[1991-08-26-WWF-Summerslam] A MATCH MADE IN HEAVEN

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

This segment (really, this whole card) is an amazing display of the creative brilliance of Vince McMahon. When he's on, he's on. The gap between this and WCW is laughable.

 

We also get the famous song that made another appearance in the Test/Stephanie wedding.

 

TOGETHERRRRRRRRRRRRRR ... OUR LOVE WILL LAST FOREVERRRRRRRRRRRRR.

 

Who is this guy supposed to be that is Randy Savage's best man? You'd think they would have chosen another wrestler. The maid of honor seems unhappy, almost like someone who privately is against this.

 

Savage using his wrestling voice all the way through his vows is awesome. Not to mention that the reverend calls him Macho Man Randy Savage.

 

They didn't even ask the objections question.

 

This is the most feel good PPV of all time. Great choice saving the reception angle until after the show went off the air and replaying it on future shows.

 

There is extra reception footage on the Coliseum Video version, which I've never seen. "A BLENDER, OHHHH YEAH!" Liz is trying to tell him they are supposed to wait to open presents, but Savage refuses to wait. Then we get the money angle, as a snake pops out of one of the boxes and Jake taunts Elizabeth with it. Undertaker hits Savage with the urn, and Sid shows up to make the save. This was a wild, ballsy angle. Completely over the top, but pretty crazy and unexpected at the time.

[Zenjo]

I couldn't remember what happened so I was shocked there was no interruption during the ceremony. Macho's giant feather on his hat was pretty awesome amongst other things.

 

I don't see what all the fuss at the reception was about. Jake kindly gave them a pet snake as a wedding gift, which Liz very rudely screams at. And then the Undertaker presents a lovely gold Urn which the Macho Man goes and headbutts for some reason. You'd think they'd be grateful.

[flyonthewall2983]

I like that the reception is taken out of the DVD version. Kind of a bland and over-acted skit to start an otherwise intense and good rivalry.

[PeteF3]

The presentation gap between this and WCW was huge, but...I really, really, really hated this whole set-up at the time, though not as much as the Rhodes feud. I chalk it up mostly to being an immature fourth-grader than a true failing on the WWF's part. But in some way it feels insulting to sell a PPV on a wedding and a foregone conclusion of a tag match with heels so long past their sell-by date. I didn't order it, but if I had and NOT gotten any sort of wedding angle on the show proper I'd have been furious.

 

We get highlights of Savage and Elizabeth's WWF careers, including WM4 and Elizabeth trying to save Savage from the Honky Tonk Man. Really well-done stuff. Not Making This Up Dept.: Shazam has this song as "Together" and attributes it to Savage & Elizabeth's wedding. Did this song make it onto some WWF soundtrack CD?

 

Some anonymous guy is the best man--after The Office finale in which Dwight and Angela's entire ceremony consisted of a few token family members and then all co-workers, and having it pointed out how little that resembles real life, I actually kind of find this refreshing. The WWF moreso than any other promotion was always one that tried to suppress any semblance of any wrestler's personal life on-air, I guess because they felt it would hurt their characters. Heenan is absolutely on fire here. And you just knew Savage would replace "I do" with "OOOOOH YEAH." This is quite the brilliant production, there's no denying that. Enough that I can sort of forget about how it all ended up.

[PeteF3]

Cut to the reception highlights, narrated by Lord Alfred Hayes. With Savage actually coming close to speaking in his normal voice (!!), not that it's much different from his wrestling voice by this point. They milk this for a long while, which is a nice effective way of getting over the shock of the cobra. Undertaker clobbers Savage with the urn and Jake terrorizes Liz with the cobra before being run off by Sid. I could have done without Hayes or the camera angle changes but this was a chaotic, well-done angle and a good way of hitting the reset button on Jake's heel turn. Generally speaking any wrestling show (or home video in this case) that goes off the air in the midst of brawling or chaos is automatically better than a show that doesn't.

[NintendoLogic]

Not Making This Up Dept.: Shazam has this song as "Together" and attributes it to Savage & Elizabeth's wedding. Did this song make it onto some WWF soundtrack CD?

It was on the WWE Anthology.

[Kevin Ridge]

Summerslam 91 had to be one of the biggest send fans home happy of all time with the faces winning most of the biggest matches on the show. Straight up wedding with things going as planned for the wedding. The regular Summerslam show ends as that. Here, we get the post show wedding reception. JJ Dillon! The snake being one of the gifts is awesome. Roberts shows up. What a fun segment.

[soup23]

Looks like I jumped the gun on crowd pleasing comments that others have touched on. Really the ultimate babyface booking show in the Garden.

