Darth Pipes

Watched some of this show today. Jesse was on fire and had a couple of good lines. Him trying to get Gorilla to stand during the Soviet national anthem and noting that there would be no hair-pulling between Bam Bam and King Kong Bundy. A few other ones that I can't remember. MVP of this show is without a doubt Bam Bam Bigelow. He worked his *** off against opponents who weren't exactly great workers in Bundy, OMG, and Andre. He definitely could have been someone big for the company.

And he ended up laying waste to the Bulldogs, Hacksaw, and some other guy.

I watched some of Showdown at Shea and I enjoyed it. I got a kick out of the Foley (funny he keeps popping up) and Cole commentary. Cole was actually entertaining and Foley is Foley. He does hint at some of his problems with Vince during it. Also got a kick out of how they made fun of Vince and points to Cole for actually acknowledging the bad blood between The E and Bruno. Shea made for a cool place to have a wrestling card.

Sting should have won the title by destroying Hogan. One of the biggest dropped balls in wrestling history. I doubt the NWO angle would have ended then but it should have at least by the turning point. WCW goes on offense against the NWO and the feud is resolved later in 1998 at War Games. There was never any resolution to the NWO storyline. They became too big and then just faded away.

The segment with Dusty attacking Tully with the baseball bat was awesome. I wish that, along with the Road Warriors spike incident, had been on the Dusty DVD. It's sad to see Magnum that way though. Really weird watching the NWA shows when you know Magnum's career is cut short only a few weeks later.

Halloween Havoc 92 turned out to be one of WCW's highest-grossing PPVs at the time. I guess that's a testament to Jake Roberts popularity.

Watched the NWA. For some reason, they started with an endlessly long match between Don Kernolde and The Golden Terror. The jobber matches were hidious and once again, the show cut off a red hot main event with Dusty/Magnum and the Midnights. I seem to remember them doing this now back in the day. AAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!! That being said, we get a good like match between Tully Blanchard and Sam Houston and a GREAT match between The Rock N Rolls and The Andersons. Classic. David Crockett is back doing commentary and you can tell because he's nowhere near as entertaining as Cornette. Cornette did the heel interviews though. Baby Doll looked pretty damn good in spandex.

Phil Musnick is a sport reporter for the NY Post and he used to write for TV Guide. He's been a long-time critic of the WWE and particularly Vince McMahon. He's a whiny, little ***** who complains about everything on TV that's even a little risque, leading many to wonder if the only shows he watches are on PBS. I think he was even very critical of the now defunct Mike and the Mad Dog Show and they both couldn't stand him. Though I can't say he was wrong to suggest congressional hearings for wrestling.

Yeah, I've heard the ending was strange. The clip I saw on the Bloodiest Cage Matches DVD has Bruno walking out of the ring after a few head stomps. Maybe it was just Bruno's style. That same DVD has the first ever MSG cage match between Bruno and Ivan Koloff. Bruno dominates virtually the entire match, throwing Ivan into the cage constantly and then walking out. A few of the guys at the Kayfabe Memories message board (great message board btw) said it should have ended with either Bruno taking Larry out with a long bear hug or beating him to a bloody pulp. The only thing I can think of for the anti-climatic finish was that Larry was apparently supposed to get a major babyface push after the cage match and they wanted to keep him strong. Of course, that didn't come to fruition and to this date, Larry has never returned to the WWE.

That must have been awful on Andre's knees. He was having problems enough with his health at that point. About Studd losing 80% of his matches...that's a major WWF heel in the eighties for you. They just weren't give big wins even if they were big stars. I read someone once wondering if Studd got to win the 1989 Royal Rumble because of all those jobs he did back to Hogan, Andre, and Backlund.

Oh, my bad.

That's an old favorite of Monsoon's. He used that to describe heel Lou Albano countless times. Blassie said that once about a crowd. An oldie but a goodie. A few notes... -Frenchie Martin apparently has a Goldberg-like streak going. It appears that Frenchie (Andre the Giant's close friend) has been on the last couple of weeks and is always winning. Even Poffo is doing jobs to him (twice) and Poffo does two jobs on the show. Weird. -Very cool them being in Caesar's but it's clear that it wasn't the best day to shoot. The wind was whipping strong and blowing Heenan and what was left of Monsoon's hair everywhere. -It's been said before but the look on Vince's face during the Piledriver video is classic. -Which reminds me...you can take Gorilla and Heenan out of the Prime Time studio but you can't take the merchandise out of Prime Time. They still have a bunch of crap in front of them. -Some sexual innuendo as Gorilla asks Heenan if Miss Betty is at the ranch.

Maybe it has to do with the nature of the event itself. I mean, Vinnie Mac only started Survivor Series to stick it to Jim Crockett and hurt his Starrcade 87. So maybe it was just viewed as a one-off sort of thing. Not to mention the results didn't have any real storyline affects. I admit though, it's very odd and it's a shame we don't have Heenan sticking Andre's win right into Gorilla's face.

