WWE SummerSlam '93

WWE SummerSlam ‘93

August 30, 1993

The Palace

Auburn Hills, Michigan

I had hoped to review King of the Ring ’93 but due to my living arrangement and priorities elsewhere, that will have to wait, so I’ll be limited for the time being to the shows that I have readily available. King of the Ring was a huge turning point in 1993. Hogan did literally nothing from WrestleMania IX to King of the Ring other than balk at doing the job for Bret Hart at SummerSlam. Instead, Hogan dropped the strap to Yokozuna at King of the Ring. To Hogan’s credit, he put Yokozuna over big and you definitely were left thinking Yokozuna was a big time monster. SummerSlam would be the first show that you got the sense that the Hulkamania era was finally over, because on July 4^th, WWE held a body slam challenge on USS Intrepid in New York. The idea being, that Hogan couldn’t slam Yokozuna, and to play on the Japan vs. USA thing that they were going for, they ran out a bunch of American wrestlers to try to slam the big guy, and all failing… until the re-packaged Lex Luger showed up on a helicopter, came in and slammed the big man. This set off Vince investing a ton of money on the “Lex Express.” Luger would spend July and August criss-crossing America in a bus decked out in red, white, and blue to all the major cities in the country. To this day I don’t think Vince has put in more effort to build his next superstar. This would all culminate at SummerSlam as Yokozuna would defend the title against Lex Luger.

Commentators: Vince McMahon and Bobby “The Brain” Heenan

“Million $ Man” Ted Dibiase vs. Razor Ramon

This would be Dibiase’s final match as injuries had finally caught up to him. Razor had just turned baby face and was beginning to be crazy over so there was no doubt who was winning here. Dibiase did the honors and put Ramon over clean here in a pretty solid match. Razor wins with his razors edge finisher, Dibiase heads off into the sunset, while Razor would be IC Champion not long after this. ** ¼

WWE Tag Team Championship

Steiner Brothers (Rick and Scott) (champions) vs. Heavenly Bodies (Tom Pritchard and Jimmy Del Ray) w/ Jim Cornette

This might be the last really good Steiner Brothers match. WWE had been doing some cross-promotion deals with Smoky Mountain Wrestling, and this was their way of putting SMW over by having Jim Cornette’s Heavenly Bodies in a major title match on the biggest show of the summer. It was a very good match, something that had been lacking in WWE for a long while before this, and we wouldn’t see another one until long after this as Vince started pretty much turning away from tag team wrestling to the point where nowadays it’s non-existent, which is really too bad. Steiners were hitting all of their high impact suplexes here, while the bodies were hitting the classic old school double team moves, and cheating like classic heels. Cornettes heel tactics as a manager outside the ring never really got over with a WWE crowd like it did in the NWA-WCW days, but still entertaining. Just non-stop action, Scotty finally finishes it with the frankensteiner. Wonderful match, that is very much underrated. Doesn’t get enough love. ****

WWE IC Championship

Shawn Michaels (champion) w/ Diesel vs. Mr. Perfect

The WWE pretty much hyped this thing up as being the greatest match of all time. With two of the greatest performers of all time it would be hard not to expect an absolute classic. A classic would have continued the theme of SummerSlam IC title classics (Rude-Warrior, Hart-Perfect, and Hart-Bulldog). For some reason… it just didn’t happen. The timing was off, spots were blown and worst of all, we got a count out finish. It’s kind of odd because Shawn would be suspended for (I guess steroids but we’ve gotten about a dozen different stories from Shawn himself, and others) and Perfects injuries were starting to kick in again and he too wouldn’t be there much longer. The match is still decent enough, but it ranks as one of the most disappointing matches of all time when you consider the performers involved. They just didn’t click. Ending comes with Perfect getting knocked to the outside, and Diesel running him into the ringpost giving Shawn the count-out win and saving the title. ***

IRS vs. 1-2-3 Kid

123 Kid made his name as an underdog jobber who kept getting beat until his real life best buddy Razor Ramon put him over on RAW. Then random baby-faces would taunt Razor with “123 chants” and thus, the Lightning Kid as he was commonly known as in the indies became the 123 Kid. Somehow the whole story evolved in Money Inc. taunting Razor, but then Razor helped the Kid beat Ted Dibiase (setting up their match) and then the natural match up would be IRS vs. the Kid here. IRS was set to get kind of a singles push and feud with Razor, so he gets the win here, but it was a decent little match with the Kid bumping around hard for IRS, but also getting his high-flying offense in which delighted the crowd. Everyone wins here. ** ½

Bret “The Hitman” Hart vs. Jerry “The King” Lawler

This match was set up at King of the Ring. After Bret had won the tournament, Lawler came out and taunted him, and Bret taunted him right back and called him the Burger King. Corny, but clever because Jerry Lawler was a GREAT classic heel that played it off perfectly. Lawler then attacked Bret. Since Bret had nothing else to do after Hogan big leagued him, the program with Lawler was set. But wait! Lawler comes out on crutches and goes into this long hilarious story about some car wreck (all the while insulting Detroit and the Hart family of course). Heenan’s commentary corroborating Lawler’s story combined with McMahon’s outrage is also comedic gold. So the long and the short of it is Lawler can’t wrestle Bret tonight so he will send in his “Court Jester” (again, corny but brilliant) Doink.

