WWF SummerSlam, Philadelphia, PA
This is the second half of the “double main event” for the SummerSlam ’90, following Hogan-Earthquake. The faith in Warrior’s title reign was just not there. These two had met at SummerSlam ’89, too, where Warrior regained the Intercontinental title from Rude, after Rude had beaten Warrior at WrestleMania V. This is in a STEEL CAGE to end their feud. It also more or less ends Rude’s WWF run.
Warrior and Rude had good character chemistry, especially at this point where Rude really did not show any fear of Warrior. The match starts with Warrior climbing over the top into the cage instead of coming in through the door, because Rude is up there calling him out for the fight.
Warrior bounces around on the top rope like a child waiting for Rude to turn around for a flying sledge. Part of the story here is Warrior’s never been in a cage match, while Rude has. Warrior had been in cage matches before, but all on house shows, this was legitimately his first televised cage match, so it’s a fair sell.
Piper calls Warrior’s tassels “the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen,” and suggests Rude should tie him to the cage by them. But Warrior is dominating early, and as Vince notes, it would take time to tie Warrior up. Piper also makes fun of Warrior’s “fuzzy boots.” The one good thing about Piper’s commentary is you could really tell when he just didn’t like someone if you paid attention.
Rude’s busted open early, but has a chance to escape and tries to take it. Warrior stops it enough to stop it, without really stopping it — he forces Rude to change his mind about trying to escape just yet.
This is actually one of Roddy’s better commentary jobs, he does a good job explaining and putting over the intensity of a cage match, and he keeps the shtick to a minimum. There’s not NO shtick, but that’s not an option.
Warrior gets busted open, too. Rude goes for the Rude Awakening, and it’s a real struggle on the turn with Warrior eventually overpowering him in the upper body and turning Rude around into a clothesline. But Rude gets his knees up on a splash. Now Rude goes right back to the Rude Awakening and gets it this time.
Apparently this has pin rules too because Vince says Rude should cover him. Rude instead climbs all the way up to the top of the cage and flies off with the sledge. Heenan has the door open and screams at Rude to leave, “It’s done!” Instead Rude is going back up to the top, this time stopping a “rung” short, and this time flying off into a fist to the breadbasket from the Warrior.
Warrior goes for the door, his shitty paint hanging off his nose, and Heenan slams the door on his head. Rude does cover there but only gets two. Rude halfway out and Heenan’s trying to pull him through the door, but Warrior is pulling him back in from the other side, and obviously Rude’s entire ass hole gets exposed.
Heenan is pulled in and takes a big right, bumping as wild as he still can. Heenan also takes an atomic drop and falls back out through the door. Warrior gets on a run with the clotheslines, Piper remains deeply confused by Warrior’s arm pumping taunt. Gorilla press slam and now Warrior is climbing over the top, and he makes it, retaining the title.
Rude would finish up with the WWF a couple months later, and only had two televised matches after this, a squash win on Superstars, one on Wrestling Challenge, and a DQ loss to Hacksaw Duggan in September at MSG. He’d take some time off, then have a stint in All Japan in the summer of ’91, before showing up in WCW at Halloween Havoc ’91, where he had probably his best career run in terms of quality and where he as consistently positioned on the card.
It’s an OK match, not really one of Warrior’s small handful of best matches. Their ’89 SummerSlam match is better, and obviously this doesn’t touch Warrior-Savage at WrestleMania VII or Hogan-Warrior at WrestleMania VI, but for Warrior it’s quite good.
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