BRM Reviews WWF WrestleMania V

[Big Red Machine]

WWF WrestleMania V (4/2/1989)- Atlantic City, NJ


Welcome to BRM’s monthly “This Day in Wrestling History” review series. At the end of last month’s review I promised that we would watch something explode in this month’s review, and as this show’s famous tagline reveals, that something is the Mega-Powers. That’s right! This month’s review is the climax to everyone’s favorite crash course in Pro Wrestling 101: WrestleMania V.


Gorilla Monsoon starts off by telling us that “you can cut the electricity with a knife.” I would not recommend doing that. He also tells us that we are in for “the most exciting seven hours of wrestling” of our lives. SEVEN HOURS?! Oh dear Lord I hope not.

ROCKIN’ ROBIN SINGS AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL- This was what they had your WWF Women’s Champion do on the biggest show of the year. IF only Stephanie McMahon had declared a Women’s Evolution sooner, then Robin could have evolved into someone allowed to wrestle on the show.

HERCULES vs. KING HAKU (w/Bobby Heenan)- 5.5/10
Haku jumped Hercules from behind while Hercules was putting his big steel chain away. This was a very entertaining opener that built very well. They did a great “whip into the turnbuckle countered into a springboard crossbody, ducked” spot where not only was I shocked these two big dudes could pull it off, but that they could do so in a way that looked so graceful while still seemingly completely natural.

GENE OKERLUND INTERVIEWS THE ROCKERS- fine
Seeing Shawn this young is entertaining on its own, as are their horribly cheap shirts.

THE ROCKERS vs. THE TWIN TOWERS (w/Slick)- 6/10
A good big guys vs. small guys match. The highlight here was Bossman reversing a diving rana attempt into a powerbomb to set up the finish, but soon before that The Rockers managed to botch a double top-rope dropkick attempt in such a way as to result in a wonderfully-timed missile dropkick into a diving elbow drop instead. That was quite fortunate.

TONY SCHIAVONE INTERVIEWS TED DIBIASE (& VIRGIL)- GREAT promo by Dibiase!

BRUTUS “THE BARBER” BEEFCAKE vs. “THE MILLION DOLLAR MAN” TED DIBIASE (w/Virgil)- 6.25/10
They had a decent match that went to a double count-out in just over ten minutes. They kept fighting afterwards, with Brutus getting the best of both heels.

LORD ALFRED HAYES INTERVIEWS THE BUSHWHACKERS WHILE THEY TRIED TO EAT BREAKFAST- They tried to talk with their mouths full and they ate with their hands. If you find that sort of thing funny then you and Vince are made for each other.

THE BUSHWHACKERS vs. THE FABULOUS ROUGEAUS (w/Jimmy Hart)- 3.75/10
Cartoonish Bushwhackers are not my thing. The match was two cartoon characters against two professional wrestlers, and the cartoons won after some meh heat.

THE BLUE BLAZER vs. MR. PERFECT- 5.5/10
Excellent for the time it got.

LORD ALFRED HAYES INTERVIEWS MR. FUJI- This took place right before a 5K run the morning before the show which was supposedly “part of WrestleMania V.” Despite this, the only WWF employees present appeared to me Lord Al, and a “last minute entrant,” Mr. Fuji. Fuji said he was proving this to show everyone he was in good condition, and also told us that the Powers of Pain would win the tag titles. We then cut to the end of the race so Fuji could cut the same exact promo. Fuji wasn’t even winded. He must be in fantastic shape.

RUN DMC PERFORM- While they were singing and dancing I was scanning the audience in the hopes of catching a glimpse of a young but still surely stern-faced Lance Storm looking on with his standard disapproval of all things not serious.

MEAN GENE INTERVIEWS DEMOLITION- Ax was great, Smash was a child who had been eating handfuls of sugar all day, straight from the bag.

HANDICAP MATCH FOR THE WWF WORLD TAG TEAM TITLES: Demolition(c) vs. Mr. Fuji & the Powers of Pain- 4.75/10
Standard stuff with Fuji letting his guys do all the work for him and only tagging in when Ax or Smash were down, then eventually getting caught in the ring and beaten by Demolition.

RANDY SAVAGE REFUSES AND INTERVIEW- and shoves the cameraperson down, too. Savage was a very convincing psycho.

RONNIE GARVIN vs. DINO BRAVO (w/Frenchy Martin)- 0.75/10
Dino jumped the bell on “Rugged” Ronnie Garvin. The match was boring, but boring, but not quite bad enough to be a dud. Bravo won clean, but Garvin attacked him and his manager after the match, which I assume must be a double turn because Jesse Ventura was completely correct that Garvin was being a complete and total sore loser.

