Old School Wrestling Review: Survivor Series 1990

The pay per view starts out with Vince McMahon’s rough and gruff voice announcing the matches. Mr. Fink looks so happy in the center of the ring to get things started. All in all the mood is positive. The Survivor Series matches are all four on four elimination matches, two teams of four guys against each other, heels on one side, faces on the other. Then, at the end, each of the survivors from heels and faces will go against each other in a last match to determine the final winner.

First match!

The Warriors (The Ultimate Warrior, The Legion of Doom (Hawk and Animal), and The Texas Tornado) vs. The Perfect Team (Mr. Perfect and Demolition (Ax, Smash, and Crush)) (with Bobby Heenan and Mr. Fuji)

Perfect and Bobby Heenan work so well together, it’s amazing. Every time Perfect throws his towel, Heenan perfectly catches it. It retains that illusion of perfection so well.

Warrior’s promo is so funny, but poor Mean Gene Okerlund is smashed between Warrior and the Legion of Doom’s spiky football gear. He looks like he’s inwardly sighing about the costumes the whole interview. “Spikes, why does it always have to be spikes?” A side note, Warrior is the first champion to change the color of the WWF Championship’s strap to match the color of his outfit. He changed it to white in this case. Just kind of interesting.

Warrior pins the first opponent during the match and the crowd goes crazy. Crush does a knee drop with a roll off the top rope, which is unusual, but really adds some flair to the normal top rope knee drop. Top rope moves aren't too common yet, but it’s nice to already see some innovation with them.

Legion of Doom and Demolition are disqualified for hitting the referee, leaving the Texas Tornado and Warrior versus Perfect. It becomes open season on the Weasel versus the Warrior! Heenan always plays such a good heel manager when he gets beaten up. Perfect eliminates Texas Tornado and Heenan unwraps a turnbuckle. Warrior gets beaten up for a while, then gets his second wind and beats up Perfect. 

The ending is kind of abrupt, to be honest. I kept waiting for the uncovered turnbuckle to be used, but it ends up being kind of a red herring. The abrupt ending was a bummer, but the rest of the match was good, especially because it opened the show. I do always expect that second wind moment from Warrior, so it was expected that he would win. I just wish it hadn’t been so abrupt. This means that only the Warrior goes on to the final match.

The Million Dollar Team (Ted DiBiase, The Undertaker, and Rhythm & Blues (The Honky Tonk Man and Greg Valentine)) (with Virgil, Jimmy Hart, and Brother Love) vs. The Dream Team (Dusty Rhodes, Koko B. Ware, and The Hart Foundation (Bret Hart and Jim “The Anvil” Neidhart))

This match is dedicated to Bret’s brother, who passed away.

There is a whole thing before this match that DiBiase has a mystery entry, who turns out to be the Undertaker. This is his debut into the WWF. He looks nice and sinister. He isn’t the phenom yet, and he doesn’t have all his tattoos, but he is extremely expressionless. Koko B. Ware is the sacrificial lamb to Undertaker’s first tombstone and the first elimination.

Neidhart takes out Honky Tonk Man next, which is fine, Honky Tonk has been very sloppy the past few times I’ve seen him. Since he’s lost the Intercontinental Championship, it just doesn’t seem like he cares. Greg Valentine seems to be the same way. I just can’t enjoy watching their matches as much anymore.

Undertaker takes out Dusty Rhodes, and then goes out after Rhodes to the back and gets counted out. This lets the Undertaker get out of the match while still making him look like a badass. He just couldn’t stop fighting and ignored the rules because he’s a dead man walking, and dead men don’t listen to rules.

The match ends with DiBiase vs. Bret and per my husband this is the only time the two have a singles type match against each other that he can remember. It’s very good and it’s a shame it’s at the tail end of the match. There are so many reversals and holds, and it becomes a match within a match, and a story within a story. It’s a great ending compared to the previous match and I really got into it. Dibiase ends up winning and going on to the last match.

The Visionaries (Rick Martel, The Warlord, Power and Glory (Hercules and Paul Roma)) (with Slick) vs. The Vipers (Jake Roberts, Jimmy Snuka, and The Rockers (Shawn Michaels and Marty Jannetty)

The Rockers start out fast and furious against the Warlord, then fight Martel. Jake comes out and he has this whole injured eye angle against Martel, so there’s a lot of heat. Snuka is in insanely good shape.

