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Dunn’s Countdown to Survivor Series: Survivor Series 1987
Loading...Survivor Series 1987
by J.D. Dunn
Brutus and Herc start out. Beefer leapfrogs him and catches him with the sleeper. The heels jump in, but Beefer hiptosses everyone. Danny Davis is the unlucky man that has to stay in. Davis reminds me of Eric Bischoff for some reason. The faces beat the ever-loving shit out of Davis. Ricky Steamboat runs into a knee, though, allowing Harley Race to tag in. Race belly-to-bellies Steamboat for two. Ricky ducks between his legs and tags Duggan. Duggan and Race brawl on the floor to a double countout at 4:30. Clip to Jake and Ron Bass going at it. Randy Savage gets caught in the wrong corner, but he blind tags Brutus. Brutus knees an unsuspecting Bass and eliminates him at 5:40. HTM gets knocked around by Bruti for a bit. Davis trips him up from the outside. That allows HTM to finish him with the Shake, Rattle & Roll at 7:15. Clip to Hercules punching a mudhole in Randy’s chest. Randy tags Jake the Snake, but Honky quickly avoids a DDT and catches Jake off-guard with a knee. The heels corner Jake for some severe punishment. They make the mistake of letting Davis in. He immediately gets hit with the DDT at 10:55. Herc jumps on Jake right away, so he can’t get to his corner for the much-needed tag. A HTM chinlock gets clipped. Jake elbows out, but Herc comes in and cuts off the tag. Herc slaps on a chinlock, but Jake counters to a jawbreaker and tags Ricky Steamboat. Already at Mach 3.0, Steamboat flies in and destroys Herc with chops. Savage comes off the top with the Elbow Drop to finish Herc at 16:59. Honky gets absolutely MURDERED by all three men. Honky eventually has enough and bails out for the countout loss at 19:10 (of 24:00). Fun stuff. Exactly how this kind of match should be built. ***1/4
McIntyre starts with Sherri and hits a crossbody right away. Moolah comes in and slingshots Christianello. Gorilla puts over the Bomb Angels. Christianello goes out via a McIntyre Victory Roll at 1:58. Robin comes in like a manly Jeff Hardy and gets caught in the wrong corner. She surprises Dawn Marie (no, not the same one) with a crossbody at 4:12. The Bomb Angels start their shtick, wowing everyone in the crowd and even the sexist Jesse Ventura. Unfortunately, they tag Rockin’ Robin in who gets overmatched by Sherri. Sherri finishes with a snap suplex at 6:54. Moolah and Judy Martin slug it out like Rue McClanahan and Betty White over the last piece of cheesecake on the set of The Golden Girls. Moolah gets caught with a double clothesline from the Glamours to even things up at 10:52. One of the Glams nearly gets the pin on one of the JBA, but it’s a false pin as the Angel bridged before the three. McIntyre spins Sherri around with a Giant Swing. The Victory Roll finishes Sherri off at 14:54, setting up a brief McIntyre/Sherri series. Velvet tries another Victory Roll on Leilani Kai, but Kai wisely snaps her neck off the top rope and finishes her with the Electric Chair Drop at 17:21. The JBA attack right away, and one of the Angels finishes Kai off with a flying crossbody off the top at 18:36. Jimmy Hart tries to get involved, but it backfires, and Martin gets finished off by a flying clothesline at 20:15. The Angels looked really good. **
Look at all these tag teams. I feel like Tony Montana with a mountain of coke on my desk. Rick Martel starts with Nikolai Volkoff and rolls him up for a near fall. Vince spins it that Strike Force are being gloryhounds. Tito hits Boris with the flying forearm to eliminate the Bolsheviks at 1:48. Ax jumps in right away and pounds on Tito. The faces dominate for the next bit as they seem to be one step ahead of the heels at all times. Jim Powers gets caught in the heel corner, though. Ax, who is such a badass, just bodyslams him into his own corner so he can tag a Rougeau. See, Ax doesn’t care. He just wants fresh meat. Raymond Rougeau tries to hit a crossbody, but Ax ducks and covers for the elimination about 6:00 in. Neidhart and Haku team up to doubleteam Powers. Valentine tags in and dismantles Roma in his usual methodical way. Dynamite gets the hot tag and destroys Smash with a clothesline. That just pisses Smash off, so he drags Dynamite to his corner. Ax and Smash collaborate to destroy Dynamite until the ref gets involved. Smash tosses him aside for the DQ around 10:00 in. Jesse now changes his story and says that Strike Force is hiding because they haven’t been in all match. Bret hits Dynamite with a wicked piledriver, but it only gets two. The whole thing breaks down as Tito tags in and goes nuts on the heels. He hit’s the Anvil with a flying forearm, but Bret makes the save with an elbow drop. Neidhart rolls Tito over and eliminates him at 13:00. The Islanders and the Dream Team take turns beating on Jim Powers, but the plucky little bastard just won’t stay down. Bret says enough of this prick and comes in to dismantle him. Eventually, Greg Valentine tries to finish Powers with a figure-four, but Powers tags Roma. Roma comes off the top with a sunset flip and pins Valentine around 