WWF Survivor Series 1990 (11.22.90) 

 

November 22, 1990 (Thanksgiving night) 

 

We’re in Hartford, Connecticut at the Hartford Civic Center. It doesn’t get much more ‘home turf’ than Hartford where the WWF HQ is located. Hosts are Gorilla Monsoon & Roddy Piper. Look, Bobby Heenan is right there guys. I appreciate Piper sounded like a good idea on paper and I would have agreed, until I heard it. He’s not good at this. Somehow Piper kept the job until Summerslam 1991.  

 

The gimmick this year is that everyone who wins their individual Survivor matches gets to compete an “Ultimate Survivor” match at the end of the night. Which is neat in theory but the fact they only did this once will tell you how well it worked out. I couldn’t find a decent upload of this and low and behold, WWE uploaded it to their WWE Vault channel on YouTube. Easily the best thing the company has done with its online presence. Everything else is a disaster. 

 

We run through the card and WHO COULD THIS MYSTERY MAN BE? One of those surprise entrants that changed the WWF landscape for the next 20+ years. An iconic character. I hate him but hey, this is the WWF. If I liked it something has probably gone wrong. Speaking of which, Survivor Series is easily my least favourite Big Four PPV. I just don’t like the concept that much and they’ve still not learned to mix it up. This is the last time they go wall-to-wall on Survivor matches. Roddy yells about Saddam Hussein and I’m reminded of the gigantic egg. Yes, it’s *that* show.  

 

Demolition & Mr Perfect vs. Ultimate Warrior, Texas Tornado & Legion of Doom 

An interesting choice to start the show with the WWF champion. It kinda shows where Warrior’s title run has gone sour. I like that he’s wearing matching gear with Kerry. Warrior gets rid of Ax, which should surprise nobody given his medical issues. Kerry softened him up with the CLAW. Perfect is intent on stealing the show here with lots of goofy overblown bumps. The slightest contact sends him flying over the top rope. It’s a shame he couldn’t keep those urges under control.  

 

The match ticks along nicely and the crowd are into it. They run LOD vs Demos, which should probably have been a Wrestlemania match but yanno. They all come in and brawl so the referee DQs LOD and the Demos. An odd decision to leave Perfect on his own versus two guys. Amazingly, we’re only halfway through this match! Perfectplex gets rid of Kerry, but Warrior kicks out of his. Warrior’s bumping is mediocre here, but his selling is much worse. Warrior was useful in this match in his smaller role. As soon as he becomes the focus the match falls apart. Anyway, Warrior comes back and splashes Perfect to win. This was very ok. It had a lot of energy. Call it ** 

 

Dusty Rhodes, Hart Foundation & Koko B. Ware vs. Ted DiBiase, Honky Tonk Man, Greg Valentine & THE MYSTERY PARTNER 

The match is irrelevant. Background noise compared to the debut.  

Mean Mark was let go by WCW because they had nothing for him to do. He’s about to set that record straight. This, of course, could have failed miserably but Mark Callaway made a point of embracing the gimmick. Given how I’m watching it, it does just look like Mean Mark with shitty makeup. However, Taker is so dismissive of Anvil here it makes him look like an instant star. Koko gets nailed with the first ever Tombstone (away from the hard cam) and he’s done. 

 

Taker already is doing good character work. The sharp little head movements. The slow movements around the ring. He’s creating something unique. Fair play to him. He’s really thought about the process and has made himself look different to everyone else*. Anvil powerslams Honky to get rid of him, which should show you how much he’s fallen off in the last year. This is it for him. He’ll be gone in a few weeks and won’t return to the majors until until a WCW run in 1994. They did try him on commentary alongside Piper, but I think you can probably get an idea of how that panned out. The match clips along at a good rate with Bret and DiBiase being the main driving forces behind that pacing. 

 

*I do like the evolution of the Undertaker character, to a degree. However, the bulk of the first five years of it is dogshit for match quality. Great character, horrible matches. I have hundreds of awful Undertaker matches ahead of me if we keep doing this into future years.  

 

Virgil trips Anvil and Ted clotheslines him for the pin. A clothesline? Really? Taker does the ropewalk here, but he does it without help. He literally just starts walking along the ropes before clocking Big Dust and getting rid of him. They have to get rid of Undertaker, due to the weird format of the show, so they have him fight Dusty to the back and he’s counted out. Although he wasn’t legal. Logically, without the dumb final match on this show, you could have just had Taker win.  

 

Anyway, Bret rolls up Hammer to get rid of him and the crowd are very responsive for Hart. It was abundantly clear he had the skill to become a top guy. Bret’s movement around the ring is so good for me. He just seems natural in everything he does. They work snug here. Bret’s lifters are great, and Ted gives him a few chops as a receipt. Ted ends up rolling through a high crossbody for the win. An interesting choice for the finish. I think Virgil was supposed to trip Bret at the end, but he didn’t.  

