Pro wrestling has been featured in video games many times over the years. Modern wrestling games are almost photorealistic. The earliest wrestling videogames, such as Tag-Team Wrestling, were crude but playable.
The game that synchronized with my burgeoning wrestling fandom was 1985's Exciting Hour.
Insane Worrier (sic) faces YOU in Exciting Hour.
Exciting Hour turned up in a nondescript conversion cabinet at one of the two arcades in Newmarket, Ontario. Fantasy Place was the cleaner and better-maintained of the two. It was at the "new plaza" and always had three or four of the latest games. The floors were clean, the games were in good working order, and it felt safe. The other arcade was a block away under the town's first fitness centre. It was attached to one of those basement billiards halls known for being full of smoke and menace, with a huge jar of old pickled eggs on the bar. The arcade was dimly lit, full of some of the older games (think Missile Command, Tempest, Zaxxon) and machines with burned-in, faded or flickering screens. It smelled of cigarette smoke or worse.
Fantasy Place Amusements at Yonge and Davis typically had some of its games in generic faux-wood-grain cabinets featuring minimal marquee art (usually just the name), little to no artwork on the control panel and some sparse instructions on the bezel.
The North American release of the game was supposed to be Mat Mania, but I didn't see such a game for some time. All I knew was Exciting Hour, which featured the Player character against a series of villainous opponents.
In the main event of the Toronto wrestling card at Maple Leaf Gardens, December 28, 1986, Kamala the Ugandan Headhunter faced WWF Champion Hulk Hogan in a no-disqualification title match.
[ This is Part Four of a four-part series on the 12/28/1986 card in Toronto, Ontario Canada. See parts One, Two and Three. ]
As I explained in a previous post, WWF booking had Hogan facing a series of monster heels in a predictable series of matches. It was no different from how The Original Sheik was booked at the Gardens in the 1970s. Match, no-DQ match, cage match. Maybe an odd other stipulation like a bunkhouse match to prevent the heel from running away and being counted out, or a strap match for the same reason.
I was not a Hulk Hogan fan. Even in 1986, I preferred the speedy and agile Bret Hart or Dynamite Kid, or witty bad guys like Roddy Piper. Hulk's balding blond head, obscenely dark tan, greasy-sweaty body, overinflated muscles and growling patter just rubbed me the wrong way. The whole "saying your prayers" schtick sounded insincere to me.
But there was no denying Toronto liked Hulk Hogan. They left the lights on when he walked up that famous MLG ramp on December 28, 1986.
WWF Champion Hulk Hogan marches up the ramp to the wrestling ring
at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, December 28, 1986.
This post is heavy on images. Click any of them for a bigger look, and check my Google+ or Flickr pages for a few more angles and 600dpi scans.
The Rougeau Brothers
prepare to battle The Hart
Foundation at MLG, 12/28/1986.
This is Part Three of a four-part series on the December 28, 1986 WWF wrestling show at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, Ontario Canada. See Part One, Part Two, Part Four.
These two teams collided over and over again in the late 1980s, and it was almost always good. On the first wrestling show I ever saw, Jacques and Raymond Rougeau took on Brett (before he was Bret) 'Hitman' Hart and Jim 'The Anvil' Neidhart. It was a great match.
The Hart Foundation vs. The Rougeau Brothers stole the show on the second show in Newmarket. Loved it.
Now mere months into my all-consuming wrestling fandom, I was getting to see them battle a third time as part of a post-Christmas matinee show at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.
This post has a lot of pictures! Click each wrestling photo to embiggen.
Dick Slater took on Wild Samoan Sika in a match that makes no sense today. But back then, any match with two mid-card guys against each other was a reasonable match. Nowadays, the same top-level guys face the same top-level guys over and over again for months.
Hulk Hogan is given his WWF Championship back after losing a wrestling match
at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto on December 28, 1986.
