The Name on the Marquee: WWF Prime Time Wrestling (8.15.1988)

-Originlly aired August 15, 1988.

-Your hosts are Gorilla Monsoon & Bobby Heenan. It’s a three-hour special again this week! Bobby’s in a bad moond because the bananaphone is out for repairs this week.

JAKE “The Snake” ROBERTS vs. DANGEROUS DANNY DAVIS (with Jimmy Hart)
-From a town near and dear to my heart, Wheeling, West Virginia. Danny stalls and tries to sucker Jake into chasing him, but it backfires and Jake ends up hiptossing him. He has Danny caught in a wristlock and uses the leverage to lift Danny over his head and slam him. Jake stays on the arm and just drags Danny around the ring and just goes forever with it before slamming Danny down. Jake misses a corner charge and Danny unleashes his skilled arsenal of stomps and stomps administered from other directions. Elbow by Danny gets two. He tries a neck vice, but Danny punches out and hits the short clothesline. DDT looks to finish but Danny makes the ropes and gives Jake a thumb to the eye. Series of shoulderblocks by Danny, but Jake boots him in the gut and DDTs him to finish. A decent four-minute match that took ten minutes.

-Gorilla has the crew rig up a phone on his side of the desk, so he can make calls but Bobby can’t. And that leads to a show-long running gag, as Bobby promised free tickets to Summerslam to a bunch of people that he owed money to, but he didn’t get the tickets and they’re all calling Gorilla demanding to talk to the Brain.

BAD NEWS BROWN vs. SCOTT CASEY
-From Boston Garden. Bad News stalls so much that he singlehandedly necessitates the third hour for this week’s episode. Casey starts armdragging him around and Bad News declares that this whole match is “bullshit” and teases walking out early. Casey applies a wristlock and stays with the arm, switching from hold to hold to wear it down until Bad News punches him out to the floor. Boston is DONE with this match and unloading the “Boring” chant on them. Bad News misses a corner charge and Casey seems to win the fans back with a piledriver for two.

-We actually take a commercial break for this and return with Bad News ramming Casey into the turnbuckle and headbutting him. Bad News targets the throat, then tangles Casey into the ropes and beats on him. Sleeper applies by Bad News, but Casey reverses it. Bad News rams him into the corner to break, and both guys are hurt. Casey throws punches. Bad News tries a kick to the stomach, but Casey grabs his leg, and Bad News uses his free leg for an enziguiri/ghetto blaster to finish. It picked up steam after a while.

UPDATE
-Mean Gene runs down the Summerslam card. Worth noting that they’re still hyping the surprise guest for Brother Love but no longer saying that it’s somebody making their first appearance at MSG.

SPECIAL INTERVIEW
-Craig DeGeorge welcomes Demolition, who show up with Jimmy Hart, and it appears they’re a week behind with this segment because Craig and the commentators are surprised to see him there. But yep, Jimmy announces he’ll be at ringside for the Tag Team Title match at Summerslam ’88.

“The Rock” DON MURACO vs. IRON MIKE SHARPE
-Back to Wheeling. Muraco throws Sharpe around the ring and rams him into the turnbuckles ten times. Muraco takes him down with a side headlock. Sharpe gets free but gets atomic dropped. Sharpe hits the ropes but runs into a powerslam, and the tombstone ends it.

RANDY “Macho Man” SAVAGE (WWF Champion, with Elizabeth and Hulk Hogan) vs. CONQUISTADOR #1 (with Conquistador #2)
-From Superstars of Wrestling. Conquistador attacks from behind but Savage fights back and suplexes for two. Jesse speculates that the Conquistadors are actually the Hebner twins as Savage boots him out to the floor and meets him out there with the top rope axehandle. Back in, the flying elbow finishes with ease, and Hulk kicks the shit out of the other Conquistador to make it a perfect evening.

-Bobby Heenan announces he has a big surprise for the three-hour special and Gorilla is completely blindsided as Brother Love sprints onto the set with no warning. Brother Love presents Gorilla with a big inflatable heart and Gorilla walks off the set in disgust, which perplexes Brother Love, but Bobby triumphantly declares, “It worked!” So we have Brother Love and Bobby co-hosting the show now.

“The Million Dollar Man” TED DIBIASE (with Virgil & Andre the Giant) vs. JUMPING JIM BRUNZELL
-From Wheeling. The Killer Bees are done at this point, and really for the better because they had one idea for those guys and beat it to death for two years. DiBiase is wearing his bad-ass green tuxedo for the first time.

-Brunzell connects with a kneelift and DiBiase heads to the safe corner of the ring for a rest. Brunzell armdrags him back out, then slingshots him back in and atomic drops him. Brunzell applies a side headlock and Heenan’s great on commentary, getting frustrated and complaining that he tried to warn DiBiase that Jim Brunzell isn’t the wrestler to pick for a “tune-up match.” Bodypress by Brunzell gets one. DiBiase finally comes to life with a back suplex and throws Brunzell out to the floor to meet with Andre the Giant for a moment.