Bret continues to sell after the match, which is key to wrestling. The bell ringing shouldn’t just be the end of the story. How a wrestler reacts to losing is EVERYTHING. He’s sat there in the ring, thinking about what he did wrong and how he could have won this match, and everyone can see him do it. It makes the whole process real. It makes it mean something. The DiBiase-Hart stuff at the end of this is ***½ territory but the stuff before is more like **. So, we’ll call it **¾. The signs of Bret Hart being the next big star this company needs are there. It’ll be a while until Vince McMahon notices. Stunning from him here though. Should have catapulted him into the upper card.  

 

Jake Roberts, Jimmy Snuka & Rockers vs. Rick Martel, Warlord, Power & Glory 

Martel, newly gimmicked up as the Model, blinded Jake with his perfume Arrogance. Jake is selling it by wearing one white contact lens. It looks cool. Unfortunately, this would lead to a blindfold match at Wrestlemania. This has that same initial burst of energy that every match has had tonight. As with Perfect earlier, Shawn’s overbumping is a detriment. It also doesn’t help that almost everyone else in the match sucks.  

 

Warlord gets rid of Jannetty. Given their size differences, he never stood a chance. Shawn, having seen Bret Hart make himself a star earlier tonight, has a crack at it too. He’s generally the best thing about the match, although his overselling is a point against him. Snuka tries a crossbody on Martel and he rolls through it for the pin. Hey, that was the finish on the last match. Did the agents not talk to each other?  

Jake is solely focused on Martel and getting revenge for his eye, which is a problem for him as he’s not able to eliminate some of the lesser scrubs. This match is so long. Given the line ups, I would say this is one of the weaker matches. It’s also the longest. Powerplex gets rid of Shawn and that leaves Jake 4 on 1. Jake nails Warlord with the DDT but Martel comes after him with Arrogance. Jake, naturally fuming, grabs Damian and runs Martel to the back. That’s a count out, sirs. It was a long way to go for this finish and the match was boring. Decent effort from Shawn. This was *½ max. 

 

Hulk Hogan, Big Bossman, Jim Duggan & Tugboat vs. Earthquake, Dino Bravo, Haku & Barbarian 

Hulk Hogan cuts a promo on Saddam Hussein pre-match and offers to join the ARMY if he’s needed by President Bush. Should have shipped the bald cunt off to Iraq. See how he faired. Gorilla calls Tugboat “an inspiration”. To whom? “Who said Hulkamania was dead?” asks Gorilla. Give it a couple of years, brother. As with every match we start hot. Bossman slam gets rid of Haku very quickly. They’ve been doing odd ‘heels losing’ dynamics tonight. Not sure I understand the logic of it. 

 

Duggan, dumbass that he is, grabs his 2×4 and hits Quake with it. DQ inevitable. Good lord, he’s stupid. Jim Duggan is genuinely a nice bloke, but his character was a fucking goon. Hogan rolls up Dino and the faces go back in front. Quake does an incredible job of manhandling Bossman. He elbow drops Bossman out of the match leaving Hogan vs Quake & Barbarian. “He’s the only one left on his team” says Gorilla, completely, and rightfully, ignoring Tugboat. 

 

Tugboat takes these tiny little steps, which look ridiculous for a big fella. Quake and the Tugger brawl to the floor and get the old DCO so Earthquake doesn’t have to take a pin. Not that they ever bothered to finish the Hogan-Quake feud. This is it. Hogan vs Barbarian to conclude then. Hogan goes straight into his formula. Flying clothesline gets 2 and HULKING UP BEGINS. You know the rest. Hogan advances to the final match. This was mostly shit. The vast majority of people in the match were an afterthought.  

 

Video Control takes us to Scheme Gene who has Randy Savage. Wait, is Randy not on the card at all? He’s not! Another victim of the stupid format tonight. Savage claims he’s the uncrowned champion and Warrior is walking around with his belt. I wonder why they didn’t just switch it onto Savage here and do Hogan vs Savage at Mania again? I guess you can’t as Savage is programmed in with Warrior for Mania, he can’t be the solution to two problems at once. Personally, I think DiBiase was a better solution than Slaughter but the whole Iraq War thing was happening. Savage uses the word “retire” for the first time here. Suggesting he’ll retire if he can’t beat the Warrior. Which is the Mania concept, the whole Liz angle, the wedding, Jake’s heel turn etc.  

