[1990-04-28-WWF-Saturday Night's Main Event] Hart Foundation vs Rockers

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Were they thinking about turning the Harts heel for the Demolition feud at first? The pre-match promo sure plays like it. Really strong match. They cut a really quick pace. It's amazing they got all of this plus a pre-match promo and a post-match brawl involving all three teams into 12 minutes. There's not much to appreciate about this match beyond the surface, but that's not really what they're going for anyway. For an SNME sprint, this is very well done.

[PeteF3]

Weird that the Harts are still high-fiving the fans after such a blatantly heel interview, especially with Jesse praising them. Quick sprint with some particularly good use of the typical Anvil spots, all of which look absolutely deadly when the Rockers are selling for them. Demolition tries to act as lumberjacks when people get thrown from the ring and that breaks down into a 3-way brawl. Have to agree with Jesse that they pretty much ruined things. This is also a testament to how absurdly stacked the tag roster in particular and the full roster in general were in favor of the babyfaces--you had all 3 of these teams and the heel side was basically the Orient Express and Rhythm & Blues. Somebody had to be turned.

[soup23]

Shitty ending aside I loved this. Anvil looked like a monster with the way the Rockers were bumping off his power moves and the Harts worked an awesome control section that made me clamor for them to turn heel. Really good match in WWF 1990 standards that was at least given some time before it broke down with Demolition interfering.

[shoe]

The finish was blah, but the work here was real good. Both teams clicked well with one another. I liked the 50/50 stuff early. Then switching up of the spots. Anvil as the powerhouse was cool.

[Dooley]

I don't know if the idea was to turn the Harts or just establish them as the "de facto" heels for the match against the smaller Rockers. Either way, I echo the praise as this match was a lot of fun and it's too bad the rope broke later in the year as I would have loved to have seen Harts-Rockers 2/3 falls.

[Kevin Ridge]

Good action to start. Harts using quick tags and bending the rules slightly as Jesse says. Here’s Demolition at ringside to scout both teams I presume. Has Bret ever hit his middle rope elbow drop? Similar to the Dibiase version that never connects. Demolition end up getting involved trying to get Michaels back in the ring. Match ends as disqualification. Was going pretty good until the finish.

[Cox]

Fun tag team match. It's weird that the Harts, in line to get tag team title matches around the horn with Demolition, can't beat the Rockers, who lost to the Orient Express at Wrestlemania, but the WWF pecking order doesn't always make sense.

[Superstar Sleeze]

The Rockers vs Hart Foundation SNME 4/90

 

They basically work the sprint version of their MSG match, which hurts the feel of the match a lot. They are literally doing the same spots as the ones. If I am calling out Marty doing a drop toehold that's pretty pathetic. I had seen this match before because it was on the Bret Hart DVD and I always really like it, but now seeing the "complete" match from MSG, this took a huge hit from me. Since they are trying to get all the spots in, the match loses that tension that was building in the MSG match. Instead, they are just transitioning between spots with no breathe. Bret's sliding knee no longer feels like the climax to a great opening act to the match, but rather just another move. Now if they constructed new spots and created a new match for their sprint then I would judge it on its merits. Instead, it is just the clipped down version of the MSG match. For example, Rockers/Busters matches for the most part seemed unique. Of course, the big change in this match and the MSG match is the appearance of Demolition. Bret gets distracted first and Shawn dropkicks Bret to the outside and Demolition acts like lumberjacks. Marty's hot tag is pretty much the same though Anvils misses his slingshot splash here instead of the heat segment. They do the Anvil tossing Shawn onto outside when he kicks out as the spot to lead to Demolition getting involved. They look to send Shawn back in, but Marty, ever the hot-head, punches Ax. The match breaks down into a melee.

 

Having seen the "full" version, this match seems like a let-down. As a sprint, it is fun because they cram a ridiculous amount of spots into the match, but less is more in this situation. I would put this firmly behind the Rockers/ Busters SNME sprint.

[garretta]

Much better than the typical WWF face/face matches, which feature boring "scientific" exchanges for 90% of the match, then a half-hearted brawl that leads to a no-contest of some sort. Here, both teams are working hard, and it truly feels like a back and forth match, with the Harts looking better here than at any time since their turn. Then Demolition comes down, and the focus changes to them and doesn't leave, I get that they're trying to build a three-way feud here, but it wouldn't have hurt to have a decision (not necessarily a pinfall, but some kind of decision) in this match before the big brawl started. As it was, it just seemed that this bout was put on the card to give the Demos an excuse to do a run-in, and it deserved more.

 

We're left to wonder if it would have been the Harts who turned if it wasn't for Ax's illness and the signing of the Road Warriors. Face Demos vs. heel Harts would have been tremendous. So would face Demos vs. heel Rockers, come to think of it. As Pete said, one of the big face teams had to turn soon to make way for the LOD. The Demos were the obvious choice under the circumstances that prevailed, but not necessarily the only choice.

 

This match directly set up a Demos/Rockers tag title match on the next SNME, which aired in July. By then, Crush had arrived, and the Demos were almost full-fledged heels.

[drew wardlaw]

Cool fast paced match here. Lots of back and forth, with a simple story. This stuff is cool to see in 1990 wwf context, it really stands out among the big man matches.

[dawho5]

Harts with a heel promo before the match? Not heels during except for the apron knee from Bret. Good, fast-paced tag. Demolition being at ringside ruins everything at the end. So all of these teams are babyfaces? That seems like some bad planning.

[flyonthewall2983]

I wonder if it was Bill Eadie's health problems that made Demolition turn as opposed to the Harts. A Hart Foundation heel turn in 1990 would have made things interesting for Bret's singles run the year after, if it happened at all after that. Bret and Jim in a feud with the incoming Legion of Doom could have had way more potential than nearly any program they were in the whole time there (definitely in their later run for the company).