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Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: January 10, 2008
PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: WWF Wrestling Challenge
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: The breakup of the tag team is one of pro wrestling’s finest traditions. Have two wrestlers who aren’t really making it happen on their own for whatever reason (too bland; too green)? Throw ’em into a tag team, see if that pops. And then, after several years of that tag team working well together and improving their ring-work and charisma, the next logical step is to break them up so that one (or both, I suppose, but it’s usually just the one) can go on to success as a singles wrestler. Oh sure, every now and then the parting is amicable. Bret ‘The Hitman’ Hart just kind of left the Hart Foundation one day and started competing as a singles wrestler.
But other times, the breakup of a tag team involves the kind of betrayal that everyone remembers. Such was the case with The Rockers, the early-’90s WWF tag team of Shawn Michaels and Marty Jannetty, two athletic young guys with high-flying moves and very bright neon costumes. They were a lot of fun to watch, even if they were basically as interchangeable as “the blond one” (Shawn”) and “the brunette one” (Marty). They were also consistently thwarted by the champion tag teams of their day like Demolition and The Hart Foundation. So when that frustration began to bubble over into occasional spats between Marty and Shawn, you knew The Rockers weren’t long for the WWF.
The actual split, however, was probably the most memorable split of its era, with the increasingly attitude-y Shawn (leather jacket! dangly earring!) at first agreeing to mend things with Marty … before super-kicking him in the jaw and then sending him flying through the plate glass of the Barbershop set (this was Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake’s follow-up to “The Brother Love Show”).
This moment will live in infamy not only for the visual of Shawn throwing Marty through the glass — and not only for the A+ announcing of Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby “The Brain” Heenan, perhaps the greatest announcing dup of all time — but also for the fact that Shawn Michaels went on to become one of the signature solo stars of the WWF’s “Attitude” era, winning the WWF title multiple times and competing in some of the biggest and most memorable matches in wrestling history. So sometimes the bad guys do win, at least in the WWE.
