[1990-08-27-WWF-Summerslam] The Rockers vs Power & Glory

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Shawn had a bad knee, so they worked this match to get around it since he really couldn't do much. Jannetty gives a really fun one-man performance, almost singlehandedly carrying this to something good. Hercules and Roma do work hard here, and Herc in particular looks like a real badass, so I don't want to call them just passengers, but Jannetty is the one who makes this memorable. Watching this, I'm surprised that the team didn't take off.

[El-P]

I think Paul Roma was the very first turn I ever seen. And it was special to me. Why can't I be 14 again ?

[Matt D]

I think this is a great exhibition of telling a very specific narrative. I don't think it's a great match.

[PeteF3]

I'm heartened to see that P&G live up to my memories as a pretty cool team that never quite got a break. Oh, they're no Midnight Express, but they have good chemistry together as partners and the PowerPlex is still all kinds of kickass. Jannetty makes a go of it without Michaels but the numbers game overwhelms him. No, it's not a great match, but it tells a fine story and goes just as long as it needs to.

 

Incidentally I like this short-lived run of Roddy Piper as a babyface commentator with a major antagonistic streak. At the open he calls the Rockers the "Mick Jagger & David Bowie of the WWF" and doesn't mean it as a compliment, and then when Jannetty was laying over Michaels to shield him from the post-match attack and Piper said "they LOOK like Mick Jagger & David Bowie right about now" I completely lost it. The single biggest laugh-out-loud moment of the set for me, I don't care how counterproductive or in poor taste it may have been.

[soup23]

Nice little sprint match. I didn't want to watch the match real analytically because of my other Rockers project this match is a long ways away. Still they worked a real good compact match around Shawn's legit injury.

[Kevin Ridge]

Shawn not moving too good heading to the ring. He gets nailed by Hercules and is done for the match. Michaels tries to get up on apron but gets attacked again. Jannetty going at it alone. He gave it a go but it tuns into a squash. Power & Glory’s finisher is cool. Gets a big pop from the crowd. This is probably their highest moment as a team.

[ajtroma]

This may have been the best thing on SummerSlam that year. Power and Glory burst out of the gate. They looked like true threats after this one.

[Karl]

I thought P&G were going to be the best team ever when I saw this! They wernt ...but they probably still are a guilty pleasure for me.

[garretta]

This is almost a direct replay of the Hart Foundation/British Bulldogs title change in January of '87, with the major difference being that there's no Danny Davis-type angle with the referee. Jannetty is just as gallant as Davey Boy Smith was, but ultimately just as unsuccessful. The title switch was the first time the Harts looked like a championship-caliber team, and so it is here with Power and Glory. I disagree with Loss that Jannetty makes this watchable; he's the one who's the passenger in the match, as Herc and Romeo run through their repertoire to devastating effect. I would definitely like to have seen a major series between the Harts and P 'n' G sometime later in the fall.

 

We also have objective Piper on commentary again, and you can tell that he's a huge P 'n' G fan and that the Rockers are too pretty for him to take seriously, though he does give Jannetty credit for guts. If he'd stayed this way, he'd have been a huge breath of fresh air, as Jesse's schtick was wearing thin by now, even as well as he still delivered it. He could have toned down the crankiness just a haif a hair and he would have been fine. But as I said earlier, either Vince gave him a talking-to after this card or he decided himself that he was too negative to fit in; maybe he felt that he was copying Jesse too much. At any rate, we soon started hearing gung-ho babyface Piper, who was twice as obnoxious but not half as good.

 

There's a debate out there over whether it was supposed to be Rhythm and Blues or Power and Glory who were supposed to beat the Harts for the belts before the Nasties came in. After seeing this match, I know which team I would have wanted it to be, and it isn't the jokers with the guitars. (I know that Honky's the main one who says that R 'n' B were supposed to take the titles, but I could swear that I saw at least one other source that said the same thing, though I can't think of that source at the moment. Maybe someone else can.)

[drew wardlaw]

Shawn looks like he's limping coming down to the ring. And I just read above that he had a knee injury. Pretty smart match because of that. On a production note, something that WWF has always been so good at making the arenas feel big and packed. They always know the right angles to use and this really shows that off. I mean, there were 20,000 people in the arena apparently, so it is big and packed, but they get the shots. As for the match, essentially a squash, I was really hoping for what could have been a great comeback for Jannetty but it never came. The finishing move was really cool though, especially because Jannetty was kind of skipping across the mat a split second before whichever guy it was landed on him.

[dawho5]

Marty looks golden here. How he never took off is a mystery to me.

[Matt D]

Marty looks golden here. How he never took off is a mystery to me.

The answer is Marty.