WWE Prime Time Wrestling: The Ultimate Challenge Special
Warrior/Hogan Contract Signing (Credit-WWE)
It’s WrestleMania season so let’s look back at Prime Time on the march to Mania VI. Curious how we rank matches? We’ve got a rubric for that.
WWE Prime Time Wrestling- 3/25/90
“Million Dollar Man” Ted DiBiase def. The Red Rooster: ★★
Big Bossman def. Boris Zhukov: ★
Rhythm & Blues def. Jim Gorman and Jerry Monti: ★
Dusty Rhodes def. “Macho King” Randy Savage: ★
Earthquake def. Ronnie Garvin: ★★
The Colossal Connection def. The Rockers to retain the WWE Tag Team Championship: ★
Old School Ad (Credit-WWE)
Show Highlight—
Ultimate Challenge contract signing. Much like their face-off at the Royal Rumble, there’s not much going on, but it’s a great visual that lived on forever in the minds of old school fans. Jack Tunney as an on-screen character was as thrilling as an arbitration agreement, but there was something about him being such a boring bureaucrat that made him so believable. Tunney sat at the head of the table at Titan Towers, making this seem like a big important deal (imagine how cool it would be this year to see Roman and Cody recreate this!). To the camera’s left of Tunney, I believe, was either the timekeeper or Vince’s old limo driver that later sued him, and to the right was Pat Patterson. Hogan was dressed like Hulk, but Warrior had on a long black leather jacket with the sleeves rolled up, like he was cosplaying C.C. DeVille. Both men blathered incoherence and signed the contract whilst looking in each other’s eyes (and the camera like a Demme shot) . If only one of them would have been on board with seeing their merch payoffs go down the pisser, someone could have turned heel to make this an even bigger match than it already was and really changed the course of WWE golden era history.
What Worked—
Gorilla and Bobby. Anytime these two got out of the studio to host Prime Time from a special location their chemistry was even more magical. The running bits were Heenan afraid of heights, wanting more tickets from Gorilla, and hassling patrons and the waitstaff inside the restaurant of the CN Tower.
Vince and Jesse. There could be a great Dark Side of the Ring on their dynamic and financial lawsuits alone. On commentary you could hear the love/hate relationship between our duo of Daniel Planview and Eli Sunday. The best of their back and forth was when Jesse was enjoying DiBiase’s new theme song and while singing the chorus, Vince, knowingly made the great aside of, “You can’t sing, stand back, will ya?”
Vince McMahon’s id. You really get inside Vince’s mind during the post-match antics of Bossman vs. Zhukov. A policeman handcuffs and beats with a billy club a helpless Communist as the American flag waves proudly. Quintessential McMahon.
WrestleMania Report. Mean Gene ran down “a compendium of matches.” My love of ten cent words emanated from these programs. Such nostalgia. If there’s one thing the Triple H era could easily do, now that the cards aren’t being shuffled and changed incessantly until the go home broadcast, is have on their precious YouTube and social media accounts a weekly, updated PLE Report where the wrestlers cut promos on each other. They have the free time, it lets them practice their promos, and it’ll make the events that would normally feel like a throwaway show (Backlash, Extreme Rules, etc.) seem like a big deal.
What Didn’t Work—
Dusty/Savage. You would have thought on charisma alone they could both pose and charm their way through a good TV match. This was all setting up their equally lousy mixed tag match at Mania, so their valets interfered and caused all heaps of hanky-panky.
Show Cringe—
Andre’s immobility. From the mid-80s on Andre was deteriorating in front of the audiences’ eyes, but especially in these matches and nights where it wasn’t a big show and he could take an off-night, he stopped looking scary and instead looked like Vince was trodding him out like a mentally broken circus animal.
The Colossal Connection (Credit-WWE)
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