The item from last week about The Undertaker saying that Vince McMahon was the reason we didn’t get the all-time dream match pitting Sting and ‘Taker got me to thinking on the topic of, dream matches that we never got, for various and sundry reasons.
The basic criteria: wrestlers of the same generation, with a reasonable chance of having been booked to work together.
I did a lot of research here, and found out that, in most cases, the matches that I’d thought we’d been robbed of actually did happen.
For example, Bruno Sammartino wrestled Harley Race to a draw in a 1973 WWF vs. NWA title vs. title match, and Ric Flair and Bob Backlund worked to a double-countout in a 1982 WWF-NWA title vs. title match.
I was surprised to learn that Flair only worked one match with multi-time AWA world champ Nick Bockwinkel, in 1986 – Flair, defending the NWA belt against Bockwinkel, who was not AWA champ at the time, retained via a double-countout.
Backlund and Bockwinkel worked a 39-minute double-countout in a 1979 WWF vs. AWA title vs. title match.
I’d say I miss the days when world champs from different companies would work matches with each other, but I was too young to be cognizant of what was going on, and by the time I was able to pay attention, it was never to be again.
As it stands, I ended up just adding two more matches we were robbed of to the Sting-Undertaker match that we could have gotten when Sting finally signed with WWE in 2014.
And one of them, The Road Warriors vs. The Rock ‘n’ Roll Express, technically took place, though the lone matchup between the top teams of the ‘80s was a throwaway match on a 1998 WWF “Shotgun Saturday Night,” when both were long past their primes.
We never did get a vintage Jim Crockett Promotions Roadies-Rock ‘n’ Roll, with Hawk and Animal as dominant heels, and Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson as sympathetic babyfaces fighting from underneath.
That feud would have been printing money, and Crockett did eventually, belatedly, allow Dusty Rhodes to turn The Road Warriors heel, but not in time to get them in a program with Morton and Gibson.
We wuz robbed.
The other one that we wuz robbed of: Bruno Sammartino vs. Andre the Giant.
Vince Jr. took away our chance to see Sting-Undertaker; Vince Sr. was responsible for us not getting Bruno-Andre.
Vince Jr. kept us from getting Sting-‘Taker because he’s just an asshole; Vince Sr. resisted the push, from Sammartino himself, to book Bruno-Andre because he didn’t see a way to make money from it without costing himself money down the line.
Vince Sr.’s thinking, per contemporaries, was, people would be unsatisfied with the finish that you’d have to do – see above: all of those title vs. title matches were draws or double-countounts.
And then, where do you go from there, because unlike a Sammartino-Race or Flair-Backlund interpromotional match, Bruno and Andre would have to go back to working other heels on the same cards in the northeast.
So, I can see why Vince Sr. did what he did – or rather, didn’t do what he didn’t do.
Even so, him not doing what he didn’t do means, we never got Bruno-Andre.
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Chris Graham
