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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!

We almost lost our top line game last week when the Raiders nearly pulled off the comeback to beat the Seahawks in Seattle. This brings up an interesting point though. As most of you who read this know, I am a HUGE Raiders fan (pause for sympathy). Watching Oakland pulling closer and closer to the defending champs last week, I wasn’t thinking about losing my top line game. The only thing that was on my mind was the potential of my team pulling off one of the biggest upsets in recent memory.

Whether it is with your confidence pool or your fantasy team, I think that your actual team should come first. It just makes both the fantasy game and the real game a lot more fun to watch. Use it as justification if you want, but don’t openly cheer for your fantasy quarterback to throw a touchdown against your favorite team. It only sets yourself up for a lose-lose situation.

Alright – Week 10 – HERE WE GO!!!

(HOME TEAM IN ALL CAPS)

13 – Denver over OAKLAND – Once again my Raiders are on the wrong side of the top line. Hard to argue that when they play last year’s two Super Bowl teams in back to back weeks.

12 – SEATTLE over New York Giants – Seattle just squeaked by the Raiders last week. They may just squeak by again, but it is hard to think of a scenario where the Giants come out on top.

11 – ARIZONA over St. Louis – Both teams are coming off of big road wins last week. The luck will run out for the Rams though. The Cardinals are a much tougher home team to play.

10 – GREEN BAY over Chicago – One team spent the bye week giving their coach an extension and one team spent the bye week explaining reports that their coach doesn’t have control of the locker room. Green Bay will be ready for this game, the Bears won’t.

9 – BALTIMORE over Tennessee – The Ravens are sitting in last place in a division without a team under .500. Every win is crucial. Lucky for them they get a home game against the Titans.

8 – Dallas over JACKSONVILLE – The Jags make their yearly trip to London and take the Cowboys with them. Just like last week, this game depends on Tony Romo’s availability. They’ll still win, but if Romo doesn’t play they should be dropped down a few lines.

7 – Pittsburgh over NEW YORK JETS – Logic would tell you that there is no way that Ben Roethlisberger will have a THIRD consecutive six touchdown game…although I don’t think logic realizes that Big Ben is playing the Jets this week.

6 – NEW ORLEANS over San Francisco – A pre-season possible NFC Championship preview turns into just another week 10 game. Not only will the 49ers not make it to a fourth straight title game, but my BOLD PREDICTION is that the 49ers will not make the playoffs this season.

5 – DETROIT over Miami – Calvin is expected to make his long awaited return after the bye week. The Dolphins have been hot as of late but they won’t be able to stop a Lions offense that includes Megatron.

4 – PHILADELPHIA over Carolina – Well, the potential for a butt-fumble sequel has returned with Mark Sanchez filling in for the injured Nick Foles. This bumps the Eagles down a few lines but they should still be able to beat the struggling Panthers.

3 – BUFFALO over Kansas City – The Bills are still fighting for a playoff spot. This will be a close one, but game-manager sensation Kyle Orton should be able to find a way to get a win against a hungry Chiefs team.

2 – TAMPA BAY over Atlanta – Yes, I do realize that the Falcons treated Tampa like a high school JV team in their first meeting. Even with that, there really is just no reason to have faith in Atlanta – especially on the road.

1 – CINCINNATI over Cleveland – The week starts off with a strong AFC North game that both teams need to win. A full healthy offense would give me more confidence in the Bengals, but they should still be able to pull this one out.

John Cena vs Brock Lesnar … stop me if you’ve heard that one before. (Actually don’t because I know you’ve heard that one before and I would like you to keep reading!)

Yes the WWE has told us that once Brock Lesnar does come back to TV we will get him and Cena locking up for the third time since SummerSlam. Taking a deeper look at it though, it is hard to have too much of a problem with it.

