WWF Prime Time Wrestling (8.21.1989) Review

-Originally aired August 21, 1989.

-Your hosts are Gorilla Monsoon and Roddy Piper in Studio A, and Bobby Heenan in Studio B. Bobby announces that he does, in fact, have a guest in there with him this week…Intercontinental Champion Ravishing Rick Rude. They trade skirt jokes for a minute while Piper looks JUST a bit irked.

RAVISHING RICK RUDE (Intercontinental Champion, with Bobby Heenan) vs. TIM HORNER
-God, the fake Rude music is just excruciating.

-Horner comes out of the gate with an atomic drop and an armbar. Rude tries an Irish whip but crashes on the follow-through splash. Looks like Horner’s getting a miracle this week, but Rude goes to the eyes and stunguns him. But what’s this? Rude throws a clothesline and hurts his arm due to the earlier armbar. Rude tries a chinlock, but Horner survives and faceplants him, and Bobby is slowly starting to freak out at ringside. Inverted atomic drop by Horner. Ten punches in the corner and a monkeyflip, and Horner’s having the best week of his WWF run tonight.

-Until he crashes on an attempted dropkick. Rude Awakening finishes it, and Rude looks like he got a real lucky break there. Bobby gives Horner a foot to the face and just arrogantly acts like it was an easy win. Rude announces that there’s no one in attendance who meets his standards, so they skip the post-match kiss.

-In Studio B, Rude promises five Rude Awakenings at SummerSlam next week. They throw a few more shots at Piper, and Piper fires back and promises trouble if these guys don’t behave themselves.

-Jack Tunney announces that for the hell of it, he’s reinstating Rugged Ronnie Garvin. They’re kind of blowing this, as the big payoff should have been Valentine being so frustrated about not getting his hands on Garvin that he demands reinstatement, but here it’s just Jack Tunney announcing, “Yeah, I warned him twice and he screwed up, but, eh, he’s a mensch.” In Studio A, Gorilla laments that the announcement is being made a little late for SummerSlam, so Garvin is being left out of the card.

HART FOUNDATION vs. HONKY TONK MAN & DINO BRAVO (with Jimmy Hart)
-Dino shoulderblocks Bret and celebrates prematurely, getting himself cradled right away. Foundation does a great little thing where Bret presses Dino against the ropes for a roll-up, and Anvil clotheslines him as he hits the ropes. Honky tags in and gets wishboned. Back from the break with Honky working over Anvil’s back. They trick Bret into stepping in there and double-team the Anvil for a bit, but Honky misses a fist drop and we get the hot tag MUCH faster than I was expecting us to. Bret takes on both opponents and looks to put away Honky with a second-rope elbow, but Dino jerks him away.

-So it’s officially a pier sixer and Jimmy’s megaphone ends up in the ring, but Anvil gets his hands on it and gives Dino a shot to the belly…and that gets the Foundation DQed. Big victory for the team that we’ll never see again. Match was fine, though.

-Piper asks Heenan why the Brain Busters aren’t putting up their belts at SummerSlam. Heenan talks about how the Harts haven’t earned it, and Gorilla guesses that he doesn’t want to lose two titles in one day.

-Sherri stirs her cauldron and has a vision of Hulk & Brutus drinking Elizabeth’s brew and it’s making them hallucinate. Zeus ominously turns the tables on Hulk, warning him to “TAKE YOUR VITAMINS!” in the most threatening voice possible.

-And now, one of my favorite weird things ever, as Gorilla and Piper discuss ordering SummerSlam on pay-per-view or satellite, and they make it a point to say that they’ve already ordered, so we should to! Did the WWF ever realize that when they had the commentators talk about how they have to order the pay-per-view themselves, it makes the WWF sound like the crappiest company to work for?

THE GENIUS vs. STEPHAN DELEON
-Genius reads a nice long poem and then takes his sweet time adjusting his kneepads before finally getting strted. Hiptoss by the Genius, and a flying headscissors. And then a fantastic bit where Genius offers a handshake. DeLeon is dumb enough to take it, and Genius shakes his hand for a full ten seconds before FINALLY taking the cheap shot and hiptossing him. And then Genius hangs onto his hand through the impact, picks him up, and shakes his hand again. Hard slap by Genius, and DeLeon is just plain mad and slaps him back. Genius puts the fight to him and connects with a moonsault, but opts not to pin him, instead going to the top rope and finishing with the honor roll. Poffo got some great heat here.

-Rude calls himself a great white and Piper a guppy. Rude points out that he’s a reigning champion, and Piper is just sitting here, being a TV host instead of getting it done in the ring. Piper slings some more insults his way and is challenging him to a fight, and Rude says he’d better start showing a little more fire because he’s way behind after being off for two years.

EVENT CENTER
-Ted DiBiase uncharacteristically has a quarter instead of his usual fistful of dollars. He explains that he knows his SummerSlam opponent is Jimmy Snuka, and Snuka has a pretty low price. Harts are mad about being stuck in a non-title match and they warn the Brain Busters that they’d better show up ready.

KOKO B. WARE vs. BARRY HOROWITZ
-Horowitz armdrags Koko and gives himself a pat on the back. We could easily make squashes in wrestling an easy thing if wrestlers understood this the way Barry did. You can be in this role and still be a star. Horowitz armdrags Koko again and basically treats it like he’s won the match. Critical error ends up being that he targets Koko’s head. Koko comes to life with a backdrop and a snap suplex. Horowitz goes juuuuuust a bit low, but Koko revives and ends it with the ghostbuster.

-Bobby Heenan hypes the upcoming Brother Love segment and even uses that as a bragging point. Piper’s been doing nothing but staying home and washing dishes for two years, but Heenan and his men have been getting invited to appear on Brother Love’s show.

