November 1993

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Talk about it here.

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This is an elimination match but starts off like Thunderqueen, I guess AJW was trying to capture the brilliance of Thunderqueen a few months prior. Minami and Masami open up for the first five minutes, and Minami surprisingly holds her own but she gets bombed to hell, just holds out long enough to draw the first 5 minutes. Then we get Ozaki vs Shimoda for another five minutes, and we get another draw. Then, in comes the Mita vs Mariko matchup, Mita completely owns Mariko until Mariko pulls out a kneebar, and...we get another draw. Now we get Akira Hokuto face off with Dynamite Kansai. Test of strength, and here come the kicks, and Hokuto is literally kicked out of th…

Another quality Kandori/Hotta tag from the depths of japanese YouTube. The pretty girls Handa and Inoue do a lot better in this match than you'd expect. Early on there's a weird long outside brawl which is largely missed by the cameras, but Inoue comes up bloody, which gives Kandori ample opportunity to kick and punch her in the bloody face while mugging and posing for Hotta. Hotta is a great hot tag as you'd expect as she just destroys Handa with brutal kicks. We also get some pretty great retaliation from Inoue on Honda, which was mostly her smashing Handas head into the ring apron and tables which was so much better than the usual move fest. Inoue also hit a pretty bos…

We get a nifty chance to look at Regal work a house show tag match along side fellow classic heel stooge Dick Slater. This is mostly the heel bumping and clowning for the faces and these are a pair of great clowns. Regal and Davey Boy had a great PPV match full of WOS spots, and they break out a bunch of those tricks here. This stuff has been spammed a lot by indy dudes lately, but it is pretty crazy to watch them do wristlock cartwheel counters in 93 WCW. Sting and Regal have a really fun knucklock sequence, with Sting doing a super impressive bridge with Regals weight on top of him. The finish came a bit abruptly after a long heel kneework section on Davey Boy, but tha…

I thought this was an excellent house show title defense. They got a lot out of not doing very much but kept it exciting and engaging the entire way through. Steamboat gets a great babyface reaction with Rude only having to play a very low key heel. There's a great moment where he gets shit canned over the the guard rail and kids (and I think some older fans too) swarm to lay hands on Ricky and lend support. If I had one criticism some of Steamboat's frustration made him less likable by the end but that also kind of worked in the favor of the psychology of the match. I love the chemistry these two had and was really happy to get this example of them working for the back r…

WWF Intercontinental Champion Razor Ramon vs Diesel - WWF RAW 11/29/93 A non-title bout. Shawn Michaels is back in WWF and he is disputing Ramon's Intercontinental Championship as Michaels has never lost it. This leads to of course the very famous Ladder Match. It is a great angle and a perfect use of the Ladder Match. It makes sense that Ramon takes on HBK's heater prior to the match to put some stank on the feud. Short match, but we do see, is pretty good. It is a Kliq Match so Razor is very giving and really lets Diesel shine. You can see the Diesel push is starting. He got his own program coming out of Summerslam with Mr. Perfect. While IRS was the leader o…

Talk about it here.

Talk about it here.