WWF 305 Live: Double the Typhoon! Some of the Yokozuna! Papa Shango!

 

Typhoon vs. Papa Shango WWF Mania 3/6/93 - VERY GOOD 

ER: I thought this was really good, even though I barely think about these two existing on the roster in 1993. They were both there through most of the year but my brain doesn't associate them with that year, like they naturally stopped existing in 1992 while still showing up sporadically on TV for another year. Typhoon being around in 1994 is even weirder to me. This was 5 strong minutes of heart rate pushing stuff, and a real standout Papa Shango performance. There aren't many times I've typed the words "a real standout Papa Shango performance". Typhoon still had a good connection with crowds and knew what things would get big babyface reactions, and it looked cool seeing him bump the 300+ pound Shango. Shango really flew on shoulderblock attempts and this got better the more Shango leaned into finding ways to actually knock Typhoon down. 

Both men missed big elbowdrops close to each other's heads, and Shango gradually began moving Typhoon. By the time Shango threw a big punch to the mouth and a reared back 0.7 BattlArts headbutt, I was fully in. Shango even throws a full dropkick to Typhoon's chest, which isn't something he pulled out often. Typhoon had several moments where you can see that Earthquake rubbed off positively on his Natural Disaster partner, as I don't recall Typhoon leaning so heavily into the ropes before. Earthquake and Boss Man always have such ballsy trust in the ropes, and Typhoon has the movement down, stretching those ropes far out over the ring apron. There's a long sleeper section that could have ground this down but they pay it off big when Typhoon powers out and sends Papa Shango into a wild bump to the floor off a steamed up clothesline. The match proper ends with Shango hitting Typhoon with...I don't know, some kind of fucking voodoo stick or something, but some of the best hits come after the DQ. Shango deadlifts Typhoon with an impressive back suplex, and Typhoon flattens him with an awesome powerslam and elbowdrop. This was one of the higher watermarks for both men in 1993, worked with a real pleasant, unexpected chemistry. 

Yokozuna vs. Typhoon WWF Mania 4/10/93 - SKIPPABLE

ER: Why do they do this to us? The first ever meeting of these two and it goes less than two minutes, and Yokozuna never even looked mildly ruffled! You would think that, as the lone WWF representative of Japan, that he would already be nervous at the news of an incoming Typhoon. They should have made Yokozuna afraid of Typhoon the same way Andre was afraid of snakes; Fuji desperately trying to explain to his client that Typhoon is merely a man, not a weather disaster. Instead, Typhoon is treated like Dale Wolfe. They start great, with Typhoon crashing into Yokozuna with three big shoulderblocks, like so many waves crashing into Kagoshima, and while they put Yokozuna on his heels he manages to time out another and throws that Typhoon with a suplex that would have crushed Kyushu. That's a great start! And that is basically the match. Yokozuna punches Typhoon back into the corner, whips him into the opposite corner, Fuji distracts him, and Yoko counters the Typhoon with an avalanche then sits on the man's chest. This could have and should have been more. This felt like we were missing the last two acts of the match. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE 305 LIVE

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

WWF House Show Oakland 2/13/93

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

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

1. Tatanka vs. The Predator

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

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

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

2. Kamala vs. Kim Chee

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

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

3. Terry Taylor vs. Typhoon

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

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

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

4. Doink vs. Bob Backlund

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

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

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

5. Randy Savage vs. Yokozuna 

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

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

6. Tito Santana vs. Damien DeMento

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

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

7. Steiner Brothers vs. Beverly Brothers 

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

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

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

8. Crush vs. Shawn Michaels

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

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

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El Deporte de las Mil Emociones: Goodbye 1989

Week 16: Goodbye 1989

EB: We’ve reached the season ending weekend for CSP and thus we’re at the end of our 1989 journey. But before getting to the last big card of the year, we want to take a moment to showcase some odds and ends we’ve uncovered from this last part of 1989.  While maybe not of huge importance, they do provide a bit more of the feel and context to how certain wrestlers continued to be presented and emphasized on tv. So let’s take a short detour into some of these odds and ends. 

One of the wrestlers scheduled for the season ending weekend is Ricky Santana. This is our first chronological look at Santana but not his first time in Puerto Rico. Ricky first showed up in CSP at the end of July 1988 and had a nine month run that saw him win the Puerto Rico title twice in 1988 and have a two and a half months reign as World Junior champion at the beginning of 1989. Santana is back for the last weekend of the year and is scheduled to be in action. His originally scheduled opponent was supposed to be Harley Race but Ricky would end up facing a different opponent instead. Let’s take a look at Ricky against Sandy Love.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTFjkYaAaTI

We’re in Vega Alta for this match and I’m digging the white suspenders Sandy has got on. This match is basically a quick showcase to reestablish Santana. It’s a pretty standard tv match with Santana showing off some of his wrestling acumen against a larger opponent. Love hits a monkey flip on Santana, but a second attempt gets countered with a knee and from there it’s academic. Ricky hits a top rope splash for the win and is looking to make a good showing to close out the year.

