When I think Rude vs. Roberts, I think "45-minute reverse chinlock."

WrestleMania IV
March 28, 1988 -- Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, Atlantic City, NJ

- All right, let's get this over with. Might be the biggest comedown in venues ever. Did you hear all the fond memories from wrestling fans when they announced Trump Plaza was closing this week? Yeah, me neither. EIGHTEEN matches scheduled in total (only 16 actually put on due to draws), I don't know what they were thinking.

A ****ing battle royal
Were they on drugs when they put this card together? You don't start with a battle royal under any circumstances. It's a spacefiller meant to let the air out of a crowd. Hey, there's a big trophy, I wonder what could happen to it. No rating for battle royals, but this was pretty much typical. Meant to set up Bret Hart's singles push that went nowhere, but it did lead to a face turn that would last for nine years.

Tournament first round: Ted DiBiase vs. Hacksaw Jim Duggan *3/4
Decent match here, unsurprising considering how well these two knew each other. Crowd was more into this than just about anything else all night, Duggan was always good at drawing the crowd in and everyone wanted to see DiBiase lose. MDM wins due to Andreference, setting up the storyline for the night.

Tournament first round: Don Muraco vs. Dino Bravo 3/4*
"Jesus Christ Superstar" gets dubbed out for some awful Roman gladiator crap. Name me one good Dino Bravo match. Go on, I dare you. This wasn't terrible, hated the finish though.

Tournament first round: Ricky Steamboat vs. Greg Valentine **1/2
This figured to be the best first round match going in, and it certainly didn't disappoint. Solid effort by both guys. Gorilla drops in an "external occipital protuberance" just for me. Would it have killed them to give us the Savage/Steamboat rematch everyone wanted? Steamboat waves goodbye to the crowd on his way to much greener pastures.

Tournament first round: Randy Savage vs. Butch Reed 1/4*
"Jive Soul Bro" edited out to my dismay. Not even close to the worst dubbing of the night, but more on that later. Savage and Liz in matching blue to start. You know, for the eventual winner, they sure made Savage look weak on this night. I wasn't a fan of this match at all, but then, Savage's best matches were invariably as a heel -- as a face he didn't get to bust out his terrific offensive arsenal as much.

Tournament first round: One Man Gang vs. Bam Bam Bigelow DUD
Most guys at school were convinced that Bam Bam was going to win the tournament without breaking a sweat, that's how big he'd been built up. Shocking result to a pretty terrible match with a finish defying explanation -- the ref was looking right at Slick when he pulled the rope down, and Gang beating on Bam Bam on the apron should've broken the count. Let's move on.

Tournament first round: Jake Roberts vs. Rick Rude DUD
Can we go back to the last match? This is just so, so pointless, slow and generally bad. A fifteen minute draw that was obvious five minutes in. Just have them do a double countout and give the time to something more deserving. The weird thing was that these guys feuded for like six months AFTER this match. One Man Gang gets a bye to the semis as a result.

Ultimate Warrior vs. Hercules DUD
Pre-push Warrior was really bad, even for him. Hercules could have a decent match with the right guy...Warrior was not that guy, certainly not at this point in time. Punches, clotheslines, more punches and more clotheslines.

Tournament quarterfinal: Hulk Hogan vs. Andre the Giant -**
The clip from WrestleMania III just underscores what a crappy venue Trump Plaza was. You pretty much knew that either Andre was going over here or they were doing a draw of some kind, to pay off the angle set up on SNME with DiBiase and Savage. The wrestling here even worse than the previous year's match, but without any of the significance. In fact, they just kept putting on worse matches as they went along, from WM3 to Survivor Series to The Main Event to here. If you're keeping score, the last hour has seen the worst stretch of matches at any Mania up to this point. Hogan does the full posedown after the double DQ, because God forbid we have a show without Hogan posing.

