We left with Luger ending his tenure in WCW and losing his first world title to Sting. To leave WCW, he had to sign a one-year wrestling non-compete that saw him take a meaningless detour in the hilariously fucking ill-conceived abomination that was Vince McMahon’s World Bodybuilding Federation. 

WCW was willing to end the wrestling non-compete about a month early so Lex could finally make his WWF debut at the 1993 Royal Rumble as either Narcissus or the Narcissist. It’s most notable for Bobby Heenan seemingly climaxing when voicing Luger’s pose down. “The Narcissist” gimmick itself seems very polarizing historically, and that’s probably determined by whether you were a WWF fan and liked the more gimmicky gimmicks. I probably fall in the middle. The gimmick itself was pretty good, but whether it was a main event heel gimmick or whether or not he should have just been allowed to be more like WCW Luger can certainly be debated. 

After a forgettable match with Mr. Perfect at Wrestlemania IX, he mostly worked a house show program with Hennig, where he lost a majority of the matches, most by pinfall. Lex had a bad TLD with Tatanka at the first King of the Ring PPV. Why you would look at those first-round brackets and decide this was the matchup that should go the longest is beyond me, and he was in six months and already growing stagnant. Because of what happened after, the shitty booking of his only WWF heel run is often downplayed or overlooked. For a company whose business hadn’t fully rebounded from the steroids/sex scandal, they were in desperate need of a new megastar. You can argue whether or not Lex was right for that choice, but it’s undeniable that he wasn’t given much of a chance early. 

On July 4th, 1993, they did the big epic bodyslam of Yokozuna on the USS Intrepid, something even Hulk Hogan failed to do. All was forgotten. The first six shitty months didn’t matter. They made Lex a major star on their television with one angle. Only the big ripped babyface in blue jeans that slammed Yokozuna disappeared. He was replaced by babyface patriot Lex Luger, who changed his gear and colors to red, white, and blue despite showing all the combined patriotism in his career as Mr. Perfect and Bobby Heenan. They also decided that the best way to build the PPV match with Yoko for the title was to take the guy who had a rep for not interacting well with fans, put him on a bus, and send him to glad-hand people across the country instead of working actual wrestling matches. Then, Luger was blamed when the concept didn’t work. 

Summerslam ‘93 did a paltry 250,000 PPV buys, down from the prior year’s 280,000 for Savage vs. Warrior and Bret vs. Bulldog at Wembley. However, it was slightly up from June’s King of the Ring, where Hogan made his first WWF title defense on PPV since his big return – also against Yokozuna – which did 245,000 buys. If Hogan couldn’t draw with Yoko at this time, it makes sense that it would have been tough for Lex, especially after a Lex Express experiment that everyone in the company at the time has acknowledged as a failure. I’ve heard Kris Zellner of Between the Sheets make this point about this era (and I agree), but the country was beginning something different culturally. This was the early era of Tarantino movies, emotionally HEAVY alternative music, and West Coast rap. Any program with Yokozuna would involve some level of patriotism, and that’s not where we were as a nation in 1993. 

So what happened? Vince saw WCW/JCP continually drop the ball by having the young, hulking, charismatic babyface always come up short. Vince knew that if you were going to make a guy, you fucking make him. He won the title immediately, like Hogan did in ‘84 in his own nationalistic match with the Iron Sheik. “The greatest wrestling promoter in history” wouldn’t cut Lex’s balls off in any way. It was billed as Lex’s only shot at the title, so Vince was smart enough to foreshadow to their fans that Lex was winning the title. 

As Senator Klay Davis from The Wire would say – “Shiiiiiiiit.” 

Nope, instead Vince booked him to come up short. Not to lose, but not to win the title. He won by fucking COUNTOUT. And to make it roughly one million times worse, he celebrated his cheap win that meant he would never get another title shot like a dumbshit with balloons falling from the ceiling. It was the ultimate fuck you to the fans by the WWF. I remember watching that show live, thinking, “Why is he celebrating right now?” And where did that celebration lead? How would they make it right after they reinforced AGAIN that Lex Luger can’t win the big one?

Ludvig fucking Borga. Ouch. 

Talk about feuds that made ZERO fucking sense with foresight being 20/20. First, you’ve hit the absolute bottom of the pro wrestling idea barrel when trying to sell the Finns as a foreign menace. Plus, anyone who saw Tony Halme work in either the WWF or literally anywhere else in the world knew that 1993 Lex vs. Borga would be a pro wrestling abomination, and that’s precisely what it was. 