MD: This is an enhancement match but Love got to do some things. He hit a bodyslam and posed so Santana could hit one of his own, that sort of thing. He looked like he could have been a fine Exotico partner to get beat up mercilessly by the Youngbloods. Not the bleached blonde gimmick you’d expect. Almost more as if he wanted to catch the Steve Strong lightning. I spent too many words talking about him already. Santana had an interesting overhead Belly to Belly where he started it from a Northern Lights and just let the head slip out. He finished it with a top rope splash caught by a nice camera angle.

EB: Los Mercenarios and Castillo and Perez have had a feud stemming from Aniversario 89. While we’ve been able to see some highlights involving singles matches between members of both teams and even tag matches where Castillo has faced Los Mercenarios with a different tag partner, we haven’t been able to see matches featuring both teams against each other. For now it looks like it will remain that way. Still, we do have another encounter in this rivalry, with Miguelito Perez taking on Mercenario #1 in singles action.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sZPGeCMixI

Mercenario #1 has El Profe with him while it looks like Miguelito does not have anyone with him at ringside. The ref checks both men before the match and it starts with Perez and Acevedo circling each other before locking up. Perez sets up for a punch with Acevedo coming off the ropes, but Acevedo grabs the ropes to stop his momentum and bails to the outside. El Profe complains to the ref as Mercenario #1 slowly gets back in the ring. Another lockup sees Acevedo back Perez up against the ropes and Acevedo gets some blows in before sending Perez into the ropes. Miguelito ducks a clothesline and counters with a series of dropkicks and slams. Acevedo once again rolls outside. El Profe yells at the referee as Acevedo slowly gets back in the ring again and complains that his tights were pulled on the slams. We go to a commercial break and come back with Acevedo in a side headlock. He tries to get Perez off him by sending Perez off the ropes but Miguelito lets go and holds onto Acevedo’s beard to reapply the hold while the ref is distracted by a complaining Profe. The sequence is repeated and Miguelito this time grabs onto Acevedo’s hair to reapply the headlock. This time it is the tecnicos who are fighting fire with fire with regards to some of the more wily tactics. Acevedo manages to break the hold by yanking Perez down by his hair, but Acevedo misses an elbow drop and Perez regains control. Acevedo begs off and leaves the ring once again to regroup. Acevedo briefly manages to get some hits in but Miguelito once again counters and hits some slams. This has not been Acevedo’s match. Perez puts Acevedo in an abdominal stretch which prompts Mercenario #2 to run out from the locker room in an attempt to interfere. However, as the camera cuts to Mercenario #2 we see that Huracan Castillo has also run out and has cut off Morrow with a back body drop on the arena floor. Castillo chases Morrow around the ring as Acevedo is able to counter the abdominal stretch. However, Morrow ends up being chased into the ring by Castillo, which causes the referee to be distracted by getting Morrow out of the ring as Acevedo tries to slam Perez. In this confusion, Castillo nails Acevedo with a punch which causes Perez to land on top of Acevedo and score the pin. Perez quickly leaves the ring to celebrate as Profe complains to the referee.

MD: Five minute crowd-pleaser here. Assassin is all stalling and stooging. Perez gets a shot in or a quick slam and Assassin is right back out. Assassin gets a hold on and it’s almost immediately countered. After the commercial break, there’s a Perez headlock where the ref gets distracted by Profe allowing him to comedically pull the beard. It’s that sort of match. They keep it up for a few minutes with everyone watching happy at each instance of comeuppance until Morrow and Castillo brawl to the ring. In the chaos, Castillo gets a shot in making Perez fall onto of Assassin for the win. No heat at all here but the match was short enough (and the Mercenarios the champs I think) so it was fine for what it was.

EB: Since we haven’t really been able to review much of Castillo and Perez as a team in this last part of 1989 due to what’s available footage wise, let’s take the opportunity to go back briefly to the summer of 1989 and see Castillo and Perez in action as a team. Their opponents are the then World tag team champions of Rip Rogers and Abudda Dein.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIyrJ55EeSY

This match is joined in progress and is from shortly after Castillo and Perez lost their hair against the Battens. This match is a case of the Caribbean tag champions challenging for the World tag titles, something we will see happen once more at the year end show. Perez is coming off the ropes but is knocked down by clothesline from Dein. A pinfall attempt is broken up by Castillo. Perez is taken to the rudos corner and is worked over by Rogers and Dein. Most of the match segment we have is Rogers and Dein working over Perez in an attempt to get the win. Carlos Colon on commentary mentions that the tecnicos need to watch out for Dein’s loaded boot and Rip’s DDT.  Rogers throws Perez out of the ring and goads Castillo inside, which allows Dein to attack Perez on the outside. Castillo goes to help Perez get back in the ring but Rogers maintains the advantage. Dein and Rogers continue to work over Perez for a few minutes but Perez and Rip knock heads on an off the rope collision. This allows Miguelito to tag in Castillo, who comes in and attacks both Rogers and Dein. Rip rakes the eyes to stop Castillo’s attack. However, rudo miscommunication results in Dein clotheslining Rogers when Castillo gets out of the way. All four men are now in the ring and squaring off. The match ends when two pinfall attempts occur at the same time, Castillo pinning Rogers and Dein pinning Perez. The ref makes a three count and awards the match to Castillo and Perez since Castillo and Rip were the legal men.

