wrestling / Columns

That Was Then 11.10.07: Looking Back At Survivor Series 1995 & 1996

November 10, 2007 | Posted by Sam Caplan

We’re back and ready to continue our look back at Survivor Series, year by year. We’re up to 1995, so let’s go ahead and jump right in.

Survivor Series 1995

By the time Survivor Series 1995 rolled around, the WWF had been running on Diesel Power for almost a full year. Diesel had won the WWF Title from Bob Backlund just three days after the 1994 Survivor Series, the event at which Backlund had won the title from Bret Hart. Now we had come full circle and Bret finally got an opportunity to regain the title he had not been pinned or made to submit for. Held in Washington, DC, Survivor Series 1995 would also see the return of President Bill Clinton, or at least the same impersonator they had gotten to show up at Wrestlemania X. Fortunately for Mr President, he would not be subjected to hanging out with Ted Dibiase and IRS this time around.

But speaking of Ted Dibiase, he made his first appearance of the evening in the opening match as his new charge, the 123 Kid, teamed with Skip, Rad Radford (Louie Spicolli doing a grunge rocker gimmick), and Tom Prichard against Barry Horowitz, Hakushi, Marty Jannetty, and Bob Holly. The Kid had just joined Dibiase a week or so before the PPV after turning on Razor Ramon during a match with Sid. Horowitz had been feuding with Skip for months because, after not winning a single match for years, he had upset the then-undefeated Skip and then beaten him again at Summerslam. Hakushi was also feuding with Skip after Skip cost him a match against Horowitz. Radford was the out of shape slob that Skip and Sunny had taken under their wing in an attempt to show that they could take any out of shape loser and whip him into shape. The rest were just kind of there because whatever. Despite all the backstory everyone else had here, Marty Jannetty was the star of the show, as he was left in a 2-on-1 situation against the Kid and Skip, but evened the odds by giving Skip a big powerbomb offf the top rope to eliminate him, then came within an eyelash several times of eliminating the Kid before Sid wandered down to ringside and dropped Jannetty on the top rope, giving Kid the win. Marty Jannetty, even back then, was notorious for putting on amazing in-ring performances whenever people expected him to just be background dressing, and then get himself in trouble and disappear before he could take advantage of it. Even to this day I consider him to be the superior worker to Shawn Michaels, and I really believe that Marty Jannetty could have been something really special if he didn’t keep letting his personal problems derail his career. Oh well.

The second match saw WWF Women’s Champion Alundra Blayze team with Sakie Hasegawa, Kyoko Inoue, and Chaparita Asari to face Bertha Faye, Aja Kong, Tomoko Watanabe, and Lioness Asuka. This match was all about building a future match between Alundra and Aja Kong, as Kong singlehandedly eliminated Blayze’s entire team and then, when it came down to just the two of them, Aja scored a clean win over the Women’s Champion. This was obviously intended to set up a singles match down the line, but then Alundra decided to jump ship to WCW and take the Women’s Title with her, dropping it in a garbage can live on Nitro in one of the most famous moments of the Monday Night Wars and directly led to Bret Hart getting screwed over in Montreal two years later because Vince McMahon feared a repeat, only this time with his World Champion. Funny how you can look at the cause and effect of things and see how a seemingly unrelated situation can wreak havoc like that.

Up next was the Survivor Series debut of Goldust as he faced Bam Bam Bigelow. Goldust had just made his debut the month before, but hadn’t yet started doing the homosexual gimmick, that would come a month or so later against Razor Ramon. As for right now, he was just Dustin Rhodes in a yellow bodysuit and gold facepaint. A lot of people at the time were wondering why he didn’t just come over to the WWF as Dustin Rhodes, but the whole point of the Goldust gimmick was to separate Dustin from his father in the eyes of the fans, and this gimmick did that in a big way, and even today most people I know don’t think “Dusty’s son” when they think of Goldust. Anyway, Bam Bam didn’t have a chance because Goldust came in with a huge push, and he put Bam Bam away with a bulldog to pick up the win.