My mom was pumped for this wedding and it didn't disappoint and hit on the right tones without it being drawn out. "The Ring Bearer is really a midget" had me cracking up. The reception footage is really well done with JJ Dillion, Sid, and a even a clowning of Hennan. The angle is of course completely over the top but it is shocking how Taker just arrives once Liz shrieks and it carries a chaotic tone throughout the rest of 1991.

[garretta]

I wonder if Randy and Liz really renewed their vows sometime around SummerSlam in an effort to save their marriage. That would account for the lack of wrestlers, or anyone else we recognize for that matter. They could have done the renewal that weekend and had the family stick around for the in-ring stuff Monday night. That would also account for the lack of the usual wrestling wedding bullshit, although the reception angle was probably a bigger reason for it.

 

I wasn't a fan of the commentary from the booth here. I know it's too much to ask Heenan to play something like this straight, and he wasn't the main problem anyway. The problem was Gino and Piper stepping all over him. Honestly, I kind of felt sorry for Bobby during this whole show, because those two guzzled him every chance they got, and a lot more aggressively than usual too. If I hadn't known that Gino and Bobby were such good friends in real life, I'd wonder if there had been a problem between them prior to the show. I've already said that I'm glad this is Piper's last pay-per-view, and I honestly think he's more obnoxious here than at any point in his entire WWF run, heel or face. At least '84 heel Piper had his charms; this version is ostensibly a babyface, but may be the biggest bully in the whole promotion.

 

They must have been rushed for time, because Liz didn't say anything except "I will". She didn't recite any vows, which would have been nice to hear since Vince got almost everything else about this right down to the music video at the beginning. She also didn't give Randy a ring. I understand that the entrances were a major part of the production, but they could have been shaved to make the ceremony a bit more legit-looking. Conversely, under the circumstances I had no problem with the minister calling Savage by his wrestling name, or Savage saying "OOOH YEAH!" instead of "I do"; this was Madison Square Garden, not St. Paul's Cathedral.

 

I liked hearing Savage talk in his normal voice at the reception, although as Pete said it really wasn't much different than his in-ring voice. Except for Okerlund being the MC at the reception, this really didn't seem like a wrestling wedding at all; the band seemed to be legit (were they really called "The Fast Fingers Orchestra"?), we had the bouquet toss and cake feeding, and then came the presents, when everything promptly and literally went to hell.

 

I wonder: If Vince had it to do over again, would he have originally turned Jake heel for the first time at the reception instead of running the aborted angle with Warrior? This was chaos at its worst to begin with; with Liz screaming and Randy knocked senseless by the urn. Imagine if Jake had shown up as a babyface well-wisher and then Liz had unwrapped the cobra. Not only would we have had the scene we did, but the question of "Why, Jake?" to boot, which would have made it even more of a classic. Personally, I'd have had Hogan make the save instead of Sid to set up the Taker feud for later, but I can see why Vince didn't do that; Hogan was ticketed for Flair, which is as it should have been.

 

I wonder how much acting Liz really had to do when Jake menaced her with the cobra; it wouldn't take much for me to freak out if a cobra was shoved in my face, and I'm not especially afraid of snakes in general.

 

Where was Percy? We should have seen him somewhere around this mess. For whatever reason, they always kept the Jake-Taker alliance fairly loose, from what I remember. You'd think that either Percy would have become Jake's manager or Jake would have become Taker's manager/advisor, but neither happened.

 

It's a shame they waited so long to pull the trigger on Savage's reinstatement, because a Savage/Taker series would have been something to see.

 

Am absolutely brilliant angle, one of the best Vince has ever done. I can't wait to see if the matches live up to it!

[flyonthewall2983]

I'd like to think that if Warrior stuck around, he would have taken the role that Sid did in this angle. Basically, have Warrior and Savage do the angle they did a year later with the Ultimate Maniacs. You could have some good segments with the two of them, still holding some anger towards each other but it dissipates as they have common enemies now. I'd not be surprised if that was the original direction the angle would have taken. If you hear Savage during the segment where Warrior is locked in the casket, it's some compelling stuff that could have worked towards that.

 

But like a turd in a punchbowl Warrior took his ball and went home. We still got a pretty intense program out of this anyway.

[dawho5]

Wedding was really well done. I did not expect it to be done with as much reverence as it was. I thought Piper and Monsoon walking all over Bobby during this was right. His way of doing things didn't fit this segment. Probably for the best that the shots of the cobra in some other universe were mixed with the actual snake that was in the box. I doubt you'd want an actual cobra being used as a hand puppet that close to your face.