Prime Time Wrestling

[pantherwagner]

During the last few months I have watched every Prime Time currently available in the WWE network (except for the last one) as well as some older ones that I have found in other places. Let me preface by saying that this is a program that I was not familiar with: I only watched Prime Time starting in 1991 (when it was a very different program) and getting WWF 1986 TV set never was a priority when I was heavily into DVD trading a decade ago.

 

This show is not at all like I would expect a Vince McMahon show to be, especially the wrestling part. Many name vs name matches featuring tons of Moondogs but also Siva Afi, Lanny Poffo, SD Jones and other lower stars. Tons of Hart Foundation too which is great. More Tony Garea that I'd care to watch. They feature a lot of Pedro Morales, Harley Race and Dory Funk - names that I'm not sure Vince had a lot of stakes on back in 1986.

 

Tons of time limit draws: I know this happened at house shows regularly but I never would have pegged McMahon as a TV time limit draw kind of guy. I can understand having Orton vs Santana calibre workers battling it out for 15 minutes but I'm not sure why would you have Hercules vs Billy Jack going longer than 5 minutes on TV much less three times as much.

 

Not many angles or interviews: often the interviews are about self-contained angles that were born, lived and died within the show. Many minutes of wrestling, most of it way below average and whatever is good doesn't seem to mean a lot anyway. Very different to territorial episodic wrestling from that era but in the end a kind of plain show. Heenan and Gorilla are entertaining and are the only remarkable thing in most shows.

 

So, what am I missing here? Was this the McMahon philosophy back then and I just never knew by watching the PPVs/SNMEs? It seems that this show was put together as filler and nothing more than that.

 

I could be very wrong (again, not an early or mid 80s WWE expert by any means) but it looks like the WWF had a booking and presentation paradigm shift after Wrestlemania III so this may just be a product of the expansion era WWF trying to find its sports entertainment identity.

[JerryvonKramer]

I bought a pile of PTW a couple of years back, when I got TNT at the same time. I found that while TNT was a trip with some hilarious moments, PTW is a really weird beast and is sometimes outright dull.

 

The earliest ones with Jesse and that Jack Reynolds are really pretty boring to sit through. And I lost momentum on it before other projects I'm involved with took over.

 

You do get the occasional hot arena match though. I seem to recall a good match featuring Paul Orndorff and B. Brian Blair (for example). You've probably seen more than me if you've watched everything on the Network ... any hidden gems in there?

 

I also think -- and it's something that we've talked about recently too -- that there's a definite pre-87, post-87 thing going on. Both in terms of WWF presentation overall, and Hogan's character. Things are a lot more homogenised after 87. The branding is more on point. The gimmicks are more tightly controlled. The match structures become more formulaic. "Rock n Wrestling" transitions more into early-cartoon era (as opposed to late-cartoon era, which is like 92-3).

[pantherwagner]

Orndorff and Blair was pretty good. Some odd stuff like Bull Nakano and Dump Matsumoto, or a match with the Crush Girls. Steamboat vs Hart from Boston which you may have already seen. Some fun Killer Bees vs Harts matches, both singles and in tag competition.

 

Nothing else I'd really go out of my way to look for though.

 

I also just watched a surprisingly good Hart Foundation vs Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkoff 6 min sprint. Probably the first time I have ever enjoyed a Volkoff performance. Sheik took some big bumps, used several suplexes and used a mean jumping lariat on Hart. Volkoff was working at a pace that I thought was going to give him a heart attack.

 

The star of this show is Bret Hart. Everybody looks much better with him than with anybody else.

 

But, yes, the show is often quite dull. Like a lot of things on the network I sometimes leave it on as background noise. Most of the time it's not good or interesting enough for me to give the show 100% of my attention.

[JerryvonKramer]

At some point the show changes though. I think those ones in 86 typically have Gorilla and Heenan in a studio right? They talk, introduce a match, talk, match, talk. I think in 87-8, they move around with gimmick locations more and have little "themes of the week". A bit more schtick in there. Like the two of them might be wearing a Mexican hats, or be lounging by a pool with cocktails, or some shit. They show a bit more MSG / Boston stuff, as well as clips from Superstars.

 

Then 89-90, a lot of matches come from TV tapings with a "Prime Time Wrestling" banner on the ring with the legendarily-awesome/terrible combo of Sean Mooney and Lord Alfred Hayes on commentary. Schiavone might crop up for a bit in 89. The totally random commentator combinations are quite fun. Matches feel a bit more B-show-y during that time. Typically like a bigger star vs a JTTS or midcarder. But hardly ever jobber matches. With Mooney and Hayes on commentary everything feels like it's happening in a vacuum.

 

At some point Heenan gets his own show. This doesn't last long, but then the whole of Prime Time transitions into a studio with a really wimpy live crowd. Sean Mooney fronts it. This is from the start of 91, you'll remember things like Sgt. Slaughter and Gen. Adnan on there. Or Ric Flair debuting later in the year.

 

Then it changes again to the roundtable format with Vince hosting it, typically with Gorilla, Heenan, Mr. Perfect and someone like Piper or Hillbilly Jim filling out the numbers. They basically just argue for 10-minute stretches, show some clips and then argue some more. And I think it stays like until Raw starts.

[Mad Dog]

I hate PTW for the most part. You get good matches here and there but you have to sit through way too much garbage. It felt like they had Beefcake vs. Johnny V on a weekly basis for months in 1987.

[artDDP]

When I was 8 my uncle gave me a bunch of VHS tapes he made of WWF TV and there was a lot of PTW from 1986 on there. I remember it being painfully dull at times but also a bit eye-opening because my mom could tell me things like Mike Rotunda became IRS.

 

I wound up losing or taping over everything over the years. Sad because everything was the live TV version of PPVs and SNMEs from 1986-1991.

 

I absolutely hated the roundtable format of the show and quit watching.

[clintthecrippler]

The other thing to remember with Prime Time is that it was always meant as supplemental watching to Superstars and Challenge. Their USA programming didn't become the #1 focus until the syndicated market started dying down in the early '90s and cable had really cemented itself from coast to coast. The two weekend syndicated shows were always going to be the main spot to witness angles go down and watch guys get built up through the jobber matches and Saturday Night's Main Event was always going to be the only place on TV to really watch Hogan wrestle, whereas Prime Time for the first few years was basically repurposing footage from the MSG, Spectrum, and Boston Garden regional cable shows they were already doing and catching people up on angles that launched over the previous weekend's syndicated shows.

[Seej]

A lot of times, I would tape the show and watch the Heenan/Monsoon segments, but skip some of the matches. I still find myself doing that on the Network.

[flyonthewall2983]

The first one on the Network is the one where Heenan started to take over for Ventura who went to film Predator. The intro was interesting in that nothing is really over the top, and Heenan pretty much acts like a straight-up co-host aside from a few heelish remarks and opining that we might see Jesse grab an Oscar.

 

They were doing the roundtable format when I started watching, which I liked. I can't wait to revisit that stuff when it goes up. Hopefully they put up All-American, too.

[pantherwagner]

Well, hopefully they put up that stuff before 2020. They just seemed to dump 6-7 episodes in one go a few weeks ago and forgotten about PTW.

 

One thing that I forgot to mention (JVK makes a reference to this) is that I really like how they have different commentator pairings for the different arenas.

 

Another odd, somewhat un-McMahon like feature of PTW is how they'd sometimes air matches 1 or 2 years old. They did that a lot on TNT as wel.