Royal Rumble 1990
Date: January 21, 1990
Location: Orlando Arena, Orlando, Florida
Attendance: 16,000
Commentators: Jesse Ventura, Tony Schiavone

Yes, that Tony Schiavone, not the other Tony Schiavone. He was around for a cup of coffee around this time and it’s more or less completely forgotten. Anyway, we’re at the third Rumble now and the look of the show has completely changed. It’s not the old and for lack of a better term tired looking ring and logo, but rather the bright and colorful one that is more commonly known. Naturally Hogan is world champion here and is looking for an opponent at Mania 6.

At this time, no one knew who that was going to be. There were rumors ranging from Warrior to Mr. Perfect (more on that later) to Zeus of all people. There were even rumors that Vince was going to have Hogan drop the belt back to Savage to have Savage vs. Warrior for the main event.

Vince was in real financial trouble at this time and Mania absolutely had to be huge or he very well could have gone bankrupt. Other than the Rumble, there’s not a lot here. Correction: there’s nothing else here. On that note, let’s get to the drivel that is the non main event matches before we get to the real reason this show exists.

The opening is just Vince listing the card and a lot of people in the Rumble. Oh and there’s a Brother Love show tonight. Jesse is wearing Mickey Mouse ears. That’s just awesome. There needs to be another character like Jesse on commentary. He’s just so awesome at it.

Fabulous Rougeaus vs. Bushwackers

All American Boys is just an awesome song. Jimmy Hart was awesome. This whole era just completely rocks. I love me some Marching Morons. Jacques has a big old beard here so maybe Jesse can finally tell their unsimilar faces apart. Jesse says that Mickey and Goofy didn’t have tickets. That’s so stupid yet Jesse makes me chuckle with it. It’s good because they’re killing time in the ring so Jesse at least gives us something to enjoy.

This is I guess you would say a rematch from Wrestlemania 5. We’re a minute in and Ramon uses a sleeper. Butch bites the referee’s pants. There was just something slightly homosexual about these teams. Watch their matches and you’ll sense it too. Ladies and gentlemen, I regret to inform you that we have a comedy match here. After about 4-5 instances of the same exact stuff over and over again, the Bushwackers are in trouble.

Luke gets beaten on for a good while as this is running too long. Naturally Luke gets the tag to Butch. If nothing else the crowd is on fire here. If they’re like this for Luke and Butch, what are they going to be like for Hogan? Anyway, after some interference by Jimmy, the Battering Ram ends this.

Rating: D+. This just went on too long. If they cut about 3 minutes in the middle of it, this would have gone much better. It was a comedy match which is ok, but not for nearly 15 minutes. That’s just way too long. These two had some shall we say interesting matches over the years and this was no exception. There’s not a lot going on here, but the crowd liked it so take that for what it’s worth.

DiBiase and Virgil are with Gene, who suggests that DiBiase rigged last year’s drawing. Either way, he has #1 this year. DiBiase was just a masterful heel. His line of “Let me tell you something little man” is just awesome stuff.

Genius vs. Brutus Beefcake

Genius’ brother is the far more famous but possibly less talented Randy Savage. Yeah I said it. Beefcake’s music is just sweet and always has been. For like the 12th time tonight we see the capacity crowd. We get it already. Genius offers a left-handed handshake. Why don’t more people do that? Genius is doing a semi-gay gimmick here, complete with cartwheels and various things that apparently equate to homosexuality.

Sorry if that comes off as derogatory, but it’s simply the case. An atomic drop by Brutus makes Genius roll around the ring three full times. That’s quite impressive. This is really a glorified squash, despite Genius being the lackey of one of the bigger heels in the company in Mr. Perfect. He also beat Hogan (count out) on SNME a few weeks prior to this. Brutus is a power guy, but you very rarely see him portrayed as such.

For such a long match (run time of about 12 minutes) not a lot is happening here. It’s not really bad and it’s kind of interesting, but nothing of note is really happening. After the sleeper doesn’t get put on, the referee is bumped and the lack of a clean ending becomes obvious. WOW. The crowd popped like a cherry for the sleeper. That’s saying a lot. Somehow inside of about 12 seconds the Genius is sound asleep.

That never ceases to amaze me. Here’s a haircut for the Genius because the referee is still out cold. Perfect runs in and beats up Beefcake though. It’s thrown out in case you were wondering. Oh and in this beatdown, Perfect uses a Perfectplex. I won’t even touch on why that’s stupid. Perfect hits a few chair shots to the ribs as it’s announced as a double DQ, I guess for the haircut. Or some reason we have a slow motion replay of basic strikes.

Rating: C+. Like I said, for such a long match, nothing really happened. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad though. It wasn’t bad at all, but it just kind of came and went. Beefcake had a very short feud with Perfect and then got injured I think, putting his career on the shelf for a good many years. Perfect would become IC Champion after Warrior had to vacate it, and the rest of his career is well known. Either way, this wasn’t bad at all, but certainly not memorable.

Mooney is with the Heenan Family. He mentions that they might wind up fighting each other. Hilarity ensues.

Mania 6 will be in Toronto.

BLAST IT ALL! Ronnie freaking Garvin is on this show. In case I haven’t mentioned it, I want him to be shot.

Submission Match: Ronnie Garvin vs. Greg Valentine

Let’s get this over with. Both guys use submissions occasionally, so that’s validation of a gimmick match. Since this is a submission match, they both take boxing stances and pound on each other. Well if nothing else it’s physical. The boxing makes a bit of sense as it’s wearing the other guy down. That at least makes some sense. They keep going for pins here, which makes sense as it’s instinct to go for a pin in a wrestling match for these guys.

If that’s fake or legit, I’m fine either way. If it’s legit, that’s just instinct. If it’s fake, it’s a nice addition to a match. Jesse implies these two are top level talent. Not in the WWF at least they’re not. They’re really building this slowly which is something good. It’s not done anymore and it should be. Oh I forgot: both guys have shin guards on which allegedly stops the submissions from hurting.

To further my hatred of him, Ronnie Garvin is in the figure four and makes “funny” faces at Valentine. Who in the world thought that would be a good idea? No wonder Vince was running out of money. He spent a ton of it on high quality cocaine apparently. Garvin uses an Indian Deathlock. Other than Terry Funk losing to Harley Race with it, I don’t think anyone has ever won anything with it.

If nothing else, these guys are beating the tar out of each other. That’s not bad at all. After a double collision, Hart steals Garvin’s leg brace which is called the Hammer Jammer. Now the figure four works. I think that almost comes close to making sense, but it’s just overdone. After reversing the figure four, we slug it out some more. This has been a very Attitude Era style match. Garvin steals the Valentine leg brace. Hart gets beaten up and a bad Sharpshooter from Garvin gets him the win.

Rating: F. Any match that Ronnie Garvin is featured in automatically is awful, no questions asked. For an unbiased grade let’s go with a B-. This was very intense and all kinds of brutal without weapons use. I still hate Garvin, but this was his best match to date that I’ve seen.

Sean is with Hacksaw, who says that Boss Man won’t be a problem for him. Duggan just looks WEIRD here. His eyes are mostly closed so I’m guessing stoned and or drunk. The end of his board is green for some reason too.

Big Bossman vs. Jim Duggan

Duggan still has no music here. Oh and Slick is Boss Man’s manager. Surprising no one, this starts as a big brawl. Almost immediately we’re on the floor. Boss Man misses a charge and his arm hits the post, and in something that stuns me, Duggan actually follows up on it! That lasts all of 3 seconds as Boss Man goes back on offense, with a FREAKING ENZIGURI! What in the world??? Where did he learn that?

Tony says the Boss Man shouldn’t have the nightstick. Jesse counters with why should Duggen have the 2×4? Tony says it’s his trademark. Wow and I thought Vince was biased towards faces. From a wrestling standpoint, this is crap. From a brawling standpoint it’s pretty good. I’m not sure what Duggan has done other than punch, but that’s ok I suppose. No actually it isn’t. I know he’s a brawler but there’s other stuff you can do too.

Clotheslines, shoulders, maybe a suplex or something? That would at least add some variety. There’s a real similarity in styles here which means that it’s going to be very hard to have a good match between these two. It can work with guys like Bret and Shawn, but with guys like Duggan who are kind of limited in their offense, this isn’t going to go well. Also, this isn’t the Boss Man that you’re familiar with. He’s about 40-50 pounds heavier at this stage of his career.

He’s not nearly as fat as he was last year, but he’s still a big old guy. You can really tell here by the end that they’re both just completely spent. Considering we’re about eight minutes in, that’s not saying a lot. For some reason that I’ll never get, Boss Man goes for a top rope splash that naturally misses.

It’s a shame that two guys are this spent this fast. Ok maybe not fast but it shouldn’t be this bad period. Boss Man nails Duggan with the stick but gets caught for the very cheap DQ. Dang man can we please get a clean pin in a match tonight? Is that too much to ask for? The 2×4 doesn’t hit anyone but it gets rid of the heels.

Rating: C+. This was fine for what it was, which is a big brawl. Neither guy is going to light the world on fire or anything like that, so this was about as good as it was ever going to get. Boss Man had slimmed down a bit here and was getting close to the weight that he would be most famous at. That enziguri was kind of preview of the great stuff that was coming from him in the next year or so. Anyway, this was good enough and they kept it kind of short which was the best thing possible.

Nothing has change in the last half hour as Mania 6 is STILL in Toronto!

Perfect is proud of what he did, and that he got #30.

Brother Love Show

Love is talking about the definition of a lady. He brings out the definition of a lady: Sensational Sherri. Jesse actually says she looks hot. I don’t remember hearing that term in 1990. In what takes about 10 minutes, they say that Sapphire is the definition of a peasant which brings her out.

Love keeps cutting her off over and over again which gets her more and more angry. She hits Sherri, leading to Savage coming out. Dusty of course comes out and the faces run off the heels and beat up Love. That took 12 minutes somehow. What was the point of Sapphire? Does anyone have an answer to that for me? That was long and rather pointless.

A lot of people say their thoughts on their Rumble numbers.

Dino Bravo wants his to be close to Warrior’s.

Earthquake will crush everyone.

Demolition say they won’t have to fight each other this year, so they’re lucky.

Bad News Brown says that people will be crying when their favorite wrestlers lose.

Dusty says that he wants to get his hands on Savage. Sapphire joins him to incomprehensibly yell.

The Rockers say they’ll be fine and they want the Powers of Pain.

Hercules says that he’s ready.

Rick Martel says no one will touch his beautiful face.

Tito Santana says he has no friends today. ARRIBA!

Jimmy Snuka says something about sharks.

Slick and Akeem (who over the last two years has had by far the best run in the two Rumbles) is the baddest guy in there.

Warrior is his general insane self, saying something about a virus, then mentioning Hogan’s name.

Tony and Jesse say some generic stuff before the next batch talk. This must have been an intermission.

Savage says he’s the person you shouldn’t bet against.

The Powers of Pain say they’ll win, which makes no sense but whatever.

Jake says the man that will do anything will win, which is him.

The Harts say they’re ready to go the distance. Those two had scary chemistry together.

Honky says he’s going to play 29 hits.

Finally, Hogan says that he’s ready.

Royal Rumble

We already know that DiBiase got #1, so the big question is who got #2? The answer would be none other than the joke of the Hall of Fame, Koko B. Ware. Seriously, what’s wrong with this picture? DiBiase, who still doesn’t have music here but would get it by Mania, isn’t in the Hall of Fame but Ware is. That’s just inexcusable. Ted jumps him on the way into the ring which is smart.

Koko is blonde here for no apparent reason. He gets slammed head first into the buckle and for some reason that wakes him up. Koko goes into jobber offense 101 but a charge at the ropes leaves DiBiase alone in the ring. 3 is Marty Jannetty, who I’m currently debating about in the spam zones. After some more jobber offense including that signature punch of his, Jannetty tries a cross body near the ropes and goes out to leave DiBiase alone again.

Jake Roberts is in fourth. These two would go at it again at Mania. DiBiase jumps to the floor to go after him including putting on the Million Dollar Dream. Back in the ring Jake naturally takes over and goes for the DDT, which fails. Sorry for the play by play aspect here, but this early on it’s really just one liners until we get something significant going on, which may take a little time.

They beat on each other for awhile until Savage comes in at 5. He’s rocking bright blue tights trimmed with black and nearly pink gloves. I’ll give him this: he was unique. They double team Jake as we’re finally getting something going here. Far less than two minutes later, Roddy freaking Piper is in at 6. The fans pop loudly for him too. That’s a pretty good collection of talent in there, but very few titles in the company.

Savage had three, DiBiase had three, Piper had one and Roberts had zero. That’s quite surprising. That’s quite a tag match also. There are some insane feuds in there, some of which never happened. Savage vs. Piper anyone? Can you imagine the promos those two would have on each other? All four of these guys could work and talk with the best of them. We mess that up with the Warlord coming in at seven.

He’s still a Power of Pain here so he’s about as generic of a monster heel as you could imagine. In something that’s both surprising and cool, Piper just flat out beats Warlord up. That’s awesome. Piper can really fight when he has to. Sherri shouting to break Jake’s neck is creepy. The eighth guy is Bret Hart. DANG there’s some talent out there! You have Bret, Savage, Roberts, Piper and DiBiase out there.

Just how awesome of a collection of talent is that? Bret got a very good pop by the way, so people knew that he was something special. Since he’s Bret Hart he goes after the biggest man in the match. This is a smark’s dream match here. Piper and Hart work together. Is there a bad combination in there that doesn’t include Warlord? With this many great guys in there, nine has to suck.

It’s Bad News Brown, who somehow is the sixth most talented guy in the ring out of seven? That can’t be something that would happen a lot. Brown was so far ahead of his time it’s scary. Think of Brown and then think of Austin. How many similarities are there in there? Jake sets for the DDT but Savage knocks him out instead. Dang I guess it couldn’t last forever. Piper almost puts DiBiase out but Savage makes the save.

Tony suggests that Savage has been paid off. That’s an interesting thought. We hit double digits with Dusty, who skips to the ring. That was just a wrong image. Naturally he goes after Savage with a bunch of elbows that miss by about two or three inches each. Dusty takes out Savage in what might have been the only thing Dusty ever got over Savage in their very long feud. There’s a fan in a red shirt in the front row that is as energetic of a fan as I’ve ever seen at a wrestling show.

Andre is eleven, moving so slowly that it’s flat out sad to watch. He can’t even stand up straight since his back is so messed up. Within seconds he tosses the Warlord as Heenan and Fuji are going at it on the floor. I’d pay to not have to see that. Dusty gets crushed by the epic weight of Andre in the corner. There’s some great comedy there that a guy as lazy as Dusty is getting crushed by the biggest guy in the company.

Speaking of annoying wrestlers, Red Rooster is 12. I know I wasn’t talking about annoying wrestlers but I had nothing better for a transition there. Piper throws out Brown but Brown comes back and pulls Piper out. They fight to the back with a huge Roddy chant accompanying them. This led to the weird match where Piper was painted half black.

According to his DVD, Andre and someone else ribbed him by getting rid of the stuff that got the paint off of him so he was stuck like that for 2-3 weeks afterwards. That’s just amusing. Just to recap, in the ring we have Andre, Rooster, Hart, DiBiase, Rhodes, and at 13 we have Axe of Demolition. As he gets in, Andre throws out Rooster, thank goodness. Dusty and Axe get Andre tied in the ropes but before they can try to throw him out, Haku, Andre’s partner, comes in at 14 to make the save.

DiBiase looks spent one second and the next he looks great. That’s impressive. Dusty does his weird Hulking Up thing with the dancing that I always got annoyed with. His Twinkie reserves get low though and he gets knocked back down. We get to halfway with Smash, putting the tag champions and the former champions in there at the same time. What a coincidence!

Akeem the African Dream and by far the most successful Rumble guy ever starts the second half by going after Andre of all people. Demolition take out Andre with a simple double clothesline. That gets a massive pop. Bret is thrown out during the hullabaloo over Andre. Your current lineup is Demolition, DiBiase, Rhodes, Akeem and Haku. Snuka is in at 17. This thing is going by quickly.

He and Akeem go at it in the house show match from a nightmare. Snuka wins, putting Akeem out early, at least by his standards. Schiavone says the battle rages on, which he used to say all the time in the World War 3 matches. Bravo gets up to 18. You can tell that the guys are starting to get a bit tired out there. There’s a ton of power guys in there also. Earthquake is 19 and he nearly immediately puts out Dusty.

He tosses Axe as well so you can see how big of a deal they were going to make this guy, at least in the short term. Neidhart is 20, giving us him, Earthquake, Haku, DiBiase, Smash, Bravo and Snuka. All of them other than Bravo combine to get rid of Earthquake. Hart is panicking over this of course. Granted I think he panics ordering dinner. I mean think about it: chicken or pasta. HE CAN’T TAKE THAT KIND OF PRESSURE!!!

We start the final ten with Ultimate Warrior who is the IC Champion at the time. He takes out Bravo, who is as pale as humanly possible while still being alive. Only DiBiase and Snuka aren’t power guys out there, and Jimmy is debatable.

Martel is 22nd, and somehow he’s the only former world champion in this match at the moment. How creepy does that sound? Haku takes out Smash with a backdrop and a superkick that was always awesome. We get a Strike Force reunion as Tito Santana is in at Michael Jordan’s number.

We’re in need of some fresh jobbers in there to replace the tired ones that we have. Hey it’s Honky at 24. He certainly fits that description at this time period. Warrior and Martel take out Anvil followed by Warrior putting out DiBiase to a big pop. That man has earned a ham sandwich if anyone ever has. We’ve got Warrior, Snuka, Honky, Haku, Santana and Martel in there at the moment and they’re joined by Hogan at 25.

He stumbles coming to the ring. That’s just funny. He takes out Snuka and Haku before taking the shirt off. Warrior gets rid of Tito and you can see it coming a mile away, but the awesomeness of it isn’t diminished at all. As if there wasn’t enough ego in the ring, Shawn Michaels is out next, 26th to be exact. There goes Honky so we have Hogan, Warrior…and as I was typing the other names they were thrown out, leaving us with the showdown of showdowns.

To say the crowd popped hard is an understatement. Heenan, who has no one in the ring at the moment, is standing out there watching. That’s just cool. They hit some shoulders and no one goes back that far. A criss cross leads to a double clothesline. From an unbiased perspective, that was really boring. From a pure 80s mark, the world just exploded from the sheer levels of awesome in those few seconds.

Both guys stay down for about 15 seconds until Barbarian is out at 27. That guy has been around forever with very little change to his gimmick, but he kept getting work. That’s quite interesting. Think about it. He was in WWF in the late 80s through early 90s, then in WCW for a bit then a quick run in WWF again and then was in WCW forever. That’s saying a lot. Rude I guess jumps the gun as he’s in maybe 20 seconds after Barbarian.

Even Jesse makes a point about it. Rude hits a pretty good dropkick to put Warrior down. For some reason Warrior saves Hogan. Jesse of course hates it but Tony has no issue with it. Rude and Warrior just always had scary good chemistry together. I’ve never gotten that. Hogan tries to return the favor and save Warrior but knocks Warrior out instead. Warrior of course jumps back in and then more or less dances out.

29 is Hercules leaving just Perfect for 30. What is the deal with pale guys wearing powder blue? Both Hercules and Bravo do that. If what’s said about Hogan and Big Show is true, Hogan has bigger boots than Show. I find that unlikely. I love how Jesse and Heenan were right about Hogan being crooked for years. I wonder if those were semi-shoot comments. Perfect finishes us at 30.

He was actually more or less set in stone to win this thing, but Hogan said no, giving us this ending. Barbarian is put out by Hercules. Yeah Perfect was supposed to be the top heel to challenge Hogan, probably even fighting him at Mania but due to Hogan saying no and Perfect vs. Hogan tanking house shows, Vince went with Warrior. That explains the big showdown from earlier.

We get down to Rude and Perfect against Hogan, which was the original ending but with Perfect winning though. Perfect accidentally puts out Rude, leaving us with Perfect and Hogan. Can you imagine if Perfect had actually won this? How awesome would that have been? It’s not like Hogan would have been crushed by it or anything. Perfect gets the suplex on Hogan but Hogan pops up.

You mean he got up from a generic not exactly snapping suplex? NO WAY! Even I have to give that one to Hogan. After smacking the post, Perfect is gone and Hogan wins…of course. I would have loved to see Perfect win there to set up that match on SNME or something. It wouldn’t have worked at Mania, but it would have rocketed Perfect to the top heel spot which was vacant at the time. I guess it was him, but not by much at all. Massive posing ends the show.

Rating: A-. This was good all around. It had cool moments like Demolition beating Andre and the showdown, but it also had the great battle royal stuff like odd alliances and interesting matchups. This was the Rumble getting it right for the first time. Earthquake looked like a big deal because of this which was the main point. This certainly was a success and went by FAST, which to me says it was interesting.

Overall Rating: C-. Let’s see: first match sucked, second match was a long glorified squash, third was a Garvin match, and fourth was a decent brawl. You add in a good Rumble and to me that’s right in the middle. It’s not a terrible show, but once again this is all about the main event with a horrible midcard. This was all about setting up Mania though and it did just that. Hogan vs. Warrior was the dream match that people wanted to see and they got a preview here.

 

 

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Royal Rumble 1989
Date: January 15, 1989
Location: The Summit, Houston, Texas
Attendance: 19,000
Commentators: Gorilla Monsoon, Jesse Ventura

This is the first PPV version of the show and things have changed a lot. Tonight, everyone is in the match and they’re focusing more on the idea of every man being for himself. The match wouldn’t be worth anything for a few more years but things should be a little bit stronger tonight as they have a better idea what they’re doing. Let’s get to it.

We start off with a listing of presumably everyone in the Rumble tonight. If not then it’s at least most of them.

Dino Bravo/Fabulous Rougeaus vs. Jim Duggan/Hart Foundation

2/3 falls here. Anvil vs. Bravo gets things going and they collide a few times with no one going anywhere. Both guys miss elbows and it’s off to Duggan for a BIG reaction. Ray Rougeau comes in and is immediately slammed down and hit by a knee drop. Hart comes in to a small but audible reaction and gets two each off a small package and a sunset flip. Jacques comes in and things break down a bit with all three heels being caught in one corner where Anvil drives shoulders into them, crushing Ray against the corner under two other guys.

Ray FINALLY gets something in by low bridging Bret to send him to the floor. At the end of the day, when you need someone to sell something you call on Bret. Dino’s side suplex puts Bret down and The Rougeau Bomb gets the first fall. Bret and Ray start things off in the second fall with Hart in big trouble. Jacques comes in and sends Bret into the corner for the traditional chest first bump in the corner which gives Dino two.

Bravo puts on a bear hug for a bit before it’s back to Jacques. A sunset flip gives Bret a quick breather but he’s immediately put in a camel clutch. Anvil makes the save but as he’s being put back in the corner, Ray comes in and puts the same hold back on. That’s good stuff there. The heels take turns working over Bret until Jacques puts on a Boston Crab. Gorilla wants Duggan or Neidhart to come in and break the hold up, because you’ve got five seconds. I love the hypocrisy you would get from him at times.

Bret breaks the hold and tags in Anvil but the referee didn’t see it. That’s such a basic spot but you don’t see it much anymore. Ray puts on an abdominal stretch before it’s off to Jacques for the exact same hold. Bret FINALLY hits an atomic drop to break up the momentum and there’s the white hot tag to Duggan. Anvil hits a slingshot shoulder on Ray and a Duggan elbow drop ties the match up at a fall apiece.

Duggan pounds on Ray to start before going to the wrong corner to try to beat up both guys. Bravo hammers away a bit but rams Duggan’s head into the buckle for no effect at all. Duggan gets punched over into the corner and there’s the tag to Hart. Everything breaks down and Duggan hits Bravo with the board to give Hart the pin.

Rating: C. This was fine but Duggan’s reactions are amazing. The guy was probably the third most over guy in the company at this point, which is covering a lot of ground given how over some of the guys were in 1989. This was fine for an opener but the ending was never quite in doubt, which is ok.

We get a clip of some people pulling their numbers earlier. DiBiase isn’t thrilled at all and immediately goes to find Slick to work out a deal of some kind. These segments need to come back, if nothing else to try to make us believe the numbers are random. The Bushwhackers are happy with their numbers but they trade anyway. Honky is mad about his number. Bad News says his is good news. Demolition seems annoyed. Jake….you can’t tell emotion from him anyway. The Rockers don’t seem to hate theirs.

It’s time for the Super Posedown, which is exactly that: Ultimate Warrior and Rick Rude posing against each other to further their feud. Warrior is IC Champion here and man alive if this happened on a PPV today the fans would likely riot. Well not riot but boo heavily at least. Heenan actually sucks up to the fans because it’s decided by fan vote. Again, the ending here isn’t exactly in doubt. This goes on WAY too long, as it’s just posing and people booing/cheering depending on who is posing. Rude finally attacks Warrior with a bar and bails. Warrior chases after him and that’s it. This somehow took nearly fifteen minutes.

Womens’ Title: Judy Martin vs. Rockin Robin

Robin is defending and is Jake Roberts’ real life half sister. Sherri is in the ring and wants the title shot at the winner of this. Martin misses a charge and Sherri sits in on commentary. They pound on each other and it’s clear that they’re not incredibly skilled in the ring. Martin slams her down and blocks a sunset flip with a punch to the head. Robin puts on a Boston Crab as this is going nowhere.

Martin blocks an O’Connor Roll as Sherri complains about not getting a rematch yet. Gorilla talks about the process you have to go through to get a rematch, which is a nice sounding idea when you think about all the automatic title rematches you get today. Imagine that: EARNING a title match. Something resembling a DDT gets two on Martin but Robin misses an elbow drop. Martin misses one also but a backslide gets two for Judy. Robin kicks her in the face for two and gets the same off a small package. Sherri: “Come on somebody win.” Robin goes to the middle rope, fakes Martin out, and cross bodies her to retain.

Rating: D. Nothing to see here but the ending wasn’t bad. The Women’s Title would be retired about 13 months later and wouldn’t be restored until about 1993. At the end of the day, no one cares about womens wrestling other than for how small their outfits are. Robin and Martin aren’t exactly eye candy either, so this didn’t do much for anyone. At least it was short though.

Slick says the Twin Towers (Boss Man and Akeem) are probably winners of the Rumble but denies knowing anything about shenanigans with DiBiase. Sean Mooney has footage (the original Vickie Guerrer) of Slick and DiBiase together and suddenly Slick realizes he misunderstood Mooney the first time. He has no comment though.

Rude runs his mouth a bit about beating Warrior. This must be intermission.

Yep, it’s intermission as we get promos from a few managers, saying their guys are going to win. Nothing to see here but we hear from Fuji (representing the Powers of Pain), Liz (Mega Powers) and Jimmy Hart (Honky Tonk Man and Greg Valentine). Like I said, nothing to see here.

Jesse is sitting on the throne that will go to either Haku or Race. He thinks he might just run for King because the chair is comfortable.

King Haku vs. Harley Race

Race was King but got hurt and the crown went to Haku. This is his chance to get it back in a one time only return to the ring. Harley shoves over Haku’s throne to start and the brawl is on. You know Race is going to be the brawler in this. Back in and Race pounds away before suplexing Haku down for two. Heenan manages both guys here but Race is kind of the face by default.

They head to the floor again with Race being sent into the post and chopped a few times. Haku sends him back to the floor after a few seconds in the ring as we stall for a few moments. More chops have Race in trouble as Jesse talks about Hogan injuring Race, which is only kind of true. Race no sells a headbutt and gets two off a piledriver. They collide again and Race falls to the floor as Heenan plays both sides, saying he’s for both guys when the other is out of earshot.