MD: We have the last seven minutes of this, which is a lot of heat on Perez and then the hot tag and the finish. It’s nice to see Rip again. Dein is billed from Palestine which was an interesting choice all things considered. In 91, he’d shift that to being from Iraq for what it’s worth. We can date this from the lack of hair on Perez’ head. This was good in building the anticipation for the tag. When it came, Castillo came in hot but had his eyes worked over by an object and he had to duck a double team to stay in it. Strong finish as Dein pinned Perez as Castillo rolled up Rip, but Rip was the legal man.

EB: One other person we really haven’t seen much of is Brett Sawyer. Despite being around for the monthly big shows in the last part of 1989, we haven’t really seen him in the footage we have available. Sawyer’s has had a series of matches with Super Medico for the WWC World Junior title which appears to be heading towards a final encounter to end the year (they are scheduled in the card lineup we have for December 16, although we can’t confirm if Sawyer did appear). Brett Sawyer won’t really be around for much longer as we head into 1990 (I guess that’s a spoiler as to who remains World Junior champion heading into the new year), so let’s take a look at him once more in action before we close the book on 1989. This time Sawyer is in tag action facing Los Mercenarios.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWyAc7bGUY0

Sawyer’s partner for this tag encounter is Armandito Salgado.  Brett starts off for the tecnico team against Mercenario #2. This match has the dynamic of the veteran Sawyer being able to outsmart the rudos while the more inexperienced wrestler in Armandito falls victim to Los Mercenarios and their chicanery. The commentary team makes note that Sawyer moves very well for someone who looks somewhat bulky. Once Sawyer tags Salgado in, it's pretty much all Mercenarios, with the win coming off their usual double DDT behind the ref’s back. Los Mercenarios will challenge the Youngbloods once more for the World tag titles at the season ending weekend.

MD: The commentators outright called Cuban Assassin “Fidel Castro” so that’s fun. Sawyer got all the shine. Salgado took all the heat. There wasn’t a comeback as Brett tried to come in to complain about double teaming and let them hit the double DDT on Salgado. Overall, I’d say the Mercenarios act works better than it should on paper.

EB: Another wrestler scheduled for the year end shows and challenging for the top singles title is Leo Burke. He’s had a series of matches against Carlos Colon and, despite being unsuccessful in winning the Universal title, Burke has been able to hold his own and even damage Colon’s knee in the process. Examples of this include Burke holding onto the figure four for as long as possible in the non-title match we reviewed in our last post and repeated focused attacks during their title matches that went to a draw. This is something Chicky would start bringing up on tv in the lead up to the final weekend of shows (‘we saw you being helped by the ringside doctor to the back after the 60 minute draw, you’re hiding how bad your knee is’). Carlos would downplay all this, saying that his knee was fine. Before ending the year let’s have one more look at Leo Burke in tv action, this time against the masked La Sombra from parts unknown.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjL75frzZ2E

Burke (as usual during this run so far) is accompanied by Chicky and we get the now customary pre match hug (to the crowd’s jeers). There’s still the push on commentary to make sure to highlight Burke’s mastery of the figure four leglock and it’s apparent now why that has been the case from the start. He has been on an eventual collision course with Carlos Colon. They’re set to face each other during the last weekend of shows for 1989 (they are scheduled for Dec. 16 in Bayamon and Dec. 17 in Mayaguez) with the Universal title on the line. Sombra starts off hot against Burke but misses a dropkick after an offensive flurry that allows Burke to gain control. Leo gets to show off his skills, both technique wise and in psychological gamesmanship, as Burke works over Sombra’s leg and eventually Sombra falls victim to the figure four. As we have seen many times already, Burke keeps the hold on after the bell before eventually breaking. Burke is ready to once again face Carlos Colon.

MD: No belt for Burke yet, which helps date this I guess. He had such an easy way of moving around the ring, confident and natural. Sombra was just a guy with a white mask but he had pretty good fire. Burke shut him down early and unleashed a full body assault, with strikes, a gutwrench suplex, knee drops, before using the shin breaker to open him up for the figure four. In and out in four minutes and very efficient.
EB: One more person we want to check on before heading towards our last shows of 1989 is Gary Albright. Since La Batalla Final on Thanksgiving Day, Albright  has dropped the Albright Lock challenge and was unsuccessful in a series of matches against Invader #1. Still, Gary has continued to be featured on tv and has switched to finishing opponents off with the belly to belly suplex. Here he is in action against Estrella Roja.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Y3pdf0khhY

This is a short match  with Albright just steamrolling Estrella Roja. This match does provide a clear look at how Albright’s now being presented by the promotion, with a  focus on his power and his new finisher. The refocus is so far showing successful results for Albright in his tv matches, and he is scheduled to challenge Miguelito Perez for the Caribbean title during the final weekend.

