WWF WrestleMania V (4.2.89) review 

 

April 2, 1989 

 

We’re in Trump Plaza, for fuck’s sake, for a very long, very bad WrestleMania show. There are fourteen (!) matches on this card and some of the matchmaking is deliberately obtuse to try avoiding good undercard matches. Nobody is stealing the thunder of Hogan and Savage for workrate on this show. The undercard is drivel. A succession of bad ideas.  

The first of which is, once again, running at this shit hole. Trump Plaza has a big flat floor with poor tiering in the seats. So, most people can’t see. It’s a fucking dump. Next up on the questionable list of decisions is letting Rockin’ Robin sing “America the Beautiful”. She can sing but it shows how small time this Mania is and how unimportant the women’s division has become.  

 

King Haku vs. Hercules 

I legitimately typed Haku’s opponent as Harley Race, which shows how warped my memory is. That match was at the Royal Rumble and Race would retire in 1990. This is an ugly match, wrestled in the New York Style. Herc forces the pace occasionally, because this IS Wrestlemania, but the effort levels are very low. The execution of stuff is ragged (clotheslines especially, and a lengthy bore-hug). Herc finishes with a backdrop driver with bridge out of nowhere. This was certainly a wrestling match that happened. 

 

Twin Towers vs. Rockers 

Bossman had a shot at being a star in the WWF until they teamed him with Akeem, the African Dream. As for the Rockers, the hottest tag act in the company, they’ve been sent out to die on the biggest stage of the year. They were feuding with the Brainbusters around the time, but WWF didn’t want that on a crowded Mania card.  

 

The match is fine when Bossman is in there, but it stinks when Akeem is in there. He’s gotten visibly worse in 1989. Shawn tries to make him look good and manages it by bumping a clothesline with such brutality it pops Monsoon. Shawn also takes a wicked powerbomb off Bossman. Akeem finishes with a running splash and Shawn did his best to get this over, but Akeem is so bad, it’s a total carry job. About **½ though. 

 

A reminder that Donald Trump was famous in the 1980s for being famous in New York. One of the world’s first ‘reality TV’ stars as he pre-dated reality TV. His TV was being photographed on the arms of beautiful women and hanging out in one of the most press coveraged cities on the planet.  

 

Ted DiBiase vs. Brutus Beefcake 

Another horrible match up here, as DiBiase is wasted wrestling this jabronie. 12 months on from working the main event. DiBiase is an underrated worker and simply matches the energy of his opponent.  

 

Comms get bored and start talking about Henry Kravis. The businessman just completed the buyout of RJ Reynolds Nabisco. They turned it into a movie called Barbarians at the Gate. The weird thing is; the greed and money was widely decried in public and yet Kravis is painted as a ‘notable rich guy’ by WWF here. The WWF is the kind of company that praises people for being rich, regardless of how they got there. Mainly because if you pull back the curtain, you’ll find the Donald Trump’s and Vince McMahon’s of the world are just massive pieces of shit.  

 

The match rumbles on, heatless, for ten minutes with the odd Beefcake hope spot getting popped but nothing else. They brawl to the floor and it’s the old DCO. Yeah, we’re really protecting Brutus Beefcake so much he can’t job to a genuine main event level guy. They ended up pushing him into the IC title picture in 1990 until a jetski accident nearly killed him and caused him to miss three years with facial reconstruction.  

 

Just 3 hours to go!  

 

Fabulous Rougeau’s vs. Bushwhackers 

No, no, no. No. I’m not watching the fucking Bushwhackers. You can’t make me.  

 

I don’t have a ‘worst tag team’ award in my year end awards but if I did, it would be these pair. They are fucking dogshit.  

Here’s Sean Mooney getting assaulted by these dingbats after the match. I would criticise Vince McMahon for this, but I saw plenty of goobers out in the crowd doing the ‘walk’. You know the one. THIS IS ON YOU.  

 

Mr Perfect vs. Blue Blazer 

Finally, they’ve managed to put two good wrestlers in the ring at the same time. A minor miracle. Owen is so good, even in this dumb gimmick, that he might be in the running for the WWF’s wrestler of the year. Owen does a little counter in this, where he switches his weight in mid-air and lands on his feet and the crowd are all “whoa”. They don’t even pop it. They’re just shocked. The trouble with masked men like this, is they’re traditionally (in WWF anyway), jobbers. Hennig gives Owen most of the match, but kicks out on ones to make a point, only to smash Hart in the face out of nowhere and hit the Perfectplex to win. Nice little match. *** 

 

It’s bizarre to me that Owen never caught on during this first run. He’d be gone by summer and off to Japan. He’s clearly outstanding in the ring. WCW even had a chance to get him before his eventful WWF return in 1992. I just can’t see why you would pass up on someone so naturally gifted?  