Tournament quarterfinal: Ted DiBiase vs. Don Muraco **
DiBiase comes down by himself after Virgil got wiped out by Hogan in the last match. The clean win here without any help gave him some extra credibility. Muraco was game here and DiBiase bumped around for him well, I was impressed with how this came off, especially after the string of horrible matches leading up to it.

Tournament quarterfinal: Randy Savage vs. Greg Valntine *1/2
Matching pink for Savage and Elizabeth this time. I'm impressed with the level of detail Savage went to for such a big occasion, digging deep into his robe collection. Decent but not great match here, Savage seemed to be leaving something in reserve for later in the night.

IC title match: Honky Tonk Man [c] vs. Brutus Beefcake 1/2*
Sadly, you just knew this wasn't the night for Honky to go down. Beefcake coming down to no music was just weird. He hadn't yet reached the peak of his wrestling ability that he would find over the next year or so, and so this match was just really slow and disjointed with a typical Honky finish. Poor Jimmy gets humiliated for the second year in a row as he gets his hair cut.

British Bulldogs and Koko B. Ware vs. Islanders and Bobby Heenan *
Heenan comes out in an animal handler's suit because of Matilda. This was ok, but the flow just seemed off. Crowd was not into this at all, can't really blame them at this point. Jesse was introduced after this and got a bigger pop than anything in this match did.

Tournament semifinal: Randy Savage vs. One Man Gang DUD
Matching black, because I knew you'd ask. No doubt whatsoever who's going over here, and it sure showed in their effort. Savage with a pitifully weak DQ win heading into the finals. I have to figure they wanted to put as much doubt as they possibly could into the outcome of the finals.

Tag team titles: Strike Force [c] vs. Demolition *1/2
Speaking of no doubt whatsoever, we have this match. Promised dubbing rant: WTF WHY DON'T YOU HAVE THE RIGHTS TO "DEMOLITION" I HAVE TO GO FOUR STRAIGHT SHOWS LISTENING TO THIS CRAP REPLACEMENT MUSIC WHYYYYYYYY. To add insult to injury, the champs' crappy "Girls in Cars" OFF THE SAME DAMN ALBUM makes the cut. Strike Force had pretty much worn out their welcome by this point, while Demolition really got the fans' attention by just being cool ass-kicking heels. Absolutely no one gave Strike Force a shot, and rightly so, you could tell that this was more a coronation than anything. Match was there, nothing terrible.

- They made a big show of bringing the belt out before the final match -- I always thought it would've made a bigger impact if they'd debuted it here rather than having Hogan wear it on The Main Event.

Tournament final, WWF title: Randy Savage vs. Ted DiBiase **1/2
Well, if you'd been paying even an ounce of attention to recent TV, particularly the last Saturday Night's Main Event, you knew where this was headed. Indeed, the crowd was chanting for Hogan way before Liz even got sent to the back. Good match, but this was more about the storyline than anything, and I've seen them have much better ones. Still, Savage with the belt at the end was incredibly satisfying.

(Matching white, BTW.)

Overall: 3/10
This certainly did live up to the nickname of WrestleMania Bore. Hardly anything of interest due to the lack of storylines, and WAY too long. It wasn't even the best wrestling show of the night - Jim Crockett put on the inaugural Clash of Champions on TBS, with the amazing Flair/Sting 45-minute draw and a ****+ Luger/Windham vs. Horsemen tag title match, as revenge for Vince's Survivor Series power play. That's just an unforgivable sin for the biggest show of the year. WrestleMania 2 at least had two *** matches to hang its hat on, which just barely edges it over IV in my rankings.

Rankings so far:
WM3 - 9.5
WM1 - 4.5
WM2 - 3.5
WM4 - 3.0

Where are you guys watching these that the entrance music is dubbed out?

WWE Network.

Why would they dub out Jive Soul Bro wasn't that part of the wrestling album?

I may have *ahem* happened across the WrestleMania Anthology in my online travels.