When Lesnar beat The Undertaker at WrestleMania, the initial reaction was that it just didn’t make sense to have a part-time guy like Brock be the one to end the streak rather than a guy that could use it to further his career like a Daniel Bryan or Bray Wyatt. It turns out, though, that this was the start of building Brock as the seemingly unstoppable beast that they want him to be – which in turn has actually brought a little more relevance back to the WWE Championship. In the immortal words of Ric Flair, “To be the man you’ve gotta beat the man!” … … … … WOOOOOOO! (I tried not to!)

A third straight successful title defense against the standard flag-bearer for the WWE over the last decade is just a way to further the “unbeatable” character of Brock Lesnar. Not even John Cena can beat The Beast – making it that much more meaningful when someone actually does beat him.

So now it’s the same concept but a different character. Instead of using the end of The Streak to further enhance a rising star’s career, it’s beating the guy that ended The Streak. There are a lot of guys on the roster now that are ready to take that step by beating Brock or even just benefit from having a program against him.

The big rumor that has been floating out there for months now is that Roman Reigns, even with the recent injury, will be the guy to take on Brock at WrestleMania. If you’re reading this, you probably have heard that already, so you’ve thought about Reigns in the spot for months now, so I won’t bother going any further with him. But who are the others? Let’s take a look, shall we?

Cesaro

Remember him? He’s the guy that, about nine months ago, was ready to step up to the main event level. Cesaro won the inaugural Andre the Giant Battle Royal at WrestleMania by carrying the Big Show over the top robe making it look like he was picking up a stack of pillow. The next night he lets the world know that he is a Paul Heyman guy!

Well that didn’t last long! Shortly after that Cesaro was back on his own and has basically been a jobber to an extent this summer. The latest example being a two straight falls loss to Dolph Ziggler in a 2-out-of-3 falls match at Hell in a Cell.

Loss after loss after loss may be the angle to start the rise of Cesaro. He is so upset that he keeps losing that he just takes out anyone who gets in his way. The story with Brock writes itself. After some time, Cesaro crosses paths with Paul Heyman and, in so many words, tells Heyman that joining him was the start of his downfall and threatens to take him out. Enter Brock to save the day.

Some writers have said that Cesaro is good enough in the ring to have a world title match at WrestleMania. With a little mic work, he can very easily be one of the top stars. He has the following, he has the charisma, he has the look. A program with Brock could give WWE a main eventer for the next decade.

Dolph Ziggler

Dolph has the same type of problem that Cesaro has in terms of a push, but Dolph’s push has been due for years! It does look like they are going to be using him in a top level story now with his participation in the Authority vs Cena Survivor Series match. Hopefully this will just be the start for Ziggler.

A run through the members of The Authority could culminate with Triple H and Stephanie once again bringing in the hired gun in Brock Lesnar to stop Ziggler. Dolph wouldn’t have to beat Brock to get the career boost he needs, but a strong showing against Lesnar would be a strong building block for a main event character for years.

Bray Wyatt

Bray is a main-eventer now, but he’s not in main-event’s yet. The time is now!

It seems inevitable that Wyatt will, at some point, turn face. It’s just like Stone Cold Steve Austin in 1997 – he wouldn’t have to change his character at all he would just be booked differently. To say that Wyatt is golden on the mic is an understatement and he backs it up in the ring.

I can see Heyman and Brock in the ring a Monday after a pay per view show saying something along the lines of “nobody can slay this beast!” This brings out the odd two-second Wyatt video and Bray on the big screen saying that he has been slaying beasts all his life. Bray needs a program with the champion to help the sustainability of his character. This business should still revolve around wanting to be the champion. Wyatt is due for his shot.

Randy Orton

To be clear, in no way do I think Orton should be the one to beat Brock. That would be a HUGE mistake and a waste of the last 23 years of The Streak. But the pot on Orton turning face is heating up and is ready to boil over. We were teased a Brock/Orton program with an RKO on Heyman recently.

Just a quick one month program with the two would go a long way to getting Orton over as a top face – which is something the company could really use right now.

Ryback

The Big Guy is back! It appears that they are giving him another run as a single face. I watched some of the shows during his run as a top face in 2012 and the crowd was electric! Ryback is a guy that could be successful with a run with the belt!

