A Look Back At WWF Superstars

Previously on Jesus Christ, Superstars: Iron Mike Sharpe made a bunch of crazy noises, Bill Pierce got tossed around by his mullet, and the Intercontinental Championship match at SummerSlam threatened to tear the Hart family apart!

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Here’s what you missed 27 years ago on WWF Superstars for August 8, 1992.

Jobbers Of The Week

Opening this week’s show with the rare important Superstars match you can watch in full on WWE’s YouTube channel is Paul Van Dale, best known as the father of Leah Van Dale, aka former Smackdown Women’s Champion Carmella. It’s truly his greatest accomplishment, as you can tell if you ever Google him.

Mr. Sunday Morning, the whole F’n enhancement PVD eats a spectacular amount of shit putting over Razor here, including taking the first Razor’s Edge, and getting chokeslammed so hard it looked like he’d fallen out of a third story window and hit concrete. It’s too bad PVD couldn’t hit his finish, which I assume is called the VanDaleizer.

Vince McMahon: “Well all he wants is what he has coming to him, allegedly; the world, and everything in it! The words of ~~Oliver Stone~~ Razor Ramon!”

Speaking of guys who’ll eventually get murdered by Razor Ramon, Ross Greenberg is back and working solo in his best tiger-print pajama pants, digging up bones against against the somehow still-an-African-savage-in-1992 Kamala.

Heading into SummerSlam, WWF’s putting a major focus on Kamala as an unstoppable force who will destroy The Undertaker once and for all, as if a 7-foot tall zombie wizard’s major weakness is guys who’d scare you if you were 7 years old and reading wrestling magazines in 1983. Lots of shots of tiny white children staring in awe. I’m going to assume Kamala kicked this guy’s ass thinking he was an actual Bengal tiger, and not history’s worst Flyin’ Brian.

You may recognize that M.U.S.C.L.E. figurine on the right as “The Dublin Destroyer,” but on this week’s episode he’s going by the much more threatening wrestling name of Brian Donahue. He’s teaming up with recent Voodoo burn victim Brian Brieger (because two Brians are stronger than one) against the Natty Disasters.

By the way, the Disasters are suddenly the WWF Tag Team Champions, having won the straps from Money Incorporated at a Worcester, MA, house show. The fans love them, too, because the Legion of Doom have gotten way too into puppetry and the Steiner Brothers haven’t shown up yet.

Hey look, Bret’s Mom gets a full name this week!

We get a full-on promo this time from Stu and Helen Hart … well, from Helen, at least. Stu’s job is to sit there staring off screen like he just saw the cat take a shit in the living room, and he’s waiting for his wife to stop yammering so he can tell her to take care of it. I didn’t know Errol Morris directed interview segments for Superstars. Helen’s point is still, “Bret Hart has the Intercontinental Championship and his brother-in-law is challenging for it, they’re both really nice about it and nothing severe is happening but it’s TEARING US APART, LISA!” Even the Bret and Davey Boy greenscreen promos are like, “hey, we’re wrestling, may the best man win.” Helen’s really losing her shit over two people she knows having the same job.

Also, any appearance from Helen and Stu Hart on WWF television feels woefully incomplete without Jerry Lawler roasting the ever-loving shit out of them on commentary. The time they showed up in the balcony at Raw and Lawler stunted on them for 10 minutes is still legendary. “Why don’t you put your false teeth in backwards and eat yourself” is an all-timer, as is, “He was so ugly for the first six months you diapered the wrong end.”

Copyright Infringement Of The Week

The actual episode opens with an interview with The Ultimate Warrior, the mall kiosk that walks like a man, in what’s (quite frankly) his worst look ever. Look at him. He looks like he bought Rick Rude’s used leggings and made an entire outfit out of them, and his hair looks like it’s about to start spinning and transport the Event Horizon. The dudes from Winger gave Warrior a side-eye for that hair. Also, I know those are mostly supposed to be Warrior face-paint shapes, but there are some straight-up Batman Forever logos on those tights. And he’s got Storm from the X-Men on his ass? He looks like he fell asleep naked on the Myrtle Beach boardwalk and told someone to airbrush their entire collection of flash on his body.

Anyway, Warrior’s interrupted by Ric Flair in a sparkling purple bathrobe that says “NATURE BOY” on the back, and compared to Warrior he looks like he’s in a three-piece suit. Flair’s big goal for disrupting the SummerSlam main event he’s not a part of is to tell Warrior that Macho Man Randy Savage is trying to enlist Mr. Perfect’s help, and that if Warrior doesn’t want to lose, he’ll “open up the checkbook” and pay Perfect to help him instead. Warrior believes this, because he’s got a dildo’s cognitive reasoning and the communication skills of a dildo’s packaging.

Trying To Cut A Promo During An Earthquake Of The Week

WWF was building to a bunch of specific matches like Bossman vs. Nailz, Shawn Michaels vs. Bret Hart, Ultimate Warrior vs. Papa Shango, and so on, and then were suddenly like NOPE, COMPLETELY NEW CARD, SORRY EVERYBODY. So now the SummerSlam hype interviews are a bunch of guys who don’t really have a problem with each other having to come up with reasons why they’re wrestling, and still treat them like they’re make-or-break blood feuds.

My favorite is the Repo Man, who was feuding with the British Bulldog for weeks and now all of a sudden is wrestling Crush. He promises that at SummerSlam he’s going to “repossess Crush’s career,” the latest in an endless parade of hilarious “Repo Man doesn’t understand what repossession means” bits.

What, did you give him the career in wrestling, and now he’s defaulted on his payments so you’re gonna take it back? How do you expect him to pay you if you’re able to repossess his job? Man, this is almost as crooked a racket as Rent-A-Center.

Stranger Things Of The Week

Tatanka has a (dark) match against The Berserker coming up at SummerSlam (despite the fact that Berserker was feuding with The Undertaker, and Rick Martel is still wearing Tatanka’s ceremonial feathers), and pops into the Berserker vs. Jason Knight main event to let us know how he’s going to prevent Mr. Fuji from interfering: the spirits of his native ancestors will be in the ring with him, and they will let him know if Mr. Fuji’s trying to cheat.

Does Tatanka have GHOST FAMILIARS now? How great would it have been if Mr. Fuji had thrown salt in Tatanka’s eyes, and all of a sudden was slaughtered and dragged to Hell by a bunch of transparent Lumbee warriors like the Dead Men of Dunharrow from Lord of the Rings?

Multi-Level Marketing Scheme Of The Week

On a final note, Vince McMahon makes the great decision to talk about how bad steroids are for you during a British Bulldog match. Instead of steroids, Vince suggests ICO-PRO’s Integrated Conditioning Program, and says the thing you want any traveling salesman to tell you about their product: “there’s no snake oil here!” Vince refuses to let the blind stupidity of the proliteriate derail his calling in life! You’ll rue the day you tangoed with Nigel West Dickens! I mean, ICO-PRO! YOU GOTTA WANT IT!

Next Week Of The Week

The disgraced, rural Georgian prison guard is back to take out his aggression on the swamp folk! Plus Razor Ramon faces off against the armpit vascularity of Jim Powers, and Mean Gene Okerlund sends for the man so Randy Savage can address Ric Flair’s allegations. All this and slightly more, next week!