The 1993 King of the Ring Qualifying Matches, Part 1

Doink vs. Mr. Perfect WWF Superstars 5/1/93

ER: I remember really liking their series throughout the KOTR tournament when I saw this as a kid, and I'm still interested to see what they bring in their other tournament matches, even though overall this match did not work for me at all. The ring work itself isn't much of a problem, but the pacing and layout and big ugly commercial break are all kinds of wack. The match is basically split in half, pre commercial and post commercial. In the 1st half it's Mr. Perfect absolutely reigning down terror on Doink, just mercilessly kicking Doink's ass around the ring and tearing apart his leg, dropping knees on his leg, trying to yank his leg out of socket, just punishing him. And Doink is selling this leg injury and literally on the mat pleading for Perfect to let up. And Perfect rips apart Doink's leg for so long that Doink clearly looks like a babyface, and the crowd gets noticeably quiet as Perfect keeps ripping at this evil clown's leg. The layout is completely baffling, because it's so dominated by the babyface that  it will then obviously lead to the evil clown valiantly fighting back on one leg. But they do us even worse than that, as they go to a commercial when Doink spills - again - to the floor, desperate to get away from the cruel Mr. Perfect.

And, of course, when they return from break, Mr. Perfect is laid out on the floor and Doink is back in the ring. They do not show us how the tide turned, all we know is that Doink got zero offense for the first half of this match, then SOMETHING happened, and Mr. Perfect was now hurt. I hate it. So then the back half is Doink going fully on offense, nobody is talking about Doink's bum wheel, and Doink is doing nothing but taking high leaps off the top rope and landing on his feet. Doink does a big axe handle to the FLOOR and another axe handle into the ring, and that whole match before the commercial break feels like it came from an entirely different match. Perfect starts pulling off nearfalls down the stretch, getting convincing falls off a small package and fighting into a backslide, but even then they come off like Doink is the babyface narrowly avoiding defeat. This match is so fucking weird. Perfect gets several nearfalls on Doink and the power structure in this match is so bizarre. Doink looks like he is valiantly surviving and Perfect looks like he's panicking to put Doink away, it's all so disconnected from the match they should have been working. The bell rings just as Perfect hits the Perfect Plex, which leads to more confusion and an angry crowd once the time limit draw is announced. This whole match was structured seemingly to confuse and irritate the crowd, the kind of match where the ring work looks strong but nothing either character does makes sense. Very annoying.


Lex Luger vs. Bob Backlund WWF Wrestling Challenge 5/2/93

ER: This was good, the proper way to work a basic face vs. heel qualifying round match, only making me wish we got way more heel Luger in WWF. Backlund flusters him to start, immediately going for a nice inside cradle and high angle backslide, sweeping Luger's legs out from him as he charges in, and the crowd is fired up by the simple heel/face formula. Luger is also someone really great at complaining his way down the aisle when he is flummoxed, really knows the level of ham to be employing on those aisle walks. We've all seen a ton of wrestlers doing aisle walks, but Luger's body language stands out in a specifically strong way. He's got the perfect posture of a man with all of the physical advantages anyone could possibly ever need, yet still finding every reason to act like he's at the disadvantage. I love how Backlund also immediately picks up where he left off when Luger gets back in the ring, immediately getting him in the corner and about to mount punches, and I loved Luger's sharp back elbow out of the corner that finally put him in control. Luger concentrates mostly on elbow strikes until Backlund's comeback, which is something I think Luger does well.

Backlund had weird timing in 1993. At first I wasn't sure where the cross-ups were coming from, but the more I go back and watch '93 Backlund the more I see guys getting crossed up by his timing. He releases too quickly on hip tosses (following through far too quickly for anyone to have completed their bump) and his dropkick positioning is too far back. He did these same two things to Razor Ramon in their WrestleMania match and it made both of them look like goofs. Luger handled it better here than Razor did there, and the finish of this one is strong for a count out. Luger pushes Backlund off to the floor after Backlund runs him into the ropes with a prawn hold - Backlund taking a real nice crashing bump through the ropes to the floor - and when Backlund gets back on the apron Luger just annihilates him with the metal plated elbow. Backlund flies deep into the aisle and there is no chance of him making it back in time to beat the count. Luger was awesome during the ref's count, acting exhausted while draping his arms over the ropes, like he had just been through a war. Big fan of this match. A well played qualifier.


