Posted on by bdamage1
Brian Damage
The Date: January 26th, 1987
The Place: The Sundome in Tampa, Florida
The Match: The British Bulldogs defend the WWF tag team titles against The Hart Foundation
It was during the WWF Superstars taping in Tampa, Florida where the second match of the night had The British Bulldogs (Davy Boy Smith and The Dynamite Kid) defending their WWF world tag team titles against The Hart Foundation (Bret Hart and Jim Neidhart) managed by Jimmy Hart. It was a title match that wasn’t supposed to be for a few reasons. The first being that ‘The Dynamite Kid’ Tom Billington had suffered a very serious back injury and was in absolutely no shape to compete. He had suffered the injury while he and Davy Boy were defending the tag team titles in Canada against Bob Orton Jr and Don Muraco.
His back injury was so severe that he was hospitalized and bedridden for weeks. While Billington was hospitalized, several wrestlers were used to fill in during house show matches including ‘Rowdy’ Roddy Piper. Vince McMahon made the decision to strip the British Bulldogs of their titles and have a tournament to decide new champions. He sent Bret Hart to retrieve Billington’s title while in the hospital. Dynamite Kid refused to hand over the belt and instead set up a meeting with McMahon.
Billington checked himself out of the hospital against doctors orders and met with Vince McMahon. At the meeting, the Dynamite Kid agreed to physically drop the straps in a title match. Supposedly, McMahon wanted the British Bulldogs to lose the title to the former tag team champions Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkoff, but Billington refused. He would only do the job to the Hart Foundation. McMahon agreed and the match was set up.
For the taping of the title match, Billington could barely walk, let alone wrestle a match. Davy Boy Smith had to practically carry Billington to ringside. While Davy Boy climbed in the ring and had their mascot bulldog Matilda chase the Hart Foundation around, the Foundation’s manager Jimmy Hart slugged the Dynamite Kid over the head with his megaphone. It was the excuse for Billington to not enter into the match. As Dynamite Kid lay unconscious on the arena floor, the Hart Foundation began to double team Davy Boy.
It quickly became a handicap match with Smith fighting off both members of the Hart Foundation. This, while the referee Danny Davis was outside the ring attending to Dynamite Kid. Davy Boy attempted to drag Danny Davis into the ring by his hair, but Bret and the Anvil regained the advantage by continuing to double team him. As Vince McMahon was screaming on play by play for Davis to get in the ring and restore order…the Harts used their finishing move ‘The Hart Attack’ to end the match. A rather quick three count by Davis and the Hart Foundation were the brand new tag team champions.
The end result of this match revealed that referee Danny Davis was in cahoots with the Hart Foundation all along. The Hart Foundation were only booked to be transitional champions, as McMahon wanted the belts on his hot new team of the Can Am Connection (Rick Martel and Tom Zenk). However, the Hart Foundation generated incredible heel heat and the Can Am Connection had their own personal issues. Bret Hart and Jim Neidhart wound up holding the tag team titles a lot longer than a month or two. Their reign lasted 10 months, eventually losing to Strike Force (the team that formed after the Can Am Connection split up).