Monday Night Raw - October 4th, 1993

• Raw wastes no time, kicking off with the 20 man battle royal. It’s all the top stars currently on the roster including Mr. Perfect, Macho Man, Razor Ramon, Tatanka and both halves of the WWF Tag Team Champions but noteworthy is newcomer, Abe “Knuckleball” Schwartz. That’s the repackaged Brooklyn Brawler and up there with Friar Ferguson and Bastion Booger as one of those gimmicks people mention when they’re making fun of this period in wrestling history. It’s the WWF making fun of the baseball strike that was ongoing at the time. The commentators are actually calling him MVP here so he doesn’t have his full on silly gimmick name yet. Shawn Michaels’ bodyguard Diesel is also in this match which makes it his first in-ring performance on Raw. The stipulation here is simple - the final two men in the ring will meet in a singles match next week for the vacant Intercontinental title. Giant Gonzales is the first man eliminated and that is his farewell - he appeared on a few house shows after this but was gone from the company by the end of the following week.

• Razor throws out IRS to continue their feud and Diesel makes a strong showing of himself, eliminating the 500lbs Mabel single handedly. It breaks down to a heel foursome of The Quebecers, Adam Bomb and Rick Martel against the babyface duo of Razor Ramon and Macho Man in the final six and the bad guys all work together. Macho and Adam Bomb basically eliminate each other and after a long period of three French Canadian heels hammering on Razor three on one, Razor counters Jacques and Pierre, sending them both out and over the top rope. Razor and The Model are the last two in the ring and referees quickly rush the ring to hold Martel and Ramon apart. They’ll meet next week and the fans were SO behind Razor here, chanting his name and desperate to see him pull out the victory.

• After the commercial break, Jim Cornette introduces the Heavenly Bodies for their match against Mark Thomas and Scott Taylor. This is a showcase match for the boys from Smokey Mountain Wrestling. In doing my research for these shows I learned some pretty nasty things about Gigalow Jimmy. He was not a nice man, known for doing some unspeakably awful things to women including sexual assault and shaving their heads while they were drugged. As far as I could find, there were no criminal convictions brought against him so much like Superfly Jimmy Snuka, he’s one of those characters I’ll just need to have my own opinion of and try to ignore. It’s a victory for Del Ray and Pritchard of course.
• Vince shows us some highlights from the previous week’s Superstars where Doink the Clown doused heels Bam Bam Bigelow and Luna Vachon with buckets of glitter and water respectively and then got them to chase him around the ring and tripped them. That confirms that Doink has turned babyface which is a real shame because I loved him as a heel. 

• Back on Raw, Doink is in singles action and debuts new theme music - it's just the classic circus music now without the awesome sinister instrumental. He threatens to throw a bucket of water on Bobby Heenan again and makes him beg, but it's a bucket of popcorn instead. Vince loves it. Doink defeats the bald jobber without any real issues. He rode a little bike adorned with red and white balloons to the ring - I did like that. Bam Bam comes down to the ring to try and get his hands on Doink but he’s restrained by referees and officials. He settles for smashing up Doink’s little red wagon and throwing it into the ring but Doink is unbothered and has a good laugh at Bam Bam.

• Raw ends with a five minute hard sell for next week, playing the final moments of the battle royal and Vince hyping up next week’s Intercontinental title match. Machismo vs. Magnifique, The Bad Guy vs. The Model, Razor Ramon vs. Rick Martel. It worked - I’m looking forward to the match!

Monday Night Raw - October 11th, 1993

• We waste no time and after a video recap of last week’s events it’s time for the Intercontinental Championship match. Rick Martel had taken a hiatus from the WWF for a while but he’s back and on a bit of a roll, but Razor’s popularity has exploded since turning babyface. He was pushed super strong last week overcoming three on one odds. They start out with some chain wrestling and Martel slaps Razor around, being disrespectful. When Ramon fights back he does the same thing much to Vince McMahon’s glee on commentary. After a competitive back and forth 10 minutes, Razor finishes off Martel to win his first championship. He looks great with the Intercontinental title belt too. Solid match but the outcome was never in doubt, even at the time.

• The Headshrinkers take on a pair of mulleted jobbers in ugly singlets. The commentators spend a lot of the match comparing Samu and Fatu to other teams in the WWF and suggesting that no one stands a change against the two islander savages. A top rope splash by Fatu gives them the victory.
• The Rocket Owen Hart, who looks much better having gotten rid of the High Energy era baggy pants, takes on a guy with an overbite so big it could open beer bottles. This match gives the commentary trio a chance to talk about Jerry Lawler and his constant insults directed at specifically Owen’s brother Bret but in general the entire Hart family. A missile dropkick and a Northern Lights suplex gives Owen the victory. 

