Since 1987, the WWF’s Survivor Series has been a Thanksgiving tradition. For a few years, it took place on Thanksgiving night, then moved to Thanksgiving Eve for a while. After that, it bounced around to a Sunday night that was close to Thanksgiving.
But the yearly event has always been a highlight of the wrestling year with its unique concept where teams of four “strive to survive” in elimination tag team matches. The 1989 edition featured five of these matches filled with the biggest superstars of the day.
In this time capsule, look back at the big event through the pages of its official program, and try to remember what the anticipation was for big wrestling events like this.
You know how there are just certain days from your past that you remember more than others? Well October 28th, 1989 is one of those days for me. It was a Saturday, which meant cartoons in the morning, but it was what went on that night that made it memorable. Let me tell you about it.
I’ve talked about the yearly Harvest Festival we had every year at my elementary school. Well, in 1989, the Harvest Festival fell on Saturday night, October 28th. So all day long I was eager with anticipation of that night’s event. It was also the night of WCW’s first Halloween Havoc pay-per-view event, which admittedly, put me in a disadvantageous position of possibly having to choose one or the other to enjoy that evening. So my morning hours were wracked with nervous feelings. Not enough that I couldn’t enjoy my usual Saturday morning cartoons, but it still played on my mind throughout the day. Normally, I can make my mind up quickly about things, but this was different. This particular day offered a very hard decision to make.
But as the cartoons ended and the afternoon started to roll around, my Dad made an offer. Since he would be going to the Harvest Festival with us so he could play bingo, he wouldn’t be there to watch TV. He suggested that we set the timer on the VCR and record Halloween Havoc while we were out! Now keep in mind, this was still the era before we had one of the cable black boxes that allowed us to get all of the PPV shows at no additional charge. At that time, I was allowed to order every other wrestling PPV, and this was the show. I skipped WWF’s Summerslam that year because I had gotten The Great American Bash in July. So we got the PPV ordered and the time set so I wouldn’t have to miss Halloween Havoc after all. With that set, I could turn my attention to the Harvest Festival.
So I spent the afternoon playing with Construx toys while I counted down the time left before time to go to the Harvest Festival. You know how I know I was playing with Construx? Because I was already trying to build what my interpretation was of the Thunderdome cage that was to be featured in the main event of the wrestling show that night. As it turned out, I wasn’t that far off.
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I really can’t remember my Halloween costumes from through the years. While that is true, I actually do remember my costume from 1989. I went as a convict. It wasn’t the most creative idea, but at least I had a costume. Time was getting close, so I got the costume on, but I still had a little time before we would be leaving.
It was in that short amount of time that I watched the only episode of the TV show “She’s the Sheriff” that I would ever watch. Since She’s the Sheriff was a syndicated show, and since it had already ended its first run, I probably had to have been watching it on my local Fox affiliate. I can’t tell you what episode it was that I saw that day, and since there are no full episodes on Youtube for me to embed, you’ll just have to make do with a video of the opening credits for the show.
So we finally got to the Harvest Festival and my first order of business was to take my Mom to the showcase and show it off to her. Our school had a big showcase display right across from the office in the main hub of the school. Back then, the top three classes at school all had a part of the Harvest Festival to handle. The 7th graders got to put on the yearly haunted house, the 6th graders were in charge of The Disco, or The Batcave as it was called in 1989, and we 5th graders had to put together the showcase. The theme for that year was antiques, and my Mom had donated her grandmother’s kitchen knife to be put on display with the other relics. The showcase wasn’t really anything special, but since we worked on it, I had to show it off.
Once I got tickets to the games in the gym, it was time to say bye to the folks and go run with my friends for the night while all the parents went to the cafeteria to play bingo. I used to think that would be so boring until I had kids of my own, and then it turned out that the bingo was the highlight of my night when taking my kids to these things.