The next match saw King Mabel, Jerry Lawler, Hunter Hearst Helmsley, and Isaac Yankem, DDS take on Henry Godwinn, Savio Vega, Fatu, and the returning Undertaker. The Undertaker was returning because he had been out for two months with a legit cracked orbital bone that happened when Mabel and Yokozuna took turns legdropping him on an episode of Raw. Because the injury was legit, he came back with a protective face mask, which he would go on to wear for the next several months. Anyway, nothing match which saw the heels get some token offense before the Undertaker came in and, in rapid succession, eliminate Lawler, Yankem, and Helmsley before Mabel just turned tail and ran for the countout loss. It’s funny that on a team consisting of Jerry Lawler, Kane, and Triple H, Mabel was the team captain and prime target of the Undertaker.

Up next was a unique concept that I’m sorry they never did again, the Wild Card Match. It was a standard 4-on-4 elimination match, but the teams were apparently formed by random draw, and so you had heels teaming with faces, which was a very unique situation at that time. The teams were Razor Ramon, Dean Douglas, Yokozuna, and Owen Hart against Shawn Michaels, Ahmed Johnson (making his in-ring debut), Sid, and Davey Boy Smith. Because of the unusual team dynamics involved here, you had some cute things happening, like Dean Douglas taking a swing at his partner Razor Ramon, only to get socked back and rolled up for the pin by Shawn Michaels. There was another cute spot where Sid held Razor for Shawn Michaels to superkick, but Razor ducked out of the way and hit Sid, and Michaels just shrugged like “ah, whatever” and wandered away while Razor pinned Sid. Davey Boy pinned Razor and then Ahmed eliminated Owen Hart, leaving Yokozuna alone against the remaining three opponents. He kept going for a few minutes, but eventually was bodyslammed and pinned by Ahmed for the win.

Finally it’s main event time, as WWF World Champion Diesel defended against Bret Hart in a No DQ match. The story here was that Bret and Diesel had met for the WWF Title twice before, but both matches ended in a DQ because of outside interference before either man could score a fall on the other, hence the No DQ stip. The seeling point for this match was basically that this time, there will be a winner. There didn’t end up being any outside interference this time around, but that didn’t stop them from using the stipulation to their advantage, including one cool spot where Bret tied Diesel’s legs to the ringpost and then started whaling on him with a chair. Towards the end, Diesel knocked Bret off the apron and through a table at ringside, then rolled Bret back in and went for the Jackknife, but Bret just slumped to the ground. Diesel hesitated for just a moment, and that was enough time for Bret to recover and, as Diesel went to lift him back up, Bret rolled him into an inside cradle for the win and WWF Title #3. Diesel was irate, and got right up, gave Bret two Jackknife powerbombs, then laid out several officials who came into the ring to stop him, but his WWF Title reign mercifully came to an end that night.

Why mercifully? See, there was a fundamental problem with the way the WWF handled Diesel’s booking for the year or so prior to this. Up until he split with Shawn Michaels at Survivor Series 1994, Diesel was a cool, confident badass with a smart mouth who would run people down verbally, and then go and kick their ass in the match. He got over by eliminating like seven people in a row in the Royal Rumble all by himself, and by eliminating almost an entire Survivor Series team by himself. However, once he got the WWF Title, he all of a sudden became a WWF-brand babyface champion/spokesman who kissed babies and helped little old ladies cross the street, and the way they totally abandoned what made him cool in the first place caused the fans to turn on Diesel, and house show gates and PPV buys dropped as a result, and the WWF actually ran in the red the year Diesel was champion. Once he lost the title and immediately turned back into the heelish character he had been before (and actually acknowledged the change he had forced on him on TV), he regained some of his popularity, but by that point the damage had been done, and he left for WCW the following spring anyway. The problem the WWF has is that it has this image that their top babyface always has to be a pure babyface like Hulk Hogan, and they don’t realize that once you get away from the persona that made the wrestler popular, you’re taking away what made the character interesting and you just end up with endless reiterations of Hulk Hogan for the rest of time. You even see that today with the way both John Cena and Batista have been neutered. Cena had his raps that he wrote himself and his nasty attitude, while Batista was the guy who didn’t say much, but fucking killed everyone he got in the ring with, but within seconds of Wrestlemania 21 ending, both had been turned into the standard company spokesperson model champion that most of the fans will turn on until somebody really cool like Steve Austin or the Rock comes along. You would think that those two, as the most popular wrestlers the company has seen in the last 20 years, would maybe tell the WWF that their idea of a babyface champion doesn’t sell now that it’s not 1984 anymore, but I guess that’d be asking too much. So next time you watch John Cena vowing to destroy Randy Orton for beating up his dad instead of coming up with a scathing rap and then stomping his ass in the parking lot and wonder why John Cena can’t be cool like he used to, there’s your answer.

