WWF RAW June 21 1993 Review (Razor/Kid Rematch)
- Tomás Cunha
- Jun 27, 2023
- 7 min read
June 21, 1993Location: Poughkeepsie, New York, USA (Mid-Hudson Civic Center)Announced attendance: N/ATV rating: 3.1 (USA Network) [up 10.2% from the previous RAW’s 2.8 rating]
Hello everyone. Welcome to another RAW review here on the blog. With King of the Ring now firmly in the rearview mirror and SummerSlam on the horizon, we have a stacked episode this week. The 1-2-3 Kid finally accepted Razor Ramon’s offer last week, and tonight their big rematch takes place. Plus, Doink the Clown battles Marty Jannetty in a 2 out of 3 falls match after they wrestled to a draw last week.
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Here is the list of WWF champions heading into the episode:
WWF Champion: Yokozuna [8th day of his 2nd reign] – previous champion: Hulk Hogan
WWF Intercontinental Champion: Shawn Michaels [15th day of his 2nd reign] – previous champion: Marty Jannetty
WWF World Tag Team Champions: The Steiner Brothers (Rick & Scott Steiner) [2nd day of their 2nd reign] – previous champions: Money Inc. (Ted DiBiase & Irwin R. Schyster)
Note: in title matches, the defending champions appear underlined
Enjoy the review!
Your hosts are Vince McMahon, Bobby Heenan & Randy Savage
We see a recap of 1-2-3 Kid upsetting Razor Ramon 6 weeks ago before the RAW intro plays.
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The Steiner Brothers (Rick & Scott Steiner) vs. Reno Riggins & Barry Hardy
The Steiners come out with the title belts, with Vince announcing they traded them back-and-forth with Money Inc. over the previous week. Scott with a gutwrench suplex on Riggins while Vince says the Steiners will be one of Yokozuna’s challengers to try to slam him on July 4. Scott overpowers Hardy and brings in Rick. Atomic drop and Rick rams him into the turnbuckle. Belly to belly suplex by Scott on Hardy followed by one to Riggins as well. The Frankensteiner puts Reno away in 3:51.
Rating: Solid squash to put over the fact that the Steiners are the new tag team champions. 1/2*
We see an ad for the King of the Ring encore airing tomorrow night on pay-per-view.
Two Out of Three Falls Match – Doink the Clown vs. Marty Jannetty
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They lock up to start and Doink actually gives him the clean break on the ropes. The original Doink gimmick was quite fascinating. Marty strikes first with a monkey flip while Doink pulls the hair and keeps playing mindgames. Jannetty brings him down with a faceplant and drops a fist for two. He goes to work on the arm and monkey flips Doink out of the corner for two. Backslide gets two. However, Marty misses a blind charge in the corner and crotches himself on the middle rope, and Doink comes off the top rope with a buttsplash for the first fall at 7:16. We take a break.
Doink 1-0 Jannetty
The second fall begins with a slugfest until Doink gets the upper hand. A hard irish whip by Doink takes Jannetty down. The clown apologizes for his actions while arrogantly slapping Jannetty, eventually dumping him to the floor. Doink rolls him back inside and gets two. Doink avoids a dropkick and gets two out of it, before putting Marty in a chinlock. Marty rolls him up for two in return, and follows it up by blocking a suplex and turning it into one of his own. Jannetty goes up top, but changes his mind and comes back down to hit a great superkick, but Doink has his leg on the ropes to break up the pin. Marty faceplants Doink and goes back up top, dropping a fist to tie it up at 11:54. And we take another commercial break.
Doink 1-1 Jannetty
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We return with Doink begging for mercy to play some mindgames, but Jannetty knows better and atomic drops him right into a clothesline for two. Doink bails and trips Jannetty up to ram his legs into the post. Heenan explains the psychology, as most of Jannetty’s offense is aerial and he can’t do any of that with an injured leg. Nice! Doink locks in a figure four back inside the ring. Jannetty reverses the hold after about a minute, but Doink immediately makes it to the ropes and Jannetty’s leg is hurt. Doink pounds away on Jannetty’s bad leg in the corner. Jannetty manages to backdrop Doink but his leg gives out immediately afterwards, and Doink applies an STF. Doink releases the hold and chooses to go up top instead, but takes too long and Jannetty slams him off. Jumping back elbow by Marty and he slugs away in the corner, as a second Doink comes out and hides under the ring. Meanwhile, Jannetty stops to go look under the ring after the fans in the front row tell him about the second clown. Doink takes advantage and knocks him down with a baseball slide. Back in, Jannetty fights back with a dropkick that dumps Doink to the floor, allowing the clowns to pull the switcheroo. Jannetty plays possum and takes the fight to Doink when he shows up, but they collide and Savage notices it’s the same one because of the face paint. Doink falls outside yet again due to the collision, however, and now the actual switcheroo happens! The fresh Doink rolls inside the ring and gets a nearfall. Marty cradles him for a nearfall of his own, but Doink cuts him off easily and finishes with a piledriver at 20:38. However, Randy Savage runs in to put the boots to the clown, and pulls the original Doink from under the ring, and the referee reverses the decision after being shown the evidence. Marty wins the third fall by DQ.
