Talk about it here.

This was lengthy, but a nice piece of business. Long promos from Slaughter, Hogan, Savage and Warrior.

A good hype job for Wrestlemania.

I do love that old WrestleMania guitar theme, almost as much as the SummerSlam theme from the same era. All the talk for WrestleMania now has it taking place "in Los Angeles." Slaughter threatens to make Hulk Hogan a POW then makes an Unknown Soldier crack--classy as ever, that Sarge is. Hulkamania is more dangerous than nerve gas, brother! Oh, Christ almighty. What a horrible retrogression these promos were. The only thing worse than Slaughter actively talking up an alliance with Saddam Hussein would be to SNME-ize the Gulf War to make puns about. What a shock, Hogan's promo gets better as soon as he starts addressing the Slaughter Rules instead of war.

 

The big Greg Valentine babyface turn is finalized as we get MSG clips and the announcement of Valentine vs. Earthquake. Savage gets promo time and is as spectacular as ever. He refers to the "Great Macho King in the sky" which is the most fabulously grandiose heel statement he's ever made and is a tack that I wish other heels would have done. Then he follows it up by quoting Bobby Brown! God help me but I actually kind of like Warrior talking about having the crystal sewn into his head--this is probably Warrior's strongest and most focused promo yet, or at least since the November Main Event. Good stuff to take the bad taste of the main event promos away.

I noticed they mention Los Angeles but not the venue for WrestleMania. P.O.W.s and unknown solider references from Sarge. Hulkamania is more dangerous than nerve gas according to the Hulkster.

 

Saba Simba! Valentine does about the slowest sell of a guitar shot ever. He will now be facing Earthquake at WrestleMania.

I miss these reports so bad. They do so good running down the matches. I thought Slaughters / Hogans promos were good and miles better than the nonsense spewed last year. Savage takes this to another level though with an amazing promo.

Hogan and Savage were spectacular here. "Too hot to handle and too cold to hold!"

The promos:

 

Hogan- About the same as his Main Event interview. Whatever you thought of that, you'll think of this.

 

Sarge- On top of the war references and puns (which are terrible), he also has to use the phrase "Immortal Slime" every single time he references Hogan. That leads to him at one point threatening to turn Hogan into the "Unknown Immortal Slime". God help us, that's a new level of awful. Add the useless prattling of Adnan and this was almost unbearable. Give me Heenan, Teddy, even Fuji instead. "You suffa, boy-san" laps that Iraqi gibberish by a mile.

 

Savage- The usual divine nonsense. Only one problem: Hogan had just referenced "the big dude upstairs", so Savage's reference to "the great Macho King in the sky" lost just a bit of its punch. Sherri again says nothing, and wears no makeup either.

 

Warrior- He flipped the switch and sounded like a wrestler. The stuff about sewing a piece of Savage's scepter into his head was crazy, but it was wrestler crazy, not space alien crazy. For whatever reason, Savage brings out the best in him in a way that not even Rude could.

 

Of course, Bob Costas ended up bailing out because of the Slaughter angle. I'm trying to think of who replaced him. For some reason, Marv Albert sticks in my head, although he was most likely busy with the Knicks and Rangers. I know someone else was there besides Steinbrenner and Maguire. Anyone care to jog my memory?

The whole instant replay debate has been mercifully excised from history--to my knowledge it's never seen a release anywhere, even on the Network. As far as I know the only other guys involved were the Bushwhackers.

 

I'm about 90% sure that Roseanne & Tom Arnold were announced for this show at one point--doing what, I'm not sure.

Thanks, Pete. I wonder why Vince buried that segment. Pressure from the Steinbrenner family, maybe?

I'm guessing it had to do with usage rights.