Survivor Series 1996

The Survivor Series made its first appearance in New York City in 1996 as the tenth edition came from the WWF’s home arena of Madison Square Garden.

The opening match saw WWF World Tag Team Champions Owen Hart & Davey Boy Smith team with the New Rockers (Marty Jannetty and Leif Cassidy) to take on the Godwinns and Doug Furnas & Phil Lafon. In this particular match, the New Rockers and the Godwinns were pretty much extraneous, and the match was really about building Furnas and Lafon (fresh off an impressive stint in ECW) up as top challengers to Owen & Davey. Once everybody else jobbed out and it came down to those two teams, Furnas and Lafon scored two straight falls to upset the champions, win the match, and immediately establish themselves. Furnas and Lafon had spent a lot of time working in Japan, and were pulling out some cool moves that the WWF fans weren’t used to and got a lot of oohs and aahs from the crowd, but for whatever reason, they never really did anything with them after this. They spent a few months working Owen and Davey, but the feud just kind of petered out when they were preparing to restart the Hart Foundation after Wrestlemania 13, and Furnas and Lafon just faded away, and I’m not sure if either of them are even in the business anymore.

The second match saw the latest in a series of PPV matches between the Undertaker and Mankind, this being the fourth that year. Mankind got over huge when he came to the WWF and went right after the Undertaker his first night, but instead of the Undertaker coming back and handily defeating Mankind like most people expected, and indeed as he had done with every monster heel he had fed to him over the years, Mankind defeated him right in the middle of the ring, which was unheard of at the time. Then everybody thought the Undertaker was going to get his revenge in the Boiler Room Brawl at Summerslam, but Mankind not only won again, but also stole the Undertaker’s manager Paul Bearer, who gave the match to Mankind after whacking the Undertaker in the head with his own urn. Undertaker finally beat him in the Buried Alive match a month before this, and now in this match Paul Bearer was suspended above the ring in a cage, and if Undertaker won he would get five minutes alone with Paul Bearer. Undertaker did win this match, but before he could get his hands on poor Uncle Paul, the Executioner (Terry Gordy under a mask) ran in and beat Undertaker down, leading to a match between the two the following month which Undertaker would win and Gordy would disappear after.

Up next, Triple H, Crush, Goldust, and Jerry Lawler faced Marc Mero, Barry Windham, Jake Roberts, and a newcomer by the name of Rocky Maivia. Much like Furnas and Lafon earlier in the show, this match was about getting Rocky over, and his coming to the WWF was treated as a really big deal, though there was a major problem with him right from the start. Remember what I said earlier about Diesel and the way WWF expects its babyface champions to be like? Well, they did the same thing with Rocky Maivia by having him come out as the smiling, high fiving babyface who gives it 110% and blah blah blah, but even though he got a decent reaction at this show, the fans quickly and violently turned on him, and the WWF had no idea why he wasn’t getting over because he was doing everything they thought a babyface should, so if you think the WWF not listening to its fans is a new thing, think again. It wasn’t until he was taken off TV entirely, then later brought back as a heel who turned on the fans who had turned on him that he finally started to get over, and when they let him use his natural charisma instead of saying “Be like this, and we don’t care if it’s not playing to your strengths” and became the Rock, he became one of the top names of the last ten years. The WWF will just never learn, you know? Anyway, it comes down to Rocky 2-on-1 against Crush and Goldust, and if you need me to tell you that he comes back to singlehandedly eliminate both of them, you’re just not paying good enough attention.

