Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby Heenan are doing commentary and they are still in Huntington, West Virginia.
The Ultimate Warrior
What the World Was Watching: WWF Superstars – July 21, 1990
Vince McMahon and Jesse Ventura are doing commentary and they are taped from Dayton, Ohio.
What the World Was Watching: WWF Wrestling Challenge – July 1, 1990
Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby Heenan are in the booth, and they are taped from Rochester, New York.
What the World Was Watching: WWF Superstars – June 23, 1990
Vince McMahon and Jesse Ventura start a new round of summer television tapings in Binghampton, New York. According to thehistoryofwwe.com, these tapings took place on June 6.
Brutus Beefcake’s squash from Prime Time Wrestling starts the show.
What the World Was Watching: WWF Wrestling Challenge – June 17, 1990
Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby Heenan commentate this Father’s Day edition of Wrestling Challenge. This is the last of the shows from Madison, Wisconsin.
Brutus Beefcake’s squash from Prime Time Wrestling kicks off the telecast.
What the World Was Watching: WWF Wrestling Challenge – June 10, 1990
Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby Heenan are in charge of the telecast, still broadcasting from Madison, Wisconsin.
One match is missing from my copy of the show. According to thehistoryofwwe.com, Rick Rude (8-1-1) defeated Sonny Rogers in the opener, his first televised match since the April 2 edition of Prime Time Wrestling.
What the World Was Watching: WWF Wrestling Challenge – June 3, 1990
Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby Heenan are in the booth and they begin a new set of television tapings in Madison, Wisconsin. According to thehistoryofwwe.com, the tapings took place on May 14.
What the World Was Watching: WWF Wrestling Challenge – May 20, 1990
Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby Heenan are in the booth, still broadcasting from San Antonio, Texas. In a funny opening bit, Heenan thinks Monsoon is talking about Tito Santana when Monsoon references former Mexican general Santa Anna.
What the World Was Watching: WWF Wrestling Challenge – May 13, 1990
Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby Heenan are doing commentary, and they are taped from San Antonio, Texas. According to thehistoryofwwe.com, these tapings took place on April 24 and drew a sellout crowd of 10,700 fans.
What the World Was Watching: WWF Wrestling Challenge – May 6, 1990
Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby Heenan are in the booth, and they are wrapping up the television tapings in Syracuse, New York.
What the World Was Watching: WWF Wrestling Challenge – April 29, 1990
Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby Heenan call today’s action, still taped from Syracuse, New York.
What the World Was Watching: Saturday Night’s Main Event XXVI
Vince McMahon and Jesse Ventura handle commentary and they are taped from Austin, Texas. To put over the Texas setting of the show, McMahon and Ventura open the show on horseback in the aisle. The card was hyped as “The Tussle in Texas” and took place on April 23. According to thehistoryofwwe.com, the show drew a crowd of 8,500 fans.
What the World Was Watching: WWF Superstars – April 28, 1990
Vince McMahon and Jesse Ventura do commentary, still broadcasting matches from Glen Falls, New York.
The Hart Foundation squash from Prime Time Wrestling kicks off the broadcast.
What the World Was Watching: WWF Superstars – April 21, 1990
Vince McMahon and Jesse Ventura are doing commentary and they are taped from Glen Falls, New York.
What the World Was Watching: The Wrestling Summit (Special Column)
As noted in prior columns, this show was a joint effort by the WWF, New Japan Pro Wrestling, and All Japan Pro Wrestling. The WWF was looking to expand its global presence while New Japan and All Japan felt threatened by Akira Maeda’s shoot-like Universal Wrestling Federation, which drew a 50,000 person crowd to the Tokyo Dome for a big show in November 1989. To counter them, New Japan and All Japan worked together on a supershow at the Tokyo Dome on February 10. Then, they built on that effort by partnering with the WWF for another big card in Tokyo on April 13 that was named The Wrestling Summit. According tothehistoryofwwe.com, the show drew a crowd of 53,742.
What the World Was Watching: WWF Superstars – April 14, 1990
Vince McMahon and Jesse Ventura are in the booth, and they are taped from Glen Falls, New York. According to thehistoryofwwe.com, these tapings took place on April 4.
What the World Was Watching: WWF Wrestling Challenge – April 8, 1990
With Tony Schiavone gone, Wrestling Challenge sees an announcing shakeup with Vince McMahon and Bobby Heenan now calling the action. They are commentating matches at the end of the taping cycle in San Francisco.
What the World Was Watching: WrestleMania VI
Vince McMahon and Jesse Ventura are in the booth and they are live from Toronto, Ontario, Canada in what will be Ventura’s last appearance calling a WWF pay-per-view. According to thehistoryofwwe.com, the show drew a sellout crowd of 67,678, a new attendance record for the venue. It drew a buyrate of 3.8 (an estimated 550,000 purchases). This was a decline from the 5.9 buyrate of WrestleMania V, but this can be attributed to more homes getting pay-per-view access by 1990, thereby messing with the buyrate average.
Robert Goulet sings the Canadian National Anthem. According to Bruce Prichard, Goulet was picked for this spot because he badly botched signing “The Star Spangled Banner” several years earlier and this was a chance for him to redeem himself in front of a live crowd. The WWF put the lyrics on the Skydome’s video screen to ease Goulet’s nerves. And if you watch his body language during the performance, he goes from a bad of nerves to a guy having the time of his life halfway through. His wife, who watched backstage, cried her eyes out after he nailed the song.
What the World Was Watching: WWF Superstars – March 31, 1990
Vince McMahon and Jesse Ventura are in the booth, and they remain taped from Sacramento, California. On the eve of WrestleMania VI, Ventura is dressed in Ultimate Warrior face paint and t-shirt and a Hulk Hogan hat. When McMahon asks for a prediction, Ventura says the bout is a tossup.
What the World Was Watching: WWF Prime Time Wrestling “The Ultimate Challenge Special” – March 25, 1990
Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby Heenan host tonight’s show, which aired on USA Network on March 25. Instead of doing the show from the studio, though, they are on location from the Sparkles Nightclub in the CN Tower in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The matches on this broadcast were taped in San Francisco, California on March 7 as part of the Wrestling Challenge tapings that took place in the same location.
Heenan is anxious about being in CN Tower, telling Monsoon that the building is swaying. They renew their gag about Heenan needing tickets for WrestleMania VI and when Monsoons says he has secured them, Heenan demands to know if they are in the front row. Monsoon asks Heenan why he agreed to have the Colossal Connection face the Rockers a week before WrestleMania. Heenan responds that he arranged the match because Andre the Giant wanted to send a message to the Hart Foundation.
