WWF 305 Live: 1987 Survivor Series Main Event
Andre the Giant/One Man Gang/King Kong Bundy/Butch Reed/Rick Rude vs. Bam Bam Bigelow/Hulk Hogan/Don Muraco/Ken Patera/Paul Orndorff WWF Survivor Series 11/26/87 - EPIC
ER: Great main event to the inaugural Survivor Series, a match that really felt like a big show main event for 25 minutes. Also, they were smart enough to have the final five survivors be the five largest men in the match. They knew exactly what they were selling. This was filled with superstars, down to the least important man. Ken Patera looks like a real force here, maybe the strongest he looked in WWF post-jail. He was like a great dancing babyface, hitting a three kick combo with a finishing punch, quick takedowns, still getting big reactions. Don Muraco looked massive and brought huge energy, standing out like an Incredible Hulk in the ring with some hulking dudes. Orndorff got the biggest non-Hogan reaction of the match, a real testament to how huge his star was in 86/87. He and Rude had some memorable stuff during their early match stretches, with Rude being the real workhorse stooging heel for a solid 10 minutes. Rude got spun around by punches from every single member of Hogan's team, gets run over with lariats, obviously gets backdropped and atomic dropped, but also gets a sly school boy on Orndorff for a surprise momentum swing.
ER: Great main event to the inaugural Survivor Series, a match that really felt like a big show main event for 25 minutes. Also, they were smart enough to have the final five survivors be the five largest men in the match. They knew exactly what they were selling. This was filled with superstars, down to the least important man. Ken Patera looks like a real force here, maybe the strongest he looked in WWF post-jail. He was like a great dancing babyface, hitting a three kick combo with a finishing punch, quick takedowns, still getting big reactions. Don Muraco looked massive and brought huge energy, standing out like an Incredible Hulk in the ring with some hulking dudes. Orndorff got the biggest non-Hogan reaction of the match, a real testament to how huge his star was in 86/87. He and Rude had some memorable stuff during their early match stretches, with Rude being the real workhorse stooging heel for a solid 10 minutes. Rude got spun around by punches from every single member of Hogan's team, gets run over with lariats, obviously gets backdropped and atomic dropped, but also gets a sly school boy on Orndorff for a surprise momentum swing.
The final 10 minutes were total big man bliss, a final five that stacks up with the highest average weight per participant in company history. All the big men had great moments, but I was most impressed by Bundy. He was great at running distraction to get Hogan counted out and out of the way, and kept dropping these cool kneedrops and crushing elbowdrops, and missing them even harder! But it was really special how they built to Bam Bam Bigelow alone in the ring against three monsters. You could argue that it was the the biggest moment of his career and he felt like an all timer in the moment. The fans responded to him huge as he was dispatching Bundy and Gang in tough battles (including a great slingshot splash to eliminate Gang), and Bam Bam is really good at selling big man offense (like heavy kneelifts) as a big man should sell them (while also doing a full flip off a big Gang lariat).
Gang takes a couple of big spills (including a wild fall off the apron) and the Bigelow/Andre final showdown is awesome. Bigelow has a bunch of cool somersaults to try to outpace Andre, and I like how Andre put him down decisively with a butterfly suplex after Bigelow had gone through two men who were already improbably larger than he was. Andre was mostly presence in this match, but it was incredible presence. He loomed on the apron the entire match, stood large in the center of the ring to confront Hogan, and had an awesome standing exchange of punches and chops in a tough Hogan lock-up as the centerpiece of the match. This was an exciting long main event that felt like a huge deal, the main event of a very good show with nothing but long matches. This main event really cemented this match as a super successful concept in the right hands.
Labels: 305 Live, Andre the Giant, Bam Bam Bigelow, Butch Reed, Don Muraco, Hulk Hogan, Ken Patera, King Kong Bundy, One Man Gang, Paul Orndorff, Rick Rude, Survivor Series
posted by EricR @ 10:00 PM
2 Comments:
Love, love, love this match. Easily the pinnacle of Bigelow's career. High end late career Andre performance, who turns nothing into everything by simply acting like everyone who isn't Hulk Hogan is beneath his notice.
I'm a huge fan of Andre all the way up to the end. Even the most immobile Andre matches had some great moments of presence and craftiness. He knew exactly how to play things through a match, one of the actual great actors in wrestling history. Bigelow had such a fun energy in his crowning moment, but everyone had a bunch to contribute to this. Gonna be one I go back to.
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