The Name on the Marquee: Saturday Night’s Main Event (11.26.1988)

-Cold open promos: Ultimate Warrior will spoil Super Ninja’s Thanksgiving! Bobby Heenan warns Randy Savage that Andre the Giant is here to do a job…which I somehow doubt Savage would find intimidating. Randy Savage is going to slay Goliath! Ted DiBiase owns Hercules, and tonight Virgil is going to collect! Hulk Hogan is ready to get revenge on Brother Love!

-We’re in Sacramento, CA.

-Your hosts are Jesse Ventura (giving himself top billing because they’re in California) and “Vince What’s His Name.”

-Gene Okerlund talks to Mr. Fuji about Super Ninja. Fuji theorizes that secrets are the key to victory, just like Pearl Harbor. Therefore, he’s produced a new wrestler out of thin air because the mystery will give him an advantage.

-Ultimate Warrior has seen every face that war can produce, so Super Ninja’s face won’t worry him, even though Ninja is wearing a mask, but Warrior has seen the faces of his enemies in war, and war has allowed him to see faces of fallen enemies, even enemies who are wearing masks, one thousand times…It sounds more awesome when Warrior says it.

INTERCONTINENTAL TITLE: ULTIMATE WARRIOR (Champion) vs. SUPER NINJA (with Mr. Fuji)
-Ninja tries an early attack with chops, but every time he tries to mix it up with kicks, Warrior just grabs and yanks his leg to trip him up. Warrior boots him out and sorta-press slams him back inside as Fuji looks on, bewildered. Vince, meanwhile, says comparing the physiques of Warrior and Jesse Ventura is like comparing horse manure to ice cream.

-Back in, Warrior beats on Ninja a little more, press slams him again, and splashes him for the pin to retain. 0 for 1. Squash-o.

-We look back at Bobby Heenan selling Hercules into slavery. I still love Hercules’ total shock and confusion at the announcement, even though he literally had no other reason to be out there during the segment.

-Jesse Ventura talks to Ted DiBiase. Controversial statement: I liked the green tuxedo more than the black tuxedo.

-Gene Okerlund reminds Hercules that he will be Ted DiBiase’s personal property if he loses tonight’s match. So there you have it; every step of this angle depends on Hercules being an idiot. Hercules talks about his chain and says he adds a new link every time he wins a match. Not to be a dick, but the chain should actually be MUCH bigger in that case.

HERCULES vs. VIRGIL (with Ted DiBiase)
-Hercules falls victim to a 2-on-1 assault, but makes a comeback and clears the ring. He chases DiBiase around and into the ring, where Virgil is waiting. Hercules, in one motion, chases DiBiase out of the ring, ducks, and backdrops Virgil. Neat.

-Virgil tries to throw punches, but Hercules blocks all of them and knees Virgil down. Virgil goes for the eyes to get a little offense in, but Hercules shakes that off and clotheslines him down. Running powerslam gets three. 0 for 2. Another squash. Hercules press-slams Virgil onto DiBiase post-match. DiBiase tries to avenge the loss, but Hercules keeps swinging the chain at him to scare him off.

-We look back at the Damien-induced heart attack that Andre suffered on the last SNME.

-Andre the Giant says he’s ready…I think.

-Gene Okerlund talks to Randy Savage, with some great foreshadowing when Gene asks why Randy requested a title defense against Andre the Giant. Savage explains that Hulk Hogan was a great champion, and he defeated Andre the Giant. So to be a great champion, he knows he has to beat Andre the Giant, too. Gee, that doesn’t sound like a complex or anything…

-The Mountain Dew Slam of the Night looks at Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake doing some lowly jobber a favor by chopping off his reverse permullet.

UNDISPUTED WWF TITLE: RANDY “Macho Man” SAVAGE (with Elizabeth) vs. ANDRE THE GIANT (with Bobby Heenan)
-Savage attacks at the bell, but gets choked down, and Andre rams him in the corner a few times until Savage counters that with a knee to the back. Savage keeps trying to make comebacks, but Andre keeps cutting them off. Andre surfboards him while simultaneously choking him with his strap. Savage is doing an amazing job here; Andre can barely move and Savage just sells his ass off to make Andre’s minimal offense look like the fight of his life.

-Savage finally gets a burst of life and hits Andre from every angle to bring him to his knees, and the crowd totally loses their shit for the champ’s comeback. Jake Roberts suddenly shows up at ringside the the Bag O’ Damien, and slides it underneath the ring apron. The match comes to a grinding halt while Savage, desperate to prove himself, tries to talk Jake into leaving.

