The Name on the Marquee: WWF Prime Time Wrestling (4.11.1988)

-New opening this week!

-Originally aired April 11, 1988.

-Your hosts are Gorilla Monsoon & Bobby Heenan.

“The Rock” DON MURACO (with Superstar Billy Graham) vs. “The Natural” BUTCH REED (with Slick)
-From the SNME taping in Nashville. Reed cuts a vicious promo on Graham in the ring, then goes after him with a chair. Muraco stops the attack and atomic drops Reed, then distracts the referee while Graham whacks Reed with his cane. In the ring, Muraco is all over Reed with elbows and hiptosses. Fistfight goes Muraco’s way, and he snaps Reed’s neck. Slick’s had enough and finally passes a foreign object to his man. Reed hammers him with it and stunguns him for two. Managers almost get into a fight on the floor, distracting the referee.

-In the ring, both men are sucking wind and Reed connects with a boot and an axehandle off the second rope for two. Flying clothesline is sold by Muraco like he’s lying down for a nap. Piledriver by Reed gets two. Slick goes up to the apron for no reason and Muraco shoves Reed into his manager to knock him loopy and roll him up for three. This match looked like somebody was playing a not-too-bad three-minute match at 1/3 speed. Both guys just moved so slow, and apparently, their 1988 resolution was to stop doing cardio.

GREG “The Hammer” VALENTINE (with Jimmy Hart) vs. BRADY BOONE
-From Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Jimmy Hart is wearing a beret to hide his embarrassing haircut, which is a little ridiculous because Brutus cut off his mullet. These two have a bad miscommunication early, as Boone wants to get his token offense, Valentine doesn’t want to let him have it, and it just dies. Boone goes off the ropes to attempt something and Valentine turns it into a spinebuster. They trade forearms and Valentine finally decides to sell for Boone. Valentine avoids a corner charge and Boone does a scary bump right on the back of his neck. So far this show has featured two of the deadest crowds and it’s kind of easy to see why canned heat became standard operating procedure in the next few months. Figure four ends it.

UPDATE
-Lord Alfred Hayes recaps the Duggan/Andre saga, with Andre costing DiBiase his first-round match at Wrestlemania IV. We get exclusive comments from Duggan recorded immediately after the match and promising revenge on Andre, and sure enough Duggan got it with a well-placed shot to the head with the 2×4 a week later.

-Bobby Heenan is relieved that Jim Duggan didn’t win the WWF Title. “Can you imagine that man winning the title! He’s friends with people who wear white socks!”

-Craig DeGeorge is at the interview platform with Outlaw Ron Bass. He tells JYD that Miss Betsy wants a little more, and she won’t stop squeezing JYD’s neck until she’s finished the job. Craig actually tries to prompt the crowd to let Bass know how they feel about JYD and gets NOTHING from them.

-Gorilla holds up the new WWF Magazine with Elizabeth on the cover, and completely misses the joke when Bobby holds the magazine sideways to look through it.

SPECIAL DELIVERY JONES vs. JOHNNY V
-From Hamilton, Ontario with the extra mat in the ring. Joined in progress with Johnny V slamming SD from the apron and stomping away. SD fights back with rights and rams Johnny into the turnbuckles as commentator Nick Bockwinkel explains that punches from SD could “give a charlie horse to the juggular vein.” Backdrop by SD gets a nice pop from Johnny V’s ambitious sell of it. Johnny V tries to fight back with a backdrop of his own, but when he puts his head down, SD just headbutts him and pins him right there. Not much here.

KILLER BEES vs. BOLSHEVIKS
-From Hamilton. Nikolai Volkoff attacks B. Brian Blair before the bell, and there’s a vocal chunk of the crowd that seems happy he did. Blair fights back with an atomic drop and starts working over the nuttal region until Zhukov tries to help, and the Russians collide into each other. Brunzell tags in and agrees to a test of strength, turning it into an arm wringer. Blair tags in but gets caught in the Bolsheviks’ corner and double-teamed. Corner charge misses and the Bees double-team him. Bees go back to work on the arm. Abdominal stretch is applied by Blair, but he must not have it applied right because Volkoff is able to break it by running into the ring and punching him in the face really hard.