Warlord gets Jannetty. Rick Martel eliminates Snuka. The match is pretty exciting, but the middle has a lot of Shawn versus Warlord, Power and Glory. It made it exciting to see Snuka come out for a brief period of time, and Jake come out for some variety. Shawn fights for a long time without being able to get to the face’s corner for a tag. It drags on a little too long, I think.

Sometimes this kind of match with the drama of one guy getting beaten up by a long time while the other team gets to switch out their members a lot can be very exciting, but I thought it was a little too drawn out. Shawn ends up being pinned and it’s Jake versus the entire heel team.

While Jake is pinning Warlord and the referee is distracted, Martel tries to use his spray can of Arrogance on Jake again. Jake gets pissed off and takes out his snake, Damien. He runs after Martel and gets counted out. Damien wraps cutely around Jake’s leg on the way out. All of Martel’s team thus goes on to the final match. It was an ok match. A little drawn out in the middle.

The Hulkamaniacs (Hulk Hogan, Jim Duggan, The Big Boss Man, and Tugboat) vs. The Natural Disasters (Earthquake, Haku, Dino Bravo, and The Barbarian) (with Jimmy Hart and Bobby Heenan)

Big Boss Man has dropped a lot of weight and looks pretty good. Hulk’s hairdo is really silly. Earthquake still looks like an oversized baby in a big blue diaper. Barbarian is a new wrestler for me, and he looks really strong like a lot of the big guys, but his outfit makes him look like a World of Warcraft druid. It’s hard to take him seriously. I can tell the age of the gimmicks is really getting started.

Haku is eliminated by Boss Man. Hacksaw gets thrown over the ropes by Jimmy Hart, so he goes crazy with his trusty 2x4 on the ring with Earthquake and Jimmy Hart and gets disqualified. A brawler to the end, oh Hacksaw.

Hogan comes in to pick up the scraps. He manages to do a body slam on Earthquake, which doesn’t surprise me in the slightest, but it surprises everyone else. Dino Bravo comes out and gets eliminated by Hogan, then Boss Man switches with Hogan, only to be eliminated by Earthquake. So far Tugboat and Hogan are the only ones left, but Tugboat hasn’t even wrestled yet.

Tugboat finally gets tagged in long enough to be yanked out of the ring with Earthquake and be counted out. So then it’s Hogan and Barbarian. Imagine that. Barbarian does a very messy piledriver. By now Hulk’s hair looks like Wolverine’s with a horseshoe. (From the X-men.) Terrible!

Three Moves of Doom (Hulk's finishers) and Hogan wins. He beats up Heenan for bonus points. So Warrior and Hogan’s matches end with both of them having their second winds, “hulking up” and winning their matches. I didn’t enjoy either match very much, but the Warrior match was better overall. It helps that I hate Earthquake, Hogan, and only Boss Man could keep me happy in this match, and he gets taken out early.

Promo -
There is a promo here with Macho Man and Mean Gene Okerlund on the arena floor. Randy Savage has a promo to take the title from Warrior and he does such great promos, he can really get the crowd going.

The Alliance (Nikolai Volkoff, Tito Santana, and The Bushwhackers (Luke Williams and Butch Miller) vs. The Mercenaries (Sgt. Slaughter, Boris Zhukov, and The Orient Express (Sato and Tanaka) (with Mr. Fuji and General Adnan)

This is one heck of a political match. Operation Desert Shield was going on, and Sgt. Slaughter was an Iraqi sympathizer heel with his Mercenary team. They were going to automatically be hated no matter what.

Everyone gets taken out almost immediately except Sgt. Slaughter. The match is entirely focused on beating up Slaughter, which is fine because of the time period. It is a mindless match, what these days would be a diva’s match. It’s not bad, just methodical and slow. Slaughter eliminates everyone except Tito. Slighter’s manager, Adnan, hits Tito with his Iraqi flag and gets Slaughter disqualified, so Tito goes on to the last match.

Segment -
The next segment is... bad. It’s the worst thing ever. The egg. This egg thing hatches and there’s a human sized rooster inside. The crowd boos. It’s called the Gobbledy Gooker. It’s awkward and horrible. Okerlund has to dance for 2.5 seconds and that’s the only fun part of the whole segment, otherwise it is misery.

