SummerSlam 1993

Date: August 30, 1993

Location: Auburn Hills, Michigan — The Palace of Auburn Hills  

Announcers: Vince McMahon & Bobby Heenan  

The Setup

Here it is—the payoff to the Lex Express and the WWF’s massive babyface campaign of the former short-lived Narcissist Lex Luger. The fabulous Fourth of July bodyslam on the USS Intrepid led to this WWF title match against the mighty Yokozuna. Bret Hart vs. Jerry Lawler had the hot angle at KOTR to set up their match here, and Taker vs. Giant Gonzalez in a Wrestlemania rematch no one wanted to see helped fill out the top of the card. 

The Business

Wrestlenomics shows the show doing 250,000 PPV buys, which was probably a big disappointment given all the hype they had for Luger. It did 5,000 more buys than Hogan’s first WWF title defense at KOTR ‘93, but that was also a cold match where Hogan wasn’t on WWF TV  much for any build. The industry as a whole was generally still cold from all of the steroid/sex abuse scandals that broke the year before, so there are a lot of variables, but it didn’t sell PPVs. 

ProWrestlingHistory has the show drawing 14,000 for a gate of $215,000. Honestly, that’s a strong crowd for this era. 

Results

Razor Ramon defeated Ted DiBiase — 7:32  **1/4 

WWF World Tag Team Championship — The Steiner Brothers (Rick & Scott) (c) defeated The Heavenly Bodies (Jimmy Del Ray & Tom Prichard w/ Jim Cornette) — 9:28  ****

WWF Intercontinental Championship — Shawn Michaels (c) defeated Mr. Perfect via count‑out — 11:20  **1/2

Irwin R. Schyster defeated The 1‑2‑3 Kid — 5:44  **

Bret Hart defeated Doink the Clown — 9:05  

Jerry “The King” Lawler defeated Bret Hart via disqualification — 6:32  ***1/2 (for both)

Ludvig Borga defeated Marty Jannetty — 5:15  *1/2

“Rest in Peace” Match — The Undertaker defeated Giant González — 8:04  DUD 

Six‑Man Tag Team Match — Tatanka & The Smoking Gunns (Bart & Billy Gunn) defeated Bam Bam Bigelow & The Headshrinkers (Fatu & Samu) — 11:15  *3/4

WWF Championship — Lex Luger defeated Yokozuna (c) via count‑out — 17:58  **1/2

Snap Bumps

-This show helped kill Luger’s chance of succeeding in the WWF, not only for losing his “only shot at the title” match, but also for celebrating his countout victory afterwards like a monumental dumbshit. 

-People have talked ad nauseam about how dumb Lex looked celebrating never getting a WWF title shot again, but even worse than that was the WWF’s presentation of the countout victory. They sent the other wrestlers out. They dropped the balloons. They played the music. Not only did they try to present this as a wonderful thing and distract us from the fact that the top babyface was indeed now fucked, but they hurt themselves. Why would anyone care that Lex can’t challenge for the title again if he doesn’t? He looked pleased as punch out there. 

-The main event was pretty well-worked. They used the salt bucket and a couple of other aids to help it along, but the crowd was mostly into it. Luger looked a little clumsy in spots, but other than the finish and an ill-advised salt-throwing spot with Fuji, the match worked with the live crowd. 

-This was the last PPV appearance of Giant Gonzalez/El Gigante/Jorge Gonzalez, and what a doozy because it fucking sucked. Poor Taker in this era. 

-Bret Hart was fucking tremendous here. I know he loved his performance at KOTR for the three matches he worked, but he had two here that were completely different. The Doink match was a solid Raw main event type match, and the match with Lawler was more of a wild brawl, playing to some of Lawler’s Memphis strengths. Maybe he saw Lawler & Jeff Jarrett vs. Moondogs matches in Memphis the year before. 

-Now, the finish itself in the Lawler match, with Bret refusing to let go of the sharpshooter on Lawler and getting DQ’d, didn’t work. Lawler was almost exclusively a commentator in WWE, and they weren’t likely to mention his history outside of the company. He really needed the benefit of looking stronger. Instead, he came out cartoonishly dressed like he was in a car accident, initially lost the match fairly by quitting, then won on a technicality when he got his ass beat too badly. Oof. 

Besides Lawler, I guess we can RIP Doink as a pushed entity after this show as well. The night after, he turned babyface, and no one over seven cared about him again. 

-This was DiBiase’s last career PPV match, and truthfully, you could see a decline in his work as he was past his peak and a few months away from permanently retiring. ‘93 Razor against peak DiBiase would have been phenomenal. 

-The Steiners’ tag was excellent in their home state of Michigan, as the Bodies worked a great old-school tag match. It made me want more matches. 

-I know they wouldn’t want to put the belts on the Bodies because they couldn’t tour if they were working SMW, but the field needed a win. The Steiners were in eight months and had beaten three tag teams on PPVs and one on the USA special (Money Inc.). It would also have given us more matches between these two teams. They had run through the division by now and still hadn’t had an angle to make anyone care. 

-Shawn vs. Perfect was fine, but kind of a letdown overall. The finish with Diesel hitting Perfect on the outside for a countout was especially fucking lazy for a PPV with a countout in the only other singles title match. The match and work itself were pretty flat. Perfect was gone soon and didn’t wrestle for almost three years after, and this may have been the worst he looked since returning. I guess there’s a reason he dipped. 

-The six-man was weird because it had TRIPLE heat. The heels dominated most of the way until Tatanka rolled up Samu. The crowd was hot for so many things on this show. Tatanka wasn’t one for the most part. 

-IRS dominated the Kid way too much. I despise the fucking IRS gimmick anyway, but all biases aside, you can question why he would be beating Kid in the first place. Kid was hot after the Razor angle, and losing to the guy wearing a tie stalled him a bit. Vince loved that stupid gimmick way too much. 

-Borga and Jannetty was a squash, but a fairly entertaining one all because of Marty. Borga did a promo running down America earlier in the show as the build to the feud with Lex began. What the fuck were they thinking? 

The Verdict

This was a thumbs-in-the-middle for me. The Steiners’ tag and Bret Hart saga provided some excellent wrestling, but there was also a lot of blah. The finish to the main event and show was ungodly stupid, and there was also a ton of filler here.