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Simply put, especially in the wrestling business, you can’t succeed in the future without appreciating the past.

With that in mind, every now and then I’d like to take look back and review a pay per view event from yesteryear to simply try and bring up some fond memories for those reading this piece. Or, in some instances, educate newer or younger watchers to let them know what they were missing out on. Since we’re in the heart of Survivor Series season, we’ll go back to the time that I, and I’m sure a lot of you reading, started watching professional wrestling. We’ll head to the Hartford Civic Center in Hartford, CT for the 1990 Survivor Series.

This show included Hulk Hogan appearing NOT as WWF Champion, a rarity in the late 80s-early 90s, the only year to have the “Grand Finale Match of Survival” where the survivors of all the matches came back for one last elimination tag match, and also gave us a, shall we say “phenom-enal” debut!

So let’s log on to the WWE Network (it’s only $9.99/month and free for the month of November for new subscribers…not sure if you’ve picked up on that from watching Raw) and take a look at this blast from the past!

1990 Survivor Series

The show kicks off with Vince’s old-school “You’re Fired!” voice introducing all of the participants and all of the teams. I’ll say this; I miss the days of the named teams! Team Authority vs Team Cena just doesn’t do it for me. In 1990, we didn’t have Team Hogan vs Team Earthquake! No! We had a lot more creativity! We had The Hulkamaniacs vs The Natural Disasters! You could even keep The Authority name, just not Team Authority. The Authority vs The Cenation or Doctors of Thuganomics. Is that so hard?

From there we are introduced to tonight’s commentary team of Gorilla Monsoon and Roddy Piper. I thought Piper was underrated as a commentator during his run from 1990-1991. Hard to sound bad when you have a great like Monsoon sitting next to you though! Not only are they introducing themselves, but they are also introducing that large egg that is sitting on the stage as well…oh boy!

The Perfect Team - Team Captain Mr. Perfect, Demolition (Ax, Smash and Crush)

Vs

The Warriors - Team Captain The Ultimate Warrior, Texas Tornado, Legion of Doom (Hawk and Animal)

There’s a whole lot of face paint in the ring right now! We quickly saw an elimination as The Warrior pinned Ax in what turned out to be Ax’s last appearance in the WWF. A few minutes later half of the match was eliminated as the LOD and the remaining members of Demolition were disqualified for their brawl outside of the ring. This added to what should have been the biggest tag team program of the time with LOD vs Demolition, but it never surfaced. I still think that the Road Warriors vs Demolition would have made a better tag title match at WrestleMania 7 than The Hart Foundation vs The Nasty Boys did.

Mr. Perfect ended up eliminating the Texas Tornado, who never really got the momentum back after this even that he had after beating Perfect for the Intercontinental Championship at SummerSlam just a few months prior. The Warrior followed that up with the final elimination of Perfect to become the sole survivor and move on to the Match of Survival.

The Dream Team - Team Captain Dusty Rhodes, Koko B. Ware, The Hart Foundation (Bret Hart and Jim Neidhart)

Vs

The Million Dollar Team - Team Captain Ted DiBiase, Mystery Partner, Rhythm & Blues (Honky Tonk Man and Greg Valentine)

This turned out to be the moment that changed the WWF for the next couple decades. Ted DiBiase grabbed the mic and announced that his mystery partner would be led to the ring by his manager Brother Love (which still just confuses me). The man that Brother Love was leading? Why it was the ne superstar making his debut - The Phenom himself The Undertaker. Couple interesting somewhat unknown facts about the debut. First, did you know that he was actually introduced as “Cain – The Undertaker”? It seems like every bit of video calling him “Cain” had been scrubbed out. But, thanks to a little investigating, I found Taker’s TV debut a few weeks after Survivor Series…

 http://youtu.be/RSUOp5fGTEg

Another interesting tidbit is that, according to rumors heard and told by Mick Foley, The Undertaker was not the initial character idea that was made for Mean Mark after he left WCW. I’ll get into greater detail on that a little later.

The match itself was mostly an introduction as to just how dominating The Undertaker can be as he quickly eliminated Koko B. Ware and Dusty Rhodes only to be counted out after going after Rhodes to finish the job. The match ended with a wrestling clinic put on by Bret Hart and DiBiase. Hart showed great heart (sorry, I had to) as he put on a tremendous performance just a day of his brother Dean passed away. DiBiase rolled through a high-crossed body for the roll up and the final pin to move on to the night’s final elimination match.

