Found Footage Friday: SAVAGE~! LAWLER~! MABEL~! PCO~! TAKER~! MANKIND~! JARRETT~! RAZOR~!

Jerry Lawler vs. Randy Savage Memphis 3/23/85 (Jonesboro)

MD: I'm not going to wax poetic on the WWE Vault finding this. You know. We live in amazing times.

The match itself was very interesting. Savage had turned a couple of times during his primary Memphis run and he was a familiar face and he was over. He had Newman with him. He was clearly the heel. The fans were still split. So they did everything they could to present Lawler as worth cheering and Savage as worth booing. To start, they had Lawler break clean at every point and get the best of Savage on rope running exchanges. 

After Lawler got a knee up in the corner, and raised his hands to show he meant for it to be a legal attack, Savage went out, got on the mic. Then Lawler did the same complaining about Tux, then Tux got to talk, and Savage again, and they went around with it, really laying out the case that you should cheer Lawler and boo Savage, even if it didn't look like that at face value. And then, when they got back into the ring, Lawler nailed Savage on the break, but by now, it was fully established how much he deserved it and how Lawler had tried to play nice first. On the next break, Lawler stepped on Newman's hand on the apron instead. The fans want to see the babyface hit hard and clown the heel and they built to it coming off as a pure babyface move and nothing petty or spiteful. 

Then of course, they inverted it by having Savage freak out about Newman getting stomped, run around with a chair, and get a cheapshot in on the next break. Unlike Lawler, though, Savage celebrated as if he'd accomplished something monumental. Suddenly, the crowd wasn't split anymore. They were booing Savage. Pretty masterful stuff. 

Because they had to tear things down and then build it all back up, Savage didn't really take over until around twenty minutes in and he did with a clever bit of misdirection with Tux and his cane. From there, things were pretty wild with Lawler coming back a couple of times and the fight spilling out to the audience. Incredibly crowd pleasing stuff with rapid fire slamming of heads into turnbuckles and grounded punches. Lawler turned Tux interference back on Savage one last time and hit the fist drop for a definitive win. Post match, he ALMOST got his hands on Tux but had to fight off three other heels instead (and he did to the crowd's delight). Really brilliant stuff overall in how they ensured that the crowd was exactly where they wanted them.

ER: To think there was a time in my fandom that I would have been bored by something like this. Savage, avoiding contact to rile up the half of the crowd who hates him while simultaneously appealing to the half who adores him, an incredible cross section of fans that not only allows this match its beautiful slow burn, but encourages it. This was 20 minutes of slow burn and shifting allegiances with men actually pleading their case on the house mic far more than hitting each other. They get so much mileage out of Savage just going out to the floor and getting upset, with little bits of in-ring character like Lawler popping his head up and down for four straight dropdowns while Savage sprinted back and forth over him. 

All the bullshit started breaking down when Savage finally started hitting Lawler and Lawler caught a Savage kick, hopping him out to the center of the ring, holding Savage's leg high up on his chest and drawing it out before finally tipping and fistdropping him in one move. Savage then catches Lawler's leg the same exact way and goes  through the same routine, only this ends with a Lawler enziguiri (a great one!). The misdirection around Tux Newman getting his cane to Savage and everything that happened after that was the kind of fire you want to see from a Lawler/Savage match. The way Savage punched Lawler all around ringside was filmed so perfectly it's as if they purposely took the brawl in front of the cameras, without actually doing that. It was just Savage giving everyone some close up magic and popping Lawler in the forehead around each side of the ring, these individual reared back shots every 10 feet, then hitting a big axe handle to the floor, then another. It's an honest to god miracle that he didn't blow out his knee until his mid-40s because he was just jumping onto concrete on every show for 15 years with or without cameras present. 

Savage is battering Lawler, and it all turns into one of the great turnbuckle smashing comebacks. Savage is bashing Lawler's head into the buckles, and they start coming a little slower with a little more resistance. The sixth time Savage is actively working to get Lawler's face to the buckle, and by the seventh Lawler has fully blocked it, and the crowd is here for it. When the strap comes down, Lawler's back is to the camera so we get to see Savage react to it, and Savage's eyes are the perfect eyes to be reacting to the strap coming down. We get them in shocking HD and it plays like such a famous clip that you'd think we'd have been seeing it in highlight videos for 40 years. Lawler's fistdrop off the middle buckle is as good as you can actually do a fistdrop...but his earlier missed fistdrop into the mat and subsequent sell might have been even better. Just another classic match we didn't realize existed until the last week. 

WWF House Show Footage

Mabel vs. Pierre MSG 11/26/94

MD: Really enjoyed this one. Pierre looked as good as anyone in the company at this point. He flew all over the place for Mabel early, timing all of his stooging perfectly and just bumping big given his size. One bit of punishment after the next. The transition was great. Mabel tried to suplex him back into the ring (and this didn't seem like a huge effort considering what he'd already done to him) and Pierre dropped straight down to the floor from the apron, causing Mabel to get hotshotted onto the top rope.

Then all of Pierre's offense was equally good, maybe too good, because the crowd was starting to go for him despite him working them a bit. Thankfully, they still went for Mabel on the comeback (reversing things on the floor to post Pierre) and Mabel hit two or three big things on the way out. Just a strong, larger than life undercard house show match.

ER: I love Mabel, ADORE Mabel, I will always back the big man...but HERE is a damn Quebecer Pierre performances if ever there was. It's no secret PCO is insane - it's been his main brand for a decade now - but I don't remember him going this hard in New Generation Raw matches, let alone on house shows. This was a man working UP to MSG, taking bumps that put 1-2-3 Kid to shame and hitting offense like a truck. I loved the layout of this, where it looked like the whole thing was going to be Pierre getting tossed repeatedly. He gets thrown so violently to the floor on the first lock up that there is no way he was able to work like this night in and night out....a thing one could have said before we found out how much he loves falling from great heights. Mabel suplexes him like it's nothing, throws him into the air with a high back body drop, really slamming him at will. 

Pierre turns the tide by stopping a suplex into the ring by throwing his body weight back and stunning Mabel on the top rope as he drops to the floor yet again. Then we get this great mix of Pierre trying to tame this sea beast by jumping all over Mabel's back, and taking big bumps as he's swatted away. He takes a back drop to the floor and responds by running up the nearest turnbuckle and hitting a real heat seeking missile of a dropkick. It always feels unsustainable, only a matter of time before Mabel would catch him again, and when he does it's just as great as before. Pierre takes an even higher backdrop than before, kicks out of the spinning heel kick but gets crushed by an avalanche, than takes his well earned time wobbling to the center of the ring and back, turning around to get flattened by a Mabel crossbody. 

Undertaker vs. Mankind Meadowlands 7/5/96

MD: I haven't seen any of the Taker vs. Mankind  stuff in a while and I wasn't quite prepared for where they were at this point in the feud. I don't remember Taker's shots ever looking quite this good for one thing. I don't know if that was Mankind leaning into them or Taker just laying them in because he was used to working him. 

This kept moving quite steadily, with Taker controlling for the first half but never in a straight line. Mankind would take over for a few shots and get cut off. He'd lose focus and start chasing Bearer. He'd go for a chair only for Taker to get it instead. He'd knock him over the rail only for him to come flying back with a clothesline. 

When he did really start to lean on Taker, he couldn't put him away. Taker punched out of the Mandible Claw in a great bit. He'd kick out of everything else and eventually Mankind lost focus again and started to hit himself and slam his head against the turnbuckle. Even then, even as he shot a choke up to stop the second Claw, Taker had to really fight for the comeback and it ended up as a pretty complete experience for everyone watching. A good entry into their series. 