Back in and Race punches some more before getting two off a suplex. Haku gets sent to the floor again as it’s pretty clear there’s not much to this match. Race tries to piledrive Haku on the floor but gets backdropped as is the usual. A second attempt at a piledriver works but not incredibly well. Back in and a clothesline puts Haku down for two but Haku comes back and misses a top rope headbutt. Race misses a headbutt of his own and charges into the superkick from Haku (looked GREAT) for the pin to keep the crown in Tonga or wherever he’s from.

Rating: D+. This wasn’t terrible and the ending kick looked awesome, but other than that there wasn’t much to see here. Race was clearly old and banged up and he didn’t have a lot to work with in the form of Haku. The crown was mostly a minor title that was only somewhat official. Nothing to see here, but no one cares about anything but the Rumble tonight anyway.

Time for more Rumble promos, with Beefcake, Greg Valentine (both of whom say they just need their fists), the Powers of Pain (Fuji does the talking for them), Big John Studd (freshly back in the company), Mr. Perfect (pretty new at this point) and Savage (insane of course).

DiBiase is much happier about his number now.

Heenan says the Family (Brainbusters and Andre) is ready and Andre says he’ll thrown them out if he has to. Arn whispers to Tully when Andre isn’t looking because Arn Anderson is more awesome than you.

Hogan gives his usual promo with the focus on Boss Man and Akeem this time.

Royal Rumble

The entrants are every two minutes, allegedly. #1 is Ax and #2 is Smash, beginning a tradition of having partners fight at the beginning of these matches. They immediately pound on each other and amazingly enough, they actually sell the offense. It’s a bunch of clotheslines and punches, but the key to Demolition has always been how HARD they hit each other, which is what you get a lot of here. In at #3 is Andre, which gives us one heck of a handicap match.

Demolition immediately hits a double clothesline on Andre and start demolishing him to a BIG pop. Andre is way past being past his prime here but this is still cool to see. Here’s Mr. Perfect at #4 and he strolls down the aisle, which is pretty wise for him. Andre starts fighting Demolition off and for some reason this turns into a tag match. Andre easily throws out Smash, resulting in a 2-1 attack on Andre.

The Giant fights them off and Perfect sells a headbutt as only Mr. Perfect can. Here’s Ronnie Garvin at #5 and they get Andre tied up in the ropes. The Giant breaks free and beats up Ax while Garvin and Hennig fight a bit. Andre shifts over to beat up Perfect, giving us some more awesome overselling. Greg Valentine is in at #6 to make it 4-1 against Andre. AGAIN Andre is all like BRING IT ON and knocks them away, eliminating Garvin in the process.

Andre chokes Valentine in the corner while Ax and Perfect continue their rather uninteresting fight. Andre starts choking Ax and the look on his face is eerie. Jake Roberts is #7 and Andre immediately pounds him down. Nothing of note happens for two minutes so here’s Ron Bass at #8 as Jake gets eliminated by Andre. Shawn Michaels is in at #9, giving us Ax, Perfect, Andre, Bass, Valentine and Michaels. As I type that, Perfect knocks out Ax.

Perfect throws Shawn over the top rope but some skinning the cat brings him back in. Shawn dropkicks Perfect to the apron as we get into a sell-off. #10 is Butch who gets a big pop of his own. As Butch gets in, here’s Jake Roberts again with the snake to scare Andre out of the match. The fans look at something, presumably Jake and Andre in the aisle, as things settle down a lot. It’s Honky Tonk Man at #11 as things are in that annoying slow period of most Rumbles.

Tito Santana is in at #12 to finally balance the heel/face ratio out a bit. There’s almost nothing going on here other than the energy burst you get from the new guys coming in. Bass hits a good backdrop on Michaels as Santana barely survives an attack from Valentine. Bad News Brown is #13 and Butch and Santana (there’s a pairing for you) dump Honky. Butch gets beaten up and Shawn goes up top to jump on Bad News and Bass. Marty Jannetty is #14 and the Rockers double dropkick Bass out.

Tito kills Valentine with the forearm and world champion Randy Savage is #15. NOW the place wakes up as he hammers away on Bad News. Perfect and Savage go at it in a match that would have the purists drooling. Speaking of making purists drool, Arn Anderson is #16. Savage dumps Valentine as Shawn fights Arn. Savage….saves Anderson and eliminates Shawn? Now there’s one I didn’t expect. To recap, we’ve got Marty, Anderson, Butch, Brown, Savage, Santana and Perfect in there at the moment. That’s quite the lineup for the most part.

Tully Blanchard makes the lineup even stronger at #17. Just to be clear, that’s two tag teams getting back to back numbers. Gee, what are the odds? The Brainbusters double team Marty as we’re just waiting for Hogan at this point. And here he is at #18. There goes Perfect, giving him the new Iron Man record at just under 28:00. Off camera, Savage and the Busters put Santana out as Hulk beats up Brown. Hogan fights off all three heels as Savage beats on Butch. Nice partner, especially after Hogan saved Savage when he got to the ring.

Here’s Luke at #19 as things slow down again. Butch gets thrown out after a remarkable 18 minutes. Hogan hot shots Blanchard but has to beat up Luke instead of eliminating Tully. After a brief lull, here’s Koko B. Ware at #20. After more of that epic Hulk vs. Luke showdown, Arn goes up top and is immediately slammed down by Hogan. Dude, you’re best friends with RIC FLAIR. Why would you think that’s smart? Hogan dumps Koko and Luke but gets double teamed by the Busters.

Warlord is #20 and Hogan clotheslines both Busters out at the same time. Warlord poses on the apron, gets in, and is clotheslined out in 2 seconds flat, setting a record that would last 20 years. Hogan also dumps Bad News, but it takes out Savage in the process which adds even more fuel to the Mega Powers Exploding in less than a month. Liz comes in to play peacemaker and the Powers shake hands.

Now we get the big showdown of the match as Big Boss Man is #21 and gets to face Hogan one on one. This is when Boss Man weighed like 400lbs and was just freaking fat. Hulk slams Boss Man down and pounds away in the corner but falls victim to a splash. A piledriver puts Hulk down and Boss Man stands tall. Gorilla says Hogan has been out there for half an hour (it’s been about 8 or 9 minutes) and Jesse is hilarious in freaking out.

To give us the third team back to back in this Rumble, #22 is Akeem. Hogan rams them together and slams Akeem but the numbers catch up with Hogan. After a brief comeback, a double splash crushes Hogan and he’s easily tossed. Hogan, ever the jerk, pulls Boss Man out and beats on him, which is apparently an elimination. Beefcake is #23, which means we just missed what could have been a good house show tag match.

Hogan and Boss Man brawl to the back as we get to the pretty dull third act of the Rumble. Red Rooster is #24 and helps double team Akeem a bit. They try to dump Akeem but Barbarian comes in at #25 and breaks it up. Gorilla: “That was kind of stupid.” Taylor and Akeem pair off, as do Barbarian and Beefcake and the heels take over. Akeem crushes the Rooster (Terry Taylor in case you’re some young kid) and here’s Big John Studd at #27.

Nothing of note happens there so here’s Hercules at #28. Again nothing happens so Rick Martel is #29. He goes right for Akeem but Studd shoves him away because Akeem is his big piece of chicken tonight. DiBiase is of course #30, giving us DiBiase, Akeem, Hercules, Beefcake, Studd, Barbarian, Rooster and Martel. Jesse and Gorilla have a debate about what a manager is as DiBiase throws out the Rooster to get us down to seven.

DiBiase and Barbarian team up to put out Hercules and Beefcake, leaving us with five. This last part isn’t quite death for the match but it’s certainly a bad sickness. Martel puts out the Barbarian to give us a final four. Akeem misses a splash on Martel in the corner and Rick fires off some dropkicks to no avail.

A cross body is caught and Akeem dumps Martel to get us down to Studd, Akeem and DiBiase. Akeem pounds on Studd as DiBiase gives instructions. Studd pulls Ted in front of a splash and dumps Akeem to get us down to two. DiBiase offers money but Studd shakes a finger at him. Studd actually fires off some suplexes to the shock of Monsoon. The elimination is academic and Studd wins.

Rating: C-. The last third REALLY hurts this. It’s not that it’s bad but after Hogan leaves you could almost hear a pin fall. Ha I made a wrestling joke. Also, John Studd? Really? They’ve got all those guys in there and they pick Studd to win? After Wrestlemania the guy was pretty much gone and I don’t think there was ever a clear reason for Studd winning given, other than they thought he was going to be a big deal. It’s just an odd pick and one that hindsight doesn’t look kindly on. Anyway not a terrible match but the booking hurts it.

Savage reassures himself that he’s still great. You can hear the paranoia and see the heel turn coming if you look hard enough.

Jesse and Gorilla wrap things up.

Overall Rating: D+. I can’t say this was a bad show because nothing on here is truly terrible, but it’s certainly not good either. This is very characteristic of the late 80s as other than Hogan and Savage, the stories were very limited at best. They were trying though and that’s something you can’t fake. Not a terrible show, but it’s nothing more than a moment \for the most part.

Ratings Comparison

Jim Duggan/Hart Foundation vs. Dino Bravo/Fabulous Rougeaus

Original: C+

Redo: C

Rockin’ Robin vs. Judy Martin

Original: C-

Redo: D

King Haku vs. Harley Race

Original: C

Redo: D+

Royal Rumble

Original: C+

Redo: C-

Overall Rating

Original: C-

Redo: D+

About the same again. That’s interesting compared to what happened with the Survivor Series Redos.

Here’s the original review if you’re interested:

http://kbwrestlingreviews.com/2011/01/08/royal-rumble-count-up-1989/

Remember to follow me on Twitter @kbreviews and pick up the paperback edition of KB’s Complete 2004 Monday Night Raw Reviews (also available as an e-book) from Amazon. Check out the information here:

http://kbwrestlingreviews.com/2019/08/26/new-book-and-e-book-kbs-complete-2004-monday-night-raw-reviews/

And check out my Amazon author page with cheap wrestling books at:

http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Hall/e/B00E6282W6

Royal Rumble 1989
Date: January 15, 1989
Location: The Summit, Houston, Texas
Attendance: 19,000
Commentators: Gorilla Monsoon, Jesse Ventura

We have arrived at Pay Per View for this one and just looking at the card you can tell things are…about the same actually. Again there are just four matches and a segment, although this one is an improvement. The matches not called the Rumble aren’t exactly jumping off the page at me, but looking at a few names in the Rumble it’s a massive improvement with guys like Hogan, Savage, Andre, and DiBiase in it.

The segment is also better as it’s a posedown between Ultimate Warrior and Rick Rude who were kind of feuding at the time. You can just tell that the show has a much higher production value and has had more time put into it which likely will mean a much better product. Granted that’s just on paper.

I wonder how the show itself would turn out. I wish there was a way I could find out. Oh. I guess I could just watch it. I think I’ll do that, and I might as well write about it too, so why don’t you come along? If I get hungry I can always eat your leg.

Our opening video is Vince listing off all of the participants in the match. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not because it keeps surprises from occurring which is one of the highlights of the match. I get what they’re going for here but at the same time it’s just a bit odd.

Jesse’s shirt has a big shark on it. That’s most odd. He and Gorilla run down the card and we’re ready to go.

A bunch of guys take WAY too long to say they’ll win.

Dino Bravo/Rougeaus vs. Hart Foundation/Jim Duggan

What is with the Rumble and 2/3 fall matches? This makes three in two years. Isn’t that a bit of overkill guys? This is really just about two feuds being lumped into one match which is fine. They say it’s international rules to justify the 2/3 falls which is fine, but the choice is just odd indeed. It’s not necessarily good or bad but just odd. The heels have Frenchie Martin and Jimmy Hart with them.

Monsoon says that the 2×4 is a mascot and not a foreign object. That’s just odd indeed. The Harts do this weird thing of taking Bret’s glasses off and make it a spectacle. I don’t remember them doing that ever before. We start with power vs. power in Bravo vs. Neidhart. They reference the weightlifting thing from last year which makes me want to rip my hair out. The USA chant goes up for an American and two Canadians (Neidhart has dual citizenship).

They’re going really slowly here and I’m not sure if I like that. They talk about Bret’s awesome in ring ability which is completely true. It’s good to know that they saw the talent that far back. Bret then takes the side suplex from Bravo and the elevated seated senton from the Rougeaus (both of their finishers) to make it 1-0 for the heels. Bret has to start the next fall as we are LIVE IN HOUSTON!

Gorilla once again botches the use of the term literally as no one is hanging from the rafters. I don’t know why but I will never stop marking out for the jumping reverse elbow from anyone. That move is just awesome. Once again Bravo does his stupid little dance before he makes a tag. I’ve never gotten what the deal was with that. Bret is still in there by the way. Again, it never ceases to amaze me when fans chant USA for two Canadian wrestlers.

Monsoon tries to cover for them by saying it’s for Duggan, but why chant for him when he’s not even in the match at the moment? Either way it’s just stupid. We hit a rest hold with Bret getting beaten on even more than usual in this match. Not sure why he’s been in there so long but it’s probably the best thing they could do. The Rougeaus do a switch and for the life of me I don’t get how people couldn’t tell them apart.

They look nothing alike. The abdominal stretch is hooked and Gorilla complains. Good thing that some things never change. FINALLY Bret tags out and Duggan is in. After a lot of double teaming Duggan pins one of the Rougeaus to tie us up at one. For some reason Hacksaw is over and by far and away the biggest star in this match. I don’t get that and never will.

The heels take over for a very short time as Bravo idiotically (at least he’s living up to his reputation) tries to ram Duggan’s head into the turnbuckle. The face comeback lasts all of a second though as Duggan is beaten on even more. After the luke warm tag to Bret, we have a big thing of calamity and Duggan pops Bravo with the board to let Bret pin him. I love faces getting away with everything they want to.

Rating: C+. Nothing bad at all here, but I just don’t get the 2/3 falls aspect. I mean really, why do that? Do these six guys need an extra ten minutes or so? I get that there’s a lot of time to fill and a ton of the roster is taken, but I don’t get it. To be fair though, the match was fine and there’s nothing to complain about from an in ring perspective. It wasn’t anything great but perfectly fine.

We see some people picking their numbers.

DiBiase doesn’t like his number but pulls in Slick and offers him a deal.

Luke and Butch both get theirs and trade them.

Honky hates his.

Bad News likes his.

Demolition and Jake are indifferent.

The Rockers wish each other good luck.

Super Posedown

This is more or less a body contest between Warrior and Rude. Well that’s more interesting than Bravo’s weightlifting I suppose. Warrior is IC Champion here. Monsoon says Warrior is pumped up all the time. Make your own steroids joke. Rude is rocking the mustache here. The first pose is the double bicep. Popular support wins this so take a guess as to who is going to win. This is really quite boring.

Jesse and Heenan try to make this seem legit which is helping things out a lot. We move to the abdominal pose for which Heenan has to oil up Rude. That’s just creepy to an extent. The third is just called most muscular. If nothing else they’re keeping this moving fast. That’s the best part about it unlike last year when it took 20 minutes. Also, this is actually in the ring. We go through the third pose and still no one cares. The fourth is a medley which takes up even more time.

Was there supposed to be a point to this? In a shocking development, Rude jumps Warrior and beats the tar out of him with an exercise bar. That was the whole point of this thing and it took too long. Again though, it was far better than the weightlifting thing last year. Warrior gets up and destroys all of the referees and suits that try to help him up and chases after Rude. This was all to set up Rude vs. Warrior at Mania.

Women’s Title: Rockin Robin vs. Judy Martin

Robin was this random chick they put the belt on and since she was the epitome of the bathroom break match, they kept the belt on her for over a year. It was retired in 1990 because no one cared and remained that way until Alundra Blayze came along and held it for about a year, then after about another year of various feuds and champions it was dropped (into the trashcan on Nitro) and didn’t come back until the Sable era.

She was just flat out boring, plain and simple, yet of course Vince stuck with her because no one really gave cared about women’s wrestling anyway and it was based on wrestling rather than athleticism or looks. Sherri, the woman that Robin took the title from, challenges the winner for a title shot. She wouldn’t win. Just after the start of the match she jumps on commentary. There’s something that even the commentators aren’t sure about but they think it was a DDT.

Again I want to know what the point of hooking the head on a slam is. I don’t recall any man other than Earthquake doing that. Sherri sounds like Michelangelo from TMNT 2. This is really short and a relief that Wikipedia has an error. They claim this is about sixteen minutes when it barely breaks five.

I thought this might have been clipped but I can’t find a single instance where it goes sixteen, so we’ll say that’s an error, which is a relief. Robin wins with a second rope cross body after faking one then getting the second. Robin’s music is really annoying.

Rating: C. I have to go with average here because other than the ending I don’t remember anything about this match. I know that doesn’t sound good, but the time in this match and everything in it are complete blanks to me. Nothing at all of note happened in it other than the ending, which was kind of cool as the fake out isn’t something that you see that often. I think I get why the division was dropped in about a year.

Sean Mooney is with Slick and the Twin Towers, Akeem and Big Boss Man. Akeem might be the funniest character in wrestling history. Slick denies the deal with DiBiase from earlier. Sean shows the footage of them talking about a deal earlier, which Slick tries to play off as something about a shoe shine. That was just odd.

Harley Race vs. Haku

A few notes about this match: first of all, it wasn’t on the home video release at first so quite a few of you have likely never seen it. It’s only been released on the Rumble Anthologies and the original broadcast plus online. Second, this is a one night only return for Race who got really badly hurt against Hogan and had to drop the crown. Haku took it but never beat Race, so Race is back to take his crown.

Before the match, Jesse is sitting on the throne and says he likes it. Thanks for that Jess. I’ve actually never seen this match all the way through so these will be my legit first thoughts on seeing this in its entirety. When I say not all the way through, I mean I’ve seen a few stills of it and never any actual video so here we go. Heenan manages both guys so he’s set no matter what. I’ve always liked the throne entrance the king got, but DANG that jobber needs a shirt.

He must weigh about 320 and he’s in just regular tights. That’s not right. Both guys come out to the same music and in a funny bit, Race is introduced as “The Former King, Harley Race!” That just sounds funny. Race, the king of the heels, jumps Haku early. Both guys have the regal purple on which is amusing as well. I think Race is somehow the face here, which just makes me feel dirty.

The tattoos on Race always looked odd to me as he seems too clean for them I guess you would say. This was a very rare thing here as we have heel vs. heel with Race being the less heelish guy. Race is just old here and is being asked to carry this because he’s the only one of the two that knows how to work a good match. Jesse says that he has to give the experience advantage to Race. Well DUH Jess. How can it be something that’s debatable?

One guy has wrestled longer than the other. It’s not really subjective. The fans are cheering Harley. This just isn’t right. They do one of the all time worst collision spots with Race going to the floor. It looked like they were in slow motion on that one. Heenan is his usual masterful self cheering for both guys at various times. This is called the Battle For the Crown because this is a match that was dying for extra billing.

Speaking of dying, Gorilla tries to say that the crowd is hushed in anticipation for the Rumble. You have to give it to Gorilla: he never gave up. Race gets a bad piledriver on the floor as it seems like this is in slow motion again. They’re just both so slow that it’s almost painful to watch. Race simply had no business being in a ring at this point and it wasn’t even his fault. He was just old and injured which certainly isn’t something you can pin on him.

He was broke due to a bad business thing (that wasn’t his fault) in Kansas City so he had to keep wrestling to pay the bills. He was good for stuff like this: putting over guys that can’t wrestle well enough on their own. I love how you can have a guy do some chops at an angle and all of a sudden he’s a martial arts master. Goodness that was a lot of A’s in a row. After Race dominates for a bit, he misses a punch and gets caught by what we would call Sweet Chin Music to get pinned.

Rating: C-. I feel sorry here because the wrestling and the in ring stuff isn’t actually that bad at all. The problem is that it feels like this is in slow motion like I’ve said a few times. That’s really the best way to put it. Race was just so old out there that I’m very glad he went to WCW and became a manager which was what he was far better suited for at this point.

He just was too old here and it was showing bad. Haku was someone that had to be carried and this was his night to be put over and while he wasn’t bad, he certainly wasn’t good. The match was bad but the wrestling was ok if that makes any sense at all.

More people say they’ll win.

Gene talks to Rude and Heenan about the pose down where Rude says he won. They bail quickly, I’m assuming afraid of the Warrior.

Royal Rumble

I’ll spare you from another rule explanation because I’m sure you know it and I already listed them off once. This year they point out the everyman for themselves rule though, which is a change from last year. That opens a big door though as it implies face vs. face and heel vs. heel. Number one is Ax of Demolition. The interval is set at two minutes again and this year they actually make it possible as the match goes over an hour, so sit back because this is going to be a long review.

Actually don’t sit back because you might not be able to see the screen. Sit in the middle I guess. Number two is Smash, so we have Demolition going at it to start us off. I love how random of a thing this is, and it’s happened at least one other time that I remember with the Steiners I think, and then the Hardys came in at 1 and 3 in 2001. They’re the tag team champions here, in the middle of their epic year and a half or so run.

To their credit they beat on each other. It just doesn’t look right though. This is like Bubba and D-Von fighting. They’re just not good at fighting on their own. There’s something about seeing partners fight that just doesn’t work. Matt and Jeff were complete failures in their feud, and I think a lot of it is people would rather have them be partners rather than opponents. They just didn’t click as opponents and that’s a shame.

Andre comes in at three and this is an historic moment, as Demolition immediately beat him to the ground with what looks like ease. Andre looks like Rey Mysterio getting beaten on like this which is something you’ll never hear again. Mr. Perfect is 4 which sucks because I wanted more Andre vs. Demolition. Think about this for a minute. Demolition did in about ten seconds what it took Hogan fifteen minutes to do. That’s insane.

No wonder those three plus Jake were the best Survivor Series team of all time. All three of them go after the Giant and Andre just shoves Smash out after Perfect distracts him a bit. Perfect is a very young guy here in the company and is rocking just regular tights. Being the Rhodes scholar that Axe is he goes after Perfect and gets beaten up by Andre for his trouble. Number five is the best possible advertisement for murdering something I’ve ever seen: Ronnie Garvin.

He is easily the most worthless wrestler this side of the Junkyard dog in wrestling history. How in the world did they ever decide to put him over RIC FLAIR for the world title? I just do not get that and never will. Everyone goes after Andre but he just sits on Axe, literally. Greg Valentine is in at six, hopefully willing to use a hammer to crush the cockroach known as Garvin.

We have four against one here with literally everyone that’s been in the match so far attacking Andre. Gorilla calls everyone that’s beating on Andre a star. That’s just amusing. ANDRE GETS RID OF GARVIN!!! I officially love this man. Get him a cow and a vineyard of wine right now!

Jake Roberts is seventh to a huge pop. He was probably the second third biggest face at the time as Warrior wasn’t quite there yet and Hogan and Savage were untouchable. Andre just chokes the life out of Jake in the corner which is sweet. That’s what I love about Andre: after being quadruple teamed he just grabs someone and chokes them. There’s something completely awesome about that.

He beats anyone that tries to stop him from beating on Jake. That’s just sweet. He’s protecting Jake so he can have the honor of hurting him. Ron Bass is here now as we get closer to reaching our jobber quota. Just after Bass comes in Andre throws Jake out. Bass is freshly bald thanks to a bad comedy angle with Beefcake. Andre is the white elephant in there at the moment as it’s really just about trying to get him out with various incredibly short term alliances.

That right there is why there needs to be at least one giant in every battle royal. They offer the main source of a story in one of these, because traditionally these matches are void of any kind of a story because it’s a complete free for all, which is fine because that’s the point.

Having someone like Andre in there for about fifteen to twenty minutes gives you a way to have something running through a large part of the match and hold it together, which is the main weakness of all battle royals not known as the Royal Rumble. The next guy in is HBK, who at this time is next to nothing. Perfect throws Axe out.

Shawn and Perfect go at it in what would eventually be one of the most overhyped feuds in wrestling history as the build was awesome but the match kind of sucked, which to be fair was what likely was inevitable. Perfect shows off his brains early by staying in after going over the top. Andre keeps choking people as that was the essence of his offense around this time. I really miss the old school stone looking Rumble logo. The thing was just cool looking.

Jesse says if he were in there he’d go to a neutral corner. Gorilla says if Jesse were in there he’d be out of there. And people wonder why Monsoon got some strange looks at times. After about a minute and a half of waiting, Butch of the Bushwackers gets us into double digits. As he’s coming to the ring, Jake runs back out with Damien and Andre eliminates himself. That’s a smart way to keep the feud hot, keep Andre looking credible and get rid of him to keep the match going.

The five jobbers lumber around the ring for a bit because there’s no big name in there for them to do anything with, which is the issue with a lot of these things. The timing is getting shorter and shorter here as Honky comes in at 11. Honky had recently lost the IC belt and was in desperate need of a reason to keep his job. He was worthless without the title so until they put him in Rhythm and Blues there was little for him to do.

Of the six guys in there, Shawn is the only face according to Gorilla in some slightly different words. Oh Butch is there too. Yep, Shawn is the only face in there worth anything. Tito balances things out a bit at 12 to a solid pop. I don’t get why he never got another big push. He was still great in the ring and was getting big reactions, but of course he was made a jobber to the stars for guys like Barbarian and Warlord.

Gorilla and Jesse discuss some theory about what is considered a good number as not a lot is going on at the moment. To be fair though the crowd is staying hot so there we are. Bad News comes in at 13 as he should have been a far bigger star than he was. Brown vs. Hogan could have been awesome if they had some guts and did it right. Honky is eliminated pretty fast to a decent pop. That’s a good sign if nothing else: he’s still getting reactions.

This has really slowed down a lot and we need some big names to come in and clear out some of these jobbers. Naturally the next guy in is Marty Jannetty, so if nothing else we have a tag team in there now. A double dropkick that was NOT stolen from the Rock N Roll Express (really, we promise we’ve never heard of those guys that we stole half our name from. Honest) takes out Bass to get us back down to seven people. I think Tito’s knee is hurt.

Thankfully Savage, the WWF Champion and on the brink of a heel turn for the ages, comes in to get the crowd WAY into this. He freaking mugs Bad News who he was having a short but very intense feud with. Arn Anderson comes out next as Savage knocks out Valentine. In the epitome of an IWC wet dream team, Anderson and Savage team up to eliminate Shawn. Dang that was just flat out odd to type. Tully Blanchard is in at 17 as this is slowing down again.

The Brainbusters beat the tar out of Jannetty and prove why they’re awesome. They dump him and heeeeeeere’s Hulk at possibly his lowest number ever: 18. I would have loved to have this be a legit draw and see him get like 4. Let’s see, how many people does Hogan get rid of to make him look like Superman. Perfect is the first victim as Hogan saves his handshake buddy Savage from him. He beats up the Brainbusters but doesn’t eliminate them, which allows them to get rid of Tito.

Since it’s gotten a bit crazy, for a recap we have Butch, Hogan, Anderson, Savage, Brown and Blanchard in at the moment. Amazingly, Butch has been in there about fifteen minutes which has to be his biggest accomplishment in the WWF. That’s actually quite surprising. At 19 we have the other Marching Moron who licked me at a house show once. Brown puts out Butch to keep us at six guys.

Anderson beats on Hogan which makes me flash back to Nitro just before the NWO showed up. Anderson beat him two weeks straight on Nitro which was a series I always liked. It gave Arn the spotlight that he never really got and definitely was qualified to have. In at 20 is the Hall of Famer Koko B. Ware. That just flat out doesn’t work no matter how many times you write it. How in the world is that thing in the HOF but Savage isn’t?

I don’t care how many times he had Stephanie, enshrine him already! Hogan dumps Koko to a pop. Even the fans didn’t like him. There goes Luke and Hogan’s total is at I think three. With three clotheslines inside of 30 seconds he adds both Brainbusters and the Warlord who sets the shortness record at 2 seconds. He stepped in and got a running clothesline to put him out.

