Coliseum Video Thanksgiving: Inside the WWF 1994

ER: My great buddy Josh is over today for Thanksgiving, Rachel is downstairs slaving away on an incredible feast, and Coliseum Videos are just about Josh's favorite kind of wrestling. So as we awaited our magnificent feast (and my god was it so far beyond epic, full Thanksgiving dinner, all prepped by Rachel, completely unreal that she went through this and nailed it. I don't deserve a damn thing), we decided to pop in this fresh crunchy slab of VHS. He liked the sound of the vignettes on this one, so we tossed it into the Video Cassette Recorder instead of wasting our time watching football. And our first visual is of Bret being caught in the locker room wearing nothing but a towel. Inside the WWF indeed.

Crush vs. Undertaker

ER: I cannot think of a wrestler I ever cared less about than Crush. Every single iteration. I can't at all remember getting excited for a Crush appearance, no matter my age. It's possible that I hated his ombre mullet, without being able to formulate those feelings into words or concrete thoughts. But this is actually kinda decent. Crush hits Taker in the jaw with the edge of a chair, and does an awesome press slam spot, pressing Taker several times before slamming him, Taker misses his crossbody in cool almost Dustin Rhodes fashion, and really it was probably as interesting as it was going to be. Not a bad start.

Razor Ramon/Marty Jannetty vs. Shawn Michaels/Diesel

ER: What a weird commentary duo on this, Stan Lane and Ted Dibiase. Lane does this weird thing where he literally commentates while doing a Vince impression. He tries to make his voice sound exactly like Vince, and what's weird is that he actually DOES sound like Vince. And the match is fun as they start with Diesel/Jannetty which is really smart, as it builds right away to Razor coming in. Michaels pops in occasionally to cockily get a cheap shot and tag out, so mostly we get Diesel dominating Jannetty, and it's great. Diesel drops him with a huge backbreaker and stretches him over his knee, hits a hard big boot, locks in a tight bearhug that Marty is great at selling (even letting out an anguished "OH GOD" during a tight squeeze), and it's such a surprising layout. On paper you'd expect to see Marty and Shawn work most of this, but Diesel is in there for 90% of the match, and it builds to this gigantic Razor hot tag. The hot tag just flat out explodes Razor hits the awesome 360 punch to knock Diesel off the apron, and we get a cool moment where Jannetty drags himself back in to hit a superkick on Shawn, and Razor absolutely plants him with a like a Rock Bottom chokeslam for the pin. This was cool.

Tatanka vs. Bam Bam Bigelow

ER: This is super Tatanka heavy at the beginning, with a bunch of Tatanka offense that only starts by him reversing a Bigelow slam in some way. Like Bam Bam picks hit up in a big slam and eats a DDT. Bam Bam is really great at making Tatanka's offense look good. Tatanka crashes and burns on a big crossbody off the top to allow Bam Bam to take over for the first time. Bammer hits a couple really nice headbutts, with Tatanka selling them really great, like he got socked in the eye. Tatanka rolls to the floor to recover, and "He's been out there since the Eisenhower administration," says Johnny Polo in reference to Tatanka being wrecked on the floor, in a reference that surely seemed dated 25 years ago when this video hit stores. I like Bam Bam a lot here, splatting Tatanka with his butt off a sunset drop, nice powerslam, convincingly jaws with the crowd to give Tatanka his comeback, and damn does he bump HUGE for Tatanka's comeback. He flies so high up into the air for a shoulderblock, like he was a jobber bumping for the Pounce, and he takes this wild bump to the floor on a tomahawk chop, just flying out through the bottom ropes and flying past the apron to the floor really fast. He gets counted out, and then comes in with a pair of scissors to attack to Tatanka, which is an angle I don't remember. Bigelow keeps trying to cut his hair and I don't remember any hair match angles from this era, but Tatanks (accidentally misspelled that but I kinda like Tatanks) gets the scissors and confusedly looks at Bam Bam's smooth dome.......and then grabs Luna's mullet and the crowd goes APE. Earl Hebner runs down and fucking KICKS the scissors out of the hand, and this whole thing took a weird and awesome turn. I dug all of this.

Bret Hart vs. Adam Bomb

ER: There's a white girl with mousey brown hair and braces who flips her lid for Hart's entrance music. Had I known her, that girl would have been my world.  Boy Bryan Clark certainly was a guy who was in professional wrestling for awhile. But a guy like Adam Bomb is a pretty perfect Bret opponent, because all you need is a couple slams and a decent back elbow and Bret would work decently with that. We pepper in a couple cool brief Bret comebacks, like when Bomb goes for a forearm and hits the ringpost. Bomb isn't great, but he's fairly engaging while working the chinlock that leads to Bret's comeback. They zoom in to show Bomb's lizard eye contacts and it hits me that we hadn't got a closeup on those eyes. If I had to put in those uncomfortable fucking contacts and they didn't show me in close up I would be pisssssssssed. Like Sean Astin having to wake up an hour early on the LOTR set to get giant feet glued on, that we would rarely see on film. Hart's comeback is switched up a little: no backbreaker, but still a big Russian leg sweep, misses the elbow off the middle to give a cool tease of a possible Hart loss, overall this was about what you'd expect from a Hart vs. stiff match. But, that's a formula enjoy, a comfortable formula.

