The Weasel Suit Matches

There were three WWF weasel suit matches that made tape, from the Spectrum, MSG, and LA Sports Arena. By memory I have only seen one, and don't remember which one it was, so I thought it would be fun to see how they match up with each other. Plus, a bonus AWA Gagne/Heenan weasel suit match, the feud that started it all.


Bobby Heenan vs. Ultimate Warrior WWF 6/18/88

ER: This is the kind of match that would have been so confusing to me had I seen it when it first happened. I was young and had just started watching wrestling, so I had no clue about anyone's history. I knew what I saw. In '89 my friends and I were all laughing at the idea of The Genius of all people getting a title shot at Hogan. To us, Genius wasn't even a real wrestler. We had no idea who Lanny Poffo was, just knew The Genius. In 1988 I would have never even considered that Bobby Heenan was a wrestler. I knew him as a doughy manager of bad guys. The thought of a manager even attempting to defeat the invincible Ultimate Warrior would have been the strangest sight to my child eyes. And luckily for me, Dick Graham and Rodger Kent on commentary sounded exactly like me and my friend doing commentary over WrestleMania VI while watching it on scrambled PPV. They approached this match with a child's innocence, wondering how this match even got signed, seemingly unaware that Heenan was also a wrestler.

The whole match has a really weird tone, and it's kind of cool. The commentary feels like people completely unfamiliar with the product, and Warrior behaves downright silly throughout. He charges to the ring wearing the actual weasel suit (commentary keeps trying to think of the word for "claws" while describing the suit, "Look you can even see the....nails.....talons.....on the suit.....What word am I thinking of? What do animals have instead of nails?") and whips the suit around his head Mystikal style. Warrior even does a funny little marching band leader march around the apron while wearing the suit. The match is short but very satisfying. Heenan has a bigger belly than he had before, but he is still super agile, sneak attacking Warrior with strikes that get no sold, begging off, and then leaping through the ropes to the floor using that muscle memory that old wrestlers retain. 

This is going to be a quick match, which even my child brain would have expected. I like how Warrior doesn't work this like a typical Warrior match. He's not running around doing shoulderblocks or press slams, he's really playing to the crowd and milking reactions in a smart way. He puts Heenan down with a sleeper after Heenan tries leveling off more strikes, and Heenan gets a long, glorious death as he slowly drifts off to sleep. Heenan swings and fights and goes down like a champ, really struggling to get out of it and fight off slumber before succumbing. Warrior ups the silliness by flat out WALTZING with the weasel suit!! And let me tell you, Warrior looked like a beautiful dancer. For an actual doofus, Warrior clearly took himself way too seriously most of the time, and it was cool to see him actually showing a sense of humor with the stipulation. It takes him an eternity to get the weasel suit on, but the crowd is into it, and Heenan looks straight out of Where the Wild Things Are when it's on. Hercules jumps Warrior, Heenan finally wakes up, Warrior lariats Heenan so he can do his awesome flip bump, and I am satisfied.


Bobby Heenan vs. Ultimate Warrior WWF MSG 6/25/88

ER: This was tremendous, the fullest and most complete version of their match. They milked their time getting to where they were going, and it was totally worth it. I love Heenan in his Andre singlet. Most people two strap it. Not many people one strap it. Lawler one straps it, but with tights. Barbaro Cavernario one straps it, but he's a caveman. Heenan and Andre are one strapping their black singlets so they can show off their white, white thighs. As it should be. The opening to this match is similar to  the Spectrum match the week before, with Warrior posing on the turnbuckles and Heenan rushing behind him to club him in the back a few times, which Warrior ignores. Heenan leaps through the ropes to the floor, and that's where this match really takes off. Heenan spends so much time running away from Warrior, with Warrior stalking him like a weird flamboyant tasseled Michael Myers. It all builds to a classic gag where Warrior drops down out of sight and hides behind a corner, naturally leading to Heenan backing his way all the way around the ring before backing into Warrior and getting choked. What makes this already even better than the prior match, is Lord Alfred Hayes (on commentary with Rodger Kent and Billy Graham) absolutely losing it at Heenan taking a beating.

