REVIEW: Supertape: The Nostalgia Is Running Wild

Welcome to KB’s Old School (and New School) Reviews. I’ve been reviewing wrestling shows for over ten years now and have reviewed over 5,000 shows. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I’ll be posting a new review here on Wrestlingrumors.net, starting today. It could be anything from modern WWE to old school to indies to anything in between. Note that I rate using letters instead of stars and I don’t rate matches under three minutes as really, how good or bad can something that short be?

Supertape 1990
Host: Sean Mooney
Commentators: Tony Schiavone, Lord Alfred Hayes, Ron Trongard, Hillbilly Jim, Gorilla Monsoon, Vince McMahon, Jesse Ventura

This was a series of tapes that WWF released back in the day. I won’t be doing the whole series as a lot of them just flat out suck and there’s no way I’m sitting through all of them in a row. Apparently there are five of them but the fifth is Tuesday in Texas plus about three other matches and I’ve already done that PPV so it’ll just be the other three of them.  This is in essence just a collection of dark matches from TV tapings and house show matches. I remember it being ok so let’s get to it.

The opening package is a different one than I’m used to and feels like something off a Superstars show or something. There’s a clip from Mania V so it’s at least early April of 89. I remember watching this MANY years ago and thinking it was great. Sean is at the WWF Home Video Center which is just a desk. We’re getting a profile on the Bushwackers plus DiBiase vs. Roberts and Santana vs. Rude. I remember all this stuff. Should be fun.

Mr. Perfect vs. Ronnie Garvin

This is a fan favorite match as in a “fan” wanted to see it so they get to see it. Garvin says a lot of things are considered perfect like a bridge or a machine, but he’s the man that breaks down the machine. Perfect says the fan has doomed Ronnie Garvin. Short enough but those worked I guess. This is in Nashville apparently. Genius does a quick poem and it’s time to go. No entrance for Garvin, but that little miscreant doesn’t deserve one anyway.

Since this is just a fan favorite match it’s kind of hard to come up with a story or much to say about it but I’ll do what I can here. Perfect controls to start with a long feeling out process. Tony tries to be funny and fails badly as you would expect him to. Garvin, having no actual talent to speak of, starts throwing punches like a common moron. In case you’ve forgotten, I absolutely cannot stand Ronnie Garvin and will blast him at any time I can.

Perfect is sent to the floor twice as he wonders what he’s gone to deserve to be put into a match like this. We get a quick boxing thing which sends Perfect to the floor for the third time in less than three minutes. Tony Schiavone could not sound more out of place here. Perfect is finally like screw this and wears Garvin out in the corner. Good man Perfect!

Garvin comes back with more punches for two again. Can he do anything else besides that? A splash gets two. Garvin goes for a Sharpshooter (called a reverse figure four) but Perfect gets to the eyes to break it up. A good wrestler would have gotten it on him. Yeah don’t expect any fair commentary on a Garvin match from me. It’s just not happening. His offense has been at least 85% punching.

Sleeper goes on Perfect as somehow this is a huge change of pace that helps a lot. Garvin, like an idiot, lets go of it when he’s almost out to cover Perfect instead for two. Perfect is rammed into all three buckles and the mat for two. In a very sudden ending, Garvin gets a small package and Perfect casually reverses it to get the pin on a small package of his own.

Rating: D. Garvin or no Garvin, this was just bad. There was almost nothing but punches with Perfect being on offense for such a little amount of time. This didn’t really go anywhere due to there being so many punches from Garvin getting very old. It came off as awkward as there was no reason for them to be fighting. That’s not good.

We get a profile on Bobby Heenan which is mainly just an interview. He says that Hogan has a big ego and only cares about Hogan and Warrior has a big ego and only cares about the Warrior. No one ever said Bobby didn’t tell the truth. Ok so they did but he’s right here. He goes on to talk about various guys with little jokes about them that are all of course amusing.

Time for a profile on the Bushwackers, complete with Gene trying to find the place where the Bushwackers say to meet him, allegedly in the middle of New Zealand. They’re basically in a shack which we unfortunately don’t go inside of. They’re cooking buzzard so we’ll go see their debut match against the Bolsheviks in Madison Square Garden.

