Reviewed in February 2012
It was 1989…my thoughts were short, my hair was long. Stuck somewhere… Damn you, Kid Rock! Anyways, let’s see what Vince, Hulkster and co. had to offer.
Sean Mooney and Tony Schiavone are on commentary, meaning this will be the most boring night in the history of our sport! And no matter what the cruiserweights are doing, all we’ll hear is how Lord Alfred Hayes and the N.W.O. are doing.
But seriously, they give a rundown of the card, which includes an appearance by Randy Savage and Sensational Sherri. (I missed who he’s facing!) Also Demolition defend the Tag Team titles against Akeem and the Big Boss Man (ironically dubbed “the Twin Towers”). There’s a tag match pitting Andre the Giant and Haku vs. King Duggan and Hillbilly Jim. “It’s going to be a spectacular encounter,” Mooney says and I heartily…disagree. Mr. Perfect vs. Hercules and the Genius will be in action.
Iron Mike Sharpe vs. Tim Horner: Horner was one-half of the Lightning Express with Brad Armstrong. (They beat no less than Sting and Rick Steiner for the UWF Tag Team titles.) The Lightning Express was like the Young Stallions, one of those mid-card teams that got talked up a fair bit, but never went anywhere. Of course, I still think the Stallions COULD have been what Strike Force ended up being.
Sharpe, who many people don’t know was a 2nd Generation wrestler, had to have been the loudest jobber of all time. I know there’s not a non-wrestling fan to be found reading this far into my blog, but if I could impart some wisdom to the novice, it’s that guys like Sharpe were probably 0-265 in TV and house show matches, but he and others like him (Jim Powers, Lanny Poffo, Steve Lombardi, etc.) served an important purpose in that he helped get other talent over by making them look good. I’ll take an Iron Mike Sharpe over Bill Goldberg, Sid, the Road Warriors, Steve Austin, Brock Lesnar any day of the week. (Heck, I could make a Top 10 list of guys who won’t sell properly for their opponents.) Yeah, more people are going to show up when they see Steve Austin on the bill than they will Iron Mike Sharpe, but at the end of the day, Sharpe’s opponent is going look good while Austin, even in 2012, is only there to make himself look good at the expense of everyone he’s in the ring with.
Sharpe does get some extended offence in this match, but it’s Horner with a sunset flip for the victory. Horner never did anything in WWE, and really, it was only these jobber matches on house shows where he had any success.
Interesting fact: According to Wikipedia, Horner was later a co-owner of Smokey Mountain Wrestling and, even later, a producer for Smackdown for a while before being released in October 2006.) Sharpe runs a wrestling school in New Jersey, whose students include Simon Dean, Devon Storm and Charlie Haas.
The Warlord takes on WWE Hall of Famer (and Sean Irvine’s favourite wrestler) Koko B. Ware. Why didn’t the Warlord go further? I mean, you could make the argument he was Goldberg, Nikita Koloff and Road Warrior Hawk all rolled into one.
This is pretty much what you expect. The Warlord gets Koko in a bearhug and hangs on for what seems like several minutes, and even afterwards, the Warlord just pounds away on the fallen Koko. Ware does get in a pretty sweet missile dropkick off the top rope but that’s pretty much it. The Warlord finishes Koko with a clothesline, which I think stopped being a finisher in 1967 (unless you’re from Texas – Hansen, JBL and it’s a lariat) and gets a quick pin.
You know, for a guy who’s WWE prime was really about a month in 1987, Koko really lucked out, getting into the Hall of Fame. Speaking of which, apparently Abdullah the Butcher isn’t p!ssed off about getting into the WWE Hall of Fame, saying that he was in the business for 51 years and the induction was 51 years too late. So…if I get this right, Abby is p!ssed that, on his first day in the business, he wasn’t inducted into a Hall of Fame that wouldn’t exist for decades. And since your WWE career win-loss record was 0-0 with 0 draws, I think Vince was tossing you a bone putting him in his Hall. If you don’t like it, feel free to go back to sticking a fork in your head at county fairs in Nebraska in front of 45 people.
Mr. Perfect Curt Hennig vs. Hercules: This was part of Hercules’ short-lived face turn, which I think they could have done a fair bit more with. Hercules had a decent look once he got a hair cut and shorter bear, although I don’t think he was all that good on the mic so maybe he should have just stayed a heel with Heenan. He might have gotten a short run with the Intercontinental title.
Anyways, this is a pretty solid mid-card match between two guys who were good in that role, and Hennig, of course, was ready for bigger things (and probably should have gotten an even bigger push). Actually, it makes me wonder what might have happened if he’d gone to Crockett/WCW after dropping the AWA title in 1988.
