WWF Wrestling Challenge (11.1.1986) Review

-Originally aired November 1, 1986.

-Your hosts are Gorilla Monsoon & Bobby Heenan.

INTERCONTINENTAL TITLE: RANDY “Macho Man” SAVAGE (Champion, with Elizabeth) vs. BILLY JACK HAYNES
-Rematch from a few weeks back, but Danny Davis is your referee and that’s just an automatic spoiler alert.

-Haynes applies a side headlock at the start and goes crazy…crazier…with wrenching it. Savage uses the hair to break in plain sight of Davis. Savage goes for a slam but collapses. Savage recovers nicely and drops a knee to the throat, and Haynes sells it so hard he falls out of the ring, and Savage meets him out there with a top rope axehandle. Nice touch from the timekeeper at ringside, who had the hammer in his hands the moment Billy fell out and held onto it the entire time they were out there, like the match could end any moment.

-Back in, Haynes comes back with a press slam. Savage makes a last-ditch effort and goes for a clothesline, but Haynes just hooks the arm and turns it into a full nelson. Savage swings his arms so dramatically while in the hold that he knocks over Danny Davis, and that’s the excuse Danny needs to call for the bell and give the DQ win to Savage. Danny actually grabs the mike to make the announcement himself, declaring that it was Haynes’ fault that Savage’s arm hit him. Crowd is good ‘n mad about that, and it was a pretty exciting TV match too!

WRESTLERS’ REBUTTAL
-Hulk Hogan assures us that he’s stronger and a better wrestler than Paul Orndorff, and he pledges to eliminate Mister Wonderful for good. This continues to be the lamest part of the first few months of this show, although Snake Pit is a close second.

ISLANDERS vs. IRON MIKE SHARPE & TERRY GIBBS
-By this point, we’ve refined their names to Haku & Tama. Tama armdrags Gibbs and Sharpe. Haku tags in and yes, we’ve all heard the stories about Haku and what a badass he is, but really, he’s wrestling a man literally made from iron who has a sharp body. It’s right there in his name, I don’t like Haku’s chances.

-Dream Team taunts the Islanders with pre-taped words while Sharpe decides to let Haku live and allows him to tag Tama back in. Sharpe and Gibbs take over on him until he makes a hot tag to Haku. Haku cleans house and dropkicks Iron Mike out to the floor, and a gourdbuster/splash combo by the Islanders gets the three-count on Gibbs. Islanders got REALLY lucky here.

-Ken Resnick meets Matilda. Dynamite talks about Matilda’s resemblance to the Dream Team, with smashed-in face like Beefcake’s and short stocky legs like Valentine, which seems to genuinely bust up Davey Boy. How thrilling for us to get rare video footage of the last pleasant day of Dynamite’s life.

-George “The Animal” Steele goes to lunch at Wendy’s, and the gag is he can only yell “EAT!” instead of placing an order. I laughed ’til I stopped.

IRON SHEIK, NIKOLAI VOLKOFF, & HERCULES HERNANDEZ (with Slick) vs. CORPORAL KIRCHNER, SPECIAL DELIVERY JONES, & LEAPING LANNY POFFO
-Hercules is still aping Bruiser Brody a bit at this stage. Leaping Lanny rhymes “Iron Sheik” with “degenerate freak” in his poem and gets a huge pop.

-SD and Slick Nik start. SD headbutts him down, and Poffo works the arm. Sheik and Kirchner battle it out while we get pre-taped words from Slick saying he has special plans for Hercules Hernandez, and we’ll see more about that in the next few weeks.

-Herc tags in and finishes Kirchner with the torture rack. I hope there’s a slightly more ambitious plan than that.

-Ken Resnick talks to the Killer Bees and say they’d like a shot at the British Bulldogs. Brian Blair hypes the 2nd Annual Brian Blair Amateur Wrestling Tournament in Tampa on November 22.

TITO SANTANA & PEDRO MORALES vs. HART FOUNDATION (with Jimmy Hart)
-Gorilla says at the start that this is going to be an elimination tag match.

-Jimmy Hart trips Tito from the outside, but before Bret can capitalize, Tito tags Pedro and Pedro hammers away while Jimmy Hart drops in and cuts a promo explaining that he needs the megaphone because the rude fans drown him out otherwise when he’s trying to help his men.

-Harts double-team Pedro in the corner, but Pedro counters a suplex and turns it into a backdrop. Hot tag Tito, who bodypresses Hit Man for two. All four men end up on the floor and brawl until the referee counts everybody out, and that’s honest-to-God how they booked this elimination match.

SNAKE PIT
-Jake’s guest is Rowdy Roddy Piper, and Jake arrogantly refers to his segment as “The NEW Pit.” Piper, freshly babyface-turned, plays up being afraid of snakes and won’t walk all the way onto the set. This is bizarre, as Jake jokes that he thinks the snake is Orton or Muraco, and they’re just totally switching roles here for some reason, with Jake playing the babyface and Piper going way over the top playing a coward. Jake invites Roddy to come over and touch the snake, and Piper boots him in the ass and runs away, and what the hell was this segment?

ROUGEAU BROTHERS vs. BARRY O & TIGER CHUNG LEE
-Raymond starts with O, and they have a nice seesaw match-up back and forth before everybody tags. Dino Bravo drops in and assures us that he’s the only classy wrestler to come from Canada, and I would have disagreed with him before I read Bret Hart’s autobiography, Check Out All the Sex I Had.

-Barry O gets knocked out to the floor, and Le Bombe De Rougeau gets three on Lee.

-Jack Tunny admits that the WWF is getting a weird amount of mail about Danny Davis lately, and he promises us that an investigation will be taking place shortly.

RICKY “The Dragon” STEAMBOAT vs. MOONDOG REX
-Steamboat trips Rex and applies a side headlock. He backs Rex into the corner for a botched victory roll, but it gets three. Pretty underwhelming for a Steamboat squash.

-Ken Resnick talks to the Dream Team, and they STILL want the British Bulldogs. The Bulldogs vow that they aren’t going anywhere, because if you leave the WWF, the only other place to go is downhill.

6.0

The final score: review Average

The 411

Hey, we got a fun feature match, that's as much as you can ask for from the '80s B-show.