Bushwackers vs. Bolsheviks

This might be December 30, 1988 as that’s the only date I can find for these teams to be fighting in this arena. The Bushwackers jump the Russians to start and it’s a big brawl. After about a minute and a half of brawling we finally get down to Luke vs. Boris. This is more along the lines of a Sheepherders’ match than the traditional stuff you would see from these guys.

The vast majority of the commentary is talking about how odd the Bushwackers are which is rather true. Trongard can’t figure out who is who here. Basically the Russians can’t get anything going at all. It’s another big brawl as the Bushwackers bite legs. Luke gets in trouble though and the Russians take over for the first time. Volkoff is called the Russian Bear in blatant gimmick infringement by Hayes.

This isn’t going anywhere at all as we’re just waiting on the down under comeback to end it. The Russians here are straight up jobbers which says a lot. Somehow Trongard still can’t tell the Bushwackers apart. They look alike but it’s not like they’re identical. Butch comes in for the save when Luke is double teamed but accidently hits Luke. Luke naturally goes after Butch because that’s just what you do.

Hot tag with no heat at all on it brings in Butch who the announcers call Luke. Everything breaks down again of course and we get the dreaded heel miscommunication to put Volkoff on the floor. The Battering Ram takes down Zhukov, followed by the double stomach breaker and we begin the long awesomeness of the Bushwackers’ undefeated streak! Yeah I’m just trying to fill in space here. Trongard says the Bolsheviks are former tag champions which isn’t true. He was rather irritating on commentary for stupid things like that.

Rating: D+. This was a glorified comedy match but for a debut it was ok. The fans seemed to be into them for the most part so it’s hard to complain about them for the most part. This wasn’t horrible but considering this was more or less the peak of the Bushwackers’ abilities by this point, this wasn’t much at all. Not horrible though.

We see the Bushwackers grilling some buzzard and Gene wants to talk about a match against Brooklyn Brawler and Bad News Brown. Luke says he remembers how good Butch tasted that day. I’m not touching that with a pole as long as 2 Cold Scorpio’s penis.

Bushwackers vs. Bad News Brown/Brooklyn Brawler

The Brawler starts with Butch. There are too many B’s in this match. This is at a Superstars taping that I’m not sure of the date on but I’d assume is in 1989. Butch bites Brawler’s tights. That has to be a rib. I remember the commentary on this match from how many times I watched this tape as a kid. Brown comes in to destroy Luke for a bit. I wonder if he ever got all ticked off over having to do stupid stuff like this.

Luke comes in to beat up the Brawler and bite him on the nose. Hayes can’t figure out which is which either. Why is this so hard, especially when Tony is flat out telling him which is which? Off to Brown now for more dominance by the evildoers. Why is it so hard to grasp: Brawler can’t beat them but Brown can? I guess that’s why they’ll be losing. In a rather odd ending, Brawler gets beaten up and Brown just doesn’t pay attention, allowing the Battering Ram and stomach breaker to end it.

Rating: D. This wasn’t much at all. The ending was kind of stupid as it came off as a way for the Bushwackers to win it without having to beat Brown. That’s fine, but when Brown is more or less a jobber here or at least is on a jobbing team, why in the world shouldn’t they be able to beat him without him just getting distracted? I don’t get that at all. Not a good match at all really.

Gene is liking the food as it’s time for the third and I think final match in the profile.

Bushwackers vs. Powers of Pain

I think this is in Toronto. Barbarian jumps Butch to start which doesn’t work at all for him surprisingly. We get a contradiction as far as the time frame goes as Demolition is listed as champions here despite Heenan earlier saying that the Colossal Connection were champions. And we hit the comedy stuff as we await the beatdown from the monsters.

Apparently the Bushwackers don’t care about winning or losing, according to Gorilla. Then why are they wrestling here? A bearhug gets Warlord nowhere. The heels work over Butch for a good while as you can definitely tell this is house show filler. There’s the tag to Luke and everything falls apart with Battering Rams all around. Fuji throws in the cane, the referee sees it, match over via DQ.

Rating: D-. I have no idea why this warranted inclusion and the match was awful to put it mildly. Allegedly the Powers would get a title shot if they won. Why in the world would that be the case? This was rather stupid and went nowhere at all. I don’t even remember the match and it ended only a few seconds ago. That should sums things up rather well I’d think.

Gene morphs into a Bushwacker in an amusing segment.

