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| The first and last Wrestling Classic. Why? WWF found stuff that worked better, such as shooting kittens out of a military-grade cannon! |
Months after one of the most monumental events in wrestling history (WrestleMania I), we get...this. For starters, it starts off with some mix between porn jazz and...nope, it's pretty much Jim Johnston banging around with the remnants of the WWF version of "Land of 1000 Dances" from The Wrestling Album to find his musical voice while thinking about banging Annette Haven. He doesn't do either of those and we're assaulted with this loud-ass jingle to conjure up the pain to come. Oh, and we apparently have "Roadie Rowdy Piper" in the main event. And something about someone winning a Rolls-Royce. And about 50 matches to get through.
First and foremost, the production values of this event are horrible and the fans seem incredibly disinterested in what's going on. That probably has to do with the fact that we're seeing everyone not named Vince McMahon strap on boots and step into the ring, but what do I know? The camera angles are TNA bad at times and the camera reflects more light than One Punch Man's head.
There, I finally worked a OPM joke into WIRTB. As an aside, if you're an anime fan and you've been sleeping on One Punch Man, stop it. Now.
Anyway, our first match features Adrian Adonis and Corporal Kirchner.
It's before Adrian gets his "Adorable" gimmick, but only by a couple months. It wasn't however, before Adonis started to balloon, weight-wise. Adonis sometimes gets lost in the shuffle when talking about wrestling in the '80s, but here's a man who took an big, fat, gay stereotype of a gimmick and made it work.
Re-read what I said, by the way. The gimmick was a gay stereotype, one played up even more for laughs because Adonis wasn't exactly a small guy. Did it set back progressiveness in wrestling back a couple years? Yeah, but pretty much every gimmick in the '80s did. It'd be like watching Skin Diamond perform and not expect a bit of kink. Yep, we're going down the porn star talk route again. I've got to keep myself occupied somehow with this clunker. Seriously, though. Skin Diamond is legit. I randomly found out about her through a Kink.com fuck machine video and lemme tell you. Whatever awards she wins in life, adult and otherwise, are worth it.
But, back to this crap. If you blink, you'll miss the match. No, seriously, there's not a single match on this card that lasts longer than 10 minutes. I'm not sure what's worse about this opener: Jesse and Gorilla Monsoon circlejerking the WWF ("nothing beats the WWF" gets uttered at least once and both spend more time trying to put over both wrestlers than actually calling the match) or the fact that I completely zoned out not even ten minutes in. Now, I get that this PPV was, in some ways, the prototype to KOTR--and most B-show PPVs as we know them now--but it's still pretty bad.
During the match, we get the reason why each match is under ten minutes. There's that good ol'-fashioned time limit trope that floated around in the wrestling world back then. Now, let's look back at the first match. There's a time limit, but one of the main things that transpires in the match is a friggin' rest hold!
Next up, we get a match that's short even by Wrestling Classic standards. The Dynamite Kid beats Nikolai Volkoff in nine seconds. I mean, at least we didn't have to hear more of Volkoff's singing, I guess, but damn! When an entire match fits into a GIF, you know you fucked up.
Third, we get to see the upstart Randy Savage begin his legendary PPV career in the WWF. What's that, you say, WWF? Most of this match is Randy walking around the ring after getting spat at? Jesse Ventura keeps mispronouncing Ivan Putski's last name? Randy gets the win with a dirty pin that's more obvious than a black guy in a horror film dying in the first 20-30 minutes? For fuck's sake. I guess WWE thinking its fans are stupid isn't anything new. If this is a classic, I'd hate to see the Wrestling Shitshow.
I'm absolutely beside myself with this one. But, at least I'm not Davey Boy Smith's nuts. Apparently, ring rope crotch shots were grounds for a TKO in the 1980s, because that's exactly what happened. After Monsoon hyped up the length of Davey Boy's match versus Ricky "Steamer" Steamboat (WTF?), Davey dives dick-first into the top ropes. I think it may've been legit, though; Steamboat and the ref go to check on DBS after the bell gets rung (puns all the way intended). As an interesting sidenote, there aren't too many porn stars from Maryland. And, yes, I'm aware that Mia Khalifa lived in Montgomery County for a bit.
