[1993-08-07-WWF-Superstars] Face to Face: Yokozuna and Bret Hart

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Local promo for a match we have a handheld of! Awesome! I don't know why it surprises me, but it does that Bret is really good in this setting.

[Kevin Ridge]

Hart gets himself a WWF Title match against Yokozuna at MSG. Savage versus Lawler on that card also. Fuji manages to out talk Bret with Hart struggling to get a word in towards the end.

[PeteF3]

Okerlund's role has become increasingly marginalized, as he only has a few weeks left with the company at this point.

 

The '93 Observers have interesting stuff about these Face-to-Face segments, and how demoralizing they were for the roster, since they had to fly up to Connecticut on a supposed day off to do them all. I get how localizing the promos again after years of generic Event Center segments would be a logical attempt to rebuild a failing house show business, but I'm sure the wrestlers saw this as a step back.

 

Yokozuna speaks! (In that he says whole sentences, rather than just shouting "BANZAI!")

[soup23]

Hart goes from being a heel chastising the Southerners vs. Lawler to be a hero for everyone to cheer against Yoko here. Good local vibe and build for the MSG match upcoming.

[garretta]

Anything ​would have been better than those lousy Event Center promos. This managed to create the illusion of interaction between Bret, Fuji, and Yoko, and surprisingly, Fuji and Yoko come across slightly better than Bret does. That isn't to say that Fuji was good or that Corny wouldn't be an improvement, just that they shone during this particular segment.

 

I like Yoko doing a bit of his own talking, just enough to appear to be his own man and not just a pawn of Fuji's or Corny's. He probably wasn't glib enough to handle his own promos from start to finish, but he showed here that he could execute when the situation called for it.

 

Sad to see that we're leading up to Mean Gene's WWF swan song. He noticeably lost a step almost immediately in WCW, and once Hogan turned heel and didn't need him as the Cosell to his (Hogan's) Ali, he really lost his sense of purpose. Getting sick didn't help him either, as he looked ten years older than he really was due to his liver problems.

 

By the way, the last MSG cage match prior to this one came in January of '91, when the Ultimate Warrior defeated Randy Savage just two days after dropping the belt to Sgt. Slaughter at the Royal Rumble.