Matthew Roberts
For my top three contribution to the Dream Card, I’ve gone at it from the angle that what a great SS card needs is a traditional Survivor Series match, a spellbinding World Title main event and a “special attraction” that is a little bit different from the normal fare. Hopefully these three matches cover those bases and then some! I’ve also gambled that some of my fellow scribes will include some “bigger” matches that I’ve purposefully avoided.
1987 – Team Moolah Vs Team Sherri
Here is my “special attraction” in the form of the ladies of the WWF, before there was any attempt to label them “Diva’s”. This slightly shaded the 1995 Women’s match, largely due to the fantastic performances of Itsuki Yamazaki and Noriyo Tateno, otherwise known as The Jumping Bomb Angels. There’s arguably less “star” talent in this match than it’s 1995 counterpart, but the excitement here, especially towards the end, is much higher. It’s fun to see the Fabulous Moolah in the ring, as it is to see Sensational Sherri Martel in the days before she became more famous as a manager. Rockin’ Robin was good fun too and if the likes of Donna Chrisianello, Velvet McIntyre and Dawn Marie are largely forgotten figures in the annals of wrestling history, they are perfectly acceptable wrestlers here. It also nice to see that the Glamour Girls tag team are managed by Jimmy Hart.
As is traditional, the “dead weight” goes early and then the WWF takes a route they would perhaps not be so quick to do today by ejecting the team captains Moolah and Sherri from the match as we roll past the halfway mark. Once one half of the Glamour Girls Leilani Kai has got rid of Velvet we are down to a straight tag team match and the excitement of the Jumping Bomb Angels. There are some great exchanges before the Angels prove to be the ultimate survivors as Yamazaki finishes off Kai with a top-rope flying crossbody and then Noriyo eliminates Judy Martin with a flying sitout clothesline to wrap things up.
This does everything a Survivors match should do. It showcases some great talent, has the big names going into it putting others over as a threat and ends with some exciting moments.
1990 – The Warriors Vs The Perfect Team
There’s been “better” technical matches than this one, for sure, but there is just something about genuine big names with no fillers butting heads in traditional Survivor Series matches. I know there are arguments for mixing and matching teams with big names supported by up and comers in order to give the young guys the “rub” but others can make room for them on this dream card. I’m going BIG all the way. Has there been a more fitting team than The Warriors from 1990. The Ultimate Warrior teaming with the Legion of Doom and The Texas Tornado Kerry Von Erich takes one of the biggest names from the WWE at the time in the form of then Champion and teams him with one of the most legendary tag teams of ANY era in the L.O.D./Road Warriors and rounds things up with the Texan legend from the equally as legendary Von Erich family. And although there is somewhat of a juxtaposition between Mr. Perfect and his teammates Demolition in terms of appearance, it makes, ahem, perfect sense that Mr. P would call on the services of such a trio to round out his own team.
The match also includes one of my favourite late 80’s/early 90’s cop-out situations where Smash, Crush and LOD are all simultaneously disqualified for brawling. Every great Survivors match needs a non-finish of that sort somewhere in the mix.
1996 – Shawn Michaels Vs Sid
There are a lot of World Title matches to choose from as Survivor Series, and it may surprise some that I would go for this one. But this was amazing on many different levels. If modern day fans think John Cena gets stick, he’s very rarely been as unpopular as ingoing champion Shawn Michaels was here at Madison Square Gardens. The New York fans metaphorically turned their back on his “boy toy” gimmick here and mercilessly booed him. In hindsight it’s not surprising that the ultra macho NYC fans would side with the man’s man that was Sid, but even watching it back now there is a feral atmosphere that still takes the breath away.
It’s without doubt Sid’s best ever “proper” match. And the credit must go to Shawn Michaels.
Whatever you might say about his backstage attitude around this time you simply cannot argue with what the man delivered in the ring. He would have been excused for being rattled by the boo’s but he just set about proving the boo-boy’s wrong and put on one hell of a match. He bumped, he sold, he made Sid look like a million dollars. There was excitement, drama (courtesy of Jose Lothario being ko’d when Sid hit him with a camera) and a finish that shocked me at the time, as I didn’t know the Royal Rumble 1997 was being held in San Antonio and that home-town hero Shawn Michaels would regain the belt there.
Of course that is partly the appeal of the match, given that a similar situation today would be an obvious set up for the big show in the former champ’s hometown coming up a couple of months later. But it was also a genuinely great match which, to be fair, Sid kept up his end of the bargain as well. But Shawn could have been in here with a broom and it would have been at least “four stars”. He really was that good.