This week’s installment of the WrestleMania Flashback series goes back in time 25 years to WrestleMania VIII as we try to sort out exactly why things went down the way they did.
Welcome to the latest installment of the WrestleMania Flashback series here at FanSided as we travel the road to WrestleMania 33 in Orlando on Sunday, April 2.
In our previous journeys back in time, we’ve gone back five years to WrestleMania XXVIII to look at the “Once in a Lifetime” match between John Cena and The Rock and the “End of an Era” Hell in a Cell affair involving The Undertaker, Triple H and Shawn Michaels, 10 years to look at the “Battle of the Billionaires” from WrestleMania 23 involving the current President of the United States, 15 years to the epic “Icon vs. Icon” battle at WrestleMania X8 between Hulk Hogan and The Rock, and back two decades to WrestleMania 13 to examine the game changer that was Stone Cold Steve Austin vs. Bret Hart.
Last week, we went back 25 years to take a look at the great matchup between Rowdy Roddy Piper and Bret Hart and we’ll be staying at WrestleMania VIII this week to look at an opportunity lost, the great match that took its place and the debacle that was the end of the show.
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It’s been 25 years since WrestleMania VIII and I’m still having a hard time figuring a few things out. So let’s just dive right in and try and work through this together.
The year was 1991. WWE was in a bit of a transition period with younger wrestlers like Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels coming into their own as singles stars and new big men like The Undertaker and Sid Justice were ready to break through as well. But through all of this, the top of the mountain still revolved around one man: Hulk Hogan.
Hogan had regained the WWE Championship at WrestleMania VII by defeating Sgt. Slaughter and their feud continued into the summer, culminating in a tag team match with Slaughter, The Iron Sheik — sorry, Col. Mustafa — and General Adnan taking on Hogan and his tag team partner, The Ultimate Warrior, a match that saw Sid Justice as the special guest referee. Hogan and Warrior won the match but there was a lot more going on here. A month before the show, Warrior had written a letter to Vince McMahon threatening to no-show if he wasn’t paid $550,000 for his match with Randy Savage from WrestleMania VII, saying that his presence at the event was just as important as Hogan’s. Vince agreed to pay him so he would come to SummerSlam but suspended him immediately afterwards, which also resulted in scrapping a storyline involving Warrior and Jake “The Snake” Roberts, who had turned heel a few weeks earlier when he tricked Warrior into thinking he was helping him in his program with The Undertaker.
So with Warrior out of the picture, Roberts and The Undertaker needed a new target and that came in the form of Randy Savage, who was also at SummerSlam for his kayfabe wedding with Elizabeth. Roberts and The Undertaker put a snake in one of the gifts and attacked Macho Man but Sid came in to make the save. Now, you have to remember that Savage had been “retired” at the hands of The Ultimate Warrior at WrestleMania VII and what this storyline did was allow for him to be reinstated, which he finally was a couple of months later by then-President Jack Tunney — there’s a throwback for you — to exact his revenge. Sid would get involved with The Undertaker but would suffer a bicep injury that forced him to miss some time. However, he would return in dramatic fashion; more on that in bit.
Following SummerSlam, Hulk Hogan was still champion but really didn’t have much going on. His feud with Slaughter had come to an end but a new challenger was on the way and it was the challenger that wrestling fans around the world had wanted to see in WWE for years: Ric Flair.
Flair had signed with WWE in August of 1991 following a contract dispute with WCW but was still the NWA World Heavyweight Champion. He actually brought the Big Gold Belt with him to WWE and called himself “the real world champion,” obviously wanting to get a rise out of Hogan. For years, wrestling fans had waited for the new issue of Pro Wrestling Illustrated to see if The Hulkster or The Nature Boy was number one that month and we were all finally going to get the dream match, right? Well, it started that way.
Flair cut promo after promo running down Hulk Hogan but with months and months to go before WrestleMania, obviously the only event that could showcase such a match, there needed to be a build. While Flair got involved with a team in a traditional Survivor Series match against a team captained by Rowdy Roddy Piper, a match in which Flair would be the sole survivor, Hogan was set to take on the new number one contender, The Undertaker, in the first-ever match at Survivor Series for the WWE Championship. Ric Flair would get involved and cost Hogan the title but Hogan would regain it just a few days later at the This Tuesday in Texas pay-per-view. However, due to the controversial nature of Hogan throwing ashes into The Undertaker’s eyes to score the victory, which Flair made sure that Jack Tunney saw, the title was vacated. That’s what we saw on TV.
