THE BIG EVENT

The Big Event
Exhibition Stadium (Toronto, Ontario)
Original Airdate: August 28, 1986

Look...I know it's been awhile. And for that I apologize. I really enjoy writing in this blog, and I don't think I'm going to lose interest anytime soon. So if you have some interest in this, my little pet project, just stay with me. It will move along, albeit at a sometimes slower place.

I also realize this is not technically a pay per view event. I am including it for a couple of reasons. First, I figured since it was a whole year between honest to god pay per views at this point, it might be fun to take a little pit stop. Secondly, I very distinctly remember renting this tape from our local video store at least 5 times as a young kid, so I thought it would be fun to revisit.

It's funny what you look forward to when you're little, isn't it? I remember when my mom would take me and let me rent a wrestling tape. I had 24 hours with that thing, and honest to god, I would watch it at least twice in that 24 hours. Sometimes thrice. Despite how that sounds, I also enjoyed playing outside. (just wanted to clear that up) Anyway, take "The Big Event" for example. On the surface, there is really nothing special about it. I think the announcers claim it set some sort of attendance record (if it did, the record was promptly broken by Wrestlemania 3). Other than that, it's really just a house show that was taped in front of 60some thousand people. (wrestling geek term alert: a "house show" is a live event not taped or shown live on television. generally, the results of house shows have little no bearing on the overall storylines. Because of this, they are often criticized for being boring). There were no title changes. In fact, there was only one title match.

But that didn't matter. Despite the inclusion of such C list mid-80's talent as "Iron" Mike Sharpe (most famous for his onscreen claim to having a wrist injury for something like 5 years) and Ted Arcidi (umm...who?), I remember watching this like it was the biggest pro wrestling card to ever come down the pike. Amazingly enough, my childhood favorite (The Ultimate Warrior, if you're curious. But more on that later) wasn't even involved. (he hadn't yet come to WWF).

What sort of point am I trying to make here? I guess just that its funny how devoted a young kid can be to one thing. And I was nothing if not devoted. I had all the merchandise (at least whatever I could get my mom to buy me) and I honestly spent a lot of time thinking about wrestling (I mean, what was I going to think about instead? school?). When I got to a certain age, I even had a notebook where I wrote down tons of dream matches and cards. I'm not really sure what happened to that notebook, but hopefully it got destroyed. Its existence in 2010 would be fairly embarrassing. Like I said way back in my introduction post, I still watch a ton of wrestling, but it certainly doesn't rule my thoughts, like it once did. But for a few magical years in the late 80s/early 90s, all that mattered to me was whether or not I'd have time to watch King Harley Race vs Pedro Morales once more before the video store closed.

Card:
The Killer Bees (Jumpin' Jim Brunzell and B. Brian Blair) def. The Funk Brothers (Hoss Funk and Jimmy Jack Funk)(w/ Jimmy Hart)
The Magnificent Muruco (w/Mr Fuji) fought King Tonga to a time limit draw
Ted Arcidi def. Tony Garea
The Junkyard Dog def. Adrian Adonis by countout
"The Rebel" Dick Slater def. "Iron" Mike Sharpe
Bobby "The Brian" Heenan, Big John Studd and King Kong Bundy def. Lou Albano and The Machines (Super Machine and Big Machine) (w/Giant Machine) by disqualification
Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat def. Jake "The Snake" Roberts in a Snake Pit match
Billy Jack Haynes def. Hercules Hernandez
The Fabulous Rougeau Brothers (Jacques and Raymond) def. The Dream Team (Greg "The Hammer" Valentine and Brutus Beefcake)
King Harley Race def. Pedro Morales
Hulk Hogan def. "Mr. Wonderful" Paul Orndorff (w/ Bobby "The Brain" Heenan) by disqualification

NEXT: WRESTLEMANIA 3

WRESTLEMANIA 2

Wrestlemania 2

Nassau Coliseum (Uniondale, New York)

The Rosemont Horizon (Rosemont, Illinois)

LA Sports Arena (Los Angeles, California)

Original Airdate: April 7, 1986

Year number 2 of the WWF pay per view has begun. (Although, if you want to get technical, Wrestlemania 1 was only on PPV in select markets, so really the Wrestling Classic was the first nationwide PPV). For the second edition of the grandaddy of them all, it is clear Vince Mcmahon was looking for ways to outdo himself. In typical 1980's "more more more" fashion, it was decided that Wrestlemania 2 would be simulcast from 3 different locations spanning the whole country. And I'm not sure if I'm in the minority or not, but I consider this experiment to be a resounding failure. I suppose the powers that be did as well, because to my knowledge, this was the first and only time it was attempted.