So far, we have:

Piledriver - not edited out
Jive Soul Bro - edited out
Cool Cocky Bad - not edited out
Girls in Cars - not edited out
Demolition - edited out

There's really no rhyme or reason to it. I thought Demolition getting cut might have had something to do with Rick Derringer, but why would they cut a song sung by one of their own guys?

Guarantee Jive Soul Bro might have a racial reason for it being dubbed.

That seems plausible. Although it doesn't explain why they used it for Slick at Raw 1000.

Watched Mania 3 yesterday. I know the time has passed, but I am a crazy outlaw or something.

Obviously it's pretty decent top to bottom and a huge step up from 1 and 2, but the pure number of schmoz finishes killed me. I guess Mania hadn't so much reached the point it is today where it's where most stories end, but I couldn't shake how dissatisfied I would have felt as a fan.

I keep finding myself marking out for Hacksaw in these things, which I don't understand AT ALL.

12-hourish warning for anyone who wants in on the WrestleMania IV fun.

Definitely interested to hear everyone else's thoughts on IV if they've watched it, but also happy to soon be moving on to a better run of shows. V, VI, VII, and especially VIII are all easily better than IV.

I'll be interested to see people's opinions of V. I just finished it over the weekend, and it was a lot tougher to get through than I remembered.

Yeah, I think that there's a chance that I like it better than anyone else does. I've got a writeup on my home computer that's ready to post when that one goes on the clock here. Off the top of my head I can think of four matches that I think are three stars or better, which instantly puts it a decent bit above WM IV.

Oh, yeah, it's way better than IV just on match quality. I was harder on it than I think most would be for all of the non-wrestling crap they loaded onto it.

Oh, yeah, I just flat-out fast-forwarded through that awful Piper's Pit segment and then forgot about it. That undoubtedly helped my favorability rating toward it.

Been pretty busy all week so I haven't had a chance to write a full writeup for WM 4 but I give it a 5/10. WM 5 will open up after Raw tonight.

Still away from my computer so I can't do the write-up but Wrestlemania 5 is now open and will remain open until the 28th.

WrestleMania V

Rockin' Robin etches out her place as easily the worst "America the Beautiful" singer in WrestleMania history. Not that I've paid much attention over time, but I doubt anyone ever did worse than that. As usual, the elite Jesse Ventura pulls no punches and pretty much says exactly what I just did.

King Haku vs. Hercules: Power match like this isn't the greatest idea to curtain-jerk the show. I thought this was at least watchable and had a few good spots that I sort of liked, which is more than I would expect of this matchup on paper. *3/4

The Rockers vs. The Twin Towers: Jesse has the line of the match with, "I believe that he irritated Akeem." I've always enjoyed this match quite a bit. It tells the exact story that it should: that The Rockers are young, athletic, and talented, but that giving up that much size means that they're just one misstep away from getting squashed. Lots of fun. ***

Ted DiBiase vs. Brutus Beefcake: This is pretty decent. Tempted to pull it below two stars because of the stupid non-finish (seriously, put one of these guys over, don't be stupid), but meh…they earned at least that much I think. **

Fabulous Rougeaus vs. Bushwhackers: Some more funny commentary by Jesse here, and I still laugh at one of the Bushwhackers very clearly rubbing Ray Rougeau's crotch during a bodyslam, but obviously there was no good Bushwhacker match ever (which isn't to say the same of the Sheepherders). 1/2*

Mr. Perfect vs. Blue Blazer: Really enjoy this match. Hennig and Owen were ahead of their time, with only a few workers in the company on their level. Unfortunately this got less time than most of the rest of the card got, so it didn't really maximize its potential, but I still thought it matched the enjoyableness of the earlier Rockers-Towers match. ***

Tag Team Titles: Demolition (c) vs. Powers of Pain & Mr. Fuji: Just realizing this now, but The Powers of Pain went from having entrance music to not having entrance music after they turned heel. That's weird. And from then on, I'm pretty sure that neither Warlord or Barbarian ever had music in the WWF again.

