wrestling / Video Reviews
Jack Likes Wrestlemania And Thinks This I Quit Match Is OK As Well: Wrestlemania 13
Loading...WWF WRESTLEMANIA 13
The second city becomes the second city to host multiple Wrestlemanias! Or at least it would if it wasn’t the third city to do so, after New York and Atlantic City. Anyway, Wrestlemania 13 is emanating from Chicago, with Vince McMahon, Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler as your commentary team. The opening video package is really good, and makes explicit reference to the shades of grey that are currently infecting the likes of the Undertaker and Bret Hart. Things are about to get properly great for the WWF, but will this be reflected on the show?
MATCH 1- FOUR WAY ELIMINATION MATCH FOR THE #1 CONTENDERSHIP TO THE WWF TAG TEAM CHAMPIONSHIPS- THE NEW BLACKJACKS VS. THE GODWINNS VS. THE HEADBANGERS VS. DOUG FURNAS & PHIL LAFON
The rules of this match dictate only two men can be in the ring at once, so tags are necessary. At one point Mosh and Thrasher are the legal men at the same time and have to wrestle each other in a daft spot. The Blackjacks brawl on the floor with Furnas and LaFon, leading to a double disqualification or count-out or something. The Godwinns then take control of the match, isolating Thrasher. Mosh initially proves a terrible house of fire, as upon entering the ring he gets booted in the face and clotheslined to the floor by Henry. H.O.G (one of the lazier puns ever attempted by the WWF) tumbles with him though, and Mosh makes it back into the ring first, then flies back out to the floor with a great plancha! And then he launches Thrasher over the top onto Henry as well! Back in the ring, Thrasher tries a moonsault but misses the mark. Phineas mows through both the Headbangers and tries to slop drop Mosh, but Thrasher delivers the save, and primes P.I.G (pig!) for a Stage Dive from Mosh for the victory! ** ¾. A pretty fun performance by the Headbangers carries this to slightly above average. Disposing of two teams simultaneously early on was a smart move as well as it avoided the jarring pile up of eliminations that can sometimes blight the later stages of these matches. It would probably have been a better match if Furnas & LaFon had stayed around though.
MATCH 2- WWF INTERCONTINENTAL CHAMPIONSHIP- ROCKY MAIVIA VS. THE SULTAN
Rocky gets a… cool response on his Wrestlemania debut. He is marketed as “the first third generation superstar in WWF history,” which makes this show feel suddenly absolutely ancient. The Sultan, who bafflingly is going into the Hall of Fame this year, has both The Iron Sheik and Bob Backlund in his corner.
Rocky begins the match with some cheerful offense, all fiery right hands and dropkicks. He tries for a clothesline on the floor, but misses and hits the ring post. That gives the Sultan the upper hand, and he capitalises with a fucking nerve hold. He does land a flying headbutt off the top and a moderately cool belly to belly suplex, but on the whole it’s a pretty tedious control segment. . Rocky roars back with more punches and dropkicks, and then hits a belly to belly of his own! He lands a flying crossbody to put an end to this bizarre streak of just repeating what’s already happened in the match, but Sheik distracts the referee so he can’t get a pin out of it. This diversion allows Sultan to hit a thrust kick for a two count, and then a piledriver for another one. Then, out of nowhere, Maivia schoolboys the Sultan and just about gets the three count! And the crowd goes mild! *. The Sultan’s offense was largely boring, and Rocky’s was too bland to improve things significantly. Plus, the crowd weren’t remotely interested. A bad match all round. The rulebreakers are furious after the bell and launch a three on one attack on Rocky until his father Rocky Johnson makes the save! A moment that would unironically be echoed eighteen years later at the Rumble with Rock and Reigns! Eventually Johnson falls victim to the numbers game himself, but by this time Rocky’s recovered enough to help his dad out, and they clear the ring of the villains.
MATCH 3- GOLDUST VS. HUNTER HEARST HELMSLEY
HHH had been making unwanted advances towards Marlena, which raised the ire of Goldust. Rebuffed, Hunter decided to hire the imposing Chyna to be his bodyguard. Both ladies are in the corners of their respective men at ringside.