I'll be blunt. I think this is one of the absolute weakest Wrestlemanias. I did when I first watched it as a young kid, and revisiting it this week did nothing to change my opinion. The first problem has to do with the format. The jumping of locations affords the show no flow whatsoever. And because it was so spread out, they also had to use 3 different announce teams. It would be charitable to say they scrape the bottom of the barrel with these. People like future Minnesota governor and paranoid nutjob Jesse "The Body" Ventura and Mcmahon himself are more than passable, but whose bright idea was it to give late night schlock horror tv host Elvira a microphone? A recurring trend (at least to me) in pro wrestling is the better the announcing, the more enjoyable the match, and I think this is really the first pay per view I watched where that rings true. I just wanted Elvira, Cathy Lee Crosby (WHO?) and a couple others to shut up (so much so that it took me out of the in ring action).

And there's not even a ton to be enthralled with in the ring, either. This show continues early WWF tradition of having way too many matches, to the point where no one is able to tell a good story in the ring. The opening match from Long Island between Paul Orndorff and Magnificent Muraco lasts less than 5 minutes and ends with a bizarre double countout. Nowadays, it is standard practice for a PPV to start with a high energy match that might go 15 minutes or something to really get the crowd involved. The Orndorff/Murcao match induced nothing in me besides a shrug and a slight yawn. The same goes for several of the other 11 bouts including a flag match between Corporal Kirchner (a second rate Sgt. Slaughter) and Nikolai Volkoff and a blinkandyoullmissit woman's match featuring the Fabulous Moolah. One of the few bright spots is a battle royal (a match where a whole bunch of guys are in the ring and the only way to lose is to get thrown over the top rope. last man standing wins) featuring some NFL players as well as future megastar Bret "The Hitman" Hart (making his first PPV appearance). I also liked the tag team title match where The British Bulldogs came away with the belts (despite his talent, this would prove to be the Dynamite Kid's only real taste of mainstream success) and the main event between Hulk Hogan and King Kong Bundy in a steel cage. It is an interesting, early prototype of the format that made WWF huge in the coming years, which was the Hulkster overcoming a seemingly impossible challenge, and triumphing in the name of all that is good and right. (this may sound like hyperbole, but Hulk Hogan really was that big at one time)

I also didn't like the fact that no ring entrances were included, as well as very few interviews or backstage segments. I think it served to make an already choppy show due to the different locations even choppier. I'm not sure if this is how the show was presented originally, but if so, it was definitely a misstep, and once again, to my knowledge, it was not one that was ever repeated.

So here we have, what was, for the most part, a step backwards, for Wrestlemania. But fear not, loyal readers (all 3 of you), we are about to enter an absolute prime period for WWF, where they began firing on all cylinders. And to me, this period began with Hulk Hogan and a 500 lb giant from the French Alps meeting face to face in front of 80,000 people. But hold on...we aren't quite there yet. Soon though. I advise you to put on your bright red Hulk Hogan bandanna in preparation.

Card:

(Nassau Coliseum)

"Mr. Wonderful" Paul Orndorff fought The Magnificent Muraco to a double countout

"Macho Man" Randy Savage (w/Miss Elizabeth) def. George "The Animal" Steele to retain the Intercontinental Championsip

Jake "The Snake" Roberts def. George Wells

Mr. T (w/Joe Frazier and The Haiti Kid) def. "Rowdy" Roddy Piper (w/ "Cowboy" Bob Orton and Lou Duva) by disqualification in a boxing match

(Rosemont Horizon)