We’re going to take a look at some holds and their names. More or less it’s breaking things down like you would see on a sports analysis show. The subjects today are the Rockers. We see a clip of maybe ten seconds or so with the Rockers beating up some jobbers and Hayes walks us through the move names. This isn’t much now, but for a kid this would be awesome stuff so the audience is quite clear. In a funny bit one of the jobbers tries to jump Shawn and all Shawn does to fight him off is STARE at him. That’s kind of awesome.

And now we do the same thing with Jimmy Snuka. That splash is still gorgeous.

Rick Rude vs. Tito Santana

This should be good. Back in MSG again. Wait according to Trongard this is Boston. It looks like Boston so we’ll go with that. We start with a test of strength that is more or less a tossup. Tito eventually wins it and then wants a rematch when Rude runs. Rude takes the chance to of course cheat and we finally get to a more traditional match.

Rude is cussing a good deal in this one. Tito works on the back as this is very back and forth stuff. After a long camel clutch by Tito, Rude treats him like Arn Anderson and spins over to drive his knees into Tito’s crotch to take over. This has somehow been going on nearly ten minutes. The time has flown by which is good I think as it hasn’t been boring at all.

We’ve had a lot of rest/time killing holds and we get another hear with the chinlock by Rude. Tito fights to his feet and rams him into the corner but runs into a big boot to take care of that. Rude pounds away but Tito rams his head into the mat to take over again. Solid stuff so far. And there’s another pair of knees to Tito’s lower half. That has to be getting old.

Tito blocks a suplex to get one of his own. Due to this, Rude can’t even get a slam on Tito who isn’t an incredibly big guy in the first place. Crowd is WAY into this. Tito is all fired up and hits the head knocker and it’s Figure Four time! So much for that though as the rope is reached maybe 4 seconds later. In a cheap ending, Tito hits the floor and goes for a sunset flip but Rude grabs the rope for the pin.

Rating: B. This was a better grade before the bad ending. They went back and forth the whole match and it worked well the entire time. The ending felt incomplete for lack of a better term. Both guys were great here though and the back work by Santana worked rather well for a change. Solid old school match that had the time to develop which is always a perk.

Ted DiBiase vs. Jake Roberts

In MSG for sure this time. This was one of the hottest feuds in the company at the time so finding a match on here isn’t surprising at all. Feeling out process to start as DiBiase tries to hide in the corner but the snake is there so he runs away in a funny bit. Alfred gets into the always confusing area of how much money Ted actually has, as if the belt is a million dollars how much could he have otherwise?

I love the way Roberts throws punches for some reason. DiBiase hits the floor to take a break. We hit the test of strength which is one that’s hard to predict as neither are known for power at all. Alfred tries to figure out where a clearly Asian photographer is from, suggesting Greece. Neither guy wins the test of strength and DiBiase runs again at the threat of a DDT.

Hayes is getting annoying and very fast at that. DDT attempt again is avoided. Jake follows him to the floor and gets caught as he gets back in to take over for the first time in the match so far. How has this been going on nearly ten minutes now? That has flown by to put it mildly.

DiBiase beats the tar out of Jake for a good while which is something he’s always been good at. And we hit the chinlock to prove that this is in fact an 80s house show match. They break it up and then go right back to it. Chinlock teases. They get back up again and there’s the Million Dollar Dream but Jake gets his foot on the rope.

Jake gets a boot up into Ted’s face and we’re back to even. Here comes Jake with his basic ending sequence as he hits the short arm clothesline. DDT is blocked AGAIN and Virgil yells at Jake for a bit. Out of NOWHERE, Jake gets a rollup to get the pin.

Rating: C+. Long match here at over sixteen minutes but at the same time it had a lot of boring spots to it, like the chinlock and the constant running away by DiBiase. It’s still entertaining for the most part though and didn’t feel that long in the slightest which is almost always a good thing. Not a great match but not bad at all really.

Post match the heels beat up our hero until the reptile makes the save. The amusing thing is that the snake wasn’t out of the bag when the heels ran. Virgil gets caught and the beatdown is not on as DiBiase gets Virgil out of there.

We get a segment of fan interviews about what’s on their mind and all that jazz. Hogan is awesome apparently. This goes on for like five minutes and is very boring.

Tugboat Thomas vs. Iron Mike Sharpe

This is Tugboat’s debut. It’s also apparently from the pages of the WWF Magazine. Really? It seems to me to be from an arena that looks like Nashville, Tennessee. I think I smell a squash coming here. Sharpe runs into him and gets nothing. Vince and Jesse more or less spend the match talking about how big he is. Sharpe can’t get anything going other than jobber offense and the splash ends it in like three minutes. Total squash so no rating.