BROTHER LOVE
-Brother Love’s got a pretty full platform this week with Andre the Giant, the Twin Towers, Slick, and Bobby Heenan joining him this week. They’re ready for SummerSlam, unsurprisingly.

SUMMERSLAM REPORT
-With one week to go, Hulk and Brutus finally cut a coherent promo, saying that Elizabeth explained the story of Zeus according to Greek mythology and that it may explain Zeus the wrestler’s mindset and what makes him tick…and then they veer into the visions they had after drinking potion. Meanwhile, Honky promises a one-way trip to the Heartbreak Hotel for Dusty Rhodes, and he promises it apparently fully sober. See, Hulk? Not that hard. We get more words from Ted DiBiase, saying it’ll be an easy victory for him taking on some tree climber who eats bananas and coconuts all day.

My roommate: Wow, that was kind of racist.
Me: Hi, Tim, have you met ’80s wrestling?

THE FABULOUS ROUGEAU BROTHERS (with Jimmy Hart, Slick, and Rick Martel) vs. BOB ALLEN & MARK MING
-Show of solidarity going into SummerSlam.

-Jacques shows off his ability to do a kip-up and challenges Ming to do the same thing. Ming can’t do it, and Jacques laughs at him until Ming just calmly gets up and clotheslines him down. We get a drop-in promo from the managers, promising victory over “Taco Breath and the Hippies.”

-Back to action, Raymond takes a turn with Bob Allen before tagging in Jacques. Kneedrop by Jacques gets an easy three-count. It’s becoming more and more apparent in the Rougeaus’ matches that isn’t ain’t right with Raymond, and unfortunately he was pretty much done by the end of this year.

-Rude promises to kick Piper’s back door down and make his wife cook a t-bone steak. “And I’d make her LIKE it.” Piper is getting quieter and quieter and is slowly turning into a time bomb as Rude keeps talking.

EVENT CENTER
-We hear words from the Brain Busters. They have big plans for Summer Slam, and none of them involve getting injured by the Harts and being susceptible to losing in a rematch. Jimmy Snuka says that when he sees Ted DiBiase, he wonders where that Million Dollar Belt came from. He bought it, Jimmy! Weren’t you watching? Because that was a whole thing.

-Gorilla announces that Prime Time Wrestling will air ONLY on the west coast next week due to the US Open. And that’s the next episode on the Network. The next Prime Time review is an episode that three time zones didn’t see!

-Rude is still egging on Piper, and Piper, calm as can be, says that they should just leave this alone and behave themselves for the rest of the show. Rude tells Piper that nobody who wears a skirt could ever keep up with him, and he just keeps pushing him and pushing him, and Piper is truly trying to behave himself, but he finally snaps and tells Rude to wait right there in Studio B, and he takes off. Rude says that if Piper wants a piece of him, he’s game, and he takes off to meet Piper in the middle. Gorilla goes off on Heenan for bringing Rude to the studio without telling anybody and allowing him to pick a fight. Roddy Piper suddenly shows up in Studio B looking for Rude, as Rude comes running into Studio A looking for Piper. He says he wanted a fight but he just saw a skirt tail running in the opposite direction, and Piper tells him to just wait right there. Piper goes running off, and Heenan looks truly worried and follows Piper back to Studio A, and Gorilla, Heenan, and a team of security guards pull them apart as the show abruptly goes to commercial. Oh MAN, I need a cigarette now.

-We’re back and Gorilla is alone in the studio, he has no idea where anybody else went…and Bobby Heenan walks in, shakes his head, and asks, totally serious, “Are you happy?”

TITO SANTANA vs. MR. PERFECT
-Oh, this should be good. They trade armdrags and hang onto each other the whole time. Both guys keep the feeling-out process going until Tito throws a dropkick that just bullseyes Perfect right on the side of his head, and Perfect goes out to the floor. Back in, Tito works the arm. Perfect gets free and tries a chain wrestling sequence, but he moves too slowly on an attempted side headlock and Tito turns it into a hammerlock. Lord Alfred lays out the entire story of the match so far: Perfect succeeds when he does one move at a time, he screws up whenever he goes for a sequence. Tito is better at sequences.

-So Tito has Perfect trapped in an armbar now as Tito has a game plan.

-Back in the studio, Heenan is sitting in Piper’s studio and just acting like he’s been co-hosting the show the whole time. Piper’s been escorted from the building by security. He says Rude was allowed to stay, and Gorilla calls bullshit as we pause for commercial. We return from the break, and now Heenan is all alone because Gorilla just said he “needs to check something.” Heenan isn’t sure what.

-We’re back with Tito and Perfect exchanging punches. Tito punches Perfect hard enough to knock him off his feet, but Perfect brilliantly wraps his legs around Tito’s foot on the way down and trips him into a chinlock. Tito gets free and fisticuffs are exchangificated. Perfect throws one quick clothesline and announces the Perfect-Plex right now, so Perfect just wants outta there. He’s too close to the ropes, though, so Tito just sticks one foot out to keep Perfect from finishing the move.

-Punches by Tito to get his comeback going, and he goes for the figure four…but the bell sounds for the time limit draw. Wait, was that 20? They must have chopped out a ton, it barely felt like ten. Match was good like you’d expect, although they’d blow this out of the water with their SNME match a year later.

-Gorilla is back and calls out Heenan for lying. Rude got his ass kicked out of the building by security too.

7.7

The final score: review Good

The 411

Great angle in the studio this week, plus some decent matches almost all the way through the show. I'm pretty hyped for SummerSlam now!!!