Gimmick Some Lovin': The Arkansas Hog Pen Match

I wonder if we could give Vince a coronary by time-traveling to 1995, going to Gorilla Position during this match, and telling him that he's looking at his future son-in-law.

The Match

The best adjective to describe everything in the introductions to this match is broad. Subtlety has absolutely no place in this segment, and the commentary (starting with McMahon reveling in the sight of the pigs to start and continuing with Lawler's Jeff Foxworthy ripoff jokes) to Helmsley's pantomimed prestige and disgust (says my wife: he looks like something off the cover of a romance novel) plays from the bottom of the barrel to the back row of the upper deck.

Slop makes an early appearance, coating Helmsley before he can fully disrobe; Godwinn would later tie the blueblood up in the ropes to forcefeed him a handful of hog chow as well. The camerawork is annoying and choppy, constantly reminding us (to the detriment of seeing what's happening in the ring) that there is a hog pen near the entranceway.

Oddly enough, we somehow end up back in the ring after this.

As we saw with the Buried Alive Match, the rules of the contest and the action presented between the bells don't always make sense together. Helmsley batters Godwinn next to the pigsty (adding a fantastic elbowdrop from the fence), then leads his hog farming foe back to the ring for no apparent reason.

There, Godwinn batters Helmsley with a great wheelbarrow suplex (and a couple of flips by Helmsley taken straight out of Shawn Michaels' and Ric Flair's playbooks), then attempts a Slop Drop DDT in the aisle, which Helmsley blocks.

An Irish whip into the gate on the hog pen gashes Helmsley's back something fierce, and makes the next few minutes the most cringeworthy parts of his career not involving a Kane mask or a posedown.

Godwinn attempts the slop drop by the pig pen again, nailing it onto a muddy and feces-laden mat, then attempts a charge, but gets backdropped directly into the muck to give Helmsley the win. The [future] Game takes offense at Hillbilly Jim offering his congratulations, so Godwinn gorilla presses Helmsley into the filth, face-first, then makes sure he gets coated head-to-toe before Helmsley takes an exaggerated series of pratfalls to really sell the loss as a generic series of hootenanny banjo and fiddle loops.