(Guest written by Matt)
Oh 1996! The year I almost stopped watching the WWF all together in favor of WCW. WCW had the better ideas, the more innovative product, and more bells and whistles. They also had great in-the-ring wrestling with all the young up and comers like Rey Misterio, Chris Jericho etc. starting out. But most importantly they had the NWO, which brought Danny and I excitement like we hadn’t felt about wrestling in years. The WWF had been in steady decline compared to the classic years, and we very nearly gave up on them altogether. The unfortunate aspect of that was that we missed out on and/or didn’t appreciate the great wrestling the WWF actually still had going for them throughout these “crisis” years. It took me a lot of years to finally admit this, but most of the payperviews in 95 and 96 were actually really good. I still think the TV sucked but it wasn’t even really fair to compare it to WCW since WCW apparently didn’t care about long term profitability and pretty much ran a free payperview every week on Mondays.
As for the event, I enjoyed it very much. Overall it wasn’t as good as Series 95, at least not when viewing it as a traditional Survivor Series event. The survival matches were mediocre at best, though it was awesome to see all the weird jobbers featured, just like in 95. On the other hand, all three singles matches were fantastic and made this feel like a great stand-alone payperview, even if it wasn’t that great as a Survivor Series. I think after this, the Survivor Series tradition was weeded out, and the 97 Series was awful. Unfortunately, I’m not going to find out anytime soon, since this was the last Series event I received from Danny.
Doug Furnas, Philip Lafon, Godwinns def. Owen Hart, British Bulldog, New Rockers
It kind of sucks that team names disappeared for good in 96. I always loved the zany team names, which started in 89. Anyway, this quasi-tag teams Series match was pretty good, but nothing that amazing. It was mostly just used as a showcase for Furnas and Lafon, who I really expected at the time to become a major force in WWF tag team wrestling since they were hyping them up quite a bit. They were great workers, but just didn’t get over in the end. I was happy to see the Godwinns jobbed pretty hard in this match, as well they should be. But again, just like last year I was disappointed that Owen was pinned so easily. But it made Furnas and Lafon look like a force to be reckoned with. Hilarious to see the New Rockers there. I think they were a team with some potential as heels, but it wasn’t meant to be.
Undertaker def. Mankind
After all their stipulation battles, this one was just a serious in-the-ring match. That’s almost the reverse of the way most long term feuds play out. Jim Ross keeps running his mouth about what a great worker Undertaker is and how impressed he is that Taker is actually doing wrestling moves, rather than just brawling. Even though this quickly became annoying, I agreed with him. This was a good solid wrestling match between two guys in their primes. The Paul Bearer stuff was kind of stupid, but I can deal with it because the match was good. I remember at the time thinking the Executioner’s attack on Undertaker after the match seemed so destructive and I thought it would lead to a big feud. In this viewing, it doesn’t look any more destructive than The Brooklyn Brawler attacking Red Rooster after his match at Mania 5. Plus, the Executioner just sucked in the end.
Marc Mero, Rocky Maivia, Jake the Snake, The Stalker def. Goldust, Crush, Jerry Lawler, Hunter Hearst Helmsley
Sunny commentated during this match. She was super hot in that dress, however; her commentary was awful. Her jokes were worse than Lawler’s, and she started to remind me of Elvira on commentary at Mania 2. Anyway, this match was again, okay, but nothing too amazing. The guys who sucked like Lawler and Stalker were eliminated early, which was good. And the decent wrestlers hung in there, and you got to see some decent combinations happening. It was especially funny whenever Maivia was in there with Hunter, since it foreshadowed years of matches to come. This match was correctly used as an effort to elevate Maivia, whom the WWF brass saw something in early. But the fans weren’t buying it yet, and his dorky character didn’t yet fit in with the changing times.
Bret Hart def. Steve Austin
This match was so good, that even at the time we thought it was amazing. Though it isn’t quite the classic that their later Wrestlemania 13 match will be, its still a good candidate for best match of 1996. Even though it starts out with “all headlocks”, the pace eventually picks up and these two guys really bring out all the stops and bring the roof down. When I see Austin wrestle in these days, I really wonder what the Attitude Era would have looked like if he hadn’t been injured a year after this. Because he was very close to being on Bret’s level in terms of technical expertise at this time. These two had great chemistry in there, and the crowd was nuts for both guys. Kudos to Austin for agreeing to lose so many times to Bret. I don’t know if I would agreed to that. Bret deserved these wins, but Austin maybe needed them a little more.
Faarooq, Vader, Razor Ramon, Diesel wrestled to a no contest with Flash Funk, Savio Vega, Yokozuna, Superfly Jimmy Snuka
Yawn! This was one of the worst matches in the history of Survivor Series! Why even bother with this mess? It was less than ten minutes long. The guys didn’t even try. That old geezer Superfly was there stinking things up. (Like he still does every now and again now.) And it ended in a completely retarded fashion. I did laugh pretty hard at the New Razor and New Diesel, but other than that, this match was dog shit.
Psycho Sid def. Shawn Michaels
At the time, I think we hated this match because we hated both guys. Now I thought it was really awesome. Sid was basically the fan favorite in this match as the crowd went wild for him, Shawn not so much. Again, the match had a slow pace in the early getgo with a lot of restholds, but after awhile the pace really picked up and it never slowed down again. It would have been cool if Sid had won the belt clean and would have made him look more like a monster, but this was the WWF of 1996 so of course he had to be a WWF cowardly heel. I laughed super hard at Jose Lothario getting smashed in the face with a camera, and later JR screaming about how the old man was going to have a heart attack. It was cool to see Sid win, even though I’m not his biggest fan. But it was a shocker, and the WWF definitely needed some shockers at this time to renew interest in the product. Great effort by both these guys to close out a great event, though maybe not such a great Survivor Series.
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