WWE Survivor Series 1987 Review: The First Survivor Series
Photo Courtesy of WWE.com
Twenty-Man Survivor Series Tag Team Elimination Match: Strike Force (Tito Santana and Rick Martel), The Young Stallions (Paul Roma and Jim Powers), The Fabulous Rougeaus (Jacques and Raymond Rougeau), The Killer Bees (Jim Brunzell and B. Brian Blair), and The British Bulldogs (Davey Boy Smith and Dynamite Kid) vs. The Hart Foundation (Bret Hart and Jim Neidhart), The Islanders (Haku and Tama), Demolition (Ax and Smash), The Bolsheviks (Nikolai Volkoff and Boris Zhukov), and The Dream Team (Greg Valentine and Dino Bravo)
Result: Team Good Guys defeated Team Bad Guys
Survivors: The Killer Bees and The Young Stallions
Rating: 3.8 out of 5 stars
With a twist on the Survivor Series elimination concept, whenever one member from an established tag team got eliminated, both members of that team would be considered eliminated.
There were a lot of ongoing feuds among the competitors, but the two hottest and most hated tag teams in the match had to be Demolition and the Hart Foundation. Both tag teams were heels at the time and had done a number on essentially all of the face teams in the locker room.
The one exception to that was Strike Force, a newly-formed tag team who recently defeated the Hart Foundation for the Tag Team Championship, ending a ten-month reign. So it came as no surprise when Tito Santana landed a quick fall on Boris Zhukov of the Bolsheviks, giving their team an early lead in the Survivor Series match.
After some intense back and forth, Demolition came in and made their presence known when Ax pinned Jacques Rougeau, eliminating the Fabulous Rougeaus. However, the hot-headed duo of Demolition got disqualified a few minutes later when Smash shoved the referee.
The elimination of Demolition gave new life to Team Good Guys, and just as things were looking good, Strike Force got eliminated by Jim Neidhart when he pinned Tito Santana after the assist from Bret Hart.
With the match down to only twelve competitors, the pacing slowed a bit. The period would actually feature some of the best wrestling of the match, and it was the longest span without any eliminations. The most entertaining part was perhaps the end of the elimination drought, when Dynamite Kid got pinned after he attempted to headbutt Haku (never headbutt a Samoan).
Team Bad Guys maintained firm control for a few minutes, really cornering off Jim Powers of the Young Stallions, but in traditional good guy fashion, it only took a blind tag and sunset flip roll-up by Paul Roma on Greg Valentine to send the Dream Team packing.
The team of the Islanders and Hart Foundation didn’t seem concerned, and again they cornered off Paul Roma of the Stallions. Roma inevitably wiggled away from Bret Hart and got to his corner the desperate tag.
Enter Jim Brunzell of the Killer Bees.
The Excellence of Execution transferred his beating of Paul Roma to Jim Brunzell. And it looked like he was going to get the pin, but a dropkick from Tama accidentally clipped Bret Hart in the back of the head. The miscommunication gave Brunzell the opening he needed, and Jim Brunzell PINNED Bret Hart.
Think about that for a minute…
That left the Islanders to fend for themselves against the Young Stallions and the Killer Bees. At first they were able to isolate Jim Brunzell, and, like Bret Hart earlier, they looked like they were en route to eliminating Brunzell and the Killer Bees.
And, like Bret Hart, the Islanders fell victim to the Killer Bees.
The ending was controversial, though, because, get this: B. Brian Blair put on a mask the Killer Bees were know for wearing and got the pin on Tama, even though Blair wasn’t the legal man. Apparently, the mask prevented the ref from realizing that Blair wasn’t Brunzell—the actual legal man—even though Blair himself wasn’t wearing mask.
1987 was a strange year.
Next: The Main Event