WWF Saturday Night's Main Event IV (January 1986)

Original Airdate: January 4, 1986

From Tampa, Florida; Your Hosts are Vince McMahon and Bobby Heenan – since Jesse Ventura is wrestling.


Opening Six-Man Tag Team Match: Hillbilly Jim, Uncle Elmer, and Cousin Luke v Roddy Piper, Bob Orton, and Jesse Ventura: Uncle Elmer actually gets Ventura right away, and tosses him around. Hillbilly Jim tags to work a side-headlock, but Ventura gets the tag off to Piper. He unloads, bringing in Cousin Luke – and Piper offers a handshake. Luke goes for it, but turns the tables on Piper - getting in a cheap shot first. Not too many people can say that. Piper goes ballistic on him, and the heels cut the ring in half. Luke finally escapes their various double teams, getting the tag off to Elmer, and he locks Piper in a bearhug. That leads to an immediate six-way brawl, and the Hillbillies clean house. We settle back with Piper and Hillbilly Jim, and Piper makes the mistake of slapping him. It... it doesn't go well. But Jim makes the mistake of tagging Luke, and Piper hooks the Sleeper (along with a little help from Orton) for the win at 8:00. Well paced, but all punch-kick. DUD

WWF Title Match: Hulk Hogan v Terry Funk: Hogan still hadn't settled on red-and-yellow yet - switching colors from weeks to week - and tonight he's got on the rarely seen blue tights. Funk goes right for him, but gets cross corner clotheslined, and knocked to the outside. Big criss cross back inside see's Hogan dump him again, so Funk – having time traveled from ECW to be here tonight – throws a chair in.. Inside, Funk takes a Flair Flip, but Hogan pulls him back in before he can bail again - for a side suplex. Funk throws a mule kick to stop the champ, but gets crotched on the top rope, and Hogan atomic drops him. Funk manager Jimmy Hart gets involved, however, allowing Terry to grab the tag rope, and get the Hulkster in a choke. Piledriver finishes Hogan dead, but, oh... HULK UP!! Clothesline! Big boot! Suplex, but Funk topples him for two. He makes the mistake of arguing the count with the referee, however, and Hogan clotheslines him to retain at 8:30. Afterwards, Funk throws about five more chairs into the ring. Luckily they were far, far away from Philly – so the place doesn’t riot. And, also, it was 1985. Match was hot then, dull today. DUD

Pool Party!: Mean Gene Okerlund hosts a pool party for the Superstars. I'm not sure what the highlight is: George Steele going down a waterslide, Jesse Ventura's tutu-esque bathing suit, Hulk Hogan talking about his protein shake regimen, or Randy Savage shoving Elizabeth into a pool. Since the last one featured half naked, wet Miss Elizabeth, we'll go with that.

Randy Savage v George Steele: Steele has a childlike infatuation with Elizabeth - groping at her during the entrances - and, holy shit, that doesn’t sit well with Randy Savage. He goes right for The Animal, but Steele acts like a monkey to scare him out of the ring. Steele bites, and stomps, but somehow, Savage outsmarts a guy nicknamed 'Animal' - goading him into a chase, and nailing him on the way back in. Steele responds by eating a turnbuckle pad, but, again, somehow that fails to beat Savage, and he drops a flying axehandle to pin him at 4:06. ¼*

Peace Match: Corporal Kirschner v Nikolai Volkoff: A fight… for peace. Certainly something you pretty much only see in professional wrestling, and top shelf porn. They do a couple of stalemates off of lockups, and then do the patented Kirschner endless headlock sequence. Luckily, this is formatted for SNME, so it lasts less than his standard eight-ten minutes. He tries a hammerlock next, so Volkoff blows him low, and drops a knee for the pin at 4:32. Match was booked like they were going for a Flair/Steamboat-style epic - but it never built into anything, instead resulting in trading headlocks before a quickie finish. Worst of all, the wrestling was incredibly loose, and looked horribly phony. This was like two kids imitating pro-wrestling on a trampoline. -* ½

Ricky Steamboat and The Junkyard Dog v Don Muraco and Mr. Fuji: Big, four-way brawl to start – with the heels dominating - before starting properly with JYD and Muraco. Muraco keeps the abuse going, but walks into a backdrop, so he bails to Fuji. He unloads 'Kung Fu,' but Dog slams him right into tagging Muraco back in. Don gets caught in the wrong part of town, and eats headbutt (eww...), but the Dog fails to properly cut the ring in half - allowing a tag back to Fuji. They do properly cut the ring in half, but Muraco misses a blind charge, and Steamboat tags in. He's a house of arson – chopping everything in sight - and he sends Muraco into Fuji with a slingshot. Flying bodypress gets two, so Dog tags in to finish Fuji with a headbutt at 5:19. Pretty standard formula stuff - but the time constraints didn't leave them much to work with. ¼*

BUExperience:  Four episodes in, we have yet to see anything break a star yet. While people did appreciate good wrestling in 1985, Saturday Night’s Main Event wasn’t where they went to find it. Just quickie bits to further angles, with lots of face time for the big stars, and new introductions on a big, NBC-lit stage – which makes sense, in terms of taking advantage of the exposure and time slot. They had to have matches that could fit in between the commercial breaks, and literally offer something different on the screen every time someone flips past, to try and hook new viewers. That format won’t give you any twenty minute classics, but it was good business at the time - generating record revenues.