What a lot of us didn’t know at the time was that the dream matchup was taking place all over the country as Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair were main-eventing house shows to get them familiar with one another, which is certainly not an uncommon practice. However, it’s been said for years that the chemistry just wasn’t there — which I have a really hard time believing — and the crowds just weren’t into it the apparently poor matches. But I think there was something else at play here. As I mentioned earlier, things were changing a bit in WWE and the Hogan gimmick was getting played out. Trust me, as a die-hard Hulkamaniac I have a hard time saying that but it’s true. People wanted to see something different and whether Vince ever wanted to admit it or not, WWE fans knew who Ric Flair was and may have cheered him instead of Hogan, especially given that WrestleMania would bring people in from all over the country — and that includes WCW and/or Flair country. Vince never wanted Hogan to be upstaged and that was evident at the Royal Rumble to decide a new champion.
I still believe the 1992 Royal Rumble is the best in history. The stipulation that the winner would become the new champion was awesome and it played out so well … until it didn’t. Flair would enter at number three and go more than an hour to win the title and still didn’t get the full spotlight. Remember when I said the top of the mountain revolved around Hulk Hogan? So the final four in the match were Flair, Hogan, Randy Savage and a returning Sid Justice, who was still working as a babyface at the time. Hogan and Justice had worked together a bit towards the end of the match, and while Flair and Hogan battled in one corner, Sid turned his attention to Savage and had him most of the way over as Flair came in with a knee to eliminate Macho Man.
Flair turned his attention back to Hogan with a few chops but the Hulkster fought back and eventually knocked Flair over the top rope onto the apron. Sid, who had been just watching all of this go down, took advantage with Hogan’s back turned and eliminated him, shouting “it’s every man for himself” right afterwards as Hogan looked up at him from the floor. Hogan then grabbed Sid’s hand and actually helped Flair eliminate him, which doesn’t make a ton of sense, does it? The funny thing in all of this is that the live crowd actually cheered when Hogan was eliminated and you’ll never hear it as WWE supposedly went back and changed the crowd reaction in post-production, which is what you’ll see on the network. They even had Gorilla Monsoon do some voiceover work to change his thoughts on the matter as well. But if you look around, you’ll see plenty of people cheering when Hogan goes out and when Flair wins. And while we would get an awesome Flair interview in the back, the focus in the ring is for some reason on Hogan and Justice. Hmmm … I really hope they don’t give that same focus to Hogan and Justice at WrestleMania. Oh wait, that’s exactly what happened.
But hold on just a minute. We still need a number one contender for Flair’s title. A press conference was held with multiple superstars to name Flair’s opponent for WrestleMania VIII, and while Justice thought it should be him due to being the last man in with Flair at the Rumble, even standing up before the announcement, it was Hulk Hogan’s name that was called. Oh, so we are going to get the dream match? Still no. Justice would eventually apologize to Hogan and the two would team against The Undertaker and Ric Flair on an episode of Saturday Night’s Main Event. But Justice would walk out on Hogan, turning full heel in the process and the build was on for that match at WrestleMania.
Flair, who just seemed lost in this whole mix, would eventually end up in a great program with Randy Savage for the title and yet another dream match that nobody really ever discussed was now on the books. If we weren’t going to get Hogan and Flair, Savage and Flair was the next best thing and the build for this was fantastic. Flair fabricated a past relationship with Elizabeth, even doctoring some photos and promising the reveal of another at WrestleMania. This was pretty edgy for WWE back then.
Once we finally got to WrestleMania VIII, Savage and Flair put on a phenomenal show in the match of the night (I still think it’s slightly better than Piper vs. Hart). It was a great back and forth affair that got very physical at points — let’s not forget about Flair’s blading job that got him in some trouble — and was a perfect mix of physicality and psychology. In the end, Savage got the win with a handful of trunks to win his second WWE Championship.
But here’s the problem with this match: IT WENT ON FIFTH!!!