 

Promo Time: Run DMC 

They’re out here to perform the WRESTLEMANIA RAP.  

 

WWF Tag Team Championship 

Demolition (c) vs. Powers of Pain & Mr Fuji 

This is mere months after the double turn at Survivor Series ‘88, which was a hopeless creative failure as nobody understood it. They pump in new crowd reactions, so it makes more sense with hindsight. I never liked Demolition. They’re just shit? I don’t get it. Were people that into Mad Max that dressing like post apocalyptic gimps got over?  

 

If Dusty Rhodes were on commentary, I’m sure he would point out the level of “clubberin” that occurs here. Nobody cares. Crowd is completely dead. They popped the entrances and that was them done. Might as well have had the Demos squash Fuji and move on. It’s an advert for having kick-ass gear and entrance music because you can get over despite being Bill Eadie and Barry Darsow.  

 

Comms claim Mr Fuji hasn’t wrestled “in years”. He teamed with Demolition last year. It was on TV! Gorilla commentated on it! Fuji gets picked off, so the Powers have an out for losing and the Demolition Decapitation finishes. The match was nothing. Total bleh.  

 

Dino Bravo vs. Ronnie Garvin 

Oh, fuck off. Why? I can only assume Bravo had it in his contract he had to be on the show because the match is thrown together and is only three minutes long. Garvin doesn’t even get his own introduction!  

Instead, his spot is blown up by Jimmy Snuka being re-introduced. Snuka was re-hired for name value but in the four years away from the WWF spotlight, he had fallen apart physically.  

 

Speaking of which, Bravo is finished as a worker. He was never very good but at this point, he was incapable of anything. All roids, bulk and crapola offence. Despite being completely finished, he stayed in the company for another THREE years. Garvin tries a few things, but Bravo beats him with the side slam after three minutes. This felt very long. Frenchy Martin takes the Garvin Stomp for good measure. This suuuuucked. 

 

Brainbusters vs. Strike Force 

Strike Force reunited for this show, having not tagged since July 1988. Rick Martel had to take a break to look after his wife, who got sick. This match merely exists as a way to get from Strike Force to heel Ricky Martel. To be honest, he was never any good, or remotely believable, as a babyface. Look at him! He’s a smug heel all day long. Twice on Sundays.  

 

Seeing as this is the ‘Busters, it’s a good match but the whole build of it isn’t the conventional tag match that the Brainbusters were so good at. Instead of the Busters being the reason why the match is driven, it’s Tito smacking Martel with the flying forearm. This happens because they do these sneaky blind tags, so it’s technically Rick’s fault for surprising Santana and getting in his way.  

 

The whole match I’ve been fuming that we didn’t get Brainbusters-Rockers here, when it could have properly cooked. Even in a sub ten-minute affair.  

Look at Ricky selling here. What a bastard. He bails and Santana is left alone to eat the pin. While the Brainbusters were naturally good here, the match was mostly storyline and Arn had a lack of chemistry with Tito, which was surprising. Call it **½ 

 

Backstage: Mean Gene takes Martel to task. Martel cuts his promo where he says he’s “sick and tired” a lot. Unlike just about every famous tag team, they would never team together again. They’d work the Loop off-TV before being on opposing sides of a six-man at Summerslam.  

 

Piper’s Pit 

As if FOURTEEN matches weren’t enough. We also have Roddy Piper. He’d be back in the ring a few months later. In all fairness, I missed Piper a lot. His film career was an interesting mix (watch They Live, and maybe Hell Comes to Frogtown). It didn’t pan out for him ultimately and wrestling wanted him back.  

 

Sadly, they can’t just bring Piper out for the fun stuff, they bring out Brother Love and have him do Piper impressions for a bit first. It DIES a death. If that wasn’t bad enough, they bring out Morten Downey Jr. I could make an argument for him being the biggest piece of shit to ever set foot in a WWF ring (WHICH COVERS SOME FUCKING GROUND BRRRRRRRROTHER). Outside of the ring he was a shock-jock and ran an anti-abortion gimmick. Downey’s career went south soon after this when he claimed he’d been assaulted by Neo-Nazis (he drew a Swastika on his head in the mirror of an airport toilet). He’s smoking, as always, here and died of lung cancer in 2001. 

