The Name on the Marquee: WWF Prime Time Wrestling (9.17.1987)

-Originally aired September 17, 1987.

-Your hosts are Gorilla Monsoon & Bobby Heenan. It’s the first Thursday night ep—HOLY SHIT, GORILLA IS USING THAT HAIR PAINT STUFF FROM THE INFOMERCIALS. It’s given his hair a maroon tint, too.

JUNKYARD DOG & GEORGE “The Animal” STEELE vs DEMOLITION
-From MSG, where the big dot-matrix clock says it’s 10:49 p.m. so at least this one’s going to be quick.. Gorilla is on top of this match with the “We won’t see too many dropkicks” line. I never got this, if it’s too a point where your commentator has a go-to line for a match that’s likely to suck, why even book the match in the first place?

-Ax axes JYD, but when he doesn’t go down, Ax slams him. JYD bounces right up and lights into him with punches. Ax runs to the wrong corner and gets bitten by Steele on the apron, which leads to a funny visual as the side of George’s face as Ax’s make-up all over it for the rest of the match. Ax & Smash are completely weirded out by Steele but eventually they sucker him in the corner and gang up on him. Smash tries a clothesline and George just bites his arm on contact.

-JYD capitalizes on that by wringing Smash’s now-injured arm. Demolition manages to get JYD trapped in their corner and Ax applies a chinlock to try to ground him, but JYD fights out of it immediately. Demolition double-teams the Dog. Dog and Smash collide on a double clothesline. They do the false-tag spot, but Steele is an idiot with a temper, so he stays in there until Demolition dumps him over the top rope. And he screws up the finish! Referee gets distracted and George grabs a ringside chair, brings it into the ring, and knocks out Ax. JYD lands on top of him for the pin while George throws the chair out of the ring. So the referee turns around and sees JYD lying on top of Ax, and that’s all he sees…and the referee just kind of freezes and stares at the scene for a moment, then turns around and looks out to the floor, and then calls for the bell. So basically, the referee got suspicious because he saw the chair on the floor, where it was supposed to be. Outstanding!

-Bobby Heenan makes the valid point that Lanny Poffo probably wouldn’t be such a jobber if he didn’t egg on his opponents with derogatory poems.

LEAPING LANNY POFFO vs JOSE ESTRADA
-From MSG. Fun fact: Lanny is actually subbing for the supposed-to-have-debuted-here Chavo Guerrero.

-Estrada attacks from behind and sees his opportunity so he’s attacking at 100 MPH with rapid-fire clotheslines and axehandles off the turnbuckles. Estrada is just mauling Poffo, who still has his entrance jacket on. Dropkick by Estrada gets two. Poffo finally manages to kick Estrada away and get his jacket off. Right hands by Poffo and a chokehold. Estrada comes right back with an uppercut and yanks Lanny by his tights out to the floor.

-Back in, Poffo gets fired up but Estrada stops him cold by gouging his eyes. Poffo kicks Estrada away. Estrada rebounds and tears at Poffo’s face and chokes him. Poffo fights him off with more kicks. Poffo fights back with kind-of-a-reverse-Frankensteiner. Estrada just shakes it off and boots him down. Poffo fights back with punches, but the moonsault misses. Estrada sends him to the corner and goes for a splash, but Poffo moves, Estrada crashes, and Lanny somersaults from the top rope to get the three. These two never really figured out what they wanted to do in there and the match never came together.

-Bobby reads his fan letters congratulating him on getting Prime Time moved to Thursday night.

-Slick invites us to listen to “Jive Soul Bro” on the Piledriver album.

-Superstar Billy Graham is back in the ring! Butch Reed can knock him down, but he’ll keep getting up. For two months.

-Craig DeGeorge is at the interview platform with Nikolai Volkoff and Slick. Slick introduces his newest charge, Bam-Bam Bigelow. Out comes Oliver Humperdink instead, and Bam-Bam shows up only when Oliver calls him out. Bam-Bam tells Slick to GTFO, Volkoff gets in Bam-Bam’s face, as Bigelow punches him off the platform.

RAVISHING RICK RUDE vs SPECIAL DELIVERY JONES
-From the Spectrum. Gorilla whips out some jargon while busting on Rude for not knowing “where the hard camera is.”

-Rude musses his hair on the lock-up, and there’s an awesome moment as he asks for a brush, and the ringside attendant actually gets one for him. We take a pause for him to brush his hair. SD reacts by biel throwing Rude by his hair and Rude is so offended he goes for a walk. Back in, Rude connects with a series of elbows. SD comes back with an atomic drop and some punches that send Rude back out to the floor.

-Back in, they duel on a test of strength and a knee to the gut gives Rude the edge. SD gets his second wind but goes for a corner charge and runs into a boot. Dick Graham actually makes a prediction on commentary, calling Rude a future World Champion. Granted it wasn’t for this company, but good on him for kind-of-correctly calling that.

-Fistdrop off the top by Rude, and he could go for the pin but he chooses to pose instead. Chinlock locked on. Jones fights out and they trade fists, and Rude catches him in a neckbreaker—just a regular neckbreaker, not his own spin on it—but again chooses not to finish. Corner charge misses and SD finally makes Rude regret all the squandered pins, clotheslining and punching him until Rude begs him for a handshake, which SD says no to. Knee to the gut by Rude stops SD in his tracks, and the body vice gets the submission. Rude demand that the ring announcer declare him “winner and sexiest man alive.”

