Vince McMahon and Roddy Piper are in the booth and they are still in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
Opening Contest: Demolition (3-0) defeat Mike Durham, Mike Williams & Ross Lindsey when Crush pins Williams after Demolition Decapitation at 2:43:
The WWF is not making it clear that the Ultimate Warrior is teaming with the Legion of Doom on house shows, so fans are wondering why Demolition are doing six-man tags when conventional tag matches against the Legion would be two-on-two. As the squash unfolds, Demolition repeat their desire to get even with the Legion because of what happened at SummerSlam. Demolition work quicker than their prior six-man squashes, making this their best outing as a team so far.
Gene Okerlund’s Update segment explains that the Ultimate Warrior did not attack Sensational Sherri on the Brother Love Show two weeks ago because he is a man of principle. It shows him beating up jobbers and WWF officials backstage after the segment in a failed effort to find Randy Savage. Poor Jim Brunzell is not spared the Warrior’s wrath either, getting his head slammed into a cinderblock wall when he cannot tell the Warrior where Savage is. Savage and Sensational Sherri do a taped promo, saying that they are not as hard to find as the Warrior thinks they are.
Akeem (w/Slick) (9-4-1) pins Sonny Blaze after a splash at 1:07:
Blaze is one of the toughest men in wrestling, showing up a mere six days after the Earthquake laid him out with several Earthquake Splashes. Piper notes that there are similarities between Akeem and Dusty Rhodes, something McMahon quickly denies. In the split screen, Akeem and Slick call out Saba Simba, saying that Akeem is the only real African in the WWF. So not only does poor Tony Atlas get saddled with an insensitive gimmick but his first feud is also ridiculously insensitive too. Akeem wastes no time defeating Blaze, heated up for this new, intra-African feud.
Nikolai Volkoff (9-0) beats Mike Sharpe after a clothesline to the back of the head at 1:21:
Ringside fans appear in the split screen and talk about how they are rooting for Volkoff because Sergeant Slaughter is mean. Poor Volkoff barely gets over for a somersault senton but does complete the move and finishes off Sharpe moments later to push his undefeated streak to ten matches. Piper did Volkoff’s babyface push few favors on commentary, questioning throughout the match whether Russians can be trusted.
Earthquake (w/Jimmy Hart & Dino Bravo) (22-2) pins Brian Costello after the Earthquake Splash at 1:50:
The only fun with this squash is seeing Earthquake wipe out the much smaller Costello. He is beyond doing these types of matches at this point, but the WWF probably felt that they needed to rehabilitate some of Earthquake’s image after he lost to Hulk Hogan at SummerSlam. After the bell, Earthquake does two more Earthquake Splashes and Costello takes a stretcher ride to the locker room.
Marty Jannetty (w/Shawn Michaels) (1-1) defeats Black Bart after a flying fist drop at 2:41:
In the split screen, Power & Glory and Slick laugh at Michaels’ condition and repeat their prior pledge that Jannetty will be next. If Michaels was going to be on the shelf longer it would have been tempting for the WWF to run Jannetty as a successful single and have Michaels come back jealous, thereby doing the Rockers breakup angle a year earlier than it actually happened. Jannetty keeps Bart off balance with a couple of headscissors and finishes the former World Class World Champion off with a flying fist drop.
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Brother Love interviews Sergeant Slaughter and for the second straight week, Rick Martel sprays the set with Arrogance before Love’s guest comes out. Love is wearing the ridiculously large “Great American Award” he received from Slaughter at SummerSlam. Slaughter introduces General Adnan as the man who gives him orders, a man with connections to the Iraqi military. While that backstory was exaggerated, Adnan was a classmate of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, allegedly fleeing the country when Hussein deemed him a political threat. Adnan broke into the business in 1959 in Oklahoma and wrestled for the then-WWWF in the 1970s as a Native American named Billy White Wolf, winning the tag team titles with Chief Jay Strongbow. Throughout the 1980s Adnan wrestled and managed in the AWA under the name Sheik Adnan El Kaissey, feuding with Verne Gagne and Nick Bockwinkel. Adnan gets immediate heat by speaking in Arabic and Piper piles on, screaming about how Slaughter’s actions are disrespectful to American servicemen in the Middle East.
The Texas Tornado’s squash from Prime Time Wrestling is shown.
Ted DiBiase, Virgil, and Sapphire are a local laundromat and Sapphire is busy ironing $100 bills. DiBiase insists that Dusty Rhodes has a price, he just has not found it yet.
Rhythm & Blues (w/Jimmy Hart) (22-0-1) defeat Duane Gill & Barry Hardy when Greg Valentine pins Gill after a double back suplex at 2:06:
WWF Tag Team Champions the Hart Foundation pop up in the split screen and repeat their pledge that they will take on all comers, including the Blues, now that they have the tag team titles. For some odd reason, McMahon insists on commentary that Gill and Hardy are brothers. The Blues use constant double teams to wear down the jobbers en route to an eighteenth straight victory.
Tune in next week to see the Bushwhackers, Rick Rude, Tugboat, Sergeant Slaughter, and the Legion of Doom in action! And Tugboat is promised to have a big surprise for the audience next week!
The Last Word: The Brother Love segment added another dimension to the Sergeant Slaughter character as he not only hates fans who love Volkoff but is openly embracing enemies of the United States. Due to the political unrest in the Middle East at the time the WWF was taking a big gamble incorporating that into Slaughter’s gimmick, but as Bruce Prichard has noted in shoot interviews the choice was made because it was believed the United States would never go to war with Iraq at the time despite Iraq’s growing aggressiveness. The Ultimate Warrior segment at the beginning of the show was meant to add more tension to his feud with Randy Savage, but it really cast the Warrior as a jerk since he beat up jobbers and officials who did nothing to him. Overall, this show was well paced and added some important plot points in the company’s existing feuds, making it one of the best episodes in a while.
Up Next: Wrestling Challenge for September 23!