Pre-show notes:
– You can watch this week’s vintage episode on WWE Network. There’s also a YouTube link to the show at the top of the next page. You can read about previous episodes on the Best and Worst of Raw tag page.
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Please click through for the Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw for March 8, 1993.
Worst: Bad Life Decisions
That video’s for the entire show, but you only need the first two minutes. Hulk Hogan, Brutus ‘The Barber’ Beefcake and Jimmy Hart open this week’s episode of Raw with 120 seconds of karaoke, cocaine-fueled posedowns and concerning life recaps that would make the Nasty Boys shake their heads and go, “shit, really? Maybe you should go back to school.”
1. Hulk Hogan has been training by hitting Brutus in the face with a metal briefcase, which seems like the OPPOSITE of what you should be doing when your friend’s got a papier-mâché skull. This is even worse than his usual training plan, which is “take a bunch of vitamins and pray.”
2. Hogan tells Brutus to explain what’s been taking up most of their time, and he says they’ve been trying to figure out how to remove the turn signals from their Harleys so they can ride from Venice to Malibu Beach with the Tag Team Championships on the front of their bikes. That’s a nice visual and all, but didn’t Beefcake just lose THREE YEARS because he didn’t care about beach safety?
3. Hogan then sings ‘Getting To Know You,’ a selection from the 1951 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I, which I think is a close as Hogan’s ever come to acting his age. I wish he’d brought this gimmick back in 1996 and played ‘March of the Royal Siamese Children’ at Starrcade.
4. Hogan’s arm is so slathered in baby oil he looks like he’s made out of liquid nitrogen. Jimmy Hart says he knows Money Inc’s weaknesses and is gonna help the Mega Maniacs exploit them, like Hogan’s gameplan isn’t “wait until they do finishing moves to me and no-sell it” like it is in every other f*cking match. They end with a riff on the “LIVE FROM NEW YORK” bit from Saturday Night Live, because Raw was trying to get that over for a while. THAT’S IT FOR RAW THIS WEEK EVERYBODY, TAKE IT EASY.
Best: Bill Clinton Jokes
It’s 1993 and Vince McMahon has to hate Bill Clinton but Monica Lewinsky and all the “Slick Willie” stuff hasn’t really happened yet, so his big slam is “Bill Clinton’s going to RAISE TAXES.” In my brain, IRS existed simply to be a bad guy who likes those FAT CAT SPENDOCRATS IN WASHINGTON. Little did Vince know he could wait a few years and just have Sunny sit in a Clinton impersonator’s lap and get ten times the mileage. Oh man, remember when the worst thing about the President was, “he plays saxophone and his brother’s kind of a f*ck-up?”
Worst: VIRGIL ALERT
To show that they’re tough and ready to take on Hulk Hogan at a WrestleMania, Money Inc. struggles for 10 minutes against the racist version of Tito Santana and WRESTLING SUPERSTAR VIRGIL, seen here at the height of his wrestling career in those pants that make him look like a black Waldo. Not the one from Family Matters. I’ve decided I’m calling the Santana/Virgil team Cock And Bull. Either that or “Racism Inc.”
Poor Tito Santana. Pairing a workhorse like Tito with an actual horse like Virgil is like asking Roger Federer to play Men’s Doubles with Stephen Hawking. Santana wrestles the entire match and makes the hot tag to Verg, whose moveset seems to consist of badly punching and hopping in place until someone tells him what to do. DiBiase trips him up when he tries to hit the ropes — the only reason Virgil hit the ropes was to BE tripped, it should be noted — and Virgil’s still mindlessly clawing at him for “revenge” while IRS is lifting him in the air for a suplex. It’s like he doesn’t notice IRS attack him until he’s fallen through the air and his head’s smashing into the ground. Tito should’ve wrestled this mess by himself.
Anyway, barely beating the worst wrestler ever by cheating is SURELY enough to stop the most impossible-to-beat wrestler in history at a show he’s main-evented 8 times!
Best: A Model Seaman
The best part of this episode (and quite possibly the best part of any episode ever) is ‘The Model’ Rick Martel showing up dressed in a bath robe and a captain’s hat to dress-down the Raw ring girls, steal their signs and show them how to properly model. It’s AMAZING. This is Martel’s first Raw appearance and oh man, if this was the only time you’d ever seen him he’d be your favorite wrestler in a walk. The fact that the Raw ring girls look like background “hot” girls from Married With Children doesn’t hurt.
He does it twice, then gets interviewed backstage by Rob Bartlett and runs him down for looking like a bum. I would’ve went with “sassy orangutan,” but I’m not a model.
Worst: Bret Hart Is Going To Break A Lot Of Promises At WrestleMania IX
During the WrestleMania hype package (also the name of Mojo Rawley’s finishing movie in 5 years), Bret Hart says Yokozuna and Mr. Fuji don’t respect him and makes a bunch of promises, including:
(1) Mr. Fuji will walk out of the ring at Mania respecting him, and
(2) He will walk out of the ring wearing the WWF Championship belt.
