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[1990-07-28-WWF-Saturday Night's Main Event] Rick Rude vs Ultimate Warrior


Loss

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  • 2 months later...

This is a good match, but after two months of training vignettes and a haircut, I felt like Rude doing his typical selling on the atomic drop and otherwise being schooled in the first few minutes just made it all seem pointless. They did all that work to make Rude seem like a serious top guy and there was no real difference in the way he worked to go with it. All of that said, Rude had a way of bringing out the best in Warrior and this is another example of that. I always pop for anyone applying a sleeper while piggybacking the victim. Rude throws some great punches when Warrior starts teasing a comeback and Warrior's Rude Awakening block is always one of my favorite spots in their matches. Rude kicking him in the gut and delivering the neckbreaker just after Warrior powered out also made me pop. And check out Rude's rapid bumping off of the clotheslines. Heenan takes a few lumps after saving Rude at the end, and Warrior takes the match by countout. Why? Bad booking aside, and ignoring that this match did nothing to make Rude seem like a threat at Summerslam, Rude gives a fantastic performance here, and Warrior is perfectly fine as well. I'll take this over Hogan/Warrior any day of the week.

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  • 2 weeks later...

More animal analogies in the green-screen promos. As forced as some of this was it actually forces the Warrior into focusing on-point. And it's better than having Okerlund involved.

 

There's a whole lot about this feud that I don't get at all. There's a cage match already signed for SummerSlam that isn't mentioned once. The WWF was always about what was happening NOW--6 months ago may as well have been ancient history. Yet the entire basis of this feud was, "Rude beat the Warrior a year and a half ago." All of those training vignettes aren't mentioned either in any way, even by Ventura--I guess THAT'S ancient history, then. Rude is pretty decisively beaten even if it's by a countout and we get Heenan getting beaten up, too. Joey Marella doesn't call for a bell even after clearly seeing Heenan interfere twice. Not to mention an idiotic spot with Marella lifting the Warrior's leg three times on the sleeper.

 

Now, all that aside--and it's a lot of "all that"--Rude was great here. Rude going into a boxing stance and just pummeling the Warrior with punches may be the best spot of any match in this series, and it's a damn good series as far as ringwork goes. I love how they keep building and building on the "block the Rude Awakening" spot. At WrestleMania, Warrior turned it into a clothesline. At SummerSlam, Rude ducked the clothesline and caught Warrior in a sleeper. Here, Rude uses a thrust kick and immediately hits the neckbreaker anyway. This is also another good Warrior performance by his standards, as his selling and bumping are actually pretty good.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

Warrior expends a lot of energy in his intro and Rude attacks him from behind. Rude doesn’t do his over dramatic selling of the atomic drop yet. Warrior to the top rope and connects! Rude avoids the splash. Rick smashes Warrior with the belt. Might as well soften him up since you got a match at Summerslam anyways.

 

Now Rude sells the inverted atomic drop big time. Rude Awakening but Warrior kicks out. Not sure they should have had Warrior kicking out of that leading up to Summerslam. Warrior his his clotheline/splash combo but Heenan breaks the count out. Warrior beats up Heenan and wins by count out. This really did not build up Rude for the Summerslam match.

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  • 3 months later...
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  • 9 months later...

The major problem with this bout was that the wrong man got the win. Rude should have beaten the count back in, with the Warrior abusing Heenan afterward as a consolation prize. That would have set up the cage match at SummerSlam (which was mentioned in passing by Vince at the end) much more logically.

 

I have mixed feelings about the kickout on the Rude Awakening. Warrior had to kick out of it if Rude was going to use it at all, since they weren't putting Rude over on a clean pinfall, but did Rude have to use it in the first place? Hogan/Orndorff was just as effective a feud without Orndorff ever piledriving Hogan during one of their matches. If they had to show that Warrior could kick out of the Rude Awakening, it could have waited until SummerSlam.

 

I don't know why they didn't show the training vingettes, or at least clips of them, instead of the green screen promos, which were about as inorganic and forced as they come, especially from Rude. As for Warrior, he makes everything that comes out of his mouth sound like mumbo-jumbo because of his delivery, which never changes even when his material does.

 

I don't have a problem with the way Rude sold. Vignettes aside, it's not fair to ask a man to change the entire way he works just to fit one program. Besides, I've become less and less of a fan of "new" Rude as time has gone on. It's nice to see vestiges of good old sleazy, oily Rude still around.

 

The leg-lifting spot from Marella was a direct result of the way Rude positioned himself during the sleeper, and I thought it was sort of inventive, though I did like Jesse's aghast "He's lifting his LEG?"

 

All in all, this match should probably have happened at least a month ago, but better late than never. The reason to buy SummerSlam (and for the cage as well) is to see if Warrior can lay just as impressive a beating on Rude again, this time without Heenan being able to interfere. I'm not sure if that would be enough for me to order the pay-per-view on its own, but with Hogan/Earthquake as the other half of the main event and Harts/Demos underneath, I'd most likely still lay my money down.

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  • 1 year later...

A lot of the WWF stuff on my discs doesn't have sound, so I've only gotten a couple of the rude/warrior promos. So with kind of watching this match in s vacuum, I really enjoyed it. I didn't really know what to expect but I liked Rude on offense and him beating down Warrior mid-comeback. I did not like Warrior celebrating so much after a count out victory (or was he angry?) I don't know, I didn't think Rude looked especially weak, although finish aside, Warrior handles him thoroughly. Also, Warrior looks totally different to me here and in an earlier promo. The fave paint and maybe a modified hair style or something? For a second I thought it was like Kerry Von Erich dressed up like him.

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  • 10 months later...

I could take a big shit on the booking of this one but lets be positive. Rick Rude is a MIRACLE worker to get something as good as he did out of the Warrior.

 

This 100 times over. I agree that it undercuts all of the booking leading up to it, but when was that ever going to not be the case once the feud hit the ring? Rude makes Warrior seem competent and badass in a way that not many guys figured out how to do. If nothing else, that must have some value to the guys upstairs.

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  • 9 months later...

Hard to give Warrior guff for not drawing when he's going over his next challenger in the lead up to their big grudge match. It's really too bad when you consider the history of these two.

 

Rude beats Warrior for the IC belt thanks to Heenan's interference. Warrior wins it back thanks to Piper. So we've never actually seen them have a fight with no one impacting the finish. Rude finishes with Piper and then goes away to regroup after Warrior moves up to the World belt. He comes back with those training videos and yeah they played for a LONG time, but he and Warrior should not have met up until the third match in the cage at Summerslam.

 

This was a useless match with a terrible finish. Sure, Rude looked talented making Warrior look capable, but if I'm a fan I'm not paying to see Warrior beat a guy he beat by countout. Rude was out on the floor and Warrior was beating up Heenan. What am I looking forward to?

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  • GSR changed the title to [1990-07-28-WWF-Saturday Night's Main Event] Rick Rude vs Ultimate Warrior

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