Today In Wrestling History 8/16: Evolution Turns On Randy Orton, Last Money Inc. Match, & More
* 29 year ago in 1986, Jim Crockett Promotions ran a house show at the Civic Center in Philadelphia Pennsylvania, drawing 7,000 fans. Philly had become a pretty strong city for JCP, but not at the expense of the WWF, who still drew 10,521 fans for a somewhat weak show a week later with The British Bulldogs vs. Nikolai Volkoff & The Iron Sheik and The Machines (Super & Big w/ Giant in their corner) vs. John Studd & King Kong Bundy as the top matches.
Historically speaking, the biggest match was the co-main event, where The Rock 'n' Roll Express defeated The Midnight Express in a 2/3 falls match to regain the NWA World Tag Team Championship. While they had feuded before in Mid-South Wrestling in 1984, this run in 1986 was when these two teams established their matches as the state of the art for American style tag team wrestling. This is one of the matches Jim Cornette released a DVD of a few years ago, and while it may not quite be the best match on the set, it's excellent and probably better than most of the televised bouts between these two teams.
The show was closed by Magnum TA vs. "The Russian Nightmare" Nikita Koloff in "match seven" of their best of seven series for the vacant United States Heavyweight Championship. What happened was that they went to a no contest, necessitating another "match seven," something they had been doing around the horn. They finally settled it the next night at a TV taping at a sold out Charlotte Coliseum, where Nikita finally won and David Crockett uttered the classic line declaring that "the Russian Nightmare...has finally come true." That aired the following weekend, but in Philly, it was spoiled because local promos for a September t6th cage match with Koloff as champion aired earlier in the show. Oops.
* 22 years ago in 1993, the WWF held a Monday Night Raw taping at the Mid-Hudson Civic Center in Poughkeepsie, NY in front of a sold-out crowd of about 3,000 fans. The live show was largely uneventful, with main event pener, 1-2-3 Kid vs. Ted DiBiase, serving as a vehicle to hype DiBiase & Irwin R. Schyster (as Money Inc.) against the Steiner Brothers on the following week's SummerSlam Spectacular special.
The SummerSlam Spectacular special was, of course, taped that night. The Steiner Brothers vs. Money Inc. was a rare WWF cage match with escape the cage rules. The rules were modified so that the door was locked throughout and the only way in or out was climbing over the top of the cage. BUT: You could re-enter the match t help your partner, and that happened, with Scott Steiner climbing back in and hitting a double axe handle off the top of the cage at one point to save Rick . While not the usual Steiner Brothers match, it was a very good, dramatic match and a really nice twist on the WWF style cage match that was common back then. With DiBiase leaving for All Japan Pro Wrestling after SummerSlam, this was the last ever Money Inc. match.
SummerSlam Spectacular also included the debut of the shmaltzy "I'll Be Your Hero" music video for Lex Luger. As always with the WWF/WWE, it's a great production, but in this case, it felt like they were trying too hard, as Luger's "Call to Action Tour" bus trip across America had not been a big success and he did not always come off great in fan interactions (like how he'd slap hands during his entrance without making eye contact).
* 11 years ago in 2004, WWE shot something of an infamous angle to close the first episode of Raw (at Budweiser Gardens in London, Ontario, Canada) the night after SummerSlam. The night before, Randy Orton defeated Chris Benoit to win the World Heavyweight Championship and become the youngest world champion in WWE history. Here, an immediate rematch was set as the main event.
Orton won a pay-per-view main event quality match that many fans thought was even better than the actual pay-per-view main event they had the night before. After the match, Evolution came out to celebrate with Orton: Batista put the new champion on his shoulders while Triple H repeatedly flashed a double thumbs up and Ric Flair got his "WHOO!" on. Then Triple H turned the thumbs up into a thumbs down, Big Dave hit an electric chair drop on Orton,and it was beatdown time. Orton bled, and as beatdowns go, it was effective, but the whole thing didn't quite fit.
The angle, with Triple H angry that Orton won "his belt," came too far out of nowhere and it wasn't the right time for Orton to go babyface (or rather, to be turned on and forced into aligning himself with babyfaces). He was not quite polished enough for the role and the whole thing just didn't click. That said, when they followed up with Batista turning babyface to leave Evolution months later, it was more effective because Batista was written as smart enough to see everything coming (thanks in part to his role in turning on Orton) and always beat Triple H to the punch.