With the arrival of the WWE's content on Netflix, I decided that I would go back and watch my favourite yearly event - the Royal Rumble, all the way through from the first televised on in 1988. It is very much not yet what the event would become.
In what would be far from the only incidence of tactical booking, the first Royal Rumble event took place on the 24th of January 1988 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. On the same night, Jim Crockett Promotions aired the Bunkhouse Stampede PPV. Overall, this feels much more like a filmed house show, rather than a true event and there are some aspects of it that are so staggeringly boring I'm surprised the Canadian's didn't riot.
The show does open well though, with a match between Ravishing Rick Rude and Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat. This is a pretty good stuff until the messy ending, which saw Rude get disqualified but not realise and believe that he had won for a considerable amount of time after the bell. Again, it's the sort of match that works well on a house show, but only with a feud that's planned to continue.
Then we have Dino Bravo lifting weights ahead of attempting the Bench Press World record. This goes on for hours, as they gradually add the weights on. Despite his Canadian status, the crowd hate Bravo and ignore his pleas for silence. He eventually does "break the record" but only with Ventura's help. In my dark moments, I fear that I might be asleep and dreaming of a life where this was over, but will eventually have to wake up to forty more interminable minutes of it.
The Jumping Bomb Angels (Noriyo Tateno and Itsuki Tamazaki) beat The Glamour Girls (Judy Martin and Leilani Kai) for the WWF Womens tag team Championships in a two out of three falls match. This was a little sloppy, but the Jumping Bomb Angels are doing some stuff that even the most athletically gifted male performers in the WWF weren't doing at the time. It says something about the standing of the match though that Vince McMahon hasn't bothered to learn the individual names of the Angels, despite putting his title on them.
Hogan and Andre sign the contract for their rematch after WrestleMania 3. This also takes a long time and Ted DiBiase is left to fill time repeating his questions as either Hogan or Andre, or both, miss their cues.
Then there's the Rumble itself. They don't have the presentation quite right yet. The countdown is inconsistent, and the buzzer is missing. They do cut to picture in picture to show the entrant through, which is nice. The actual match is a mixed bag of older guys and a couple of people on the rise, like Bret Hart, Jake Roberts and The Ultimate Warrior - it's the One Man Gang that distinguishes himself as the one to beat though, which eventually Jim Duggan does.
There's still half and hour to go on the show though? There's another match and it's again two our of three falls, this time between The Islanders (Haku and Tama) and The Young Stallions (Paul Roma and Jim Powers). This was slow and dull and there's an injury to Paul Roma that see's the Islanders run out a dominant 2 - 0 victory.
The show is still not over though, as then, with a rapidly emptying stadium around them, Vince and Jessie recap the show. It's looks terrible and I can see why they didn't continue to do this NFL style wrap up for long.
I mean, it's nice for a completist point of view - but this is very much not what the event would be in just a few years' time and it's hard to recommend this particular show.
