Survivor Series '87

Legacy Review

Survivor Series '87

November 26, 1987 from the Richfield Coliseum in Richfield, OH

Commentary: Gorilla Monsoon and Jesse Ventura

Following the literally industry changing success of Wrestlemania 3, Vince decided it was time to expand the PPV calendar. To continue WWF's successful national expansion, they decided to aim right at Jim Crockett/the NWA's signature event: Starrcade. Instead of a normal card, it was decided that this new PPV would feature giant elimination tag matches. Not a new match type, but it was one that had never been done on this scale before. The show was also sold on the fact that this would be the first time Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant would stand in the ring together since their epic Wrestlemania 3 clash. And to cut into Crockett's bottom line even more, not only was this first Survivor Series put on Thanksgiving night opposite Starrcade, Vince strong armed the cable companies by telling them that if they carried Starrcade instead of Survivor Series (cable companies only had one PPV channel back then), they would not be allowed to carry next year's Wrestlemania.

"Macho Man" Randy Savage, Brutus "The Barber" Beefcake, Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat, Jake "The Snake" Roberts & "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan (w/Elizabeth) vs WWF Intercontinental Champion The Honky Tonk Man, Hercules, "King" Harley Race, "Outlaw" Ron Bass & "Dangerous" Danny Davis (w/Bobby Heenan and Jimmy Hart)- Between commentary's entrance, opening packages, promos, and wrestler entrances this first match doesn't start until 10 minutes into the show. It's like an episode of Raw. Savage and Honky were feuding over the IC title. The most recent champion, Steamboat, had sadly been all but forgotten. Race and Duggan were also feuding over the King title. Big reaction for Savage, who hadn't been an official face all that long. Beefcake and Hercules start. Beefcake goes for a sleeper early but Hercules falls into his corner and tags. Davis takes the tag but, being a referee turned wrestler, doesn't want to get in. Beefcake flips him in and the faces take turns on him. Steamboat skins the cat twice. Duggan and Race end up in together and immediately tumble outside and start brawling all around the barricade. Both guys are counted out. They have to be separated by their teams and we have a reset after everything calms down. Savage gets distracted and the heels work him over. He gets a blind tag to Beefcake, who waffles Bass with a jumping high knee and eliminates him. The heels work Beefcake's arm for a while. Beefcake manages to get on offense against Honky but doesn't tag out. Davis catches him with a knee in the back, and Honky gives him the Shake, Rattle and Roll to eliminate him. Savage runs in after Honky but gets Hercules instead. Roberts goes face in peril. After a while he hulks up on Davis, kills him with a short clothesline and gives him the DDT to eliminate him. Roberts quickly goes FIP again. He jaw jacks his way out of a Hercules forever chinlock and gets the hot tag to Steamboat. Steamboat softens Herc up, and Savage finishes him off with the flying elbow. Honky's all alone. The faces take their time pummeling him. Savage atomic drops Honky over the top and out. Honky decides he's had enough and walks, taking a deliberate countout. SURVIVORS: Randy Savage, Jake Roberts and Ricky Steamboat. This had a good start and finish with a flabby and slow middle, but it was a solid way to set up the concept of the large elimination matches. Savage, unsurprisingly, looked like a megastar. **3/4

Promo time with the heel team for the main event. Bobby Heenan again argues that Andre got a 3 count at WM and promises to wipe out Hogan's teammates before leaving Hogan alone to Andre's mercy. Andre directly quotes himself from the recently released The Princess Bride by telling Hogan "I'm here for your soul!". Anybody want a peanut?