The Bizarre One starts off brimming with piss and vinegar! He delivers nine punches in the corner to Helmsley, then substitutes the tenth one for a kiss! It’s funny how the crowd are much more keen on that now they know he’s straight. An atomic drop and a clothesline continue Goldust’s good start, and then HHH gets tied up in the ropes! He only gets free because Goldust kicks him loose. Hunter is finally able to take control when he forces his foe off the top rope, sending him tumbling out to the floor. From there, the match takes a noticeable nosedive. Triple H was still far from the finished article at this stage and his moves are technically sound, but quite flat. Eventually simultaneous clotheslines bring about a stalemate. On the floor, Chyna starts to intimidate Marlena, and eventually traps her against the ring apron, too petrified to move. While this goes on, HHH counters the Curtain Call and tries a Pedigree, but Goldust gets out of that in turn and again tries for his finisher. From that position he can see Marlena in trouble, and he ditches the move to lift her to safety on the ring apron. HHH takes advantage to hit a high knee on Goldust though, and there’s a domino effect- Goldust crashes into Marlena, Marlena flies off the apron, and Chyna catches her in mid air with a bearhug! Hunter finishes the match off with a Pedigree to complete a miserable chain of events for the fan favourites. **. The opening and closing stages of the match were heated and entertaining, but what occurred in between was entirely forgettable. The finishing sequences wasn’t executed brilliantly either, as Chyna and Marlena had to stand around for ages at ringside waiting for the guys in the ring to get themselves ready. It got to the point where Marlena just looked silly, rather than frozen with fear.
MATCH 4- WWF TAG TEAM CHAMPIONSHIPS- OWEN HART & THE BRITISH BULLDOG VS. VADER & MANKIND
The British Bulldog and Owen Hart may have been the reigning tag champions, but they were also on the brink of collapse after Hart accidentally on purpose eliminated his partner from the Royal Rumble. Bulldog was primed for a face turn and the fans were really getting behind him, but after Wrestlemania Bret persuaded the duo to put their differences beside them and fight for the Commonwealth against America, which ended up being an even better direction. Meanwhile, Paul Bearer had thrown together his two violent, volatile clients, and hoped for the best.
Owen finds out early on that Vader’s weight advantage may prove problematic. A clothesline has little effect, a high crossbody gets countered with a slam, and a huracanrana is turned into a powerbomb! Vader thinks he can finish early with the Vader Bomb, but Bulldog saves the day. He doles out big clotheslines! Owen contributes dropkicks! And then Bulldog breaks out some suplexes! Mankind aims to turn the tide with the urn Bearer stole from the Undertaker, but Bulldog dodges the shot and trips him up. Vader picks up the baton though (or, you know, urn) and waffles Davey Boy with it to give the challengers the upper hand. The Brit takes a beating for a little while before he plucks Vader out the sky and drops him with a terrific powerslam! In comes Owen off the tag with a delightful missile dropkick, and a high crossbody (successful this time!) for a two count. Vader kills his momentum with a big avalanche, and now it’s Owen’s turn to suffer. Mankind and Vader even dust off Demolition Decapitation! Mankind throws Owen to the floor, but runs right into a belly to belly suplex when he follows, and that allows Hart to make the hot tag! Bulldog tries for his powerslam, but Foley is able to slip on the Mandible Claw! Owen attempts to rescue the match but Vader avalanches him- however, the impact sends the King of Harts stumbling into Bulldog and Mankind, and the impact knocks them out the ring. Mankind desperately clings on to the Mandible Claw, and the referee counts both teams out, the second time that’s happened tonight. The tag team division has to be more careful. Fun little match though! ** ¾. The two face in peril segments kind of blurred into one and that made the bout feel a bit odd, but considering the styles clash between these four and the tremendous pain Mankind was working through, it could have been odder still! The pace was good though, and there were some nice moves.
MATCH 5- I QUIT MATCH- BRET HART VS. STEVE AUSTIN
I think there is a serious case to be made that this is the single greatest thing WWE has ever done. This could actually be both ‘the greatest match of all time’ and ‘the greatest angle of all time.’
The match begins with a great brawl through the crowd, it feels furious and genuinely unpredictable. Austin and Hart wade so deep into the mass of humanity that you almost lose sight of them, and the only people trying to stop the fans from just consuming them whole are Ken Shamrock (superb in his role as guest referee), and a couple of well meaning but ineffectual legends at ringside. Stone Cold squashes his nemesis against some hockey boards and kicks the shit out of him, and the Hitman responds by backdropping Austin down a flight of stairs. It’s just carnage. I always enjoy a match spilling into the audience, but it’s become such an established thing to happen in wrestling matches that WWE have become too slick at it. There’s always a neat little area cleared by a private army of security guards for the fight to take place in, and the wrestlers have realised that what the live audience wants from such a brawl is the opportunity to merely be near the wrestlers and maybe get their gurning face on the camera, so once they’re in the crowd they don’t actually have to do much. They just wander around a bit, holding each other’s hair as if they were women with alcohol poisoning. It feels different in this match, like the reason they’re in the crowd is because the ring cannot contain the sheer hatred! It’s such a thrilling start and it’s timed perfectly as well, because once they finally extricate themselves from the Chicago crowd, they’ve got a solid 15-20 minute stretch in the ring with which to tell a story. And what a super story they tell!
