wrestling / Video Reviews
The Name on the Marquee: WWF Prime Time Wrestling (9.29.1986)
Loading...-Originally aired September 29, 1986.
-Your hosts are Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby Heenan. Bobby says he’s about to unveil some footage of the worst wrestler of all time, someone so pathetic he doesn’t even belong in wrestling. But that footage is coming later.
-All of tonight’s matches come from the September 6 card at Boston Garden.
COUSIN LUKE vs. COWBOY BOB ORTON
-Orton misses a corner charge, but Luke’s connects. He follows with a double axehandle for two. Gorilla notes that Luke used to wrestle barefoot, but he’s now upgraded to sneakers and that seems to have improved his technique.
-Bearhug by Luke as ringside audio technician Nelson Sweglar calls this match for Cousin Luke. Gorilla says it’s a losing bet. Orton is able to break the hold and drops Luke with a series of punches. Luke fights back with Polish hammers to Orton’s ears. Hard Irish whip by Luke and he follows with a charge, but this time, Orton is ready for him and raises the knee, and Luke quite convincingly takes a hard shot and drops, and Orton gets an easy win. This was surprisingly good for a four-minute foregone conclusion and felt like a decent TV feature match.
-Bobby Heenan doesn’t give a crap about hillbillies, so he was amusing himself with the WWF Magazine crossword puzzle during the match.
THE GREAT DEBATE: PIPER’S PIT vs. THE FLOWER SHOP
-Quick recap: Adrian Adonis refuses to cede control of the interview segment slot to Roddy Piper, even though Piper maintains that was the deal they made with each other before Piper left in April to go make a movie. Adonis has also stolen Piper’s bodyguard, Bob Orton, just to mock him. Piper gets the WWF hierarchy to release an official statement saying that the Flower Shop is a piece of crap and gets the segment pre-empted one week to do Piper’s Pit, and Adrian interrupted the segment just out of spite. So that brings us here. The Pit and the Flower Shop are set up side by side in the arena and both segments are going to be done simultaneously.
-Crowd is already giving Piper a standing ovation at the start, but Jimmy Hart cuts him off before he can say a word, and Adrian introduces the Flower Shop guest, Cowboy Bob Orton. Orton says that the Flower Shop is the best interview segment. The colorful flowers are classier and more vibrant than plaid. Piper also needed a bodyguard because he lacked a backbone, so that exposed a major weakness in Piper’s confidence level.
-Piper calls Adonis “an ugly son of an unnamed girl” and gives Orton a cute little pillbox hat to wear instead of a cowboy hat. Piper jiggles Adonis’ manboobs, which gets Adonis so flustered hat he can’t finish a sentence, and the cameraman gets so tired of his stuttering and stammering that he just drifts over to Piper’s Pit.
-Piper calls Adonis a disgrace to pro wrestling before bringing out his guest, Don Muraco. Muraco awkwardly says that it’s a pleasure to be a guest on “The Body Shower,” and Piper is off to the races, teasing Muraco for his ugly shirt and his incoherent promo. Adonis complains, so Piper gives him a bra to entertain himself. Muraco gets totally irritated with Piper too, and suddenly the buzzards are circling around Piper. Piper puts some oversized panties over Adrian’s head. Muraco says that in America, you should be allowed to dress how you want and say what you want, and Piper says he doesn’t want children exposed to Adrian Adonis. Ah, the Reagan ‘80s.
-Piper calls Muraco “Fatso”, and that’s what finally pushes the heels over the edge. Adrian knocks Piper out with a flower pot, and Muraco & Orton hold Piper’s leg into place while Adrian injures it with some well-placed chairshots. The Piper’s Pit set gets totally dismantled during the attack, and Adonis smears Piper’s face with rouge and covers him with flowers to drive the point home. Adonis gleefully chants “No more Pit!” as he leaves to celebrate. Piper is GONE.
