WWF Superstars 2/27/93: Three Maulings and an Under 5 Minute Classic

1. Yokozuna vs. Brian West

ER: This started with Brian West getting run right fucking over with one of Yokozuna's greatest clotheslines, and things didn't get any better for him. Yokozuna had two minutes to look like an unstoppable physical force, and he did it without breaking a sweat. He looked amazing in his white tights and black mawashi, and Brian West looked disgusting in his inverted singlet. West gets his ass kicked pillar to post while wearing a singlet where the straps go on the inside of the nipples. You never want to be out there in a dickey singlet top while a 500 pound man is throwing punches and headbutts at you. When the coroner is having your family identify the body, you don't want to be wearing something as stupid as Brian West. Yokozuna's legdrop is a thing of all time wrestling beauty: the form, the impact, the way he rolls off, the impressive safety of it all. He throws West with his belly to belly and sets up the banzai splash perfectly, running into West with another clothesline that drops him on his back, right into position. This was Yokozuna working with Terminator efficiency. Imagine a 500 pound Terminator chasing a kid through an arcade. Different ballgame. 

2. Nasty Boys vs. Mark Ming/Jim Gorman

ER: You always see people talk about the bad luck of showing up to your job duty and finding out you were opposite the Steiners, and that's valid. But the Nasty Boys are right there with them for most unfortunate gig worker opponent. Sometimes Knobbs and Sags show up with a literal lip licking intensity and desire to beat a couple guys up. It usually isn't unprofessional, and this match wasn't either. But there are levels of "professional" and a lot of them don't include elbowing a guy in the eye socket to start a Saturday morning. Maybe Mark Ming is a master salesman. There are several examples of Mark Ming doing weekend job work and maybe it would be worthwhile to examine his selling in those matches. So maybe Knobbs pulled his shot and Ming's selling is just so good that he slumped into the middle rope looking like a man who suddenly feared for his safety and was not expecting to be hit in the eyeball on this day. 

Knobbs looks so excited to beat Mark Ming's ass that he really had one of his best back alley ass kicking performances here, just a couple months before the Nasties' WWF exit. There are a lot of guys on this 1993 roster who are really busting their asses and wreaking hell on jobbers before the major spring roster transition. I love when the Nasty Boys throw out all civility and just fall on guys. Knobbs and Sags each do elbowdrops in this match that are real asshole older brother elbowdrops. They are big guys who just flop full weight onto other guys, leaping off one bed and onto the other with no regard for their younger brother or their bed frames. Sags hits an elbowdrop off the top so crushing that I would have rather had a couch thrown onto me. There's a shot of Knobbs standing on the apron at one point, leaning forward on his tippy toes over the top rope, wide eyed in almost childlike glee, licking his lips while Sags beat some dude's ass, and that shot kind of sums up the Nasty Boys. What's the proper term for an occasionally annoying asshole? Ask Rob Dibble or Norm Charlton. 

3. Doink vs. Big Boss Man

ER: This match is insane. It's Boss Man's last taped match of this WWF run, and it's a generous performance that helped Doink look like a very real threat. There's an alternate timeline 1993 where Vince doesn't panic after Hogan's long-forecast exit, and held steady through the year with Bret/Crush/Tatanka/Perfect/Duggan as the top babyfaces, and Yokozuna/Luger/Doink/Bigelow/Razor as the top heels, and every single person would have been better for it. Crush's feud with Doink killed his potential big run, but that's on WWF for unnecessarily keeping both men mired in it for half the year. If Luger stays heel, Crush slams Yokozuna, and Doink continues working amateur shootstyle matwork against guys 100 pounds heavier than he, THEN you have a promotion with a thriving summer. Heel Doink was an incredible role that Matt Borne played to perfection. People fondly remember the series with Mr. Perfect, the PPV gem against Bret, and weekend gems like his technical sprint with Bob Backlund, but I think this match against Boss Man was Borne at his aggressive bulldog matwork best. It being Boss Man's last WWF TV match for 5 years, and how dominant Doink was at the front end, looked like they were destroying Boss Man at his going away party. But the comeback came and showcased how at his best Boss Man was always just Dustin Rhodes, if Dustin was carrying an extra 100 pounds. I mean I don't remember Black Reign being anywhere near as good as Boss Man, but in theory.