Teams captained by Lex and Yokozuna at Survivor Series ‘93 did 180,000 buys, which was not only their lowest number in history at the annual event but would remain so until the final Survivor Series before the launch of the WWE Network (2013), headlined by Cena vs. Del Rio and Orton vs. Big Show in title matches. This was a disaster since it was Lex and Yoko’s first time in the ring since the Summerslam debacle. They killed the feud dead in August by following the Dusty Rhodes or WCW playbook. 

When we got to the Royal Rumble ‘94, it was announced that Luger could challenge Yokozuna for the WWF title at Wrestlemania if he won. So after all the bullshit, they were going to finally anoint babyface Lex as champion at their biggest show of the year, right? 

Shiiiiitttt. 

Nope. Instead, Lex co-won the Rumble because of a tie with Bret Hart. That’s right – he couldn’t even advance by winning. He got the title shot by TYING at the end. My fucking goodness. Then, he lost the first title match at Wrestlemania when special ref, Mr. Perfect, assisted Yoko. The angle was set up to revisit the ice-cold Luger-Perfect feud from the prior year, but flip the heel/babyface dynamic. However, Perfect disappeared, and Lex was permanently out of main events, eventually feuding with Tatanka and forming a tag team with the British Bulldog before leaving in 1995. If that doesn’t make sense, it probably did by this point because, as proven by every booker who booked him in a national promotion, Lex couldn’t win the big one. 

I can hear Gerry Briscoe in my head saying, “Great work, Mr. Mac-man.” 

Other Later Notable Luger Bullshit:

• Lex showed up in WCW at the first Nitro in 1995. A week later, he worked with Hulk Hogan but had no finish. They didn’t do the match on PPV for almost two full years (Hog Wild ’97), and even then, they gave it away on free television the Monday night before that. This was seen as a dream match by fans who followed both the WCW and WWF for years, and WCW never once put it in a position to draw money. 
• Lex made his official heel turn at Halloween Havoc 1995, but it was in the background of Jimmy Hart’s heel turn. By then, Jimmy had been with Hogan for over two years, and his turn cost Hogan the WCW title, so that was the headline. Lex turning was an afterthought. 
• Lex did some of the best character work of his career when he was a heel, but still a friend and tag partner of babyface Sting. He was so great at playing to the crowd like a babyface when Sting was watching, and he immediately stopped as soon as he turned his back. They paid this off by dropping the story cold after maybe six months and moving on to Lex being part of the NWO feud. 
• Lex’s only WCW title reign after returning lasted six days. Yes – this huge muscle-bound man with charisma, dubbed a future star by people in the business, magazines, and newsletters once he burst on the scene, was a babyface world champion for SIX days combined in his entire career. Unfuckingbelievable. 
• Lex eventually joined the cool babyface group, the NWO Wolfpack. Surprisingly, he did not fit well with the hip-hop feel of guys like Konan and Kevin Nash. Adding the guy who looked like he tucked his T-shirt into his jeans was a misfire. 
• When Luger turned heel again, he did it in the background of the Kevin Nash turn and the Finger Poke of Doom in January 1999. Yes, his big moment was buried again. 
• Luger didn’t wrestle Sting until the 11/15/99 edition of WCW Nitro in the WCW title tournament. Yes, after teasing a split between 1995-96 and being best friends again after, they didn’t work a singles match until Lex was in the company for four years. Lex turned heel almost ten months before their random tournament match. Why wouldn’t Sting be the first person he wrestled? 
• For a run, Luger became known as “The Total Package” and did a less energetic pre-match posedown like the Narcissist, minus the mirror. 
• Luger teamed with a business casual-clad Ric Flair as Team Package in 2000.
• Luger worked with Chuck Palumbo in a program under Vince Russo in 2000, when Palumbo was the new Total Package. It’s not like the program was intended to draw money, but the promos and matches looked horrible on paper, so why do it at all? 
• Lex’s last major story was a tag team with Buff Bagwell, known as Totally Buff, who were later part of Ric Flair’s Magnificent Seven. It was not good. Shocking, I know. 

After writing about this in three parts, it’s fair to say no one who ever looked like Lex Luger was booked as horribly on the national pro wrestling scene. Multiple companies and bookers repeatedly made the same mistakes, despite it being proven early on that Lex could draw money if he weren’t booked as a loser. It’a too bad we never got to see how successful he could have been otherwise.