SIVI AFI vs. PETE DOHERTY
-Bizarre pre-match commentary from Gorilla and Alfred, mentioning that Sivi Afi has asked to be called Toma from now on, and that he’s forming a tag team with Haku. Uh…no.
-They trade bodyslams and then Afi takes control with chops and a Wattskick. He takes a second shot at it and dropkicks Doherty out of the ring. Doherty paces around the ring, grinning like a madman while he stalls. Back in, he shoulderblocks Afi but runs right into a backdrop. Running headbutt gets two. Afi tries a chinlock. Doherty bites Afi’s ear and whips him into the corner. Doherty misses the charge and does a sick bump from it, landing straight on his head and neck on impact, and even Gorilla & Alfred can’t hide their disgust at the way it looked.
-Afi slams Doherty and then goes upstairs. Bodypress connects for three. Somebody must have passed a memo around the locker room that night because that’s the second energetic no-resting unimportant match of the show.
-Gorilla Monsoon has to make a phone call and asks Heenan to finish the segment. Heenan again talks about his rare footage of the worst wrestler of all time and flashes a sign at the camera reading “Gorilla Monsoon.”
-Ken Resnick talks to The Team That Can’t Be Slammed. Big John Studd says that with Andre the Giant gone from the WWF, he’s the true giant, and Bundy warns Gorilla Monsoon that some day, he might show up on the set at Prime Time looking for trouble. He invites Gorilla to come out of retirement.
-Gorilla can’t understand why Orndorff & Bundy have been challenging him to get in the ring as of late and emphasizes that he’s retired and has no intention of ever getting in the ring. That’s the fascinating thing about Gorilla’s career. He had to be absolutely the ONLY wrestler ever to lose a retirement match and actually honor the stipulation.
U.S. EXPRESS vs. HART FOUNDATION
-Foundation is just great at the start, acting surprised at every pre-match instruction the referee gives, and when the bell sounds, Anvil straddles the rope instead of completely exiting the ring, just to irritate the Express.
-Brett (at least I think he’s still spelling it that way at this point) starts with Rotundo and immediately winds up on the wrong end of an armbar. They have an awesome exchange in the corner that’s too fast to call, and Rotundo slingshots Brett into Spivey’s boots to daze him.
-Spivey tags in and clamps on a side headlock, which has Neidhart hilariously flipping out for no reason in the corner. Brett goes off the ropes and tries a leapfrog, but he severely underestimates Spivey’s height and…uh…Brett needs out of the ring right now. Anvil tags in while Brett walks off the pain.
-Spivey shoulderblocks Anvil and Anvil sells it by laughing and pointing at Spivey, which the crowd pops like crazy for. Crowd is a perfect 50/50 split for this match and their energy is off the charts.
-Another shoulderblock and suddenly Anvil’s not laughing. Beal throw by Spivey and he applies a toehold. Brett runs in to break the hold, and the Express decides that if the Harts will cheat, so will they, so when the referee chases Brett back to the apron, the Express switches without a tag. Referee asks the crowd if a tag was made and the crowd sides with the Express. Alfred points out that Neidhart called the referee an idiot earlier on and suspects that the referee doesn’t care what the Express does at this point.
-Back from commercial, Harts are laying a beating on Spivey. Harts take turn choking out Spivey while the referee gets distracted by Rotundo. Alfred says that the US Express showed some inexperience by being detracted, which made them susceptible to a hot spot.
-What?
-Rotundo tags in, knocks Brett off the apron, and uses Neidhart’s goatee to snap his jaw. Neidhart avoids a corner charge and now Rotundo’s in trouble. Decapitator gets two. Chinlock by Neidhart as both teams are now just switching off at will without tagging. Gorilla voices an opinion that tag team matches should have two referees. The man eventually became President of the WWF and never followed through on campaign promise #1.
-Brett gives Rotundo a hard knee from the apron and the crowd pops. If there’s one thing Boston wrestling fans can be total hipsters about, it’s that they were the first city in America to notice that the Harts were something special. They ALWAYS got a big pop in Boston, even in their heel bottom-of-the-card filler days.
