wrestling / Video Reviews
WWF Prime Time Wrestling (8.7.1989) Review
Loading...-Originally aired August 7, 1989.
-Your hosts are Gorilla Monsoon and Rowdy Roddy Piper. Piper is absolutely hell-bent on getting “Zeus the Moose” over as a taunt.
WIDOW MAKER vs. TERRY DANIELS
-Sgt. Slaughter’s old Cobra Corps trainee is suddenly back for job duty. Widow Maker throws Daniels into the corner and offers to help him up. Daniels gets back up and gets the crowd’s attention by press slamming him! Armdrags by Daniels, and Widow Maker backs off. Problem with the name “Widow Maker” is that there isn’t really a short version of it for typing recaps. Widow Maker misses an attempted elbow, continuing to have an off-night.
-Wid–screw it, Barry finally gets things going with an inverted atomic drop and a back suplex. Powerslam looks to be the end, but Daniels has fight left and throws punches. Barry goes to the eyes to stop that, but Daniels just fights back with boots and a dropkick. Barry looks totally confused by how resilient Daniels is proving to be, but he dodges a corner charge and uppercuts Daniels over the top rope.
-And with that, Barry finally decides to just get out of there while he can and superplexes Daniels for the three-count. This was unexpectedly a good little match with a story, with Barry walking in there expecting an easy night and just getting frustrated by how much life Terry Daniels had in him.
-Piper rants more about “Zeus the Moose.”
SPECIAL REPORT
-We flash back to last week’s Brother Love segment, and this alleged “Special Report” is just a start-to-finish replay of the whole thing. Well that was hardly special at all, Lord Alfred.
POWERS OF PAIN (with Mr. Fuji) vs. YOUNG STALLIONS
-From Wooster, MA. I know it’s not spelled that way but I’ll be damned if I’m going to go to the trouble of double-checking the right way. Joined in progress with Roma in peril. Barbarian gives him a backbreaker, and the POP does a drop toehold/elbow combo. Bearhug by Warlord, and Roma tragically forgets how to throw a punch so he remains in the hold until Warlord simply lets go and tags out. Barbarian misses an elbow and it’s “hot tag” to Jim Powers, although “hot” is a pretty relative term at a five-hour TV taping.
-All four men end up in the ring and we get a weird finish where Powers is just attacked by an invisible man and is in pain after fucking NOTHING has happened to him, and the Hart Attack off the turnbuckles finishes for the Powers. Seriously, watch how this plays out, nothing happened to Powers. It’s weird.
HERCULES vs. CHRIS DUFFY
-Comment below this review if you had a dog when you were a kid and you swung the dog’s leash over your head to do Hercules’ entrance in your living room. I don’t want to feel like I was the only one.
-The Genius recites a SummerSlam poem while Hercules throws Duffy all over the ring. Clothesline knocks Duffy over the top rope. He brings Duffy back in and ends it quickly with the torture rack.
-We get a promo from Randy Savage, Sherri, and Zeus. Sherri stirs her “Cauldron of Madness” and sees Hulk Hogan pooping his pants in terror on Saturday Night’s Main Event. Savage has heard a rumor…a RUMOR, mind you…that Elizabeth might be at SummerSlam. Sherri thinks she’s trying to get Savage back from Sherri, but Sherri promises that if Elizabeth tries, she’ll strip Elizabeth naked. Honestly, that’s probably going to get more buys than the Red Rooster/Mr. Perfect match.
KOKO B. WARE vs. RICK MARTEL (with Slick)
-They trade arm stuff. Martel does a nice-looking counter and Slick leaps up from the floor and high-fives Martel, who’s still in the ring. How did it take me so long to notice Slick is incredibly tall?
-Martel gets dropkicked to the floor and stalls for a bit. He heads back in and Koko charges, Martel ducks, and Koko zooms over the top and onto the floor. Back in, Martel goes to work on the lower back with a series of elbows. Koko stuns Martel with a bodypress for two. Martel heads to the top rope to try to finish it, but Koko krotches him and slams him back down to the mat. Missile dropkick and a splash for two, and since he followed the missile dropkick with a splash instead of a ghostbuster, that means he’s losing.
-So he gets distracted by Slick, allowing Martel to sneak attack him, but that only gets two in a nice change-up on the formula. Koko misses a corner charge, and a knee off the top rope ends it for Martel. That was a’ight.
BROTHER LOVE
-Brother Love is just way, way, way, way too happy to welcome Bobby Heenan and the new Tag Team Champions. It’s basically just a victory lap for the Busters as they write off Demolition as finished and look ahead to the Hart Foundation.
SUMMERSLAM REPORT
-The Catch Phrases That Didn’t Catch hit parade continues, as Mean Gene hypes “The Meltdown in the Meadowlands” coming up in a few weeks. We get words from Hulk and Brutus, who admit that they looked weak in front of Savage and Zeus on SNME, but they’ve got it all together now, and Elizabeth is coming back to lend a hand.
BRUTUS “The Barber” BEEFCAKE vs “Macho Man” RANDY SAVAGE (with Sensational Sherri)
-Vince makes a bald joke at Jesse’s expense, and then interrupts him when he tries to offer a comeback. Good to be the boss.
