I know I’ve posted a fair number of reviews of old wrestling shows on here but they have been reviews I did back in 2012-2013. How’s about I do a more up-to-date review. In flipping through YouTube, I came across this particular show and I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen it before.
And of course, since I have to know these things…this card took place the same day that Dale Earnhardt won the 1987 Bristol Night Race! WOO HOO!!!! (Oh, just realized I have spoiled my future review of the race over on Track Talk. Oh well…
Gorilla Monsoon and Lord Alfred Hayes are on hand but, according to Gorilla, will be joined by Duke Doherty…or rather Pete Doherty, aka “The Duke Of Dorchester” (Massachusetts, not Ontario). If I recall, he had this grizzled voice and was a pretty unpolished heel commentator for a while in the 80s.
Scott Casey takes on Tama. Was Tama the heel by now? The little reaction Casey gets is mostly boos but MSG has gone silent by the time he hits the ring. Tama doesn’t get much more and Gorilla tells us he’s without Bobby Heenan. (Again, did Heenan not have to do house shows if he wasn’t commentating?)
Trying to cross some things off my To Do list and just letting this opener play out. We pretty much know who’s winning this one, don’t we?
After a back and forth match, Casey gets the piledriver on Tama and for a minute you think maybe the jobber gets the victory. But Casey hesitates and then when he does go for the pinfall, Tama gets his foot on the rope. Tama turns it out within moments with a second rope splash for the win.
Tito Santana is in the ring awaiting “The Outlaw” Ron Bass. Monsoon discusses an incident with Bass last month and the two exchange words. As soon as he gets in the ring, Bass finds himself under attack from Tito Santana. The action spills out of the ring and Tito throws a chair at Bass. The crowd is excited to see Tito taking it to Bass.
After battling almost back to the dressing room, Bass grabs his whip (Miss Betsy) but Tito grabs a chair and eventually gets possession of Betsy. Great moment when Bass goes to toss a chair in the ring and Tito catches it.
Bass gets sent to the floor and picks up some kind of object. Bass nails Tito with it and heads to the top rope. I figured this might be it but Santana slams him off the top rope. Bass kicks out and eventually goes on the offence. The story becomes Tito being beaten down but still trying to come back against Bass.
With Bass being counted out, the 20-minute time limit runs out and a draw is declared. I have to admit, I figured Bass was getting the win. Santana, as the face, wants five more minutes. Bass teases accepting but then departs.
Okay, considering that was a mid-card bout between two guys who never had a long program together, Santana and Bass came to work on that particular night. (Maybe they were pissed they missed watching the Bristol Night Race and decided to take their frustrations out on each other.)
Sensational Sherri defends the WWF Ladies’ Championship against Velvet McIntyre. McIntyre sets the champ on her heels to begin with. Obviously not the first championship match for McIntyre as she challenged the Fabulous Moolah at Wrestlemania II.
McIntyre gets a couple of near falls in with a hi-cross body and a sunset flip off the second rope. You still get the sense, however, of just how good Sherri was in the ring.
I wonder if Sherri was just the victim of being good at a time when women’s wrestling wasn’t getting the respect it deserved. I mean, I watched the Jumping Bomb Angels on a couple of occasions in 1987-88 and they were kicking it up a notch. However, there wasn’t a lot more in North America so Sherri went from champion to manager of the likes of Randy Savage, Ted Dibiase and Shawn Michaels. If WWF had the quality of women wrestlers it does now, I wonder what Sherri and the female wrestling scene would have been like in the late 80s.
McIntyre does make a good match out of it. Sherri, however, gets the pinfall after a back suplex. Like any good heel, she remembers to hook the tights.
By now, Pete Doherty has joined commentary. He sounds like Jimmy Durante and is not part-owner of JTG Daugherty Racing.
The other half of the Islanders, Haku, is in action at Madison Square Gardens. He’s facing Rick Martel and has back-up in the form of Tama. Martel heads to the back and brings out Tito Santana, so the Strike Force era is now upon us.
The ref sends Tito and Tama (sounds like a band) back to the dressing room. Haku tries to attack but Martel quickly gets control. As you might expect Haku uses heel tactics and his strength while Martel uses his quickness and agility.
With the referee distracted, Tama gets involved and hits Martel with a steel chair. Haku gets the victory but Santana comes down to clean house and protect his new tag team partner. Ironically, I was just thinking we would get another draw (double-count-out, perhaps).
There’s a long post-match segment where they tease Martel being stretchered out but he leaves with help from Santana.
After the match, Howard Finkel announces a special guest. Gorilla talks about how last month former Toronto Blue Jay (oh, yeah and New York Yankee and some other teams) Dave Winfield was at MSG. This time it’s Andre the Giant who Finkel says believes he (Andre, not Finkel) is the rightful WWF Champion as a result of Wrestlemania III.