The main event is a match I’ve done before so here’s a cut and paste review since I don’t want to do it twice.

Hulk Hogan/Brutus Beefcake vs. Randy Savage/Zeus

We start with Sean giving a very brief introduction, saying that this is a real challenge to Hulkamania etc. This was in Nashville at a Wrestling Challenge taping in December of 1989 with the PPV on December 27. The heels are already in the ring when we start this up, which can’t be a good sign. Hogan is world champion here. Your commentators are Vince and Jesse. Hogan brings his own chain to lock the cage. That’s just odd.

Beefcake gets in first but as Hogan is getting in, Sherri slams the door on him so it’s 2-1. Savage grabs Hogan to hold him on the ground. The referee runs over to help him, despite having no actual authority here. As he’s doing this, Sherri locks the door so Beefcake is stuck. However it’s the late 80s so we have to make this completely pointless to close out the decade, so Hogan gets loose and climbs in about a minute later.

Beefcake is down now though, so I guess there was at least a thought there. The cage is moving a lot, which is a flaw of the old school kind. The faces are all of a sudden dominating. Dang Hogan liked raking men’s skin. He did that a lot. However, Zeus rams both guys’ heads into the cage to turn it around for the second time in less than four minutes. The rules here are both guys have to get out to win. There’s no pins or submissions.

Savage nearly gets out but Beefcake makes the save. I really think Brutus was underrated as a worker. He suffered from having his career turned upside down by the face injury and some of the absolute dumbest gimmicks of all time. Savage and Zeus are completely dominating here. They both try to go up though and the faces make the saves and here’s your comeback.

All four are down after a quadruple cage shot. For no apparent reason, the referee opens the cage, and Sherri slams the door on his head in one of the SICKEST sounding things I’ve ever heard. I mean there was a thud when that door hit him. Despite it being no holds barred, we need to keep the official out of the way. Sherri slips Savage the chain. In a laugh out loud moment, Jesse says Vince has no authority here. I love lines like that.

Savage jumps off the top of the cage with the chain around his hand but misses Beefcake and here come your faces again. A chain shot takes Savage down but of course doesn’t knock him out. You’d be amazed how immune to pain cocaine can make you. Zeus pounds on Hulk. I’ll give you two guesses as to how that goes for him. Beefcake gets up the cage after knocking Savage off and does this big celebration before leaving. Thanks for leaving your partner you freaking traitor.

He pulls Savage out. So let me get this straight: Beefcake leaves Hogan and then tries to help the other team win. What kind of a freaking excuse for a friend is he? What’s next: joining the heel stable as a completely over the top character that can only say two words and apparently losing his calling as a barber? Good grief I love wrestling. Only in wrestling could that even resemble making sense. Four cage shots leads to three leg drops. WOW he must have hated Zeus.

Three Hogan leg drops is equal to the combined power of the militaries of Bolivia and the Death Star. Wait, Hogan gets the pin? There were no pins mentioned before. At least the 80s are going out in style: a short cage match with over the top characters and rules that are changed on the fly. Jesse’s line of “I don’t believe it he did it again” cracks me up.

Rating: B-. This was literally just a match at a TV taping that was thrown on at the end, so what do you expect from it? It’s about ten minutes long and exactly what you would expect it to be. It’s nothing great but it sent the fans home happy and ended Hogan vs. Zeus so there we go. It did what it was supposed to do also: gave the people a reason to buy the movie. This was perfectly fine.

Overall Rating: C. This is the definition of a mixed bag. Some stuff on here is good but some stuff on here is pure head scratch material. The second half is much better than the first, but this is about as thrown together as you could get. It’s ok, but I wouldn’t really recommend it for anyone other than truly hardcore fans, merely due to the randomness of it.

Thomas Hall has been a wrestling fan for over thirty years and has seen over 50,000 wrestling matches. He has also been a wrestling reviewer since 2009 with over 5,000 full shows covered. You can find his work at kbwrestlingreviews.com, or check out his- Amazon author page with 30 wrestling books. Get the latest and greatest in professional wrestling news by signing up for our daily email newsletter. Just look below for “GET EXCLUSIVE UPDATES” to sign up. Thank you for reading!