Back in the ring, Hart decides to target Austin’s leg. He hacks away at it, dropping elbows and throwing kicks, and caps this run of offense off by wrapping a figure four leg lock around the ring post, a mega cool move that someone like Daniel Bryan should have stolen by now. This shifts the match from an uncontrollable brawl to a more cerebral, measured affair, and the violence of the ring post figure four ensures the transition is utterly seamless. Bret then snatches a steel chair and wraps it round Austin’s knee with the intention of Pillmanising it, a cool little callback to the fact that Stone Cold himself popularised the move months over when he attempted it on Flyin’ Brian. Unfortunately for the Hitman, Austin is playing possum- he wriggles free from the chair and gives Hart two nasty shots! It’s significant that at this point, Hart’s offense has primarily been calculated and vicious, tenaciously targeting the knee, attempting to crush it in a fairly elaborate manner. Austin, meanwhile, has been successful with short, sharp (very very sharp) shocks- whacking Hart with the chair out of nowhere, disrupting all the knee work briefly with a sudden stunner. It makes Stone Cold look passionate and exciting, while Bret seems a scheming, malevolent bastard. Anyway, Austin then decides to ditch the chair in favour of some more basic moves, suplexes and slams and whatnot. This is the one tiny flaw in the match, it doesn’t really make any sense that Steve would just randomly ditch the chair like that. But, when you’re telling such a grand, epic story, and doing it so fucking superbly, you can expect to be forgiven for these minuscule plot holes.
Out on the floor, Bret reverses an Irish Whip and sends Stone Cold careening into the guardrail. Austin emerges from the collision busted wide open! And now things are about to go totally stratospheric, as Bret gets all bloodlusty and starts to hammer away at the cut with punches, shedding babyface credentials with every blow! He snatches another steel chair and smashes it into Austin’s knee. Bret tries the Sharpshooter, but Austin rakes the eyes to get free. Earlier in the match, Austin tried the Sharpshooter and Bret countered the exact same way, so now Hitman looks the fool for falling for his own trick. And now Stone Cold is roaring back, hurling Hart chest first into the turnbuckles, them dumping him off them with a superplex! With Bret slumped on the apron, Austin seizes a camera cord and tries to choke the life out of his foe with it, but Hart rescues himself by grasping for the ring bell and waffling him in the head with it! The pace of the match is just unreal, and I like the way the shot with the ring bell is used almost as punctuation, to signify the beginning of the end. The best wrestling matches need moments like that in the same way that sentences need full stops! Or exclamation marks.
So, Austin is floored having just had a ring bell crashed into his face, and Hart locks in the Sharpshooter. Austin howls in pain and strains for the ropes as blood pours down his face. This may sound familiar! Pro wrestling is essentially an aesthetic business built on cool images. The reason Hulk Hogan was the biggest star in the world for years and years despite not being anywhere near the most talented wrestler was because he looked like a fucking Greek god. The reason people get off their feet for a Shooting Star Press despite it making no sense in the context of a fight is because it looks so dazzling. And the reason Bret Hart vs. Steve Austin at Wrestlemania 13 is one of the most iconic matches of all time, while their only marginally weaker effort at Survivor Series 1996 goes relatively unheralded, is because this match features Austin’s tortured, bloody face, absolutely refusing to give in. It’s an image so powerful it created the biggest superstar in the history of wrestling. Austin fights and fights and so nearly kicks free of the hold, but eventually he succumbs to the creeping fog of unconsciousness, and Bret Hart wins the I Quit Match! I award this match *****! Earlier in this series of reviews I said that the perfect match needs to be terrific as a stand alone match that can be enjoyed by any wrestling fan no matter how distant they are from the product, while simultaneously being equally as rewarding and preferably more so to someone who has followed the build-up to the match and become truly invested in its outcome. Well, voila! Austin and Hart does both those things so spectacularly well. I’m assuming everyone knows the backstory to this match, with Bret becoming disillusioned with the direction of the WWF and its fanbase, resentful of the adorable lavished on the immoral Shawn Michaels and the borderline psychotic Steve Austin. What happens in this match is Bret metamorphosing from a beloved fan favourite into a despicably, whiny heel without changing a single aspect of his character, and while that’s remarkable to see out of context, I’d imagine it would be even more compelling and rewarding for fans who genuinely adored Bret and perhaps even shared his concerns about the modernising WWF product. When people say Bret Hart isn’t charismatic, this performance should be pointed at, and a follow up question might be “what other wrestler has ever achieved a feat as remarkable as this? To reinvent himself without reinventing himself? And kickstart one of the best angles in WWF history while doing so? And simultaneously give his opponent the final push he needed into inevitable superstardom? Heck, just show the aftermath of the match where he’s stomping up the aisle, defiantly slapping the hands of his remaining supporters and barking abuse at anyone who questions him. It’s just an astonishing performance by Bret. An astonishing performance by Austin as well, of course- while Bret faced the tough task of radically reforming his character while keeping it exactly the same, Stone Cold had to come across as a sympathetic figure while also being completely unsympathetic and uncaring about everyone around him. He realised better than anyone at the time that what wrestling fans wanted more than anything from their heroes was an authentic toughness, and focused on positively exuding it! So, it’s two phenomenal performances, it’s a phenomenal angle that kickstarted a phenomenal angle, and it’s a phenomenal match. Is it the best match ever? Impossible to say! Is it the best match in Wrestlemania history? … yes. It’s a wonderful piece of work and contributes more to the lore of ‘Mania than any other match apart from Hogan-Andre, while being several times more immediately entertaining than that one.
