horrorfan_1986

WWE Survivor Series
November 22, 1990

The Warriors (The Ultimate Warrior, Kerry Von Erich and The Legion of Doom) vs The Perfect Team (Mr Perfect and Demolition)
The Warriors is perhaps the simplest, yet best names for a Survivor Series team ever. You had the Ultimate Warrior, the Modern Day Warrior and the Road Warriors. After finishing his feud with Rick Rude, Warrior's title reign seemed to be on it's death bed. Instead of finding Warrior a short term World Title feud until it was time to drop it, he started teaming with LOD in some six man tags against Demolition. Hennig and Von Erich had been feuding ever since Von Erich won the IC title from Hennig at Summerslam. Technically, Perfect had regained the IC title a few days earlier, but it wouldn't be aired until December, so Von Erich is still sorta the champion. Before the match, Mean Gene talked to The Warrior's. When Gene asked Hawk about what his game plan is, Hawk answers "I don't know what my thoughts are..." Wow. Warrior gives a long promo where I couldn't understand a single word until the end when he said that his team has a disease that isn't treatable. Wow. Warrior somehow had the talent to always come up with the weirdest promos of the night, no matter how messed up the earlier ones are. Ax didn't even bother to grease back his hair for the event, which really just shows he's lost all care for being in the company. While everyone is figuring out who will start, Animal tackles Smash to begin the match. I guess that's one way to pick it. Demos and LOD fights it out some. Ax is tagged in and axes away on Von Erich. Tag into Warrior and Ax is no match for the WWE Champion. Warrior hits his running splash to pin Ax. This would pretty much be the end of the road for Ax in the WWE. Demolition works over Animal until Smash breaks up a cover, which brings in Hawk. LOD and Demolition are fighting it out and the referee has enough and DQ's both teams. I personally hate it when multiple men are eliminated at one time. The following year, the opening match would do the same thing. Warrior and Perfect squares off in the middle of the ring. Perfect calls for Von Erich to get in the ring. It sounds like Perfect said "You're the one who wants the belt [IC title]", but Monsoon says otherwise. Hmm, I assume Monsoon is just trying to keep kayfabe. Actually, I can't remember seeing either wrestler with the IC title when they came down. Von Erich hits the Discus Punch to Hennig and Perfect does his outside of the ring bump. Back in, Hennig undoes the turnbuckle pad (A common theme in their matches) and sends Von Erich into it. Perfect Plex and that's it for the sorta IC champion. This leaves the WWE Champion in with the real, but not really IC champion, Hennig. Hennig pushes Warrior into the exposed turnbuckle and hits the Perfect Plex. Amazingly, Warrior kicks out. Perfect bumps all over the ring for Warrior until getting the flying shoulderblock and the running splash to lose the match. The Ultimate Warrior is your survivor and he moves on to the Grand Finale Survivor Series match where all of the winners face each other to determine a sole survivor. The match felt a bit rushed. Eliminating four people at one time certainly has something to do with that though. However, once Demolition and LOD were eliminated, the match really improved. Von Erich and Hennig had a nice chemistry together, it's just too bad that Kerry couldn't stay clean during this time. The only part of the match I have a major issue with is Warrior kicking out of the Perfect Plex. That should of been a major feat, but the way it was treated, it was meaningless. Overall, a nice way to begin the show. Nothing outstanding, but definitely passable. 15 Minutes. 2 Stars.

