The Name on the Marquee: Saturday Night’s Main Event #6 (05.03.86)

-We open with Gene Okerlund running down tonight’s card as various entertainers (cough) jump in with comments…Will the sun set on the British empire? Will Adrian Adonis do gay stuff to Paul Orndorff? Will Hulk Hogan promise never to try to talk like a black guy for a promo again?

-We’re in Providence, RI, taped on May 1, 1986 and aired two days later..

-Your hosts are Vince McMahon and Bobby Heenan (Jesse was in Hollywood shooting something-or-other about a Predator at the time…I think he played Chris Hansen.)

-We flash back to Wrestlemania 2 where the Funk Brothers KOed Junkyard Dog with a megaphone. Jimmy Hart reveals his big surprise for the night: Jimmy Jack Funk is at ringside!

-We go to ringside where Mean Gene is standing by with Hulk Hogan, Junkyard Dog, and Haiti Kid. Haiti Kid, with a mouthful of marbles, says, “I never worry about a man who wears red underwear!” Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh SNAP! Hulk out-stupids him by saying that the Funks are “butt-washers.”

HULK HOGAN & JUNKYARD DOG (with Haiti Kid) vs. TERRY & HOSS FUNK (with Jimmy Hart & Jimmy Jack Funk)
-JYD is wearing a Hulkamania shirt and Hogan is wearing the collar & chain to show unity. JYD slams both Funks and Hulk follows with the rolling headbutts. Jimmy Hart tries to interfere but Haiti Kid yanks him off the apron.

-The match finally officially starts with Hoss & JYD, and JYD goes right back to a bodyslam. Hoss retreats, then tags out. Terry gets an advantage with punches, but misses a blind charge and launches himself out of the ring on impact. Terry makes lemons out of lemonade by chasing Haiti under the ring as long as he’s out there. Back in the ring, Terry walks into a clothesline, and Hulk & Hoss tag in. Hoss attempts a criss-cross but Hulk is too smart for it, and Terry ends up taking a boot to the face in the confusion. JYD tags back in, but so does Terry. Terry chops and punches and tries a few elbows. Bobby Heenan: “He shouldn’t hit him in the head. It’s amazing how nature protects the weakest part of the body with the strongest.” Bravo.

-JYD turns it into a boxing match until Terry retreats. Hoss gets rammed into the corner and Terry gets rammed into his brother. The faces are distracted by the premature celebration, Jimmy Hart seizes the opportunity to KO Haiti Kid with the branding iron. JYD scoops up his little body to take him back for help, and Terry Funk hilariously stomps on his head on the way out. JYD heads out to Rent-a-Midget for a replacement (Thank you, Bobby) and we go to commercial.

-Back from the break, Hoss has the advantage until Hulk reverses a suplex for two. JYD enters to headbutt Hoss to try and give Hulk a breather, but Hoss recovers quickly enough to send Hulk to the floor, where Terry and Jimmy Hart pounce. JYD goes to the floor to slam Terry Funk, and the faces double-team him. Back in the ring, Hoss gets a boot to the face and a headbutt. JYD tags back in as Haiti Kid returns to ringside. Hoss tries to fight back with punches. Terry tags in to try his luck with punches, but a double clothesline stops everything. Terry makes it to his feet first but misses a splash from the top rope. Hulk tags in and drops the leg to finish things. Post-match, the Funks clear the ring and absolutely destroy the midget until Hulk comes to the rescue. 0 for 1. Total mess with action all over the place, no way to keep track of it, and the faces absolutely dominated things. I also found it a little odd that Jimmy Jack didn’t get involved at all after being hyped as the “big surprise” from the heels.

-Uncle Elmer and King Kong Bundy are weighed in for the Battle of the Big Boys. Bundy is 468 pounds, and Elmer, loading up on some Uncle Elmer’s Fried Pig Parts, tips the scales at 430 pounds.

UNCLE ELMER vs. KING KONG BUNDY
-Lock-up goes nowhere again and again and again. Shoulderblock goes about as well. Bundy goes for the eyes and grounds Elmer, then follows with a choke. He follows the choke with another choke. Gorilla Monsoon would usually whip out his thing about “setting a deliberate pace” at this point. Elmer goes on the offensive with his ass and avalanches Bundy. He goes for another avalanche but misses. Bundy drops the elbow and gets the pin, and that’s it for Elmer in the WWF. 0 for 2.

-Backstage, Adrian Adonis sings “Hey, hey, Paula, I want to wrestle you tonight.” This gimmick is always referred to as Wrestlecrap, but Adrian busted his ass to make it work.

-We go to Gene Okerlund, wearing nothing but a towel, interviewing Paul Orndorff.

“Mister Wonderful” PAUL ORNDORFF vs. ADORABLE ADRIAN ADONIS (with Jimmy Hart)
-Paul comes right out of the starting gate with a pair of armdrags and a pair of bodyslams, and Adrian heads out for a breather. Orndorff goes out to drag Adrian, who is already in drag, huh-huh, back into the ring, only to whip him out to the floor again. Adonis re-enters and tries to stall. He catches Orndorff with a kick to the stomach, but Orndorff comes back with an abdominal stretch. Adonis makes it over to the ropes and lures Orndorff to the corner, where he finally gets the advantage with a few cheap shots. Hiptoss sends Orndorff across the ring, but Orndorff turns a charge by Adonis into a backdrop over the top rope. He press slams Jimmy Hart for good measure, and with Adonis & Hart both out cold on the floor, we take a break.