-Volkoff chokes Blair out and dumps him onto the floor. Back in, Bolsheviks take turns working him over as Nick Bockwinkel lays out his objections to Gorilla’s passion project, explaining that a team clever enough to screw with one referee would find some way to confuse a second referee, so the two-referees proposal would be wasted effort. Blair ducks an attempted double team and we get the false tag spot, which happens so often on Prime Time Wrestling, it’s a wonder they didn’t work out a sponsorship deal for it. “The False Tag Spot of the Week is brought to you by Kaopectate. Kaopectate can stop a lot of repetitive shit, but it CAN’T stop the Kaopectate False Tag Spot of the Week!”

-Blair finally makes the for-realsies tag and Brunzell goes to work on Zhukov. Dropkick nearly finishes, but that brings Volkoff into the ring and Brunzell is taking on both opponents. Sleeper locked on by Brunzell, but Volkoff comes off the second rope with a double axehandle and pins Brunzell without making the tag. It actually wasn’t that bad, aside from a tiresome spot.

DAVID SAMMARTINO vs. DINO BRAVO (with Frenchy Martin)
-Well, I’ll be jiggered. Gorilla and Bobby don’t even mention Dino’s opponent by name when they introduce this match from Boston. Here’s this chapter of the David Sammartino story: He came back to the WWF in January 1988 for a second chance and two things immediately fucked it up. His dad was perfectly miserable and quit the company, and since his dad was the entire reason that David ever had a job, he was a dead man walking. On top of that, David lost his cool with a heckler in the crowd a few days after this match and kicked him in the mouth, getting himself arrested and fired immediately. There’s something rather telling about David, too, in this match. At Wrestlemania I, Gorilla & Jesse marvel over how much David looks like Daddy Bruno. His hair was the same, his body was the same, the way he moved around the ring was the same. Here we are three years later, and David now has long blonde hair and a more chiseled body. Somebody is tired of being compared to Dad.

-Dino shoves David into the ropes and gives him a forearm. David chops him and a shoulderblock goes nowhere. Dino tries to flip him and David just gives him a boot to the chest. Arm wringers are traded and Dino chops David. Series of armdrags by David and Dino heads to higher ground. Back inside, David goes for a monkeyflip and Dino counters with an inverted atomic drop. Piledriver by Dino and he pauses to celebrate, which costs him the three-count a moment later. Slam and an elbow by Dino get another two-count. Headlock by Dino. David fights out with punches and sunset flips Dino for two. Dino slams him down and goes for the elbow, but it misses. More punches by David, and then a Dad-like charging boot for two. Another slam by David and a knee to the jaw gets two. Dino gets a side suplex out of the clear blue sky and gets the three-count. Short and just a string of moves.

WRESTLEMANIA IV REPORT
-Gene Okerlund recaps the battle royal and the Intercontinental Title match. Bret Hart and Bad News Brown have words about trophy destruction, a subject about which they have passionate but differing viewpoints.

“The Million Dollar Man” TED DIBIASE (with Virgil) vs. ALDEN KINSEY
-From Bristol, TN. DiBiase is fired up, throwing Kinsey out to the floor right away and just ramming his face into the apron over and over before slamming him. Back in, he keeps up the attack, and Kinsey is such a jobber that he actually manages to lose to DiBiase’s backward falling elbow that never connected.

KOKO B. WARE vs. RAVISHING RICK RUDE (with Bobby Heenan)
-Rematch from a bout we saw a few weeks ago, where Koko got distracted by Heenan’s attempted birdnapping. Koko goes to work with punches and Rude makes a hasty retreat to protect his beautiful face. Back in, Koko keeps up the attack with headbutts and dropkicks. Koko does the same crotch-first corner bump that Brady Boone did earlier, but Koko wins for doing his without damn near killing himself.

-Rude works the neck, but Koko elbows out. We take a break and return with Koko caught in a chinlock. Koko starts to fight out, but gets dumped on the floor, where Heenan taunts him, still feeling extra cocky because of Wrestlemania. Back in, Rude goes BACK to the chinlock and slams Koko down. Fistdrop from the top has Koko so prone that Heenan decides to make his move for Frankie, but that brings out the British Bulldogs, who chase him back to the locker room. Rude runs to the locker room to retrieve his manager in a nice callback to the previous match, and Koko wins the second match in the series by count-out. Koko was game but Rude was taking a night off.

3.6

The final score: review Bad

The 411

The angles this week were fine, but aside from the tag team bout, the matches were a whole lot of nothing.