That Was Then 11.02.07: Looking Back At Survivor Series 1989 & 1990

Survivor Series 1989

Survivor Series 1989, taking place yet again on Thanksgiving night and this time in Chicago, Illinois, featured the same tag team elimination format as the first two editions, but this time the matches would be 4-on-4 instead of 5-on-5. Though there were less bodies flying around in each match, this meant that we would get an extra match out of the show, so in my opinion it was a fair trade-off.

The show opened with Dusty Rhodes, Brutus Beefcake, Tito Santana, and the Red Rooster taking on the Big Boss Man, Bad News Brown, the Honky Tonk Man, and Rick Martel. Just like last year, Bad News walked out on the team and got himself counted out after one of his partners hit him by accident, and then Beefcake finally pinned Honky Tonk Man and eliminated him from the match, and then eliminated Rick Martel a moment later to make it 3-on-1 with Rhodes, Beefcake and the Rooster against the Boss Man. Boss Man quickly eliminated the Rooster, but one big cross body from Rhodes was able to put Boss Man down for three to win the match, though he extracted some revenge after the match was over by beating Rhodes down with his nightstick.

Next came Jim Duggan, Bret Hart, Hercules, and Ronnie Garvin (who all carried 2x4s to the ring) taking on Randy Savage (now the Macho King), Dino Bravo, Greg Valentine, and the Canadian Earthquake, later known simply as Earthquake. This match was the only time Bret Hart and Randy Savage faced off on WWF PPV, and ended with Savage dropping the big elbow on Bret to eliminate him. Though Valentine was eliminated early on, Garvin and Hercules also suffered defeats, leaving Duggan 3-on-1 against Savage, Bravo, and Earthquake, and though he kept afloat for a brief time, he ended up getting in trouble and was tossed from the ring and counted out to give Savage’s team the win.

The third match saw WWF World Champion Hulk Hogan teaming with WWF World Tag Team Champions Demolition and Jake Roberts to take on Ted Dibiase, the Powers Of Pain, and “The Human Wrecking Machine” Zeus. For those unfamiliar with Zeus, the short version of the story is that he was an actor who played Zeus opposite Hogan in a wrestling movie called No Holds Barred, and Vince McMahon thought it would be cool if they got Zeus to come out and fight Hogan in real life. The guy couldn’t wrestle a lick and couldn’t even fake it very well, but that didn’t stop him from being pushed as an indestructible monster or, indeed, a Human Wrecking Machine. He opened the match by wrecking Hogan, but got himself disqualified by shoving the referee down, causing him to be eliminated about a minute in and covering for the fact that he can’t work. Hogan was in bad shape, and soon his team was as well, as both Ax and Smash were eliminated by the Powers Of Pain, who then went on to get themselves disqualified as well for double teaming Hogan. Jesse Ventura, on commentary, was outraged that the biased referee disqualified Dibiase’s entire team for what he considered relatively minor infractions, and I do have to say that they probably booked too many guys that had to be protected into the match and didn’t leave very much room for clean jobs. Dibiase, now left 2-on-1, was able to put Roberts away, but in the end fell to the mighty Hogan. The brief interaction with Hogan and Zeus was also to help build to the upcoming No Holds Barred PPV which, for those who also don’t recall, was a PPV where they ran the movie first, and then a cage match pitting Hogan and Brutus Beefcake against Zeus and Randy Savage. I’m not going to review that, but Hogan and Beefcake won when Hogan pinned Zeus after three legdrops. I do kind of wish we got Hogan vs Zeus in a singles match on PPV just because it would have been legendary as one of the worst matches of all time, but sadly we were never given the pleasure.

