WWF Survivor Series 1994

For 1994, the WWF – perhaps noting that the return to the standard series format in ’93 did nothing to effect the commercial response to the show – decided to mix things up again, taking the familiar elimination match format, and the well received changes made in ’91 and especially ’92 – and creating a hybrid, with two cogent main events, as well as several elimination matches to both settle, and advance angles.

As a nine year old kid – just under a year into my blissful markdom, and completely unaware of anything going on backstage, let alone buyrates and format changes – I was beyond pumped for this one. My grandparents had agreed to order the show, and while I was into all the angles (yep – all – even Doink/Lawler… I was that much of a mark), nothing compared to my enthusiasm for Bret Hart defending the WWF Title against the deranged Bob Backlund.

From San Antonio, Texas; Your Hosts are Vince McMahon and Gorilla Monsoon – in his last appearance calling a WWF pay per view event.


Opening Survivor Series Elimination Match: The Bad Guys (Razor Ramon, The 1-2-3 Kid, Davey Boy Smith, and The New Headshrinkers) v The Teamsters (Shawn Michaels, Diesel, Owen Hart, Jim Neidhart, and Jeff Jarrett): The heels debate who gets to start with Kid, eventually landing on Neidhart, and the Anvil runs him over like a freight train. Jarrett comes in to get his licks, but gets too cocky (Jeff Jarrett? No!), and walks into the lightning kicks. Tag to Sione (The Barbarian, Fatu's new tag partner, as Samu had recently left the WWF - brilliant kayfabe reason: 'he ate bad fish'), who hits an impressive press slam. Jarrett goes to the eyes to takeover, and a flying clothesline gets two. He bails to Owen, but Owen wants Bulldog (they were involved in the Hart Family Feud, and would both be corner men in the main event later). Sione obliges, and they do a nice reversal sequence over control of a hammerlock. Owen with a dropkick, but he gets flung into the Bad Guys' (not the heels, the team!) corner, and walloped. Sunset flip gets two for Davey, but he walks into an enzuigiri. Neidhart with a hairpull slam, but Davey hits a well executed hanging vertical suplex. He decides to tag Fatu instead of finishing, and he hits a flying headbutt, but can't capitalize because his boots are uncomfortable. See, they were running an angle that the Headshrinkers were trying to become more civilized - by learning to wear boots in the ring - but that they couldn't get used to them, and that the discomfort would cost them matches. Why former tag team champions, and hardened veterans like the 'Shrinkers would suddenly decide to switch up a winning formula for something as trivial as footwear was never quite explained, but I think it is becoming more obvious why Samu decided to bail. That allows Jarrett to take control, so Fatu quickly bails to Ramon. Razor - quite accustomed to footwear - manages to walk all the way across the ring, and even executes offensive maneuvers. He's like a real wrestler, or something. Blockbuster, and then he blockbuster's Kid onto Jarrett in a neat bit. Fatu goes with Owen, and eats spinkick for two, but Owen makes the mistake of attacking the head (dude, you wrestled these guys in '92 - and made the same mistake!), so he finally tags in the secret weapon - Diesel! Powerbomb quickly finishes Fatu at 13:31. Kid jumps Diesel with dropkicks, and tries a flying sunset flip, but gets chokeslammed. Powerbomb sends him home - with a one foot on the chest pin - at 14:13. Sione tries to avenge his partner(s), but walks right into a powerbomb at 14:44. Davey comes in a house of arson, but a big boot knocks him to the floor (where Kid is still selling the powerbomb, dead on the floor), and he gets counted out at 15:58, leaving Razor alone - five-on-one. Shawn - who still hasn't tagged in – beckons Diesel to the corner, and starts jawing instructions at him to finish him. The distraction allows Razor to schoolboy Diesel for two, and Ramon unloads. 2^nd rope flying bulldog for a dramatic two, but he walks into a short-clothesline. Snake eyes, as Shawn rebukes Diesel from the apron to finish him. Second snake eyes blocked, and Razor goes for the Edge, but gets backdropped. Big boot by Diesel, and he finally powerbombs him - and now with Razor good and dead - suddenly Shawn wants a tag to get the pin himself. Diesel obliges, but Shawn isn't done harassing the poor guy, and wants Diesel to actually hold Razor for Shawn to Superkick. Razor moves, however, and Shawn blasts Diesel with it... and then berates him for it! That sets Diesel off (this was part of a great storyline, as that same bit had cost Diesel the Intercontinental Title to Ramon at SummerSlam, a tag match with Ramon and Kid on TV, and again here - finally breaking the camels back), and he starts going after tag partner, and fellow Tag Team Champion Michaels. The rest of the team can't stop him, and they all end up brawling with Diesel as he chases Michaels to the back, giving Ramon the countout win at 21:45.  
Survivor: Razor Ramon
Really fun match, that was given time to develop during the first bit, had the great ‘monster Diesel’ portion in the middle, and then worked the big angle to close. Much has been said about Diesel’s ill-fated run as WWF Champion, but after the year he had in ’94 – and his reception here – it was completely understandable why they gave it a shot. Not trying would have been a waste of talent. Not so understandable: why they completely neutered the character that got him over in the first place. The ending here was a derivation of the opener from ’91 – but worked far better here – as it didn’t feel like a copout as much as the payoff to a terrific storyline. This also served to get Shawn’s ‘superkick’ over as a legitimate finisher, as up until 1995 he had been using a modified side suplex – with the superkick as a transition move – but after it was enough to knock big Diesel out three times, people started taking it seriously, and he shelved the ‘Teardrop Suplex’ for good. *** ¼

