The Name on the Marquee: WWF Prime Time Wrestling (6.2.1986)

-Originally aired June 2, 1986.

-Your hosts are Gorilla Monsoon & Bobby Heenan. This seems to be the week when Heenan formally jumps from guest host to permanent host, because he leads off with a complaint about how his name hasn’t been added to the opening yet.

“Golden Boy” DAN SPIVEY vs. MAGNIFICENT MURACO (with Mr. Fuji)
–Muraco puts on a stalling clinic, but to his credit, he IS getting some pretty amazing heat for it. Spivey has had enough and when Muraco teases sliding into the ring, Spivey just stomps away at him and then slams him. Muraco goes to the floor to retreat. Back in, Spivey slams him again. Muraco retreats in the corner and Spivey London bridges him and gives him a boot to the gut.

-Muraco dazes Spivey with a forearm and tosses him to the floor, and this is Boston, so Muraco rams Spivey into the barricade and topples it. He takes him to another barricade and topples that one. Back in the ring, Muraco gives him the infamous Asian spike. Fistfight erupts and Spivey wins that. Clothesline by Spivey gets two. Dropkick sends Muraco over the top rope and on top of Nelson Sweglar. Muraco tries to retaliate by suplexing Spivey on top of the table. Spivey reverses the suplex, but Muraco holds on with a handful of tights and makes it an inside cradle on impact for the sudden three-count.

–Back at the studio, Bobby Heenan demands a medical update on the condition of Nelson Sweglar and says that Dan Spivey has only himself to blame for losing. How good can you plan on being when you pattern your career after Arnold Skaaland, he reasons.

TONY GAREA vs. MR. X
–Joined in progress with hot suplex action while Gorilla and Lord Alfred Hayes have an extended conversation about Elvira. Hiptoss by Garea, but he misses an elbow and X goes right to work on the arm, giving Gorilla an opportunity to complain about what a crappy partner Cathy Lee Crosby was, and he’s just glad “Okers” was there to give him somebody to talk to.

-Legdrop by X gets two as we inexplicably pause for commercial. Back from commercial and X has a side headlock applied. Really lethargic “action” follows, with X bouncing off the ropes and not even running when he comes toward Tony. Back to the side headlock as Gorilla tells the grossest story ever about working a 90-minute draw against Bruno Sammartino and getting so dehydrated that he began licking Bruno’s sweat to get some saliva going.

-Garea slingshots X into the top turnbuckle for our first moment of excitement in this bout. Series of dropkicks by Garea, and a roll-up gets three. Gorilla notes that this match probably went longer than Garea wanted it to. Garea’s not alone.

-Johnny Valiant vows that the Dream Team will get their titles back in the very near future.

LEAPING LANNY POFFO vs. PSYCHO CAPONE
-Joined in progress with Gorilla & Alfred discussing the recent opening of Al Capone’s vault. Poffo works the arm, but Capone backdrops him as Gorilla and Lord Alfred are just endlessly amused by the name Psycho Capone and keep riffing on it. Bobby made a pretty good point in the studio, is Psycho Capone a more ridiculous name than Leaping Lanny?

-Slam by Leaping Lanny, and a somersault splash from the top rope could probably finish, but Lanny goes back upstairs for the moonsault and…the match keeps going. Ah, slingshot splash. NOW Lanny wraps it up. Gorilla marvels that if you scored this match on points, Psycho would have had a 37-1 advantage, but Lanny pulled it out.

KING TONGA vs. TIGER CHUNG LEE
-Joined in progress with Lee working the leg, and then Tonga works the leg while the commentators try to figure out whatever became of former wrestler Terry Garvin.

-Tonga & Lee trade chops and headbutts, which works to “Tongy’s” advantage according to Lord Alfred. Tonga goes back to work on the leg while Gorilla’s commentary goes soaring off the tracks again with a discussion of how much he used to enjoy tickling his opponents. Thrust kick knocks Lee the hell out and Tonga gets the three-count.

-Ken Resnick talks to Jimmy Hart and the Funks. Dory Jr. does a redneck Backlund promo saying that Jimmy Jack is the meanest and craziest of the Funks.

NON-TITLE: BRITISH BULLDOGS (Tag Team Champions) vs. HART FOUNDATION (with Jimmy Hart)
-Brett winds up in the wrong corner and takes a beating from both opponents. Anvil fares better and the Harts target Dynamite’s eyes. Hard forearms by the Hitman. Backbreaker and the second-rope elbow follow, but two moves of doom prove to be insufficient to keep Dynamite down and he makes the hot tag. Running powerslam by Davey Boy, and a pier sixer erupts. Hart attack behind the referee’s back, but the referee actually turns around in time to catch them doing it and for some reason, it’s a DQ. Like, seriously, it’s a double-team move and they use it in every match. Why was it illegal this time?

-Back at the studio, Heenan believes that the Bulldogs provoked the double-teaming. Therefore, the Bulldogs should be stripped of the belts and the titles should be awarded to King Kong Bundy and Big John Studd.

THE MATING GAME
-From TNT. They’re using the actual “Dating Game” music, which is surprisingly left intact on the Network. They have a bachelorette asking the questions, and the three bachelors are Jimmy Hart and the Hart Foundation. Vince makes fun of Jimmy for wearing red underwear. The joke for Brett’s introduction is that he doesn’t have much of a social life and his hobbies are boring. Vince introduces Jim Neidhart by saying he’s nicknamed “The Anvil” because he moves with the speed of one in his matches.

-And then we proceed to actually playing “The Dating Game.” In Bill Carter’s book The Late Shift, there’s a surprisingly lengthy discussion of a skit from early in Jay Leno’s “Tonight Show” tenure that absolutely died, a parody of “The Dating Game.” And one of the problems with the skit, to be brief, was that you can’t really spoof “The Dating Game” because the original show was already so ridiculous and campy that a parody of it would look exactly like a normal episode. So, that’s the problem I’m having with this segment. To his credit, though, Bret gives a HILARIOUS answer about how he grew up in a cold climate and he had a runny nose so often that he learned how to lick in every direction with his tongue.

-Anyway, the woman refuses to pick any of them because they’re all morons, and storms off the stage. They bring out a dorky Hart Foundation fan to be a bachelorette instead and she picks The Anvil. Bret then had group sex with the bachelorette and nine members of the studio audience while having an argument on the phone with his wife, and then wrote a chapter about what a scumfuck his brother Smith was.

TED ARCIDI vs. BIG JOHN STUDD
–These guys set a world record for test of strength duration after a lot of stalling. Arcidi goes for the slam but Studd grabs the ropes to stop it.

-Back from commercial, Arcidi takes Studd down with clubbing blows. He tries a backdrop, but Studd blocks it and dumps him to the floor. They brawl on the floor until the referee counts them out. That’s it.

 

 

5.5

The final score: review Not So Good

The 411

Not much of a week but at least they're starting to show some grasp of pacing with this program because it wasn't a slog like the last few episodes. The pace is starting to pick up so at least it didn't let me get bored.