The 1988 Royal Rumble, which I watched the other week, felt like a bit of a glorified house show, where the Royal Rumble itself didn't even go on last. Here, just a year later, there have been a number of improvements but still we're a little away from what the event will become.
Taking place at the The Summit, in Houston; Texas and with Gorilla Monsoon and Jessie "The Body" Ventura on commentary.
The event begins with a two-out-of-three falls tag match, with "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan, teaming with the now fully face Hart Foundation, against Dino Bravo and The Fabulous Rougeaus. I enjoyed this one. I will have seen Jacques quite a bit, in the Mountie character but this might be the first time I've seen them tag and I'm quite impressed with how modern they feel. They, and the Harts, keep the match technical, until Duggan comes in and just whacks people in the face.
We see some of the number draw taking place - this is a nice touch and leads us into the storyline of the Million Dollar Man trying to buy a better number from Slick.
A women's match follows, between Champion Rockin' Robin and challenger Judy Martin. This is not good. Sensational Sherri was on commentary and, whilst that's not her forte', is the only memorable thing about the match.
Keeping up last years tradition of load of time invested in something that's not actually wrestling, we then get a long posedown between Ravishing Rick Rude and The Ultimate Warrior. Rick Rude doesn't come out to his music, but a brutally overdubbed similar theme - reminds me of the ECW dvd's. Again, this takes ages and the crowd go with Warrior in every round, until eventually Rude cracks him in the head with a flexing bar.
Finally, we get a match to determine the true King of Wrestling, between King Haku and King Harley Race. Again, this match is pretty bad, perhaps because they're both similar in style but as they're both in the Heenan family, Bobby The Brain is fun shifting his support to whomever is on top.
Then the Rumble happens. We're now at 30 entrants, which works well. We still don't have entrance music for the people coming out, after the first two, but we do have the countdown and the classic buzzer noise. The WWE have worked out that the Rumble is a good way to continue their stories too, with both members of Demolition drawing 1 and 2 and having to fight each other. Andre the Giant makes most of the early running, until an eliminated Jake Roberts returns with Damien and Andre eliminates himself running from the snake.
Hogan also has a spell on top, including the elimination of his Mega Powers teammate Randy Savage, which is the start of their breakup, leading to the match at Wrestlemania V. Shawn Michaels "skins the cat" in the match, for what would be the first of a million times. It's won by a returning Big John Studd, who eliminates Ted DeBiase, who did buy number 30.
It's definitely slicker than last year, but there's still a degree of dead air and repetition that the company would iron out over the next few years. Looking forward to seeing the improvements in 1990.