Survivor Series Elimination Match: Clowns R' Us (Doink, Dink, Wink, and Pink) v The Royal Family (Jerry Lawler, Sleazy, Queasy, and Cheesy): Okay... um... so... basically, Doink, and his midget clown friend Dink had been harassing and pranking King Lawler on RAW for weeks, so Lawler rounded up some midget mercenaries (where would you even go for that sort of thing... like... pre-Craigslist?) to settle things at Survivor Series. This was the sort of thing I was mildly interested in when I was nine - but now, I can't believe they actually put this on TV, let alone pay per view. Doink and Lawler start, which is kind of a surprising character move for a Memphis heel. Doink with an enzuigiri off of the initial tie-up, so Lawler tries his own - but misses, in a nice bit. Doink grounds him, allowing all the midgets (on both sides) to run over him. Lawler tries the same bit, but Doink trips Lawler's midgets over on the way. The match goes on that way: with Doink hitting something, and then the midgets messing with Lawler - and Lawler trying the same bit, but not working out - until Lawler grabs a phantom foreign object from his team, and wallops Doink. That leads to a midget rumble, and in the confusion, Lawler pins Doink with a handful of tights at 10:36. With Doink gone, Lawler directs traffic (midget traffic!) pretty easily, and 'guides' Cheesy to a pin over Wink at 13:10. Pink comes in a house of arson, but a double team with Lawler allows Queasy to get rid of him at 14:28. Dink in, but, really, the match was over the second Doink was pinned. There's no mixing allowed, so even if Dink manages to eliminate all the Royal midgets, it would come to a stalemate with Lawler. He makes a go of it anyway, but more shenanigans allow Sleazy the pin at 16:05. Afterwards, Lawler berates his team, telling them not to celebrate - as he won the match. Kinda cold, but dude does have a point. He kicks them out of the ring, but they continue to defy him, raising their little arms up in the air like miniature, white Black Panthers - leading to a showdown. The clowns return, and all the midgets gang up on Lawler, with whole thing ending in a pie in the face, of course.
Survivors: Jerry Lawler, Sleazy, Queasy, Cheesy
It broke down after Doink got eliminated, but it worked as a comedy match - with Lawler's masterful heel tactics easily keeping the crowd engaged. ¼*  

