Down With The Brown: Best Of The WWF Vol. 10

Well, it was my intention to take another look at one of the plethora of WWE DVD’s I’d picked up in the last few months, but thanks to my newest time killer, I’m on an 80’s kick, so I’m taking a brief U-turn back to my youth this go around.

And let me give a brief plug for that time killer, The History of the WWE:

http://www.angelfire.com/wrestling/cawthon777/updates.htm

For all the wrestling encyclopedia dorks like me this has it all, DVD match lists, title histories, actual promotional posters from house shows and PPVs, and the thing that has got me extremely hooked, year-by-year listings of (almost) every house show, TV taping, and PPV since 1963. It’s ridiculous how much stuff is crammed on this site. Check ‘em out, and just try to spend less than an hour there.

Anyway, 1986 was my favorite year, and looking through all the results has made me nostalgic for it, so from my virgin year of wrestling, here we go:

Match #1

The Funks & Jimmy Hart vs. Ricky Steamboat, Junkyard Dog, & Haiti Kid

-This is the Jimmy Jack and Hoss version of the Funks, and this all stemmed from Jimmy Hart punking out Haiti Kid on an episode of SNME. Poor Haiti never got a break in 86. Between Piper shaving his head and getting beat up by the wussiest manager in history, I wouldn’t have been too thrilled to be him. Steamboat steals Hoss’s hat and mocks the Funks with it. And just so we’re on the same page, Jimmy Jack is Jesse Barr, brother of the late Art Barr, and Hoss is NWA legend Dory Funk, Jr. Man, a Steamboat-Dory match would have been superb, so disappointing the other four had to partake. Okay match, once the comedy elements subside, Steamboat and the Funks put on a pretty good display that pretty much gets ruined with Jimmy Hart simultaneously displaying some of the worst offense and selling you’ll ever see. Ben Stiller did a better job in 1999 than Hart does here. Somewhat surprising ending too. Not a great match, but not offensively awful like I feared either.

Match #2

“Cowboy” Bob Orton vs. Tito Santana

Interesting how Orton gets more respect now due to his son then he ever did in his WWF days, where he always was treated as a lackey (even worse, he initally was a TV jobber in 1984.) This is taking place around when Adrian Adonis hired him as he’s sporting the pink hat. Tito is fresh off his Savage feud, and was preparing to spend six months in limbo until his partial feuds with Danny Davis and Butch Reed in 1987. So it makes for an interesting match-up as both guys are in the same realm with Orton getting a minor push and Tito getting a minor de-push. Nice storytelling as Tito focuses on the once injured arm of Orton. And there’s a pretty impressive segment where Orton attempts a flying headscissors and ends up crotching himself on the top rope. And while that sounds pretty outlandish, it comes off pretty believable.

Orton does great bumps including a beautiful one where he tries to fall over the guardrail, except the rail won’t hold his weight and he almost splats onto a woman’s lap in the front row. This turns out to be a really good match, though with the inordinate amount of restholds, you know where the match is headed. But it’s good stuff, despite the fact that it’s all clipped to hell. ***.

Match #3

The Machines vs. “Big” John Studd & King Kong Bundy

Andre is nowhere to be seen in this, which kinda makes the whole point of the angle useless here. For the record, Big Machine (the larger one) was Blackjack Mulligan. Strong Machine was the future Demolition Ax (the former Masked Supserstar). The obvious problem with The Machines was that Andre was usually too injured to wrestle, and nobody cared about the Machines if Andre wasn’t there. I guess the hope was that the fans would forget and just assume one of them was Andre, but the fans ended up being a little smarter than that, and the gimmick ended up with a shelf life of barely six months, which is about a month of RAWs in today’s terms. Actually, all said and done, Giant Machine only wrestled about five times, and three of those were six-mans where he probably spent no more than fifteen seconds in the ring.