Anyway, this is lots of punching and kicking and little else. I still didn't think it was completely awful though. *

Dino Bravo vs. Rugged Ronnie Garvin: This was whatever. Don't really get what WWF's fascination with Dino Bravo was. He was a passable brawler at times, but had zero personality and was hopelessly generic. 1/2*

The Brainbusters vs. Strike Force: Enjoyable action, thought the Strike Force breakup was a nice bit of booking as well. I'm glad that in their short run with the WWF, Arn and Tully got to book a Mania win. **3/4

I fast forwarded through Piper/Downey, because I've already suffered through it in the past. Quite the segment to have as Downey's one wrestling appearance since he proceeded to die of lung cancer.

Andre the Giant vs. Jake Roberts (special referee Big John Studd): Garbage. Andre's ability to move was deteriorating from one year to the next in these early Manias. Would have been better if he had just turned face and retired after he got fully done with the Hogan program. 0*

The Hart Foundation vs. Greg Valentine & The Honky Tonk Man: This was alright. Decent pace, etc. On a show with a lot of tag matches, this probably only ranks third though (behind Rockers/Towers and Brainbusters/Strike Force). *1/4

IC Title: Ultimate Warrior (c) vs. Ravishing Rick Rude: Rude bumps like such a beast in this match, and really makes the Warrior look like a million bucks. Sick missile dropkick spot by Rude as well that I didn't remember about. Really well-booked, with Warrior coming out looking as strong as before while also elevating Rude to the next level. Think this would have gotten match of the night honors until the main event came along and surpassed it. ***1/4

Bad News Brown vs. Hacksaw Jim Duggan: Pretty bad. 1/4*

The Red Rooster vs. Bobby Heenan: It's not like this filled any time, and it's not like The Red Rooster was over, so I don't know why this match existed. Too short to rate. N/A

WWF Title: Randy Savage (c) vs. Hulk Hogan: The famous "champ comes out first" match. I think this match delivered nicely on one of the GOAT angles, with brilliant psychology and good action. Match of the night, and at this point in WrestleMania lore, I'd say this was second only to Savage-Steamboat. Hat tip to Jesse for truly awesome commentary here. ***3/4

Overall: While there were low points, there were easily enough high points to call this a good show. In my book the three-star barrier was broken on four different occasions on this night. I don't think it had enough to seriously compete with WrestleMania III, but that's the only Mania to this point in time that it fell short of; it pretty easily surpassed the other three.

WrestleMania Rankings
1. WrestleMania III
2. WrestleMania V
3. WrestleMania IV
4. WrestleMania
5. WrestleMania 2

WrestleMania V
April 2, 1989 - Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, Atlantic City, NJ

- Well, here we are again, back in the same crappy venue as last year, as nobody demanded.

- WWF Women's champion Rockin' Robin (sister of Jake "The Snake" Roberts) does America the Beautiful. Bit of a comedown from Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin, wouldn't you say?

Hercules vs. King Haku *3/4
Not my first choice for an opener. Herc was as over as he'd ever be here, although you'd never know it from the initial crowd reaction. Pretty decent power match, actually, better than I was expecting.

Rockers vs. Twin Towers **1/2
And we get our first look at the Showstopper, the Main Event, the Icon...in the second match. Dubbing update: PLEASE bring back "Jive Soul Bro". If I remember right, the Rockers had done a little too much rocking after midnight before this one. Even so, they put in a terrific effort here, with Shawn having a couple of great spots. Really solid big/little tag team formula match.

- Hey, Tony Schiavone is at WrestleMania! I'd forgotten he was with the company for long enough to do one.

Ted DiBiase vs. Brutus Beefcake *1/2
Nothing really notable here, except for a wonderful reminder of Jesse Ventura's philosophy on life: "Win if you can, lose if you must, but always cheat." Double countout didn't help matters any. Crowd is still dead.