-Brawl starts with both men still in full entrance gear. Brutus wins the brawl and goes after Sherri. Savage comes to the rescue and back in the ring, Beefcake chokes Savage with his jacket to stay in control. Savage misses a charge and eats a bodypress. Sherri gets desperate and provides distraction. I’m a dude and even I have to give Sherri props for diving from the apron to the floor feet-first in spiked heels.
-Savage winds up on the floor again as this match is 100% Beefcake so far. Savage hides behind Sherri for a breather. The diversion works this time and before long, Beefcake is on the receiving end of the axehandle from the top rope and a spiked heel to the face. Back inside, Beefcake gets a cradle, but Sherri’s distraction prevents the three-count. Savage and Beefcake trade near-falls for a little bit.
-Sherri removes her hose and uses it to strangle Beefcake, and by this point, Sherri is actually sweating more than either of the guys actually in the match. Earn that pay, Sherri! And before long, she takes an accidental high knee from Savage during some attempted interference and crashes to the floor. Beefcake backdrops Savage to the floor and everybody is taking a breather. Savage tells Sherri to run back to the locker room, some nice mirroring of bits with Elizabeth on previous SNMEs…
-Back from commercial, Beefcake is in control of the bout until Savage decides to target his throat. Man, Savage IS going old-school tonight. And sure enough, here comes Zeus, just in time for Beefcake to clamp on a sleeperhold on Savage. Zeus takes his cue, interferes to get the DQ, and clamps Beefcake in a bearhug. Hogan comes to the rescue, but Zeus sells NOTHING for him and then applies a bearhug. Savage adds an axehandle from the top rope, and they gang up on Hogan. They nearly give him a haircut, but Beefcake comes to the rescue this time, and Zeus no-sells a final chairshot, giving us a “WTF?” face from Hulk. Zeus stares down Hogan and Beefcake, who are both waving chairs at him, Savage and Sherri actually have to talk Zeus into leaving the ring. Zeus does so…reluctantly. Great little bout from two guys with chemistry. Possibly the best match of Beefcake’s career.
THE BOBBY HEENAN SHOW
-Meltzer was reporting at this point that USA still wasn’t exactly thrilled with this and that a decision would be made this week about the fate of the show. SPOILE: This is the final episode.
-Our first guest is Morris Katz. Hey! I know this guy! He was a contestant on What’s My Line? once. Katz’s claim to fame is that Guinness recognizes him as “the world’s fastest painter” and that he’s painted more than 185,000 pieces in his lifetime, some of which he painted in under a minute. Do a Google Image Search; for stuff he he did in a minute or less, it’s pretty impressive.
-So Bobby sends him on his way and tells him to paint as many pictures as he can for the rest of the half-hour. Lord Alfred welcomes a “bona fide” (and he pronounces the E) actress, Heather Hunter, and Jamison immediately acts nervous and awkward because he recognizes her.
-So Bobby asks Heather what movies she’s done and she mentions she’s been in Cumming On America, and Bobby is impressed that she’s worked with Eddie Murphy. Bobby asks if she’s the love interest in most of her movies and she nods. Jamison finally whispers in Bobby’s ear and clues him in about what Heather does for a living, and Bobby is suddenly all stuttery and awkward around her, so he throws it to commercial to compose himself.
-We return with “Morris the Cat” having finished another masterpiece as Bobby continues the interview. By the way, a quick Google search determine that the passage of time has treated Heather SHOCKINGLY well and she’s settled into a nice second life as a photographer. Good for her.
-Morris starts banging on his table to get Bobby’s attention because he can’t believe how rudely he’s being ignored, and Bobby just wants him to shut up while he keeps talking to Heather. Heather flirts with Jamison, to Bobby’s horror.
-Lord Alfred welcomes another guest, and it’s another one I recognize from the outside world. Jean Beckwith was on Late Night with David Letterman for Stupid Human Trick and absolutely could NOT do her trick, with Dave even giving her extra time to try to do it at the end of the show. Her trick is “blowing smoke bubbles,” a trick that involves cigarettes and soda, and she crashes and burns here just like she did on Stupid Human Tricks, and Bobby is completely annoyed that she can’t do it. “So we’re just going to sit here and watch you die?!” And then Jean mentions her appearance with David Letterman and admits she couldn’t do it then, either. So I’ve now seen this woman not be able to do this on two different shows.
-Jamison is actually the one to speak up and complain that the segment is boring and asks if they can just have Heather dance to finish out the show. Bobby throws it to commercial, and when they return, he actually very politely says that she managed to do one during the commercial so now he’s a believer and he really wants her to do it again before they go off the air. And she finally manages to produce a tiny marble-sized bubble.
-And then in an act of absolute cruelty, WWE Network edits out the final minutes of the show, where Heather gives Bobby a lap dance and Bobby sells it by doing a Heenan bump out of his chair, all while Jamison implies that he just blew a load into one of the couch cushions, a marvelous, insane, delightful blaze of glory for this show to go out on.
-And that’s kind of the sad thing. Lots of new shows take a few episodes to get going, and The Bobby Heenan Show is a perfect example. In the early episodes, you get the impression that they’re going for “lol the guests don’t know what they’re in for,” but here, it’s absolutely obvious that the guests were all clued in on the fact that this show is total bullshit, and all of them were just having a fantastic time out there.
