WWE Survivor Series 1989 (1989)

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

A different way of telling a story

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

The first two Survivor Series events had not impressed me at all. I was bored by the tag-only format and they just didn't seem all that exciting.This 1989 edition, however, really turned things around and made the event watchable to me (for the first time in its existence) for a couple of reasons:-The match pairings seem more logical this go-round. Each matchup is usually comprised of two dueling tag teams paired up with rival WWF superstars. I could see a clear "angle" in every match. -This event may be the peak of the Gorilla Monsoon and Jesse Ventura announcing team. The announcing table is oh so important to these events, and in my mind there may not be any better than right here. -Even the production values (in terms of graphic and presentation) seem better in '89.I won't go into the individual matches here, but suffice it to say that they are all entertaining. I had considering dropping this event altogether in my watching of classic WWF pay-per-views, but was re-energized by this '89 edition.

Admit to me now, that WWF in 1989 has got some abnormal ridiculous wrestlers. Some gimmicks are only laughable, but some... some of them are really terrible.1. Big Stiff Man/Bad News Brown/Honky Tonk Man/Rick Martel Vs. Tito Santana, Piggy Rhodes/Brutus "Idiot" Beefcake/Red Rooster - Watching some of these guys was painful... 5.5/10 2. Macho King/Greg Valentine/ Dino Bravo/Earthquake Vs. Jim "so ridiculous" Duggan/Hercules/Bret Hart/Garvin 5.5/10 3. Ted Dibiase/Powers of Pain/Zeus Vs. Jake Roberts/ Demolition/Hulk Hogan - I Always hate these wannabe Road Warriors called Powers of Pain. The only points goes to Jake The Snake. 5/10 4. Mr. Perfect/Fabulous Rougeau Brothers/Rick Rude Vs. Jimmy Snuka/ Annoying fools out of the woods/Piper - Curt selling nice! He is perfect for real. And he won above this bunch of non-wrestlers! Thx a lot WWF.7/10 5. The Ultimate Jerk/The Rockers/Jim Neidhart Vs. André/Brainbusters/King Haku - Bad ending 6/10

Wow, a lot can change in three months! Rolling around to Survivor Series 1989 Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage had finished, but the war between Hogan and Zeus raged on as Zeus joined Ted DiBiase's Million Dollar Corporation.Savage had got some closure on the whole Mega Powers deal. He'd ditched MIss Elizabeth for Sherri Martel and cheered himself up by defeating Hacksaw Jim Duggan to become the new King of Wrestling. Now calling himself the Macho King. Duggan was not pleased and so they both got teams together to go at it here.The Ultimate Warrior had caused considerable pain to Bobby Heenan and his minions by defeating Rick Rude at Summerslam to become Intercontinental Champion and then beating Andre The Giant, another one of Heenan's cronies, repeatedly at house shows so Warrior got his team of Ultimate Warriors together to take on Bobby Heenan and his evil allies.Instead of the traditional five on five format, we were going four on four this year, with the 20 man tag team series scrapped and five matches instead of four. All of these changes worked well, though the 20 man tag matches were a lot of fun.And we start the night off with the feud between Dusty Rhodes and the Twin Towers. One of the Towers, Akeem, was missing. As it was Dusty's team, the Dream Team, consisting of Rhodes, Brutus Beefcake, The Red Rooster and Titoi Santana defeated Bossman's team The Enforcers, consisting of Bossman, Bad News Brown, Rick Martel and the Honkt Tonk Man. This was a fun match. In the end it came down to Rhodes and Beefcake vs Bossman, No double team was needed as Rhodes pinned Bossman to win the match for his team.Next match was the King's Court of Randy Savage, Earthquake, Dino Bravo and Greg Valentine decisively beating Jim Duggan's 4x4s made up of Duggan, Ronnie Garvin (who was in a heated rivalry with Valentine), Bret Hart and Hercules. In the end it came down to Duggan and Hart vs Savage, Bravo and Earthquake. Hart got triple teamed and then pinned. Duggan ran around after Sherri and got counted out. End of match with Savage, Bravo and Earthquake all surviving. One sided and a bit of an anti climax at the end. Probably the weakest Survivor Series match the WWE had put on to this point.Next match saw the Hulkamaniacs WWE Champion Hulk Hogan, WWE Tag Team Champions Ax and Smash and Jake Roberts defeat the Million Dollar Team Ted DiBiase, Warlord, Barbarian and Zeus. It came down to DiBiase vs Hogan and Roberts. Roberts was distracted by DiBiase's bodyguard Virgil and was eliminated. DiBiase fell to Hogan in short order though. A good match which came down to captain vs captain, which is the way it should be. Hulkamaniacs win with Hogan the only survivor.Next up comes a match built around the entertaining feud between Rick Rude and Roddy Piper. The Rude Brood, led by Rick Rude and including Mr Perfect and the Fabulous Rougeaus Jacques and Raymond defeated Roddy's Rowdies; Roddy Piper, Jimmy Snuka and Luke and Ben the Bushwackers. After Piper and RUde were counted out wrestling on the outside the match came down to the undefeated Mr Perfect and Jimmy Snuka. Snuka hit his flying crossbody, but Perfect kicked out. They duel for a while, but Perfect eventually wins it with a perfect-plex. Rude's Brook your winners, Mr Perfect the only Survivor.Our main event saw good triumph over evil as The Ultimate Warriors, The Ultimate Warrior, The Rockers Shawn Micheals and Marty Jenetty and Jim Neidhart defeated The Heenan Family Bobby Heenan (Heenan took the place of a fired Tully Blanchard) Andre the Giant, Haku and Arn Anderson. It Came down to Warrior vs Heenan and Anderson. Warrior took care of a tired Anderson and then destroyed Heenan to win the match for his team.This was an entertaining show built around 5 good rivalries. While the King's Court vs the 4x4s was a little disappointing simply because of the one sided nature, it was still a fun little match. All the rest of the card was solid to good and it left us all wondering just what the future had in store for Hogan and Warrior.