-Back from the break, DiBiase gives Brunzell a backbreaker. DiBiase chokes Brunzell over the second rope and Andre just gives him a gentle shove back to the center of the ring. DiBiase goes for the backward falling elbow that always misses, and Brunzell rolls out of the way and makes the comeback. Brunzell whips DiBiase into the ropes for a dropkick, but Andre reaches in and grabs DiBiase’s tights, holding onto him so Brunzell crashes, and then DiBiase dives on top of him for the three-count. Good match, with DiBiase being willing to let Brunzell look like a player and making it a nice back-and-forth battle.

-We get pre-taped words from Jesse Ventura. Jesse addresses rumors that are swirling ever since his participation in Summerslam was announced…he’s not jealous of Hulk, Hulk is jealous of him. Jesse hasn’t wrestled in three years, but chooses not to wrestle because he doesn’t want to damage his beautiful face in the wake of his emerging movie career. He can’t be bought because he’s making hand over fist in Hollywood. Andre the Giant doesn’t scare him, and Andre had better watch where he puts his hands because as a referee, Jesse can fine him for striking him. Jesse promises there will be a winner at Summerslam ’88 and it will be the better team. Jesse continues teasing the face turn that never came.

JUNKYARD DOG vs. ONE MAN GANG (with Slick)
-From Dayton, Ohio. Looking ahead at the match listings for future episodes confirms that, yes, this is the One Man Gang’s last appearance before getting a makeover. Picture quality for this is really weird, as it looks like it’s a dubbed copy that came from a VHS. Maybe Gorilla got this match in a tape trade.

-JYD comes out swinging, punching Slick to the floor and stealing his hat. Dog and Gang trade punches and Gang whips him into the corner so hard that Bobby says “he shifted the ring four feet!” and Gorilla calls the kettle black by saying that Bobby just said something completely unrealistic. Rolling headbutts send Gang out to the floor. Slick gets even and interferes, allowing Gang to sneak up and attack, and a big elbow gets two.

-Back from commercial, Gang keeps hammering him and heads to the second rope, but the big splash misses and Dog sends Gang over the top and out to the floor, and they trade punches until we reach the double count-out. Gang was game and it was as decent as it could be.

ULTIMATE WARRIOR vs. TOM BURTON
-From Dayton. Warrior sends Burton out to the floor, then carries him up the steps and slams him back in the ring. Warrior mows him down with a clothesline that has an audible “whack” to it. Gorilla press and the slam finish.

LEAPING LANNY POFFO vs. TERRY TAYLOR
-From MSG. Lanny does a poem about Superstar Billy Graham, and Graham applauds emphatically and declares “Poffo is a genius!”

-Taylor armdrags Poffo and celebrates. Poffo armdrags him back and Taylor goes to the floor to stall. Back in, Taylor complains about hair-pulling but Poffo keeps on him with a bodypress and a side headlock. Taylor uses the handful of hair himself to turn it into headscissors. Poffo kicks free and cracks Taylor with some punches, and a shoulderblock by Poffo gets two. Taylor comes back with a slam and a chinlock, using handfuls of hair to keep him on the mat. Taylor dumps him on the floor. Poffo tries to sunset flip back in and Taylor blocks it and has to point out to the referee that he’s pinning the man in a funny bit. Taylor makes something of the screw-up by playing up being exasperated with the referee and getting into a shoving match, which nearly causes him to lose the match when the referee shoves him into a roll-up.

-Poffo slams Taylor into position and moonsaults him for two. Scorpion gets the submission, with Sean Mooney again calling it a scorpion despite Lord Alfred’s insistence that it’s a Boston figure four. This was fine and dandy. The scorpion/sharpshooter is an interesting hold in that it was always the finisher WWF guys until they found something else. DiBiase used it for a while, now Taylor’s using it before he switches to the chicken wing, Ron Garvin will use it for a while…

BRUTUS “The Barber” BEEFCAKE vs. HERCULES
-From County Stadium in Milwaukee at Wrestlefest ’88, a show which shockingly has not found its way onto the network yet. This is an area where this company always shined, it’s a 53,000 seat stadium with 25,000 seats sold tonight, and in any other promotion, you’d be seeing gobs of empty seats on every camera angle, but they’re careful about how they shoot this and they’ve configured the ring set-up smartly so it looks like the stadium is packed.

-Beefcake applies a side headlock and wrenches it on Herc. They get into a fist fight and an elbow by Brutus sends Herc out to the floor. Back in, Beefcake keeps beating on Herc until Herc uses a handful of tights to send him outside. Back in, Hercules applies a chinlock.

-In the studio, Gorilla gets another angry phone call from one of Bobby’s friends, George Schlatter. The creator of “Laugh-In” is a pretty unexpected name-drop for this show.

-Beefcake breaks the chinlock with elbows but Herc just applies another one. Beefcake elbows free and gives Hercules ten punches in the corner. Hercules whips him and applies a full nelson, but Beefcake rams him into the corner to break and then applies the sleeper. Weird finish as Herc breaks free from the hold, and Beefcake rams him into the turnbuckle and pins him right away. Why not just put the guy to sleep? Match wasn’t bad, though.

6.9

The final score: review Average

The 411

Gorilla actually ended the show by saying "That three-hour special wasn't as bad as I was expecting," and honestly, that's a pretty good appraisal.