Oh man, this needs more love! What a hilarious tune lol

There are 10 new episodes of Superstars on the Network. I wish I could set up an email alert that would tell me these things.

Shawn Michaels cutting a promo on Tatanka in advance of WM IX: "Well I got news for ya, Indian!"

That's a new variation.

Not only was Bret vs. Yokozuna surely the least-anticipated Mania main event in history up until that point, but it seems like a pretty massive drop-off from #2 until then (I would think Hogan vs. Bundy). It definitely made the Mania build feel Mickey Mouse to me.

"Look at the size of those puppies!" -Bobby Heenan, talking about Giant Gonzales's hands.

Such an innocent time.

Man, I still remember this opening of the 4/10/93 Superstars. Having no idea what happened in WrestleMania, I was not expecting the second half of, "And just who will be World Wrestling Federation Champion: Yokozuna...or Hulk Hogan?!"

Such a sinking feeling to find out that Hogan somehow again came away from Mania with the belt.

I wonder how that whole sequence goes where someone like Louie Spicolli finally gets upgraded from pure jobber status after years of doing it. "Congratulations, buddy. We're gonna let you be Rad Radford. If you play your cards right, we might give you a low-key angle where you try and fail to become a disciple of Bodydonna Skip."

I also wonder what caused Jim Duggan to go from trunks to a singlet after many years in the trunks. It's not like his body got worse.

Wasn’t this ultimately the most pointless Hogan reign as he dropped the belt back to Yokozuna in the next 1-2 months to set up the Summer of Lex?

Yes. I don't think he won it back with any long-term plan to launch Luger. Really, I don't think they even had a particular plan for a Luger face turn at the time of KOTR 1993, where Hogan jobbed to Yoko (via camera man interference).

Seems like they probably hoped that Hogan would show up and slam Yoko on the Intrepid, but that Luger was the backup plan. As much as I did actually get behind the Summer of Lex push, it really was absurd that he went from The Narcissist to the obsessed patriot with no progression in between. Totally believable in kayfabe for any American, even one who doesn't wave the flag on any regular basis, to step up in Lex's spot and stand up to Yoko. Far less believable in kayfabe for an American to react to Yoko's challenge by immediately beginning to dress like this and make the American flag the center of his entire personality.

I thought the plan was for Hogan to put over Bret at KOTR, but he refused, so they just put the belt back on Yokozuna?

To my knowledge, the story on that has been that they planned on Bret vs. Hogan for SummerSlam rather than KOTR. Bret claims they did a WWF Magazine photo shoot to hype that very thing.

Not sure of the exact story on Hogan's exit except that he apparently flaked on house shows after WM IX and only worked some more tag matches with Brutus against Money Inc. It's clear that they did KOTR in a way that allowed it to be Hogan's curtain call, since Yoko squashed him with repeated banzai drops after the match. Of course, that wouldn't have stopped Hogan from miraculously returning at the Intrepid event.

Very random sighting, just happened to catch my eye as the camera quickly panned by:



That's definitely the "shoes are too tight" woman from WM VII who was crying during the Liz-Savage reunion. Glad she relaxed enough to wear a t-shirt to an event instead of the full business suit she was wearing at WM VII.

I found her former self:

Everyone else has to qualify for the KOTR tournament. Bret gets automatically seeded #1 and doesn't have to qualify.

Bret got jobbed with salt in the eyes at Mania, so there's kayfabe sense to this, but it's just never good booking for a babyface to give him a pass into a tourney that others have to earn their way into, especially if the plan is for him to win it.

Weird-ass moment where Hulk Hogan is in mid-promo and his brain stops functioning for a moment.

Hogan: "Now to cut to the quick, brother: we're gonna take care of that dude in Dayton. But you, Fuji, you, Yokozuna, or anyone else that messes with me, my little Hulksters, or the brothers at my side...you're messing with my family. I precious that - I pressure that - I precious that...I REGARD that more than life - I'm so excited I can't even talk -"
Gene: "Hey! I can tell it!"

It was not only a pre-tape, but it was from the beach, so I'm surprised they just went to air with it. But then again, the gears might have already started working toward burying him.

I was so all-in for the 1993 Mr. Perfect face run. In hindsight I should have known very well that he wasn't winning KOTR, but I was obsessed with the idea of him winning it during the run-up.

He was left to offer the indisputable best babyface/babyface post-match handshake in history.



"I'm ****ing pissed I lost. In the name of sportsmanship, here you go. ... Still ****ing pissed, because winning this match was everything."

And nobody bothered to take notes that THAT is how you do it.

Pretty random to see Typhoon working a singles jobber squash in May 1993. Figured he and Quake were both gone from the company by this point.

He was only three months away from the infamous debut of The Shockmaster in WCW.

Amazing catch! Nice Mr Perfect shirt.

Was she a superfan or a plant?

Fall Brawl 1993 was one of the few WCW ppvs I ever got. Coincidentally, this is the next War Games show on TLF and I believe this was his in ring debut. Match ending spoiler:



Slightly ot: Cactus vs Yoshi Kwan on that show was the most disappointing thing I ever saw.

I assume superfan. The camera didn't linger on her at all here, so there was no particular intent to feature her here; I just had an "Ace Ventura spots Ray Finkel" moment.

Man, things have really gotten desperate when you're running weekly vignettes to hype the arrival of the Smoking Gunns.

Companies generally botch the **** out of undefeated streaks, but few examples are worse than the Tatanka undefeated streak.

For whatever help it provided in getting him over, they just kept booking themselves into a corner where they increasingly had to give him non-finishes in every match. WrestleMania title shot has to be a countout. Put him in the King of the Ring qualifier against Giant Gonzalez and only let him escape with a DQ win where Gonzalez is disqualified for brutalizing him too badly. Then a time limit draw at KOTR. It's almost as though they could just let him lose at a certain point instead of obsessively keeping the streak going long past its usefulness.

Not to mention having the streak end with an unceremonious squash at the hands of Ludvig Borga.

I have to say, I didn't actually hate the Borga squash of Tatanka. I liked Borga, and that result at least seemed like a big deal. (I of course was unaware that Tony Halme was an actual unabashed Nazi.)

Giving Mr. Perfect a 2.5-year undefeated streak and then blowing it off on a house show, to a guy right on the verge of pinning Hulk Hogan clean, and then never mentioning it on national TV...now THAT was a master class in how not to capitalize on an undefeated streak.

These types of things make sense in the case of someone like Goldberg, who is a dominant monster, or Mr. Perfect, whose gimmick sort of demands that you keep jobbing to a minimum, but Tatanka was neither physically impressive nor the owner of a gimmick that really lent itself to the streak. It was just kind of dumb.

I never felt strongly about him either way as a fan. I was intrigued when they gave him the weekly vignette treatment prior to debuting him. But then he debuted and he gave up a bunch of offense to a jobber in his first match, and that probably did more to shape my opinion of him than the long undefeated streak did; it forever stuck with me. That stuff mattered a lot. Bret Hart giving up near-falls to Virgil, and I'm supposed to buy him as World Champion? Sorry, but a wrestler who is a big deal needs to demonstrate dominance whenever the opponent is a small-timer.