The Royal Rumble match has created a lot of memorable moments in WWE over the last several decades.
Demolition Smash was a recent guest on Wrestling Then and Now to discuss a wide variety of subjects. When asked about his moment with Demolition Ax in the 1989 Royal Rumble, Smash talked about how special that moment was and how the crowd reacted to them facing off.
“What’s funny is when when you’re behind the curtain, and your music starts, and you can hear the crowd. We really didn’t know that we were going to be first and second. So yeah, that was kind of a big shock when the music hit, Bill [Ax] went out there, and the crowd went nuts and everything.
“So then when you got that time limit for the next person to come out, all of sudden they hear the music again, and it got kind of quiet for a minute when I came through the curtain, then they cheered. So it was a real different thing for them. And then, when we got in the ring, you could have dropped a pin, and you could have heard it. That’s how quiet it was.
“And then I think Bill threw the first punch at me, I don’t know, but we started going at it, and then they went nuts, and it was a lot of fun. When you can control the crowd, make them cry, make them scream, make them love you, hate you, that’s what it’s all about. And that was one of those times we could do anything we wanted to, but it was perfect.
“This is where Vince is a genius or whoever helps Vince. Then bring out Andre the Giant, so now you got some of the toughest guys in the whole territory but against the toughest, the biggest guy. I mean, they put it together just beautiful. So, like you’re saying, they could never do that again. They’ve tried, but it’s just like, who cares? I mean, it was a really good angle. A lot of fun.”
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