4-3 with Strike Force in the lead.

Now we’re both slowing down a bit and we’re getting to the point where things are also a LOT less cluttered. That was the problem earlier: things were just overly crowded. Neidhart pins Santana which really furthered their feud as the former champions pin the champions. Even with that, Demolition would be the team to take the belts from them at Mania 4, holding them for over a year in the longest reign in history which I can’t imagine would ever be topped.

Jesse says his great, great grandfather Ephraim the Body came over on the Mayflower. To say Jesse was hilarious is an understatement. The Stallions are just getting the heck beaten out of them, but like a bad fungus they won’t go away. With it being 6 on 6 it’s a lot better looking here.

That being said, the Bulldogs are put down by superkicking Dynamite after a very fast paced sequence with Bulldog and the Harts to an extent. The Stallions are STILL getting beaten up at this point and you almost want to feel sorry for them. I say almost because then you flash back to how much of a bastardization the Horsemen were with Roma in them. Hit Roma MORE!

It’s now 3-2 heels, which I believe is the first time all night that a heel team has been ahead. That’s actually very impressive. The Dream Team, who I never remember winning a match, screw up by trying to show off which allows Roma to pin Valentine with a sunset flip off the top and get us down to some hot four on four action. In case you can’t remember, that’s the Harts and the Islanders vs. the animal lovers of the Bees and the Stallions.

Hart is just so far ahead of everyone else out there it’s scary. Tama is a guy that was awesome yet sadly enough not a lot ever was done with him. He was 21 at this point and after about another year, you just wouldn’t hear much of him again. Jimmy has to be tired as he’s been out there for all three matches so far. Egads a double headbutt from the Islanders and Roma has to be completely dead. I have something to be thankful for on this Thanksgiving show.

Haku and Neidhart both hit dropkicks. This was actually a nice coincidence as Monsoon says he’d like to see Anvil get up for a dropkick and before he’s done saying that Anvil was in the air. The timing was perfect and Monsoon got a kick out of that. No that wasn’t meant to be a pun. Roma FINALLY gets out and a Jim Brunzell is in. The Bees take out the Harts after a rollup. We get the evil foreign nerve hold which never actually did anything that I can remember.

The Islanders, the far fresher and more dominant team, get a lot of time to beat on the quick faces which is a nice sign. They get about seven minutes. Another nerve hold and Jim looks like he’s having a seizure or getting a blowjob from a Rottweiler. We go to a random shot of the crowd. Yeah that made no sense at all. After a VERY long beatdown, we get all 6 guys in the ring except one. Blair has put a mask on and hits a sunset flip as the illegal man for the win.

You would think that the referee would notice that there was a killer bee getting knocked to the floor and within half a second a masked bee is hitting a sunset flip but then again, I’m no professional. Despite having nothing to do with the ending, Strike Force’s music is played for the faces to leave to.

Rating: B. This was awesome with all kinds of stuff going on. The apron was crowded but this was much better paced than some of the other matches tonight which just flew by with everyone being eliminated within a few seconds. Here the match went on longer and people were eliminated in a more normal and realistic style.

The ending was fun as the faces cheated to win and speed beat power. This was just fun with everyone getting a turn and hitting their finisher which is always cool to see. It was a bit sloppy with so many people, but dang it was fun.

Ted DiBiase is thankful that he’s rich and that he got to make RVD kiss his feet back when RVD was about 12. How amazing is it that DiBiase would never be a world champion and the kid that kissed his feet would? That’s amazing for anything, not just pro wrestling.

Honky says he’s still the IC champion. Yeah the belt didn’t give that away.

Jesse’s hat is great as he tries to get it over his headset but it’s just kind of sitting on his head. Even Gorilla says that wasn’t fair.

Recap of the main event feud. Andre hasn’t wrestled since Mania, which isn’t true as he was likely on house shows but we can’t let that be known. Heenan and Andre says they’re going to destroy Hogan. Andre is so huge he’s terrifying.

Hogan says his team will dominate.

Andre’s Team vs. Hogan’s Team

Andre’s Team: Butch Reed, Rick Rude, King Kong Bundy, One Man Gang.

Hogan’s Team: Bam Bam Bigelow, Don Muraco, Ken Patera, Paul Orndorff.

