“You ain’t nothin’ special to me, man. You’re a piece of flesh.” – Jake “The Snake” Roberts, 2/28/87
This is a supplement to Year in Review – WWF in 1987. Dates refer to Prime Time Wrestling unless otherwise noted.
Hulk Hogan was the WWF’s most famous thing, but the 1987 roster was loaded: stars like Andre the Giant and Roddy Piper, workhorses like Randy Savage and Bret Hart, gimmicks like Honky Tonk Man and Brutus Beefcake, stables like Bobby Heenan’s Family and Jimmy Hart’s Foundation. Not to mention the new guys like Ted DiBiase, Rick Rude, Demolition, Ultimate Warrior – there was a lot going on.
Plenty has been written about the history of these wrestlers because most of them were pretty notable, whether from the capability that led them to the WWF or the legend they attained by just being a part of it. Below you’ll find my thoughts and feelings on what I saw most of them do on the WWF in 1987.
The Main Event Famous Guys of 1987
The WWF makes movies, pal, and since January 1984 Hulk Hogan was the leading man. The prototype wrestler muscles and long blonde hair split down the middle by a fiercely receding hairline remained popular with ticket-buying audiences, who could see him take down pretty much every bad guy who stopped through in main events across the country. Already a man for hyperbole, he has the torch of pro wrestling completely passed to him at WrestleMania III before the WWF’s largest audience ever when he bodyslams and pins Andre the Giant to retain the WWF Championship.
Hogan uses this feat to… kind of just do the same thing he was doing before. The Hulkamania formula remained reliable if not shifty as he feuded with the Heenan Family on TV and continued to defend the WWF Title at house shows against Randy Savage, One Man Gang, Killer Khan, and plenty others.
“Why don’t you just take a stake and drive it in my heart, Andre?!” – Hulk Hogan, 2/16/87
As the formula continued the amount of random Really Good Matches Hogan had in the last few years slowed down, so it’s more than welcome when Macho Man Randy Savage takes his place for a bit next year. First, Savage paints his masterpiece with Ricky Steamboat at WrestleMania III and drops the Intercontinental Title. He goes soul-searching after, and Miss Elizabeth remains the glue that holds the act together with the right mix of innocence and bewilderment.
“It’s gotten to the point where he’s, uh… actually cruel!” – Miss Elizabeth, 4/20/87
We shouldn’t just ignore that Savage’s previous gimmick was abusive husband, but given respect earned as the WWF’s workhorse and how over-the-top he was in an over-the-top era the crowd fully embraces him when he returns and channels his psychopathic energy towards bad guys like The Honky Tonk Man. Savage was most reliable, versatile, and everything in between: he works loops mid-year with Hogan, Steamboat, Butch Reed, One Man Gang, and others while providing top-tier squash matches and promos on TV.
Rowdy Roddy Piper milks his last few months with the WWF as much as he can, and I know he really left after WrestleMania because on TV he feels less present than ever. The WWF relies on 4 weeks of Piper’s Pits to kick-off Hogan/Andre, and his farewell Piper’s Pit (3/30) is must-watch for the crowd control alone. So goes maybe the last real pro wrestler run there ever was.
“You can shoot me, you can stab me, you can spit at me … When you came to see me fight, you got your money’s worth. I never retreated, I never surrendered!” – Rowdy Roddy Piper, 3/30/87
40-year-old Andre the Giant doesn’t wrestle a ton in 1987, but when he does they try and make it count and on TV he feels more present than ever. Maybe that’s because he was (the Hogan feud basically lasts all year), or maybe that’s because the an evolving approach to TV just demanded it. Andre breaking bad and wearing the black singlet defines him for another generation, the WWF’s ultimate movie monster who also became extra famous this year as a friendly movie monster in The Princess Bride.
