· Survivor Series 89, was probably the low point, wrestling-wise, of the year. If you don't count No Holds Barred: The Pay-Per-View. And really, who does?

· And no, I will NOT review No Holds Barred: The Pay-Per-View. So just don't even bother e-mailing me about it.

· Live from Chicago, IL

· Your hosts are Jesse Ventura and Gorilla Monsoon.

· Thankfully (or not, depending on your point of view), by 1989 the WWF had managed to get organized enough not to have every PPV run 4 and a half hours, and so no clipping was needed for this show.

· Opening match: Big Bossman, Bad News Brown, Honky Tonk Man & Rick Martel v. Brutus Beefcake, Tito Santana, Terry Taylor & Dusty Rhodes

And as you can see, the unwieldy 5 on 5 format was dumped in favor of 4 on 4, which produced 5 matches instead of 4. Good move, sez I. Martel & Santana had the main issue (I refuse to call Bossman & the American Cow's "feud" over the nightstick a legitimate issue) so they start. Pretty non-descript match to start, as they run through the basics and Taylor gets to play sacrificial lamb. Or rooster. He was just riding out the contractual gravy train at that point anyway

Santana gets the hot tag and kills Martel, but tries a rollup and it gets reversed for the pin. Geez, that makes like 140 matches between those two with that ending. Interesting note for those of you obsessive enough to e-mail me stuff like this: Shane-O-Mac, the most homicidal, genocidal, suicidal guy to wear a sweater vest, is the on-the-floor referee for every match, probably stuck there on the order of Daddy-O-Mac in order to learn the flow and pace of a wrestling match. The future Sapphire is shown in the front row of the crowd, cheering on the Dream. Taylor and Martel do a nice sequence, and AGAIN poor Terry gets killed. Geez, he's getting buried, we GET IT ALREADY.

He makes the mistake of talking smack to Bad News Brown, and takes a beating for it. Gotta admire the guy for guts. However, once again, Bad News runs afoul of a teammate (this year's lucky winner: Big Bossman) and walks out on his team. But I mean, it makes sense: What self-respecting bad-ass black guy would team with a prison guard and a guy nicknamed "Honky"? It's just BEGGING for a bad situation. Ahem. HTM & Beefcake do their usual match, with an unusual twist: Beefcake hits a high knee and Honky lays down clean. Martel & Beefer do a boring mini-match next, with Brutus getting the pin on a sunset flip. Bossman is 1-on-3 now. He dispatches Taylor without breaking much of a sweat, and speaking of breaking sweat, here comes Dusty with a bodypress for the pin and the victory at 22:00. This was decent. **1/4 Survivors: Dusty Rhodes, Brutus Beefcake. More...