Back then, there was an illusion that the promoter would try to sign interesting fights, and any fight could be interesting. Magnificent Muraco vs. George 'The Animal' Steele? They're not feuding, but sure! Rowdy Roddy Piper versus The Iron Sheik? There's no angle, but hell yeah! You know Piper can cut a promo, so get him out there in front of the camera with Ken Resnick or Gene Okerlund or Billy Red Lyons, and he'll talk people into buying tickets to see the house show like it was a big deal.
Hell, I remember that exact match being set up. I'm not sure they'd even run the Piper babyface turn in summer 1986. Piper was booked against Sheiky Baby at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium. He cut a promo that acknowledged the fact that it was a weird pairing, since Piper was still ostensibly a heel, and so was Sheik.
"I don't think they like me in Buffalo," said Piper. "I don't think they give a damn about me in Buffalo! I ain't comin' to win or to lose. Obviously, the Sheik and I have beaten everybody. I think, why did they do this? What you're talking about is a couple of studs. *snort* What you're talking about here is a couple of guys that've never been rode."
Piper then went on a tirade about how the difference between the two of them was simply down to looks. He said Iron Sheik had a nasty, ugly face, and he could only get a woman with a hundred-dollar bill stuck to his forehead. Still, Piper was determined to win, as any good wrestler should be.
"Because I'm gonna use chairs, I'm going to use water buffalos," screamed Piper, his face turning red. "I might grab the kid ... I might BEAT him to death with my canary! But I know one thing for sure ....... I ain't datin' none of his broads!" Exit screen right, and Ken Resnick plugs the show one more time.
Back to Slater vs. Sika. Slater was brought in fall '86 with Koko B. Ware, Kamala, Blackjack Mulligan and Superstar Billy Graham in a big talent injection. Slater was a heel from the South, but he was being packaged as "The Rebel" for the WWF. A babyface. Nobody cared. I don't think he got over in the slightest. And Sika was working his old wide-eyed nonverbal savage gimmick with screaming manager The Wizard. Slater won the match by DQ. I can only presume Sika took Wizard's horn necklace and blated Slater in the head with it. Who cares.
Iron Sheik was next, defeating affable Antiguan jobber SD Jones.
Hercules Hernandez, a pale, long-haired bodybuilder, beat Corporal Kirschner, who bled like a faucet at my first wrestling show in Newmarket earlier in the year. No such gore this time. Kirschner was already doing jobs on his way out the door.
In the only other non-main event on the show, big Russian Nikolai Volkoff came to the ring and had ring announcer Marty order the crowd to stand and be silent and respect his singing of the Soviet National Anthem.
He barely began when a big guy in cowboy gear hit the ring. Blackjack Mulligan pounced on Volkoff and pinned him in mere seconds. Easiest payday of the night right there. Pin me, pay me. The crowd liked it, I guess.
Still to come....
Jacques and Raymond Rougeau in their blue robes prepare to wrestle
The Hart Foundation in Toronto at Maple Leaf Gardens on Dec 28, 1986.
.... a rematch from the first wrestling show I ever saw. The Rougeau Brothers vs. Brett Hart and Jim Neidhart, the Hart Foundation. That's coming up in part three.
I'm guessing it was a Christmas present. My dad got us a pair of tickets for Jack Tunney's next action-packed wrestling card at Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens. It was a special matinee show on Sunday, December 28, 1986. Great seats, too - Golds in the back corner.
Much of the lineup looked like a TV taping - ten matches, mostly stars vs. jobbers with a few top names in the main events. The headline event was to be WWF champion Hulk Hogan taking on Kamala, the Ugandan Headhunter, in a rematch from their inconclusive bout at the Gardens a month earlier. But it wasn't a TV taping -- no TV cameras except for the local news. Just a sold-out WWF Maple Leaf Wrestling house show in Toronto.
The WWF had a busy day that day. The Fed had four shows running that day. Not just an A, B and C show. Because Toronto was getting an A show matinee, the boys were also booked for a night show in Richfield, Ohio.
