Prologue…

Because of the sheer glut of wrestling available to watch, it’s not always possible to find out out the entire context of a feud. It’s hard enough to do it today when most of the important stuff can be found on YouTube or tape dealing websites, but when you’re a kid and watching Silver Vision tapes depending on which one had the best cover? Context, feud and everything else go out the window and you make judgements with what the WWF decides to show you.

I first watched Wrestlemania VII as a young teen. And by ‘watched’, I mean ‘I saw Sgt. Slaughter vs. Hulk Hogan on the front cover and skipped the other matches to watch it’. I genuinely wanted Slaughter to win and beat Hogan. This had nothing to do with any Pro-Iraq beliefs as at the time of the viewing I had no idea what the hell they were going on about with regards to a war. Which was probably for the best seeing as THE WAR ENDED BEFORE THE MATCH TOOK PLACE. If I had found out Slaughter had turned heel on America because they had accepted Nikolai Volkoff as a face after the fall of the Berlin Wall, then I would have loved him even more. The didn’t really mention that aspect of the turn too much as if they had, Slaughtermania likely would have ran wild. As an older friend of mine once joked ”Watch a Nikolai match? You can Volkoff!”

Why would a kid like Slaughter? The name helped as it wasn’t every day you heard the word ‘slaughter’. The army gimmick definitely helped, as we Brits respect our troops and crazy grand-parents. Even more so when you’ve been raised on a diet of Dad’s Army, Lord Kitchener posters and Blackadder Goes Forth. The sight of a man with Jimmy Hill’s chin and Pat Roach’s physique threatening to do very bad things to a foreigner made me respect him and his unintentional authenticity. Even better, the fact he had Middle-Eastern comrades made him an UPDATED archetype. Most people of a certain age in the UK will have likely been through the same experience of watching an old British comedy with family and having to ask why the ‘good’ characters were using words like ‘darky’. Not with Slaughter! He may have been sixty years old but he had the finger on the pulse of modern Britain! (and likely on his own wrist to make sure he was still alive). He could eat spicy foods and go to hot countries and not get a tan like the rest of us!

So, there’s Slaughter. Moustache’d, multicultural and WORLD CHAMPION. And who did he beat to achieve this most Highest of Honours? ONLY THE ULTIMATE FUCKING WARRIOR.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlFtk0ciegk&feature=related

If WWF wanted me to boo Slaughter for having won the World Title with a little help from his friends as he fought Hogan of all people, then they were clearly nuttier than squirrel shit. Even when I was young and stupid I could see Hogan blatantly cheated, like at Royal Rumble ’92 when he helped eliminate Sid because he was a sore loser. To horribly mis-quote Jesse Ventura: ”Win if you can, lose if you must, but always take it like a man!” It’s one of the reasons why I lost respect for Warrior, as all he seemed to do was moan and whine like an old woman at having lost his title when it was his own bloody fault for getting distracted multiple times during the match. Plus, Slaughter achieved things using teamwork. Teamwork is a positive concept beat into kids at school, so it was hilarious to see it work to great degree by the supposed villain while Billy NoMates Warrior looked (more) foolish (than usual).

Although mature wrestling fans all hate Hogan when they grow up and find out about ‘kayfabe’ and whatnot, as a kid I only cheered for Hogan when he was the most interesting person in the match. Hogan vs. Perfect, Earthquake or DiBiase? Hogan gets my cheers. But put him against Sid or Undertaker or Warrior or (yes) Slaughter? Hogan had no fucking chance.

I still respected/realised there was a good chance Hogan would win though, and there was only one way of finding out who would win…

The Match…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHIooFPGhq0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yX-PUb3dVAQ&feature=related

I loved this match ten years ago and it’s still my favourite Hogan Wrestlemania match (although given the competition, that’s hardly a glowering review). During the promos, both men had been promising a higher level of brutality and they weren’t kidding. Slaughter used a steel chair, choked Hogan using cables, used a Special Commemorative chair and THE IRAQ FLAG in his attempts to force the Dark Side onto Hogan. Although Hogan gets the opening advantage early on when he shoulder-blocks Slaughter and he sells it like the Greek economy fell on him, most of the match is Hogan being brutalized by Slaughter. This was not a sight I was used to. Andre was fat and slow, Bundy had been hurt more times than Hogan than vice versa (even when Hogan was bandaged up!) and Warrior had only *just* managed to get the 1-2-3 on him. No other opponent of Hogan’s in my limited viewing history had kicked the shit out of Hogan like this. He even made Hogan bleed, something which I’ll never forget. Slaughter had turned the Immortal One mortal and he didn’t even need Pain and Panic to do so.

