WWF Survivor Series 1993
Date: November 24, 1993
Location: Boston Garden, Boston, Massachusetts
Announcers: Vince McMahon and Bobby Heenan
The Setup
For the first time in two years, we had a Survivor Series without a WWF title match. After 1992’s much more traditional pro wrestling card, this event returned to the Survivor Series format with a heavy emphasis on elimination tags. In the main event, they still found a way to get around Lex Luger not being able to challenge Yokozuna for the WWF title by putting them on opposite teams.
The Business
Wrestlenomics has this show at 180,000 PPV buys, by far their lowest PPV buy count, outside of the Wrestling Classic in 1985, which had a far smaller universe. This number was also down 28% from Summerslam for Luger vs. Yokozuna, so minus the presence of the WWF title, Lex “getting his hands” on Yoko wasn’t an incentive to purchase this show.
Prowrestlinghistory has the show drawing 15,509 for $180,000. That feels like a low ticket average for the WWF, so there could have been some papering here.
The Results
Marty Jannetty, Randy Savage, Razor Ramon, & The 1-2-3 Kid beat Irwin R. Schyster, Diesel, Rick Martel, & Adam Bomb (26:58) in an “elimination” match. Jannetty & The 1-2-3 Kid were the survivors **1/4
- Savage pinned Diesel (10:20).
- Schyster pinned Savage (16:47).
- Ramon pinned Schyster (20:32).
- Razor Ramon was counted out (20:42).
- Kid pinned Martel (25:49).
- Jannetty pinned Bomb (26:58).
Bret, Owen, Bruce, & Keith Hart beat Shawn Michaels, The Red Knight, The Blue Knight, & The Black Knight (30:57) in an “elimination” match. Bret, Bruce, & Keith were the survivors. *
- Owen pinned The Black Knight (10:49).
- Bret forced The Red Knight to submit (18:06).
- Owen forced The Blue Knight to submit (23:55).
- Michaels pinned Owen (27:26).
- Michaels was counted out (30:57).
SMW World Tag Team Title Match: The Heavenly Bodies def. The Rock-n-Roll Express (C) in 13:41 **3/4
The Bushwhackers & Men on a Mission (Team Doink) beat Headshrinkers Samu & Fatu, Bastion Booger, & Bam Bam Bigelow (10:58) in an “elimination” match. The Bushwhackers & Men on a Mission were the survivors. DUD
- Williams pinned Samu (3:02).
- Mabel pinned Booger (6:02).
- Miller pinned Fatu (8:33).
- The Bushwhackers and Men on a Mission all pinned Bigelow (10:58).
Lex Luger, The Undertaker, Rick & Scott Steiner (The All-Americans) beat Yokozuna, Crush, Ludwig Borga, & Quebecer Jacques (The Foreign Fanatics) (27:59) in an “elimination” match. Lex Luger was the survivor. **
- Borga pinned Rick (5:05).
- Crush was counted out (11:36).
- Luger pinned Jacques (14:04).
- Yokozuna pinned Scott (16:57).
- Yokozuna and The Undertaker were counted out (22:26).
- Luger pinned Borga (28:02).
Notable Happenings
Undertaker and Yokozuna fought outside to a double countout. Even when the two first got into the ring together, the reaction was a lot louder than when Yoko tussled with Lex. They were very good in the ring together, as well. All of this led to their feud.
Lex Luger pinned Ludwig Borga in the show’s final fall. That was odd since Borga was still headlining house shows with Lex. Lex had to come out victorious after Summerslam, but they protected Crush more than Borga.
The Family Feud match was the initial setup for Bret vs. Owen at Mania X. Owen was distracted checking on an injured Bret, and was rolled up by Shawn, making him the only Hart brother to be eliminated. Owen returned to argue with Bret after the match and walk off.
The Heavenly Bodies won the Smoky Mountain tag titles from the Rock n Roll Express. This show was both teams’ second match on national PPV in 1993 (WCW Superbrawl III), although Jimmy Del Ray had already replaced Stan Lane in this version of the Bodies.
Razor Ramon pinned IRS clean, which was also an odd choice, since they were occasionally working house shows and met at the following Royal Rumble. The accountant did hit Razor with his briefcase to cause a Bad Guy countout, but IRS needed help being believable to beat Razor in future singles matches, and this didn’t help.
Randy Savage and Crush each came out in the others’ matches to distract the other and cause eliminations. As you can see, they used this show to start building for Mania.
The Best, The Worst, The Underrated
The Best: Southern tag team wrestling. The crowd didn’t enjoy the style, but you know what? Fuck these people because it was the best thing on the show.
The Worst: The Four Doinks match is such low-hanging fruit. Just total bullshit. What a waste of Bam Bam and the Headshrinkers, BUT, I’m going with Lex Luger’s show-opening video. He was with his family in a godawful holiday sweater wishing everyone a Happy Thanksgiving. The ways they tried to make him Hulk Hogan were awful, and the differences were on par with that—the perfect storm of a shit presentation.
The Underrated: 1-2-3 Kid. He looked so damn good in that opener. Sean Waltman really was a tremendous worker.
Backstage Notes
Mr. Perfect was originally scheduled to be on Razor Ramon’s team, but he left the WWF the week before the event. There were issues with Perfect, feeling like he wasn’t being used well, and he still had the back injury, so he went home.
Terry Funk was scheduled to be a knight in the Hart’s match, but went home because he said his horse was sick. He was also going to be the last knight eliminated and unmasked—” that damn horse,” he says sarcastically.
Jerry Lawler was originally supposed to captain the team of knights against the Hart family, but he was pulled from the show and suspended by the company for being charged with rape of a 13-year-old girl. The girl later recanted, and Lawler pleaded to a witness-tampering charge, but I would advise anyone reading this to research that case a bit.
All that was announced ahead of time about the Doink tag was that Bigelow & Co would face four Doinks. This awfulness was what we got.
Rating: 3.0/10
The show was bad, but also made worse by a dead crowd that wasn’t into much all night. It was a three-hour PPV with no good matches, and closed with Lex Luger vs. Ludwig Borga.
The Video
Back Then Wrestling 