Spiner Watches Old WWE PPVs

[Spiner202]

I recently subscribed to Sportsnet+ in Canada (don't ask), and it provides a random assortment of historical PPVs to watch. I think I've mentioned in other threads that my first exposure to wrestling was around 2002, so I'd see a lot of the PPVs from about that year until 2004 or so, as well as the occasional one from the Attitude Era. I'm planning to watch everything that this service has - somewhat in order (but I may deviate as I get bored). Below is a screenshot with what is available - hopefully they add more over time. Things in green are ones I've already finished watching (ignore the months; they're not 100% accurate, but were used as a way for me to ensure I'm watching in order):



In this thread, I'll comment with some random thoughts as I work my way through these, but not necessarily on each PPV. Please try to keep future PPV's spoiler-free

My thoughts today are essentially that wrestling had a rough time during this era. Wrestlemania 1 was entertaining for the sheer spectacle of it all. I loved how they just had a random WWE person sing the anthem, rather than getting a celebrity. It's pretty clear early on that Hogan is the best they have; not necessarily as a wrestler, but he cuts the best promos and has the most excitement around his matches. I'm not sure if there was truly a good match on either of the first two Wrestlemanias, but starting with the third one, Ricky Steamboat vs. Randy Savage was excellent. Survivor Series 1987 didn't do much for me, and the first Royal Rumble in 1988 was pretty rough as well.

I love the commentary team of Gorilla Monsoon and Jesse Ventura. They speak in such a hilarious way. By contrast, I didn't love McMahon/Ventura on Royal Rumble 1988. They felt too adversarial (even though I know a lot of wrestling commentary works that way).

I skipped ahead to Wrestlemania 18 because I wanted to see Rock vs. Hogan and it was awesome. There's something special about having a crowd that is so into a match. In any case, I'm sure this will take me years to complete, but I'm looking forward to the adventure, because I have a lot to catch up on!

 

[Webster]

My thoughts today are essentially that wrestling had a rough time during this era.

I remember that period of wrestling (I assume the reference to the first WM places the tyime in question to the mid/late 80s) and it was rough. Once VKM took over the then-WWF, left the NWA and began conquering other territories you could see from 35,000 feet where the endpoint was going to be...

Unfortunately, many of the promoters at the time (Jim Crockett, Bill Watts, Verne Gagne, etc) either were too pigheaded to work together or thought that the NWA (which was descending into its' own shadow at the time) would themselves stop Vince McMahon.

That said, there was a lot of good wrestling back then; you just had to really really look for it.

 

[Spiner202]

Yeah other than the fact that the quality of the wrestling isn't that high, it just feels like a very unrefined product. I'm about halfway through Wrestlemania 4, and it's tough to follow why a match ends sometimes by DQ or countout. There was one match where somebody kicked out long before the ref counted to 3, but they called the match anyways.

I'm sure they're trying to create a storyline where someone got screwed out of a match, but I feel like the modern era has much better mechanisms to achieve that.

I cannot wait until I hit a point where Bret Hart moves into the main event and the Undertaker debuts. The former is someone I've heard so much about, but he feels reigned in as part of the Hart Foundation in the PPV's I've seen, and the latter would be one of the first instances of a wrestler I watched growing up (I guess technically Hogan was around at the time, but it wasn't quite the same).

 

[Webster]

Yeah other than the fact that the quality of the wrestling isn't that high, it just feels like a very unrefined product. I'm about halfway through Wrestlemania 4, and it's tough to follow why a match ends sometimes by DQ or countout. There was one match where somebody kicked out long before the ref counted to 3, but they called the match anyways.

The one match of that period that comes to mind was Hogan-Andre at WM3.

The match itself wasn't very good...the reason its' still considered one of the great 80's matches was the months-long buildup to it: could Hogan be the first to press and bodyslam the Giant? (nevermind that Andre had allowed other wrestlers to do that ) Everyone wondered whether Hogan could do that and when he did? That's when the crowd erupted at what they were seeing; VKM had them eating out of the WWF's hand that night,

 

[Spiner202]

Took me a few days but I finished Wrestlemania 4. It definitely benefits from splitting up into separate viewings - there were 16 matches on the card, and most of them were fairly mediocre. Despite that, I thought the main event was pretty good. It's nice to see someone new crowned champion, and while I understand the political side of Hogan being around in the main event, if you watch wrestling purely without thinking about how something makes someone look weak or strong, it's a pretty entertaining match.

 

[Spiner202]

Near the end of Summerslam 1988 and my two takeaways are that (1) Superstar Billy Graham is a wild listen on commentary and (2) The Ultimate Warrior really likes drugs. Seriously his match with the Honky Tonk Man and subsequent promo is a sight to behold.

 

[Webster]

The Ultimate Warrior really likes drugs. Seriously his match with the Honky Tonk Man and subsequent promo is a sight to behold.

*makes note to watch*

 

[Spiner202]

It really is incredible how many of these old PPV's have the exact same ending - Hogan is victorious and spends minutes in the ring flexing to Real American.

I get it - he was the most over guy they had, and to be honest, it's pretty epic, but I feel like I've seen it happen more times than not at this point.

On another note, I'm really enjoying the Hogan/Macho Man feud. Without the context of all the shows in between PPVs, it can be a bit hard to get invested in each storyline, but the Hogan/Macho Man one is done pretty well.

 

[Webster]

the Honky Tonk Man

Funny thing about his gimmick there, Spiner: when he debuted as the Honky Tonk Man, the gimmick was supposed to get him over as a face but the fans hated it in an X-Pac, GTFO kind of way.