Promo -
There’s another promo. It’s for Hulk’s team. Wait, Hulk’s team? Not the WWF Champion’s team? The interviewer, Sean Mooney, before the final match has this horrified expression on his face during Warrior’s part of the promo. It’s so funny. You can practically see Mooney thinking to himself “What the hell are you saying?” I love it.

The Babyface team of Hulk Hogan, The Ultimate Warrior, and Tito Santana vs. The Heel team of Ted DiBiase, Rick Martel, The Warlord, and Power and Glory (Hercules and Paul Roma) (with Virgil and Slick)

Warrior has changed his brief’s again. He’s got the outfit changes down.

Warlord is gone in less than 30 seconds by Tito via the Flying Burrito (per Hubby), aka the Flying Forearm, but then DiBiase gets Tito soon after. I guess part of my problem with this match is I know Power and Glory are never going to pin Hogan. Only DiBiase or maybe Rick Martel have enough star power to pin Hogan. It’s like trying to throw level 5 characters against a level 60 boss. You know it ain’t gonna work. When Hogan pins Glory I’m all like, yeah, totally called that one.

Warrior gets tagged in and he honestly gets more of a crowd pop than Hogan did. For once, Hogan does more of the work, which is amazing. Martel gets beat up for a bit, then quits and gets counted out. Honestly I don’t blame him. I know it’s story line because he’s a bad guy and all, but really? Would you want to job to Hogan? I’d be all over quitting for a “storyline” any day if it meant I didn’t have to job to him like everyone else has to back in the locker room. At least it meant I got to do something different.

Dibiase gets the Three Moves of Doom and is pinned by Hogan, amazing. Sarcasm. So Warrior has slim pickings with Hercules. So, basically as I’m reading it, Hogan would work with the Ultimate Warrior, the WWF Champion, but only if he got to take on the level 50 guy (DiBiase) and leave the level 30-ish guy (Hercules) for Warrior to pin. Warrior barely got to wrestle, which was a huge let down. Backstage politics, brother!

Final thoughts - 
I really liked the final elimination match idea, it was a really fun. (Besides the Hoganification of it all of course.) It does give the Survivor Series’ individual matches more meaning. Overall the pay per view was pretty good, there was some good points, and some bad ones. I don’t know if I would watch it again, because there are other pay per view’s I enjoyed a lot more than this one.

Dreamtime Dreamscape: Bookshops in Time

Last night I had a kind of adventure dream turned shopping dream. I have shopping dreams quite often, I guess I have a lot of anxiety when it comes to shopping, which doesn’t surprise me because I hate dealing with money.

In any case. The dream started out that I was in this huge library. It was made of white marble. The whole place was beautiful, with huge Renaissance paintings and built in bookshelves between carved columns. On pedestals around the room were miniature Greek statues.

Accompanying me into the room was a creature I knew to be some almighty being, a God type creature. He, or she, was telling me that I had to make a decision that would shape the world as I knew it. The time streams were being twisted upon one another, and unless I fixed it, all time would cease to exist.

To destroy the extra time stream, I had to throw the miniature Greek statues into the Renaissance paintings, which were actually mirrors, and that would destroy one of the time streams. The god creature warned me that everything from that time stream would cease to exist, all it’s objects and memories, so I’d have to consider wisely.

I thought hard about the second time stream, I had memories from it. Something about the cats and the basement garage from the house I grew up in and the cats getting into the basement garage made me make my decision. I threw one of the Greek statues into the painting mirror.

All of a sudden, half the books in the library started turning to dust. Horrified I asked what was going on. These were all my favorite books! I was told that because I destroyed one time line, the books written in that time would be destroyed too, but I could prevent that by buying all the books I wanted for a price... $20.00 per book and $5 per newspaper.

I agreed to the price and started frantically looking at the books. As I looked, the place became packed with people. My husband was there, looking for books of his own. I started stuffing important books into my pockets, and people kept stealing them from me, so I had to try to find books and keep the ones I had safe.

I found a bunch of newspapers with Calvin and Hobbes prints and grabbed them, but somehow in the fuss, my glasses broke. As I was stumbling around the floor to find them, another person grabbed the Calvin and Hobbes and switched them for Popeye comics. I couldn’t see anything, and time was running out, so I rushed to the checkout counter with my husband.

