Wrestlemania 3 Review

I have developed a scoring card to give the most accurate star rating for my reviews. For the most part I think they are pretty accurate:


5 Star Match= A 3.0 star IMDB rating
4 1/2 Stars Match= A 2.5 star IMDB rating
4 stars Match= A 2.0 star IMDB rating
3 1/2 stars Match= A 1.5 star IMDB rating
3 stars Match= A 1.0 star IMDB rating
2 1/2 stars Match= A .7 star IMDB rating
2 star match= A .5 star IMDB rating
1 1/2 star match= A .3 star IMDB rating
1 star match = A .2 star IMDB rating
1/2 star match = A .1 star IMDB rating
Dud= A O IMDB rating



Tonight we review Wrestlemania 3. Pontiac Silverdome. WWF said they set a attendance record of 93,173. But most fans argue it was around 70,000. I have a book called total football and they list the attendance record for Superbowl 16 at the Pontiac Silverdome between the 49rs and the Bengals was 81,270. There must have been more than 70,000 at WM3 only 5 years later. Anyway onto the review.

Match 1: Can-Am Connection Vs Don Murraco and Bob Orton Jr: Muracco and Orton were having trouble at this point and Murraco would make his face turn shortly after this event. Decent opener a little short. Can Am gets the win at the 5:34 mark.
2 Stars

Match 2: Hercules Vs Jack Haynes: The battle of the full nelsons, alot of heavy hitting between both guys, match ends at 7:33 in a double countout. Hercules busts Haynes open with a chain after the match 1 1/2 stars

Match 3: Hillbilly Jim, Little Beaver, and Haiti Kid Vs King Kong Bundy, Lord Littlebrook and Little Tokyo: Boring short match. A good time to make a sandwitch. Best moment, when Bundy squashes Little Beaver. Hillbilly's team wins by DQ at 4:01. 1/2 star.

Match 4: Harley Race VS Junkyard Dog: Loser bows to the winner. JYD knocks Race all over the place for two minutes until JYD gets distracted and Race hit's a belly to belly suplex for the pin at the 2:03 mark. JYD beats up Race after the match. 1 star.

Match 5: Dreamteam Vs Rougeus: Another short match. Brutus misses and hit's Valentine by mistake and the Rougeus set Valentine up and deliver their finisher. Dino Bravo interferes and nails one of the Rougeus and pulls Valentine over for the pin. Dreamteam gets the win at the 4:01 mark and leave Brutus behind for messing up I guess. 1 star.

Match 6: Farwell Match, Rowdy Roddy Piper Vs Adrian Adonis. Pipers retirement match. Yeah right. Piper get's the biggest cheer of the night. Starts the match by whipping Adonis with his belt. Adonis hit's a stiff clothesline at one point. Adonis puts on good night irene and let's go before piper's hand drops the third time thinking he won. What an idiot. Brutus comes in and wake's up Piper who put's the sleeper on Adonis for the win at 6:12. Brutus get's revenge and cuts Adonis's hair for cutting his hair accidently in a recent tag match. It was a short match but most entertaining so far. 2 1/2 stars.

Match 7: Danny Davis and the Tag Champs Hart Foundation Vs Tito Santana and the British Bulldogs. Danny Davis has turned heel after screwing the Bulldogs out of their tag titles for the Hart Foundation. Pretty good six man tag. Davyboy beats the crap out of Davis first giving him a tombstone piledriver then the running powerslam. Davis uses Jimmy Harts megaphone to knockout Dynamite kid for the pin at the 9:15. Crowd is not pleased. 2 1/2 stars.

Match 8: Koko B Ware Vs Butch Reed. Koko uses his speed and does most of the offense in this one. But Butch Reed catches him in the air and rolls him over while grabbing the tights to get the pin at 3:43. Tito comes down to ringside and argues then beats up Slick and tears off his crappy looking suit. 1 1/2 stars