Doink vs. Randy Savage

ER: And this is actually pretty great. This is still Matt Borne, who is obviously a really good match up for Savage, and both guys work really hard. Savage takes a few totally unnecessary bumps to the floor, not even doing any moves, just doing planchas to the floor and landing on his feet to show frustration. A lot of this match weirdly happens outside, there's a lot of Savage going after Doink and Doink trying to avoid him, Savage all energy. Borne is great at his character here, and I like that he's hardly laughing like he usually did, just annoying Savage. He misses the Whoopie Cushion which is a tough move to hit and miss, and eats a great Savage lariat to the floor. A second Doink gets involved, crawls under the ring, and sneaks up on Savage and hits a nasty shot right to the back of the his head. Under ring Doink then holds Savage's leg when he spills to the floor, so the original Doink wins by count out. I thought it was a pretty awesome way to do a count out finish and the match structure was really weird, so much time spent outside the ring. Annoyingly, lamely, Savage gets the referee to come back out and check under the ring and gets the match reversed in his favor when they find another Doink. That brought it back more into Coliseum territory.

ER: We get this weird and WONDERFUL 10 second segment with Earthquake, where we just bump into fun, chill, ultra casual Earthquake backstage wearing a windbreaker, who just says "Oh hey guys,   it's your old friend Earthquake, just letting you know that I'm back!" That's weird. I mean it was great, but it's weird right?

Ludvig Borga vs. Razor Ramon

ER: This is really exciting as it's the only Coliseum Video that Borga made it on to, and they make him look really strong against Razor. The early part of the match is all Borga, knocking Razor to the floor, literally just shoving Razor to the floor out of a lock up (great spot), big shoulderblock that knocks Razor on his butt, and we get an actual great knucklelock exchange that has Borga do a long build to Ramon getting powered down to his knees, but fighting back to do a cool knucklelock Northern Lights suplex. Borga gets a lot, some of it good (a nice fast wind up elbow) some of it had its heart in the right place (big flying clothesline). Borga even gets a kind of shocking pinfall, as he hits a lariat off the top and gets an actual 3 count, but Razor's foot was on the ropes. There's a really nice suplex by Razor, bringing Borga in from the apron, great tease around Borga suplexing Ramon to the floor, but both men go down selling once Razor suplexes him in the ring. We get a really weird Finnish (HA!!!!!!) when Michaels runs in and cracks Razor in the head with the belt, and after a long period of both men being down they actually let Borga get the pin. Borga celebrates all around the ring with the title and looks crushed when they take it away, and this was during that weird time when there were two IC title belts so there are just too many belts around the ring and nobody knows what is happening. Those are two weirdly overbooked finishes in a row on this tape. Borga really took 80% of the match and Hall bumped all over for him, totally delivered what I wanted it to.

Shawn Michaels vs. Lex Luger

ER: You know who was great? Lex Luger. That guy was great, loved him during all his 95/96 WCW run, and here he is looking great. Go figure. Michaels is also IC champ in this match (Ramon was IC champ in the prior match, they were doing some thing where Michaels was claiming he never lost the belt) and heel Michaels was unquestionably the best iteration of him. He's a little sluggish on offense here, does a chinlock that drags a bit, but bumps impressively for Luger's big offense run, and Luger looks fantastic in it. Luger's shoulderblocks and lariats were on, hits a great back elbow, nice powerslam, Luger looked like clearly the best babyface in the company here. Sadly Michaels immediately opts to get counted out so he won't lose his title that isn't his, and Luger used the old Narcissist forearm and really smashes Diesel with it. I didn't actually realize Luger used that metal plate forearm once he was All American. Finish to this couldn't have been much lamer, but the words itself was the goods.

Cage Match: Bret Hart vs. Yokozuna

ER: I know I've seen this match before and really liked it, and my memories were totally correct because this is awesome. Yoko was so damn good and Bret worked snug enough here that he always looked totally plausible as a guy doing damage to Yoko. Bret is smart about this as most of his advantages comes with Yoko missing big offense, like a big elbowdrop and a big legdrop or missing a charge into the cage, and Bret would take over from all of those things with nice uppercuts, with Yoko not being fazed for long. They did a bunch of really smart stuff around cage escapes, good teases, with one amusing one where Hart is almost over the top and gets yanked down by one big Yoko arm. Hart does really great with it, dropping fast onto the top rope dick first and Yoko starts laughing. Yoko is so great here, I mentioned Hart worked snug to make up for the size difference, but Yoko has a bunch of great shots I don't remember him using including just a straight punch right to the throat, also a sick uppercut. And since a lot of the match is built around Yokozuna missing big moves so Bret can work in offense, he also misses things I don't remember him ever doing, like a big splash. For as big as he was I don't remember Yoko ever just doing a standing splash. Yoko really bumps around big for Hart, loved that big flat back banana peel bump, and Hart actually hits the Russian Leg Sweep on him, except he does it exactly like the Zig Zag since Yoko would be impossible to leg sweep. Finish is complicated but it's unique because it's drawn out compared to other similar finishes of the era. Yoko brings in his ancient ceremonial salt bucket because that's a thing, and he and Hart trade using it as a weapon. Once it got brought in I assumed it was a one and done, Yoko hitting Hart and escaping, or Yoko losing and being hit and Hart escaping, but they did some more teasing with that. This match got a lot of time, 20 minutes plus, but they were so clever with how they milked everything. This match ruled.

ER: This tape was killer, one of the best Coliseum releases out there. It bookended a really special Thanksgiving, and I'm still completely full while finishing this. I have stopped typing several times to eat pie. Caramel apple pecan pie. It's impossible. Happy Thanksgiving!