WWF Saturday Night’s Main Event #23 (10.14.89) review 

 

October 14, 1989 (Taped: September 21, 1989) 

 

We’re in Cincinnati, Ohio at the Riverfront Coliseum. You may know it, currently as the Heritage Bank Center, thanks to naming rights. It’s a big indoor arena and has hosted various American sports teams you’ve never heard of like the Cincinnati Stingers (ice hockey), Cincinnati Kids (football/soccer), Cincinnati Rockers (Arena football), Cincinnati Stuff (basketball) and the Cincinnati Swarm (Arena Football). I haven’t made any of those up! I was going throw a fake one in but there’s so many wacky ones I couldn’t bring myself to taint it.  

 

The building is currently owned and run by AEG. When this show aired, it was owned by two guys (Brian and Albert Heekin). I hate that massive corporations own everything now. It fucking sucks. This building was home to WCW Souled Out 2000 and WWE Cyber Sunday 2006. All the truly great wrestling shows. Hosts are sex trafficker Vince McMahon and Jesse Ventura.  

Everyone cuts promos and Ted DiBiase has now recruited Zeus to be his dogsbody. An upgrade on Virgil, for sure. We’re right on the back of Randy Savage claiming the title of “king” by beating Jim Duggan. He’s now the “Macho King” with Queen Sherri.  

Randy didn’t need the gimmick, but they stuck with it for ages! When Jerry “The King” Lawler started working there in 1993, the “King of the WWF” gimmick would disappear for good but ironically King of the Ring would start on PPV.  

 

Randy Savage vs. Jimmy Snuka 

They’d already figured out that Snuka sucked and were milking him for everything he’s worth, in terms of jobs. Snuka is still living off the cage dive and the Piper feud from 1984. He has nothing else left. It would be sad if he wasn’t a murderer. Savage is most guys last chance saloon at having a good match. Look at George Steele. Snuka can’t even manage to have a good match with Macho, which just about says it all.  

 

Snuka tries to be the guy he was in his prime and he can’t do any of that anymore. Not that he was that interesting to begin with. Snuka is very much a ‘rose tinted glasses’ guy in the history books because his splash looked good, and he was in cool, timely feuds. As a worker he was mostly boring. Here he’s boring AND he’s trying to channel Hogan and Flair. Savage hits Snuka with Sherri’s purse* for the win. Snuka’s selling was horrible here. He should have been put out to pasture. They did an ok job of hiding how shitty he really was and some of the camera angles made the match work.  

 

*Vince obsessively calls it a “pocketbook”. What the fuck is a pocketbook? Ventura eventually gets him back up and running by just calling it a purse, like a normal person. I’m aware the word was used to describe a purse in American slang but it doesn’t make sense. It’s not a book, is it? I assume that name came from it being book-sized and a portable pocket, of sorts. It’s a purse. If you’re sat there saying “well, what’s a purse, that’s also a stupid word for handbag?” Purse comes from the Olde English word “pursa”, meaning a small leather bag used for coins.  

 

Jesse Ventura makes a reference to Donald Trump whupping Merv Griffin, which sets me off into how awful Trump was in 1989. He was coming off the “Art of the Deal”, a self-promotional pile of shit, which somehow turned into a best seller. However, he then cheated on his wife, bought and sold stock almost randomly and ploughed cash into his ugly yacht. The Griffin incident that Ventura is referencing is when he fought for control of the Trump Taj Mahal. How did that pan out for Donald? He filed for bankruptcy. Trump would fire off a series of fiscal duds in the late 80s. Buying the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan for $407M, way more than it was worth (valued at $350M by an analyst, Trump bought it because he thought it looked nice). He purchased the Eastern Airlines Shuttle for $365M, which it wasn’t worth (it never, ever, made a profit). For the first time in his life, Trump had money from a legitimate success (his shitty book, gambling) and he blew it all on a bunch of expensive crap, with no chance of turning a profit.  

 

With the Griffin thing, Trump already owned two casinos in Atlantic City, which were just competing. Griffin offloaded the casino to Trump in exchange for a chunk of Resorts. The Taj cost a billion dollars, when all was said and done, and filed for bankruptcy in 1991. It was Trump’s first massive failure. So, while Ventura thinks Trump has scored a big win here, he’s actually scored a massive L. Trump’s Castle Hotel & Casino, which had been actively competing with his other Atlantic City properties followed suit in 1992. The Trump Plaza casino followed it in March 1992. All three casinos out of business at the taxpayers penny. Because Donald wanted something stupid and got it because he was rich. The Trump Plaza in Manhattan fell in 1992 as well. You may remember it from Home Alone 2*. Trump’s vanity and stupidity on show before the entire world. It should have been the end of him, but he was just famous for being famous at that point.  

 

*Trump famously has a cameo in Home Alone 2, where he tells young Kevin Macallister where the reception desk is at the Plaza. By the time the movie was released, Trump had already lost the building to banktuptcy. I’d have cut him out. But that was already an issue where the very name Donald Trump was synonymous with New York society. To keep his business failings off the front pages Trump had a string of tabloid connections to women. Marla Maples will be the one that, I’m sure, the WWF will beat into the ground in the coming year.  

 

Anyway, it wouldn’t be the first time Ventura was wrong because he sucked up a rich dude and it wouldn’t be the last time either. At least he was good in Predator. Which, if you think about it, would have been a better title for a book about Trump.  