Around this time, Hogan was wearing a helmet during house shows. He brought one to the ring with him against Bad News Brown at MSG. I'm sure they used the same ending for this match.

I've been looking forward to seeing this card for a long time, mainly to finally see the Bruno/Larry Z cage match. Hulk Hogan, JR, and the WWE are trying to alter history by saying 36,000 people were there to see Hogan/Andre but any real fan knows that they were there for one reason and one reason only and that was to see the Bruno/Larry cage match.

You know, I was just expecting the usual from the Big John Studd HOF profile (the Andre match) but it was pretty good and did a comprehensive (as comprehensive as 47 minutes could be) look at his career. You see his original WWWF stint as one-half of the Executioners, follwed by footage from the Mid-Atlantic, AWA, Florida, back to the WWF where we see the beginning of his body slam feud with Andre in February 1983, finally to the WMI match, and his victory at the 89 RR. Pretty cool stuff.

Sweet! I always enjoyed the Gorilla/Heenan road trips.

Yeah, Hart/Austin was fantastic. Their feud never had a satisfactory conclusion.

Austin beating Bret for the title at WM14 and avenging his earlier lost would have been better.

I have to say the U.S. vs Canada stuff (Bret being a heel in the U.S. and a face in Canada) was great and it was like nothing we've seen before.

Yeah but I mean I hope we get to see Vinnie Mac perform it.

Interesting. But then again, the format of the Survivor Series consisted of insignifcant elimination matches. No titles on the line. I just watched most of Prime Time. While I agree wrestling-wise the show was terrible, I thought that the Heenan/Monsoon interaction was top-notch. Heenan was really on his game here. Those two are proof positive that you don't need to curse or have sexual innuendo (though Heenan would slip in an occassional off-color joke) to be funny. A few notes... -The next episode would indeed mark the return of Prime Time to Monday. My guess is the ratings weren't so hot at that spot though the WWF would try to spin it differently. Why they didn't do this for that week's show, I'll never know. -Favorite Heenan line was after Monsoon talked about how bad 1987 was for Superstar Graham and how the next year might be better for him. Heenan says "Next year might be better. They might lynch him." -Got to love the topical humor. Heenan claims Rick Rude is the one whose causing trouble in the Princess Diana/Prince Charles marriage. "She wants the Ravishing One...and the Brain." -The debut of the Ultimate Warrior, who was still pretty raw at this point. It's interesting how they keep comparing his body to Rick Rude's and how more than a year later they would be feuding. -Debut of the Demolition music video kicked ass. -I'll echo the point that stretching out the King Kong Bundy doll created a distrubing visual. I guess that was supposed to be the sexual innuendo for the show that week. -Talk of the Slammys. Maybe we'll get to see Stand Back or that kick-ass backstage brawl between Harley Race and Jim Duggan.

True, true. I think Heenan was supposed to be the original manager of Flair but quit because he couldn't keep up with Flair's partrying. Airing at the same time as the Survivor Series...not a smart move by Prime Time. USA Network had literally nothing back then...they probably could have moved it a few days sooner.

I could be wrong but the way Gorilla said it, Survivor Series was either occuring or was happening as the show aired. It's possible it was going on at the same time...I think Prime Time might have still been on Thursdays at this point. You know, I remember watching Prime Time religiously back in the day but I never remember them being on Thursday. Since my Prime Time memory is apparently not up to snuff, I was wondering...a while back I read that Andre's performance was so bad at the Survivor Series that they didn't show footage from the event for two months. Anyone know if that's true? I wonder how they discussed the event on Prime Time. Gorilla ragged Heenan's team for weeks leading into the show but it was Heenan's team (namely Andre) that emerged victorious. Gorilla was never one to eat his words though. We should soon be coming up to the point where Heenan sells Andre's contract to Ted Dibease. That should make for some fun Heenan/Gorilla banter. It's a shame Heenan couldn't have still be managing Andre when he won the WWF Championship. Brain deserved to manage the champ and get a big one over Hogan, even if it lasted only two minutes.

HBK and HHH were great during this time. Definitely the most entertaining HBK was on the mic. They get a good one off on the next Raw where HHH talks about how better and smarter he is than Bret and how he was bigger than Bret in more ways than one. Leading HBK to look down at HHH and exclaim... "Good God, you can put an eye out with that thing!" I never noticed how detached Bret was. I wasn't privey to that info back then. Although I imagine that Pillman's death contributed to his already disinterested move. Very sad that Bret and Neihart are the only ones remaining from The Hart Foundation. My bad before on noticing all the wrestler's deaths. Owen's death was a tragic, freak accident and JR said on the Pillman DVD that he actually died of an undiagnosed heart condition. But it's amazing how so many wrestlers didn't learn from that death. It's apparently moved onto the second generation. Last year, Davey Boy's son was suspended by the WWE for a steroid-related offense. It's true amazing. He knows what juicing did to his father yet Harry is apparently in a gigantic rush to join him.