Found Footage Friday: 1993 WWF House Show Oakland 2/13/93

WWF House Show Oakland 2/13/93

MD: Richard Land (@maskedwrestlers on Twitter) has launched a new service releasing rarities twice a month. It's honestly more than we can easily keep track of, which is a great thing, but we'll feed stuff into Found Footage Friday as much as we can. Reach out to him for more information. This was a house show that neither Eric or I had ever seen from a period where we have both seen a lot of house shows. 

ER: This is an example of the kind of house show I would have been able to attend at age 12, had my parents not kept secret from me the entire existence of live pro wrestling. We lived about 60 miles north of Oakland/San Francisco. We went into the city regularly for Giants games, occasionally for A's games, once for a baseball card show at the Moscone center, and every Christmas season so my mom could see the big window displays at the downtown SF department stores. We would not have gone into the city to see professional wrestling, and I believe that my parents hid the existence of house shows from me with the same ferocity of Peggy Hill hiding the concept of Competitive Eating from Bobby. Newspaper pages were cut out, lies were told. This show happened just after my 12th birthday and this review should be filled with me sharing memories of that happy day when my father or poor mother took me to this show. But they were trying to raise me right. 

1. Tatanka vs. The Predator

MD: The Predator is Horace Boulder with face paint. We hit this JIP and it's kind of nuts how Tatanka sets the mood immediately. Super hard chops in the corner, everything looking crisp, including an atomic drop. I've gotten the sense in revisits that I didn't appreciate Tatanka enough when I was younger, but everything looked great. He missed an elbow drop which let Predator take over. You'll be happy to know that he had the family legdrop. They worked a pretty decent grounded chinlock with the crowd absolutely going up for Tatanka's hope spots. They were hot for the opener here, especially so when Tatanka started the war dance. He absolutely flattened Predator figuratively with one final chop and then literally with the Samoan Drop. There was a reason why it wasn't just Strongbow but Wahoo as well that gave him the headdress I guess. Nice brisk opener here. I vaguely wonder if there are some great indy Tatanka matches from the late 90s we should try to find. Vaguely.

ER: I am actually a pretty big Horace Boulder Guy. Over the last 25 years of my wrestling fandom I have tried to sell more than one person in my life on the Idea of Horace Boulder/Horace Hogan. How cool is it that there was a guy who out there who was related to the biggest star in pro wrestling and even had the exact same movement, height, and posture as that biggest star, and that he also wrestled exactly the same in a lot of ways. Except that he was Hulk Hogan Without Success. He wrestled like Hogan, if opponents didn't have to treat him like Hulk Hogan and crowds didn't react to his offense as if it were being delivered  by Hulk Hogan. Hulk Hogan Without Success would have been a really funny gimmick. A lot funnier than "The Predator". 

The Predator is a name that invokes the scariest unkillable cool alien presence when it's associated with Arnold's machine gun biceps and John McTiernan's late 80s action perfection dominance. The name "The Predator" invokes the worst possible other horrors when associated directly with pro wrestling, and the singular The implies that he is the worst of them. Begging and pleading with my dad to finally take me into the city to see a wrestling show and suddenly tasked with explaining to him why this man is Thee Predator, and me having no answer because The Predator was a House Show Exclusive over the Winter and Summer months of 1993 and I wouldn't have understood the negative connotations of the word Predator anyway. This would have been one of only three chances for me to see Horace Boulder live in the Bay Area, a fact I wouldn't have appreciated at the time. Imagine living in Colorado and getting to sit in attendance for a Velocity taping dark match of Horace Hogan & Bull Buchanan vs. Mark Henry & Mark Jindrak? God could you imagine. Also of note, in this match, Horace was shaped exactly the same as Gene Snitsky. Exact same build, size, and shape. 

2. Kamala vs. Kim Chee

MD: This show is full of stuff that I feel like we just never had on tape on any other house shows. Kamala was with Slick and didn't want to fight Kimchee at all. That let Kimchee get an early advantage until Kamala started to fight back. An errant Slick distraction allowed Kimchee to whack Kamala with something I couldn't make out given the VQ, but then he erred and went after Slick. Kamala chased him down, fought him off, and crushed him to the delight of the crowd. Post-match Slick put Kimchee's hat on Kamala, so that was fun. This was a lot of shtick in a very short period of time, but the crowd ate it up as well they should.

ER: I wonder if 1993 could be considered our best year of Steve Lombardi, in ring. I'm not sure this match would be the one for you to support that claim. In fact, it had to be a pretty great gig pulling lowest card heel duty against house show Kamala in 1993. You got to bullshit with the referee and fans for a couple of minutes, do some light cardio to get away from the former savage who you keep provoking, and then you settle in to sway your body in response to 1-3 Baba chops, stand still for the thrust kick, and run into the cross chop. Lombardi takes a really big bump over the top to the floor as Kamala exits him from the ring post match, and for something that is probably the most dangerous part of his day, he takes it in a way that would classify as a Memorable Royal Rumble Elimination on any given night. 

3. Terry Taylor vs. Typhoon

MD: Speaking of shtick, this was the second massive physical mismatch in a row and they leaned hard into it. 93 Taylor was, in some ways, at the height of his powers and this was an absolute stall fest. He was strutting, hiding in the ropes, threatening to walk to the back. Everyone in the crowd knew that if Typhoon got his hands on Taylor, he'd lift him up with an armbar or clamp on a headlock or run him over with a shoulder block. Taylor used the ref as cover to get in a throat shot and stayed on the throat until Typhoon started to fight up. Whereas, the crowd was very much behind Tatanka because they wanted to see him triumph, them clapping up Typhoon was more about seeing Taylor get his comeuppance. His cutoff went low instead of high however, and Typhoon even went up for an ill-advised belly to back for him. Taylor then went up and out on the cover attempt, stooging himself about fifteen feet on a kickout. Taylor hitting that suplex actually meant the transition spot of Typhoon reversing a standing vertical (and propelling Taylor across the ring again) was all the more effective though. Finish was Taylor getting some distance with an eyepoke only to leap off the second turnbuckle into a powerslam that was more of a Snow Plow as Typhoon didn't quite get him around. 

ER: 1993 might also be the best year of Terry Taylor, and it's hidden almost entirely on house shows. He has an out of nowhere great Raw match against Mr. Perfect in January and then after a couple more TV appearances he continued working months filling out house shows as the perfect version of himself: A heel Mark Harmon who rubbed people the wrong way with an insincere Nice Guy act. Aloof "Nice Guy" Terry Taylor is a persona that Taylor captures so well that it's one of those things clearly just already being answered by his shirt. I think I would love this match if it were just Terry airing any wrinkles out of his robe before handing it to a ringside attendant. Taylor plays this great fame of Avoid and Strut, never running from Typhoon but showing far too much confidence and acting like an idiot whenever caught. He starts a shoving match and storms the fuck out of the Coliseum, working with the kind of craft that makes 90s House Show Heel From The Territories look like the most fun job in the world. I would take Taylor's full extension slow bounce over from Typhoon's shoulderblock every damn day. Buddy Landel was never this good. 1993 Terry Taylor might be one of the greatest hidden years in wrestling. What looks like a contender for the best in-ring year of Taylor's career, happening in the biggest American company...but hidden almost entirely on house shows. 

Taylor convincingly kicks Typhoon's ass when he takes over. His punches are great, and he acts like a shithead in between every strike. But he also gets pressed through the ropes to the floor during a pin attempt and he makes the spot look as great as it can look, like a French Catch level of comedy and grace. He takes a high backdrop and yells when splatted by an avalanche. I loved the twist before the ending, where Typhoon was ramping up for the finish and Taylor shut it down with an eye poke. I actually got tricked into thinking they were icing things down for another minute or two, until I saw Terry climb to the top. Terry leaps right into a powerslam and then maybe the best part of his whole performance happens, as he just lies flattened and motionless for a hilariously long time, the entire time Typhoon was celebrating and shaking hands with fans after. When Taylor finally starts to stir, he continues making a 90s house show heel look like the most fun job in the whole world, going around the ring claiming that he got his shoulder up in time, before finally hopping to the floor and proceeding to injure his back, limping and openly grimacing, not hiding his pain from the laughter. Terry Taylor feels like a Top 5 guy in 1993 WWF, if we actually got to see more than a handful of matches.  