On the mid-November card, Kamala obliterated George 'The Animal' Steele. George did a stretcher job after succumbing to a series of splashes from the Ugandan Headhunter. Kamala was obviously a monster. A destroyer. Potentially unstoppable.
Next stop? Hulk Hogan.
Now, I was still a relatively new fan, and as such was naive to the established patterns of WWF booking.
As I understand it, the established series of encounters was kind of like this:
Large or especially evil heel emerges
Heel demolishes high-midcard talent
Heel faces Hulk Hogan in standard match
Heel cheats and is disqualified, cheating fans out of conclusive finish
Rematch is announced for two weeks later in a no-DQ match
Heel gets counted out, still cheating fans out of conclusive finish
Rematch is announced in a steel cage so heel can't run away
Provincial politics needs to be more like professional wrestling. I’ll explain.
New Democrat politician Joe E Legend debates nasal-adjustment rhetoric with Progressive Conservative member The Rogue.
Everyone should know by now that professional wrestling is not a bona fide competition.
Athletes play roles, playing to the audience’s passions in an exhibition of exaggerated physicality simulating combat on a stage with ropes. What appears to be a brutal, angry, violent airing of personal grievances is actually a cooperative effort. The wrestlers work together to put on a good show, and take care of each other so they can keep working, night after night.
And of course, it’s all surrounded by interviews … under the lights and in front of the cameras, they forward their storylines with trash talk. The good guys pledge to do their best and play fair, the bad guys are convinced of their goals but will do whatever it takes, even if it means bending the rules.
Now, compare that to provincial politics. The participants are not as sweaty and muscular -- for the most part -- but they do their own theatrics in front of the cameras on their way into the arena, the legislature, where they act out combat in question period, shouting and gesturing and deriding their opponents.
The problem is, it seems to be less and less about show.
The premier was asked about it yesterday at province house. He said he used to take this approach: there were three categories -- things we agreed on and should try to get done, things we didn't agree on but we could work on, and then there were things we were going to disagree on. The things that we disagreed on were things that were going to be the substance of the election to come, but the House was the place to get things done that could get done and work on things that it was possible to get done.
In other words, the fighting was for show, except on things that were election issues.
But now there seems to have been a change. When’s the last time you felt like your provincial politicians were working together on anything? Doesn’t it feel like they’re fighting all the time?
It feels more and more like real nastiness, and it’s tough to imagine some of these elected combatants driving to the next town in the same car as profesional wrestlers would.
Perhaps our leaders could take some lessons from The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin about how to have an exciting fight while cooperating.
My Roddy Piper obsession was ratcheted up a notch at news he could be retiring. Adrian Adonis (kayfabe) smashed up his knee with a chair and Piper could barely walk. Oh, but he still insisted on fighting. The WWF knew not to hot-shot an angle, and kept Piper and Adonis apart for months more until WrestleMania III. For now, Piper would be fighting Adrian's friends, Bob Orton and the arrogant and muscular Don Muraco.
Dad got us tickets to the November 16, 1986 Toronto wrestling show at Maple Leaf Gardens, with Piper taking on The Magnificent Muraco.
Front-row gold seats for wrestling at Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens. Thanks, dad!
I had a sweatshirt with Rowdy Roddy on the front, and crafted a sign that, years later, looks a little homoerotic for my nearly-40-year-old taste. But I was a kid and had no idea.
"Great Scot!" proclaims Pro Wrestling Illustrated. "Rowdy Roddy Piper TURNS GOOD"
As I mentioned right from the beginning of this blog, I dug Rowdy Roddy Piper right from the beginning. He was a bad guy, but he was entertaining. He had a different energy. He talked back. He wasn't as big or as muscular as his opponents, but he wouldn't hesitate to get in Hulk Hogan's mustachioed face and tell him off. There was something more convincing about Roddy Piper, and I liked it.
But when I became a fan, Roddy was not on television. He was not at the live events. He just wasn't around.
Piper was in Hollywood shooting a movie. But when he came back, things got crazy.