The Fabulous Moolah def. Velvet McIntyre to retain the Womans Championship

Corporal Kirchner def. Nikolai Volkoff in a flag match

Andre The Giant won a 20 man battle royal, last eliminating Bret "The Hitman" Hart (other participants: Jimbo Covert, Pedro Morales, Tony Atlas, Ted Arcidi, Harvey Martin, Dan Spivey, Hillbilly Jim, King Tonga, The Iron Sheik, Ernie Holmes, B. Brian Blair, "Jumpin" Jim Brunzell, Big John Studd, Bill Fralic, Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart, Russ Francis, Bruno Sammartino and Willaim "The Refrigerator" Perry)

The British Bulldogs (Davey Boy Smith and The Dynamite Kid) (w/Ozzy Osbourne and Capt. Lou Albano) def. The Dream Team (Brutus Beefcake and Greg "The Hammer" Valentine) (w/ Johnny Valiant) to win the Tag Team Championships

(LA Sports Arena)

Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat def. Hercules Hernandez

Adrian Adonis (w/ Jimmy Hart) def. Uncle Elmer

Terry and Hoss Funk (w/ Jimmy Hart) def. The Junkyard Dog and Tito Santana

Hulk Hogan def. King Kong Bundy (w/ Bobby "The Brain" Heenan) in a steel cage match to retain the World Championship

Next Up: The Big Event

THE WRESTLING CLASSIC

The Wrestling Classic

The Rosemont Horizon (Rosemont, Illinois)

Original airdate: November 7, 1985

"What the hell is this?", you may ask. That is a natural reaction. The "1st Annual" Wrestling Classic (or as I've come to call it, "the 1985 pay per view that time forgot") is oft overlooked, but I plan to leave no stone unturned in pursuit of completing this blog/project so here we are.

Unlike Wrestlemania, The Wrestling Classic was conceptual. Almost all of the matches were part of a 16 man single elimination tournament, the winner of which would receive...well...nothing as far as I can tell. I guess at this point the writers hadn't figured out that to make something like that engaging, there really needs to be something at stake. It's very easy. Give the winner a guaranteed title shot and all of the sudden it's WAY easier to be invested in the outcome of the tournament.

This time, however, the only prize at stake was a Rolls Royce that was supposedly being given away in a sweepstakes, with the winner to be announced at the PPV. I'm fairly certain this was all a work, but if it wasn't, how quick do you think the winner turned around and sold that bad boy? I can't see a random wrestling viewer tooling around his neighborhood in a 200 thousand dollar luxury car. Whether it was real or not, the segment on the show where they announced the winner was agonizing, and clearly the crowd agreed because there were plenty of "boos" and some trash was even thrown at the ring. Wikipedia says that segment was cut due to time constraints in the original PPV broadcast, and it probably should have stayed cut.

Anyway, in terms of the actual product, the slight progress from Wrestlemania toward the heyday of WWF is apparent, but this show is definitely still a crude early version of what would come later. The production values are still very shoddy, with everything being a little too dimly and the ring once again looking super cheap.

The actual wrestling takes a step in the right direction this time, but the concept is too ambituous. All told, there are 15 matches on a 150 minute card. So when you factor in backstage segments and that goofy Rolls Royce giveaway, no one was really given time to tell much of a story in any one match. There are also a lot of strange, anti-climactic endings to some of the matches. In wrestling terms, these are known as "non-finishes", or matches that don't end with a decisive winner.

Probably the most significant aspect of this show is it marked the PPV debut of one of the biggest superstars of the 1980's, "Macho Man" Randy Savage. Like Hulk Hogan, Macho Man is a household name, and even here, early on, it's clear there is something different about him. He was very athletic and did moves in the ring that you didn't see much in the WWF at the time (at least not on this card), and he gave a great interview. It was sometimes hard to determine what in the heck he was talking about, but that didn't matter. Macho Man had IT. He was magnetic. He very clearly represented the new wave of wrestlers that would propel the WWF to the next level.

On the other side of the spectrum, we have Macho Man's opponent in the first round of the tournament; "The Polish Hammer" Ivan Putski. This match, even though it was short, was to me a telling representation of what was going on within the company at that time. Putski clearly represented the old guard. He had a stocky, bodybuilder's frame, wore simple red trunks to the ring, and sported a slicked back 50's style hairdo surely held back by at least half a container of Brill cream. Macho Man was his complete antithesis. He wore loud sequined outfits with bright colors, and jumped around the ring with ease, as opposed to Putski's Greco Roman inspired mat based moves. And just like what would ultimately happen in the business, the old guard was disposed with ease in about 3 minutes.