Moving on, Iron Sheik loses to JYD because now we can't say Vince McMahon is a racist (or something). Now, I won't deny that JYD was over. The crowd erupted when he won. But, Sheiky Baby helped start Hulkamania and he kind of got jobbed out. Shrug life, amirite? At least he wasn't Terry Funk. Terry Funk, my friends, lost to Moondog Spot. Moondog Spot is legendary in his own right. But, he didn't really do anything in WWF. Yeah, he got a tag team run with Moondog Rex in the early '80s. But, by this point? Meh.
I'm really regretting my decision to watch this one. Where's a classic Lacey Duvalle clip when you need one?
After Tito Santana, perennial babyface, heeled out to win (I guess it was payback) against Don Muraco, Paul Orndorff gets a win because Bob Orton clocked him in the face with the Orton Cast. We then turn our attention to Lord Alfred Hayes looking like an SVU case waiting to happen. Oh, 1980s. Only you thought that sexual harassment jokes were uproariously funny. Seriously, this was pretty gross to watch and caused me to throw out the idea of making a ton of porno references. After Vince gets all Voice of God on Alfred, we get a horrible rundown of the events thus far.
Hayes screws up names, seemed completely oblivious to what went down (aside from "oh, this guy won"), and tried to make us believe that this was a great first round. Fuck. This. Shit. We're not halfway through and I'm already perplexed at the insanity that's going down. We've gotten sexual harrassment, nut shots, and a slew of other shit that I don't even want to get into. And we're not even halfway done! Who the fuck would pay to see this shit show of dingleberries?
Apparently, 14,000 people in Rosemont, Illinois who wanted their money back. Money that could've been spend on turning Space Whores into a real thing--or at least a better thing. I promise, that's my last one.
Next, our quarterfinal matches. Somehow, Adrian Adonis putting his foot on the rope while being pinned isn't enough to get a pinfall reversed, because he lost to The Dynamite Kid. After this, we get Randy Savage pinning THE STEAMER! after clocking him with something from his trunks, brass knuckles according to the WWE Network. Now, I didn't see any brass nor knuckles, but fuck it. It's your world, Vince. I'm just trying to get some good wrestling to watch. Junkyard Dog counts his own pinfall in our next match (this is the face of the night, by the way, folks). At least Moondog Spot wasn't going to win the whole thing, I guess. And Mr. Wonderful and Tito Santana start brawling on the outside to the tune of a double countout.
Ok, it's not often that I hope Hulk Hogan can save the day on a wrestling event. It's not. But, dammit, Hulk, save the day on this crapheap of suck. What's that, WWF? Hogan gets the win because of disqualification? ARGH! Nope. I've got to keep going. Let's go, just like The Wrestling Classic itself, at lightning speed.
- Randy Savage beats Dynamite Kid after both of them look tired, but probably more so just tired of being here drecking along. It wasn't that bad of a match. I just wish the time limit bullshit wasn't in place. Then, we would've gotten a real wrestling classic.
- Jack Tunney awards some schmo the Rolls-Royce.
- Junkyard Dog wins The Wrestling Classic by forcing Randy Savage to eat a count-out loss. If you're keeping score folks, every JYD win was gained by some sort of outside force--and he got to count his own pin. I'm honestly wondering who's the real face of this whole thing.
Fuck this. No, the fact that The Dynamite Kid and Randy Savage have a five-minute match isn't enough to save it. The production values doom it to hell before we even get to the actual wrestling. And on top of that, pretty much every match ended in a Dusty finish. Nope. Stay far away from this one. That is my Christmas present to you. I'm Speed on the Beat and I review the crap so you don't have to.
...and I'm pretty sure I'll eventually have to get a new sign-off phrase so I don't get approached by the Nostalgia Critic. But, until then, the crap will continue to be reviewed to spare you the displeasure.
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