To get the record to eight, Hogan runs over and puts out Brown and Savage, the later being by mistake. This would be a major point in the heel turn in about two weeks. Savage is TICKED! Liz comes down to try to straighten things out as Savage offers the handshake to fix things for now. Savage and Liz leave as Boss Man gets in.

He’s about 100lbs heavier than his traditional weight. This began another Rumble tradition of the one on one showdown. These two had been the big feud for a good while and the showdown hadn’t really come yet so this was a pretty big deal. Not surprisingly Boss Man takes over and Gorilla defends Hogan with the somewhat legitimate argument that Boss Man is fresh.

Hogan takes a decent piledriver and eventually gets back to even as the buzzer rings about three and a half minutes after Boss Man came out. And in a SHOCKING, yes SHOCKING I say, turn of events, it’s Boss Man’s partner Akeem. Now here’s something amusing to me where the bias towards the main event is as evident as ever.

Gorilla starts whining and complaining about how DiBiase must have had something to do with this because there’s no way that tag partners could have consecutive numbers and wind up in this position against Hogan. He’s completely backwards there. First of all, this is the third time in this Rumble where partners have come in back to back (Rockers and Brainbusters, which more or less gives away that this isn’t a random draw).

On top of that, how could DiBiase have known that Hogan would have been in there at this moment all by himself? If nothing else, this would prove that DiBiase had nothing to do with it as there is no reason for him to assume that Hogan would have A, been in there already when the Twin Towers came in, and B, that Hogan would be alone.

In order to do that, DiBiase would have had to find out what Hogan’s number was, and the only ways he could have done that would be to find out Hogan’s number directly from Hulk which is unlikely or to have found out all 29 other spots AND managed to spread enough deals around to make sure that Akeem and Boss Man had consecutive numbers after Hogan.

I’m supposed to believe that he managed to pull all this off in less than two hours with the help of just Virgil? Give us some credit there Gorilla. Granted I don’t think he put that much thought into what he said, but that’s the point of these reviews: to break down things like that and show how stupid some stories can be. In a quite anticlimactic moment, Hogan is hit with a double splash and thrown out. Really, that’s all there is to it.

That just came out of nowhere and all of a sudden the fact of how stupid that may have been kicks in. Tell me oh great and mighty Vince: why should I care about the rest of the match? Your top faces are all gone now with about ten entries to go. This wasn’t smart booking at all as they backed themselves into a corner for what is likely going to be a weak finish. Hogan of course pulls Boss Man to the floor and beats on him as Beefcake comes out. It’s a big tag team brawl minus the tagging.

Hogan says he’s going back in and the referees finally do their jobs and keep him from doing so. Hogan pulls Boss Man out AGAIN because this is all about him again, despite him not being world champion or even in the title picture. He and Boss Man fight to the back and they’re going to say Boss Man is out because Hogan pulled him over the ropes. In at 25 we have someone that might even be less useful than Garvin in the Red Rooster.

I finally got the joke/idea behind the name of his finisher the Five Arm. It’s one better than the forearm. Get it? That lowered my IQ a good bit. The announcers try to figure out who the final five guys will be and naturally they know them inside of 4 seconds. The two faces do the generic beating on the heel because that’s Rumble Theory 101. Gorilla actually agrees that Hogan cheated. I never thought I’d hear that.

Barbarian is in next to make what should be a completely one sided match. Barbarian, the genius that he is, beats up the faces and then goes after Akeem on his own. I love idiotic heels. Despite this being 1989, Big John Studd is somehow still a relic here. He goes straight for Akeem in what would become a running theme for the end of this match which I’ll get to in a minute. John is a face here on one last hurrah I guess you would call it.

Basically John keeps throwing people out of his way so it’s just him and Akeem, which can be translated into the guy that he can do the least with while still looking like he’s doing something. Hercules comes in at 28. Just like I thought it would, this has REALLY slowed down since Hogan left and it just doesn’t feel right at all. The next to last entrant is Rick Martel, the returned face who is just about to become a heel and a model.

The final guy is DiBiase to few people’s shock. If he was supposed to be the big heel, two things: one, he should win, and two he should go on to something big after this. At Mania 5 he had a throwaway match with Brutus. Studd is just a complete waste of time out there as he hasn’t actually beaten on anyone other than Akeem. The final eight, all in the ring, are DiBiase, Akeem, Studd, Martel, Red Rooster, Beefcake, Hercules and Barbarian. What a motley crew that is.

Rooster is finally gone and we’re at seven. Studd finally fights someone else in the Barbarian. I don’t believe it. DiBiase and Barbarian put out Beefcake and Hercules to bring us down to DiBiase, Barbarian, Studd, Akeem and Martel. Martel puts out Barbarian and then gets knocked out maybe four seconds later to get us down to three.

The heels double team Studd as I can’t wait for this to end. Akeem is put out after a mistake and we’re down to Studd and DiBiase. He offers money and Studd isn’t interested. After a few power moves, Studd causally throws DiBiase over for the most lackluster ending in the history of the Rumble. Virgil comes in and gets beaten up as well. Wow that was dumb.

Rating: C+. This is the first of its kind in a way so you have to take it with a grain of salt. They didn’t know what they were doing with the thirty man formula, but I just don’t get the point in having Studd win it. I suppose the issue was that they didn’t think it was a big deal yet so they gave it to a random guy like they did last year. That’s the only thing I can think of at least.

The match really suffers at the end though because once Hogan is gone, there’s just no drama or anything at all. Studd winning was almost obvious but not quite. Also, Akeem has been in the final three in both of the first two Rumbles. How insane is that? This was a big improvement over last year, but they still had a lot of bugs to work out. Not bad, but it would be massively improved in the coming years.

In the locker room, Savage goes on a rather long rant about how it was a misunderstanding, but you can see the heel just dying to get out. Liz says that it wasn’t a fight or anything like that. The Mania main event was coming and would be obvious today, but back then it was built up so well that it was shocking.

Gorilla and Jesse say some basic stuff before we get a highlight package to end it.

Overall Rating: C-. Average. That’s the only way to put this. There’s nothing at all here that is going to be considered great by any means, but nothing at all is really all that bad. You’re not going to see anything that rivals Steamboat vs. Savage but there’s nothing here that wouldn’t hold your attention for the most part. This is where the Rumble is still being fleshed out but you can see the elements there that made it such a great concept for a show.

It’s not great and it’s not bad, but a lot of work was needed. For once though you could clearly tell that they had the right idea though and things would be much better next year where they would really get it right. I’d say this show is worth seeing once maybe, but you won’t be missing anything if you don’t see it. If you catch it and have some time to kill you won’t think it was a waste of time but you won’t be thrilled either. Not bad, but nothing great at all.

 

 

Remember to follow me on Twitter @kbreviews and pick up the paperback edition of KB’s Complete 2004 Monday Night Raw Reviews (also available as an e-book) from Amazon. Check out the information here:

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It’s December) and that means it’s time for the Road to Wrestlemania to begin. That road starts with the Royal Rumble, which has a very long history to it which we’re going to get into every day for the next 32 days before we hit the 2021 edition. We’ll start with a brief intro into the background of the show and how it got started before moving into the show itself.

So back in late 1987, the NWA was going to start airing PPVs of their own with the first one being Starrcade on Thanksgiving night. Vince, ever the ball buster, decided to air his own show on that night called the Survivor Series, saying that whoever didn’t air his show wouldn’t get to air Wrestlemania. Most of the cable companies bailed on Crockett (NWA owner for all intents and purposes) and aired Survivor Series, but they told Vince to NEVER do that again.

This is where Vince got crafty: he couldn’t air a PPV on the night that Crockett was running his next PPV (Bunkhouse Stampede, which is one of the DUMBEST and most screwed up shows ever for a ton of reasons, including not even being able to get the freaking start time right), but he could run a free TV show on that night. Therefore, he got an idea from one Pat Patterson about a battle royal with timed entrances and a card around it. The idea is the Royal Rumble, and there have been twenty five of them so far. Let’s get to it.

Royal Rumble 1988
Date: January 24, 1988
Location: Copps Coliseum, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Attendance: 18,000
Commentators: Vince McMahon, Jesse Ventura

So as I said, this is the first of the Rumbles and it aired on live TV instead of on Pay Per View. The battle royal tonight is twenty men instead of thirty and we also have three other matches on the card on top of that. We also get a bench press demonstration from Dino Bravo (just go with it) and the contract signing for Hogan vs. Andre II at the first live Main Event which would happen in twelve days. In a KB related story, I would happen in about ten days. Let’s get to it.

Vince does the intro over what I thought was Rude’s music. Oh it was Rude’s music. No wonder they sounded alike.

Rick Rude vs. Ricky Steamboat

This should work well with a career face vs. a career heel. That’s another thing you never get anymore: matches for the sake of having a match. You know what? It could work today too. For the sake of simplicity, Rick will only be used for Rude and Ricky will only be used for Steamboat. Rude pounds away to start but Steamboat fires off chops in retaliation. Rude throws him over the top because he’s still new at this WWF thing. Steamboat skins the cat back in and throws Rude to the floor.

Steamboat does Rude’s pose and Rude complains of a pull of the tights. Back in and Rude wants a test of strength and Dragon, ever the slow one, accepts. Down goes Ricky but he finally hits a knee to the hand to break the grip, followed by a wicked spin out to take Rude to the mat. Steamboat cranks on the arm and does so for a good while. The crowd is pretty much quiet here, so we can hear the individual shouts from fans which give Vince and Jesse something to talk about.

Rude escapes but Steamboat chops him right back down and armdrags him down as only Ricky can do. An elbow puts Ricky down for a bit and Rick pounds away some more. Steamboat comes back with chops and another armdrag into an armbar. More slugging out occurs with chops vs. punches dominating the action. In something you don’t often see, Steamboat seems to botch a spot, resulting in him backing into a knee from Rude and falling (intentionally) to the floor.

Rick sends Steamboat back first into the apron and slams him down as Steamboat is in trouble. There’s a camel clutch by Rude as he finally has a body part to work on. Steamboat taps but that wouldn’t mean anything else for about six years. The referee checks the arm and they make a BIG error as Ricky lets his arm fall three times before stopping it on the fourth drop. Jesse FREAKS as only he can but the match just keeps going. Gotta love that live TV thing right?

Anyway Steamboat stands up and drops Rude on his back to put both guys down. It’s Steamboat up first but a splash hits knees. Back to the chinlock but Ricky makes the ropes and sends Rude into the buckle ten times. A chop to the face gets two and we hit the mat for some technical stuff and a pinfall reversal sequence. By that I mean about five pin attempts each and the crowd is waking up now. Ricky suplexes Rude down but Rude pulls the referee in the way of the cross body. Rude puts on the over the shoulder backbreaker (his move before the Rude Awakening) but it’s a DQ win for Steamboat.

Rating: C. The main issue here was the length. This runs about eighteen minutes and a lame ending didn’t help things either. At least you had two talented guys in there to make the match work a bit better. Still though, cut about five minutes off of this one and it’s WAY better all of a sudden. Steamboat would be gone in just a few months.

It’s time for the bench press lift record attempt. Dino Bravo is doing the lifting (in wrestling gear) and Jesse is spotting. Frenchy Martin, Dino’s manager, is here too. Dino presses 415 to start but first demands complete and utter silence. The 415lbs are easily lifted ten times. We’re going for over 700 by the end so this may take awhile. Next up is 505, which I believe is what Yokozuna weighed when he debuted. That one only goes up eight times as we’re at six minutes spent on this so far.

This time it’s going to be 555. Great this is going to take even more time now. Dino stops to yell at the fans a bit first and now we’re going to the lifting. This one gets about seven reps as this continues to take time. Now it’s 595. They keep talking about a world record, even though there’s no official there to confirm this is happening or anything like that. Wait let’s yell at the fans some more before he lifts it three times. We’re at ten minutes now.

Jesse yells at McMahon a bit and Bravo takes forever to do 655. Gene doing the used car salesman selling of this segment helps a bit due to how over the top and ridiculous it is. Now they go for 715, but the record would be unofficial because the bar will have to be weighed later. We stop to yell at the fans of course first though and storms off. As Bravo goes to finish, Ventura reaches down and pulls the bar up. Yep, that’s the actual payoff of over fifteen minutes of this nonsense.

Women’s Tag Titles: Jumping Bomb Angels vs. Glamour Girls

These are real titles (held by the Glamour Girls at this point) which have perhaps the most confusing history ever, as the belts were literally bought and sold between two wrestling companies. Anyway, they’re here now and the Angels (Tateno and Yamazaki) beat the Glamour Girls (Judy Martin and Lelani Kai) in the finals of the Survivor Series match which basically set this up. This is also 2/3 falls.

I’m not entirely sure which is which on both teams but Vince doesn’t even know the names of the Angels at all until someone tells him later on. The Angels immediately charge at the Girls and hit stereo dropkicks to take over. For those of you unfamiliar with the Angels, basically imagine the Hardys before they became poster children for what drugs can do to you but with long hair and wearing one piece female swimsuits.

We start with Kai vs. Yamazaki (the one in pink. Got it) and a knee to the back from Martin gives the Girls control. Yamazaki Matrixes out of a cover and rolls Kai up for two. Off to Tateno for a kind of suplex out of a piledriver position for one. Jesse asks Vince the names of the Bomb Angels and Vince has NO idea. He suggests calling them pink and red. Yamazaki tries a cross body but it literally bounces off the shall we say rotund Martin.

Off to Kai again so Yamazaki knees her down before bring Tateno back in. Both Angels fire off forearms to take Kai down and there’s an Octopus Hold (a freaky kind of abdominal stretch from Japan) from Tateno. The Angels put on stereo figure fours before it gets down to just Tateno on Kai. There’s a legdrop between the legs ala Jeff Hardy but instead Tateno spreads her own legs to spread Kai’s into the splits as well.

Yamazaki hooks something like a Sharpshooter while being off to the side of Kai. That’s incredibly painful looking and I don’t think I’ve ever seen it otherwise. The Angels get in a tug of war over Kai with Martin losing the war. Martin makes a tag but it doesn’t count because her feet weren’t on the apron. There’s a rule you never see enforced. Not that it matters as there’s the regular tag anyway. Martin comes in and beats on Tateno a bit before hitting a falling backwards facedrop out of a powerbomb position for the first fall. Big Show called that the Alley Oop if it wasn’t clear.

Martin pounds on Tateno after the break but Tateno bridges out in the Matrix move from the mat. Martin misses a splash and there’s Yamazaki again. A middle rope clothesline puts Martin down for two as Vince knows the Angels’ names now. The Angels cause some heel miscommunication but Martin loads up the same move that won her the first fall. In a classic example of PSYCHOLOGY, Tateno rolls through it into a sunset flip for the second fall this time. See? She LEARNED over the course of the match. That shows thinking, which is psychology! It’s not that hard! She slipped a bit on the flip but I’ll forgive it this time.

The third fall begins with a double clothesline from the Angels for two on Kai but Lelani pounds away on her in retaliation. Off to Martin who blocks a fisherman’s suplex and escapes a backslide out of the corner. A slingshot sends Yamazaki into the wrong corner and double teaming gets two on her.

Off to Tateno who is thrown around even more than Yamazaki was. Tateno comes back with a pair of release atomic drops minus the knees and it’s off to Yamazaki for a top rope knee for two. A double underhook suplex gets two on Kai but a senton backsplash misses for Tateno. With Kai trying to get in, the Angels hit stereo missile dropkicks on Martin for the pin and the titles.

Rating: B. For the late 80s and women’s wrestling, this was off the charts. The Angels are every bit as good as any male cruiserweight not named Mysterio you’ll ever see and when they’re against people like the Girls, their skills are shown off even better. This was beyond state of the art for this time period and is still amazing today. Check these chicks out and you won’t be disappointed.

We recap Hogan vs. Andre at Wrestlemania by getting the opening minute or so which saw Hogan trying the slam and Andre getting a “controversial” two count. Andre wants a rematch and has been sold to DiBiase, who wants to buy the world title. Andre showed how evil he was by attacking Hogan on SNME and easily choking him down, setting up the rematch in about two weeks and a match which drew an INSANE 15 rating on LIVE national TV on NBC. Today Vince would lose his mind at a 5 on cable, so this was unthinkable back then.

Oh and now we get the contract signing between Andre and Hogan on tonight’s show for the match on February 5 in Indianapolis. DiBiase is here too as Jesse points out how stupid the fans are for cheering for a song called Real American here in Canada. Even Jack Tunney is here. For those of you unfamiliar, picture Johnny Ace if he wasn’t dripping with charisma.

Gene actually calls Andre Mr. Roussimoff here, which you NEVER hear on WWF TV. Andre won’t sit down and then he won’t sign. Hogan signs but Andre wants to read the whole thing first. One thing to note: Gene has probably said the date of the match about ten times. It’s so simple yet so effective. Andre signs and beats up Hogan for fun to end this after a LONG time.

Jesse and Vince talk about the Rumble and say that if you go over the top, it doesn’t matter where your feet touch because you’re out. I’m assuming that means you have to hit the floor but it’s not exactly clear.

Royal Rumble

Okerlund explains the rules and the intervals are every two minutes here. If you don’t know the Rumble rules, you have no business reading this. It’s a battle royal, people come in every two minutes, there are 20 people in it (this year only) last man standing wins. #1 is Bret Hart and #2 is Tito Santana, and wouldn’t you know it their tag teams are feuding right now. I mean what are the odds?

They slug it out to start with no one having any kind of advantage. Bret finally takes him down and heads towards the rope as Butch Reed comes in at #3. This is a different kind of Rumble as heels don’t fight heels and faces don’t fight faces yet. They just kind of work together as you would expect them to. Tito is almost thrown out by Reed but he escapes and beats on both heels for a bit.

It’s Neidhart in at #4 as not a ton is happening so far in this match. This leaves Santana more or less down 3-1 and everyone pounds away on him. The clock is pretty lenient so far as there’s no way they’re going two minutes between each of these entrants. We get some slow triple teaming and after a choke on the ropes, here’s Jake Roberts in at #5 to quickly toss out Reed. We’ve got Roberts/Santana vs. the Hart Foundation which is quite the tag match when you think about it.

The Harts get beaten down and then thrown into each other but Neidhart breaks up the DDT. Bret piledrives Santana down and Harley Race is in at #6. The crowd is staying way into this which is a good sign for the future. Things kind of slow down a bit as the faces and heels beat on each other for a little while. Here’s Jim Brunzell at #7 to make it a six man tag for all intents and purposes.

Roberts goes EVIL by pulling on Neidhart’s beard. Only Reed has been eliminated so far. The good guys are in control at the moment with Race almost being thrown out. Here’s Sam Houston, Jake’s real life half brother, coming in at #8 to beat on everyone in sight. Well every heel at least. The Harts finally get together and throw out Santana to get us down to six people in the ring.

After about 90 seconds, here’s Danny Davis at #9. To be fair he’s barely a jobber so it’s not like this is going to give the heels any significant advantage. Oh wait he’s fighting Sam Houston so yeah, the heels are in control. Race gets caught in the ropes and Jake keeps knocking him back and forth in a funny bit. Davis tries to kick Jake and gets his leg caught, followed by a suplex from Roberts.

Danny escapes a DDT as we get Boris Zhukov at #10, maybe 80 seconds after Davis came in. Things continue to go slow as we’re trying to build up to a regular battle royal. Race goes after Boris in the first instance of heel vs. heel in this match. Race and Hart double team Brunzell for a bit as this continues to be slow. Don Muraco comes out as #11 but Nikolai Volkoff follows him out, apparently thinking he’s #11. Now there’s a story you don’t see that often but which could work.

Brunzell puts out Zhukov and apparently Nikolai is going to be #12 in a few moments. After way too long of nothing happening, Nikolai is officially #12. Brunzell is put to the apron but gets back in just as Race is eliminated by Muraco. We’ve got eight in there at the moment, which would be Hart, Neidhart, Roberts, Brunzell, Houston, Davis, Muraco and Volkoff. Race won’t leave ringside so as Duggan comes out at #13, he beats Race up on the way. This would lead to one of those so ridiculous it’s hilarious moments at the Slammys.

Duggan goes right after Neidhart because HE wants to be the Jim in this match. The place is way into him too so the crowd reaction is good. After maybe a minute here’s Ron Bass at #14. Volkoff dumps Brunzell as Jake and Neidhart collide. The clock gets even shorter as B. Brian Blair is #15. There are way too many people in the ring now. Everyone fights everyone as Hillbilly Jim is #16, and the fourth person in this match named Jim. He also dumps out Jim Neidhart to empty the ring a tiny bit.

Dino Bravo is #17 as Bass dumps Houston. Back to slow motion mode with everyone pounding on people near the ropes without really doing much. Ultimate Warrior (doesn’t mean anything yet) is #18 and Bret is FINALLY put out by Don Muraco. I timed this next one, and the One Man Gang comes out at #19, 53 seconds after Warrior. They’re not even trying here. Gang immediately pounds on Roberts so Warrior jumps on the big man’s back. This is WAY before he would have been able to slam him anyway.

Gang dumps Blair and Roberts in about ten seconds, which is the best thing that could happen in this match. The Junkyard Dog is #20, giving us a final group of Davis, Volkoff, Muraco, Bass, Hillbilly Jim, Dino Bravo, Ultimate Warrior, Gang, Duggan and Dog. Hillbilly and Gang hammer on each other as Duggan puts Volkoff out. Gang tosses Hillbilly as Bravo and Davis double team Duggan. This ends badly for Davis as Duggan dumps him to a BIG pop.

Bravo and Gang dump the Warrior as we’re down to six pretty quickly. Bass jumps the Dog and tosses him to get us down to five. Muraco dumps Bass and we have a final four of Muraco, Gang, Duggan and Bravo. Gang splashes Duggan in the corner, leaving Muraco to have to fight off both guys. He even takes Frenchy Martin down with a dropkick, only to have Gang clothesline him out to get us down to three.

Jim gets double teamed for awhile and Bravo drops an elbow on him. The same clothesline sequence the heels tried earlier backfires and Bravo gets clotheslined out. Duggan pounds on Gang in a Mid-South reunion but a single shot from Gang takes him down. Gang beats on him next to the ropes, so Duggan low bridges him to win the first Royal Rumble.

Rating: C+. This is one of those matches where the words “well, they tried” come to mind. That’s the best way to put this match: they didn’t really know what they were doing yet, but they tried. The lack of star power hurt this one as only Duggan and maybe Dog were big names here. It wouldn’t be until next year when the star power came into this and it became a main event thing. Still though, it’s certainly not a bad match and they would get better as time went on.

We recap (see? It even happened back then) the contract signing from earlier tonight.

Hogan is in the arena (in jeans, which is a weird image for some reason) and says that he wants Andre. Standard hype interview for a big match but it’s Hogan in the late 80s so you know it’s awesome.

Islanders vs. Young Stallions

Another 2/3 falls match here just to fill in the final part of the show. The Islanders have recently kidnapped Matilda and are recently back off suspension for returning the dog. Tama and Powers (It’s Haku/Tama vs. Jim Powers/Paul Roma) start things off and no one can get a real advantage in the early going. The Stallions beat on Tama a bit, with shots to the head for some reason, before it’s Haku in off the tag.

A cross body gets two for Roma and the Stallions work on the arm for awhile. Off to Tama who gets in like one shot before we cut to a camera angle from over the announcers shoulders. That’s a new one. Powers gets caught by a double headbutt and Haku hammers away on him some more. This continues to go nowhere so I think out of boredom it’s off to Roma vs. Tama.

Roma dropkicks Tama down but Haku low bridges Roma, sending him to the floor and injuring the knee. That’s good enough for a countout for the first fall and the Stallions take Roma to the dressing room to get his knee looked at. In other words, we need a reason to show the contract signing again and let Andre talk a bit. Just like Hogan, Andre doesn’t have much to say but it hypes up the Main Event.

Back to the match after the promo, the recap and a pair of breaks and it’s basically Powers in a handicap match now. You can see big gaps of seats where fans have left. For this one, I can’t say I blame them. Powers dropkicks him down and we hear about Giant-A-Mania from Jesse. Off to Tama who pounds away even more and kicks out of a small package at two. Tama’s jumping back elbow takes Powers down and it’s a little Samoan trash talk for good measure. Haku’s dropkick gets two and there’s a gutwrench suplex for two more.

It’s off to an abdominal stretch but Powers finally hiptosses out of it to get a breather. Haku misses a splash and things slow down again, but there’s no one for Powers to tag because of Roma’s knee injury. Roma finally tags himself in and Haku casually kicks the leg out to take over. Jesse wishes that was Vince’s knee because that’s the kind of guy he is. Tama puts on a half crab and the referee stops it.

Rating: D. This match is a victim of its spot on the card. The problem here is that everything else is done and this was the textbook definition of filler. It’s hard to care about something like this when there’s no story and no interest in this match, and on top of that it wasn’t even anything decent. This is one of those matches though where you can’t blame a lot of the problems on the wrestlers.

Jesse and Vince chat a bit about what we saw to end the show.

Overall Rating: C+. There’s one major thing to keep in mind about this show: it was on free TV. On PPV, this would have been bad, but to be fair they had no idea what they were going for here so anything good, which a lot of stuff on here was, was a surprise. This was a decent entry into the show, but they did WAY better next year when they had an idea what they were doing. Good first effort though.

As I did with the last series of reviews, I’ll be comparing the new ratings to the original ones and posting a link to the original review.

Ratings Comparison

Ricky Steamboat vs. Rick Rude

Original: C+

Redo: C

Jumping Bomb Angels vs. Glamour Girls

Original: B-

Redo: B

Royal Rumble

Original: C-

Redo: C+

Islanders vs. Young Stallions

Original: C-

Redo: D

Overall Rating

Original: C+

Redo: C+

This show hasn’t changed much other than a few tweaks here and there.

Here’s the original review:

http://kbwrestlingreviews.com/2011/01/08/royal-rumble-count-up-1988/

Remember to follow me on Twitter @kbreviews and pick up the paperback edition of KB’s Complete 2004 Monday Night Raw Reviews (also available as an e-book) from Amazon. Check out the information here:

http://kbwrestlingreviews.com/2019/08/26/new-book-and-e-book-kbs-complete-2004-monday-night-raw-reviews/

And check out my Amazon author page with cheap wrestling books at:

http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Hall/e/B00E6282W6

We have arrived at the first of the Big Four PPVs, the Royal Rumble. This is one of the true unique matches in wrestling as there isn’t another match like this. Yes it’s a battle royal, but it’s distinct from others are we have the time intervals. In case you’ve never seen one of these, the rules are simple. You have 30 men (twenty in the first one) in total with two starting it off.

Every two minutes thereafter (with a few exceptions in some years) another person comes in. The only way to be eliminated is to be thrown over the top rope with both feet touching the floor. The last man standing wins, and beginning with the 1993 match, the winner received the world title shot at Wrestlemania, making this in a way something like the semifinals of a season with the finals being at Mania.

As usual, this has a backstory attached to it involving Vince vs. Crockett. The NWA had a show called Bunkhouse Stampede, which was somehow worse than it sounds. Vince decided to give away a PPV level card (in his head at least) for free. The Royal Rumble was that show.

In something that amuses me greatly, Vince would be TICKED when the NWA did the exact same thing on March 27, airing the first Clash of the Champions, which really was a PPV caliber show at the same time as Wrestlemania 4, which this is the buildup show for. Anyway, the series has produced some great moments, primarily due to the idea of the iron man record, which is how long people can last in the match.