Another notable performer making his first PPV appearance here is a guy named The Dynamite Kid. Casual wrestling fans wouldn't know the Dynamite Kid, but fans of the industry regard him as one of the greatest, most influential in ring performers in history. Unfortunately for Dynamite, he was incredibly self destructive and is apparently now destitute and confined to a wheelchair. Chris Benoit, who was also regarded as an incredible performer before going down an extremely dark path of his own, cited Dynamite as his biggest influence in the ring. Here though, Dynamite was in fine form, even though he was pretty clearly already abusing steroids. The finish of his semi-final match with Savage is original and interesting and surely the best of the whole show.

For anyone interested, the tournament was won by the Junkyard Dog. JYD was immensely popular for awhile, and honestly, I never understood it. He was a portly, affable seeming guy from the Carolinas somewhere with the voice of an old bullfrog and the word THUMP (his catchphrase) written across the back of his wrestling gear. He could never really do much in the ring (his finishing move was a headbutt), but that didn't stop the fans from cheering pretty loudly for him. (sidenote: JYD was killed in a car crash in 1998. His death was one of the very few untimely passings of a wrestler that wasn't presumed to be died to drug/steroid abuse)

Oh, and in case you were wondering, some guy name Mike from Illinois "won" the "Rolls Royce".

Enjoy your weekend!

Card:

(Tournament first round)

Adrian Adonis (w/Jimmy Hart) def. Corporal Kirchner

The Dynamite Kid def. Nikolai Volkoff

"Macho Man" Randy Savage (w/ Miss Elizabeth) def. "The Polish Hammer" Ivan Putski

Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat def. Davey Boy Smith

The Junkyard Dog def. The Iron Sheik

Moondog Spot def. Terry Funk (w/ Jimmy Hart) by countout

Tito Santana def. The Magnificent Muraco (w/ Mr. Fuji)

"Mr. Wonderful" Paul Orndorff def. "Cowboy" Bob Orton by disqualification

(Tournament quarter finals)

The Dynamite Kid def. Adrian Adonis

"Macho Man" Randy Savage def. Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat

The Junkyard Dog def. Moondog Spot

Tito Santana and "Mr. Wonderful" Paul Orndorff fought to a double countout

World Heavyweight Champion Hulk Hogan def. "Rowdy" Roddy Piper by disqualification

(Tournament semi-finals)

"Macho Man" Randy Savage def. The Dynamite Kid

(Tournament finals)

The Junkyard Dog def. "Macho Man" Randy Savage by countout

Next up: Wrestlemania 2

A VICTORY FOR DEMOCRATS, AND GOOD WRESTLING

So I'm about halfway through my second pay per view, so that entry should be up soon, but to fill the gap, I thought I'd write quickly about yesterday, which could prove to be a fairly significant day in WWE history.

As most not living under a rock are aware, yesterday was midterm election day and some important races were decided across the US. My adopted home state of Pennsylvania swung Red, which is disheartening, but that is a discussion for another time. Anyway, anyone who follows the WWE (and probably anyone who makes a habit 0f watching the national news) knows, company CEO Vince Mcmahon's wife made a bid for a US Senate seat in her home state of Connecticut. And, well, as most people now know...she lost.



Obviously, I didn't know a ton about the particulars of the race, because it was not taking place in my home state, but to a casual observer, her loss certainly makes sense. Her previous political experience and qualifications for the job were dubious at best. Her campaign ads stressed her strong leadership of the WWE, some even explicitly said she "cleaned it up". Now, the inner workings and heirarchy of the company aren't abundantly clear to outsiders, but I, like most people, thought Vince was still pretty much the main guy, so I couldn't tell if these ads were just all hot air. Clearly most of Connecticut thought so. A lot of recaps of the election I've read this morning have indicated the Mcmahons more or less threw a ton of money at the wall and attempted to buy her this seat, and it didn't work.

