10 Things You Didn't Know About WWE In 1991
5. WWF Brought The HEAT
Following the WrestleMania VII debacle, as evidenced by a further decline in the buys between SummerSlam 1990 and '91, business did not improve.
Vince McMahon was always averse to a heavy heat angle. He was - and this of course developed an intense irony when he eventually monopolised the North American industry - a "send the fans home happy" promoter. Vince, after all, had positioned a babyface on top as WWF Champion for well over 90% of the time spanning January 23, 1984 to January 19, 1991. Only the scheming of Ted DiBiase in 1988, and a two month period in Randy Savage's reign, disrupted the long pattern of a babyface - Hulk Hogan, Savage, the Ultimate Warrior - operating as ultra-cartoonish purveyors of wish fulfilment.
In 1995, when Vince McMahon ceded creative power for a week, he couldn't cope, and re-cut the one thing Bill Watts was allowed to do: a heavy heat cliffhanger angle.
1991 was a different story. 1990 was hardly a great year - Warrior floundered on top - but in 1991, it really felt like the walls were closing in on the '80s pop culture behemoth. In response, to shock young fans back into caring, Vince decided to traumatise them.
He booked a psyche-scorcher of an angle in which Randy Savage was bitten in the arm by Jake Roberts' cobra. Watch it 32 years later, and you're still convinced that little bastard will dart his head through the screen. It was heavily implied, after an endless-feeling administration of CPR, that the Undertaker had suffocated the Warrior to death by trapping him inside of a casket. As was taped in 1991, Marty Jannetty would rather have smashed his face into glass than confront the end of his friendship with Shawn Michaels.
The WWF of 1991 was nightmarish for the young fans, as the bad vibes surrounding the promotion seemed to bleed through the camera lans...