MD: Just a quick mauling with a delayed vertical suplex and the belly to belly for the win. Having seen some 87 Hacksaw Higgins in New Japan recently, I kind of wish we had a run with him in PR instead. He would have been an awesome Invader opponent. This, however, is exactly the match that Albright should be having on TV at this point. There’s just not much to say about it.
With our side trip through some final odds and ends of 1989 completed, let’s now look at the December 16 season ending house show. One of the scheduled matches was a singles match featuring Harley Race vs Ricky Santana, however there was a change in opponent for Santana. Ricky is now facing a wrestler making his debut in Puerto Rico, one Kokina Maximus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsOZ1bV3u7A

There is a size difference between the two opponents, something that Hector Moyano and Carlos Colon remark upon in their commentary. This is Kokina’s first appearance in CSP and he’s also scheduled to take part in La Gran Guerra later that night (you can see the cage and two ring setup in the background at certain points throughout the match). Colon mentions that the strategy when you are outweighed by your opponent is to try to use your opponent’s size difference to leverage them down somehow and then go on the attack (it’s tougher for them to get up once down). Santana is not backing down from Kokina but despite some offensive flurries is not able to knock Kokina down. Kokina surprisingly shows off some wrestling combined with head-based offense, such as putting Santana in an armbar and then proceeding to headbutt Santana’s hand while keeping the hold on. Sanatan manages to fire off a few blows, but Kokina sidesteps a dropkick and starts working on Santana’s neck and throat area. On commentary Carlos Colon and Moyano are talking about the pedigree and history of Samoan wrestlers, and how Kokina is young and has great potential. Kokina throws Santana out of the ring and makes a gesture to the crowd. Santana tries to get back in the ring a few times, but Kokina knocks him back to the floor. Kokina works again over the carotid area with a nervehold for a while, but eventually makes the mistake of missing a diving headbutt. Santana tries to take advantage by hitting several punches that have Kokina off balance. Ricky finally knocks Kokina down with a dropkick. Ricky tries to send Kokina into the ropes but Kokina counters. Santana dodges a clothesline but Kokina catches him on the rebound with a Samoan drop. A splash makes it a formality and Kokina gets the win.

MD: I’m not entirely sure where Santana’s been for a chunk of 89. He had a NWA run in the middle of the year but it doesn’t seem lengthy. My memories of Yokozuna have him debuting in the WWF in or around December 92, so him showing up three years earlier to cause trouble here feels thematically similar. He had the timing down already and Santana did well fighting from underneath. This might have been his debut in the region and I imagine they followed it up with some more one-sided squashes on TV.

EB: There were also quite a few title matches scheduled for the year end show. A WWC World Junior title match between Super Medico and Brett Sawyer resulted in Medico retaining his title. Invader #1 and Manny Fernandez squared off for Invader’s Puerto Rico title, a match where Invader was able to retain the title but the issue with Manny was not settled. TNT faced Sika in a successful TV title defense. Carlos Colon and Leo Burke are scheduled for a Universal title match with a 90 minute time limit (since two weeks prior they had a 60 minute draw). We’ll talk about this match and the follow up shortly.

There were also two more title matches that took place on December 16, both for which we have footage available. Let’s first look at Gary Albright challenging Miguelito Perez for the Caribbean title.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dImg0dCWd3Y

The match video has some issues near the end but we get most of the match between Perez and Castillo without notable video issues. This is from a Campeones airing so we have Hugo, Carlos and Chicky on commentary. Both men lock up and jockey for the advantage. The crowd starts getting on Profe’s case, which Miguelito eggs on. This causes Albright to go outside and cover Profe’s ears so he can’t hear the jeers. Albright asks the crowd to keep it down and gets back in the ring. Both men lock up, but there's a stalemate that’s broken by a Perez dropkick that sends Albright back outside. Miguelito is in control throughout the first minutes, but Albright eventually counters into an armlock and works on Miguelito’s arm. This is the story of the middle portion of the match, with Albright continuing to work on Miguelito’s arm by applying pressure on the mat (something that’s highlighted on commentary as being part of Albright’s amateur experience). Albright throws Miguelito outside, where he continues to attack the arm by throwing Perez into the lighting rig. Back in the ring, Albright makes the mistake of missing a splash from the middle turnbuckle, which gives Perez the opening to start a comeback. Miguelito plays to the crowd as the video gets wonky here. Perez hits a series of punches and a clothesline to knock Albright down. Miguelito sends Albright into the ropes and hits a powerslam, but Albright breaks the pinfall count by putting his leg on the rope. Perez starts punching Albright again but Gary hits a leverage throw that sends Miguelito tumbling through the ropes to the outside. Albright knocks Perez off the apron twice, but on the third attempt Miguelito counters with a sunset flip for two. An inside cradle appears to get the three count just as the video cuts off (there’s a glitch in the video but Hugo mentions three about the count and you can hear the outro music start playing right at the end which is usually played when the match segment is done). Perez has retained the Caribbean title.

MD: We get at least most of this (I’m not sure of the finish) and the video gets choppy towards the end. Again, it starts with some stalling and stooging from the heel and as much as I love that stuff in general and can even appreciate the Studd-ian dissonance of it being done by a guy who is huge, I’m not sure that it was right for Albright. When he does take over, it feels like a call back to Strong vs Colon, as he just tears apart Perez’s arm with a hammerlock, into the corner, down on the mat, and best of all, on the outside into the metal constructs that they use for (I think) lighting? Perez comes back after Albright misses a splash but he’s definitely fighting from underneath with roll-ups and the sort. I think he wins with a small package but that’s the end of the footage so it’s hard to tell.

