[1980-07-26-WWF-Philadelphia, PA] Hulk Hogan vs Andre the Giant

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[SAMS]

1980-07-26
WWF
Andre the Giant vs Hulk Hogan
Philadelphia Spectrum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Card
★★

Really fascinating interview with Andre before the match. They talked about his diet, travel schedule, exercise routine (or lack thereof), and his opinion of the wrestlers over in Japan. Watching late 80s WWF they put over Andre as this unbeatable entity, the Eighth Wonder of the World etc., but he’s often in comedy matches and clearly not at his peak. I didn’t watch it in real time so I knew that it wasn’t long before he started using a walking aide and of course passed away. So these kinds of emphasis always went a bit over my head. But going back through the footage and seeing how different territories presented him on a month by month basis has given me a far greater appreciation for him. Increasingly he does come across as this unique entity. Occasionally his offense looks more Giant Baba than Stan Hansen, but the promotions, and Andre himself, do an excellent job of conveying his raw power, the struggle any wrestler in the world would have with even trying to compete with him, and ultimately, the futility in even trying to gain a victory over him. And it doesn’t come across like a shill either. Looking at Andre in context it’s self evident, of course he would be this unbeaten legend, he’s MASSIVE!
Anyway, to the match. I thought that Andre and Hogan worked this excellently. They had a brief staredown to start. We know Hogan’s a huge guy, but seeing Andre tower over him in both height and stature really is a spectacular visual. The work is simple but effective. In contrast to the Backlund/Patera title match, where Monsoon always looked like he had things under control, it never seemed like Dick Woehrle would be able to control these two behemoths. Andre controlled for the most part, but Hogan managed to get the transition with some nice stiff kicks to the gut and it felt organic. He couldn’t contain Andre for long though and seeing that he was going to be on the receiving end of a corner splash, he pulled Dick into the line of fire.
After some deliberation it was announced that Hogan was DQ’d. He’s aghast, but I’m not exactly sure why. As things were building towards the Shea Stadium show it made sense that they would do a DQ finish here, but I wasn’t crazy about this ending. It was blatantly obvious that Hogan pulled the referee, so I can only assume he hoped that it would be Andre who would be DQ’d for attacking the referee. But it was too obvious and left the finish a bit flat. Otherwise I actually would have liked maybe 3-4 more minutes on this, as I think they still had a ways to go before they needed to transition to the finish and the match was ticking along nicely. If it had a better finish and was a tad longer this really could have been something intriguing.