WWF Prime Time Wrestling (9.11.1989) Review

-All right, here comes the good stuff…

-Originally aired September 11, 1989.

-Your host is Gorilla Monsoon, who recaps the whole incident from the week before SummerSlam. He promises that going forward, Bobby Heenan and Roddy Piper will still be a part of Prime Time, but there will not be another occurrence of what happened with Rick Rude.

-Case in point, Bobby Heenan will now be in Studio A. This is actually a pretty graceful way of ending The Bobby Heenan Show. The gist of it is, to be on TV at all, Bobby must be where Gorilla can be in close proximity to him, as a precautionary measure. So Heenan is really unhappy to be back in the co-host’s chair, but there he is once more.

-Meanwhile, Rowdy Roddy Piper has commandeered Studio B, including, to Heenan’s exasperation, the expensive chair that Heenan ordered for his show’s set. Piper and Heenan have also had to post appearance bonds, and they’ll be fined and suspended out the wazoo if there is ever another physical altercation.

WIDOW MAKER vs. TIM HORNER
-I started first grade the week before this aired, and since “widow” isn’t a word that comes up in a six-year-old’s vocabulary very much, I recall I had a classmate who thought that Barry Windham’s name here was “The Window Maker.” It could have worked. He could spray Windex instead of Arrogance and polish a defeated jobber instead of cutting his hair. If he had come along in the Attitude Era, Vince Russo could have given him a valet who called herself the Glass Blower.

-Armdrag by Windham. Horner does a slick Duke boys-roll over Windham’s back to counter a backdrop and then dropkicks him. Hiptoss by Horner, but Barry sees him charging off the ropes and makes it a tilt-a-whirl backbreaker. Horner is groggy but he hangs in there and throws punches. Windham goes to the eyes to stop that. Gutwrench by Windham. Referee gets down on the mat anticipating a pin, and Windham just tells him “no” to dish out more.

-Horner just keeps punching and surprises Windham, no-selling an inverted atomic drop and clotheslining him down. Windham does another inverted atomic drop, this time with feeling, and that one seems to take. Superplex gets the win. Pretty good match, with Horner hanging in there and Windham looking like a bigger star because his opponent looked credible.

-Back at the studios, Piper shakes off Heenan’s threats of revenge. If walking to the ring was all it took for Rude to get his ass kicked and lose at SummerSlam, what threat is Rude to him?

UPDATE
-Right before SummerSlam, Ultimate Warrior had just finished squashing a jobber on Superstars when Bobby Heenan walked out to taunt him. Warrior followed Heenan until Andre the Giant and strangled him. And now that SummerSlam has come and gone, Andre formally challenges Warrior for the Intercontinental Title. Warrior cuts an insane promo about hypodermic needles and threatens Andre with “the juice of the Warrior!”

DUSTY RHODES vs. TOM STONE
-From Wrestling Challenge. Dusty chases Tom Stone out of the ring with his ill-gotten nightstick. Tony Schiavone and Gorilla throw some inside baseball on commentary, with Gorilla noting that Joey Marella is acting like he’s used to seeing a nightstick and Tony tells Gorilla to check on him.

-Big floppy punches by Dusty, and he throws Stone out to the floor. Buy WWF Magazine!…Dusty suplexes Stone back in the ring, and a big elbow wraps it up.

-In studio B, Piper snooping around the set and interrogates Heenan about some of the weird crap he’s finding over there.

-We head back to ringside, where Koko FINALLY has ditched “Piledriver” and leads the fans in a sing-along of his new theme, “Bird, Bird, Bird.” This was so catchy and matched him so much better.

POWERS OF PAIN (with Mr. Fuji) vs. GEORGE SKAALAND & MARK FREAR
-Skaaland gets hammered down and gutwrenched by Warlord, which is impressive because he’s a beefy boy. Frear tags in and he has nothing but trouble until a second-rope clothesline ends it.

SUPERFLY JIMMY SNUKA vs. JAKE MILLIMAN
-Snuka slams Milliman around while Honky drops in and vows revenge. Chops and slams by Snuka, and the splash ends it.

EVENT CENTER
-Good god, they’re rerunning that Bad News Brown promo again.

-Gorilla drops the bad news that Rick Rude lost the Intercontinental Title, so they went ahead and switched out the Rick Rude match they had scheduled for this week. Here are the Rougeau Brothers instead.

FABULOUS ROUGEAU BROTHERS (with Jimmy Hart) vs. BUTCH MAYO & TERRY DANIELS
-Jacques stalls with a gymnastics display in the corner. From there, the Rougeaus double-team Mayo and Raymond, who’s developing a mullet in a total conflict of interest with his own entrance music (“We hate that long-haired look,” dammit!) applies a Boston crab. Kneedrop by Jacques is enough to end it without Terry Daniels ever tagging in.

KING DUGGAN vs. TONY ULYSSES
-Duggan is so cocky that he just turns his back and allows Ulysses to attack from behind so he can shrug it all off and clothesline him around. He throws Ulysses to the floor and brings him back in for a slam. Three-point stance ends it. Duggan just had the time of his life doing this gimmick.

-Piper does some topical humor about Jim Bakker. I mean, it would be humorous if Bakker would just fucking die already, here Piper’s jokes just make me angry thinking about how he’s still a thing.

BRUTUS “The Barber” BEEFCAKE vs. DALE WOLFE
-Rick Martel cuts a great promo gently suggesting that he’s a LITTLE annoyed because he just learned about the amount of fan mail Brutus gets.

-Irish whip and a backdrop by Brutus, and the sleeper finishes without much of a problem.