Doink hits Boss Man upside the head with a cardboard box, which we are lead to believe was loaded, but either way Boss Man sells a box across the head as if someone cheap-shotted him with a pipe. It was almost shocking how dominant Doink was, but after a win over Tugboat and his mauling of Boss Man, this was the time to show how Doink could dismantle an opponent of any size. As I said up top, this match is insane. You don't often get to see a guy dressed up like a Spirit Store policeman working shootstyle amateur matwork with a clown, so this match had a deranged "technical street fight breaks out at a southern states Halloween party" feel to it. Doink twisted Boss Man's neck into a neckbreaker and dragged him to the mat with a drop toehold, then worked his legs into a fought for STF. It's so surreal watching a man in slightly rubbed off clown makeup work snug hammerlocks and half nelson grapevines against a man as large as Boss Man, and there's a moment where Doink traps Boss Man's arm and shoot turns him into a pin like he was Jack Brisco. Doink even plants him with a high back suplex and a tremendous fireman's carry takedown into an armbar! Doink completely eliminated the size difference while in control, making it look like Boss Man couldn't break these holds or stop these takedowns even if he knew they were coming. 

But Boss Man's comeback is believable and loudly received, as he press slams Doink off the top and goes on a real tear. I love when Boss builds speed and hits the ropes harder and harder, pushing the pace and throwing punches the entire time. He thunders into Doink with a corner clothesline and throws heavy corner punches, short uppercuts under the chin, a big boot, and slides to the floor with an uppercut after using his weight to see if he could break the ropes with Doink draped over them. Does the Georgia lawman get green spray paint sprayed into his eyes at the finish? Yes, but this was a fucking fight and it deserved to end dirty. 1993 Boss Man still had so much left in the tank. In his last couple weeks under contract he worked house show singles matches against Flair and Lawler, which I wish we had. We left a lot of fun potential Boss Man matches on the table that year, but in exchange we got the All Japan run that was probably the biggest gift his career gave us. Watch this match immediately.

4. The Narcissist Lex Luger vs. Jim Powers

ER: Luger and Powers matched up several times in short WCW singles matches a few years after this, Luger a major babyface and Powers with 40 extra pounds of muscle. Their March 1997 WCW match was their best competitive match, an entertaining babyface vs. babyface match. This one is a totally different dynamic obviously, with Luger as a freshly debuted top heel and Powers a babyface who was mostly working house shows. Powers looked like early career Rick Martel here, and four years later he looked like an American Gladiator.  Luger's work as the Narcissist was far and away the best work he ever did in WWF. His offense never looked better, his timing was better utilized, and it was a much more natural fit. He looked more at home taking apart Jimmy Powers in 90 seconds than he did in any 90 seconds of his All American Lex run. Powers was given some good offense in their 1997 encounters, but in 1993 it was all Luger, and he had a tight 90 seconds of material. 

I loved how they started this with Luger flipping out over Powers stealing a pose in his trifold mirror, blindsiding him with an awesome lariat and never letting up. He beats Powers up, and Luger is cool when he's smugly beating people up. He throws Powers chest first into the turnbuckles and lifts him high up for a back suplex, and the bionic forearm he hits would look like one of the sickest match finishers of 2022. Whoever was in production realized this, and we got to see that elbow from several different angles. Luger got up a real head of steam to hit the killshot, and it's a moved that looks as good in real time as it does in slo motion. The best slo mo replay showed Luger holding that elbow in tight to his body, fist to ear, Powers bumping it at the last possible split second. We got robbed of a two year Narcissist run, for nothing. Doctors get in the ring to attend to Powers after the match, Powers selling like he was knocked cold. They could have had Luger murdering men like this all year and built to a huge Bret/Luger title match at Summerslam. What might have been.