WWF Title Towel Match: Bret Hart v Bob Backlund: This was a phenomenal angle, where Bret, winning a routine title defense against fellow babyface Bob Backlund on Superstars, offered a handshake. Backlund initially obliged, but as Hart celebrated, Backlund jumped him, locking on a crossface chickenwing – nearly tearing Hart's shoulder out of its socket. It took a horde of WWF Officials to pull him off, and when they did, Backlund just stared demonically at his hands - saying he had 'snapped' – apparently still harboring a grudge over the fact that his manager had thrown in the towel to cost him the WWF Title - way back in 1983. He then went on a rampage through the WWF - acting normally - though prone to 'snapping,' and locking people in the dreaded chickenwing, until this rematch was booked. The rules stated that the only way to win would be for the designated corner man (Davey Boy Smith for Hart, Owen Hart for Backlund) to throw in the towel - no pinfalls, countouts, or disqualifications. I had been watching Superstars when Backlund ‘snapped,’ and I was legitimately concerned for Hart’s safety going in. It was a brilliant angle, and they developed it slowly – as the initial assault was back in July - before SummerSlam - but in an era before monthly pay per views, they had to delay running it a good four months. Backlund played his part perfectly - 'crazy old man' to a tee - stuck in 1983, thinking he's still WWF Champion; coming out without entrance music, and dressed in a ratty old robe you'd find at K-Mart. Backlund charges as the lights come up, but walks into a pair of slams, and bails to the floor to regroup with Owen. Back in, Bret grabs a wrenching mat-based side-headlock, but Backlund suplexes out. Bret dives right onto continuing the assault on the neck, and grabs a chinlock, and maneuvers back into the side-headlock. Backlund wrestles out, and dives onto the arm, going for the chickenwing, but Bret counters back to the headlock. Backlund counters out into a hammerlock, and goes for the chickenwing immediately, so Bret shoots him a belly to belly suplex, and grabs a front facelock. He can't keep Backlund grounded, however, so rather than lose him altogether, he goes into an abdominal stretch on the way up. Headbutt, but the 2^nd rope sailing elbow misses. That one never works. That damages the arm, however, and Backlund is quick to capitalize, tearing at it like a ripcord. He locks an armbar, but Bret kips-up, and they spill to the outside. Backlund goes to the eyes to keep control, and continues abusing the arm and shoulder. Great bit, as Backlund locks an armbar, so Hart goes into the front-facelock to counter, then turns it into a swinging neckbreaker - but all through that, Backlund still doesn't release the arm – holding on like a vicious dog to his last bone. Bret with an inverted atomic drop to break it up (if there's one way to get any mans attention...), and he tries for the Sharpshooter, but Backlund squirms free. Hart with a figure four instead, but Owen refuses to even consider throwing in the towel. Backlund manages a reversal (sending Owen into fits of joy), but they break it up - both a little worse for wear. Bret bashes the knee, and supermarket sweeps him into another Sharpshooter attempt - but Backlund kicks off. Backlund with a visually impressive piledriver, leaving Bret dazed, so he clamps on the chickenwing - but Bret has the facilities to stay near the ropes, diving into them. Backlund tries a headbutt and a neckbreaker to daze him some more, but Hart backdrops out of another piledriver attempt - as the challenger gets more and more desperate. Bret with his own - equally well executed - piledriver, and a bulldog. Russian legsweep, and a backbreaker hit. 2^nd  rope elbow, and it's Sharpshooter time! He locks it in, but Owen runs in with a bulldog to break it up. The Bulldog takes exception to that one, however, and chases Owen around - only to knock himself out on the steel steps, in a nice bump. Owen - with his parents at ringside - suddenly decides to care, acting like a kid during a playground accident, as if he didn't mean for Davey to get hurt. That distracts Bret long enough for Backlund to lock the dreaded chickenwing (which had me legitimately worried, live), and through Hart fights to keep a vertical base, it's only a matter of time before Bob gets the bodyscissors on as well. Meanwhile, on the outside, Owen continues to flip out about Davey's welfare - and now he's starting to worry about Bret, too! After all, they may be fighting, but it is his own big brother locked in the perilous clutches of a madman. Backlund wrenches the hold, but Bret refuses to quit - and his corner man is still unconscious. Owen, seeing this, starts actually crying, and appeals directly to parents Stu and Helen Hart at ringside, to throw in the towel for Bret. I was totally buying Owen's face turn as kid, and even though I was worried Bret was losing the title, I could be consoled if it meant reconciliation with brother Owen. Bret keeps fighting, but there is no escape, and Backlund aims to end his career. Finally, Owen talks his parents into crossing the rail, literally stepping over Davey's body, and Helen's ready to toss in the towel - but Stu holds firm. Bret is howling is pain - with this Hannibal Lecter-style madman laughing his head off, until finally Helen tears the towel away, and throws it in at 35:11, crowning WWF Champion Bob Backlund. The crowd is just in shock over that one, as despite how awesome Backlund was with this angle, he fit into the 'New Generation' about as well as Leave it to Beaver would fit into NBC's Thursday night lineup this week. He would, in fact, drop the title to Diesel only a few days later at a house show. Afterwards, Owen runs in to check on Bret - but actually just grabs the towel as a trophy, and hightails it to the dressing rooms! The match was much slower than anything modern fans (even in 1994) are accustomed to giving a half hour to - as it was two former amateur wrestling champions showing off to each other, their colleagues (and probably Stu, a little), with a mat wrestling exhibition. Even still, the drama of Hart avoiding the chickenwing was well built - and the crowd responded accordingly - freaking out whenever Backlund would even come close to applying the hold. Great sell job all around, as well - even from the corner men - as Owen's great acting display on the outside to sell the ending sold things as much as Bret's brilliance on the mat. Bret would continue selling the ending, taking time off until January due to the damage done by the chickenwing – in the process missing an appearance at the first house show I ever attended – giving us a Diesel/Backlund rematch instead. *** ¼

