If you believe the rumors/legend, the original plan for WM IV was for Ted Dibiase to win the WWF title and Randy Savage to beat the Honky Tonk Man for the IC title, but it was changed because HTM refused to lose the title to Savage for some reason. If they would have stuck to the original plan, how do you think future plans would have changed? They were clearly building a Hogan/Dibiase feud and they would have probably have had a title match at Summerslam instead of the tag match we got. HTM surely would have become a jobber much sooner, but where would Savage have fit in? Would they have still done the MegaPowers Exploding angle, only with Hogan as WWF Champion and Savage as IC Champion. Heck, would Savage have even been in the main event at WM V?
Also, do you know if there was ever a Hogan/Dibiase singles match, as all of the matches I have seen involving them were tag matches like Summerslam 88?
More importantly, how would the tournament have gone with the original bracketing? Originally the winner of Dibiase-Duggan was supposed to meet the winner of Gang-Bigelow and Jake-Rude was in the upper bracket instead. I don’t even know where they would have gone with that setup.
Anyway, original idea for Summerslam was Savage winning the title from Dibiase as the big kickoff for the PPV tradition and then Savage goes to WM5 against Hogan like the universe dictated. That was always set in stone.
And yes, Hogan and Dibiase had a pretty good singles match on SNME in 1989 and a bunch of good ones on the house show circuit.
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`Tags: House, Randy Savage, SNME, WWF
I always figured that DiBiase would have been supposed to be the heel champion heading into WMV, and that Hogan would dethrone him.
When Macho man won at WMIV I know a lot of people who were like “What the HELL?” as none of them took Savage seriously as a World Champion level guy, and if the day before someone has told them that he’d win the tourny, they would have been laughed at and mocked.
And I figured that DiBiase was supposed to win the belt from savage at the first Summerslam, but then plans changed.
Poor Ted. he left the NWA for the WWF because Flair and his good ol’ boys screwed him out of his deserved NWA World Title reign, and then he got shafted from his promised WWF World Title reign.
After watching the latest PrimeTime on 24/7, it’s pretty obvious that DiBiase/Hogan was going to be the original final. Savage & DiBiase would have met in the semis. And, Gorilla & Bobby were pumping a Savage/Steamboat rematch. If you think about it, they could have done Savage/Steamboat II…then let DiBiase beat a weakened/tired Savage. Then have DiBiase beat a weakened Hogan in the final after he got beat up by Andre.
Fantasy booking aside…the real question is why they didnt just leave the title on DiBiase on build to a main event with Hogan or Savage taking on DiBiase. The tournament sucked and DiBiase was mega, mega over as the champ through nefarious means. I always felt like stripping him of the title undercut his momentum.
DiBiase, in my opinion, is the biggest star to never win the world title in the WWF/E. It would have been nice for him to have gotten a title reign there.
I also don’t buy this rumor for a second: HTM refuses to lose the IC title so Vince just agrees and puts the WORLD TITLE on Savage? Doesn’t that seem a little incongruous?
Also, WWF was VERY big on ending all major shows with a babyface win. Ending the biggest show of the year with a heel winning a tournament, and the world title, just doesn’t seem like something they’d do at the time.
Also, and I could be wrong here, but I BELIEVE that Dave Meltzer debunked this rumor a while back.
According to HTM and Savage (in separate interviews, of course) Honky was supposed to do the job on “The Main Event”, pretty much as it went down, except it would’ve been a clean pin rather than a countout.
Apparently HTM did a last minute, “I’m not jobbing, I’ll take this belt and go home” kind of hold-up, so Vinny Mac had little recourse.
Also, given the MASSIVE drama surrounding the “Main Event” finish (Andre “defeating” Hogan), I reckon WWF would’ve broken the “send the fans home happy” edict in order to build some “heat” for the inaugural Summerslam (see what I did there?).
Three people (DiBiase, Honky, and Savage) have all corroborated that DiBiase was scheduled to leave WM IV with the strap. In fact, I believe a World Title was promised DiBiase upon entering, and being how long-term the booking was, it further supports the theory that WM IV would’ve been said opportunity. Yeah, I know they promised Bad News the strap, etc, but still.
It all makes sense after the fact: put the belt on a babyface (knowing yer gonna turn him), get the strap off Hulk (which was ALWAYS in the cards), and let Honky actually put somebody over, as opposed to losing what was then a lengthy feud to a star (Savage) with more heat. And the night ends with the beautiful Elizabeth high atop Mach’s shoulders in what is the greatest close to a Wrestlemania ever.
I think putting the strap on Savage probably worked out for the best… after all he drew crazy money the year he was champ doing megapowers stuff and wrestling Dibiase all around the country… this also allowed Honky Tonk man to make an instant superstar out of the Warrior.
Sure Dibiase as champ would of been sweet but business sense wise the WWF probably gained rather than lost any momentum.
Er, no. Savage drove tons of fans away during his reign. And he did the same thing again after he beat Flair in ‘92. In fact 1992 is the WWWf/WWF/WWE’s worst year from a financial perspective in history.
And the War-Yah didn’t exactly do Austin-like business either.