The Vipers - Team Captain Jake “The Snake” Roberts, Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka, The Rockers (Shawn Michaels, Marty Jannetty)

Vs

The Visionaries - Team Captain Rick “The Model” Martel, The Warlord, Power & Glory (Hercules and Paul Roma)

This match was pretty much built around Martel “blinding” Roberts with his cologne “Arrogance.” Roberts came out with odd white contact lens and all to help sell the injury. This all led up to the big Blindfold Match at WrestleMania 7. The evolution of production costs and values have since given us blindfolds that you can’t actually tell where the eye holes are.

Not really much to this match itself other than, for the first time ever, all members of one team survived as all of The Visionaries moved on to the Match of Survival.

The Hulkamaniacs – Team Captain Hulk Hogan, Big Boss Man, Hacksaw Jim Duggan, Tugboat

Vs

The Natural Disasters – Team Captain Earthquake, Dino Bravo, The Barbarian, Haku

I still say that the program of Hulk Hogan vs Earthquake was very underrated. Earthquake’s finishing move was probably done so many times by me and my brother I don’t know how we still had rib cages. They didn’t have the “Don’t Try This At Home” disclaimers back then so it was ok to do :). But to see ‘quake hit the move so much that it took the Immortal Hulk Hogan out of action was just unheard up. It led to an entertaining one-on-one match at SummerSlam at the elimination match here.

This was a back and forth match that never saw a team have more than just a one man advantage. At the time, it was hard to predict how the match was going to end. Nowadays, of course you knew that Hogan was going to be a survivor! The only question was would anybody on his team join him.

The answer would be “no” as Hogan was the sole survivor who moved to the final match.

Macho King Randy Savage Interview

We take a break from the matches to see what is going on with the Macho King. As he had been doing for weeks, Savage simply made his case to take on The Ultimate Warrior for the WWF title. Nothing really else came of it this time – other than Savage, after being asked what would be next after winning the WWF title, saying that he might just go ahead and retire. Now we all know, that was a very subtle way to start the rivalry that gave us the great Retirement Match between Savage and the Warrior at WrestleMania 7.

Just a quick side note – it seems like I have been mentioning a lot about the following year’s WrestleMania here. Keep that in mind as you watch this year’s Survivor Series. We have seen WrestleMania storylines start around this time of year. Just something to keep in the back of your head.

The Alliance - Team Captain Nikolai Volkoff, Tito Santana, The Bushwackers (Luke and Butch)

Vs

The Mercenaries – Team Captain Sgt. Slaughter, Boris Zhukov, The Orient Express (Sato and Tanaka)

Ugh! This was just a slow moving match. It really seemed like the only purpose of this match was to have Slaughter give a promo attacking the US troops that were watching on the Armed Forces Network (this being the first PPV show that was sent to the troops). Some people had issues with Slaughter becoming the Iraqi sympathizer (to the point that death threats were made). I really didn’t have a problem with it. Of course I didn’t agree with what he was saying or doing, but it led to the most patriotic WrestleMania there was with the LA Sports Arena drenched in red white and blue as Hulk Hogan finally beat Slaughter. Business wise, well the storyline led to the most pay-per-view buys that the WWF had to that point.

As for this match, Slaughter ended up attacking Santana with the Iraqi flag to get disqualified and made Tito the sole survivor who moved on. The finish also helped Slaughter look ruthless and saved the inevitable confrontation between Slaughter and Hogan.

The Hatching of the Egg

For weeks the WWF had been advertising this giant egg that would be ready to hatch at the Survivor Series. Speculation ran roughshod as to what was in there. As he introduced the egg, Mean Gene Okerlund suggested that some of the possibilities included a dinosaur, ballons, and the playmate of the month. Well, after a few cheesy egg cracking jokes, the egg finally exploded and we were introduced to ….

… The Gobbeldy Gooker …

… a giant turkey suit that was work by a member of one of the most famous wrestling families of all time, Hector Guerrero. Thank goodness Eddie (and to a much lesser extent Chavo) didn’t let THAT be the way the Guerrero family will be remembered in the WWF.