It’s something that’s just cool to think about while really having no significance at all. The record is over an hour by a few people but we’ll get to that later on. Other than that, it’s really just a great novelty act that only comes once a year and never gets old to me. That’s very hard to do, but it works. I have no idea how the reviews of these matches are going to go, but I’m looking forward to it. Let’s get to it.

As always, I hope you guys call me out on anything you disagree with. Keep in mind that these are simply my thoughts as I watch the shows. I very well may be wrong about every opinion I have on them, so if you think I am, then bring it up. That’s what these are for at the end of the day: getting people talking, which I’ve done enough of now, so let’s get to…more of me talking.

Royal Rumble 1988
Date: January 24, 1988
Location: Copps Coliseum, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Attendance: 18,000
Commentators: Vince McMahon, Jesse Ventura

Here we go with the first ever Rumble. This wasn’t actually on PPV but rather a special on USA, similar to Saturday Night’s Main Event in a way. The idea was invented by Pat Patterson, and that’s about all there is to say on that aspect of it. Since this was a TV special, it only has four matches on it, which to be fair is the same amount on the first Survivor Series. The Rumble here has twenty men in it, most of which are midcard guys.

There are two other things going on with this show other than the matches. First of all we have a contract signing for Hogan and Andre II, which took place two days after my birthday. Also, Dino Bravo is going to try to bench press 715lbs, which would be a world’s record. With all that said, let’s get to the first ever Royal Rumble, which certainly is a historic thing when you think about it.

Vince and Jesse talk about the show, which sounds ok at best, but that doesn’t really mean a lot.

Rick Rude vs. Ricky Steamboat

This was a great feud in WCW in about four years, but it never took off in the WWF for some reason. Ricky, not Rick mind you, would be gone very soon. He wanted time off to be with his newborn son, but it didn’t happen so he went to WCW and had some of the best matches of all time with Ric Flair. So Ricky and Rick are fighting here before Ricky leaves to go fight Ric. I’m glad we’ve got that cleared up.

Rude just got here recently, so there’s very little known about him. I’ll never get tired of seeing Steamboat skin the cat. It just looks awesome every single time. Ventura always seemed like he had a man crush on Rude, which was just funny to me. There’s really no point to this match other than just having a match for the sake of having a match, which isn’t something I agree with but it’s fine I suppose.

You have two great wrestlers so it means the match should be good. It’s classic 80s heel vs. face stuff, so what more do you want. That being said, this is fairly boring to start. It’s fine from a technical standpoint, but it’s a bit bland. Dragon’s armdrags help that out though, as I could watch him do those all day. Granted I’d be bored out of my mind doing so, but I could do it. Steamboat is really good at being able to keep the crowd into a very standard match.

That’s a talent that very few people ever could have, and Steamboat is one of the best ever at it. I mean, he’s working on the arm of Rude, which is some of the most standard stuff you can do and he’s making it interesting looking at least. He’s doing mainly arm work and the crowd is reacting to it. That’s all you can ask for. During this first part of the match we keep hearing a woman’s voice over and over again.

It’s not something that’s supposed to be there either. Jimmy Hart never managed Rude, at least not that I can remember, and Steamboat’s wife who occasionally came to the ring with him, so I have no clue who that is. However, once a camera swings around, we see that a woman has brought a bullhorn with her, more commonly known as a megaphone. Oh this is going to be a long match isn’t it?

And now this is just getting boring. It’s going on way too long here and Steamboat just botched taking an elbow BADLY. I mean it looked horrid, which isn’t something I can ever remember saying about him. I want to hurt that woman with the megaphone. Oh look, it’s ANOTHER armbar, but the fans are cheering it to an extent. At least there’s some psychology being used and he’s adding in more stuff to the arm to switch it up a bit. That’s nice to see.

Now if only the arm plays into the finish later on, we’ll have an actual story being told instead of just most of one which is what happens far more and far too often. Rude can’t pose because of the arm, and the woman thinks it’s just SO funny. The fans really do love Steamboat. They’re cheering wildly for simple punches and chops. That’s saying a lot. Rude goes to the really bad version of a camel clutch.

It’s the kind where he just sits on Steamboat’s back and puts his hands on his face which is supposed to be effective somehow. Thankfully that lasts about ten seconds. Oh never mind it’s back on. Dang I can’t stand cock teases like that. Steamboat slaps the mat which would be considered a tap out today, but obviously this is way too early for that. Rude really wasn’t that good at this time in his career.

He’s rather young and doesn’t have a lot of stuff in his arsenal and it’s rather boring. Somehow we’re discussing Vince putting his fingers up people’s nostrils. You can tell the announcers are rather bored at this point. This match is relying on rest holds such as this chin lock far too much. Yeah they’re actually still in it. At least with Steamboat he worked on the arm which makes sense.

It takes away the Rude Awakening and while you can argue that the clutch takes away Steamboat’s movement, it’s just boring looking. Ricky (again, not Rick but Ricky) mixed up his offense and used strikes and holds on the arm to at least keep it moving. That’s a major perk if nothing else. To their credit, the crowd has stayed rather hot the whole time. They really did love Steamboat. DANG that bridge was pretty from Dragon.

They speed it up all of a sudden and now it’s good. Steamboat goes up for the cross body but Rude pulls the referee in the way of it. I’m not sure if Rude was using the Rude Awakening yet, as he gets Steamboat up in an Argentinean Body Vice, which is where you put a guy on your shoulder and pull down. Jesse says Steamboat just got a Rude Awakening, so there’s your finisher name.

Rude would be with Heenan by the time Mania rolled around and would be somewhat better. He leaves celebrating but Vince gives away the DQ ending by mistake just before it happens. Nice going BOSS. Rude is a bit angry to say the least as we go to commercial. That’s just weird to say.

Rating: C+. This was something that didn’t need nearly twenty minutes. The problem was in all the rest holds and Rude simply wasn’t ready for a seventeen minute match yet. Steamboat didn’t help things with the arm work, but to be fair Rude forgot about it maybe two minutes after he was done. The crowd was into it, but it was just barely ok. The ending sucked too.

It’s time for the bench press attempt. Ventura talks about what we’re about to see while insulting Gene at the same time. Bravo, the Canadian, gets an interesting reception. We get a promo from his manager, Frenchy Martin. It’s in French naturally so I have no clue what he said and I can’t make fun of him. Since we only have four matches, we have time for a warm up of 415lbs first. Wait, Bravo wants it to be silent.

I’ll give you two guesses as to how that goes. He does the 415 ten times as we set up another 90 to make it 505 as Frenchy talks some more. There’s no angle or comedy angle or anything like that going on here. Bravo is just lifting weights. The fans, shockingly, are booing. He speeds this set up a bit by only doing eight reps of it. Gene is despately trying to make this seem epic and is failing completely.

We’re up to 555 now, and it’s just the same thing: Bravo wants the people to be quiet, he stalls, he lifts it, and more weight is added. What’s the point of this freaking thing? Gene is trying to do like a commentary thing here and it’s dull to no end. Bravo can’t do it because there’s too much noise. Ventura waists more time by saying be quiet and Gene asks for silence. Bravo does about six reps here (they should all be red) and again asks for silence.

This is just idiotic as we’re at about ten minutes. Yes, ten minutes is being wasted on this. Were there no jobbers available for people to squash? It’s 595 this time as Bravo hates noise. Wouldn’t the time here have been better spent in like, a match for Bravo? This is obviously supposed to be used to get him over but it’s not working. I’d assume it would work better with actual wrestling, but I don’t know enough about the finer points of the game I guess.

Again, the same formula is used but this time we have another French promo. He does three reps as Gene says how awesome Bravo is. Who really thought this would be a good idea? Remember there’s no Titantron or anything, so the people can see a spotlight on something, but for the most part they can’t see a stupid thing. We’re at 655 pounds now so at least we’re close to being done.

I love also how there’s no judge or official to determine that this would be a record or anything like that also. The booing is ridiculous now so Ventura and Bravo yell at McMahon, who allegedly was just a commentator at this time so that was odd. Hey he got 655 up! We’re over seventeen minutes now as Jesse says that this is unofficial because the bar will have to be weighed later. So wait, this might not count anyway? Give me a break guys.

This is beyond moronic and has been from the start, but supposed someone hit their head and thinks this is interesting. We don’t even get to know the results until later on? WOW and you people wonder why people popped so huge for Hogan and Savage. They were the only interesting things on these shows. Again: be quiet. He lays down but gets back up once again demanding silence. Oh come on now. He’s walking away now and Martin is trying to calm him down.

Jesse asks the people if they want to see a world record. Crowd: NO! Jesse ignores this of course. They waste a minute getting Bravo calmed down and we’re hopefully at the end of this. Jesse helps him do it by grabbing the bar. He would claim to have gotten it clean with Jesse saying he only put two pounds of finger pressure in it. This went on over twenty minutes, as in longer than the opening match. If anyone can explain the mindset of Vince for doing this, I’ll get you a ham sandwich.

Women’s Tag Titles: Jumping Bomb Angels vs. Glamour Girls

This is 2/3 falls. The Women’s Tag Titles did indeed exist. Much like he did with Moolah’s Title, Vince bought them from the NWA and gave them to the Glamour Girls who allegedly won them in Egypt. I think it was billed as a double main event and shown on a split screen with Patterson winning the Intercontinental Title in Rio. It happened blast it! Anyway, the Glamour Girls are old and annoying, but the Bomb Angles are freaking AWESOME.

At Survivor Series when they destroyed the Glamour Girls, Jesse said they were like watching Savage or Steamboat or Dynamite Kid and he couldn’t be more correct. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m not a fan of women’s wrestling, but I’ve been looking forward to this match as I’ve never seen it, so you’ll be getting a legitimate fresh review here from me.

More or less this is just housekeeping at this point, as everyone knows the Angels are winning here. I’m not going to try to spell the Angels’ last names properly time after time, but the Glamour Girls are Judy Martin and Lelani Kai. Only the Angels get entrances. These belts were defended maybe twice or so in the six and a half years they were around and no one noticed when they were retired.

These two are like Lita vs. Moolah or something like that. For the sake of simplicity, the Angels will be named Red and Pink based on their attire. All four are wearing what would be described as one piece swimsuits for attire which aren’t flattering at all. Jesse and Vince are arguing about weightlifting and Jesse implies that Vince has never lifted one. That’s another of those moments that are ironic given what we know now.

Vince doesn’t know the names of the Angels either. OH MY GOODNESS! Vince says for lack of anything better, let’s call one Pink and one Red. I called that first Vince! I don’t care if I wouldn’t be born for another ten days. That was MY idea. That’s either awesome or scary as I’m thinking the same way Vince does. The Angels are just flat out destroying the Glamour Girls here as they look about as worthless as Vince is on commentary.

Dang man at least know the names of your talent. His excuse is he doesn’t speak Japanese. What difference does that make? If I walk into an Italian restaurant I can order spaghetti and I don’t speak Italian. It’s a word and you match it with a color. How hard is that?

Pink using the split legged move that Jeff Hardy used a lot. The Angels remind me of the Hardys actually with their continuity. In a very cool spot, both have a leg of one of the Glamour Girls and pull on her as the other Girl pulls from the other side. The Angels win and the Glamour Girl that’s standing more or less winds up doing a headbutt onto her partner. It looked cool.

The Angels are embarrassing the champions at this point as the Girls more or less can only do bare bones level stuff while the Angels, although a bit sloppy at times, are all over the place with varieties of offense that look very great. Like I said they’re not perfect, but man they’re fun to watch. They’re not boring like most of the women wrestlers around this time period. It’s like the situation in the Winter Olympics a few years ago with the French judge.

One of the teams did a very basic routine perfectly and the other team did a ridiculously hard routine nearly perfectly. As far as execution goes here, the Glamour Girls are likely better, but they’re nowhere near the level the Angels are at here. Jimmy Hart rubbing one of the Glamour Girls’ calves to get the circulation back into it is funny stuff. Oh I almost forgot: the woman with the bullhorn has had it taken away or has been told to stop using it THANK GOODNESS!

The Girls win the first fall using a fairly cool looking move. Martin sets for a powerbomb but instead shoves Red over her head. Big Show used this for awhile which he called the Alley-Oop. We take a quick commercial break between falls and when we come back we ring the bell. I like that. All of a sudden Vince knows the name of the Pink Angel. Well thanks for getting it seven minutes into the match buddy.

She goes for the same finishing move again after a big brawl but Red gets a sunset flip out of it instead to tie us up. We hit another commercial and upon returning we run down the Andre/Hogan contract signing and the Rumble very quickly before the bell rings. I’m most impressed here as the announcers actually talk about the match once the bell rings instead of hyping up the bigger stuff later on.

That’s showing the girls respect which is something you rarely see in today’s product. When the Angels are on offense, this match is interesting. When the Girls are on offense, I want a sharp object to do bad things with. Ah there now it’s interesting again. The Angels hit a double dropkick from the top to win the belts in a cool looking finish. That was nice.

On replay, Jesse is proven correct as he claims that when the Angel went for the cover she hooked the arm of Martin, raising it off the mat so there shouldn’t have been a pin. Vince says that since the shoulder blade was down it counts. I don’t know what to say to that.

Rating: B-. I was expecting to be bored out of my mind here, but they carried this quite well in my eyes. It was fairly clear that these belts were a joke, but if nothing else they gave us something that we very rarely if ever get to see in this era, with that being a fast paced and well done women’s match. This was fun. It was sloppy, but fun.

We hit the recap button on Hogan vs. Andre which I’m sure you all know. In case you’re brand new to wrestling (if you are you’ve picked a most interesting place to start), Hogan and Andre had the biggest match of all time at Wrestlemania 3 in front of 93,173 people, with Hogan successfully defending the title. At one point very early in the match though, Hogan tried to slam Andre but his back gave out and Andre landed on him.

There was a lot of controversy to the count because Hogan literally couldn’t kick out and it looked like Andre had won in 15 seconds. That’s the driving force behind this rematch. McMahon says that he thinks the third mat slap was “the referee shoving himself up to signal that it was a two.” I get that Vince is the face commentator, but THAT’S the best he can come up with? No wonder he was on the verge of bankruptcy so often.

Anyway, DiBiase came into the picture and tried to buy the belt, but Hogan wasn’t interested. Since Hogan said no, DiBiase paid Andre to take out Hogan. DiBiase was so great on the mic and in general it’s terrifying. How did he not get a short run with it? Depending on if you want to believe it, there’s a story out there that says he was supposed to, but due to Honky Tonk Man throwing a monkey wrench into things, that never happened.

The full story of that is in my Mania 4 review if you’re interested, but in essence, the original plan called for DiBiase to hold the belt over the summer of 88, but it would have involved Savage beating Honky for the IC belt. He said no, so Savage got the world title four months ahead of schedule. Basically we recap the entire feud up to this point in a series of videos that take about seven minutes. This feels more like a show for people that are new to the company at this point, which is rather interesting.

After another commercial, we’re in the ring and for some reason they ring the bell for this. I guess it was to get attention, but it was still odd. Gene says what this is for and introduces Hogan for the contract signing for this match which will take place a week from Friday. It was taking place on a live show on NBC on a Friday night. Live TV was a very new idea back then and being on prime time during the week was unheard of.

You can tell it’s a very different wrestling world than it is now. Hogan is wearing jeans. That just looks odd. Jesse makes a great point that Hogan should be booed for coming out to Real American in Canada, but of course he’s worshipped even more. Gene mistakenly says that Andre weighs 425 which confuses Vince for a bit. Jack Tunney is here and gets a very mixed reaction (he was a big time promoter in Canada and had a lifetime job for selling to Vince.

This same deal was in place for Monsoon who owned the Puerto Rico territory of all places) as he should. Andre just looks awesome in his suit where you can see the suspenders holding up his pants. It sounds stupid but for Andre it looks sweet. Heenan has sold his contract for a million dollars and then later in I think 1989 bought it back for a hundred grand. That’s a very sweet deal when you think about it.

There’s a ton of mind games from Andre which has Hogan looking flat out scared. That’s something you hardly ever see. Hogan signs as DiBiase cuts a promo talking down to Hogan which is just awesome. Andre just stares at Hogan before signing which is rather intimidating. Andre signs and then beats up Hogan of course, because it wouldn’t be wrestling without it. This was a new idea so the cliché isn’t there yet, making it much cooler.

Buy Wrestlemania 4.

We talk about the Rumble, which sounds really weak. There’s not a lot of huge names in it, which kind of hurt things. Let’s do it.

Royal Rumble

Bret Hart is #1 and Tito Santana is 2, so if nothing else we’re guaranteed a solid opening. This was the hot feud for the tag belts at the time, so I’m quite shocked that these are the two opening guys. Bear with me on this, as I have no idea how this is going to go. And we’re off. Vince is complaining about Andre and DiBiase’s conduct, saying that if Andre wins the title it’ll be a dark time for the company. I agree.

Those 45 seconds were indeed a nightmare come to Stamford. Thankfully Jesse gets Vince talking about the match and mentions how ironic it is that these two are starting, which amuses me. Something I noticed here: Vince mentions that hopefully 3 will be one of Tito’s friends. This was a lot more of a standard battle royal as there’s no concept mentioned of every man for themselves.

The idea of say Neidhart throwing out Bret would be a split of the team instead of just a regular thing in a battle royal. That’s very interesting. 3 is Butch “I was supposed to be a Horsemen” Reed. Tito hits the forearm just as Butch comes in to make it one on one again. Jesse says that Reed is virtually rested. Why wouldn’t he be all rested? Also if you’ve been resting, doesn’t it imply you had been doing something before? Why am I examining this?

After about a minute and a half (the space between people always changed through the match. According to Wikipedia this match runs 33 minutes even. Now I’m bad at math, but with 19 different entrances considering that two start and two minutes between each, wouldn’t there be a minimum of 38 minutes, which would also assume that the last person out was eliminated more or less immediately and didn’t have to run to the ring) Neidhart is 4, making it three on one against Tito.

Naturally just before Jim gets in, Bret and Butch mess up a double team spot which I think was going to be called the Convenient Plot Twist of Doom, but I could be wrong. The Harts kind of steal Demolition’s finisher to beat on Santana a bit more. Vince finally points out the idea that Reed could double cross them, but naturally he doesn’t.

After about 75 seconds we have the fifth entrant of Jake Roberts who was rapidly becoming a huge name. He’s by far the biggest star in the match at this point and immediately eliminates Reed and then hammers on Neidhart. Jim would be his opponent at the infamous Heroes of Wrestling issue which I’m sure you’ve heard of.

Jake and Tito clean house for a bit as it will never cease to amaze me how a guy can get a beating that would put most people in a hospital and be up fresh and fighting just seconds later. The crowd is WAY into this. The DDT doesn’t hit and the heels are in control again. Bret hits a piledriver on Tito as number six is Harley Race who needed to retire about five years prior to this.

At seven we have Jim Brunzell as we’re in full on battle royal mode of very little happening. This is a white hot crowd which is helping the boredom a lot. All six guys try to get each other out in a big pile which is either very cool or very stupid. Sam Houston, Jake’s tiny and untalented brother in law is eighth. The commentary here has to be limited as it’s really just punching and kicking and a random attempt at an elimination that doesn’t do anything.

That’s the nature of the beast though as you have to fill in a lot of time out there. We have seven people in the ring right now which is far too high of a number. As I type that, the Harts throw out Tito. Danny Davis is ninth. He was a referee turned wrestler and about as effective as Santino. Sam Houston beats him up if that tells you anything. Race gets caught in the slingshot position which is where he sits on the middle rope and gets punched down but his feet save him and bring him back in.

I’ve always liked that one. More random punching follows. These fans REALLY want a DDT. Boris Zhukov is the tenth entrant and eighth currently in the ring. How are we already halfway done with this? He goes for Houston, which makes sense as he’s the tiny guy in the match, but it’s getting a bit repetitive. Race and Boris go at it, and the term every man for himself is first used on a Rumble broadcast. I love me some hot heel on heel action. It had to be said.

Davis tries to get rid of Sam Houston to become mayor of Jobber Town USA, or would it be Jobber Town Canada in the Horowitz province? We start the second half with Don Muraco (incorrectly called #10 by Vince) and Nikolai Volkoff who run down at the same time. Uh oh we have an uninteresting problem here. Muraco hits him and climbs in, making that whole segment completely pointless.

We have WAY too many people in there until Boris is eliminated to take us down to just eight in the ring. That’s still far too many people laying on the ropes and punching each other. I wonder if they ever get bored doing that for so long. Brunzell hits a sweet dropkick on Hart. That was nice. Apparently Nikolai will be 12th when we finally get to him.

After Vince mentions that he has the list of all twenty names, more or less ending any feeling of suspense at least for me, Nikolai comes in, again making the time where he stood at ringside completely pointless. Race does his traditional back flip bump to be eliminated which always looks good.

Jim Duggan comes out 13th to a MASSIVE pop. He and Roberts were likely the second and third biggest faces in the company at this point. He and Race have a short incident in the aisle which I guess is the setup for the hilarious fight they had at the Slammys. Find that show as it’s hilarious stuff all night long.

There are WAY too many people in there with I think nine at this point and for some reason they’re all on one side of the ring. That looks very odd indeed. Ron “Don’t Call Me Lance” Bass comes in and I promise that’s the last of my Chris Berman moments. I can’t stand that guy. I like the way Duggan punches. It just looks cool. The ring is too full but Brunzell being thrown out helps a bit.

Brian Blair is 15 to get us down to just five people to go. These fans sound like they’re heroin addicts given how much they want the DDT. After even more stalling and bad punching we have Hillbilly Jim at sixteen. He takes out Anvil in about four seconds to keep us at that ten person equilibrium. Dino Bravo gets us to 11 as number 17 which I think is a new record for most people in the match’s long standing twenty minute history.

That’s the problem here. Considering the whole match is thirty three minutes, Bravo should be coming in at thirty two I believe, yet we’ve got three more to be entered. Bass gets rid of the pest known as Sam Houston. The match becomes legal when some rookie that hasn’t done anything yet known as the Ultimate Warrior comes in. He’s a jobber killer at this point and barely even that high up.

Bret finally goes out as I guess he couldn’t stand to be in there with someone as bad as Warrior. He was in there twenty five minutes which is the record at the time. About forty seconds after Warrior comes in we have One Man Gang who would win the Slammy for Best Group. He knocks out Roberts and Blair in about a minute to finally start clearing the ring up a bit. The final man comes out after about a minute and it’s the Junkyard Dog. Well that’s pretty anticlimactic.

For the life of me I will never understand what was so great about this guy. He was supposed to be a big deal but I’ve always found him to be a complete waste of air. Anyway, this is the final field of about nine or ten so let’s do it. Yeah it’s ten. Vince shows off his brilliant wrestling mind by picking the Dog to win it. The 300lb Lithuanian Nikolai Volkoff is the first of the ten out thanks to Duggan.

Gang backdrops Jim out to take up to eight. Gang is also the I think fourth person that Jesse says this is his type of match. We get it: brawlers should do well in this. Davis gets clotheslined out to finish eighth. Gang and Bravo eliminate Warrior about five seconds later with relative ease. Dog is out a bit later to take us to five. Bass’ elimination takes us down to four.

I know that was just listing eliminations but they all came rather quickly with nothing at all between them. The final four are Gang, Bravo, Duggan and Muraco. The announcers pick the Gang for the win. Muraco beats up the Achilles enthusiasts while Duggan is down. Bravo holds Muraco up so Gang can clothesline him out, and naturally…it works. What? Of course it works.

Those are finely trained professionals. Did you expect them to make a mistake or something like that? They try the same spot on Duggan and it fails to take us to Gang and Duggan as the last two. Gang beats on Duggan on the ropes and charges at him, but Duggan of all things uses his head and pulls the rope down for the win.

Jesse is annoyed which is funny. We almost immediately go to commercial. One thing I really liked there was that there were no commercial breaks which would have messed up a lot of stuff for me. I’m glad they did it right.

Rating: C-. This match gets a pass, but it wasn’t that good. To be fair, it’s the very first one and they had no clue what they were doing, so given the information and knowledge they had, this was good. The roster wasn’t huge here as Hogan, Andre and DiBiase were the biggest stars in the company at the time, so there was only so much they could do, but it was certainly watchable. Next year they would iron out a lot of the kinks to improve it greatly, but for a first try this was fine.

We recap the real thing of the show by talking about Hogan and Andre. Hogan comes out again to talk about the title match on the fifth and says exactly what you would expect him to say. This was just window dressing.

Islanders vs. Young Stallions

Yes we actually have another match on this show and oddly enough it’s also 2/3 falls. The Islanders had dognapped Matilda recently in a somewhat well known angle. In short, they stole the dog and then gave it back. It was a big deal at the time for no apparent reason. Vince plays Sherlock Holmes here which is idiotic sounding. Heenan is apparently in Barbados for no given reason. Tama and Jim Powers start.

Tama was a guy I’ve always liked but he never got anything going for him. Vince admits that he was bored out of him mind during the Bravo segment which is great. It’s always good to hear Vince admit the he screwed up. They more or less ignore the match for the beginning because the show is more or less over at this point. Vince says that Tama has a devastating leap.

He doesn’t say into a splash or anything like that, but just a devastating leap. Wait, so he has a painful jump? Is he a jump rope master or something? Does Heenan turn the ropes? The man that would somehow become a Horseman named Paul Roma gets a tag and then it’s his turn to get beaten up. Oh dear Roma hurt his knee. No one seems to care. He gets counted out to end the first fall.

We go to commercial and as we come back, the Stallions are in the back getting Roma’s knee looked at. As stupid as that sounds, we get another recap of the contract signing and while a match is going on, we go to Andre and DiBiase for a promo in the arena. That’s just painfully stupid looking.

The commercial is let’s say three minutes long. In three minutes a guy with a bad knee got to the back and DiBiase and the Giant got word to the production team that they wanted to say something and got to the stage in time? That’s a BIG stretch. Andre says exactly what you would expect him to say. He does use the term Giant-a-Mania which is kind of awesome.

After another commercial we’re back in the second fall. Roma’s knee is dead here but we keep going anyway. I’ll give them credit as that’s actually a rather creative way to get in a match and a promo in the final part of the show. It’s kind of plausible but not really. It’s close enough though. Naturally they talk about the promo. You have to give it to Vince: he managed to get a promo in so that he wouldn’t have to talk about this match very much at all.

I’ll give him credit for something up with good ideas like that. That’s not bad at all. Jesse says that the Hogan vs. Andre match will be bigger than the Indy 500. Vince says he’d like to see Jesse dragged behind an indy car. Dang that’s rather violent.

This is just rather generic stuff for the most part as Powers can’t tag out because his partner is hurt. He finally does and Roma is destroyed, giving up to a half crab pretty quickly. Jesse somewhat sarcastically calls it a valiant effort which is I guess his attempt at being nice?

Rating: C-. This booking made little sense as I don’t get why this went on last. It was pretty boring but it’s not bad. It’s standard 80s stuff but it’s little more than a squash. It closed the show on an odd note, but this was ok I guess.

Vince and Jesse recap the show for about three minutes with a very long talk about the Bravo thing. For the love of goodness it wasn’t a big deal! They desperately try to make it a big deal, but man it’s just a failure. They of course recap Hogan and Andre and in a funny close, Jesse goes through the information for the match time and location etc., which disgusts the marketing freak known as Vince. That’s just great.

Overall Rating: C+. There’s a major factor to remember when watching this show: it was completely free. As a pay per view, this would have been lower than an F. However, given that this was pretty much thrown together and was given away free, how much can you complain? You got four matches and six segments total.

The first match was ok I guess, the second was exciting, the third was a new gimmick which is always worth a look and the fourth…well I’m not sure why it was where it was but it’s not bad. The two segments were the epitome of hit and miss as the first was just a waste of time, but to be fair you could just change the channel for this one. The Hogan/Andre was nothing but a build up for next week which is also fine. The one thing I don’t get is where a lot of guys were.