Up next, Roddy Piper led former hated enemy Jimmy Snuka and the Bushwhackers against Rick Rude, Mr Perfect, and the Rougeau Bros. This was probably the most interesting match on the show as the Rougeau Bros were eliminated early and fairly easily, leaving Rude and Perfect 4-on-2. They came back with eliminations on the Bushwhackers to even it up at 2 apiece, and there was a long heat segment on Snuka which built some pretty good drama, but Snuka finally got the tag to Piper, and he and Rude brawled out of the ring and to the back, getting counted out in the process. Now 1-on-1, Snuka came close several times to beating Perfect, but Perfect ended up hitting the Perfectplex to win the match for his team and keep his undefeated streak intact. Perfect’s another guy who never got a singles PPV match with Hogan, but probably should have.

The final match of the evening saw IC Champion the Ultimate Warrior, Jim Neidhart, and the Rockers ride into battle against the Heenan Family of Andre The Giant, Haku, Arn Anderson and…Bobby Heenan. It was originally supposed to be Tully Blanchard on the team, but he apparently failed a drug test days before the PPV and was fired, so Heenan had to substitute in for him. There were a lot of rumors that since Anderson and Blanchard were negotiating to go back to the NWA at this point, Blanchard was told he failed a drug test specifically to destroy any value he had to the NWA, and sure enough his contract offer was pulled and the offer Anderson got was reduced drastically, which caused a lot of heat between them from what I understand. So here’s the match, and Andre starts by beating up Warrior’s team before Warrior even gets to the ring, but finally Warrior makes it down, beats up Andre, and clotheslines him over the top to the floor, knocking him out and causing him to get counted out. Here’s another story, as the reason he was eliminated so quickly was that by this point in his career, Andre was seriously in a bad way physically, and what matches he was wrestling only lasted thirty seconds or so becaus he couldn’t handle doing anything longer. They couldn’t leave him out of the PPV because he was Andre, so they booked this as a nice little workaround to the problem. As a kid growing up then, you of course had no idea about any of this, but looking back it was pretty obvious if you knew what to look for. Anyway, Neidhart, the Rockers, and Haku all got eliminated, leaving Warrior 2-on-1 against Anderson and Heenan. Anderson was able to control Warrior for a while, but Warrior turned it around and eliminated him with the press slam/splash combo, leaving Heenan all by himself against Warrior. Warrior, with a big smile on his face, gleefully abused Heenan for a minute or so before mercifully putting him away, though he did hit one final clothesline on Heenan in the aisle as Heenan made his way to the back. Though you again wouldn’t have probably noticed it at the time, the fact that they had Warrior main eventing a PPV showed that the wheels were being set in motion for him to take over from Hogan as WWF World Champion.

Survivor Series 1990

The fourth edition of the Survivor Series, coming from Hartford, Connecticut, featured the same format elimination tag team matches as the first three, but there were two innovations that made this Survivor Series unique, and neither has been done since. The first was that after the five regular tag team elimination matches were finished, all the survivors would go to a final tag team elimination match, faces against heels, at the end of the night. The other centered around a giant egg that had been appearing on WWF television for weeks leading up to Survivor Series, with the tease being that nobody knew what was inside the egg, but we would find out when it hatched at the PPV.

But before we got to all that, there were some tag team elimination matches to get through. The opening contest saw WWF World Champion the Ultimate Warrior teaming with Intercontinental Champion Kerry Von Erich and the Legion Of Doom to take on Mr Perfect and all three members of Demolition: Ax, Smash, and Crush. I believe this was the first time ever that the WWF Champion wrestled in the opening match on a PPV, though feel free to correct me if I’m wrong on that. Mr Perfect was totally on tonight in oversell mode, bouncing around like a pinball for anything the faces threw at him. Ax was the first one eliminated, probably because of the health problems that required there be a third member of Demolition (email me about that if you don’t know what I’m talking about.), and he tagged in for about a minute before being eliminated by the Warrior. The other two members of Demolition went next, along with both members of the Legion Of Doom when all four men started brawling in the ring and the referee disqualified all of them, leaving Perfect alone against the two singles champions. Thanks to ramming Von Erich into an exposed turnbuckle, Perfect was able to eliminate the IC Champion with a Perfectplex, but the same tactic did not work against the Warrior, who rallied to defeat Perfect and win the match for his team, advancing to the final match.