A few years ago, Mick Foley was on the Legends of Wrestling show with the topic being “Worst Characters.” Obviously the Gooker came up and Foley brought up a rumor he had heard that could have had GRAVE effect on the WWF (you’ll see what I did there in a little bit).

When Mark Calaway signed with the WWF, Foley heard that the initial idea for him would be to debut as “The Egg Man” and HE would be the one to come out of the egg. Foley went on to say that he could only think they took one look at the man and realized that “The Egg Man” would be a horrible horrible mistake and decided to go in a different path and the Gooker may have just been a late throw-in since the egg had already been so heavily advertised. If you haven’t figured it out yet, instead of The Egg Man, Mark Calaway became the conscience of the WWF, The Undertaker. Just take a moment to think about that one …

Grand Finale Match of Survival

The Ultimate Warrior, Hulk Hogan, Tito Santana

Vs

Ted DiBiase, Rick “The Model” Martel, The Warlord, Power & Glory (Hercules and Paul Roma)

Not exactly the most exciting of ways to end a pay-per-view. The match started off as a back and forth bout, but quickly turned into nothing more than The Warrior and Hogan can take on anything as, after The Warlord and Tito were eliminated within the first two minutes, the rest of the match was the two biggest stars of the year dominating the remaining four members of the opposing team.

While I’m sure it was nice for guys like The Warlord, Paul Roma and Hercules to walk around saying they were in a WWF pay-per-view main event, the match left a lot on the table. It was the expected finish of the early 90’s.

While the finish of the show may not have been that memorable, the show as a whole was. To get yourself in the Survivor Series spirit, I recommend giving it a look.

What do you think of the show? What other shows would you like to have reviewed? Follow me @Tadigity24 and let me know what you think!

Every time I talk about this situation, I always preface it with this – I understand that the story-lines in professional wrestling are not real! They are not really punching each other – they are not really kicking each other, for the most part they don’t even dislike each other. Professional wrestling is better described as sports entertainment with an emphasis on entertainment.

This, however, is about the night where wrestling got real.

Most of you who are reading this know what happened on that fateful November evening north of the border. But I’m sure there are some that think something called the “Montreal Screwjob” would not be appropriate for this website. Here is a bit of an overview of the events that led up to the 1997 Survivor Series –

Bret Hart was the top name in Vince McMahon’s WWF in the mid-90s leading what was called “The New Generation” after the likes of Hulk Hogan and Macho Man Randy Savage left for Ted Turner’s WCW. In 1997, Hart also signed with Turner for what was at the time the largest contract ever for a wrestler. At the time he signed with WCW, Hart was the WWF Champion, so plans were laid out as to how Hart would lose the title before leaving the company.

The main event of the Survivor Series that November was a rematch of WrestleMania 12 with Hart taking on Shawn Michaels. The rivalry between Hart and Michaels didn’t stop when the cameras were turned off. The two had a very heated rivalry backstage – so much so that real fights broke out between the two. Losing the title cleanly to Michaels was something that Hart just did not want to do.

The Survivor Series in ‘97 took place in Canada (Montreal to be exact) where Hart was/is a bit of a national hero. What Hart had wanted to do, to save face in his country, was to end the title match with Shawn Michaels at the Survivor Series with a disqualification, or no contest – something that would see Bret leave that night with the belt. He would then walk on to Raw the following night, thank the WWF fans for everything, and hand the belt over.

McMahon, however, was very weary of that idea. WCW had been beating the WWF in the ratings war for over a year at that point. The war between the two companies was intense. On an episode of WCW’s Monday night show “Monday Nitro” Medusa, who at the time was the WWF Women’s Champion wrestling as Alundra Blayze, walked on to the Nitro set and dropped the WWF Women’s belt into the trash live on national television. Allowing Hart to leave the Survivor Series as champion, while NOT under contract, created a déjà vu situation that McMahon wanted to avoid…at ALL costs.

Hart wouldn’t budge though. In a final meeting to go over what would happen in the match, McMahon agreed to Bret that the match would end how he wanted and he would make his last appearance with the WWF the following night to hand the belt over.

At least that is what Vince told Bret.