If they had kept the Horsemen going after Arn and Tully left in 1988, it would have been interesting to have Flair, Windham, Hennig and someone else to keep the franchise going. Then, once Flair regained the title from Steamboat in 1989, have Hennig challenge his Horsemen buddy for the title, leading to either Flair or Hennig turning face. Damn you Jim Crockett, why won’t you find a time machine and flash-forward from 1987 and have me come back with you to help run your booking staff?
By now, Vince’d be running shows at the Glencoe Fair and hoping to get a dozen people in to see Rocky Miavia vs. “Stunning” Steve Austin try and figure out who can sell the least.
Speaking of selling, one of the great things about Hennig is that even though he was a top star in WWE and got a pretty good push in 1989-1991, he always sold well for everybody. (That might have been the reason he had to take time off for a screwed-up back in 1991-92.) He wasn’t afraid to make other people look good, by doing the proverbial bouncing around like a ping-pong ball when he got run into the corner.
Case in point, he gets a good match out of Hercules here, even being up in the backbreaker when the bell rings. There’s a moment where you wonder if Hercules gets the submission win, but it’s a time limit draw. I guess this helps Hercules but it should have been a Hennig win, really.
“The Genius” Lanny Poffo will take on Jose Luis Rivera: Hmm…weird to think they’d follow a mid-card match with another jobber bout. The Genius, “full of glory and renown,” has a poem predicting victory for Savage and Zeus against Hogan and Beefcake at SummerSlam. We can joke all we want about this being a jobber vs. JTTS match, but this was a good idea for Poffo at this point. He had just turned heel and gotten a bit of a push, but no one bought him as a mid-carder yet (and some might argue no one ever did) so putting him in there against Ronnie Garvin or Hercules wouldn’t have worked.
Him defeating Rivera was believable, and was a good venue to show off his skills as a heel. People knew Poffo as a face, and knew he had some skills in the ring, but as a heel and obviously going over Rivera, this match gave Poffo a better opportunity to show off what he could do, to show off his in-ring skills (when he wasn’t focusing on making the heel look good and basically just taking moves) and his ability to be cheat.
Case in point, Poffo got the victory after a somersault splash off the top rope. Poffo was fine in matches like this, but I think somewhere along the line, the WWE bookers realized he wasn’t quite so believable as a mid-card heel, so they teamed him with Hennig as a manager and tag partner. It gave Poffo a continued push, (at least until mid-1990) but helped hide the fact that he never got over that JTTS stigma…although he did get a count-out victory over WWE Champion Hulk Hogan on Saturday Night’s Main Event.
In what I assume is going to serve as the “Main Event” for the first half of the card, Hillbilly Jim (who is already in the ring when we come back from what must have been the commercial break) and King Duggan take on Andre the Giant and Haku (who show great tag team continuity by entering together). Of course, there’s a “USA! USA!” chant for Duggan.
Andre and Haku bolt and Andre states (via Howard Finkle) that he’s not coming back until the crowd shuts up, but he does return after Danny Davis threatens to fine him and Haku.
Even after all four men get into the ring, it’s still about five minutes before there’s so much as a lock-up. This is one of those bouts where, based on the marks’ reactions to the four participants, the heat on the match far outweighs the merits of the match itself.
One cool spot, however, has Andre tied up in the ropes (a usual spot for the heel Andre) and the two Jims (oh wow! I just saw what they did there!) picking up Haku and, as the commentators point out, using him as a battering ram against Andre.
Gotta be honest…not a big fan of any of these four, so to me, this is one of those “Let me see what else I could be doing” matches. (I respect what Andre brought to the ring and did for the business, but he was one of those guys who needed someone to work with, and Duggan just wasn’t the guy to get a decent match out of him.)
In the end, Duggan has to bring in the 2×4 to nail Haku and allow Hillbilly to get the pinfall. I know everyone was supposed to mark over this, but it made Duggan look weak because I don’t think he won a match from 1987 onward, without using the board.
And this must be the break because we go to Mooney, who has transported himself to the dressing room, where he interviews or rather holds the mic while Randy Savage and Sensational Sherri talk about facing Brutus Beefcake. Then he sticks around to interview the Big Boss Man and Akeem.
Interesting fact: The Big Boss Man’s character was a former prison guard. His partner, Akeem/One Man Gang now works as…a Prison Guard.
In a bad bit of planning, as the Twin Towers leave, in comes their opponents, Demolition. Mooney makes note of not wanting to cause “a melee” but really, could they not have started the segment with Boss Man and Akeem, then switched to Savage and Sherri and then brought in Demolition?
