Savage vs Ultimate Warrior Career vs Career

[Resident Evil]

The Warrior vs Savage from Mania is one of the best pro matches I've ever seen. Savage was the best ever in the WWF for making his matches feel important and epic and this was no different. Of course, things are amplified here because of the career vs career factor at play. Savage through his work ethic, wrestling, selling and body mannerisms was a terrific wrestler. Body language is something I'm big on in wrestling but it's an awful hard thing to describe. But just as one example -- Savage is well known for pointing towards the sky before coming off of the top rope. It's an act that has been copied by almost every fan mimicking wrestling at sometime in their life. It's cool, it adds a ton of importance to a move and it even looks epic because of the bigger than life aura it projects. The movement itself is also very similar to the hardest bodybuilding pose to pull off effectively as you have to have everything developed well to look good with this pose (see Sergio Olivia). Savage has a very good build and he pulls this pose off making himself look even more believable by looking like a supreme athlete to the fans. The lats or what I like to think of as the human wings are spread out for everyone to see right before Savage takes flight. It's a beautiful, awe inspiring sight. Now, it looks like I'm kind of going off here but I'm just trying to emphasize how important body language is in wrestling. Just one movement can mean so much and Savage I feel on an overall basis was as good as anyone has ever been in this department.

 

The match itself is big making everything happen in it even bigger as there is nothing more important than a career; not even the world title. Warrior as a super babyface has never even been closed to being legally pinned before. He is even higher than Hogan in being indestructable. Savage was already a wrestling legend who has always hanged at the top of the card. He is the heel but the result is still up in the air though there is no doubt that Warrior is the odds on favourite by a pretty good margin.

 

Where the match really shines is the ending stretch. Savage ends up hitting 5 top rope elbows against the Warrior. 5 of them when usually 1 is enough except if you're Hulk Hogan. But Warrior's even above Hulk Hogan and almost doesn't even seem human. He survives it and ends up hitting the press slam followed by a splash. The press slam, not only another visually and physically epic move but a move so protected that only one person in history survived it. However, that was Hulk Hogan, a guy who Savage could never, ever beat no matter how many times he tried. When I'm watching Savage up in the air like that, all I can think about is how the career of one of the all time greats is about to come to an end. Years of effort about to go down the drain with his former manager (adding even more emphasis and emotion as if this match needed any more to every move in the ring) Savage as a heel has no chance now. No heel really ever kicks out of a top face finishing move back in the day.

But at Wrestlemania and on the biggest/most important day of his wrestling life Savage does the impossible. He breaks perhaps the singe biggest rule in the WWF by kicking out of a face's finisher move. Something he could not do against Hogan but yet in the face of his career being wiped away kicks out of a finisher from a wrestler that is even above Hogan. Words can't describe how much that nearfall means to me or how shocking it was. It's the kind of nearfall that can't be replicated and at this point I'm often already at the point of tears. There aren't too many matches that have that kind of effect on me.

From there on it's superb as well. Savage is unbelievably great at selling fatigue here so we never forget how devastating Warrior's military press slam really is. He gets himself another chance and in a desperate attempt to put away the man who survived 5 elbow drops tries to crush Warrior's throat? on the guardrail. But Savage's desperation turns against him with a sick hit of the guard rail and in yet another great selling bit by Savage we see his own career right than and there pretty much evaporate. Savage is for all intents and purposes out. However, he still has the instinct to survive and repeatably just tries to go out to the floor after being shoulderblocked by Warrior. This is the part that truly gets to me as we see Savage not being able to do ANYTHING at all but still wants to go. He still wants to wrestle and keep going on but it is all for naught and essentially hopeless perhaps even due to his own desperate action. Thinking of Elizabeth watching her former man go through all of this at the end makes it all the more emotional. In the end the Warrior covers Savage like he was nothing which is a boost to his charactor as well.

 

What a match. An epic emotional bout that made both the Warrior along with Savage look strong, told a story and set the seeds for Savage to turn face leading to one of the most emotional wrestling angles of all time. Star ratings don't give this match justice. This is why I watch wrestling.

[sek69]

People will probably snark at it not being the best match technical-wrestling wise, but I'd say it was one of the best worked matches if that makes any sense. The end of the match going into the final reunion with Liz payoff was one of those moments that will never be able to be reproduced.

[Tim Evans]

It's one of the most heated and well planned matches I've ever seen. Almost everything about it was flawless. Savage proved his awesomeness but Warrior should get some credit too.

[Dylan Waco]

Actually, I think WP missed the best part of the whole match in his review.