EB: And as mentioned before, the Caribbean tag champions Los Mercenarios get a rematch from Thanksgiving against the World tag champions Mark and Chris Youngblood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4J8xVSjLsaw

This is a rematch from the Thanksgiving Day show. The Youngbloods control the first part of the match with some quick tags (or switches in some cases), keeping Morrow on the mat. Acevedo comes in at one point with a slam but Morrow misses an elbow drop and the Youngbloods continue to work on Morrow’s arm. Morrow is able to make the tag to Acevedo while in an armbar and Acevedo takes control against Mark. A quick tag brings Morrow back in for a blow from the top. Morrow throws Mark over the top rope when the ref’s back is turned. Chris helps Mark back in but Los Mercenarios control the middle portion of the match with a sleeperhold on Mark. Chris comes off the top rope to hit Acevedo and break the sleeper but as the ref admonishes Chris, Los Mercenarios switch out and Morrow goes back to the sleeperhold. Morrow goes up top and hits splash for a two count. Acevedo is tagged in and goes for a senton off the top that misses. Mark tries to get to his corner but is cut off by Acevedo, however they end up knocking their heads off a rope rebound. Morrow jumps off the top rope to stop Mark from making the tag (and that was some distance Morrow went). Morrow hits a suplex for two. Morrow keeps Mark on the mat as Mark tries to fire himself up. Mark avoids a double clothesline and counters with a double clothesline of his own on both Mercenarios. Mark finally tags Chris in and Chris cleans house on both Mercenarios. All four men are now in with the Youngbloods getting the upper hand and even going for stereo pin attempts on Acevedo and Morrow. The Youngbloods continue on the attack and at one point dropkick Morrow out of the ring. As the Youngbloods focus on Acevedo, Morrow runs back into the ring holding the belt he had been wearing in his hands. He proceeds to wrap it around Chris Youngblodd’s throat from behind. Morrow hits a belt assisted neckbreaker on Chris. Morrow backs Chris into the rudo corner and ties him with the belt to the turnbuckle. Chris is unable to move as he’s tied by the neck. Mark tries to help his brother but Acevedo comes in with his belt that he had taken off and Los Mercenarios proceed to attack Mark as Chris can’t do anything but watch from the corner. The Youngbloods win by disqualification but Mark is whipped with the belt by both Mercenarios. Eventually, Super Medico and Miguelito Perez hit the ring to chase off Los Mercenarios (this is not shown but is mentioned by Hugo at the end of the video).

MD: This was a pretty straightforward and therefore totally solid match with a super hot finish/post-match. They controlled on Morrow, primarily on his arm for a while to start, a basic shine but one where Morrow was happy to stooge and feed. Heat had its share of chinlocks and nerveholds but also an illegal toss over the top rope behind the ref’s back and Morrow hitting his top rope splash with Assassin missing a flip off the top. Chris came in hot and it looked like the Youngbloods were sure to win but Morrow went out and came back with a strap to draw the DQ. The post-match was brutal, just a tight choking in the corner and a whipping on top of that. The fans really could never know what to expect. There was as much of a chance that the Youngbloods would win the titles at the end of that match or that Profe would help Los Mercenarios retain and they’d move on, or, you just might get the heat on a blood feud turned up. That’s one of the fun things about the territory.

EB: We don’t know the end result of the Universal title match in terms of whether it had a clear winner or if it went to a draw, but we do know that Carlos Colon remained Universal champion after the match. But there are two more things we need to explain before finishing up with 1989. The first is that the main event for the December 16 show was a La Gran Guerra match. If you missed the explanation of what La Gran Guerra is, here it is again. It is a match where two rings are enclosed inside a steel cage structure (including a roof) where two teams face off with the objective of handcuffing all of the opposing team’s members to the cage walls (there are several handcuffs placed around the walls of the structure). All team members start inside the cage at the same time and the winning team is given the opportunity to uncuff any team members that had been taken out of action in order to receive their prize for winning: 5 uninterrupted minutes where they can attack the still handcuffed losing team at their leisure. This will be the fifth La Gran Guerra to take place with El Ejercito de la Justicia and El Club Deportivo tied with two wins apiece. The tecnico team consists of all champions with Carlos Colon, Invader #1, TNT and Mark & Chris Youngblood representing El Ejercito de la Justicia. For El Club Deportivo it will be Leo Burke, Manny Fernandez, Sika, Kokina Maximus and Chicky Starr. We don't have the match footage but we do have the following video snippet (it’s the first 50 seconds of the video that is relevant).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHlt0iddO1c

This video is of a match we’ve already covered but what’s important is the intro to the video that features highlights from the December 16 show. We get some scenes of the Youngbloods vs Mercenarios and Invader #1 vs Manny Fernandez matches. More importantly, we get two brief clips that show how 1989 ended for Carlos Colon. The first clip is from La Gran Guerra,  where we see Leo Burke putting Carlos Colon in the figure four leglock as the rest of the rudos move to run interference. This is immediately followed by a clip from the December 17 Universal title match between Colon and Burke. Here we see that Carlos, after weeks of having his knee constantly attacked, is too hurt to fight out of the hold, succumbs to the pain in his injured knee and gets counted down while in the figure four leglock. Thus we have a new Universal champion to close out the year in Leo Burke. Chicky Starr has once again gained control of the Universal title as we close out 1989.

