The Name on the Marquee: WWF Prime Time Wrestling (10.29.1987)

-Originally aired October 29, 1987.

-Your hosts are Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby Heenan. The set is supposed to be decorated for Halloween, but Bobby screwed up the arrangements, so to punish him, Gorilla switched out a scheduled King Kong Bundy match for a Bam-Bam Bigelow match.

BAM-BAM BIGELOW (with Oliver Humperdink) vs SIKA
-From Boston. Sika stalls uncharacteristically before getting knocked to the mat with a shoulderblock. Bam-Bam targets the leg with diving headbutts and a toehold. Sika goes to the eyes to break the hold. Bam-Bam leapfrogs Sika and clotheslines him, and Sika goes to the floor for a rest. Back in, Bam-Bam throws a dropkick. He goes for an avalanche but Sika ducks and Bam-Bam absolutely CRASHES into the corner, getting a big reaction from Boston for it.

-They trade rights. Sika Irish whips Bam-Bam and Bam-Bam does a Flair flip onto the apron(!) as Sika charges and crashes on his own attempted avalanche, which means Bam-Bam is in prime position for the slingshot splash to finish. Dat finish doe.

IVAN PUTSKI vs IRON MIKE SHARPE
-From MSG, with Gorilla and Nick Bockwinkel on commentary. Ivan Putski is back after a year and a half off, although I have no idea what anybody thought they’d be able to do with him.

-Poses are traded and Putski quickly overpowers Sharpe and sends him to the corner. Iron Mike decides he’s better off outwrestling him and goes for a top wristlock, but Putski overpowers him again. Iron Mike tries a full nelson, but get out your Gorilla Monsoon bingo cards because he doesn’t have those fingers locked, and Putski flexes his way to freedom.

-Iron Mike tries a dropkick and misses, although it would have only made contact with Putski’s knee. Sharpe finally decides to try punching and choking and that finally turns the tables. Sharpe tries ramming him in the corner, but Putski moves out of the way and Iron Mike hits the post shoulder-first. Polish hammer finishes. Nothing remarkable for either man, but the crowd shot after the bell is a keeper for the site of Vladimir the Superfan cosplaying as Randy Savage.

-A stagehand has retrieved a pumpkin from the dumpster, so the set looks a LITTLE festive now.

-And now, the moment that Ted DiBiase went from “heel” to “HEEL.” The Million Dollar Man comes up to the interview platform and Virgil has a basketball with him. DiBiase pulls a five-year-old named Shawn from the crowd and asks if he can bounce the ball 10 times. Shawn does it, so DiBiase offers $500 if he can bounce the ball 15 times. Shawn bounces the ball 14 times, and DiBiase kicks it away from him. The heat from this is just extraordinary and what more can you say about it but the fact that they included a basketball with a Ted DiBiase action figure released a year ago? Cute story from Ted DiBiase’s autobiography, as the kid was a plant and got paid the $500, but since he was only five years old, he got so worked up about being on TV and in front of the crowd that he forgot about the plan for the segment and was GENUINELY crying about how he didn’t bounce the ball 15 times. Somebody posted a great photo on Facebook not that long ago of DiBiase having a chance encounter with adult Shawn at a car rental office, so it’s nice to know he recovered from the trauma.

HACKSAW JIM DUGGAN vs JOHNNY K-9
-From Toronto. Hacksaw’s back but again, they’re pretending he was never gone. Kind of like the final episode of “Boy Meets World” when Minkus tells everyone he was over on the other side of the school the whole time.

-Duggan headbutts K-9. K-9 throws a punch so hard that he falls backward and lands on his ass. Duggan gives him nothing, dropping a knee and applying a chinlock. K-9 sends him into the ropes and gives him an elbow to the chest. Hacksaw just hacksaws up from that and flings him across the ring. Big slam by Duggan, and the three-point stance ends it. Just a squash.

-Gene Okerlund chats with Brutus Beefcake. Everyone in the world will be watching the Survivor Series, and Beefcake is delighted by the thought of getting to give five haircuts in one night.

BOLSHEVIKS (with Slick) vs LANCE ALLEN & SONNY ROGERS
-Boris Zhukov’s debut, from Superstars.

-Volkoff starts with Sonny Boy, with a series of knees and a double-underhook suplex. Zhukov tosses Sonny to the corner and demands FRESH jobber. Volkoff rams Allen into the corner and tosses him out to the floor. Zhukov rams him into the barricade and Rogers helps his partner back into the ring, which was the worst thing he could have done. Volkoff drops him throat-first on the ropes and Zhukov chokes away at him. Double forearm by Zhukov gets three. That was about the peak of the Bolsheviks in terms of being perceived as a threat.