Razor Ramon vs. Tito Santana WWF Superstars 5/8/93

ER: Quick match, under 4 minutes, but laid out smartly and efficiently for the time. One of my favorite things about Santana during this era is the different ways he would utilize the flying forearm. Since he wasn't winning a ton of matches in '93 he wasn't using it to win, but he would still find ways to smartly peak reactions around it. He smartly used it for crushing nearfalls, but here he went to it almost right away and got a HUGE reaction from the crowd. This era WWF fan really responded well to babyfaces. On the episode of Raw preceding this show there was a long Duggan/Michaels match, and the fans lost their minds for Jim Duggan. Here Tito got a great reaction during his entrance and the fans would get loudly behind him every time he was in control. When he hit that forearm the crowd flipped, Vince flipped, and Razor barely got his boot on the bottom rope. Great placement from everyone. And because Tito Santana is great and wrestling in 1993 wasn't a bunch of twee theater kids, Tito just starts raining down fiery mounted punches on Razor instead of looking at the ref with a "please don't piss on me" face. The strike exchanges were strong and Tito is good at working over arm wringers, plus one of Razor's great unheralded strengths is selling things like arm wringers. Razor is a strong "on your feet" salesman, the kind of guy who is better at dancing in place than most. Razor takes over with a big hotshot and throws some big stomps into the side of Tito's head. I would have liked a more dynamic finish, but the finish we got was good in terms of the characters involved. Tito had Razor reeling and went to the top for a crossbody (and the fans were reallllly buying into a Tito win here) but Razor rolled through the crossbody and held the tights. It's odd that Razor wasn't given a cleaner win, but it all made sense from a character standpoint.


Papa Shango vs. Jim Duggan WWF Wrestling Challenge 5/9/93

ER: Not great, but nobody was watching this one with Great Match Theory in mind. Shango is big and has the greatest makeup possible, Duggan is stunningly over, and they both throw strikes that aren't nearly as good as they should be. 1993 Duggan was getting big loud reactions from fans everywhere, and even though I lived through and watched this era I am still surprised at how fans were into every single thing about this guy. I like Duggan, but I just didn't remember him getting top of card reactions in 1993 (even with the Yokozuna stuff). Some nights Duggan lays in punches and comes in harder on shoulderblocks, but on nights like this he throws his punches slower and lighter and pulls way back on clotheslines. Charles Wright is weirdly one of the lighter big man workers in history, a guy who always looked like he should absolutely murder a guy but instead would hit so so axe handles and clubbing offense. Shango goes over for a nice backdrop and then lay around in a Shango chinlock for awhile, and eventually Duggan hits the 3 point clothesline for a clean win. They can't all be winners, but the fans were into this. The people in 1993 knew what they wanted, and they wanted to yell about the USA.


Bam Bam Bigelow vs. Typhoon WWF Raw 5/10/93

ER: It's really good to know Vince and I are on the same page, as he flat out says "talking about the beef". Now, I skimmed back in the episode to hear what I missed, and I'm not certain anyone was ever talking about beef. I have no idea what anyone could have been said concerning "all that beef", to get Vince to bring up that damn beef, but he's sure not wrong. This is filled with big beef slamming into each other. Some of the strikes were a little lacking (there was a miscommunication on one, other times Bigelow throws these not punches/not forearms that were disappointing), but all the good stuff was there. Typhoon hits a big bodyslam, Bigelow hits an even bigger bodyslam and a super impressive back suplex (Typhoon never looks like he goes up easy for offense, so this lift was quite a feat)...and in an amusing moment Typhoon springs back to his feet to hit a lariat that sends Bigelow FLYING out of the ring. He went through the middle ropes so quick and he just dropped out of view, swallowed by the earth. We got two different fun moments of each man trying to get back in the ring (dug Typhoon's knees first bump dropping onto the ring steps), and the finish is cool with Bigelow muscling him up AGAIN, this time for a big ass Samoan drop (which Vince points out was Bigelow sending a threat to Tatanka) and hitting the diving headbutt. This was what you'd want. Also, nobody makes mention of the fact that this was a battle of Fire vs. Water, which feels like the exact reason you have a soundbite guy like Savage out there.