SummerSlam 1993: WWF Built a Hero All Summer and Refused to Crown Him

The opener has one job: move Razor Ramon upward while letting Ted DiBiase leave with his dignity intact. It accomplishes that without pretending DiBiase is still the athlete he was several years earlier. Ramon bumps, sells, survives the veteran control segment and catches DiBiase with his own exposed-turnbuckle mistake before the Razor's Edge.

The match is basic and never threatens to become memorable, but the historical context adds weight. This is DiBiase's final WWF in-ring match. The Million Dollar Man spends it making a newer star look more important than he did before the bell, which is a fitting exit.

The best conventional match on the card wastes almost no time. The Heavenly Bodies attack early, the Steiners respond with suplexes, Jimmy Del Ray flies around with far more athleticism than the era's tag-team stereotype suggests, and Jim Cornette keeps the heat moving from ringside.

The match is only nine and a half minutes, which is both a strength and a frustration. Nothing drags, but another five minutes might have allowed the structure to breathe into something genuinely excellent. The hometown reaction for Rick and Scott gives every comeback extra force, and the Frankensteiner finish sends the right team home with the belts.

This is the disappointment that comes from two names carrying impossible expectations. Michaels and Perfect are both technically gifted enough that the audience arrives waiting for a classic. Instead, the match is good in fragments: crisp counters, strong selling, Perfect's explosive comeback and enough evidence that both men are trying to construct something substantial.

The chemistry never fully clicks. A few transitions feel forced, the rhythm repeatedly resets, and Diesel dragging Perfect out of the ring turns the finish into another countout on a show that already has too many indirect conclusions. Good wrestlers have ordinary matches sometimes. SummerSlam 1993 picked an inconvenient night for it.

The 1-2-3 Kid is the attraction because the crowd already understands the possibility of an upset. IRS spends most of the match grounding him, which gives every flash cradle and sudden kick a little extra energy. The veteran-versus-young-underdog story is obvious, but obvious is not automatically bad.

The problem is time. At under six minutes, the match reaches the point where the Kid's comeback could become interesting and then stops. IRS wins cleanly with the Write Off, which at least gives SummerSlam one of its increasingly rare decisive finishes.

Doink is not the opponent anyone paid to see Bret Hart fight, and that is exactly the point. Jerry Lawler's fake injury is designed to infuriate the audience before Hart ever touches him. Matt Borne's Doink is credible enough in the ring to make the detour work, particularly when he attacks Hart's knee and gives the match a simple target.

Hart eventually reaches the Sharpshooter, Lawler hits him with the crutch and the match ends by disqualification. As a standalone bout, it is merely solid. As the first chapter of one long SummerSlam angle, it does its job: the crowd wants Lawler punished more than ever.

There is not much traditional wrestling here, but there is plenty of hate. Hart attacks Lawler with the same crutch that had been used against him, Lawler cheats whenever officials look away, and the match feels less like a contest than the physical payoff to months of insults about the Hart family.

Hart submits Lawler with the Sharpshooter and then refuses to release it for several minutes. The decision is reversed, making Lawler the winner and preserving his claim as the king. On a card overloaded with disputed finishes, another disqualification should be irritating. Here it works better because losing the official decision while physically destroying Lawler gives Hart a reason to keep chasing him.

Marty Jannetty is present to make Ludvig Borga look dangerous, and there is not much effort to disguise the assignment. Borga attacks, throws him around, cuts off the brief comeback and finishes with the backbreaker submission.

Jannetty sells well because Jannetty usually sold well. That does not make the match feel like pay-per-view material. It is five minutes devoted to establishing a new heel on a card that already struggles to justify some of its runtime.

The good news is that this ends the feud. The bad news is that eight minutes still have to happen first. Giant Gonzalez remains unable to move with the speed or precision necessary to make Undertaker's supernatural selling compelling, and the no-disqualification stipulation merely gives them chairs and ringside objects to use slowly.

Paul Bearer's return with the urn gets the audience reaction the wrestling cannot. Undertaker revives, hits a collection of clotheslines and finally wins with the flying clothesline. Gonzalez then turns on Harvey Wippleman, which at least supplies a clean endpoint to the program.

This is the pleasant surprise of the second half because everyone behaves as though speed matters. The Headshrinkers are excellent bases and bumpers for the Gunns, Tatanka's hot tag wakes the crowd up, and Bam Bam Bigelow looks like the best athlete in the match whenever somebody needs to be cut off violently.

The triple diving-headbutt attempt is exactly the sort of oversized visual a six-man tag should build toward. All three heels miss, Tatanka rolls up Samu, and the finish arrives before the chaos becomes exhausting. There is no grand historical importance here. It is simply fun, which SummerSlam 1993 does not provide often enough.

The bell-to-bell match is better than the punchline it became. Yokozuna understands his role perfectly: absorb Luger's hope, cut him off with size, and make the eventual bodyslam feel like the physical achievement the entire summer promised. Luger is limited but over, and the crowd responds strongly to his late comeback.

Then the booking drives the Lex Express directly into a wall. Luger hits the loaded forearm, Yokozuna falls to the floor, and Luger spends precious seconds punching Fuji and Jim Cornette instead of dragging the champion back into the ring. The count reaches ten. Luger wins. Yokozuna remains champion. Balloons descend anyway.

A short title reign for Luger might not have fixed the company, and Yokozuna ultimately became an important champion. That is not the point. The point is that WWF constructed this specific night around a specific promise and then declined to deliver it.