ER: I shouldn't be surprised by Foley going this hard on a house show, but seeing it in HD it's shocking how much damage he took in front of a bunch of New Jersey sickos who knew how much of a sicko he was. If you ever look at Foley's schedule over '95-'98 and see a house show match like this, you'll wonder how his body didn't give out the first few months of his WWF schedule. When Foley started in WWF he was still making trips back and forth to Japan, going back and forth to take sick beatings on opposite sides of the globe. I guess his body was just conditioned to it by that point but I was still surprised how hard Taker was laying it in and how bad Foley's bumps got. It's obvious Taker is hitting him hard from the bell, clubbing him hard on the back of the neck and throwing tighter strikes than I associate with 1996 Undertaker. 

But then the chairshots start, which are much harder than 1996 WWF chair shots, and it all peaks with Foley taking his backwards bump off the apron to the guardrail...but this lunatic lands back-of-head first into the thickest bottom rail of the guardrail, and the leap back was FAR. The leap backward being so far is probably what led to his body not flying into the railing itself, but flying backward just to whip the most tender part of your head into the thickest steel...that's a guy who should be working 180 matches a year right there. That bump would concuss and give brain damage to most men, but it doesn't even slow Foley down. He still takes more crazy bumps on the floor, including a great one over the railing, off a chair and onto the concrete, which seemed to signal to the Meadowlands crowd that he really was doing this for them, as the chants for Foley started to have a One Of Us feel to them the more damage he took. Awesome fight. Foley really did himself a minor disservice by focusing on his goofy "having fun with Owen" house show matches in his first book, because I had no idea there were hard performances like this out there. I, of course, should have known. 

Jeff Jarrett vs. Razor Ramon Montreal 10/21/94

MD: Most of the Hall I've seen lately has either been 90-91 Puerto Rico or 88 NJPW so it's weird to see him as Razor. This went a few directions I wasn't quite expecting and I think, as much as anything else, it was them trying things. They had wrestled a few times earlier in the year but this was fairly early in their 'marriage' that would last a while.

It's funny because I buy it out of 2025 Jarrett, but I'm not sure I was feeling the strut here. Much more gripping and organic was the way that he paintbrushed Ramon's head after taking him down a few times. All of that paid off so well with him running right into Ramon's open handed slam and bumping huge. Beautiful stooging and feeding. He'd subsequently get knocked out, come back strong, and run right into the fall away slam and Ramon paintbrushing him a bit in return.

Once he took over, he controlled primarily through some nice cutoffs (an enziguiri, dropkicks, corner whips, a nice punch, etc). They really did a great job of building the hope spots, getting bigger and more elaborate each time until Ramon finally punched his way through it all only to get redirected over the top. Ramon controlled out there but Jarrett reversed a whip for a cheap (but effective count out). 

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The Great 16 Man WWF Raw Battle Royal of 2/15/93

16 Man Battle Royal WWF Raw 2/15/93

ER: I've watched this battle royal a couple of times now and I think it's grown into a really fantastic one. I was initially disappointed, as it's the last appearance we have of Berzerker (and his only appearance in a match on Raw), and I'll always be at least a little bit butt-chapped over not getting Berzerker all over these early episodes of Raw. Once I was able to emotionally move past that fact, I was able to enjoy this battle royal for the very real joys within. This is a very active battle royal with some pairings that we never got to see in actual singles matches, a cool mix of a few top guys (Razor, Michaels, Tatanka) and undercarders, painful elimination bumps, and hard work. Razor, Michaels, and Tito gave standout performances, with Tito lasting as a surprise final four, Razor actively punching his way through the entire match, and Michaels punching and bumping and stooging across all of it. Every time I saw Razor in the background he was in a punch out with someone new, either decking Kim Chee right across the jaw, getting lifted into a choke by Typhoon, then turning around and throwing his long right hands to punch anyone close. Michaels throws great jabs throughout (teeing off on Tatanka in the corner) and bumps bigger the longer it goes, capping everything off with a ton of showmanship leading up to his elimination. 

Berzerker is really important to a battle royal, as he's constant motion and never gets stuck just trying to lift someone's leg over a rope. This man has no loyalties (though he does assist heels when approaching a babyface and heel locked in combat) and is endlessly entertaining as he constantly stomps across the ring looking for someone to clobber. Even though he was eliminated sadly early by Kamala, Berzerker was involved in a couple of great bits: Tito leapt off the middle turnbuckle to punch Berzerker in the face (Berzerker held in place), and Berzerker sold it by backpedaling all the way across the ring while punching at the sky; when Owen Hart jumps onto Berzerker's back with a sleeper, Berzerker calmly walks to the nearest set of ropes and dumps Owen right over his head to the floor. I was also wildly entertained by Steve Lombardi's appearance as Kim Chee. The Kim Chee persona plays better to Lombardi's strengths than Brooklyn Brawler does. In this role Kim Chee was mostly just trying to avoid Kamala, and his whole time in the match was spent running away from him, directly into someone else's attack. It all culminated in Kamala chasing Kim Chee through the crowd and into the balcony of the Manhattan Center, which was an awesome visual, spotlight following them as they crawl over chairs and run through the loge seating. 

Bob Backlund was his usual extremely annoying battle royal self, constantly spider monkeying himself on the ropes with his butt sticking out, always a hard man to eliminate. Koko got tossed high over the ropes by Michaels, Damian DeMento got wrecked by Typhoon (also a guy with a fun battle royal performance, digging his fingers into peoples' mouth and eyes while they were holding onto ropes), Berzerker took an expectedly big bump to elimination, Typhoon was a big crashing wave hitting the apron and ring steps on his way to the floor, and the Shawn Michaels elimination was spectacular. The match came down to a final four of Razor, Tatanka, Michaels, and Tito. Razor rolls out of the ring after Tito nails him with the flying forearm, leaving Tatanka and Tito to run wild on Michaels. Michaels gets run back and forth across the ring, post to post, taking those "leap to middle buckle and corkscrew senton the mat" bumps to greater effect with each one. I kept expecting him to comeback and at least dupe Tito into getting thrown out, but I loved how it was just two good babyfaces knocking an asshole heel senseless until they threw him far over the top rope to eliminate him. 

There was a great pre-match angle where they said the 16 Man Battle Royal got changed to a 15 Man Battle Royal because all 15 wrestlers refused to participate in a battle royal with Giant Gonzalez. It was a smart move to protect Gonzalez (and everyone else), but a stupid move in that it did not give us any Berzerker/Gonzalez interaction, or Kamala/Gonzalez; because of that decision we never got to see Iron Mike Sharpe make a dumb face as he backed away from Giant Gonzalez, and we should have been upset. But I liked how they did use Gonzalez, having him come out to ambush and eliminate both Tatanka and Tito, giving Razor the win by sheer luck of him being outside the ring when the fur suit carnage happened.  Tito splatted hard to the mat, a great battle royal effort ended with an unforgiving back bump. Gonzalez looks massive, Razor's mullet de-greased and fluffed out behind him as he celebrates his win, hopping in place repeatedly while his thumbs point squarely to his chest. 

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An Exhaustingly Exhaustive Review of WWF Royal Rumble 1/24/93, Pt. 2

Bret Hart vs. Razor Ramon

ER: Another great match. Perhaps too long, but still a great match. The first 75 minutes of the show is one of the best 75 minute stretches of wrestling you'll find in any era of WWF. A couple pieces could have been placed differently, and the crowd gets weirdly restless in the middle (maybe burned out by too many closely strung together nearfalls? I don't know). This starts with a great opening punch exchange, and Razor never got enough credit at the time for his punches. I'm not sure who else could even make the claim to a better whipping right hand in this era, or any era. Razor's punch doesn't allow much wiggle room and requires a lot of moving parts, and I don't know who threw a similar punch better. Also, Razor and Bret are both great stomp punchers. Razor throws those long rights, whips Bret hard into the turnbuckle, and Bret takes just a classic back first bump into them, making it look almost as violent as his classic chest first bump always looks.  

