WrestleMania 5: MegaPowers Explode!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[snuffbox]

They ruined one of the great moves of all time.

You could keep Brooklyn Brawler in that Heenan Family match to keep Studd on the card and, like Andre, maximize his look/name value without exposure. That'd have been a good one for Uecker to guest commentate.

Bit surprising in hindsight that Hercules didn't get over as a babyface. He was a lot better than/more charismatic than a lot of the generic muscle guys, your Ted Arcidis and such, and the chain was cool. Certainly, more wins would've helped but that might be more on the quality of the roster then than bad booking...maybe some of the stuff that wouldve gone to Herc ended up with Dusty when he came in.

 

[Valeyard]

Animal Steele kicked out of the Big Elbow at Mania 2.

He popped up like nothing, killed him with his finish, and the elbow woke Steele up for the next ten years?

 

[snuffbox]

And it put the stuffing back in the turnbuckles.

 

[alfdogg]

Card could be helped by combining the Heenan haters into a six man (Rooster, Hercules and Jake the Snake vs Heenan, Haku and Andre.

This should have been Warrior's team at Survivor Series 89, team name included

 

[BruiserBrody]

it's pretty low on the egregious Hogan booking scale.

A year later he kicked out of Warrior's finish and kicked out at 3 and jumped to his feet at the finish.

Then of course we have his Nitro booking from Oct 95-Uncensored

 

[Valeyard]

Kicking out and totally no selling are pretty different, though. It makes sense in the story of the Warrior match. It was just completely unnecessary with Savage, especially considering the money to still be made.

 

[Tino Standard]

The WM 5 finish was just so…uninspired. It was the most basic, formulaic Hogan match finish possible. Heel hits finisher > Hogan kicks out, hulks up > Punch, punch, punch > Big boot, big legdrop > Pin.

That’s all you could come up with for a WM main event championship match that had been building for 18 months?

 

[Valeyard]

Like, he just had to move out of the way. You can hit the usual after, and in hindsight it plays into the next year's finish. There's no way Savage doesn't eat the legdrop but the trip made the destination a mess and any rematch less significant.

 

[BruiserBrody]

Warrior survives 6 (IIRC) big elbows and pins Savage with one boot on his chest..... Savage is champ a year later.

It'll be ok guys. The 80s wasn't false finish booking to the max.

Bruno used to beat up the heels, look down at them in disgust and walk out of the cage untouched.

 

[Valeyard]

The story of Savage/Warrior makes that make sense (Savage with the hate in his heart and both of them fighting for their career) and Warrior didn't just pop right back up to hit his finishing sequence like nothing. Hogan needlessly buried the elbow and would for the rest of his association with Savage.

Leaving a dude laying in a cage is the best but they should never have made the door even an option because that's for pussies.

 

[BruiserBrody]

The gate receipts up until SummerSlam suggest that it didn't matter in the long run either way

Hogan was maced and beaten with a nightstick in Oct and then immediately no sold it on the Brother Love Show in the same segment and still went on to set records with the Boss Man leading up to WrestleMania

--
Hogan physics also came into play in 1990 as a butt splash in May were career threatening whereupon multiple butt splashes in August were able to be shook off as he went on to victory

Would Savage and Duggan or Savage and Dusty have set records had the big elbow been slightly stronger? This was a cartoon and Hogan was Popeye or Superman. you ride that train until the millions of dollars stop coming in for it

---

Imagine the money they could have drawn in Memphis if Jerry Lawler would have just learned not to drop his strap and make them heels stronger

 

[Valeyard]

No selling a beatdown and killing a finish against your best opponent are wildly different things. It also built to something which made money and didn't actively harm the end result. The Earthquake angle made Quake and was the last worthwhile thing Hogan would do in the WWF, and again, it built towards something and wasn't a burial for no reason.

You seem to be thinking I'm saying Savage should go over, which isn't the case. The issue is the finish went out of its way to hurt Savage, which definitely hurt the rematch potential because Savage wasn't a threat anymore. It's bad storytelling and hurt the future drawing potential, which considering how well they did is insane when they could've done even more. They kneecapped the feud in its second act.

 

[Mickey Massuco]

They were never gonna continue this feud anyway though, it was stopped in its tracks due to hogan needing to promote no holds barred. There were only two ppvs left in the year and both of them had the wwe wanting to pair Hogan with Zeus. By the time 1990 rolled around, the wwe was already all in on the warrior. Matching hogan and savage past that point would have needed a rebuild anyway with all the time that had gone by.

 

[Valeyard]

House shows, though. Let alone as a bridge to Zeus.

 

[snuffbox]

House show tours were bigger than premium lives then (plus they existed!). There would be 3 ppvs later in 89, including No Hold Barred, and Savage was a tag opponent of Hogan in 2 of them. They also did a Main Event on tv in early 1990 with Buster Douglas, who'd just upset Tyson (the orginal ref for Hogan-Savage). They did a European tour. Not a great time to turn one of your main eventer's most popular finishing moves into reverse kryptonite. Don't kill your best moves, don't kill off cities.

Hogan did this again in 1995 with Vader. The powerbomb was medicinal on TV. License to print money was, again, revoked in favor of a man's feelings.