Bobby’s introduction of Andre is a bit amusing as he says he’s from FRANCE. Heenan just shouts it which was a bit odd. This was at the very end of Hogan’s four year reign as he would lose the belt two days after I was born on February 5th 1988. We actually have reasons for a lot of these guys being in this match. Hogan and Andre of course need no explanation. Orndorff hates Heenan (although they would reunite about a year later) because Heenan fired Orndorff for Rude so those two are explained.

Orndorff and Bigelow shared a manager in Oliver Humperdink so that’s why the Beast from the East is there. Patera was feuding with the Heenan Family, and Muraco had saved Billy Graham from Gang and Reed. Graham was supposed to be in this match but had to retire due to injuries. Bundy is there just because of Heenan, and Reed and Gang are there to get back at Muraco. Some of these are a bit stretched, but I think it’s fine.

Graham was Hogan’s friend so Muraco being in the match as his replacement is fine. Hogan is still rocking the old school WWF Title here which was a bland looking belt. Orndorff gets a heck of a pop which surprises me a bit. Of course the roof is blown off for Hogan as it should be. Andre’s eyes are locked onto Hogan as he comes down with the American flag. Was there a point to Hogan’s bandana having the strips hanging down into his eyes that I just never got?

Monsoon says that Hogan decides Rock is going to start. I love that it’s just assumed that Hogan makes all of the decisions because he’s the only one with a brain. Ok on second thought looking at his team that’s a good idea actually. Hogan’s team huddling is clichéd but cool. Moraco is freaking scary looking.

We start with the ravishing one and the magnificent one. I love how they don’t even have names anymore and it’s just descriptions. Rude’s tights are odd to say the least as they’re covered in road signs. Hogan is in and gets less of a pop than Orndorff. However, his is much longer. Bigelow gets a loud reaction of his own. Patera, a guy that I’ve already explained, gets zero reaction. It’s also Butch Reed in there now.

Big leg gets rid of Reed in about 3 minutes. Andre comes in and the showdown is imminent. However, Hogan high fives Patera which is called a tag. Even Hogan says he didn’t mean to do it. Jesse screams conspiracy about Joey Marella saving Hogan. In something that you might not know, Joey is the son of Gorilla Monsoon. You know, if Hogan wants Andre so badly, why doesn’t Patera just tag him back in? Andre tags out to Bundy anyway.

Why is it that every time that a big guy is sent into the corner Monsoon swears the ring moves at least 6 inches? No, it didn’t. According to the voiceover guy, the heels weigh close to 2000 pounds. Are you telling me that one guy can move them that far? Patera is eliminated by the gang to tie us up at 4. Bigelow’s pop for him helping Hogan is INSANE. Orndorff and Bigelow are getting pops that can rival Hogan. That’s saying a lot.

No that’s saying more than a lot. That’s mind blowing and unheard of. Orndorff and Rude are gone within 2 minutes of that and since they were more or less filler I’ll spare you the details. Rude was out of the pin but we’ll let it go I guess. Muraco and Bundy are in there now and just as I say that Gang comes in. That’s about 1400lbs between three guys. That’s freaking insane. Not even Taker, Kane and Show are that big. Muraco tries to slam Gang.

Yeah there’s a reason he’s known for his body and not his brain. Note: at this point Hogan and Andre haven’t touched each other. Gang eliminates Muraco with a splash and he’s on a roll here. The more I see of Bigelow the more I agree with IC. This is brought on as Bammer gets a great looking (considering who did it) sunset flip on the Gang. He cleared him almost easily. That’s very impressive since Gang was taller than Hogan.

Bigelow is getting beaten up badly here. I love how Hogan has been in there maybe 45 seconds other than run ins and yet will easily get the biggest paycheck of the night. Heenan apparently has a master plan. Is there a school for managers and heels to get master plans from? I’d love to sign up for them. Did anyone else ever think that Hogan looked like he was about to cry when he was upset? His face was always comical to me.

Andre is huge compared to Bigelow, but we don’t get to explore that as Bigelow rolls forward and it’s on. The pop for this blows away everything else all night. Hogan of course beats the tar out of Andre. He hits the ropes but Bundy pulls him out. Hogan plays hero and beats on the inconsequential heels, slamming them both, but in doing so he’s counted out. So let me get this straight. Hogan and Andre lasts a 54 seconds, meaning Hogan was legal less than 2 minutes combined in this match.