Doink 1-2 Jannetty
Rating: Talk about a hidden gem. This match was absolutely incredible, one of the very best WWF matches of 1993. The first two falls had decent action, but the third fall was where it got great. Doink going after the leg to stop Jannetty from using high-flying moves was great psychology. They traded nearfalls back-and-forth, Doink faked the switcheroo the first time around in a great bit, only to do it the second time around and get caught because of Savage. This was a great piece of business, and a great match at that! ****
Mr. Hughes (w/ Harvey Wippleman) vs. Bobby Who
Hughes comes out with the urn and addresses Undertaker before the match begins. Hughes takes control easily and dropkicks Who. Hughes takes his time as usual until he slams Who and follows with an elbowdrop, only to break up the count at two. Hughes with a gutwrench powerbomb but he breaks up the pin yet again. Scoop powerslam… and he breaks it up again. Okay, we get it. A sloppy Bossman slam finally does it at 3:02.
Rating: These squashes just don’t work. Nobody reacts, no one cares, and the only feeling this extended “beating” causes is lethargy. There’s a reason this whole feud with The Undertaker was scrapped. 1/4*
Main Event
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Razor Ramon vs. The 1-2-3 Kid
The Kid hesitates before entering the ring. Razor eventually goes after him on the apron only to miss a punch and get rammed into the turnbuckle, and Kid launches himself with a flying sunset flip for two. Kid gets another nearfall with a spinkick, but Razor catches him on a charge and plants him with a fallaway slam. Razor turns him inside out with a clothesline and drops an elbow on him. The Kid manages to block a hiptoss attempt, flips backwards but gets caught with a GREAT chokeslam! That was a fantastic bump by Kid, it looked like it killed him. Razor with the arrogant bitchslaps to the back of Kid’s neck while he’s trapped in a hold, and Razor picks him up to hit a running powerslam. Backdrop superplex and Razor signals for the end, but throws him to the floor instead. He exposes the floor and goes for the Razor’s Edge out there, but The Kid turns it into a backdrop on the exposed floor. The Kid goes for a flying crossbody off the top, but slips accidentally on the top rope and nearly hurts himself real bad on the concrete floor. Razor improvises by throwing him back inside and missing a blind charge in the corner, setting up the moonsault block (the move that got him the upset win) for a very close nearfall! And then, The Kid simply says f*ck it as he smartly grabs the money and takes off in a car, resulting in a 5:15 double count-out draw as Razor tried to follow him. That’s genius!
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Rating: This was brilliant. It was hyped so much over the previous month that people were very excited to see it (the higher-than-usual 3.1 number proves it), and the WWF capitalized on it with a brilliant non-finish. The Kid sold the moment like a champ, knowing he’d get the beating of a lifetime… but he also couldn’t refuse the offer and wanted the money! Razor had the chance to put him away but he wanted to hurt him more than necessarily beat him, and that’s what allowed The Kid to nearly steal yet another win. Once that didn’t work this time around, he simply took the money and got the hell out of town. It might sound disappointing because it’s a non-finish and no one likes it, but if you really think about it, it’s totally relatable! This was genius and added even more heat to their program. ***
Razor Ramon cuts a quick promo to end the episode, saying he will eventually catch The 1-2-3 Kid and get his hands on him again.
END OF THE SHOW
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Final thoughts: This episode was loaded, they hyped it a lot over the previous week (previous month in the case of Ramon/Kid) and they delivered on top of that. This was a tremendous episode of RAW, with a strong match of the year candidate and a hot angle to close it. I’m willing to say this was the best RAW up until that point. A very entertaining hour of wrestling. 9/10
POINT SYSTEM
Thank you all for your time. Don’t miss any of the upcoming reviews as we build towards WCW Bash at the Beach in July and WWF SummerSlam in August. See you next time!
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