The On-Air Personalities of 1987
The voices and managers of the WWF were integral to the whole operation too, a few of them providing a constant that carried the company more than anyone but the guys above. We know now the WWF was fundamentally run by creeps, but the creeps really nailed this tone of both playing it straight and giving a big Lucille Bluth wink to those who got “it.”
With Vince McMahon‘s schedule filling up, Mean Gene Okerlund practically defined 80s wrestling as the WWF’s go-to guy: backstage interviews, roving journalist, B-show broadcaster, celebrity handler. He was just as comfortable in the background letting a star be a star as he was carrying a boring one through a routine interview, and if he wasn’t comfortable he found a hilarious way to show it. When Ted DiBiase tries to give him cash on TV (8/10), he doesn’t just reject it but flips out as if he’s been caught on-screen ripping apart the entire fabric of his profession.
“Sivi Afi there with one of the worst move I’ve ever seen…” – Vince McMahon, 1/5/87
McMahon and Jesse “The Body” Ventura called Superstars and Saturday Night’s Main Event, Jesse and (the LEGENDARY) Gorilla Monsoon got together when they could (like WrestleMania), and Gorilla developed a legendary chemistry with Bobby “The Brain” Heenan throwing to matches on Prime Time Wrestling.
Howard Finkel‘s ring announcing kept being the right amount of official and sort of sarcastic so that it always set the tone for what was ahead, while young and clean-cut Craig DeGeorge does an OK if not nervous job replacing no less than Mean Gene for the stage interviews and Prime Time’s “WWF Update” segment. Poor Lord Alfred Hayes got phased off TV, but he stayed memorable by way of Coliseum Home Video.
“Only he would call C-O-L-L-E-C-T. What a mark!” – Gorilla Monsoon, 8/31/87
The WWF talk show sets remained to help along a story too, though the times were changing: Piper’s Pit and Adrian Adonis’ The Flower Shop depart when their hosts do and Jesse Ventura’s Body Shop was around as infrequently as he was. In their place was the venue of great Jake Roberts promos that was The Snake Pit as well as (barely) Missy Hyatt’s Missy’s Manor.
With more TV, there was more time for tryouts on commentary: Nick Bockwinkel, Jake Roberts, Don Muraco, Mike McGuirk, “The Duke of Dorchester” Pete Doherty and new producer Bruce Prichard all had a go though no one sticks with it.
The Bad Boys (and Girls) of 1987
The managers still reigned supreme in the WWF, legendary names like Heenan, Hart, and… Virgil? Hold on.
From the backseat of a limo, “The Million Dollar Man” Ted Dibiase introduces himself (7/6). Then he does it again and again, a promo or in-ring stunt almost weekly as the WWF goes all in on introduction by repetition. The name speaks for itself, but he has a mission statement too. Virgil, his bodyguard/butler who always wore some kind of sparkly tuxedo, accompanies DiBiase everywhere as he cuts an ER line, kick kids out of a pool, bribes a wrestler to take his place, and cheats a little kid out of a simple dribbling contest. He also adapts to the WWF in-ring style right away and is both winning and working good matches against all types of folks. In a world where Hogan is the lead guy, DiBiase’s money and presentation make him feel like The Other Champ and he becomes a natural rival by the end of the year.
“Everybody has a price.” – Ted DiBiase, always
That’s new, because the WWF had mostly been about Bobby Heenan managing The Heenan Family and going after Hogan with all the big and tall wrestlers he could find. Big John Studd and Ken Patera were both out for various reasons, but in 1987 he made his biggest bet yet in Andre the Giant. His two big bets last year were winding down their WWF runs, though still used effectively: King Kong Bundy with Hogan house show matches and the iconic midget attack at WrestleMania, Paul Orndorff with one more turn on Heenan (8/24) over the new body guy in the territory.
