Matches From 1993

[Loss]

Barry Windham v Arn Anderson - WCW Slamboree 1993

 

Not as good as you'd expect it to be given the participants. Windham and Arn for whatever reason never gelled for me as opponents, but I did enjoy them quite a bit as a team. This is a match with some nice DDTs and spinebusters, and Windham has a pretty wild bladejob going on, but there's just not much of a match, and there's really no build to speak of. You'd think these two would have really good matches against each other, but every Windham/Arn match I've seen has had me disappointed.

[Frankensteiner]

Not so much a review, but more or less a question. I've read a couple of off-hand comments as to the high quality of the 8/93 Hart-Yokozuna Cage match. Now, I've never seen the match myself so it'd be nice if someone could write a review or point me to one.

 

For those that have seen it, how does that match compare with the 12/15/93 Hart-Yokozuna Cage match that made tape (released on Coliseum Video's Inside the WWF)? Checking History of the WWE, Bret-Yoko had a short series of Cage matches in August and September of '93. They didn't work another one until their 12/15 meeting. One would think the match structure wouldn't be all that different between the two, especially given that they were all dark matches, although the work could have been just that much better when they met in San Francisco. I remember watching the taped version a couple of years ago and didn't think much of it then, but I may need to rewatch it.

 

As a side note, a couple of weeks ago, I did see a Hart-Yokozuna match from Survivor Showdown Showdown in '93. It was a decent bout which got my interest in finding out more about their Cage match.

[Guest djhaigh]

Before I begin the review, I just want to clarify something. This is *not* the match that got PWI MOTY honors in 1993. That's the most common misconception there is on the Internet, I think. PWI MOTY was a match they had on 07/19, which was a Shawn Michaels title defense that involved instant replay and the match being restarted.

 

Would it be possible to get a review of the 7/19 match? I've never seen it and I've always wondered why it got PWI MOTY and ****3/4 from Dave. With PWI I just assumed it was the May match because of the title switch.

 

I just watched 7/19 and their Rumble match recently. They serve as quite a contrast. The Rumble match is all a Shawn show. He controls almost the entire match on offense and the finish is really babyface stuff as Sherry "turns" on him but costs Marty the match with miscommunication.

 

Meanwhile, 7/19 is really out of character for Michaels. He's quite subdued. The first segment leading up to the restart is all Jannetty fire punctuated by heel shortcuts from Michaels. Even later, there are almost none of the Shawn signature spots. His most sustained offense is using the ropes for leverage in a facelock.

 

This is Shawn as a sneak and a bit of a coward, not a showman. Marty gets the athletic offense and keeps the crowd hot. Jannetty gets a bunch of cool nearfalls in the final stretch, then takes a monster bump into the finish.

 

Good stuff.

[ohtani's jacket]

Michinoku Pro is something I've never really been into, so I decided to watch a batch of stuff from '93 to see how I like it.

 

Great Sasuke vs. Super Delfin, UWA Welterweight title vs. mask, 7/24/93

Great Sasuke/Sato vs. Super Delfin/Gran Naniwa, 7/26/93 (handheld)

Great Sasuke/TAKA/Sato vs. Delfin/Shinzaki/Naniwa, 8/19/93 (handheld)

Great Sasuke vs. Super Delfin, UWA Welterweight title match, 8/24/93

Super Delfin vs. Sato (Dick Togo), 9/28/93

Super Delfin vs. Sato (Dick Togo), mask vs. mask, 12/10/93

 

Rudo Super Delfin was the revelation here.

 

Not in the sense that he was a great rudo... I have no idea why they gave him this role, he didn't look the part and wasn't that great at playing the part... What surprised me was that instead of being spotty like I thought he would be, he worked a slower, more methodical style. The opening minutes are crap, as they are in a lot of juniors matches... And not just aimless matwork; aimless opening exchanges with no theme to them at all, matwork or otherwise... But once they settled into the heel taking the lead, Delfin did a lot of really good stuff. The 8/93 match against Sasuke is a really good title match. If Delfin had been a more charismatic rudo & Sasuke a more sympathetic babyface, it might have even been a great match.

 

I was looking forward to seeing some early Dick Togo, but he was really green & his gimmick sucked. He was a power wrestler, who could do cool moves for a guy his size, but like most young wrestlers he concentrated on getting his offence right & hadn't developed a character or any of the other nuances of performance. The mask match isn't bad, but I gotta question the booking of why anyone would care that Dick lost his mask at this point.

 

The tag matches aren't flash, but it's worth noting that they're closer to Lucha than the later M-Pro stuff.

 

All up, not bad from a small company in its first year.

[ohtani's jacket]

Harley Saito vs. Takako Inoue, JGP '93, 5/8/93

 

This is one of the best Joshi matches of the 90s and smokes anything Akira Hokuto did in the 1993 Japan Grand Prix.

 

Here you've got Harley Saito who's best work nobody sees because early JWP was barely recorded & nobody can be fucked watching LLPW, and Takako Inoue, who was the hardest working midcarder in AJW at the time, tearing it up for 30 minutes in a match that shouldn't be anywhere near this good except Saito's a fucking pro & Takako was so game in '93. Beat for beat this is near perfect for 30 mins. I have no idea how they managed this. I guess they just went from one beat to the next, got into a groove & it all flowed together. While I was watching it, I kept thinking some dumb shit was bound to happen, but no... Instinctively, I agreed with every thing they chose to do. Anyway, this is built around some really good themes, the predominant one being a rib injury to Saito. I don't think Takako had any idea how good a worker she could be when her confidence was up. Awesome.