Rougeau Brothers vs. Bushwhackers DUD
Jacques had some real primo entrance music during his career, between "All-American Boys" and "Not the Mountie". Bushwhackers were easily my least favourite guys from this time period, they had the only thing that made them worth half a damn (the ultraviolence) taken away from them, and they were just giant goofs who couldn't wrestle their way out of a wet paper bag, there to entertain the kiddies. Absolutely nothing the Rougeaus could have done here to make this worthwhile.

Mr. Perfect vs. Blue Blazer **1/2
Perfect without the music just isn't right. I'm reminded as Owen does his does his standing backflip off the top rope that he was probably the best high flyer in North America at the time. Such a shame it took him so long to stick. Anyway, this is a lot of fun but too short for how good these guys were. A couple of great spots, most notably Owen's bump off Perfect's knees from the splash off the top. Perfect was really generous in how much he gave Owen in this match, this could easily have been a glorified squash but Curt clearly wanted to make Owen look good.

- Jesse gets his annual introduction to the crowd. Then we get Run-DMC with their WrestleMania Rap. This kind of stuff would work somewhat better for Vince in following years, but I can't think of many worse matches of act and venue than this one (Master P in WCW comes to mind). Absolutely zero ****s given by this crowd.

Tag team titles, handicap match: Demolition [c] vs. Powers of Pain and Mr. Fuji 1/2*
Punchy-kicky, punchy-kicky, Demos finally catch Fuji and give him Demolition Decapitation. The Powers were considered nothing more than Demolition knockoffs (knockoffs of knockoffs, depending on how you feel about Demolition and the Road Warriors) and just did not look like they belonged in the ring with the champs. You could almost argue Fuji outworked them. Bleh.

Dino Bravo vs. Ronnie Garvin DUD
Oh, good ****ing lord. Jimmy Snuka comes out for no reason at all, just to make this show that much longer. I'm probably biased because I hate both these guys, but this was just a complete chore to sit through. A match like this would never make it onto a card today.

Brainbusters vs. Strike Force ***
OK, here we go. Business should pick up here. One and only Mania match for Arn and Tully, although Arn would make a cameo appearance at WrestleMania X-8 during Flair/Taker. Strike Force had just gotten back together after Martel was out with a worked injury. Fun match while it was 2-on-2 until Santana nailed Martel with the flying jalapeno, but even more fun watching the Busters take Chico apart once it's apparent Martel's not coming back in. Arn's spinebuster is one of the most beautiful moves in all of wrestling. Martel cuts a terrible promo post-match.

- We now go literally a full half hour without a speck of wrestling -- the awful Piper's Pit, a Donald Trump interview, a No Holds Barred preview (with hilarious Jesse rant following), a full recap of the Megapowers angle, and a long interview with Hogan. I'm assuming there was an intermission, otherwise I'd be asking for my money back.

Jake Roberts vs. Andre the Giant -*
And we continue with the non-wrestling, heh. The returning Big John Studd is the special ref for this one, in a full role reversal from his match with Andre at WM1. You can see from the long shot of Jake's entrance that Andre casually takes off one of the turnbuckle pads, then rams Jake's head into the exposed buckle as the announcers wonder with astonishment what happened to the pad. Commentary had really warmed up here, as Gorilla asks Jesse if he's heard of David and Goliath, and Jesse comes back immediately with, "Yeah, he used a foreign object!" That's pretty much the only interesting part of the match, as Andre had deteriorated well past the point where he should have been in the ring (and this wasn't even his last Mania match!), and Jake couldn't muster any believable offence against the Giant. Ted DiBiase came down to help his former tag team partner by stealing Damian, setting off a year-long feud between the two that would eventually also lead to the Big Bossman's face turn.

