Henry's World

 At SummerSlam 1992 (my review here ), the world finally got it's first look at Bret Hart, main event superstar. Bret put on a classic with the British Bulldog, and a few months later, he was rewarded for his past six years of hard work, taking the WWF title away from Ric Flair at a TV taping in Saskatoon, Canada. Survivor Series 1992 marks, in my eyes, the first steps into the "New Generation" era of WWE's history. Vince McMahon was in hot water over the usage of steroids in his locker room, and needed to shift away from the muscle-bound behemoths of the past, quickly. Ultimately, that meant laying the groundwork for the departures of Vince's two golden geese: Hulk Hogan and The Ultimate Warrior. Hogan went on a leave of absence following WrestleMania 8, while Warrior, despite being in a heavily-promoted program with Randy Savage, was released a few weeks prior to this show. Just to complete the erasure, the British Bulldog was also let go, just months after the ...

 I'm sure there might be some questions as to why I skipped this event on my first time trek through reviewing WWE pay-per-views in the 90's, and the answer is actually quite simple. I was eager to just push past everything in my path to the Attitude and Ruthless Aggression Era, a timeframe I was more familiar with and more interested in reviewing. As a result, I dictated to myself that I would only review two shows per year prior to 1998, and after covering SummerSlam '92 early last year , there was one spot left. I had been burned with some dull Royal Rumble shows in the first iterations of the event, so I chose WrestleMania 8 instead. In retrospect, I wish I had been patient enough to just review everything in chronological order, just like I had initially planned, or at least had given up that silly "two show" rule, which I ended up breaking later on anyway. This is definitely an event worth reviewing, especially as I've never seen it before. This is the ...

 If there's one thing you can consistently count on Vince McMahon to provide, it's a product built entirely on a petty desire to "get back" at anyone he feels personally threatened by. In 1989, Ted Turner had completely taken over Jim Crockett Promotions, transforming it into World Championship Wrestling, and "Billionaire Ted" went right to work trying to overshadow Vince. This included running five WCW pay-per-views in '89, one more than the WWF. Turner kept that business model in place in '90 and '91, even adding a sixth big event with an annual collaboration with New Japan Pro Wrestling. Vince, likely furious at the thought of anyone making more pay-per-view revenue than him, added a fifth event to the calendar, This Tuesday in Texas. It was an interesting experiment, and one that was far from a success, at least in the financial sense. Pay-per-view buyrates had been slumping since early 1990, and This Tuesday in Texas followed that trend with...

 I've talked quite a bit about the WWF's need for a new main eventer, specifically a heel, and we've seen over the course of these reviews just how many failures Vince McMahon piled up during the search for his next big star. You had Earthquake, a suitably intimidating gimmick for a quite decent worker in John Tenta, but he was pushed into a program with Hulk Hogan far too soon, booked to look completely pathetic. Sgt. Slaughter managed to draw tons of heat after turning on the USA to publicly support Iraq, but the Gulf War conflict came to an end before the character could truly begin to pick up steam, plus Slaughter just wasn't interesting enough in the ring to make watching his main event matches palatable. Elsewhere on the roster, Jake Roberts had turned heel off the strength of several genuinely unsettling vignettes involving the Ultimate Warrior, but before that feud could go anywhere, Warrior was gone from the company after strong-arming Vince for more money at S...

 By 1991, the WWF main event scene was staler than it had been in years, in desperate need of something fresh to shake it up. Vince had seen this specific problem coming and tried to develop two new main event heels the previous year, Earthquake and Sergeant Slaughter, but both failed in providing anything interesting at the top of the card. Earthquake failed more because of booking than Slaughter, who simply couldn't handle main event duties at this stage of his career, but either way, it was time to try something different. Fortunately for Vince, he had one of the most reliable main event performers in the history of the business on his roster, and said performer had just stolen the show at WrestleMania 7. It's time for the "Macho Man" to take center stage again. After spending the last few years trapped in the midcard, Randy Savage, along with Miss Elizabeth, became the featured attraction for SummerSlam, staging their kayfabe wedding which was marketed as "A ...