MATCH 6- CHICAGO STREET FIGHT- THE LEGION OF DOOM & AHMED JOHNSON VS. THE NATION OF DOMINATION
The rulebreakers are represented by Faarooq, Crush, Savio Vega, and the usual array of assorted well wishers, including PG-13 and a young D-Lo Brown. The announcers are excited because the fan favourites have brought a kitchen sink, rather than everything but one. As a result of this, the popular saying was changed to “they threw everything but the giant space moths at them.”
This match is just utter mayhem! Ahmed sets the tone by leaping over the guardrail and into Crush in the front row. A skinny young Colt Cabana makes a semi-famous cameo, attacking Road Warrior Hawk from his seat by the entrance aisle! Meanwhile, Animal tries to piledrive Faarooq through a table, but it doesn’t break up and ends up looking messy as anything. Crush and Ahmed continue their personal battle by exchanging trash can shots, and the former comes out on top. Vega tries to choke the life out of Ahmed with a noose, which is just uncomfortable to watch. Faarooq then does the same thing to Hawk. It makes my skin crawl, it does. TAFKA Ron Simmons redeems himself by, at the hands of a revitalised Hawk, taking a startling fall from the top rope right to the floor Yikes! Hawk then disorients a large swathe of the Nation with a fire extinguisher. All the survivors try to beat up Ahmed, but the L.O.D make the save. Ahmed and Hawk grab a 2×4 and drive it into Crush, and that is enough for a rather anticlimactic three count. ***. The finish was underwhelming and the noose spots were a bit tasteless considering people are still actually put to death that way. In places though this was a terrific, totally unhinged brawl, but it also felt quite coherent and easy to follow. A wild and zany brawl that continued the development of a style that would underpin the Attitude Era.
MATCH 7- WWF CHAMPIONSHIP- SYCHO SID VS. THE UNDERTAKER
Shawn Michaels joins the announce team for the duration of the match and is not especially annoying! Also, Bret Hart makes an appearance before the match begins to rant at both men and claim that he deserves to be the WWF Champion. Sid eventually tires of his presence and drops him with a powerbomb! From there, Undertaker attacks him from behind, getting the match underway.
‘Taker beats Sid across the ring, before crashing into him with a corner splash. Old School connects! However, Sid then clamps on a bizarrely timed bearhug, sapping all the life from the match just as it’s getting going. Once that tedious hold is finally broken, the champ clotheslines the challenger out to the floor- but the Deadman lands on his feet! Sid retaliates by clotheslining him again, and this time Taker goes head over heels across the announce table. That begins an impromptu tour of the ringside area for the Phenom, as he meets the guardrail, the announce table again, and then the ringpost. In the ring, a brief Taker comeback is stopped by a powerslam for a two count, and then a leg drop gets another two. Say what you want about Sid, but he could do a heck of a leg drop until they started to deform his feet. The challenger starts a proper comeback by throwing Sid out to the floor and into the front row! They exchange punches while segregated by the barricade. Taker comes out on the better end of it, but back in the ring Sid starts hitting all these axe handles. He heads to the top rope, maybe for another axe handle, we’ll never know, because Undertaker throws him to the mat! But his attempt at the Tombstone is countered by Sid with a Tombstone Piledriver of his own! He even covers like ‘Taker tends to, but only gets two out of it. Sycho throws his foe back to the floor, and at this point Bret Hart decides to get involved, whacking Sid with a chair! He’s restrained by a swarm of officials, while Undertaker shows no remorse in driving the champion into the ring post. A chokeslam back in the ring only secures two though. A flying clothesline misses and Sid tries for the powerbomb, but Hart is like a man possessed in his quest to force a title change, and hops on the apron to provide a distraction. Sid tries to swat him away but Bret snaps his neck on the ropes, and the Sycho flails backwards into a Tombstone Piledriver to crown a new WWF Champion! * ½. They tried hard and Bret Hart’s interference was exciting, but this still wasn’t very good. It’s similar to the Diesel match from the previous year, but with a serious lack of pizzazz. Sid controlled much of the match which wasn’t a good idea, his manoeuvres didn’t look as dangerous as even Kevin Nash’s. Taker looked impressive in fits and starts and his title win was a nice moment, but it doesn’t redeem this match much.