*SPOILERS*This Survivor Series was kind of strange. The atmosphere was just kind of... off, but in a good way. This was the first time we had 4-on-4, rather than 5-on-5, matches, and not enough tag teams for a 20-man match. I think it made the matches better and faster-paced, plus we got 5 matches rather than 4. With matches of this type, that's a big difference, and you can tell.The opening match was memorable for Brutus Beefcake continuing his short-lived hot streak, eliminating both Honky Tonk Man and Rick Martel. This was one of the best performances up to that point, behind only the Macho Man the year before and Bam Bam Bigelow at the first Series. He survived and overshadowed his team captain, Dusty Rhodes. It was also fun to watch Bad News Brown abandon his team for the second year in a row. Think about how much different this match, as well as his match from the year before, would have been had he stayed. While the Ultimate Warrior would have beaten him, BNB might have put up a good fight against Rhodes and Beefcake. But why did they need him to replace Akeem? Was he injured?The second match was marred by some inexplicably low heat. It was simply a squash from the beginning, never mind Duggan eliminating Valentine. Toward the end, Earthquake, Dino Bravo, and the Macho King cut the ring off and wear Bret Hart down for about 5 minutes before Macho eliminates him. The same thing happens right afterward, as they beat Duggan to a pulp and he gets counted out. Very anticlimactic. I have never seen a match this one-sided at a pay-per-view.Then came the supposed main event, which is memorable to me because it is the Powers of Pain's one pay-per-view highlight. Then-tag champs Demolition simply jobbed to the Warlord and Barbarian, continuing the Survivor Series' 15 minutes of fame tradition. And Hulk Hogan gets a lot of hype, even though he only eliminated one opponent. The rest of the Million Dollar Team was disqualified.Not much to say about the next match, except for Roddy Piper and Rick Rude's feud is highly underrated today.The Ultimate Warrior got the last match, probably to see if he could handle main event status. He did this time. He was instrumental in all his team's eliminations, and survived. This was one of Shawn Michaels' best performances in his pre-Heartbreak Kid days.Funny how there were no tag team feuds in this event. If you look at it, all the opposing tag team feuds were leftovers from early '89. And I was disappointed at how the Hart Foundation jobbed. Neidhart was just a piece of meat.