WWF @ Houston, TX
Sam Houston Coliseum
December 11, 1987
After watching the fun and enjoyable Los Angeles 88 house show a couple weeks back, I made a stack of more late 80s house shows to check out. Problem is, while a lot of these matches look really fun on paper, these cards are often dreadfully boring. The matches are wrestled at half speed, with a lot of the guys giving less than half an effort. Can’t say I blame them, considering the WWF was running 300+ shows a year across the world; a punishing schedule to say the least. Still, there’s a certain charm to these shows and you can definitely enjoy them for what they are if you lower your expectations and put yourself back into the late 80s. A perfectly fine way to enjoy a lazy weekend afternoon.
Houston was another of the WWF’s regular house show taping cities during these years, with many of the lower card matches being featured on Prime Time. It’s interesting how these house shows were broadcast in full on local area TV stations. I wonder what the mindset was behind this? Ticket sales weren’t exactly hot in some of these cities.
This show featured one of the all-time fucking worst commentary trios – Bruce Prichard, Mike McGuirk, and the ‘Duke of Dorchester’ Pete Doherty. It was fucking painful to listen to, like nails on a fucking chalkboard! Doherty in particular, with his awful, gravelly voice and Bostonian accent was a nightmare for my ears. Bruce Prichard was half a year away from becoming Brother Love and was just terrible on play-by-play. Mike McGuirk was breath of fresh air between the two of them, but she didn’t say nearly as much.
1) Sam Houston pinned Dusty Wolfe at 8:36 with a bulldog
Lol to Sam Houston being in the opening match in the Sam Houston Coliseum in Houston, TX. That’s a fucking lot of Houston! Sam Houston hung around forever as a borderline jobber, lasting deep into 1989 it turns out. He was pretty good in the ring, but was definitely too lean for this era of the WWF. This was an extended squash, with Houston easily picking up the win. I can’t stress enough just how unbelievably awful Doherty’s commentary was. He cheered on the heels in the most aggravating and exaggerated way possible, even losers like Dusty Wolfe and just argued endlessly with McGuirk and Prichard. Just fucking awful.
2) Hercules pinned the Junkyard Dog at 8:15 with his feet on the ropes
Hard to believe JYD lasts another year with the company because he was just done by this point. This was all stalling, with the most basic, bare minimum of contact. JYD just looked sad in the ring and contributed nothing. Even his trademark charisma was pretty much gone. Hercules wins by cheating but really wasn’t exactly putting in much more effort than the Dog.
3) Demolition (w/ Mr. Fuji) defeated Billy Jack Haynes & Brady Boone at 10:22 when Smash pinned Boone after dropping him throat-first across the top rope
I remember reading about this weird feud in WWF mag or something. For whatever reason, Billy Jack Haynes and Ken Patera became a tag team for a while, and Demolition injured Patera in storyline. Brady Boone was brought in as Billy Jack’s cousin and wore matching tights and filled in for Patera in this house show feud. None of this really went anywhere, but it gave Demolition a bunch of solid wins. I can’t even remember if this storyline made it to Superstars. Overall a really weird feud. Boone looked way too small for this era, but seemed good in the ring. He was fast and could take a beating. Haynes was gone less than two months later and Boone was relegated to house shows and jobbing, so this was definitely a short lived thing. Pretty good match though and a solid win for Demolition who were really finding their groove by this point.
4) Rick Rude pinned Paul Orndorff at 8:59 using the ropes for leverage after blocking Orndorff’s sunset flip attempt from the apron
Orndorff was another guy on his way out the door, as he’d be gone just weeks later, right at the beginning of January 88. His face turn in 87 really sucked and he was such a lame duck good guy after his heated feud with Hulk Hogan. He turned face back in summer when Bobby Heenan brought in Ravishing Rick Rude, and they had been battling since. Even as a kid I thought it was incredibly stupid that Orndorff was on Hogan’s Survivor Series team. This match was pretty good, starting off as a heated brawl, with Orndorff and Rude taking it to the floor. It slowed right down after. During one long headlock, I was noticing that Rude still didn’t quite have his look down yet, wearing a plain pair of long red tights. After some back and forth at the end, Rude wins by cheating as he continues his climb up the card.
5) The One Man Gang (w/ Slick) pinned Brutus Beefcake at 9:17 with an elbow drop after Beefcake was distracted by Slick on the apron
Ooh this was bad. So slow paced and all stalling early on. I was excited to see this weird pairing, but this match never got going, as they slowly meandered through the motions. Gang wins with very simple cheating. He threatens to cut Beefcake’s hair after the match, but the Barber blocks it and instead goes after Slick to a huge pop.
6) WWF Tag Team Champions Rick Martel & Tito Santana defeated Bret Hart & Jim Neidhart via disqualification at 16:19 after Neidhart hit Martel with one of the title belts as he had Bret applied in the Boston Crab
An actual good match on this card! Even at half speed, these guys still wrestled a solid seesaw battle for the tag team titles. I’ve been meaning to dig more into Strike Force’s tag team run and see who else challenged for the titles other than the Harts. This was a really basic tag team match, but the fans were right into Strike Force. Martel manages to get in the Boston Crab, but the Anvil interferes for the DQ to keep this feud rolling. Not nearly as exciting as it could have been, but good nonetheless!
7) The Ultimate Warrior pinned Iron Mike Sharpe at 5:31 following a press slam
LOL to these true jobber matches. Sharpe was literally one of the biggest jobbers, height and build wise, the WWF had – no wonder they kept him around for years. It was kind of impressive to see someone topple a bigger, well built opponent, than the usual pasty and flabby losers. The Warrior was still so early into his gimmick and still didn’t quite have his matches figured out yet. I anticipated him bulldozing over Sharpe, but it was more competitive and slow early on, before the Warrior finally put him away. The Warrior was so green and clumsy in the ring, that if he didn’t have the personality and charisma, I don’t know if he would have ever lasted. The crowd was already very big into the Warrior, even though he didn’t quite look like a true superstar yet.
8) Ricky Steamboat pinned Ron Bass at 9:26 with a flying bodypress
Steamboat was pretty much coasting through the remainder of his contract by this point, and definitely didn’t look too motivated out there. This was another slow paced battle, with tons of stalling from Bass. I was surprised to see Steamboat go over, as he seemed to be losing a lot after dropping the title to the Honky Tonk Man.
9) Greg Valentine defeated Ken Johnson via submission with the figure-4 at 3:04
Speaking of pasty jobbers, Ken Johnson looked very much like your typical Superstars geek of the era. And this was a true Superstars style squash, with Valentine running through all his main moves before making Johnson submit to the figure four. I laughed at that loser Pete Doherty gushing over the physique of Greg Valentine. The Hammer was known for many things, but I’ve never heard anyone put over his look before lol.
10) WWF World Champion Hulk Hogan pinned Ted Dibiase (w/ Virgil & Andre the Giant) at 9:30 with a roll up after Dibiase collided with Virgil on the apron; the referee originally called for the bell at 6:06 after Andre tripped Hogan from the outside, with referee Dave Hebner ordering Andre backstage and fining him $2000
I was really looking forward to this main event, and it was a fun sprint. Dibiase was such an effective and awesome heel, and I was shocked to see him lose by pin to Hogan so soon after debuting in the company. The addition of the Giant on the outside added a ton of heat to this match, and I’m surprised they didn’t just go for the basic DQ finish. At least Dibiase got quite a bit of offense in before this rushed to its conclusion.
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