Gleed's Retro Raw Blog: February 1993 Raw - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

By Haydn Gleed

What you should watch from Raw’s in February 1993

I really enjoyed the Brutus Beefcake and Money Inc program. Based on a real life situation, there was genuine emotion from the crowd and this viewer when he made his comeback, just to be blindsided and attacked. Really good work all round.

Hulk Hogan returned with a pre-taped video and then a live promo, and they were both very newsworthy and intriguing. In the pre-taped segment, his comments were very revealing about him as a person, and also how the WWF were trying to spin the controversy that Hogan was involved in. The in-ring promo included a huge babyface turn for Jimmy Hart, so you need to go out of your way to see this episode, which is available on WWE Network.

There were a lot of squash matches this month, but they were used well to make the winners look strong. Coming out of the month of February, Yokozuna looked like an unstoppable monster.

What you should avoid from Raw’s in February 1993:

On the February 15 edition, there was a 16-man battle royal, and it was godawful. As I said in my verdict in the review of that particular show, there just felt there was no consequence to this match, so it was really hard to get emotionally involved in what was happening. The action was so bad that even Vince had to comment on it. Although it did get better when it came down to the final four, it was ruined by the most illogical entry and subsequent self-inflicted elimination by the Giant González. Not only were we told before the match that he was not being allowed to enter, but he waited until there was only three people left in the ring before coming in. Is that even allowed in a battle royal? If so, why don’t more people do this? Then he eliminated two people, and then jumped over the top rope himself to allow Razor Ramon to win…..ummm okay. I hated this whole mess like you wouldn’t believe on so many levels.

Although the squash matches served their purpose, there wasn’t one stand out match during the whole month. The two longest matches were the Battle Royal, which you may have guessed I couldn’t stand, and a six-man tag match, which although decent, didn’t really need to go the 16 minutes that it went.

Who Is That Wrestler?

Brutus Beefcake: Brutus Beefcake, real name Edward Leslie, began wrestling at the side of Hulk Hogan, and they were billed as brothers in their early careers. He briefly had a run Bill Watt’s mid-south territory before being called to the WWF. He started his WWF career as a heel singles wrestler in the early '80s, having notable feuds with David Sammartino and Hulk Hogan with Johnny Valiant as his manager.

In 1985, he teamed with Greg "The Hammer" Valentine and became an awesome heel tag team by the name of The Dream Team. Leslie was limited in the ring, and Valentine was able to hold up the in-ring portion of their matches. This was during the golden age of tag team wrestling with teams such as The Hart Foundation, The British Bulldogs, the Rougeau Brothers, etc. They won the tag team titles in 1985 which they held for eight months before losing them to The British Bulldogs at WrestleMania 2. The duo would continue to tag together for a year until WrestleMania when Valentine walked out on Brutus. Later that night, Roddy Piper beat Adrian Adonas, and as the stipulation was that he would have to have his hair cut if he lost, Brutus came out to do the honour, hence giving him the barber nickname.

As a singles babyface, Beefcake would have notable feuds with the likes of Honky Tonk Man, Randy Savage, Zeus, and Mr Perfect. In 1990, as he alluded to in the promos this month, he had a near fatal parasailing accident. The story goes that Brutus was helping a friend get ready for takeoff, when the driver of the motorboat pulled away after accidentally taking a cue to start. As a result, he was struck the face, causing severe damage. He was out of action for close to three years before making his return during this month of February 1993. While he was out, he had a brief interview segment called The Barber Shop, with it’s most famous interview being the break up of the Rockers, when Shawn Michaels threw Marty Jannetty through the glass window on the set.

Soon after the WrestleMania 9 match with Hulk Hogan against Money Inc, Leslie disappeared from WWF television. He later popped up as a sidekick to Hogan when he made his jump to WCW. During his 5-6 year run with WCW he played "Brother Bruti", "The Butcher", "The Booty Man" and "The Disciple". Probably his most memorable moment in WCW, for better or for worse, was the angle between Hulk Hogan, Ultimate Warrior and himself. As he was a lackey to Hogan, often cheating to help Hogan defeat his opponent, Warrior saw him as a way to get to Hogan, so kidnapped him and brainwashed him. Yeah, it was a "good" as it sounds.

After he left WCW in June 1999, he semi-retired but wrestled occasionally for the likes of ECW, World Impact Wrestling, LPW amongst others. He made headlines in 2004 when a white powder was found in his possession while he was working in a Boston subway, which caused an anthrax scare. He insists that the substance was merely aspirin, but he checked himself into rehab. Much to the delight of the old school fans, the Dream Team reunited in 2009 for the PWO show. He has also been a coach on Hulk Hogan's Celebrity Championship Wrestling in 2009.

Scott Taylor: Scott Taylor, real name Scott Garland, who was a jobber losing to Bam Bam Bigalow in February 1993, is better known Scotty 2 Hotty, inventor of the worm. Scott was actually with WWF/E from 1991 up until 2007. He will always be remembered fondly by me as part of the tag team Too Cool, with Brian Christopher, and then Rikishi, which was just a really fun undercard gimmick.

The act was never going to be a main event act, but just a very good piece of the tapestry that makes an entertaining wrestling show. After Brian Christopher left the company in 2001, Scotty tagged with Albert for a time, before reuniting with Rikishi in 2003. He was kept around the company as a glorified jobber until his release in 2007. They recently teamed again on Old School Raw, and Too Cool reunited again last week at the NXT Arrival show to put over NXT Tag Champions The Ascension.

Stat Attack:

-There was two hours and eight minutes of Raw when you take out the commercials during the month of February 1993.

-Roughly 61 minutes of the Raw shows in February 1993 was taken up by wrestling matches.

-There were 12 matches in total, with the first Raw of February having the most matches with five.

-Tatanka was the most active wrestler of the February 1993 Raw TV shows, with a match against Damien Demento, participated in the 16-man battle royal and teamed with The Nasty Boys against Shawn Michaels and The Beverley Brothers.

-The longest match of the month was the 16 Man Battle Royal with 15:03 of action. The six-man tag was only beaten by a second, as their match finished in 15:02.

-50 percent of the matches during February 1993 would be classified as squash matches.

-There were two screwy finishes, firstly with the 16 man battle royal, and then later that same night between Brutus and The Million Dollar Man when IRS interfered with the briefcase. These both occurred on the February 15, 1993 edition.

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