Saturday Night’s Main Event #27 (7.28.90) review 

 

July 28, 1990 (Taped: July 16, 1990) 

 

 

We’re in Omaha, Nebraska. Hosts are Vince McMahon and Jesse Ventura. This is the last time Ventura will co-host one of these things, as he’s about to storm out of the promotion over pay offs. The next time we’ll hear his dulcet tones will be in WCW. McMahon would end up paying Ventura $800,000 by way of settlement. It’s interesting to note that Ventura would not set foot in a WWF ring until 1999, when he came in as a special referee. He’ll be replaced on comms by Roddy Piper. Make no mistake about it, losing Ventura is a key part of Vince McMahon trials and tribulations during the early 1990s and it hurt.  

 

WWF Championship 

Ultimate Warrior (c) vs. Rick Rude 

Rude is the number one contender because he beat Warrior for the IC belt. Rude is the only guy who’s beaten him, ergo, he gets the shot. They used the same logic in the Great White Hype. Rick is a good choice to sell all Warrior’s stuff. He does a lot of overblown selling, so Warrior just has to connect and let Rude do the work. It’s a good performance from Rude and it was enough to win him the title match at Summerslam.  

It is borderline that he’s taking the piss, but his character let’s him get away with it. They do something weird here and the referee lifts Warrior’s leg on a sleeper instead of the arm. What the fuck? Also, Rude hits a swinging neckbreaker, which is very close to the Rude Awakening. Bobby Heenan gets involved, Warrior beats him up and Rude gets counted out on the floor. This was fine. Rude did enough here to show that he could conceal the weaknesses of the champion. **½ 

 

So, the theme of this show is “Animal Kingdom”, which leads to a series of skits involving Gene Okerlund and Alfred Hayes mimicking a TV show I’m not familiar with. I won’t go into details, but Hayes takes it seriously and Okerlund does not. We also get a ‘tribute to Hulkamania’ as Hogan is on his way back from being squashed by Earthquake. It was an excuse to write him off TV while he was making a bad movie. Sad “Real American” is the saddest of all theme songs.  

 

Promo Time: Hulk Hogan 

Hulk Hogan comes out for an interview. He talks like he’s been out injured forever but it’s been three months, jack. The crowd erupts for his every word here. If you compare the reaction to Hogan with Warrior, you can see the difference. They probably should have put the belt on a heel. The oddest thing about this angle is Hogan is pals with Tugboat, who will corner him at Summerslam. He needed a spare Brutus Beefcake. Quake and Bravo are about to jump Hogan when Tugboat runs in for the save to BY FAR the largest reaction of his entire career*.  

 

*The backstory here is crazy. Fred Ottman was positioned here to be Hogan’s bestie so he could turn on him. To what end? To become an Iraqi sympathizer called “Sheik Tugboat” (I swear I’m not making this up) who would face Hogan (!!!!) at Wrestlemania VII. Yes, this is really what they were thinking of doing but then Sgt Slaughter became available, and the rest is history. Including Ottman, who didn’t even make it to Summerslam and Hogan’s corner. They just got rid of him from the angle. He would eventually turn after Mania and form the Natural Disasters with Earthquake. Man, Wrestlemania VII could have stunk even worse than it ended up doing.  

 

After a bit of research, I’ve tracked down the whole ‘Animal Kingdom’ thing. The show was called Wild Kingdom and ran from 1968 until 1988. Hosted by Marlin Perkins and Jim Fowler. The show was a big hit in the late 60s and early 70s, although it was plagued by accusations of faking animal sightings for the camera. Perkins was once quizzed about it by a reporter and punched him in the face! He’d fit right in with pro-wrestling. Anyway, Perkins died of cancer in 1986, and the show slowly died with him. Clearly someone was a fan around the offices and made the connection as it was filmed in Omaha.  

 

Sidenote: I took another one of my patented “breaks” here. Mainly because of work but hey, Christmas. Whatcha gonna do?  

 

WWF Tag Team Championship 

Demolition (c) vs. Rockers 

Demos are now a threesome as Bill Eadie had some health issues and was replaced by Brian “Crush” Adams. Not to be confused with the Canadian rock singer who brought the world the “Summer of ‘69”. They’re using Freebird rules, so any two can wrestle but it’s always Crush and Smash with Ax on the floor. They blow a Rockers double team so bad that Vince is shouting “what is happening here?” at the screen. They pre-taped this. How did that make it in?  

