Austin101's "WWF Wrestlemania 6- The Ultimate Challenge" Review:
Yeah, it's been awhile. I'll try to do Wrestlemania 7 and 8 both this week as those are a couple of my favourite Wrestlemania's to review.
Some Notes to begin as always:
-A guy by the name of Robert Goulet sang a rendition of "O Canada" before the show.
-Other celebrity guests in attendance included Steve Allen, Rona Barrett, and Mary Tyler Moore.
-A teenager Adam Copeland (Edge) attended WrestleMania VI, sitting eleventh row ringside. Twelve years later, he returned to the Skydome as a competitor in WrestleMania X8 when he defeated Booker T.
-Also at this show Diamond Dallas Page drove a pink Cadillac to the ring as a part of the entrance for The Honky Tonk Man and Greg Valentine who performed at the event. Twelve years later, Dallas Page also returned to the SkyDome as a competitor in WrestleMania X8 defeating Christian for the European title.
-Live on PPV from the Sky Dome in Toronto, Ontario Canada.
-Jesse and Gorilla do the commentary once again as always while Mean Gene does the interviews backstage like always, and the Fink does the ring announcing like always.
-WrestleMania 6 was the last WrestleMania that Gorilla Monsoon and Jesse Ventura hosted together, as Ventura left the WWF later that year. Monsoon and Ventura had commentated every WrestleMania up until this point (excluding WrestleMania 2, where Monsoon commentated from Chicago and Ventura from Los Angeles).
Now, onto the matches.....
1) Opening Contest: Rick "The Model" Martel vs Koko B. Ware
The Model got a lot of heat from Toronto when he came down to the ring (as heels always did back in those days) especially in the first couple matches of the night.
The Bird Man got an excellent ovation.
Back and forth action bewteen both these competitors. King Haku and Hercules had a good opening single's match at Wrestlemania 5 and this one was much like that in the sense where it's a good way to start the show. They could go this route or the typical "Tag Team" match route they tend to go a lot. (I believe they do at Wrestlemania 7 just off the top of my head with The Rockers)
Martel forced Ware to submit with a Boston crab at 3:51. Seemed longer for some reason but this was a pretty good opener actually. A lot better then I expected when I first watched it and that still stands like that today whenever I see this event.
**
2) Demolition (Ax and Smash) vs The Colossal Connection (André the Giant and Haku) (w/Bobby Heenan) for the WWF Tag Team Championship
Bobby Heenan cuts a pretty funny interview backstage (like always) with Mean Gene before this match.
Demolition (Ax and Smash) were always hillarious to watch when they spoke before a match. (We got to see two intervies from this team on this night, both before and after this tag team match.)
Demolition were also MEGA OVER here at the Sky Dome and during this period.
I wonder why they aren't in the hall of fame yet? I imagine them to be very soon, perhaps even this year for WM 24 in the Hall of Fame class of 2008? If not then I'm hoping by at least 2010.
This match didn't feature a lot of tags as Andre was getting past his prime, if you wan't to call it that. He only applied offensive moves from the outside of the ring while Haku did all the work against the team of Deomolition.
Ax pinned Haku after a Demolition Decapitation at 9:30 in order for Demolition to regain the WWF Tag Team titles. This got a huge pop as expected.
After the match, André turned on Heenan and Haku and attacked them after Heenan slapped André.
* 3/4
3) Earthquake (w/Jimmy Hart) vs Hercules
Squash match which showed the power of the Earthquake. Would have been a lot better it if was shorter.
Especially considering the show like the last couple Mania's was a long one.
Not a whole lot to talk about here as it was rather boring at times as you may expect.
Earthquake pinned Hercules after the Earthquake Splash at 4:52.
1/2*
4) Brutus "The Barber" Beefcake vs Mr. Perfect (w/The Genius)
If you've been reading my reviews of Rumble (1-20) and Mania (1 through 6 thus far) you should know I don't like Bruti, "The Barber" Beefcake.
What makes me irritated even more then his hair cut, his tights, his mannerisms, his poses, his name, his face, his voice, ok I'll stop...IS the fact his interviews are even worse and VERY corny.
Why the fans loved him so much, once again will remain a mystery to me. At least there's SOME good news and that is that he doesen't appear at WM 7 or 8 (at least I don't think?) and just once in the WM 9 tag match, so all is done in the world of beefcake for me. (Ahhhhh, feels much better.) It's literally a workload to review his matches for me.