All that aside, the notion that she "cleaned up the WWE" is the main thrust of this writing. Maybe 12-18 months ago, the WWE started on a very public campaign to tone down their product to achieve the rating of "TV-PG". Ostensibly, the reason given for this was to expand their potential advertisers, but I don't think it was too hard to see the truth. It was a calculated move made in concert with the start of Linda's campaign to win the Republican primary. It was clear her advisors wanted the product she peddles to come off as un-smutty as possible. The funny thing is, of COURSE it didn't work. Seemingly every knock on her came from her association with the WWE. That was going to happen no matter how family friendly they made WWE product, because ultimately, she has zero political experience. She has never been anything but the WWE guy's wife, so clearly any attacks or counterpoints toward her were going to take that and focus on it, whether her wrestlers were saying the word "ass" on television or not.

I'm not suggesting WWE product has to be needlessly tasteless at every turn, but I do think making everything as toothless as possible has done some damage. The picky choosy, slightly hypocritical nature of the censorship was sort of bothersome as well.

Some examples:

-Stone Cold Steve Austin's trademark catchphrase "can of whoop-ass" was censored in the 10 o clock tv hour. That's a word that can be said pretty much any time of the day on any channel. Hell, it's barely a curse word anymore. In fact, this summer, there was a MOVIE called "Kick Ass" with ads at every bus stop in the city of Philadelphia in plain view of folks of any age. Once again, I'd like to stress that I'm not advocating being tasteless just for the sake of it, but taking it insanely to the other extreme is not necessary either. The thrust of pro wrestling has always been to tell a story with engaging characters, and Stone Cold Steve Austin (one of the most popular characters in the entire history of the business) is a beligerent, trashmouthed redneck. Let him be who he is, especially when who he is made the company boatloads of money.

-Triple H has been one of the more popular wrestlers of the past 15 years. He is also famously married to Vince and Linda's daughter Stephanie (after spending some time with the ambiguously genitaliaed man beast known as Chyna, but that's neither here nor there), which essentially gives him carte blanche in the locker room and basically makes him part heir to the whole kingdom. Anyway, I thought it was suspect that in the midst of doing little nitpicky things like renaming John Cena's "F.U." finishing move "the attitude adjustment", Triple H was still allowed to parade around in a D-Generation X tshirt which read "World's Largest Member" (teeheehee). Is that really any more suggestive or "dirty" than calling a move "the F.U."? I certainly don't think so. But I guess we can write this one off as standard nepotism.

-the most puzzling to me (and I swear I'm not trying to score any points with the feminist community here) is the fact that the WWE female roster hasn't even been a little regulated. They're still allowed to jump around in next to nothing and strike all sorts of sexually suggestive poses on the way to the ring and mid-match. I'm certainly not offended by this. In fact, sometimes it's not half bad. The point I'm trying to make is these inconsistencies enforce the (apparently mis)calculated nature of this whole move.

So the logical question to conclude is "Where do we go from here?". Now that Linda's political aspirations are dashed, does the WWE head back to the status quo? My feeling is "yes". While I doubt they will ever go back to being as racy as the late 90's "Attitude era" (maybe the most commercially prosperous era of the company, but I'll get into that a lot more somewhere down the line), but I suspect the reins will get loosened fairly quickly. If it helps the story of a match to have a wrestler bleed, they will bleed. If it makes sense within the context of a wrestler's character for him to say "hell" or (GASP) "ass", he will. I may be completely offbase, but I think as far as wrestling fans go, this is the possible result for the Connecticut election. (even if the other guy lied about serving in Vietnam)

Glossary of terms

So before I continue, I think I'll throw out a couple definitions of basic wrestling lingo, just in case. I figure anything further than this can probably be explained in the context of a given blog entry, but here are a few basics at least:

heel - 'bad guy' or villianous wrestler
face or babyface - 'good guy' or hero wrestler
heat - a strong negative reaction from a crowd
pop - a strong round of applause or positive reaction from a crowd
angle - as explained above, the storylines behind why specific wrestlers are fighting
face turn/heel turn - a character changing from good to bad, or vice versa
bump - a part of a match where a wrestler falls or otherwise puts himself in harm's way (ie - he took tons of crazy bumps in that match)
shoot - anytime a wrestler breaks character and does something completely legitimate, be it speaking as himself in an interview, or accidentally injuring his opponent
work - anything in wrestling that is scripted. The vast majority of what goes on in pro wrestling is "a work" or "worked"
stiff - a wrestler who is so real in the ring, he tends to genuinely inflict pain on his opponent, or an exceptionally rough move (ie - man, he really stiffed him). OR could be a term for a crappy, slow wrestler with no fluidity
workrate - used to describe the realism/quality of an individual wrestler's performances
swerve - when an angle appears to be going in a very specific direction, then goes the complete opposite way suddenly and unexpectedly (I think this one makes more sense when used/seen in context)

I THINK that about covers it. Anything else, I'll explain as I go.

