My Take On Saturday Night’s Main Event 03.08.08: Saturday Night’s Main Event (3.01.86)

Posted by Larry Csonka on 03.08.2008

Hulk Hogan may fight for the rights of everyone, unfortunately for him no one was returning the favor…



As with the similar columns of this title, this is from WWE 24/7. Since we are in the WrestleMania season I thought it would be fun to look back at some of the build for WrestleMania II. Before the Internet and Monday Night Raw, this was back when Saturday Night's Main Event was not only an important show but an important building tool for a big show like WrestleMania.

WWF Saturday Night's Main Event~!:

Match/Segment: Boxing Match: Mr. T defeated Bob Orton (2nd round) by Count Out
Larry's Enjoyment Index: 7.0
Final Thoughts: The back-story is that "Battling" Bob Orton had laid out the challenge to "anyone that has wrestled in the WWF" for a boxing match. Since Orton had an open contract, Hogan signed the contract for Mr. T to accept the challenge. Piper cuts a really fun promo running down Mr. T, saying that he doesn't have Hulk Hogan to hide behind this time. I miss wacky Piper promos. We also get footage of Mr. T killing people in sparring. This is what led to the WrestleMania II boxing match between Mr. T and Roddy Piper. Mr. T is of course serious while Orton resorts to cheating (not breaking clean, thumb to the eye and hitting T after the bell of the first round.) We then get some hilarious showboating by Orton in round two and more cheating. Piper gets involved, Orton gets tossed out, and this results in yes, a count out. Orton and Piper beat down and whip Mr. T after the bout while Ventura says that, "This looks like a scene from Roots II." While nothing great as far as the worked boxing goes (which always sucks) the execution of the angle was done well, and as mentioned it got us to the WrestleMania II boxing match between Mr. T and Roddy Piper. For the second year in a row I felt that this was a smart use of Mr. T. I am not saying that the WrestleMania II boxing match is great, or even good, but it was a smart use of Mr. T, who was riding the Rocky III/A-Team wave and the crowds were into him.

Match/Segment: King Kong Bundy pinned Steve Gatorwolf
Larry's Enjoyment Index: 6.75
Final Thoughts: Hennan gives us a promo, demanding that Hogan give Bundy the title shot tonight. Bundy kills this young man in about a minute, with the avalanche and FIVE count. Bundy was one of many in the "monster challenger role" for Hogan, and was built effectively with these squashes. They tried to make him a killer and it worked because people thought he as a threat to the world title. This was a short, but effective angle leading into the segment next, which leads to WM II with Bundy and Hogan in the main event.

Match/Segment: World Heavyweight Title Match: Hulk Hogan defeated Don Muraco by Disqualification to retain the title
Larry's Enjoyment Index: 8.5
Final Thoughts: Before the match Muraco cuts a promo, explaining the Fuji is not there along side him tonight and that Heenan is the replacement manager for the evening. Mean Gene makes a bad joke saying that Fuji has "The Asian Flu." GONG. Basic Hogan match, run wild, get beat on and make the huge comeback. But Heenan got the DQ when he entered the ring, which led to the great beat down on Hogan. Muraco holds Hogan in the corner and Bundy delivers the avalanche three times. Muraco then pulls Hogan center and Bundy delivers two splashes to him. The Bulldogs finally come out to end the evil attack of the heels. They play up the internal injuries and Hogan does the stretcher job. The match was nothing special, but the angle is great and is a perfect set up for WrestleMania II. Here's something to think about, Don Muraco was the "#1 contender" for this match and was downgraded all the way to opening card fodder with the guy that was part of the main event in the previous year's WM (Orndorff). That would be like Jeff Hardy losing at the Rumble, and facing Shawn Michaels at WM this year in an opening match that went to a Double Count out in 4:10. That's pretty crazy.

Match/Segment: World Tag Team Title Match: Brutus Beefcake and Greg Valentine defeated The British Bulldogs to retain the Tag Team Titles
Larry's Enjoyment Index: 7.1
Final Thoughts: The Bulldogs had defeated Valentine and Beefcake in a non-title match previous to this (January.) Dynamite Kid did a sweet diving head butt as he jumped off the top rope, then off of Valentine who was being held by Davey in a fireman's carry. Damn cool. As far as this match goes, I thought that these teams worked well together. The Bulldogs were awesome and Valentine was a great workhorse and leader for his team. While many others and myself give Beefcake a lot of shit, and with good reason, he did work well with the Bulldogs. The finish is weird as hell. The Bulldogs are making this huge comeback, Beefcake gets tossed and then Valentine and Dynamite collide, fall, Valentine on top and he gets the pin. This was just a really odd finish, but in a way the fluke nature doesn't hurt the Bulldogs. But it is odd as hell. This of course would lead to the WrestleMania II rubber match so to speak, where the Bulldogs would win the tag titles with Ozzy Osbourne in their corner.

Match/Segment: Hulk Hogan Update and Music Video!
Larry's Enjoyment Index: 5.0
Final Thoughts: Mean Gene waits on updates at the hospital. We get nothing, but now we get the debut of the REAL AMERICAN VIDEO~! This is so horribly wonderful. ELEVENTY BILLION STARS! They hyped the injury angle and got out the new video. All Hogan hype, which is fine, but wasn't overly important I feel. I know some will say that it was the introduction of Real American, which is synonymous with Hogan, but he came out to the song earlier, so they flubbed the order of events in my opinion. Man that video is just horribly wonderful.

Match/Segment: Junkyard Dog pinned Adrian Adonis
Larry's Enjoyment Index: 4.0
Final Thoughts: Adonis was an awesome worker that doesn't get any love because most people only remember him for this time frame, which was out of shape and wearing makeup and leg warmers and or dresses. The truth was that even being out of shape he was a great worker and would bump very well for the faces. I just wish that more people could have seen him when he was truly awesome. After the typical JYD stuff, we get a ref bump and Hart costs Adonis the match. Adonis and Hart would take out JYD after and have celebration time. I don't remember the angle, but Adonis would go onto defeat Uncle Elmer at WM II. As I said, I don't remember the angle, but going off of this Adonis vs. JYD would have made more sense, especially if Adonis was winning and JYD was losing. And he was losing. He would tag with Tito Santana vs. Terry and HOSS Funk.

The Overall:
Best Match/Segment: World Heavyweight Title Match: Hulk Hogan defeated Don Muraco 8.5
Worst Match/Segment:: Junkyard Dog pinned Adrian Adonis 4.0
Final Thoughts: This show is the usual SNME formula. Start off pretty hot and build to the main event in the middle, usually a Hogan match, and then either watch it tail off or jump off a cliff. That is what happened here, there were six segments and four of them were good and focused. And then the final two jumped off the cliff. The bottom line is that five of the segments all had a purpose, and that was to in some way set up or build for WrestleMania II. That was the hook of the original SNME shows. They had purpose and were an important tool for things like building to WrestleMania. While SNME maybe an outdated concept today, due to their being so much first run WWE TV, back in the day it was needed. This show also scored something insane like a 10.0 rating.
Show Score: 7.0