Sunday, August 16, 2015

WWF King Of The Ring 1993



So, in a vain attempt to try and beef up some content, I've been spending whatever time I could doing little write-ups on. For this week, we'll do the first seven King Of The Ring Pay-Per-View events from 1993 to 1999. Though there have been other King Of The Ring tournaments prior to '93, this is the first to be on PPV and for a time within WWF/E canon, all those other tourneys never existed.

Also, I've never seen those tournaments, so I can't really say much.

So, we begin with the quarterfinal matches of the tournament and for the sake of brevity, I'll keep these short and sweet. I suppose I could dwell deep into the mechanics of each match like a proper review would, but then there's a reason why I call these wrestling musings and not reviews.



Bret Hart beats Razor Ramon in a pretty decent opener. I like the finish where Ramon tries a superplex and Bret somehow just counters it.

Mr. Perfect beats Mr. Hughes via DQ when Mr. Hughes attacked Mr. Perfect with Undertaker's urn that he stole from Paul Bearer for some reason... yeah, this was a thing that happened. And for some reason, I didn't care. I can't say why, though.

Bam Bam Bigelow beats Hacksaw Jim Duggan... again, this is a thing that happens.

Lex Luger and Tatanka wrestle to a time-limit draw... hey, remember when time-limit draws were a thing? Golly, I sure wish they brought those back. (Not really, but given all the crummy finishes these days, it'd be something different at least.) This was a thing that happened and I kinda wished hadn't because it sucked... and since this ended in a draw, Bigelow gets a free ticket to the finals... because sure, why not?

And so, in your sole semi-final match, Bret Hart beat Mr. Perfect to advance to the finals of the tournament. For anyone who enjoyed the match they had at Summerslam a couple years prior, they'll probably get a kick out of this as it's every bit as good as that match was and thensome, as Perfect wasn't as hurt here as he was in that other match and there's no annoying Coach character blowing his goddamn whistle. It's a match with two ring greats playing their parts to perfection (no pun intended.)

Yokozuna defeated WWF Champion Hulk Hogan to win the title and drive Hulkamania out of the WWF for almost a decade. This is the match where a "photographer" shot a exploding camera into Hogan's face and Yoko went in for the kill. As irritated as I was at the notion of Hogan winning the title at Wrestlemania IX the way he did, this made me VERY HAPPY. Yeah, the match was plodding bullshit, but even to this day, I get a perversed pleasure in watching Hogan get carried away in agony, with his ego in ashes. Of course, this being long after the fact,

The Smoking Gunns (Billy and Bart Gunn) and The Steiner Brothers (Rick and Scott Steiner) defeated The Headshrinkers (Samu and Fatu) (with Afa) and Money Inc. (Ted DiBiase and Irwin R. Schyster) when Billy rolled up DiBiase for the pin... a classic example of "we've got eight guys that we have no clue what to do with, so let's put them in an eight-man tag-team match." See, kids? It's not just modern-day wrestling that has these.

Intercontinental champion Shawn Michaels defeated Crush to retain the title, taking advantage of Crush being easily distracted by clowns... this is a thing that happened... yeah, I didn't care for this one in the slightest.

Bret Hart defeated Bam Bam Bigelow in the finals to win the King Of The Ring crown. There's actually a point where Luna hits Bret with a chair and that allows Bigelow to score the pinfall with the flying headbutt, but a second ref comes in to smarten up the first ref and the match is restarted as a result and that leads into Bret victory-rolling Bam Bam. This was perfectly acceptable fare.

And so we get the coronation of Bret Hart, with Jerry Lawler jumping in to attack Bret and start a feud that would go on and off for a period of time. And that's it. Show over.

I can't say that I didn't enjoy this one. Whether it was showcasing Bret Hart adapting to different opponents and managing some good to great or the beautiful exile of the Huckster at the hands of Yokozuna, this was a pretty solid offering all things considered. Nothing to complain about here.

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