Mr. Perfect v Tito Santana (WWF Saturday Night's Main Event, 7/28/90)
I thought this was bonkers great. I'd seen it before and I know I liked it a bunch then too, but it never landed like this. I'd probably put it in Tito's top 5 - maybe top 3 - WWF matches, and honestly I might have it as Perfect's #2 behind the Bret match from King of the Ring. At the very least it's my favourite heel Mr. Perfect performance; maybe my favourite heel Hennig performance, period. I guess I'd forgotten this having not really watched much of him for a while, but man that guy was an ATHLETE. Early on he does an amazing bit of stooging by scooting backwards all the way across the ring on his knees and it was honest to god as quick as I've ever seen anyone do that. I can't imagine three quarters of the WWF roster at the time would be able to RUN quicker than Perfect did this.
I've been sort of whatever on WWF Hennig because the bumping can be too much even for me, but this was him at his preposterous best. One of the criticisms of Flair doing the upside down corner bump all the way into his 80s is that, while very much an ATHLETE in his own right (up until he was like 72 or whatever), he never really had the physical speed or athleticism to pull that bump off convincingly. To make it look like it was actual momentum that took him up and over in the corner and not him doing it on purpose. Now on the surface that's sort of a ridiculous criticism as this is pro wrestling and just about everything is dumb and done on purpose, but also because with that bump it doesn't really matter how fast a person is -- from a physics standpoint, going upside down in the corner like that is nigh on impossible without some measure of intent from the person doing it. But still, old man Flair taking that bump looked much less impressive than, say, prime Shawn Michaels, because Michaels was a fucking ATHLETE and hit the turnbuckles at a hundred miles an hour. It looked more realistic when Michaels did it, while we still acknowledge that as a bump it's never actually realistic at all just by virtue of the physics and biomechanics involved in pulling it off (and also because it's pro wrestling). Perfect takes a bunch of bumps in this that would ordinarily look like nonsense, and to be fair a couple still do, but he performs them with such explosiveness and timing that someone less agile attempting them would look plain stupid. It's not easy to make it look like you actually got punched in the face so hard you were knocked over the top rope, yet Perfect made that specific bump look damn near effortless, like it was Tito's strike that caused it and not Hennig just fucking yoinking himself up and over the ropes. It was kind of remarkable watching it from the perspective of someone who trains people to jump high for a living. I would very much like to know how he programmed his explosive training, for example.
Beyond the bumping I thought his overall selling was excellent. Tito doesn't spend a ton of time working the leg as such, but he does apply the figure-four for a visual nearfall and Hennig's limpy selling ruled. It wasn't even so much that he was selling the leg specifically; the limp was part of the larger problem of him being punched out his boots and that he was on jelly legs to begin with. And besides, the REAL star of leg selling in this match was yer man Earl Hebnar. He takes one of the more believable ref' bumps I've seen when Perfect collides all awkward with his knee and it looks like Earl about eviscerated his ACL. He makes three slow-crawling nearfall counts that Perfect kicks out of at the very last millisecond and the crowd are just molten hot for all of it. Hebar actually makes the count while clutching his broken leg, flopping and squirming across the ring like a landbound trout, slapping the mat in agony afterwards, trying to pull himself up by the ropes to soldier on, he was damn near turning purple! Like what the fuck, Earl?! People are championing HHH as some saviour of modern wrestling and we're letting old man HBK teach folk how to act when the WWE had Earl Hebnar on their books for like sixty years ready to show people how you actually do the professional wrestling. And just to round out the cast, this was one of the best Bobby Heenan managerial shows ever. He had so many awesome little moments of coaching from the floor, reminding Perfect that Santana needs to beat HIM and not the other way around, looking like a man whose nerves are about to put him in the ground with every close call. There was a brilliant bit where Perfect had Tito in a neck crank and, from behind the ref's back, Heenan asked if Perfect wanted him to run distraction to allow for some blatant choking. Of course Perfect says yes, Heenan gets in Hebnar's ear and Perfect chokes Santana with two hands around the throat.
The finish was also very perfect (yes yes I am hilarious). Tito lowers his head for a back body drop and Perfect immediately shoots in for the Perfect Plex. I'm dead ass certain Perfect had won matches in that exact way before, maybe even against Tito, but this time it's scouted and Tito reverses it into a small package. Perfect then reverses that into his own cradle and you can just feel the crowd's heart sink when the ref' (a replacement referee by the end, as we tip our hat to Earl Hebnar) counts three. Tito comes out of this looking great because he almost certainly would've won had the referee not been crippled, Perfect comes out looking tough as nails for surviving it all anyway, and smart and skilled enough to win clean as a sheet in the end. I loved this. I mean, I don't have a clue what a list of the greatest Intercontinental title matches would look like, but offhand this feels like it might be top 1.
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