While at the checkout, the god creature rang up our books and I fumbled to get my glasses back on. Our total was too much for us to afford. I looked through our books and realized half the books were wrong, and the newspapers I wanted were gone. In a panic, I searched for the ones I had actually picked up. I found a few newspapers at the bottom of the bin, including one stuck at the very bottom that was a larger, more complete run of Calvin and Hobbes. Estatic I added that one to our collection and got rid of the Popeye ones.

The books I had picked out were all torn up, including the books I had put in my back pockets for safe keeping. Between the disintegration due to the timeline being destroyed and everyone picking books out of my pockets, my books had been ripped to shreds. I was devastated. The god creature was very mad, and only after my husband yelled at him did he give me another few minutes to look around while the shop was emptying out.

I ran to the back where the paperback fiction was and started opening up drawers, trying to find something I wanted. I found a couple of priceless books, and, more importantly, a few old vintage seed packets from the old timeline. These would be rose bushes or tulips that would never grow again unless I took them out of the bookstore! I had to have them, but they weren’t on sale. Frustrated because nothing was going my way, I grabbed the seeds and stuffed them into my pockets.

I ran up to the register with my last remaining books. The total came to $180.00. I don’t know why, but that number was very important. I woke up almost immediately after seeing the total. I have no idea why.

Binx feels a chill down his spine...

I feel like I's being watched...
Hint: It's Cheri!

Wrestling and Aristotle, a musing

On Reddit I frequent the Squared Circle subreddit, which is all about wrestling. Today there was a post I really resonated with, so I replied to it. It was about someone introducing their girlfriend to RAW for the first time, and, as user righteyebrow said:

"... I convinced her to watch a match or two to see how she liked it.

First up it was Orton vs. Fandango. It was around the time when Orton hit the superplex she admitted wrestling was not as fake as she thought. When Orton then hit the DDT off the ropes she was convinced Fandango had broken his neck... By the RKO she was literally in tears. Like actual tears. I kinda felt bad.

So, after seeing some poor young dancer be absolutely decimated she didn’t want to watch anymore. But I convinced her to just watch one more match… which was Del Rio vs Dolph Ziggler.

After about the fifth time she thought Ziggler had been killed, I had to turn it off.

Yeah, so, my girlfriend hates wrestling now."

My reply: I remember going through that period. My husband introduced me to wrestling about 6 years ago when we first started dating. I was flabbergasted that anyone would put themselves through such pain and misery for a crowd. It took a lot of repeat watching to see the actual art behind it and how the wrestlers can make the product look so good... and also try so hard not to hurt their opponents.

It's scripted, and the wrestlers are 'fighting' but there's also a lot of trust between the guys and gals out there, from the wrestlers, to the refs, to the commentators. It all has to work just right for the viewers to believe it. And when real injuries happen, they're never planned, never scripted, and always terrible for the wrestlers.

It took a lot of time for me to be able to watch things like Foley's tooth coming out his nose without getting ill feeling. Now I realize that as much hell as Foley's put his body through, it is his job and he's proud of it. I could never do it, but that doesn't mean he can't find satisfaction from putting one hell of a show. Aristotle realized that theater is a way to purge ourselves of strong emotions, and to watch the wrestlers go through hell and back, to me, is a way to give way to the strongest emotions of triumph and tragedy. It is modern theater.

My husband and I talk a lot about how wrestling has more in common with the theater of old than some people would like to admit. Shakespeare has rowdy plays and I think if he saw wrestling, he'd love the drama of it as an extension of the plays he created.

We talk constantly about the catharsis, the purging of emotions, wrestling provides and how important that is. Only by watching shows where they are directed to bring out our strongest emotions can we release them. It's part of why wrestling hasn't been as popular these days as it was before, I think. They've taken a step back from the theater aspect and tried to be too "real." We need the vibrant characters that can act their parts completely and absolutely in the ring.

It's been 6 years now and I understand how frightening it can be to watch wrestling for the first time. They can make it seem so real that each impact hurts you and you can swear that they are really unconscious and they are seriously injured. 

But then... because you experience that worry over your favorite wrestler during the perfectly placed commercial break after a seemingly bad bump, when your loved ones are injured, you know what that worry feels like and you can move past it and get down to the helping your loved ones faster. You know what worry feels like because you've felt it. It's not an emotion that's unfamiliar. 

It's that purge of emotions that's so important. Wrestling is a theater. To deny it is to deny what makes wrestling such a core and necessary part of our society.

You can read the post here.

Vivi loves string!

Dis string is highly relavant to mah interests