Now the real fun starts, as Bret Hart takes on Stone Cold Steve Austin. A bit of backstory: Bret had taken some time off after Wrestlemania 12, and his contract came up during that time, so it was not a 100% certainty that he would even return to the WWF when he was ready to work again. He entertained some very tempting offers from WCW, but in the end decided to return to the WWF for a longer term contract that would extend beyond the end of his in-ring wrestling career. However, during the months that he was gone, Austin won King Of The Ring, delivered the classic Austin 3:16 promo, then spent the next four months running Bret down and calling him out, with the idea that if he returned, there would be a match waiting for Bret, but if he didn’t, it’d make him look like he pussied out and ran from Austin. But Bret did come back, and agreed to this match, but things had changed quite a bit in the months he was gone, because now the fans had become accustomed to Austin and liked his schtick, and when Bret came back trying to be the squeaky clean hero he always had been, the fans weren’t having it and totally turned on him. It was a completely unexpected situation for Bret and the WWF, but they made the most of it by turning him heel in 1997, and the feud with Austin was used as the catalyst. But this was the first match of that feud, and it was a great wrestling match which showed that Bret still had what it took, and also that Austin could keep up with him. They also smartly booked the finish in such a way that it looked like Bret caught him off guard and pinned him instead of decisively beating him, making it look like Austin had his number and Bret just got lucky. In fact, I believe Bret won every match between the two in 96/97, but this first match was probably the best straight up wrestling match they had.

Back to the elimination matches, Faarooq, Vader, and the New Diesel and New Razor Ramon (again, email me if you need the info on this one) took on Yokozuna, Savio Vega, Flash Funk, and Jimmy Snuka, who was a surprise partner for the face team. There really wasn’t much of a match here, it was basically just something to kill time between the Hart-Austin match and the main event, and everybody got disqualified for brawling in the ring. This was pretty much the worst ending to any Survivor Series elimination match. Not much else to say about it, really.

Finally it’s main event time, as Shawn Michaels defended the WWF World Title against Sid. I always thought it was pretty funny that this very match got pulled from Summerslam 95 because the card was too weak, then they ended up using it to main event another PPV a year or so later. Shawn was on the roll of a lifetime at this point, as he had won the WWF Title at Wrestlemania 12 and had subsequently been singlehandedly dragging awesome match after awesome match out of every stiff he got thrown in the ring with. While a lot of people might question his drawing power, I point to his 1996 run as proof of how he had no peers in terms of his ability as a worker at that point. So for his latest challenge, he was thrown in the ring with Sid who he had feuded with before and defeated, but now the WWF Title was on the line. Side had returned to the WWF the previous summer to team with Michaels, but had won a WWF Title shot by beating Vader at Buried Alive, so they were at odds once more and, to make matters worse, Sid had beaten up Jose Lothario’s son the week before, so Shawn was also out for revenge. Much like the weird crowd reaction to the Bret-Austin match, the crowd here began unexpectedly cheering for Sid over Michaels, even when he attacked Jose and sent him falling off the apron to the floor, apparently with a heart attack. Everyone went to go check on Jose, and Sid used the distraction to grab a TV camera, hit Shawn with it, then give him the powerbomb to win his first World Title. In a way it seemed like it was too little too late for Sid, who had really been on a hot streak in 1991-93 in the WWF and WCW, but then he disappeared for two years and the luster was gone by the time he got back. I was a little surprised to see Sid win the title since I figured that Bret would return and beat Austin (which he did) and then go on to work a title program with Shawn, but that obviously never happened until…well, you know.

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And that’s the first ten years in the bag, so that means we’re halfway through. We’ll be back soon with the one I know everybody’s been waiting for, 1997 and 1998. So until then, this is the Robust One signing off. Thanks for reading.

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Sam Caplan

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