I mean, there’s no IC Champion in Honky. There’s no Savage who would go on to win the world title at Mania. No Demolition who would win the tag titles. Beefcake wasn’t there either and he would get the title shot at Mania. Martel, the other tag champion wasn’t there.

It certainly would have helped the battle royal out, but I guess that’s neither here nor there. The show is fine all things considered, but it’s really more of a historical thing than a good thing. It’s not bad at all, but don’t expect a great show because it isn’t one.

 

 

 

Remember to follow me on Twitter @kbreviews and pick up the paperback edition of KB’s Complete 2004 Monday Night Raw Reviews (also available as an e-book) from Amazon. Check out the information here:

http://kbwrestlingreviews.com/2019/08/26/new-book-and-e-book-kbs-complete-2004-monday-night-raw-reviews/

And check out my Amazon author page with cheap wrestling books at:

http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Hall/e/B00E6282W6

 

Monday Night Raw
Date: June 12, 2006
Location: Bryce Jordan Center, State College, Pennsylvania
Attendance: 4,500
Commentators: Jim Ross, Jerry Lawler

It’s the night after One Night Stand and that means we have a new WWE/ECW Champion in the form of Rob Van Dam. Sure it was a screwy finish, but that’s one of the places where ECW shines. That’s a big story in its own right, but we also need to get ready for Vengeance later this month. Let’s get to it.

Here is One Night Stand if you need a recap.

In Memory Of John Tenta.

Paul Heyman says that even though he isn’t an official official, Rob Van Dam is still the new WWE Champion. Tomorrow night on the debut of ECW on Sci-Fi, the WWE Championship will officially be rechristened the ECW Championship. Since Edge is the #1 contender, Van Dam will defend the title against him at Vengeance. Therefore, Edge, Lita, and all of you are invited to the debut show. Van Dam comes in to spin the title, which still says John Cena.

Opening sequence.

Randy Orton vs. Kane

So Orton is now on Raw. Orton gets in a right hand in the corner and manages to stomp Kane down in the corner. JR: “Kane was devastating in See No Evil. Maybe we can have a sequel here called Silence of the Slams.” A dropkick puts Orton down but Kane sits up and hits the big boot. The running clothesline into a side slam sets up the top rope clothesline but Orton blocks the chokeslam. Kane kicks him outside and they fight up the ramp for the quick double countout.

Rating: D+. This didn’t have time to go anywhere but it feels more like a means to set something else up in the near future. What we got here didn’t last very long and that’s probably a good thing given that this was a cold match with Orton just debuting on Raw. At least the See No Evil lighting seems to be over for no at least.

Post match they fight up to the stage until the Costume Kane shows up for the brawl with the real one. Costume Kane knocks the real one out to the floor for a crash.

Here’s Charlie Haas to talk about accidentally knocking Lilian Garcia off the apron last week. Lilian has a sprained wrist and Charlie is truly sorry, but here’s Viscera to interrupt. Viscera says that was very sweet and Lilian may accept the apology, but he doesn’t. The beatdown is on, including the big splash. Lilian isn’t sure what to think about this.

We recap Vince McMahon trying to get HHH to join his Club but HHH outsmarted the McMahons and by not drinking the drugged water, meaning Vince and Shane were left laying instead.

Jonathan Coachman is trying to make sure everything is perfect for Vince McMahon’s State Of The WWE Address tonight. The cameramen aren’t even in the right place!

ECW on Sci-Fi debuts tomorrow.

Jerry Lawler complains about Joey Styles costing him the match against Tazz. Then to make it even worse, Sandman attacked poor innocent Eugene.

Eugene is worried about Jim Duggan facing Umaga tonight. Duggan: “WAS BABE RUTH WORRIED WHEN HE FOUGHT GODZILLA ON TOP OF THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING??? Trust me, THAT HAPPENED!” He’s ready to fight tonight.

It’s time for the State of WWE, which means it’s time to talk about the return of ECW. In addition, Vince is not pleased with what happened between himself, HHH and Shane McMahon last week. The last person to cross the boss was Shawn Michaels, who isn’t in action anymore thanks to the Spirit Squad. Therefore, tonight HHH gets to face the Spirit Squad in a gauntlet match. After tonight, HHH will join Michaels on the highway to H***. Wasn’t that back in 1998?

Torrie Wilson vs. Candice Michelle

It’s a Wet N Wild match, meaning there are various water based implements in the ring and the winner is on the cover of the WWE Summer Special magazine. Naturally they’re both in white in case you didn’t get the idea here. They go back to back to start and start with the water guns before Candice throws her face first down onto the water balloons. Candice hits a backbreaker and puts some water balloons down Torrie’s clothes for a Vader Bomb.

That’s good for two and Lawler is way too happy about the kickout. Candice throws a bucket of water but stops for the Go Daddy Dance. A splash in the corner sets up another bucket of water being poured onto Candice, setting up the Stink Face. They go outside with Lawler being sprayed with the water gun and JR rather enjoying the visuals, calling it better than the Oklahoma State Fair. Back in and Torrie hits a facebuster for the pin.

Rating: D. I don’t think this really qualifies as a wrestling match for the most (Moist?) part and that’s fine. They weren’t trying to do anything here other than the obvious and in that regard, it worked rather well. They kept it short and in this case, Lawler’s commentary was as it was supposed to be. Not good of course, but looking for quality here is missing the point.

Trish Stratus hosted the inductions into the Canadian Walk Of Fame and kissed Pamela Anderson. This isn’t on the Network.

Commentary explains the various things required for Rob Van Dam to beat John Cena last week.

Video on Van Dam winning the title.

The Spirit Squad says it’s GAME OVER for HHH. I really hope that isn’t supposed to pass for clever at this point.

Spirit Squad vs. HHH

Gauntlet match. Actually hang on as here’s Vince McMahon to say we don’t need a referee right now. Instead we see what happened to Shawn Michaels when the Spirit Squad got their hands on him. Mikey starts for the team and gets clotheslined before the bell. The knee drop into the jumping knee to the face make it worse so Vince sends out Kenny. HHH beats up both of them with a neckbreaker and a spinebuster so it’s Johnny coming in as well.

The fans chant for DX as Nicky is here as well, making it 4-1. HHH is whipped into the steps and it’s time to wrap a chair around his knee. Vince: “Not on the knee. Break his d*** neck!” Mitch is called out to join the fray….but he comes sprawling out of the entrance because Shawn Michaels is back. Sweet Chin Music hits Mitch and Shawn goes to the ring to clean house. The Pedigree connects as well and DX is back, complete with stereo crotch chops. HHH even drops his trunks to make Vince’s eyes bug out as a bonus.

Rating: D+. There was a bell so this was an official match, but the wrestling wasn’t quite the point (again). It worked out well in getting Shawn back though, which was the point of the whole thing. Vince is going to need more than the Spirit Squad to give these two a challenge, but they’ll work fine for the first boss. The reunion was good as well, as that felt like a special moment.

Back from a break and Vince makes the Spirit Squad vs. DX at Vengeance.

Jim Duggan vs. Umaga

Eugene and Armando Alejandro Estrada are here as well. Duggan jumps him at the bell and hammers away but is quickly tied in the Tree of Woe. Eugene hands Duggan the board but Umaga kicks him in the head anyway. Umaga breaks the board over his own head and finishes in a hurry with the Samoan Spike.

Post match Eugene gets tied in the ropes and has to watch Umaga hit the running hip attack in the corner on Duggan.

See No Evil video.

Here’s Mick Foley, who has some good news: his eye and multiple lacerations suffered putting on the show of a lifetime will be fine soon. What matters is that the cuddly Mick Foley is back, right here at the University of Pennsylvania (wrong school). All he can think about is…being interrupted by Ric Flair. Foley says he only let Flair have his entrance because of who he is. Now what is Flair doing here?

Flair says he has been wanting to talk to Foley for three years and doesn’t care about One Night Stand. He wants to talk about the two of them, because Flair has heard what Foley has said about Flair’s comments on his wrestling career. The only person on Flair’s status around here is Joe Paterno so he is standing up for WWE against this ECW stuff.

For years, people like Flair, HHH, Shawn Michaels, Rock, Austin, Undertaker and Kurt Angle have wrestled their way to greatness. But then people say the greatest thing they ever saw was Foley going off the Cell and through a table. Flair: “We wrestle our way to greatness. You fall off a Cell and you’re great? That’s bulls***.” Foley says no one here cares about Flair vs. Race, Steamboat or Funk because that’s too old for them.

To Foley’s WWE fans, Flair’s thousand dollar suits will never match up to the Santa’s Village t-shirt and ripped flannel. Foley slept on a roof as WWF Champion to save a few bucks and what really bothers Flair is he can do nothing about it. This glorified stuntman could rip Flair apart so Flair takes the jacket off and backs Foley into the corner, but Foley cites his eye injuries from last night. Foley: “My eyes are so screwed up I might mistake you for Joe Paterno and start slapping the wrong old guy around!”

Foley leaves so Flair offers thumbtacks and a ladder if that’s what it takes to get Foley in the ring. That won’t work for Foley, but he’ll challenge Flair to a match at Vengeance, 2/3 falls. Flair can’t accept fast enough. I remember never liking this feud before so maybe watching it with fresh eyes will work better. This worked well and laid out the issues in the intense way you knew you would get from these two.

Johnny Nitro vs. Carlito

Melina is here with Nitro and Shelton Benjamin is on commentary, as he will be defending the Intercontinental Title in a triple threat against these two at Vengeance. Carlito grabs an armdrag and a hiptoss to start but goes outside when Melina steals his apple. Nitro uses the distraction to hammer away, with Melina getting in a headscissors from the floor. Carlito fights back up with a springboard elbow and a clothesline but Melina offers a distraction. That’s enough for Shelton to help block the Backstabber, setting up a standing shooting star press to give Nitro the pin.

Rating: C-. Very short by the book match here which worked fine as a way to set up the title match at Vengeance. It wasn’t about having a competitive match but Shelton screwing Carlito over makes sense. It’s nice to see Nitro added into the mix as well, though it makes his early struggles on Raw a little more confusing in hindsight.

Mickie James is rather amused by Beth Phoenix getting hurt last week. It’s amazing how many people get hurt for getting on her bad side. Ashley broke her leg and is on Smackdown, Trish Stratus has a bad shoulder and now Beth has to eat through a straw. Mickie and Beth grew up together but then Beth got really, really mean. Randy Orton of all people pops up to talk about the huge upset when Kurt Angle beat him. That was in ECW though so Angle should want a rematch at Vengeance under WWE rules. Spread the word.

The Highlanders are coming and raid the trash in Times Square.

We look back at the DX reunion.

Vengeance rundown.

Lita takes over interviewing duties for Maria and brings in Edge. He changed the face of wrestling last night by beating three ECW has beens and then costing John Cena the WWE Championship. Tomorrow night, the two of them will be at ECW but as for tonight, he’s facing Cena, who will never be WWE Champion again.

Stevie Richards, Justin Credible and Balls Mahoney are here to sit in the front row.

Edge vs. John Cena

Cena is serious tonight and double legs Edge down to start the fight in a hurry. They go outside with Edge going into the steps so Lita jumps on Cena for the DQ in less than a minute.

Post match the ECW guys jump the barricade so Cena cleans house with a chair. Cena says he got an awakening in ECW last night and since anyone can show up and do whatever they want, he’s going to be showing up on ECW tomorrow night as well. He likes this feeling and he’s going to have an extremely good time tomorrow.

Overall Rating: C. The wrestling was almost nothing here but this show did a good job of making me want to see tomorrow’s ECW show. That’s exactly what they were going for here and Vengeance is starting to look good as well. That’s a nice use of time tonight and I’m curious to see how they pull off both shows. Now that being said, the Raw stuff was actually pretty weak and the wrestling was just a step above awful, but I’m liking where things are going. Find a nice mixture of all that stuff and the show could be back on its roll in a hurry. For now though, nice job of building things up.

 

 

Remember to follow me on Twitter @kbreviews and pick up the paperback edition of KB’s Complete 2004 Monday Night Raw Reviews (also available as an e-book) from Amazon. Check out the information here:

http://kbwrestlingreviews.com/2019/08/26/new-book-and-e-book-kbs-complete-2004-monday-night-raw-reviews/

And check out my Amazon author page with cheap wrestling books at:

http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Hall/e/B00E6282W6

Survivor Series 1991
Date: November 27, 1991
Location: Joe Louis Arena, Detroit, Michigan
Attendance: 17,500
Commentators: Gorilla Monsoon, Bobby Heenan

This show marks a change of pace from the Survivor Series formula and it was for the better. The fans saw little to no reason to buy a pay per view with nothing on the line, so giving them a traditional main event to look forward to. The rest of the show follows the normal formula though, and thankfully there are no eggs here. Let’s get to it.

We open with a clip from Superstars with Savage being tied up in the ropes as Jake made the cobra bite Savage’s arm. Piper immediately ran down from the broadcast booth to try to help. Liz came out screaming as well. This is when Savage was a commentator and retired but looking for reinstatement.

The key thing is he had been scheduled to be on the PPV as a captain against Jake’s team, but because of this, both captains were pulled off the show with three days’ notice as mentioned above. The actual match between the two of them would be a week later on a different PPV called Tuesday in Texas, which was another $20. It felt like a total ripoff because that’s exactly what it was.

Anyway back on Superstars, Savage can’t stand up because of the snake bite but he keeps trying to fight Jake. They finally get Savage on a stretcher and start wheeling him away but he falls off. Now we get to the unintentional comedy. Savage falls off the stretcher and Vince is freaking out on commentary. The camera cuts to a crying child in the crowd and Vince loses it, audibly cracking up on air and trying to talk about “complete chaos” while clearly laughing.

We get the announcement from WWF President Jack Tunney that Savage and Roberts won’t be allowed to wrestle at Survivor Series. This is translated as “HAHA WE GOT YOUR MONEY ALREADY!”

Gorilla and Bobby talk for a bit.

Team Ric Flair vs. Team Roddy Piper

Ric Flair, Ted DiBiase, The Mountie, The Warlord

Roddy Piper, Bret Hart, Davey Boy Smith, Virgil

It’s also back to the simple team names this year. Roddy was Flair’s first feud in the company and not only did you know the matches would be good, but the promos would be awesome too. Bret was feuding with Mountie over the Intercontinental Title, Smith was feuding with Warlord over who was stronger and Virgil was feuding with DiBiase because who else was he going to feud with?

Flair has the REAL World Title with him here, which is censored but if you know your titles, you can see a WWF Tag Team Title, which looks really weird if you’re in the arena (for clarification, the short version is Flair was NWA Champion, left the NWA, wasn’t paid back for the deposit he put down on the belt, brought it to the WWF, got sued, and couldn’t use the title in the angle they were doing anymore so they would substitute in another belt which was censored in storyline.)

Big reaction for Bret, who has finally split from Neidhart and is Intercontinental Champion as of Summerslam. DiBiase starts for his team against Piper, which is a pretty awesome match by itself. No managers are allowed at ringside this year but Sherri is there anyway. Flair sneaks in and blasts Piper in the back to give Ted an early advantage. Piper atomic drops Ted and Sherri comes in to choke him, which somehow isn’t a DQ. Piper kisses her and punches DiBiase to take over.

Sherri is sent to the back and Roddy brings in Smith. The good guys work over the arm of DiBiase with Virgil of all people getting the biggest pop. After all four go in they start going around again with all four getting in another set of shots on the arm. Bret stays in but misses a knee in the corner to put himself in trouble. They trade near falls before Bret takes Ted right back down by the arm.

DiBiase hiptosses him down and wisely tags in Flair. Bret starts with some of his favorite moves before tagging in Davey Boy to slingshot Flair into the corner. Piper wants in but Flair stops the tag. There’s the gorilla press to Flair and the tag to Piper, drawing a BIG pop from the crowd. Piper goes nuts with punches, knocking Flair to the floor for a Flair Flop.

Back inside and it’s off to Warlord who Piper wants to try a test of strength against. Piper is just playing though and brings in Smith for the big power match. Smith hits some shoulder blocks but misses a charge and it’s off to Mountie. Bret tags in and Mountie immediately hits the floor like a cowardly heel should. Instead here’s DiBiase who gets elbowed off the middle rope for two. Ted and Bret hit head to head and both guys are down.

Mountie is willing to get in there now but it’s back to Davey instead. Smith gorilla presses Mountie and pumps him about three times before slamming him down for no cover. Off to Flair who chops away at the Bulldog which doesn’t work at all. DiBiase and Flair try a double team but get double clotheslined instead. There’s the powerslam to Mountie but he’s not legal. Flair comes off the top with a shot to the back of Smith’s head for the pin and the elimination. Both guys were legal too so well done on keeping order.

Piper immediately charges in but Flair tags DiBiase back instead. Flair comes in to face a downed Piper but Ric is put in the Figure Four almost immediately. That goes nowhere so it’s off to Mountie vs. Virgil and Mountie can’t get a tag out from anyone. You know, because everyone is afraid of Virgil. Flair comes in and has zero luck so it’s DiBiase vs. Virgil again. Ted powerslams him down and it’s immediately back to the Warlord.

Virgil gets sent to the floor and Flair whips him into the steps, with Virgil doing an awful job of pretending to slam into them. The Warlord’s full nelson goes on but everything breaks down and Bret comes off the top to take out Warlord, giving the illegal Piper the pin to tie us up at 3-3. It’s Piper vs. DiBiase now before Virgil is quickly tagged in. Virgil slaps the Million Dollar Dream on DiBiase but Ted sends him into the buckle to escape.

Here’s Flair again with a belly to back suplex before it’s back to Mountie. Every remaining heel takes their shots on Virgil in what is likely the best possible option. Flair covers him for two and puts his feet on the ropes because that’s what Flair does. DiBiase comes in and ducks his head, only to get caught by a swinging neckbreaker. There’s the hot tag to Piper who no sells everything Flair throws at him. Everything breaks down and Flair is sent to the floor. That’s important because the referee disqualifies EVERYONE in the ring, but Flair was outside and is the sole survivor.

Rating: B. Gah this was going AWESOME until the pretty lame ending. Having Flair be the sole survivor is a smart move though as it makes the fans hate him even more. This was a GREAT setup though and was on pace to be a classic before the ending. To be fair though, at the pace they were going the match would have been an hour long if they were going to do a full version. Still though, what we got was very good.

Gene is on the platform and brings out Savage to talk about Jake, because we can’t have the match on this show so let’s talk about it instead. Savage talks about being bitten by the snake and being able to see and hear Liz crying, which is the worst thing Jake could do. He promises to be all over Jake like melted butter. Oh man stuff just got REAL. Liz comes out in what is presented as a bigger deal than it should be. As usual, she has nothing to say.

Gorilla thinks Tuesday in Texas may be on TV! I think he might be wrong here.

Team Mustafa vs. Team Slaughter

Colonel Mustafa, Berzerker, Skinner, Hercules

Sgt. Slaughter, Tito Santana, Jim Duggan, Texas Tornado

Skinner is an alligator wrestler from the Everglades and Berzerker is a crazy viking who tried to stab Undertaker with a sword. A lot of these guys are on their way out. Hercules would be in WCW by May, Tornado would job to the stars until leaving in July, as would Mustafa (Iron Sheik). The rest of the guys would do nothing of note for the rest of their time in the company.

Kerry looks high as a kite and almost falls off the apron getting into the ring. This is pretty recently after Slaughter’s face turn as he was a heel at Summerslam. This isn’t exactly the most talent laden match ever and the only feud is Slaughter vs. Mustafa due to their recent split.

Tito and Skinner start with Santana taking over with a headlock. There’s the flying forearm out of nowhere and Skinner hits the floor without a cover. Off to Berzerker vs. Tornado, which would work a lot better down in Dallas. Berzerker misses a dropkick and it’s off to Mustafa. After some very brief offense, Kerry tumbles to his corner and brings in Duggan to face Hercules, which took place in the first ever match at Survivor Series.

Duggan gets taken down by double and triple teaming and it’s off to Mustafa. He loads up his curled boots and does nothing with them. Duggan pounds away and backdrops Mustafa down before the hot tag to Slaughter. The big showdown is an atomic drop and a clothesline to Mustafa for the elimination.

Berzerker comes in with some clotheslines and a kick to Slaughter’s fat gut. A boot to Slaughter’s face puts him down and it’s off to Hercules for some two counts. Back to the viking who gets crotched on the top rope and kicked in the legs. Off to Duggan who clotheslines Berzerker to the floor, only to have Berzerker come back in for a backdrop back out to the floor. Tornado comes in and pounds away on him before it’s off to Hercules again.

Tito gets a blind tag and hits a forearm to the back of the head (El Paso Del Muerte) for the pin and the elimination. Skinner comes in as it’s 4-2. I don’t see this going well for Mustafa’s team. A blind tag brings in Slaughter who rolls up Skinner for the elimination. Slaughter whips Berzerker into Duggan’s clothesline for the elimination and the win.

Rating: F. The match was awful, it was never in doubt, and the biggest deal on the heel team was Skinner, who would get an Intercontinental Title shot soon after this. What a horrible match and one of the most worthless ones in the history of the show so far, which is covering quite a bit of ground. Nothing to see here at all.

Here’s Jake to plug Tuesday in Texas some more. To be fair, Jake saying “trust me” in that evil voice of his was amazing. Jake swears he didn’t know that the snake had venom in it still but making Liz cry excited him. God has told Jake that God doesn’t like Okerlund, so let’s blame everyone but Jake. I said he was awesome, not that he made sense. No reptiles are allowed at the match between Savage and Roberts. He wants to kiss Liz and that’s about it.

We recap Hogan vs. Undertaker. Flair confronted Hogan in the Funeral Parlor (Undertaker’s interview segment) and went off on him about hearing about Hogan for years. Now Flair is here and wants to know what Hogan is going to do about it. Hogan pulled off the shirt and Undertaker came out of a standing casket behind Hulk and hit him with the urn. Piper and Savage ran out of the broadcast booth with chairs but Undertaker literally swatted away Savage’s swing. Undertaker rips Hogan’s cross off ala Andre in 87 and leaves.

WWF World Title: Undertaker vs. Hulk Hogan

Undertaker is “undefeated” here, which means overseas tours and house shows don’t count because Tito Santana beat him in Spain and Warrior beat him on a bunch of house shows. Feeling out process to start with no one being able to get a real advantage. Undertaker shoulders Hogan and Hulk regroups a bit while Undertaker reaches to the urn. Back in and Undertaker chokes away in the corner in a shot you see in a lot of his video packages.

Bearer chokes Hogan a bit and Undertaker slams him. A big elbow misses and the place cheers loudly. Hulk pounds away but he can’t put him down. A slam doesn’t work, nor does an elbow to the head. Hogan clotheslines UNdertaker to the floor where the Dead Man lands on his feet and pulls Hogan outside. Back in and Undertaker chokes away some more and Bearer does the same. Undertaker starts smothering him as you can see the Hogan super fan, a guy who dressed up like Hulk (including yellow trunks) sitting in the front row and freaking out.

This hold goes on for a good while, which is just Undertaker having his hand on Hogan’s face and doing nothing else. By long I mean like two and a half minutes. When the whole match is only thirteen minutes, that’s quite the stretch. Hogan comes back with some shoulder blocks that don’t do much, only to haveUndertaker clothesline him down again. There’s the Tombstone but Hogan is up before a cover. He pounds away on Undertaker and knocks him down to one knee which is a very rare sight.

Hogan gets a good slam as Flair is on his way to the ring in his spiffy black and white robs. Hogan takes out Flair with a right hand and big boots Undertaker, only to have Bearer grab his leg. Undertaker loads up the Tombstone as Flair slides in a chair. The piledriver on the chair gives us a new champion and a decisive face pop for the Dead Man. Undertaker holding the title like it’s a coupon for a free coffee at a gas station is a nice touch.

Rating: D. Yeah this match completely sucked but we have a new champion and a reason to watch Flair vs. Hogan, which never happened for various reason. Hogan would beat Undertaker for the title at Tuesday in Texas six days later, but the title would be held up and decided in the Rumble, where Flair would win it and set up Wrestlemania. Bad match, but a BIG moment.

People come out to check on Hogan as Gorilla rips into Flair. Hogan takes a while to leave, likely to let the fans get over some of their shock.

Roddy is in the back and goes on a big rant against Tunney and Flair andUndertaker.

Flair and Perfect say they told us this would happen and now they’ve been proven right. Flair is the REAL World Champion now.

Intermission, which means we see a graphic for fifteen minutes. Seriously, there’s nothing other than a graphic and a countdown clock.

Gene recaps what’s happened so far in case someone ordered the PPV halfway through for some reason.

The Natural Disasters and IRS are ready for the Legion of Doom and Boss Man. That’s the main event. They’re not even hiding the ripping off of the fans anymore.

Legion of Doom and the Boss Man are ready too. Seriously there’s nothing else to say here. They say exactly what you would expect them to say and nothing else. Hawk gets ready to do the WHAT A RUSH line but as he loads it up, Sean interrupts him to say Gene is with Jack Tunney. Hawk gives him a look that would stop a tank and says his catchphrase, then lets Sean throw it to Gene.

Tunney announces Hogan vs. Undertaker II at Tuesday in Texas. He’ll be at ringside as well, driving the boredom levels shoot through the roof, if that’s even possible.

Team Nasty Boys vs. Team Rockers

Nasty Boys, Beverly Brothers

Rockers, Bushwhackers

This is right before the Rockers split and they’re already having issues. This is regular rules, which means individual eliminations and not one loss means both team members are gone. Butch and Knobbs (Brian Knobbs of the Nasty Boys along with Jerry Sags) get things going as Gorilla and Bobby talk about Hogan vs. Undertaker II. Butch hits a running knee lift and it’s off to Luke. Luke and Butch take over on the Nasty Boys with a pair of double clotheslines.

The Beverly Brothers come in and do about as well as Knobbs and Sags with both Brothers taking a Battering Ram. The Rockers double dropkick the Nasty Boys and the good guys have cleared the ring. It’s Shawn vs. Beau Beverly (the other is Blake) now as the announcers debate which guy on either team is the brains. A backbreaker puts Shawn down and it’s back to Knobbs. Luke comes in and avoids a splash in the corner but whacks his arms too much, allowing Knobbs to hit a middle rope clothesline for the elimination.

Off to Shawn vs. Sags with Jerry suplexing him down. Gorilla talks about how tonight will culminate at Tuesday in Texas. Some annoying fan stands up and poses for the camera so the shots keep cutting away a lot. The Rockers work on Sags’ arm before it’s off to Blake. Gorilla somehow can’t tell the Rockers apart, even though they pretty much look nothing alike and have been together for years now.

A superkick puts Blake down but he comes back with knees in the corner. Marty comes off the middle rope and shoves the referee for no apparent reason. It doesn’t go anywhere so I guess it was a mistake. Off to Beau who doesn’t do much other than allow a tag to Butch who cleans house. The Beverlies double team him with a backdrop into a facejam for the pin and the elimination.

It’s Nasty Boys/Beverly Brothers vs. Rockers now with Marty coming in again. Marty monkey flips and hurricanranas Beau down for two as Heenan and Gorilla trade statements of excitement. An enziguri puts Beau down again and it’s off to an armbar. It’s also off to Shawn, who doesn’t do as well as you would expect against one of the Beverly Brothers. Off to Blake who jumps over Beau and lands on Shawn’s back in a move later used by the World’s Greatest Tag Team.

Out of nowhere Shawn grabs a backslide on Beau for the pin to make it 3-1. Sags is in next as Gorilla thinks Marty should reach further for a tag. Even though the Rockers would split less than a month later, it wasn’t clear yet who would have gotten the super push. The Nasty Boys head to the floor and Shawn clotheslines Sags off the apron and superkicks Knobbs down. Back in and Sags takes over again. Marty’s eyes are just gone and he looks awful.