This match however was pretty good and probably the best to this point of the night.
Of course when you got Hennig in there what do you expect, a bad match? No. Perfect is a great worker and he didn't have to carry this match on his own as Beefcake was pretty good in his own right to be fair.
Beefcake pinned Perfect after Beefcake sent Perfect into the ring post at 7:48.
Unfortunately Beefcake had to win though.
Oh well it was a pretty good singles contest in the undercard of Wrestlemania.
**
5) "Rowdy" Roddy Piper vs. Bad News Brown
This feud had been running for a solid few months.
Piper cut a strange promo before the match where he was painted half black. This was because Piper was being labeled as racist by Bad News Brown in the weeks before the contest.
This match was just a brawl at best, no real wrestling moves applied here but that is okay if they can get the point across in a very good way. (See Taker-Austin Fully Loaded 99)
However in my my opinion this didn't come off all that well despite Roddy being very over with the crowd as expected.
These guys battled to a double count out at 6:48.
Fans weren't happy as they never are with draws, double count outs or DQ's.
3/4*
6) The Hart Foundation (Bret Hart and Jim Neidhart) vs The Bolsheviks (Nikolai Volkoff and Boris Zhukov)
Quick domination by the Hart Foundation here.
Bret "The Hitman" Hart pinned Zhukov after a Hart Attack at 0:19 as he looked into the camera lipping "1...2....3" and it was over just like that.
Can't really rate this anything well over a DUD for that reason alone as it was one of the quickest matches in history.
1/4*
7) The Barbarian (w/Bobby Heenan) vs Tito Santana
Heenan's presence in a match always makes a basic singles match like this worth while. Whether he uses heel tactics on the outside, gets involved, or it is his facial expressions, it's always guaranteed to be a laugh riot. My favourite manager ever. In my opinion the funniest and BEST manager ever likewise. I'll go one better and say he is the funniest wrestling character of all time to. And I can't wait to hear him on do color commentary for Wrestlemania's 7, 8 and 9 in my three upcomming Wrestlemania reviews.
Tito Santana as I've said before is an underrated Mania performer. He was in a whole lot of them (including the first ever match against the Executioner) and doesen't get a whole lot of credit so I always like pointing that out.
This match was kept relatively short so nothing really big to complain about here.
The Barbarian pinned Tito Santana after a top rope Clothesline at 4:33 for the victory.
Santana did a very good job carrying the match though overall.
* 1/4
8) "The American Dream" Dusty Rhodes and Sapphire (w/Miss Elizabeth) vs "The Macho King" Randy Savage and Sensational Queen Sherri in a Mixed Tag Team match
Well, we all know the "American Dream" Dusty Rhodes was better known for his roles in the NWA:WCW, but he was still very over in his brief WWF stint.
Savage did a good job as a heel for a couple years in the late 80's, early 90's as the "Macho King" as well.
Sapphire to me was annoying, I know it's bad to rip on the dead but well I could hardly stand her. Come think of it there were A LOT of characters I could barely stand in the early 90's WWF. (mostly faces)
Elizabeth is Elizabeth, very attractive.
Some pretty good stuff here but not anything overly special and Savage had to pretty much carry the entire match.
Sapphire pinned Sherri after Miss Elizabeth pushed Sherri over Sapphire at 7:52.
Then the faces danced at the end of the match....aww what a happy ending.....
* 1/4
9) The Orient Express (Sato and Tanaka) (w/Mr. Fuji) vs The Rockers (Shawn Michaels and Marty Jannetty
First off this match has NOTHING on the Royal Rumble tag team match in 1991. Wow that match was **** 1/4.
They were a little off on this night for whatever reason and the pace was considerably slower in comparion.
Still though with two great teams like this going at it at Wrestlemania with pretty good time given to them it's pretty hard to dissapoint.
It ended up being a pretty good match but the Express won by countout at 7:30 when Marty Jannety got counted out after being blinded with salt thrown by Sato.
** 1/2
10) "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan vs "Canada's Strongest Man" Dino Bravo (w/Jimmy Hart and Earthquake)
Duggan carries the American flag to the ring chanting USA...in Canada.
Good for Jesse to call him on that and no matter how much Monsoon tries to justify face wrestler's actions, he just couldn't on this occasion.
Pretty basic single's match here, nothing great at all which has been a big theme for the night.