Hart takes over by working over Razor's leg, kicking it out from under him a few times while holding onto his other leg, slamming it into the ringpost, and it's the only part of the match that feels incomplete or misplaced. It never really leads anywhere, Razor doesn't sell the knee, and I don't think you really needed a leg work segment to set up the Sharpshooter finish 12 minutes later. You can just win with the Sharpshooter, you don't need leg work. Now Razor working over Bret's ribs is much more interesting, and it starts with Razor reversing an Irish whip by jamming a kitchen sink knee into things, then whips Hart low into the corner. Bret slides across the mat ribs first and gets wrapped around the ringpost, and the ribs give Razor a cool focal point for the rest of the match. We DO get Bret going hard chest first to the buckles and we realize, yes, the Bret chest first turnbuckle bump IS the definitive violent corner bump. This particular one is one of Bret's best versions, and think of how many matches that covers. I don't know how Bret's arms didn't go completely numb after hitting the buckles. He ran full speed into them like he couldn't see them and had no idea they were there, and then fell backwards, rigid, to the mat. Most match finishes do not look as nasty as Bret running into the buckles. 

We get a lot of Razor working on Bret with his abdominal stretch, stomps, a stiff shoulderblock, and his always nice fallaway slam. Bret's big comeback from all of that is big, with Razor taking a high  backdrop bump to the floor and then Hart nailing a full body tope (with a couple of sneaky mounted punches thrown in after the landing). They work in a lot of momentum shifts down the stretch, which were all handled well but might have benefitted from one or two of them being dropped. Still, it lead to some classics, including proof that Bret might be the only person who can make the jump off the middle buckle into someone's boot actually look damaging and not silly, and the way he crumbles after hitting it is an incredible sell. It also helps that he hits his Hitman elbow off the middle rope so actually has a reason to be leaping off it into a boot in the first place. The match really should have ended with Bret wriggling out of what surely would have been a match finishing Razor's Edge to trap Razor with a backslide. Nothing that came after was necessary, and the finishing itself came off a little clunky (even with Razor grabbing onto the ropes and Earl Hebner's pant leg to desperately stop the Sharpshooter. Pulling a backslide out of the jaws of a Razor's Edge would have kept Razor stronger, and the backslide looked like a finish (most of the crowd bit hard at the late kickout). Still, even with my criticisms this felt like the 2nd best match on a card with four strong matches. 

Lex Luger debuts as Narcissus in an awkward segment where really nothing at all works. They have the trifold mirror set up in the entrance way, but Luger's gear covers up a lot of his body so you can't even see what all the fuss is about. And there IS fuss. Luger poses to an obstructed view while Heenan lavishes such praise over his body that it nearly approaches Power and Glory workout video levels of uncomfortable. My favorite part was when Heenan drooled over Luger's thighs. "Yes! Look at yourself! Enjoy yourself, Narcissus! Look at his thighs!!!"

The Rumble Match

This is a really really good Rumble, with the only flaw being that it is TOO LONG. It has a great first half and almost felt like a love letter to fans of the territories, as it was front-loaded with several different world and regional champs and that early star power felt big. Within the first 10 entrants we had Flair, Backlund, Dibiase, Lawler, Tenryu and Perfect. Flair and Backlund start it off, and neither Monsoon or Heenan talk about what a historic showdown it legitimately was. When you think of early 80s WWF champ, you think Backlund; When you think of early 80s NWA champ, you think Flair. As best I know, this is the only recorded footage of these two facing each other. There was an early 80s "title unification" match at the Omni but I don't think footage of that was ever shown on TV. So you get a fairly decent chunk of a Flair/Backlund match, years later than you would have wanted it, but they work it like an actual match (as opposed to spending the time trying to lift a guy's leg over the ropes). Papa Shango interrupts as the 3rd entrant but gets disposed of immediately, so we get a 4 minute Backlund/Flair match, and that's pretty neat. Now, Backlund was in this Rumble for over an hour, but I thought he looked pretty bad during at least his first half hour, and 1993 Backlund had a ton of weird timing issues. It often felt like Backlund was purposely trying to throw off his opponents' timing during this run, but he doesn't seem the type to do that. 

The two major standouts of this Rumble are Flair and Lawler. They're each in for just 15-20 minutes but their activity and execution and sheer knowledge of how to work a great Rumble is unparalleled. Flair must have had a running bet to see how many eye pokes he could fit in to his run, as he cuts off every single spot with an eye poke and it's incredible. My favorite was right after Max Moon came in and hit a fiery babyface sequence, and Flair tapped him on the shoulder and poked him in the eyes before just walking off. Lawler looked amazing during his whole run, punching everyone in sight and selling even better, getting into battles with guys we never got to see him battle (like Lawler/Backlund, or Lawler/TENRYU! Just the idea of a Lawler/Tenryu singles match makes me angry that they were even in the same ring and it didn't happen). Lawler has an awesome moment with Max Moon, where Max hits his nice corner spinning heel kick on Lawler, goes for it again and eats a huge backdrop bump to the floor. Huge bumps to the floor were one of the great things about this Rumble as I'd say 2/3 of the eliminations were dangerous bumps or bad landings, and that's an insanely high percentage. Also, Lawler has these incredible lowrider car show screen printed tights. Perfect targets Flair and Lawler and anything those three do with and against each other is gold, and if you want to talk about disgusting eliminations then you have to talk about Lawler and Perfect. 

Lawler takes the highest elimination bump of the match, getting launched by Perfect, and then immediately cashes in that receipt. Dibiase and Koko start shoving Perfect over, and Lawler begins yanking him by the head, really making it look like Perfect was desperately trying to hold on to that bottom rope, turning it into a really violent elimination. Referees are trying to pull Lawler away, guys in the ring are shoving Perfect, and Perfect hangs on to the bottom rope as long as humanly possible. It's, ahem, perfect. Knobbs, Skinner, and Samu have really memorable 3 minute runs, and you need a few high end crash and burn guys to make a Rumble good. Knobbs got a huge crowd reaction and had a real fired up run, Skinner came in like a dangerous potato throwing asshole, and Samu came in throwing headbutts. They all took tremendous bumps to elimination, with Samu's maybe the most dangerous. Undertaker had come out midway through (hilariously right as Lawler was headed back through the curtain, and Lawler gives Undertaker a wide berth) and he eliminates Samu by setting him on the top rope and shoving him hard, Samu flipping onto the apron on his head before going to the floor. Berzerker was fun during his 5 minutes, but with a guy who can eat up that much of the ring you hope for more than 5 minutes. I loved how, when Berzerker entered the ring, he went around the ring literally hitting every single person in the match. He didn't focus on anyone (until following Backlund to the floor and hitting him with a chair) but instead just stomped and clubbed his way through everyone. Koko also had a good run, building off 10 year feuds by going after Lawler while gleefully hiking up his gigantic High Energy windbreaker pants. 

The halves of the match are really clearly divided, as the ring needs to be fully cleared so Giant Gonzalez can debut and attack the Undertaker. I liked the Gonzalez debut, even though they never actually learned how to film him. When a guy is *actually* 8 feet tall, you don't need to film him from the floor up. He's the tallest man in pro wrestling history! Show him from far away so you can see how much larger he is than anything else in the arena! When you shoot him ground up it just makes him look like a normal guy, albeit a normal guy wearing a fur and muscle suit.  The problem is, since you had to clear the ring for that angle, and you front loaded the Rumble with most of the best workers, you're left with IRS, Damien DeMento, and Backlund when the smoke clears. It takes quite awhile to build any of that lost momentum back, with even a Natural Disasters Explode moment feeling tepid. Earthquake went right after Typhoon with no explanation, eliminated him, and then it was never mentioned again (Earthquake was gone at the end of the month and worked WAR for the rest of the year). 