Roddy Piper was the host of an interview segment called Piper's Pit. In front of a set of three sparsely-decorated flats, a pair of folding chairs was set up on a tartan rug. Piper would either have a good guy on and belittle him, or be joined by a bad guy who he'd praise up and down.
But while Hot Rod was away, a new segment emerged. The Flower Shop, hosted by biker-turned-fauxmosexual 'Adorable' Adrian Adonis. Adrian was a heel, a bad guy who hit the homophobia button hard. It was not yet uncool to yell anti-gay slurs in public, and the WWF exploited that to the extreme with Adonis, a fat guy who could bounce around the ring like a rubber ball.
Adrian starred on the Flower Shop, with his pipsqueak manager Jimmy Hart and bodygard 'Ace' Cowboy Bob Orton, Jr. Orton was previously partners with Roddy Piper. Now he was aligned with Adorable Adrian, switching his brown cowboy hat for a pink one.
At the end of the summer of 1986, Roddy came back. And boy, he was mad. Look what had become of his show! Flowers! A prancing, fat gay man! His partner in a pink cowboy hat! The outrage! Roddy confronted the usurpers.
Adonis and crew ganged up and beat Roddy up. Adrian assaulted Piper's knee with a steel chair and left him smeared with makeup. Fade to commercial.
Later in the show, Roddy reappeared. Hobbling in on crutches and carrying a baseball bat, he was a man possessed. He smashed flower pots, upturned tables and used the bat to obliterate the lattice and flats of the Flower Shop set. Wincing in pain but burning with anger, Roddy Piper made it clear that this war was just beginning.
HOLY CRAP. MUST BUY TICKETS.
The wrestling magazines jumped on it. Had the evil Roddy Piper changed his ways? Is Roddy Piper a good guy now? Can Hulk Hogan trust him? This was my first babyface turn, and I was right into it.
I'd been to one, two, three wrestling shows so far but had yet to see Roddy Piper. Roddy Piper was my favourite. Now Piper was back. Mission: See Roddy Piper live.
My opportunity was just around the corner at Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens.
By the end of September 1986, I was fully into my wrestling obsession. I was watching all the TV I could, renting videos, reading magazines, collecting the LJN WWF Superstars wrestling figures, and on and on. But in this era, Toronto Wrestling TV meant WWF TV.
At the end of Summer 1986, the World Wrestling Federation revamped its TV show lineup.
CHCH Channel 11 out of Hamilton added a third hour of programming. Saturdays still offered the afternoon hour, Maple Leaf Wrestling, only it was hardly Canadian. It was a re-cut of the syndicated WWF Superstars of Wrestling. That show in the USA was eventually renamed WWF Superstars after someone came forward proving an existing trademark for the show title "Superstars of Wrestling." Thus, Maple Leaf Wrestling had nothing to do with Toronto Wrestling, other than being a weekly TV platform to roll out the angles and hustle Promoter Jack Tunney's next action-packed card at Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens.
At 7pm, CHCH ran a highlight show simply called WWF Wrestling. You'd still get to see a match from Maple Leaf Gardens in the last 15 minutes much of the time.
Some guy's external occipital protuberance is blocking the view of Gorilla Monsoon recording another stand-up intro-extro for CHCH-TV's WWF Wrestling at Maple Leaf Gardens. This is from around 1987 or 88, as the Tunneys have had the old NWA ring painted with red, white and blue posts.
Sunday brought a new show, WWF Cavalcade, at 1pm. This was again a re-cut one of the new syndicated shows, WWF Wrestling Challenge. Not strictly Toronto wrestling again.
Across the border on WUTV Buffalo 29, wrestling started at noon with one of the syndicated shows. Sunday, I think, had another hour, which I think was Wrestling Challenge. Thus, one of the two hours of shows repeated one of the hours of CHCH programming, aside from the special intro/extro shot for the Canadian market.
And by special intro, I don't mean it was particularly special. It was nothing more than Vince McMahon, Jesse Ventura and Bruno Sammartino or Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby Heenan doing an intro from their "broadcast position."