My friends and I ran around and played games, toured the haunted house, and made several trips to The Bat Cave. Not to dance mind you, but to hear the music and hang out in the darkened room. No self-respecting 5th-grade boy could be seen dancing awkwardly in front of the girls.
But even as I was having all of this fun, my mind kept drifting back to home and the hard-hitting NWA action I was missing out on. The Festival was starting to wind down so I made my trip to the “general store” to buy some old-fashioned candy and got ready to go home to see how things were turning out in the wrestling battles.
The flaw in my plan was realized when we got home and the show was still going. So not wanting to get spoiled on anything prematurely, I waited until it was over, rewound the tape, and started the show!
I had been highly anticipating the Halloween Havoc show because the NWA had done such an amazing job building up not only the rivalries but the theme of the show itself. It had a Halloween setting and had an advertised main event of a Thunderdome cage match pitting Ric Flair and Sting against Terry Funk and The Great Muta. The promotion for the cage itself was fantastic as they boasted it would be the largest cage in history and would be electrified to make sure the competitors stayed inside.
But not only was the main event something I was really looking forward to but there were also several other key matches that night as well. The first meeting between The Road Warriors and The Skyscrapers was dubbed as The irresistible force meeting the immovable object, The Steiner Brothers taking on the mysterious tag-team only known as Doom, Lex Luger meeting Brian Pillman, and other matches.
It was hard staying awake that night to take it all in, but I fought my way through it, and watching that show capped off a great night in my young life.
After all of these years, it’s funny to think back about how a school event and a wrestling show could make such a lasting impression on me. But I think it has more to do with the current state of life we find ourselves in. So much responsibility with jobs, families, and the like, that sometimes our hearts ache to just go back, even if just for a little bit. And that’s what Retro Ramblings is for me. It’s my chance to go back, even if just briefly, to a simpler time. Thanks for taking a minute to make the trip with me.
And just for the record, here’s my ratings for the Halloween Havoc ’89 matches from that night:
Tom Zenk vs. Mike Rotunda – 2 stars
The Samoan Swat Team vs. The Midnight Express & Steve Williams – 3.5 stars
Tommy Rich vs. The Cuban Assassin – 1/2 a star
The Fabulous Freebirds vs. The Dynamic Dudes – 3.5 stars for the crowd atmosphere
The Steiner Brothers vs. Doom – 3 stars for the mystery
Lex Luger vs Brian Pillman – 4 stars
The Road Warriors vs. The Skyscrapers – 3 stars for the spectacle
Rick Flair & Sting vs. Terry Funk & Muta Thunderdome Cage Match – 4.5 stars for the whole experience
The WWF Thumb Wrestlers were my consolation for not having the LJN figures. Now I really didn’t mind not having the full-sized LJN figures as they weren’t very fun to play with due to their inflexibility. The only reason I wanted the full-sized LJN counterparts was because everyone was getting them.
The Thumb Wrestlers were cheaper, so I was actually able to pick up several packs of these with my weekly allowance, and that gave me enough variety to really enjoy having these. I had Hulk Hogan, JYD, Hillbilly Jim, Iron Sheik, Nikolai Volkoff, and Big John Studd. As I said, enough variety to play around with and have some matches.
The WWF machine was clicking on all cylinders and they really knew what they were doing with these thumb wrestlers. I mentioned how they came packed two per package…well, they mixed them up and the same figure would appear in multiple packs. This meant that you could theoretically find any matchup of the figures you wanted. To the best of my research abilities, here are the two-pack combinations that were available:
In this Time Capsule, I’m looking at something very near and dear to my heart, as it’s the official program from the NWA’s Great American Bash tour in 1988.
For wrestling fans back then, the Great American Bash event was the highlight of the summer. The tours in 1986 and 1987 set the wrestling world on fire those summers, and while 1988 was a little less enticing than those first two years, it still featured several hot feuds. Not to mention the PPV event that year would feature the Tower of Doom match.