Blake comes in again and gets kicked in the face, allowing for a falling tag to Marty. A big jumping back elbow takes Knobbs down and a snapmare gets two. Knobbs takes Jannetty down again and Heenan talks about Tuesday in Texas. Off to Sags with a powerslam and a belly to back suplex before it’s back to Knobbs. Marty gets his knees up to stop a middle rope splash and there’s the tag to Shawn. Everything breaks down and Marty swings Sags’ feet into Shawn’s face, resulting in Knobbs rolling Michaels up for the pin.

That leaves us with Marty vs. Blake and the Nastys. Shawn freaks out on him before he leaves too to even further tease the tension. Marty starts with Knobbs and hits a middle rope bulldog but Jerry takes him down almost immediately and knocks him to the floor. A powerslam from Blake puts Marty down and the Nastys head to the floor. Jannetty dives on both of them and slams Blake’s face into the mat. Marty hooks a terrible looking small package on Sags but Knobbs rolls them over to give Jerry the final eliminating pin.

Rating: D. Man alive this was a long match. That’s the problem the rest of this show has created: there’s nothing else worth watching for the rest of the night and now they’re just filling in time to say that you’re getting a PPV that means something, when really you need to see the sequel to get the full thing.

Gorilla and Bobby plug Tuesday in Texas again.

Legion of Doom/Big Boss Man vs. IRS/Natural Disasters

This is your main event people. Let that sink in for a minute. The LOD are the Tag Team Champions and IRS (Irwin R. Schyster, a tax auditor) and Boss Man are having a worthless midcard feud. Boss Man and IRS start things off with the tax man getting thrown all over the place. Off to Animal vs. Earthquake which wakes the crowd up a bit.

They collide and Animal’s cross body is caught in a backbreaker in an impressive display of strength from Earthquake. Back to IRS to face Hawk with the latter working on the arm. Typhoon gets the tag, only to have IRS thrown at him by Hawk. Off to Earthquake who carries Hawk to the heel corner. IRS and Boss Man come in again and it’s a briefcase shot to Boss Man’s head for the elimination.

It’s Typhoon vs. Animal now and the Disasters double team Animal in the corner. Earthquake suplexes him down as Monsoon talks about Bobo Brazil. IRS hits a top rope right hand for two and Typhoon puts on a bearhug. Animal escapes and hits a clothesline before tagging in Hawk. IRS misses a briefcase shot to the head and hits Typhoon by mistake, giving Hawk the easy pin.

Earthquake wants to fight IRS now but walks off with Typhoon instead, making it the LOD vs. IRS. Hawk powerslams IRS down but a charge goes shoulder first into the post. Hawk gets sent face first into the steps as we continue to fill time by having IRS look like he has a chance. We hit the chinlock as the announcers talk about Thanksgiving dinner. A not very hot tag brings in Animal who cleans whatever is left in the house. IRS tries to walk out but runs into Boss Man in the aisle. Back in and Hawk hits a top rope clothesline for the win.

Rating: D+. We go from Hogan vs. Andre II to this in five years? That should give you a good idea as to what you’ve got going on with this show. The match was nothing and there was no reason to get excited about it, because the whole reason the match was happening had been postponed to Tuesday. In Texas.

Hogan won’t talk to the cameras about what happened.

Gene is in the bowels of the building with Bearer and Undertaker. Hogan will rest in peace. In Texas. They look in a casket to end the show.

Overall Rating: D-. Let’s take a look at what we had on this show: a really good opener, a horrible second match, a bad yet historic third match, a bad fourth match, and a worthless fifth match. This is all interspersed with a bunch of commercials for Tuesday in Texas, which is possibly the biggest bait and switch in company history. This show made me mad because it’s a big flip off to the fans, and that’s not acceptable. Watch the opener and that’s about it.

Ratings Comparison

Team Flair vs. Team Piper

Original: A-

Redo: B

Team Slaughter vs. Team Mustafa

Original: F

Redo: F

Undertaker vs. Hulk Hogan

Original: C-

Redo: D

Team Nasty Boys vs. Team Rockers

Original: D

Redo: D

Legion of Doom/Big Boss Man vs. IRS/Natural Disasters

Original: D

Redo: D+

Overall Rating:

Original: D+

Redo: D-

A little worse this time, but the same problems still plague this show. Screw you Vince.

Here’s the original review if you’re interested:

http://kbwrestlingreviews.com/2011/11/10/history-of-survivor-series-count-up-1991-here-lies-hogan/

Remember to follow me on Twitter @kbreviews and pick up the paperback edition of KB’s Complete 2004 Monday Night Raw Reviews (also available as an e-book) from Amazon. Check out the information here:

http://kbwrestlingreviews.com/2019/08/26/new-book-and-e-book-kbs-complete-2004-monday-night-raw-reviews/

And check out my Amazon author page with cheap wrestling books at:

http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Hall/e/B00E6282W6

Survivor Series 1991
Date: November 27, 1991
Location: Joe Louis Arena, Detroit, Michigan
Attendance: 17,500
Commenators: Gorilla Monsoon, Bobby Heenan

Ok, so due to Microsoft and their annoying automatic updates that no one actually knows what they’re good for, I lost 91-94, so this is the second time I’ve reviewed these four shows. Therefore if I seem a bit annoyed, that’s why. Anyway, the main thing here is simple: Vince has more or less given up on the idea of having all Survivor Series matches and has given us a traditional main event match, in this case, Taker challenging Hogan for the world title.

Also, Flair has jumped ship to the WWF in a huge botch on WCW’s part. Finally, the hottest feud in the world right now is Jake Roberts vs. Randy Savage, but I’ll get to why I’m ticked off about that in just a few minutes. Other than that, the show is pretty much what you would expect.

The roster is changing a bit though; with it being more like the early 90s look than what we had seen for years before. It was a pretty bad show when I watched it two weeks ago, so maybe it’s somehow improved since then.

We get the logo and everything with a huge banner over it saying 5th Annual. Is it really something we need to know that badly? Within 30 seconds of the start of the show we’re hearing about the Roberts vs. Macho situation. So here’s the idea: Savage lost the career ending match at Mania and is officially retired. However, he’s trying to get reinstated since no one really stays retired (are you listening Ric Flair?).

Roberts had been supposed to feud with the Warrior for a huge program but Warrior was a jerk and got fired, which you can read about in my Summerslam 91 review. Anyway, they instead paired him with Savage for this. This past Sunday (this show is airing on Wednesday which was the tradition back in the day) Roberts got Savage into the ring and tied him up in the ropes before pulling out a cobra. Before I go on, does that sound like some latent sexual issues or is it just me?

Anyway, Savage get bit by the cobra and they can’t get it off of him. The crowd is so into this it’s unreal. Eventually they get him out of it and Savage tries to fight back but can’t stand up because of the “venom”. In one of the absolute funniest moments I can ever remember in wrestling, Vince is FREAKING over this and actually doing a great job on the mic which is a lot more than he usually does.

However, as Savage is being put on the stretcher, we cut to a kid in the audience crying and Vince absolutely loses it. He’s cracking up and since Piper ran to the ring to help Savage, there’s no one to bail him out here. It’s just great as he’s trying to stay serious but just can’t do it because he’s holding back laughter.

I guarantee that whoever did that cut was fired. I can’t imagine they weren’t. So anyway, after all that (they showed the entire segment which was about 4 minutes long), we go to Jack Tunney who says that this is his fault and he’s to blame for what Jake did.

Now we get to the big part: Savage will not be allowed to wrestle tonight, and Jake has been pulled from his match as well. HOWEVER, Savage is reinstated and will face Roberts at ANOTHER PPV called Tuesday in Texas, SIX FREAKING DAYS AFTER THIS SHOW. Remember, the incident that they’re referencing was three days prior to this. They’re changing the main event three days before the show so that they can hook in more PPV buys for ANOTHER show six days after it. That my friends is nonsense.

I’m sorry but that just doesn’t work. The fans are already paying 30 dollars for this show and they don’t get the real main event out of it? Hogwash. Instead Vince says for only 20 dollars more you can see the main event that you paid for here. I get that Vince was running low on money at this point, but there comes a point where you’re just screwing the fan too much. This is stupid on all levels. If you want to do this, give the people more than 72 hours notice.

How many people do you think might have missed Superstars and not known about this until after the show had started and their money had been paid? Again, that’s nonsense. I’m legit ticked off again over this, with the only thing that’s keeping me calm being Tunney’s licking of his lips in this promo. It’s just weird looking. He looks like he’s getting ready to eat an ice cream cone or something. This whole segment was just designed to tick off fans.

But hey! In six days, you can pay us MORE money to see this match, so make sure you order the other show. Gorilla and Bobby plug the show even more before we start our first match, 6 minutes into the show. Ok make that 7.

Roddy Piper’s Team vs. Ric Flair’s Team

Piper: Bret Hart, Virgil, Davey Boy Smith
Flair: Ted DiBiase, Warlord, Mountie

The feuds actually match up here as Piper and Flair were feuding, DiBiase and Virgil had just finished feuding, Hart and the Mountie would clash over the IC belt in a few weeks and Smith and Warlord were arguing over who was stronger. Wow a match that actually works out well in that area. I don’t know what to say. Sherri is with DiBiase here.

Actually, all four heels have managers, with (going in order listed above) Mr. Perfect, Sherri, Harvey Whippleman and Jimmy Hart. They can’t stay at ringside though. Flair is out now with a censored belt. Ok so this deserves an in depth explanation as well I guess. Back in the 80s, wrestling was based on the territory system as you likely know. Most companies were part of the NWA but all had their own champions and talent (think of it like the NCAA with its conferences).

However, there was still an NWA world champion that went around the country defending his title everywhere. This you likely know or have at least heard of. Now like I said, there were all kinds of territories. One guy in the south started to buy a bunch of them and join them into a superterriory.

This man’s name was Jim Crockett who you’ve likely heard of. He turned it into what you now know as WCW, but it wasn’t known as that at the time. Anyway, he tried to go to war with Vince but just didn’t have the money to do it. He eventually sold to Ted Turner, who changed the name to World Championship Wrestling.

Turner slowly started to fade away from the NWA stuff as he and Crockett had realized the same thing: WCW was the NWA at this point. He owned all the talent and the NWA championship (the big gold belt was made by Crockett for Flair. Before that they had used a different one.) Now at the time, Flair was still the NWA champion, but was also the WCW champion.

This was represented by the same belt though, as more or less it was the same title but officially it wasn’t. It’s very complicated no matter how you look at it so if that doesn’t make sense to you, don’t be surprised. So Turner brought in a bunch of people that had no freaking clue how to run a wrestling company, with the main one being Jim Herd. Herd looked at Flair and thought that he was washed up and past his prime.

This was abdsurd as well since Flair was not only world champion but the top draw still. Herd thought the Nature Boy gimmick was stupid and wanted to change Flair into, and I’m not making this up, a bald gladiator. Yes, he wanted to drop one of the most famous gimmicks in history to make him a stupid character.

As Kevin Sullivan put it, “after we change Flair’s gimmick, let’s go change Babe Ruth’s number.” Flair, having a brain, told Herd that this wasn’t going to work. Herd, being the idiot that he was, decided he knew more wrestling than Flair and told him that Flair would do it or be fired.

Now this is where Flair had him. Since, like everyone that knew what they were talking about, Flair knew that he could walk straight into the WWF and be launched right to the top of the show, he didn’t back down. Herd fired him and Vince got a nice big present called Ric Flair just handed to him. Now let’s get to the interesting part. When he was fired, Flair was still WCW and NWA champion.

Yes, Herd was dumb enough to fire him BEFORE changing the title. See what kind of idiot he was? He was stripped of the WCW Title which was then put in a match between Luger and Barry Windham, which was booed out of the building with chants of WE WANT FLAIR! The winner didn’t matter, because no one was going to take them seriously as champion, and why should they have? They never beat Flair for the title so they were in essence fighting for the number one contender spot.

No one bought it and the title was hurt badly for the next year and a half since instead of watching fake champions, they turned the channel to USA to see how the real WCW champion did in the WWF. Now the REAL interesting part lies in the NWA title. Like I said, Flair held both titles which were represented by the same belt.

The NWA had a policy for its world champions: you win the title, you pay 25,000 dollars as a deposit on it. The deal was done to prevent people from showing up in other companies with the title. In other words, you rented it. Once you lost the belt you got the money back with interest on it.

Now that’s fine and good. Flair paid the deposit and all was well and good. However, once he was fired from WCW he was stripped of the belt and was told to return it to the NWA. Flair said he’d be glad to do it as soon as he was given his money back. Problem: the NWA didn’t have it. Flair says well then you don’t have a belt either. He took it to Vince and used it in a gimmick, calling himself the REAL world’s champion.

The NWA panicked since there was no way they could let this happen. They took Flair to court over it and were laughed out of the room since they had absolutely no case. They made a deal with Flair and weren’t living up to their end of it. Therefore, there was nothing they could do to keep Flair from using the title on WWF TV. It was his property so he could do whatever he wanted with it.

Eventually Flair went back to WCW and let them use the belt after they paid him what he was owed. The big gold belt became the WCW Title and the rest is history. WCW left the NWA in about 1993 and the NWA tried to revive itself with a tournament in Philadelphia. I think you know what happened there.

Anyway, the point of this was that during this time, the NWA got a temporary injunction against Flair to keep him from using the big gold belt but the angle kept going anyway with other belts being used in its place. Tonight it’s a tag title, which is blacked out but at times you can see the edges of it. How weird would that have been? Flair is just standing there holding up one of the tag titles. Oh yeah we’ve got a match to do too. Let’s get to it.

Hart’s pop is INSANE. They knew what they had here and that would be made apparent as next year at this time he would be world champion. We start off with DiBiase vs. Piper. That’s a very interesting match that I don’t think ever had a big time feud. They of course have a great match here as my amazement never ends as to how DiBiase never got a title run. They of course have a great mini-match here since they’re both awesome.

Sherri comes in for interference but it of course backfires since Piper was practically a main eventer and such things don’t bother him at all. Now we get Virgil, who for some reason gets a pop. This is even more reason for me to hate what they’re pulling tonight. The crowd is white hot, so instead of giving them a big match, let’s give it to people in a week. Yeah that’s very good work there guys. Way to support your fans.

The face team spends about three minutes just killing DiBiase with all three guys getting in a lot of work on him. Finally he gets out and we get Flair vs. Hart. Even back then we knew it was something special. Bret was so on at this time that it’s unbelievable. The Heenan cheering for Flair is just funny stuff. Now the faces take their turns beating up on Flair. About 5 minutes straight is just faces beating on DiBiase and Flair.

Despite that, this is very entertaining either way as both guys are big time heels so the beatings work well and the crowd is WAY into this. Piper comes in to beat up Flair some and it’s so loud you can barely hear much. He finally gets out and we have Warlord and Bulldog in a test of strength. Due to some expected heel cheating, Bulldog is in trouble now as the Mountie continues to crack me up with how completely over the top he is with his gimmick. It’s so ridiculously insane that it’s greatness.

We get a funny bit as we see Jimmy in the back PANICKING since he can’t be out there with the Mountie. Managers really are a lost art indeed today. They’re something that can really enhance a character yet for some reason they’re never used anymore. I don’t get that. Being a manager requires two things: being able to talk and being able to take a beating once in awhile. Seriously, is that something that sounds next to impossible or next to that difficult even? I don’t get it.

It’s just not that hard to me, at least in theory. Instead we get people like Santino and Abraham Washington. Why not make one of them a manager? Nope, instead everything has to be about comedy instead of enhancing a character. Yep, you have to love that.

Bret comes in so Mountie bails as fast as he can, giving us Bret vs. DiBiase again so I can’t complain. Smith comes in after about 8 seconds of this as Mountie is tagged in. It’s brawl time and note: Gorilla says that the legal men are Flair and Smith, which would be wrong. Anyway, Smith hits the powerslam on Mountie but Flair goes to the tope and hits a double axe handle shot to the back of Davey’s head.

He rolls him over and pins him as Gorilla is freaking out about how Flair wasn’t legal, despite him saying that he was not 20 seconds before this. I love the confusion that is Gorilla Monsoon a lot of the time. Piper immediately runs in to beat on Flair, despite him not being legal in the match but who cares about something stupid like legality? All four people beat on Piper for a bit as the fans are still way into this match. That’s a good sign that after about eleven minutes we’re still this into a match.

Piper puts the figure four on Flair to a HUGE pop. Virgil comes in to fight Mountie who is terrified of him. For some reason, no one wants to fight Virgil. Why not? The guy just wasn’t that big of a deal. All that mattered in his career was that he beat DiBiase one time. That’s all anyone ever actually cared about and it was indeed a cool moment. However, once that angle ended, which it had by this point since DiBiase got the belt back, he was just Virgil, a bald guy that threw decent punches.

There’s just nothing really to market there and it turned into nothing at all because there was just nothing they could do with him at this point. It’s the quintessential difference between having a gimmick and being a character. A gimmick is something like Repo Man. He was something that you could throw in with anyone at all and the gimmick would work fine. John Cena is a character. He’s just a man that goes out there and wrestles really well.

There’s more depth to him, but it’s harder to put him with someone because you have to build something up with him. Also, it takes away from the creativity of the storylines with him as you can’t really do much other than have it be about respect or a challenge or so and so wants the title etc. It leads to some very boring and generic storylines.

There’s no right or wrong answer about what’s better, but for someone like Virgil with limited skills and charisma, a gimmick would have worked much better for him. The same holds true for Cena as a gimmick would be awful for him. It’s usually the bigger a star you are, the less you need a gimmick. He and Flair go at it for a bit and as usual, Flair loses at first only to make his comeback and look dominant.

A lot of people say that Flair’s style is boring. I disagree. Yes, he does the same stuff a lot of the time, but how many truly bad Flair matches can you remember, and I’m not talking about when he was all old and likely not legally considered alive. I’m talking about when he was in shape and not old. Think about it: the guy had good matches because he had a formula.

Flair gets beaten on, he makes a small comeback, gets beaten on again, makes a big comeback, goes for the leg, gets the figure four, the face gets to the ropes, and then the finish. The matches worked though and that’s all that mattered. Then you would get idiots like Dusty Rhodes who of course just couldn’t do things the intelligent way and had to have his style of match with Flair, which made them a lot worse.

Those aren’t Flair’s fault. Dusty is to be blamed for those since he’s the one that screwed them up by having to wrestle his horrible style. Dang I’m going on a lot of tangents here. Anyway, Hart does the nice thing and throws Virgil back in to get beaten on some more.

Full nelson goes on but Bret breaks it up to let Piper pin Warlord in the exact same thing that got rid of Bulldog. Well played Hitman. Everybody beats on DiBiase a bit more, with even Virgil getting in some solid stuff. Flair however just ends that as he becomes my hero. Heenan is singing Flair’s praises which never gets old as he even threatens to have Gorilla thrown out. The response of silence is just funny.

Virgil gets beaten on for about three minutes to set up the ending that I hate. He gets DiBiase down and heads for the corner. Both Piper and Flair come in for a big fight, but then the other four come in. Flair gets knocked to the floor and we have a big brawl. Then to end the match, 5 people are disqualified except for Flair because he was on the floor, making him the sole survivor. I get that they wanted to push Flair, but this match was so awesome up to this point that I wanted to see them go longer.

It’s not like they were short on time. Later on the tag team match gets twenty minutes. You could have given this another ten and it would have been fine, but then again, I’m no professional.

Rating: A-. This match was awesome. The crowd was way into it, the wrestlers were all on fire, the feuds made perfect sense, the pacing was good, and then the ending screwed all that up. Yeah here the main issue is the ending, which was just flat out bad. It put Flair over which was the point of the match, but I wish there was another way they could have done it. Either way, this was a very fun and entertaining match. Now if only the rest of the show is this good, which I doubt.

Savage and Liz say to buy Tuesday In Texas. Screw you both. Actually no, just screw Vince and his greed.

Team Slaughter vs. Team Mustafa

Slaughter, Duggan, Texas Tornado, Tito Santana
Colonel Mustafa, Berzerker, Skinner, Hercules

Oh this is going to be bad. It’s like the 80s died and this is the corpse. Basically, it’s America vs. not America here, with Mustafa being more commonly known as Iron Sheik. He had managed Slaughter during his heel run but now Slaughter is red white and blue again so all is fine and dandy. Duggan makes sense to be there, Tornado and Santana are midcard faces. Berzerker, Skinner and Hercules…eh they’re just there to fill in the dates their contracts say they have to work.

Yeah this is going to be pretty bad. Look at the face team. It’s a former world champion, a former NWA champion, a two time IC champion, and Duggan who was always in the upper midcard. They’re against a guy that used to be world champion but that’s not mentioned here and three career jobbers. Yeah this is going to go GREAT. I love how Slaughter can go so evil and then in just a few months he’s a beloved face again. Yeah it’s stupider than it sounds.

The most entertaining part about this match is Gorilla and Heenan arguing. You can tell they’re fairly bored out there and I can’t blame them at all. This match is just boring. There’s no point to it, there’s no reason to want to watch it, and there’s nothing of interest going on. You can tell this was just thrown together and that’s never a good thing. I don’t care about seeing these people fight because they’re just beating on each other with no particular rhyme or reason.

Heenan says some lines about Middle Eastern people that are borderline racist but not quite. Now we get to the best part of the match: the part where the bookers thought it was ok to have Sheik in there for over two minutes straight. Seriously, why? The guy can barely move and he’s going to carry the match? Yeah I think you’re getting why I hate this imbecile. They fill in the void by talking about the Taker vs. Hogan match which is fan better and more interesting.

Sheik gets pinned by a Slaughter clothesline that wasn’t anything special at all. Yeah, this might be the worst Survivor Series match of all time. It’s just flat out boring in all aspects. After about 5 minutes since Sheik got beaten, the other three heels are dispatched in less than two minutes total. Duggan dances around like this is a big deal. Apparently he was captain?

Rating: F. This was just awful. It wasn’t interesting, there was no story, the winners were never once in doubt, and it was just not any good. This was just completely pointless on all levels and was just there to fill in about 20 minutes counting the introductions. Egads what a horrible match.

The winning team walks down the hallway and says they can’t wait to see this match on video. Yeah that wasn’t pointless at all.

Jake Roberts says you should buy Tuesday in Texas. Somehow this takes five minutes to say.

We recap Hogan vs. Taker. They don’t mention how he got the title shot, but they make it obvious that Flair is going to be involved in this. On the Funeral Parlor, Taker’s segment, Flair confronted Hogan which led to Taker beating him down with the urn. Savage and Piper ran out to help him and couldn’t really do anything.

Savage hits Taker with the chair but Taker just knocks it away. That was awesome. Also, Taker rips the cross off the neck of Hogan, which is a direct homage to Andre 4 years prior to this. Taker was billed as undefeated here, despite having lost a bunch of matches to Warrior.

WWF Title: Undertaker vs. Hulk Hogan

So this is the first non Survivor Series match in the history of the show, which I think was what was needed. Since it’s the main event, of course it’s the shortest match on the show. We could have a problem here though as neither guy is going to sell crap here. Gorilla tries to convince us that they’re the same size. That’s just amusing. He goes on to say that Hogan has quickness and agility. I’m sorry but that’s just hilarious.

Hogan looks scared to death which is awesome. Bearer of course gets in his shots as Taker is in control. You have to remember that he’s only been around about a year at this point. This would be like Cena vs. Swagger in the main event of a major PPV for the title. Apparently it’s a big deal that Hogan can’t slam Taker despite him hitting Hogan as he goes up. Yeah that’s not a big deal at all. Taker gets clotheslined over the ropes and lands on his feet.

That’s always a cool looking spot and it makes it look like the move did nothing at all. The never ending debate about what’s in the urn continues. Was that ever answered? Taker’s tattoos interest me. Given his gimmick, what must that day in the tattoo place have been like?

Gorilla is of course freaking out over Bearer as Heenan says his monitor keeps kicking in and out. Monsoon says he’s going to start kicking Heenan in and out in a bit. Those two are just great together. There’s a Hogan lookalike at ringside who is leading cheers. It’s really quite amusing. Taker uses a smother on Hogan. That’s an interesting move as he just covers Hogan’s face with his hand.

That’s both good and bad as it looks a lot more effective than some moves do, while at the same time really being nothing at all. Heenan naturally can’t hear Monsoon, which is odd as he has that big headset on. Ok the smother doesn’t need to go on for two minutes. Taker does the eye roll that never gets old. Hogan makes his comeback but after more interference he takes a tombstone. Naturally he pops right up and starts his finishing sequence.

Bearer’s reaction to Hogan popping up is just great. As he goes for the legdrop, Flair comes out and touches his belt. Hogan, feeling a sense of animalistic pride, goes out and stops him. He puts Taker down again and goes for the leg but Bearer grabs him.

As he’s got the referee, Flair puts in a chair and Taker tombstones him on it for the title to more or less kill Hulkamania. Taker’s slow walk to the back with the belt is nothing short of greatness. Also, if Hogan isn’t legit hurt here, he needs an acting award. He looks completely gone.

Rating: C-. Again, this is a match where the historical aspect far outweighs the wrestling that you saw on display. Hogan losing at this point was a big deal, but he was getting very little reaction in this match. His time had simply gone by this point and it wasn’t working anymore.

That’s all fine and good, so Vince decided to take a BIG gamble and have him lose here. There would be a rematch in 6 days, but Hogan would only hold the title for a few days before it was declared vacant with the winner of the Rumble getting it. Hogan wouldn’t hold it again for over a year.

All the faces say they’re going to win.

All the heels say they’re going to win.

Tunney announces the rematch with Hogan and Taker for next Tuesday. Yep, it’s only 20 dollars and you get two main events, which you were supposed to get tonight, but screw that idea.

Nasty Boys/Beverly Brothers vs. Bushwackers/Rockers

The Rockers are on the verge of splitting up at this point with the Barber Shop happening in just under two months. As for the other three teams, they’re just there. Yes, this is the match that gets over 20 minutes and is the longest of the night. What in the world was Vince on tonight? This makes tonight even more of a slap in the face of the fans as we get 23 minutes of this and no Savage/Roberts.

Yeah that’s just great Vince, thanks for screwing over every person that pair their money to see this match. The Rockers are just ungodly over here, so of course they were being split up. We start off with Butch and Knobbs. Gorilla says no one knows more about surviving than the Bushwackers. Um, what? They do their comedy act as I can’t believe they still had jobs at this point. Somehow they would last until 1994.

Yep, no one cares about this match at all, but since the theme of the night seems to be how can we screw the audience over even more than we have earlier on in the night, it of course goes on and on and on. Luke, who once licked my at a house show, is gone fairly early due to a Brian Knobbs flying clothesline. Yep, that’s the kind of match that this is going to be: the kind where a flying clothesline that more or less sucked can get an elimination.

Can’t you tell how excited I am to be reviewing this match AGAIN? Oh I’m in heaven here people! Anyway, Marty comes in then and is looking either confused or stoned out of his mind. It’s likely both. Heenan, being as bored as ever, starts an argument with himself.

Heenan goes on to say that had Hogan not gone after Flair he would have won, which is likely correct. After more bad offense from both teams, Butch is put out following a weird double team move. It was supposed to start with a backdrop and end with a facebuster, but instead it looked like a bad botch. It was kind of like a 3D but nowhere near as cool looking or effective.

I think the Beverlies were supposed to be rich guys but I’m not sure. We’re down to Rockers vs. all four. Shawn starts getting his head handed to him as I’m sure Becca would love to steal it but that’s a different story. After getting beaten on forever, Shawn hooks a quick backslide and pins Beau. So now it’s Marty’s turn to get beaten up on for a good while as still nothing happens. We’re nearly 20 minutes into this and Marty puts on an armbar.