Hart Foundation vs. Honky Tonk Man and Greg Valentine *3/4
Rhythm and Blues hadn't quite been born yet, as the Hammer is thankfully still a blond. Decent effort from all four guys here, but the flow wasn't great. Something just seemed missing.

IC title: Ultimate Warrior [c] vs. Ravishing Rick Rude **3/4
I love seeing Finkel rushing through his introduction of the Warrior to get out of the ring before Warrior arrives. He probably never forgot getting knocked off the apron at Summerslam 88. We get one of my favourite spots ever in this match, as Rude tries to hit a kneelift on Warrior, who still has the belt on and ends up crushing Rude's knee with it. Warrior tossing Rude around the ring to start was fun, it gave the crowd what they were expecting as no one really considered Rude a worthy challenger here. This actually ended up being a pretty good power match with some actual psychology (working on Rude's back - the failed hip swivel was a funny spot) and great selling by Rude. Decent prelude for the better return match at Summerslam.

Bad News Brown vs. Hacksaw Jim Duggan 1/4*
This is getting excruciating, we're past the three hour mark and we still have two nothing matches before the main event. Like the world really needed to see these two guys with no issue go to a double DQ.

Red Rooster vs. Bobby Heenan DUD
Literally nothing. Rapidly losing the will to live.

WWF title: Randy Savage [c] vs. Hulk Hogan ****
And now, after three hours and fifteen minutes of mostly filler, we finally get to the reason everyone is here. Savage gets the ultimate disrespect by being sent out first. I'm assuming he was behind Pat Patterson acting as Liz's human shield coming down the aisle. Hogan cements this as a special occasion by busting out his four-move combo from New Japan. Jesse's gleeful hatred of Hogan is incredible, easily one of the top 10 match calls ever. Savage supplies him with plenty of material with his psychology in this match, heeling it up with gusto and trying everything he could to frustrate Hogan. My only complaint with this was the finish, as I'm still annoyed that Hogan got to kick out of the elbow with authority and then immediately finish with the usual. We get the only real pop of the night as Hogan scores the three count, though, so it was probably the right call. I've said this on multiple occasions and I'll say it again here -- this really suffered from the horrible crowd. Put this in a stadium and it goes down as one of the GOATs instead of just the very good match it was. But, then, I'm ridiculously biased toward Savage in general and this angle in particular, so take that for what it's worth.

Overall: 5/10
I have to score it higher than WrestleMania I, because there were several good matches and the main event was miles better. It loses major points, though, for being so interminably long and having such huge stretches where nothing interesting was happening. And coming back to the same ****ty venue (really just a glorified bingo hall) and another dead crowd for a second year in a row hurts it a lot as well -- it seemed like they were literally there to see Hogan win the title back and that's it. Vince didn't give them a whole lot of reasons to cheer for anything else, though. He would eventually learn that throwing together several matches with no storyline just to get a couple of guys a payday actually hurts your card, but we're still a fair distance away from that.

Ratings so far:
III - 9.5
V - 5.0
I - 4.5
2 - 3.5
IV - 3.0

Forgot to mention, this was the second year in a row that WrestleMania didn't have the match of the night. Jim Crockett repeated the stunt from a year ago by putting on another Clash on TBS, headlined by a rather decent heavyweight title match of some renown -- Steamboat vs. Flair, 2/3 falls.

WM V

Haku vs. Hercules

Pretty good offense to start for Herc. Perhaps surprisingly Haku’s offense isn’t as well executed, although he does have some pretty nifty moves. 2 stars

Rockers vs. Twin Towers

“All the talking is over…You know everybody’s talking about…” The pre-Heartbreak Kid then proceeds to make a very strange face a few times. Not quite ready for the mic Shawn.
But he could work and work together with Marty. This match starts very well. This is a good example of the distinctness of tag team wrestling. Some moves and psychology that can’t be done in singles wrestling, and these wrestlers are actually willing and able to do it. Akeem is so silly and it detracts from the match perhaps. But Michaels still gives him a million dollar sell job on a clothesline. At the end some lack of coordination on dropkicks comes in. The fans liked this and so did I. 3*