 Business was slowly beginning to trend downward for Vince McMahon and the WWF by the start of 1991, but our favorite a** kicking billionaire knew just what was needed to turn things around. At the Royal Rumble , Vince put his top prize on Sgt. Slaughter, looking to exploit the political fervor surrounding the Gulf War to translate into significant interest for a WrestleMania main event between Slaughter and the eternal American savior, Hulk Hogan. In the process, a feud began between Randy Savage and former WWF Champion The Ultimate Warrior, creating a potential money match to anchor the midcard, similar to what Vince had with Savage/Steamboat and Andre/Hogan in advance of WrestleMania 3. McMahon was thinking big time, booking one of the largest venues in the entire country, the Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles, California, in an attempt to get even more bodies into a stadium than he had with the Pontiac Silverdome in '87 and the Toronto SkyDome one year prior. But you know what t...

 The 4th annual Survivor Series features two historic, well documented, debuts, both of which have garnered plenty of attention in hindsight, albeit for entirely different reasons. First up, The Undertaker, now one of the most respected and acclaimed workers in the industry, jumping ship from WCW to replace Bad News Brown on Ted DiBiase's team. "Mean" Mark Callous, as Undertaker was known in Ted Turner's joint, had flashed some potential in the past, but no observer could've seen what would await Undertaker in the decades to come. The second debut is more relevant in the wrestling journalism sphere, but still holds an important place in the legacy of this show. Yes, Survivor Series 1990 gave the world it's first sighting of the Gobbledy Gooker, and the best left unsaid about that monstrosity, the better. Aside from debuts, this show also continued the tradition of an entire card filled with multi-man tag matches, with the added wrinkle that the survivor, or su...

 At WrestleMania 6 (my review here ), Vince McMahon believed that he had struck gold once again, utilizing Hulk Hogan's starpower to crown The Ultimate Warrior as the new biggest name in the industry. Warrior was now the WWF champion, ready to claim the mantel of the "face of the company", but there was one problem: Hogan was going nowhere. Yes, your friendly neighborhood Hulkster may have taken some time off to sell an attack by burgeoning monster heel Earthquake, but Hogan was still clearly the focal point of WWF programming. Warrior just couldn't pick up the slack, and business began to decline as a result. Of course, we know that Hogan would reclaim his crown eventually, but 1990's SummerSlam gives us a rare glimpse of Warrior in the main event, with no Hogan in sight. The champ has renewed his feud with Rick Rude, as their trilogy of pay-per-view bouts concludes inside of a steel cage.  - SummerSlam 1990 comes to you from The Spectrum in Philadelphia, Pennsyl...

 It's been a busy start to the month for me, with 12 posts in 10 days, including my 1,000th. The past couple days have been quiet, so I just wanted to drop in and let you know what's going on, since that type of hectic activity followed by nothing might be a little off-putting.  For a start, as may well be obvious, I've been really enjoying my return to my Madden 12 series, putting in a ton of work in the last few weeks. That pace won't be continuing, but you can still expect to see that content popping up from time to time. I now intend to have just 4 posts a season, with the preseason, regular season summary, playoffs summary, and offseason, with the week-by-week posts completely a thing of the past. That does mean that there will likely be a long gap between preseason and regular season posts, as I have to play 16 games during that period, but I promise you that I have no intention of giving up. My initial plan for The Dynasty by the Bay was to go just 5 years into t...

 Today marks a milestone I knew I was closing in on, but I've kept it extremely close to the vest to save as a surprise: my 1,000th post on this blog. I thought this was a good opportunity to run through the history of Henry's World, beginning all the way back in 2006.  My blog began life when I was in just the 2nd grade, as a way to house the short pieces of writing I was doing in school. Here's the very first post: The Haunted House . Later on that year, I began my first series, The Pug That Always Finished Second. It starred our family pug, Bucky, and his annual defeats at the racing portion of the Pugtacular event, which we attended for a few years when it was held in the Bay Area. You can find that entire journey, beginning in 2006 and finally concluding in 2012, here . Those early years of my blog can be fascinating to look through, as you get to see me grow up and find my footing as a blogger. I started and stopped tons of series ideas, would take huge breaks between...