Survivor Series Elimination Match: Guts and Glory (Lex Luger, Mabel, Adam Bomb, and the Smoking Gunns) v The Million Dollar Team (King Kong Bundy, Tatanka, Bam Bam Bigelow, and The Heavenly Bodies): Luger starts with Tatanka (they had the main issue, though Luger had beef with the entire Million Dollar Corporation - which is, while we're on the topic, a horrible name for a corporation), and Tatanka suplexes him, but runs into a pose, and Luger unloads. Many clotheslines follow. So many, in fact, that Tatanka can't handle them all himself, and has to outsource to some of the other guys. Mabel and Tom Prichard have a go, and Mabel uses his size to dominate. Bodypress off of the 2^nd rope sends Prichard home at 3:58. Jimmy Del-Ray comes in for vengeance, but gets uranage’d on, and bails to Bundy, for a proper fatty showdown. Mabel actually wins - in a surprising bit of booking, considering Bundy had recently returned, and was somewhat protected. Bigelow gives it a go, but gets enzuigiri’d, and Mabel heads up top, only to get slammed off. Bam Bam with a sloppy sunset flip, but Mabel buttsplashes him to kill that effort. Cactus clothesline puts them on the outside, but Mabel's a beached whale, and can't beat the count at 7:15. Mabel looked good here - as he could in the right doses, and especially when limited to tag matches - but unfortunately, sometimes pushing people for perceived talent and motivation doesn’t payoff - as the 1995 Mabel push so graphically demonstrated. Sometimes there really is only so far a guy can go. And sometimes that 'far' is dressing in purple satin, and leading 90% white family crowds in mock-rap sing-along’s. Adam Bomb in next, but Bigelow quickly dumps him. Bomb with a slingshot clothesline back in, and a slam, but a cheap shot from Bundy allows Bigelow a flying moonsault to finish at 8:09. Luger runs in with a quick schoolboy for two, but makes the Luger-esque mistake of heading right into the heel corner, and Bam Bam tags Del-Ray. He fires off a well executed savate kick, but eats a diving forearm off of a criss cross, and he's done at 9:56. The Smoking Gunns go to work on Tatanka, cutting the ring in half with quick tags, and Billy Gunn nearly puts him away with a fantastic dropkick. Sidewinder (sidewalk slam/jumping legdrop combo) gets two, but Bart gets caught with the Fallaway Slam (a Samoan drop) at 13:27. Billy tries to recreate the magic (the magic that resulted in Tatanka kicking out of everything, and then eliminating one of them - yes! – that magic!) with Luger - but Tatanka keeps kicking out of everything (though, to be fair, 'everything' is more 'hiptosses' or 'snapmares' this time around), and catches Billy with a sloppy spinebuster. Tag to Bundy, and the Avalanche finishes Billy at 16:14. Luger tries his best to hold his own, but it's three-on-one, and they don't have Shawn Michaels around to fuck things up. Basic formula: Luger gets a slight advantage, the heels triple team him, and switch out. Tatanka wants to be the one to finish him, appropriately, and powerslams him - but it only gets two. Series of elbowdrops, but Luger gets a fluke cradle, and Tatanka's gone at 23:14. Bundy doesn't mess around, however, running (well...) with a splash at 23:21.  
Survivors: King Kong Bundy, Bam Bam Bigelow
Going in, you'd think this would be the appropriate place to blowoff Luger's feud with the Corporation - and they did at least give him the token pinfall over his main rival, Tatanka - but with Bundy having just returned, and renewed interest in a Bigelow push (as well as the WWF becoming increasingly indifferent with Luger's direction), the booking made complete sense. Match was well paced, logically booked - if a bit sloppy at points, and overlong in its closing argument. *** 
 