Million Dollar Man vs. Million Dollar Mullet

The terrible haircut on Brutus a genius move to make getting your hair cut by him more frightening. When I was a kid I thought Brutus was so cool and Ted was old and weak. How things change; I can see that Ted clearly is the superior athlete. But not quite good enough to carry Brutus to a sincerely good match. 1 1/2*

Rougeua vs. Sheepherders

Had this match taken place in the NWA I would have been looking forward to it. The crowd likes the Bushwhackers but was just as bored as I was during this. ½ *

Mr. Perfect vs. Owen Hart

The announcers talk up the match very nicely, but then it ends up being really short. This is the type of match that should be long. Despite all the moves these two have, and the short time, Owen Hart does the double slam followed by drop kick sequence twice twice. Perfect’s offense is just dull. The execution of the plan is there, but the plan is not. 2*

Powers of Pain and Fuji vs. Demolition

Somehow I like the storyline here somewhat, despite it not altogether being altogether sensical. Fans were even confused at first thinking Fuji might have been turning face rather than Demolotion when he turned on them. And the race comes off as goofy.

Demolition used offense suitable for two guys that are limited but decent. And, by tradition, you put the great worker in first, so naturally the Warlord starts out. The only interesting offense from the heels of course comes when the Barbarian is. Boring; they could have done the “faces get hands on the manager” schtick a lot better. ½*

Dino Bravo vs. Rugged Ronnie Garvin

An encounter of epic proportions. I don’t need to explain; the match is exactly as exciting as one would expect upon reading who is in it. 0*

Santana and Martel vs. Tully and Arn

This is a clinic about how to start a tag team match. The crowd isn’t that hot as this is a team new to the federation and another team that just got back together, but they are quite interested as the match goes on. A nice turn with the crowd booing Martel several times. 3 *

Martel shows potential on the mic with his voice, accent and style but unfortunately botches some words which isn’t good since his gimmick is soon to be somebody smooth and arrogant.

Some sideshow. Not a bad idea since the show is over 3 ½ hours. Unfortunately it was stupid.

Andre vs. Jake

Using traditional star rating criteria this match is awful but the fans are about as hot as they have been all night when Andre gets hooked in the ropes. 1 ½ I think is right on a more reasonable system that is more complete in encompassing all the things fans enjoy in a match.

HTM and Valentine vs. Hart Foundation

Gorilla says Valentine wanted a little bit of extra speed so he slimmed down, bringing his total from zero to one. He also can’t lift Bret Hart on a simple move. At least it has a novel way to make the hot tag. 1 1/2*

Warrior vs. Rude

Good start to the match. Fans cheer the bite from Warrior relatively loudly. That’s the crowd we have. These two had not peaked yet and this match is only alright workrate wise. Jesse always had good commentary for these two wrestlers. Pretty cool idea for an unclean finish. 2*

Bad News Brown vs. Duggan

If anybody needs a nap, here is your chance. The crowd might wake you up repeating “hooooooooo”

Heenan vs. Red Rooster

Don’t wake up yet.

Hogan vs. Savage

This match isn’t great outside of the legendary commentary. Of course, the build was great and the fans love it anyway. Personally I found it pretty dull on this view, more detached from the storyline and remembering the commentary already. 2*

This PPV does have the great advantage of not being WM IV. However, overall this is just a below average PPV. The top matches are average to a tick above average, and several matches are complete clunkers.

WM III>>V>IV>I>II

VI is really not as good as I remember.

I'm trying to even remember what I wrote down about it, since the whole "watching ahead" thing had me viewing it a few weeks ago now. I had it similar in quality to WM V I think, maybe put it a tick ahead IIRC. I have a writeup on my home computer, that will jog my memory.

That's what I'm finding, overall match quality is worse but that crowd.