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September 2022 Wrestling Discussion


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Looked it up, it was Yoko, Borga and the Quebecers vs. Taker, Luger and the Steiners.  Borga did make the show, but Quebecer Pierre didn't. He was replaced by Crush.

 

Edit: As an aside, SS 93 was a super-weird show.

Edited by Log
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My favorite out of place Undertaker thing was when Vince made him appear at a press conference about New Jersey deregulating pro wrestling, and he had to present Governor Whitman with a construction paper tombstone for the previous wrestling tax bill.  

He looks like he wishes he was actually dead. 

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22 hours ago, Log said:

Looked it up, it was Yoko, Borga and the Quebecers vs. Taker, Luger and the Steiners.  Borga did make the show, but Quebecer Pierre didn't. He was replaced by Crush.

 

Edit: As an aside, SS 93 was a super-weird show.

I'm currently rewatching old WWF from the start and one fun thing from those early Survivor Series matches is the random replacements.  In 88, JYD quit and was to be replaced by Brian Blair, but then Blair quit, too, so Scott Casey stepped in.  I joked that James Dudley was next on the depth chart.  I just watched a match from the 1989 show where Earthquake stepped in for Barry Windham after Windam left the company.

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On 9/26/2022 at 5:49 PM, Log said:

Looked it up, it was Yoko, Borga and the Quebecers vs. Taker, Luger and the Steiners.  Borga did make the show, but Quebecer Pierre didn't. He was replaced by Crush.

 

Edit: As an aside, SS 93 was a super-weird show.

It was Tatanka, Luger and the Steiners first, but Tatanka was "injured" after he lost for the first time against Borga. Yokozuna crushed him after the match. Luger injured Pierre as retribution. Undertaker replaced Tatanka, Crush replaced Pierre. 

The show was super weird. Harts vs Kings Court without Lawler. Instead HBK who had nothing to do with that storyline at all. The Knights featuring Greg Valentine. The Smoky Mountain Tag Title match with almost 0 crowd reaction. Opener with Jannetty and Kid winning. The 4 Doinks.... 

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6 hours ago, MoeCristyV.1.6 said:

It was Tatanka, Luger and the Steiners first, but Tatanka was "injured" after he lost for the first time against Borga. Yokozuna crushed him after the match. Luger injured Pierre as retribution. Undertaker replaced Tatanka, Crush replaced Pierre. 

The show was super weird. Harts vs Kings Court without Lawler. Instead HBK who had nothing to do with that storyline at all. The Knights featuring Greg Valentine. The Smoky Mountain Tag Title match with almost 0 crowd reaction. Opener with Jannetty and Kid winning. The 4 Doinks.... 

I noted a lot of this when I watched this show for the first time in a long time a couple years ago (kinda regret that).

I believed they clumsily inserted Shawn in that program by insinuating he said something about the Hart family.

I know they were trying to do Cornette a solid since he did allow folks from SMW to pad out their thin roster. However, they could have made that a dark match. Boston wasn't the right place for that match.

The amount of effort they put into Ludwig Borga from the time he shows up in the summer of 1993 until he is gone in January/February 1994 is mind-boggling. Like he didn't matter one iota over that six or seven months. At least Nailz got the whole Bossman feud. He didn't last long enough for the Taker program, but he got to do the terrible Bossman program start to finish. Borga never even got to do a big singles match on PPV. He got the Jannetty match at Summerslam, the Survivor Series multi man tag, and was basically done by Rumble 1994. That's crazy given they protected him the whole way through.

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1 hour ago, odessasteps said:

I recall the Observer at the time had endless speculation on who the Knights would be.

I remember being 12 and discussing that same thing on Prodigy. God bless my 14.4 kbps modem.

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Terry Funk claimed that he was going to be one of the Knights, but he changed his mind and went home instead. Sent Vince a message saying "My horse is sick, I think it's dying" and just went.

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As an eight year old, I would record the audio of WWF shows onto cassette tape, so I could listen to them in bed. As a result, the commentary of Summerslam 93 is seared into my mind, especially Vince shouting 'Jannetty is an opportunist! Marty Jannetty is as opportunist!' during his comeback against Ludwig Borga.

Borga was my favourite wrestler of all time for the, like, three months he existed for a kid who didn't get to see Raw, only PPVs my grandparents had recorded for me. After all, he beat Tatanka, who I hated, and came out to the Finnish national anthem, which was like The Mountie's instrumental theme song but even more stirring and epic. As a general rule, the more a heel came across like a James Bond henchman, the more I liked them.

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30 minutes ago, SturmCRF said:

As an eight year old, I would record the audio of WWF shows onto cassette tape, so I could listen to them in bed. As a result, the commentary of Summerslam 93 is seared into my mind, especially Vince shouting 'Jannetty is an opportunist! Marty Jannetty is as opportunist!' during his comeback against Ludwig Borga.

Borga was my favourite wrestler of all time for the, like, three months he existed for a kid who didn't get to see Raw, only PPVs my grandparents had recorded for me. After all, he beat Tatanka, who I hated, and came out to the Finnish national anthem, which was like The Mountie's instrumental theme song but even more stirring and epic. As a general rule, the more a heel came across like a James Bond henchman, the more I liked them.

I love that despite his deep, uncompromising love for saving the environment he looked like the live action version of a Captain Planet villain.

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He "won" the Intercontinental Title against Razor Ramon on a Coliseum Video match. Decision was overturned because HBK left his IC Title in the ring and the ref found it. His sudden injury meant that Adam Bomb got squashed by Earthquake at WM X. Other then that, I think that was his whole WWE career. 

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Agreed - strange card.