-Back from commercial, Savage attacks from behind and gets chopped down. Meanwhile, Heenan frantically searches the ringside area, trying to locate Damien. All he knows is that Jake had Damien when he showed up and didn’t have him when he left. Heenan gets dangerously close to Damien’s location and Savage bolts outside to chase him off, and Jesse actually points out a plot hole there: Randy didn’t see where Jake put the bag. Vince hastily explains that it must have come up while Randy was trying to talk Jake into leaving. But I just love Jesse for totally shooting a hole into that.

-Heenan finally locates Damien and tries to take the bag back to the locker room, but Jake returns and chases Heenan back into the ring. Heenan bumps like a pinball for Savage and Andre gets tangled in the ropes during the fracas. Jake tries to toss Damien onto him, but Andre gets free, runs out of the ring, and faints in the aisle. DDQ is the official call, if you were wondering. 1 for 3. Match of the night, although God knows there’s not exactly a competition there.

-Hacksaw Jim Duggan vows that Dino Bravo will look like a squashed frog when he’s done. As for his match tonight, it’s going to be one on one and two-by-four. Hoooooo.

FLAG MATCH: HACKSAW JIM DUGGAN vs BORIS ZHUKOV
-Copy-pasted from a Coliseum Video I reviewed a few weeks back. Fisticuffs lead to a Duggan atomic drop that launches Zhukov out of the ring. Back in, Zhukov gets a boot and walks into a series of punches. He goes for a dropkick(!) and nearly Wattses all over Duggan before the big patriot moves out of the way. This looked just indescribably bad.

-Duggan whips Zhukov into the ropes and Zhukov gingerly comes off the rope and politely hands his body over to Duggan for a big slam. Three-point stance finishes. 1 for 4. An unfortunate example of one guy totally giving up on a match, as Zhukov seemed to be game for the first minute or so, and then when he realized Duggan just wanted a squash, he said “Fuck it” and mailed it in.

-We flashback to Hulk Hogan appearing as a guest on The Brother Love Show, where Brother Love set him up for an assault by the Big Boss Man and Slick.

THE BROTHER LOVE SHOW
-Brother Love announces that his guest tonight is “a Real American,” which gets a big pop…and then he introduces Slick. Brother Love also makes the fatal mistake of establishing that the Big Bossman isn’t in the building tonight.

-Then he introduces the Hulkster and we get a cute bit of schtick where Brother Love keeps asking Hulk questions and then snatching the microphone away to answer the question himself. Hulk finally gets fed up and grabs the microphone from him, and reams Slick and Brother Love for setting him up. Brother Love takes the microphone back the moment he gets a chance to, and for some reason, that, of all things, pushes Hulk over the edge. He tosses Slick from the ring, handcuffs Brother Love to the top rope, and clotheslines him to the floor, leaving him hanging by his wrist. 2 for 5. I always liked this segment. Brother Love was just a perfect shithead here, not realizing that he could only push his luck so far.

-The Fabulous Rougeau Brothers announce they have relocated from Montreal to Memphis. Parle vous francais?

YOUNG STALLIONS vs. THE FABULOUS ROUGEAU BROTHERS (with Jimmy Hart)
-Canned heat for this one is absolutely out of control while the crowd is visibly sitting on their hands. Jacques and Raymond take turns laying a beating on Jim Powers until Jacques misses a bodypress. Hot tag to Paul Roma, and he cleans house. Vince chides him for beating up the wrong Rougeau Brothers, and sure enough, when he finally goes after the correct Rougeau, he falls victim to Le Bombe De Rougeau. 2 for 6. Another squash in our series of them tonight.

-Andre vows revenge on Jake Roberts. Jake vows that he won’t stop until Damien has consumed a giant.

-Hulk says that truth, justice, and Hulk Hogan law will take over in the Bush administration, so Bossman had better look out. Hogan warns the Bossman that he plans on jerking him from one side or the other.

Cute touch to wrap up; the credits are rolled over shots of Brother Love being bodyslammed and clotheslined over the top rope. The song playing over the credits: “Higher Love.”

3.3

The final score: review Bad

The 411

Easily the weakest card ever for an NBC show; it was a weird case of bad timing for them in that all of the angles and feuds they had going on were at points where they weren't quite ready to give anything away for free yet, so it's this really limp show with four squashes that's just there to fulfill the commitment to the network.