WWF RAW September 27 1993 Review (The Intercontinental Title Is Vacated)

September 27, 1993 Location: New Haven, Connecticut, USA (New Haven Coliseum) Announced attendance: ca 5,500 TV rating: 2.7 (USA Network) [up 28.6% from the previous week’s 2.1 rating]

The undefeated Tatanka faces Rick Martel this week on RAW. The Quebecers defend the WWF Tag Team Championship against “worthy” opponents – or so they say! Jimmy Snuka returns. Furthermore, Jack Tunney has an announcement regarding Shawn Michaels’ Intercontinental Title. Let’s get into it.

Here is the list of WWF champions heading into this episode:

• WWF Champion: Yokozuna [106th day of his 2nd reign] – previous champion: Hulk Hogan

• WWF Intercontinental Champion: Shawn Michaels [113th day of his 2nd reign] – previous champion: Marty Jannetty

• WWF Tag Team Champions: The Quebecers (Jacques & Pierre) [14th day of their 1st reign] – previous champions: The Steiners (Rick & Scott Steiner)

Note: in title matches, the defending champions appear underlined

Enjoy the review!

Your hosts are Vince McMahon, Bobby Heenan & Randy Savage

WWF President Jack Tunney announces the Intercontinental Title is vacated and Shawn Michaels’ suspended after he failed to show up for a number of title defenses. Next week, there will be a battle royal with the final 2 participants meeting the following week for the belt.

RAW’s intro plays.

Tatanka vs. Rick Martel

They lockup and shove each other to start. Back to the lockup, Tatanka with a headlock takeover and Martel escapes with a headscissors. Martel avoids a Tatanka attack and does some taunting while the announcers talk about next week’s battle royal. Tatanka blocks a kick to the gut by Martel, hits an atomic drop and clotheslines Martel to the outside. Martel stalls and persuades Tatanka into chasing him, allowing Martel to stomp away on Tatanka as he was getting back in the ring. Tatanka goes for a springboard crossbody, but messes up the spot and does it a second time. Martel ducks the crossbody and throws Tatanka to the outside as we take a break.

Commercial break

We return with Martel in control. Sunset flip by Tatanka gets two and Martel locks in an abdominal stretch. Tatanka explodes with a hiptoss to escape the hold before applying an abdominal stretch himself. Martel rakes the eyes to escape. Tatanka misses a blind charge and eats the turnbuckle. Backdrop suplex by Martel gets two. Backbreaker by Martel and he goes for a slingshot splash, but Tatanka gets his knees up to block it. Despite the reversal, Martel remains in control as he keeps working over Tatanka’s back. Martel applies a reverse chinlock. Tatanka escapes that and comes back with a crossbody for two. Martel rams Tatanka’s head into the buckle but it has no effect and Tatanka IS ON THE WARPATH! Tatanka makes the usual comeback with chops and clotheslines. He hits a flying chop off the top rope, but chooses not to cover and Martel throws him to the outside. Eventually they take the fight to the floor and the referee counts both men out at 10:48.

Result: Draw

• Rating: This was a decent match with both men putting on a solid performance, but also ultimately pointless due to the finish. Tatanka’s undefeated streak simply wasn’t that interesting anymore and it was clearly just a matter of time until someone ended it. **1/2

Event Center with Joe Fowler

Joe Fowler recaps the rules for next week’s battle royal for a shot at the Intercontinental Championship and announces the participants:

• IRS

• Randy Savage

• Adam Bomb

• Giant Gonzalez (he’s still around??)

• Mr. Perfect

• Owen Hart

• Rick Martel

• Jimmy Snuka

• Bob Backlund

• Quebecer Pierre

• Quebecer Jacques

• Razor Ramon

• Mabel

• Diesel

• MVP (not that one!)

• The 1-2-3 Kid

• Bam Bam Bigelow

• Marty Jannetty

• Tatanka

• Bastion Booger

Ludvig Borga vs. Phil Apollo

Borga goes after Apollo right away with knees in the corner before hitting a clothesline. Sidewalk slam by Borga. He dumps Apollo and clotheslines him on the outside. Borga hits a delayed vertical suplex back inside the ring. Slam by Borga followed by an elbowdrop. Borga with some shots to the midsection and the Torture Rack ends it at 3:15.