4. Doink vs. Bob Backlund

MD: I can't wait to read Eric's take on this one. That's true for the whole show, but especially this. It was, in my mind, exactly what you'd think a Backlund vs. Doink house show match would be. Just a perfect opening with Doink almost busting a lung falling over laughing at Backlund's handshake attempt followed by him hitting three measured takeovers before Backlund returned the favor with all three in quick succession. Beautiful stuff. They then took it straight to the mat just liked you want out of goofy Minnesotan wrestling machine and an evil clown, before switching over to extended holds and reversal attempts. When Backlund finally pried an arm away, he spent a good minute teasing a punch as the fans roared and the ref warned only to just go into an armbar instead; not just any, of course, as he made sure to wrench Doink up and over in the most painful manner possible. He just didn't punch him. That would have been unsportsmanlike. Not that he didn't keep teasing it. Doink, skilled harlequin that he was, turned Backlund over and started stretching him, going so far as to chucking him over the guardrail. Eventually Backlund came back and returned favor, hitting an atomic drop that sent Doink through the ropes. Both guys put absolutely everything they had into what they were doing. With Borne, it was what he had to do to get over. With Backlund, it was just who he was. Anyway, Doink was able to capitalize on being half out the ring to take out Backlund's eyes with something nefarious and he scored a quick, cheap pin. We're better off for having seen this.

ER: This is great. Historic even. It's a reason why handheld wrestling is the literal best wrestling. Handhelds capture moments that are manufactured for real people in the room that have a relaxed The Cameras Are Off vibe you would never see on TV. Doink/Backlund is a pairing that's remembered so fondly by those of us who remembered watching it as kids and seeing matwork and finding out what a fucking stump puller is. But there aren't actually that many Doink/Backlund matches, and the TV ones were under 5 minutes. This match was a different animal. This was a different animal because this was Doink working a Bob Backlund Madison Square Garden match. Bob Backlund was weird and awkward in 1993 WWF. He was like unfrozen territory babyface and it was like he had been in a Dead Zone coma for a decade and went right back to working 1983 territory wrestling babyface. And now he's doing it in Oakland, CA, which is hilarious to me. Bob Backlund is the whitest wrestler in history and here he is in Oakland, and it's the literal only time he's wrestled a match in Oakland. Doink is tasked with working a 20 minute match with a goofy 1980 white meat babyface in Oakland...and he succeeds by somehow working AS Bob Backlund. 

Doink the Clown works this match both as Doink, but also as 1980 Bob Backlund, were Backlund a heel and also wearing white grease paint to darken his complexion. Backlund also works as 1980 Backlund and Doink is his heel doppelgänger in the exact same style. This is a long form, mostly quiet match, that easily could have lost the crowd's attention at any point and yet they never did once. This crowd was invested in a recreation of a Bob Backlund/Buddy Rose match from a decade prior. Doink works slow strength spots and mugs whenever Backlund is unable to break the hold, Backlund works his long armbar while Doink takes big comical Backlund bumps. Doink bumps like a clown would bump, and it's perfect. When he finally makes the ropes after Backlund's armbar, Backlund pulls him back and Doink goes flying as if shot out of a cannon. Later he takes a big bump and lands right on his butt with his legs out, like a toddler learning to walk. When Backlund finally pulls off the big atomic drop, Doink springs forward through the ropes to the floor, all leading to him taking a weapon out of his jacket to jab Backlund with. Backlund gets the DQ win and literally runs through the crowd like a maniac, like a Bruiser Brody whose goal was to hurt zero people. 

5. Randy Savage vs. Yokozuna 

MD: This hit just right. Savage did the babyface version of the Taylor shtick to begin. He got on the mic just to go "Ohhh Yeahhh," which by 93 was probably more than enough. He spun around after Yoko started the sumo stomps. He got back on to start a USA chant. He was just late-era WWF Savage in the full body suit holding babyface court. The match itself was pretty straightforward. Yoko dominated with his size. He had these sort of downwards aimed punches that looked devastating. He tossed Savage out and slammed him into the rail. He dropped a leg on him. Savage would try to punch up but five or six punches equaled one of Yoko's. Finally Yoko missed a splash in the corner and Savage staggered him off the top rope before Fuji intervened with the flag, toppling him. Yoko hit a belly to belly for a quick pin. Post-match, he went for the Banzai Drop, missed, and got knocked out of the ring by Savage. There wasn't much to it. It didn't go wrong. They got as much value out of it as possible and I don't think the fans were at all disappointed for what they got.

ER: Matt pointed out that yes this is essentially babyface Terry Taylor vs. heel Typhoon (even though I don't think it's anywhere close to as good as our heel Taylor/face Typhoon match) although with less on the heel side and less on the face side. It's a lesser version of that, basically. Less. But also look how damn far Macho Man flew out of the ring when Yoko threw him to the floor! He didn't have to do that. He could have taken a much more sensible bump to the floor on a house show. I love how Savage punches to his feet, loved his punches to Yokozuna's face (and how Yoko would throw his head back for them) and I loved the way Savage crumpled when Yoko put him down with one return shot. I wish they had a couple extra beats before going right into the belly to belly finish, and I wish Savage had a piece of babyface offense that looked better than his top rope axe handle. It feels like a waste to go to the top rope and only come off with a weak axe handle that looks like spatchcocked hands. 

6. Tito Santana vs. Damien DeMento

MD: These two faced off twenty times between October 92 and the middle of 93. I would have sworn it was more. We have one of their PTW matches. DeMento more or did things right, but it didn't come off great. I'm not sure we needed another bit of early stalling after the Taylor match, even if he had the additional advantage of that special dissonance you get when a bigger guy does it with a smaller one. He took over by jamming Santana on a hip toss and hitting a clothesline. He cut him off with quick eye pokes (again dissonance). The grounded chinlock that made up a chunk of the heat worked in theory because you had someone as good as Santana fighting up out of it, but I'm not sure we needed to see it again this card. The finish was fine. Tito hit the flying forearm in the ropes. As a kid, I knew whenever he hit it and didn't get the win, which, after a certain chronological point was more often than not as his role shifted, he'd be losing. The shift to El Matador gave him El Pase de la Muerte, the shot to the back of the head, and that meant the ending of the match was more open to possibilities. Here though, DeMento landed on him on a suplex attempt back in. Maybe one too many heels going over in a row here? I probably would have liked this more in a bubble.

ER: I cans see Matt is setting me up here to be the Damien DeMento Guy, and maybe that guy is me. I am certainly more of a fan of DeMento's now than I ever have been from 1993-2021. What an odd guy to have basically existed in wrestling for only one year, the kind of guy with minimal ring experience who never would have been hired for this role in any other era. To hear DeMento tell his story, his "I had no experience but I trained with Johnny Rodz and then I worked worked 140 matches in 11 months in WWF and then retired" would sound like a whopper of a lie. "So yeah, there I was working Madison Square Garden with only 40 or so matches under my belt..." yeah sure okay bud. I don't know if DeMento was actually good, but he is a weirdo who came out of nowhere to work a full WWF schedule for a year and then returned to Pennsylvania and that's it, and that's cool. I love the energy he puts behind missed clotheslines, and his short lariat after blocking a hiptoss looked real good. I was impressed with his positioning near the ropes after taking Santana's flying forearm, and his dedication to making it look like he actually grabbed the top rope on his way back in the ring to shift his weight onto Santana. 

7. Steiner Brothers vs. Beverly Brothers 

MD: Unsurprisingly, this was very enjoyable. Here, the shtick worked on so many levels. Beau and Blake put so much energy and enthusiasm and verve into it. They'd try to buddy up with the ref, would hide behind a security guard, would bob in and out between the ropes at high speed. And with 2024 eyes, the anticipation was all about the huge bumps you know that they - the only guys willing to face the Steiners - would be taking. They were working so big that it wasn't even about the people in the last row seeing them; it was on the hope that Verne would see them all the way from Minnesota. And the Steiners obliged, dropping them on their skull for belly to belly suplexes, power slams, and of course the Frankensteiner at the end. Meanwhile, they really kept it moving. The Steiners were constantly fighting from underneath and often retaking the offense only for the Beverlys to have to go underhanded to stay in it and take back control. 

I get that in the years following this, Scott would become more and more listless in his matches and I would even say here that he wasn't necessarily working the crowd or working for the crowd, but he was entirely engaged with what his opponents were doing. You never got the sense that he wasn't trying to fight back, that he wasn't affected and incensed by everything that was happening to him, that he wasn't desperate to get revenge and to make it over to his brother for a tag. He was just laser focused on the Beverlys as opposed to channeling the crowd. It gave everything a more athletic, organic feel, and, after the hot tag, a more chaotic one with bodies flying around and timing perhaps being just a little bit off. It worked for the crowd, however, and it worked for me three decades later.