Carlos Colon comes out fairly late, but it's really weird because he clearly belonged in the first half of this when it felt like they were legitimately trying to bring in a ton of regional champs. What would Carlos Colon even mean to a 1993 WWF audience? Also, you better believe Monsoon referred to the 45 year old Colon as a youngster after both he and Heenan had spent the entire match using Backlund's age 43 as a negative against him.  I would love a show of hands at the Arco Arena to find out how many in attendance knew anything about Carlos Colon. They had him announced for the Rumble several weeks before the match, but had only showed a picture of him during Mean Gene's Rumble previews, no footage or anything. It would have been far more valuable to see Colon throwing punches and headbutts at Lawler, Tenryu, and Flair; instead we get to see a lot of Colon against Damien DeMento, which is weird! Tatanka was by far the most exciting worker of the 2nd half of this, and his chops in the corner were thrown with more force than any Flair chop. 

Bob Backlund is 28th elimination, going past the hour mark and getting the most mixed reaction of the match. For the first half hour the crowd audibly hated him, but the longer he stayed in the more the crowd seemed to be pulling for him. When he was eliminated I genuinely could not tell if the loud reaction was applause for him making it that far, or relief that Backlund was not going to be in the main event of WrestleMania. The finish run is Macho Man vs. Yokozuna, which was better than I remembered, but the execution of the finish is as bad as I remembered. They work a 5 minute singles match as the final two, and it's good. Savage gets Yokozuna reeling with axe handles, Yokozuna hits a great thrust kick, Savage fights back, and eventually hits the big elbow. And then Savage pins Yokozuna...in the Rumble...and Yoko kicks out, sending Savage over the top to the floor. I kinda get it, I guess? The pinfall attempt just looks stupid and makes Savage look like a total dweeb, but I guess I can buy that the two of them had been one on one so long at the end that Savage went into Singles Match Mode. But that elimination? One man just cannot press a man from his back, over the top rope, and make it look like anything other than a man jumping over the top rope. Savage does as well as possible in that situation, but surely we could have figured out a better way for Yokozuna to eliminate Macho Man. This Rumble is way too long and dips hard for a bit in the middle, but that first half has some of the best work in Royal Rumble Match history and that alone makes this one of the best Rumbles, warts and all. 

This feels like one of the best WWF PPVs and it's weird that it doesn't get discussed as such. I thought every match was a varying degree of great, with the Rumble Match itself being too long and having too much deadweight but still succeeding due to a lot of hard work from the entrants. Lawler, Flair, Perfect, Dibiase, and several guys who were only in for 3 minutes all had great showings, and it had some of the nastiest elimination bumps of any Rumble. The other 4 matches are great in their specific way, and I think it's important that they all accomplished something very different, all felt very different. The opening tag is one of the great WWF tags of the 90s, Michaels/Jannetty had a better match at a house show the day before (and a much better match a few months later on Raw) but still delivered here, the big boys fight was fast paced and fun, and Hart/Razor gave us a Bret singles match that we rarely saw (they had two PPV matches and to my knowledge no other singles matches that made tape). This was a great show. Every single match is recommended. 

Best Matches: 

1. Beverly Brothers vs. Steiners

2. Bret Hart vs. Razor Ramon

3. Big Boss Man vs. Bam Bam Bigelow

4. The Rumble Match

5. Shawn Michaels vs. Marty Jannetty

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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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WWF MSG House Show 6/12/93

 Full 6/12/93 Show

Tito Santana vs. Papa Shango

ER: Great reaction for Tito from the large MSG crowd, still a guy who was a great attraction on a card and should have had a chance to be on more through the 90s. He was a less heralded Bret of this year, a guy who could have a cool 10 minute match with any heel on the roster. And this was great, but also because House Show Papa Shango is a thing I always get a kick out of, because you have an evil voodoo priest working like a Memphis house show heel. He bumps into the ropes, misses elbowdrops, waves his arms to try to prevent going over on a sunset flip (and then coming up from the sunset flip with a big lariat). He buries kitchen sink knees into Tito's ribs and works like a Dogcatcher and it rules. Kids really react to Shango and he knows it, love him yelling at kids on the floor. He really needs to scare kids more, really go for the jugular and get close. Fans love the finish, when Tito finally reverses one of those kitchen sinks and flips over the leg to schoolboy him. Fun 10 minutes to start the show.

MD: Tito and Shango are not guys that I think of as being around this deep into 93. Tito would last another month or two and Shango a few more after that. Anyway, it's always a good time to comment on these shows with Eric because he and I are usually not too far off taste-wise. Watching Shango interact with the crowd was the most interesting thing here and while, in general, I'm glad he did it and did it so emotively, it came off as more braggart than voodoo monster. I'm not sure if that was because he was cycling towards the end of the gimmick or what. We didn't get as standard a Tito formula as usual here, no lengthy shine and a quick, slick roll up. My second favorite thing on this one was either Shango's cut-offs which for the most part felt huge, or Tito's neat little drop down elbow smash to the back of the head when Shango put his head down (which isn't something I remember him doing very often but had a very Matador feel to it).


Shawn Michaels vs. Razor Ramon

ER: This starts with Howard Finkel receiving a note that Shawn Michaels refuses to come out unless his music plays first, which is a fun pointless thing for a heel to do on a house show. Our cameraman gets a cool zoom out when Michaels first gets into the ring, strutting and fluffing his hair. It's a cool pull back shot to show the size of the crowd, framed really well. Razor Ramon gets a really loud, wild reaction, and starts the match by throwing his toothpick at Michaels' face, which Michaels of course sells as if he got slapped. And this was a great house show match, a match you could use to argue Michaels as the best on the roster in 1993. He looks like he loves nothing more than getting a heel reaction from the crowd, and making sure Razor gets the biggest reaction possible. Michaels has a huge bump night, really treating a match in the Garden as importantly as his King of the Ring match the next night against Crush. He flies far off punches, gets whipped hard into the turnbuckles multiple times, gets kicked off the top rope and takes a huge free fall bump to the floor, all while working these great cheating spots to transition to his bigger pieces of offense. He works a couple of eye pokes in at smart times, hits a big springboard lariat (which Razor bumps for, stands up, and does a great dangerous no-look backwards stagger out through the ropes). Both throw great punches, Michaels works a choke by flattening out his body over Razor, getting his feet hooked on the ropes multiple times for leverage and drawing heat with it. It all builds to a huge moment of Michaels actually taking the Razor's Edge to a huge crowd roar, but Diesel pulls him out before Razor can win the title. Nothing but action, a ton of effective work in under 10 minutes.

MD: In my head, watching this, it felt like 1993 Michaels was very intent to prove himself, as every Shawn Michaels iteration is. But in 1993, he still thought the way to do that was to make his opponent look amazing instead of making himself (and to a lesser degree, the match) look amazing. In other words, he was out to prove to management that he was a top heel in the company by making the babyfaces look like a million bucks while still having the fans care about him. Some of that was the pre-match shtick, some that he was carrying the belt, some of that he had Diesel with him, some that he escaped at the end. His offense had that manic Randy Savage sort of feel, flying this way and that at someone with stuff that wasn't too out of the norm, just hit from a higher angle and with more oomph. It all works and it makes it a shame that Michaels' goals shifted so much in the years to come.


Bret Hart vs. Bob Backlund

ER: This was so great. Hitman works a 30+ minute match with Backlund the literal night before he works a total of 60 minutes across 3 matches. Just an incredible weekend of work for Hart, and this Backlund match looks great when compared against those King of the Ring matches. I think it is clearly ahead of the Bam Bam match and could see an argument for being better than the Razor match. Either way, it's great, and completely different from any of the three PPV matches. This match is all about Backlund being presented as a serious competitor in 1993 WWF, in the venue this man sold out more than almost every other man. Before this he had mostly been fighting Mike Enos and Damien DeMento on house shows, he obviously wasn't working like a guy in any kind of upper card mix. Backlund had wrestled a couple of times at MSG since his return, but this was Backlund working a Bob Backlund Match in the Garden, and it really split the crowd in entertaining ways. It really felt like his true return to the Garden.

