Borga Stepped Into My Life from a Magazine

Ludvig Borga vs. Tatanka  WWF Superstars 10/30/93 - EPIC

ER: It's crazy that this match was on Superstars, because this match felt like something that easily should have taken place on the upcoming Survivor Series PPV. Borga was positioned as the #2 heel at this point and Tatanka was at worst the #4 babyface (behind Bret, Luger, and Razor). Both had undefeated streaks, with Tatanka's now at 20 months, and it would have made way more sense to give this match a PPV platform. I love the Rock n Roll Express but there's no reason they needed a match at Survivor Series when this could have been positioned 2nd from the top. This was really Borga's first big singles match (outside of house shows, he dominated Marty Jannetty at Summerslam, so really the only opponent TV viewers would have seen give him even minor trouble would have been Virgil), so the first real opportunity to see a star get actual offense against him. 

Tatanka was a popular attraction at this point, a popular babyface who did nothing but win matches. But this match is probably the first time I ever heard him get a USA chant, and this match was really the first time the WWF heavily billed him as "An American, Defending America". Despite calling him a Native American often, I am sure many fans viewed him as a foreigner, because wrestling fans don't always have a firm understanding of race and cultural heritage. But here Tatanka was An American, Defending America, after having only previously served as The 4th Most Patriotic American At Best. Now a Proud Native American, Tatanka was never before treated as American as Hogan, Duggan, or Randy Savage - specifically during the 11 summer weeks of 1993 when Savage presumably lived in and slept in his stars & stripes sequined tuxedo and matching cowboy hat. 

Ludvig Borga's hands down best quality is that the second he comes through the curtain until the moment he's out of sight (and assuredly beyond), he looks like he is absolutely disgusted by every person he sees. Borga is filled with revulsion at this life that chose him, and loathes the sticky handed children and mustachioed north easterners who surround him. His scowl is iconic. The match plays out as a satisfying house show main event, with Borga goading the fans the entire time and getting loud heat and playing to all sides of the ring. Watching Borga with a full push behind him really highlights the things he was great at, and by now he was second in WWF only to Lawler at working the crowd. Heels played to crowds more at house shows, but Borga and Lawler were the only ones doing it in all of their recorded matches. Borga works over Tatanka's midsection with punches (finding specific people in the crowd to threaten before and after every one), and they milk a lot out of Tatanka knocking Borga off his feet. Borga misses a big avalanche and Tatanka goes wild with multiple clotheslines to finally knock Borga down, and the man challenges Tatanka to do it again! Borga works this match as if he's 7' tall and 400 lb., dropping down to one knee after a dropkick and getting knocked off balance but not down by chops and clotheslines and eventually gets knocked down by a nice crossbody. 

The USA chants are coming in steady when Borga hits one of the greatest body shots my eyes have seen, when Tatanka ducks a Borga lariat but Borga catches him with a whipcrack full arm shot to the belly that I guarantee was the loudest strike on this show. It's a loud enough sound to stop the USA chants cold and Borga gloats about that, rubbing that punch into the collective faces of Worcester. Borga hits a big vertical suplex and works a long but effective side headlock. This was not an IRS chinlock in the middle of a squash match for reasons nobody could ever know, but instead an actual worked headlock with both making it build to something. There's a surprisingly dominant Borga spot where Tatanka powers up out of a headlock and plants Borga with a hard back suplex, and Borga ROARS to his feet and plasters Tatanka with a lariat right under the chin. You didn't get a lot of no selling in late 1993 WWF so this stood out as some Zeus level shit. When Tatanka starts his war dance, Borga tries cutting him off with punches to the kidneys (which Tatanka has been selling the entire match) but Tatanka powers through, and we get into our finish - my only real fault with the match. Mr. Fuji had come to ringside to act as foreign distraction, and Fuji's distraction allows Borga to waste Tatanka with a folding chair. WWF wasn't using a lot of chairshots in this era, and while it wasn't to the head it was still a loud shot. Borga lunges at and scares a kid in the front row on his way back into the ring, and then pins Tatanka in the middle with only one finger. 

And with that, Ludvig Borga has once again pantsed America in front of the girl he has had a crush on for 3 years, pointing and yelling to all of the other countries about America's baby dick as America scrambled to pull their pants up. We get a post match finish that is greater than any angle that has finished an episode of Raw to this point, with Borga and Yokozuna manhandling and flattening Tatanka while the Quebecers keep Luger tied up. Luger gets to run off the heels, but the Steiners were supposedly locked in the dressing room and Luger was - AGAIN - too late. I think for the angle to have really worked they needed to really wreck Tatanka. Borga needed to do way more cheating to win, and Yokozuna needed more than one banzai splash. But the fans HATE Borga and Yokozuna and the heel side feels incredibly strong right now. This could have given us an excellent Borga/Yokozuna vs. Tatanka/Luger TV tag, but they only used that match a handful of times on house shows...two months later. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE LUDVIG BORGA