[1993-08-13-WWF-MSG, NY] Jerry Lawler vs Randy Savage

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Insanely heated. Lawler seriously is ridiculously over. There's one point where he tells a Helen Hart joke before the match, and the crowd stops booing for approximately 3 seconds to laugh then immediately returns to booing. Savage is an afterthought here, getting in almost no offense on Lawler and when Bret comes down to get in Lawler's face and eventually attack him -- resulting in Lawler winning by DQ -- Savage just kinda stands there like a bump on a log. I will continue repeating it as I watch this set -- Vince thought Savage was done way before he actually was.

[KB8]

I couldn't make out a lot of what he was saying at the start, but yeah, they were just all over him here. At one point I'm pretty sure someone in the crowd tries to throw something at him. Pretty much a total Lawler show, but not because Savage is bad or anything -- like you said, Vince has more or less given up on him at this point and has stuck him in the "afterthought" category.

[Matt D]

Insanely heated. Lawler seriously is ridiculously over. There's one point where he tells a Helen Hart joke before the match, and the crowd stops booing for approximately 3 seconds to laugh then immediately returns to booing. Savage is an afterthought here, getting in almost no offense on Lawler and when Bret comes down to get in Lawler's face and eventually attack him -- resulting in Lawler winning by DQ -- Savage just kinda stands there like a bump on a log. I will continue repeating it as I watch this set -- Vince thought Savage was done way before he actually was.

Did Savage vs Flair draw in 92? Did Crush vs Savage headline any shows? I guess I can research that. #3 would be, did Hogan's exit (and how difficult Warrior was to deal with, perhaps) have something to do with Vince wanting to tone down the importance of Savage? Or what about how unstable he apparently was in 92 when the Liz break up happened?

[Phil Schneider]

This was very similarly worked to their Nassau Coliseum match a year later, Lawler working his signature heel match, hiding a chain and pounding on an over babyface. Savage however was way more game then he was a year earlier. Lawler breaks out the toastmasters joke book over the microphone to start, and Savage comes out with his own Macho midget dressed in matching gear. Lawler goes after the midget, and is able to crack Savage with a chain while he was on midget defense. Savage takes a huge over the top rope bump and a nasty post shot, and Lawler does the things he did. No one does that particular dance as well as heel King, and we even got a great douche bag rope a dope by Lawler. Savage takes over and chucks Lawler over the top where the king does his insane signature bump, and gets smashed into steel posts. It looks like Savage is going to finish him off, but Lawler surprisingly retakes control by catching him with a shot to the belly off an axehandle. Lawler hits his piledriver but Bret Hart comes out and the jaw back and forth before Lawler spits on Hart, causing Bret to rush the ring and the DQ. Definitely one of the better 90's WWF Lawler matches I have seen, and it was fun to watch Lawler and Savage working with the heel/face roles reversed.

[jdw]

The match Phil recommends is on this card:

 

WWF @ Long Island, NY - Nassau Coliseum - July 9, 1994 (3,100)

Randy Savage pinned Jerry Lawler at 11:04 by reversing a backdrop attempt into a sunset flip

 

WWF World Champion Bret Hart defeated Owen Hart with the Sharpshooter in sudden death overtime of a 60-minute marathon match; results of falls: Bret pinned Owen at 35:31 by reversing a sunset flip, Owen won via submission to a figure-4 at 43:58, Owen won via submission to a figure-4 at 46:08, Bret won via submission with the Sharpshooter at 53:45, Bret won via submission with the Sharpshooter at 1:08:23

 

Might want to include it in the 1994 set. smkelly mentioned it as looking interesting off a tape list, but no one pimped it. I suspect the Bret-Owen is a lock.

 

John

[ohtani's jacket]

That Owen/Bret match has some great Owen stalling but as far as the actual wrestling goes it should not be on the set whatsoever.

[KB8]

How much house show Lawler is floating about from '93, anyway? I know there's that Tito match that's also from MSG where he has the crowd totally eating out of his palm by the end of it (Phil talks about it on Segunda Caida, I'm sure). I'd happily sit and watch Jerry rile WWF house show crowds up all day.

[Loss]

That Owen/Bret match has some great Owen stalling but as far as the actual wrestling goes it should not be on the set whatsoever.

Way too talked about a match to not be represented, even if it doesn't hold up.

[Frankensteiner]

I think that match totally holds up. I'd say it's their second best match behind the Cage match.