Piper comes out here and eviscerates Brother Love. Showing us the difference between someone who can talk in wrestling and someone who CAN TALK in wrestling. Morten Downey tries to attract Piper’s attention and he completely no sells the mug. I’ve seen this segment several times and I have no idea why they even invited him. Z list celebrity. 

Piper runs Brother Love off, by stealing his kilt, and turns his attentions to Downey. Piper gives Downey a few chances to tee off on him and he fails, miserably. He’s so unfunny, it’s unreal. Piper fake laughing at him is wonderful. The skit ends with Piper spraying a fire extinguisher in Downey’s face (and up his arse). This felt like a waste of Piper, and I think he knew it too. He knew he was being punished for leaving and he was going to make the best of a bad situation. He came out of this shit looking like a huge star despite it being a god-awful segment. 

 

There are still six matches left on this son of a bitch.  

 

Video Control isn’t ready for more graps through and instead gives us a trailer for “No Holds Barred”, Hulk Hogan’s movie debut. An attempt to do Rocky with wrestling and having Tiny Lister play the Apollo Creed role. The WWF bought into this hook, line and sinker and we’ll be hearing A LOT more about it.  

 

Not content with Morten Downey Jr, a Hogan movie and all this other bullshit we get an interview with Donald Trump who calls this a “boon” to the town and his casinos. What a fucking scumbag. At least the WWF moved on to exploiting children instead of promoting gambling.  

 

We cut back to Jesse Ventura who screams and rants about Hogan invading Hollywood. He looks like he’s shooting from the hip. It’s a banging promo. A proper example of how to commentate and remain a character. 

 

Video Control gives us a history of the Megapowers, which highlights how the story has percolated. Hogan, the dirty spotlight stealing cock, had his eyes on Miss Elizabeth and Savage, rightly, got pissy with him about it. Randy was mad because Hogan wanted his spot and he wanted his woman too, yeeaaaah. You know he did. They let Hulk Hogan cut another rambling, incoherent promo. He’s gotten increasingly bad at sticking to topic and tries to go around the hills before descending into the valley. Maybe he told Donny Trump he’d put him over in the promo.  

 

Andre the Giant vs. Jake Roberts 

Special referee is Big John Studd. The sole big spot during his comeback after winning the 1989 Royal Rumble. He had been retired for a few years before this and would retire again later in the year. This time because he believed Vince was screwing him over on pay offs. Maybe business was just down Big John. Rather sadly, he’d die of cancer in 1995 after fighting it for a few years. He was just 47.  

 

This match is awful. It’s a total mismatch. They knew Jake was over enough to feud with Andre, but he’s not got the creative nous to figure out how to cover for Andre’s shortcomings. Andre is way beyond being able to work a singles match by 1989. They should have know better. They’d hide him away in the Colossal Connection after this until his babyface turn a year from now, which basically marks the end of his run.  

 

There’s a lot of this business. Andre is so far off it that there’s a spot where he’s supposed to knock Jake out of the ring, and it takes him three attempts to stand up. It’s just so sad. The match, which fell apart ages ago, ends up with Ted DiBiase running in and Andre getting into a fight with Studd. Jake chucks his snake in and Andre got the DQ for punching the referee. That’s such a soft DQ. Game’s gone. This was the drizzling shits. I feel bad for Jake, who had a terrible Wrestlemania matches and Andre, who should have been hidden away in tags by this point.  

 

Backstage: Tony Schiavone gets a word with Sensational Sherri. Just to remind us that she still exists. She’d end up cornering Randy Savage during his heel run as Queen Sherri and doing a sensational job of it.  

 

Greg Valentine & Honk Tonk Man vs. Hart Foundation 

Bret is starting to look very cool. He’s got all his mannerisms and style down, which would catapult him to the top of the company. This is a tidy little heel/face tag match but the crowd don’t care. Not that they’ve cared all night. Atlantic City has to be the most rotten location they ever ran Mania at. Imagine having one of the hottest TV products going and running at a casino, where none of your fans want to go? 

 

Anyway, Bret is particularly good and when people talk about him as a worker it’s mainly because he had this realism about him. And he was doing it at a time when no one else in the WWF was. It made him stand out. The trouble with modern wrestlers is they don’t want to stand out. They want to do a bunch of flashy shit, same as everyone else.  

 

The finish is even neat. Honky goes after the megaphone but Neidhart spots it and throws it to Bret. Honky then gets waffled for the three, all behind the ref’s back. It was smartly done and a solid match up. Call it about **¾.  