ER: I love the Beverlys/Steiners as a match. Their 1993 Rumble match might be the WWF MOTY, and Enos/Bloom should be in the discussion for Greatest Steiner Opponents. Enos and Bloom are big guys who bump huge for the Steiners, but in a way that makes it clear that these big bumps are being done by big guys. Mike Enos getting crazy height on a backdrop looked even crazier because it looked like a big man getting tossed up that high. But this is a gem because it's a Steiners/Beverlys match that we would never see on TV. Only on house shows do you get to see Scotty as face in peril, a match constructed much more around Beverlys cut off spots instead of Beverly bumps (those are still saved for the end). Mike Enos was always the praised member of the Beverlys, but Bloom is the one who shines brighter in a house show environment. He's the more expressive heel, the one better at drawing heat, the one better at arguing with the ref, the one who even goes and draws sympathy from a security guard in the aisle, and he also has better punches and stomps. The eventual hot tag was explosive and quick, the real time for Enos to shine. It's incredible to me that this is just the way Mike Enos took the frankensteiner. He wasn't just getting vertically spiked on PPV, he was doing it in front of a few thousand people, working towards that one dad in the crowd with a camcorder. Mike Enos taking the frankensteiner is one of our Great Bumps, a Minnesotan man in mustache and mullet and middle age spread doing the most complicated breakdancing head slide. It's incredible. How did the Beverlys never get a Hasbro? Enos should have had one with neck breaking action. 

8. Crush vs. Shawn Michaels

MD: Not entirely sure how to tackle this one. First and foremost, Sherri was at ringside as a "neutral observer" or some such. She unsurprisingly had the best offense in the match when she got to lay it in on Shawn. She was also really effective in the finish as Shawn was stalking her and she tripped over the ring steps backwards. It was generally a different match when she was involved, more visceral, more gripping. If I had never seen Michaels before, this would be my take: when he took offense early, he was bumping and stooging over the ring, but there was almost too much energy to him. It wasn't focused and channeled the way the Beverly's managed to do it. It felt much more like a guy playing a role. It was easy for him to be press slammed and otherwise tossed around by Crush and he went over the top for it when it was so inherently evident that maybe he didn't have to and it ended up subtracting from the overall effect. When he was on top, however, likely due to the fact that Crush was so much bigger and the effort did need to go into it, he was dogged and persistent and unyielding and his stuff ended up looking really good; it had to in order to be credible. He had no choice. Him putting the extra effort in there paid off whereas in the early stages, when he was stooging, it distracted. And there was nothing more real in the entire match than Michaels, irate, snatching the title belt and smashing Crush over the head to draw the DQ as he tried to check on Sherri. Nine times out of ten, a DQ like that would feel like them searching for a way out of the match. Here, it felt like an act of heated passion in the moment. 

ER: I love that there is one woman captured on camera who is fully into Shawn's entire routine, unafraid to publicly like what she likes. Crush is announced at 257 which must mean Crush was working a heel Buddy Rose act. 1993 was really the peak pro wrestling year for the fried fluffed out mullet, and appropriately we get a large portion of the match built around  the potential pulling and tugging of fluffy split end Rod Beck mullets. After Michaels complains immediately about a hair pull, they spend the next couple minutes with Crush holding him in a side headlock while Michaels' hand keeps drifting up towards that flowing cotton candy, the ref stopping his hand 2-3 dozen times on every side of the ring. Michaels going up for Crush's press slam is an awesome spot. Both men make it look so effortless, with the 257 lb. Crush walking Michaels and holding him up to a couple sides, more and more people getting to their feet the longer Crush has him up, dying to see Michaels thrown into the sun. I liked how Michaels' big bump to the floor focused more on the speed of getting there rather than something showy and athletic. The way he spilled made it look like a man who wasn't fully in control of the landing, even though he was. His selling for Sherri's slaps and kicks was excellent, like a man getting up from his blanket after one too many hornets makes his picnic an impossibility. 

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WWF UK Rampage 93

 

I really like how Rampage 93 is filmed. It looks and sounds like an incredibly well produced handheld, capturing a neat up-close house show vibe. It's 12,000 loud people in Sheffield and the crowd and ring are mic'd like you were there live. It's a real house show card too, with tag guys split into singles and a 10 minute Brooklyn Brawler match. 

1. Fatu vs. Brian Knobbs

ER: Nasties were so over that Knobbs was able to go around the ring milking NASTY chants for two straight minutes without anyone losing interest. Knobbs was like a big fat sloppy Hogan to this crowd, and he is a pretty great fat sloppy Hogan. I love how Brian Knobbs runs the ropes like fat guy. Not a fat guy wrestler, just a fat guy. He runs the ropes like an overweight principal who gets in the ring at a school fundraiser to do a completely ill-advised spot. If your principal ran the ropes like Knobbs, you'd think he was just being fun dorky Mr. Wilson. But Brian Knobbs is like the school's weird janitor getting in the ring and running the ropes like a fat lunatic, and kids fucking love it. 

2. Doink vs. Kamala 

ER: Doink keeps wrestling Kamala to the mat and it's so damn cool. Nobody ever rushes in and grabs Kamala in a single leg and then start working half grapevine armbars on him. Doink is working Iowa shooter holds on Kamala and I don't know if I've ever seen anyone do that. Kamala falls in ways he doesn't usually fall, because nobody ever thought to work like Lou Thesz against Kamala. Doink runs into Kamala's comebacks really well, and there was a big time Kamala moment where he got sick of the armbars and just started swinging wildly on Doink as Doink scrambled to the corner. Kamala pinning Doink the wrong way took up too much of the runtime. 

3. Mr. Perfect vs. Samu

ER: Samu is so damn good during their opening rope running. He sticks every piece of Perfect's precise timing. He's the one doing the close call dropdown and leapfrog, and he's hitting them all while also working as careening out of control chubby guy. When they do more rope running he does another dropdown, then shuts it down with a cool clothesline. When Perfect gets thrown over the top to the floor, he REALLY gets thrown over the top to the floor. Perfect goes face first into the ring steps like he's trying to lose an eye. All of Samu's strikes look really powerful and Perfect bumps painfully for them, not doing big athletic bumps. His bumps to the floor were all really fast and I thought they had real complementary body language during their strike exchanges. Good rhythm. Perfect's inside cradle is a really great nearfall, but I do think they rushed to the finish. Needed a bit more build to the Perfect Plex. The whole match felt like a nice slow stiff build and then the finish was just bim bam boom. Bump to the floor, missed splash, Perfect Plex. This was all still really good, one of the best WWF singles matches of the year, but a finish that felt like part of the same match would have made it even better. 

4. Bob Backlund vs. Damien Demento

Why does it feel like I've seen half a dozen Demento/Backlund matches? Were these two just at the perfect corresponding place on the heel/face totem pole alignment, working low stakes face/heel back and forth, and there just happened to be some guy who followed WWF on tour to make sure and document several different Demento/Backlund matches with his camcorder? This is an official release obviously, but it feels like I've seen several Damien Demento/Bob Backlund matches and I'm just not sure how that's possible. They don't really have chemistry but they don't not have chemistry, they just fill about 7 minutes and it's fine, and some part of me has spent my life watching dozens of Bob Backlund/Damien Demento matches that were filmed by a Bad Dad, or perhaps the Greatest Dad. Demento took a big Berzerker bump to the floor and Backlund made a lot of great Popeye Whoa-Whoa-Whoa noises so maybe this was actually fucking great. 

5. Typhoon vs. Brooklyn Brawler

ER: What does it mean to the people of Sheffield, England, to see a man dubbed The Brooklyn Brawler? Had tales of the Brawler's Brooklyn Brawls made their way to South Yorkshire? Was Enzo Castellari's 1990: The Bronx Warriors been an underground UK hit, leading to a rising knowledge among UK teens of the various Five Borough Fighting Styles? Regardless, the people of Sheffield were treated to a real active Brawler performance, one that will no doubt be one of the great showcases of the best of his 1993, where he keeps running away from and running into Typhoon. He is great at getting leveled by Typhoon and building suspense by avoiding getting leveled, but things really jump a level when Typhoon finally misses an elbow and Brawler starts stomping his way through a really fun match. 