Next time on El Deporte de las Mil Emociones, we have reached 1990. There is a new Universal champion in Leo Burke but you can bet El Ejercito de la Justicia is looking to win it back as soon as possible. What twists and turns await us in 1990? What new and/or returning faces may we see? Our journey through 1990 begins.

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

1. Yokozuna vs. Brian West

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

2. Nasty Boys vs. Mark Ming/Jim Gorman

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

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

3. Doink vs. Big Boss Man

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

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

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

4. The Narcissist Lex Luger vs. Jim Powers

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

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

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On Brand Segunda Caida: Tennessee Indy Grab Bag

Bryan Turner has been posting some great unseen or rarely seen southern indy wrestling, and we've been diving in over the past several weeks. Even cherry picking through the best stuff, there are a lot of things he's uploaded that jump out. Here are a couple that jumped out at me today. 

Yokozuna vs. Tatanka MECW 12/99

ER: This is the last recorded match of Yokozuna's career, recorded sometime in December 1999 (two months after Heroes of Wrestling). Yokozuna didn't work many matches in the three years after WWF, and considering that, the match couldn't be edited more painfully. It being the last match of his excellent career, he was obviously at his largest. Knowing that, you'd go into this match expecting a long nerve hold spot in the middle somewhere. If you were editing a match for time to air on local TV, that would be the couple minutes you edit out. Instead, this match is joined in progress for the duration of Yokozuna's nerve hold. From commentary, you get the impression that the beginning of the match was a lot of active Yokozuna work. We start with him already drenched in sweat and breathing hard, and don't get to see what got him that way. When they get standing, you can see Yokozuna still has real quick burst speed. He clearly needed constant rest, as he timed a Tatanka charge really nicely to send Tatanka crashing to the floor, and the entire time Tatanka was on the floor Yokozuna stood bent at the waist, hands on his knees, torso practically horizontal. But, when he had to shut something down or do a quick dodge, he looked surprisingly nimble. His strikes were really good. Arguably the best part of the match was Yokozuna throwing hard rights to brawl down the aisle at the end of the match. He built to his bumps well, with him not bumping (in the footage we have) until Tatanka hits a tomahawk chop off the top, but he takes two more after that one, the third rolling to the floor where this ended. You could tell that there was a great wrestler still in there who could have worked a several more years without the extra 150 pounds. Of course, it's much easier said than done for any man to lose my entire literal person in weight. I sometimes think of Yokozuna still in WWF through 2002, working a whole slew of matches with WCW guys that we never got to see. What a great wrestler. 

Barry Houston vs. Jarell USWO 5/23/03

ER: I believe this is by far the latest Barry Houston we have (and the latest listed match of his that I could find), and it's not exactly the swan song a Houston fan would want to see. Barry Houston is so unlike the Barry Houston you're thinking of right now, that there is a non-zero chance this was some guy using the Barry Houston Name in front of 40 people just outside Nashville. Houston is beefy here, like when Chris Harris showed up for a week in WWE, and he shows no signs of the wrestling ability that made him a cult favorite in WCW. Jarell (graphic reads Jorell but that reads like a Planet Krypton ass name and the announcers clearly call him Jarell then whole match), looks reallll green, and is wearing just khakis and a short sleeve plaid shirt, like he just came straight from his grandparents' anniversary party. Jarell's stomach is already heaving when Houston takes him over with a side headlock to start the match. Jarell has to think  about what move to do next after any move he does, he did bad version of a couple things I like; a bad Jumbo knee lift, and raking Houston's face across the top rope. It's better that someone attempt good wrestling than bad wrestling, if it's going to look bad. Houston has a nice back elbow and clothesline, although Jarell took a bad bump for the clothesline that was so "play wrestling" that it minimized the impact a lot. A chain gets involved and Jarell throws a couple punches somewhere over Houston's head and a few inches in front of his face. Houston's punches look better and have better form, but his were only half successful. One of them was an uppercut that landed somewhere around Jarell's upper boob. I'm happy that an unseen Barry Houston match showed up, but some secrets are better left untold. 

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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 Handheld Reno, NV 1/23/93

Running a 2,000 attendance house in a 12,000 capacity arena just a day before the Royal Rumble, this show had a couple unique matches I wanted to see and a nice snowy winter season happening outside. 

1/23/93 Full Show

The Predator vs. Jim Powers

ER: God bless early 90s camcorder dads who knew how short the battery life on their camcorders were, yet always overextended themselves thinking they could afford to record Jim Powers working Tony Garea tribute matches and still have enough battery for the main event. Memories of every plug of the school gymnasium being hogged by dad's charging their extra batteries. Predator is Horace Boulder under a mask, and it's really funny to me to have a guy named PREDATOR but have him working a lot of pointing at his head after dodged charges or complaining about Powers pulling the tights. Predator seems like a risky gimmick to assign someone in wrestling, but it also makes me laugh thinking about the Predator pointing at his head in the jungle right before Arnold sneaks up behind him with a schoolboy. Predator was the only one keeping this match interesting as Powers is all bad punches and arm wringers. There was a nice spot where Predator blocked a sunset flip and then punched the mat going after Powers, and I like  a guy who pulls his opponent face first into the turnbuckles by grabbing the waistband of his trunks. Predator does an admirable job selling Powers' punch and kneelift to set up his match finishing powerslam, and we collectively thank this camcorder dad for editing out a long Predator chinlock where Powers' abdomen was desperately heaving. 

