WWE recently relaunched the iconic series of television specials, Saturday Night’s Main Event. This latest iteration was shown on the streaming platform Peacock instead of the traditional home of NBC. After all of the hype leading up to it, I tuned in to check it out and you know what? It still had that special feel that the original series did all those years ago when it originally launched in 1985.
There’s never been anything quite like Saturday Night’s Main Event for great Saturday night entertainment for old-school wrestling fans like myself. The series had already made its debut shortly before I became a wrestling fan, so I missed out on the first couple of specials. I knew of them though as friends at school couldn’t stop raving about them on Monday mornings after they had aired.
Saturday Night’s Main Event was at one time the biggest wrestling show on television. Pay-per-view was in its infancy for most of the series run, the NWA had yet to launch their Clash of the Champions series, and the regular wrestling shows on television were still filled with non-competitive matches for the most part. Yeah, they’d throw us a bone every now and then and give us a decent main event match, but even that usually was just to set up something for later, and would often end in a non-finish.
Once I really got into wrestling, I couldn’t wait for my chance to watch Saturday Night’s Main Event. The first one that came along for me was on Saturday night May 1, 1986. I didn’t have a TV in my room back then, so I slept in my dad’s spot in his bed since he was out of town. He had a little black and white TV on the nightstand beside the bed. I tried hard to stay awake to watch it, but I didn’t make it. I had fallen asleep before it started. It was probably the news that did me in.
But I woke up just in time to see what was supposed to be the start of a Ricky Steamboat vs. Jake “The Snake” Roberts match. Ricky Steamboat was my favorite wrestler at the time, and I was always excited whenever I got a chance to see him on TV. Unfortunately for 8-year-old me, the match didn’t really happen, because Jake attacked before the match and nailed Steamboat with the DDT on the concrete floor. Also what was unfortunate for me was that I fell back asleep almost as quickly as I had woken up to see the bit that I saw.
Circumstances continued to conspire against me, and I missed the next couple of shows as well. At this time, my family didn’t own a VCR so I didn’t even have the option to record and watch the next day. But in November of 1986, we finally got one and I was primed and ready to record the next event so I wouldn’t miss out on all of the excitement, and what a doozy of a show it was.
The first Saturday Night’s Main Event that I got to watch in its entirety took place on January 3rd, 1987. The “main event” of this show pitted World Wrestling Federation champion Hulk Hogan against his one-time friend turned bitter rival, “Mr. Wonderful” Paul Orndorff. And this wouldn’t be just another match. No sir. This match was going to take place inside the walls of a 15-foot-high steel cage! The only way to win one of these cage matches was to put your opponent down to the point that you could leave through the door, or climb over the top. The important thing is that your feet must touch the floor.
I was already very excited about getting to record and watch a Saturday Night’s Main Event for the first time, but my excitement level got turned up to 11 while watching The Golden Girls with Mom earlier in the night, as one of the commercials was a short promo from Hogan with the cage in the foreground threatening to tear Orndorf limb from limb. I knew this was going to be awesome, but I had no idea just how much suspense there was going to be in the big match.
I’m watching the tape the following morning after the live event, and the Hogan-Orndorff match was up first. It was a good back-and-forth affair, but nine-year-old me really had no reason to think that Orndorff would actually beat Hogan. But it got to a point in the match when both men were a little groggy, and they started to climb out on opposite sides of the ring. Jesse “The Body” Ventura on commentary exclaimed that it was a race! I kinda got on the edge of my seat. It was neck and neck as they both started down the outside. Vince McMahon was yelling for Hogan to drop down! Then it happened. Both men hit the floor at the same time! The theme song “Real American” started playing, which after the bout a winner’s music is played, but in this case, it didn’t really tell you who won since both men used the same theme song!
Wait…who just won the match? There was confusion at ringside as both men were claiming victory. McMahon and Ventura were each arguing the case for a different competitor. Referees Joey Marella and Danny Davis were each declaring a different winner. Multiple replays of the finish were shown, but no official announcement had been made. The show went to a commercial break, leaving everyone pondering what the outcome was! It was suspense at it’s finest. When the show returned, an announcement was made that this match had been declared a tie. But since a tie is like kissing your sister (my words, not theirs), the referee ordered the match to be restarted!
So after we had just witnessed an incredible battle, with an incredible ending, we were about to get even more! Unfortunately, the rest of the bout was not as exciting as the first half. Hogan went on to soundly defeat Orndorff once they were back in the cage just as he said he would in that earlier promo during The Golden Girls. He even gave Orndorff’s manager Bobby Heenan a good thrashing for good measure after the match was over.
The rest of the show was good, but nothing else that happened was going to top the suspense of that main event match. On Monday morning at school, my friends and I discussed that match endlessly and debated whose feet touched the floor first. It was certainly an event that we all thought was spectacular. I kept that VHS recording for years and probably watched that main event match at least 25 times after that.
As the years rolled on, many more Saturday Night’s Main Event programs aired, and while they had memorable moments of their own, none of them ever duplicated the suspense that the Hogan versus Orndorff cage match did. And one thing is for sure…the suspense of that match was pro wrestling storytelling at its finest, and the suspense it created all those years ago still resonates with me today.