[1992-11-14-WWF-Saturday Night's Main Event] Shawn Michaels vs Davey Boy Smith

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Shawn wins the IC title in a surprisingly fun match. The audio is peppered, but considering how hard they worked to get over Davey Boy, this is a big loss for the WWF. Still, yet again, the WWF is in transition. It's a shame it took a business downturn for Bret and Shawn to get an opportunity, as it may have worked better had they experimented with it when business was good.

[Strummer]

I didn't like that Vince kept saying Davey Boy was going to win because it obviously gave away the finish. I had just turned 13 at this time and I knew Shawn was winning as soon as Vince started in. I was a Shawn fan though so I was psyched

 

Bobby was pretty good here. Yes he tells some election jokes and stuff about Larry Bird's recent retirement but he puts over Shawn pretty well enough

 

very sad ending to Davey Boy's 2nd WWF run

[Tim Evans]

This was better than the last time I watched this match. Shawn and Bulldog takes some nice bumps. I'm surprised Vince didn't bury Bulldog more.

[shoe]

I thought this was a pretty fun match with a good story and a lot of energy. I thought this would be a fair comp to the Windham/Rude bout. More flashy than that one, but not as gritty. I liked the Rude bout slightly better. In both bouts their is some nice back work.

[BackToBionic]

I remember being really surprised when I was like 9, but I was at a friend's house with like 3 other kids roughly my age so we probably wouldn't have been paying attention to commentary even if I had been old enough to catch on.

[Kevin Ridge]

Pretty clean win for a heel at like Michaels at the time. But quite the turnover for wrestlers in WWF in 92. Hogan, Warrior, Piper, Von Erich, Sid, Slaughter, Iron Sheik, Haku, Barbarian, Roberts, Smith, Road Warriors all leaving. Guess guys like Valentine, Volkoff too. Probably others. Know some of them returned but got to be one of those years where a organization lost a lot of it's stars.

[PeteF3]

It's been fun to see certain trends that have been (by sheer coincidence) popping up on various TV shows all at once on these Yearbooks. We had Racism Week in 1990, conflicting tag partners earlier this year, and now both of the Big Two are expressing a fetish for matches centered around injured backs. This is as complete of a Shawn singles match as we've seen, as he bumps great and even shows off some fresh offense. In a very weak year for the WWF this is probably the best match to air on free TV.

[WingedEagle]

This was much more fun than I recalled and a pretty great performance from HBK considering who he was working with. The heat here was pretty great, unless it was piped in and I missed it, as they didn't look as hot as they sounded. He mastered the role in '97, but Michaels was such a great heel here with his facials. Solid focus on DBS' back leading into a logical finish.

 

***1/2

[garretta]

I liked the fact that this was a relatively clean title switch, which seldom happens at this time for a heel. Yes, Shawn took the pad off the turnbuckle to set things up, but the actual move that led to the pinfall was clean. Shawn looked pretty good working Davey's back throughout the match, and they did a great job of setting Shawn up as a crafty opportunist type. The HBK character is really progressing well in general this year, and Shawn's perfect for it.

 

Davey seemed to move well here, and it's a shame that this is it for him in this run. When he came back, even though he was more successful, I don't remember him being nearly this good athletically. He's not quite what he was during the Bulldogs' prime, but he can still get it done.

 

The crowd was way too loud to be real here. It was so bad at times that I could barely hear Vince even at the top of his lungs, and that takes some doing.

 

Speaking of whom, this was a typical performance from him, although I was pleasantly surprised to hear him utter the words "hiplock" and "short-arm scissors", especially the latter. But his screaming was just as intolerable as ever, and thank God Heenan was there to call him out on "ONE, TWO, THREE.....HE GOT HIM! YES HE DID, AND DON'T YOU DARE SAY DIFFERENTLY!", which he tried twice.

 

Overall, though, the Brain disappointed me. It may have been in character for him not to know who Larry Bird was, but you'd think his real-life native Hoosier pride would shine through for even a brief moment. The "Hoosier/Who's Here?" bit was even worse, although that was mostly because Vince growled "Stop it!" rather than play along. Vince, if you're going to have a comedian in the booth (and that's what Heenan is, association with Flair and Hall aside), you either need to work with him or find someone other than Gino who will. It's not like you give a damn about the matches in the ring anyway, so play straight man for Bobby and be thankful you still have him, at least for now. I didn't really catch the jokes about President Bush due to the bad audio.

 

Interestingly enough, Shawn wasn't supposed to challenge Bret at Survivor Series; according to Wikipedia, they wanted Jake Roberts to return and take that spot, but couldn't sign him. The Davey-Jacques match that was hyped here obviously never happened either, since Davey had been fired. Davey-Jacques was no loss, but as hot as Jake was in WCW before he left, I think he and Bret could have had a really good match. I might have even considered putting the belt on Jake if that's what it would have taken to bring him in, with the proviso that he gets one strike and one strike only as far as drugs and booze.

[Beast]

Michaels and Bulldog had better chemistry than Michaels and Bret. Davey looks amazing here and the power vs speed dynamic is well done. Heenan points out that Bulldog may be just as fast as Michaels, which may be an overstatement, but he certainly keeps pace with Michaels here.

Interesting thing is that on both syndicated shows that aired the morning before this show, each of these guys had a feature match.

On Superstars, Bulldog made his last IC defense against Repo Man.

On Challenge Michaels beat Bossman (by countout when Nailz distracted Bossman) in a match that may have been just as fun as the Bulldog one had it gotten more than 4 minutes. There are moments in the Bossman match that are so crisp and well done that it's a damn shame they didn't interact more. Bossman, like Bulldog, was able to combine power with technique and would have been a strong challenger for Michaels years later with the roles reversed. 

For locations that aired Challenge on Sunday, the Bossman match was replaced by the SNME Bulldog match as something that happened the night before. Luckily, the 11/14 version is on Youtube. Another fun note is that Perfect mocks Bulldog during the Repo match for wrestling so soon before his major title defense, claiming he's guaranteed to lose. Yet on Challenge Heenan praises Michaels for doing the same thing, saying it proves what a top competitor he is.

[cactus]

Bulldog puts in a better performance than the one he had when he faced Bret at Wembley. This was a super fun sprint that gives us Michael's first singles title and it's Bulldog's last WWF match for a few years. 

★★★½