My prediction for months now was that Kurt Angle was going to be the guy to beat Rusev when he finally comes back to WWE this year. Well, that’s not happening unfortunately. Here is the order that I could see things going : Rusev beats Sheamus for the US Title at Survivor Series – Ryback beats Rusev for the US Title at TLC – Ryback wins the Royal Rumble and goes on to feud with Brock and win the title at WrestleMania. If the crowd gets behind Ryback in the next few months the way they did in 2012, the atmosphere at Levis Stadium would be incredible!

What do you think? Who do you agree with? Who do you disagree with? Who did I forget? Follow me on Twitter @Tadigity24 and let me know!

Time for a little mini-rant!

The Cowboys are playing the Cardinals this week in a battle of two of the NFC’s best teams. After taking a shot in the back last week, Tony Romo’s status for the game is up in the air and will more likely be a game-time decision. Obviously this will play into our decision on what line to put either team. BUT, because we have a game every Thursday, the pools are locked at kickoff.

I don’t get it! Why can’t the one line you use on the Thursday game be locked leaving the other lines available for editing up until their kickoff? Makes sense to me! So to those that run the Fantasy Football sites on Yahoo and CBS, since, you know, they are avid readers of mine, it’s time to change your system!

OK, I’m off my soapbox and ready for a new week of football!

WEEK 9! HERE WE GO!!!

(HOME TEAM IN CAPS)

13 – SEATTLE over Oakland – Do…do you need an explanation?

12 – SAN FRANCISCO over St. Louis – The Rams defensive line is starting to live up to their pre-season expectations. Unfortunately the Rams offense has been hit by the injury bug and will have no chance of putting up enough points against a fresh San Francisco team.

11 – CINCINNATI over Jacksonville – The Bengals have been struggling a bit, but the Jags are still the Jags. AJ Green could be making his return this week. Even if he doesn’t, you shouldn’t have any worries over putting Cincy this high.

10 – KANSAS CITY over New York Jets –Alex Smith is hurting a bit, but the Chiefs offense doesn’t really need a quarterback anyway. The Jets won’t be able to stop Jamaal Charles, which means they won’t be able to stop the Chiefs.

9 – CLEVELAND over Tampa Bay – I know that I have been talking about the Browns a bit the last few weeks, but it does still feel a little odd to put them this high. The fact that it’s a home game against Tampa makes it a lot easier.

8 – PITTSBURGH over Baltimore – Welcome back to relevance Big Ben! I’ll go out on a limb and say that Roethlisberger won’t put up another 500 yards/6 touchdown game, but he will be able to do enough to get a huge divisional win.

7 – Indianapolis over NEW YORK GIANTS – The week ends in Jersey with a Colts team coming to town that has something to prove after giving up the previously mentioned 500 yards/6 touchdown game.

6 – San Diego over MIAMI – The Chargers have looked good despite losing two big division games recently. The second half of the season has traditionally been San Diego’s time to shine. The Dolphins should be able to put up a good fight but the Chargers should be able to hold on and win a close game.

5 – DALLAS over Arizona – We already talked about this one before. Dallas at 5 is based on Tony Romo playing. I think he will and the Cowboys should fight behind him.

4 – CAROLINA over New Orleans – The week starts off in Charlotte with two teams who have three wins…and are playing for first place? The NFC South has seen better days. We’ll make this week’s BOLD PREDICTION that the winner of the NFC South will NOT have a record above .500. Cam needs a bounce back game and he gets it against the Saints defense.

3 – HOUSTON over Philadelphia – This could be the sleeper Game of the Week. The Eagles have looked solid all year but Arian Foster may just be too much for them to handle this week.

2 – NEW ENGLAND over Denver – Brady vs Manning in a rematch of last year’s AFC title game. The change in venue will be enough for the surging Patriots to get a bit of retribution.

1 – Washington over MINNESOTA – It was announced today that RGIII will be back and start. I didn’t have too much faith in him when he was healthy let alone coming back from (another ) injury.