The Million Dollar Team (Ted Dibiase, Rhythm and Blues and a Mystery Partner) vs The Dream Team (Dusty Rhodes, The Hart Foundation and Koko B Ware)
Dibiase and Rhodes had been feuding since Summerslam when Dibiase revealed he had bought Sapphire. IIRC, Sapphire was gone from the WWE by now. Since winning the tag titles, the Harts were feuding with the R&B's. Koko is well...the jobber he always has been. Before the match, Roddy Piper mentions the death of Dean Hart, Bret's brother and how Bret is dedicating the match to him. Once everyone is in the ring, DiBiase reveals his mystery partner. Accompanied by Brother Love, The Undertaker. Much like the case of the great IC title holder mystery, this would be Taker's first time on tv, but technically he made his debut a couple weeks earlier at a TV taping that wouldn't air until after the event. Taker starts off with Bret and easily throws Bret around. Tag into The Anvil, surely he'll have better luck. Rhino runs for a shoulderblock, but Taker gives him a weak looking chokeslam. Tag into Koko. Oh yeah sure, the fuckin tag team champions couldn't do anything, but I'm sure you will Koko.
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Koko within a minute gets Tombstoned and eliminated. Upset of the night~!!!! >_> Bret charges back and pushes Taker to his corner where Valentine is tagged in. HTM comes in, but Anvil easily pins him with a powerslam. And with that, I believe HTM was on his way out of the company. So long Honky. Anvil comes in to get him a piece of DiBiase, but Virgil distracts him allowing DiBiase to closeline Anvil to pin him. Even Anvil can't believe he was pinned with such a weak looking move. Taker and Rhodes are in. Taker heads to the top rope and hits a double ax handle to eliminate the team captain. Brother Love decides to kick Dusty when he's down. Someone forgot to tell Love that he's supposed to get out of the way once Dusty gets up. Dusty grabs Love, but Taker (Who seemingly was tagged in by Valentine) goes after Dusty. The pair fights up the entrance way while Shane McMahon tries to break it up. Taker is counted out. The fans are showing a lot of good support towards Bret. Valentine sets Bret up for the Figure Four, but Bret just rolls him up for a pinfall. Loudest pop of the night thus far. Piper is really getting excited for Bret making Bret's eventual singles push more obvious. A lot of long two counts. Bret trips over a downed Dibiase and looks to injury his ankle. DiBiase turns his back to gloat to the fans. Bret jumps up and rolls DiBiase up, but only gets a two count. The fans are getting louder and louder cheering on Bret. Bret hits the ropes and goes for a cross body. Dibiase rolls through and locks his hands to get the 1-2-3 on Hart. DiBiase is the first member of the heel team in the Grand Finale. This match had two purposes. First was to debut the Undertaker and give the fans something to talk about. They certainly did that. The second, I'm not too sure if it was intended, but it was a test run for Bret as a singles star. Bret managed to be the most over wrestler on the show up to this point, even beating out Warrior. It'll be another nine months or so, but Bret the singles wrestler was on it's way. This match flowed much better than the previous one. My only complaint would be that Dusty and DiBiase didn't have much interaction together. When you have feuding team captains, you really need to showcase it. Instead, Dusty took a backseat to Bret. Not that I'm complaining though. Bret and DiBiase's last little sequence really got the crowd hot and produced an exciting match up. It's a shame they never got to feud against each other. Sure, they had a few meetings, but they could never get in sync with each other. When DiBiase was a singles wrestler, Bret was in the HF. When Bret turned singles, DiBiase started Money Inc. Check out Bret's DVD for a nice singles match between the two though. 14 Minutes. 3 1/2 Stars.

The Vipers (Jake Roberts, The Rockers and Jimmy Snuka) vs The Visionaries (Rick Martel, The Warlord and Power & Glory)
God, can you imagine how much drugs were in the Viper's dressing room? Typically with these early survivor series teams, the names were very simple. Hulkamanics were used a couple of times. Same goes with The Dream Team, Million Dollar Team and Warrior just took off the 'Ultimate' from the previous year. However, Martel's group's name proves to be one of the most creative. A Visionary is a person who can see future events, such as religious. So Martel is somewhat seeing in the future to see his team win. However, it had another meaning that goes hand in hand with the storyline for the main feud in this. On the Brother Love Show, Martel sprayed Roberts with Arrogance (His cologne) blinding Roberts. So not only is Martel predicting victory, but he's taunting Roberts as well. Marty and Warlord starts it off. Marty tries jumping Warlord, but Warlord just throws him around. Shawn tries, but ends up with the same fate. Marty tries a cross body, but ends up getting pinned cleanly by Warlord. Michaels ends up selling for all of the heels. Warlord looks pretty motivated for a change. Martel gets a roll up on Snuka, but remembers in the final moments to grab the tights eliminating him. Martel spends most of the match avoiding Roberts and only getting in the ring when the face is in trouble. Michaels tries his best against Roma, but goes down to the Power Plex (Super Plex/Body Splash combo) to eliminate Michaels. Jake is left all alone with one bad eye. Roberts surprises Warlord with a DDT. The Visionaries have the ref distracted so Martel tries to sneak in another shot of Arrogance to Roberts. Jake moves out of the way, but Martel doesn't realize. Roberts pulls Damien out of his bag and chases Martel back to the back. The Warlord is still the legal man so the ref counts out Jake Roberts (Damn, a lot of dirty finishes tonight). Your winners are the entire team of The Visionaries, all of whom will team with Ted DiBiase in the Grand Finale match. This match is rather historic. For the first time in Survivor Series history, an entire team survives. Sadly, they would whore it out by doing it a multitude of future times. Much better than I was expecting. The big guys (Herc and Warlord) really stepped up their game. The match was also given a lot of time for only 4 eliminations. Shawn Michaels deserves a lot of credit for making the match good though. While the heels stepped up their game, the faces weren't a lot of help. Luckily, Michaels did the most work for his team. Not great by any means, but definitely more than passable, especially with who was in the match. 18 Minutes. 2 1/2 Stars.