Brawler stomps away at Typhoon's head, stomps him right between the legs, stands on his throat, bites at his face, and stands on top of his back while Typhoon is draped over the bottom rope, surfing on him while pulling back the top rope reigns like Chris Elliot riding Melora Walters out to sea in Cabin Boy. He chokes and rakes at the eyes of a prostrate Typhoon, shouting out an amusing "Come on, that's a count!" while Typhoon's shoulders are down during the choke. This is among the longest Brawler control segments I've seen and I thought it was cool how he kept kicked at Typhoon's leg and really dominating this, keeping the big man down. When you knowingly go into a Typhoon match against Brooklyn Brawler, I don't think any of us would have expected it to be a mostly dominant Brawler performance with a quick and definitive Typhoon comeback victory right at the end. When Typhoon takes over, it is for good, and it is great. Brawler, who had been doing so well, makes the mistake of whipping Typhoon into the corner. Typhoon reverses that whip and follows Brawler in with a killer avalanche, then pulls Brawler by the arm directly into a perfect powerslam. I don't anticipate a better 1993 Steve Lombardi match from this one, but this is surely among his best matches of the 90s. 

6. Shawn Michaels vs. Crush

ER: I loved this. Anybody who ever got mad at me online for making fun of how terrible Shawn Michaels was during most of his last decade, should at least acknowledge how in the bag I am for 1993 Shawn Michaels. My 2000s and beyond criticisms come from a place of sadness, not glee. 1993 Shawn Michaels was a high speed John Tatum with better execution. He could push a pace without dropping the story at any point, was great at big momentum shifts, and knew how to work every size opponent instead of just mostly working the same match regardless. He was incredibly active but in ways nobody else was, flopping and stooging and bumping unnecessarily big, a great heel to get over the power of his opponent while looking like a joke, without ever looking like a joke. 

Crush and Michaels seemingly always had great chemistry as opponents. They have two big singles matches after this one in 1993: Their great King of the Ring Qualifier which is one of the great unheralded 5 minute matches, and their bloated but overall good IC Title match at King of the Ring, and there's a 1991 singles match on some Coliseum video or foreign Superstars airing. I wish we had more Rockers/Demolition matches or any of the 1993 Crush/Michaels house show matches to paint a fuller picture, but all the evidence we have paints them as natural opponents. 

This is the better version of the King of the Ring qualifier, as it had a much longer Crush control sequence before the great Crush ringpost bump, and more Michaels offense after his takeover. It's great. Michaels gets his ass beat in a non-stop sprint, getting pie-faced and pinballed across the ring, enough so that Heenan has to start bemoaning a Michaels title loss, and it's hilarious. 

"Can you imagine the embarrassment? 'Where did you lose your Intercontinental Title? In Sheffield?!' How could you ever live that down?"

Crush has a great way of catching a high speed Michaels in a bearhug - which Michaels escapes by throwing punches at his eye - and I love how he's able to go on bursts of matching Michaels for speed, then ends a quick moving exchange with something huge and forceful like a big backbreaker. There's an incredible press slam section where Crush walks Michaels around in full extension press for half a minute, walking him toward several sides of the ring and offering him up to the front row. When they saw how great Crush was at walking Michaels around the ring in a press slam, they really should have set up a Bam Bam/Spike Dudley spot with crowd plants, it would have played in Michaels highlight videos for the next 25 years. We'll settle for Michaels getting clotheslined over the top to the floor in the way that only 1993 Shawn Michaels was getting clotheslined to the floor. 

His comeback after a match-long beating is convincing, working smart spots to control a big man, like driving his knee into Crush's kidneys and then shoving him face first into the ringpost. Who remembered how great Crush was at taking ringpost bumps? Every one that he's taken in his Michaels matches has been Lawler-level great. The finish of this one is a less satisfying "Michaels just leaves" fuck finish than the KOTR Qualifier double count out, but I was really getting into the way Michaels was wearing Crush down after the ringpost bump. He just keeps coming off the ropes with axe handles until Crush gets dropped to all fours, then he comes off the ropes with an elbowdrop to the back of his neck. With an actual finish, this becomes one of the 10 best WWF matches of 1993 WWF. 

7. Lex Luger vs. Hacksaw Jim Duggan 

ER: Jim Duggan was such a megastar in 1993 that he was able to drape himself in the American flag and lead the Sheffield Arena in loud USA chants. This was just a couple months after Duggan was the first person to knock Yokozuna off his feet, a moment I loved but wouldn't have thought that it would have a huge impact across the pond. Yokozuna had done an in-ring promo before this match and lingered at ringside the whole match, and when Luger's entrance music hit he was announced as "The NarCISSus" Lex Luger. Like the flower, not like the Greek myth. But they are merely afterthoughts, because the place comes unglued when Duggan's music hits. This is a 12,000 strong crowd and Duggan is wearing his USA singlet and USA kneepads, and gets the entire crowd to chant USA. Can you even entertain the IDEA of a foreign crowd chanting USA at a WWE show any time during the past 20 years?? You'd think this was in Alabama, not Yorkshire. USA chants. Loud. What a different time. Luger might as well have not even been in the ring. 

Luger works this as a stooge for Duggan, bumping around for Duggan's running clotheslines and playing into spots like trying to smash Duggan's head into the turnbuckles, only to have it reversed. Duggan was treated like Hogan and it was like I was watching this match from some weird alternate timeline. 1993 Duggan's appeal to live crowds was undeniable. 1993 Luger is a far better wrestler than Duggan, but Duggan would have drawn a far bigger number than Luger with a PPV match against Yokozuna. These two work the loosest match I've seen in 1993 WWF, leaning out of every clothesline and every strike, and it didn't matter an ounce. This was a Rick Reuschel/Mark Buehrle soft contact battle and it completely worked for the live crowd. Yokozuna sits down on Duggan's chest out on the floor and rolls him back in the ring, and there's a great show closing segment when Mr. Perfect runs out to start beating on Luger before Duggan can be pinned. As loud as the crowd was for Duggan, they react to Perfect as if he was the biggest name on the show (which was true, so that checks out). The main thing this match accomplished was making me genuinely want to see a Luger/Yoko vs. Duggan/Perfect tag match, which is a match they set up perfectly here and then never mentioned it again. All they did was run Luger/Perfect and Yoko/Duggan singles matches the rest of the tour. It's wild how many interesting workrate and fan service matches they left on the table during this era. 

Go out of your way to watch this for the great Samu/Perfect and Michaels/Crush matches, and a total surprise in Brooklyn Brawler/Typhoon. 

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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. 

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WWF Summerslam 8/30/93

Ted Dibiase vs. Razor Ramon

ER: I have been watching through a lot of 1993 TV, really enjoying the 2+ month build to Summerslam, but when the show finally got here I wasn't actually sure what would open the PPV. I haven't seen this show in a couple decades (shout out for the millionth time to New Release Video and their excellent pro wrestling selection growing up), and I love how little I remember about the actual card. This makes sense as an opener when you look at everything else on the card that needs to take place, so starting with a popular guy like Razor makes sense, and when Razor comes out in his outstanding hot pink gear it's clear they made the correct choice.

Razor was one of the most over guys of 1993, but when you step back and look at his last 6 months it was kind of a miracle. 1. He has the most unnecessary WrestleMania match, short, and with Bob Backlund throwing off his timing. 2. He loses to the Kid, then loses 10 grand to the Kid, then gets made fun of by another heel for both losing and getting outsmarted out of money by the Kid (properly setting up this very match). 3. He loses in the first round at King of the Ring, and while it was a great match against the eventual winner, it's still Razor not on a PPV past the 20 minute mark. He got over by his sheer This Is Very Cool for 1993 charisma, and that is cool. So here he is again, opening a PPV. Dibiase isn't totally the best in ring match for Razor, but it gives him a larger opponent, and that means people are actually seeing his offense hit against someone with size. Dibiase lands heavy on bumps, so while Razor's offense looks cool when a smaller guy is bumping around the ring for him, here he got to look like he was muscling around someone substantial. It's a fun slugfest, and they ran into each other in satisfying ways. Dibiase took a big bump over the top from a lariat, and puts Razor down with a very convincing sleeper. Everything in this felt honest, but it wasn't quite the pace or explosiveness the crowd wanted to see. But it built to the finish the fans wanted to see, with Razor planting Dibiase with the Razor's Edge after Dibiase was run into the turnbuckle (after removing the pad himself). I really liked this Edge too, as Razor really had to work to get Dibiase up in a crucifix, and Dibiase was excellent at selling panic while getting hoisted. So even though it took Razor a bit to get him up there, Dibiase made it look like it was because he was struggling to get out of it, really made the finish. Three days later, Dibiase would win the All Japan tag titles with Stan Hansen, and a couple months after that he would be retired. 

