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DIR Return to: Sheriff Lonestar's PPV of the Week
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#Post#: 20802--------------------------------------------------
Sheriff Lonestar's PPV of the Week; True Survivor
By: SheriffLonestar Date: November 16, 2013, 3:16 am
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Yeah I know I said we'd be doing the best PPV's of 2013, but I
ran into the problem of them ones freely available on youtube I
have already done this year or aren't actually available. I
shall remedy for next week. However this week we are going to
take a step back to an all time classic.
The Survivor Series concept began as a way of eeking out another
PPV on the back of the Hogan Andre feud that dominated the WWE
post WMIII. It staid on the table as the format became very
popular with fans. Its timing, its otherness nature and its
ability to put every meaningful feud in the company on the card,
they also liked the Thanksgiving Tradition aspect of putting it
on Thanksgiving day. Something the NFL had been exploiting since
the 50's with The Detroit Lions always playing the home game on
Thanksgiving afternoon, The Dallas Cowboys also play one game
every Thanksgiving Day, this meant you could essentially watch
television and eat for nine hours straight. The advantage for
Vince and his crew (then Pat Patterson, Bruce Pritchard and JJ
Dillon) was that there was really nothing at stake. No titles on
the line because the Survivors matches dominated the card, you
could have odd endings and get people counted out or DQ'd
without ruining their push, and you could elevate people with
surprise wins without hurting things to much. In fact if you
look at an early Survivor Series like this one you could pretty
much tell who was making money in the company.
I chose the 1990 one as it was the first, and so far only,
version of the series that led to its, ahem, ultimate
conclusion. The survivors of the good guy teams, met the
survivors of the bad guy teams. It is a testament to how black
and white the WWF was back then. The opener kind of fills me
with sadness in one sense. Four of these guys, two form each
team, are no longer with us. However the match itself is a bit
of barnstormer and perfect opener. It is certainly the most
memorable none Hogan match the Ultimate Warrior ever had,
however if your work Curt Hennig how bad can anything be? The
Warrior, Kerry Von Erich and the Legion of Doom look like they
are from different planets compared to the current WWE roster
just by looking at their bodies you can see they where taking
some STRONG vitamins, but it got the crowd going. The next match
on the card featured the début of perhaps the greatest gimmick
ever designed; The Undertaker. The Million Dollar team versus
The Dream Team was actually the best wrestling match of the
card. Considering the world titles the participants would hold
between them, somewhere like 14, and tag team belts they would
hold, they really knew what they where doing. When the
Undertaker dropped big Dust with the tombstone you knew they
where onto something. The Visionaries vs The Vipers was a mixed
bag, but then you had a mixed bag of talent. Jake the Snake was
not built for tag competition, his best work comes as a solo
artist and while Rick Martel is a great hand, he is dragged back
by the stiff and unrelenting ie boring Warlord and the preening
ego maniac that is Paul Roma. Hercules is quite good though, and
for some reason I loved their Superplex splash Finisher. I don't
understand why more people haven't done it.
Moving on to something more like the main meal having dispensed
with the trimmings. We get the Hulkamaniacs vs The Natural
Disasters. Sensibly the weaker links are removed early and the
series with Barbarian and Hulk towards the end is pretty
awesome. Barb really made Hogan work in this one, and when Hogan
was taking a battering his match quality greatly improved. I
don't think anyone had hit this hard since Stan Hansen the
previous April. The closer is the throwaway bout of the evening,
The Alliance versus The Mercenaries. A rather embarrassed Tito
Santana having to drag his team, which he isn't even the captain
of, up to some scratch standards against The Orient Express
(underused), Brois Zukhov (eh?) and Sargent Slaughter (here is a
bad idea waiting to happen). It thankfully is over quickly,
leading the way to the Survivors match which I won't say to much
about if you haven't seen it.
This show wasn't all greatness and light. As great as it was in
the wrestling context for the time, and clearly The Undertaker,
still going strong 23 years later, was a stroke of genius.
However this show also saw the début of the Gobbledy Gooker,
Dusty Rhodes and Vince McMahon argue to this day whether it was
worse than the Shockmaster, the Shockmaster has more edge it was
unintentionally funny whereas the Gobbledy Gooker was more like
“Oh my God really?”. The concept of teams against each other had
played itself out, the following year we had the Hogan Vs The
Undertaker for the title and the team concepts dropped down to
the one “classic” match we have today.
Enjoy the show.
HTML http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbUpRtIAQD0
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