When “Ravishing” Rick Rude made his first appearance at Madison Square Garden (8/3), he was already a fully defined heel wrestler – so he just kept optimizing. The name set a tone, but the strip show and shit talk before matches was about to make a legend. “King” Harley Race spent 1987 cashing in on his own legend, taking aesthetically interesting bumps while firmly entrenched in all the campiness the King gimmick demanded. Heenan signed Hercules (who just kept getting bigger) and got The Islanders to turn bad too. Haku remains his stoic bad self while Tama just goes for it as over-the-top obnoxious heel.
“Adonis, you fat slimy slob… how dare you touch a hair on Beefcake’s head! How dare you touch me… a mistake!” – Brutus Beefcake, 3/9/87
Though Adrian Adonis left the WWF in April and Heenan’s guys were always calling dibs on Hogan, Jimmy Hart ran the table in 1987: he captures not just the Intercontinental and Tag Team Championships but the WWF Women’s Tag Team Titles after Leilani Kai & Judy Martin bleach their hair and become The Glamour Girls.
I won’t tell you an Elvis impersonator with offense as intimidating as a mashed carrot did anything to present wrestling in 1987 as anything but a cartoon, but The Honky Tonk Man‘s combination of endless success, lack of athleticism, and a Memphis influence that gave him the ability to bump and cut pitch perfect promos (6/29) worked well enough that he held onto the Intercontinental Title from July on and becomes the (natural) catalyst for babyface turns by both Jake Roberts and Randy Savage.
The Hart Foundation in their blue or pink singlets made up for Elvis guy with reliable chemistry, big bumps, and brilliant hot tag setups that usually made their matches the best straight-up wrestling in the company. Big and hysterical Jim “The Anvil” Neidhart distracted McMahon while a 30-year-old Bret Hart slowly plotted to take over the world with balls out, realistic pro wrestling.
“Cup of coffee, man… yeah! Man! Wow! Man, freak out!” – Macho Man Randy Savage, 3/9/87
1987 cements pimp-gone-straight parody Slick in wrestling history, not really for his managerial skills but the ridiculous “Jive Soul Bro” track off the The Wrestling Album II. He seems more focused on ending the life of Superstar Billy Graham than winning championships, but sometimes his guys had purpose: One Man Gang is an enormous man in an era known for comically enormous men, while Butch Reed quickly becomes the epitome of capable, muscular, and sometimes boring WWF 80s heel.
All of Hogan’s Friends in 1987
By 1987, any fan favorite in the WWF that wasn’t Hulk Hogan made a good living but didn’t have a good shot at at peaking beyond being Hogan’s partner a few times, feuding with Savage at house shows, or losing to The Honky Tonk Man a bunch.
1987 peaked extra early for two of 1986’s all-stars: both Jake “The Snake” Roberts and Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat became fleeting presences after their big WrestleMania matches — one due to injury, one due to pregnancy. Roberts had only just turned babyface at the start of the year after a guitar shot from Honky Tonk Man on The Snake Pit (2/23), a move that aborted an intriguing Hogan feud but made sense considering the astounding pops the DDT was getting (check out 12/14/86 vs. Danny Davis). Steamboat had just returned himself (SNME 1/3), eventually getting revenge on Randy Savage by winning the Intercontinental Title at Mania in one of the greatest matches of all time. Then, poof – here comes Honky Tonk Man.
Hacksaw Jim Duggan brings the 2×4 and USA chants early in the year before he gets arrested and re-introduced later in the year, right around the time the Ultimate Warrior shows up (11/26) with his muscles and paint and he sure seems really bad at this. Might be rough if he sticks around.
“I’ve never claimed to know how to cut hair, and that’s what makes it so much fun when I get to do it!” – Brutus Beefcake, 7/6/87
Brutus Beefcake is way more around and important than anyone wants to imagine. An inadvertent haircut from Adrian Adonis followed by a tag loss at WrestleMania splits The Dream Team up and snaps something inside of Brutus that causes him to emerge after Adonis’ match with Piper with a huge set of prop clippers and cut his hair. Time to drop the wrestling and become a marketable superstar, brother Brutus! It all makes sense in an 80s kind of way but mostly results in bad wrestling.