The Machines blow a double slam of Bundy right off the bat, but Big makes up for it with an effortless slam of Studd. Poor Monsoon and Hayes can’t tell the Machines apart even though Big Machine is a good four inches taller and fifty pounds heavier. Studd and Bundy get into a shoving match (which happened a lot around this time) but the two patch things up. I can only assume a Studd-Bundy feud was in the works, since once Studd left, Bundy was left with nothing to do aside from beating up the little people. Pretty nothing match that is summed up by the total lack of response both times the Machines get the hot tag. It’s also summed up by Heenan getting partially stuck in the ropes when he tries for the run-in forcing a looooooooong two count before the DQ finish. *1/2.

Match #4

The Dream Team vs. The U.S. Express

This is the Danny Spivey version, and it’s hard to believe a straight-up, no-nonsense guy like Rotundo would last over two years in the WWF. Of course, he’d succumb to the gimmick in his IRS days, but it’s so odd to see him here. Hard to believe, but there were over ten legit tag teams in the WWF in 1986, which made it very easy for teams to get lost in the shuffle which is what the Express did almost immediately after Spivey joined.

Let me add, this appears to be the all-Boston addition of this release as all four matches have been Boston Garden matches, which is not necessarily a bad thing. I’d say it was the next best venue to MSG in the 80’s, though I did like the rampway of the Maple Leaf Gardens.

Anyway, this is very early Spivey as he still has the Brody boots (and doing a little research, Valentine & Beefcake are still the champs here, hence no introductions), and I guess the idea is if you unfocus your eyes, Spivey looks just like Barry Windham. Rotundo spends the entire match on defense, and Spivey is so green, after getting the hot tag, he stupidly tags Mike back in twenty seconds later, which makes Rotundo resort to purposingly playing face-in-peril just so he can hot tag Spivey AGAIN. I swear, two hot tags in under a minute. And we’re left with Beefcake vs. Spivey which is one ugly couple of sequences finished with an even uglier roll-up ending. Rotundo and Valentine play their parts so it’s not awful, just not anything I’m eager to see again either.

Match #5

Billy Jack Haynes vs. Brutus Beefcake

Okay, NOW we’re in MSG with hooray, another Beefcake match. I’ll admit in my younger days, I liked the Barber gimmick and thought he had some good matches, but yikes he was awful in his heel days, especially as a singles guy. His opponent is Billy Jack Haynes who may have set a record for shortest WWF tenure with his one week engagement in 1984. He even got write-ups in WWF Magazine but he was gone by the time it went to press. Haynes was notorious for being difficult which combined with his lack of charisma led to him getting not much of a push but instead getting his ass kicked by Hercules and then later by Demolition. That and being one of the four guys who were left off the inaugural Survivor Series card entirely helped lead to his departure in 1988.

One last shot at Brutus and I’ll leave him alone. He has the worst stomps in wrestling. He just gets great height then gently lays his foot into a body part, and it always looks so awful. Pretty bad match with Beefcake getting WAY too much offense and it all leads to a very lame finish. *. Only highlight is Johnny V wearing a shirt that says “I Love Johnnie” which means he’s wearing a shirt that not only tells us how much he loves himself, but how incapable he is of spelling his own name.

Match #6

The Islanders vs. Jimmy Jack Funk & Mr. X

Funk went from star at the beginning of the tape to jobber an hour later. And here’s the answer to everyone’s favorite trivia question. Mr. X was none other than referee Danny Davis prepping for his in-ring debut in 1987. You’d be shocked how built he is here, and it makes sense why he wore so much padding as a wrestler, since the fans didn’t want a muscular ref, they wanted a puny one getting massacred. This match also features female referee Rita Chatterson (the ref who accused Vince McMahon of raping her.) Funk got demoted quickly after Dory Funk, Jr. left the WWF since with no real Funks left, there was no point pushing a fake one. This was supposed to be The Funks vs. The Islanders which will explain why a jobber team dominates so much.