After Andre leaves, out come the lumberjacks for the Lumberjack Match between The Honky Tonk Man and Ricky Steamboat.
You know the Honky Tonk Man is one of those guys you appreciate more now than you did in 1987. When I was watching him back in the day, he was this slimy Elvis-impersonator who lucked his way into the Intercontinental Championship. (Which was supposedly actually true seeing as how – with a no-show by Butch Reed at the tapings where Steamboat was to drop the title – Vince McMahon is reported to have pointed to the Honky Tonk Man as he was walking by and said “How about that guy?” The only issue with that long-repeated rumour is there was a segment they filmed – and took photos of – that was supposed to be in the dressing room after the match where all the heels including the Hart Foundation, the Islanders, Randy Savage AND BUTCH REED came out to congratulate Honky on the win.)
When he beat Steamboat for the title in June 1987, it looked like the biggest fluke in wrestling history and you assumed he was going to drop the title at any moment. Instead, over the next year and a half, Honky Tonk proceeded to make everyone from Savage to Jake Roberts to even Koko B. Ware look like a million bucks and on the verge of winning the title. When Honky somehow got away with the title (via countout or disqualification) and the arena announced a rematch (no DQ or lumberjack match) for the next card, it got people excited to come back because they’d be sure that THIS time Honky Tonk would get his comeuppance and his opponent would win the title the next time out (so you better get your tickets to see that). In a way, he was like Ric Flair in that regard.
And once he lost the title, he ended up basically being a jobber to the stars, putting over everybody they put across from him cleanly. Let me tell ya, I would take a dozen Honky Tonk Mans (okay, not with the same gimmick) over these guys that have a great look and the marks cheer for but seem to think the business should be built around them at the expense of the overall business.
Honky Tonk gets the first shot in but gets cocky and allows the Dragon to come back. Of course, the action spills out to the floor bringing the lumberjacks into play. As Steamboat retains control, Jimmy Hart has to come over and commiserate with Gorilla. (They seemed to do that at least once a match no matter where they were.)
Tama hooks the leg on Steamboat but then George Steele hooks the leg of Honky Tonk Man, leading to a near fall for the Dragon. As you probably could expect, this is pretty much 99% Steamboat but as he goes for what should be the final pinfall, Jimmy Hart gets up on the apron to distract the referee. Instead, George “the Animal” Steele hits the ring to make the three count.
As the ref gets George out of the ring and Steamboat attacks Jimmy Hart, Honky uses the megaphone to KO the Dragon. The Honky Tonk Man gets the pinfall but that’s just the start. Led by Tito Santana, the lumberjacks fill the ring and do battle.
Okay, so see what happened. The Honky Tonk Man did a great job in making it look like Steamboat was in total control and on the verge of winning the title. (Don’t get me wrong. Steamboat was a great competitor who was able to get great matches out of anyone.) However, when the Honky Tonk cheated to win and retain the title, the crowd is incited (a chant of “BullSh*t” can be heard) and a rematch would pretty much sell itself.
Steamboat vs. the Honky Tonk Man must be the last match before intermission because Lord Alfred Hayes throws it to some interviews Gorilla conducted at various times throughout the night.
Gorilla interviews Pete Doherty backstage and he might sound like Jimmy Durante but he looks like a cross between Hacksaw Jim Duggan and Ted Dibiase. Doherty tells Gorilla he’s going to call it like he sees it and Monsoon insinuates he better behave himself.
Then it’s an interview with Superstar Billy Graham after his comeback from hip surgery. By the way, Superstar Billy Graham is STILL alive! Graham talks about his “vendetta” with Butch Reed. Man, you can really see where Hulk Hogan took a lot of his promo style from Graham.
Oh boy! It’s Gorilla with Slick…oh yeah and Butch Reed. Slick is probably one of the most under-rated promo guys in WWF History. Both Slick and Reed say they will be retiring Superstar Billy Graham tonight.
Gorilla is still in the back, this time with the Junk Yard Dog and George “the Animal” Steele who will be facing Demolition. You can tell Gorilla is trying to hold it together when George does his promo. As Gorilla talks to the JYD, George inadvertently invents the Dudley Boyz by bringing in a table and saying he might put Ax and Smash through a table.
Gorilla finally gets to come back and sit down as the Superstar Billy Graham-Butch Reed match starts off the second half of the show. Funny story: As Graham was coming down the aisle, my Mom said “That’s Hulk Hogan.” I don’t think I fully convinced her it wasn’t Hogan – See what I mean about Hogan using a lot of Graham’s mannerisms!