Samu vs. Owen Hart

ER: This was a better version of the Powers/Predator match in half the time, with our undaunted director also opting to trim out Samu's chinlock. WWF loves having a babyface make their comeback after being held in a chinlock, and this man recognized what he should and shouldn't be filming. Here Owen gets that sunset flip that Jim Powers couldn't turn, but it only gets a one count and Samu hits him with a thrust kick after. There's a fun stretch where it felt like Owen could pull it off, after hitting a nice spinning heel kick and then knocking Fatu off the apron. I thought he was going to put Samu away with a missile dropkick, but Fatu snuck up and knocked Owen balls first into the top turnbuckle, Samu putting him away with a follow-up superplex. After the match, Owen continues selling his balls in the ring long after the Headshrinkers have left, even explaining to the ref what happened from his back. Owen makes the Vader V with his right hand and then uses the edge of his left hand to chop at that V, explaining what the top turnbuckle did to his balls. The ref nods understandingly before exiting the ring. 

Yokozuna vs. Earthquake

ER: This showdown would have looked insane to my 12 year old eyes, a clash of the two (probably) largest men I had ever seen. Little could anyone in attendance have known how rare this match was going to be. Their sumo match on Raw over a year later was their only televised match, and other than that they had only a few scattered house show matches, many of them in California. Seems cruel to present an Earthquake as a babyface in California but that's what they do. This was great in its too brief existence. We get some good shoving to start, Earthquake showing off his footwork to dodge Yokozuna's shoves, running into Yokozuna with shoulderblocks that make both take a step back. Yokozuna takes over with a back elbow to counter an Earthquake avalanche, and runs over Earthquake like it's nothing. Maybe I just get dewy-eyed and sappy during a wrestling match between two gigantic fat guys, but I tell you the air went out of the crowd when Earthquake took that back bump. Yokozuna dropped a gorgeous legdrop and Earthquake did a full body spasm like he had just been decapitated, and I was shocked at how quickly and easily Yokozuna put things away with the banzai splash. This match felt big enough to be a PPV attraction and get 12 minutes. But some things can only be contained in short starbursts. This was only their second match, and all 3 of these minutes were great. But it's a shame that we never got to see them have an actual war of the colossus.

The Beverly Brothers vs. The Undertaker

ER: This was advertised on the arena sign as Undertaker vs. Papa Shango, so I guess they felt like since they blatantly false advertised one of the two matches they announced for this show, the best way to pay that back was by just having three minutes of Undertaker laying waste. The great twist, is that I think this 3 minute sprint is more entertaining than any Undertaker/Soul Taker match I can remember. Undertaker vs. Papa Shango doesn't play as big as it should, but this handicap match was like a T-Rex vs. two velociraptors. But, well, two dumb jock velociraptors. This looked like it was going to be a one-sided mauling, both Beverlys getting run over by Undertaker for a minute straight after cheapshotting him before the bell. Bloom and Enos are both great bumpers, and they play this match like they were Kaientai, and it was the best. They get some brief control, when Bloom hits Taker with a chair and Enos snaps his neck over the top rope. The crowd reactions for Taker's deadman sit-ups keep getting louder, and the Beverlys act more and more annoying the longer they're in control. Undertaker has a fun time with the whole thing, and it looked like he was doing his own separate bit at ringside as he kept stumbling and falling into Mike McGuirk. Beverlys hit a bunch of elbowdrops after hitting a tandem vertical suplex, but leave their backs turned for far too long around a man known for rising from the dead, and the Reno kids lost it when he sat up again and ran wild. Enos takes a huge cartwheeling bump over the top to the floor to sell an uppercut, Bloom gets finished in ring by the Tombstone.

Berzerker vs. Bob Backlund

ER: Berzerker is a great house show act, as he works with the crowd and does unique bits more than any other wrestler from this era, even more than Flair. Here he barks ar Backlund and starts whipping at him with the belt from his tunic while Backlund is folding his ring jacket, that belt coming closer and closer with each whip. The crowd reacts with some real hostility to this one, the Reno crowd booing Backlund's dorkiness at the bell and only mildly getting behind him when he swept Berzerker's leg into Berzerker doing the splits. Berzerker getting his leg swept or kicked into doing the splits is the kind of spot that should get a big reaction every time, but this is a weird pairing and the crowd didn't seem to like it. It's funny when Berzerker rolls out of the ring and is out of camera sight, but you can hear him Hussing around ringside at people. They take a long time to lock up, with Berzerker repeatedly challenging Backlund to reach up and grab his right hand way up in the air, and Backlund responding with trepidation. 

