By Haydn Gleed

What you should watch from Raw’s in March 1993

Bret Hart vs Fatu was by far the best match of March 1993 on Raw at least. Bret Hart was positioned as the fighting champion taking on all comers, and he was made to look strong by essentially beating both the HeadShrinkers and their manager Afa. Really good technical match, which is surprising since Fatu would later become Rikishi, but the psychology was brilliant as well. I really got a kick out of the moment when Bret feigned that he had legitimately hurt his knee while running the ropes, and then rolled Fatu up for a close two count.

I really enjoyed the jobber matches, as they put over either the aggression of the “star” or some evil characteristic of the heel. Lex Luger against P J Walker was especially my favourite, as Lex looked brutal in this match and put over his arrogant cocky persona. It helped that PJ bumped his ass off all around the ring as well.

What you should avoid from Raw’s in March 1993

Rob Bartlett, need I say more? I will anyways. The Elvis impression I could tolerate, but the Vince McMahon impression simply ruined the show for me. It was not funny, didn’t make any sense on any level and I literally nearly stopped the show playing. In the end I did actually have to mute the audio as it was driving me insane. Then on the final Raw of March, he did this bit with the bigger Raw sign ladies, and it made my skin crawl.

As any of you, dear readers, would know, as wrestling fans, we are not ashamed to say we like watching Pro Wrestling. However, when you ask your mates, or your other half, to sit down and try watching this wrestling stuff with you, if you got a 30 something overweight man, trying to stick his tongue down the throat of a larger 40-50 year old lady, you do get embarrassed. This is what Rob Bartlett made me feel while watching and listening to his commentary during this month, and I was sat on my own the majority of the time.

The build for WrestleMania 9 was very ho-hum. It started off with a bang in the early part of the month with Bret Hart showing off his skills, and regular promo’s from the Mega Maniacs and Money Inc. But towards the end of the month, there was hardly any mention of WrestleMania outside the studio parts with Mean Gene. I know Raw wasn’t the same show that it is today, and in fact Superstars was considered the A show, but you would still expect more of a build than what we got.

A minor bad thing about this month, was that there was a lot of stuff that was sort of entertaining, but not good. The entrance for The Bushwhackers, the one night angle with the Model, Doink’s antics the list goes on an on. They didn’t annoy me, they were decent, but as an overall impression of the month, nothing really got me excited on the shows like that had in January 1993 and February 1993.

Whatever happened to that wrestler?

P J Waker: P J Walker, real name Peter Polaco, was the jobber who put over Lex Luger on an episode of Raw in March 1993. You guys may know him better as Aldo Montoya or Justin Credible. He was trained in 1992 in the infamous Hart Dungeon in Calgary, Alberta Canada by Stu & Keith Hart. The Dungeon is famous for producing some of the best wrestlers the industry has ever known such as Bret & Owen Hart, Chris Jericho, Chris Benoit amongst many others.

He was hired as a jobber in early 1993 and stayed that way until 1994 when he was signed to a full time contract. He was saddled with a terrible gimmick due to his Portuguese heritage that was named Aldo Montoya. He wore a mask which was joked about backstage and in all fairness did look like a jock strap.

During his time in his initial run with the WWF, he befriended the members of the infamous The Kliq when Scott Hall took a liking to him. He had a number of feuds but was not being pushed as he felt and others felt he should have. He was granted a release in 1997 and went to work for ECW. Initially, he was a single’s wrestler who would have memorable feuds with Sabu, Tommy Dreamer, Jerry Lynn, and others. It was around this time that he shaved his head and started wearing more grunge type clothing that would come to define his character.

My personal favourite time of Justin Credible’s career was during the time he was tagging with Lance Storm as the Impact Players with manager Dawn Marie. The Impact Players won the ECW Tag Team Championship on two different occasions, but my favourite feud was when they were up against Tommy Dreamer and Sandman. In the last year of ECW’s existence, he won the ECW Championship from Tommy Dreamer and then had a feud with his long time tag partner Lance Storm.

When ECW folded in 2001, Justin was brought into the WWE, but due to many issues, never really had a high profile feud. Justin teamed up with X-Pac and Albert to create a new faction by the name of X-Factor, which I believe was originally supposed to be a WWE version of the Impact Players, but it never really went anywhere, and Justin once again left in 2002.

Between 2002 and 2006 Justin wrestled for a number of independent promotions such as Ring Of Honor, Wrestling X Society & TNA. He was again brought back into the fold in 2006 with the re-launch of the ECW brand. He only last in the company for three months.

Since then, he again wrestled on the independent circuit. In 2012, his personal demons caught up to him backstage at an Extreme Reunion show where he was found to be in no condition to perform. In the 2 years since that incident, he is one of the rare breed that has cleaned up his life. He writes a regular blog on his website Thejustincredible.com, as well as hosting a video and podcast both named Pro Wrestling 101.

Stat Attack

-On the four episodes of Raw in March 1993, there was a total of one hour and 31 minutes of Wrestling action.

-In total there was 17 matches meaning on average just over 4 wrestling matches per show, which lasted on average five minutes and 22 seconds.

-Bret Hart vs. Fatu was the longest match on the show with a match of 15 minutes and 6 minutes.

-This was the second longest match in Raw history up to this point.

-Doink, Money Inc, Tatanka, Bob Backlund, Papa Shango & Fatu (one single match and one as part of the Headshrinkers) all wrestled twice during the month. Fatu thanks to his Championship match with Bret Hart wins the most active wrestler with 24 minutes and 6 seconds of wrestling match time.

-Eight of the 17 matches were competitive matches, and nine of the matches were squash matches involving jobbers.

-Statistically, there is not one person on this planet who liked Rob Bartlett on commentary during March 1993 (I may have made up that stat).

If you have any feedback at all I would love to hear it. Send me an email to haydn.gleed@gmail.com. You can also hit my up on twitter @haydngleed or look for me on Facebook.

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