You have to love that. Actually I don’t. That’s ridiculous. The show was based around this but instead we get a minute long fight and Hogan out there for less time than some people can hold their breath. That’s just freaking sad. Now we have Bigelow against these three, which I’m betting isn’t going to go well for the Beast. Jesse points out that even if Bigelow was fresh this would be nearly impossible. He throws a dropkick of all things and gets height on it. I’m impressed with this guy.

Considering the other two big guys did jack and Bigelow just did a slingshot splash and cleared the top rope at nearly 400lbs, I’m impressed with Bigelow, so IC, you win this one. Gang misses a top rope splash and gets pinned. I think that was rigged so he could go find pie. So it’s Andre vs. Bigelow, and Andre is more or less fresh against Bigelow who is pretty much dead. Bigelow is rolling around to avoid Andre but then in a move that just looks hilarious Bigelow charges at him and misses.

That looked like something from a bad comedy movie. Andre hits a suplex move which was kind of a butterfly I guess but with only one arm hooked (Gorilla says double which isn’t true at all) for the win. Hogan runs out and beats Andre up. That is even more nonsense. Andre won completely clean. Hogan got beat clean. I love how Hogan could do absolutely no wrong. This is ridiculous actually and Hogan is a whining bastard.

He of course poses to end the show and Jesse is absolutely right: he has nothing to celebrate. Jesse as always threatens to come out of retirement and take the title from Hogan. In the back, Heenan and Andre say they’re ready for Hogan and they just proved it and all Hogan has to do is sign the contract. Jesse is rightfully ticked off and we have credits?

Rating: B. This was another good match and it did the important thing: it gave you the possibility that Hogan could lose. It evened the score at one apiece. I’m actually ticked off about what Hogan did. That’s just complete and utter nonsense. Why should Hogan get to do that? The heels winning was brilliant and unexpected, and it set up the rematch in early February that got a 15 in the ratings. Think about that for a bit.

Overall Rating: A-. This was a perfect way to introduce the format. It advanced the stories, it gave a bridge to the next year, and it was all fun. You had four distinctly different matches, each of which played to a different area of the card, and the ending was a surprise. This is a rare occurrence in the history of the company actually.

Usually I would say that you should watch it because it’s the first show and for nothing else. This time, watch it because it’s the first show and because it’s a great show. This is definitely good and worth watching and gets a very high recommendation.

Note: this is accurate as of August 11th, 2009. Now, I did a bit of research here and I found something that illustrates a lot. As I said, there were 50 wrestlers in action tonight. For the sake of this, we’ll factor out the women’s match and say it’s 40. Let’s compare this to a match from last year’s Survivor Series, in this case Team Orton (Orton, Shelton Benjamin, William Regal, Cody Rhodes, Mark Henry) vs. Team Batista (Batista, CM Punk, Matt Hardy, Kofi Kingston, R-Truth).

Now, that’s 40 guys compared to 10 guys. In total, the 40 men on tonight’s show won 60 titles in the WWF. That’s a lot. By comparison, the 10 guys in the modern match have won 54 (excluding the hardcore title reigns which would put the modern team over). Think about that for a minute. ¼ of the people won 90% of the amount of tag titles. Also, R-Truth as of this writing has never held a non-hardcore title.

I’m also considering any tag title reign as separate reigns, so Neidhart and Bret Hart, three time tag champions, account for 6 of those 60 titles. That tells me a few things. First, there are FAR too many titles today. Second, it’s not as hard to become a champion today. Look at two main event guys in the 87 show: Bigelow and Orndorff.

Neither won any titles in WWF, yet they main evented shows, yet Matt Hardy and William Regal have never main evented any PPV that I remember (they may have but off the top of my head I’ve got nothing) and have a combined 22.

Now Hardy is probably a bigger star than either of them, but Regal simply isn’t bigger than Bigelow, plain and simple. Therefore, third, it says that title reigns don’t mean that you’re a star. Either way, there’s a huge difference between the eras and the title scene now is just ridiculous.

 

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I completely forgot about it this year.  I’m going to start posting two a day, starting with the 87 original and the one that would be today (Sunday, 1997) and I’ll be caught up in about 5 days.  SOrry about the delay.

 

KB