WRESTLEMANIA 1

Wrestlemania 1

Madison Square Garden (New York, New York)

Original airdate: March 31, 1985

So here it is. The beginning. The patient zero of pay per view professional wrestling. And much like I am trying to do with this blog (which I'm sure 2 people will read, but I digress), the WWF was clearly still trying to "iron out the kinks" at this point. While watching this show, I was going back and forth in my head as to how to format the blog. My initial thought was to do a straight forward list of the matches and review each one individually, but that seems too hacky. So what I think I'm going to do is just write my various jumbled thoughts on the show freeform, and then list the results at the end of the entry. That leaves me a lot more freedom to write about different PPVs from different angles, and in some cases, actually come up with an interesting angle from which to write about a crappy, uninteresting show. (if my memory serves me correctly, this will be a particular problem from about 1993-96. Those were dark years for the company).

And much like I am currently doing on a 1000000000000000000000% smaller scale, the WWF was clearly trying to find their identity a bit with the very first Wrestlemania. Don't get me wrong, the seed of genius is CLEARLY there. It wouldn't have lasted 26 years and counting if it wasn't. But it wasn't quite sussed out yet.

There are a couple of problems. One is that (at least to me, the actual product (wrestling) isn't quite up to par yet. Don't get me wrong, there are certainly some great workers on the card. Ricky Steamboat is rightly regarded as one of the greatest of all time, but here he is paired in an extremely forgettable 5 minute match with a generic heel named Matt Borne (Borne eventually acheived some degree of fame years later portraying Doink, an evil clown, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it). There are also an abundance of wrestlers who, while not anywhere near legendary status, were certainly solid WWF fixtures for many years. Case in point: Tito Santana. Tito, who spent about a decade being good (not great) in the company has the honor of kicking off the show against a masked wrestler named The Executioner. I consider myself a near expert on modern era WWF trivia, but that one stumped me. I had to look up who portrayed the Executioner. Turns out it was "Playboy" Buddy Rose, who spent most of the remainder of his career (before his untimely death) poking fun at his own weight problem. The Executioner must have been extremely shortlived. His match with Tito is just as forgettable.

I think the other thing that makes this show less than memorable is the lack of angles. I'm not really sure how much to explain wrestling lingo, since I'm not sure who (if anyone) will read this, but for the unitiated, an "angle" is the story behind the fake fights in wrestling. In many ways, they're very comparable to much more testosterone laden soap operas. Anyway, there weren't a ton of angles leading into the first Wrestlemania. While Vince Mcmahon clearly had a vision to wed wrestling with other popular culture (WM1 features appearances by singer Cyndi Lauper, "musician" Liberace, Yankees legend Billy Martin, and then extremely popular actor Mr T), but I don't quite think he had the right vision for his own product yet. But that would come in time, obviously. I don't even think they really had the right grasp on production values yet. Everything is way too dark, and little things are distracting, like the fact that the ring ropes are clearly too loose.

The main event serves as a nice glimpse into what is to come, though. It pits Hulk Hogan and the aforementioned Mr T against Rowdy Roddy Piper (who still had some good years with WWF left ahead of him) and Mr Wonderful Paul Ordorff (who would be out the door within a year or two). It's by no means a gem or an all time classic match, but the crowd is clearly more invested in it than any of the other bouts. And while Hulk was still maybe 2 years off from being the full fledged phenomenon he would eventually turn into, you could tell people had already gotten behind him a fair amount. Plus, the inclusion of T was a clever bit of cross promotion, Unlike the women's match, which essentially served as an extended commercial for Cyndi Lauper's song "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun".