Heavenly Bodies vs. Steiner Brothers

ER: This was the match I most remembered from my video store rental, a super exciting 1993 WWF tag match (a year not really known at all for WWF tag wrestling), featuring a team I was completely unfamiliar with. If you were not watching the TV right before Summerslam, the Bodies literally debuted just a few weeks prior, and barely got any real showcases while getting thrown immediately into a PPV title match. It really does not feel like a thing WWE would do with a team today, and that's cool. The match ages like something that felt really great in 1993, and still has a ton going for it. This match feels like a modern AEW match that would get a lot of stars, playing out as a 10 minute sprint with a ton of moves. A ton of the moves were cool, but there were also a ton of hitches and gaffes, guys going up for suplexes too early or getting crossed up but running through with a move anyway. So exactly like an AEW tag, really. Bodies jump the Steiners before the bell and run a cool stretch where they keep knocking Scott to the floor while double teaming Rick. The double teams all look vaguely dangerous, like everybody is too hopped up and the timing is slightly off. Rick leaps into a double vertical suplex before either Body is suplexing him, then they shoot him into the ropes for a double flapjack but he fights it the whole way down to make it a backdrop (instead it looks like a flapjack that splats him right on the shoulder). But Scott can't be kept on the floor for long and is soon back in, leading to Steiners throwing both Bodies around, and it's always fun when Steiners throw people around. Bodies roll to the floor after getting thrown, and upon reentering the ring they get completely worked over again. Prichard gets press slammed, Del Ray gets backdropped, both eat Steiner lines, both eat atomic drops, and this was really looking like it was going to be an easy Steiners win. 

I loved how the Bodies took control, with Del Ray leapfrogging Scott and Prichard nailing him with a bulldog once he ducked. It gave us a nice Bodies control segment on Scott (which really should have been longer), with Del Ray hitting a cannonball off the apron, then his 'round the world DDT and a superkick in ring. But almost immediately after, Scott launches Del Ray after another DDT attempt, launches Prichard with a double arm suplex, and then Rick is back hitting Steiner lines on everyone. Bodies took some real punishment in this match, with hardly any recovery time. Del Ray is out here taking the top rope bulldog, takes a wild powerslam from Rick (he took Scott's tilt a whirl slam earlier while looking like he knew he might die), then took the Frankensteiner at the finish. I'm not sure you can find a 1993 WWF match that contained more moves performed per minute, and that is the kind of thing that would stand out and get star ratings in 90s American wrestling. It would have really benefitted from some breath, as this was as go go go as you can get and was filled with moves you really weren't seeing from anyone else on TV. Now that every single popular indy and AEW tag match is formatted exactly like this match, it doesn't come off as special. I would have liked to see a follow up match on Raw, see how they worked a match that wasn't a sprint in front of the Steiners' hometown crowd. But if you're into seeing a ton of cool moves thrown out in an economic runtime, you can't really miss with this match. 

Shawn Michaels vs. Mr. Perfect

ER: Champ enters first, which is something that always feels wrong to me, and it curses the first part of the match. Because this is a match with a mostly bad first half and a mostly great second half. I kinda hated the start of this, with a bunch of mapped out running exchanges that played too mapped out. A lot of leapfrogs and missed clotheslines and a couple of quick rope running moves where you couldn't really tell who was taking the move and who was delivering it. It looked like a couple of yarders doing a move for move reproduction of a better match they had seen. There was just too much disconnect and it felt too much like the horse shit Michaels wants to see from Adam Cole and Johnny Gargano. 

The match got good when Michaels started working over Perfect's back. Michaels dropped elbows and whipped Perfect into the turnbuckles a couple times, and Perfect took really painful violent looking bumps getting flung into those turnbuckles. It built to an exciting comeback (with Perfect's back perfect again, oh well) where Michaels' bumps felt much more connected to what Perfect was delivering. There was some nice timing on a big explosive Perfect dropkick that Michaels bumped on his shoulders, and he did a fun pirouette bump for an atomic drop. Michaels also had some strong super late kickouts, tricking the fans at least 3 different times that they were seeing a title change. The finish was pretty weak, as Perfect hits the Perfect Plex but Diesel just drags him out of the ring. Perfect actually lands punches and knocks Diesel's sunglasses off (Heenan: "Perfect is hitting a man with glasses!!"), and catches Michaels with a punch when he tries to get involved. Diesel had been around a long time as Shawn's heavy, and this was the first time anyone really landed a punch on him. But Perfect lost by a count out, which means that Earl Hebner somehow missed every single thing that happened over the prior 10 seconds, somehow counting Perfect out while also not noticing that he was in a fight with Diesel. That's just lazy and makes everyone look like an idiot. 

IRS vs. 1-2-3 Kid

ER: 1-2-3 Kid's eyebrows have finally grown back and he looks so much more normal. But this match is one of the most baffling decisions of 1993. This sounds like an extreme comparison, but just as the sudden Luger face turn really fucked up a ton of much better 1993 plans, having IRS beat Kid on his first PPV appearance feels insane to me. Who could have possibly thought this was a good decision? They had booked his arc perfectly up to this point, getting him real grassroots reactions and chants from crowds. This match felt like the exact 100% correct match to be having, right up until the moment that IRS quickly and easily pinned Kid. Kid got to do his crowd pleasing audience in front of his biggest crowd, against a large opponent, and it was going great. He hit a couple of different spin kicks and was good at avoiding IRS's offense...until getting knocked silly to the floor. IRS is good at knocking Kid down, and Kid is good at finding fun ways to come back. IRS hit a predictable chinlock and we all knew Kid would start to break it once the 1-2-3 chants started. Those started 10 seconds in, Kid fought out of it. Again, everything was going exactly as planned. 

Kid hits his moonsault press, which beat Razor Ramon, but IRS kicks out. Kid immediately ties him up with a majistral cradle, which beat Ted Dibiase, but IRS kicks out. Kid throws a spin kick, IRS catches it, and Kid throws his knee right into IRS's face. IRS kicks out of THAT! And then, they get up, IRS jumps over a dropdown, and then hits his big lariat for the cleanest possible victory. Of all people, they had IRS kick out of both moves that earned Kid his two big TV victories, withstanding more damage than any Kid opponent so far. And then he just gets up and hits his finish! Money Inc was over, Dibiase was gone, and they have Kid - the guy getting bigger and bigger organic reactions with every TV appearance - lose to IRS in his first PPV match. I am actually shocked. Kid beating IRS at Summerslam was literally the most easy to pick result on the entire card...and it didn't happen. I have absolutely zero clue why it did not happen. 

Bret Hart vs. Jerry The King Lawler/Doink

ER: This was a tremendous segment. Lawler comes out on crutches with his left knee heavily wrapped with a hot water bottle. He runs down Detroit's auto industry by talking about how beat up his rent-a-limo was due to the lackluster Detroit auto quality control, how he got into a bad accident and had to crawl through the flames, how he hopped on one leg to get to the arena to gallantly face Bret Hart. And there is nothing more IN THIS WORLD that Lawler wants, than to get into that ring and face down Bret Hart with just one leg. But these damn doctors refuse to clear him to compete, even though - again - there is nothing he wants more than to take Bret down a peg or two. Alas, as he cannot compete with this leg, no matter what his heart says. So, in his proxy, he has chosen Doink as Bret's new opponent. This was a really well done Memphis bait and switch, giving the babyface an opponent that he hasn't been preparing for. It was a great way to get Doink into a surprise spot on the PPV (along with Crush and Duggan, he would have felt like the biggest snub from the card), and it was the only look we ever got at the naturally great pairing of Bret and Doink. It's criminal we didn't actually get a TV feud between them

They have a great 10 minute match, Hart throwing some of his greatest worked strikes, and Doink putting in an excellent physical performance with some great cut off spots. It's a physical match and both guys are so good at a physical but theatrical style, throwing excellent worked punches and great stomps to the face. Doink comes out smoking a cigar, carrying a couple of buckets. He throws one bucket of confetti on some kids, trying to scare them like an evil Harlem Globetrotter. Then he throws an actual bucket of water on Bruce Hart (sitting ringside with Owen) and Bruce does a real great "hold me back" crazed fight eyes reaction. Doink turns right around into a great Bret right hand and then proceeds to stumble around ringside and the ring while taking punches and losing grease paint. He eats a big clothesline and gets crotched on the top rope, and he's really vicious when Lawler's distraction leads to his sneak attack takeover. He throws Hart into the ring steps and hits a knee breaker, rams his knee into the ringpost, even working Bret's leg over with a nasty stump puller. Doink lands ass to knees on a Whoopee Cushion and Hart goes into kill mode. Hart hits some of his best ever downward strike elbows, including a Bret highlight reel worthy 2nd rope version. Bret locks in the sharpshooter with his back perfectly turned to Lawler, and Lawler breaks one of his crutches over the back of Hart's head, hopping around on his perfectly fine knee. I really loved this era of Memphis style invading Vince's style. 

