September 1993

Hulk Hogan & The Great Muta vs The Hellraisers - NJPW 9/23/93 A lot has changed since the Hogan vs Muta confrontation in May both men have lost their championships, Hogan to Yokozuna and Muta to Hashimoto three days prior to this. The Hellraisers were not tag champs at this point, the classic tag team of Scott Norton & Hercules is. So no gold on the line. This match and Tenryu/Hase drew 18,000 to Yokohama Arena, which is a pretty impressive figure. The novelty on the surface is Hogan and Muta as a tag team besides a couple weird looks from Hogan to Muta there is not much there. The real novelty is Hogan eating all of Sasaki's offense like a champ. A lot of…

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Pretty much the perfect WAR v New Japan midcard match. One of the very coolest things about this feud is how nobody ever takes an off night, whether it's a packed out Dome show, a spot show in a thousand-seater venue, or an untelevised house show. Whenever it's WAR v New Japan everybody brings the violence. This was a G1 Climax show headlined by Mutoh v Hase, so it was a card of some relevance. I can only assume the event was taped for television even if the version I watched was a handheld. That said, this was like the fourth match from the top and they had thirteen minutes to work with. Nogami and Iizuka were not a top level team in the company. Tenryu was 44 working mi…

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Recorded via fancam of the event as Young Lion matches were almost universally not filmed outside of some here and there. This in particular is a great showing as it involves two guys who will go on to have strong careers: Ishizawa as the devious Kendo Kashin and Ishikawa as a straight laced ace shooter. Even this early in his career (not even a year) he's pretty great on the mat, and Ishizawa pre Kashin can't coast off his reputation and goofy antics as per standard so he has to do the same. The result is a pretty heated match that starts off with both men hurling out slaps and other strikes in a game of one-upmanship between them while occasionally losing their cool. …

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Great, old school work, with awesome fundumentals and awesome heat. The match is only ten minutes long and it's nonstop fire for those ten minutes. My favourite Regal match of 1993 so far and my favourite Regal vs Steamboat match. *** 3/4

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WWF World Tag Team Champions Quebecers vs 1-2-3 Kid & Barry Horowitz - WWF RAW 9/27/93 The Quebecers had just defeated The Steiners two weeks back in an awesome match under the convoluted Province of Quebec Rules match. Highly recommend that match. This kicks off the Quebecers vs 1-2-3 Kid feud which climaxes with Kid & Marty winning the Tag Team Titles at the 1 year anniversary of RAW in an awesome match which I have called one of two best non-Bret, non-Shawn matches of WWF 93-97. Quebecers claim they will have a high profile title defense. Raven as Johnny Polo is just so weird to me. It doesn’t feel right. They are in New Haven so he is wearing Harvard…

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I'm starting to wonder how these two workers ever got a dubious rep. I've myself dismissed Hotta during the GWE discussion but I will say she is pretty good when not compared to the Top 100 workers ever. Both workers stuck to their strengths here so naturally it was good. It was a slow paced bout, but in my opinion the good kind of slow pace for this type of simple, brutally violent battle.They were wise enough not to go outside the ring or do extended holds. Instead, Kandori brings the flash submissions and takedowns which are over, while Hotta brings the face shattering stiff kicks. I think Hotta was way lower on the totem pole here than Kandori, so she makes up for it …