But things jump up to a level I wasn't expecting, when Heenan does arguably the greatest hidden weapon routine I've ever seen. Heenan fishes a weapon out the front of his singlet, and jabs it into Warrior's throat. The ref is on him and Heenan has an absurdly quick sleight of hand to tuck the weapon so that it is perfectly poking out a couple inches out of has singlet, past his butt cheek. He then lets the ref check his legs and boots. The camera gets a great shot of the weapon poking out and Heenan taking it out the moment the ref turns. He jabs Warrior again and slips it incredibly fast into the back of his boot. Ref fooled again, Heenan jabs Warrior, and I don't see him slip it anywhere. We didn't see it, because Heenan has it hidden UNDER his left boot. It was such an incredible routine, done with actual expert quick hand skills, just a masterfully performed bit. Rodger Kent was great at running play by play over the weapons hiding, his own world class performance as it sounded like the best possible Lance Russell getting flummoxed by the weapon not being found. Heenan bites off more than he can chew and Irish whips Warrior into the ropes, and Warrior catches the hand holding the weapon as Heenan tries to tomahawk him with it. Great visual, all played the best.

And then we go into the portion of the match where Heenan is just taking painful bumps into every corner of the ring. Warrior flings him pillar to post, Heenan takes a painful shoulder to ringpost bump, takes those perfect Heenan corner bumps where he manages to hit three different parts of the ropes before he hits the mat. He gets flung upside down back first into one, flies up across the corners of another leading to Warrior elbowing him down so he can hit two more things on his way to the mat, all just totally unique movements to Heenan. Warrior locks on the sleeper, Heenan goes out like a light, and Warrior is more efficient at getting the weasel suit on this time. The highlight of this portion of the segment is Hayes cry laughing throughout, while handling the play by play portion of one man dressing another man in footie pajamas. "Warrior is so precise! Putting it on so properly! Yes, that's it Warrior, get his arm in there." It was glorious. This match is a match that any fan of pro wrestling should love and respect. There really aren't many better versions of this kind of thing.


Bobby Heenan vs. Ultimate Warrior WWF 7/15/88

ER: This is merely an abridged version of the MSG match, so is redundant. Same format, same material, only rushed through and therefore not as satisfying. We get some minor differences, with the best being Heenan refusing to get in the ring to start (both our prior matches started with a Heenan ambush) and Warrior grabbing Heenan from the ring by both arms and pulls him right into the ringpost. Heenan ran from Warrior, in the ring, back out the other side, rubbing his chest and stretching his rotator cuff the whole time to sell his posting. Warrior surprises him again by hiding, lifts him up in a double choke and tosses him onto the apron, then bounces his head off several turnbuckles while the fans count. 

Heenan grabs a weapon out the front of his Andre singlet (though I think it would technically be a Heenan singlet, pretty sure he was wearing this when Andre was still in trunks) and runs through the same routine in the same order as the MSG match, but it's done far more hastily, his sleight of hand isn't as clean, and he just loses the weapon instead of Warrior catching him mid swing. It's not as satisfying, but it's still a ton of fun seeing him stab Warrior in the neck a few times. Heenan takes his gnarly upside down bump after getting whipped into the buckles, gets thrown across the ropes in the corner and elbowed down, all repeats from the MSG match, only half as many bumps. The sleeper finish is academic, only he puts up even less of a fight than in the other two matches (even Alfred notes that he's never seen someone succumb to a sleeper so quickly). If the MSG match did not exist, this one would be the one to seek out. But since the MSG match does exist, this is mostly superfluous. 


Bobby Heenan vs. Greg Gagne AWA 8/17/80

ER: This is clipped but it's cool to see the origins of this match, see how Heenan works practically the same in his mid 30s as he does doing part time work in his mid 40s. Gagne is a great babyface, and this has a ton of Heenan clobbering him with a cast. A cast would have been a nice twist to the Heenan/Warrior matches, but then we wouldn't have gotten the hidden weapon routine. I really liked the false finish of the sleeper hold, as once Gagne locked it in my brain had already been conditioned to Heenan needing to be put to sleep for the finish to work, so when Heenan managed to shake Gagne loose I actually made a WHOA sound outloud, alone. The crowd was insanely loud throughout this, as it was clearly a stipulation the fans wanted to see. I don't actually know how these matches were presented to WWF crowds, if they were actually promoted as part of house shows, if their were market specific promos for them, or if they were just thrown out there with little notice. The fans were clearly into the WWF weasel suit matches, but the fans in St. Paul were reacting to this match like it was a bloody I Quit match. Heenan bumps big, flies around for Gagne's great babyface offense, bumps shoulder first into the ringpost, does one of those great Heenan bumps where he flies into the buckles and gets his legs and arms hung up in the ropes on his way down, all of it slays. I'd love to hear the conversations between Heenan and Vince, love to know how the idea of bringing the stipulation back even came up. I imagine there are some good stories there, and I love when Vince was still willing to bring regional stipulations to his brand.