The Natural Disasters (Earthquake, Dino Bravo, Haku and The Barbarian) vs The Hulkamaniacs (Hulk Hogan, The Big Boss Man, Tugboat and Jim Duggan)
This has been in the works since right after Wrestlemania when Earthquake attacked Hulk Hogan on the Brother Love Show injuring Hogan's ribs. Tugboat (Who had just debuted) led the charge in getting fans to send letters to Hogan wishing his health to improve. Before Summerslam, Earthquake injuries Tugboat. Dino Bravo is 'Quake's little buddy. The Big Boss Man ends up taking Tugboat's place at Summerslam by being in Hogan's corner. After Summerslam, Bobby Heenan and Rick Rude starting insulting The Boss Man's mother. After Rude quit after being upset with his depush, the feud became Boss Man vs Heenan with various Heenan Family members (Such as Haku and Barbarian) wrestling Boss Man. Duggan is randomly thrown in there since he's pro-America. Haku starts off the match wrestling Duggan and Boss Man. Boss Man easily finishes Haku early on with his Boss Slam. Duggan tries knocking down Earthquake, but when Jimmy Hart pulls down the ropes, Duggan chases Hart around and in the ring. In a scene right out of Wrestlemania III, Duggan decides to hit Earthquake with the 2x4, getting himself DQ'd. God damn, it's a repeating process for Duggan. Hogan gets him a small piece of Earthquake (A man he had yet to pin) and actually performs a small package on Dino Bravo eliminating him. Tugboat is still on the outside. Boss Man sets out to deliver hard time on 'Quake, but 'Quake is just too powerful for the man from Cobb County. Boss Man is pinned following a splash. Hogan tries to recreate the infamous Andre body slam (Keep in mind Earthquake, while being a big man is much smaller than Andre), but fails twice. After 10 whole minutes, Tugboat remembers he's actually in the match and he tags himself in. He and Earthquake falls to the floor still fighting. Neither man gets back in the ring before the 10 count and are thus counted out. Wow...I hope you didn't overexert yourself, Tugboat. This leaves just Hogan and The Barbarian. The Barbarian hits some of his trademark moves (Which are still awesome), but Hogan chooses to Hulk up and show that it takes little effort to beat Barbarian. Hogan wins with the legdrop. With that, Hogan joins The Ultimate Warrior against Ted DiBiase and the Visionaries for the Grand Finale. This certainly wasn't a battle of the most gifted wrestlers bout. With the exception of the Barbarian and Haku, there were some dreadful wrestlers in this. They were smart enough to do plenty of quick tags and have an elimination every 2-3 minutes. For what it was, it was pretty good. I still believe they fucked up in not pushing The Barbarian farther in the WWE. He and Hogan could of had a much better match at WM than Hogan and Slaughter had. Oh well. 15 Minutes. 2 Stars.

Over at the stage, Mean Gene interviews Randy Savage. Savage talks about the Ultimate Warrior preparing their feud which had just been started. Savage hints that he might retire after winning the WWE World Title from Warrior since there wouldn't be anything left for him to do. I'm going to assume Savage was hurt because not booking him in a match was flat out stupid.