If the 400+ pound high-flying and babyface comebacks wasn’t enough to help Bam Bam Bigelow stand out then the flame tattoo covering his big skull ensured it. Just a year into the business with a name and look nobody could deny, Bam Bam got a red carpet rollout for the summer similar to Randy Savage’s two years before, with all the managers trying to sign him (The Battle for Bam Bam!). By November he looks like the #2 babyface in the WWF, by next November he’s working for the Crocktt Family.
“In these days of rapists, kidnappers, and murderers plea bargaining for a fraction of their sentences or even getting off scot free…” – Gene Okerlund on Ken Patera, 4/6/87
Olympian Ken Patera helped Big John Studd cut Andre the Giant’s hair at the end of 1984 to setup Andre and Studd’s WrestleMania match, then went to jail. For real. He returns in 1987 with a set of vignettes that describe in surprising amount of detail his arrest, then paints him as a reformed criminal led astray by the corrupt Bobby Heenan. It’s admirable (for the WWF) until they take it too far (as they do). He gets to mess up Heenan’s neck (5/4), then gets injured and put in a tag team with Billy Jack Haynes. This pairs up two guys who always seemed either too generic (or maybe prideful) to ever work with where the WWF was heading.
Junkyard Dog and George “The Animal” Steele remained popular but very much on the downswing, especially JYD who looks actively bad (9/17) and would soon make his exit. Tito Santana still got the job done too, but by 1987 he was just introducing new bad guys to the masses with very good matches. A split by Don Muraco and Bob Orton calls for Muraco having a competitive match with a babyface that would reasonably call for a handshake at the end, and they call on Tito to do that. By the end of the year he becomes a tag guy, albeit a successful one. More on that in a moment.
The Tag Team Combinations of 1987
Though they did not make it out of 1987 as champions, The Hart Foundation provided such a solid base for a tag division that they definitely convinced the WWF to keep stacking it with new teams. They begun the year winning the Tag Team Titles from The British Bulldogs (2/7) and ended it losing to the new pairing of Tito Santana and Rick Martel: Strike Force! You see, they strike… with force. That was their thing.
Martel teamed with Tom Zenk earlier in the year as The Can-Am Connection, a team seemed prepared for big things before Zenk split. Strike Force did a few big things, but mostly filled the void of generic Rock & Roll Express types before Demolition beat them in 1988.
“I’ll show ya some of my towns, if you show me some of your towns” – Tom Zenk to Rick Martel, 2/2/87
At first glance Ax & Smash seem like Road Warrior types but OH is it so much more. Bill Eadie (Strong Machine/Masked Superstar) and Barry Darrow (Krusher Khrushev/Repo Man) don’t really have a featured rivalry or match in 1987, but sometimes all you need is a bunch of wins and an electric guitar riff followed by a couple of face-painted heavy metal He-Men wearing leather and chains who used to wrestle under other names. They do the basic WWF beatdown well enough, but it’s their theme music (and music video! – 11/26) that stands out.
The Bulldogs didn’t do much after Ozzy Osbourne helped them win the Tag Team Titles at WrestleMania II, and by the start of ‘87 Davey Boy Smith is practically working handicap matches to cover for the rapidly declining Dynamite Kid. The WWF tries to give them a thing with a bulldog mascot named Matilda. It was like a meme, but in the 80s and with more animal abuse.
Plenty of generic babyfaces are ready to fill the void, and that was the thing with these tag teams: they’re all gimmicked up so they stand out, but nobody is really all that better than the other. They work the WWF 80s tag team match, which was an effective if not occasionally monotonous part of the show.
“I’m gonna be with you from now on and we’re gonna be striking… with force, baby” – Tito Santana to Rick Martel, 8/31/87
The Rougeau Brothers of Jacques and Raymond get a non-title win (6/29) then a dozen shots at the titles before everyone gets sick of them and they turn heel. The Killer Bees, always stubbornly solid, got a mask switcheroo gimmick that works for about three months. The Young Stallions are formed when two young and chemically enhanced jobbers named Paul Roma & Jim Powers begin to casually team up, and you can’t say they didn’t get pops when they won their matches.