Nowadays, VKM and Company would continue pushing him as a face; back then, though, Vince McMahon had a little bit of common sense and they decided to run with it and played Honky Tonk up as a heel.

The result? One of the better heel gimmicks of the late 80's/early 90's and, at that time, the longest-ever reign as Intercontinental Champion (since eclipsed by Gunther).

 

[Spiner202]

Funny thing about his gimmick there, Spiner: when he debuted as the Honky Tonk Man, the gimmick was supposed to get him over as a face but the fans hated it in an X-Pac, GTFO kind of way.

Nowadays, VKM and Company would continue pushing him as a face; back then, though, Vince McMahon had a little bit of common sense and they decided to run with it and played Honky Tonk up as a heel.

The result? One of the better heel gimmicks of the late 80's/early 90's and, at that time, the longest-ever reign as Intercontinental Champion (since eclipsed by Gunther).

I didn't love him at first, but he's starting to grow on me. In general, I feel like the product has improved a lot between 1985 and where I am now in 1989. The wrestling is still a lot worse than today, but it has improved and the product as a TV show is also getting more refined. Also, for better or worse, I think in the early Wrestlemania days, there were a lot of wrestlers that just weren't cut out for TV, and by 1989, there were tons of more gimmicky guys that play well on TV.

I also updated the OP with a more current screenshot. They added a ton of Survivor Series PPV's that were previously missing, so those are on my list now too! Hopefully they add some of the Royal Rumbles in January, because I have a feeling that it being November was the catalyst for getting all of these Survivor Series' added!

 

[Webster]

n general, I feel like the product has improved a lot between 1985 and where I am now in 1989.

I remember a lot of the wrestling from that period (WWF, NWA, WCW-pre Bischoff, etc) and there was a lot of good wrestling, it just wasn't on TV a whole lot (WWF, by my recollection, had a weekly national show on Saturdays on NBC of all places, while both the NWA and WCW were on Ted Turner's TBS Superstation during the week). Every other promotion was still mainly local airings, which allowed both McMahon and Atlanta to begin hoovering up other territories (not the promotions per se', just the territories they covered) with increasing speed.

 

[Spiner202]

I'm towards the end of Summerslam 1990 now. A few more thoughts:

Despite what a terrible person he was, The Ultimate Warrior is just pure fun. The guy's music hypes me up every time, and he just has so much intensity that it's something amazing to watch.

The audio is actually messed up on a bunch of these PPVs. There are several of them where you can barely hear the commentary, but you can't turn the volume up because the ring/crowd noise is at a normal volume. Summerslam 1990 is an even more egregious offender because they do pre-match interviews with one of the wrestlers while the other is in the ring, and they keep the music playing of the guy who is in the ring at a volume that exceeds the interview volume. At least most of the other shows sorted out the promo volume, even if the commentary was messed up. It doesn't make them unwatchable, but it's definitely a bit disappointing, and I hope it doesn't continue into the JR days.

Also, the next PPV on the list after this one is Survivor Series 1990, and I believe that's where Undertaker shows up for the first time

 

[Webster]

Despite what a terrible person he was, The Ultimate Warrior is just pure fun.

The Ultimate Warrior, Spiner, is one of the ultimate mysteries (pardon the expression there, ...) of the wrestling business. I once referred to him as one of the two most controversial wrestlers to ever work in the business (the other one, by the way, is Chris Benoit) and there's a bunch of reasons, both in and out of the ring, for that...

-Warrior was one of the worst in-ring workers to ever step inside the ring, period. He just was; for instance, Harley Race said he didn't know the difference btwn a wristlock from a wristwatch. He was rude to fans, something a lot of wrestlers have commented on (Arn Anderson, Ted DiBiase, Hacksaw Jim Duggan, Bobby Heenan - who also suffered a broken neck from a botched Warrior move) - and so on.
-He couldn't carry a match any length of time; despite being taught by Rick Rude how to carry matches of up to 20 minutes, Warrior's average match went about as long as the typical Goldberg (or nowadays Ryback) match
-Post wrestling, the man was straight-up homophobic; he did a speech at UConn back in 2005 that got shut down for being just over the top homophobic...

Ultimate Warrior's speech nearly triggers university riot

THE WARRIOR ATTACKS The Ultimate Warrior gave a speech infront of University of Connecticut students last night that almost broke out into a riot. Major arguments broke out after many considered Warrior's thoughts to be homophobic and racist. People started yelling at Warrior as he...

www.neogaf.com

-He also flat out robbed Vince McMahon into giving him a contract raise and, going from a lot of the above individuals thoughts, was really only in the business for money.

That said, he got over with the fans so...

 

[Spiner202]

The problem is that almost everyone involved in wrestling prior to the last decade or so was a terrible person. Granted, there are varying levels of terribleness, and arguably, Ultimate Warrior is worse than most of his peers. It takes a certain level of cognitive dissonance to enjoy wrestling, and I'd say the same thing about football (which I also love).

As for his wrestling skills, I agree that he's worse than most of these guys in the ring, but I do think he has gotten marginally better over time (I'm currently into 1991), and I think his sheer energy elevates him above the majority of other workers. It's like when Hogan starts to "Hulk up". It's not very technically impressive, but it still gets me hyped up. I guess I'm not particularly sophisticated when it comes to wrestling

Edit: I forgot to mention that I would love a few modern WWE characters who cut promos the way they did back then: just non-stop yelling. I think it'd be a hilarious contrast to today.

 

[Webster]

and I think his sheer energy elevates him above the majority of other workers.

That was his saving grace, Spiner: the man practically invented the style of wrestling later popularized by both Goldberg and Ryback.