The crowd seems annoyed that the match isn't starting at first, and then Berzerker keeps milking the annoyed reaction to build more and more heat, until the crowd is loudly mocking Berzerker with Huss chants and he is doing back bumps out of frustration. Berzerker finally does get that knucklelock and forces Backlund to his knees, and Backlund valiantly fights to his feet before rolling through to his own top wristlock, which Berzerker breaks with his fist. It's like they're working a Jack Brisco/Killer Khan match straight out of 1979, and that, while simple at times, mostly works. Berzerker eventually takes one of his big backwards bumps to the floor and then marches angrily down the aisle, drawing heat the whole way. In ring he hits a couple of bodyslams and jaws at fans, and works a long (probably too long) bearhug which eventually ends with Backlund somewhat lamely just falling on Berzerker for the pin. A fan either near the camera or holding the camera thinks aloud that this was one of the worst matches he has ever seen. This was not a classic, and was somehow the second longest match on the show, but it did have its rewards.  

Ric Flair vs. Mr. Perfect

ER: This was a real crowd pleaser, the kind of strong 15 minute match that you'd want to see if you were excited to see either of these two, checking off all the greatest hit Flair boxes without ever feeling like it was coasting. Flair is a guy who can play the greatest hits and not feel like he's bored with them and can still throw in a couple surprises with a smile. It's cool seeing how big he can work a house show match, taking some painful high bumps (on a hard ring) while working toward specific sides of the crowd. He's a guy who is excellent at causing a stir in a specific section of the building, knows how to pick fights with people from the ring, and knows how to get great heat for 15 minutes. He does all his shtick and does it get: He shoves Perfect a couple times and gets slapped each time, he takes a long walk down the aisle after eating a shoulderblock, he gets caught going up top and takes a hard bump getting press slammed down, obviously he's going to take a high backdrop. 

When he's on offense he's cheating, and it gets a rise the entire time. I'm gonna give the cameraman credit for partially obscuring the lens when Flair threw a low kick and eye poke, as if he was helping Flair cheat to transition. Flair worked over Perfect's arm and held a grounded headlock while planking his legs on the middle rope. He does the full routine on two sides of the ring, and the spot our cameraman picked couldn't have framed it any better. Flair was practically working this entire routine for this guy. Flair really rubs his cheating in to our side of the ring, at one point holding just one straightened leg on the ropes while bicycling his free leg. We also get a perfectly framed shot of Flair holding his calf over Perfect's throat, like Flair was putting on a show especially for us. The finish stretch is great, with stiff chops from both, Flair getting his trunks yanked down for a good sunset flip nearfall, and then keeping them down to the glee of the crowd when he ducks his way right into a Perfect Plex. Classic house show stuff, 100% success rate. 

Shawn Michaels vs. Marty Jannetty

ER: Shawn gets announced first and does a great job getting heat just by taking off his chaps. He also tries to grab Mike McGuirk a couple times and it gets people upset because he looks like a guy who would definitely try to grab a woman. Marty is wearing fantastic turquoise and zebra tights with perfect tassels, honestly some of his best gear. A stark, damning contrast to the atrocities he would would inflict upon the Royal Rumble crowd the next night. This match had the finish stretch of that next night's match but was pretty different overall, and probably even better. There's a long Michaels abdominal stretch spot that has an excellent first act but then probably carries on a bit too long in the second act before rushing through the third. You can usually wrap up your abdominal stretch spot in one act, but it was still a great hammy Michaels performance. The best kind of hammy Michaels is house show shithead Michaels, where he's shaking his ass at the crowd and giving people in the front row cocky asshole smirks, and those abdominal stretches give him plenty of time to rub some specific fans' noses in it. Michaels goes into control really quick in this match (he skipped and floundered around the ring for a lot of okay Marty offense the next night), sending Jannetty frisbeeing into the ringpost. 

He works over Marty's arm with hammerlocks and strikes, and once he's worked over the arm enough he starts working over Marty's midsection. I love when a heel switches targets after suitably damaging one area. There's a great spot where he drops Jannetty stomach first over a chair on the outside, which at least gives us good reason to work that abdominal stretch for so long. The great first act on that stretch that I mentioned earlier, is Michaels locking it in near the ropes (for cheating purposes) and a nice build to Marty hip tossing his way out of it. But right as Marty gets there, Shawn holds onto the tope rope to block, and the blocked toss re-injures Marty's arm. GREAT spot. The finish stretch has a lot of similarities to the PPV match the next night, working out the timing for a couple of spots: Jannetty catching Michaels with a DDT after Michaels thought he got out of the way of a fistdrop, and Michaels missing a superkick only to be nailed with one for a close 2. If anything, Earl Hebner was really rushing counts, which didn't give a lot of time for the nearfalls to settle in, but added a manic feel that the crowd did respond to. Since Sherri wasn't here, the finish was different, simple, and well done. Michaels gets thrown into the buckles and slumps into them, but ducks out of the way of a great Jannetty missed avalanche and then scrambles onto him for a quick pin. He shoots a quick Fuck Yeah glance at a person at ringside he'd been taunting the whole match, and BAM, Shawn Michaels has left the building. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE WWF 305 LIVE

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE BERZERKER

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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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