Now, in the days of the brand split, it’s not weird to see a title match go on early in the card but this was WrestleMania VIII when there was one champion. In six previous WWE Championship matches at WrestleMania — remember it wasn’t defended at the first one in another mistake that I’ll get to some other time — it had always gone on last and I’m still in the camp that no matter what, a title match goes on last. So with a great matchup like Randy Savage and Ric Flair for the WWE Championship, why exactly didn’t this match close out the show? Oh, that’s right.
So we get an instant classic from Flair and Savage. The same can’t be said for Hulk Hogan and Sid Justice. Hogan has had some amazing moments at WrestleMania but this was not one of them. Billed as possibly his last match in WWE — and it was for a while — this was your typical Hogan match but didn’t have the opponent necessary to give it a big-time feel. In a couple of weeks, I’ll be looking back at Hogan vs. Andre from WrestleMania III, and even though that match was certainly not a technical masterpiece, it was still one of the biggest matches in history and you could say the same for Hogan vs. Savage at WrestleMania V and Hogan vs. Warrior at WrestleMania VI. But this was something different. This was Hogan going on last for the sake of going on last and to also set up the return of someone who Vince said he couldn’t wait to fire just over seven months earlier.
So the match gets going and it is what it is and we get to the end. Hulk does his thing and hits the leg drop and we get the 1 … 2 … oh, Justice just kicked out. Wait, that never happens. And it was never supposed to happen. The aisle leading to the ring at the Hoosier Dome was really long and Papa Shango — yes, freaking Papa Shango — was supposed to hit the ring and break up the pin. But he missed his cue and then took his time getting to the ring, which caused Sid to have to kick out, which I’ll give him all the credit in the world for doing. Sid’s manager, Harvey Whippleman, quickly jumped up on the apron and the referee called for a DQ finish; this whole thing looked so sloppy. The Godfather … err, Papa Shango would finally hit the ring and start the double team that was supposed to happen and The Ultimate Warrior would return to make the save, giving the crowd Hogan and Warrior in the ring as the show came to a close, which is what this whole thing was about in the first place. In a not so shocking turn of events, things only went downhill after WrestleMania, at least in terms of what this was supposed to do.
Hogan really was leaving for a while, which is likely what prompted Vince to bring back The Ultimate Warrior. We actually wouldn’t see Hogan again until the buildup for his tag match at WrestleMania IX and Sid was supposed to go into a big feud with Warrior for getting involved. However, Justice was gone from WWE just a few weeks later. After failing a drug test, he was set to be suspended but opted to quit altogether instead. So the big result from the final match at WrestleMania VIII was a feud between Papa Shango and The Ultimate Warrior that played out over a number of weeks and then was ultimately — no pun intended — forgotten about when Warrior became the number one contender to Macho Man’s title.
There are just so many things about the events surrounding WrestleMania VIII that make no sense to me even to this day. While I don’t want it to sound like I’m complaining about the match between Ric Flair and Randy Savage, because it was an amazing match that I consider one of the best in WrestleMania history, I still have to wonder about the real reason that Hogan vs. Flair didn’t take place. Could those live event matches really have been that bad? Or was this another case of two huge egos not wanting to lose, much like what reportedly happened 15 years ago with Hogan and Austin? Flair has come out and said that the match with Hogan was discussed when he came to WWE in 1991 but was never promised and Hogan has said that Vince just completely switched gears on the two of them.
I’m also still baffled as to why you would put Hulk Hogan vs. Sid Justice on after the title match between Flair and Savage. And why would they have Papa Shango of all people be the one to interfere in this match, especially when they were wanting to do Sid and Warrior anyway? I mean, Charles Wright finally found his place in WWE and was elected to the Hall of Fame last year but this was a character that had debuted not even two months earlier, and to my recollection, had no ties whatsoever to this bout. This was a run-in for the sake of a run-in and it went horribly wrong. What was he doing back there anyway that caused him to be late? There’s a Godfather joke in there somewhere but that’s what the main event turned into anyway … an absolute joke.
Tune in next week for the penultimate installment of this year’s WrestleMania Flashback series as I go back in time three decades to WrestleMania III to take a look at what some call the greatest match in WrestleMania history: Ricky Steamboat vs. Randy Savage. Until then, please feel free to give your thoughts on WrestleMania VIII and everything that goes along with it.