Classic Match: Alundra Blayze vs. Bull Nakano, SummerSlam ’94

RondaRousey.com’s Classic Match series takes a closer look at significant and super cool matches from wrestling history.

On August 29, 1994, two women from opposite sides of the world entered the ring in Chicago’s United Center, ready to fight for the same prize: the WWF Women’s Championship. Alundra Blayze and Bull Nakano’s yearlong feud would make this title feel important and their match at SummerSlam would go down in history as a bonafide classic.

The Feud

Blayze had a level of skill, athleticism, and hardworking attitude that befitted a defending champion. She had been the first non-Japanese wrestler to work for the notoriously hardcore All Japan Women’s Pro Wrestling (AJW) and had been chosen to revitalize the WWF women’s division in the mid-nineties. She won her belt in a tournament, defeating six other women to become the first holder of the reinstated title.

Her challenger, Bull Nakano, was brought over by Luna Vachon to defeat her longtime rival when she hadn’t been able to get the job done herself. Nakano was confident and imposing with her towering dyed mohawk and frightening makeup. And she didn’t just look intimidating: She had submission wrestling expertise on her side and over two hundred pounds that she knew how to use to dominate smaller opponents.

Like Blayze, Nakano had a history in AJW. She’d started wrestling there at age 15 and won her first championship the next year. Nakano then showed up in WWF early in her career as one-half of The Devils of Japan with her mentor Dump Matsumoto. Flashforward to this feud and Nakano’s WWF return was as an AJW legend; and like her opponent, she was a maker of women’s wrestling history, having been the first World Women’s Champion of Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (CMLL) just two years prior.

Going into the match, Blayze knew she had Nakano’s size, technical skill, and ruthlessness to deal with, along with Vachon in Nakano’s corner, ready to cause trouble. Blayze would have her work cut out for her to retain her title.

The Match

We get the idea of what type of opponents our champ is up against before the match even starts. Little girls give both women flowers, and Vachon throws Nakano’s at Blayze before scurrying out of the ring. On commentary, Vince McMahon notes that Blayze is an “outstanding athlete, taking nothing away from Nakano, who certainly has a decided weight advantage.” When Nakano forgoes a sportsmanlike handshake to kick Blayze in the stomach, Jerry Lawler says, “What I like about Bull, she don’t waste any time.”

Nakano really doesn’t waste a second. She both fights like a hoss and fights dirty, dominating the match early. She tortures Blayze with submissions and gets several nearfalls before the other woman lands any offense. But Blayze keeps fighting, trying to out-strategize and use her superior speed against her opponent to make up for that size disadvantage. Blayze eventually wins like the skilled veteran she is when—after dodging a top rope leg drop—she takes out Vachon on the apron and hits Nakano with a German suplex with a bridge for the pinfall.

Nakano would eventually win the Women’s Championship from Blazye at the Big Egg Wrestling Universe inter-promotional crossover wrestling event at the Tokyo Dome in November 1994. Their feud and the WWF Women’s division would fizzle out soon after, and both would head to WCW to clash again in 1995. But the legacy of this straight up great match would survive, and it’s been one that supporters of women’s wrestling have always held up as an example that women can deliver the same quality of matches as men can when given the opportunity.

You can go back and revisit this match (and the entirety of WWF SummerSlam 1994) on the WWE Network.