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