WWF Sunday Night Slam, Youngstown, OH
A request! EIGHT DAYS away from SummerSlam! It’s a two-hour special on the USA Network from Youngstown! The city of cities!
The WWF’s women’s division of this period had talent available and, to some degree, an effort to bring in real top talent from Japan like Nakano and Aja Kong and whatnot. But you could tell (1) Vince wasn’t sincerely interested in a women’s division, and (2) Vince really did not actually care for the real top talent from Japan like Nakano and Aja Kong. He did not like their wrestling style and he did not like their, well, point of origin.
Randy Savage liked Bull, though. He’d go, “BULL NAKA-NAKA-NAKA-NO!” He wasn’t saying the name right but he was enthusiastic.
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Morgan’s already in the ring for the match, and Nakano (using the Orient Express theme because of course) is managed by Luna Vachon. I am, in general, Looking Respectfully.
Heidi Lee is announced at 123 lbs, Bull at 220. Savage says he tried to ask out Bull Naka-naka-naka-no and Luna on a double date, “but they refused me. I was lookin’ forward to it!” Randy knew what was up. Only dude in the WWF with fully functioning eyes. Bull’s on her way to challenge “Alundra Blayze” at SummerSlam.
In the early moments, Morgan busts out close to what we’d now call a poison rana; it doesn’t spike but rolls back into a pin attempt, however weak a pin attempt, since it’s just her kinda leaning against Nakano’s ass in the end.
Morgan could work, wildly underrated and even largely unknown today. She breaks out some terrific stuff in any match you watch of hers. Nice rolling short arm scissors. Nakano slows it down with a dragon sleeper resthold.
Ross relates that some believe Nakano could beat many of the men in the WWF, and Savage says he’s certain he could beat her two out of three falls. When Ross goes over her fame and regard in Japan, Savage says maybe three out of five.
Nakano drops Morgan out of a choke, then drops the big leg for two. Bull works a modified Boston crab then pretzels Morgan up starting from a sharpshooter position. Heidi sent outside and Luna gets a clothesline in for kicks.
Nakano was a truly great wrestler but being honest you can see why Vince may not have taken to her. She’s working a lot of Interesting Submissions here, which just is not a favorite style of McMahon and never has been. Even the “technician” types he really took to over the years — Bret, Eddie, Benoit, I’ll include Angle so you don’t think I forgot your favorite wrestler, Danielson, those types — didn’t focus so much on “the mat game” like Bull is in this match. They brawled a lot, they kept the pace up, they had other stuff they were doing that really made up the bulk of their matches; the “technical master” stuff was great dippin’ sauce for the meat-and-potatoes work that Vince likes, you could hype it as their specialty but not have it make up the majority of what they did. A wacky submission that isn’t a finisher is nothing more to McMahon than the average chinlock or side headlock. If you listen to his calls on Bob Backlund matches even before he took over the company, you can hear a snide dislike for Backlund’s general approach to wrestling. It comes from Vince the Fan as much as Vince the Promoter and Businesscunt.
Morgan fires up with a sunset flip and a dropkick, flies with a crossbody off the top for two. The pep in the match is pretty much all from Heidi Lee, and Bull doesn’t do enough with her size and power advantage to counter that for WWF TV. It would just get a lot more reaction if she were hurling Heidi around instead of working holds. Again, it’s not bad wrestling, but it’s wrestling that won’t maximize her potential in this place.
The guillotine leg drop finish is, of course, spectacular and awesome.
An alright match! It’s silly to want everyone to work the same, so that’s not what I mean, really, though I guess that is sort of the end result of saying “when you’re this much bigger, you should really wrestle like you’re this much bigger.” Sitting in holds just doesn’t spark the imagination of The WWF Universe, but chucking Heidi Lee Morgan around the ring would have. Morgan is a potentially great opponent for Nakano, but here she is mostly a good one.
It was the sort of match on 1994 TV that really did stand out, though, and more and more I have a deep appreciation for TV matches that stood out from this time period, because they were pretty rare with the WWF especially.
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