Sophia Michaels
Previously on Jesus Christ, Superstars: WWF Champion Bret ‘Hitman’ Hart took a break from trying to figure out whether or not there’s ever been a right time to say goodbye to perform SLAM JAM, currently the fourth biggest song in the United Kingdom.
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Here’s what you missed 28 years ago on WWF Superstars for January 2, 1993.
Jobbers Of The Week
This week’s most notable jobber (to the stars) is The Berzerker, which is what’s left after you sign a 6-foot-8 wrestler, Vince McMahon’s best idea is, “I don’t know, a Viking that wins by count-out?” and you wait a few months. If you’ve ever studied Norse warrior tradition or played The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, you know a “berzerker” are the fighters who “transformed into an animal” by putting on animal skins for battles and fighting in a wild trance. They also sometimes transform into actual bears and ruin your dinner party. This Berzerker doesn’t do any of that. He’s Bruiser Brody filtered through a 1993 WWF lens, which means he dresses like Hagar the Horrible and is largely ineffectual unless he’s trying to murder a zombie with a sword. It could be worse. He could be playing basketball.
This week The Berzerker can be seen Making Fuck with Mr. Perfect, who sends him back to Parts Unknown, Scandinavia, in about five minutes with a Perfect Plex. Fun note: In a previous life, The Berzerker teamed up with a masked man named THE GRAPPLER to form “The Breakfast Club,” a Portland wrestling tag team who’d pin you and pour milk and Cheerios on your chest. That’s a real thing! It’s like they put it together with a random gimmick generator. “A ninja teams with an abominable snowman and they call themselves FOOTLOOSE, because after they pin you they cut off your foot.”
George Anderson returns this week, sadly without his baked potato jacket, to lie down and have his rib cage flattened by Yokozuna’s murderous taint. I’m not sure we could rely on George to get through a stiff breeze without turning over and showing his belly, much less defeat a 600-pound sumo champion whose finisher is using his falling ass to turn your entire torso into roadkill.
This young Michael Bolton in a Puma jacket is Mitch Bishop, the jobber whose name 100% sounds like a Jake Peralta alias. “I’m MITCH BISHOP, a pastor who became a professional wrestler to infiltrate the business and uncover the identity of the WWF Superstar who killed his wife! I love mullets, Puma, and getting kneed in the chest.” He’s got some sweet baby blue gear under the jacket with boots that don’t match, making him the world’s worst Ric Flair. He loses to the devastating Normal Knee Drop* of Damien Demento, who is just about to comfortably sink into his plot in the early ’90s WWF character graveyard beside The Berzerker.
*I say “normal knee drop,” but as has been pointed out in the comments section a few times, the idea was that he’d “loaded” the knee pad to make it hurt more. He’d usually “load” it by turning the pad around and dropping a knee with the straps in the back, which … I don’t know if that makes more or less sense than putting a wrench or whatever between your kneecap and the pad, and still kneeing someone with the padding. This is the one part of Damien Demento that doesn’t work!
The highlight of the match is when Jerry Lawler uses “The Magistrator” — a John Madden-style telestrator that allows him to draw pictures on the screen — to reveal who is sending bad brain vibes to Demento:
Here’s a template you can use to draw your own. For example, what if the voices he hears in his head are Randy Orton? What if they’re Super Calo? I don’t know, have fun with it.
Dave Sigfrids steps into the ring without his tag team partner, Dave Roy, to get his head vertically flattened by the brah Crush. Between the hair, the compactness and the jacked physique I’d believe it if you told me he was Kenny Omega’s biological father. His biological father who is deeply disappointed in him for getting into video games instead of World War 2 movies and girls. He might also be a young Tim Storm. No amount of pressing bench can prepare you for an affable Hawaiian squeezing your brain like a stress ball, though, so he loses in short order.
Crush, however, has bigger fish to fry, brudda.
Two For Flinching Of The Week
The World Wrestling Federation is still cool with a clown randomly wandering into their arena and doing clown shit to people against their will, so here’s Doink popping in after Marty Jannetty’s victory over Tom Stone to fake him out with an empty bucket. The last time this happened Marty thought the bucket was full of confetti and got drenched, so no matter what he does, he loses.
Crush doesn’t play like that though, brah. When Doink shows up after his match to boop him in the snoot with a rubber ball on a string, Crush lets it slide … but when Doink boops a fan’s snoot, Crush full-on takes him by the arm like a mom and is like, “NO. STOP IT.” I wish this had been Doink’s last-ever appearance, with the payoff being that sometimes you can just tell someone to stop being an asshole and they’ll stop. Especially if they’re afraid you’re going to use your bare hands to deflate their brain like a whoopie cushion. Crush describes this later as a “stiff warning,” which is the kind of law you need to lay down when snoots are being egregiously booped.
New Announce Team Of The Week
Macho Man Randy Savage joins the announce team this week, much to the chagrin of Jerry Lawler, presumably to warm up before Raw airs its first episode a little over a week later. Savage on joining the team: “I LIKE IT … A NEW TYPE SITUATION, THERE’S A RUMBLIN’ GOING ON, how do you like THAT!” Sure!
Where’s Bobby Heenan, you ask? Why, preparing for the triumphant arrival of NARCISSUS.
All we know for now is that the “Narcissus” is debuting at the Royal Rumble, and Heenan’s 100% convinced that the men and women of the WWF Universe will instantaneously drop trou the second he appears Bobby Heenan has never sold anything with the ferocity of Narcissus’ beauty, which is super funny when you realize he’s talking about Lex Luger. Even at Luger’s peak, he kinda looked like the muscular version of Pepe the Frog. His body is a package in toto, though, so tune in to the 1993 Royal Rumble knowing a Sense8 orgy might break out as soon as he steps through the ropes.
Mean Gene uses his time in the Control Center to crack open a dictionary and inform us that a narcissist is, “A conceited self centered person. Thinking too highly of one’s self. And, unduly preoccupied with one’s own appearance.” Where was this kind of service when I was googling Scandinavia to talk about The Berzerker?
The Numbers Don’t Lie, And They Spell Disaster For You At Sacrifice Of The Week
In addition to that hot, adult Narcissus content, the Royal Rumble will also feature the first WWF pay-per-view match of the legendary Steiner Brothers thanks to a contract dispute with WCW’s Bill Watts. They’re going up against The Beverly Brothers, which if we were talking about the 1992 WCW Steiner Brothers would end with Beau and Blake being suplexed into paste and laid to waste with some top rope bulldoggery. I imagine wrestling the early ’90s Steiners would feel like being in a car accident, as opposed to the late ’90s Steiners, who were IN car accidents.
Scott’s still more into mullet care than lifting weights at this point (although he’s still got that Big Poppa Pump foundation of fit madness), so the most interesting thing he says in the Steiners’ little “choose me” promo is pronouncing “Beverly Brothers” as BEVERLYBLUTHERS. He has no idea what power he possesses.
Next Week Of The Week
The Royal Rumble is almost upon us, Raw lurks just ahead, and two poor chumps get completely Steinerized. See you then!
Written by: Uproxx
