In episodes 1 & 2 of Monday Night Raw, WWE had presented a show with a faster pace and a grittier feel than its other broadcasts of the period, with episode 3, it delivered, for the first time, a show that felt important, vital even. That’s because on the show, Mr Perfect and Ric Flair were set to do battle in a match where the loser would have to leave the company. This was the calibre of match, and level of importance that had previously been saved for pay-per-views or the occasional Saturday Night’s Main Event but instead, WWE was giving it away, for free (in front of a crowd that, even at capacity, would only have numbered a thousand) on network television. It is matches and moments like this that has provided Raw with its reputation as the king of pro wrestling television, even today, some 27 years after it was first broadcast, and even as its importance has dwindled over time. This history means that most wrestling fans still view WWE’s successes and failures through the prism of Raw, the metronome of WWE’s product, to the point that it feels almost impossible to imagine the promotion without it. It is therefore not unfair to say that, without this kind of moment taking place in the early days of Monday Night Raw, the wrestling business would not be the same as it is today.
Read the review of Monday Night Raw Episode 2 here.
Ironically, that moment only really came about because Ric Flair decided to call time on his career with the company. When Flair had originally joined WWE in the middle of 1991, he had done so with the agreement that if Vince McMahon ever stopped using him as a top-level act, he could leave the company. As it happened, and as Flair has revealed in interviews over the past few years, Vince McMahon came to him at the end of 1992 and told him he was going with the young guys, and that Flair would no longer feature at the top end of the bill for his company. He therefore gave Flair the opportunity to negotiate with WCW who were now led by Bill Watts (a man who Flair trusted, as opposed to Jim Herd who had been in charge when Flair left the promotion). With Flair now on his way out of the door, and Mr Perfect having had to turn babyface late the previous year (to replace the Ultimate Warrior who had been released suddenly), the two had been on a collision course for a couple of months- maybe at one point Vince had hoped this match might take place at Wrestlemania 9 (Flair had a no-compete clause which meant he could not return to the ring, for anybody else, until after ‘Mania that year) but instead it happened here.
The Flair/Perfect collision wasn’t the only bout that had been advertised prior to the show however, it was also set to host a collision between Repo Man and Randy Savage after Repo had attacked Savage on the previous week’s show and stolen his hat. This might feel like a relatively trivial thing for two men to have a bitter fight over, and it was, but at least WWE had taken the time to actually promote something ahead of time, and give them some semblance of a reason to want to fight one another (something they’d failed to do on either of the first 2 episodes of the show). It is for this match that Repo Man turns up outside the Manhattan Centre to kick off the broadcast. Arriving in the same truck we saw him driving away in at the end of the previous episode, he was greeted by Sean Mooney who, for the third week in a row, is stood outside the building. We are taken swiftly into the venue where Vince McMahon is stood with Rob Bartlett, and for the first time on Raw, Bobby ‘The Brain’ Heenan, as Repo makes his way to the ring. As you might imagine, Heenan is interested only in the main event and predicts that tonight will be the last time we see Mr Perfect.
During this contest, Vince McMahon talks about the fact that at the Royal Rumble (that aired the previous night on pay-per-view) ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage came close to winning the 30-man match, but that ultimately, Yokozuna picked up the victory. I mention this because this episode of Raw was actually recorded a week earlier, immediately following the live broadcast of episode 2, in other words, it was actually recorded 6 days before the Rumble had taken place. Obviously Vince would have known their plans for the Rumble show when they were recording this show, but that he would go so far as to say what had happened at the Rumble, during the recording (and therefore not allow for any change of plans, injuries or mistakes to take place at the Rumble), is interesting. I may be wrong, but it would be my hunch that WWE would have needed to provide the tape for the show prior to the night before broadcast (especially in 1993), and so it was unlikely that they could have dubbed in this piece of commentary after the Rumble, once they were sure everything had gone to plan.
Back to the match, and Savage got things under way quickly by running to the ring and taking it straight to his opponent, forcing the referee to call for the bell to start the bout. From here they fought around the ring, and down the aisle before making it back to the squared circle. After an ad break, and some more back and forth, as well as some irreverent commentary about Bill Clinton’s recent inauguration (Clinton had just been sworn in as President the previous week), Savage managed to pick up the victory with a top rope elbow drop in typical ‘Macho Man’ fashion. Rating: 6/10. This was a by-the-numbers bout which was purely designed as a time filler for this and the previous show (and a way to get Savage into an advertised television match) and was perfectly adequate for what it was. Afterwards, Vince McMahon hyped up the Headlock on Hunger benefit show that WWE were due present the following Friday at Madison Square Garden (unfortunately, the Headlock on Hunger show does not appear to be on the WWE Network as at time of writing) before we get an advert selling tickets for Wrestlemania 9 at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas.