Now Lawler takes the match over for Doink, but the beaten down Bret surprises Lawler with awesome punches. Lawler soon cheats to transition, and works a great long stretch of sneaking nasty crutch shots into Bret's throat behind the ref's back. He works a long slow drama out of these crutch shots, with Bret staggering to all sides of the ring. And they kept cutting to Owen in the crowd reading these terrible lines like "Beat his behind, Bret!" in his screeching, cracked voice copy while wearing loose leather pants tucked into cowboy boots. Lawler soaks up boos while throwing the most disgusting crutch shots to Bret's throat. It's a great bunch of bullshit and a perfect way for a smug heel to work a match he was forced to participate in. The only weak portion of the entire half hour segment, was when Hart makes a comeback with a low mule kick. I don't really like the idea of Hart coming back with a kick to the balls, but even worse was the kick not connecting. Hart was offline and it came off clunky, clearly hitting Lawler in the leg. But the Hart offense it *lead* to was fantastic. Hart's punches rocked Lawler in the corner (Lawler is the best in wrestling history at selling punches in the corner, falling all over the ropes while using them to prop himself up), he hit a high backdrop and hard backbreaker, STUCK Lawler on a piledriver, and hit a middle rope elbowdrop as fine as any fistdrop Lawler threw in his career. The finish wraps things up a little too easily, with Bret basically just tapping him in the middle with a sharpshooter with no real fight. Now, we did get a great post-match twist, as Hart refused to break the sharpshooter and got his win reversed to a Lawler DQ win. I think that's a tremendous bit of horse shit, giving Lawler more trash to talk as he remains the true king of WWF. 

Ludvig Borga vs. Marty Jannetty

ER: There's a huge sign right on hard camera that says "Lardwig's Hate Section!" I honestly don't know how Borga could have made a big enough impact at this point to even HAVE a hate section. He had a handful of weekend squash matches, but no Raw matches. There were a couple of Borga vignettes that played on Raw, highlights from his squash matches played over the Finnish national anthem. On this very PPV he had a previously taped promo, walking around the rubble of a bad Michigan neighborhood while listing some reasons America is terrible, and none of his points were really wrong. But, he's got a hate section, and they think he's fat. Marty Jannetty is dressed like cocaine. 

And this is one of the most one-sided squash matches to ever make it onto PPV. Marty Jannetty went from winning the IC title three months earlier on Raw, to getting wrecked on PPV for 5 minutes and losing so definitively that you'd think Jannetty was being disappeared. Borga went right at Jannetty's ribs with body blows (with Jannetty doing these almost silly bunny hops that feel too disconnected from the punches "lifting him off his feet") and kept leveling him with stiff arm clotheslines, even tosses him WAY up into the air with a sky high flapjack, uppercutting Jannetty in the stomach on his way down. This is so completely one-sided that the crowd seems audibly confused, waiting for a Jannetty comeback that was never going to come. This is all about Borga punching Jannetty in the ribs, clubbing him in the back, and knocking him down with lariats. Borga misses a great avalanche (landing fast, chest first into the top buckle) to give Marty and opening, but then literally turns around and just lariats Jannetty coming back off the ropes. This had to be Vince punishing Jannetty, right? Jannetty's only real offense in the match looks great, two superkicks that Borga takes to the throat, excellently timed, and Borga sells like a dumb Bond villain henchman trying to let the table know he was choking (in other words, an excellent way to sell two superkicks to the throat). But he catches Jannetty's crossbody and drops him with a powerslam, then - gets this - lifts Jannetty off the match and finishes things EASILY with a nice torture rack. Brutal loss for Jannetty, no idea how you even begin to rehab your character after a loss like this. Even though it's not mentioned on commentary, I wonder if the Borga torture rack is being subtly used as a way for Borga to challenge Luger next (even though Luger hasn't really used the torture rack in WWF at this point in time).

The Undertaker vs. Giant Gonzalez

ER: I really do love that they spent literally 3 months hyping this match as a Rest In Peace match, without ever ONCE defining what a Rest In Peace match is. They hinted that they were going to, Mean Gene said we'd be finding out, but at no point in any of the build up to this match and at no point in the match itself do we ever find out what makes this a Rest In Peace match. 1993 still had a lot more connection to the carny days, and blindly billing a match as a Rest In Peace match is like a drive-in poster billing some shitty horror movie as "The bloodiest movie you will EVER see!" And I miss that carny connection that is in hindsight so much more wholesome than our current Modern Social Brand Discussing Their User Interactions. 

The Giant Gonzalez fur suit was a Great Thing. It was really off-putting when I was 12. Maybe it made every puberty-bound 12 year old watching at the time uncomfortable too and that's why everyone thought it was terrible. Except now the fur suit is so clearly the 100% correct choice for his ring gear that it's insane that the gear wasn't universally praised at the time. Wrestling needs freaks, and the tallest wrestler ever wearing a flesh colored muscle suit kicked insane amounts of ass. Big Show has spent his entire career looking like the Most Normal Giant, and it is an indisputable fact that Big Show - during literally any portion of his career - would have been better wearing this exact same fur suit. You cannot argue against that point. Instead we mostly got him cracking jokes while wearing Kirkland Signature jeans and comfortable white New Balance walkers. 

Also, WWF never understood how to film Gonzalez, the Easiest Pro Wrestler to Film. They ALWAYS film Gonzalez for underneath, the way they film guys to make them look bigger. They were so in their heads, so used to making 6'6" guys look 6'10" filming them underneath, that they flush the easiest slam dunk of Giant Gonzalez's run. The key to filming Gonzalez is simple: Just show him from far back. When you zoom in close on Gonzalez, it looks exactly like a zoomed up shot of me, a person 1/3 the size of Giant Gonzalez. You need to film him from far away, so viewers can see how large he is compared to every single thing around him. It's such an easy thing to understand, and they never understood it. You need to film him flat footed, dead on, to show how much taller he is than the tallest person near him, to show how tall his is when standing on the floor next to the ring. Once you see him towering over the crowd as he walks to the ring, it's a tough visual to forget. Stunning how not one person in the production truck ever figured this out. 

The Rest In Peace match was very similar, it turns out, to the other Undertaker/Giant Gonzalez matches, and it really showed that Gonzalez would have been an actual successful wrestling giant if he had just learned to throw decent downward clubbing arms. If you are an 8 foot tall man in a fight, you will be primarily throwing downward clubbing arms. Gonzalez never learned how to make his connect. If he learned to make a little sound with those clubbing arms it really would have added a lot to his limited offense. The size difference between Gonzalez and Undertaker will always be impressive to me, just dwarfing a very large man. The match is mostly Gonzalez clubbing and choking Undertaker until Paul Bearer makes his big return. The Bearer return is handled great, he runs through Wippleman with a clothesline and gets the urn back, and Undertaker regains his powers, hits several very soft clotheslines and a nice throat thrust, then wins with a clothesline off the top (because there was zero chance anybody was ever going to try to hit any kind of piledriver on Gonzalez). The fans reacted big for the Paul Bearer return and actually jumped to their feet when Gonzalez finally got knocked on his back, and that's really all you want from a big match like this. One of the all time great Rest In Peace matches we have on tape. 

Tatanka/Smoking Gunns vs. Bam Bam Bigelow/The Headshrinkers

ER: Great six man that really showed off the chemistry of the two pairings, and it's kind of crazy they didn't continue running this trios around the house show circuit. We have several Tatanka/Bam Bam matches and we know their chemistry is real, but this was a great use of all six guys. Bigelow has the best shape in wrestling history, and he looks big and awesome here. He works quick exchanges with Tatanka that are nearly identical to their house show exchanges, although the crowd here reacts quieter to them than on any of their house show matches (especially shocked at the quiet reaction for Bigelow cutting off the war dance with an enziguiri, which is a great spot). But the fans are into the match, really into Tatanka, and again everyone is used well. Gunns are able to come in and work either quick takedown spots (lariats or bulldogs) or leave the ring quickly (like a nice Bart pescado or Bigelow hitting a fucking BEAST of a lariat to break Billy's body over the top to the floor). Billy looked really good while using all his cool rodeo offense, like the hooking bulldog lariat or the guillotine takedown, and Fatu had the best possible timing on all of his thrust kicks, knowing exactly the right moment to stop an advancing Gunn. I also loved every single Head Shrinker headbutt, and the Gunns were excellent at whipping themselves into the mat at the exact right time to make them look devastating. The finish is fun, with the heels all nailing standing headbutts on Tatanka, but then missing on all three of their top rope headbutts, leaving Samu to be rolled up by Tatanka. Perfect kind of house show pleaser multiman. 