Duggan pinned Bravo at 4:15 after hitting Bravo with a 2x4.
*
11) "The Million Dollar Man" Ted DiBiase (w/Virgil) vs Jake "The Snake" Roberts for the Million Dollar Championship
The Wave actually happened during this match. Toronto did it once again at Summerslam 2004 during the Taker-JBL WWE title match.
Only question I have is why does Toronto pick matches like THESE to do the wave during? Or at all? It's not a Maple Leafs game.
These two despite being great characters sometimes have "slow matches" but this was a great back and forth match that the wave couldn't even effect.
I was very happy with what I sad. These two are two of the top guys in the business that never got to hold the WWF Championship belt.
Virgil threw DiBiase back in the ring after a double K.O. on the outside, Roberts had stolen the belt before the event but Dibiase won it back here. Roberts did get counted out at 11:50.
Great match, best of the night so far.
***
12) The Big Boss Man vs Akeem "The African Dream" (w/Slick)
A squash for the Bossman who was a face at this point.
Boss Man pinned Akeem after a Boss Man Slam at 1:49.
Dibiase attacked Boss Man at ringside prior to the match, igniting a brief feud between the two.
1/4*
-Rhythm & Blues comes out to sing their new single
"Hunka, Hunka Honky Love." That's Diamond Dallas Page as the chauffer, it truely is the absolute lowest point of Greg Valentine's career. Eventually, and thank god..... The Bushwhackers come out and smash their instruments.
13) "Ravishing" Rick Rude (w/ Bobby "The Brain" Heenan) vs "Supermurderer..err sorry...Superfly" Jimmy Snuka
For just under four minutes this match was okay.
It set the stage for the main event that would make everybody's money worth the price of admission, or PPV whatever way you slice it.
Rude pinned Snuka after a Rude Awakening at 3:59.
This could of been longer....oh well. (Remebers Rude's match at WM 4) Neeeeevermind, this was fine as it was.
* 1/4
14) Main Event- Hulk Hogan vs The Ultimate Warrior in a "Title for Title" match for the WWF and InterContinental Championship
Far and away the two most popular babyfaces of this era. (Savage was a heel at the time.)
People can say all they want about how crazy Warrior is and how bad of a worker he is, and how unprofessional he is, and how he couldn't cut a promo to save his life. And while most of those things are true, no one can deny he was a draw, and a huge one at that.
People always said Hogan passed the torch to the Warrior in this match.....
Well my question is...if this is true, then why did Hogan main event the next three Wrestlemania's and win?
ANYWAYS.
The match was slow paced at times but the electricty in the building and the crowd in the sold out skydome made up for it. The atmosphere in that building really helped the match in the same way Hogan's match at skydome did with The Rock at Wrestlemania X-8.
Even though there was some bear hugs, and slow moments with rest holds the match was fast paced at times also, so you can't just lable it one thing or the other.
The Crowd was split right down the middle and when Warrior won this contest it really was something special to see. That's apart of the reason it is so remembered. Who can honestly forget the Warrior shaking the ropes with pyro's going off in front of a sold out-electric skydome where Ventura yells "THE WARRIOR'S WON THE TITLE!"
The Ultimate Warrior pinned Hulk Hogan after a Warrior Splash at 22:51 to become the WWF Champion for the first time. He also vacated the IC Title later that year but he was a double champion when he won the gold on this night. What's interesting is when Triple H won the main event at Skydome at WM X-8 he also had two titles (although they counted as one) in the Undisputed Championship. (Which was the later WHC and WWE Belt.)
This still stands as arguably Warrior's best match ever (I say arguably because of the Savage-Warrior match that happens at WM 7 in the next review.)
**** 1/4
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Final PPV Rating for Wrestlemania 6= 5.5/10
The Hulk Hogan-Ultimate Warrior classic show down at the Sky Dome is reason enough to give this event a decent rating for historial purposes. However other then that there wasn't a whole lot to brag about and I happen to think this Mania is extremely overrated by many people when they want to declare it as one of the better Mania's which in my opinion isn't the case at all. Still though an enjoyable show for nostalgic reasons and pretty decent overall, however there were WAAAAAAAAY to many matches that were under a star, which is some what depressing.
Feedback as always would be appreciated to generate discussion.....
Up Next From Austin101: "WWF Wrestlemania 7"
(which is one of my personal favourite Mania's to watch)
(Stay Tuned......)
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