Match 9: IC Championship Match, Machoman Randy Savage Vs Ricky Steamboat. Savage sidelined Steamboat for a couple of weeks when he came off the top turnbuckle and rammed Steamboats throat into the guardrail. Steamboat came back and has chases Savage all over for this match. Very quick match. Both guys using speed and counters. Steamboat uses his arm drags and Savage uses his speedy maneuvers and aerial tactics. One part that gets the crowd going is when they go for 3 or 4 pins in 30 seconds. Jesse Ventura is yelling about Steamboat not playing fair. During one of the scuffles the ref gets plowed over and knocked out. Savage goes for the big elbow and hits it but there isn't a ref to make the count. He goes outside for the timekeepers bell and tries to use it. George Steele grabs it from him and gets kicked in the head. Savage takes the bell up to the top rope and is going to nail steamboat. Steele pushes him off and he takes a tumbling fall onto the mat. Savage recovers and picks up Steamboat for a slam but Steamboat cradles into a small package and the win for the title in 14:16 and the crowd goes nuts as he celebrates. A devastated Savage leaves the arena with Elizabeth. The best Wrestlemania match in history at this point.
This is a touchy subject but having been a fan for 14 and a half years and seeing all kinds of awesome matches I give this match a solid 4 1/2 out of 5 stars. Most think this is blasthomy and it should be given a solid 5. The only reason I don't give it a solid 5 is I knocked off half a star for George Steele's interference and because as intense as it was it felt a little short. Another five minutes would have changed that I think. A great match nontheless. One Steamboat match I liked more than this was Wrestle War 89 when he defended and lost the title to Ric Flair. He lost it in the same fashion as Savage but it was twice as long and it was clean right down the middle.

Match 10: Jake The Snake Roberts Vs The *beep* Tonk Man: Jake has just turned face after *beep* blasted him with a guitar on the snake pit. Jake comes out with Alice Cooper and attacks *beep* as he tries to get in the ring and controls most of the match. *beep* has Jake in the corner but catches a vicious inverted atomic drop out of the corner. Jake starts to make a comeback but Jimmy Hart grabs his leg to distract him. *beep* scoops the legs and holds onto the ropes for leverage to get the pin in 7:18. That has been a popular move. Someone has used that same move each year at mania. Jake is pissed and so are the fans. He grabs the guitar and takes a wild swing at *beep* but misses and it explodes on the ringpost. *beep* takes off leaving Jimmy Hart to get traumatized by Damion. A fun match 2 stars.

Match 11: Nikolai Volkoff and The Iron Sheik Vs The Killer Bees. Pretty Standard tag match. Volkoff tries to sing the Soviet National Anthem. Hacksaw Jim Duggan runs in and the crowd goes nuts. Usual tag stuff. Iron Sheik gets the camel clutch on B Brian Blair. Hacksaw is chasing the heels and sees the opportunity and smacks Sheik with the 2X4. Drawing a DQ at 5:39. Eh I give it 2 stars.

Match 12: The Main Event for the world title. Hulk Hogan Vs Andre The giant. The video has about 15 minutes of buildup before the actual match showing everything that led to this. Hogan has been champ for 3 years. Andre has been undefeated for 15 years. Although technically that's not true. I think they meant he had never been pinned clean, I know he lost battle royale's DQ's and Countout's.

Crowd is eating it up as both men stare eachother down. Hogan tries for an early slam and collapses Andre covers and Hogan barely kicks out. This would draw controversy for months because alot of people thought he got the pin. Andre chops kicks and headbutts and clubs Hogan around for 3 to 5 minutes. Hogan tries a comeback but catches a big boot. The action goes outside the ring where Andre tries to headbutt Hogan but instead headbutts the ring post. Action goes back into the ring. Hogan starts to hulk up. Three punches stagger Andre and a running clothesline knocks him down. Bobby Heenan is going berzerk. Andre gets up and staggers to the middle of the ring. Hogan scoops him and slams him. You should see all the cameras in the arena going off at this point. I haven't seen that many cameras go off at once since then. Crowd loses it. Hogan gets the legdrop and the pin in 11:48 to retain the title. Crowd is estatic. Andre is leaving on the motor cart vowing to get another shot. Heenan looks heartbroken. Hogan poses to end the show. Most will agree it was a sloppy match. 2 stars if you are going just on wrestling ability But I give it 2 1/2 stars just because it had such buildup and that feeling of something that comes along once in a lifetime.

Best wrestlemania so far. Most of the matches were way too short. Overall I gave the event 7.1 stars out of 10. An improvement. Wrestlemania is gaining momentum. Besides the World title and IC title matches most of the stuff was filler, or too short. Except for Jake Vs Honke the 6 man tag and Piper Vs Adonis which came accross as pretty good. The rest was not very good. Too short.

Best Match: Machoman Randy Savage Vs Steamboat (Duh)
Worst Match: No Dud this year but the Hillbilly and Midgets Vs Bundy and midgets takes the place of worst match.


So we have reviewed the first three manias here are the results.

WM3 7.1 stars
WM2 4.8 stars
WM1 4.1 stars

Tomorrow we go onto WM4 at Trump Plaza.