March 1994

Even taking into account the cop-out countout finish, this was better than it had any right to be. The tag team scene is still struggling come 1994, but it's clear that they have big things planned for Mabel. Mo works portions of this match to allow the bigger Mabel to not get too gassed and he's not too bad, he hits a really impressive cross body that gets a lot of height for his size. When Mabel is in the ring, the commentators gush over how huge he is and he gets a lot of power spots and even lands a spinning wheel kick that pops the crowd huge. The Quebecers double suplex Mabel and everyone in the building looks shocked. The Quebecers eventually get themselves counted…

This was billed as falls count anywhere but in reality it was falls count anywhere except in the ring. It was sort of convoluted. You can't pin your opponent in the ring, but pinning them anywhere else in the arena or city of New York is fine. It also had a Texas death match twist to it in that after each fall the loser had sixty seconds to return to the ring. If he couldn't do so, the match was over. In practice it only went about eight minutes but it was an okay little brawl. Few are better than Savage at communicating the hatred of a feud that's supposed to be built on hate and he came out the gate jumping straight at Crush's face. You bought that he hated him, basical…

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IWGP Heavyweight Champion Shinya Hashimoto vs Scott Norton - NJPW 3/21/94 Having defeated Muta twice, Sasaki and Chono at the Dome, Hashimoto had burned through a lot of challengers, a perfect time for top gaijin in New Japan, Scott Norton to step up. Looking at Scott Norton, he seems like he should be a favorite of mine as a big brick shithouse type wrestler, but I have not seen much to judge. The first ten minutes or so of this is excellent. Really riveting David vs Goliath type shit which is not something you get to see from Hashimoto often. Norton is trash talking him telling him to hit the ropes. Hashimoto cant budge the big man. I love how he no sells the ra…

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Nothing fancy here--just two guys stiffing the shit out of each other in gritty, gritty fashion. Kawada seems to have an answer for what most of Hansen tries, and has some cool counters to the Lariat. But eventually Hansen catches him with it. Kawada has seemingly been lost in the wilderness since losing the Tag Titles--he desperately, desperately needs a signature win or three. As it stands at the moment, no one could possibly expect that he "should have gone over" on 6/3.

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Well, on paper these two are almost perfectly matched for each other: one of joshi's nastiest individuals against one of its most sympathetic underdogs. There's actually some fine counter-wrestling on display for most of this, before Kansai asserts herself with her sick kicks. From there this is an extended squash with a few timely hope spots from Hasegawa. I had trouble with this because the Youtube video was off circa-1978 equipment and woefully out of sync, so maybe this would be better on rewatch. As it is, not really essential viewing by either woman's standard, but a good Champions Carnival-style match.

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Lex Luger vs Rick Martel - WWF RAW 3/28/94 I am interested to see how Luger is presented after the title loss. Vince harps on him being screwed out of the title but I think Mr. Perfect’s name only comes up once. Ted DiBiase is sitting ringside for this match. I am not sure if Perfect was ever going to happen. It looks like DiBiase trying to buy Luger was already in the works. How refreshing to let an angle play out over 5 months rather shoot the whole angle in one week then rehash the same shit for 3 months. DiBiase has a sneaky important 1994 with both Undertaker vs FakerTaker and Luger/Tatanka being 2/3 major angles going into Summerslam 1994. Luger and Martel…

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