Yokozuna vs. Lex Luger

ER: This is a good match, sometimes a very good match, and briefly a great match. And it's a really interesting science experiment if you focus on the things fans are really reacting to. Because based on the reactions for the bulk of this match it is difficult to see the Proud American Lex Luger decision as anything but an early call disaster. Because the fans in Michigan react louder to all of Yokozuna's offense, and all of Yokozuna's missed offense, than almost anything Luger hits. Even more notably, the crowd is quiet on every single one of Luger's kickouts. There were several moments where it looked like Yokozuna would be walking away with this one, and the crowd just did not react to Luger NOT losing. Macho Man has been decked head to toe in the American flag for two months, Luger has been driving around the United States in an American flag bus for two months, and this crowd does not sound like a crowd who cares about Luger winning the title. Perhaps the most dire omen for Luger's Proud American run is that there isn't even a USA chant we're 15 minutes into the match. How insane is that?? This match has been built ENTIRELY on the fact that Lex Luger is an American and Yokozuna is, for all intents and purposes, not.

And this crowd couldn't even bother to chant USA until Luger was trapped in a nerve hold, DEEP into America's triumphant war with the Japanese. And it was pretty clear that a lot of that was because Luger didn't do anything to play up his babyface status. I will never understand WWF's strategy of suddenly turning Luger babyface, and then never having him wrestle as a babyface to get the crowd used to this sudden hero's mannerisms. They just did not react to Luger here, and it's weird to not hear a crowd get excited when Yokozuna's big belly to belly and legdrop gets kicked out of. 

When you think of literally EVERY other babyface on this roster, who was winning TV matches, and picture them in Lex Luger's exact same position, it's difficult to imagine ANY of them getting the quiet reaction Luger gets here. Duggan and Crush got sustained loud noise for the duration of their good matches against Yokozuna. There is no doubt either of them would have gotten even louder reactions challenging for the title on PPV. But Tatanka, Razor Ramon, Bret Hart, the Undertaker, all would have gotten the crowd more interested than Luger did here. I'm convinced Virgil could have gotten more noise, as Virgil new more tricks than Luger at getting good babyface reactions. Honestly, if they would have let 1-2-3 Kid beat IRS clean with an actual finisher instead of making the braindead decision to already beat Kid, they EASILY could have built to an excellent 1-2-3 Kid/Yokozuna title match at Survivor Series. 

They give Kid a good win over IRS, no schoolboy rollups, but let the fucking Kid beat the 2nd member of a tag team who isn't going to have any more matches together. He beats IRS with an earned finish, actually putting him down, and then in a few weeks you give him a strong Raw match against Bastion Booger. You show he can beat big guys. Then the next month you give him a good 10 minute Raw match against Doink and you have him beat Doink. You set up the WWF's "smallest" guy vs. Yokozuna, a real Rocky situation. Yet for some reason they instead treated Luger like HE was Rocky against Yokozuna! How idiotic is that? 1-2-3 Kid would have been an excellent Rocky, and him lasting against Yokozuna would be an actual feat that would grow his legend. But Luger is the man presented as having *the best chance* at beating Yokozuna! He's not Rocky, he's America's Greatest Hope. 

This match has to be considered one of the biggest failures of the 90s, a campaign that completely fucked up the trajectory of what had been an excellent and well-balance mix of over babyfaces and heels. Luger immediately clogged up the progression of everyone else. There was a natural way to turn Luger babyface, but it would have taken until 1994, and Vince panicked. 

The actual finish of this match is spectacular, a well peaked moment of excellent timing from several people, and the only time the match got the reaction it deserved. Fuji gets accidentally hit with the salt bucket, Cornette causes a distraction, Luger pulls off the protective arm band and wallops Yokozuna with a killer forearm, Yokozuna takes the incredible King Hippo bump through the ropes to the floor for the KO....and then Jim Cornette makes Luger look like the biggest dummy in the world by getting on the apron to stall for time and eat a punch (bumping big to the floor in the process), delaying Luger long enough to get Yokozuna counted out. Lex Luger not winning the title, and yet still getting an in-ring celebration COMPLETE WITH BALLOON DROP is one of the ultimate neutering moves in pro wrestling history. Having a balloon drop to celebrate winning the popular vote is about as cool as slipping in a massive pile of shit and then taking a victory lap around the block because you didn't tear your rotator cuff after everybody saw you fall into that pile of shit. 

It would go down as one of the strongest contenders for saddest and most pathetic ways for a babyface to finish a PPV...and it somehow only gets worse. After cutting to an incredibly long Lex Luger victory music video - which is really laying it on thick to an audience who is being goaded into celebrating a man who didn't complete his stated task IN HIS ONLY CHANCE - we cut to Luger celebrating backstage. Luger is celebrating with Randy Savage, the Steiners, and Tatanka (who all would have gotten the crowd more involved in their hypothetical main event PPV match against Yokozuna) and Luger proceeds to give the flattest concession speech. He really goes into "what an honor it was to perform for the great Michigan fans and represent his country" and manages to sound more and more like a loser the longer he speaks. 

And then Ludvig Borga shows up and immediately comes off like the coolest fucking gunslinger in this piece of shit town. Borga steps right up to Lex Luger's face, surrounded by Randy Savage, Tatanka, and the Steiners, and tells Luger what a fucking loser he is, tells him how shitty America is, and tells Luger he is going to destroy Luger until he represents the crumbling infrastructure of the shittiest parts of the Failed State of America. 

And nobody does a single fucking thing. Borga runs down their accomplishments, their upbringing, their country, and their identity, and then he walks out of the room with all of their dicks tucked into his jorts pocket. I can only assume the cameras cut away because Borga was seconds away from shitting on their couch while none of them made a single step toward stopping him. Luger did NOT win the title for America, in his only chance to do so. And then the most foreign man on the roster just waltzed into his locker room minutes later, proceeded to rub Luger's nose into every single one of his failures, and then just walked out without a scratch. 

I am not sure I have ever been more shocked by the finish of a PPV. Proud American Lex Luger had absolutely NO chance.

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The 1993 King of the Ring Qualifying Matches, Part 2

I took a look at the first half of the 1993 King of the Ring Qualifying matches last week, and here's the shocking conclusion, leading up to a review of the 1993 King of the Ring.


Giant Gonzalez vs. Tatanka WWF Superstars 5/15/93

ER: I love looking at Giant Gonzalez. People who criticize him during his naked Sasquatch suit period are people who don't have any sense of wonder. I wish I had been a kid in the crowd during any of the shows where Giant Gonzalez worked, because I would have been in wonder. Big Show is a far better wrestler than Giant Gonzalez, but Big Show has almost always come off like a very large normal man. Big Show has more mass than Gonzalez! But Gonzalez never came out to the ring wearing dad jeans and a tucked in polo shirt. Gonzalez looked like a damn freak of nature, like something out of a horror movie, and the body suit ruled. Anyone who tells you this weird muscle and pubes suit isn't the greatest shit, is lying to you or lying to themselves. This is a wildly giant man who projects even larger size with his movements and I love seeing him lumber around a ring. 

Tatanka is a cool opponent for him, not because it makes for a great match, but because as a child I wouldn't have known who was winning this match. Tatanka was undefeated! Gonzalez was wrecking 2-3 guys at a time and just chloroformed the Undertaker! An 8' tall man who could dispose of multiple men at once and also occasionally use serial killer tactics to end matches is an absolute wild card. Gonzalez is not great at selling on his feet, but I love the moments where he is clubbing Tatanka into dust. Tatanka gets hammered into the mat real well and Gonzalez knew how to make crazy eyes better than Big Show ever did. His selling on Tatanka's comeback is silly, he doesn't know how to stand or move when being attacked, so he wobbles and stumbles and puts his hands on his head like he is miming "Going Crazy!" But I loved Tatanka leaping off the top with a big tomahawk chop and getting caught by the throat. Our finish is weak, and understandably so, as Gonzalez shoves ref Bill Alphonso (props for using the tiniest ref in a Gonzalez match, smart visual) for the DQ while dragging Tatanka around by the neck, hitting him with a nice heavy chokeslam after the bell. Also, this match might also be one of the only matches in WWF history involving two indigenous opponents, which is really cool.