Bret Hart vs. Doink

Standard Hart match here, and Doink is still being played by Matt Borne (a good wrestler in his own right). Bret ultimately gets the sharpshooter on, but wait! Lawler comes in and hits Bret with his crutch, revealing of course that he wasn’t hurt at all. So Bret wins by disqualification. Lawler helps Doink to the back, but gets stopped by President Jack Tunney who tells Lawler that since he seems to be fine, he can wrestle, and orders Lawler to go back and face Bret.

Bret Hart vs. Jerry Lawler

Again, more standard Hart stuff here. Lawler gets in his normal Memphis cheap heel tactics in, and gets some token offense, but this is a beat down. Bret is clearly working very stiff with Lawler here apparently getting a little revenge because Lawler injured Bret (according to Bret) during the King of the Ring beat down. Bret finally wins the match with the sharpshooter but doesn’t let it go. You have a bunch of officials and suits coming in pleading with Bret to let go of the hold but he doesn’t. Finally Bret lets go of the hold, but it’s too late, and the ref decides to reverse the decision and disqualify Bret. Lawler does a stretcher job and holds his hand in the air while on the stretcher in a classic dick move. Crowd is just livid over the whole deal. Absolutely fantastic storytelling by two of the greats. This was going to be paid off at Survivor Series where the Hart Brothers were just going to beat the holy hell out of Lawler, but Lawler got himself into a little legal trouble over a rape allegation and the pay-off didn’t really ever happen until two years later at King of the Ring ’95. ****

Marty Jannetty vs. Ludvig Borga

Borga is a Finnish environmentalist and is the new evil foreigner to be the big heel. Basically he was brought in specifically to feud with Lex Luger. Outcome here is definitely not in doubt. Borga pretty much squashes Marty here, as Marty didn’t even get any offense in. Still, I enjoy a good squash, especially if it makes sense. * ¾

Giant Gonzalez w/ Harvey Wippleman vs. Undertaker w/ Paul Bearer

This would be the blow-off match to the epic Undertaker-Gonzalez feud. They “spiced” the feud up by having Harvey’s other guy Mr. Hughes steal the Undertakers urn. We never got an Undertaker-Hughes match (not that I was clamoring for one) as Hughes left the company after King of the Ring. This match is better than their WrestleMania match (how could it not be?) but it is still bad because Gonzalez can literally do nothing. Undertaker wins with a flying clothesline, and then Gonzalez turns baby face by turning on Harvey. I guess the fans are happy here. DUD

6 Man Tag Team Match

Bam Bam Bigelow and Headshrinkers (Samu and Fatu) w/ Luna Vachon and Afa vs. Tatanka and Smoking Gunns (Billy and Bart)

Tatanka and Bam Bam have issues. I want to say Bam Bam cut Tatanka’s hair at one point but I don’t remember. They were just feuding pretty much from WrestleMania until now. I also want to say that this was originally supposed to be Bam Bam vs. Tatanka, but the booking changed, when Sherri left the company. She was set to face Luna here as well. The Gunns and Headshrinkers were directionless at this point as the tag scene shifted from Steiners-Money Inc. to Steiners-Cornette. This is a helluva match though, and again, another match on this card that has largely gone un-noticed. Just nonstop action. My favorite spot of the match is Tatanka is left for dead and Bigelow and the Headshrinkers go up for the triple flying head butt. Tatanka moved out of the way, but it was really telling a great story. Tatanka then rolls up Samu for the win and the delight of the crowd. Another bitchin’ match. *** ¾

Main Event

WWE Championship

Yokozuna (champion) w/ Mr. Fuji and Jim Cornette vs. Lex Luger

Why does Lex Luger get labeled as a choke artist? Here is your answer. So after almost 2 months of nothing but hype, and playing on the USA thing, we come to this match. They even bring out Randy Savage as “master of ceremonies” to introduce Luger. The match is actually pretty good and main event worthy, but the finish is one of the biggest head scratchers in wrestling history. Why would you invest that much time, effort, and money into this and then have him win by… count out? To make matters worse, they have a celebration as if he actually won the title. To this day I just don’t understand this logic at all. It makes absolutely no sense. I’m not a big Lex Luger fan or anything, but this set him up to fail big time the same way it did when Flair would never put him over in either of their big matches in 1988 in the NWA.  Luger would still spend the rest as the top baby face, but never would get that type of attention again and then he would ultimately fail even worse at WrestleMania X. 1993 was just a weird year I guess. ** ¾

Final Analysis: Odd booking in the main even aside, this is a really fun show. It has some pretty good matches but the problem with it is nothing historic happened, nothing that stands the test of time, other than the failure of Lex Luger to win the big one. Even the brilliant Hart-Lawler storyline would have to be placed on hold for things that happened outside of the ring. The show is mainly remembered for Luger’s choke job and the highly disappointing IC title match. Still, it’s a show worth checking out, and you won’t come away disappointed you spent the time watching it.