For the WWF Wrestling intro, Gorilla would shoot a few stand-ups at ringside from time to time, exhorting viewers to get their popcorn, settle in, get set, get ready, because the superstars of the World Wreslting Federation are coming right atcha!
Gorilla Monsoon tapes a stand-up at ringside at Maple Leaf Gardens for CHCH-TV's WWF Wrestling programming.
I'm not sure if WUTV 29 still ran All-American Wrestling late Friday nights.
The most exciting shows of all, of course, were Saturday Night's Main Event. I had to wait until about this time to see one -- October 4, 1986, taped September 13, 1986 at Richfield, Ohio. It ran during the Saturday Night Live time slot was a seriously hug event. It was the only place to see Name vs Name matches on TV instead of Name vs. Loser stuff.
I was so hungry for wrestling, I'd watch the comparably atrocious material coming from Al Tomko's All Star Wrestling in Vancouver BC on CKVR in Barrie. Finding International Wrestling from Quebec on CityTV was hit or miss. One of the Buffalo network affiliates eventually picked up AWA wrestling.
I know I could've seen more -- AWA, Stampede and perhaps others -- on TSN, but specialty channels like TSN and MuchMusic were pay TV in 1986.
So, if you haven't figured it out already -- I'd have to go back to Maple Leaf Gardens again. It was an itch that had to be scratched.
For years and years, waiting for wrestling in Toronto was like waiting for a streetcar: you didn't have to wait long. Another one would be along shortly. Unlike rock concerts or home shows, which might only hit your city for one night, wrestling at Maple Leaf Gardens was a return engagement. Before my time, it was weekly, wasn't it?
By the time the Tunneys sold out the Toronto wrestling office to Vince McMahon's World Wrestling Federation in 1984, the shows were coming just slightly less often. When I became a fan in 1986, they were coming every two, three or four weeks.
After missing The WWF Big Event in late August at Toronto's Exhibition Stadium, I felt like absolutely had to see the next show. Lucky for me, Billy 'Red' Lyons was there on the TV to tell me about the big wrestling card coming to Toronto on September 28, 1986.
The two matches that drew me to this card were the main event -- hairy, crazy, George 'The Animal' Steele vs. flashy, sneaky, intense Intercontinental Champion Randy 'Macho Man' Savage. I think the two were at the tail end of a feud ahead of Savage's legendary feud with Ricky 'The Dragon' Steamboat. Steamboat, at the time, was still busy with Jake Roberts.
I was up late on a Friday night watching WWF All American Wrestling on WUTV, Buffalo 29, when Howard Finkel's voice interrupted the commentary.
Not so strange, as the WWF TV shows of the day were essentially infomercials to hustle people into attending live events. The matches shown during the show were to familiarize the audience with the talent and advance the angles (storylines).
They were rarely competitive matches -- it was usually a star squashing a non-star. During the matches, the play-by-play was usually interrupted by an announcer hyping the next action-packed card in your area.
The interview segments did the same thing, promoting the next show. Hence, wrestlers "cutting a promo" for the next town. Now the kids say "cutting a promo" any time they talk about a wrestler yelling about something.
So, The Fink cuts in and starts talking about a huge show just signed for Toronto's Exhibition Stadium. As you've seen in my recent posts, I'd been to two WWF shows in Newmarket. Two 'C'-team shows featuring the least in-demand talent on the roster. But this show announced for Toronto looked bigger than WrestleMania, and it was going to happen in Toronto!
Is it possible to be underwhelmed because you've built your expectations so high that it's impossible for something to meet them?
Considering it was only the second wrestling show I'd ever been to, I don't remember a whole lot about this night. I don't have pictures. I remember the local newspaper, The Era, had one shot of Adonis vs Junkyard Dog, but their online digital archive does not offer access to 1986.
Could this have been a weak show because of the WWF's intense schedule? The wrestlers had worked a ridiculously long night on the evening before at a TV taping in Brantford.