The Alliance (Nikolai Volkoff, Tito Santana and the Bushwackers) vs The Mercenaries (Sgt Slaughter, The Orient Express and Boris Zhukov)
Before the match, Slaughter gives a long interview with Mean Gene where he does everything in his power to disrespect the American troops in the gulf. WWE being classless? Noooooo. This match is a great example for when you can tell the WWE had a weak talent roster at the time. You have Nikolai f'n Volkoff as a team captain. Comically, the Pro-USA team doesn't have a single American on it. However, the Anti-American team has Sgt Slaughter, Pat Tanaka (An Hawaiian portraying a Japanese man), Boris Zhukov (Born in Virginia although portraying a Russian) and manager Mr Fuji (Just like Pat Tanaka). Gotta love the WWE's logic eh? Tito realizes that besides Tanaka, he's left to carry the whole match. Flying forearm to eliminate Zhukov within a minute. The Bushwackers use the battering ram to eliminate Akio in under 2 minutes. Tito repeats his success with Zhukov to eliminate Tanaka in under 3 minutes. As crazy as all of this is, it made the match not boring. That all changes once Slaughter gets in the match and drags it down BIG TIME. Slaughter works over Nikolia for awhile before beating him with an elbow. Luke actually shows a little talent with a diving back elbow (D-Von Dudley-like) and heading to the top rope. Slaughter lifts up his knees and catches Luke to pin him. Butch throws some of the weakest punches ever, but is eliminate 30 seconds later. Santana nails a top rope forearm on Slaughter, but only gets a two count. That's enough to finally wake the crowd though. What do you do when you wake up the crowd if you're Slaughter? Slow the match down and kill off the heat, of course.
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The fans try to entertain themselves and Tito does get a little reaction here and there though. Slaughter pushes Tito into referee Joey Marella. Tito covers Slaughter after a Flying Forearm, but General Adnan comes in and breaks it up with his flag. It should be noted that Marella had his head down in the corner not seeing the action. The referee on the outside (A very young Shane McMahon) sees it all, but just yells at Adnan. Slaughter locks in the Camel Clutch, but Marella calls for the bell DQ'ing Slaughter. Why Slaughter got DQ'd, I have no idea. But I'm not complaining that it's over. Tito joins Warrior and Hogan in the Grand Finale against DiBiase and The Visionaries. God bless Tito, he tried, he really did, but there was no way he could of saved this match. They quickly eliminated Sato and Tanaka, but then keep in Slaughter to drag down the match. Volkoff had zero business even being a captain. This was nothing more than a piss break. For the pathetic star rating it does get is only because Tito tried to make this bearable. 11 Minutes. 1/2 Star.

It's time. It's finally time for the biggest moment in professional wrestling history. Mean Gene heads over to the giant egg and begins to speculate what could be inside. Could it be a dinosaur? Uh...maybe? Maybe a giant thing of balloons? Uh...what have you been smoking Gene? As out there as a dinosaur was, how can you say balloons? Wait...it's cracking. Oh my god, think of the possibilities. It's probably the debut of a new wrestler. Oh...it's probably a WCW wrestler jumping over. Maybe Flair? Sid? How about Lex Luger? Oh I know...it has to be Ricky Steamboat. Dragon - egg...sounds about right. The pieces are coming off...here it comes....it's...it's...it's...a guy in a giant turkey costume?!!!! *Dead Silence...moments later...BOOOOOOO* The creature comes out and gobbles and gooks to Mean Gene. Wait a minute...his name is probably the Goobledegooker!!!! The Gooker drags Mean Gene to the ring as the production crew plays some music to try and hide the silence and boos. The Gooker hops over the top rope. Wow...he's AGILE. Roddy Piper can't believe how awesome this is. Wait a minute...Mean Gene and the Gooker are square dancing~!!!!!! Now the Gooker hitting the ropes and inviting Gene to follow. Aww...Gene falls. Gooker does a cartwheel, Gene does a poor version of it. More square dancing~!!!!!! Piper mentions how all of the kids are loving this, but for some reason, the camera doesn't show too many smiling children. Gooker and Mean Gene leaves the ring to the cheers no reaction of the fans. Ladies and gentlemen, after weeks and weeks of buildup, the egg has cracked and the Gooker has debuted. The WWE has outdid themselves for being totally unpredictable. NO ONE saw this coming. It looks like the Survivor Series has a new mascot!!! Just think...


*Gets a puzzled look on his face*

Randy FUCKING Savage didn't have a match in favor of 10 fucking minutes of the GOOKER?!!!! WOW. This is...wow. In all of my years of watching, this is the most outrageous moment I've witnessed. Even after nearly two decades of watching this event, I'm still amazed the WWE actually did this. Amazing...just amazing.

As memorable of a "Great" moment as that was, it's time to move on to the Grand Finale match...

