WrestleMania 2 – April 7, 1986
After a brief interlude in New York, we’re going out to Los Angeles. Vince really does a great job at making it seem like the main event is going to be something you just can’t miss. Susan St. James says she thinks Hogan will win — what a bold prediction. Out in LA, you’ve got Jesse Ventura sandwiched between Lord Alfred Hayes (ungodly awful) and Elvira (horrible). To make matters worse, there are really only two fully-functional headsets which Hayes and Elvira use; Jesse’s mic is all messed up which is pretty annoying. Our ring announcer, Lee Marshall, gets things rolling with Hercules Hernandez and Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat. I hardly remembered this one, but Steamboat was actually very good in this generic-1980s-WWF-mid-card match. Steamboat wins with a high cross body block. His talent was really wasted in what was essentially a curtain-jerker on the west coast. In fact, with the time zone difference, the LA audience didn’t watch the already recorded matches until after the main event ended, meaning the Chicago portion we just saw would be their “main event” on closed circuit.
In a match that I can recall skipping almost every time I watched this show, Adorable Adrian Adonis w/ Jimmy Hart takes on Uncle Elmer. I’ve skipped this match so many times that I even had to fight the urge to hit fast forward when I saw it was about to start. The reality is it wasn’t that bad. Adonis was deceptively awesome. He weighed 300 pounds and dressed like a woman, but he was actually a tremendous athlete and even even manages to carry Elmer (arguably the worst wrestler I’ve ever seen) to a reasonably decent match. He flips all over the place like an acrobat before securing a clean fall with a flying chop to the prone Elmer. Adding insult to injury, Adonis beats him up after the match until Elmer rolls to the outside.
“Awful” Alfred interviews an enormous Hulk Hogan who vows to win, regardless of his injuries. Jimmy Hart is back out there with Terry and “Hoss” Funk who battle it out with Tito Santana and the Junkyard Dog. I loved JYD as a kid. In fact, a month after this, JYD headlined the first live WWF card I ever attended against Hoss Funk at the Nassau Coliseum in a sort of WrestleMania revenge match. This is a by-the-numbers baby face vs. heels tag match. Approximately two and a half hours in, I’m really tired of watching wrestling at this point and I’m ready for the show to be over. Terry Funk actually does a lot to make things entertaining, bumping on the floor and taking a body slam on a table. Surprisingly, the heels steal one here in our penultimate match with a little assistance from Jimmy Hart’s dreaded megaphone. Terry smashes JYD with the foreign object while referee Dave Hebner’s back is turned, he gets the cover and the team is victorious. Much like the Long Island audience earlier, the Californians chant “bullshit.” Terry sells a knee injury after the bout. Now we’ve got a dozen or so crew members coming out to assemble the steel cage for the main event.
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