• Vince McMahon conducts an interview with Ludvig Borga. He insults America, calling Americans illiterate and lazy, and calls Lex Lugar a garbage truck driver - because America is full of garbage you see. Lex Lugar has had enough of listening and comes down to respond. He says basically what you’d expect him to say “if you don’t like it, get out, America is the best” and so on. He challenges Borga to a match and flips out when Ludvig turns his back and just leaves the ring - he says he’ll fight Lugar when he wants to, not when Lex wants it.

• Adam Bomb has a new manager. Johnny Polo has traded him to Harvey Whippleman. That was wise - I commented more than once that the pairing made no sense to me. An Atom Smasher powerbomb gives him the win.
• They are promoting the return of Crush next week for a “summit” with Macho Man. Bobby Heenan thinks it’ll get physical but Randy says it’s all cool. They’re friends who have an issue so they’ll talk it out and get back on the same page. He’s not worried about fighting with Crush and is confident it’ll all be fine after next week.

• The Rock n’ Roll Express, who are the Smokey Mountain Wrestling Tag Team Champions and rivals of the recently arrived Jim Cornette, make their WWF debut in a tag team match with Duane Gill and Barry Hardy. This is part of a talent sharing arrangement with Cornette which also saw people like Undertaker wrestle for SMW in return. Robert Gibson and Ricky Morton are certainly talented wrestlers and have a lot of fun double team moves and tag team fundamentals but they look terrible - they look like a pair of old men with long, flowing mullets. Very hard to take seriously. They win this match with a double dropkick on Duane. 

Monday Night Raw - October 18th, 1993

• The show opens with a dramatic Vince McMahon-narrated video about historical political summits. He includes last week’s confrontation between Lex Lugar and Ludvig Borga, and then mentions the Savage/Crush summit tonight. In the arena, Macho Man seems agitated and accuses both Heenan and McMahon of agitating - tonight he’s going to talk some sense into Crush and sort everything out. Heenan says that at his own personal expense he’s arranged for a camera to be waiting outside the arena so we’ll all know the second that Crush arrives here tonight.

• In the opening match, Scott and Rick Steiner battle PJ Walker and Tony Devito. Scott is really aggressive here, murdering Walker with a suplex into a piledriver and then forcing him to tag out so he and Rick can finish off Devito with their tandem bulldog off the top. Dominant performance for the former Tag Team Champions.
• In an interesting storyline wrinkle, Vince promotes a fan vote about whether Shawn Michaels should be brought back from his suspension or not. He’s had his Intercontinental title taken off him already. Diesel and Mr. Perfect argue both sides of the argument. In storyline he was suspended for no-showing events and ducking title defences - Diesel says he had the flu! 

• There’s a new WWF Unbelievable video, this one putting Yokozuna in an old school monster movie! Amazing.

• Irwin R. Schyster battles Scott Taylor. Interestingly from a time capsule point of view, during this match Vince promotes this week’s special movie on the USA Network which was Stephen King’s Pet Cemetery. He always promoted something else on USA during these shows but its rarely worth mentioning. IRS wins this with his Write Off clothesline.
• There’s a video promoting the arrival of Double J, Jeff Jarrett. A country music star who wants to use the WWF to boost his music career. The video says it better than I can.

• Undefeated Tatanka battles Iron Mike Sharpe. Before the match there’s footage from WWF Superstars where Tatanka had a run-in backstage with Ludvig Borga. Tatanka dares him to step up and say what he’s said about America to his face. Here tonight, Tatanka defeats the big barrel chested bruiser with his Papoose to Go drop. 

• Joe Fowler hosts the Survivor Series report. There’s now been two matches announced, but the show sold out before any had been. It’s “a double main event” says Joe. Interestingly one of them is Bret and his three brothers (only Owen was also under WWF contract at the time) vs. Jerry Lawler and three mystery knights. I’ll have a lot more to say about that match in particular at the show.

• Crush has finally arrived. Bobby Heenan runs backstage to meet him. He’s grown himself an evil goatee while he was out healing up from the four Banzai drops. When Heenan gets back to ringside he reads the riot act to Savage for what he has apparently done, but won’t provide any details. 
• Before we get to the Crush/Savage summit, Bam Bam Bigelow takes on a guy in ugly blue tights that look like denim. Bam Bam finishes him off with the diving headbutt.
• Apparently the fan vote is 65% in favour of NOT bringing back Shawn Michaels so Diesel makes a plea to the fans to please bring back “the greatest wrestler of all time”.