Bret Hart didn't really work as the heel, and he didn't need to. Backlund was treated as a serious threat, and the longer it went you had more and more believers shifting their allegiance from Hart to Backlund. There was really only one tiny minor heel story that was paid off by Hart, with Backlund being tentative to accept Hart's frequent handshake requests after breaks in grappling. Backlund treats each handshake like he suspect's Hart of having a joy buzzer, and the crowd doesn't quite know what to make of it...until they get the sense that Hart really DOES have something planned. There's no real reason for them to think that other than Backlund's unfounded suspicions...but they start to believe Hart is going to pull a fast one, and around the 15 minute mark Hart finally turns a handshake into a quick go behind. It doesn't really get him anywhere, but it confirms suspicions, and even though he doesn't do a single other underhanded thing in the match it gives the crowd every reason to root on a Backlund upset.

The grappling in the match is nice and tight, with Backlund working some tight headscissors spots, engaging slow build knucklelock spots, and some very cool leverage work around a Hart hammerlock. Backlund gets to work his classic main event slow burn minimalist matwork again in the Garden, and seeing the crowd slowly won over by the style as the pace quickens is really exciting. Backlund has a great attempt at the one arm lift, getting way down in a squat and getting Hart up, but Hart rolls him back into the hammerlock. When Backlund does finally get the one arm lift he places Hart on the top, Hart hits a big crossbody, Backlund kicks out and then deadlifts Hart into a back suplex. There's a great spot where Hart has his hammerlock and leverages Backlund into a pin, and Backlund reverses by going into a wild splits that made them look like they were playing Twister, eventually reversing Hart's leverage into his own pin. It looked like something that Timothy Thatcher should steal, and the crowd kept getting more and more into Backlund as he slammed into Hart with shoulderblocks. Once Hart nailed his backbreaker and especially the elbow off the middle rope, the crowd clearly thought that was the finish, and when Backlund kicked out there wasn't a bored fan in attendance. It's a great 30 minute build and the payoffs the match builds to are worth it.

In addition to a great match, we get a burgeoning stepdad/son or mother's boyfriend/son relationship between the guy recording this show and an 11 or 12 year old with a lot of questions. You can really hear the kid bonding with this videographer the longer this match goes as the kid shows genuine interest in taping video matches, the guy teaches him a couple of things, answers his questions about wrestling, and they both get involved in the match that neither of them thought could have gone on this long. The man explains some wrestling stuff to the kid, talks about what a big deal Bob Backlund used to be a decade before, and once the kid finds out this man is into Backlund then Backlund immediately becomes the kid's favorite wrestler. "I like Bret, but I like Bob more" is a thing that probably no other 11 year olds said in 1993, but this kid saw a resurgent Bob Backlund as his in, and it worked! Our videographer has an adult friend who tries to talk about Kobashi and Kawada and All Japan, but the kid knows how to shut that down by asking all the right questions about Backlund.

The man explains to the kid that Backlund used to have long matches all the time when he was champ, and they were great. "I have some of them on tape, they're really good." "I'd like to see those! Can we watch them together?" My heart melted. It's adorable. The match is laid out so well that you can hear both of them get really invested in a potential Backlund upset. The man even starts talking about Backlund working his way back into the main event ("Could you imagine Bob Backlund on Raw as champion? In 1993?") and the kid sincerely gets into Backlund's ring work. "He's really strong!" the kid says, after Backlund does his one arm power lift out of a Bret keylock. And the kid only gets more impressed with Backlund's strength as he sees the deadlift back suplex and the atomic drop with Bret held on his shoulder for 8 seconds. The man even teaches the kid some life lessons and is never dismissive with him, actually spending time explaining some things. The kid says some unintelligible insult and the man says "Yeah you shouldn't say that, you could offend somebody." "But I don't understand what's offensive about it." "I'll explain it more later but for now just don't say that." They even go through a routine that you can tell the kid loves, when the man is explaining that the security guard KNOWS he is recording the show, and he goes through a whole "he knows that I know that he knows that I have a camera" and they both keep adding on qualifiers like it's a Bugs Bunny cartoon. It's always a treat to hear kids bonding with father figures, but bonding over Bob Backlund in 1993 is extra special.

MD: I saw this one years back and knew it was something special, but it's been offline for a while so I'm glad it holds up. It definitely tends to be an underrepresented match. To point, my pals Marty and Pete just did a podcast where they went over their top 25 WWF matches of this era and while both talked about different Bret vs. Backlund matches, neither mentioned this one. There's no other WWF match like it from the 85-95 period, not with the time it gets, with the commitment to matwork, with the slow build. I'm not sure Bret has another match like this on tape. There's the extended Backlund headlock segment, in and out, Bret spending a lot of the match working the arm (and because he's Bret, it's not that he works the arm for a bit and then works another limb, even like Backlund, who later goes to the leg; he just keeps working that arm). It has such a build for Backlund's eventual deadlift out of the (rolling) short arm scissors, and yeah, all the while, you have this kid with his accent going from complaining about the long headlock to getting more and more into Backlund. My favorite bit here might be the handshakes, the first of which Backlund really milks accepting (and why wouldn't he accept a handshake from Bret?) and then the second with Bret getting a go behind from and Backlund outwrestling him before Bret goes to the arm. It didn't come off as heelish so much as aggressive and determined by Bret, which is a tricky line to walk but one that he could manage easily in front of that crowd. There were some boring chants early during the headlocks but they didn't seem to last to the end. It's a hell of a performance, a very unique Bret match that broadens his case in general, and yeah, super impressive he did it the night before KOTR 93.


The Undertaker vs. Giant Gonzalez

ER: God if I could have been a kid seeing Giant Gonzalez at a house show. I would have been one of those kids standing there mouth open, in awe. The freakshow aspect of pro wrestling always appealed to me. Seeing the very large Undertaker being completely dwarfed by Giant Gonzalez would have been incredible to me, and while I don't think there are any actual good matches between the two (I wonder what would even be considered the best Giant Gonzalez WWF match?) but it's a crazy spectacle that I will always love. It's mostly clubbing, and it's mostly clubbing that doesn't look great, but Gonzalez had an incredible wingspan and those arms look COOL when he is swinging them way over his head and dropping tree branches onto Undertaker's back. The fans love when Taker fights back with uppercuts, and there are a couple of very cool Gonzalez cut off spots. Gonzalez hits a double chop block into Undertaker's throat and Taker goes down hard, then does a nicely timed zombie sit up, and we get Gonzalez smashing him with a chair. Harvey Wippleman's involvement only adds to the excitement, and the finish is Taker grabbing the chloroform rag from Wippleman. Gonzalez used the chloroform on Undertaker at WrestleMania, and apparently TWO MONTHS later these guys were just killing each other's brain cells on the nightly. Wippleman is driving town to town with a huge bottle of chloroform, has a garbage bag full of rags, and two men totaling nearly 750 lbs. are trying to vaporize each other's nervous systems. It's incredible.

MD: Yeah, this was actually a pretty effective piece of business and it's a testament to WWF as an entity and the crowd as well that they could go from Bret and Backlund working holds for half an hour to this without even blinking. The visual of Undertaker punching up looked great to the point where I was disappointed we didn't get a good look at the last couple as Gonzalezes' body was in the way. The nervehold was fine because Taker worked it well from underneath and the crowd was into it. They kept it vaguely interesting around it too, with Gonzales moving fairly well with the kick and clothesline over the top and Taker creation motion with the whip into the stairs. The most unsettling thing was the extended angle of the nerve hold making me look more closely at the rear end of Gonzales' gear than I ever had before. Some baffling artistic choices there. The chloroform deal is pretty baffling given the size of these guys. That was the "Dr." Harvey Wippleman, bit, right? Somehow I feel like it would have worked better with Big Bully Busick if they worked a "Guy who kidnapped the Lindbergh baby" gimmick with him.