All in all, a good start and certainly extremely important in a historical sense, but not an essential event in any way, unless you consider yourself a total WWF completist (which I guess I will be when this blog is said and done) or if, like me, you can't get enough of the Iron Sheik refering to "Mean" Gene Okerlund as "Gene Mean".

Card:

Tito Santana def. The Executioner

King Kong Bundy def. Special Delivery Jones

Ricky Steamboat def. Matt Borne

David Sammartino (w/Bruno Sammartino) fought Brutus Beefcake (w/Johnny Valiant) to a double DQ

The Junkyard Dog def. Intercontinental Champion Greg Valentine by countout (Valentine retains)

Nikolai Volkoff and The Iron Sheik (w/Classy Freddie Blassie) def. The US Express (Barry Windham and Mike Rotundo) (w/ Capt. Lou Albano) to win the Tag Team Championships

Andre The Giant def. Big John Studd (w/Bobby "The Brain" Heenan) in a "15,000 dollar Bodyslam Challenge"

Wendi Richter (w/Cyndi Lauper) def. Leilani Kai (w/The Fabulous Moolah) to win the Womens Championship

Hulk Hogan and Mr. T (w/ "Superfly" Jimmy Snuka) def. "Rowdy" Roddy Piper and "Mr Wonderful" Paul Orndorff (w/ "Cowboy" Bob Orton)

A brief intro

I've been a wrestling (the "fake" kind) fan on and off my entire life. I'm not even entirely sure why. It's just something I got into when I was maybe 3 years old and never truly got out of. I very vividly remember watching 3 or 4 hours of wrestling EVERY Saturday morning during the hours most kids watched cartoons. There was Wrestling Challenge, then WWF Superstars of Wrestling, then some cruddy WCW show, then it was time to go out and play. The amazing thing is these shows were extremely unexciting in retrospect. It was mostly established stars wrestling no name "jobbers" and not very much was done to advance the soap opera like storylines that I could never get enough of.

As I got a little older, I'd save the money I made doing chores around the house and occasionally get my mother to let me purchase one of the WWF's then quarterly pay per views. It was a BIG event to do that back then. You had to go down to the cable company, pick up a special box to hook up to your tv just for that night, then take it back in the morning. And despite the fact that it is certainly a conventionally "dorky" thing to be into (probably moreso now), my stepdad was cool enough to take me to whatever live shows WWF ran close to us, including Raw once around 1996 (the salad days of their next big crop of stars like The Rock, Triple H and Stone Cold Steve Austin)

ANYWAY, at some point in like 2006, after a lengthy absence from having anything to do with wrestling, I gradually got back into it again. It started with checking out some old late 80's pay per views for nostalgia purposes. Then I decided to order the Royal Rumble, because that was always my favorite of their shows. Then it was Wrestlemania. Then I started dabbling in the WWE's weekly shows again. That was when it started getting out of control again. Now, I can fully admit to being obsessed again. I watch all WWE and TNA (a veeeeeery distant second to WWE in terms of mainstream popularity) programming and regularly attend shows run by a variety of other "indie" organizations (which is made tremendously simple now that I live a mere 10 minute walk from the old ECW arena).

Since then, I've always toyed with the idea of doing a wrestling blog, but I certainly don't think I'm clever enough to distinguish myself from the other dorks who write long detailed blogs about the business using nerdy mark terms like "workrate" or "pop".

But then the idea for the gimmick behind this blog hit me. And yes, I can freely admit it is a total gimmick. I'm going to watch every Pay Per View event the WWF has ever run, and write about them as I go. This seems right for a multitude of reasons. One is that it will be like taking a walk through my 26 year old life. Wrestlemania 1, the very first pro wrestling pay per view, aired on March 31, 1985. I was 1 year and 24 days old at the time. This gave me the idea that maybe as I go through these, it will trigger some personal reflections of growing up, since I essentially grew up along with that particular company.

So here goes nothing. Obviously the first couple years will go by without too many entries since less than 5 ppv's a year ran until the early 90's. If I can, I'll try to keep it interesting by approaching these in different ways. Maybe I'll even have some guest writers if I watch a certain show with someone else. So yeah...let's do this. Someone bring out the Fink for some ring intros.

Note: I'm putting no time frame on how often I'll be able to watch these. Realistically, working around my job and everything else, it will probably be just a couple shows a month. We'll see.