Borga Became a Legend in My Life

Ludvig Borga vs. Scott King WWF Wrestling Challenge 10/24/93 - FUN

ER: Poor poor Scott King. He doesn't even get his name announced before his beating, as Borga shoves Mike McGuirk (holy shit, Ludvig) out of the way just as she's about to. I've seen Borga shove Finkel out of the way before, but this has to be the first time Borga has physically moved McGuirk before an ass kicking. Ross is appalled and Heenan says she just shouldn't have been in the way, and should have instead been doing the announcing from the kitchen and they work a great bit around that, with Ross ignoring Heenan as Heenan keeps apologizing and then continuing the joke ("I should have said laundry room because we all know she can't cook!"). This probably reads extremely offensive but it played more like a good Charles Nelson Reilly bit about Bret Somers than an anti-woman screed. The fact is, Ludvig Borga is the world's most aggressive Roomba, just shoving his way over anything that gets in the way of his primary directive: Murder that man standing in the corner. Borga shoves a woman, a Roomba drags a cat blanket around the house. These are the same killing machines only with different strength. 

Borga goes after King's ribs with punches, and King is really great at selling rib injuries. He has a way of clutching his left arm close to his body and holding that left arm with his right, the best visual way to put over an internal injury. Hands to stomach looks too dainty and reads more like diarrhea. Clutching an arm to your body through clenched teeth and one closed eye is the kind of thing Tenryu would do to sell a rib injury. Scott King took several punches to the body, and I love how Borga mixes the angles he throws them at. My favorite punch this match was Borga standing to King's 5 o'clock and wrapping a right hand underneath King's ribcage. The flapjack uppercut looked great, and Borga has the most effectively painful looking Torture Rack these eyes have seen. 

Ludvig Borga vs. Mike Bucci  WWF Raw 10/25/93 - GREAT

ER: This was one of the best squash matches of 1993. Most memorable squash matches are remembered for their violence. If a job guy lands on his head, it's typically part of a memorable squash match. This match was one-sided and Borga has great looking offense, but Mike Bucci didn't wind up in traction. What made this so memorable was Borga's full commitment to being a sincerely hated heel. The Narcissist and later Doink face turn really left Borga as the only vocal heel on the brand who could do strong crowd work. Borga is a heel who wrestles like he openly hates the fans he's wrestling in front of, and this match was the best he's pulled that off yet. He picks one guy in the crowd, a big mustachioed guy in the front row behind camera that we don't get to see until after the match, and he rubs this guy's face in it after every single shot he takes at the future Super Nova. It plays incredibly on camera, because Borga is walking right toward the ringside camera between every move, yelling past it at this unknown object of ire. 

Borga hits a spinebuster on Bucci, lifts and drops him with a double handed choke, hammers him with beautiful rights to the body, and in between every shot he's walking over to this guy and telling him to kiss his ass. Borga runs down everything a man from Poughkeepsie might hold dear, all while effectively pounding away at Bucci. Bucci's inexperience adds to the heel heat as he looks kind of off balance when he gets thrown into the ropes, so every time Borga wasted him it felt like he was taking advantage of a man in over his head. Borga is the biggest heat machine in WWF at this point, getting even more heat than Cornette can get for Yokozuna by shouting 20x the words Borga does. The 1993 WWF crowds were responding far louder to Ludvig Borga as a heel, than they were Lex Luger as a face. Borga was getting real modern reactions, as the hatred was clear, but he looked cool delivering his hateful beatings and some fans were naturally reacting to him throwing guys like Bucci into the air and then punching them to the mat. The face reactions were loud and competed with the louder heel reactions, but this man was drawing LOUD reactions like few. He taunts the crowd like an absolute pro. He has the same annoying smug European qualities as some of the best heels in French Catch. When you see him singling out fans while not forgetting to spread plenty of hate to the rest of the fans, while also taking the time to smugly acknowledge someone's hand-drawn Finnish flag, he comes off like one of the great heels of 1993 American wrestling. Borga was a much hotter act than given credit for at the time, and this match was the hottest the act has looked in WWF so far.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE LUDVIG BORGA