18:00 into the match. We go back to the same formula; this time it’s Roma getting killed. Brunzell eventually gets the tag and tries to slam Bret Hart. Tama comes in and dropkicks them over, but Brunzell rolls through to eliminate the Hart Foundation at 23:58. Tama jumps right on Brunzell with a Trapezes Lock. The Islanders trade off with the same hold, isolating the Killer Bee in their corner. He gets a desperation Sunset Flip, but can’t finish Haku off. Haku puts his head down on a backdrop allowing Brunzell to kick him in the chest and make the HOT TAG TO POWERS! The Stallions come out fired up, but they run right into Haku, who at this point was a total badass in the Samoa Joe mold. Jumpin’ Jim tags back in and hits Tama with a dropkick. In all the confusion, Brian Blair dons a mask and slingshots into a Sunset Flip on Tama for the final elimination at 30:46. Now, given all the babyface teams, could you have picked the survivors from the start? Incredibly hot match with very few slow spots. ****
Now there’s some raw tonnage in that ring. Multiple subplots here: Hogan and Andre hate each other, of course. Andre turned on Hogan and challenged him nearly a year earlier. They had the Match of the Century at WrestleMania III, which Hogan won, but Andre thought he got the win early in the match. Longtime Hogan nemesis “Mr. Wonderful” Paul Orndorff turned face and is a part of Hogan’s team, but Jesse points out that Hogan can’t trust him. Bam Bam Bigelow had debuted not long before and was still something of a wild card. Don Muraco, who reminds me a little of Batista, starts with then-newcomer Rick Rude. Rude gets the ever-loving dogshit beat out of him by all five faces. Patera, like an idiot, knocks him to the heel corner where he tags Butch Reed. Reed doesn’t fare much better and gets eliminated by a Hogan leg drop at 3:08.
Andre climbs in and just stares at the back of Hogan’s head. Hogan wants to go, but Morella rules that Hogan tagged out when he was high-fiving his teammates. Ken Patera is the unlucky one who gets to come in, despite Hogan’s objections. Andre decides Patera isn’t even worth his time, though. Orndorff holds his own against Bundy, the Gang and Rick Rude. The faces are just all over the heels here, and the crowd is eating it up. One Man Gang hits a clothesline, which looks more like an STO, but that didn’t exist in North American wrestling at the time. It gets the elimination at 8:00.
Orndorff comes in and destroys Rude. I don’t think Rude’s hit an offensive move all night. Orndorff signals for the piledriver, but Bundy hits him from behind, allowing Rude to get the upset elimination with a schoolboy rollup at 9:39.
Rude’s still a sitting duck, though, so Bam Bam jumps on him. He lets Hogan get him some before Murraco tags in and eliminates Rude with a powerslam at 10:27, making it 3-on-3.
Bundy misses a kneedrop on Muraco, allowing the Rock to go work on Bundy’s leg. Muraco and Gang tag in. Muraco tries to slam Gang and collapses under the weight for two. Gang throws him into Andre’s head and finishes with a splash at 12:11.
Jesse is gloating now, as he anticipates Hogan being left alone with the three monsters once Bigelow is eliminated. Bigelow takes a ton of punishment, some of it clipped by CHV. He keeps kicking out, though. Andre tags in but misses a swing. Bigelow makes the HOT TAG TO HOGAN! Hogan and Andre go toe-to-toe. Hogan dominates, but Bundy pulls him to the outside. Hogan beats up both Bundy and the Gang, but they keep him outside long enough to get him counted out at 16:45.
That leaves Bam Bam alone with Andre the Giant, the One Man Gang, and King Kong Bundy. Bam Bam drops an elbow on Bundy’s leg going back to the work done by Muraco. Bundy misses a charge, allowing Bam Bam to slingshot on top of him for the elimination at 19:18.
The Gang jumps Bigelow before he can recover. Gang and Andre dominate until Gang misses the 747. Bigelow covers to eliminate him at 20:38.
It’s down to Andre and Bigelow. Bigelow avoids the Giant but misses an avalanche in the corner. Andre drives his shoulder into him and hip tosses him over, squashing him for the final elimination at 22:54. Hogan comes back and knocks Andre out of the ring, setting up their big rematch for the Main Event a few months later. None of these guys were particularly great wrestlers at this point, but they knew how to build the match in order to get their goals (a: build a Hogan/Andre rematch, and b: get Bigelow over) accomplished. ***1/2
The 411: For an era that didn't specialize in workrate, this PPV produced some pretty good matches. Three out of four is pretty damn good for this point in time (and even the women's match was okay thanks to the dazzling work by the angels). More importantly, though, they actually had good booking behind it to make things interesting. Jim Powers, a winner on PPV? Bigelow survives, but Hogan doesn't? Unfortunately, this kind of out-of-the-box thinking would become obsolete once they made it an annual event. Strong thumbs up for the 1987 Survivor Series. |
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| Final Score: 7.5 [ Good ] legend |