Bam Bam Bigelow vs. Tatanka

ER: Great match, a real hidden gem. This would have been a memorably hot main event match on Raw, and the MSG crowd reacts loudly for both men. I find that even more impressive because this has been a card STACKED with good matches so far and this crowd is showing no signs of burnout. It's uncommon for crowds to get tired and react with low energy to a good match, and this crowd has already seen the biggest babyface in the company work a 30+ minute match. But Tatanka's crowd reactions in 1993 cannot be denied, and Bigelow makes sure they stay strong by constantly jawing with the crowd, keeping them involved. This whole match I kept thinking "man what a great Bigelow performance" but I enjoyed the match so much I went right back and watched it again. And then the whole time I kept thinking "man what a great Tatanka performance". Turns out it's just a great match and both add to that. Bigelow's offense looked really good, loved a series of headbutts Bigelow is really great at occupying himself selling for Tatanka's tomahawk chops, knows how to hold his head and stagger into place really well to give Tatanka time to surprise him with a crossbody or flatten him with a clothesline. Bigelow bumped big for Tatanka, but not too big. He would absorb several tomahawks and then go down hard for a clothesline, or take the chops and then take a bigger chop to fly backwards over the top to the floor incredibly fast (great way to set up the count out finish).

He made Tatanka look very powerful, but his cutoff spots kept people loudly engaged. There were three really REALLY great ones, all of which shut the Tatanka cheers off immediately, and all were so cool that the fans also reacted in the way that they knew they were seeing something cool. The three moments: 1) Bigelow taking chops and reeling while Tatanka ran into the ropes for a lariat, only to be stopped dead by a perfectly timed BBB dropkick. 2) Bigelow lifting Tatanka off the ground into a fireman's carry, and Tatanka wriggling out of it into a sunset flip that Bigelow sells perfectly off balance for a couple seconds...before just crushing Tatanka by sitting down hard on his chest. Bigelow looked so cool in this moment that I half expected the crowd to treat him like the babyface. 3) is expertly placed right after Tatanka started his war dance, hitting a couple chops and dancing around the perimeter of the ring, and Bigelow puts him down with one of his best timed enziguiris I've seen. He nailed Tatanka so well that not only did he come off like the coolest guy in the room (helps when you look, dress, and are shaped like Bam Bam Bigelow) but the crowd instantly seemed convinced that Tatanka was OUT. Great house show match, the kind of match that would be a memorable TV or PPV or Coliseum Video match had it aired there, and not merely recorded by a true saint.

MD: While it's another one I haven't seen in years, I remember being a fan of their Royal Rumble 1994 match, and this makes me think I was probably correct in that fandom. Everything hit here and the crowd was more than happy to come along for the ride. Eric covered this really well so I'm not sure what I can add on specifics. I mean, I primarily want to just talk about the sit out on the sunset flip and how the fans went completely nuts for it. I'll say that Bigelow stood out a little more to me than Tatanka, but that's primarily because he was in control of the match and probably because he was just a big looming presence. That was Eric's first impression too and I think if you're going to just give this one watch, what you'll note too. It wasn't just his offense which was so impactful, but the way he reacted to things, whether it be selling his head after cutting Tatanka off or the exasperation for Tatanka's comebacks after he thought he had him down in the stretch (like after that picture perfect timed enziguiri). 

There wasn't a moment that Bigelow wasn't completely invested in the match and the happy marriage of that investment and the larger than life presence of this monster of a man facing off against someone who obviously believed in himself and his character as thoroughly as Tatanka did made for a crowd that was just electric. You could nitpick that they maybe shouldn't have laid it out to come out of a chinlock after the Taker/Gonzales match did something similar with the nerve hold, but it worked so that's all that matters. Past the squash and the reaction it got, the other moment I loved was Tatanka's final comeback. I love monsters who resort to eyepokes to keep control (like Hansen was apt to do) because of the inherent dissonance of this huge heel having to cut off the babyface that way. The first time Bigelow did it, it worked, but the second time, later in the match, it led to the hulk up. That attention to detail is something they don't need to stick in their matches, but I can assure you that crowd remembered the first eyepoke with derision and when Tatanka no sold the second, they went absolutely nuts.


The Headshrinkers/Afa vs. Kamala/Smoking Gunns

ER: Another strong match, the exact way a trios with these guys should have been worked. It doesn't waste any time and doesn't go any longer than it needs to (just under 10 minutes) but gets great reactions the whole time (a running theme on this show). Things blow up quick and I loved seeing the Gunns and Kamala run wild on the Headshrinkers, with everyone all occupying the same space at once. Fans were very into babyface Kamala, and it was clear he had that same Hacksaw Duggan charisma. Duggan was the easiest to book man of the last 30+ years of wrestling, a perpetually over babyface regardless of his booking. Kamala could have easily been kept as a babyface getting great house show reactions through 1996 at least, and in matches like this he comes off as an actual major star. The crowd (and especially the kid sitting next to our director) is in love with every single movement of the Ugandan savage, and why shouldn't he be? 

The match settles down into the Headshrinkers taking apart Bart Gunn, and Bart can take a nice beating. He gets thrown to the floor and takes a nasty bump, hanging up in the ropes and hitting the apron on his way down. Later he takes a backdrop bump (getting tossed by both of them) that would make Rick Rude take notice. Afa is really great playing his part, choking Bart in the corner from the apron, and it all builds to a really satisfying babyface hot tag. Billy is a good hot tag, loved his reverse bulldog (basically the way you'd take down a calf at the county fair) and when it comes down to Kamala cleaning house and landing his big splash the crowd is losing their minds. I like the house show finish of Kamala getting the visual pin after the splash (pinned stomach down of course) and then getting schoolboyed after getting distracted by Afa. A Headshrinker winning a match with a schoolboy is a little silly, but when it's jungle savage vs. jungle savage you get out of there any way you can.

MD: I actually wish this was on Mania instead of a HH because while the crowd was great, I really wanted to see more of Kamala reacting on the apron and Afa in general. You could mainly spot Afa from his hair here. The Gunns must have been working the Headshrinkers a lot because some of Bart's exchanges (like the jumped over drop toe hold bit that led to a payoff of one later) were pretty sharp. The highlight here was probably when Kamala and the Gunns ran the heels off early and everyone went nuts for it. Afa was moving pretty well for a guy you rarely saw in this sort of situation by this point. I wonder how much Doink turning and becoming a harmless mid-card babyface act hurt Kamala in the long run. You could see him the next year as part of a Quebecers/Polo trio, for instance, or the year following in a mix scenario against the Bodydonnas and Sunny, and so on.

ER: I LOVED Bart hopping out of a drop toehold, glad Matt remembered to mention it. 


Lex Luger vs. Mr. Perfect

ER: Another real treasure, and I sincerely think it is the best Narcissist Luger match we have. Narcissist Luger is really great, a criminally short 4 month run that was cut abruptly and foolishly short. WWF had so many hot acts in 1993 that there was really no reason other than post-Hogan fear to abruptly turn Luger. In hindsight it seems so easy to just keep Duggan/Savage/Yokozuna going through Summerslam, and have Luger beat Bret in the finals of King of the Ring. Duggan was insanely over in 1993 and deserved a reward main event, and a Summerslam match with Yokozuna would have been memorable. Hart still gets to have three great matches and KOTR, Luger obliterates Hart with a loaded forearm to win the crown, you go as far as you want with Hart's comeback match with Luger (Hart in a face mask is optional but Hart beats Luger at Summerslam), Luger gets to wear a crown a look impressed with himself in mirrors for two months, it all writes itself so easily. Their TV (and house shows from what we have) was filled with a ton of over acts, the hot acts were almost equally babyface/heel, the only way to stop this momentum was by suddenly turning any one of these naturally growing acts.

