Summerslam 1988

Date: August 29, 1988

Location: MSG in New York City, New York

Announcers: Gorilla Monsoon and “Superstar” Billy Graham

The Setup

Hogan was coming back from filming No Holds Barred, and you had Savage feuding with DiBiase, and Andre’s last match with Hogan ended in a double DQ. So even being a tag, you’re tying up the two biggest storylines in the company. Inexplicably, WWF President Jack Tunney also assigned noted heel announcer Jesse Ventura as the special referee. This show was also after Ventura was bribed on live television by DiBiase and didn’t refuse it. How stupid this was isn’t hammered home enough in retrospect. 

The Business

WrestleTalk reports the show did 400,000 PPV buys, but the Observer reported 400,000-500,000 at the time. That’s an outstanding number for early PPV in 1988, but it would also be dwarfed by ZEUS the following year. The show was sold out at MSG, which wasn’t the least bit surprising. 

The Results

The British Bulldogs TLD The Fabulous Rougeau Brothers in 14:14 ***1/4

Bad News Brown def. Ken Patera in 6:33 1/2*

Rick Rude def. Junkyard Dog via DQ in 6:18 1/4*

The Powers of Pain def. The Bolsheviks in 5:27 *1/4

Intercontinental Championship: Ultimate Warrior def. Honky Tonk Man (C) in 0:31 NR

Dino Bravo def. Don Muraco in 5:28 3/4* 

WWF Tag Team Championship: Demolition (C) def. The Hart Foundation in 9:49 ***1/2 

Big Boss Man def. Koko B. Ware in 5:57 **1/4

Jake Roberts def. Hercules in 10:06 * 

The Mega Powers def. The Mega Bucks in 13:57 **3/4

Notable Happenings

The main event featured Liz taking her skirt off, revealing some granny panties to distract the heels and allow a babyface comeback. This came after repeatedly teasing a bikini in the show build, so it was a letdown in that regard, but still a memorable moment from the era.

Ron Bass sliced up Brutus Beefcake with some spurs on TV, so Honky Tonk Man offered to defend the IC title against anyone who wanted to take Beefcake’s place. Warrior coming out and destroying Honky was one of the most memorable moments of the decade, and absolutely made Warrior. I couldn’t rate this as a match, but the angle and response were awesome. This was a rare moment where people who saw it would legit never forget.

Jimmy Hart was working a gimmick in which he kept The Hart Foundation under contract as their manager after their babyface turn, despite the latter’s protests. Hart came down to the ring during the match and gave Ax the megaphone to use on the challengers for the finish to the best match on the show.

Rick Rude dropped his trunks while on the top rope in his match with JYD, revealing tights underneath with Cheryl Roberts’ face on them. Jake came in and attacked Rude for the DQ, continuing a feud that lasted almost the entirety of 1988.

Hercules got the Damian treatment after the clean DDT loss to Jake, something normally reserved for enhancement talent.

-Gorilla Monsoon & Billy Graham did their first and last PPV together as announcers. They were an awful team.

The Best, The Worst, and Most Underrated

Best: It’s easily the Warrior’s IC title win. Everything was incredible, and it turned out to be iconic.

Worst: The WWF singles midcard. Holy shit, they would do a makeover in a few months, and you can see why here. There’s just so much dead weight here with Muraco, Patera, JYD, Dino Bravo, etc. There were some good matches on this show, but quite a few dreadful ones as well.

Most Underrated: Ray Rougeau. I loved his work so much in the opener, and generally have in the little footage we actually have of him as a performer. He was athletic, his stuff looked good, and he could work the crowd.

Backstage Notes

This show was the first after the cable industry got the WWF to stop counterprogramming JCP PPVS, so we got Summerslam, held the month following The Great American Bash.

Jacques Rougeau had already knocked out Dynamite Kid backstage with a roll of quarters. The two bad noticeably had less interaction than anyone else in the match, but everyone remained professional, and they had a good match.

The Rating: 5.5/10

The truly awful matches were kept relatively short, and we had three good tag matches and the Warrior coronation. The announcing brought it down a tad, but the show is a breeze to get through.