-And we’re back with an airplane spin by Orndorff. He loses his balance and both men spill outside. Jimmy Hart tries a cheap shot and gets chased into the ring. While the referee deals with him, Orndorff gets a megaphone to the back by Adonis and works the back. He misses a kneedrop but makes it back to his feet before Orndorff can recover. Slam and an elbowdrop get a two-count. Suplex gets another two-count. Splash of the top is countered by the knees and Orndorff is all fired up. Adrian gets tied in the ropes and Orndorff lays into him, and then Jimmy Hart, the hardest working manager in the business, takes more bumps. Orndorff shreds Adrian’s dress and strangles him with it, and when Tim White tries to stop, Paul shoves him to the mat for the DQ. Anticlimactic finish following a solid outing. 1 for 3.

MEAN GENE OKERLUND INTERVIEWS HULK HOGAN
-Opens with a great shot of the arena, dissolving from a packed house to a totally empty building before the show. Hulk and Mean Gene look at the attack from King Kong Bundy on the last SNME and clips of the Wrestlemania 2 cage match. This is a little disappointing, as Hulk starts off with a great talking point that sounds like he’s going to get deep on us (He basically hints that he had been coasting a little bit before the attack, and when his career was almost taken away from him, he realized just how hard he had to keep working) but after about 10 seconds of that, he goes right back to the three demandments of whatnot. 1 for 4.

RICKY “The Dragon” STEAMBOAT vs. JAKE “The Snake” ROBERTS
-Ricky Steamboat complains about Jake’s post-match ritual and says, “I won’t tolerate that!” Jake tops him fairly easily with a deranged promo where he stares at Damien, talking about how much they’ve taught each other. Damien, for his part, flicks his tongue every time Jake addresses him directly, making him look that much more evil.

-Before the bell even rings, Jake clotheslines the Dragon off the apron, and follows with a DDT onto the concrete. Steamboat lands with a sick, audible thump, and according to Jake’s DVD, that was a legitimate KO in the name of getting the angle over. Jake drags Steamboat in the ring and drags Damien all over him, and even rubs Steamboats mouth to really drive home the evil. At ringside, Bonnie Steamboat gets up and runs backstage as her husband is loaded onto a stretcher. No match here, obviously, but an AWESOME angle. 2 for 5. Despite no backstage “invisible camera” skits or scripted promos, this angle somehow drew money.

-We go to Wrestlemania 2 and the finish of the Tag Team Title match.

TAG TEAM TITLE, 2 OUT OF 3 FALLS: BRITISH BULLDOGS (Champions, with Captain Lou Albano) vs. NIKOLAI VOLKOFF & IRON SHEIK (with Classy Freddie Blassie)
FALL ONE: Nikolai and Davey Boy start. Nikolai misses a charge right off the bat and Davey Boy hammers away. Nikolai gets pinballed in the Bulldogs’ corner but catches Davey Boy with a press slam and tags in Sheik. Sheik gets a back suplex and a camel clutch for the submission in less than a minute. Damn.

FALL TWO: Nikolai stomps Davey Boy and rams him into the evil boot of the Sheik. Sheik tags back in and backdrops Davey Boy, then spits on him for good measure. Clothesline by Sheik and he’s so pleased he takes a moment to pose. Abdominal stretch by the Sheik, but Davey Boy hiptosses out. Instead of tagging, he goes for an elbow and misses. He takes a boot from Nikolai and the big Russian tags back in. Clothesline and a stomp to the chest by Volkoff, but Davey Boy reverses a sunset flip. The quick-thinking Sheik distracts the referee to stop the pin. More double-teaming involving the Controversial Foot Gear of the Iron Sheik, but it only gets a two-count. Davey Boy blocks a kick to the stomach and gets an atomic drop on the Sheik for a two-count. Nikolai gets a neat rolling suplex-pin combo for two. Davey Boy lands an elbow on the jaw, but he gets yanked over to the heel corner again and Freddie Blassie holds Davey Boy in place for the Big Boss Man legdrop. Nikolai goes for the pin but misses Davey Boy’s foot on the ropes and celebrates prematurely. Davey Boy sneaks up and rolls him up for a three-count to tie things up.

FALL THREE: Davey Boy gets attacked by Nikolai as Vince announces that Dynamite has a knee injury. (Legit or story?) Iron Sheik tags in and loads the boot for a kick to the ribs, but he only loads twice, so it doesn’t get maximum effect. Boston crab by the Sheik, but Davey Boy makes it to the ropes. Volkoff re-enters and works the back. Davey Boy punches his way out of a bearhug and Sheik re-enters and walks right into a running powerslam. Volkoff breaks the pin, but Davey Boy finally makes the tag. Dynamite Kid walks into a bearhug from Sheik, and then from Volkoff. Hot Tag: You’re Doing It Wrong. Sheik gets a camel clutch of Dynamite. Referee gets distracted by Volkoff and Davey Boy runs in and rolls up Sheik, without the referee noticing that it’s the wrong man scoring the three-count. Good match. 3 for 6.

-Great closing sequence sees “Take Me Home” playing over fans leaving their seats and going to the exits.

-And here’s the Game Show Utopia plug that you’ve all come to know and love.

The 411: No classic matches or must-sees, but two solid outings in the second half of the show, and the Snake-Dragon angle is awesome stuff. I dunno, I'd say let a flip of a coin decide whether you'll check it out.
Final Score:  5.0   [ Not So Good ]