Jerry Lawler: King Of The Ring
Considering his “The King” moniker, it makes sense that Lawler has had so many matches at the King Of The Ring events.
Lawler’s first match at the PPV was in 1994 when he took on “Rowdy” Roddy Piper in the main event. Despite being great talkers, the match was poor. The finish involved some random Roddy Piper fan, a badly-executed back suplex, and an awkward pin. As Bruce Prichard put it: “I thought that they would…tear it down in an old school way and instead it was just kind of old.” It headlined over the KOTR tournament because who cares about it anyway, nobody could ever make a PPV around that premise(!)
The next year, he wrestled Bret Hart in a Kiss My Foot match, after which “The King” ended up with a “Hitman”’s hoof shoved down his throat. It really speaks volumes about the state of the WWF at the time that this was the best match of the card, even in spite of the bizarre stipulation.
During The Ultimate Warrior’s 1996 return, he feuded with Lawler. After the build-up largely surrounded by Warrior’s magazine and university, the two-faced off at KOTR. The Memphis legend got in pretty much all the offense, about 90% of which was chokeholds. Warrior even got up from a piledriver before Jerry did. UW won with a running shoulder block – he could not be bothered to even do a Warrior Splash. Oof, bad.
1997 saw Mankind face Lawler in the KOTR semi-final. Foley did all he could to get the PPV match over with unnecessary bumps but the result was forthcoming and the match had no backstory so the crowd just did not care.
“The King Of Memphis”’s final PPV match contribution to the event was in 1999 when he refereed a tag match pitting his son Brian Christopher and Scott Taylor (Too Much, who would later become Too Cool) against Al Snow and Head. Lawler counted the pin when Christopher pinned Head using a bottle of Head & Shoulders so the future Grandmaster Sexay pinned the ‘shoulders’. It is about as good as it sounds.
Randy Savage: Uncensored
There is little doubt that “Macho Man” is one of the best to ever lace up a pair of boots but Uncensored lacked pomp and circumstance in terms of match quality. Despite standing across the ring from great workers like John Tenta, Ric Flair, Arn Anderson, Kevin Sullivan, Chris Benoit, The Giant, Roddy Piper, and Lex Luger – Savage lacks a good bout at the event.
Working backwards, Randy’s last match at the PPV was in 1998. Rated –1 and ½ stars by Dave Meltzer, this was a very one-dimension cage match. Slow and plodding, it was further ruined by a nonsensical finish. Everyone’s favorite main eventer The Disciple (Brutus Beefcake) got involved and caused a no contest result. Savage was saved from the two-on-one beatdown by Sting who “Macho Man” assaulted and walked off, not aligning with Hogan. Not even the world title match, it main evented over Sting vs Scott Hall. As Wrestling Classic Reviews’ Paul Matthews summed it up, “This wasn’t good. It was mindless brawling and had no finish. The action was punching, whipping, and ramming each other into the cage. It wasn’t interesting. Then the non-finish killed it. What a disappointing main event.”
The previous year, Savage was in cahoots with Hogan in the nWo. In an 11-man four-on-four-on-three WarGames match, the faction fought Team WCW and Team Piper in a needlessly overcomplicated bout that very much took away from the WarGames premise – each team had something on the line if they won. Messy and disorganized, Savage himself played a small role in the match, not scoring any eliminations until the first one from his team out after a Lex Luger Torture Rack. Although WarGames matches are enjoyable, this one was proof that if a concept is not broken, do not fix it and ranks in the lower echelon of WarGames bouts.
1996’s PPV match was a comic spectacle. In this, Hogan and Savage teamed up to defeat eight other men in a Doomsday cage. The two best workers – Ric Flair and Arn Anderson – were dealt with early and even then limited in the match’s format to simple strikes. In addition, the match featured powder and frying pans as weaponry as if it was a deleted scene from a 1960s episode of Batman. Most confusingly, despite featuring immobile and one-time workers like Z-Gangsta (Zeus) and The Ultimate Solution (previously The Final Solution), it ended after pinning Ric Flair: the then-world champion. Guys, you had seven other blokes to protect the face of your company. Utterly preposterous.
The first event in 1995 pitted Savage against Avalanche. Although both were strong workers in their own right, the action moved at a lumbering pace. As the solo PPV debut of Savage, this really was not the way to kick off his career in WCW. Like in the aforementioned Hogan match, despite being at Uncensored and in a No Rules match, the match was ruled a DQ after interference. That said, we got to see Ric Flair in drag so it was not a lost cause.
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