[1993-05-24-WWF-Raw] Bret Hart and Razor Ramon

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Razor offers 1-2-3 Kid $2500 to step into the ring with him one more time. The angle got over big right out of the gate, as the crowd is already chanting "1-2-3". Bret comes out and encourages the chants and says Razor should be focused on King of the Ring. Nice segment.

[Kevin Ridge]

Razor skipped out on the greasy hair look. No slacking on Bret's part. Hart pokes some fun at Razor and the crowd continues the 1-2-3 chant. Razor/Bret had to be the premiere first round match for King of the Ring.

[PeteF3]

Razor has harsh words for that cock-a-roach, the Stick-Mang, and offers him $2500 for a rematch. Bret Hart comes out, and he and Vince openly wonder how Razor can beat Bret if he can't beat the Kid. The "1-2-3" chants are now in full force, and Bobby moans about how everybody in every arena is going to do the same thing. Heenan was always brilliant at that "put something over while complaining about it" audience mind-control.

[WingedEagle]

Ramon out for an in-ring interview, saying Kid didn't beat him and he'll give Kid $2500 if he does it again. Hart is out to set up their match at KOTR.

[soup23]

Really cool interview and a theme that would work for Razor for a while of him always being on the lookout for the upset happening and the crowds being more invested in nearfalls on him. Bret and Savage getting into the counting also helped get this over.

[garretta]

This was beautifully done from start to finish. Hall played his embarrassment and anger like a virtuoso, and Sacage and Bret were terrifiv at planting the seeds for the "One-two-three" chant. Twenty-five hundred's a bit low for a challenge in '93, but it gives Hall a lot of room to go up if Waltman keeps refusing (which we know he does at least once).

 

I loved Bret coming down and taunting Hall about how he'll never beat him if he can't even beat a "nobody" like Waltman. This is especially true since Bret got a clean submission win over Hall at the Royal Rumble. Actually, I'm kind of surprised they're running Bret-Hall at another pay-per-view in light of that result. I know it's only an opening round match, but it's getting lots of hype, as we saw here. I might have switched the brackets and put Bret vs. Mr. Hughes in order to keep the matchups fresh. That would have left us with a Perfect-Razor bout, which hadn't been run on pay-per-view before and could have blown off the issue between those two once and for all.

 

Savage isn't exactly a perfect straight man for Heenan, but the Brain got off a classic nonetheless when discussing Bill Fralic's golf tournament: "I had four holes-in one. I only played three holes. though." When he says it, it actually makes sense!

 

This is the first angle involving a challenge or a bounty that I can think of in the WWF since the bounty placed by Heenan on Paul Orndorff's head in 1985, which was never collected and ultimately forgotten when Paul turned on Hogan in the summer of '86. (John Studd's bodyslam challenge ran concurrent to this, but it had been around since Studd's original WWF debut in late 1982.)