[Kevin Ridge]

Macho Midget is still around. Another performance by Lawler where he picks apart his opponent. Totally dominates Savage. Macho gets a flurry of punches and Lawler takes a huge bump over the top rope to the outside. Crowd was popping big for that. King back in control after as Bret Hart shows up. Very complaining 1997 type Bret. He ends up attacking Lawler in the ring. What a poor sport! Lawler happily takes the DQ victory. Big tease of a fight between Savage and Hart after. Savage may have been underused by Vince but I wish Lawler had got pushed more. He was getting big heat.

[PeteF3]

Man oh man...I'm enjoying the matches, but this is part of a BIG stretch of long foreign bouts and handhelds, and it's starting to wear. This is a note as much for myself for future reference as anyone else, not to get too surprised if I start to get pissy and nitpicky until I get some Memphis interviews or WWF Updates to break things up.

 

Huge heat for Lawler. "I HATE BURGERS AND I HATE YOU!" Fantastic. Lawler begins with a public service announcement: "Would the lady who left her nine kids at Shea Stadium please come pick them up, they're beating the Mets 6-0!" Old joke at an easy target, but the crowd instantly gets madder than they already were. Foreign object usage aside, once the match starts it's about as strong as Lawler has ever looked with the company, at least until the feuds with Taz and the Miz. Bret Hart makes his way to the ring and like Elizabeth at WM8 he's inexplicably confronted by an army of suits. Jerry clearly has Savage beaten when he takes the time to spit at Bret Hart, who assaults Lawler for the DQ. That leads to an intriguing pull-apart with Savage afterward, which sadly won't go anywhere.

 

The legal issues would have derailed things anyway, but I still think they could have gone farther than they did with this Lawler heel push. Savage was marginalized, but the crowd is still hot for him and VERY hot for the post-match. Camera-operator: "Who do you like now?" Little kid: "MACHO! He's a legend!" Vince should have listened to that boy.

 

As a package this was pretty awesome, actually. The match isn't really great, but both guys do work hard especially by the sometimes hard-to-watch WWF house show standards of the day.

[soup23]

Not the best match but really great to see Lawler in this environment. Savage continues to be a guy were throughout the 90's, I have been mostly unimpressed in ring and he didn't do a whole lot here. Lawler was masterful with the control of the match and set up the ending perfectly. Savage and Bret going after each other for a bit before cooler heads prevailed was interesting. ***

[garretta]

I hated this one.

 

First, almost everyone who reads these forums knows that heel Lawler grinds my gears. I'd watch him as the Memphis everyman every day for a hundred years, but he doesn't try as a heel whatsoever, in the ring or on the mic. The jokes have whiskers on them, the hide-the-chain stuff makes the refs of his matches look like total retards for not catching it (he plays to the crowd too much instead of just sneaking in a shot that no one can see), and the rest of his offense shows no skill whatsoever. Even his piledriver and DDT were weak here.

 

But the bigger problem was Savage. I'm not sure who I blame for his non-performance here; I'm sure he knew how Vince felt about him as a wreslter by now, but that neither explains nor excuses his total lack of effort. It's so bad it ruins Bret's run-in; instead of being angry that Bret caused Savage's chance to beat Lawler to go by the boards, I was pissed at Randy for being mad that Bret saved him from a further asskicking. He did nothing in the match to show that he deserved to win it: no heart, no fire, no resilience at all. He had the one flurry where he beat Lawler up a bit on the outside and that was it. The rest of the time, he was a punching bag, to the point that I'm wondering if he tanked (as in not putting in a good effort) on purpose as a protest to Vince over the way he was being used. What better time to do it than in his main building, the one he still travels to every show without fail? Either Randy gets a meeting where he can air his beefs or he's released and can go somewhere where he'll be used more to his liking.

 

I think the suits were out to stop Bret because he had a World title match later that night and they supposedly didn't want him to tire himself out worrying about Lawler. Of course, the added benefit was that SummerSlam remained hot, since Bret didn't get more than a few punches in on Lawler.

 

I wish the clip from Superstars​ where Lawler slapped Savage had made the set, because I'm betting that Randy showed more fire reacting to the slap than he did during this whole match.

 

I just thought of something: Maybe Randy was returning the favor from his April trip to Memphis, when he and Lawler clashed at the MSC and Randy got 95% of the offense. I didn't like that match much either. Are we ever going to see these two work to their capabilities against each other again? I'm not holding my breath, that's for sure.