Monday, August 5, 2019

WWF Summerslam 1990


The first major PPV event in Warrior's only WWF title reign has him in a cage match against one of his former opponents, now sporting a new look... and also, we've got a Hulk Hogan match.


The Rockers (Shawn Michaels and Marty Janetty) defeated Power And Glory (Hercules and Paul Roma) in the opening match. Perfectly acceptable wrestling match and the crowd seemed hot for it, so as an opener, it was fine and got me in a good mood for the rest of the show.

The Texas Tornado (Kerry Von Eric) defeated Intercontinental Champion Mr. Perfect in a surprisingly short match... only a couple minutes long. Apparently, Kerry was a last-minute replacement for Brutus Beefcake, who was injured in an accident of some sort. For some reason, I couldn't really get into this match. Maybe because it was short, maybe because both guys are now dead, or maybe it's something else... but this feels off.

Sherri defeated Sapphire via forfeit when Sapphire never showed up. This plays a role later on, as we will get to later.

Warlord defeated Tito Santana in a thing that happened... yes, the WRLRD!

Nobody is going to get that.

The Hart Foundation (Bret Hart, Jim Neidhart) defeated WWF Tag-Team Champions Demolition (Smash and Crush) in a best-of-three-falls match (2-1) to win the tag titles. This was another fine case of perfectly acceptable tag-team wrestling. Quite frankly, I'm shocked by how much I enjoyed this one... which is why I'm keeping my thoughts brief. It was a fun little match that needs little to say... and it was a Best-Of-Three match, which tend to be notoriously difficult to keep interest high; especially nowadays.

Jake "The Snake" Roberts defeated Bad News Brown via DQ when Brown smashed Jake with a chair after another relatively short match. Yep.

Jim Duggan and Nikolai Volkoff defeated the Orient Express (whose names I don't recall, sorry) in a thing that happened... yep. I didn't really mind this all that much; a bunch of brawling and stuff. But sometimes, brawling is fun and I'll take good ol' fashioned ass-kicking brawling over a thing that happened any day of the week.

Macho King Randy Savage defeated Dusty Rhodes with a loaded purse... this was another thing that happened. And for those wondering about why Sapphire no-showed, it turns out that she was "bought off" by Ted Dibiase. I guess she couldn't bounce the... never mind. I don't need to go there.

Hulk Hogan defeated Earthquake via countout when he slammed 'Quake through a table and Quake never got back up... that was a rather weird ending to what was otherwise another Hulk Hogan match as only Hulk Hogan can pull off. Your mileage may vary in this regard.

Oh wait, 'Quake attacks Hogan and then here comes the Big Boss Man who chokes out Hogan with a stepladder... so we're using Summerslam to build to matches on the house show circuit. What a concept.

WWF Champion Ultimate Warrior defeated Rick Rude (now sporting short hair that he'd stick with until his passing in 1999) in a steel cage match to retain the title... this was a letdown, because I thought these guys had great matches at Mania and Summerslam the previous year. Maybe the cage had a hand in hindering the story or maybe it's due to the lack of stakes here; you knew there was no way Warrior was losing this one and the match made no effort to try and convince you otherwise. It was almost as though they were just going through the motions.

By the way, Rick Rude wouldn't be long in WWF after this and he'd eventually end up in WCW.

Summerslam 1990 was probably noted for a couple solid tag matches, Kerry Von Erich winning his one title in WWF and a lot of things that happened. It's not a particularly great show, but it doesn't collapse under its own weight like a lot of these current-day WWE shows do.

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