Michaels/Diesel/friends vs. Razor/Perfect/Kid/Janetty was looking really good. Lawler gets arrested for touching underage girls, they shoehorn Shawn into that instead, Perfect gets injured, it turns into a mismatch of random guys without any real back story. 

Then again, I really don't know who else you put in that position that makes sense? Funk would have been pretty cool, but would have been a big ask to make it work from a storyline perspective. Harts vs Terry, Dory, Jimmy Jack and.......Jeff Gaylord-Funk would have been awesome.

Steiners were treading water and I believe were already on the way out - having them in there against the Quebecers seemed odd as it never went anywhere after (a good 10 minute draw match on Superstars followed, with the commentators strongly hinting that the Steiners would never get another shot). The booking for the main was all over the place. Two PPVs running, Luger celebrates in the ring over a consolation prize. I think they should have reversed the eliminations, and had Luger/Borga be the double countout spot, and then have Taker beat Yokozuna to build to the Rumble, or have Luger pin Yokozuna because he was afraid of Taker. Too many guys look irrelevant here - Luger gets his consolation prize beating Borga, Tatanka is an afterthought after Borga beats him. Borga shatters his ankle not long after, so it goes nowhere. Then Hennig bails on the company in the midst of that feud. So yes, they did everything possible to make Luger look like a total loser, but his two feuds lined up in 1994 got wiped after they barely got started, and then the Tatanka feud at the end of the year ended off camera on top of it. It did a great job of putting the Savage/Crush feud on the map as a big deal.

 

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30 minutes ago, odessasteps said:

Too bad he missed his chance to be in a stable with the Harris Twins. 

There is an alternate timeline where he somehow is a member of the Truth Commission (hell, Mantaur was member at one point...unfortunately not as Mantaur) and later on DOA. So much untapped racism there.

34 minutes ago, MoeCristyV.1.6 said:

He "won" the Intercontinental Title against Razor Ramon on a Coliseum Video match. Decision was overturned because HBK left his IC Title in the ring and the ref found it. His sudden injury meant that Adam Bomb got squashed by Earthquake at WM X. Other then that, I think that was his whole WWE career. 

That late era of Coliseum video before WWF went their own way with WWF Home Video is sort of lost in time. I have absolutely no memory of that. I am sure it happened but those releases stop meaning as much later on. Outside of gems like the Harts (Bret and Owen) vs. the Steiners right before Owen fully turns heel, the amount of filler on those releases is unbearable. You get stuff like heel Shawn vs. heel Skinner (shortly before Keirn fades into being the other Doink when Borne feuds with Crush) in a seven minute match where Skinner takes 90 percent of the match. Just some bizarre stuff that should have been left as dark matches.

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26 minutes ago, GuerrillaMonsoon said:

Agreed - strange card.

Michaels/Diesel/friends vs. Razor/Perfect/Kid/Janetty was looking really good. Lawler gets arrested for touching underage girls, they shoehorn Shawn into that instead, Perfect gets injured, it turns into a mismatch of random guys without any real back story. 

Then again, I really don't know who else you put in that position that makes sense? Funk would have been pretty cool, but would have been a big ask to make it work from a storyline perspective. Harts vs Terry, Dory, Jimmy Jack and.......Jeff Gaylord-Funk would have been awesome.

Steiners were treading water and I believe were already on the way out - having them in there against the Quebecers seemed odd as it never went anywhere after (a good 10 minute draw match on Superstars followed, with the commentators strongly hinting that the Steiners would never get another shot). The booking for the main was all over the place. Two PPVs running, Luger celebrates in the ring over a consolation prize. I think they should have reversed the eliminations, and had Luger/Borga be the double countout spot, and then have Taker beat Yokozuna to build to the Rumble, or have Luger pin Yokozuna because he was afraid of Taker. Too many guys look irrelevant here - Luger gets his consolation prize beating Borga, Tatanka is an afterthought after Borga beats him. Borga shatters his ankle not long after, so it goes nowhere. Then Hennig bails on the company in the midst of that feud. So yes, they did everything possible to make Luger look like a total loser, but his two feuds lined up in 1994 got wiped after they barely got started, and then the Tatanka feud at the end of the year ended off camera on top of it. It did a great job of putting the Savage/Crush feud on the map as a big deal.

If you didn't know better, based on the responses, commentator/part time worker Randy Savage is by far the biggest star in the promotion followed by Taker and then Yoko and maybe Bret as 3b to Yoko's 3a or vice versa. It's dire in terms of star power.

Once Hogan is done and only really doing the overseas tours and you get a bunch of exits as the years goes, it's clear they don't have the star power or depth to do a three hour PPV. Summerslam 1993 is an alright show (first two matches good, the middle drags massively including the Hart/Lawler stuff which seems to go on forever, Taker/Giant Gonzalez stunk to high heaven, and the title match was alright for what it was). Survivor Series 1993 is just a bad show. To be honest, Survivor Series 1992 kinda stunk as well and was probably too affected by the amount of turnover and turmoil in the company.

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9 hours ago, MoeCristyV.1.6 said:

The Smoky Mountain Tag Title match with almost 0 crowd reaction. 

 

8 hours ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

 

I know they were trying to do Cornette a solid since he did allow folks from SMW to pad out their thin roster. However, they could have made that a dark match. Boston wasn't the right place for that match.

 

Corrnette has said that the whole reason for the SMW co-promotion was to get him to manager Yoko

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I'm interested as to what Vince got spooked on the overall concept.

Was it that the concept relied on keeping around so many guys in one place for months at a time to build to a successful card, or was it that too many guys were taking too many pins on TV, when that rarely happened?

It seems like he cooled on the concept in '89. Tried to revive it with the stupid Wild Card match in 1990. 1991 either had fuck finishes or clean sweeps, 92 had the one tag team match. 

Had a good run in the New Generation era. The Russo era not so much. 

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