 

Generally, the match is fine. Rockers can both sell and bump. Marty is on form. The new look Demos don’t do it for me but only because Crush sucks so much. He’s boring, soft and tries to be flashy but fails. He also looks like a man-child. Everything looks like a shit version of another move. He and Marty have another miscue. Shawn gets a hot tag, and the crowd go nuts for him. If it hadn’t been apparent to this point, this is where it becomes noticeable that Michaels had “it”. Bill Eadie jumps in, lariats Shawn and gets the pin. How did you get Ax and Crush mixed up, Joey Marella*? Jesus. Anyway, this was good at times but had too many mistakes.  

 

Post Match: Hart Foundation and LOD run in to complain about the decision. Should have done four corners at Summerslam, really.  

 

*Joey Marella was just 31 when he died in a car crash. While doing a little research I discovered a Wikipedia page about premature deaths in wrestling, which sent me down the most depressing rabbit hole of all time. I am now incredibly sad on Christmas Day. Thanks, wrestling.  

 

WWF Intercontinental Championship 

Mr Perfect (c) vs. Tito Santana 

Former IC champ Santana gets a rare big match here. This starts out lightning fast. Perfect bumps like crazy, selling Santana’s frantic approach. He does take a few silly bumps but it’s less obvious than usual and Tito is a great, great bumper so that compensates for it. They have a weird ref bump, where Perfect falls on Earl Hebner’s knee. This prevents him from getting over to check on the Figure Four and is late on the Flying Forearm pin. It’s pretty wild seeing a heel kick out of a babyface finisher in 1990.  

 

They switch refs and Perfect takes over. His offence is cool but when Santana gets back into it he clearly pushes the pace and the energy this creates is sensational. I’m still not convinced Hennig knows when and where to take his wacky bumps but the one over the ropes in this is mint. Sadly, he also dives face first into the buckles for no reason. Small package reversal wins it for Perfect. Loads of energy and effort from Tito in this one. Hennig was all over the fucking place. ***¼.  

 

With the match structure as it was, this was an easy four stars if the heel was taking normal bumps or was more consistent with his bumping. I find Mr Perfect infuriating at times. He’s so great at 90% of wrestling but that awful 10% where he just takes odd bumps at the wrong time. 

 

Buddy Rose vs. Texas Tornado 

So, hey, they signed Kerry von Erich but decided to bill him as the “Texas Tornado”. He is still called Kerry von Erich here and Vince even talks about the Von Erich family. This whole project has given me a new sense of how great Kerry was. You can forget about that in the WWF though.  

Buddy isn’t even fourty here but looks dreadful. Discus Punch finishes. Nothing to see here. Adding Von Erich just adds in another muscular guy to the midcard to replace Warrior. What they should have done was hire Kerry a few years earlier and just put the belt on him instead. The trouble with Kerry is he’s quite dim. Just a big roided up buffoon. He didn’t have Hogan’s charisma, and he couldn’t talk that much.  

 

We end the show with a few promos, including Warrior who’s preparing for his title match against Rick Rude at Summerslam. The combination of weird promos, strange personality and Warrior’s inability to connect to people on a human level is about to derail his big push. Not just yet but the experiment is on its last legs already. The issue with this year is that the WWF were still doing great business. So, it’s tough to argue with that hard, cold data.  

 

However, the Warrior title run was a flop, and they’d hit the reset button in January. Warrior is such a bizarre guy, such a freakishly weird character study, that it’s hard to look away. He’s not the star he thinks he is. He’s been given everything on a silver platter and that’s not enough for him. His behaviour over the coming two years is fascinating as he ruins his own career. Effectively finished by late 1992 and out of the price range of WCW until that shit 1998 run. Only briefly returning to the WWF when they got desperate in 1996, and he fucked that up too.  

 

The 411: 

The Perfect-Santana match, while infuriating, is a tremendously well-structured match for 1990. The rest of the show is less good with constant skits involving Lord Alfred Hayes and the big Fred Ottman push in full force.  

 

NEXT: Some gods damn All Japan. For the WWF it’ll be Summerslam 1990 with Warrior vs Rude on top.