The Islanders take offense early but soon Jimmy Jack is flat-out destroying Tama, and I don’t know, it just doesn’t seem right. It would be like watching a Superstars squash go fifteen minutes. Okerlund on commentary even makes fun of the Islanders island wear “looks like something my mother-in-law would give me for Christmas.” Tama sells like a champ though, and once he turned heel and was allowed to be himself, he became one of my favorites. Nice finish as Tama almost brings the frog splash to the WWF by accident, but there’s nothing too thrilling here, unless you’re eager to see Davis without a shirt on.

Match #7

Roddy Piper vs. A.J. Petruzzi

This may possibly be my favorite squash match as Piper wrestles the entire match with his left arm behind his back (aside for one move.) The face pop is insane as it’s Roddy’s first TV appearance in four months, and Piper hadn’t even done anything yet (the Adonis feud exploded during the next TV taping.) Petruzzi paintbrushes Piper and Piper responds by beating the living sh!t out of A.J. Great stuff.

The Flower Shop vs. Piper’s Pit

This is the abbreviated version that aired on PTW’s Year in Review show as Piper’s set and Adonis’s set are placed side by side. Piper is stunned to see his former friend Orton join with Adonis, and even more stunned to see his former friend Don Muraco on Adonis’s side too, and all three men triple-team him with Adonis destroying Piper’s leg with a chair.

We then cut to Piper taking a baseball bat to The Flower Shop on the next week’s show.

This is followed by Adrian Adonis returning to the WWF (I’ll explain in a moment) and attacking Piper on Piper’s Pit two months later.

And this finishes with Piper attacking Adonis on Wrestling Challenge clearing out the lockerroom to separate them.

Okay, see if you can follow this. The WWF’s taping schedule often got a little screwy because Saturday Night’s Main Event usually aired before the syndication did, and in a weird situation, the SNME where Piper’s crutch shot knocked Adonis out of action was taped BEFORE Piper was attacked in the Shop-Pit showdown. So the whole episode of “injured” Piper was taped before Piper was injured in the first place. And secondly, by that logic, Piper “injured” Adonis and knocked him out of action before Adrian attacked Piper. The angle was taped out of sequence. So yes, neither man was really injured, although I still kinda wonder why Adonis was taken off TV for two months. Adonis had issues with management leading to his firing after WMIII, I’m not sure if he took time off or was suspended here, or perhaps he really WAS injured and just worked through it on the Pit angle. I say all this because this leads to:

Match #8

Roddy Piper vs. “Magnificent” Muraco

With Adonis out, Piper was left to fight Muraco and Orton instead who formed a team and comically came to the ring with bagpipe music and wearing kilts. Muraco is also in a weird period where he let his beard grow to almost Hillbilly Jim lengths which made him look even scuzzier. This is one more Boston Garden match for you with Muraco wearing a blue kilt to mock Piper’s red one. Piper throws it on Muraco’s face and we’re off.

This is a complete brawl, and you’d almost have thought Muraco was the instigator the way Piper treats him. Barely five minutes in, both men are bloody (Muraco opts to blade from getting puched in the face) and the crowd is rapid the entire time. Seriously, the Edge-Hardy match would have been so much better (and more believable) if they had followed the way this match went. Two guys that hate each other, beat each other bloody, and the other one wins basically on a fluke. A fun match and a great way to end the tape.

End of tape.

I have mixed feelings about this release, because the Piper stuff is awesome. 1986 Roddy Piper was lightning in a bottle, probably the last time Roddy would be this amazing in the ring and on the mike. The Tito-Orton match is really good too, but the rest is rather blah. There’s nothing terrible here, per se (only the Machines match really felt like a waste of time), but it’s a tough call if the thirty minutes of good outweigh the hour of okayish stuff. If the Flower Shop-Piper’s Pit segment had been complete, it would have been an easy recommendation, but instead I’ll go:

Slightly recommended, thumb in the middle, ever-so-gently leaning up, B-.

-Sydney Brown