SUPERSTAR BILLY GRAHAM vs “The Natural” BUTCH REED (with Slick)
-From Toronto. This is something of a rarity for Prime Time, a match with an actual issue behind it. They brawl as soon as Graham steps through the ropes. Sleeper locked on by Graham. He’s close to the ropes so Slick passes a weapon to his man, so Reed breaks the hold AND knocks Graham completely loopy. Reed takes Graham over to the apron and snaps his leg over it repeatedly to work over the plastic hip. He even clobbers Graham a few times with the timekeeper’s hammer.

-Graham is so weak that Reed is able to overpower him with a test of strength. Graham managers to flip himself over and uses the test of strength to get Reed’s shoulders on the mat for a two-count, which irks Gorilla because “that’s not a pinning combination in my book.” OK, dude. Graham gets distracted by shenanigans involving the theft of Slick’s hat. Reed lobs a chair into the ring and presses it into Graham’s hip and the commentators are gobsmacked that the referee is allowing that.

-Reed comes off the top rope, but Graham is ready with a shot to the gut. Bearhug is locked on by the Superstar, but a cane shot from Slick breaks the hold. Reed sweeps the legs up and pins Graham with his feet on the ropes. These two had a DISMAL match in Philadelphia around this time so my hopes weren’t high, but really, Graham, in his condition, delivered probably the best match he was capable of at this point and it wasn’t bad at all.

-Gene Okerlund talks to Honky Tonk Man. Five opponents at Survivor Series, but Honky’s bringing his guitar, so you may as well call it “batting practice.”

-Craig DeGeorge is at the interview platform with Bobby Heenan, Slick, Mr. Fuji, Jimmy Hart, and Johnny V, all managing a single team during the 10-team match at Survivor Series. Bobby Heenan did about 95% of the talking, which is a big let-down for those of us just dying to hear one last promo from Johnny “Tony Clifton Wannabe” V.

KEN PATERA, BILLY JACK HAYNES, & “The Rock” DON MURACO vs COWBOY BOB ORTON & ISLANDERS (with Bobby Heenan)
-Bruce Prichard, Mike McGuirk, and Nick Bockwinkel on commentary. These once-in-a-lifetime commentary combos are just fascinating to me.

-Haku starts with Haynes. Haku with a series of shoulderblocks on Haynes. Elbow misses and they stalemate. Tama tags in and Haynes just hiptosses him across the ring on his way in. Muraco slams Tama and brings in Ken Patera, who uses his cast to whack Tama in the manner of a weasel, allegedly.

-Muraco and Orton end up in the ring together, getting a pretty big reaction from the crowd, but Orton chickens out and tags in Haku. Haku traps Muraco in the heel corner, but Muraco just fights off all three men and sends Orton out to the floor.

-Back from the break, Patera applies a chinlock on Haku as the commentators notice that Bobby Heenan is missing. Bockwinkel deems this suspicious because if Heenan isn’t at ringside, it must mean he has…a plan.

-Heels start going to work on Patera’s arm while Bockwinkel questions the wisdom of wrestling in Patera’s condition. Even if you have medical clearance, isn’t going into the ring wearing a big giant brace showcasing your injury a bit stupid? Patera makes the tag to Muraco and this time Orton isn’t fast enough to escape. Dropkick and an Irish whip by Muraco.

-Orton counters an attempted backdrop and Muraco gets triple-teamed in the corner. Funny visual, as Patera’s approach to stopping it is walking over and bonking Tama on the head with his cast, a la Moe. Tama tags in and chokes out Muraco. Tama holds up Muraco for a knee by Orton, and Orton actually connects! The heels should buy lottery tickets together now.

-In an even BIGGER holy shit moment, Orton actually does an RKO! I’ll be damned. It’s 1987 so it’s only called a “nice maneuver” at this point. Islanders double-team Muraco. Nerve hold by Haku. Muraco fights it and we get the false hot tag, and I’m shocked at how sick I am of that spot at this point. Pier sixer breaks out without the hot tag actually being made, but Orton falls victim to ironic justice as Ken Patera knocks him out cold with his cast and Muraco gets the pin. If they cared about acknowledging history they could have made a big deal out of that. Good match overall, though.

7.0

The final score: review Good

The 411

This show is honestly better than it looks. The dud matches are short, the feature's solid, Graham/Reed is a pleasant surprise, and the DiBiase segment is an all-time classic. Give it a look.