After Bret left the meeting, Vince sat with Michaels and Triple H, who were also in the meeting, in a silence that said everybody was thinking the same thing. It was Triple H who made the initial statement, “F*** it! If he won’t do business, we’ll make him do business!” The match was supposed to end with Michaels putting Hart in his own finishing move, the SharpShooter, which Bret would reverse and lead to allies of both Michaels and Hart to come out and the match would end in a no-contest.

Unbeknownst to Hart though, McMahon had instructed the referee to call for the bell as soon as Michaels had Hart in the SharpShooter and awarded the match and the title to Shawn Michaels. Hart spat in McMahon’s face in the arena, went to the backstage area and punched him in the eye, and proceeded to head down south to WCW. With the exception of a Hall of Fame induction in 2006 and a quick interview spot in 2007, the WWF would not see Bret Hart again until hatchets were finally buried in 2010.

So that’s the story behind wrestling’s most controversial night. Everyone has questioned the events of that night and pointed the finger at each side. For the sake of discussion, I would like to throw out a couple simple “WHAT IF” scenarios.

WHAT IF Bret never signed with WCW and stayed with WWF?

Quite honestly, I think Bret leaving the WWF would be inevitable. The WWF was going through the transition from “The Next Generation,” a time where the show was almost completely made for children to the “Attitude Era,” a time where the show was something that some parents were trying to keep their children from watching.

Hart showed a little attitude during his run as a heel before he left the WWF in 1997, but I get the sense that Bret Hart the man would want nothing to do with the antics that were happening during the Attitude Era. In no way is that a shot at Bret though – guys like Bruno Sammartino disassociated themselves completely from the WWF during this time and they’re still considered to be amongst the greatest of all time. It’s just a clash of styles. Bret was great for the mid 90s, may not have been as great for the late 90s.

WHAT IF McMahon stuck to the original match plan and allowed Bret to leave Survivor Series with the title.

To me, this would have been a near fatal blow to the WWF, and it has nothing to do with what would happen the next night. Whether Bret would simply drop the belt the next night on Raw or if he would drop the belt…in a trash can…the next night on Nitro is irrelevant.

Without the events of that night and the one-on-one sit down interview that aired on Raw eight days later that gave us the infamous “Bret screwed Bret” line, we may not have been introduced to the biggest villain character of the attitude era – Mr. McMahon. With no Mr. McMahon, there would be no Austin/McMahon rivalry which ruled 1998 and basically saved the company.

Although he probably wasn’t thinking about it at the time, Vince needed the heat that was generated from the Montreal Screwjob to create the character that would give the WWF fans someone they were longing to see be stopped. In one of the DVD documentaries, Vince said that his reaction to the heat was “you hate me – ok, let’s go with that then.”

And go with it he did.

A few months after the Montreal Screwjob, a Monday Night Raw main event of Stone Cold Steve Austin vs Mr. McMahon gave the WWF their first win over WCW’s Monday Nitro in the ratings in over 85 weeks and they never looked back. I am sure that the Vince Russo, Ed Ferrara and the rest of the writing staff for the WWF would have come up with other ideas for 1998, but it’s hard to imagine they would have come up with something that had the success that the Austin/McMahon feud did.

If you think about it, the real culprit in this situation was WCW and the Monday Night War. If WCW Executive Producer Eric Bischoff hadn’t played several underhanded tricks against his competitor (such as giving away Raw results and the aforementioned championship belt trashing) McMahon would probably have no issue with allowing his company’s most prestigious prize, the championship belt, to be in the hands of a wrestler who was under contract to another organization.

Simply put, McMahon had his back against the wall and needed to make a difficult decision. The decision he made was the right one. In the infamous “Bret screwed Bret” interview, Vince also made reference to the “time honored tradition” that Bret didn’t follow. It’s simple – to put it in the terms of the old territory days, Vince was the promoter. It is the wrestlers job to perform based on what is laid out by the promoter.

It’s not the way that Hart, McMahon, and even Shawn Michaels should be remembered. Shawn said it best that night in 2010 when hell froze over and Bret Hart was back on Raw. When you think of Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels, you shouldn’t think of Montreal, you should think of Anaheim and the two putting on an unprecedented WrestleMania performance in the 60-minute Iron Man Match at WrestleMania XII.

Montreal is not how they should be remembered, but it was a night that will forever be etched in the stone of wrestling history.

Professional Wrestling is scripted – but life isn’t.