There were bad guys too, though it’s more complicated: The Islanders turned heel, and Greg Valentine & Dino Bravo spent the year as The New Dream Team before Valentine returned to Jimmy Hart later in the year. After Iron Sheik got fired, Slick teamed Nikolai Volkoff with Boris Zhukov to form the The Bolsheviks – subtle! Creative! Speaking of: hailing from somewhere in Latin America, The Conquistadors (12/21)? Before they were an Attitude Era punchline, they were an actual tag team… but still kind of a punchline.
Supporting Cast, Undercard, Oddballs
Plenty of men were advertised on posters featuring Hulk Hogan or Randy Savage, but were rarely the focus: inter-changeable rivalries fluttered in and out of existence week after week, usually more heels than faces because there was always need for fresh Hogan meat. There were also the occasional oddball — with all due respect — the enhancement talent that stood out or the weird gimmick the WWF tried to run with for a couple months.
Women’s wrestling seemed like all the rage in the WWF just a couple years ago, but that shifty McMahon seemed to just use it for WrestleMania and MTV: by 1987, 64-year-old Fabulous Moolah is once again the inactive champion. Newcomer Sherri Martel beats her for the title over the summer and demands to start being called Sensational, with awesome promos and solid ring work that isn’t supported by the (usually good) presentation. More emphasis is put on the WWF Women’s Tag Team Titles, including the Jumping Bomb Angels showing up and freaking everybody out like Tiger Mask did a few years before – just stuff nobody else was doing at a speed nobody else was doing it.
“Whether they roar for me or against me, I’ve heard them roar so many times it always makes my skin crawl!” – Magnificent Muraco, 11/30/87
Magnificent Muraco & Bob Orton‘s bickering veterans tag team becomes a rivalry of veterans: Muraco goes babyface and gets re-emphasized, Orton goes quiet and leaves. Muraco’s Mr. Fuji Hollywood sketches are re-aired, he starts cutting promos like Diet Hogan, and he takes on Superstar Billy Graham as a mentor. Muraco is a man of early 80s WWF who’s capable in 1987 even if he’s really really really big. Based on commentary and general emphasis, Vince McMahon seemed absolutely jazzed to have a former champ like Graham back as a wrestler — until his age shows and he takes the mentor route. Besides matching tie-dye gear with Muraco at Survivor Series, his most notable thing is when they show him fall down using a walker (6/22).
Koko B. Ware joins the WWF and charms everybody in undercard matches with his dropkicks, brainbuster, and actual parrot he brought to the ring. Poetry-reading and frisbee-tossing Leaping Lanny Poffo takes his losses; Olympian and former AWA guy Brad Rheingans wins a lot but is barely on TV. We can’t forget about Outback Jack, the unassuming Australian who came in with a series of vignettes and left before we could see him win more than a couple matches.
“You know, I reckon you blokes probably think about koala bears when you think of your Ozzie mates.” – Outback Jack, 1/19/87
Outlaw Ron Bass and Blackjack Mulligan come in for a bit and try out WWF characters: Bass gets an arena sound effect for his bull whip (“Betsy”), while Mulligan is a general Texas fella who beats Nikolai Volkoff in 30 seconds (2/13) and leaves soon after. Barry Windham, Mike Rotunda, and “The Rebel” Dick Slater leave the WWF and the first two are talking shit on Crockett TV right away while Dangerous Danny Spivey tries to find a tag partner to replace Rotunda… then just stops. The WWF signs Sam Houston, who is so over-the-top as a fancy footwork rodeo-loving babyface that it becomes off-putting (11/5). He loses at the Sam Houston Coliseum (11/26), in case you were wondering.
