WWF Summerslam 1992

Sorry about the delay... but I hid myself to repair myself over the past couple days... yeah, that's it.

Anyway, we turn the clock back to 1992, where Summerslam is airing in England and we have an Intercontinental championship match main eventing the show, with champion Bret Hart defending against the challenger and hometown favorite, the British Bulldog. This is one of the few instances where an Intercontinental championship match closing out the show over the WWF title match makes sense; because it's British Bulldog's home turf, it's going to be a hot match with a hot crowd, and it's not a fucking Iron Man match.

WWE should watch more WWF shows.

Anyway...




The Legion of Doom defeated Money Inc. (comprising the Million Dollar Man Ted Dibiase & Irwin R. Schyster) in a pretty good opening match that would bring an end to the Road Warriors' first WWF tenure. About the only thing noteworthy about this match was the entrance, where the Warriors were riding motorcycles to the ring and carrying a ventriloquist dummy named Rocco. Remove the dummy and you have one of the cooler Road Warrior entrances in their career... Why is the dummy a thing, anyway?

Nailz defeated Virgil in a nothing match. Nailz is a convict gimmick wrestler who had a choke move for a finisher and then choked Vince for real to get himself fired. Virgil is Virgil. Next.

The match between Shawn Michaels and Rick Martel ended in a double countout when Sherri fakes passing out and both guys are fighting on the outside. This is the rare instance where you have a bad guy taking on another bad guy at a time when such occurrences were somewhat uncommon. The match isn't anything special other than for that particular talking point and was pretty much forgotten once Shawn won some gold.

WWF Tag-Team Champions The Natural Disasters (Earthquake and Typhoon) defeated the Beverly Crushers... er, I mean, the Beverly Brothers to retain the titles. Eh, this was a thing that happened. Nothing else to say here.

Crush defeated Repo Man. Squash match for Crush. Next.

Ultimate Warrior defeated WWF Champion "Macho Man" Randy Savage via countout due to shenanigans involving Ric Flair and Mr. Perfect, who attacked both guys near the end of the match and eventually struck Savage in the knee as Savage was on the dive. Due to this, he was unable to beat the 10-count. Savage retained the title on this night and embraced with Warrior despite the shitty way their match ended, but sadly Flair would eventually defeat Savage for the title, only to lose it to Bret Hart in Saskatoon. This is the first time I'm actually watching this match and I've got to say that while I liked their Wrestlemania match more - I thought it told a better story, overall - this was also pretty damn good stuff.

Undertaker defeated Kamala via DQ. Undertaker's entrance of riding a hearse into the ring is a cool visual in open daylight that probably would've worked better at a night setting, but is still faster than any modern-day Undertaker entrance at Wrestlemania.

British Bulldog defeated WWF Intercontinental champion Bret "Hitman" Hart to win the title in a good little match that some critics have touted as the greatest of all time. According to Bret, Davey was all pilled up and thus this was just as much a highlight for Bret since he was able to work the whole match himself while dragging Davey along for the ride. See, this is more impressive than Ric Flair carrying a broom to a three-star match... but then again, the broom went on to marry the promoter's daughter and is a big part of the company while Davey... well, best I stop myself here.

Regardless of what you want to believe, this was a great match that would probably be the highlight of Davey Boy's career. It wouldn't last, however, as Bulldog would drop the title to, you guessed it, Shawn Michaels, while Bret would defeat Flair for the WWF title, setting up their climatic encounter at the 1992 Survivor Series... wait, hold up. Wrong show.

Summerslam 1992 is almost literally a two-match show. A lot of the undercard stuff is not necessarily noteworthy and quickly forgotten afterwards, but the two big championship matches more than delivered the goods and made up for the lesser stuff. See, it's okay to have a lot of shitty matches on the card, so long as your main events deliver. And that was certainly the case here.

Not much else to say, really. I enjoyed this show tremendous and I'd watch it again next year in lieu of whatever PPV event was going tonight.