Up next is a short match pitting Kamala, now under the guidance of babyface, Reverend Slick, against long-time WWF jobber, Brooklyn Brawler. The Kamala character was always a problematic one- portraying one of the few ‘African’ (James Harris, the man who played Kamala, was actually from Mississippi) wrestlers in the history of the company as a simpleton, in war-paint, carrying a spear around and mumbling incoherently was undoubtedly racist, and was not acceptable even by the sensibilities of 1993. His turn to the babyface side of the aisle after having been badly treated by his management duo of Harvey Wippleman and Kim Chee, was possibly (if we’re being kind) a ham-fisted attempt by the company to put things right but, they were never likely to spin this gimmick in a positive way. As part of Slick’s attempts to ‘civilise’ the ‘Ugandan Giant’, he encouraged the fans to chant” you are a man”, and when they chant it during this contest, Bartlett on commentary responds with “he is a man, and he needs a thigh master”. After a few minutes of not particularly co-ordinated action, Kamala executes his big splash and then, after taking a few moments to figure out which way he needed to position Brawler in order to pin him (apparently, Kamala had somehow, as a consequence of his babyface turn, forgotten how to pin an opponent), gets the 3 count. Rating: 3/10
After a brief ringside interview with Slick and Kamala conducted by Vince McMahon, where Slick says that the fans deserve the credit for the change in the big man, for opening their hearts to him, we are taken to a Royal Rumble report, with ‘Mean’ Gene Okerlind where he wraps up the news from the night before. Unlike the earlier commentary (which would have been mixed in with crowd noise, and was just one small moment in a match), this was likely a drop in to the show, pre-arranged as such with the Network, so that WWE wouldn’t have had to play it on the safe side and could be more specific about what had happened the night before. As part of this report, Okerlund names Wippleman’s new monster as Giant Gonzalez and also, when talking about the unveiling of Lex Luger, refers to him as one of the biggest names in the sport (effectively, and in a rare moment for WWE, acknowledging that he had a headlining career elsewhere before arriving in the promotion).
After this, it is finally time for the main event- Ric Flair vs. Curt Hennig in a loser-leaves-WWE match, and with 25 minutes of the broadcast remaining, they’d been given more than enough to time to construct something memorable. While this is easily the best match of the night (and indeed, of Raw’s entire 3 episode run up to this point) I would argue that over time this match has become slightly overrated. It’s undoubtedly a good match, played before decent heat from the live crowd and containing a fair amount of drama towards the end as the ramifications of the match took effect, but there are moments of sloppiness and the middle section, made up of a number of sleeper holds and rear chinlocks is drawn out. It starts with Heenan getting up from the announce table on several occasions to consult with Flair and try to help him strategise only for Perfect to outsmart ‘The Nature Boy’ on each occasion. When Flair tried to introduce a chair to proceedings, he was caught by referee, Earl Hebner, and dispossessed of the foreign object. The tide turns when, after a commercial break, Flair reverses an Irish Whip and Perfect goes flying into the turnbuckle and over the top to the outside.
This bump busts Mr Perfect open for our first glimpse of blood on a Monday Night Raw episode (and what was likely the first crimson shed on a WWE broadcast since Wrestlemania 8). After a number of wear down holds, where the crowd try to get Perfect back in it, Flair clamps on the figure 4 and desperately clings on to the top rope to increase the leverage and pressure on the hold, only breaking it when Hebner catches Flair cheating and kicks his hands away from the ropes. As Vince McMahon and Bobby Heenan go into full on hype mode on commentary while Bartlett, probably perplexed by what all the fuss was about, sits almost entirely in silence, Flair rummages in his boot and pulls out a pair of knucks, knocking Perfect down with them only for Perfect to be saved from the resulting pin by getting his foot on the rope. After another advert break, the match hits the home stretch- Mr Perfect makes his big comeback, psyching himself up as Flair hits a series of chops that seemingly have no effect, he then rolls ‘The Nature Boy’ up in a small package for a close count before Flair gets to his feet only to walk straight into the match winning Perfect Plex. Rating: 7/10 As you might imagine, Heenan does a fine job in selling his tragedy at the result in its aftermath and is howling into the microphone as we cut to one final break. Before the show goes off the air, McMahon has just enough time to announce that Flair will be gone from WWF, just as soon as he’s honoured his commitments at the weekend with the company (to cover the fact that Flair would be at Madison Square Garden the following Friday in his last match for the company- at least until he returned in 2001).
It’s hard to know whether the main event of this show would have taken place on free-to-air television if not for Flair choosing to leave WWE when he did. Had there been a chance to send Flair on his way in another major setting then it’s hard to believe WWE wouldn’t have taken it. Saying that however, if WWE had wanted to generate, at least some income from the match, it’s difficult to know why they didn’t just promote it for the MSG show set to take place later that week (Flair did after all, face Perfect at the show anyway). In truth, it seems clear to me that despite the problems WWE were facing in terms of top line stars during the early part of the year (as documented in some detail in my review of the 1993 Royal Rumble here), Vince McMahon was determined to forge ahead with his decision to transition the company from one generation of talent to another, and Ric Flair was firmly in the outgoing group. And so, Monday Night Raw got its first ‘moment’, the type of thing that the show would (a fair bit later on) become known for, but on the night of the broadcast could just as easily have been an outlier, brought about by the sudden departure of a former 2-time WWE Champion.
Epilogue- Superstars Episode 331
As usual, I’m including the corresponding episode of Superstars as part of this review, and also as usual it wasn’t a particularly eventful show. There is one exception- a Jim Duggan interview in which he says he’s proud of the USA and isn’t happy about Mr Fuji going around saying that American workers are lazy and can’t make good cars or stereos anymore. He then challenges Yokozuna to a match, where he says he knows he can knock the big man down.
Later in the show Mr Fuji responds to Duggan and accepts the challenge, it is then advertised for the following week’s episode of the show.
In results from the broadcast- The Headshrinkers defeated Reno Riggins & Bobby Perez (Rating: 3/10), Damien Demento pinned Tommy Knight (Rating 2/10), Mr Perfect overcame Louie Spicoli (Rating 2/10), Shawn Michaels picked up the victory opposite Gary Jackson (Rating 2/10), High Energy bested Brooklyn Brawler & Chuck West (Rating 2/10), Bob Backlund got the duke against Pete Christie (Rating 2/10), and Bob Backlund downed Iron Mike Sharpe (Rating 2/10).
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