You never see “salt in the eyes” or “Hulk Hogan whipping out his dick and slapping it on your main-event’s face” coming.
Worst: Tatanka Somehow Manages To Remain Undefeated Against Phil Apollo
Shawn Michaels calls into the show to cut a promo over Tatanka’s match, which is against the dumpiest man in the world, Phil Apollo. Phil should not be confused with RAY Apollo, who was replacement Doink. Phil was a New England-area wrestler whose most memorable moment was losing to Adam Bomb in Adam Bomb’s debut. He’s got a Wikipedia page, but you don’t have to read it because I just told you everything on it.
Imagine if Don Muraco was a foot shorter and couldn’t do a push-up. That’s Phil Apollo. Tatanka defeats him by deciding it was time to win and hopping around in a circle.
Best: Mike Edwards Defeats Phil Apollo In The Worst-Looking Jobber Contest
Usually these 1993 Raw jobbers are fun to write about, because they kept wrestling and eventually became something else. Von Krus became Big Vito, Scott Taylor became Scotty 2 Hotty, Glenn Ruth became Headbanger Thrasher … “Mike Edwards” didn’t become anybody. I can’t even find anything about him online beyond “he’s not the Mike Edwards from the Electric Light Orchestra or the one from Jesus Jones.” He looks like Vince handed one of Rob Bartlett’s 90s New York comedian friends a leotard and told him to fall down when Papa Shango punched him.
If you don’t remember Papa Shango, here’s what you need to know: The Godfather used to do voodoo and one time he made the Ultimate Warrior throw up using MAGIC. That’s really it. He was the first sorta-offensive gimmick of perennial offender Charles Wright, who was great at the “entertainment” part of sports-entertainment and not so much at the “sports.” Papa Shango wrestled like Virgil and Kane had a baby, and again I’d like to point you to the cool magical voodoo vomit stuff because that’s really the point.
Worst: Eventually The Jobbers Are Just Going To Be Cardboard Cutouts
This is Tony DeMoro. According to the Internet, he wrestled five matches and disappeared forever. Vince describes him as a “good looking young man, really put together.”
That picture illustrates how Tony got this job.
Best: B.O.B.
DeMoro’s opponent is none-other than precious jewel of 1993 Bob Backlund, between his WWF Championship run at the turn of the 1980s and his reprise as an insane grandpa in ’94. Backlund shows up in an INCREDIBLE windbreaker (pictured) and spends the match stuck in a Mortal Kombat standing animation. Crouching, legs wide, hands moving in circles. You know what I’m talking about.
Backlund’s great here because he dismantles DeMoro using basic wrestling holds. DeMoro’s a turd in the ring, so Backlund just shoot hip-tosses him until he bails. When he gets back in, they do some mat wrestling that’s just Backlund sitting down and spinning in place while DeMoro kinda mindlessly paws at him from a foot away. The crowd LOVES Backlund, too, and there’s a black guy center stage in a bright yellow BOB BACKLUND WWF WORLD CHAMPION t-shirt who stands up the entire match and talks trash. Goofy old nerd Backlund is a dream come true for some people, and I’d legitimately rather see a dorky extra from Mayberry who is just really great at high school wrestling step into WWE and murder everybody with hip-tosses. Give me that over another huge, hairless muscular guy who learned how to scream first and work second.
Anyway, Backlund beats dude with CHILD’S POSE.
Bob Backlund for President. Again.
Best: Most Of Mr. Perfect Vs. The Model
Apparently only Mr. Perfect and Bret Hart got to wrestle actual matches on Raw in 1993. Everybody else got stuck wrestling security guards in spandex.
This week’s main-event is weird babyface Mr. Perfect against The Model, who has made us hate him by being mean to Rob Bartlett and insulting stranger ladies who can’t convincingly hold up a sign and walk in a circle. So, face vs. face. It’s mostly great, too, as you’d expect. You never realize how much Rick Martel influenced Intellectual Savior Damien Sandow until you watch him wrestle. He did the cartwheel, he wore pink trunks, the whole thing. They just replaced “he’s handsome” with “he’s smart” and “a bottle of perfume” with “Cody Rhodes.”
Everything’s going great until they go to commercial.
Worst: AND THEN THE DAMN MAIN EVENT ENDS DURING THE COMMERCIAL
No, seriously.
If Raw hadn’t already gone long due to two separate Hulk Hogan promos, ended the show in the middle of a main-event, promised to show us the remainder of the match next week and then never mentioned the match again I’d say it was the worst Raw ending of the year. Man, how did they preemptively top ending the only good match on the show during a toy commercial?
But yeah, Mr. Perfect countered a backdrop attempt into the Perfect Plex and got the win while Macho Man was imploring us to bite Slim Jims. There’s still a few minutes left in the show, though, because of COURSE THERE ARE, and Perfect uses them to bring the ring girls in the ring and put them over. He LIKES the stranger ladies, you see. He’d never be mean to them, assuming they never try to do anything in front of him.
Typhoon’s in next week’s main event, though, so I’m sure it’s all uphill from here.