STRIKE FORCE vs. THE BRAIN BUSTERS (w/Bobby Heenan)- 6.25/10
The match was good, but in reality the important thing here was the angle, which saw Martel walk off on Tito after accidentally getting hit by Tito. I guess the Mega-Powers aren’t the only team exploding tonight.

GENE OKERLUND INTERIVEWS RICK MARTEL- GREAT promo by Martel. I’m sold on this feud right now, and if it wasn’t WrestleMania weekend, I’d start scrolling through the WWE Network to find all of the angles and matches for this feud right after I finish this review.

THE BROTHER LOVE SHOW, WITH SPECIAL GUEST “RODDY PIPER”- TERRIBLE
He swerved the crowd by having himself introduced as if he were Roddy Piper and came out to Piper’s music. Brother Love was wearing a kilt, too. He proceeded to interview “Roddy Piper,” by which I mean he would ask a question, then switch seats and answer in a Piper impression.
Morton Downey Jr. came out and was very hostile to Brother Love. This seemed completely pointless.
Then Roddy Piper came out. I’m sorry, but I don’t buy for one second that Roddy Piper would just sit in the back and let Brother Love make fun of him and wait his turn to come out. Non-witty banter occurred and way too much time was wasted with them reaching for each other’s kilts to rip off. Piper eventually managed to rip Brother Love’s kilt off and we got to see Bruce Pritchard run up the long aisle with his underwear showing.
While all of this was been going on, Morton Downey Jr. has been doing nothing but sitting there and smoking and throwing his cigarette on the carpeted ring. He and Piper then engaged in some slightly more clever banter, but it still wasn’t anything close to good. This dragged on F*CKING FOREVER with Downey being a total jackass and constantly blowing smoke in Piper’s face while Piper warned him not to do it again. Piper finally asked Downey for a cigarette and while Downey inexplicably turned his back on Piper to get him one, Piper pulled up one of the stools to reveal that there was a fire extinguisher hidden beneath it… which it would make no sense for Piper to know about because this is the Brother Love Show, not Piper’s Pit. When Downey turned around, Roddy sprayed the fire extinguisher in his face. This whole segment was absolutely horrendous and more boring than you can possibly imagine.

NO HOLDS BARRED PREVIEW- Zeus punching those cinderblocks looked kind of cool. Mean Gene told us we could bet on it being a “blockbuster,” but if comments by Vince McMahon and Jim Ross during the Attitude Era are to be believed, it actually lost money.

SEAN MOONEY INTERVIEWS DONALD TRUMP- nothing of note was said, so don’t worry about it.

JESSE VENTURA PROMO- AWESOME!
He’s utterly furious about No Holds Barred because Hogan is infringing on his territory. Jesse, being completely awesome, said that Hogan was doing this because Hogan knew he had no chance of beating Randy Savage tonight, and that he would therefore be out of a job. Wonderful!

MEGA-POWERS VIDEO PACKAGE- a poor recap of the angle because of the lack of explanations.

GENE OKERLUND INTERVIEWS HULK HOGAN- good, I guess
The stuff about Savage was good, in that wacky Hulk Hogan kind of way. Then it just got insane as he went off on a tangent about how Donald Trump hired a team of seismologists to check the ground because the building because he was worried that the Mega-Powers exploding would cause some sort of earthquake, resulting in the whole building be swallowed by the ground.

SINGLES MATCH WITH BIG JOHN STUDD AS SPECIAL GUEST REFEREE: Jake “The Snake” Roberts vs. Andre The Giant (w/Bobby Heenan)- 2/10
Andre and Studd immediately getting in each other’s faces was awesome. Jake came out and something resembling a match was had. Jake eventually went to get his snake but Heenan distracted the referees while Dibiase and Virgil came out and shoved Jake down and stole the snake. Jake took off after them while Andrew attacked Studd just to be a heel. Jake caught up to Dibiase and got his snake back, then let it (I don’t remember if this is Lucifer yet or we’re still on Damien) loose in the ring to scare Andre off and save Studd. Stake declares Jake the winner by DQ.

SENSATIONAL SHERRI PROMO- good
She buried Rockin’ Robin and vowed to win the title back from her soon. She also made fun of Miss Elizabeth for having her tag team break up on her and declared herself to be much hotter than Elizabeth. They both have 80’s hair here, so neither of them qualify as hot. 80’s hair is the worst.

