The Sherri Martel x Luna Vachon Fight

Sherri Martel x Luna Vachon WWF Raw 4/12/93

ER: During the first few months of Raw, Vince and Macho Man would frequently try to get Raw's slogan to actually stick. Raw! Uncut, Uncooked, Uncensored! doesn't sound bad in print advertising, but I don't think it was going to work when Vince and Macho Man would take turns saying each word like they were recording their first answering machine message. Importantly, even if the slogan had worked, there was nothing whatsoever about Raw that was Uncut or Uncensored. You have seldom seen wrestling more Cut or Censored. I suppose they chose not to cut the Brutus Beefcake comeback interview where he talks in depth about his depression following the parasail accident, and someone in the Manhattan Center yells at him to kill himself. That probably should have been cut, but was painfully Uncut. 

It took a Rob Bartlett interview segment with Luna Vachon to finally give viewers something that did feel Raw! Uncut and Uncensored. If there was blood I could have called it Uncooked. But even without blood, this was a wild, out of nowhere violent segment. To my knowledge this was the first segment given to Bartlett, right at the end of his short-but-too-long WWF commentary career. By the end of the segment, it was clearly his greatest contribution to wrestling. It starts as a simple interview with Luna Vachon that was mostly Luna growling through a non-sensical Ultimate Warrior Promo for Girls with Bartlett nothing much more than a guy holding the mic. As Luna calls out Sensational Sherri and continues talking about the impact of her presence in the ring on time and space and the universe at large, Sherri storms out and things get real. Sherri is dressed like a character on White Lotus: white suit jacket, black bra underneath in lieu of an actual top, billowing slacks, and it's topped off with a great head curly Jim Croce hair. Luna continues on her bullshit and Sherri rolls her eyes, laughs and throws a side kick right into Luna's tit. 

From there we get one of the wilder, unscripted-feeling, violent brawls from any era of Raw. This is a real brawl, the kind that would have stood out on the grimiest IWA Mid-South show. Sherri starts throwing stiff right hands, Rob Bartlett makes the mistake of staying in the middle of it too long and gets his vest and shirt ripped off while his body gets thrown aside, Luna swings her heavy studded belt straight at Sherri's face multiple times, Sherri throws a full extension vertical suplex on the floor, and brother, clothes are being torn off at unsustainable levels. Bartlett accidentally gets in the way and gets chased off and he shows that he can do a funny comedy run. I wouldn't have thought he could do a good comedy run and it showed he could at least do comedy. Meanwhile Sherri is absolutely falling out of her top, tits spilling out next to kids' heads, and that's before the brawl goes over the guardrail into the front row. Look at the vivid elation and nirvana on the faces of mulleted children and Poughkeepsie hockey dads as Sherri punches her way past them with a handful of Luna's spectacular Michael Jackson Bad Tour '97 Backup Dancer hair and you know they're seeing something they've never seen before. Sgt. Slaughter hauls Luna off over his shoulder, legs kicking, and it seems like everything is settled business. 

Instead, we come back from commercial break and for some reason Sherri is wearing only her black bra and black satin lingerie shorts, covering her bosom with Macho Man's tastefully black and white spangled cowboy hat, and frankly looks fucking incredible. Within moments of her yelling about Luna over the house mic, Luna comes back down to ringside, apparently left totally untended-to backstage during the break. This woman had to be carried away by a man not 5 minutes earlier. You gotta have someone keep an eye on her for at least the next few minutes. But Luna immediately comes back down the aisle doing this funny theatrical Lon Chaney creep to start shit up all over again. She chokes out Sherri and this woman is out here fighting in her underwear that is barely containing her, and still throws a RINGS level knee to the stomach. Luna gets hit with that shoot knee and sells it like Flea getting hit with a bowling ball in Lebowski. It's incredible. Sherri shouts into the mic again and they frame her made-up face in the overhead lights in a glowing shot. She looks straight out of a Russ Meyer movie, or the Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman poster. She walks out of the arena in her bra, literally shoving past Papa Shango doing his dumb voodoo shit in the aisle. 

Rob Bartlett later came back to do commentary covered in scratches and scrapes and bruises, torn undershirt hanging half off, a hilarious far off dazed look in his eyes. Macho Man and Vince dunk on him the rest of the show and make mean girl comments about his physique. Bringing out a man covered in cuts just to do commentary for the debut and last match of Friar Ferguson. They had Friar Ferguson going on after a brawl that would have fired up a sold out Mid-South Coliseum in 1985. If Ronda Rousey and Charlotte came out and had this brawl on Raw, it would be talked about as a universally great moment in pro wrestling. Here, it was barely capitalized on in any way. Luna had attacked Sherri multiple times at WrestleMania, and this was Sherri's earned revenge, and all it lead to was a month of house show matches later that summer. Maybe it's for the best. A straight match wouldn't have come close to matching the rawness of this fight.

Is so strange that it even happened. There was next to no female presence on WWF TV in 1993. There were Raw ring card girls, Sherri, Helen Hart, and a couple interviews with Jim Duggan's wife after he got flattened by Yokozuna. You did not see women on Raw in 1993. But it took two women to go out and have the most memorable, most raw, uncut, and uncensored segment of the first few months of the longest running pro wrestling show in all time and space and the universe at large. And then it's gone.