Winner: Ludvig Borga

• Rating: Simply not interesting, slow, boring and the crowd couldn’t care less. DUD

Jimmy Snuka vs. Paul Van Dale

Snuka is back for a one-off cameo. Or apparently one of two appearances now that we know he’s in the battle royal. Snuka takes over with the usual chops, leapfrog and hiptoss sequence. Slam and a headbutt by Snuka. Van Dale actually gets some offense while the announcers get Crush on the phone yet again. Snuka hits a piledriver. This keeps going but the focus is all on the Savage/Crush feud. Van Dale surprisingly takes Snuka down with a shoulderblock. Snuka comes back with a leapfrog right into a chop. Backbreaker by Snuka sets up the Superfly Splash for the win at 4:34.

Winner: Jimmy Snuka

• Rating: Another uninteresting squash on this episode. I was surprised to see the crowd not reacting to Snuka, who always got loud reactions even in his recent WWF run in the early 90s. What should’ve been a short and sweet Legends appearance kept going on forever, and the focus was all on Savage/Crush. This was no good but at least the fans did get up for the Superfly Splash. DUD

Meanwhile, IRS is in his office with secretaries for a promo. Razor Ramon will pay for costing him the match against PJ Walker last week and promises to be one of the final two in next week’s battle royal.

The Quebecers come down to the ring ahead of their title defense against a surprise “top” WWF tag team.

We come back from a commercial break with Barry Horowitz in the ring. Bobby Heenan interviews him and asks him where his partner is. Reno Riggins is home with the flu, but he chooses a replacement: The 1-2-3 Kid.

Main Event

The Quebecers (Jacques & Pierre) (w/ Johnny Polo) vs. The 1-2-3 Kid & Barry Horowitz

WWF Tag Team Championship

The crowd are behind The Kid here. He starts off with a couple of quick kicks to both Jacques & Pierre. Even Horowitz joins in with a few dropkicks and The Quebecers bail. Back in, Jacques asks for a handshake and Pierre jumps The Kid from behind. The Quebecers take over with a nice double-team clothesline. Jacques & Pierre slam each other onto The Kid a number of times and get a nearfall. The heels remain in control until The Kid ducks a springboard crossbody by Jacques. Kid sends Jacques to the outside with a roundhouse kick. Polo checks on him and screams that he’s been knocked out. Jacques gets stretchered out as Polo & Heenan ask for the match to end, but Howard Finkel announces the match must continue.

Commercial break

We’re back with Pierre defending the belts alone as we see Jacques still out in the back. Pierre hits a flying legdrop off the top rope for two. Pierre up top again for a diving crossbody, and then Pierre slams Horowitz onto his corner so he can make the tag to Kid. That didn’t make much sense. Pierre takes The Kid down as the crowd chants for The Kid. He comes back with a series of kicks. Pierre blocks a spinning wheel kick attempt, but Kid catches him with another kick. Kid goes for yet another spinning wheel kick, Pierre ducks and The Kid knocks himself out on the floor. Johnny Polo immediately throws Kid back inside the ring and Pierre gets one arm on top for the really cheap win at 9:47.

Winners & still champions: The Quebecers (Jacques & Pierre)

• Rating: I get what they were going for here, but the execution wasn’t the best. First of all, the introduction of the lame challengers was poor – they went to break and Horowitz was standing in the ring when the show came back on. They could’ve done that a lot better. Second, the match itself was weird. The idea on paper of having Jacques getting knocked out to make it look like The Quebecers could lose the titles was a good idea on paper, but having it happen because of a roundhouse kick – which The Kid does in every match – was odd. The finish was very underwhelming as well, as Horowitz could’ve easily taken the pin after a small flurry of offense. It was still a watchable match with the crowd finally waking up after the previous squashes. **

Finally, Razor Ramon joins the announcers for a short interview. They tease a potential Intercontinental Championship match between Razor and Savage right before the episode ends.

END OF THE SHOW

Final thoughts: Not a strong episode this week. The squashes were longer than necessary and not impressive. As far as the two featured matches go, while they were technically solid, both finishes were extremely flat. Nothing memorable happened here apart from the Intercontinental Title announcement, which was enough to make me wanna watch the next episodes. 4/10

POINT SYSTEM

Read more about the point system here.

Wrestler	Result	Star ratings	Main eventing	Extras	Total
Pierre	1	2	1	1.5	5.5
Jacques	1	2	1	1	5
Rick Martel	0	2.5	0	0	2.5
Tatanka	0	2.5	0	0	2.5
The 1-2-3 Kid	-1	2	1	-0.5	1.5
Ludvig Borga	1	0	0	0	1
Jimmy Snuka	1	0	0	0	1

That’s all from today’s post. Thank you all for reading. Make sure you don’t miss any of the upcoming WWF & WCW reviews here on the blog. See you next time!

Written by:

Tomás Cunha