After the interview segments, future Horsemen Paul Roma…yeah, let your brain wrap itself around that…it’s like former WCW Champion David Arquette….takes on Sting in his WWE debut…oh wait, it’s Sandy Beach.
I tried looking up Sandy (or Sunny) Beach because I knew he showed up in the California-based UWF in 1991. Sure enough, he and Steve Ray (not Booker T’s brother Stevie Ray) beat Cactus Jack and Bob Orton in the first (and last and only) UWF Pay-per-view.
This is a lot like the Poffo-Rivera match where it’s another jobber vs. JTTS match, with the outcome never in doubt. Still, Roma was a decent mid-card worker and Beach put in a decent night’s match. Nothing I’m going to remember in five minutes, but a solid way to get the crowd back into the show after hitting the concession stand and the washrooms.
Randy Savage vs. Brutus Beefcake and it’s a testament to Savage that he could get a good match out of Beefcake in 1989. I don’t think Savage was at the height of his career here, since he was kinda being moved out of the World title scene. I mean, by the Main Event in March 1990, he battled Hulk Hogan for the title, but I think everyone expected him to job out to a punch from James “Buster” Douglas, who had replaced Mike Tyson as special referee for the bout.
But he and Sherri were in a program with Dusty Rhodes…and Sapphire (SIGH!) I mean, with all due respect to the late Sapphire, I think the polka dots were enough of a hill for Rhodes to climb on the road to getting over in WWE, but saddling him with Sapphire?
Anyways, speaking of having tough roads to climb, Savage was placed in a program where his presence was needed to legitimize the challenge of Tiny “Zeus” Lister against Hulk Hogan and Brutus Beefcake.
While Hogan was supposedly focused on Zeus, his co-star in “No Holds Barred”, Savage was feuding with Beefcake, with the idea he wanted to get by Hogan’s buddy to get back to the World title.
Instead, Savage was pushed into a feud against Jim Duggan over the title of “King”, Rhodes and then the Ultimate Warrior.
So it’s taken me “x” number of words to get back to the fact that after feuding with Hogan, Steamboat and even the Honky Tonk Man, since it was at least for the Intercontinental title, late-1989 to 1992 really could and should have been a down-time for Savage, but he still managed to put in some good performances. (I think his “Retirement” match at Wrestlemania VII vs. the Ultimate Warrior is very under-rated.)
Still, I think his best days were in 1986-1987 when he joined the Road Warriors, Roddy Piper and Ric Flair (and later C.M. Punk and now the Briscoe Brothers) who were so over with the crowd as heels that they had to be turned face.
Another change with Savage was the involvement of his manager. With Elizabeth, she was there at the ring to cheer him on and perhaps be used as a shield by Savage outside the ring. Sherri, on the other hand, was very actively involved in the course and outcome of the match. This particular match is a good example of that, as with Beefcake trapping Savage in the sleeper, Sherri ran in and hit Beefcake with his barber’s bag.
I guess the result makes sense since Beefcake gets the win (by disqualification) so the crowd’s happy, but Savage doesn’t eat the pinfall loss. Personally, I think Beefcake should have jobbed out cleanly by the superior Savage, but they had a pay-per-view to build to.
Ironically, Beefcake-Savage wasn’t the main event. Instead, that’s reserved for the WWE Tag Team title match between the Big Boss Man and the One Man Gang and champions Demolition. I know that a title match is a title match but I think Savage and Beefcake were further up the card (and again, heading towards a pay-per-view main event).
This match was given a fair bit of time to “marinate” itself…Not Windham-Flair time but certainly more than what you’ll see on Raw and Smackdown these days.
Ironically, when Demolition were first brought in, they were supposed to be this power-house team that used brute strength and force to…well, “demolish” everything in their path. So it was kinda strange to see them battling the larger foes of Akeem and the Big Boss Man.
And, of course, the Boss Man and Akeem had a good segment where they were in control, using their weight and size to their advantage.
In the end it was the cheating tactics of the challengers that led to their downfall. The Boss Man went to use the night stick but missed Demolition and nailed Akeem. Smash blocked the Boss Man from coming to his partner’s aide and Ax pinned Akeem for the victory.
Other than the replay, there’s not a lot more from the WWE crew after the Demos clear ringside.
Not one of the WWE’s stronger cards, but some smart booking for what they had. Interesting to note that Savage and Beefcake were the top singles match at a time when the NWA/WCW had just finished up Flair-Steamboat and had guys like Luger, Sting and Terry Funk in the main event scene. Also interesting to note from a personal standpoint. This was Dee’s birthday, roughly two weeks before I met her.
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