[1993-07-18-WWF-Wrestling Challenge] Marty Jannetty vs Mr Hughes

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

This time period may have been Jannetty's peak, between this match, the Michaels match and the Doink match. Hughes does a few nice things, but this is really a Jannetty match through and through, and it's his selling and Jim Ross's commentary that gets Hughes over strong. Really well laid out. Hughes is awkward and has trouble selling or stringing together more than one move, but Marty works well with him and carries him to something decent.

[KB8]

I agree, Marty was fucking awesome around this time. There's a bunch of really neat stuff in the Doink match, but I put that down to two really good wrestlers coming up with ideas and running with them. Here though, other than Hughes' big bumps off of armdrags (I love Hughes bumping around like that, because he's super athletic for a guy that big), this is a total Marty show and he has a lot of fun stuff to eat up time.

 

Would it be a stretch to call him a top 5 guy in the company that year?

[Gregor]

No, I don't think it would be a stretch at all. Bret Hart's the only guy in the WWF who I'd say was definitely better than Jannetty in 1993. I'm not saying he's #2 for sure, but if he has an argument for that spot then it's not a reach to say that he's one of the top five.

[Kevin Ridge]

I like Ross making the argument since you can’t see Mr. Hughes eyes behind the sunglasses that it makes him more unpredictable. Marty goes for a headscissors outside and Hughes just drops him over the steel railing. Best Hughes singles match but that all comes down to Jannetty. He made Hughes looking like a monster just bumping off him. Marty throws everything at Hughes in the end before being caught in a powerslam. Marty had some excellent matches in 93 and early 94. He didn't seem to have much of a singles push though after dropping the IC title back to Shawn.

[PeteF3]

Ah, here it is: the first--and for many to come only--Yearbook match I saw live.

 

Not a terrible match but not really good either. Hughes has gone totally WWF-style and other than those armdrags we don't see any of Hughes the big fat bump machine, and his offense isn't anything special either. This is totally made by Marty bumping off him and throwing high-flying moves at him, essentially wrestling a brick wall. That superkick was ghastly--more impactful than just about any version Shawn ever did except maybe the time he killed a flying Shelton Benjamin.

 

This was during a stretch of long feature bouts on both Superstars and Challenge--there was a 6-man at this same taping that even got the "we're out of time!" treatment and was finished the next week. I still suspect that Ross' fingerprints were all over this stuff.

[soup23]

I didn't dig this one much at all. Hughes had a really good match in 91 but couldn't deliver the goods here. Marty does his stick and move routine which works to a degree but ultimately this fell short of the memorable WWF syndicate matches. **

[garretta]

What a waste of a great performance by Jannetty. He was on fire here, dominating most of the match offensively and looking superb doing it. But Hughes was the one with the push, so he got to hit one lucky move and score the three-count, which did nothing to help him out either. Marty either needed to get the clean win here to set up his IC title rematch with Shawn the next night on ​Raw ​or be squashed flat in three or four minutes to get Hughes over as a monster who could give Taker a run for his money. The only decent move Hughes hit here was the counter to Marty's flying headscissors on the outside where he dropped him on the railing. Outside of that, he did almost nothing whatsoever besides yelling taunts directed at Taker into the camera.

 

On the plus side, JR and Heenan were wonderful together here, and JR seems to have gotten the idea of how to work with Bobby. The highlight was the spelling game they played, where Bobby would go to write down a comment and JR would "help" him spell it. That's the kind of thing you would have expected out of Gino six or seven years before (although they never did that exact bit), and it wouldn't surprise me if Gino, whom JR has credited as someone who helped him learn how to get along during his early WWF days, gave him some tips on how to bring the best out of Heenan while still maintaining his own trademark style.

 

Bobby was also very good with strategy here, describing in detail how he would use Hughes' outfit against him if he was in Marty's shoes. That's only one example of how informative he was here, and if you like his humorous side, the Oklahoma hayseed jokes at JR's expense were here too, including a classic line about Marty having to possibly ride to the hospital in the back of JR's hay-strewn pickup truck. What a shame Vince had already taken over as the lead pay-per-view announcer again, because these two deserved to work together at least one more time, preferably without Savage to weigh them down.

 

For such an iconic character, we've seen very little of Taker in these last two Yearbooks. Were his feuds that ​unwatchable during this time? If so, how the hell did he get over as one of the greatest personalities and superheavyweights in WWF/E history?