The Fabulous Moolah, The Jumping Bomb Angels, Velvet McIntyre, & Rockin' Robin vs WWF Women's Champion Sensational Sherri, WWF Women's Tag Team Champions The Glamour Girls, Dawn Marie & Donna Christanello (w/Jimmy Hart)- Who knew WWF had 10 women on the roster in 1987? Dawn Marie is not to be confused with 2000's WWE Divas era wrestler Dawn Marie. Moolah is a face now because reasons. The crowd wants nothing to do with it and still boos her. Sherri goes after McIntyre to start. Moolah is soon in there with Sherri and she looks pretty good for her age. Er, she's wrestling pretty good for her age. McIntyre rolls Christanello up from an electric chair position to eliminate her. A Robin crossbody on Marie takes her out. The Bomb Angels get in for the first time and immediately start tearing the house down. Yamazaki goes for quick covers on Kai. Ventura is loving the joshi puroresu. The heels take back over on Robin and Sherri eliminates her with a suplex. Every time Moolah gets in she's booed. The crowd did not get the memo. Wait, there was no memo. Martin tries to take on all the faces. The Girls eliminate Moolah with a double clothesline. Tateno drops Martin with one stiff right cross. McIntyre puts Martin in a Boston Crab, then transitions into a Cloverleaf and tries to turn it into a Bow and Arrow before they end up in the ropes. Nicely done. Tateno and Kai straight up collide full force in the middle of the ring. Kai goes for a pin but Tateno bridges out at 2. The timekeeper messes up and rings the bell. The ref waves it off. McIntyre gives Sherri a Cesaro Swing! Queen of Swing! McIntyre then gets up in electric chair position and rolls Sherri up for the 3! She tries the electric chair roll up one more time on Kai, but Kai saw the last two and drops her down. McIntyre is eliminated. The two tag teams are all that's left. Donnybrook! The Bomb Angels slingshot the Girls into each other. Kai misses a dive off the top rope and proper splats on the apron with a huge bounce. A Tateno crossbody eliminates Kai. Martin tries to fight off both Bomb Angels but they're too much. Jimmy Hart gets on the apron and eats a dropkick. A flying clothesline off the top finishes Martin. SURVIVORS: The Jumping Bomb Angels. This was surprisingly good. The women didn't get spots like this in 1987 and they showed a ton of fire and were clearly out to make an impression. The booking was also very smart as all the best workers lasted the majority of the match. Velvet McIntyre looked very good, and The Jumping Bomb Angels were a couple of dynamos in the ring. Their performance here earned them a marquee match and tag title win against the Glamour Girls in January '88 at the first Royal Rumble. Bring the Bomb Angels forward in time to today and they would absolutely be stars, either in STARDOM or any major American promotion. ***

WWF Tag Team Champions Strike Force, The Killer Bees, The Young Stallions, The British Bulldogs & The Rougeau Brothers vs The Hart Foundation, Demolition, The Islanders, The Dream Team II & The Bolsheviks (w/pretty much every manager on WWF's payroll)- That's a lot of bodies. As the match starts a good 75% of the apron is taken up with guys ready to tag in. This new very short lived version of the Dream Team is Greg Valentine and Dino Bravo. It's team elimination rules, which means when one member of a team is eliminated the other is also out. Volkoff and Martel start. A flying menudo from Santana makes short work of Zhukov and the Bolsheviks. Ax runs in and starts axing. The faces work quick tags on Bravo. Dynamite and Haku have a bit of a chopfest. Both Young Stallions take a beating, which will be a theme in this match. Jacques tries a reverse crossbody off the 2nd rope but Ax ducks it and gets the pin to take the Rougeaus out. Powers gets beat down some more but he manages to survive. The Demos beat on Dynamite while he in the ropes. The ref tries to break it up but Smash pushes him away, causing a DQ and Demolition is gone. Bret and Dynamite revisit their old Canadian Stampede days for a bit. Martel gets a semi-hot tag sequence. Strike Force and the Harts reignite their tag title feud. Santana nails Anvil with the flying pescado but Bret comes in and not only breaks it up, but hits Santana in the external occipital protuberance so hard Anvil gets the pin to eliminate the champs. Powers gets beat up again but the heels can't keep him down for a pin. Valentine no sells a Powers suplex. Pay your dues, kid. The Stallions finally manage to cycle out. Dynamite makes the mistake of trying a flying headbutt off the 2nd rope to Haku and is the one hurt. Haku nails him with a superkick and the Bulldogs are out. Bret ties Powers up in the Tree of Woe. The Bees run in to get him out. Bravo hits his side suplex but doesn't go for a pin. Instead he tags in Valentine, who goes to lock in the figure four. Powers fights him off long enough to get a sneaky tag to Roma, who comes off the top rope with a sunset flip to pin Valentine and take out the Dream Team. We're getting down to the nitty gritty. The Bees get a couple of near falls on Anvil. The match has been going on so long the ref's shirt is half untucked. Roma survives a couple of Anvil pin attempts. Attempted donnybrook! Brunzell and Bret are the legal men. Brunzell scoops Bret up and while the ref is distracted Haku dropkicks Bret's back with the intention of flopping Bret into a pinning position, but Brunzell rolls through it and pins Bret instead! The Harts are out. The Islanders manage to put up a fight for a little bit, including getting some ref distracted double teams in, but in the end the 4 on 2 is too much. The Bees pull of a regular trick of theirs where they put on masks to allow them to switch out without the ref's knowledge, and the illegal Bee wraps up Tama with a sunset flip to get the pin. The only blatant cheating the entire match, and it was done by a face team. SURVIVORS: The Killer Bees and The Young Stallions. This was really good. With so many guys involved there was no reason not to keep it going nonstop and they did just that for nearly 40 solid minutes that never bogged down or got boring. The winners were an interesting choice. They might have been earmarked for greater things at the time, but neither team rose higher than midcard fodder in the tag division, while the true next breakout team (Demolition) was taken out early. ***1/2