So here we get Luger in full Narcissist mode just 3 weeks before the bodyslam heard round the world, and it's a great coda. The pre-match is filled with great Luger moments, like him pointing out poses to Howard Finkel in the mirror, or his reactions when Finkel announced that Luger's forearm would have to be covered...unless he wanted to pay a $25,000 fine and face a 6 month suspension. Perfect has his own great pre-match moments, spitting his gum at least 10' across the ring at Luger, then getting into a quick nose to nose with Luger. Luger slaps him, Perfect attacks him with his unthrown hand towel, hitting a towel lariat. Luger is a great heel bumper, maximizes fast back bumps and takes them athletically without letting the bump get too flashy. He gets kicked around the edges of the ring by Perfect and takes versions of Perfect's signature rope flip bump without the flip. He's great at being chased around a ring, great at begging off, and we could have had at least 12-18 months of him as the King Narcissist before turning him.

Perfect bumps big for Luger's control, which sounds like an obvious thing to expect, but I think is made much more unexpected (and more impressive) by Perfect knowing he would be working three physical matches (including an arguable match of his career against Bret) the next night. So Perfect taking a huge bump getting through over the top to the floor or hard whipping bumps into turnbuckles felt like much more of a risk knowing he'd have to do it all night next night. Luger drops nice elbows and keeps simple offense snug, throwing an especially nice clothesline that Perfect bumped legs out. Luger is an all time great at late kickouts, and he consistently gets LOUD reactions for late kickouts, really getting people to bite with perfectly timed shoulder lifts, arm shooting upward. The match benefits from its distraction finish (it was going to be either that, a DQ, or a count out), as Shawn Michaels (with Diesel) is very good at being a distraction. Michaels comes out wearing white overalls and sunglasses and gets up on the apron, a genuine distraction that allows Luger to blaze into frame with a potential 25K elbow. Luger gets the pin and well...what might have been.

 
MD: There are a few little things I'd tweak here or there on almost all of these. I'd have Perfect's music hit as Luger was posing. I'd have Luger use some submission targeting the back instead of the chinlock again as he'd been focusing on it for a bit. I'd have Perfect take a few more bumps when Luger was in control. I'd have Perfect survive a forearm with the pad on, maybe. In general though, you judge the match you do get, and this one was a good match. Perfect still had to get revenge from Mania (as they hadn't been to MSG since then) and he came in hot with Luger kept on the run. Probably the best thing about 93 face Perfect is that he got his AWA offense back, and had three or four ways to hurt Luger's leg before locking in a deathlock. If he had a bit more time he would have been able to get the full foot-pressing-into-knee Gagnelock but Luger knocked him out of the ring first. The crowd was big for all of Perfect's comeback attempts, be it a punch on the floor or working out of the chinlock into a top wristlock attempt later, and when he did finally come back, it was beautiful stuff (the kneelift, the neck whip, an awesome leapfrog/turn around/dropkick spot). Michaels' distraction was built off of Fink announcing that they'd be wrestling in a cage on the next card (which we don't get, by the way: it's the elimination 6 man with Shawn/Diesel/Bam Bam vs. Perfect/Jannetty/Tatanka), but it was all timed really well as an excuse for Luger to hit the forearm. We really were robbed of a long Luger heel run in 93.

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Coliseum Video Thanksgiving: Smack 'Em Whack 'Em (+ Bonus JAPW!)

As has happened the past few years, my friend Josh came over on Thanksgiving and we played video games and watched a Coliseum Video. I'm not sure we intended this to become a tradition, but whenever Josh comes over he tends to want to either play old NES games, Silent Hill 2, watch a Coliseum Video, or watch old WCW. This time he chose to just wear a Silent Hill 2 long sleeve while watching a Coliseum Video, and this was the one he chose. It's a pretty legendary tape, often regarded as the best in the series due to the selection of Bret Hart matches. I will not spend any sentences beyond this one writing up any of the Bushwhacker segments that happen between every single match of this tape. 

Berzerker vs. Crush 

ER: Oh my god this was GOOD! It was also WEIRD! Because Crush appeared to be completely zonked out of his mind on something, anything. His eyes were really shut and it felt like Berzerker had to keep kicking him his the face a bunch just to keep him awake. Berzerker has to put in a real overdrive performance, Crush taking a beating that only built to his big comeback. I am not trying to paint too negative a portrait of Crush, but there was just something very off and very far away about his mannerisms in this match. Kona Crush was one of my least liked guys in WWF. I hated his look, hated his fluffy frosted mullet, hated his chubby baby fat face. Crush was not a wrestler I looked forward to seeing. But this was arguably the most I have enjoyed him, and we can point directly to Berzerker as the reason. Berzerker put over Crush's strength HUGE, and it was great. They do a couple tests of strength, one ending with Berzerker getting thrown backwards and taking his fast backwards bump over the top to the floor, and then a shoulderblock exchange sees him also quickly whip himself over to the floor. I love that bump. Berzerker comes back in with a big boot and the Crush admirably takes his own bump to the floor, opting to go out through the middle ropes but taking it more like a luchador, which looked weird but cool. 

Berzerker controls things with these great annoying boots to the head, not letting Crush get to his feet, just stalking around him and needling him with these push kicks. He hits a big delayed piledriver, and it's a shame (and also logical) that he didn't break out the piledriver more as he has a nice one. He misses the big kneedrop which gives Crush an opening, and Crush hits a really nice atomic drop and a side slam, before squeezing Berzerker's head until he passed out. I was realllllly hoping for one minor Berzerker comeback during the head squeeze, such as him looking as if he might fight out of it, before eventually succumbing. It did take Crush awhile to finish him with the vice, so perhaps we were supposed to be interpreting that as Berzerker fighting through it, but I would have liked that visually represented better. Still, this match was so good, which is a strong upgrade over every single online review I found. Those reviews collectively described this match as essentially the saddest fart sound in the world. And they were wrong. If anything, this was a joyous, confident, trumpeting fart sound, delivered in front of your friends and family, who would go on to share in your joy. 

Earthquake vs. Repo Man

ER: I was hoping for more Earthquake here, and the crowd is really quiet for a lot of Repo Man's control. Repo tries to use his verbal skills to get the crowd engaged, and I thought it was hilarious when he locked a headlock on Earthquake and said "I got him now!" Gorilla Monsoon calls Earthquake "Mr. Quake". Which would make his first name Earth, I suppose. "Mr. Quake is my father's name. Call me Earth." To be fair to Repo Man, Earthquake doesn't sell his offense very engagingly. He falls down a couple times, but is a little quiet in his emotion. He catches Repo off an attempted top rope axe handle in a bearhug and hits a nice powerslam, nice elbowdrop, does that awesome Earthquake thing where he just steps on and walks over someone's chest, and then brings that big Canadian butt down on Repo's chest. Babyface Earthquake might make more sense against a bigger heel challenger, but Repo Man was not someone the crowd was interested in seeing give Mr. Quake any issues. 

"Cooking for the Single Man"

ER: This is a segment with Yokozuna eating a comical amount of food in a Japanese restaurant. It was not discussing his relationship status, but we were rather seeing just how much food one single, solitary man could eat. Okerlund is there doing kind of running commentary and seeming genuinely amazed by how many buffet size portions of sushi Yoko manages to quickly engulf. They grill up 6 pounds of shrimp, 10 ribeye steaks, just a huge amount of food. Gene keeps bringing up how there is no way they could eat this much food, and Yokozuna just stares directly at the food the whole time. Gene is talking to Yokozuna and asking questions, but Fuji answers all of them while Yoko just stares mesmerized by the grilled shrimp and steaks. It should be noted that Yokozuna used chopsticks to eat this massive amount of food, and he is really great at using them. That is some unexpected dedication. He houses so much food in this clip. It's the most method performance, just a man filming a home video segment on his day off where he gets to eat 25,000 calories without getting up. Gene, Fuji, and Yokozuna were all perfect in their roles. Top end Coliseum segment.  

