[1990-05-26-WWF-Superstars] Brother Love: Hulk Hogan & Earthquake

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Hulk Hogan and Earthquake are both special guests of the Brother Love show. Hogan's bring-it-on acting really gave away that it would just be Jimmy Hart coming out. Jimmy Hart says Earthquake isn't here because of a 105-degree fever. It's all a distraction, as Earthquake lays Hogan out from behind with a chair and gives him some really terrible-looking splashes a few times in a row, which is enough to sideline Hogan for the summer to film Suburban Commando, and set up a big Hogan/Earthquake match at Summerslam.

[Strummer]

Even with Hogan out Vince was able to make money with those damn bracelets. From what I recall they actually really did sell a whole bunch of them.

 

This was an effective segment that the core WWF audience really bought into

[PeteF3]

There's a really weird thing at the beginning with Vince & Jesse leaving the booth to "get a bird's eye view" of the show. Was there a shot of an empty booth that they had to explain away after the fact or what? Vince just didn't want to announce over the big angle?

 

Hogan threatens Jimmy Hart when Earthquake doesn't initially appear, until he gets dropped from behind by a chair and hit with three Earthquake splashes. Hogan gets stretchered out and here we get Vince to berate the officials.

 

This was an unbelievably rushed segment that came off VERY "off" for some reason, especially by the high standards set by the WWF production crew. The effectiveness of the angle is more to the credit of the marketing after the fact than it was in the actual execution, if that makes any sense. I don't know if the Hogan "retirement" video shows up on this set (the one with the stringed dirge version of Real American) but that did far more to get the angle across than the actual attack did.

[soup23]

Well I can't be partial to this because this is my first wrestling memory as a near 4 year old boy. In fact this is one of my first memories in life period. I still thought the angle looked good and Hogan selled it well with nice touches like Vince being out there added.

[Loss]

I just realized the 105-degree fever line was probably a subtle WWF attempt at trying to "top" Luger's fever at Capital Combat.

[PeteF3]

A dedicated Montreal conspiracy theorist could see it as a pre-emptive strike against Bret Hart and his 104-degree fever.

[Kevin Ridge]

Brother Love show with special guest Hogan and Earthquake. Jimmy Hart shows up in place of Eathquake who is sick. Jimmy calls Hogan a has been. Here’s Earthquake! With a chair too. Earthquake splash! And another. Brother Love is really enjoying all this and I’m loving just watching his facials the whole time. It’s him getting back Hogan for all the previous crap. Earthquake squishes Hogan once more. Pat Patterson is not wearing his white sneakers. Cause Vince is!

[Cox]

I just realized the 105-degree fever line was probably a subtle WWF attempt at trying to "top" Luger's fever at Capital Combat.

As funny as that would be, this was recorded on April 23, almost a month before Capital Combat, so unless somebody in the WWF front office could see the future, I doubt that would be the case. Besides, if somebody in the WWF front office could see the future, they should have been putting it to much better use than making fun of Lex Luger, like trying to make sure the WBF never happened.

 

This was my first Hulk Hogan injury angle as a kid, so it has a little bit of nostalgia value for me. That said, I had no idea the segment was this short...I remembered it being longer, maybe because of how well the WWF sold the angle in post production for the next several weeks. So while this actual angle isn't much, the WWF did a pretty good job of making chicken salad out of chicken shit, and made Earthquake look like a monster.

[garretta]

I'm wondering if something went seriously wrong here, or more accurately several things.

 

First of all, the announcing was done in Stamford by then, so the "bird's eye view" stuff was a cover story for seeing Vince on camera when he'd have no real reason to be otherwise. You notice that we don't see Jesse at all, and you'd think he'd have been lurking somewhere to laugh at Hogan being injured.

 

Second, Quake's entrance felt like it came too soon. Hogan and Hart barely said anything, and Brother Love said nothing, before he came out and laid Hogan out with the chair. (Since when does one rather weak chair shot to the back, even from behind, lay Hogan out? He's taken harder shots than that dozens of times.)

 

Third, the splashes were absolutely awful. The first one was almost a total miss, and you can tell it's a miss on camera. The second was okay, but if you watch the third one closely, Hogan has to grab the back of Quake's singlet and hold on, like Quake was going to get up before the camera could really show the impact of the splash.

 

Last, I know that the officials were wired so that the fans could hear their conversation as Hogan was being stretchered out, but the lifting sequence took far too long and looked amateurish, to say the least. That could be one reason why "announcer" Vince forgets himself and screams "GET HIM OUTTA HERE!"; Hogan, to his credit, sells away, making sure to gasp and cough loudly enough so that the camera can pick it up.

 

Why didn't they redo it at the Challenge taping the next day? They couldn't, because guess which match was the dark main event? You got it, Hogan vs. Quake (which Hogan won by DQ). This was their one and only chance, and it was a disaster, natural and otherwise.

 

To add another wrinkle, according to a poster at Kayfabe Memories, they'd actually shot the angle at the previous taping, with Hogan accepting a challenge for Quake to do pushups on his back, then Quake laying him out. So that makes one version of the angle already scrapped, plus another one with all kinds of mistakes. No wonder Vince was pissed off.

[Dooley]

This actually didn't play well in real time but kudos to WWF's production team because the video montage that came from it was almost note-perfect and really got people into the angle.

[GSR]

This week Brother Love has not one guest, but two and the first is Hulk Hogan. The Hulkster joins him but before he can say anything Love cuts him off and says that his second guest is the Earthquake. His music plays but no sign of Earthquake and Jimmy Hart makes his way out to the set on his own. Hogan wonders where Earthquake is at? He doesn’t feel the tremors and doesn’t feel the ground opening up and swallowing all his Hulkamaniacs. Hart says that the Earthquake isn’t here due to doctors’ orders; he’s got a 105 degree temperature and a severe case of the sore throat! Hogan grabs Hart by the jacket and tells him if he doesn’t get the Earthquake out here right now he’ll be the only natural disaster! Hart tells him to keep his hands off him, and then from the back comes a chair wielding Earthquake which he nails Hogan in the back with. He puts his foot on his chest and cups his ear a la Hogan, before delivering three Earthquake splashes. A bunch of referees and officials try to get Hart and Earthquake out of there and call for someone to get a paramedic. A stretcher comes and they cut to a shot of the crowd with everyone looking concerned about what has happened. Vince McMahon is even out there and Hogan is put on the stretcher with Vince screaming to get him out of there.

 

This was a strong angle and a heck of an attempt to get Earthquake over. I’m not sure what the situation with blood was at this time, but a trickle of blood from the mouth would’ve done wonders here, especially as it was clear Earthquake was greatly protecting Hogan when delivering those splashes. Having Vince down there in the chaotic scenes certainly added to the spectacle, and the shots of the crowd let you know that they had believed what they had just seen and were worried.

[JRH]

If you watch the full episode, the segments after (there's two more squashes after this segment) are really interesting as Jesse commentates the next match alone, then Vince comes out acting incredibly somber and low key and Jesse browbeats him for getting involved during the final match. They rarely had the commentary take a backseat to the main angle, at least not for that long.