EVENT CENTER
-Mister Perfect reminds us that the Perfect Record(TM) is still intact, and this is the point where that really starts being a thing as they’re getting ready to re-launch him. The Rockers are here and shall continue to be for the foreseeable future.

COLISEUM CORNER: SUPERFLY JIMMY SNUKA vs. “The Million Dollar Man” TED DIBIASE (with Virgil)
-From SummerSlam, which goes on sale shortly.

-Joined in progress. Snuka reverses an Irish whip and gets a backdrop. DiBiase gets the advantage back with a stungun and stomps Snuka. DiBiase slugs him a few times and follows with a suplex for two. Commentary on this is funny, as the NWA-bred Tony Schiavone objects strenuously to Jesse’s contention that Fijian wrestlers have hard heads and apologizes for calling Snuka “an animal,” apparently oblivious to the WWF’s ethnic conventions that we all came to know and love during this era.

-DiBiase slams Snuka and goes for the Falling Elbow That He Never Ever Hits, and Snuka moves out of the way. Snuka gets a slam of his own and gets a headbutt off the middle rope, and BUY THE VIDEO!

-Jake The Snake is here with Damien. Every day of Ted DiBiase’s life is going to be bad news.

HONKY TONK MAN (with Jimmy Hart) vs. MARIO MANCINI
-Honky gets distracted bickering with the fans and Mancini actually gets a surprise attack on the Honkster. Honky fights back and chokes Mancini out. Shake, Rattle, and Roll finishes.

-In the studio, Bobby Heenan is noticeably excited about the next segment.

BROTHER LOVE
-Brother Love, now mulletless because of Brutus Beefcake, welcomes Roddy Piper, who has a leather bag for some reason. Piper just stands there silently and without Piper saying a word, Brother Love takes the opportunity to dish out every “skirt” joke he can think of. Brother Love just keeps unloading on him until he finally gets curious enough to ask about the bag, and Piper explains that Brother Love’s greasy hair, red complexion, and yellow teeth have led Piper to the conclusion that he needs a hygiene lesson. So Piper pulls out all kinds of shampoos and toothpaste on Brother Love’s face while holding onto him by the tie.

-Bobby Heenan is so horrified by the unprovoked assault that he comes out to demand that Piper stop. Piper threatens Heenan with an ass-kicking, and Rick Rude tiptoes out and finds a bottle of Listerine that Piper pulled out and just kind of forgot about. and he throws it into Piper’s eyes. With Piper blinded, Rude goes on a total assault, stomping him and dropping Brother Love’s “oak lectern” onto Piper (for some reason it strikes me as funny that oblivious commentator Vince McMahon just happens to know off the top of his head what kind of wood it is). Rude finishes the assault with a Rude Awakening…the neckbreaker one. Best part was Brother Love’s music still playing through the entire attack.

-Piper cuts a good fired up angry promo in Studio B while Heenan sits in Studio A and just laughs and laughs and laughs at him.

ROCKERS vs. HART FOUNDATION
-Bret and Marty immediately begin doing stuff faster than I can type. Rockers double-team him with a hiptoss, and Anvil’s not having this, so he lays out both Rockers with clotheslines. I’d call the crowd about 60-40 for the Harts, if you’re curious.

-Everybody tags and Anvil shoulderblocks Shawn. Shawn trips him and applies a side headlock before Anvil can do anything about it. Anvil tries an atomic drop, but Shawn flips behind his back and rolls him up. Anvil kicks out and the Rockers double-team him with arm work.. Anvil just turns it into a slam on Michaels and tags out, but Bret misses an elbow and the Rockers just pick up where they left off and work Bret’s arm over.

-In the studio, Heenan is still laughing about the Brother Love segment.

-Back to the ring, Shawn’s in trouble and the Harts are getting aggressive now, throwing punches before Anvil clamps on a chinlock with a knee in Shawn’s back for extra oomph. Dropkick by Anvil gets two. Backdrop by Anvil just launches Shawn into space before he finally comes down. Harts go in for the kill with the Anvil slingshot, but Shawn rolls out of the way. Harts block the hot tag and Bret cuts off an attempted comeback with a boot to the jaw. Second rope elbow, but again Shawn has the presence of mind to roll away and finally makes the tag to Marty.

-Dropkicks by Janetty, and a powerslam gets two. Double clothesline dazes both men but they get back to their feet. Double superkicks on Bret connect with a satisfying THWACK, but he kicks out. Bret clotheslines Shawn with his last remaining ounce of strength and it’s a great shoe-on-the-other-foot moment as Bret makes the hot tag and now Anvil cleans house. Neidhart hits the ropes for a clothesline, but he knocks Bret off the apron in the process. Bret crashes into the barricade, so Anvil dives out to the floor to check on him. The Rockers, being sportsmen, stay in the ring and wait it out, but the Rougeaus see an opportunity and run in for a surprise attack on the Rockers. Harts revive and make the save, and the match ends with the Rougeaus being chased to the locker room by all four men. I mean, you KNEW there wasn’t going to be a decisive finish, but that was a pretty good ending, and the match absolutely met expectations.

-Great ending to the episode, as Heenan is still laughing and laughing and laughing while Piper, in Studio B, sits and stares motionless. And Heenan keeps laughing and laughing until he glances at the monitor and sees that Piper is just sitting there quietly and not reacting…and suddenly, Heenan isn’t laughing anymore.

7.5

The final score: review Good

The 411

The Heenan/Piper stuff was amazing, and the show was bookended by two pretty damn good matches. Give it a look.