Ladder Match: Bret Hart vs. Shawn Michaels

ER: This is one of the reasons this tape was so popular, a ladder match before the more famous Michaels ladder matches. It's probably my favorite era of Michaels to watch, as he's more of a conniving big bumping heel and still has Sherri singing his theme song and looking like a smokeshow at ringside. He takes nice bumps into the turnbuckles, into the ringpost, and a great shotgun blast bump after Hart leans full body weight into a European uppercut. There's some strong Sherri distraction that leads to Shawn quickly climbing a ladder in ring and come fingertips away from grabbing the belt, and the climbing is a real strength in this match. A lot of ladder match quality really hinges on climbing for me, because as uninteresting as climbing something can be, it's an important aspect of this stipulation. The best ladder matches have climbing that doesn't insult your intelligence. Michaels gets knocked off the ladder and gets a real lucky break when the ladder falls over directly onto him but the ladder bounces off the middle rope before getting to him. That top step would have dropped right onto his teeth. Both guys take nice bumps off the ladder, and Michaels continues flying around for Bret's final stretch run, takes a great teeter totter bump into the ladder, and there's a nasty moment where Hart hooks his leg in the ladder bumping off it. I think it was exactly how to take the bump, but it looked like his knee got snagged in a disgusting way. They really take turns taking painful bumps around the ring, and Bret finally grabs the belt after Michaels lands crotch first into the ropes, hitting the ropes, apron, and floor in three successive great bumps. 

Kamala vs. Bret Hart

ER: This was a real favorite of mine when I rented this tape as a kid. I always loved Kamala and this might have been his best full match during his 90s WWF run. Hart is someone who is just going to be better than most at working around Kamala, and Kamala really tightened things up against Bret. Bret knows how to stick and move and the moments where Kamala catches him are great, hitting big overhand chops and catching Bret right under the chin with a mule kick. Hart does a bunch of great things like stomping on Kamala's bare feet (why wouldn't anyone do that??) and I adore Kamala selling his stomped toes. Kamala really plays up the savage role here, and really does an awesome job working up to Bret's pace. There's a dropdown/leap frog exchange that some wouldn't believe, a great leap from the Ugandan giant, in a match filled with cool cutoff spots from Kamala. Kamala was always catching Bret with a cross chop to the throat or a bearhug, and Hart's comebacks were all so satisfying. Hart hit maybe the finest side Russian legsweep I've ever seen in this match, knowing that he would have to throw it completely on the much larger man. You see Bret working through every single step of the move, and it's so gorgeous. He traps Kamala's arm, hooks his neck, grapevines the leg, then hits it. These two are a wonderful pairing, and I loved how logically and interestingly this match worked through its story, a really strong way to fill an 8 minute match. The Kim Chee botched distraction leading to a high leverage school boy is the most believable way you can beat a monster like this. I love this match. 

Bret Hart vs. Ric Flair

ER: This is undeniably a match that could make a Coliseum Video tape infamous. An actual World title changing hands in a match that hadn't been seen before. The tape makes no effort to hide the fact that Hart wins the World title on this tape, as Lord Alfred Hayes reveals 30 seconds into the tape that later on we WILL see Bret Hart win the World Wrestling Federation Championship from Ric Flair, in a match that is available ONLY on this release. And for two guys whose egos will not allow them to acknowledge their in ring chemistry with each other, I think these two were a real natural pair. This is a great match and maybe the best time for these two to have crossed paths. I don't think you can get a better crossing of career axis, just the best time for these two to have their best possible singles match. 

Flair is super expressive throughout the whole long title match, and his yelps and screams really help put over a Bret hammerlock and other surprise Bret offense. Flair is a guy who, at this point in my wrestling viewing, I have seen so much that I no longer get excited for. But I can still get sucked into a strong Flair performance, and this was a strong Flair performance. He doesn't undersell himself by stooging around, and really acts like a guy who knows all the tricks and knows when to apply them. He's really smart at reversing Bret's offense, with the absolute best reversal coming on a sunset flip attempt. He basically  moonwalks with the momentum of the move until he regains his footing and punches downward to break it. Everyone always instinctually sends their weight forward, working against the move, but Flair treats it like a treadmill whose pace you have to match to keep your balance. Now, we do get a spot where Flair gets his full ass shown while Bret yanked his trunks down (and Hart really holds those trunks HIGH) and Flair takes a backdrop bump while still fiddling with his trunks. You would not believe how loud a Saskatoon crowd can get after seeing the toned buns of a man in his mid 40s. Hart's bumps make Flair look like a guy who knows how to utilize his strengths, and he uses two different sick sternum bumps into the turnbuckles to create openings for Flair. 

All of the work around roll ups, backslides, and the leg work to set up figure fours or sharpshooters was always engaging. Flair works a cool "stalking" portion down the back side of the match, dragging Hart around the ring by his arm or leg, holding Bret's arm while shooting a kick right across the jaw, throwing short uppercut punches that are my very favorite Flair punches, and Bret is always smart enough to know to grab a leg for a flash nearfall. All of Flair's offense looks fantastic here, everything looking like it just rocks Bret. It's genuinely impressive to me when Bret is able to shrug off Flair's chops, as they all look like really lightning bolts. We get an awesome moment leading to Bret's triumphant title win, when he takes a HARD chop and looks Flair straight in the eye while calmly removing both of his singles straps to invite one last chop. This whole match is so well worked, the time filled so well, building to a conclusive and deserving title win in Canada. This match deserves its reputation, and is the kind of match that would make an entire Coliseum Video worthwhile. 

Razor Ramon vs. Undertaker

ER: Ramon has to work a pretty generous match here, as he works the whole thing as if he's a lot smaller than the Undertaker, except he's at worst the same exact size as the Undertaker. Taker is a pretty big lug in this one, and Ramon doesn't seem fully used to being the "smaller big bumping guy" for a guy who is the same size as him. So the ropewalk smash doesn't look great, and Ramon does really well to make some of this offense look effective. But Ramon wasn't fully comfortable in the character at this point (just a few months later he was so much more comfortable in his gimmick and mannerisms), and there wasn't a ton to work with in a zombie Taker performance. There was one long spot where Ramon hits three straight very nice elbowdrops, and Taker just takes them like a real dead fish, not acknowledging that any offense is being done in any way. And that's just not an interesting gimmick or match development for me. 

BONUS THANKSGIVING  JAPW!!!

Homicide/Sandman vs. Da Hit Squad JAPW 2/3/01

PAS: IWTV put up 30+ JAPW shows as a special Thanksgiving treat, so while I am crazy busy today I thought I would add something to Eric's Thanksgiving post. This was in the ECW arena and it was clear that these guys were the spiritual successors to ECW. We get a full Sandman entrance and it is crazy how much taller he is than the doghouse guys, he looks like Robert Fuller. Much of this match is Hit Squad as big bumping heels for the triumphant babyface team. I tend to think of the DHS as guys stiffing rookies and tossing them into walls, but they are also great as stooging guys taking flip bumps and getting stiffed by the Sandman. Apparently Sandman was really into swantons in 2001? Great looking Swanton's too, he hits one with Monsta under the ladder, and one to put Mafia through a table. Finish was nuts with Mack getting lifted for the Cop Killa and Sandman adding a little momentum by shoving his legs, making Mack over rotate a bit so he takes it right on his neck. It's about the nastiest bump I have seen for a move that always ends up nasty. 

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