Doink vs. Mr. Perfect WWF Wrestling Challenge 5/16/93

ER: This is not as infuriatingly laid out as the first match in their series, but it has similar problems. The strengths are strong, and the work is strong, but the layout is still odd and the time limit draw comes off messy and way too early. Perfect has really good energy for a babyface, but is really stuck working like a heel at this point. He has too many heel tendencies and they all come out, and it clearly confuses crowd reaction. It is possible to play a smug babyface, but the formula is still off for '93 Perfect. Doink had a real spectacular entrance, filled with great close up mugs to the camera, weird popcorn eating, and squirting a 3 year old with his lapel flower. Perfect jumps him in the aisle to prevent him from terrorizing more kids, and Perfect quickly goes back to attacking the leg just like their first match. And, just like the first match, the leg work is strong! Perfect drops knees on Doink's leg, kicks at it, locks in a nasty trailer hitch, all of it looks painful. But again, that leads us to a sad clown limping and hopping around the ring and doing his best to fight back. There is nothing inherently wrong with a babyface targeting a limb, but it just plays bad to do it all at once. Perfect attacks Doink's leg for so long that the fans automatically start viewing Doink as the underdog. Just as with the first match, it's all wack. This match gets a couple favors their first match didn't get, such as no bad commercial break that divides the match into Perfect offense/Doink offense. But Perfect just massacres Doink's leg until Doink manages to be close enough to the ropes to toss Perfect to the floor, then Doink limps along slamming Perfect into the ring steps.

Now what this match doesn't get that their first match got, is some actual interesting nearfalls. The time limit draw here doesn't feel worked toward in any way, they just start throwing fists until a bell sounds and again take way too long to announce the result, leading to the exact same confused silence as the finish to their first match. Plus, when you end with a time limit draw after only 5-6 minutes, it's always insulting. I believe there was a Regal/Misterio match on Nitro that went 6 minutes and got called a 15 minute draw, so that's our low bar stupidity with the finish, but this wasn't much better. Also, Doink was absolutely THRASHING Perfect with his punches and got to throw a series of awesome left-rights until Perfect timmmmmberrrrrs over. Valiant fighting babyface, Doink. The ending is a real pile, but I dug Perfect asking for 5 more minutes (which would almost make this a 10 minute match!) and Doink running into the ring to jump him the second Perfect turns his back. Doink limps and hops on one leg all the way down the aisle as Perfect chases him off.


Shawn Michaels vs. Crush WWF Superstars 5/22/93

ER: What a great 5 minute match. Weak double count out finish aside, this was the best match of the Qualifying Rounds. The two of them were complementary enough that it made me want to go seek out their other few singles and tag matches (there aren't many, a couple Rockers/Demolition from '90 and singles matches from '93, surprising that they never crossed paths at any point in '96/'97). Crush really came off like a big babyface monster here, and Michaels helped a lot with that. Crush just facepalms Michaels across the entire ring to start the match, and it stays that level of great from there. Michaels does big bumps but a bunch of great Rock-taking-a-Stunner bumps all around the ring and ringside. I think that kind of exaggeratedly bumping has his place, and Michaels brings a great stooging Memphis flair to his showy bumps. Big athletic bumpers today intentionally seek to copy the athleticism portion of these bumps, most don't think of the stooge spot as the necessary delivery of the athletic bump. Michaels in '93 was really good at not devaluing the spot that caused the big bump. Crush facepalmed him, hit a big clothesline, got shoulderblocked, andMichaels bounced and flew for all of it. He goes through bigger bump ending variations on signature bumps, like when he gets kicked in the stomach while balanced across a corner, and flings himself over the top to the floor. Crush has an all time great Crush moment where he press slams Michaels and slowly walks him all the way around the ring, ref yelling to put him down, Crush walking around showing off a full extension press to every side of the ring, threatening to throw him like Bam Bam and Spike. I have never seen Crush cooler.

What really puts this over to next level was how good Crush was bumping for Michaels' run. Crush takes two notable spots and makes them mean much more, getting lured and leveraged into the ring steps by Michaels, and then run face first into a ringpost. He smashes hard into the steps, and I always like when a big man's first bump of a match is a big crash. A big crash landing that finally takes him down. Right after he's walking away to clear the cobwebs, and Michaels just runs and shoves him into the post. Crush has a great post bump, kind of sliding into it on his knees while he was bumping back. Most guys go in leaning forward and into it making it more obvious you're shielding with your hand, and you're bumping into an unmoving object. When Lawler bumps into a ring post and does it leaned back, feet going out in front of him, it focuses the bump equally on the post bump and back bump, so a great quick back bump really makes the posting go by quicker and look harder (Lawler takes several other post bump variations and make them also look great). So Crush gets waylaid by two straight shots into hard inanimate surfaces, and I love how that's ALL of Michaels' offense. I'm not sure later ego would have allowed for a match where he plays heel and the only time his opponent goes down is when he's shoved into an object. The double count out is disappointing, as the match was so hot that a good finish would have made it one of the sleeper best WWF matches of 1993. But it did set up the PPV match, so we'll see how that match goes soon.


Mr. Hughes vs. Kamala WWF Wrestling Challenge 5/23/93

ER: This could have been a lot better, but it really wasn't meant to be good. It was the shortest match of the Qualifying Round, not even making it to 3 minutes, and played as more of a Kamala/Kim Chee/Wippleman angle. Kamala had a silly and spirited performance that the crowd was into, and his standing shots came off better than Hughes'. Hughes felt like he was holding back. His strikes had a good physical motion to them, mixing up overhand rights, but they would land light. They look too pulled. Kamala would come back with big fat overhand chops and the crowd would fire up. Hughes does hit two of his big dropkicks consecutively (although Kamala sells the first one weird, kind of prancing around waving his arms before bumping for the second one). Kamala gets a cool surprise superkick when distracted by Kim Chee, throwing it back as Hughes approached, and then hit his running splash. Naturally, Hughes gets pinned while on his stomach. That's a really great crowd involvement spot, it's always great hearing all the kids screaming for Kamala to roll him over. It always works and Kamala's faces during it are always a fun silly way to get kids into things. Count out finish is cheap, but Kamala was established as easily confused at this point.


Doink vs. Mr. Perfect WWF Raw 5/24/93

ER: This was certainly the most fully realized of their three matches, and a really good TV match. The first two matches were clumsily or confusingly laid out matches with weak finishes but had strong in-ring. But in hindsight those first two matches were even more annoying because Mr. Perfect chose to work the exact same match in all three of them. It's like Perfect couldn't fathom coming up with a three match progression, so he just worked Doink's leg over in near identical ways in three straight matches over three weeks. The only thing that changed was time. This is the match he got the most time to flesh out the match, which is why the other two matches just felt like clipped matches that ended with no warning. He could have worked an out of control brawl leading to a double count out after 5 minutes, or have Doink close to winning the first and have him figuring out Doink more each match, but he doesn't do that. He just works the same exact progression of leg attacks, leading to the heel evil clown selling a leg injury the whole time. The knee injury was worked better into this match than the other ones, and had more time to go in more interesting ways.

What's disappointing is the match starts with Doink jumping Perfect and choking him with Perfect's hand towel, then wipes himself off with it, getting all the areas. So of course Perfect punches him and gets the towel, then hits a big lariat with the towel. It was a hot brawl that felt like the culmination and frustration of their prior two matches. But then Perfect starts the leg work the exact same way he started it the other two times, and we go into that match. It's a good version of that match, but it's like someone on their third attempt at a joke: even if it's funny it will have lost some momentum. Doink pays good service to selling the leg, not letting it stop him from doing a move he really shouldn't be doing (like jumping axe handles), but he would always be slowed immediately after.

I think Perfect took too much of a slice in these matches, and that Doink could have been more impressive with his limited time in each match. He should have been more vicious. Perfect is tough! But this is still good. Perfect takes a big bump to the floor after getting thrown, takes a really good ringpost bump to give Doink breath, and later in the match locks in a nasty figure 4 variation. A lot of great moments that don't always feel part of the same match but also always feel close to greatness. They involve the second Doink well, with Doink scrambling under the ring and coming out with fresh face paint and a much better wig, and Perfect immediately putting the new Doink away with a killer Perfect Plex. You knew Perfect was showing off when he would deadlift the Perfect Plex all the way over. Crush runs in after the match and really this should have set up a series of Perfect/Crush vs. The Two Doinks house show matches, but those matches never happened. Just Crush/Doink over and over until Crush was dead.

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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.

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