With only four long matches on the show we get the odd placement of intermission here, just before the main event. There's a long Ted DiBiase video package where he goes over some of his greatest hits of getting kids to do tricks for money only to screw them out of it, humiliating people with the promise of money, and bribing a public pool manager into shutting down and kicking all the kids out. Hilarious stuff. During some commentary chinwagging Ventura puts the Jumping Bomb Angels over again.

WWF Champion Hulk Hogan, "The Rock" Don Muraco, "Mr. Wonderful" Paul Orndorff, Ken Patera & Bam Bam Bigelow (w/Oliver Humperdink) vs Andre the Giant, "Ravishing" Rick Rude, One Man Gang, King Kong Bundy, & "The Natural" Butch Reed (w/Bobby Heenan and Slick)- That's a whole lotta beef on the heel team. This match isn't filled with an overabundance of guys I would call good workers. Rude's tights are very '80s. Hogan and Andre lock eyes during Hogan's entire entrance. Muraco and Rude start. Rude gets absolutely nothing as the faces work him over. He manages to make a tag to Reed, who also gets nothing. A Hogan legdrop finishes him off, thanks for coming. Andre comes right in and wants Hogan, but Hogan high fived Patera after the elimination and Joey Marella says it's a tag. Ventura lambasts him for "saving Hogan again". Andre immediately tags out because it's Ken Patera and he has zero interest. I don't blame him. Rude gets back in and again does nothing but sell until he manages to get an eye poke in and tag out. Patera gets caught in the heel corner. A diving clothesline from OMG finishes Patera off. OMG and Bigelow hoss it up a bit. After a Bundy distraction Rude rolls Orndorff up and uses a handful of tights to get the pin. Muraco powerslams Rude and he's done for the night, taking most of the remaining workrate with him. OMG gives Muraco the 747 splash and Muraco's gone. Bigelow tries a sunset flip on OMG but OMG just sits on him. Bigelow goes FIP. Other than his attempt to get at Hogan Andre hasn't been in the entire match. OMG and Bundy take turns on Bigelow until finally Andre gets in. Bigelow dodges him and gets the hot tag to Hogan. Hogan and Andre have a slug/chop/chokefest with Hogan eventually getting the upper hand. Bundy trips Hogan as he's running the ropes and Hogan goes out to chase him. He gives both OMG and Bundy slams on the floor but doesn't get back inside in time and is counted out. The crowd is very not happy. The ref has to threaten Hogan with awarding the match to the heel team to get him to leave. Bigelow is all alone against three fellow superheavyweights. He manages to dodge a Bundy avalanche and hits him with the slinghot big splash to eliminate him. OMG misses a big splash off the top rope and Bigelow covers him for the pin. It's down to Bigelow and Andre. Andre actually has to work now. He knocks Bigelow around for a bit then hurls him over with his grabby half suplex thing to get the win. SOLE SURVIVOR: Andre the Giant. As soon as the bell rings Hogan tears back in and attacks Andre with the belt. What a sore loser. Hogan's music plays like he actually won something. Heenan yells at Hogan that if he wants Andre he has to sign for a title match. Hogan celebrates and poses like he won to send the crowd home happy. Ventura calls him an egomaniac for celebrating like this when he lost and he's got a point. Ventura: "Only in Cleveland would they cheer the loser." Heh. The match itself wasn't too shabby considering who was in there. They kept the pace up and it was well structured. Like the Bees and Stallions in the tag team match, Bigelow got a lot of shine but never really went anywhere with it. **1/2

OVERALL SHOW THOUGHTS: Looking at it on paper you'd think there wasn't much to this show, but it's better than you'd expect. This is from a period where WWF was riding high with the '80s boom and seemingly could do little wrong. Everyone was working hard and motivated and the concept of the elimination matches came off well. Add in a hot crowd all night and it's a fine watch.
OVERALL SHOW GRADE: B