The next match was mostly notable because it featured the debut of the Undertaker, who came in as the mystery partner of Ted Dibiase and Rhythm N Blues (Honky Tonk Man & Greg Valentine) as they faced Dusty Rhodes, Koko B Ware, and WWF Tag Team Champions the Hart Foundation. Undertaker started the match and almost immediately eliminated Koko with the Tombstone, then tagged out and allowed his partners to have some fun. Neidhart was able to pin HTM with a powerslam, but was eliminated himself shortly afterward, and then Rhodes was eliminated by the Undertaker, leaving Bret in a 3-on-1 situation. To Bret’s luck, Undertaker got himself counted out when he left the ring to go to the aid of his manager Brother Love, who was being attacked by Dusty on his way out of the ringside area, and then Bret reversed a figure four attempt by Valentine into a small package to eliminate him as well, bringing it down to Dibiase and Hart. Bret put on a great showing and seemed to be on the verge of defeating Dibiase several times, however Dibiase rolled through on a crossbody by Hart and cradled him for the clean win. As a side note, Bret’s brother Dean had died I believe the day before this show, and Bret dedicated the match to Dean, and even though he didn’t win, he did put in a great showing for his brother. Too bad this wasn’t the last time he’d dedicate a match to a dead brother.

The third match saw Jake Roberts, Jimmy Snuka, and the Rockers take on Rick Martel, the Warlord, and Power & Glory. Roberts and the Rockers all had revenge on their minds, as both had been the subject of attacks by members of the opposite team. Rick Martel had sprayed Arrogance (his personal line of cologne) in Jake’s eyes and blinded him, albeit temporarily, while Power & Glory had attacked Shawn Michaels’ knee with a chain at Summerslam and put him out of action for several weeks. Unfortunately for Jake’s team, tonight was not the night they’d get their revenge as they were eliminated one by one until Jake was left all by himself. He was now in a 4-on-1 situation for the second time in Survivor Series history, but though he had come back to narrow it to 2-on-1 in 1988, he wasn’t able to repeat that performance this year, being eliminated by countout while chasing Martel to the back with his snake. However, Martel was not the legal man in the ring, so he was not eliminated, and this meant that for the first time in Survivor Series history, an entire team had survived the match, and they would now join up with Dibiase to face the badly outnumbered Ultimate Warrior, who desperately needed some faces to win if he wanted a fighting chance.

Luckily for him, Hulk Hogan wrestled next, as he teamed with Hacksaw Jim Duggan, the Big Boss Man, and Tugboat against Earthquake, Dino Bravo, Haku, and the Barbarian. Any guess who went over here? Duggan, Boss Man, Haku, and Bravo all went relatively quickly, leaving Hogan and Tugboat against Earthquake and the Barbarian. Hogan got to play Face In Peril for a few minutes before tagging in Tugboat, who had been purposely saved by Hogan for late in the match to come in and clean house if they got in trouble, so he comes in and starts going at it with Earthquake (who he would ironically go on to form a tag team with a year later), and both men wound up brawling outside the ring and getting counted out, leaving a still tired Hogan alone with the Barbarian. If it were anyone else, Barbarian might have had a chance, but this is Hogan we’re talking about here, so of course he came back to hit the legdrop and advance to the finals.

Before we get to the next match, Mean Gene Okerlund interviews Macho King Randy Savage, who was not wrestling tonight for some reason. I had heard something about him being injured, but don’t know that for sure, so anyone who knows either way feel free to drop me a line and let me know. Anyway, he cuts a promo with the basic point being that he wants to take another run at the WWF World Title, currently held by the Ultimate Warrior. This would go on to lead to Warrior shooting him down, Savage interfering and costing Warrior the title against Sgt Slaughter at the Royal Rumble, and then the climactic retirement match between Savage and Warrior at Wrestlemania 7, which I think to this day is the best match Warrior ever had, and I’d definitely even put it over the Wrestlemania 6 match with Hogan.