 

WWF Intercontinental Championship 

Ultimate Warrior (c) vs. Rick Rude 

They need to teach Warrior how to work so he’s about to be in with Rude for the summer. In order for that to happen, they need to steal the belt off him here so Warrior can chase revenge. Rude, by virtue of being a great heel, actually draws a reaction. Then the Ultimate Dipshit runs out here and throws on a bearhug. You, sir, are a babyface. What the fuck are you doing? 

 

Credit to Rude for how he works though. He winds the crowd up and then takes a bunch of bumps. If you took out all Warrior’s stupid bearhugs and the match would be decent. Rude throws in some of his great selling, making lemonade of Warrior’s lemon offence. The theatrics go over well and maybe this is when Vince got convinced Warrior had “it”. What he should have seen is that Rude had “it”.  

 

Warrior is such a huge idiot that he tries to do a running backbreaker and falls over. He’s not strong enough, nor coordinated enough to do that. While the match is good (like **½ territory) it’s entirely Rude. A total carry job. Rude gets the upset win when Bob Heenan grabs Warrior’s foot and holds him down. Warrior looks like a pillock for failing to chase Heenan and Bobby has to climb into the ring and beg off. Again, Warrior outworked. Warrior compounds his idiocy by dropping Heenan awkwardly and hurting him.  

 

It cannot be stressed enough what a fucking imbecile, an embarrassment, a fucking clown the Warrior was. He was so shit at wrestling. He understood the aura part, which is the hardest part to get, but nothing else. The problem his matches with Rude caused were a belief, from Vince mainly, that Warrior could be his main star. His main attraction. Rude should have let him just stink the joint up and we could have been rid of him here.  

 

Bad News Brown vs. Jim Duggan 

We follow that with this debacle. Duggan sucks on offence. I assume he’s short sighted because his timing is so rotten. Brown can’t take bumps. It’s an awful idea and it doesn’t work out. We’re also THREE HOURS into the show. Which is normal in 2024 but in 1989, that’s a marathon show. Especially for WWF. Luckily, they keep this one short as they both bail for weapons and the ref calls it inside four minutes. Match was horrible though. This is the match where Duggan blows snot all over his moustache on camera. Vile. 

 

Red Rooster vs. Bobby Heenan 

Nobody wants to see you, Terry. Just fuck off. Heenan misses a charge and Terry pins him in about 30 seconds. Taylor still looks like a total shmuck because Brooklyn Brawler kicks his ass afterwards.  

 

WWF Championship 

Randy Savage (c) vs. Hulk Hogan 

It’s odd to see Hogan as the challenger in such a big environment. Although, being in Trump Plaza does make it feel far less important than most Wrestlemania. Savage comes out first, and the crowd are clearly hyped for Hogan. While we’re a little over the peak of Hulkamania, this crowd has appeared thanks to the 80s boom and that’s Hogan. 

Ventura implies Liz will just go with whoever wins. “What a little gold digger!” he rages. Hogan’s arrival wakes up a crowd that’s dozed all night. This is a match I’ve never liked that much. The guys had such intense chemistry and had decent matches, around Hogan’s weaknesses, using Savage’s speed and rage to drive the context. Hogan with power and posing. This time it doesn’t happen to a good level.  

 

There’s something about the big Mania spotlight that Savage seems uncomfortable with. Compared to previous Mania main events though, it does fare well. Savage’s energy, albeit littered with time wasting, puts it above a mass of weak Hogan mains (and the overbooked Savage-DiBiase match last year). Hogan gets a little colour to try and add to proceedings.  

Liz plays her part. She’s neutral and looks to help both guys. Savage gets mad about it and the sub-plot is that Liz being here is a distraction for him. Liz stops Hogan from javellining Savage into the ring post, which results in Hogan getting posted. The problem with having Liz as such a key component in the match is that you lose focus on the work.  

 

Savage does great heel work by hiding his cheating in this. Hiding your cheating is the difference between a good heel and a great heel. Heels that openly cheat suck. Big Elbow only gets two and you know the rest. Hulk up, big boot etc. Hogan wins his second world title. Kinda crazy he’d only won two at this point, but the first one was four years long. ***¼ 

 

This match is fine, but the overarching story was better, and they didn’t have an epic, which they could have. The finish, when it came, was so flat. Savage hit his finish, Hogan kicks out, hits his finish and we’re done. It is the best Wrestlemania main event to this point, but Hogan would do better with Warrior (yes, that guy) one year later. 

 

The 411: 

The show is way too long and there’s way too many matches, segments and it’s painfully long. 3h40m in 1989 is like getting a comp tape that has an entire tournament on it, or two days of shows cobbled together. The crowd were dead for most of it and it’s not a good show.