The beginning of my new series is here. How it will work is I will just go through each match and discuss my feelings about each match. At the end, I'll give it a rating out of 5 Run GFBs.
Wrestlemania VIII (1992)
This is at the end of Hogan's run with WWF at the time so they had a double main event of Hogan facing Sid Justice and Ric Flair defending the WWF Title against Macho Man Randy Savage. As I was watching, I was taking notes so that I could write more detailed information about each match and remember some of the jokes I was thinking about when I was watching it. Let's get to my thoughts:
Shawn Michaels vs El Matador (Tito Santana): This was the curtain jerker of the night. Bobby Heenan and Gorilla Monsoon are on commentary. Heenan started making jokes about Reba McEntyre and Tito before the match began. Gorilla started talking about how you could call a 900 number so you could hear from all of the winners from that night. Tito was fairly over, which is surprising since I don't really remember people really thinking much about him. Shawn was already on point with his storytelling and working through a match at this time. The match was fairly slow which did not help out Shawn show off his great abilities. Tito was using a bunch of headlocks and there were weird pinfall attempts using side headlocks. This was not a great match to start the show but I really liked Shawn, especially knowing what he was going to become.
Jake Roberts vs Undertaker: Taker was already so over. Paul Bearer was there and he was such an underappreciated manager at the time, because he did so much stuff nonverbally. Heenan during this match and throughout the night was so great in his role as a heel. At the start of the match, Jake was being stalked by Taker and he tried to figure out how to beat Taker during the match. Taker was already working on making himself into the person we would grow to love over the years. This Wrestlemania at the start is showing us what the future will look like, and actually the next couple of decades as well. The end of the match was great since Jake hit two DDTs and Taker kicked out of both of them. Taker finally hit the Tombstone Piledriver on the outside, rolled Jake inside and pinned him.
Rowdy Roddy Piper vs Bret Hart for the Intercontinental Title: This is the first great match of the night. Piper was a heel but people really loved him. I guess this was the start of the time where Bret was starting to play up how he was from Canada and the crowds started booing him here in the US. In this match, Piper was doing an amazing job of telling the story of the match with Bret doing a great job of using his skills to help sell the match physically. Piper then busted Hart opened with a sucker punch so he started to bleed from his forehead for the rest of his match. There were some REF SHENANIGANS going on towards the end but it ended with Bret winning the match as he countered a sleeper hold off one of the corners into a pin to win the match and the IC Title.
8 Man Tag: This was definitely a cool down match before the first of the two main events. It was just weird and how it didn't work out in any way because some of the people in the match were not at the height of their powers. Jimmy Hart was out with the heels and it was great to see him doing his thing. He made the match enjoyable, but that was it. The faces won and it was unmemorable.
Ric Flair and Macho Man Randy Savage for WWE Championship: The story behind this match was that Miss Elizabeth had once been with Flair and he supposedly had compromising photos of her with him. Mr. Perfect is with Flair and he is doing such a great job on the outside of the ring. Savage is truly angry, and knowing things about him from his real life, he probably was a little bit angry because of this. Flair during the match is so smooth and cocky about his greatness throughout the match. Flair gets busted open(of course) and he really played it up for the rest of the match. Mr. Perfect saved Flair after the Flying Elbow and gave him a weapon to use to try and win. However, Savage kicked out of the attempt made by Flair. Miss Elizabeth came down to the ring and was excellent in her way of conveying the feeling of what the crowd was thinking. Savage finally won with a rollup where he held onto Flair's trunks to secure the victory.
Tatanka vs Rick Martell: Now we get into the second low part of the show. This match was very underwhelming. Tatanka was very over but the early 1990s crowds are crazy and were not super smart in their understanding of what was truly good and what wasn't. The big thing I noticed was that the announcers didn't really care about the match either since they were talking about the world title match. Anyway, Tatanka won but I didn't really care.
Money Inc vs Natural Disasters for WWF Tag Team Championships: Uh oh. We have our second underwhelming match in a row. N.D. was so slow and looked like crap. I was reminded of Kane and Big Show now when watching N.D. now. Jimmy Hart was once again out with Money Inc during this match so it made the match at least a little bit better than it could have. N.D. were the faces and they won but because of disqualification so Money Inc retained the titles.
Owen Hart vs Skinner: This is what I wrote about this match: I think this match will be shorter than how long it took me to write this sentence. The other thing is that Skinner looks somewhat like Luke Harper. Owen won and now for the final main event.
Sid Justice vs Hulk Hogan: When the match started, I thought it would be better if it was a promo off. If you don't know about Sid, he is truly terrible at stringing sentences together. Here is a video of some of his more impressive botches. Gorilla Monsoon, around the middle of the match, says "Are we looking at the end of Hulkamania?" Sid then put together two sentences together and I had to pause the video on the WWE Network (only $9.99) so I could gather my thoughts. The match ends in a DQ and this is a terrible way to send the people home. The Ultimate Warrior did make a shocking return to save Hogan from a beatdown by Papa Shango and Sid but it was too little to late for me.
Now, I want to talk about one of the promos that was given during the show. Lex Luger shows up and talks about how he is a part of the World Bodybuilder Federation, the bodybuilding fed that Vince set up but was forced to shut down because of the first steroid scandal they went through. He also looked like he had taken ALL OF THE STEROIDS, he was so bulked up. The other thing that was both weird and hilarious was how he pronounced plethora. He pronounced it ple-thoor-a instead of ple-thur-a like normal people do. The final thing he did was drink milk, to supposedly tell us to always drink our milk.
This was a good Wrestlemania to start off with because it allowed me to see one that I hadn't seen this one before so I didn't know what was going to happen. There were three good matches on the card that I would suggest you see. The three are Jake/Taker, Piper/Bret and Savage/Flair. They all tell a really good story and are also pretty good wrestling matches as well.
In the end, Wrestlemania VIII gets 3 Run GFBs out of 5. Join me later this week(probably on Thursday), where I will be taking a look at Wrestlemania 22.
Thanks for reading and have a great week.
HT101
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