THE HART FOUNDATION vs. RHYTHM & BLUES (w/Jimmy Hart)- 5.75/10
The heels get hoisted on their own petard.


WWF INTERCONTINENTAL TITLE MATCH: The Ultimate Warrior(c) vs. Rick Rude (w/Bobby Heenan)- 6.75/10
I love everything about this match from beginning to end, and gave it the highest rating I could while still being honest.

BAD NEWS BROWN vs. “HACKSAW” JIM DUGGAN- 2.5/10
They brawled a bunch and then grabbed weapons and got DQed.

MEAN GENE INTERVIEWS THE RED ROOSTER- Terry Taylor did about as good of a job with this as possible, given the circumstances of being… you know… the Red Rooster.

THE RED ROOSTER vs. BOBBY HEENAN (w/the Brooklyn Brawler)- squash with a boring post-match segment.
Rooster squashed Heenan, then got jumped and beaten up by the red rooster.

GENE OKERLUND INTERVIEWS MISS ELIZABETH- she says she’ll be in neither man’s corner tonight, and that she hopes neither of them is seriously hurt.

WWF WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Randy Savage(c) vs. Hulk Hogan- 6.5/10
Even back in 1989, the champion had to come out first when the company favorite was the challenger. Props to Jesse Ventura for calling this out, and props to Gorilla Monsoon for not even trying to defend it.
The match was disappointing. Hogan could still put on a good match if he wanted to at this point (and he did seem to want to) and Savage was Savage, but this match just mostly didn’t work for me. The stuff with Miss Elizabeth was well done and the last few minutes were very good, but so much of the heat just felt very generic and didn’t really contribute to any sort of story other than “Savage is the bad guy.”


This show was extremely boring. It went three hours and forty minutes, and very little of that felt useful or important or interesting. They tried to pack FOURTEEN MATCHES into this window, and it absolutely did not work, showing that they learned absolutely nothing from the previous year’s disaster. Considering all of the build and the level Hogan has shown an ability to deliver to on this stage with far lesser workers than Randy Savage (Warrior at WM6, Andre at WM3), the main event was an extreme disappointment. After this experience, I highly doubt I will be returning to this era of the WWF any time soon. Honestly, at this point I just want to get as far away from the Hulkamania Era as possible, in every possible way, so that’s exactly what I’m going to do for next month.

[Bob-O]

WWF INTERCONTINENTAL TITLE MATCH: The Ultimate Warrior(c) vs. Rick Rude (w/Bobby Heenan)- 6.75/10
I love everything about this match from beginning to end, and gave it the highest rating I could while still being honest.

I forget who, but there's a shoot interview of somebody remembering Rick Rude where they talk about Rick putting the fear of god into Warrior before this match, which Rick was known for with the bigger (sloppier) guys, and the reason Hogan refused to work with him. Had he only put the fear of god into Sting...

Considering all of the build and the level Hogan has shown an ability to deliver to on this stage with far lesser workers than Randy Savage (Warrior at WM6, Andre at WM3), the main event was an extreme disappointment.

Hogan was phenominal at making opponents look credible, but I think ego got in the way when he came across the ones that didn't need him to - especially Savage. I think that whole ordeal is what led to Flair opting to work with Savage instead of Hogan despite Hogan being the dream feud. Flair says he didn't think they were "compatible" in the ring, when we all know Flair was capable, especially in '89, of pulling a great match out of anyone. I think Flair knew it'd be more trouble than it was worth...

[Big Red Machine]

Considering all of the build and the level Hogan has shown an ability to deliver to on this stage with far lesser workers than Randy Savage (Warrior at WM6, Andre at WM3), the main event was an extreme disappointment.

Hogan was phenominal at making opponents look credible, but I think ego got in the way when he came across the ones that didn't need him to - especially Savage. I think that whole ordeal is what led to Flair opting to work with Savage instead of Hogan despite Hogan being the dream feud. Flair says he didn't think they were "compatible" in the ring, when we all know Flair was capable, especially in '89, of pulling a great match out of anyone. I think Flair knew it'd be more trouble than it was worth...

I had never heard that theory in relation to why we dind't get Flair/Hogan, but I've heard similar things in relation to Hogan and Savage. Someone pointed out on a podcast that the point when Hogan begins to transition into the really cartoonish parody 80's Hogan we all think of today from an in-ring perspective when his entire offensive arsenal gets reduced to punch, bodyslam, boot, leg drop, back rake, is when Savage starts to get popular as a heel to the level where they know they'll have to turn him babyface, and that Hogan resorting to heel tactics is him trying to be edgy and siphon off some of that "cool heel" aura for himself.