Main Event: Casket Match: The Undertaker v Yokozuna: Basically, Yokozuna killed the Undertaker, sending him to heaven for all eternity (see: he took few months off) - but he came back, and after killing a twin zombie version of himself – he wants revenge. Also, now he's wearing purple, - because wearing grey boots would just be ridiculous after no selling death. To make sure a Royal Rumble revival doesn't happen, the WWF has Chuck Norris as the special enforcer - though this is about ten years before he became a pop culture phenomenon - and at this point was 'TV's Walker: Texas Ranger,' as Vince McMahon reminds us about three hundred times. During the entrances alone. Yoko tries to run away to start (what a monster!), but 'Taker stalks him, and they slug it out on the floor. Inside - ropewalk forearm hits, but Yoko drops him like a Samoan off of a criss cross. Uranage, and Yoko drops a big leg. He tries for the casket, but 'Taker's all 'nope, sorry Hurley,' and they brawl in the box, taking out manager Jim Cornette in the process. Speaking of Cornette,  that had to be some kind of sick joke - sticking him with Yokozuna. The guy who helped develop the five-star rating system gets stuck watching and promoting a guy who rarely ever breaks a star night after night after night, for years. That's the ultimate irony. Yoko continues to dominate with a bodyslam, but he gets hair slammed off of a backdrop attempt. Flying clothesline, draws out King Kong Bundy and Bam Bam Bigelow to assist Yoko, but they run into Chuck Norris - whose death stare is enough to keep them back. It turns out to be a ploy, however, as IRS runs out of the crowd, and locks 'Taker in a sleeper, dumping him in the casket for Yoko to finish. As noted earlier, though, this isn't 'Monster Yokozuna' anymore, this is post-WrestleMania X, dopey Yokozuna, and he gets caught in a choke trying to close the lid. That draws out Jeff Jarrett, who beelines past Bundy and Bam Bam, but Norris sidekicks him halfway up the aisle. Inside, 'Taker hits the jumping clothesline. DDT follows, and a big boot puts Yoko in the casket. He snaps Mr. Fuji's Japanese flag in half (he's a xenophobic deadman), and we're done at 15:24. Match was the slow, plodding mess you'd expect from these two - but the crowd liked this junk - even though in no rational world did it warrant over ten minutes. – ½*

BUExperience: Overall fun show, as they finally realized that endlessly tweaking the format wasn’t going to effect the commercial response to the show – wrestling is cyclical, and when business as a whole is down, so is Survivor Series. When the cycle is up, the buyrate would be up – and the best thing to do is just put on the best show you can, and not fret over sticking to some magic formula. They would stick with that line of thinking for a few years, in fact, with the cycle down – until the Attitude Era came along.

This one was well booked, making the best use of the five-on-five formula – last seen in much slower paced action back in 1988 – yet, major angle development with the Diesel face turn, and the title change. The casket match was horrible, yes, but after a year of build up, they were required to do a pay per view blowoff – and that was about as good as you were going to get out of both guys at that point. ***