Referee Danny Davis gets repackaged as “Dangerous” and joins The Hart Foundation; Killer Khan stays the same and gets a few matches with Hogan before leaving. Steve Lombardi is around as needed. Wild Samoan Sika returns without Afa wrestler under the guidance of The Wizard and eventually Mr. Fuji — he teams with Kamala and gets a (quick ) shot at Hogan’s WWF Title (SNME 10/3). Oh yeah, Kamala is there on-and-off. If Andre and Orndorff couldn’t wrestle Hogan at WrestleMania, it may have been him.
“Why didn’t he put him away 15 minutes ago?” – Gorilla Monsoon on Red Demon, 2/13/87
Barry Horowitz makes his first appearance (8/24) and actually wins a match (10/12); Scott Casey looks like Manny Fernandez and does a badass piledriver. Sal Bellomo is hilariously working out his to being a heel now that he’s fat and McMahon respects him even less. Pete Doherty is still over at the Boston Garden and Ivan MacDonald is a tattooed Brit who looks cool telling the crowd to screw off until he takes the most silly telegraphed bump over the top rope (3/23).
You’ve got to hand it to Red Demon too – the very definition of a WWF oddball. Jose Luis Rivera (mostly) is sent to the ring under a mask to do old school territory heel shtick, hiding a foreign object in his tights and pants and pissing off the crowd. It reads like they’re trying to make a point, that this was an era with too much color and expectation for that to fly anymore… but it reads a little meaner these days than practical.
Those Who Made it Worth It
These can be seen as a year-end awards, kind of — it’s mostly the folks who actively stood out to me, ranked in no particular order but also kind of in an order.
Best Acts
1. Macho Man Randy Savage & Elizabeth
2. Bobby Heenan and Andre the Giant
3. Hulkamania Hulk Hogan
4. The Million Dollar Man and Virgil
5. Jimmy Hart and The Hart Foundation
6. Bobby Heenan and The Heenan Family
7. IC Champion Honky Tonk Man and Jimmy Hart
8. Jake “The Snake” Roberts
9. “Ravishing” Rick Rude
10. Pre-Retirement Rowdy Roddy Piper
Best Wrestlers
1. Bret Hart
2. Macho Man Randy Savage
3. Tito Santana
4. Ricky Steamboat
5. Ted DiBiase
6. Hulk Hogan
7. Rick Rude
8. Jake Roberts
9. Koko B. Ware
10. Harley Race
Best Tag Teams
1. The Hart Foundation
2. Demolition
3. Strike Force/Can-Am Connection
4. The Islanders
5. The British Bulldogs
6. The Rougeau Brothers
7. The Killer Bees
8. The Young Stallions
9. Bob Orton & Don Muraco
10. The New Dream Team
Best Newcomer
1. The Million Dollar Man
2. Demolition
3. Hacksaw Jim Duggan
4. Rick Rude
5. The Honky Tonk Man
6. Slick
7. Ultimate Warrior
8. Bam Bam Bigelow
9. One Man Gang
10. Koko B. Ware
Most Underappreciated
1. Tito Santana
2. Jimmy Hart
3. Sam Houston
4. King Kong Bundy
5. “Mr. Wonderful” Paul Orndorff
6. Kamala
7. Nikolai Volkoff
8. Sensational Sherri
9. Hercules
10. Cowboy Bob Orton
Worst of the Worst
1. “Virgil”
2. Broken Down British Bulldogs
3. Billy Jack Haynes
4. Ultimate Warrior
5. Hulk Hogan (sometimes)
6. Oliver Humperdink
7. Reformed Ken Patera
8. Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake
9. The Honky Tonk Man
10. Downward Junkyard Dog
Best Weirdos
1. Pete Doherty
2. The Wizard
3. Sika
4. Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake
5. Killer Khan
6. “Superstar” Billy Graham
7. “Outlaw” Ron Bass
8. Blackjack Mulligan
9. Outback Jack
10. Oliver Humperdink