-Gene Okerlund drops in to congratulate Gorilla on a recent trip to Las Vegas where Gorilla managed to make his money last long enough to spend 31 hours in the casino. It kind of sounds like Gene just goofing around, but from the stories about Gorilla I semi-believe that. Mr. Fuji and Demolition stroll in to complain about how few matches they’ve wrestled lately because nobody wants to face them.

RANDY “Macho Man” SAVAGE (with Elizabeth) vs TIGER CHUNG LEE
-Okay, if he’s facing Chunger, then Savage is definitely full-blown face now. Chunger throws a right hand and they trade arm wringers. Lee sends Savage into the corner and works the back as we get a pre-taped promo from Elizabeth, calmly saying that she’s not a fan of Honky Tonk Man’s style of wrestling.

-Lee clotheslines Savage down for two as we get some awesome continuity on commentary, as Vince and Bruno are fawning over Savage and Jesse finally snaps and reminds us that Bruno attacked Savage during an interview once.

-Meanwhile, Lee goes to the top rope, but Savage slams him off and finishes with the flying elbow. That was literally 90% Lee, I guess as the ultimate test of “Are we sure he can work as a face?”

-We get pre-taped words from Honky Tonk Man. He declares himself the greatest Intercontinental Champion of ALL time, no matter how much it angers Randy Savage to hear that.

-A camera follows Randy Savage to the locker room. He catches Jimmy Hart all alone and threatens to murder him if Honky ever says anything like that again. Jimmy Hart is almost in tears as he says that Savage would never do something like that if Honky had been in the room.

BULLDOGS’ DOG TIPS
-Remember to make sure your dog is properly vaccinated and tagged.

OUTBACK JACK & SPECIAL DELIVERY JONES vs RUDY RIDER & DARRELL NICKEL
-It’s like the first match in Outback Jack career mode or something. Nickel is a big muscual sumbitch and hammers Jones. Corner charge misses and Nickel does a Heenan-style bump on the turnbuckles. Damn, Nickel wants a job. Outback and Jones switch off and work the arm. All four men wind up in the ring. SD just calmly knocks Rider out of there. Boomerang finishes.

-Back in the studio, Bobby is starting to get more hate mail than he can handle about the time slot change for Prime Time. He goes over his schedule for the next month and slowly realizes that moving the show to Thursday was a bad idea.

BAM-BAM BIGELOW (with Oliver Humperdink) vs. NIKOLAI “Company Man” VOLKOFF (with Slick)
-Volkoff tries to attack at the bell, but Bam-Bam no-sells it and punches him right over the top rope. Volkoff tries shoulderblocks and they’re all no-sold. Bam-Bam wipes out Volkoff with a shoulderblock of his own and punches the piss out of Volkoff. Volkoff tries to go for the eyes, but Bigelow slugs back and headbutts him down. Diving headbutt as Slick screams, “What’s going on?!”

-Shoulderblock by Bigelow, and then an elbow to the head. Volkoff goes for the eyes and bites Bigelow. Skullcracker topples Volkoff, and Bigelow props him up just to dropkick him right over the top rope. Volkoff goes back in and just gets headbutted and headbutted and headbutted until he goes back to the floor again. Back inside, Bigelow punches him, and Volkoff goes to the eyes again. Irish whip is dodged by a forward roll, and Bam-Bam headbutts and punches Volkoff simultaneously to KO him and get the three-count. Bam-Bam’s Ass, meet Rocket Ship to the Moon. Rocket Ship to the Moon, meet Bam-Bam’s Ass.

-Back in the studio, Gorilla now realizes that Bobby is regretting the move to Thursday so he speaks out in favor of it.

-Gorilla mentions that Tito Santana is now one half of “Task Force.”

INTERCONTINENTAL TITLE: HONKY TONK MAN (Champion, with Jimmy Hart) vs TITO SANTANA
-Okay, this is kind of neat, as they established a mini-angle for this earlier in the show. Gorilla had mentioned that the “greatest of all time” claim pissed off all of the former Intercontinental Champions, including Pat Patterson, Don Muraco, Pedro Morales, and Tito Santana. So logically we can assume Tito demanded this match because he’s offended by Honky’s hubris.

-Honky stalls and Jimmy Hart complains that he’s distracted by the crowd noise. He warns the fans to keep the noise down or else Honky won’t sing after the match. Honky finally goes in, gets bodyslammed a few times, and bails. Back in, Honky blocks and reverses a hiptoss, but an elbow misses. Honky fights back and applies an armbar to wear Tito down. Tito gets fired up by a “Tito” chant and reverses it.

-Atomic drop and ten shots into the turnbuckle by Tito. Tito puts the boots to him, and a big backdrop follows. Knee for two, and two for tea. Back from commercial, Honky can’t quite put him away. Tito throws punches, Honky throws kicks, Honky misses an axehandle, and a bodypress by Tito gets two. Abdominal stretch by Honky and sure enough Gorilla finds fault with it. Tito hiptosses out.

-Tito stomps away at Honky and connects with a big right hand. Flying forearm connects, but instead of going for the pin, Tito goes for the figure four. Jimmy runs in and swings the guitar at Tito. He misses but the referee calls for the DQ anyway.

5.0

The final score: review Not So Good

The 411

Hot feature bout, and the Bam-Bam angle and squash are pretty fun, but the rest is pretty pass-up-able.