Yeah and you wonder why Shawn was given the big push. Shawn gets the tag leading to all five guys being in there at once. During this, Marty slams Sags but his feet hit Shawn in the face to let him get rolled up for the pin. Shawn is LIVID. He looks like he’s about to kill Marty but it doesn’t happen and Shawn goes to the back to leave it at three on one.

Jannetty fights as much as he can but even after some cool looking spots, he goes out to a bad small package. Seriously, it just looked awful. Marty’s shoulder was up and yet he got counted down anyway. It was just bad on all levels.

Rating: D. This was just BORING. Look at the opening match and then look at this one. The first one was a minute shorter yet I had FAR more to say about it. This was just boring and it’s a great example of how two matches can be completely different. The first one was interesting, sharp and fun. This was long, boring and sloppy. Granted it could be more about a lack of talent in this one but I digress.

This was just not good and there was absolutely NO need to give this nearly 25 minutes. You had a great match to open the show that would have been an A+ had it been given a few more minutes. The world title match could have used another 2-3 minutes. Yeah I know I say that a lot and in most cases there just isn’t enough time to go around. In this case, there should have been all kinds of time to go around but instead it got wasted here. That’s inexcusable.

With nothing else to say or do, it’s main event time.

Legion of Doom/Big Boss Man vs. IRS/Natural Disasters

Yep, this is the main event. Even at a house show this is a weak match, but here at the “Let’s screw the fans show”, it’s the main event. Apparently this was supposed to be Sid on the face team and Roberts on the heel team. Sid got hurt so they were going to put Savage in, but due to the move on Sunday, which means Vince’s greed, he got pulled and they took off Roberts too, since IRS is FAR ahead of Roberts on the company totem pole.

Anyway, IRS and Boss Man start, despite having no animosity at this point in time. LOD and the Disasters were feuding, but other than that, there’s little point to this. I really want this to end soon. Nope, apparently we’re in for the long match here as it’s generic offense all around to start. Yep, again, no one really cares about this match because we haven’t been given a reason to care.

The announcers clearly aren’t interested in the match at all as they bicker. Rule of thumb: the more bickering you hear between the announcers, the more bored they are. Finally after five minutes of people hitting each other and doing shoulder blocks, we get something interesting as Boss Man has IRS in trouble but he gets a metal briefcase to the head and is pinned. Unfortunately this messes up Gorilla’s rant about how Flair stole the title from Hogan.

Also, apparently there has to be something in the briefcase because it being made of metal isn’t enough to knock out Boss Man. Yeah that makes sense. So now it’s LOD against the three of them. Since they’re the tag champions at the moment, I doubt they’ll lose. As I say this, we get the fourth plug for Tuesday in Texas. We get it already guys.

Vince wants our money and if we want to see the big matches we were promised we have to pay another 20 dollars next week. As if we haven’t had enough excitement in this match, it’s time for a BEARHUG. Gorilla: I think he’s wasting time with this hold. I would agree if the last word was match. IRS goes for the briefcase again but it misses and hits Typhoon in the head and eliminates him. Quake is TICKED.

He’s ticked enough that he leaves with Typhoon. So it’s IRS 1-2 with the tag team champions. What happens of course? It goes on for 6 minutes. My goodness give me a break. Finally the LOD wake up and hits a top rope clothesline to end this which Gorilla says was inevitable. See, even he knew this was how it was going to end. Hey let’s plug Texas again. Heenan says it’ll be better than tonight. It couldn’t be much worse.

Rating: D. Again, this was BORING. There was no point to this being a six man. If they wanted to just have the faces win to end the show, do the smart thing and just make this a tag team title match. A few things are accomplished by doing that. Number one, it makes the match at least seem important.

Sure the LOD would keep the belts, but at least it would have had a sense of meaning to it instead of just a random match like this. Second, it would have been far more logical than this. Anyway, this was just bad and boring, but the faces won and the fans went home happy, so that’s good I guess.

Gene is in the catacombs of the arena. Joe Louis Arena has catacombs? Cool? Anyway, Bearer says that Hulkamania died tonight and plugs Texas to end the show.

Overall Rating: D+. And that’s being generous. The first match on this show was awesome. It goes downhill fast. I don’t know what the heck they were thinking on this show. Wait, yes I do. The fans will buy one PPV. That means they’ll but a second. Seriously, this was sickening to see from the WWF. There’s no call for pulling the big match three days before the show just to have a one on one match six days later. I’m sorry but that’s not right.

Also, it was a Survivor Series match tonight. How hard would it have been to have them in there but just have them do a double count out with Jake running away or a double DQ or something like that? You give the people what they paid to see, you tease them with the big match just a bit more, and THEN you put the big match on the card in six days. That’s fine with me, but don’t advertise this as being the big match between Randy and Jake and then not have it.

Let them have their quick thing here and then let them do the match Tuesday. That’s all well and good. Other than that, this historic moment with Taker winning his first title mixed with an awesome opening match isn’t enough to make this work anything though, so it’s not recommended at all. The first match is worth seeing though.

 

Remember to follow me on Twitter @kbreviews and pick up the paperback edition of KB’s Complete 2004 Monday Night Raw Reviews (also available as an e-book) from Amazon. Check out the information here:

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Survivor Series 1989
Date: November 23, 1989
Location: Rosemont Horizon, Rosemont, Illinois
Attendance: 15,294
Commentators: Gorilla Monsoon, Jesse Ventura

This was one of two options for me to redo this year and since I did the 1996 show just two years ago and this is my favorite era, it wasn’t all that hard of a choice. It’s actually an interesting show as there are a few experiments taking place which could make for something fun to watch. Let’s get to it.

We open with the Saturday Night’s Main Event style promos from people on the show. This is already off to a cool start.

Hulk Hogan is happy that he’s healthy, but also for his team of Hulkamaniacs at the Survivor Series. I’m very glad he pointed out the name of the show we’ve paid to see.

Ted DiBiase is happy that he’s rich.

Jake Roberts is happy for the DDT.

Demolition is glad that they don’t have to fight each other. Fair point.

Randy Savage and Sherri are happy that he’s the only man worthy of being the Macho King.

Jim Duggan loves the USA. Sounds like a run of the mill day for him.

Dino Bravo is glad to have the Earthquake on his side.

Dusty Rhodes likes his polka dots.

Big Boss Man likes dishing out justice.

Brutus Beefcake likes wrestling, strutting and cutting. I wonder in what order.

Rick Martel is glad for his good looks.

Rick Rude is thankful for his ravishing body. Narcissism must run in the Rick family.

Roddy Piper is thankful for not being Ricky Rude.

The Genius….I think you can guess this one.

Mr. Perfect for being perfect. Kind of one dimensional no?

The Bushwhackers are glad for stuffing in turkey. Freaks.

Bobby Heenan is thankful for spending time with his family. The HEENAN Family that is.

The Ultimate Warrior for intensity. I’m stunned.

Vince McMahon narrates a card rundown. There’s something so weird about him being the voiceover guy. I miss those squares that show the match participants. Oh and team names other than Team Insert Name Here. You can’t think of some alliterative name? Like Rotten Writers?

One thing I’m thankful for: that the dark match was dark. This night got started with Boris Zhukov beating Paul Roma. I wouldn’t wish that on Vince Russo.

Enforcers vs. Dream Team

Big Boss Man, Bad News Brown, Rick Martel, Honky Tonk Man

Dusty Rhodes, Brutus Beefcake, Red Rooster, Tito Santana

As usual, this is mainly about the captains, but at least we get some Jive Soul Bro and Brutus Beefcake music, because the 80s were that awesome. Actually almost everyone involved here had great music. Again, the 80s were awesome. Dusty even has Boss Man’s nightstick because stealing things is part of the American dream. Tito and Honky Tonk start things off because Tito vs. Martel on pay per view wasn’t allowed for some reason. An early armbar has Honky Tonk in trouble but a cheap shot allows Martel to come in.

The pace picks way up as they run the ropes and Martel scores with a dropkick. Tito is right back with an atomic drop into a rollup for two so it’s off to Boss Man, who gets armdragged in a hurry. Dusty comes in and you can feel the energy go up. I’m not the biggest fan but that man had more charisma than almost anyone ever. With the dancing jabs out of the way, Brutus comes in and gets pounded down by Boss Man.

Honky Tonk misses a right hand so it’s back to Martel for a backbreaker. Some knees to the back don’t do much so it’s off to Rooster as it becomes clear how much better the names were back then. Boss Man, Dream, Model, Bad News, Brutus and….well ok there was no saving Rooster. Speaking of Rooster, it’s his turn to get beaten up by a revolving door of villains. Ventura is right there talking about how the size difference is working against Rooster, almost like he’s a real analyst.

A sunset flip finally gets two on Honky Tonk and a collision puts both guys down. That’s enough for the tag off to Tito for some serious house cleaning but it’s too early for the Figure Four. Martel slams him down and misses his elbow that always misses. Tito grabs a rollup but Martel reverses into one of his own and a grab of the trunks (not sure how much that would help here) gets rid of Santana at 9:15.

Dusty comes in and we cut to a shot of a “fan”, who will later be named Sapphire. Considering she hasn’t been officially introduced yet and would be gone just after Summerslam 1990, it’s kind of remarkable that she was only around for about nine months. Anyway Martel gets taken down with a dropkick and the big elbow gets two. It’s back to Rooster for what looks like some dancing and a headlock, which is quickly countered into a backbreaker.

The bearhug from Boss Man has Rooster in even more trouble until he bites his way to freedom. Boss Man tags Bad News (again, great names) but he doesn’t want to come in, meaning Rooster has to pull him in. Ever the serious one, Bad News isn’t about to have any of this stupid gimmick and beats the heck out of Rooster.

Boss Man comes in without a tag and accidentally hits Bad News. Oh dear I don’t see this going well. Before Bad News can use them all as floss, he walks out on his teammates and is counted out at 15:30. The melee allows Brutus to come back in and hammer on Boss Man until an elbow to the jaw cuts him down. Honky Tonk comes back in for two off a belly to back suplex and shrugs off some right hands (90% of Brutus’ offense). He can’t shrug off the high knee (5%, along with the sleeper for the remaining 5% as Brutus wasn’t exactly versatile) and it’s 3-2 at 17:24.

Martel comes in next and chinlocks Brutus down, followed by a backbreaker to put Brutus on the apron. Brutus comes back in with a sunset flip though, and after Martel gets caught grabbing the ropes, Boss Man is on his own at 20:13. Rooster comes in (Dusty is kind of a lame partner) and tries some forearms, only to get caught in the Boss Man Slam for the elimination at 21:00. Now Dusty is willing to come in for the big right hands and Brutus adds some chops. Boss Man is rocked so Dusty comes in with with a crossbody for the final pin at 21:59.

Rating: C-. It was dull at times, but there’s only so much you can get out of some of these people. Honky Tonk was past his expiration date, Rooster was Rooster, Brown was barely involved, Tito vs. Martel should have been its own match, and Dusty was only in there for a little while. The match wasn’t bad and it was a good way to start things off, but there were only two feuds of note in the whole match.

Post match Slick throws Boss Man the nightstick and it’s a heck of a beating for Dusty and Brutus. Dusty even gets handcuffed and beaten down on the ropes, drawing some blood. Well….were you expecting anything else from him? Brutus finally makes the save with the clippers.

In the back, Boss Man says Dusty is his prisoner. Well your prisoner is currently in the middle of a big arena and being let out of handcuffs. I see why Boss Man left the prison job.

The 4×4’s, all carrying 2×4’s, are ready for the King’s Court. Bret Hart says it’ll be their finest hour. Ronnie Garvin wants to use his board for uh….things. Hercules doesn’t think they’ll have any problems. Jim Duggan says their team is ready for anything.

4×4’s vs. King’s Court

Jim Duggan, Ronnie Garvin, Bret Hart, Hercules

Randy Savage, Canadian Earthquake, Dino Bravo, Greg Valentine

Yeah it’s the Canadian Earthquake because that you don’t want him confused with the Costa Rican Earthquake. The 4×4’s clear the ring with the boards and then try to toss them to each other. Garvin messes up because he’s Ronnie Garvin and a natural failure. Duggan follows Savage to the floor to start and hands it off to Hercules for a forearm to the back. A gorilla press sends Savage into the corner for a tag to Valentine for the atomic drop and the traditional funny sell job.

Bret comes in to work on the arm and Duggan sends said arm into the buckle. It’s off to Hercules for some forearms on the also legal Bravo but Earthquake comes in, runs him over, and hits the Earthquake for the elimination at 3:57. Duggan tries his luck with some shoulders that have no effect, so Bret gets behind Earthquake to trip him down on a third try. Garvin comes in and I suddenly want to see Earthquake crush him like a grape.

The Court starts taking turns on Garvin, including a top rope ax handle from Savage. A quick backslide gets two on Bravo but it’s already back to Savage for the snap jabs in the corner. Valentine comes back in though and since we’re not ten minutes into the match yet, Duggan makes a blind tag and clotheslines him out to even things up at 7:32.

Savage comes in and snaps Duggan’s throat across the top rope and it’s back to Earthquake for some forearms to the back. The Court is certainly making good tags to take their turns. Earthquake misses the big elbow so it’s off to Garvin to chop and headbutt Bravo. There’s the Garvin Stomp (it’s stupid when Randy Orton does it too) but Bravo rakes the eyes to break up the Sharpshooter.

It’s off to Hart vs. Savage and Randy PANICS as the crowd really wakes up. You better believe those Bret pops were being noticed, even if it took two years to get to the solo run. Savage gets taken down and runs off for the tag to Bravo so Bret beats him up instead. Garvin comes in again and is IMMEDIATELY side suplexed for the elimination at 11:18. I never get over how much Garvin absolutely sucks. He just got pinned clean by DINO BRAVO. What in the world does that say about your career?

Duggan hammers on Earthquake again before handing it back to Bret for a matchup I never knew I wanted to see. Bret wants Savage though and Jesse, a big fan of both guys, is rather pleased by these developments. Savage gets tied up in the ropes and Duggan, ever the All-American, chokes behind the referee’s back. A missed knee drop makes things even worse for Savage and Bret gets two off a backbreaker. Bret misses the middle rope elbow (a regular one as he didn’t have his signature version down yet) though and it’s back to Bravo for the bearhug.

It’s back to Earthquake for some choking and a two count with the fans being rather pleased by the kickout. Bret avoids a Savage charge to send him into Bravo though and now the hot tag brings Duggan back in. For reasons of temporary insanity (or maybe sanity in his case), Savage drives Duggan into his own corner so Hart can tag himself in. A quick missed charge hits the post though and Bravo adds a shoulder breaker, setting up Savage’s elbow for the elimination at 19:07.

So it’s Duggan alone against Bravo, Earthquake and Savage, meaning Jim is looking completely fine. Earthquake unloads on him in the corner and the level of fine is starting to come down. Duggan beats up all three of them without much effort (Behold the power of AMERICA! Ignoring that Savage is from AMERICA of course!) and tosses the whole team outside.

As the announcers try to figure out who is legal, Earthquake comes back in and drops the big elbow for two. Savage hits the ax handle but misses the running crotch attack. Since the guys kind of suck at this, Sherri low bridges Duggan to the floor and it’s a countout at 23:25 to finish Duggan off.

Rating: D+. The strange ending aside (Duggan can’t take a pin here? Not even 3-1 with the new big monster and RANDY SAVAGE on the other team?), this wasn’t all that thrilling of a match. Other than the fans going coconuts for Hart, it was a lot of punching and kicking and very little more. It also wasn’t the biggest surprise, as any team with Hercules and Ronnie Garvin on the team and JIM DUGGAN as the brains of the operation is in serious trouble.

Post match Duggan cleans house with the 2×4.

Dusty Rhodes is very hurt but Gene Okerlund is sure that he’ll be dishing out Americana soon enough.

The Genius has a poem saying he’s smart and how stupid the fans are. That’s such a simple gimmick but it’s one that would work so well today. Give him a guitar and he’s basically Elias with a better vocabulary.

Million Dollar Team vs. Hulkamaniacs

Ted DiBiase, Powers of Pain, Zeus

Hulk Hogan, Demolition, Jake Roberts

I’m not going to explain Zeus in full again because it just makes my head hurt. You know what doesn’t make my head hurt? The most awesome Survivor Series team in the history of the planet. I mean seriously, Hogan, Roberts and Demolition. Someone please try to find something that matches that level of amazing so I can point at you can call you stupid.

Just in case it’s not enough yet, the villains won’t let them in the ring (Jesse: “Count all four of them out!”) so Jake throws Damien in, because the most awesome Survivor Series team in the history of the planet has A BIG FREAKING SNAKE TOO! Still one of my favorite moments ever and something I still throw on if I need a smile.

Zeus wants Hogan to start so Gorilla goes into his weird questions about what the Z on Zeus’ head is for. Like….what else do you think it’s for? He’s a big Zorro fan? I mean, he should be because Zorro is so awesome that he would be first on the list if this team ever needed a fifth man but I still don’t get that rant. Hogan of course can’t hurt Zeus to start as the right hands and clotheslines have no effect.

A jumping knee does nothing so Hogan rakes the eyes and gets in a slam, which does all the damage of a standard slam. Zeus pops up and cranks on Hogan’s neck, in a spot that the Giant would use to put him on the shelf for weeks in WCW. A bunch of choking and a shove of the referee are enough for the DQ to get rid of Zeus at 3:20.

Zeus won’t stop choking and it takes the combined forces of the Powers of Pain and DiBiase offering money to get him off. Hogan is mostly dead so DiBiase comes in to drop some knees. More choking keeps Hogan in trouble but he finally gets a boot up in the corner and brings Jake in. The beating begins in a hurry and it’s off to Demolition for the rapid fire pounding to the back (I could watch that for at least a minute). Hulk is fine enough to come back in for a middle rope ax handle as Gorilla goes on about the Z on Zeus’ head again.

DiBiase elbows Ax in the face and brings in Warlord because the Powers of Pain vs. Demolition is still a thing a year after it was a bigger thing at the previous year’s show. A clothesline gets Ax out of trouble but Mr. Fuji trips him up, allowing Warlord to drop a headbutt for the pin at 9:52.

It’s off to Hogan to beat up Warlord in a match you would think would have happened at some point. Jake comes in and the fans want the DDT but have to settle for Smash hitting an ax handle to the back instead. Not quite the same thing. Barbarian kicks him in the face though and it’s DiBiase coming back in with a middle rope ax handle (the most popular move on the show).

The falling punch (still cool) gets two and we hit the chinlock. DiBiase misses the middle rope falling elbow (as always) but Smash still won’t tag for no apparent reason. Barbarian tags himself in and takes Smash’s head off with a top rope clothesline for the elimination at 13:44. Jake comes in but can’t DDT Barbarian no matter how many times he tries. The beating continues as Hulk is dying for a tag.

Some knee drops and a piledriver get two on Roberts but Barbarian misses the Swan Dive. There’s the hot tag to Hogan (Jesse: “Uh oh.”) and it’s time to clean house. The rapid elbows and a suplex give Hogan two (you don’t see him getting many near falls) and he clotheslines both Powers down. They pop back up and hit a spike piledriver….for a double DQ at 19:51, sending Jesse over the edge in an awesome rant. And yeah, that’s completely bogus, especially with Hogan and Roberts now having a 2-1 advantage over DiBiase.

The Million Dollar Dream has Hogan in trouble and Roberts has to save Hogan at two arm drops (Jesse: “THAT’S THREE TIMES! THREE TIMES! HOW COME ROBERTS WASN’T DISQUALIFIED???”). Hogan fights out of another attempt and punches DiBiase out of the air (because he was trying ANOTHER ax handle). The latest hot tag brings in Roberts for a neck snap across the top rope, giving us another great DiBiase sell.

Cue Virgil with his bad hand so Roberts beats him up too, including a DDT to a big pop. With Roberts down, DiBiase gets in the fist drop and throws his feet on the ropes to get rid of Jake at 23:42. Hogan is still down from the Million Dollar Dream so DiBiase picks him up and hits a clothesline for two. A chinlock goes on and Hogan slaps DiBiase’s arm, which would be shocking to see today. The comeback gives us a double clothesline but Hogan is up first and hits exactly what you would expect to set up the legdrop for the pin at 27:32.

Rating: C-. I love the face team but my goodness they picked a really weird way to get to the finish here. Hogan and company were either even or ahead for most of the match and Hogan just wins with ease in the end. What’s a better way to go here: the usual, or Zeus, who Hogan is feuding with at the moment, wrecking Hogan so badly that DiBiase pins him to set up a title program with DiBiase down the line? I wasn’t feeling this one, but the energy (and Jesse ranting) helped it a lot.

Jesse is LIVID post match, saying the referee probably even disqualified Virgil too.

Savage and Zeus, who face Beefcake and Hogan in a cage match in a few weeks, are ready to take care of business inside the cage. Sherri waving her hands in the background for some reason is a little distracting.

Hogan comes in to Beefcake’s locker room and they’re ready to win in the cage. Sherri comes in and throws powder in their eyes so the beatdown can be on.

We run down the remaining two matches.

As intermission continues, Jesse talks about issues inside the Heenan Family, including pushing and shoving in the locker room.

The Rude Brood is ready to win tonight. Rick Rude talks about his great teammates, Mr. Perfect knows how to get rid of Jimmy Snuka and the Rougeau Brothers have been training extra hard.

Roddy Piper can’t get his team to quit eating before the match. I remember this from when I was a kid and it’s still bizarre.

Rude Brood vs. Roddy’s Rowdies

Rick Rude, Mr. Perfect, Rougeau Brothers

Roddy Piper, Jimmy Snuka, Bushwhackers

There’s no Heenan with Rude, playing up the issues in the Family. Perfect jumps Luke from behind to start so it’s already off to Butch for a bite of the leg. Piper and Snuka bite the arm and it’s back to Butch to bite the back for a second helping. Jacques comes in and nips up but stops for a hug from his brother. We settle down to Jacques flipping over Snuka but getting taken down by a flying headbutt. A chop keeps Jacques in trouble and Snuka….I want to say dances? With Jacques down, the Superfly Splash is good for the elimination at 4:01.

Rude comes in for a leapfrog and a hip swivel before handing it off to Perfect. A botched low bridge sends Perfect outside as the Brood can’t get anything going at all. Luke comes in for a snapmare on Perfect and Snuka punches him in the face. The fast tags continue with Butch coming in for a few knees to the back. Piper’s atomic drop knocks Perfect over for the tag to Raymond, whose backdrop is countered into a sunset flip for two. Raymond gets two off a superkick but Piper grabs a piledriver for the second elimination at 7:39.

Perfect is in next for a snapmare of his own on Piper but gets catapulted into the corner as only Perfect could do. Butch comes in for some near falls off some stomping but a single kick to the chest knocks him into the corner. That means it’s back to Piper for some right hands and a hip swivel at Rick as Perfect is turned inside out. Butch adds another bite but gets rolled up for the elimination at 10:45.

Piper is right back in for a rollup of his own and Snuka adds a top rope chop to the head. It’s Luke’s turn to hammer away and a headbutt to the ribs gets two. Perfect is able to make a tag but Rude gets punched out of the air. Not that it matters though as a kick to the ribs sets up the Rude Awakening to even things up at 12:14.

So now we can have the match that they wanted in the first place, which definitely sounds better. Rude chops Snuka down and throws in a hip swivel before handing it back to Perfect, who gets kicked in the face. It’s already back to Rude for a chinlock, which goes nowhere either so Perfect comes in and gets small packaged for two. You really can tell that the energy has gone out of the arena and they’re just going through the motions with this one.

A ramming of the heads puts Perfect and Snuka down (should have knocked Perfect silly) and there’s the double tag. They slug it out, which is never a good idea against Piper. The fight falls to the floor and it’s a double countout at 18:36. So we’re down to Perfect vs. Snuka with Perfect making the mistake of ramming Snuka’s head into the buckle. Dude have you ever watched a Snuka match? A dropkick puts Snuka on the floor but he’s right back in for a pinfall reversal sequence. Snuka’s high crossbody is reversed into a cover for two but it’s the PerfectPlex to finish him at 21:27.

Rating: D. I’ve never liked this match as it was basically a delayed start until we got to the match that they really wanted to do. It also doesn’t really advance anything as Snuka vs. Perfect wasn’t a feud and Piper vs. Rude is right where it was before. At least Perfect got the win though and that’s what really matters, because he should have been ready to move up into the main event.

Post match Snuka goes after Perfect and Genius but the smart (and perfect) villains get away.

The Rude Brood says to not worry about Heenan’s whereabouts and promise to celebrate the ravishing way.

The Ultimate Warriors are ready to go. Jim Neidhart laughs a lot, the Rockers are their usual confident selves, and Ultimate Warrior says they all have organ donor cards. My goodness imagine the drug bills.

Ultimate Warriors vs. Heenan Family

Ultimate Warrior, Rockers, Jim Neidhart

Andre the Giant, Arn Anderson, Haku, Bobby Heenan

Heenan is out there because Tully Blanchard failed a drug test and is leaving, never to wrestle in a national promotion again. The fight starts before Warrior even shows up but here he is to save Neidhart as the bell rings. Three clotheslines put Andre on the floor and it’s a countout at 27 seconds, which is totally different than Zeus being eliminated earlier. Anderson’s “DANG IT” face is great, as always.

We settle down to Anderson getting beaten up by anyone who can get their hands on him, including the running tackle in the corner from Neidhart. Andre finally gets up and staggers out, with the Rockers getting in a few cheap shots. Haku comes in for some forearms to the back and Heenan chokes in the corner as Jesse says he would take Heenan over Gorilla in a fight. Before Gorilla can freak out, Haku superkicks Neidhart for the elimination at 3:31.

Michaels comes in to pick up the pace with a monkey flip before it’s off to Marty to start on the arm. Marty’s crossbody is caught but Shawn hits the dropkick to the back for the near fall. It’s back to Anderson, who can’t get a suplex, but Haku comes in to make it a double suplex, which is caught by Shawn in a nice save. Double superkicks get two and it’s off to Warrior for a backdrop. Heenan refuses the tag (well duh) so Anderson gets caught in an armbar instead.

Anderson takes him down with a shot to the ribs, hands it off to Heenan for a kick to the ribs, and then comes back in when Heenan gets touched once. That was the only way to go and it’s worth a chuckle. Anderson beats the heck out of Jannetty and Haku adds a few shots to knock Jannetty silly. Heenan comes back in for some stomps on Jannetty and a knee drop….for the clean pin at 8:54.

Egads how far have you fallen when you’re losing clean falls to Heenan? It’s instantly back to Anderson, who gets caught in Warrior’s bearhug. A rake to the eyes gets Anderson out of trouble so Haku gets bearhugged as well. It’s off to Michaels, who gets sent outside so Warrior has to toss him back inside. Heenan’s front facelock doesn’t work so here’s Anderson again for some stomping in the corner. Shawn is back up and rubs Anderson’s face into the mat, blinding him so badly that he tries to tag Warrior.

A Rocket Launcher gives Shawn two but for some reason it wakes Anderson up enough to take over again and bring in Haku. That just means a missed charge though and Shawn gets rid of him with a high crossbody at 12:54, leaving us with Shawn/Warrior vs. Anderson/Heenan. Four Hall of Famers isn’t too shabby. Heenan is willing to come in and punch Shawn a few times but Warrior scares him into the corner.

With Michaels on the floor, Heenan goes up (oh dear)…but climbs back down a few seconds later with a fit of sanity coming over him. Heenan refuses a tag so Anderson gets sunset flipped for two, sending him into a frenzy over the lack of a tag. Shawn gets knocked down so it’s back to Heenan, who tags out almost immediately again. Anderson wins a slugout and scores with some headbutts to the ribs in the corner as Warrior is shaking his head for some reason. Odd man indeed. There’s the spinebuster to get rid of Michaels at 15:48, though Anderson can barely move.