Graham has the upper hand as the bout starts, even attacking Slick but then the manager slips Reed a foreign object (it was 1987, that’s what we called them back then). That – and using Superstar’s T-shirt to choke him out – allows the Natural to take over. As you might expect Reed focuses on Graham’s injured hip.
Remember how in earlier matches, it was pretty much all the face? In this case, it was pretty much all Reed. Superstar Billy Graham would have a bit of offence here and there but Reed quickly turned it back around within a moment or two.
Of course, just as I say that, Graham takes over and gets the bearhug on Reed. Slick jumps into the ring and nails Superstar with the cane, drawing the disqualification. Okay, now this is a strange turn of events. To me, Reed was on the rise – or maybe he wasn’t due to missing that show – and Graham, injured, was nearing retirement. One would have thought that Graham might have put in a heroic effort only to fall victim to Reed and the attack on his hip. Weird that Graham got the win, even if via DQ.
Graham goes after Slick and when Reed comes to his manager’s aid, Graham ends up shoving the ref and gets the bearhug on Reed again. Referees and officials (including the fabled Terry Garvin of Terry Garvin’s School of Self-Defence) rush to ringside to try and get Graham off of Reed. Even Gorilla Monsoon gets involved. However, the damage has been done and the referee rules the bout a double disqualification.
I guess to calm things down they throw out a jobber vs. jobber match as Leaping Lanny Poffo takes on Jose Estrada. Pretty far up the card for this bout. (Fun fact: Lanny Poffo went to the same high school as Denise Richards.) Poffo’s poem is about the first time he wrestled at the Gardens.
Estrada jumps Poffo and “Leaping Lanny” wrestles the first couple of minutes with his ring jacket on. Estrada has most of the offense early but Poffo comes back. Interesting moment where Poffo gets Estrada in a head scissors take down out of the corner.
Estrada fires Poffo into the corner but Leaping Lanny is gone by the time Estrada follows him in with the splash attempt. Poffo picks Estrada up and slams him down to the mat. Poffo goes to the top rope and connects with a flying flip for the pin.
Lord Alfred Hayes interviews Demolition. Ax and Smash have the same face paint scheme. Going forward, Ax had more of a silver paint scheme but on this night they went with red and black. They also didn’t have the famed Demolition theme they’d use later but the music they did use seemed vaguely similar to their later theme, just not quite the pounding heavy metal. Also, of note, Mr. Fuji is not at Madison Square Garden.
The Junk Yard Dog and George “The Animal” Steele used “Grab Them Cakes” from the original wrestling album. I just realized that this would have been after JYD’s short break from WWF after Wrestlemania III.
Noteworthy moment early on as Ax ended up in JYD/Steele’s corner. Steele goes to bite Ax and ends up with a lot of the make-up on his face.
This was mid-1987 so Demolition were still pretty new on the WWF Tag scene. They definitely have their moveset and style they would utilize throughout their WWF run but they weren’t as dominant over a team like JYD and Steele as they might have been a year later. Certainly, this is a contrast between two workers on their way up and two on their way down the card.
Demos toss Steele out of the ring and with the ref tied up with one Demo, the other goes to slam JYD. Steele brings in a chair (man they’re using a lot of chairs tonight) and pokes the kidney of the Demo. JYD ends up on top and in position for the pin. However, the ref doesn’t count and instead calls for the bell. Turns out, he disqualified Steele for use of the chair, which is weird because it looked like the ref’s back was to the action. Lord Alfred Hayes tries to cover by saying the ref saw Steele “using his peripheral vision.”
This match was like the Graham-Reed match. It didn’t need a disqualification ending. Demolition was on the upswing (much like I expected Reed to be) and should have gone over clean. And that was your main event. Just like that, Gorilla says farewell on behalf of Lord Alfred Hayes (Pete Doherty wasn’t around for the main event) and the show is over.
I understand that Hogan would go on mid-card so he could leave before the end of the show but did they really need to do that for Honky and Steamboat? I mean, with all due respect for what Demolition would become in the WWF Tag ranks, the bout against the Junk Yard Dog and George the Animal Steele was not exactly Main Event-calibre. Flip the order of the show and you might have something.
I will say, however, that everyone seemed to come to work, especially the Tito Santana-Ron Bass match. I also didn’t expect much from Graham-Reed despite the history, just due to Graham’s condition at the time. I think this might have been the commentating debut of “The Duke of Dorchester” Pete Doherty but given that he only shows up on clips of house shows, it’s not like this is history in the making.
Yeah, not pay-per-view worthy but overall not a bad show to spend a couple of nostalgic hours on.
johnmilner.ca 