 

WWF Championship 

Hulk Hogan (c) vs. Ted DiBiase 

Ted is back for another title shot. This time he’s cornered by Zeus, to set up the No Holds Barred Match/Movie PPV. Zeus is also on the Million Dollar Team at Survivor Series. The fact is that Hogan has already pinned him once. You’d think the interest would have quelled. Hogan continues his bizarre habit of referring to DiBiase as the “Multi-Million Dollar Man”, which nobody else has ever called him and he’s never been known as. He does it all the time.  

 

DiBiase is still great in 1989, although he’d stop caring soon thereafter. He bumps around like a freak and makes Hogan look good. Jake Roberts and Virgil both get involved while Zeus stands around yelling. It’s not a bad match, because DiBiase is a cracking worker when he wants to be, and he has great chemistry with Hogan. It’s a shame they never had a big match.  

Zeus jumps in there, which you’d think would be a DQ, but the ref lets it go. Hogan makes his own save and then rolls up DiBiase to retain. Holy shit, the ego on this fucking guy. Just take the DQ win. **½. A pretty good match thanks to the chemistry these guys had. It’s a shame Ted never got that big PPV main against Hogan for the belt. Ted puts Hogan out with the Million Dollar Dream here to set up Survivor Series and Jake runs back in with his snake out, and Damian, for the save.  

 

Video Control gives us clips of Roddy Piper’s ongoing feud with the Heenan Family and especially Rick Rude. I used to adore Roddy Piper but his babyface 1989 return is ghastly. He’s so bad.  

Here he makes fun of Bobby Heenan’s weight, calls Haku “Sneezy” and points out how rubbery his lips are. Yes, really. It’s weird and quite racist. In life, in wrestling, in anything really. It’s like Sick Boy says in Trainspotting. “You have it, then you lose it, and you never get it back”.  

 

Roddy Piper vs. Haku  

At least Piper’s in-ring is still full of manic energy. His selling is dogshit, however. He gets clotheslined on the floor, has to get back into the ring and decides that’s the bump. Logic be damned. Piper finishes with a belly to belly here. A move so nondescript, I have to rewind to see what it was. Piper is, at least, mega-over, which is fair based on his mid 80s run. One of the all-time great runs in wrestling. He is finished as a top guy though, sadly. 

 

Piper came back on a reduced part-time schedule, working around a third of the normal level of dates. He’d be retired altogether by 1992, putting over Bret Hart on his way out at Wrestlemania VIII. If he’d never wrestled again, he’d have been one of those rare workers to retire on his best match. Instead, his last match was in 2011. Wrestlers never retire. Not really.  

 

Video Control gives us shouty promos from DiBiase and Zeus, hyping Survivor Series. After that, we get Rick Martel who is still sick and tired of Tito Santana.  

 

Rick Martel vs. Tito Santana  

This should be the blow-off of their lengthy 1989 feud, stemming from Martel turning on Tito at Wrestlemania V. However, this is just to preview Survivor Series as Martel’s entire team is out here and Santana retorts by bringing all his team out too. It’s a shame this never got a big PPV showdown as they have great chemistry, and Martel was due some comeuppance. His uppance should have come!  

 

Tito should get his revenge here with the Flying Forearm, but he gets off the cover because he sees Slick on the apron. Just stay where you are there chief, and you get the duke! “He calls himself the model. A model of what? Not sportsmanship” – McMahon. This is how his brain works. Who hears models and thinks about sportsmanship? Martel’s facials are sensational here. When he’s taking a backslide, he’s hitting the wildest possible eyes. He also sells a nut shot with his mouth wide open. 

We’ve all been there, fellas. Martel was perfect for this promotion because he was such a fucking goofball. Tito has it won again, with a Figure Four, but Slick is on the apron again and SHOCK OF SHOCKS everyone spills in for a big fight to sell Survivor Series. The match was genuinely good, and they should have run it back on the next SNME. *** 

 

The Martel-Santana feud is one of the last ones where you never see a payoff because the payoff is happening on house shows around the loop. This used to be the way. You had a big TV feud, with a turn or an attack, and then it paid off on the house shows so you could do it again, and again. At this point they’ve already been running “Tito’s revenge” for five months, for example.  

 

Rougeau Brothers vs. Bushwhackers 

I’m not watching the Bushwhackers. You can’t make me. DUD 

 

Video Control gives us Hogan to yell about Survivor Series and he’s still selling his neck. McMahon and Ventura continue their bizarrely rehearsed freakshow commentary.  

Ventura caps the show off by giving a Nazi salute to camera. Holy shit.  

 

The 411: 

It’s a little sad to see the WWF in 1989. No longer the great force it was in previous years but people still watching and waiting. Santana-Martel and Hogan-DiBiase both feel disappointing in retrospect as they never went anywhere. Savage-Snuka was just bad, and the last match wasn’t worth mentioning. For half the show to be good, in the ring, should be a bonus but the whole show leaves a foul taste in the mouth. The overwhelming stench of Zeus and the shilling for the forthcoming PPV, which is only Survivor Series, no one cares, ruins the vibe of the show.  

 

NEXT: For the Fed it’s Survivor Series but for me it’s going to be Halloween Havoc!