The PPV event would not feature the touted scaffold matches, but since this program covers the tour as a whole, that anticipated matchup is featured, as well as the War Games matches that also were not going to be on the PPV.
This program is a great look back into the goings-on in the NWA that summer, and I hope you enjoy flipping through it as much as I did.
The flip book below is super easy to use. The controls are in the control panel below the book, and you can use them to go forward or backward. I suggest using the expand button to blow it up to full screen for maximum enjoyment.
Recently, Jeff and I along with the help of Jason recorded and published a new episode of the Gnarly 90s podcast with a look at the year 1993. We touched on all the major news events, sports stories, television and movies, and the new technology that debuted in 1993. One subject we didn’t touch on was the events in pro wrestling in 1993.
1993 has long been shunned by pro wrestling fans as a “down” year. While it’s true that attendance and ratings were down that year, and a lot of hokiness ensued that year, I really enjoyed it. Back then, I was just as glued to the weekly shows as I was in 1986 or 1989, two very fondly remembered years in wrestling.
In the WWF, while they were in a rebuilding era where talent was concerned, 1993 saw the launch of Monday Night Raw. The first half of the year featured the show coming from the Manhattan Center in NYC and provided a unique experience for a wrestling fan. One that few have been able to capture since. It was an intimate setting with a very enthusiastic crowd and combined with the focus on putting forth top matches, it resulted in a tremendously fun show to watch every week.
Who can forget the angle where Money Inc. smashed Brutus Beefcake with a briefcase that lured Hulk Hogan back into action on behalf of this friend, or the night that the 1-2-3 Kid scored the amazing upset victor over Razor Ramon? The environment was perfect for wrestling even if it wasn’t at the heights Vince McMahon wanted it to be at.
Over in WCW, they too were in a bit of a rebuilding era with their talent, bringing in and promoting new, young acts for the fans. Their WCW Saturday Night show also had a great feel to it as it emanated from the re-vamped Center Stage Theater in Atlanta. The small crowd was on top of the action, which was pretty good. Along with what ended up being great action on their PPV events, and the every-couple-of-months Clash of the Champions TBS specials, WCW was a lot of fun to watch and keep up with on a weekly basis.
1993 was also the year ECW got on television. While Eastern Championship Wrestling wasn’t quite what Extreme Championship Wrestling would be later on, it was still a fun show at a minor league level. It was a place to see some older stars like Terry Funk, Eddie Gilbert, Jimmy Snuka, and others, while at the same time building the foundation of stars that would define ECW for the rest of its tenure like Tommy Dreamer, The Sandman, Taz, Sabu, and Public Enemy.
And possibly my favorite wrestling promotion of 1993, Smoky Mountain Wrestling enjoyed the most entertaining year of its short existence. SMW was hitting on all cylinders in 1993 with The Rock & Roll Express enjoying a tremendous revival and feuding with longtime nemesis Jim Cornette and his tag team of The Heavenly Bodies. We even got to see Bobby Eaton join the mix with the Bodies against the R&Rs who were joined by Arn Anderson. Ron Wright as the elderly manager of The Dirty White Boy was a great act and a highlight of the weekly TV shows. But SMW also brought great action in the year all year long, maybe capped off by their Bluegrass Brawl event in the spring. It had a great old-school territory-type vibe to the promotion that made it different, yet complimented the other major offerings in the wrestling world that year.
All in all, even though most fans look down on 1993, I put it in the Top 5 wrestling eras of my lifetime. And the best part is, thanks to modern technology, you can re-experience it all today. With the WWE Network offering every episode of Raw from that year as well as their PPVs, all of the WCW Saturday Night episodes, the PPV events, and the Clash of the Champions are all available as well. And under their ECW banner, you can watch all the episodes of their TV from that year as well. You have to turn over to YouTube to watch SMW, but every episode of their TV is there too. So in theory, you can go back and relive all of 1993 today. As a matter of fact, I believe I’ll do just that.