• In the main event segment, Crush heads to the ring but to everyone’s shock, he has Mr. Fuji with him, Throughout this show, Macho Man has barely said a word on commentary but what he did say was about another former friend who turned on him - Hulk Hogan. He calls Hogan a primadonna and that it was probably Hogan who turned Crush against him. Crush tells Macho that he used him and he was jealous because Crush had surpassed him. He calls Mr. Fuji Master Fuji and says that he was there for Crush - he owns the biggest hotel in Hawaii, where he spent his time recuperating! He says Macho could have saved him from those four Banzai drops but chose not to because he wanted Crush to be taken out. Macho has head enough and gets into the ring and calmly tells Crush that they can talk about this rationally and he’ll own up to any mistakes he’s made but Fuji is a parasite and is getting in his head. He tell Crush to shake his hands and not to trust Fuji. They’re best of friends! His words seem to land and he shoves Bobby Heenan away and does shake Macho Man’s hand, which gets a big cheer! Crisis averted - Crush almost turned heel but Randy Savage resued him from the dark side. Or did he? Crush attacks Macho Man from behind! He hammers him around the ringside as WWF Champion Yokozuna and Jim Cornette come down to the ring. Crush throws his now former friend into the ring where he takes a Banzai drop. Crush is now aligned with the man who injured him, united in hate against Macho Man and I guess, America. After a commercial break, Vince McMahon breaks the news that Savage has a lacerated tongue - he had a lot of blood in his mouth during the beating. 

Monday Night Raw - October 25th, 1993

• Raw starts with the way it ended last week and Crush’s in-ring return. He’s changed up his lock, wearing black, purple and silver and coming to the ring with no theme music. Mr. Fuji accompanies him to watch him demolish Phil Apollo. Crush squeezes Apollo’s head to submission, and then continues to stomp on him after the match with encouragement by Fuji. 

• The 1-2-3 Kid battles Marty Jannetty in a rare babyface vs. babyface match. Beforehand, heel manager Johnny Polo mocks both men, sarcastically calling this a manly match between two real rough-housers. These two will be on the same team at Survivor Series, but I’ll talk about that later. This is a fast paced competitive match with them going move for move and counter for counter. The fans pop for the stereo kip up to their feet. Johnny Polo comes out during this match to get a closer look from ringside. Why? He has no pre-existing issue or connection to either of these men. He trips Marty which gets the fans thinking maybe he’s now managing the 1-2-3 Kid but then he trips the Kid too. Polo makes the difference - the referee gets knocked down and on the outside, he shoves Marty into the ring post, causing 1-2-3 Kid to miss a dive onto the outside. Both men are down and he wakes up the referee so he can count and the match ends via a double countout! He screwed them both over. Maty attacks Polo and brings him back to the ring and he and the 1-2-3 Kid work together. A double superkick knocks him out of the ring. I’m not 100% sure what they were going for with this whole segment, but Marty and the Kid are both really popular with the live crowd so its all good.

• There’s another video introducing Double J Jeff Jarrett. I didn’t bother capturing this one. It’s more about how he can’t make it in the music business because of politics - they don’t like local boys like him, just elites from California. He name-dropped Macho Man, Razor Ramon and Lex Lugar last week. This week it’s Undertaker, Mr. Perfect and The Steiners. He’s swinging for the top of the card it seems.
• Ludvig Borga takes on a jobber who Vince just keeps calling Gucci. He looks so unsafe - Borga just throws the guy around, including with a flapjack where he lands on his front really roughly and looked like he broke a wrist. Borga spends more time shouting abuse at the fans than paying attention to his opponent and the crowd chant “we want Lex” at him. Ludvig wins with his torture rack backbreaker and then after the match, Bobby Heenan interviews him. I’ve been very critical of a few people so far in 1993 - Mr. Hughes and Giant Gonzales especially, but Borga might be the worst so far. Generally speaking my criteria for how much I don’t like a wrestler is how unsafe they are. I don’t mind bad wrestlers, it’s not my place to judge and everyone is trying their best, but I have no tolerance for clumsy, unsafe workers who hurt people. Borga may or may not be the worst of the three examples I’ve just given but he seems the least bothered about hurting people. Anyway, he’s facing Tatanka on the next episode of WWF Superstars - undefeated streak vs. undefeated streak.

• Men on a Mission battle two no-names. If you’ve always wanted to hear Vince McMahon say “Woomp there it is!” then this is the episode of Raw for you. He says it twice in fact. Mo and Mabel smash them as Heenan and Vince discuss their pursuit of the WWF Tag Team titles and The Quebecers. 
• Two more matches have been announced for the Survivor Series, in addition to the two we learned about last week. One of them features the 1-2-3 Kid and Marty Jannetty, as discussed earlier. It’s a lot of names to type out so the screenshots are below (top row is one match, bottom row is the second); they’re both four vs. four classic Survivor Series matches. 

• The near 7 foot tall, 300lbs Diesel battles Dan Dubiel. The fan vote about whether Shawn Michaels should be brought back from his suspension or not ended with 63% not wanting HBK back. It’s a commanding performance for the big man who rocks Dan with lots of clotheslines, knees and forearms. A big boot and a stiff punch to the face gives the big man the victory in his first main event, but not his last.