WWE Survivor Series 1987 Match Ratings and Commentary
The Main Event (Credit-WWE)
Let’s look back at WWE’s first ever Thanksgiving tradition, Survivor Series. Curious how we rank matches? We’ve got a rubric for that.
WWE Survivor Series ‘87- 11/26/1987
(Survivors in bold)
Randy Savage, Ricky Steamboat, Jake Roberts, Brutus Beefcake and Jim Duggan def. The Honky Tonk Man, Hercules, Harley Race, Ron Bass, and Danny Davis: ★★
The Fabulous Moolah, The Jumping Bomb Angels, Rockin’ Robin, and Velvet McIntyre def. Sensational Sherri, The Glamour Girls, Dawn Marie, and Donna Christanello: ★
Strike Force, The British Bulldogs, The Fabulous Rougeaus, The Killer Bees, and The Young Stallions def. The Hart Foundation, Demolition, The Dream Team, The Islanders, and The Bolsheviks: ★★★
Andre The Giant, King Kong Bundy, One Man Gang, Butch Reed, and Rick Rude def. Hulk Hogan, Paul Orndorff, Bam Bam Bigelow, Ken Patera, and Don Muraco: ★★★★
Andre and Bigelow (Credit—WWE)
Show Highlight—
Andre the sole survivor. What a hidden gem this match was! Four star matches and Andre The Giant didn’t typically go together in a sentence. And who cares that his finishing suplex looked like shit, Andre got his big win to build to the biggest match on free TV. Try not to find it bittersweet that this was the best and healthiest Andre had looked at the tail end of his career. Pair that with Bobby Heenan, always the foil playing the fool, finally gets a big win and he celebrates uproariously. The most match celebration and promo cut is worth the investment in this show.
What Worked—
Vince monopolizes PPV. It was ruthless, it was shitty, but Vince McMahon won. If you had to point to one seminal even that killed the NWA, this was it.
Honky’s Heat. The babyfaces in the opening gave an extended pounding to Hercules before finishing him off, a great kayfabe warning to Honky for what was going to be a harbenger of what would befall him. So he went full chickenshit and intentionally got counted out, and nobody but nobody chickenshitted like Honky chickenshitted.
Million Dollar Man vignettes. For those of you that don’t know the reference, the Million Dollar Man was a Vince McMahon creation—and almost a self-referential rib on himself—but oddly enough, the essence of the character had been done before in the comic novel, The Magic Christian by Terry Southern. Written in 1959 it’s about a rich man who pays incredible sums to people for their humiliation and his amusement. Pick it up from Amazon, it actually does hold up and I legit laughed out loud uncontrollably in public from it, which, honestly, who does laugh out loud from reading something? Anywoohoo, this video was a great way to introduce DiBiase to the PPV audience. Some of these clips are just all-time classic, like making the little kid bounce a basketball and kicking it away, generating real-life visceral heat. The other humiliating acts of public degradation include him making someone suspiciously looking like Linda McMahon bark like a dog (figure the fuck out what that is supposed to mean in the mind of Vince?). My personal favorite clip from his debut wasn’t shown here sadly, where DiBiase gets a papercut from counting $100 bills and demands to go to the ER for a band-aid. What we did get, is Ted in what had to be Vince’s old-timey convertible with a ridiculous fur coat made out of puppy fur, where the production team does a completely flawless audio dub of what would be otherwise an impossible windy soundtrack.
What Didn’t Work—
Ring apron. I know that’s the charm of an WWE 80s supercard, but it’s funny how impossible the task was to have a ring apron that covered all.
Women’s match. Calling it a styles clash doesn’t illustrate how much of a generational clusterfuck this was. You had the Jumping Bomb Angels bringing in an ahead of their time, Japanese style. Sensational Sherri wrestled like a shitkicker from the territories. And then Moolah wrestled as a face for some ungodly reason, with every bit of her offense on fast forward and not allowing her opponents/protege/harems to sell.
No Piledriver? Not saying it would be actually, you know, sonically satisfying, but it must have took some restraint from Vince to not hawk the Piledriver album with Koko singing the title track. Especially with him not doing anything that night in the ring. Imagine the heel heat of him singing it and Honky interrupting it for his unnecessary heel promo that he did cut later on.
Rick Rude’s Atomic Drop Sell. 2/10. He merely took a few steps in pain with a look of discomfort. No standing on his tippy toes, no holding his ass, no cooling his butt off in the ring corner from the impact, nothing! He robbed us all here.
Hogan’s character. What a dick. It really is baffling how poor of a sport his character was portrayed to be. Andre legitimately won fair and square and Hulk ran back into the ring at the end to hit him unprompted with the belt.
Show Cringe—
Lighting issues. I’m clearly nitpicking here because this was a great, great success for a first of its kind show, but the start of the show was as lit as well as any Saturday Night’s Main Event and then during the tag-team match, it got murkier than Hardcore Heaven 1997.
Davey Boy and Smash (Credit-WWE)
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