Team EgoMania and Underpushed Minority (Hulk Hogan, The Ultimate Warrior and Tito Santana) vs Two of the Deadly Sins Alliance (Ted DiBiase, Rick Martel, The Warlord and Power & Glory)
Like my custom team names? Hogan and Santana team up to take on The Warlord. Santana hits the ropes and nails the Flying Forearm to pin the Warlord outdoing his first elimination of the night by pinning Warlord in under 30 seconds. Santana tries his luck with DiBiase, but Santana forgets he's not in the ring with a jobber. DiBiase ducks and rolls up Tito to eliminate him. What the FUCK?! You actually have Tito and Martel in the same match, but they have zero interaction? Meanwhile, Warrior is still just hanging out on the apron even though he was able to rest for nearly the entire PPV. "What, you just got out of a match, Tito? Meh...you're fine to start this." Hogan plays the face-in-peril taking punishment from everyone. Power and Glory hits the Power Plex, but Hogan KICKS OUT. Hogan hits one closeline on Roma to pin him. Whoa. Warrior and Martel comes in, but after taking some abuse, Martel just walks out getting counted out. God, how many is that tonight? DiBiase lasts about a minute before being pinned with the legdrop by Hogan. It's down to Herc against Hogan and Warrior. Hogan gives the boot to Herc and tags in Warrior to hit the splash to finish off Hercules. Here you have it, Team EgoMania your SOLE SURVIVORS. Nothing more than a bury job (Especially for Power and Glory) and yet another ego boost (An unneeded one) for Warrior and Hogan. It was kept short and fairly inoffensive to be too bad. I love the concept of this match, but this was far too predictable. It doesn't help matters that over the course of the past year, the WWE lost so many heels. Infact, the previous Survivor Series had five heel captains (DiBiase, Andre, Rude, Boss Man and Savage) well only ONE of them was even wrestling on this show as a heel. Granted they pushed Earthquake as a top heel by now, but the show flat out didn't have enough top heels to do this. It's bad enough Perfect was a team captain against the World Champion (Especially when you consider he was feuding against the IC champion at the time), but you had to somehow come up with capable heels for Hogan and Warrior for two matches. Sorry, but Martel just doesn't cut it. Had the WWE had a little guts and made the teams more random (Hogan, DiBiase, Santana and Warlord vs Warrior, Power & Glory and Martel) it would of made this much more interesting. Seeing Hogan vs Warrior could of made this PPV semi-epic. Instead, this was just kind of pointless. 9 Minutes. 1 3/4 Stars.

Overall
1990 was a tough year for the WWE. They lost several very important heels and their hope for the man to carry the company for years to come (Warrior) bombed. So this year produced one bad PPV after another. This one is more mixed than the others. Unlike the other three, there isn't any one great match (Rumble, Hogan/Warrior and Harts/Demo), but there's less crap than the others. The PPV is highly notable for the debut of the Undertaker, Bret Hart looking like a star, the wrestlecrap known as the Gooker and the creative Grand Finale match. This PPV proves to be much different from all the others (Up to this point). The shortest match in Survivor Series history (Up to his point) was 17:50 which was at the 1988 event. Every match on this show is shorter than that match. Especially for their roster, it proved to be a wise choice. However, it wasn't enough. Luckily, the next few years they'd continue to change it depending on the quality of the roster. Overall, it's easily the weakest SS from the first four. However, it's still memorable enough to give it a view.

Best Match: Million Dollar Team vs The Dream Team
Worst Match: The Alliance vs The Mercenaries

Grade: C+

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Tommy Platinum

I didn't know Survivor Series was ever JUST elimination matches? I assumed every Survivor Series had one or two just like modern events.

It sounds like an interesting PPV but there arn't really any individual matches I would look to check out based on your ratings and descriptions. The debut of The Undertaker is the main reason I know about this PPV, and I guess seeing that would be pretty cool.

If nothing else, the Survivor Series elimination matches are usually fun so I am sure it is a worthwhile watch, just not something I would go out of my way to see with so much other great wrestling out there.

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King Steventon

Most SS elimiantion matches suck and fail to deliver to their potential. Hell, that could be said for most SS PPVs.

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horrorfan_1986

1987-1990 were nothing, but Survivor Series matches. 1991 featured the first singles match. 1992 finally showcased a more traditional PPV.

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Tommy Platinum

You learn something new every day. I assumed there were always singles matches.

I think that in a way, it is a shame they are no longer the focus of the PPV. I like PPVs with a theme (but not a theme like Cyber Sunday, One Night Stand or Lockdown, which whores out gimmick matches or makes the PPV seem a joke). The Survivor Series Elimination matches can be extremely entertaining, but nowadays they are not given as much build. That is why I would love to see Team Punk vs Team Orton this year.

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horrorfan_1986

The main problem with today's elimination matches are how long they're given for the match. In addition to matches getting barely enough time, they have eliminations so quickly. Take the 2003 SS for an example. There was THREE eliminations before the first minute. Having 10 people (And up to 9 elimination), you need plenty of time to develop the match, otherwise, it seems so unrealistic.

Probably my favorite Survivor Series elimination match was the tag match at the '88. It went nearly 45 minutes, there was a double turn, a shocking runner up team and some damn fine wrestling in the middle.

Also in order to have a good elimination match, you need wrestlers who can put on a long match without it looking bad. Using 1990 as an example, The Alliance vs Mercenaries is a poor choice for a long match. However, with the talents of the Hart Foundation, Ted DiBiase, the uniquess of the Undertaker, the Dream Team vs Million Dollar Team could of been given more time.

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