-Rotundo gets caught in the wrong corner but manages to fight off both opponents and lunges forward even though he’s trapped in a bearhug.
-Back from another break, the Harts block a hot tag and Rotundo winds up on the floor. Back in, another hot tag is blocked, and then they do the false hot tag, because why not. Brett charges and runs into a boot as everybody in Boston continues to have the worst luck with corner charges. Rotundo rams the Harts into each other and finally makes his tag. Spivey rams the Harts into each other and FINALLY connects with a corner charge. Bulldog ALMOST finishes, but wouldn’t you know it? The time limit expires. Oh my GOD that was a damn near perfect tag team bout.
PEDRO MORALES vs. RENE GOULET
-Gorilla hilariously says “It wouldn’t be Prime Time Wrestling without a Rene Goulet match.” Goulet’s career is winding down, as he’s not even wearing his glove anymore, and he is now clean-shaven and is pretty unmistakably the guy who stepped in to separate brawls three years later.
-Side headlock applied by Pedro, and yeah, Goulet’s career is definitely winding down because the commentators are just burying the crap out of the poor guy, noting that he hasn’t won a match in at least a year, and he recently shed 25 pounds and it didn’t appear to do him a damn bit of good and he shows no sign of improvement.
-Goulet wrings the arm. Morales reverses but Goulet shows a little fire and throws him to the floor. Goulet goes to the top rope and teases a flying elbow, and the crowd does not give a crap. Gorilla even laughs at him for suggesting it.
-Gorilla suggests that Puerto Rico should name a street after Pedro Morales. Heenan says they already named a street sign after him: Dead End.
-Back from commercial, Boston Garden is buzzing in eager anticipation for the end of this match. Morales keeps trying to get back into the ring and Goulet blocks every attempt. Morales finally makes it back in and shows some signs of life. Goulet targets the eyes to block a comeback. Morales gets a backdrop and an atomic drop for two, but then Pedro rolls up Goulet for three.
-Ken Resnick mentions “the new look of WWF Television” while Jake Roberts steps in to plug his new segment on Wrestling Challenge, The Snake Pit, saying he loves the feeling of total control that comes with having that microphone in his hands. Ricky Steamboat will not be a guest on the Snake Pit, but he might be a sacrifice.
TAG TEAM TITLE: BRITISH BULLDOGS (Champions) vs. NIKOLAI VOLKOFF & IRON SHEIK (with Slick)
-Ring looks like a dumpster by the time Nikolai is finished singing, and Slick gives this white reviewer a hilarious look at what an afro combined with hat hair looks like.
-Davey Boy starts with Sheiky Baby while Gorilla notes that the only belt in the WWF that Sheik hasn’t held is the Tag Team Title, because he previously held the World Title and the Tag Team Title.
-What?
-Sheik gets hiptossed and slammed. Dynamite tags in and works the arm, but winds up eating Volkoff’s boot and we pause for a commercial. Sheik tosses Dynamite to the floor and Volkoff pounces, sending him into the post. Back inside, a backdrop by Sheik gets two. Volkoff tags in and goes to work on the torso , but Dynamite gets a lucky tag and Davey Boy shocks Volkoff by applying a bearhug and lifting him with it. Sheik tries to break the hold but Davey spins around so Sheik hits his own partner.
-Sheik tags in properly and immediately takes control with a gutwrench. Camel clutch looks to finish, but Dynamite breaks it. Davey Boy cradles Sheik out of nowhere. Volkoff reverses it behind the referee’s back, and then Dynamite reverses it back, and Davey Boy gets the three count to retain.
-And now, Heenan finally gets to unleash his big surprise, his video footage of the worst wrestler ever. He rolls the tape…and it’s footage of Hulk Hogan beating the crap out of Heenan. Gorilla laughs and shows off the videotape that Heenan was planning to show.
