On this day in 1988, Andre The Giant "defeated" Hulk Hogan to win the WWF Championship on The Main Event from the Market Square Arena in Indianapolis, Indiana.
How did you feel about Andre finally winning The Title? How long should he have held it?
I loved it but wasnt thrilled with how they did it at the time. I wish he would have held it until Mania but that would have screwed with their Mania plans and they weren't about to book Savage to go over Andre clean. I accept that Andre wasn't very mobile then and they had to get the title off of Hogan in a bizarre way, I just wish he had a bit more than his minutes long reign.
I also wish Dibiase had won the tournament because he is one of the guys that I think deserved a World title run, even a transitional one to Savage because The Mega Powers exploding was always the endgame of a Savage title run.
Interesting sidenote: This was also the debut of the Winged Eagle Belt. What a great looking belt that was. I have one, too. And not the toy that you can buy at wwe.com, but the real thing that Reggie Parks made; same former wrestler that made it for the WWF along with their other belts at that time.
I was furious when it happened. They screwed the Hulkster and I was ready to jump through my TV. I honestly didn't sleep that night.
They should have given Andre a hunk of Backlund's reign or Bruno's entire second reign but Vince Sr. used him as a trading chip instead.
Hogan should have never dropped the title, and I mean never. We should be in the middle of his 33rd consecutive year as the champ right now.:wink2:
I marked out when Andre won the title...after all the years of Hulk Hogan being champion there was a new champ.
This could have been a perfect opportunity to keep the belt on Andre until at least Wrestlemania, perhaps all the way to Summerslam. You could have either had Savage beat him, or gone to Summerslam and have the Ultimate Warrior do it instead of him going for the IC belt.
Or, now looking back, what would have been a great moment was DiBiase telling him to give him the title and Andre refuses, followed by throttling The Million Dollar Man. Then, have DiBiase vs. Andre at WM.
I would have loved that scenario with Dibiase. He could have used shenanigans to beat a face Andre for the title and still transitioned to Macho Man at Summerslam or sooner if need be.
In a perfect world, a healthy André would have been a great champion. The person to beat him would have been an instant star. I really think he should have held it until 'Mania, only to lose it to Savage (then have Savage beat DiBiase at SummerSlam).
Unfortunately, he was in no fit state to defend it even on a semi-regular basis. I think at a push, the longest he could have reasonably held the belt would be until SummerSlam... though most of the main events in it's first few years were tag team matches.
In a perfect world, a healthy André would have been a great champion. The person to beat him would have been an instant star. I really think he should have held it until 'Mania, only to lose it to Savage (then have Savage beat DiBiase at SummerSlam).
Unfortunately, he was in no fit state to defend it even on a semi-regular basis. I think at a push, the longest he could have reasonably held the belt would be until SummerSlam... though most of the main events in it's first few years were tag team matches.
I beg to differ. Andre did wrestle in singelsmatches regulary, almost as often as anybody, in fact, in 1988, Andre wrestled at least 130 matches from his title win to December 31 of that year. 70 precent of those matches were singles matches, where Andre first feuded with Duggan, then WWF champion Randy Savage and then Jake Roberts. And bear in mind, those matches were not short squashed as he did with Warrior a year later. These were matches which lasted usually 10-15 minutes. During this time, Hogan wrestled around 80- 90 matches, and WWF Champion Randy Savage wrestled around 100 according to my records. So based on your statemen, out of these three guys Andre should have been the champion
So back to topic, Andre could have been champion for a lengthy time. But at the time, Andre was getting older, he alreday had his legacy and never needed the belt. So he was the perfect guy to dethrone Hogan, but then have him give it up. So WWF could crown a new champion - Randy Savage
Funny thing is that soimetimes during the late 1989- and early 1990, Andre was not recognized by WWF as champion. First of all, they never spoke of him as a former champion, second and more importantly to back my statement is that in the WWF pc game Microleague wrestling, there is a list of all former WWF champions in chronological order all the way from Buddy Rogers to Ultimate Warrior. However, Andres names is not on that list.
I don't know the reason for this, might have been a mistake by the ones who wrote it, but a the same time, During this time, Andre was never mentioned as a former WWF champion. It was not until later years when he died WWF started to menitoning him being a former champion.
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