 

Nikolai Volkoff, Tito Santana & Bushwhackers vs. Sgt Slaughter, Boris Zhukov & Orient Express 

Interesting that facing the evil foreigners team (led by American Sgt Slaughter) is a team of foreigners led by Volkoff. So, the match is terrible. Just absolutely god awful with a bunch of shitty workers. Tito takes out Zhukov to improve matters after a few seconds. The crowd starts chanting “USA” and it just stops as they try and figure out who they’re supporting.  

 

We blow through this real quick with all the heels getting dumped out and leaving Sarge against all four babyfaces. Which makes NO sense. My guess is they want to establish Slaughter as a guy who can tear through undercard guys like a used Kleenex. Which might work better if he didn’t get his ass kicked by the Bushwhackers. This is who they’re wanting to headline Wrestlemania by the way!  

 

Sarge gets rid of the sheep shagger team with an assortment of low impact spots and then has a half decent four-minute match with Tito to make up for the preceding shitshow. Somewhat offset by Roddy Piper telling us you shouldn’t fight latinos because they all have a temper. Also, by Slaughter being GASSED. He’s fucked, lads. General Adnan jumps in there and whacks Tito with the Iraqi flag and Sarge gets disqualified. Santana heads to the Ultimate Survival match. This was SHIT. DUD 

 

Video Control throws us to Gene Okerlund who’s standing by the gigantic egg, which is about to hatch. They shilled this a lot in the buildup to Survivor Series and people thought it was going to be Ric Flair or something (no, really. People thought they’d debut Flair by having him pop out of a big egg). Instead, it’s the Gobbeldy Gooker. The idea behind the Gooker (Hector Guerrero here) is that he’d be a WWF mascot. Going to live shows and hyping the crowd up, etc. Vince wanted a worker under the costume so he could have matches. This never happened.  

Silence. Booing. More silence.  

Poor Mean Gene is left out there to die and they dance. Silence. Monsoon and Piper try to cover for it. Vince was apparently “really excited” about this. They did continue to try and push it but after a month of failure they gave up. There’s a kid in the front row here who yells “yeah, get down”. I wish harm upon him. I hope he’s having a terrible time. Probably well into his 40s now. Miserable, beer bellied slob. This whole segment goes on for 7-8 minutes.  

 

Ultimate Survival Match 

Hulk Hogan, Ultimate Warrior & Tito Santana vs. Ted DiBiase, Rick Martel, Warlord & Power and Glory 

Paul Roma: Main Eventer. I’m assuming the show was overrunning (IF ONLY THEY COULD HAVE SAVED 10 MINUTES SOMEWHERE) because this goes on with ten minutes left on the PPV. It’s already a dumb concept and it’s about to die a death. Tito immediately dumps Warlord with the flying forearm in a bizarre spot. Ted dumps Tito onto the ropes to get rid of him. Now it’s Hogan & Warrior vs EVIL. The evil of Paul Roma. Herc looks terrible here. It’s amazing to me that Power & Glory was even a thing. Finisher aside, they sucked.  

 

DiBiase decides to take the bulk of the match, in an attempt to save it. Powerplex, badly executed, on Hogan but that just forces him to Hulk Up and gets rid of Roma. Ricky Martel takes a powder and is counted out. The idea being that he’s got to job to Jake at Wrestlemania so they need to not have him job beforehand. So, why do this stupid match?  

 

DiBiase, bizarrely, gets dumped next. Big boot. Legdrop. Warrior then gets shot of Herc and we’re done. Interesting to note Hogan jumping in at the finish to count Herc down. He just couldn’t stand not being the centre of attention, could he? Anyway, this fucking stank and was a terrible idea from start to finish. Tito Santana did ok, if I’m stretching for positives.  

 

There isn’t even any tension between Warrior and Hogan, who are all pally despite Warrior taking Hogan’s belt earlier in the year. Call it * at most. Very rushed, not well executed.  

 

The 411: 

The first half of this show is fun, honestly. LOD vs Demolition in their match, Bret Hart pulling a wonderful performance out against Ted DiBiase, the debut of the Undertaker and even Shawn Michaels turned in a good performance in his match.  

 

However…the second half of this show HONKS. The Hogan match stinks. The Slaughter match REALLY stinks. The Gobbeldy Gooker. And then we end on that pointless Ultimate Survival match where the WWF decides Hogan and Warrior can co-exist. The most boring possible thing to happen. Either have them get into it or have one of them turn on the other. Or have one of them get eliminated because the other is jackass. How hard would any of that of been? Instead, we get nothing. No matches built towards. No feuds furthered. Just nothing.  

 

Ultimately, this is a bad show. Is it the worst WWF show of 1990? It’s hard to say because they didn’t have a good show all year. It’s up there and yet still par for the course. Is 1991 any better? Nope.