 

For years Warrior's gimmick was that he was ssome batshit crazy psycho dude who talked to "the Gods" and spirits during his promos as if they were really feeding him his power. As a kid I always hated Warrior because of this, but looking back it's pretty clear that they were just playing off the guys real life psychological problems to create a wierd grey area where you were either dealing with a schizophrenic or someone who was dealing with supernatural or maybe both.

 

Anyhow, after Savage kicks out of the unkickoutable press slam, there is a great moment where Warrior stops and holds out his hands and starts talking to them and looking up at the sky and talking to the Gods or spirits or the voices in his head and he has this look about him as if the whole thing was a lie. It's almost a play off of the famous, Christ on the Cross "My God Why Have you Forsaken Me?" line as Warrior is ready to give up because he knows that if that can't beat Savage, the Gods aren't with him and he's got no chance.

 

Honestly to me that's the best part of the match. It puts Savage over as someone that is literally stopping a non-human force and it sort of is the culmination of Warriors whole gimmick all at the same time.

[Resident Evil]

I was going to talk about this but I decided not to. I never really meant to do a review. I just wanted to say a couple of comments but than it just kept on growing.

[Dylan Waco]

Actually I was glad to see someone do a write up of sorts about that match. For a long time it was a 'safe" net favorite, but it's dipped out of favor in recent months for some reason. I agree with almost everything you wrote.

[Loss]

I still think it's an excellent match as well. Different wrestling matches strive to do different things. One thing Ray said about this once that I thought summed it up well is that it's basically a fairy tale -- a comic book hero going against the evil king. I've probably watched this once a year or so since it happened and it never loses anything for me.

[jdw]

Actually I was glad to see someone do a write up of sorts about that match. For a long time it was a 'safe" net favorite, but it's dipped out of favor in recent months for some reason.

Really? I guess I've misses that stuff.

 

When I walked Hoback through my review of the Warrior-Rude match from SummerSlam '89, the first thing he said to me is that we need to re-watch the Savage-Warrior match.

 

Somebody (likely Patterson) worked hard to layout some pretty good Warrior matches. Even in the Rude match you can see flashes of the stuff that typically dragged Warrior into the seventh circle of worker hell, but they never really amounted to anything more that flashes and hints before the match zoomed right past it. I really don't like the warrior at all, and would just as soon not see 98% of his matches. But he did end up in some excellent matches, and he did play a part in them being good.

 

 

John

[Dylan Waco]

I've enjoyed reading your stuff on the WWF matches btw JDW.

[Guest the last]

I watched this match again recently and I honestly forgot how good the match was. I thought it was thoroughly entertaining and I especially liked the whole difference to Warrior like not running down to the ring and other changes in mannerisms in my opinion brought out the importance of the match.

[Loss]

The match makes me also miss customized airbrushed wrestling trunks made for a specific event. Rick Rude and occasionally Warrior were great for this, and someone really needs to bring the trend back.

[Resident Evil]

The match makes me also miss customized airbrushed wrestling trunks made for a specific event. Rick Rude and occasionally Warrior were great for this, and someone really needs to bring the trend back.

 

Totally agree. Rude was so awesome at this.

[jdw]

I've enjoyed reading your stuff on the WWF matches btw JDW.

 

It's an interesting project that I'm enjoying. It's been a long time since I've written much on what I think about "work" in any kind of a focused fashion. It's nice to be able to walk through where and why I think Bass-Tito goes off the rails, or how Valentine was excellent during his time on top against Steamer in their MSG match and how I wish the rest of the match was up to that level. Or stuff like Tito-Steamer vs. Pre-Dream Team working a very simple tag team structure, but doing it very well with a big payoff at the end.

 

If my internet would get it's shit together, which would free up some of my time to watch another match a night, I might add another project similar to it.

 

Add, as allows, comments from others are always welcome in the thread. I like to hear what others think of the stuff, even if they don't agree.

 

 

John

[Kronos]

I know this is an old thread, but I wanted to chime in anyway. After a discussion on another board about how I wasn't giving Warrior a fair shake and having watched a fascinating long shoot by him on youtube, I decided to rewatch some of his stuff.

 

I realized that the match with Hogan at WM 6 was a thing of beauty, certainly not for its tech wrestling but for its drama and energy. And the Savage match, which has perhaps my all-time favorite ending with Randy and Liz getting back together, ranks right up there in storytelling. W certainly knew how to work a crowd, and he made it fun. Watching that stuff reminds of why I got into rasslin in the first place. . .