Some running shoulders have Anderson in trouble but he sidesteps a charging Warrior to send him outside. Heenan goes up again and again comes back down. Now Heenan is willing to come back in but when the no selling begins, Heenan’s time in the ring quickly comes to an end. Anderson sends him into the corner but Heenan won’t tag in again, probably being as smart as he can. Warrior rams them together and hits the gorilla press into the splash to get rid of Anderson at 18:16.

Reality hasn’t set in yet for Heenan so Warrior sneaks up on him…giving us a hilarious visual as Heenan slowly turns around. Jesse: “You’re loving this aren’t you Monsoon?” The beating begins in a hurry and Heenan is thrown over the corner to the floor. That’s enough for Heenan but Warrior throws him back inside for a shoulder and the splash for the final pin at 20:27.

Rating: D+. Heenan alone almost made this entertaining but there’s only so much that even he could do. The wrestling isn’t the point here and there’s nothing wrong with that. Warrior winning was never in doubt as his biggest challenge was eliminated in less than thirty seconds. Not a good match, but Heenan made it fun enough.

Post match Heenan staggers to the back, with Warrior running up behind him for one more clothesline.

A stills package ends the show to Warrior’s music.

Overall Rating: D. This one really didn’t work very well with a lot of punching and kicking matches and very little else. The storylines weren’t so much advanced as much as just storylines staying in one place. Having Hogan in the middle and Warrior in the main event was certainly an experiment but it was more odd than anything else. The energy goes away at the end of the third match and you can feel it being gone. I love it for the nostalgia, but there’s just not enough here.

Ratings Comparison

Dream Team vs. Enforcers

Original: B-

2012 Redo: C+

2018 Redo: C-

King’s Court vs. 4x4s

Original: B+

2012 Redo: D+

2018 Redo: D+

Hulkamaniacs vs. Million Dollar Team

Original: D-

2012 Redo: C

2018 Redo: C-

Rude Brood vs. Roddy’s Rowdies

Original: D

2012 Redo: C-

2018 Redo: D

Ultimate Warriors vs. Heenan Family

Original: C+

2012 Redo: C-

2018 Redo: D+

Overall Rating

Original: D+

2012 Redo: D

2018 Redo: D

My original reviews continue to amaze me.

Here’s the original review if you’re interested:

http://kbwrestlingreviews.com/2011/11/08/history-of-survivor-series-count-up-1989-includes-a-bonus-review/

And the 2012 redo:

http://kbwrestlingreviews.com/2015/10/28/survivor-series-count-up-1989-its-already-going-bad/

Remember to follow me on Twitter @kbreviews and pick up the paperback edition of KB’s Complete 2004 Monday Night Raw Reviews (also available as an e-book) from Amazon. Check out the information here:

http://kbwrestlingreviews.com/2019/08/26/new-book-and-e-book-kbs-complete-2004-monday-night-raw-reviews/

And check out my Amazon author page with cheap wrestling books at:

http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Hall/e/B00E6282W6

Survivor Series 1989
Date: November 23, 1989
Location: Rosemont Horizon, Chicago, Illinois
Attendance: 15,294
Commentators: Gorilla Monsoon, Jesse Ventura

While Warrior is busy fighting the Heenan Family and Andre the Giant in particular, Hulk Hogan is feuding with Ted DiBiase and DiBiase’s hand picked opponent: the monster Zeus. This would be one of the dumbest ideas that wrestling has ever produced for reasons that we’ll get to later. Let’s get to it.

We open with a video shot from a car going up to the arena, going through the doors, at the souvenir stands (12.99 for a shirt. Today that might get you a sleeve) and now it’s time for opening show promos.

Hogan is thankful for time with his family and to be the strongest force in the universe. And for his team.

DiBiase is glad he’s rich.

Jake likes his snake and the DDT.

Demolition is glad they don’t have to fight each other.

Savage is glad he’s the Macho King.

Duggan is proud to be an American.

Bravo is glad Earthquake is on his side.

Dusty is thankful for his polka dots.

Beefcake for cutting hair.

Martel for his looks.

Rude for his body.

Piper because he’s not Ricky Rude.

Genius for being the smartest man in the world.

Perfect for being his name.

The Bushwhackers for sardine stuffing.

Heenan for being surrounded by the Heenan Family.

Warrior should be thankful that Ritalin is soon to be available.

We run down the cards with those nifty squares showing each team member.

Dream Team vs. Enforcers

Dream Team: Dusty Rhodes, Brutus Beefcake, Tito Santana, Red Rooster

Enforcers: Big Boss Man, Bad News Brown, Rick Martel, Honky Tonk Man

This is mainly over Dusty vs. Boss Man in Dusty’s first big feud in the company. Dusty stole Boss Man’s nightstick hat which has ticked Boss Man off and rightfully so. The other major feud is Santana vs. Martel, as the two split at Wrestlemania V with Martel turning heel. Tito and Honky start things off and for the third straight year, Honky and Brutus are in the opening match on this show.

Tito takes over quickly but Honky gets in one kick before RUNNING over to make a tag to Martel. That’s quite the cowardly heel act. Rick dropkicks Tito down as Jesse talks about the now broken up Strike Force. Tito atomic drops Martel for two and everyone but Bad News gets in the ring at once. Nothing all that interesting happens but it’s cool to see. Brown not getting in is perfect for his character too. Off to the Boss Man who is immediately armdragged down by Tito.

Dusty comes in and pounds away as the fans go nuts. Chicago was a big NWA town so it’s easy to see why he’s popular. Brutus comes in to another pop but Boss Man takes him down with a few shots to the back. Honky comes in but misses a fist drop. Beefcake hammers away but Martel makes a blind tag and takes over on Brutus. Rooster comes in and the place goes quiet. When you can’t get a reaction in Chicago, things aren’t that good for you.

Martel hits some knees to the face and it’s off to Honky who dances a lot. Boss Man comes in and slugs it out with Rooster with the big man taking over with ease. Martel comes back in and drops some knees but gets rolled up for two. Back to Honky as Rooster is in trouble. The four man variations are already paying dividends as the match seems less crowded from the start and the guys can stay in the ring a little longer. Rooster and Honky collide and it’s a double tag to give us another battle of Strike Force.

Tito goes loco on Martel and beats him down, but Martel breaks the figure four. Santana tries an O’Connor Roll but Martel rolls through and grabs the trunks for the first elimination. Dusty comes in next and hits a dropkick (and a decent one) followed by the big elbow…for two? We must be in the WWF. Brutus comes in to work on the arm and stomp on Martel’s face when he tries a reverse monkey flip.

Rooster comes in and can’t seem to figure out what to do with a headlock. Martel gets impatient and takes him down with a backbreaker. Off to Boss Man who slaps on a bearhug. Gorilla keeps calling Brutus the team captain but the team is called the Dream Team and Dusty came out last. I for one believe Gorilla Monsoon at all costs. Rooster bites out of the hold and Boss Man tags Bad News…..who isn’t interested in coming in.

After Bad News gets pulled in he takes over because he’s fighting a freaking rooster. Just like last year though, Bad News accidentally gets hit by his partner and he walks out. Good to see some things never change. It’s three on three now and we have Boss Man vs. Brutus. After the Barber gets beaten on some more it’s off to Honky for a belly to back suplex. Out of nowhere Brutus hits a high knee to Honky for the fast pin, making it 3-2 (Brutus, Dusty and Rooster vs. Boss Man and Martel).

Martel immediately comes in and puts a chinlock on Brutus which doesn’t last long. The second version of the move does though as the match slows down a lot. A backbreaker puts Brutus down and he goes into the buckle a few times. Brutus grabs a sunset flip again out of nowhere to eliminate Martel and it’s 3-1. Brutus tags in Rooster to throw a bone to Boss Man and the Boss Man Slam gets the fast pin to make it 2-1.

Dusty is in next but it’s quickly off to Brutus for some knees to the chest. Back to Dusty as the good guys are using some intelligence with the fast tags. Boss Man gets whipped into the ropes and Dusty takes him down with a cross body, likely rupturing at least three of Boss Man’s vital organs in the process, for the final pin.

Rating: C+. Nothing special here but it was fine for an opener. The fans liked most of the good guys and other than Rooster, that was a solid set of heroes. The match wasn’t competitive or anything for the most part after the first five minutes but there was nothing particularly bad about it.

Boss Man destroys Dusty with the nightstick and cuffs him to the ropes to keep up the beating. Brutus makes the save with his clippers.

Boss Man brags about what he just did.

The King’s Court, led by King Randy Savage, is ready.

The 4x4s, Jim Duggan’s team, say the same thing but much louder.

4x4s vs. King’s Court

4x4s: Jim Duggan, Ronnie Garvin, Bret Hart, Hercules

King’s Court: Randy Savage, Earthquake, Dino Bravo, Greg Valentine

The 4x4s all jog to the ring with boards in their hands. This would be the second or third time that Bret was teased as a singles guy but it wouldn’t click for another year and a half. The major feud here is Savage vs. Duggan over the crown which Savage recently took from Duggan. Valentine and Garvin also have an issue but it’s nothing major. The board carriers clear the ring and stand in the ring for a while. It looks like we start with Garvin vs. Savage but Duggan chases Savage to the floor before it’s Hercules who actually starts for the 4x4s.

Hercules pounds away and slams Savage down, but right into the King’s corner and it’s off to Valentine. Greg gets atomic dropped and Bret gets tagged in. Bret works on the arm for a bit and it’s off to Duggan for some right hands. Garvin comes in and this feud continues to be lame. Garvin gets taken into the heel corner and it’s off to Bravo for some power.

Hercules comes back in to make it power vs. power with Hercules taking over. And never mind as Earthquake comes in, kills Hercules with a shot to the head and hits the Earthquake (running seated senton splash) for the elimination. Duggan comes in and collides with Earthquake (he’s still Canadian Earthquake here but that didn’t last long) but can’t do anything to him. Bret, being the smart guy that he is, sneaks up on Earthquake and school boys him so Duggan can take him down.

Off to Garvin who pounds away but Earthquake crushes him badly enough to make Garvin a pizza topping. Bravo comes in to pound away on Garvin, followed by Valentine doing the same. The Figure Four is countered and Garvin rolls Greg up for two. Savage drops a knee and it’s back to Bravo to work Garvin over a bit more. A backslide gets two for Ronnie and Savage comes in again very quickly.

Valentine comes back in even faster and they chop it out but Garvin makes a blind tag to Duggan for the three point clothesline to eliminate Valentine and tie things up. Bravo comes in again and is quickly followed by Savage and then Earthquake. Earthquake misses a big elbow and there’s the tag to Garvin. He beats on whomever he can and headbutts Bravo down. Here’s the Garvin Stomp (the circling stomp that Randy Orton uses in modern times) and he tries the Sharpshooter (Garvin used it before Bret) but Dino breaks it up.

NOW we get somewhere with a double tag to Savage vs. Hart. These two had an awesome match on Saturday Night’s Main Event a year or so before this but they never got to follow it up. Bret takes over with an atomic drop and goes for the legs but Savage dives away and tags in Bravo again. The middle rope elbow gets two for Bret and it’s back to Garvin who immediately walks into a side suplex to make it 3-2.

It’s Duggan vs. Earthquake again with Jim pounding away in the corner. Bret gets the tag and a double clothesline puts the big man down. Savage comes in and Bret is ready for a fight. Savage gets tied up in the ropes and Duggan chokes away like the hero he is. Randy gets Bret down and misses a knee drop, allowing Hart to hit a backbreaker for two.

A small package gets two for Bret and Savage charges into a boot. Bret misses a middle rope elbow and it’s off to Bravo again. Dino puts on a bearhug because this match hasn’t dragged enough already. Off to Earthquake for some high powered choking followed by an elbow drop for two. The crowd popped a bit for the kickout which is more than can be said for most of this match.

Bret finally breaks free and tags Hacksaw in again so he can slam Savage. And never mind as Bret tags back in about 15 seconds later. Bravo works over the mostly beaten Bret and Hart misses a charge, going shoulder first into the post. A shoulder breaker sets up the Savage Elbow to make it 3-1.

It’s off to Earthquake to beat on Duggan in the corner but he misses a charge and everyone comes in. Duggan throws everyone into the corner into Earthquake and the Court all bails to the floor. Savage and Bravo get clotheslined down but Earthquake jumps Duggan to take him down. A big elbow gets two on Duggan and it’s back to Bravo. Duggan avoids a charging Savage but Sherri low bridges him and it eventually draws a countout.

Rating: D+. For the life of me I don’t get why Duggan didn’t get pinned here. The ending is rather lame and it doesn’t help a match that ran WAY too long anyway. You could easily cut ten minutes out of this and no one would have missed anything at all. The match was dull outside of the moments when Bret was in there, which is something we’ll touch on more later.

Duggan chases them off with the board.

The Million Dollar Team is ready for a Thanksgiving feast in the form of the Hulkamaniacs.

Dusty Rhodes is hurt badly.

The Genius reads a poem about Thanksgiving.

Hulkamaniacs vs. Million Dollar Team

Hulkamaniacs: Hulk Hogan, Demolition, Jake Roberts

Million Dollar Team: Ted DiBiase, Zeus, Powers of Pain

Ok, so now I get to explain Zeus. Back in 1989, the WWF released a movie called No Holds Barred starring Hulk Hogan. The villain in the movie is named Zeus and you may notice he’s here. Zeus is played by an actor (not a wrestler mind you) named Tom Lister and the idea is that he’s living his character and is coming to beat Hogan up “in real life” because he lost in the movie. This would be like the guy who played Goldfinger trying to get revenge on Sean Connery. To make things even better, this was rumored to be the main event of Wrestlemania VI.

I’m sure you can see the problems mounting up already, with the main one being that Zeus doesn’t know how to wrestle. Other than that, there’s the fact that the movie barely broke even so a lot of people didn’t get the idea of the story. A positive twist to this is that a lot of people didn’t get the idea of the story, which probably kept the company from being laughed at more than they already were. Zeus wrestled like four matches ever, most of which were short or tag matches so he wasn’t in the ring long. WCW, the geniuses that they are, brought him back seven years later and put him in the main event of another PPV.

Anyway back to the match. The Million Dollar Team won’t let them get inside until Jake fires in the snake to chase them all away. Hogan and Demolition are the champions that you would expect them to be at this point. Zeus wants to fight Hogan one on one but their respective partners hold them both back. Jake starts with Zeus but the actor wants Hogan. They stare each other down and Hogan bounces off Zeus. Hogan pounds away but nothing hurts Zeus at all.

Instead Hulk finds the one weak spot on Zeus by raking the eyes. He slams Zeus down and amazingly enough, IT DOESN’T REALLY DO MUCH. Barbarian hits Hogan in the back of the head and Zeus twists Hogan’s neck around. He starts choking away and it’s a DQ for Zeus who is only pulled off by DiBiase and the promise of money. Just to clarify, we’re giving the Hulkamaniacs, an 80s dream team, a man advantage. Also why would DiBiase get Zeus off Hogan? Wouldn’t Hogan’s pain and agony make DiBiase happy?

It’s DiBiase vs. Hogan now and Hulk is in early trouble. DiBiase hammers away in the corner but Hulk gets a boot up to stop a charge and there’s the tag to Jake. A clothesline puts DiBiase on the floor and it’s off to Ax who demolishes DiBiase with ease. Smash comes in and they both pound Ted down. Back to Hogan who helps Demolition with a triple team. Our hero everyone. Back to Ax with a clothesline but DiBiase elbows him down out of desperation.

Off to Warlord as these two teams are still feuding even a year later. Come to think of it there wasn’t much else in between for those guys either. The tag team division really has fallen far in just a year. A shoulder breaker puts Ax down but Barbarian misses a middle rope elbow. Back to Warlord but he gets clotheslined down almost immediately. Fuji trips Ax up and a basic elbow drop is enough to tie the score.

It’s Smash vs. Warlord now but it’s quickly off to Hogan. Hulk softens him up to bring in Jake, which Jesse calls a mismatch. That’s likely based on power but Jake is taller than Warlord. Off to Smash but Warlord pokes him in the eye to take over. Back to Barbarian whose big boot is caught but Smash misses the elbow. DiBiase comes back in to drop his falling punch for two.

It’s chinlock time with a knee in Smash’s back. DiBiase misses a middle rope back elbow of all things but Smash won’t tag for some reason. Barbarian makes a blind tag so the hot shot Smash hits on DiBiase doesn’t count and Barbarian takes his head off with a top rope clothesline for the pin. Jake comes in next but he can’t DDT Barbarian. Barbarian whips Jake into the corner with authority although I’m not sure who’s authority it was.

Back to Warlord as things slow down a lot due to exhaustion. Jake dives for a tag but DiBiase slaps Hogan to draw him in instead. DiBiase piledrives Jake but Roberts gets a foot on the ropes to Jesse’s annoyance. Barbarian misses a headbutt and there’s the hot tag to Barbarian. He cleans house and gets two on Barbarian off a big boot. A suplex gets the same and my goodness how rare is it to see Hogan get a two count? Hogan fights off both Powers of Pain but they catch him in a spike piledriver which is good for a DQ for both of them, making it Hogan/Roberts vs. DiBiase.

DiBiase drops knees on Hogan before slapping on the Million Dollar Dream. That eventually gets two arm drops and Jake makes the save. That’s actually a nice touch as it makes the hold look stronger by needing a save instead of Hogan saving himself. Hogan finally breaks the hold and punches a jumping DiBiase. Hot tag brings in the Snake for some house cleaning. Jake drives in knees on DiBiase’s head as Hogan is dying in the corner.

Here’s Virgil to interfere and take the DDT. DiBiase drops a fist on Jake and puts his feet on the ropes to steal the pin. Ted pounds on Hogan who is still reeling from the long Million Dollar Dream. Off to a chinlock and Hogan taps, which wouldn’t mean a thing for years. Hogan breaks the hold but they clothesline each other. DiBiase belly to back suplexes him and it’s Hulk Up time. You know the rest and there’s the legdrop.

Rating: C. There’s one major problem with this match: the first four minutes of this match give away the ending almost immediately. How can you give Hogan, Roberts and Demolition a man advantage that fast? I’m not saying Hogan should have lost, but the Zeus stuff could have come later in the match and worked much better. Have Zeus stand on the apron most of the match and it would have worked fine. The fans finally reacted at the end though.

Savage and Zeus are ready for their tag team cage match on PPV two days after Christmas.

Hogan and Brutus do the same. They’re facing Savage and Zeus in case that wasn’t clear. Sherri shows up and throws powder in their faces so that Savage and Zeus can jump them.

Jesse and Gorilla talk about the tag match and Jesse mentions that there’s trouble in the Heenan Family, which is code for Arn Anderson about to go back to the NWA and Tully getting busted for cocaine.

The Rude Brood is ready for Roddy’s Rowdies. These promos are pretty much the same all around.

This one however isn’t. Roddy is talking to Gene when the Bushwhackers and Snuka come up and are all holding turkey legs. Roddy says after the match they can have lunch. Then they all scream about breaking big bones.

Rude Brood vs. Roddy’s Rowdies

Rude Brood: Rick Rude, Fabulous Rougeau Brothers, Mr. Perfect

Roddy’s Rowdies: Roddy Piper, Bushwhackers, Jimmy Snuka

There’s no Heenan with Rude, which is part of the issues the Family is having. Luke (of the Bushwhackers along with partner Butch) and Perfect get things going but after a single slam it’s off to Butch who bites on Perfect’s thigh. Luke comes in and does the same and Snuka matches suit. Butch bites as well and it’s off to Snuka.

Jacques comes in as well and they stall a lot. Jacques poses so Snuka headbutts him down and follows up with a big chop. A slam puts Jacques down and it’s a Superfly Splash for a quick elimination. Rude comes in next and swivels his hips, only to get headbutted into a tag from Perfect. Rude accidentally low bridges Perfect so Snuka rams them together and the Brood is in trouble.

Off to Piper vs. Perfect and the Brood’s luck continues to go bad. Luke comes in and drops a knee before it’s off to Snuka for more shots to the head. Back to Luke for more biting and Butch beats on him a bit more. Piper comes in to face Raymond and for some reason Rougeau tries to slug it out with Piper. A superkick puts Piper down for two but he piledrives Raymond for the easy pin and it’s 4-2.

Perfect comes in with his neck snap for two and for the first time, Piper’s team is in trouble. Piper comes back with a slingshot to send Perfect into the post. Butch comes in for some basic stuff but it’s quickly back to Luke. Roddy is already back in for some rapid fire punches and now it’s Perfect in trouble. Back to Butch for more biting but he poses too long and Perfect rolls him up for the elimination.

Piper tries to steal a pin on a rollup to Perfect but it only gets two. Off to Snuka before Luke headbutts Perfect in the stomach. Rude makes a blind tag but jumps into a punch to the gut. Luke ducks his head and the Rude Awakening ties us up at two each. It’s Piper/Snuka vs. Rude/Perfect which is a heck of a midcard tag match.

Rude vs. Snuka starts the final four off and Rude swivels a bit more. Perfect comes in and taunts Piper, drawing him in so Snuka can get double teamed. Snuka finally gets in a shot to break Perfect’s momentum but Rude gets the tag before Piper can come in. Snuka grabs a quick small package for two before taking Perfect down with a flying headbutt. They hit head to head and both guys go down, followed by a double tag.

We finally get Piper vs. Rude which is the whole point of the match. Piper easily wins a slugout and backdrops Rude down. They fight to the floor and it’s a double countout, getting us down to Snuka vs. Perfect. Perfect hits a great looking dropkick to put Snuka on the floor. Back in and Snuka gets in a chop in the corner, followed by a cross body for two. The PerfectPlex out of nowhere gives Perfect the win.

Rating: C-. They did the right thing by having the tag teams get knocked out quickly because they didn’t mean anything in this at all. Other than that though there was nothing of note here. Piper and Rude were both counted out to make sure they stayed strong and Snuka didn’t mean anything at this point. Nothing to see here but it wasn’t bad or anything.

The Rude Brood celebrates and Rude says don’t worry about Heenan being gone.

The Ultimate Warriors are very fired up. Warrior’s topic of the night: organ donor cards.

Ultimate Warriors vs. Heenan Family

Ultimate Warriors: Ultimate Warrior, Jim Neidhart, Rockers

Heenan Family: Andre the Giant, Arn Anderson, Haku, Bobby Heenan

Andre can barely move and it’s sad to see. Neidhart and the Rockers start before anything happens and Jim is in trouble early. Here’s Warrior, the reigning Intercontinental Champion, without any music and a big clothesline puts Andre on the floor, which draws a countout because Andre was the only Heenan Family member in the ring when the bell rang. We’ve already got the same problem the Hogan match had.

Warrior and Haku get things started for all intents and purposes but it’s quickly off to Neidhart vs. Arn. Andre (in blue instead of black) yells incoherently at the Warrior as he leaves. It’s Haku vs. Jim now with Haku in control. A superkick puts Neidhart down and eliminates him like it’s a squash match. Off to Shawn to make Haku miss him and now it’s Jannetty’s turn.

Haku tries a double clothesline but only hits Shawn. He picks up Marty but Shawn dropkicks Marty down onto Haku for a near fall. Off to Arn who tries a double suplex with Haku on Jannetty, but Shawn catches his partner in a nice move. Double superkicks put the wrestlers on the other team down and it’s off to Marty vs. Haku. Warrior gets a tag in a few seconds later and Haku immediately goes for the eyes.

Haku backs Warrior into the corner and Heenan points to Arn for the tag in a funny bit. Arn immediately gets taken down and Marty hooks an armbar. Anderson brings Marty to the corner and tags in Heenan for a single punch before it’s back to Haku. Arn knees Marty in the back and Haku superkicks him down so Heenan can drop a knee on Jannetty for the pin. You could loudly hear them calling spots on that sequence for some reason.

Warrior comes in so here’s Anderson again and he’s quickly caught in a bearhug. Haku comes in and gets one as well. Off to Shawn who gets knocked to the floor with a few shots. Shawn moonsaults out of the corner over Arn and Anderson is in trouble. Warrior and Michaels both punch Anderson at the same time and Arn backs away from Warrior. A splash from Shawn gets two and it’s back to Haku.

That doesn’t last long either as a cross body eliminates Haku to get us down to Warrior/Shawn vs. Heenan/Anderson. Heenan tries to get in some cheap shots on Shawn which draws in Warrior. Why? Was he that afraid for Shawn’s safety? Arn dumps Shawn to the floor and Heenan goes up….and then regains his sanity and climbs back down. Arn keeps asking for help from Heenan because he’s getting tired so it’s finally back to Bobby, who runs at the first sign of trouble.

Shawn rams his head into the back of Arn’s head and both guys are down. They slug it out but Shawn walks into the spinebuster (called the Anderson Drop) for the elimination. Warrior fires off some shoulders but Arn ducks and sends him to the floor. Heenan goes up again but thinks better of it again.

Off to Heenan but Warrior quickly Hulks up so we see some more Anderson. Warrior fights him off as well and whips Arn into Heenan to knock Bobby to the floor. The gorilla press and splash get us down to one on one. Warrior sneaks up on Heenan and what do you think happens here? A shoulder block and splash take care of Bobby in short order.

Rating: C-. I think it was watching the whole show before this but this was another dull match. Warrior was never in any danger and I think everyone knew it. To be fair, this would have been better with Tully out there and you can’t fault the guys for that. Heenan being in there had to turn it into a comedy match and I can’t hold that against them. Still though, another dull match in a series of them tonight.

Warrior sprints up the aisle and clotheslines Heenan as he leaves to end the show.

Overall Rating: D. There are multiple problems associated with this show. First of all, nothing here is what you would call good. The matches are all ok at best and nothing beyond that. I guess the best match would be the opener, but even that was just ok. This was a really weak time in the company as they had Hogan but he had beaten everyone already so there’s nothing for him to do.

However there’s a bigger problem with Survivor Series overall. In short, what’s the point of any of this stuff? No stories are advanced here, other than the first match there was no clean fall between the people the feuding people, and there’s nothing to build off here. Look at Hogan. If you have Hogan lose in that match with DiBiase putting him to sleep after that much of a beating, you have a new opponent for him.

Instead, we have Hogan standing tall again which is nothing new at all. That’s the problem with the first few shows other than the first one. Survivor Series went nowhere and the appeal died very quickly. That wouldn’t change until 1991 so 1990 was somehow even more boring to sit through.

Ratings Comparison:

Dream Team vs. Enforcers

Original: B-

Redo: C+

King’s Court vs. 4x4s

Original: B+

Redo: D+

Hulkamaniacs vs. Million Dollar Team

Original: D-

Redo: C

Rude Brood vs. Roddy’s Rowdies

Original: D

Redo: C-

Ultimate Warriors vs. Heenan Family

Original: C+

Redo: C-

Overall Rating

Original: D+

Redo: D

Bonus Match

Original: B-

Redo: B

I think the difference here is that with the original I didn’t like it at all but with the new one I got bored by it because it just keeps going and going.

Here’s the original review if you’re interested:

http://kbwrestlingreviews.com/2011/11/08/history-of-survivor-series-count-up-1989-includes-a-bonus-review/

Remember to follow me on Twitter @kbreviews and pick up the paperback edition of KB’s Complete 2004 Monday Night Raw Reviews (also available as an e-book) from Amazon. Check out the information here:

http://kbwrestlingreviews.com/2019/08/26/new-book-and-e-book-kbs-complete-2004-monday-night-raw-reviews/

And check out my Amazon author page with cheap wrestling books at:

http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Hall/e/B00E6282W6