…and then wrestling logic goes out of the window as Hogan Hulks up, no-sells and big boots/leg-drops Slaughter for the pin and title. I hated that finish (hate hate hate hated it) as a kid. I wouldn’t have minded if Hogan had done something special or ”brutal” as he’d promised to get the win. But a leg-drop? He leg-dropped Virgil and his crime was only getting in the way. Slaughter had mocked thousands and made Hogan bleed his own blood. ”How dare you insult my country and the troops dying for a good cause we sort of helped create in the first place! Leg-drop!” Slaughter was trying to kill Hogan and he was too dumb to realise it. I liked to think that Slaughter wasn’t interested too much in keeping the title and he was more focused on hurting Hogan, so he took the pin off a weak-arse move so he could remain in physical condition to bring the hurting later on. For further proof of my crazy 14-year old theory, Slaughter and Co. attacked Hogan backstage immediately after the match Nguyen Ngoc Loan style.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkOkE2o6eGU

The match still stands up to this day, but everything else simply doesn’t. From anything but a small child’s perspective you cannot help but cringe at the whole ordeal. Slaughter’s promos are embarrassing, his allies were only there because of their ethnicity (Adnan looked older and weaker than my Grandad and he only had one bloody lung), Hogan’s promos stop being fun when they’re about real-life wars and atrocities and the whole company generally looked like crap given that this was the main feud. Even Heenan’s commentary during the match was below-par, as he focused more on chatting up Regis Philbin then he did the main event.

Aftermath…

The Sgt. Slaughter vs. Hulk Hogan feud will never be remembered as a positive one, due to the exploitation of the Iraq/Kuwait conflict for Xenophobic dollars. The WWF could have been accused of cashing in on the war if it hadn’t had a negative effect on the buyrate and attendance. Wrestlemania VI had jammed 67,678 into the Toronto SkyDome, VII had to be happy with 16,158. They had originally chosen the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for the event, but changed it to the much smaller Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena and dared to cite it being ”for safety reasons”. The owners of the Memorial Coliseum actually released their own reason, which was ”only a few thousand tickets had been sold”.

The feud got stretched to Summerslam 1991 because someone apparently thought it would be fun to have Adnan, Sheiky-Baby and Slaughter wrestle as a unit. Which would be a good idea if this was King of Fighters, but in real life it resulted in the only bad match at Summerslam…and it was the main event. Slaughter would later apologise to America and turn face, making me hate him for doing the exact same thing Volkoff had done to start this whole feud in the first bloody place. I also thought the American fans were stupid for cheering him at this point, considering the things he’d said about the country! He’d lose to Nailz and disappear soon afterwards (making me a Nailz fan, but that deserves another entry on a later date).

The reason I typed this (far longer than anticipated) article was to see other people’s perspectives on this match. Over the years this match has come up in conversation with a few (Non-American) friends about and surprisingly, they seem to like it for similar reasons to me (Hogan bleeds, Slaughter was awesome). It would be interesting (and justify my bloody stumps for fingers) to read other people’s comments and thoughts on this match and feud.

And Finally…

Scott Keith: Gorilla declares that the war is now officially over that Hogan has won the title back. I’m sure all the soldiers in Kuwait were relieved to hear that.

J.D. Dunn: This is supposed to be some sort of a metaphor for the American spirit conquering all, but if they really wanted to have an accurate metaphor, Hogan should have gone over here, trounced Slaughter in a rematch and been stuck refereeing a match between General Adnan and the Iron Sheik for the next several years.

Scott Keith: Lex Luger probably would have won by countout.