WWE Royal Rumble 1989 Match Ratings and Commentary
DiBiase and Big John Studd (Credit-WWE)
Let’s look back at WWE’s second Royal Rumble, where they were still figuring out how to do these things and it was a PPV anomaly. Curious how we rank matches? We’ve got a rubric for that.
WWE Royal Rumble ‘89- 1/15/1989
“Hacksaw” Jim Duggan and The Hart Foundation def. Dino Bravo and The Fabulous Rougeaus Brothers: ★★★
Rockin’ Robin def. Judy Martin to retain the WWE Women's Championship: ★
King Haku def. Harley Race: ★
Big John Studd won the Royal Rumble: ★★
The Summit (Credit-WWE)
Show Highlight—
DiBiase buys #30. Part of why you’re watching this show is because you remember this show-long bit. DiBiase looked horrified to draw whatever number he picked, and the story of this show was that he bought the number from Slick that The Big Boss Man or Akeem drew, which was an anecdote that followed DiBiase throughout the rest of his WWE career. It’s funny and perfectly in character if, assuming it was only the Twin Towers picks that he the option to buy, that he was pissed that he got number 22 and not 30. And I didn’t catch this until re-watching it, but DiBiase makes a big to do of saying, “…the million dollar hand to pick the million dollar number,” before blaming Virgil in ’90 for picking his number when DiBiase did it here himself. You could argue the focus of this show needed to be on the story of the dissension between The Mega Powers but eh, screw it, this was great stuff that lasted for years.
What Worked—
Vince’s intro. Of all of Vince’s PPV introductions this is the most subdued and it still sounds like he snorted his personal best bench of good ol’ booger sugar. Listen to it again, it’s a bombastic start with Hulk Hogan as expected and then you can hear Vince just totally lose his momentum in this rare whiff of a voice over session. Vince clearly seems to not recognize “Outlaw” Ron Bass, too. I’ve written about it here before but I wish they’d bring this back for a Rumble. I know for some, naming all the entrants takes the surprise out of the Rumble, but you can still leave in a graphic for, say, six surprise entrants or whatever. For WWE always wanting to hook casuals, lapsed fans, and first-timers in, getting to see all the guys involved let’s you know not only who’s in it but makes them seem all like stars.
Crane Shots. What makes WWE’s video production style so infuriating today is that they do capture fantastic angles and shots but they can’t hold on them longer for a millisecond. In this show, they did a wonderful job utilizing the crane to get these panning, epic shots of the action and the Summit crowd. My favorite shot of this show with the crane, is some fan’s fucking ecstatic and slightly pained expression when a sprinting “Macho Man” Randy Savage slaps him a five on the way running to the ring.
Jacques Rougeau. On the surface an odd choice to call someone ahead of their time but wow, what a great shitheel. His sell of the atomic drop; the old heel schtick of pointing to his head to show how smart he is, which, obviously was something of a planned spot because it was so crammed in there at the last second and Jesse was cued to comment on it; he would be over so much if he came along today. What a jam up kinda guy.
Slick. “Hey, what’s man whattsup brothaaa?” True story: when I was 9 I had to do detention because I word-for-word recited Slick’s greeting to DiBiase and my teacher thought I was doing some sort of racist impression. Clearly not familiar with the Doctor of Style but he wasn’t exactly in the wrong either.
Tumbler. Along with the video intro of all the Rumble entrants, I desperately want to see them bring back the tumbler.
“Would you get a load of that…” When Howard Finkel introduces Mean Gene to the crowd, Jesse Ventura makes that cryptic remark on commentary. The way Jess said it in a sly, breaking-the-4th-wall way always made me think there was something to that and that there just HAD to be some crazy as fuck story revolving around Finkel and Okerlund. As a teenager I emailed Scott Keith even wondering if he noticed and heard the same thing but he didn’t know of any dirt. Still waiting for something to show up on Tony Khan’s Angelfire Urban Legends thread.
“Ravishing” Rick Rude. Who would have thought I’d come to the defensive of this infamous segment? Sure, you can argue the crowd got cheated out of a match, but I’ll argue this propelled—in a roundabout way—Warrior to the WWE title at Mania VI. If you didn’t have Rude as the diametrical opposite of Warrior, and the anticipation of seeing Rude getting his ass kicked by the Warrior stretched out from Mania where Warrior got screwed by Rude, to the insane, career-defining pop he got at SummerSlam when Warrior did win the IC belt, Vince never would have had the confidence to run with Warrior the following spring. It’s said that Rick Rude made the Warrior by having satisfactory matches in the ring, but not having a match and pushing that asskicking out was what made Warrior.
So many good bits of business here: Rude being jealous that he was the natural body builder and Warrior was merely some roided-out loon; Heenan sucking up to the city of Houston by attempting to not be an asshole at first and slowly letting that evaporate. Okerlund bowing his head from hurt feelings after Rude called him “little man.” Warrior being a total fucking dumbass no-selling Heenan spraying oil into his eyes. After 35 years I can finally appreciate this.
Ax and Smash draw #1 and #2. That’s the genius of the Rumble. It clearly establishes surprises will happen and having the tag team champions forced to fight each other establishes that friendships are irrelevant. Having tag teams oppose each other wasn’t a thing in the initial iteration of the Rumble in ’88 and you can see so many instances of them figuring out how to do Rumbles in this one (Even in ’89 you had them push the duration record with Jesse in disbelief Ax was in the ring after like, fucking 4 or something, the shortest time in the ring with Warlord getting out in a second, having an elimination record, and number 27 randomly being the luckiest draw). Arguably it's still the best number 1 and 2 start in the history of the match.
Damien. Jake throwing in his snake to scare Andre and get him to eliminate himself still works after all these years.
What Didn’t Work—
“Sensational” Sherri and the women’s title match. Sherri, especially in this pre-Queen era, reminded me of every bitch supervisor that terrorized me at my boyhood latchkey. Her commentary was rougher than Judy Martin, though. A sloppy, awkward match with zero heat.
Green screen promos. They gradually phased these out, but the bad chroma key looked lousy on-screen and the neater, backdrop of the PPV sign was used instead for years. Having an identifiable logo and graphic for each wrestlers was a great idea though, too, another way that Vince used to differentiate each wrestler.
Haku vs. Harley—Had this been in a shithole Mizzoura bar at 2:00AM with them both fuckeyed on Jim Beam this would have made you pay attention.
Show Cringe—
Big John Studd wins the Rumble. In hindsight nobody knew Studd would be gone from the company some six-odd months later, but what momentum was this supposed to parlay into with Studd only penciled in to be the special guest referee at Mania V? It took Hogan winning in ’90 for it to be cemented that top guys won this match, here, it still feels like a dud winner. Being that WWE in the 80s was so insistent with babyfaces winning and Hogan in particular looking the strongest, he honestly should have just won here, and they could have put his duel “accidental” elimination of Savage and Bad News spot at the very end. Once the Mega Powers were gone, the momentum and heat of the match completely dissipated and I venture to say most people stop watching at that point, too.
Hogan and Bad News (Credit-WWE)
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