Gimmick Some (Wrestlemania) Lovin': The Blue Bars of Doom

My Rating

There's no context where I would ever defend this as a good wrestling match; both in the modern context and compared to cage matches of its day (like the Magnum T.A.-Tully Blanchard classic previously covered here), it's a stinker.

There's so little actual wrestling, and most of its runtime is given over to Wrestlemania pageantry instead of the match itself; the segment lasts a little over 20 minutes, but bell-to-bell, this one goes only ten minutes and fifteen seconds.

The commentary is a mishmash of unintelligible (Ventura), too serious ("Lord" Alfred Hayes), and far beyond the realm of any comprehensibility (Elvira).

In fact, Elvira shows herself to be a combination of a female Jerry "The King" Lawler (ogling and objectifying the scantily-clad performers before her) and Art Donovan, the Baltimore Colts legend who famously (or infamously) stumbled his way through King of the Ring 1994 with no idea how the event actually worked. Elvira drifts between misinformed, disinterested, and blandly titillated, detracting from the performance every time she speaks.

She actually celebrates this moment as "more clothes coming off".

That's not the point of this match, though. This isn't wrestling, and Vince McMahon, like he told Ted Turner, is not in the wrestling business. This is Wrestlemania, which, then, now, and forever, is about the spectacle and celebrity, and there this match excels.

It absolutely cannot be overstated how over Hogan is here; whether Bundy seemed in 1986 to just be another "Monster of the Week" like he does 32 later I can't say, but Hogan was obviously charisma incarnate.

His every move is met with raucous cheers, and he gains so much goodwill with so little effort that it's obvious why Hogan's workrate could never match his Southern counterparts: he could get the same wild reaction from a few punches and headshakes that Magnum T.A. would literally need to attempt murder to gain.

Being disappointed in this match is your fault for expecting anything more out of Hogan and Bundy in the 80s; they presented their style of match, and the LA crowd ate it up.

Nobody, not even Reigns, could pull off such softball booking today; this is 100 percent a mid-1980s artifact. Just like Rocky IV pulls off a dramatic and emotional ending with a mixture of easy stereotypes and foregone conclusion plot points, this match grabs its intended audience with the standard "Hogan can probably do it, but what if he can't?" booking, and holds them tight through the finish.

Sting vs. Triple H failed where a glorified legends segment tried to pull off a legitimate match, but Hogan vs. Bundy finds some success in telling the emotional, archetypical Hogan story on Wrestling's grandest stage.

This one slightly edges out our previous Wrestlemania entry on those grounds, and I'll go 5/10; it's not good by any means, but it's a great slice of 1986 WWF for anyone's time capsule.

It is possible for Dave to absolutely adore a bloodless, blue bars cage match, but that does not happen here.

Meltzer says:

Meltzer gives this one a star and a quarter; if you're expecting a match with such low workrate to get any higher from the Observer, you're as insane as Ventura seemed on the headset.