Back to the in-ring action, Sgt Slaughter leads his band of USA haters, evil Commie Boris Zhukov and the equally evil Japanese Orient Express, against the super American team of New Zealand’s Bushwhackers, Mexican Tito Santana, and formerly evil Commie turned US sympathizer Nikolai Volkoff. I never realized how stupid the teams in this match looked until I just typed this out. Anyway, Nikolai’s team wipes out Zhukov and the Orient Express in about a minute and a half, leaving Slaughter in a 4-on-1 situation. Slaughter ends up faring much better than Jake Roberts did when presented with the same odds earlier in the evening, coming back to eliminate Volkoff and both Bushwhackers by himself, leaving Slaughter and Tito 1-on-1. The ref gets bumped, and Gen Adnan took the opportunity to sneak in and whack Tito with the Iraqi flag, but the ref woke up in time to see it and disqualified Slaughter, giving Tito the win, as he would now go on to the finals to team with Hogan and the Warrior against Ted Dibiase, Rick Martel, the Warlord, and Power & Glory. The whole match probably didn’t even last ten minutes, though watching Slaughter come back from such terrible odds was fun.

But before we get there, let’s find out what’s in that egg! Mean Gene is on the podium with the egg and throws out several possibilities of what might be in the egg, none of which were the slightest bit realistic. Most people thought it would be a new wrestler, but this was before there was anywhere near as big a smart following of the business as there is today, so nobody had any real knowledge on which to base this. No matter what anyone expected, they were surely disappointed when the egg hatched, and out came the Gobbledy Gooker. For those who didn’t get to see this, the Gobbledy Gooker was Hector Guerrero dressed as a giant turkey with a giant dummy head like you see on people who dress up as Looney Tunes at amusement parks. You could hear the boos from the crowd who obviously felt ripped off by such a lame payoff to an angle like this, and it only got worse when the Gooker took Mean Gene to the ring and, instead of doing something cool like attack Gene (you have to admit, a heel turkey would be a fun idea for about thirty seconds, which would be thirty seconds longer than this was fun), he instead started dancing, and even got Gene in on the action. Monsoon and Piper, on commentary, seemed to be enjoying this a lot more than anyone else was, and indeed the whole deal got such a bad reaction that the Gooker disappeared almost immediately and was never spoken of again, at least until years later when it became okay to joke about and he appeared in the Gimmick Battle Royal at Wrestlemania X-7. And yes, Hector got in the suit again for the occasion. Gobbledy Gooker…Lazertron…LAX’s personal bitch…poor Hector just can’t catch a break, can he?

So now we’re in the Grand Finale Match Of Survival, and Warlord gets eliminated about ten seconds in by a flying forearm from Tito. I get the feeling that this was done because of an injury, because he definitely looked like he had his bell rung at the end of the match against Jake’s team and he might have been taken out early here to avoid further injury, but that’s just a theory. Santana gets eliminated a couple of minutes later, and it’s Dibiase, Martel, Roma, and Hercules against The Two Guys You Know Will Never Lose To This Bunch. They are not referred to this way officially, of course, they wouldn’t want to make the outcome TOO obvious. But sure enough, Hogan kicks out of the Powerplex and pins Roma with a clothesline, Martel gets knocked out of the ring and hightails it, taking the countout to get eliminated, Hogan pins Dibiase with the legdrop, and even though I’m sure you’ll be shocked to discover that Hercules couldn’t come back from a 2-on-1 against Hulk Hogan and the Ultimate Warrior, he eventually went down in defeat after the Warrior splash. Hogan and Warrior beat the shit out of Slick after the match to celebrate, and we get a nice, homoerotic shot of their asses as they stand on the apron with their hands raised, end of show.

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