Summerslam 1990

Date: August 27, 1990

Location: The Spectrum – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Announcers: Vince McMahon & Roddy Piper

The Setup

The card was built around a double main event featuring Hulk Hogan avenging his injury against the undefeated Earthquake, and The Ultimate Warrior defending the WWF Championship against Rick Rude inside a steel cage after a months-long house show program. While the title match went on last, Hogan’s return from the injury angle that gave him time to film Suburban Commando was the draw on this show. 

The Business

The show did approximately 507,000 pay-per-view buys, almost doubling that year’s Royal Rumble and comfortably beating Survivor Series. The attendance at The Spectrum was 19,304, a sellout, translating to $338,452. 

The Results

Power & Glory beat The Rockers (6:00)

IC Title Match: The Texas Tornado def. Mr. Perfect (C) (5:15) ***

Sensational Queen Sherri beat Sapphire via forfeit NR

The Warlord pinned Tito Santana (5:28) **1/2

Tag Team Title Match: The Hart Foundation beat Demolition (C) in a Best 2-out-of-3 Falls match (14:24) ***1/4

Jake “The Snake” Roberts beat Bad News Brown (4:44) via DQ. 3/4*

Jim Duggan & Nikolai Volkoff beat The Orient Express (3:22) *1/4 

“Macho King” Randy Savage pinned Dusty Rhodes (2:15) NR

Hulk Hogan beat Earthquake (13:16) via countout. ***

WWF Title Steel Cage Match: The Ultimate Warrior (C) def. “Ravishing” Rick Rude (10:05) **1/2

Notable Happenings

-They teased throughout the show that Dusty Rhodes couldn’t find Sapphire until it was revealed that she had sold out to Ted DiBiase and left the arena with the Million Dollar Man. That’s why the Dusty-Savage match was so short, and this led right into a Dusty-DiBiase program. Sapphire did a few vignettes with DiBiase, and Virgil revealed in WWE Magazine that DiBiase repossessed all her gifts l, and she quietly left when her contract was up.

-The Legion of Doom made their first-ever WWF pay-per-view appearance, running down to ringside during the tag team title match to stop Demolition from cheating and neatly segue into that program. 

-They did an injury angle with Shawn in the opener with Hercules’ chain because Shawn had a real knee injury, and they were thinking about breaking the team up and teaming Marty with Shane Douglas as the New Rockers. Marty did an excellent job working almost the entire match by himself.

Best, Worst & Most Underrated of the Night

Best: The Hart Foundation vs. Demolition. In two of the first three Summerslams, these two teams had the best match, although this time it was Crush & Smash, as Ax recovered from an allergic reaction to shellfish that nearly killed him. 

Worst: Jake vs. Bad News Brown. As if the possums posing as Harlem sewer rats weren’t stupid enough, we also got an awful match with a lame finish to boot. 

Most Underrated: Tito Santana. I’m sure I liked his match with Warlord more than most, but he carried Warlord to a perfectly competent big man-little man match underneath. 

Backstage Notes

-Brutus Beefcake was finally scheduled to win the IC Title against Perfect at this show, but had a tragic accident on the beach with a parasailer that crushed his face and almost killed him. Tornado had only recently debuted on TV, so they gave him a rocket push, but Kerry was a shell of himself and plagued by personal problems, so he never really reached the level the company hoped for. 

-This was Rick Rude’s last WWF PPV as a wrestler, as there was a money dispute when the WWF used his name to headline house shows against Warrior, but didn’t pay him as such. He wouldn’t appear on WWF PPV again until 1997 as a part of DX with Shawn and Hunter. 

-Hogan blasted Earthquake with a chair in the back so hard that it immediately started swelling up and bruising. 

Rating: 4.0

Even with Warlord-Tito being better than one might expect, there was no need for it or the Duggan & Salufhter tag to be on a PPV. The matches with Savage and Sherri, respectively, were nothing more than to advance the Sapphire angle. The Hogan match was better than most Hogan matches of the era, and the cage match was fine. This was probably the worst of the first few Summerslams.